Reviews

“The Church has 2,414 Canon Laws, and I never met one I liked …. I found the God epitomised in these laws to be harsh, legalistic and only reluctantly forgiving … The Code’s God is the antithesis of the God whom Jesus presented to us as our Father.”

After spending twenty years as a Roman Catholic Priest, William Kienzle left the church in 1974, largely because the diocese refused to marry divorcees.

He subsequently married a copy-editor to whom he’d announced his love a year before he left the priesthood (but he insisted this wasn’t the reason he left). He then found a job as editor of MPLS magazine in Minneapolis, most of which he and his wife had to write themselves, often using the pen-names Mark Boyle and Fiona Lowther.

After two-and-a-half years he moved to Kalamazoo to become Assistant Director of the Center for Contemplative Studies, run by the Trappists, which was subsequently moved, lock, stock and barrel, to the University of Dallas in... (more)

A lot of people report what’s happened.  Only one man has the balls to report what hasn’t happened yet.
–  Next Week’s News Starring Andy Borowitz  www.borowitzreport.com

Andy Borowitz has won multiple awards for his humor.  He has produced successful programs for film and television, his daily internet column the Borowitz Report attracts millions of readers and is a leading source of political satire.  His satirical op-ed pieces permeate web, print and television media.  He is one of the most respected satirists living, and so it is a testament to the savagely fickle and judgmental world of the entertainment business to learn that Borowitz was unceremoniously fired from one of his earlier comedic writing gigs.  Why was he fired?  For not grasping the depth of characters of a television sitcom.

Early in his career Borowitz was briefly employed as a writer for the Facts of Life, a television sitcom... (more)

The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.
— from Wuthering Heights

She lived a short life and wrote one really good book.  Emily Bronte may have been the most talented writer of the three Bronte sisters.  Wuthering Heights was a milestone in Victorian romantic literature, with influence on narrative structure that we benefit from as readers today.  The novel’s themes of doomed love, passion and its elements of mystery and social commentary have made it an enduring masterpiece.  Unfortunately, when Emily was alive, she didn’t get the credit she was due.  Many critics believed the work was undisciplined and lacked effective control of the narrative.  The novel’s structure was viewed as thoughtless rather than complex.  Other critics, recognizing the power and passion of the work, claimed Emily Bronte could not possibly have written the book.  Skeptics of her capabilities... (more)