Raritania

Time and again I have been struck by the difference between people how are supposed to read literary classics, and the far less inspiring wa...

The entertainment press is, like the rest of the press, not famous for encouraging a long-term perspective. Slight ups and downs in the mark...

The dominance of the effects-powered science fiction and fantasy spectacle, and with it, the "summer tentpole," is typically trace...

Time and again I have been struck by the paucity of English-language writing on a major historical subject. Large patches of German history,...

I have often remarked here on the trend in the hugely important markets of East Asia (China is the world's second-biggest, Japan's t...

By the end of its fourth season, Game of Thrones became the most watched show on HBO ever . More watched, even, than the storied Sopranos...

Through the '80s and '90s, a typical year saw three R-rated films in the year's top ten earners at the American box office, and ...

Gamers have often held the view that Japanese and Western--e.g. American--role-playing games tend to differ significantly in style. (Indeed,...

When I started taking an interest in literature, I naturally found myself wondering just what made a novel, a novel. Certainly there is a ...

Much has been said of devices like the Kindle changing how we get our books. However, apart from the publicity given to independently publis...

Anyone who's spent much time trying to get published has probably been advised at some point to study the market. However, just like so ...

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD "It is very difficult to tell the truth," Leo Tolstoy remarks in War and Peace . He wrote these words in...

No literary work is ever perfect, and one need not retreat into fuzzy talk about human fallibility to understand why. The truth is that writ...

"Show, don't tell" is perhaps the most clichéd piece of writerly advice. It may also be the most useless . Yes, showing ha...

The top movie at the Japanese box office this year was the final Hayao Miyazaki movie, The Wind Rises . Of the top ten , eight were Japane...