The Year of Firsts
Deanna Bennett's memoir of the first year after her husband Tom died, holiday by holiday, from the depths of sorrow to the start of a new life. A tribute and a review.
Tag: Grief
Writing through loss, and books that came out of it or were built to help other people through theirs.
2000sZombieland (2009) Review
Zombieland (2009) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A road movie with four people, a list of survival rules rendered on screen, and Woody Harrelson looking for a Twinkie. It is very funny for eighty minutes and…
2020sNomadland (2020) Review
Nomadland (2020) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Frances McDormand lives in a van among real people playing themselves, and the film is at its best whenever she is listening. What it will not do is name…
2020sThe MCU Phase 4 and Beyond (2021-present) Review
The MCU from Phase 4 onward rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Scoring every project I have seen puts Phase 4 at an average of 4.4 and Phase 5 at 2.67. The interesting part is not the…
2020sWandaVision (2021) Review
WandaVision (2021) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Three episodes of genuine formal invention, three of increasingly conventional plot, and a finale that answers a question the audience had stopped wanting answered. The sitcom pastiche is the…
2020sIronheart (2025) Review
Ironheart (2025) rates 1 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The series that closed Phase 5, three years after its protagonist was installed in a film that had other business. A character handed a show on the strength of…
FaithC.S. Lewis Day: The Argument With Tolkien
Lewis was an Oxford medievalist who became an unlikely broadcaster, wrote seven children's books in seven years, and produced a book about grief so raw he published it under a false name. His thirty-year argument with Tolkien about worldbuilding is…
Character DevelopmentWilliam Shatner’s Birthday: March 22 and the Man Who Went Up
Picard got a holiday from a background prop. Kirk got nothing, so March 22 is the closest anchor available. The reason it is worth marking has little to do with Star Trek: at 90 Shatner became the oldest person to…
GriefBehind the Book: Buttercup
I spent almost twenty years unable to write about my marriage to Claudia. The book only worked once I stopped telling it and let Buttercup, our cat, tell it instead.
GhostwritingCan a Ghostwriter Help Me Write About Losing My Spouse or Child?
A ghostwriter can help you write about losing a spouse or child, at your pace, with the person you lost at the center. Here's how grief memoirs are written, from someone who's lived it.
1970sBlacula (1972)
William Marshall plays a tragic vampire prince with Shakespearean dignity in this landmark Black-led horror film. Is Blacula as silly as its title?
2010sThe Babadook (2014)
Jennifer Kent's 2014 Australian grief horror. Essie Davis as widowed mother.