A deep dive into the obscure 1983 horror film "The Keep," directed by Michael Mann and the slightly less obscure 1981 F. Paul Wilson novel it's based on. The premise is great: German soldiers occupying a keep in Romania during World War 2 get slaughtered by a supernatural force. While the book is enjoyable and interesting (though it doesn't stick the landing). the film is a wreck, plagued with production problems and savaged in the final edit. This was a really fun one to th

A deep dive into the classic 1971 blaxploitation film "Shaft" and the 1970 novel it is based on. The film is good and very important to both film and pop-culture. The book is *really* good and it's interesting to see how different it is than the movie despite the events being largely the same.

On May 1, 2026 I saw Orlando Ballet's production of The Great Gatsby. Serendipitously, it hit right when I was writing a series of essays about adaption of stories into new mediums so I thought it would be fun to do a deep dive into it from this perspective. (It's also been a while since I've written about the ballet.) In preparation for the show I reread the novel which, hardly shockingly, is really good. I very much liked the ballet though it is pretty different than the

A deep dive into Gustav Flaubert's masterful 1856 novel "Madame Bovary." Spoilers: It's...masterful.

A look at Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and Jules Massenet's opera adaptation "Werther." I take a look at the adaptational changes in general and the Opera Orlando 2025 production in specific.

I dive into Richard Sale's novel "The White Buffalo" and revisit the 1977 film adaptation. Spoilers: It's a pretty good book.

A look at Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel "The Bride of Lammermoor" and some comparisons with the opera it inspired "Lucia di Lammermoor"

Part 3 of my series on Moby Dick and its adaptations, looking at Christophe Chaboute's 2017 graphic novel.

Part 2 of a series on Moby Dick, looking at the 1956 film starring Gregory Peck. Spoilers: It's pretty good.

A dive into Leo Tolstoy's 1878 masterpiece "Anna Karenina."

Part 1 of a series on Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick," looking at style, structure, and the themes of proto-cosmic horror and nihilism.

Part 1 of a look at Dracula in media, starting with Bram Stoker's 1897 novel and Michael Pink's 1996 ballet.

The second in a two-part look at R.F. Kuang's novels Babel and Yellowface and the ways they reflect on each other.

The first in a two-part look at R.F. Kuang's novels Babel and Yellowface and the ways they reflect on each other.

A look back at some of the best books I read in 2019.