I could not name a more famous writer than William Shakespeare. High school english looks at his plays; college classes dedicate whole semesters to the legendary iambic pentameter writer. He lived from 1564 to 1616, so why do we still study him today? People mention his complicated verbage or how he wrote all his plays…
Tag: authors
Bullet Train Book Review
I finally got around to reading the second book in Kotaro Isaka’s Assassins series. I stumbled upon this series by accident when browsing the good ol’ Barnes and Noble. When I read the back cover of Three Assassins and I knew I had to read it. After I started, I learned there were more books…
A Grief Observed Book Review
C.S Lewis has been a long standing favorite of mine. However, I have only really read excerpts of his works, apart from The Chronicles of Narnia. I love his history and his approach to writing. I love his intersections of religion and science and life. Despite only reading excerpts, I have collected a small portion…
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Book Review
Welcome to our first book review of 2024! I am excited to review my favorite read from 2023 to introduce this year to many more book reviews. How can we be a book blog without the book reviews? There are books we put down, books we enjoy, and books we dislike. Some books we might…
Movie and Book Comparison for Doctor Sleep
We all know how Hollywood likes to ruin perfectly good books. They make unnecessary changes to great stories. Recently, I read and watched Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. The movie pleasantly surprised me even though it was vastly different. The movie perfectly blended in elements of the book along with seamlessly flowing with the Kubrick…
5 Books to Boost your Holiday Spirit
It is officially the holiday season. Whether you are a put the tree up before Thanksgiving kind of family or nothing starts til after we eat turkey kind of family, I think we can all agree December 1st is fair game. With the holiday season things can feel frantic. We are searching high and low…
The Magician’s Nephew Book Review
It wasn’t until my junior year of undergrad that I really fell in love with C.S Lewis’s writing. I was working for a family at the time and we’d often talk about books and authors we enjoyed. The grandfather mentioned to me his fierce enjoyment of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis. Honestly, it…
Umbra Ex Libris: A Year in Review
November marks our one year anniversary of the official launch of Umbra Ex Libris! This year has been a great learning experience for all of us. We still have a lot to learn and much more to write about. We have enjoyed every second of it. Thank you to our dedicated readers and to those…
Perfect Halloween Drinks to Enjoy this Season
Happy Halloween Weekend! Here at Umbra, we are big fans of the season. Between the costumes, the candy, the great reads, it’s a blast! One thing we are particularly fond of are the festivities. One thing we really enjoy are the Halloween parties. Unfortunately, there will be no party for us this year, but that…
Xeric’s Demise: A Short Story
Xeric walked down the spiral staircase into the depths below his tower. He still could not believe the wizard council forbade his research. What did those spell slingers know about the fine art of transfiguration anyways? No one in town cares about the neat trick changing mice into rats. They wanted to experience something truly…