Mark Pursell
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Buzzed Books #8: Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music
Buzzed Books #8: Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music by Mark Pursell If Emma Donoghue has a byword, it’s “immersion.” The Irish-born author—who first gained international literary attention with her 2000 historical picaresque, Slammerkin—has a knack for building fictional worlds that envelop a reader with the mesmerizing quality of an enchantment. Sights, smells, textures, emotions; blood, dust, lust… Continue reading
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Buzzed Books #7: Train Shots
Buzzed Books #7 by Mark Pursell Vanessa Blakeslee’s Train Shots In “Princess of Pop”, the eighth of eleven stories that comprise Vanessa Blakeslee’s debut collectionTrain Shots, Blakeslee gives a voice to one of our most exposed yet tight-lipped pop culture titans: Britney Spears. In a gutsy move that could have easily backfired or lent itself… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #18: Geeking Out on True Detective
Like a Geek God #18 by Mark Pursell Geeking Out on True Detective WARNING: contains mild spoilers through the end of Episode 7. Here’s a facet of my geekdom that I haven’t really addressed yet on this blog: crime fiction. Crime stories don’t usually come to mind when someone says the word “geek”, but there’s… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #17: Agents of SHIELD Mid-Season Report Card
Like a Geek God #17 by Mark Pursell Agents of SHIELD Mid-Season Report Card The thing you need to know before we starting talking about Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is this: I love Joss Whedon. No, listen. I’m a hardcore Whedonite. I first fell in love with Joss Whedon’s storytelling vision because of his short-lived… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #11: Finding Our Footage
Like a Geek God #11 by Mark Pursell Finding Our Footage Part of what makes movies so delightful, so transporting, is the fantasy of it all. Even darkly-realistic, psychologically-complex movies are constructed, and no matter how engaged we are by them, there is always, at some level, the slight, smiling recognition that everything playing out before… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #10: A Dreadful Double Feature Triple Threat
Like a Geek God #10 by Mark Pursell A Dreadful Double Feature Triple Threat Halloween in the Information Age always sees a glut of “favorite scary movie” lists clogging up your feeds and repeating the same recommendations over and over again. The thing is, if you’re a horror geek or a fan of scary movies… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #9: Geeks, Ghouls, and Gore
Like a Geek God #9 by Mark Pursell Geeks, Ghouls, and Gore Fear—being brought face to face with your own mortality and the possibility that you will be somehow damaged or erased in mind, spirit, and/or body—has always been replicated in our cultural objects, from scary stories told ‘round a bonfire in the prehistoric… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #8: The Destiny of Ellen Ripley
Like a Geek God #8 by Mark Pursell The Destiny of Ellen Ripley No franchise escapes the law of decay. With the exception, perhaps, of the Harry Potter novels, franchises—whether in books, movies, television, or video games—tend to flame out rather than finish strong. You can attribute this phenomenon to different factors—an exhaustion of ideas,… Continue reading
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Like a Geek God #7: An Unlikely, Unlikeable Heroine
Like a Geek God #7 by Mark Pursell An Unlikely, Unlikeable Heroine Of all the anime properties to make their way to Western shores over the decades, Sailor Moon is undoutedly one of the most beloved and most recognizable even to non-fans. 2012 marked the show’s twentieth anniversary, and this winter we will see a… Continue reading
About
The Drunken Odyssey is a forum to discuss all aspects of the writing process, in a variety of genres, in order to foster a greater community among writers.
Recent Posts
- Episode 579: A Roundtable Discussion of Jodi Picault’s The Storyteller, with Samantha Nickerson and Chelsea Alice
- The Curator of Schlock #420: The Stepfather
- Video: Joy Baglio’s Residency Farewell Reading at The Kerouac Project of Orlando.
- Episode 578: Bob Kealing!
- The Curator of Schlock #419: Run All Night
The Drunken Odyssey 