Author: Alex Diaz-Granados
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Movie Watcher Memories: ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ at 40
On May 21, 1980, Twentieth Century Fox released director Irvin Kershner’s Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to writer-director George Lucas’ Star Wars, which was retroactively retitled as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope for its Summer 1981 re-release. Like Star Wars, it opened mid-week close to Memorial…
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Audiobook Review: ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars Collection’
On February 14, 2017, Random House Audio released William Shakespeare’s Star Wars Collection, a 15-CD box set featuring the three audiobook editions of author Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars Trilogy. It consists of dramatic readings of Doescher’s first three books in the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series: Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, The…
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Book Review: ‘William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh’
Two trilogies are now behind us, dear reader….Thank you for sharing this journey with me, and may the Force be with you onward, into episodes 7, 8, and 9. – Ian Doescher, in his Afterword to William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge: Star Wars Part the Third Roll swiftly as thou canst, good…
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Movie Watcher Memories, or: Mom Nixes Shark Pic
I was 12-and-one-quarter years old when Steven Spielberg’s Jaws made its theatrical debut on June 20, 1975 and lived with my widowed mother, Beatriz Diaz-Granados, in a house in the unincorporated community of Westchester in suburban Miami-Dade County. At the time, it was just us two living at the house on Southwest 102nd Ave; my…
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Book Review: ‘The World Remade: America in World War I’
“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.”— President Woodrow Wilson, on the State…
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Book Review: ‘William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge: Star Wars Part the Third’
The boy is nearly now within my grasp, And I shall make him mine with this next move. I shall devise a play to pull him in, Some tale that pricks his heart with grief and woe. Come players, to the list, ye are engag’d! – Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, Act II, Scene 4, William Shakespeare’s…
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Book Review: ‘A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918’
On May 30, 2006, Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, published G.J. Meyer’s A World Undone: The History of the Great War, 1914 to 1918, a one-volume history about the most misunderstood conflict that very few people living in the 21st Century know about: World War I. Overshadowed by the global conflict that…
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Memoria Mater & Other Bits of My Mind II
With Mother’s Day – my fifth since my mom’s death in 2015 – getting farther and farther away in the rearview mirror of life, I still find myself with no shortage of things to write about her. A remarkable woman, Mom was, and she led an interesting, even adventurous life. Born and raised in the…
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Memoria Mater: Mother’s Day 2020 (and Other Pieces of My Mind)
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, the fifth occurrence of the celebration honoring mothers, motherhood, and the bonds between mothers and their children since my mom, Beatriz Diaz-Granados, died, Needless to say, it was a difficult day for me; I was close to my mother, who passed away on July 19, 2015 at the age of 86…
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Life in the Time of COVID-19: Stupidity and Craven Disregard for Public Health …Two Things That Irk Me
Today the U.S. reached another unhappy milestone in the novel coronavirus pandemic: as of 4:30 this afternoon, 78,469 Americans – young, middle-aged, and elderly; rich, poor, famous and not famous – have died from COVID-19 in a four-month period. By way of comparison, the bloodiest post-World War II conflict in U.S. history resulted in 58,220…
