T.K. Wade -- Author

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

The Decameron [Book Review]

"The Decameron" is a very long book written by Giovanni Boccaccio. It was published in Italy in 1471, although it was circulated in manuscript form between 1349 and 1353.

Hey! We got ourselves yet another Jean Shepherd reference here! It was actually Jean that got me to read this huge thing. In one of his stories, he tries to impress his teacher by doing a fudged book report for his father's copy of "The Decameron." He doesn't actually read it; he just skims a few parts and really has no idea what it is even about.

The teacher, in this case, is immediately suspicious. For one, the book is an absolutely massive tome, and it was really too much for a little boy to be reading. Secondly, the book is notoriously dirty. It is one of the smuttiest books ever written and certainly not good reading for a child. She calls him out on it, and he has no choice but to confess what he did.

I was so charmed by this story that I decided to read the book in its entirety. Since the original book was in Italian, I had to get a translation. I had a lot of choices, since the book has been translated many times over the ages. I ended up going with a fairly modern one by Wayne A. Rebhorn. It was published in 2013, and I have zero complaints about this translation. It reads very easily, using modern language, while still keeping all the context of the period in tact. You might also learn a thing or two about what it was like back then.

How do I even begin reviewing a book so big?!

The story is about seven women and three men who are leaving Florence to escape the Black Plague. Once they find a nice place to stay for a while, they decide to spend each day telling stories to one another. The way they do this is by electing a king or queen for each day who choses the theme of the stories. They each have to tell one apiece, and then a new king or queen is elected for the next day. This clever structure allows for ten days of stories by ten people. Yes, if your multiplication is correct, that is exactly one hundred stories.

Each day has an introduction and a conclusion. There is also a fairly long introduction to the book itself which tells the story of the storytellers and how everything is getting set up. It's all very structured and nice, allowing the storytellers themselves to be apart of the whole presentation. You get to know them as well as the characters in their tales. Very nice.

The majority of these tales are filthy as hell, most of them having to do with adultery. Sometimes it's presented as a bad thing, and other times it is shown to be something that should actually occur. For example, if a husband is mistreating his wife or ignoring her too much, it might be agreed upon that she has every right to go out and seek her own pleasure.

What is particularly interesting is that the storytellers are all Christian, but they are telling each other shocking stories about infidelity. Extremely rarely, the stories will even go into homosexuality and some very vile acts on behalf of friars and ordained priests. Despite the stories they tell, they do openly reject a lot of the things the characters do in the name of their religion and pray they will do better in their own lives. Remarkably, this dirty book still holds strong Christian values, and the author himself has done the same.

My favorite storyteller was a guy named Dioneo. At the end of the first day, he asks for a rule where he always goes last and that he may ignore the day's theme if it pleases him. This was a fun wildcard to end every day with. You never knew what story you would get at the very end of the day, and that is why he is my favorite.

Nearly every day was about some sort of sexual theme. Nothing was off the table. There was even a hilarious one where a guy thinks he became pregnant because how his wife always wanted to be on top of him during intercourse. That is almost my favorite story because of its hilarity.

The final day actually changes things up to not be about sex at all. It was a shift to people who were actually good and wonderful in their lives. I know that seems boring, but this was actually a breath of fresh air after almost 90 stories of infidelity and other forms of bad behavior. Of course, Dioneo still broke the trend with the final story which was about a man being really horrible. Go figure.

The final part of the book was actually an apology from the author. We use the term "apology" a little differently these days. He was not sorry for anything. What he was doing was explaining why his book was perfectly fine as is, and why it should never be censored. He says he wrote this book as an adult for other adults. If people are offended by it, then he did not write this book for them. On top of that, he actually expresses that he was writing this specifically for women. He considered them to be his target audience.

The apology at the end is extremely cool, and I actually encourage anyone to just read that all by itself. It is relevant to modern times, and it is a great essay that speaks well against the dangers of censorship. I probably highlighted more parts in the apology than in the actual stories.

One last factoid before I wrap this up. The title "Decameron" actually means "Ten Days," but the story actually takes place over fifteen days. The reason for this was because the storytellers did not want to tell dirty stories on holy days. This also allowed whoever was the new king or queen to keep their rule for some extra days until they could begin again. I really liked this additional detail.

I 100% recommend "The Decameron." It is a very long read, but most of the stories are short. It isn't really that hard to read if you get a good translation. Just keep in mind that this is a very dirty book, and it rarely holds back. Additionally, if you only read one part of it, check out that apology at the end. For reference, the chapter is called "The Author's Conclusion." Really important read, especially for those who are a little nervous about writing controversial stuff when you have a religious background.

This blog was written on August 7, 2026.

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Monday, August 31, 2026

Araby [Short Story Review]

"Araby" is a short story written by James Joyce. It was published in 1914.

This is a story about a boy who forms a very specific view about life, people, and all the things around him. He sees things in a romanticized way, which is the whole point of the story. It kind of acts as both a loss of innocence and a cautionary tale pertaining to how we often have a habit of forming wild opinions on things we don't really know much about.

The reason I am not going much into what actually happens in the story is because I was not really super into the writing of this one. The theme was the big thing here, and it is true that there is a danger is the over-romanticizing of things. We can quickly fall in love with something awful or even just entirely banal, and the truth could come crashing down on us later on, leaving us very confused and possibly embarrassed.

People we think are great, may not be so great or just fairly normal. Places that sound amazing might be really ordinary or bad. I do think it is important that we try and carefully track the world around us. There are things that are amazing, but we need to not falsely invent them.

There is a flipside to this coin. We can negatively romanticize things as well. Things we go around professing that they are bad might not be quite as awful in real life. It works the same way, but it focuses more on the negative. This story, however, focuses on making something banal seem absolutely wonderful... until a sudden revelation proves otherwise.

"Araby" is a very short single-session read, so there is no reason not to recommend it. I don't think it is bad. Sometimes a person's style just doesn't mesh with my brain.

This blog was written on August 4, 2026.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Paul's Case [Short Story Review]

[I spoil the main beats of this story.]

"Paul's Case" is a short story written by Willa Cather. it was published in 1905.

This, put simply, is a very good story about a boy named Paul who was having an extremely hard time fitting into the world. There was nothing particular wrong with his family and friends. His father was not perfect, but he had enough money to keep him afloat. But for some reason, Paul just detested everything about his life and wanted to get away.

What is interesting about Paul is that he seems to admire the classier style of living. He adores wearing fancy suites and going to the opera. Things like that. He even got a job as an usher at Carnegie Hall just to be around those sorts of people, and he was completely satisfied with that. His father, however, ripped him away from that to force him into more of a lucrative occupation.

This ultimately leads to Paul stealing money from the new business and running off to New York to live a life as he wishes to live. It works... for a little while. What is interesting is that he doesn't get into trouble. His father pays off the business and comes looking for him. Weirdly, Paul seems to have rather preferred jailtime than going back to live with his father, so he runs away again with what little money he has left.

Paul is given the opportunity to shoot himself, but he decides that it was not the way to deal with this. However, while in a complete stupor after waking up, he jumps in front of a train as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It kind of suggested that he might not have done it if he had been more awake. Like... being so groggy allowed the temptation to fully manifest like in a dream, and he left this world right then and there.

I do recommend this story, [redacted for Blogger.].

Either way, there is nothing wrong with this story, and it was good enough to end up a movie in, I think, 1980. Might have to check that one out sometime.

This blog was written on August 3, 2026.

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Monday, August 24, 2026

The Wizard of Mars [Movie Review]

[I spoil most of the movie.]

"The Wizard of Mars" also known as "Horrors of the Red Planet" is a science fiction movie released in 1965. As the title may or may not suggest, it is a science fiction adaptation of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz." This is also the only reason I saw it and am now reviewing it.

I kind of want to keep this brief since, and I will be entirely honest right at the beginning, I did not really enjoy this movie. This is, by all accounts, just barely an Oz movie. It is mostly a survival movie set on Mars. The Oz stuff did not come in until the 40-minute mark, and it was an extremely loose interpretation.

There are four in the stranded crew. The one female is named Dorothy. At the 40-minute mark of the film, they find a brick road that is in ruins. They refer to it as a "golden road," which had me rolling my eyes. The road leads to a ruined building which is not green. In fact, I do not think there was one green object in the entire movie.

From there, it gets really difficult to explain. A lot of the writing that happens towards the final part of the film is remarkably pretentious. It involves an alien race that evolved past their physical forms, yada yada yada. There was a floating head though played by John Carradine. This got me excited until he just wouldn't shut up about the plot of the film. It was a very long lore dump.

Ultimately, this led to the crew trying to restart a giant clock which made everything disappear. The wind up back in their ship only to find out that only two minutes have passed. But it wasn't two minutes. It was about an hour and seventeen minutes and nothing barely happening.

I do not recommend this film. I feel that the idea of setting Oz on Mars and having astronauts find it is a great idea... but do not do it like this. This is bad.

This blog was written on August 1, 2026.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2026

The Open Boat [Short Story Review]

[I spoil the main points of the story but leave out a lot of the details.]

"The Open Boat: A Tale Intended to Be after the Fact, Being the Experience of Four Men from the Sunk Steamer Commodore" is a short story written by Stephen Crane. It was published in 1897.

The plot of this story is very easy to summarize. Four men are in a lifeboat after their ship sinks in a storm. The captain is injured, and so it is up to an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent to get them to land. Land is actually not far away, but nobody seems to be there to guide the boat to shore safely. The story involves how they achingly keep the boat just outside of view of the shore, wondering if they will have to drown out there, despite actually seeing land. Eventually, they just decide to make a rush for it and just barely make it there alive. One person does show up and does everything he can to save the four men.

What I did not tell you in this summary is what makes the story worth reading. The author goes heavily into what it was like physically and mentally to suffer this fairly short stint of survival. It is wonderfully detailed to the point where you can really empathize with their situations. The author also goes into the concept that no human on this planet really thinks they are going to die. They may say they know it will happen or whatever, but they have no actual concept or true realization of it inside them--possibly some sort of built-in defensive mechanism. It takes a moment like this where you are forced to confront it and possibly accept it for that realization to actually be genuine. This concept was the most philosophically interesting bit I got from the story.

A weird thing happened with this one. It got more interesting after I was finished reading it. Despite the story being written in the third person, it is actually a true story. The correspondent was the actual author. Stephen Crane was in that boat! It kind of makes sense. He writes what the correspondent was thinking, but only shows outward observations of the others. The great thing is that this really could have passed as fiction, and I would have never been the wiser.

I absolutely recommend this story. It is a great survival story, the some of the philosophical aspects about life and death are also really interesting too. Kind of an eye-opener.

This blog was written on July 28, 2026.

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Monday, August 17, 2026

The Yellow Wallpaper [Short Story Review]

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was published in 1892. Apparently this story is fairly well-known. It has gained a bit of popularity lately because of all the "Backrooms" stuff. I had not heard of it, but I feel like I might have seen a movie or something about it at one point.

The story here is that the female narrator temporarily moves into a house. She is given a room with some dreadful yellow wallpaper that she completely obsesses over. A good portion of her writing is about this wallpaper and what's wrong with it. As the story proceeds, it slowly becomes clear that this house may actually be haunted, and the ghost has set its target on the narrator.

The interesting thing about this narrative is that she seems to be making it as the event is taking place. This is incredibly immersive. As she gets oppressed by what very well may be a demon, she is writing it all down while under that influence. So you do not just see what happens, you experience it psychologically through her.

This is a very good horror story, and I did not want to entirely spoil it. I recommend that you find a copy of this. As old as it is, it is easy to see its influence on a lot of things that came later such as "Silent Hill." Good stuff!

This blog was written on July 23, 2026.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2026

The Cube [Movie Review]

"The Cube" is a movie written and directed by Jim Henson. It was was released as a part of a television anthology series called NBC Experiment in Television. It could mostly be classified as a psychological horror.

It is debatable whether or not this should be called a movie, since it is technically considered an episode of a show. The issue is that it doesn't really feel like a TV show. It comes across more like a film, where the show was the vehicle for its presentation. But you can decide for yourself.

Despite this being a Jim Henson project, there are no puppets here. There is only a set and actors portraying roles on that set. It's also a serious movie for adults, which sometimes comes across as a comedy, but more often seems to be some sort of psychological horror. The thing that is happening is not good no matter how much comedy gets injected into it.

The story is about a man who has lost his memory. He wakes up in a cubical room. He has no idea why he is there. At first, he is alone, but people randomly come through the walls from time to time to mess with him. Some say he can just leave whenever he wants, and others tell him that he is trapped there until he dies. The man spends the entire film trying to figure out the rules of the cube... or even if there are any rules.

Much of his encounters at the beginning of the film are incredibly silly. They even reflect a lot of the humor we've seen in the Muppet movies later in his career. At this point, the man is just confused and not taking much of it very seriously. As the movie continues, these comical moments only serve to depress him as he realizes how trapped he really is. It becomes scary, because a lot of it makes so little sense. He struggles to figure out if this is someone else's doing or if he is doing it to himself.

Other than that last paragraph, I don't want to say anymore. I know it seems silly not to spoil such an old movie, but honestly... I don't think many people have seen it today. It's kind of a hidden gem. I really enjoyed it, and I certainly recommend it to today's audience.

Hard to believe, but there was a horror movie called "Cube" made much later that... MAY have borrowed an idea or two from this old film by Jim Henson. There are some symmetries that are hard to deny. One might also be left thinking of other films made later such as "The Matrix" and "Backrooms." Yep, this old 1969 movie actually messed with me pretty hard. It's good stuff, and I just want people to know about it so they can go see it.

If you are interested, there is a black and white and also a color version available on YouTube. Both versions are decent quality. Take an hour out of your life and go watch a Jim Henson horror movie!

This blog was written on July 20, 2026.

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