books
Review: Serenity Found
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe
edited by Jane Espenson
Rating: 3 out of 5
What can I say? Meh. Another collection of essays (following the superior Finding Serenity) discoursing on the deep meanings to be found in the universe of Firefly, a short-lived TV series as well as Serenity, its major-picture [...]
What I’m Reading: 2008 July
Sunday, July 13th, 2008This is the first in a regular series of posts meant more for myself than anyone else. I just want to keep a record of what I’m reading.
So far in July:
Public Enemies: The True Story of America’s Greatest Crime Wave by Bryan Burrough (552 p)
Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning by Sol [...]
Review: His Dark Materials
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008His Dark Materials:
The Golden Compass
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass
a triology by Philip Pullman
InstaRating: 4 out of 5
This trilogy has apparently sparked quite the bitter controversy, especially online. It’s a tale of High Fantasy,Variationen von omaha poker. quite consciously in the vein of Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, but it takes a tack quite different than, [...]
Review: The Book of Lost Things
Saturday, April 7th, 2007The Book of Lost Things
a novel by John Connolly
InstaRating: 5 (out of 5)
This is simply a good book. I would not have thought anything would rank up next to a new book by Guy Gavriel Kay (Ysabel, which I’ll review some other time), but this one easily meets that standard. One of life’s [...]
Review: Echelon
Sunday, March 4th, 2007Echelon
a novel
by Josh Conviser
InstaRating: 2 out of 5
This book\’s title caught my interest because I keep up with surveillance tech and its social implications, and ECHELON — the alleged US NSA electronic sifting program — is the monster of all surveillance programs. Although I knew this was a spy thriller, I thought there was [...]
Review: World War Z
Friday, January 26th, 2007World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
InstaRating: 5 out of 5
After the debacle that was The Stonehenge Gate, I was looking for something good to read, to wash the taste of failed prose from my mouth. Happily I picked up this piece of psuedo-history. Written by the author [...]
Review: The Stonehenge Gate
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007The Stonehenge Gate
a novel
by Jack Williamson
InstaRating: 1 out of 5 … maybe less
During those moments when I delude myself that I’m a writer, I pursue an odd oscillation in my reading. I like to read great works of fiction, to have something towards which to aspire. But I like to leaven that mix [...]
Review: Oryx and Crake
Saturday, January 20th, 2007Oryx and Crake (a novel)
by Margaret Atwood
InstaRating: 4 out of 5
In brief: Snowman is the last (traditional) human alive in a world curiously empty. He bears the secret of what happened to civilization and slowly reveals it to himself as he watches over the successor species: humans carefully designed to thrive in the ecologically-devastated [...]
Review: Interface
Sunday, November 26th, 2006Interface
by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
(c) 1994
Bantam Dell
InstaRating: 3.5 out of 5
An experimental biochip is implanted in a governor of Illinois after he suffers a massive stroke. Its stated purpose is to repair the connections in his brain, giving him access to speech and motor skills again. Unknown to many, the chip [...]