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Old Man’s War
Blurbs mean a lot to me. I put a great deal of trust in them, and time and again blurbs have proven an excellent curator of books. But blurbs are used and abused—like everything else. Old Man’s War has a blurb on its front cover that states the following— “…Scalzi’s astonishingly proficient first novel reads…
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Neuromancer, and a little Disney
I finished Neuromancer a few days ago during a long and delay-ridden day of travel. I carelessly gave it three stars.That was rash. Neuromancer continues to linger with me. It drips with PKD. But even more so this book inhabits Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. These two examples are obviously linked, but Scott’s adaptation of PKD…
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Oscar Wilde, and the Canon reconsidered
I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray a few days ago. I was astonished by how much I enjoyed this book. Astonished because I’ve grown weary of the Canon. Dusty, stodgy, and arcane feeling books written so long ago. Don’t read this as millennial angst. Mine isn’t the youth’s lament that traditionally bemoans its elder’s…
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Some sci-fi, a review
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: 30th Anniversary Edition, October 1979 by Edward L. Ferman My rating: 2 of 5 stars Last week I watched an episode of a show called Mythic Quest. But alas, it was a flashback episode and essentially a one-off. The episode centered around three characters working at a sci-fi…
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Getting Old, an Ode to Presidents’ Day
Two years ago I started reading books about WW2. One after the other. I zeroed in on The Battle of the Bulge. I found these books enthralling. I even struck up a conversation with an old man while browsing the military history aisle at McKays. He recommended a book. So I bought and read that…
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Road to Erudition
I read The Sentence last year, and sometimes a book is so bad it lingers, and festers. I’m also frequently reminded of it on Instagram. My IG algorithm is almost exclusively books–-pictures of books, bookstores and booksellers, book quotes, and in general the book aesthetic. There is a burgeoning niche internet book culture, aptly named…