Posted in book reviews, books on June 17, 2008 | No Comments »
Jeff Somers, The Electric Church: The Barbie Murders meets Ocean’s Eleven meets The Bronx Warriors. Not sure why Somers didn’t just go straight to the screenplay. The underclass, as envisioned here, is barely more than a bunch of ragged extras with bad teeth; this society would surely not last more than a few months. That [...]
Posted in C18th, book reviews, books, tagged Isobel Grundy, John Banville, Kepler, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on March 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Recently read John Banville’s Kepler. A beautiful novel, densely packed though short. It came out in 1999 and I can’t imagine it was too widely read, despite the laudatory reviews by various heavy hitters, because of its somewhat arcane subject. But passing it up because of a lack of familiarity with or interest in Kepler [...]
Posted in book reviews on January 28, 2008 | No Comments »
The Keep by Jennifer Egan. Really well done; a bit of a literary Rubick’s cube, with all that that implies. Recommended. (excerpt)
Guardian by Joe Haldeman. Read it in one sitting in the bath — back problems; don’t ask — and it promptly fell apart. Engaging enough but inbred, in a U.S./SF of-a-certain-generation way, and [...]
Posted in book reviews, tagged Ian Rankin, Lev Raphael on November 11, 2007 | No Comments »
Just finished two novels, mainly in the bathtub: The Edith Wharton Murders: A Nick Hoffman Mystery by Lev Raphael (Stonewall Inn, 1998), a slight novel most notable for its bitter, somehow bloodless, yet very funny send-up of the dusty grey corners of second-tier academe. Highly therapeutic, especially just now. I mean, things are bad, but [...]
Posted in books on August 19, 2007 | 1 Comment »
What I’ve been reading:
The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks. I love Iain Banks. But he has to get over his unrequited love thing. And he really has to get over his incest thing, though this iteration is lighter and generally less unpalatable than some earlier ones (eg. A Song of Stone [...]
| neilmckenty on File this under “don… | |
| Binge reading … on Lazy, hazy days | |
| Bojan on Reading | |
| Cynthia on Happy International Women… | |
| Candace on Another reason to finish that … |
