Book Blog
November 8, 2026
es, I know, I’ve done this with you guys before. Another weird/strange book that someone loaned me, this one a two-novella book titled The San Veneficio Canon. The first one, The Divinity Student, I completed. Then I washed my brain out with a nice samurai novel, just to ground myself. And if you think detailed historical fiction on ancient Japan is easy, you don’t know this book. I’m not saying it was bad. Just… confusing. And disturbing. Example? The story starts with a Divinity student getting hit by lightning, really fried. But what happens to him next is even stranger. He […]
November 1, 2026
ound a very new, very slender (dammit) new book by a favorite author, Becky Chambers (famous for her series starting with A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. In this one (unconnected with her other works) we’re looking at a more scientific view of long-distance space travel, a view of how it could be done. In short, it’s like Project Hail Mary without the confusion. Here, a team of four astronauts have slept their way (not in the way you are thinking, you smuts) to a distant system, one with clearly evident life (not sentient) on four planets. Their […]
October 25, 2026
magine this as the opening paragraph of a book… On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and […]
October 11, 2026
nother novella from Italo Calvino, who brought us the strange and insightful The Nonexistent Knight. In this one, a Viscount is fighting the Turks and finds himself on the wrong end of a cannon. As the author notes, with good reason, the best way to attack a cannon is from the sides or rear. But, oh well, our Viscount Medardo literally takes the full load dead center. The field surgeons struggle with that remains and manage to preserve him. Most of him. Well, half. He only exists as the left side of himself, the rest of his absent body cloaked […]
September 27, 2026
kay, don’t dismiss this out of hand, but I got this book from a young (and sharp) kid who attends my Zen class. But, yeah, we both read a lot and we both like China Miéville so there’s that. Anyway, The Nonexistent Knight is a delightful tale by Italo Calvino, written (I’m thinking) in 1950 or so (judging from the copyright). I’m going to make a guess and figure the entire point of this novel is to mock the ideas of chivalry, of knighthood, and the tales which speak worshipfully of them. We begin with King Charlemagne riding along his assembled army, […]
September 20, 2026
his one is another of those Golden Oldies I got from the big used bookstore, by Poul Anderson back in 1968. And a funny little story about this. Was sitting in a fast food joint a week or so back, going from somewhere to somewhere else, just grabbing a bite and sitting in a booth with my book. Reading and chewing. A booth or two down on the other side of the aisle, two churches (a man and a woman, not seemingly married) were yacking away about some sort of church speech or presentation they were going to make, outlining […]
September 6, 2026
o a very interesting novel by S.M. Stirling, and part of a series (I think, possibly The Sky Kings). This novel, In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, we seem to be in the middle of things. This novel assumes (as its plot twist) that we’ve long observed life on Venus and Mars. In fact, it opens at a science fiction convention (with cameo by famous authors) in 1962. It’s known that Russian probes to Venus has found scifi staples of dinosaurs, cave men and (of course) beautiful cave gals. And on Mars, we’ve observed cities and canals on this arid, […]
August 16, 2026
read this when it hit the shelves in the early nineties and remembered loving it. Even gave my copy to my sister-in-law to read (and, evidently, misplaced in Horder’s Hell). Alas. So, Jumper is about a young boy whose father is extremely abusive. Having chased off his mother (more like her fleeing for her life), his father turns his rage on the boy, often beating him with a belt with a rodeo buckle on it. And one night, because he’s drunk, hates himself, hates his life, for whatever reason, he turns his rage (and belt) on his son again. David […]
August 9, 2026
new series by (I guess) our new author J.S. Dewes, a tale of betrayal and terror on the literal edge of the universe. So rich boy Cavalon, a privileged brat who annoyed his all-powerful granddad in a very rebellions manner, gets “French Foreign Legioned” to the Argus, a decommissioned battleship now serving as a gutted watchpost, eyes on the “frontier”, supposedly watching for the return of an alien horror that all but annihilated us in two wars. Of course, he’s a rich boy in a ship full of angry troops who have all been sent to this outpost in the literal […]
August 2, 2026
his all began when my siblings press-ganged me into driving up to take care of my mom for three days. Of course, it’s a full (and taxing) drive each way, so that’s five days. And since there may be delays in my relief, that’s six. So no big deal. Since I’d be driving alone (and since rental cars no longer have CD players) I could not borrow from the library and was sorta stuck, that is, until my pal Jesse bought me a Fire so I could get Audible books. I’ve already reviewed my “test” book, The Last Days of New […]