Book Blog
October 13, 2024
‘ve always thought of writing a semi-fictional book about World War One aviation. I realized there is far more to know than just the planes. Did pilots use zippers or buttons on their flies? Did they drink coffee (could the Germans even get coffee by 1918?). What was the slang, the thoughts, even the haircuts. Think about your own life and the number of little items in it – now imagine trying to write a compelling story at some level of detail. In the end, I still love flying so I wrote a book about crows, an excellent book that […]
October 6, 2024
ou might remember me mentioning this, how I got interested in this book, only to find out that I already had it on the stacks. Amusing story HERE! So Jon Winokur wrote this 1987, a book which look on the art of being a curmudgeon and what societal role we play (I use the “we” form here – is there any doubt that I’m not a get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon). Of course, the Okay Boomer crowd sees it this way. To them, they are superior to us, what with their ability to speed and tailgate (with their parent’s insurance close at hand), […]
September 29, 2024
‘m a little late to the party here. The Rockford Files played while I was in junior high and college, and that was D&D night so I never caught them. I do know that in my final year at Va Tech, my roomate watched these things and curious, I watched over his shoulder. I still carried an interest in this show for, what, forty years? Thus, in retirement, I took time to watch the series on Roku (which shows dedication, since it runs with lousy commercials that are no longer fun to dissect the tenth time around). Anyway, Garner plays […]
September 22, 2024
aving produced a novel with what I thought was a good cover (and wasn’t (even my dear old mother told me that)), this book is sold by its cover (even author Rebecca Thorne admits it). I was standing in the bookstore and it caught my eye, two women reading before the fire in dreamy watercolors. And so I was sold. Not convinced? I’m including it below. You be the judge. Cute, eh? So it’s an interesting little fantasy book, specifically because the main characters are “lesbians with powers”. I mean, how else can I put it? Reyna and Kianthe love […]
September 16, 2024
friend who has read and enjoyed a number of my recommendations suggested (tentatively) this book. His pitch reminded me of how I tried to ask for dates in high school. Hesitantly. And the book (about Fred, a nerdish young accountant who is transformed into an unholy creature of the night (well, religion doesn’t show up, not really, and Fred just works overnight on his accounting practice)) is interesting. Yes, Fred is as happy as a socially-awkward noodle-head can be, and he has a source of easy-to-get blood. But then trouble raises its head. And again. And again. The chapters are […]
September 8, 2024
f you’ve ever seen Justified on the web or streaming services, you know that cool main character, Federal Marshal Raylan Givens, a Gary-Cooper-like lawman who casually blows away Southern tire-biters who have it coming (meaning they are trying to draw against him). He’s a cool dude. And he’s the creation of Elmore Leonard, a crime writer of great renown. He’s written a string of books about this character and they are all as smooth as moonshine. It’s a very unconventional storytelling method. First off, you nearly have to read it out loud. From a grammar standpoint, it isn’t proper English. […]
September 1, 2024
idn’t we just talk about this author? Becky Chambers, writer of A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit. She’s that author who takes a wondrous set of characters and locations and trashes them, telling the story with edge-case characters and briefly-mentioned locations. You aren’t getting sausage grinding with this author. You get a new telling of a new perspective in a “loose universe”. I like this, if only because it is ballsy writing. So in Record of a Spaceborn Few, earlier books have hinted that when the Earth collapsed into ecological disaster, the […]
August 25, 2024
o the last time I went back to sci fi in the eighties, it didn’t play out so well for me. I didn’t enjoy it and gave it up at the midpoint. It was simply a dead horse. But in the same purchase, I’d picked up The Sudden Star by Pamela Sargent. Okay, so the premise here is that there are “white holes” (what black holes feed into (look, everyone in 1979 was all excited about black holes. They’d captured the imagination of the public back then. Even Disney cashed in), So we find Earth overlooked by this new star, […]
August 18, 2024
his short little Japanese novel starts with a down-on-his-luck postman shuffling through a useless life, that is, until his doctor tells him he’s got a tumor and only weeks, maybe, to live. That would be a lot to take in. Whats more to take is the next day, when the devil appears and makes an offer – if this doomed man agrees to it, the devil will remove one thing from our world. For each removed thing, the man gains a day. Okay, so the first thing is cell phones to which the man agrees. The next day on the […]
August 11, 2024
o image there is a “Roman” sort of empire, with a huge city and a privileged founding race (literally blue-skinned), an empire that spans most of the known world. Imagine you are a white-skinned “barbarian” who has elevated himself to a position of commanding a regiment of engineers – and hey, you like just building bridges. You also are a smart-ass and a realist with a touch of mild Tourettes. And then your content life of engineering and problem-solving is upset when you realize that a massive army has been moving around inside the borders of this empire. It has […]