Book Blog
June 16, 2024
nother Norfolk used bookstore find (someone tossed it, to my gain). The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a tale about a tunnel ship (that makes the warp paths other ships can use. In this universe, a divided human race (after our planet’s collapse there were those who stayed in system, and those who joined a refugee fleet) finds itself as members of the Galactic Commons, a sort of UN in space sort of thing. Rosemary Harper has signed up on Wayfarer to be their ship’s clerk. But she has a history, something she is hiding. But the […]
June 11, 2024
nteresting idea here – how would World War Two have changed if Neville Chamberlain had not just given Hitler Czechoslovakia, kicking off the war earlier, say, 1938? It’s interesting in that the Japanese are no-way interested in bombing Pearl Harbor yet. The Germans are slugging their way into France with a lot less then they had in 1940 – only Panzer Is and IIs. More importantly, General Sanjurjo does not die in a plane crash and runs the Spanish Civil War himself, instead of Franco. So there are no quick thrusts – just a slog in Spain, France, Poland and […]
June 9, 2024
eah, yeah, another Destroyermen book. I’m over the halfway point now. So our Alternate-World-War (starting when an aging destroyer fell into a primitive world where dinosaurs never went extinct) continues on the allies’ front lines. In the west at the former Grik capitol, the Grik ready a counterattack across the strait between Madagascar and Africa. And over in South America, the Doms prepare to strike the allied base. There is a bit of synergy in the storytelling. In both cases, a massive force looms over the good guys. And as very typical in Taylor Anderson’s story, it seems to always […]
June 2, 2024
o an interesting book, especially given our time. Imagine a company named “Information”, that unlike Truth Social or X, strives for a bias-free platform. You can ask anything and it should be reasonably correct (wasn’t this the original goal of the internet?). And further imagine that for the last twenty years, world-wide elections take place for local representations. You vote for your party and if you win, your immediate area is now under the control of that party. And there are dozens of parties – nationalistic, green, protectionist, etc. I really liked the party named Policity1st, which does not campaign […]
May 26, 2024
‘ve listened to David Sedaris many times on NPR. He’s the Jewish gag guy, a sad sack replacement for the crashed-n-burned Woody Allen. And he’s funny and observational. When you are Engulfed in Flames is his collection of short stories of his life. I really enjoyed his piece on The Smoking Section – here, Sedaris talks about smoking, how he started, and all the times he tried to quit. Interestingly, he and his partner moved to Tokyo for three months, as if the change of scenery would help. He even takes a class in Japanese and manages to finish dead […]
May 19, 2024
while ago I wrote a review for The Traveling Cat Chronicles, which I heard about in Japan (movie poster below) and found that the book had been translated into English. It was a great story form the cat’s point of view of a man and his furry companion, traveling Japan together, trying to find the cat a new home for reasons that are horribly poignant when finally revealed. It was a great story that brought tears to my eyes. Since I only seem to find better literature in other countries, I was snooping the stacks in the Amsterdam train station […]
May 12, 2024
eil Gaiman can always be counted on to provide interesting and clever fiction. And this one, his massive tome of American Gods, shows this ability to the utmost. So figure that gods need people to make them exist. They exist through belief. Belief is what makes gods live, and brings them power. So of course, American has no gods before there are people (the rest of the world is lousy with them). And as humans arrive, across the Barents Strait, grind their longboat prows into Newfoundland, settle in Plymouth, arrive to build railroads, to escape a potato famine, or are […]
May 5, 2024
rigger Warning is a collection of Neil Gaiman short stories, perfect for the long plane trip to Amsterdam. They all are stories which the main character is surprised (sometimes fatally) by a turn of events. Often they are close calls, or cautionary notes, or just death. But they were all fun. My favorite of the bunch was Adventure Story, a cute little story where a man asks his mom about an item on his late-father’s desk, an tiny figuring, and in denying and pooh-poohing it, his mother hints of some sort of crazy Indian Jones adventure his father went through. […]
April 29, 2024
ou’ll notice that I’ve picked up reviews again. With my two week vacation in Amsterdam and my blogging about it, I really didn’t have time for book reviews. Well, I’ve got a stack to get through so even though it’s late, let’s get started. So Taylor Anderson’s Deadly Shores is the ninth book in the Destroyermen series. In this one, the world gets bigger as we learn more about the reptilian grik locations in Africa, hints about another race further north along the western coast, and possibly more allies beyond the South American Dons. Yes, the book is busy. Unlike […]
March 24, 2024
his is one of my puzzled reviews. Rachel Cantor’s A Highly Unlikely Scenario was an odd little read. You can figure this by the sub-title included: “A Nestsa Pixxs Employee’s Guide to saving the World”. So Leonard is the pizza employee, and he handles call center duties in a futuristic world where fast food corporations run everything. He’s feeling a little bad about his old Jewish grandfather, whom he kinda ridiculed and chided in the last years of his life. And then, suddenly, Leonard gets a call from someone who is in prison. The calls keeps coming in – even […]