Friday June 3, 2011
Comment [1]
Moving past a particular book, to an author’s body of work or oevure, it gets more difficult; I set up BookNom to recommend books, which in 98% of all cases are contiguous with the works of an author. But go...
Thursday June 2, 2011Comment
Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by Hugh MacLeod : Portfolio (Penguin), New York; 2011 hardcover isbn 9781591843849
from the publishing info [fine print] “Selections from this book first appeared on the author’s website, gapingvoid.com“
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This is...
Tuesday May 31, 2011Comment
How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads by Daniel Cassidy : CounterPunch Books (AK Press), Petrolia, CA; 2007 paperback edition isbn 9781904859604
So perhaps you knew that the Irish saved civilization, or how the Scots-Irish...
Monday May 30, 2011Comment
Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe, translated by Alexander O. Smith : Haikasoru (Viz Media), San Francisco, 2007; 2009 paperback edition 9781421527734
From the Publisher: “Young Wataru flees his messed-up life to navigate the magical world of Vision, a land filled with...
Sunday May 29, 2011Comment
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Stephen Johnson : Riverhead (Penguin), New York, 2010 hardcover, isbn 9780441011490
It’s hard to boil down Johnson’s argument into a quick synopsis, which is perhaps why he filled 170 or...
Saturday May 28, 2011Comment
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld : Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009 hardcover isbn 9781416971733, 2010 paperback isbn 9781416971740
Interior illustrations by Keith Thompson: http://www.keiththompsonart.com/leviathanbook.html
First, a few admissions: Yes, one might call Leviathan “steampunk” – it’s not, but...
Saturday June 4, 2011
Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content by Colleen Jones : New Riders (Pearson/Penguin), Berkeley, CA; 2011 paperback isbn 9780321733016
There is a need for a writing guide/design book on how to build websites — no, not the underlying code, or HTML and CSS and CMS...
Wednesday June 1, 2011
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles 1-10 by Roger Zelazny : Eos Books (Avon, HarperCollins; in 2010 HarperCollins renamed the Eos imprint Harper Voyager), New York; 1999 paperback, re-released in 2010; isbn 9780380809066. Collects material previously released 1970-1992.
There are many classic series in Science Fiction and...
Thursday May 19, 2011
Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden : Picador, 2010, 9780312429546
Almost nothing happens in Molly Fox’s Birthday. The unnamed narrator—a playwright on writing holiday at an old friend’s flat (Molly Fox, a stage actor of some renown) in Dublin while her friend is in New York—dawdles, dines, thinks about her history...
Wednesday May 18, 2011
Embassytown by China Miéville : Del Rey, 2011, 9780345524492
Reviews usually roll out rather more plot summary than I find appropriate for a novel as charily plotted and prone to epiphany as Miéville’s are. Me, I find 90% of the joy and awe of reading a work of speculative fiction lies...
Wednesday May 18, 2011
Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry : Lifelong Books (Da Capo Press, Perseus), Cambridge, MA; 2009 trade paperback isbn 9780738212289
I don’t keep vegan, or kosher; I don’t even bother with the fish-on-Friday thing during lent even though I was raised Catholic. I’m an unrepentant carnivore and for me, meat...
Tuesday May 17, 2011
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn : Anchor, 2002, 9780385722438
Ella Minnow Pea‘s elegant subtitle is “a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable.” The story hinges on several pangrams, sentences written using all the letters of the alphabet, the most famous of which, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” Dunn...
Monday May 16, 2011
Stoner by John Williams : NYRB Classics, 2006, 9781590171998
Simple and tender, and unique in its being a sympathetic portrait of an ordinary Midwesterner. Here is what happens in this book: In 1910, William Stoner leaves his father’s farm for the University of Missouri, ostensibly to study agriculture; but he...
Saturday May 14, 2011
Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene : Penguin, 2010, 9780143118053
A Christmas gift whose bestowers theorized that since they didn’t know my favorite authors but knew I loved books, a meta-book would work. And they were so right, because this book was awesome.
Studies...
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Evil Plans
How the Irish Invented Slang
Brave Story
Where Good Ideas Come From
Leviathan
The Great Good Place
Ruled Britannia
Leiber's Lankhmar 
Clout
Evil Plans
The Great Book of Amber
How the Irish Invented Slang
Brave Story
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