Friday, September 03, 2010
Book 33 - Autobiopsy (Rubens)
Good literary fiction. Like Isherwood, not awesome, but excellent ending.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Book 31 - Well of Ascension (Sanderson)
Good epic fantasy. A little heavy-handed with the emotional plot.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Book 28 - Down There On a Visit (Isherwood)
Very good modern novel. Last part is quite a surprising twist.
Friday, July 02, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Book 22 - The Road Less Travelled (Peck)
Very good self-help. Parapsychology and synchronicity a little hard to swallow
Friday, June 04, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Book 18: A Generous Orthodoxy (McLaren)
Average. The spirit stuff is very weak and disappointing. Like, that's all you get?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Book 10 - Guitar (Brookes)
Pretty good history of guitars and some modern boutique guitar-building. Brookes is more interested in guitars than music.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
2010 - 7 - Permanance (Schroeder)
Pretty good SF. Similar universe and ideas to Watts' Blindsight (consciousness rare, though not a disadvantage), but sunny and cheery instead of bleak and hopeless.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
2010 - 2 - The Great Emergence (Tickle)
Awful. Historically ignorant, philosophically incoherent, sociologically fanciful.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Book 49: Pushing Ice (Reynolds)
OK SF. Some cool ideas, but protagonists were annoying power-loving heirarchs.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Book 40: Fugitives of Chaos (Wright)
Good fantasy. In the struggle of art v. ideology, art wins, but ideology pokes its nose in occasionally.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Book 15: God in a Cup (Weissman)
Fawning and trivial look at third wave "coffee guys" (Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, Stumptown)
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Book 13: Inspiration and Incarnation (Enns)
Good discussion of NT use of OT (not grammatico-historical by a long shot)
Monday, March 09, 2009
Book 11: An Evil Guest (Wolfe)
Good. Lots of action, Lovecraft ending, baffling shout-out to Cory Doctorow. I think there's more to this book than I got, maybe because I've heard people say there's always lots to Wolfe.
Book 10: The Golden Transcendence (Wright)
Excellent finish to the trilogy. High-quality far-future SF.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Book 8: The Shack (Young)
Poorly written, low-quality theodicy. Protagonist does not have his wits about him, for which I blame the author.
Book 7: The Light Ages (MacLeod)
Average fantasy. Victorian era + Magic + Revolution should have been awesome, like Susanna Clarke meets China Mieville, but it was kind of flat.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Book 6: Dream (Selby)
Very good. Introductory comments by Aronofsky are just wrong, but author's preface is interesting ("Living the dream" v "Living the life")
Book 4: The Phoenix Exultant (Wright)
Excellent sequel to The Golden Age. Hero's a bit more sympathetic now. And a couple of funny parts.
Book 3: The Golden Age (Wright)
Excellent far-future post-Singularity SF. Good stuff on remaining human (or not). And a kind of cool lost-memory detective story. Cliffhanger ending.
Book 2: Pirate Freedom (Wolfe)
Very good historical novel. Doesn't seem as weird and layered as usual for Wolfe, but maybe it's just going over my head.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Book 28: The Elementary Particles (Houellebecq)
Excellent modern fiction. Too much graphic sex, but some excellent philosophy.
Book 27: Ha'penny (Walton)
Very good Farthing sequel. A couple of characters are the same, heroine is of the same type as Farthing's.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Book 26: Irresistible Revolution (Claiborne)
Very good activist Christian stuff. "Do small things with great love."
Book 25: Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis)
Surprisingly good. With Lewis you rarely escape the feeling of being preached to, and he seems to be fighting a battle with some old ideas for which Weston's a stand-in (check Wikipedia), but on the whole it was fairly cool.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Book 23: The Monsters of St. Helena (Hansen)
Pretty good story about Napoleon in exile. Not as weird as Hansen's other stuff, and not as interesting either.
Book 22: Perlman's Ordeal (Hansen)
Good story about a hypno-therapist in early-20c London. Gets kind of weird.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Book 21: A History of Violence (Wagner)
Good graphic novel. Can now see why Cronenberg did the movie.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Book 19: Mr B. Gone (Barker)
OK horror. Most books bring you in by putting the protagonist in jeopardy. This one tries to put you in jeopardy, but it's not convincing. Angel/demon negotiations were pretty cool.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Book 16: Watch Your Back (Westlake)
Decent Dortmunder novel. Don't know who that support group at the end were, though!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)