Thursday, February 19, 2009

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 5: Hamlet (Shakespeare)

Canonicity puts it beyond categorization.

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.

Book 1: The Birth House (McKay)

OK historical novel.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Book 31: What is the What (Eggers)

Excellent "autobiography" of a Sudanese Lost Boy.

Book 30: The Song of the Silent Snow (Selby)

Good short story collection.

Book 29: The Book of Joby (Ferrari)

Very good fantasy/adventure. First third is spectacular.

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.

Book 24: Boone (Hansen)

Wow. Just terrible. Annoying, pathetic people. Maybe that was the point?

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.

Book 20: Surprised by Hope (Wright)

Very good semi-popular theology on the end.

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.