It’s one of the classic mistakes, isn’t it? The quality of the art has no dependence on the character or personal qualities of the artist, right? It’s entirely possible for a complete bounder and an utter cad to be a brilliant and gifted writer, who can produce sterling prose that informs the mind and touches the heart, isn’t it? Actually,… Read more →
Category: Books
A Nice Night…
Sitting on the couch, with some music quietly playing in the corner, reading A Dirty Job, while Trish sits on the other end of the couch reading Temeraire,I know, I know, but the British title is so much less cheesy than the American one and we can hear Sarah breathing through the monitor. That’s a pretty nice way to spend… Read more →
Science Fiction Authors Say Smart Things: Sagan on TV
Over on his blog science fiction writer Nick Sagan (author of fun books Idlewild, Edenborn, and forthcoming Everfree) has a post about his favourite TV shows. Now, while all five shows he lists are good shows, his numbers 5, 4, 3, and 2 would not make my list of “all time best” shows. (How can you make a list of… Read more →
Book Notes: Agony Column
OK, time to do some initial clean up on my “To Blog” folder. The first thing on the menu is a set of pointers to Agony Column content, to thin out the “Books” subfolder. I’ve mentioned before that Rick Kleffel might be the reviewer who most constantly lines up with my eclecticism, and looking at my “To Blog” folder I… Read more →
Spend nine minutes with Alan Moore
He comes off a bit pretentious, and probably won’t get any new readers from this, but since I was already fully converted it’s very interesting to me. Read more →
Things to listen to
Not music this time, but a bunch of things you can slap in your MP3 player and use to fill up some dead time. I’m going to assume you know what a podcast is, and have software to harvest them. (I use Doppler.) Let’s start with academics. Professor Courtney Brown, of the Political Science department at Emory University in Georgia… Read more →
SF Authors say smart things: Scalzi on the Judiciary
SF author John Scalzi is doing “reader request week” over at his popular blog Whatever, an annual event where he posts in response to reader requests (duh!). Today’s post is on the question of “activist” judges, and Scalzi’s response is great. I’ve noticed that my political opinions and Scalzi’s have some overlap but they certainly aren’t congruent; this piece is… Read more →
Minor sidebar work
I’ve added random quote functionality to the sidebar, and so far I’ve just fed in something like 30 choice Bertrand Russell quotes. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I intend to add other authors, or just keep deepening the Russell quote collection. You’ll see it at the top of the sidebar. You will also see a new entry in… Read more →
Margo Lanagan’s Voice
I was really expecting a more pronounced Australian accent. That’s what I get for working with guys in Victoria, I guess. A while back genius Australian short story writer Margo Lanagan posted that she had done an interview with the BBC World Service‘s program “The Word“. The short interview is nominally about her brilliant short story collection Black Juice–a collection… Read more →
Monday MP3 Miscellany
So, in lieu of actual content, I bring you a bag of links to audio content, both musical and book-related. This’ll be a long post. Read more →
Take down that scam, kids!
Remember last year when a bunch of SF writers got together to prove that PublishAmerica was a vanity publishing operation, not any kind of real publisher? (See more info here or here.) You might remember that I even bought a copy of the book they submitted–I really tried to read it, but it was so unendurably bad that I couldn’t… Read more →
Hey, get a cool book for free
OK, short notice, I know, but I should point you guys at this: Martha Wells: One more reminder about the Free Book contest I’m giving away ten signed paperback copies of The Wizard Hunters, and the deadline for entry is February 15 (Wednesday). Right now there are 51 entries, so the chances aren’t bad. If you know of anybody who… Read more →
Another Award Post…
So, I see that the shortlist is out now for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award: Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go Ken MacLeod – Learning the World Alastair Reynolds – Pushing Ice Geoff Ryman – Air Charles Stross – Accelerando Liz Williams – Banner of Souls This one is almost as hard to call as the BSFA list.… Read more →
Counting Heads
Yesterday my copy of David Marusek’s Counting Heads arrived. I kind of took a flyer on this–I had heard a few good things around the net, but I didn’t have a positive recommendation from any of my usual sources. Today, I found the Rick Kleffel–who is definitely one of my trusted sources for recommendations–had a decent length review of the… Read more →
Best First Lines?
So, Litline (American Book Review) has what they purport to be the 100 Best First Lines from Novels. I don’t know about the 100 Best, but there’s certainly some good ones in there, although I could certainly argue with the order. For example, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” should… Read more →
