While we’re talking about reviews… You may recall me mentioning how much I was enjoying Tom Disch‘s Word Of God. I noted this weekend that Paul Witcover–himself a gifted novelist–has written a particularly good review. Until I get off my butt and write my thoughts on the book out, allow me to point you to Paul’s.
Category: Books
Explainers In The Mainstream.
Hey, remember back in June when I wrote a bit about how much I was digging The Explainers? Well, it appears the mainstream media has caught up with me…he said arrogantly.. The Sunday Book Review in the New York Times reviewed the book this weekend. It was the cover review. Here’s an excerpt: Of course, representing any Feiffer strip with… Read more →
Aside
“I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” That’s one of many, many tidbits to be found at the site for Andrew Zuckerman’s new book, Wisdom. Go there. Watch the clip. Then see if you can resist the urge to buy the book.
Screen Reading
“The inclination to read a huge Victorian novel, the capacity to untangle a metaphor in a line of verse, the desire to study and emulate a distant historical figure, the urge to ponder a concept such as Heidegger’s ontic-ontological difference over and over and around and around until it breaks through as a transformative insight — those dispositions melt away… Read more →
Diverse practyk in many sundry werkes
My goal is to redefine the whole history of rhyme ‘Cause the only way to free the soul is to free the mind And no wisdom as old as this should be confined To total mystery, so we’ll just read the signs And DaVinci codes, and try to see the science In this linguistically-composed pristine design –extracted from Rhyme Renaissance… Read more →
Aside
Golden Books 1: The Sun, The Moon, And The Stars
Over at the blog Steven Brust shares with his roommates, the question was posed about the “golden books“—those ones that because you hit them at just the right time, and they were just the right thing, made a lasting change in you, and how you interact with the world. I didn’t comment there, but I’ve been thinking about it. Several… Read more →
Missing The Joke: Or How I Learned To Bind The Spirits
You know what I hate? When I can tell that something in what I’m reading (or seeing) is a reference to something, and I don’t know what that something is. Sometimes it’s an inside joke, but more often it’s a literary reference, or an allusion to some knowledge I don’t have. Most of the time I can spot the reference,… Read more →
What’s the -philia for books?
…because man I love books. I love the good stories, and I love the well-crafted physical objects as well. Love ’em. So let’s talk about a whole bunch of book-related topics, to give me a book fix. First I’d like to do a little bit of a rant about books as commercial objects. Actually, as I’m intelligent enough to understand… Read more →
Silence Falls On Mecca’s Walls
And now, because I couldn’t turn up a copy of this online todayGoogle so rarely fails me these days, and ironically, once I had looked it up I was able to find a copy with a non-title search. when I wanted to refer to it during a heated discussion of US foreign policy, and I had to go pull out… Read more →
How about a Saturday Bookish Links roundup?
On my last excursion to Boston, while I sadly did not get to do the Readercon thingRound-the-clock meetings suck. Next job I work only in North American time zones–the global economy can go hang., I did get to pick up a couple of more Centipede Press books that I had directed to my US mail drop (a.k.a. “Matt’s house”): a… Read more →
A Previous Engagement
No blogging today, nothing’s getting between me and the new TaltosIf that made you think of Ann Rice, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. book. I’ve known Steve for quite few years now, but I’ve known Vlad since I was 10 years old–we go waaaay back. And unlike many people I knew when I was ten, I’m always glad to… Read more →
Jaycee
I read a lot of science fiction. I have, since I was a kid–the first novel with no pictures I ever read was A Wrinkle In Time. The first “adult” book I ever read was Foundation. When I was younger I had the opportunity to read a lot of the early short work in the genre. Libraries had a lot… Read more →
It’s Real. It’s Here.
My copy of this finally arrived on Wednesday (shortly after copies hit Pitcairn’s Island)–and despite poker night followed by an hour of Australia work email very late at night, I still started into it. Thursday morning was… um… not ideal. The book though, is great. I only got through around a hundred pages that night before I had to give… Read more →
Wednesday Bookish Links
I was delighted to find out this week that Emma Bull is writing a sequel to Territory (you might recall I was pretty excited about that one), tentatively titled Claim. Of course, in the interim, I can always get a hit of Shadow Unit. (I think I might have mentioned that once or twice, possibly.) I have made no secret… Read more →
