Tag: Books & Reading
Best of 2010
It’s entirely ridiculous for me to offer up an annual “best of” list. I don’t keep up with the latest and greatest. I’d rather plunder the riches of the past than fetishize the new. Of the twenty or so books I read this past year, only one was published in 2010: The Heart of Higher […]
Read More → Best of 2010Dark Green Religion
Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future by Bron Taylor My rating: 5 of 5 stars Here’s a rarity — an academic book that is also a page-turner, at least for me. I couldn’t put it down. This is a broad survey of an emergent global phenomenon which might be called earth worship […]
Read More → Dark Green ReligionConnect the Dots
Some people criticize the green movement for being almost like a religious faith. Others say the green movement has lost touch with its spiritual roots. Now Dark Green Religion by Bron Taylor has landed on my reading list. I’ll report back if I figure anything out.
Read More → Connect the DotsPerils of Reading
I wanted to write something here about how to enjoy a book, novels in particular. I’ve touched on this before, but I wanted to expand on that theme. It’s not enough to read for an hour or so before you go to bed. Read when you first wake up in the morning. Read at lunch […]
Read More → Perils of ReadingHundredth Book
Phil Baird / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Tomorrow at my book club we are discussing our hundredth book. We have been reading together since the summer of 2001, when we got started with Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Since then we’ve been through an awful lot, including the flooding of our city as well as […]
Read More → Hundredth BookBookbook
A friend of mine quit Facebook earlier this week. Said he wanted to spend more time reading. Someone else suggested he needed a Bookbook application, which I thought was pretty funny. (But, come to think of it, maybe that’s a better name than GoodReads or LibraryThing.) (Though I don’t think Facebook is dominating my mental […]
Read More → BookbookThe Atrocity Exhibition
These are not reviews — more like reading notes. Title: The Atrocity Exhibition Author: J. G. Ballard Published: 1970 The Atrocity Exhibition was originally published in 1970, but it was shredded by a distraught Nelson Doubleday, or so the story goes. It was published again by Grove in ’72 under a different title, and then […]
Read More → The Atrocity Exhibition334
Once again, these are not reviews, just some scattered reading notes. Title: 334 Author: Thomas M. Disch Published: 1974 Like Nova, this is a good novel by an author capable of greatness. I admire Disch, and was saddened when he took his life last year. I have a collection of his stories, entitled Fun with […]
Read More → 334Babylon, Babylon
I recently failed to complete two works with similar names: Babylon Babies, a book by some French dude, and Babylon 5, a TV series from the 1990s.
Read More → Babylon, BabylonChildren of Men/Little, Big
It should be noted: These are not book reviews. I think of them more as reading notes.
Read More → Children of Men/Little, BigThe Sea Priestess/Spin State
It should be noted: These are not book reviews. I think of them more as reading notes. This is my journal, and I’d like to record some thoughts on each book I read. That’s all.
Read More → The Sea Priestess/Spin StateThe Speed of Dark
Title: The Speed of Dark Author: Elizabeth Moon Published: 2002 So here’s a book that I enjoyed despite some glaring deficiencies. It’s the tale of a young autistic man. He’s high-functioning with a genius aptitude for pattern recognition, so he’s gainfully employed. In fact he’s part of a whole unit of autistic employees at some […]
Read More → The Speed of DarkGlasshouse
Title: Glasshouse Author: Charles Stross Published: 2006 There’s usually a point in most novels where I feel the hook, where I no longer feel the effort of pushing forward and making myself read, but suddenly (or not so suddenly) find myself being pulled forward, intrigued, under the spell. I’ve noticed this usually happens somewhere around […]
Read More → GlasshouseInfinite Jest
Title: Infinite Jest Author: David Foster Wallace Published: 1996 David Foster Wallace, you’ve gotten the better of me. I started reading Infinite Jest shortly before my daughter was born. I’ve continued to plug away at it for three months.
Read More → Infinite JestThe Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Title: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon Author: Julie Phillips Published: 2006 If you go to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, you can see a huge gorilla beating its breast. It’s stuffed of course. It was shot on Mount Karisimbi in the Belgian Congo in November of […]
Read More → The Double Life of Alice B. SheldonHer Smoke Rose Up Forever
Title: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever Author: James Tiptree, Jr. Published: 1969-1981 He wails voicelessly as conviction invades him, he who had believed in nothing before. All the agonies of Earth, uncanceled? Are broken ghosts limping forever from Stalingrad and Salamis, from Gettysburg and Thebes and Dunkirk and Khartoum? Do the butchers’ blows still fall […]
Read More → Her Smoke Rose Up ForeverSpin
Title: Spin Author: Robert Charles Wilson Published: 2005 Imagine you’re a kid looking up at the night sky and all of a sudden the stars vanish. All of them, instantly, gone in the blink of an eye. That’s the opening gambit for Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and I was hooked. Imagine growing up in […]
Read More → SpinMixed-Up Files
Title: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler Author: E. L. Konigsburg Published: 1967 This book was published the year I was born. I figure I was around ten or so when I read it on a trip to the Field Museum in Chicago with my father. The story of two young kids […]
Read More → Mixed-Up FilesTreachery
Every month, the Octavia Science Fiction Club meets at Octavia Books. Our reading selections are chosen by our members on a rotating basis, organized around a loose theme. Most recently we read three books on the theme of “Treachery.” You can get any of these books from Octavia Books by clicking the links. Note that […]
Read More → Treachery