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The Penelopiad
Overview Overview Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) is a compact, slyly subversive retelling of Homer’s Odyssey that re-centers the narrative on Penelope and the twelve maidservants who are hanged at the end of the original epic. Written as a faux-memoir from Penelope’s vantage in the Underworld, punctuated by a persistent, shape-shifting chorus made up of…
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That Old Ace in the Hole
Overview That Old Ace in the Hole (2002) is Annie Proulx’s panoramic, character-driven novel set in the Texas–Oklahoma Panhandle. It follows Bob Dollar, a guileless land scout employed by a corporate hog‑farming conglomerate, as he embeds himself in the fictional town of Woolybucket. Proulx makes the landscape and its people the book’s central subjects: the…
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John Willie, The Story of John A.S. Coutts
Overview What a remarkable book. I’ve read several other books by Perez Seves which were excellent, and this was no exception, in fact I feel this was his best work to date. As long-time readers of this blog will know I am very interested in the history of fetish art, and the artist in this…
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
A rare DNF for the Neilos Reading Machine. Made it to page 92 and tapped out, just couldn’t keep my eyes open. This is a good book, and I feel it is worthy of a review despite my not being able to get through it. Bill Bryson is a bestselling travel author who, back in…
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact Sept/Oct 2024
From an editorial review: The September/October 2024 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact delivers a robust balance of rigorous, hard sci-fi worldbuilding, procedural mysteries, and thoughtful examinations of near-future sociology. Edited by Trevor Quachri, this double issue continues the magazine’s long-standing tradition of grounding speculative concepts in plausible scientific realities while expanding its narrative boundaries. Could…
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Conrad’s Fate
Overview and Context This was, as one editorial review put it, a wild romp! Conrad’s Fate is a young adult fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, published in 2005. It is the fifth chronological novel in the acclaimed Chrestomanci series, though it serves as a prequel to the events of The Magicians of Caprona and…
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Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Overview This is a masterpiece. You are likely thinking, “Neilos says things like that in a lot of his reviews.” That’s true, but rather than saying, “no this time I really mean it” I will say that the reason is I read a lot of great books. Not all of them, what fun would that…
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R is for Rocket
Overview: This was amazing. Overview with more than three words: Published in 1962 by Doubleday (and subsequently as the version I read, a popular Bantam paperback), R is for Rocket serves as a curated introduction to the lyrical prose and speculative imagination of Ray Bradbury. While many of the seventeen stories had appeared in earlier…
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The Skin Map
Well, this was not good. Not good at all. I’m not going to pan it and trash it, the author writes fairly well but this book was all over the (skin) map and was a real slog to get through. Remember, I’ve been through Life of Johnson and Decline and Fall so when I say…
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Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
I want just one Irish author to write in a style other than stream of consciousness, even just once. James Joyce kicked it off with Portrait of the Artist, then Sam Beckett carried the ball with Murphy and various other novels, and now Roddy Doyle has entered the chat. I did not like this book,…
In His Own Words