In his own words
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Super Space Encyclopedia
Review: An amazing, absorbing, informative book. The illustrations and photos are worth more than volumes of text. Even just the ones from Hubble. We’ve gone so far and yet we’re just barely begin to explore and learn. This book made me want to: increase funding for all space programs Overall rating: Readability: Plot: Other: Immensity
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Conan: The Hour of the Dragon
Review: Super good read. Fast paced, sword and sorcery. Proper old 1930s pulp magazine fare. However… Robert E. Howard stood apart from his pulp contemporaries by an Aquilonian League. A mile. His characters are well developed and he created a whole world. Think about Middle Earth and Narnia (which came later). If you’re not white,…
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Drowning in Beauty: The Neo-Decadent Anthology
Review: Like any great anthology, some good, some bad, some great, most average. This was, to put it simply, trying too hard to be cool. The Decadent Movement was a late 19th century literary and artistic phenomenon. Think Dorian Grey and you’ll get it. The creators disavow that Neo-Decadent is an homage or pastiche to…
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A Little History of Science
Review: What a superb little book. Science and its history explained in a clear and entertaining way. All the way from the Babylonian astronomers to the world wide web. Not a book of trivia, this was a clear and concise journey through the trials, errors, leaps forward, and disastrous steps backward that have created the…
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Rebecca
Review: I was enchanted for the first 30 pages but then it just went on and on. An influential novel, an important novel. A tiresome novel. Rebecca, or, Proust-writes-a-thriller. There was no need for this to be 428 pages. Even if you just cut out every description of scones you could trim a hundred pages.…
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The Red and The Black
Review: This was one of the selections from my Lifetime Reading Plan book. It was loooooong. Fairly difficult prose as it was translated from 19th century French. But. It was good, very good. Way ahead of its time (1830). A novel that challenged conventions and showed the inside machinations of church and state in post…
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The English Patient
Review: I was reluctant to read this as I had heard that it was a women’s book. Meaning one of those odious volumes that fat chicks in yoga pants gush to one another about in trendy coffee shops. Well I had no cause to fear, this was outstanding. From beginning to end this novel was…
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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1
Review: Before the Hugo and Nebula Awards came into being there was the Hall of Fame. The Science Fiction Writers of America Association decided to pick the 25 best short stories from 1929 to the current year of 1964. Thus, all these stories were picked by the writers of the best SF at the time…
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G, A Novel
Review: It didn’t take long to figure out why this one won the Booker Prize. Elusive to define. Partly historical, partly imagined. One reviewer described portions of it as a sexual meditation. Like Proust, the protagonist is unnamed through most of the novel. And even then he is known simply as “G”. Also like the…
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The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Review: You can’t speed read Bede, indeed, no need. I have always wanted to read the Venerable Bede, if for no other reason than to find out what was so venerable about the chap. Now I know. Bede was a scholarly monk who lived from around 673-735 AD in what we now call the United…