In his own words
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America 1908
Review: Grabbed this off the shelf at random and what a winner it was. The author, Jim Rasenberger is someone I was not familiar with but I am for sure going to check out his other books. If they are anything like this I want to read them. Okay, so this book was published in…
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Review: This was 190 pages of excellence. Reading Vonnegut always makes me feel like I need a shower and a walk in the sunshine after. But that just means it’s dark, it doesn’t affect the exellence. The novel tells the story of Eliot Rosewater, drunk, volunteer fireman, and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation.…
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Mrs. Dalloway
Review: This was unexpected. It was written in stream of consciousness like Joyce’s Ulysses which surprised me. I had read To The Lighthouse a couple years ago and that was conventional, so I guess I expected more of the same from this author. Two things I didn’t like were the lack of chapters and to…
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The Fire and the Darkness
Review: Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut made the name part of popular consciousness with the publication of Slaughterhouse Five. But for historians this is a minefield that most choose not to navigate. How to balance the remembrance with politics and the war. Like with Hiroshima, it’s difficult to discuss or write about without taking a side or…
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Burning Chrome
Review: This is one of my rare re-reads and it was by design, not something that I read and halfway through figured that I had actually read this before. I did that with a few, remember that 25 years of this reading journal was read through a vodka filter. I first discovered William Gibson when…
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The Sea
Review: This book, perhaps of all the (eight so far) Booker Prize winners I have read is the One True Winner. An outstanding piece of modern literature and a joy to read. So what is it about? In this case, I’m at a loss, it’s sort of about life, and dealing with illness, and grieving,…
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Weimar Germany, Promise and Tragedy
Review: A surprisingly engaging yet still scholarly history of Weimar Republic Germany. A rare bird indeed in the history book genre. You either get the tiktok quick read version or the omg did we need a whole chapter on the development of tweed trousers one. This was engaging from the first paragraph and while it…
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Analog SF Magazine January/February 2024
Review: My first Analog magazine for 2024. This was the best one I have read yet, with lots and lots of great content in both fiction and science fact, and in a couple of instances a blend of both. We meet an asteroid algae farmer harvesting oxygen for sale on the open market in A…
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Analog SF Magazine Nov/Dec 2023
Review: You might be saying to yourself, a magazine? But this is a book review blog! Yes, but this is quite different. Analog is a digest style magazine that has roots going back to the pulp magazine heyday in the early 20th century. I have bought individual issues before but always wanted to subscribe and…
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Why Evolution is True
Review: This was excellent. Science communication at its finest, meaning lots of information but presented in such a way as to be easy to understand for a layman like me. Very often I find that people are not as confused by evolution as they are resistant to it at a deep emotional level. This book…