Tag: 5 stars
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Review: I held off on reading this for a long time. I’m nearly done the complete works now and decided not to put it off any longer. This is because: But I was wrong in putting this one off for so long. There is a reason that this is one of Cather’s most recognized and Read more
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In a Free State
Review: The fourth Booker Prize winning novel I have read since beginning my quest of reading all 50 plus winners. Like all the others I have read there is no questioning the brilliance and reasons for winning. But like a lot of the others this one was pretty dark and very serious. Ferris Bueller gets Read more
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The First World War
Review: What new things could a student of the Great War like Neilos possible learn? Oh… so much. It is true that for years I have read and listened to all sorts of material on this conflict. And it is still as clear as trench-mud. There was so much even leading up to August 1914 Read more
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The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1
Review: Dark. Holy fuck. And this was only Volume 1. A chilling first-hand account of life in the soviet prison industry system. Man’s inhumanity to man, repeated ad nauseum. Like a very long version of the author’s own One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. A lucid reminder to keep people like Trump out Read more
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The Ghost Road
Review: What an extraordinary book. A tour de force from first to last. Set in 1918 and with retrospectives to an earlier time prior to the war. A gritty, even shockingly brutal look at life in 1918. Imagine all the old codgers you see at the cenotaph on November 11 being young and fucking each Read more
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The Song of the Lark
Review: “Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the things that wakened and chirped in the early morning, the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeasurable yearnings of all flat lands.” I cannot express how magnificent this book is so I’m not going to even try. This book made me want Read more
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Death in Venice
Review: A literary triumph. I nearly said tour de force but I’m gay enough already without adding fuel to the fire. A dark, brooding tale of homosexual obsession. Kind of like a gay Lolita. The prose is magnificent without being overly wordy and pedantic. Leitmotifs abound, so many that Wagner would be jealous. And speaking Read more