I started out blogging about books, way back in 2001, but somewhat ironically, I rarely post anything about books any more. My free time has been whittled down to the point where book blogging is time taken away from other stuff, and it’s never been that popular here. I post reviews of science books that… Continue reading The Science of Magic
Category: Booklog
Recent Genre Fiction Reading: Schroeder, Buckell, Cole
I’ve gotten out of the habit of booklogging recently, which is sort of a shame, because it means I’ve also gone back to the problem that led Kate and me to start booklogs in the first place: people ask what I’ve been reading recently, and I can’t remember… As a sort of corrective to this,… Continue reading Recent Genre Fiction Reading: Schroeder, Buckell, Cole
Dan Wells, John Cleaver Series [Library of Babel]
I’ve heard a bunch of good things about Dan Wells’s John Cleaver series (a trilogy at the moment, consisting of I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don’t Want to Kill You, but the ending of the last leaves an opening for more, should he want to write more), but I somehow… Continue reading Dan Wells, John Cleaver Series [Library of Babel]
Lev Grossman, The Magician King [Library of Babel]
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians never got a full entry to itself, but as I said when I mentioned it in this round-up post, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a magical school novel about recognizable American teenagers attending Brakebills, a sort of liberal arts college for the wizarding set, somewhere in the lower Hudson… Continue reading Lev Grossman, The Magician King [Library of Babel]
Ten Years Before the Blog
While future historians will undoubtedly remember August 7th primarily as SteelyKid’s birthday (it would be irresponsible of me to encourage people to go edit the Wikipedia date page accordingly, wouldn’t it?), there was another locally important event on August 7th, some years earlier: August 7th, 2001, saw my first blog post ever, the inaugural post… Continue reading Ten Years Before the Blog
Jim Butcher, Ghost Story [Library of Babel]
One of the problems with a long-running series is that it accretes backstory as you go (unless, of course, you go the Rex Stout route and just pretend that time doesn’t pass for the characters, even when you have the client in a later book being the son of a character from one of the… Continue reading Jim Butcher, Ghost Story [Library of Babel]
China Mieville, Kraken [Library of Babel]
I’m not a huge Mieville fan, but the descriptions I read of Kraken sounded like good fun. As I like fun books, and a fun book written by China Mieville seemed sufficiently improbable that I just had to see it, I picked it up a little while ago, and read it over the last week… Continue reading China Mieville, Kraken [Library of Babel]
Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief [Library of Babel]
I’ve heard a lot of buzz about The Quantum Thief— see, for example, this enthusiastic review from Gary K. Wolfe, so I was psyched when it finally became available in the US a little while back. Of course, the down side of this sort of buzz is that it’s almost impossible to live up to… Continue reading Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief [Library of Babel]
1491 by Charles C. Mann
We picked up a used copy of Charles Mann’s pop-archeology book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus a while back. I didn’t read it at the time, because I was a little afraid that it would be rather polemical in what I think of as the Neil Young mode– wildly overstating the awesomeness… Continue reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik [Library of Babel]
Tongues of Serpents is the nth book in the Temeraire series started with His Majesty’s Dragon (in the US, anyway), and another “Meh” review from me. In this case, this is probably less to do with the book itself than with the fact that I am not really in the target demographic for this book.… Continue reading Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik [Library of Babel]