Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story is probably my favorite of his books. It is a silly book, about the romance between Tommy Flood, a naive would-be writer from Nebraska, and Jody Stroud, a young woman in San Francisco who finds herself turned into a vampire. It’s an extremely funny book, with adventures involving… Continue reading Christopher Moore, You Suck [Library of Babel]
Category: Booklog
L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall [Library of Babel]
I picked this out of the to-be-read pile because it’s specifically name-checked in the “SF and the History of Science” panel description on my Boskone schedule. I figure it’s pretty likely to get brought up, and since we had a copy lying around, I might as well actually read it so as to be able… Continue reading L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall [Library of Babel]
Charlie Huston, No Dominion [Library of Babel]
The last booklog post was about an author who made a name writing urban fantasy, who is trying to write in a different subgenre, so it seems somewhat appropriate to have this post be about an urban fantasy by an author who made a name writing something else. OK, Charlie Huston might object to having… Continue reading Charlie Huston, No Dominion [Library of Babel]
Jim Butcher, Furies of Calderon [Library of Babel]
Jim Butcher’s last few Dresden Files books (coming soon to a tv series near you…) have included little afterwords in which he tells the story of how he started reading SF, and urges readers to check out his new epic fantasy series (the “Codex Alera”). He explains that he’s always wanted to write that sort… Continue reading Jim Butcher, Furies of Calderon [Library of Babel]
Kij Johnson, Fudoki [Library of Babel]
Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman, the story of a fox in Heian-era Japan who becomes a woman for the sake of love, was a beautiful and moving book, so, of course, I bought her next book, Fudoki immediately. And then, it took me three years to get around to reading it… There’s no real good… Continue reading Kij Johnson, Fudoki [Library of Babel]
Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid [Library of Babel]
Noted travel writer Bill Bryson has a real gift for making entertaining anecdotes out of basically nothing. His travel books are frequently hilarious, but if you think carefully about what actually happens in the books, there’s very little there. His gift as a writer is to inflate mundane experiences– waiting on line at a train… Continue reading Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid [Library of Babel]
Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Paul Davies’s forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled “Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life,” so you know that he’s not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the “Goldilocks Enigma,” and what others refer to as “fine-tuning”– basically, how do you account for… Continue reading Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
A. Lee Martinez, Gil’s All Fright Diner [Library of Babel]
Having booklogged two heavy and confusing books already today, let’s throw in something light. A. Lee Martinez’s debut novel Gil’s All Fright Diner is a comic fantasy featuring a couple of redneck-y guys named Duke and Earl, who stop by a diner in rural Texas for a quick bite to eat. Of course, Duke is… Continue reading A. Lee Martinez, Gil’s All Fright Diner [Library of Babel]
Hal Duncan, Vellum [Library of Babel]
Having finally posted about Gaudeamus, I might as well get the other great “WTF” book in the stack out of the way. Hal Duncan’s Vellum has been described as “cubist fantasy,” and while I’m not quite sure what that means, it’s probably as good a description as any. Vellum takes place in 2017, and also… Continue reading Hal Duncan, Vellum [Library of Babel]
John Barnes, Gaudeamus [Library of Babel]
In some ways, John Barnes’s metafictional novel Gaudeamus is the proximate cause of the huge backlog in my book logging. I was more-or-less caught up at one point, but then stalled on this book, unable to think of what to say about it. I’m still not entirely clear on it, but I’m just going to… Continue reading John Barnes, Gaudeamus [Library of Babel]