Jack McDevitt is a prolific SF author, with a couple of running series that recently appeared in booklog entries here (see, for example, Antiquities Dealers in Spaaaace!!!). Coincidentally, he’s also talked to the Slush God, in an interview posted at SciFi Weekly. He says a bunch of interesting stuff, and not just about his books:… Continue reading Jack McDevitt Interview
Category: Books
Call for Nominations: Book of the Year (Non-Fiction)
Continuing the year-end wrap-up theme, I’ll invite suggestions for the best books of the year. Since I’m so far behind on the booklog, it’s much harder for me to remember what came out in 2006, and come up with a ranking, but I have some ideas. I’d like to hear what other people think, though,… Continue reading Call for Nominations: Book of the Year (Non-Fiction)
Call for Nominations: Book of the Year (Fiction)
Continuing the year-end wrap-up theme, I’ll invite suggestions for the best books of the year. Since I’m so far behind on the booklog, it’s much harder for me to remember what came out in 2006, and come up with a ranking, but I have some ideas. I’d like to hear what other people think, though,… Continue reading Call for Nominations: Book of the Year (Fiction)
Product Placement
Another idle thought inspired by the Bond movie (I may or may not post comments about the movie as a whole, but you can check out Kate’s spoiler-laden comments. I liked it a little more than she did, but I’m more familiar with the genre, and willing to cut them more slack…): From what I… Continue reading Product Placement
Inside the Writer’s Studio
I scan the titles reviewed by the Onion AV Club through their RSS feed every week, and only click over there for things that look particularly interesting. I don’t regularly check their feature stories, which is why I’m a week late in noticing that they have an interview with Donald Westlake, one of my very… Continue reading Inside the Writer’s Studio
UnSuggestions
Following up on the weekend’s reading suggestions, I should point to John Horgan’s list of the Ten Worst Science Books. These aren’t obscure self-published tracts on the Theory of Everything, either– Stephen Jay Gould, Malcolm Gladwell and E. O. Wilson make the list, and there are more best-selling suggestions in the comments.
Would You Like Something to Read?
We’re out of town for the weekend visiting family, so if you usually depend on this blog for entertainment, you’ll need to find something else to do. How about a good book or two? You can’t decide what to read? Well, the Internet is here to provide suggestions. You might, for example, think about the… Continue reading Would You Like Something to Read?
Bookstore Conundrum
If you go into any big-box bookstore these days, you’ll find a huge section of manga titles (that is, Japanese comic books), including dozens of different series, many of them running to a dozen or more volumes. This section is always impeccably organized, with all the series grouped neatly together, and the overall section alphabetical… Continue reading Bookstore Conundrum
Broken Things
I would post some sort of wrap-up about the Lisa Randall chat yesterday, but Discover is broken. They don’t have a link to a transcript on the site– in fact, they haven’t updated the front page to reflect the fact that the chat was yesterday, and is now over. There was a link that would… Continue reading Broken Things
Na No NO Wri Mo
November has been dubbed “National Novel Writing Month” or “NaNoWriMo” for those with too short an attention span to handle full words, in which people will commit to trying to write an entire novel in just thirty days. If you look around a bit, you’ll see lots of blogs and LiveJournals tracking the progress made… Continue reading Na No NO Wri Mo