If I get a review copy of a book that sounded interesting from a publicist, but it turns out I kind of hate the book, am I still obliged to read it and write it up for the blog? I’m not talking about the totally unsolicited review copies that turn up unannounced in my mail–… Continue reading A Question of Ethics
Category: Pop Culture
Why So Many Theorists?
When I was looking over the Great Discoveries series titles for writing yesterday’s Quantum Man review, I was struck again by how the Rutherford biography by Richard Reeves is an oddity. Not only is Rutherford a relatively happy fellow– the book is really lacking in the salacious gossip that is usually a staple of biography,… Continue reading Why So Many Theorists?
Quantum Man by Lawrence Krauss
While I’ve got a few more review copies backlogged around here, the next book review post is one that I actually paid for myself, Lawrence Krauss’s Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, part of Norton’s Great Discoveries series of scientific biographies. I’m a fan of the series– past entries reviewed here include Richard Reeves’s… Continue reading Quantum Man by Lawrence Krauss
Overthought Reviews of Genre Fiction
One of the perils of book reviewing, or any other form of literary analysis is putting more thought into some aspect of a book than the author did. It’s one of the aspects of the humanities aide of academia that, from time to time, strains my ability to be respectful of the scholarly activities of… Continue reading Overthought Reviews of Genre Fiction
What a Drag It Is Getting Old
Today’s blog silence was the result of travel down to and back from New Haven, where I gave a talk at Southern Connecticut State University. Weirdly, this was also a day full of reminders of my own advancing age: — After the talk, I wandered around New Haven a bit, visiting places I used to… Continue reading What a Drag It Is Getting Old
Hugo Nominations: Meh
The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it’s just our flaky DSL that’s kept me from saying anything about it. that’s only part of the story, though. I haven’t said anything about them in large part… Continue reading Hugo Nominations: Meh
How Many Books Is That?: Modeling Amazon Sales Rank
A few months ago– just before the paperback release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog— Amazon started providing not only their Sales Rank data, but also sales data from Nielsen BookScan. Of course, the BookScan data is very limited, giving you only four weeks, and the Sales Rank data, while available over the… Continue reading How Many Books Is That?: Modeling Amazon Sales Rank
(Sub)Genre Is a Marketing Convention
(Alternate Title: “Epic Fantasy Is What We Point to When We Look Down on Epic Fantasy.”) I’ve been on a bit of an epic fantasy kick lately, evidently due to the thousand-ish pages of The Crippled God not being enough. This means that I was in a weirdly appropriate mental space to catch the recent… Continue reading (Sub)Genre Is a Marketing Convention
Musical Poll: Blinded by the WTF???
A very silly musical poll question, brought to you by the local classic rock station’s music selection this morning: Which of these makes more sense:online surveys On an unrelated note, it’s deeply unfair that sleeping really late puts SteelyKid into a worse mood than not getting enough sleep does.
What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein
Regular blogging has been interrupted this week not only because I jetted off to southern MD but because this week was the due date for the manuscript of the book-in-progress. It’s now been sent off to my editor, and thus begins my favorite part of the process, the waiting-to-see-what-other-people-think part. I’m pretty happy with it,… Continue reading What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein