If you're a Lightspeed Magazine subscriber, maybe you noticed a familiar name listed in the nonfiction column section of the February ebook edition. I am happy to announce that, starting with the February issue, I will be joining Amal El-Mohtar and Andrew Liptak in reviewing books for Lightspeed Magazine!


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Come wintertime, I start to crave Russia. Not Russian food or vodka or anything like that. More like stuff that puts me in a Russia mood. So I listen to a lot of Havalina “Russian Lullabyes”. I want to hear a lot of instrument piano. I stick “Russian Ark” in the DVD player. This month, I had an unbearable craving to read Tolstoy. So I downloaded ( Read more... )

Some time ago, I was watching PBS (come to think of it, I used to watch PBS a lot. What happened? It's not like it went away after our cable got cut) when I saw a trailer for Masterpiece Theater that showed a gothic castle, a creepy looking young man who takes over said castle, even creepier twin spinsters, and a youth trying to take back his ( Read more... )

(Scene: a meeting room filled with people. At the front stands an empty podium. LaShawn soon enters from the back and makes her way to the podium, setting a briefcase on the floor beside it. She squats to open the briefcase, rifles through it for a moment, then nods in satisfaction and stands. She adjusts the microphone to her level and coughs. The ( Read more... )

One of my favorite movies is Daughters of the Dust.  I saw it on PBS one night in my early college years. I remember flipping through channels, bored, and coming across black women in white dresses dancing and playing on a beach. Mesmerized, I kept watching. I didn't understand what I watched, nor did I have a clue what was going on, but still, I ( Read more... )

I finished reading this book over a month ago, but it took me a while to sit down and actually type out my thoughts on it. I found this to be an intriguing book, though in some ways it was heartbreaking to read.

The Sparrow tells the story of Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest and a master of linguistics. He is the only survivor of an first contact ( Read more... )

Whew...just two minutes ago, I finally read the last page of Shadowplay. I've been reading this book for several months now...I don't remember the exact date when I started it. All I know is that it's a looooooooong book, and darn it, if it wasn't so interesting, I would've put it down a long time ago.

The trend of long, thick, heavy description ( Read more... )

This is the first time I'm reviewing a book after I met its author. In this case, I met Rothfuss at this year's past Oddcon. It's one thing to read a book, review it, and not meet the author until several years down the line, if ever. It's another thing to meet someone, learn they have a best-selling novel, then go out and read it.

But read "The ( Read more... )

A Beer & Marmalade Book of the Month

This past month, I've been watching the entire series of the revisioned Battlestar Galactica. It's an awesome show, and I highly encourage people to watch it, even though there's not an ounce of optimistic sunshine in it.

Believe it or not, Battlestar Galactica has a lot in common with Never Let Me Go, which ( Read more... )

I am growing to become a huge fan of Kelly Link. When I first read her story "Lull" in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #16, it prompted me to send her an email, begging her how exactly she came up with her weird, surrealistic ideas to have a palindromic story that consisted of a poker game, a cheerleader playing spin the bottle with the Devil in ( Read more... )