I just finished the third and final book in Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy. The three books are "Manifold: Time", "Manifold: Space", and "Manifold: Origin ( Read more... )

Oh my god, what a clunker of a book. Seriously, don't read this thing if you value your time ( Read more... )

Just finished reading "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" by Kate Atkinson ( Read more... )

I love sci-fi books where the author has put serious effort into a fully-realized world (or galaxy or universe). Not to say that good sci-fi is impossible without this; indeed, lots of great books have been written in what is "merely" a future Earth. But then, sometimes, you get an author who has really fully imagined a huge new world with ( Read more... )

Just a quick note on my book reviews... I've been giving each one of them a star rating (which will also apply to other sorts of reviews [movie, software, music] if I ever do any). So, a quick explanation (not that anybody's asked):

• 0 stars: Couldn't finish the book, it was so awful. (I'm the sort of person who will finish a bad book, so if it's ( Read more... )

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat: "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien is one seriously weird book. It concerns the adventures of an unnamed narrator (who is stricken by a sort of amnesia very early in the book so we never learn his name) through a weird land run by two policemen who are overly concerned with everything having to ( Read more... )

I decided to take a little trip back... instead of reading today's pulp fiction (e.g. the Da Vinci Code), how about yesterday's pulp fiction ( Read more... )

In 1815, Thomas Jefferson wrote a few of his friends concerning a project he had lately involved himself with. He had taken the four Gospels and "cut out from them every text they had recorded of the moral precepts of Jesus, and arranged them in a certain order, and although they appeared but as fragments, yet fragments of the most sublime edifice ( Read more... )

I definitely don't always read serious or meaningful stuff... sometimes I just read fluff. As with this book, "Whiteout", by Ken Follett. Follett is well-known for action-adventure-espionage books, and "Whiteout" is definitely action-adventure.

( The setup )

Earlier this week, I read "The Big Time" by Fritz Leiber. Originally published in 1958, "The Big Time" betrays Leiber's interest in theater and the stage, as the entire novel takes place in one middle-sized room with only twelve characters; it reads much like a one-act play, but in novel form ( Read more... )