Title: Zoe’s Tale
By: John Scalzi (Tor, 333 pp.)
Concerning: The fourth volume in Scalzi’s Old Man’s War trilogy - wait a minute, that can’t be right - presents the events of the previous book, The Last Colony, narrated by John Perry, from the point of view of Perry’s beloved adopted daughter Zoe - a spunky teenager who’s pleasingly ordinary, apart ( Read more... )

Title: Blue Mars
By: Kim Stanley Robinson(Bantam/Spectra, 761 pp.)
Concerning: This is the final volume of Robinson’s mammoth trilogy on the colonization and terraforming of Mars, following Red Mars and Green Mars. The “First Hundred” of original Martian colonists as well as some of their descendants serve as prime movers and eyewitnesses to a ( Read more... )

Title: Once Upon a Time in the North
By: Phillip Pullman (Knopf, 104 pp.)
Concerning: In this prequel novella to the His Dark Materials trilogy, aeronaut Lee Scoresby makes his first visit to the frozen North, has a Wild West-style adventure and meets the ursine Iorek Byrnison.
Quote: “‘Friends and citizens, friends and human beings, I don’t need ( Read more... )

Title: The Second Plane - September 11: Terror and Boredom
By: Martin Amis (Knopf, 211 pp.)
Concerning: A collection of essays, reviews and two short stories about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Islamist fundamentalism and the post-9/11 landscape by the British novelist (who, among other thing, doesn’t care for the term “9/11”).
( Read more... )

Title: The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure
By: Jack Pendarvis (Macadam Cage, 2005, 186 pp.)
Concerning: The Atlanta author’s first book features short stories and funny essays of the McSweeney’s/New Yorker “Shouts & Murmurs” variety (the latter includes one titled, “Dear People Magazine: Keep Up The Great Cyclops Coverage.” The stories ( Read more... )

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
By: Mark Haddon (Doubleday, 226 pp.)
Concerning: Autistic 15 year-old Christopher John Francis Boone writes a narrative of his attempt to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor’s dog, setting him on an adventure and revealing secrets that test his mathematical mind's ability to cope.
( Read more... )

Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
By: Junot Diaz (Riverhead, 340 pp.)
Concerning: Snapshots of several generations of an ill-fated “Afro-Dominican” family in New Jersey and Santo Domingo, replete with geeky pop culture references, untranslated Spanish terms, urban slang and footnotes about the horrors of the Trujillo dictatorship.
Quote: ( Read more... )

Title: Green Mars
By: Kim Stanley Robison (Spectra, 535 pp.)
Concerning: This is the second volume of Robinson’s mammoth ‘Mars’ trilogy (the middle book between ‘Red Mars’ and ‘Blue Mars’). The terraforming of Mars continues and includes higher surface temperatures, open bodies of unfrozen waters and hardy, proliferating plant life. Tensions ( Read more... )

Title: American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
By: Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf, 283 pp.)
Concerning: An analysis of the political and social factors (along with the personalities) at play for six defining incidents in the early decades of the United States, from the vote to declare independence from England to the ( Read more... )

I've been sick for the past couple of days. At the moment I feel better, but my sense of well-being has ebbed and flowed: fever, nose/throat congestion, body ache. (It only hurts in my skeleton.) And my voice has been a throaty croak. goudabonbon suggested that it may be flu, but it doesn't seem as severe as all that.

I could feel it coming on when I saw The ( Read more... )