Apr 7, 2013

And now, back to why it is we’re all here in the first place. Here’s what I’ve been reading, and some recs.           THE DINNER I don’t read a lot of literary fiction these days, but the idea behind this one – that you’re introduced to a character you have some sympathy to begin with who you slowly...

Feb 16, 2013

I haven’t done one of these posts in awhile because… well, because it takes me awhile to read books. So here’s a quick grab bag of what I’m been consuming that I think is pretty good food for thought. I do have a stack of other things (so many, many other things) left unread. So here’s to hoping I can recommend some of those soon as...

Dec 8, 2012

NOTE: This post was originally published on the Feminist SF blog in 2006 or so. It was pretty popular at the time, but has been difficult to find these days, so I dug up the cache and am re-posting here. Despite being tempted (the “terrorism” bit is… interesting), I have left it unedited. Almost without fail, Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness...

Sep 14, 2012

I would not call a lot of books “brilliant,” but OSAMA is pretty effing brilliant. I thought this book was going to be nigh unreadable, based on the concept – a world where Osama bin Laden is the character in a series of pulp novels, and a private eye is tasked with hunting down the guy who writes the bin Laden novels. But wow. I’m so...

Jul 11, 2012

A couple years back, I had an old high school classmate email me out of the blue and ask if I could offer him some tips on writing, because he really wanted to be a writer so he could “Work from anywhere and make money typing on the beach in Hawaii.” No, really, that’s what he said. This email made me so angry that I just deleted it without a...

Jul 10, 2012

In an ideal world, I’d write up whole blog posts about each of these, but for the sake of brevity, here’s some great books I’ve read this year that you may love, in no particular order:           Ian Tregillis’s Bitter Seeds is… a great book. The Nazis have invested in a supersoldier war program that exploits and tortures young...

Jul 3, 2012

I was reading a well-known science fiction author last night and found myself repeatedly bumped out of the story by all the techno-babble. I’m not averse to techno-babble, mind, it’s just that I didn’t buy that this POV character viewed the world through techno-babble glasses. If you’re staring at a sunset, it’s highly unlikely that you’re thinking...