Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
My review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’m going to go ahead and guess that my review of Twilight is going to sway neither the book’s legion of fans, nor its serious detractors. In all honesty, I’m kind of torn about reviewing the book at all. Its first-person protagonist is a seventeen year-old [...]
Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
While not quite as brimming with homoerotic undertones as the first in the series, Throne of Jade nonetheless presents the reader with plenty of repressed man-dragon love to go along with a few aerial battles, a murder plot, and an interesting encounter with a [...]
Let the Right One In: A Novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Like many Americans, I saw the movie version of Let the Right One In before reading the book, and enjoyed it quite a bit. This led me to pursue the book and, as is almost always the case for [...]
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hubert Selbey Jr.’s Requiem for a Dream is a hard book to read … not due so much to its sensitive subject matter, which is frankly riveting, as to Selby’s unconventional, stream-of-consciousness prose. The guy barely believes in basic punctuation marks, let [...]
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
One has to remind one’s self, while reading the Harry Potter series, that they’re meant for children in the 10 – 14 range, give or take, and not for a married guy in his early thirties who’s simultaneously reading Hubert [...]
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil
My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ray Kurzweil has been accused by some as being incredibly optimistic in his vision for the future of humanity and the computer’s that we’ve created. His predictions, however, have an uncanny way of coming to pass, at [...]
GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator (magazine) Issue 3 by Debbie Moorhouse
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
As with each issue so far, GUD issue 3 contains an eclectic combination of short fiction, poetry and artwork, most of it in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. Once again, the overall quality of work is strong. Particular standouts, [...]
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
His Majesty’s Dragon is a tender story about the beautiful, homosexual, inter-species love between the protagonist and his gigantic black dragon.
Ok, so that’s not really what it’s about, but seriously … the homoerotic undertones in what is otherwise a fun, if not particularly challenging, [...]
I’ll have a few more trip blogs coming in over the next couple of days, but I also read two books while on vacation. Here’s my review of the first of them:
The Children of Men by P.D. James
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Though it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years (my wife’s copy), [...]
The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life by Eugene Mirman
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve seen Eugene do stand-up several times, and he’s pretty funny, though not my favorite comic of all time. His style of humor is relaxed, sometimes self-deprecating, often ironic and … confused? It’s not uncommon for him to [...]