Abarat is a young adult book by Clive Barker. It’s filled with strange imagery, but leaves out the horror stuff that he is best known for. The story kept me interested as the various odd characters ran around the fictional islands. And they are odd. One of them is a man with seven extra heads.… Read more Abarat
Category: Books
All The Shah’s Men
All The Shah’s Men tells the story of the CIA Coup of the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. The basics I already knew, so it was more for the deeper story that I read this. Stephen Kinzer weaves a fascinating tale of a country that was cruelly betrayed by the United States. I understand the reasoning… Read more All The Shah’s Men
Psychotronic Video
Someone linked to this from Reddit. I used to love getting this magazine, back when I would hang out in bookstores and buy magazines (and books). I read one of the issues just now. It makes me want to go buy old schlocky movies. I like all the digital stuff we have going, in that… Read more Psychotronic Video
Aloha From Hell
The third Sandman Slim novel from Richard Kadrey. These are all pretty good hard-boiled urban fantasy novels. Apparently there are 10 of them in the series. About one a year. That’s not too bad. He’s very much into world building and creating lots of characters and creatures. It almost feels like a game system novelization.… Read more Aloha From Hell
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
I’ve been reading as well. Not just watching cheesy movies. I read this, the third, collection of Stephen King short stories. Finished it a week ago, but been lazy. He says in the introduction that his best short stories where in the other two collections and he’s probably right. But there are some gems. I… Read more Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Skin Game
This is the fifteenth Dresden Files novel. That’s a whole lot of nooks in a series. It’s the latest to come out and it’s been over three years so Jim Butcher may be done with the series. He still has mysteries unresolved that he’s hinted at, so I’m hoping he writes at least one more… Read more Skin Game
Bad Blood
This is the story of the rise, duplicity, and fall of Theranos. I discovered Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes shortly before John Carreyrou’s Wall Street Journal story brought them down. It probably wasn’t from this Stanford article but this quote came from it and probably went out on the Twitterverse where I soon found… Read more Bad Blood
Provenance
Ann Leckie’s Provenance is, I believe, the last of the Hugo nominated books for me to read. I liked this one a lot. The story was interesting and kept me reading. I found the use of pronouns a bit hard to get into but got used to it eventually. There seemed to be a kind… Read more Provenance
Raven Stratagem (Machineries of Empire) book 2
This is the followup to Ninefox Gambit. The second in what looks like a trilogy. This continues the story from the previous book but while I don’t think it could really be read on its own and does make up a larger story, is more standalone than the shattered earth books, which really felt like… Read more Raven Stratagem (Machineries of Empire) book 2
Ninefox Gambit
This is the first book in a series that contains the fourth of the Hugo nominated books I am trying to read this year. Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee, is a very far future novel set in a space during a rebellion. It’s hard to describe really because I had a hell of a… Read more Ninefox Gambit