The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth, by Judith Moffett This ‘fix-up’ novel* about the interactions between Earth people and ecological aliens was so ponderous and so swathed in psychobabbulous platitudes that I almost began to sympathize with the Sad Puppies.† Almost. Even this pointless set of interminable tales of deus ex …
Tag Archives: books
Monday Book Report: The Divine Right of Capital
I Read It So You Don’t Have To Dept. The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy, by Marjorie Kelly Returning to a book almost twenty years after its release may bring many pleasures, surprises, or insights. Reading an author’s words decades after they were written may cause us to nod our heads in …
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Book Note, #409: The Camp-Meeting Murders
The Camp-Meeting Murders, by Vance Randolph & Nancy Clemens A fairly pedestrian mystery story is enlivened by its depiction of small-town life in the South and by the peculiar spinster narrator, Bedelia Alcott, who plays the traditional part of the clueless detective in her misguided musings about the central crime, the murder of a Holy …
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Analysis: The 4th Hundred Books
or, At Least The Unexamined Life Requires Less Math As I mentioned a little while back, I have now read 400 of the books in my personal library since I started tracking my reading back in June 2015. Below is a sketchy analysis of the books in this last hundred books. Of course, as usual, …
Monday Book Report: Frenzy
James O. Causey’s Frenzy is a scathing noir novel about a vicious, vulpine grifter with big plans and bigger failures, a feral fox among wolves who wish to tear out his throat if he makes just one false step. He makes several. But he survives each beating, each attack, each checkmate by fast talking, flight, …
Monday Book Report: Confessions Of A Crap Artist
Some trepidation is normal when visiting a old friend with whom one has not passed any time for many years. One fears that he has changed, that you’ve changed, that neither of you are the persons who once shared the deep intimacies and easy bonhomie that make up true friendship. How pleasant it is, therefore, …
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Book List: 4th Century, Final Quarter
As I mentioned earlier this week, I recently finished reading book #400 since I started keeping count in 2015, and, since I’ve already caught you up with lists of the first 75 books in the last hundred books, here I’ll catch you up with the remaining twenty-five books making up the full hundred. (As usual, …
400 Books
I’ve just finished my 400th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. The book which saw me cross this fictional milestone was an interesting look at the Soviet Union just after World War II, Why They Behave Like Russians, written by John Fischer and published in 1947. Fischer visited the …
Monday Book Report: The Dog Watches and other poems
or, Through the mirror of Curt Hopkins’s poetry, and what I found there The first book of poetry by Curt Hopkins, The Dog Watches and other poems, shows off this American writer’s talent for picking out the poetic shards of life from the collision between humans and the onrushing train of time and thought. In …
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Monday Book Report: Nightwatch
Nightwatch, by Andrew M. Stephenson Too much and too little compete for the reader’s inattention in this barely workable SF book in which the most human characters are robots. The protagonist, though purportedly a human earthman, seems to understand human emotions as poorly as the author understands actual human beings and such things as plots …