I was lucky enough to spend three days this weekend on the beach, doing pretty much nothing but reading, swimming, and downing the occasional tropical drink. My dad recently bought me a copy of Return of the Native, one of my all-time favorite books but one I haven’t read in a very long time. I…
Review: Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi
Ship Breaker is the first young adult novel written by Paulo Bacigalupi, a new but critically acclaimed science fiction writer who recently won a Nebula award for The Windup Girl. This is no light read in terms of poverty, abuse, violence, and environmental conditions – but at the same time a fun, action-filled read set…
How I Read: A Survey
Amused by Books recently posted this survey, and I thought it had some good questions in it, although I decided to cut the survey in half (55 questions seemed a bit long to me). I may post Part Two another time if this is at all interesting. 1. Favorite childhood book? The Oz series by…
Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I read Fahrenheit 451 in two days this weekend. There aren’t many books that make you see the world differently when you’re done, and for me this was one of them. The book tells the story of Montag, a fireman, in a near-future American town. In this near future, books are illegal, the government controls…
New Kindle Report: Day 3
New Kindle arrived Friday, so I’ve now had two full days to play with it (er, I mean read). Here are a few pictures and a few quick comparisons between Kindle 1 and Kindle 3. Things that are fantastically better: text/screen contrast page turning time space (will I ever read 3500 books?) ability to sort…
New Kindles Released Today
Waiting for my new Kindle! Yesterday Amazon started shipping them out, two days ahead of schedule. Great news, except my order still said “shipping date TBD”. Even worse (sort of) they shipped the cover out ahead of the Kindle, so the Amazon box on my doorstep tonight was NOT my Kindle. But hooray! Tonight I…
Review: Middlemarch, Part 2
I finished Middlemarch at last, and while I’m a little bit happy to move on to a new book, Middlemarch is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time! It’s too big a novel for me to write any kind of comprehensive review, but here’s a summary and some brief thoughts (and see…
It’s A Major Award…
I was excited when Lit Addicted Brit passed this award along to me. I realize it’s making the rounds to lots of people, but hey, there are a lot of us bloggers out there. I’ve been working on my blog for almost three months now and still feeling pretty unknown. So seeing my blog named…
Which Fantasy/SF Books will become Classics?
Jessica from On A Pale Star has posted a cool link to a couple of recent posts on the SF Signal. They asked fantasy and science fiction authors to answer the question: Which science fiction and fantasy books written in the last ten years will become classics? This isn’t a poll or a literary critique;…
In the Middle of Middlemarch (Reading the Classics Part 1)
Reading about bloggers’ favorite books recently inspired me to pick up some classics I missed in college. A lot of people mentioned Middlemarch as a favorite. I always meant to read something by George Eliot so this was long overdue, and I’m really enjoying it so far. A couple of months ago I wrote a…
Review: Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris
This is the fourth book in a historical mystery series about Sebastian St. Cyr, a troubled nobleman in Regency England (he is probably troubled in part because he has such a romance-novelish name). The historical mystery is a genre I really like and one you don’t hear much about. Two of my favorite series are…
Review: Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik
Spoiler Alert: Don’t read this review if you haven’t read books 1-5 in the series. If you like fantasy and historical fiction, and haven’t read this series, I highly recommend you pick up book 1, His Majesty’s Dragon. I had been looking forward to this book for a while, and I was disappointed. Novik’s Temeraire…
The Book Stop 