Monday, September 30, 2019

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 9/28/19

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This time out, I have books in two categories: three newly-published books, and two that I paid for myself but just came in the mail. Ne...
Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Service With a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse

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I will never write a Wodehousian novel: I know that. But the one in my head that I would  write, if I were capable, would be the Unified F...
Friday, September 13, 2019

Quote of the Week: Secret Shocks

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Everything's been electric lately. Lately everything I touch gives off an electric shock: doorknobs, the railings of stairs, the water f...
Thursday, September 12, 2019

Smile When You're Lying by Chuck Thompson

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It's easy to pretend  to be more radical, more transgressive than everyone else: you just have to say that you are. Living up to it is...
Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Leap Year by Steve Erickson

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I doubt anyone has noticed this -- or cares -- but I've been using Wednesdays this year for reviews of SF/F books, or of fantastika  m...
Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks

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P.G. Wodehouse died in 1975, after writing only fourteen Jeeves and Wooster novels among his roughly hundred books during a seventy-plus y...
Friday, September 06, 2019

Quote of the Week: Something to Say

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For a while I didn't have anything more to say. I was working in a comic-book store on Melrose Avenue. This is the main drag of Pop Ange...
Thursday, September 05, 2019

Florida Man and His World: Two Books by Craig Pittman & Dave Barry

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Sometimes you read two books because  they cover the same thing, because you expect they'll bounce off each other in your mind. It doe...
Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

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There are times when my tags are inadequate. Today, for example. Slaughterhouse-Five  is a classic, I think: it was for my generation, a...
Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Beanworld Omnibus Vol. 2 by Larry Marder

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The sad thing about reading comics is that it's usually pretty easy to catch up. Oh, sure, if you suddenly realize in the year 2019 th...
Monday, September 02, 2019

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 8/31/19

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More books than usual this time: one came from the library and a stack from a trip to the Strand in NYC. So let me talk about them in that...
Sunday, September 01, 2019

Books Read: August 2019

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Well, I'm only typing this three days late this time, which is an improvement from last month. (Which, if you've forgotten, covered ...
Friday, August 30, 2019

Quote of the Week: So It Goes

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Billy covered his head with his blanket again. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward -- always got m...
Thursday, August 29, 2019

I, Rene Tardi, Prisoner of War in Stalag IIB, Vol. 1 by Tardi

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I probably should say this first: this book is titled I, Rene Tardi, Prisoner of War in Stalag IIB, Vol. 1 . And it's credited to ...
Wednesday, August 28, 2019

The Skill of Our Hands by Steven Brust and Skyler White

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The most weak-ass world-ruling conspiracy returns in 2017's The Skill of Our Hands , a sequel to 2014's chamber succession drama T...