Category: Reviews

Movie, TV, and book reviews

A Murder in Thebes [Reading Challenge 2019]

A Murder in Thebes by Anna Apostolou St. Martin’s Press, 1998 [Challenge # 17: A historical of any genre. ] I’m not a big mystery reader, but I like historicals. The two put together like this book does provided a twist on what I already enjoy and gave me a history lesson to boot, though …

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Reading Challenge 2019 Update

All the books I’ve read for my 2019 Reading Challenge up to July, with ratings and links. 4. What you will read to your grandchildren: A children’s book (middle grade or younger). A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L’engle. 5. East meets West: A book taking place in Asia (Turkey to Japan, Siberia to Vietnam) …

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The Last Samurai [Reading Challenge 2019]

The Last Samurai by Mark Ravina Wiley, 2005 [Challenge # 5: A book taking place in Asia (Turkey to Japan, Siberia to Vietnam.)] I really wanted to like this book. It’s a biography of Saigo Takamori, a Japanese historical hero who might be compared to Abraham Lincoln in American history, a down-home politician who embodied …

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The Cold Commands [Review]

The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan New York: Del Rey, 2011 The Land Fit for Heroes trilogy by Richard K. Morgan is a very odd and divisive fantasy series. Don’t let the title fool you. It is meant sarcastically. There are no real heroes in this book, or anti-heroes, really. The main characters are …

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A Wizard of Earthsea [Reading Challenge 2019]

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin Bantam, 1975 (originally published 1968) [Challenge # 49: A book you loved as a child.] Oh Earthsea, Earthsea, how little I knew thee! For my childhood revisit read for this years’ challenge, I chose Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. I had read it way back …

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Being a Dog [Reading Challenge 2019]

Being a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz New York, Scribner, 2016 [Challenge # 9: A book with a dog on the cover.] Since I enjoyed Alexandra Horowitz’s first book, Inside a Dog, for its insights into the canines we share our lives with, I picked up Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of …

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The Geek Feminist Revolution [Review]

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley Tor, 2016 Kameron Hurley is one of a new generation of feminist SFF writers who began to publish in the 2010s, when social media began is phase of near-ubiquitousness, a cornucopia of hype, much of a geek-related. By geek I mean SFF in its many media — games, …

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A Swiftly Tilting Planet
[Reading Challenge 2019]

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle Dell Yearling, 1978 [Challenge # 4: A children’s book, middle grade or younger.] A Swiftly Turning Planet is a hot mess of a book, but not without its rewards. The third installment of the Murry family saga that began with A Wrinkle in Time, it features the insufferable …

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The Lies of Locke Lamora [Review]

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Paperback edition, Bantam, 2007 The Lies of Locke Lamora came out in 2006, but I only got around to it in 2019. I’m coming out of a long period where I did not read current science fiction or fantasy, only old favorites. It caught my attention at …

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Jet Age [Reading Challenge 2019]

Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World by Sam Howe Verhovek Avery, 2010 [Challenge # 25: A book in which airplanes figure prominently.] Hubris and aviation have a long, intertwined history together. Overconfidence in a flight control system most likely caused the recent crashes of a Boeing 737 Max …

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