Minor Thoughts

Yes, it was slow moving. But the book was entertaining nonetheless.

I’ll probably read the next book in the series, just to see where things go next.

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Paying football and basketball players will not ruin college sports or cause them to become “subcontractors.” Indeed, given the way big-time college sports are going, paying the players may be the only way to save them.

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Martha K. Levin, the executive vice president and publisher of Free Press, the imprint of Simon & Schuster that published “The Iliad,” said the presentation sent “the message that even if you’re buying 90 percent of your books on your e-reader, this is the one that you want to have on your bookshelf.”

Dune by Frank Herbert My rating: 6 of 5 stars Brian Herbert, on Dune. Dune is a modern-day conglomeration of familiar myths, a tale in which great sandworms guard a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice that represents, among other things, the finite resource of oil. The planet Arrakis features immense, ferocious worms that [...]

Glory Season by David Brin My rating: 5 of 5 stars Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun The best science fiction is, at its heart, speculative fiction. These books start with a single big idea—a single question—and develop it. The great books take that idea and develop it superbly. Glory Season is a great book. It [...]

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We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’

This book is a cross between the hard boiled detective fiction of the early 1900’s and modern fantasy. It reminded me of reading Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, crossed with a bit of the absurdist humor of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.

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What I came away with was a better sense of life bordered by death. By giving such a short timeline—one day—I required each author to tell a tale of birth, life, and death. Though the stories ranged from the far past to the far future and into worlds that never were but could have been, there was single thread of familiarity. There was a sense of wonder and emotion that was at the heart of it all.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Since I’ve started reviewing books, I’ve been trying to force myself to review a book based on what it’s meant to be rather than on what I wish it was. After all, that’s the only way to be fair to the author. So it was with …