Posts Tagged: Books
A couple of belated book reviews
Hey, didn’t I resolve in January to read fiction and then to blog about it? Why yes I did.
Book Review: The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
Wow, that took a while. So much for my New Year’s resolution to read a novel a month, eh?
I started on this book in late January, after skipping through three quarters of the Mortal Engines quartet. Then I was taking a class, which left me with very little time and energy for such frivolities. But the class ended, and on Easter weekend I decided to pick it up again. I was immediately hooked, and devoured it in a three-day binge of more-or-less nonstop reading.
Book Review: Mortal Engines, Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices
One of my new year’s resolutions is to read more literature, and then to blog about it. This post is more of a prologue to that, because the books it reviews don’t really count as literature.
So a month or two ago I was browsing TVTropes, and came upon this entry right here. A post-apocalyptic future with mobile cities that eat each other? This was way too intriguing to pass up. I decided to only order the first three books since the last, A Darkling Plain, is only out in hardback.
Graphic Novel Review: Fun Home
I love Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, and have from the day I came out and picked up my first GO-Info (strip # 140, “The Last Tango”, where Mo and Harriet have sex one last time before breaking up for good). Until it ended earlier this year, it was the first thing I read when picking up Xtra! West, and I could always count on it to make me laugh make me think, or both. I own all the collected books, including The Indelible Alison Bechdel.
But, there was one book of hers missing from my collection: a non-DTWOF book I didn’t even know existed until this summer, when I saw it as part of an exhibition on animation and comics at the Art Gallery. I read it all the way through in one sitting, absolutely captivated.
Arthur C. Clarke: 1917–2008
Well, damn.
I guess part of me thought he’d live forever, or at least long enough to see all the marvels he imagined or predicted. Hell, he saw geostationary satellites and global telecommunications become reality, why not space elevators or Martian colonies or deep-space travel as well?
First post!
…of the year, that is.
Okay, it’s been almost a month. What have I been up to, you ask?
Well, I spent 10 days in Ottawa and Montreal, visiting family. I saw Mamma Mia! at the National Arts Centre, which was awesome. Yeah, it was a pretty threadbare plot, little more than an excuse to string together two dozen ABBA songs, but that’s exactly what I signed up for, so that’s all right.
Around The World In Eight Minutes
I just finished reading Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur-le-Conquérant. Quite an enjoyable little book, though not really Verne’s best. I did appreciate all his exploration of the science behind the Albatross, Robur’s wondrous flying craft—Verne’s work is meant to educate as well as entertain, and I’m a sucker for a good science history lesson.
