Reviews, Top N lists, and other sundry literary stuff.
I don’t really remember how this one popped on my radar. An Amazon.com “plog” entry? Recommendation? GoodReads stream? All of those? Something else? Anyway, Jeremy Shipp’s Vacation popped up sometime late last year and it made it onto my to-read list. I’m positive that if my local library had it, I’d have read it already […]
Having never before read any H.P. Lovecraft, I held a deeply geeky shame. This was an author that was supposed to have helped define modern horror, helped define weird fiction and the truly-out-there sci-fi. The “Cthulhu Mythos” was something that I referenced frequently and yet ignorantly. All this time it was as if I had […]
I first encountered Accelerando about two years ago and had a go at the PDF version last year. I didn’t get very far on this first attempt — but I blame the fact that I was trying to read it via PDF. I flew threw the first 20 pages or so but got stymied after […]
Waiting for dinner to cook… Smells good, can’t wait. Caught P.’s latest Twitter shortly after I got home and had this weird moment of synchronicity. See, I stopped off at the library on my way home and while browsing the available volumes of Dick, Delaney, and Lovecraft (none of which piqued) I noticed that they […]
If asked to condense it to a single sentence, I would say that in essence, Galatea 2.2 is Richard Powers’ novelization 1 of the ideas laid out in Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. That said, I’m uncertain how to respond to this one. After reaching the last page and closing the covers, it left me feeling […]
Argh. This book was maddening. Coming off the heels of Generation X and Microserfs, I suppose my expectations were pretty high but this really felt like the literary equivalent of bottoming out. With All Families are Psychotic: A Novel, Coupland thrusts us into this absurdly over-the-top comically dismal present tense-ish Florida that just doesn’t ever […]
If Microserfs were a Jeopardy contestant, its dream board would be: Nerd vs. Geek Literary Encryption Techniques Esoteric Double Entendres Silicon Valley: Then & Now Material and/or Mental The Body Sucks? NOTE TO SELF: Do not read this book again as long as I’m still working in software.
The book you hate to love? Or love to hate? It’s no wonder Coupland saw literary success after this book. It really smells like a triumph on all the scales that authors and their critics measure each other. It has many devilishly clever moments, it is rife with scythe-like word-play, the plot is well-paced, the […]
In December, John gave me a homework assignment: “You want to include some sort of ‘mystery’ element in your stories? You better get familiar with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.” It seemed like a simple enough request. Get down with the classic, defining bodies of pulp noir. Sam Spade? Philip Marlowe? You better know these […]
I forget where I came across GoodReads.com the first time around but I had basically just removed the link from my del.icio.us “todo” set when Sarah pops up and tells Wranglers to get on board. So, several Wranglers later, I cave and join up as well. Short versions of immediate impressions: The concept is neat […]