book reviews

An Author I Wish Everyone Knew About – J.G. Ballard

I first heard J.G. Ballard’s name in connection with the film Crash and its NC-17 rating. Not the super-shrill-racism-is-bad (which of course it is) film Crash. I’m talking about the David Cronenberg film from 1996 which features a peculiar group of people who get turned on by automobile collisions. (Honk honk!) The movie sounded bizarre. [...]

December 19, 2011 READ MORE →

Book Review: The Five by Robert McCammon

If you head on over to Amazon and take a look at reviews for Robert McCammon’s The Five, you’ll quickly see a refrain: First of all, I’m a big McCammon fan. I loved Swan Song. But– Welcome back. I hope you didn’t pay too much attention to all the fussing over there. I won’t add [...]

December 10, 2011 READ MORE →

I Shall Not Hate

If you have kids, you might agree with me that it seems like their lives are one near-death experience after another. My son can find ways to get hurt in the blink of an eye, at the drop of a hat, or any other cliche we might throw at it. He can get hurt when [...]

November 3, 2011 READ MORE →

Mathieu Duchesneau and the Horrors of Missing Capitalists! Book Review of Atlas Shrugged

 By Mathieu Duchesneau Are you a looter or a producer? I am not an extremist by any measure. As it happens, I am what you could call an anti-ism..ist. Or something. You might say that this is a form of extremism, but please bear with me for the moment and continue reading. The point is, [...]

October 31, 2011 READ MORE →

A Short Guide to a Happy Life

To the surprise of absolutely no one who loves Anna Quindlen’s writing, her charming little book A Short Guide to a Happy Life is a treasure. A short treasure, both in size and brevity. The book is about 7” tall and ends on page 50. About half of those pages are touching, sentimental, black and [...]

October 24, 2011 READ MORE →

Those Across the River: Book Review

I just finished a book that I think would go perfectly with WSL’s October theme.  Those Across the River is Christoper Buehlman’s breakout horror novel, and it is a terrifying delight.  It takes place in a sleepy Southern town with a secret that lies dormant; that is, until Frank Nichols and his soon-to-be-wife come into [...]

October 10, 2011 READ MORE →

If You’ve Ever Wanted A Female Hannibal Lecter: Chelsea Cain’s Archie and Gretchen Books

The Chelsea Cain books that I’ve read remind me of The Silence of the Lambs, but with a beautiful, educated woman in place of Hannibal Lecter.  I’ve read the first three in the Archie and Gretchen series. I can’t get into the second and third books too much today without spoiling things for you, but [...]

October 8, 2011 READ MORE →

A Wizard of Earthsea

“The Earthsea books were my absolute favorite as I was growing up.” So said a coworker of approximately the same age as me. I was reading fantasy back then, constantly, just like him. But I never ever heard of Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea novels. A Wizard of Earthsea is the first, and I read it [...]

August 31, 2011 READ MORE →

Julian Baggini and The Duck That Won The Lottery

Julian Baggini’s book The Duck That Won The Lottery was my 160 for the Dewey Reading Project. It wasn’t that tough of a selection. The other dusty books buried in the Reasoning and Thought and Thinking call numbers weren’t all that enticing. Duck wasn’t dusty yet, because we had a brand new copy. But the [...]

August 30, 2011 READ MORE →

Sara Gruen Books, With Reviews To Come

I had never heard of Sara Gruen before seeing a copy of Water For Elephants come across my desk at work. I’m a sucker for the circus, having grown up with Something Wicked This Way Comes and graduating later to weirdness like Geek Love. So I grabbed it. I read it over the next 30 [...]

August 23, 2011 READ MORE →