I picked up a copy of Walking with God: A Journey through the Bible, by Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins, for a couple of reasons. First, someone raved about it on national radio. Second, I’ve been feeling this tug to study Scripture in more depth, but time and time and time seem to be the big challenges I face in this season of my vocation (young kids + lots of other things to do + exhaustion at the end of the day).... Read more
Over the last week I read the family Patricia C. Wrede’s latest, The Far West, which is the third (and, apparently, final) volume in the series that began with The Thirteenth Child and Across the Great Barrier; and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. I read the last fifth of book on Saturday evening, and my voice was beginning to go as we got to the final pages. So the main point you should take away from this is, this is a darn good series... Read more
One excellent thing about the social networking experience regarding books is that my reading queue is being filled with a wider range of books along with being a higher quality. This was certainly not true for most of my life. Since my father was a SF fan along with other varied interests it was his relating of some SF stories that caught my interest into diving into the home library. Isaac Asimov was my first great love and so I... Read more
Jack Vance is not only a great sf writer, but a great American writer. He started out writing fairly standard pulp adventure sf (albeit very clever and well-written pulp), but over the years, his eccentric writing style, biting view of human nature, humor, and skill at building strange new worlds became more and more important, although they are still allied closely with pulp adventure and tons of plot in a small space. He never loves his sentences more than the... Read more
Including Nathan Fillion …. finally, Shakespeare I can’t wait to see! (Yes, Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion are what it takes to make that happen. So sue me.) It’s debuting at the Toronto Film Festival in September. Tor.com has photos. Read more
Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife. 1885 painted by John Singer Sargent via Wikipedia I am reading The Amateur Emigrant from Delphi Classics complete Robert Louis Stevenson collection on my Kindle. Every time I look at Stevenson’s face on the cover, I like him more. And I already love his fiction. The Amateur Emigrant is the first of Stevenson’s trilogy about traveling to California. (The other two books are Across the Plains and The Silverado Squatters.) It is altogether delightful,... Read more
Julie recently reviewed Jack McDevitt’s Polaris; I’ve been working through that series as well, and here’s my take on it. The Alex Benedict/Chase Kolpath series has a very different feel than the Academy series. It also concerns archaeology, but as it is set 9,000 years in our future, and other intelligent species are scarce, it pretty much all has to do with traces of past human societies. Alex Benedict, the narrator of A Talent for War, is not, in fact, an archaeologist; rather,... Read more
Every week SYNC gives away a contemporary book paired thematically somehow with a classic novel. This is directed at YA readers to get them to listen to a book if they won’t pick one up to actually read. What is SYNC? SYNC is the audiobook publishers’ and AudioFile Magazine’s commitment to introducing the listening experience to the young adult audience. SYNC will give away 2 FREE audiobook downloads each week for 10 weeks this summer. The weekly SYNC audiobook pairings... Read more
Having thoroughly enjoyed Wilkie Collin’s The Moonstone, I went out and got a copy of the same author’s The Woman in White. Short answer: it’s even better. The Moonstone‘s climax is marred by a plot point that seems completely implausible today, although it would have seemed more more reasonable when it was written, whereas The Woman in White has no such problems. The premise is straightforward. While out walking late at night, a young drawing master named Walter Hartwright encounters a strange young woman, dressed... Read more
… He paused. “Tell me again what Scofield said to you. About the river of blood.” I closed my eyes and found the words. “‘They said that if the rivers didn’t run red with blood, then the blood of my family would run like a river.'” “Yes. That troubles me.” “All of it troubles me. The phrasing doesn’t match the rest of what he said. He was clearly quoting, or attempting to quote, something that was said to him. It... Read more
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