Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger

This book is not a complete history of SpaceX. Instead, it focuses on the beginning years of the upstart aerospace company that has now completely redefined the parameters of space travel. Specifically, it describes Musk’s vision to transform the aerospace … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

I should know better than to read books about writing, and yet I am irresistibly drawn to them. I have even written one called Writing as a Metaphysical Experience. However, I figured out long ago that writers are idiosyncratic, that … Continue reading

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Book Review: Drop City by T. C. Boyle

I bought Drop City months ago but put off reading it until now. For one thing, it’s a long novel, and for another, I didn’t know what to expect. Whenever I have taken up novels having to do with the … Continue reading

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Book Review: Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened by William Least Heat-Moon

Not long ago I read Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. It’s a travelogue/memoir of a trip he took around the United States keeping to smaller roads and out-of-the-way places. More recently I read River-Horse, a memoir of his boat … Continue reading

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On Rereading Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

What can I say? Lord of Light is a terrific book and Roger Zelazny is a one-of-a-kind author. If only he were still around weaving his incomparable tales! He died way too young (at age 58 of cancer). I may … Continue reading

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Book Review: Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill

I decided to read this memoir because I am getting old. In a couple of years I’ll reach seventy. Although I can still walk miles a day and do my customary pull-ups, pushups, and power yoga when I exercise, my … Continue reading

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Book Review: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

This is a fun book to read. Award-winning writer George Saunders has spent decades teaching Russian short stories in his writing classes, and in this volume he chooses several of his favorite stories and expounds upon them at length. In … Continue reading

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On Rereading The Very Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Sometimes at odd moments I enjoy looking over the books on my shelves. I don’t have a large collection; there’s probably not more than two or three hundred books in it, but those books hold many precious reading memories. I … Continue reading

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Book Review: River-Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America by William Least Heat-Moon

I last met William Least Heat-Moon in the memoir Blue Highways, an account of his journey around the continental United States alone in a small camper van. In River-Horse, he undertakes a boat journey along America’s rivers and lakes from … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1 Edited by Jonathan Strahan

Even though a lot of the fiction I write, particularly short fiction, is science fiction or fantasy (or sometimes a blend of the two), I don’t read a lot of genre fiction. My reading goes all over the place – … Continue reading

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