Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is an international literary superstar. Every book he writes quickly climbs bestseller lists and sells hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies. Since I’m not in the financial position of being able to afford to buy books … Continue reading

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Book Review: Literary Life: A Second Memoir by Larry McMurtry

I found this book during a random search of the biography/autobiography section of my local library. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that as much as I can remember I have never read anything before by … Continue reading

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Book Review: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

This is an excellent memoir. If I have a complaint, it is that it is too short. I would have loved to have heard many more details and to have Martin not stop at the end of his stand-up comic … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman

When the original series of Star Trek first appeared on network television in 1966, I was thirteen years old. I had already been exposed to science fiction on television in the form of Lost in Space a year earlier. I … Continue reading

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Book Review: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg

I don’t know how I missed reading this novel back in the early 1970s. I read several of Silverberg’s other novels of that era, the best of which were Dying Inside and The Book of Skulls.  Silverberg was on a … Continue reading

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Book Review: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

One of my sons has the opinion that Malcolm Gladwell oversimplifies sociological issues, and he has a point.  My son would rather read the complex tomes on which Gladwell’s research is based, and that’s fine.  Gladwell does tend to generalize … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Very Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Volume Two – Edited by Gordon Van Gelder

I have been reading a lot of short stories lately. The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century was about eight hundred pages of short stories, and The Best American Noir of the Century was about seven hundred fifty pages … Continue reading

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Book Review: When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning

This is a fascinating book.  It deals with a chapter in the history of publishing of which I was not aware: the push by the military along with civilian organizations and individuals to supply combat troops during the Second World … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Best American Noir of the Century – Edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler

I checked this hefty volume of short stories out of the library because I had been so impressed by the collection The Best Mystery Stories of the Century.  What is noir and what makes it different from mystery?  Well, it’s … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

The first book by Malcolm Gladwell that I read was Outliers, and I thought it was terrific.  Its premise, in brief, is that genius comes through practice, and Gladwell gives examples such as Bill Gates and the Beatles to prove … Continue reading

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