Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway

I must have read this book decades ago as a young writer.  Certain parts have the ring of familiarity, especially Hemingway’s descriptions of writing in cafes with a notebook and pencil. It’s a sparse book: a collection of vignettes about … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Best American Short Stories 2016 Edited by Junot Diaz

In these days of economic austerity I often peruse the new book shelves of the local library rather than book stores for reading material.  On one of those forays I came across this volume.  It’s a hardcover; I didn’t know … Continue reading

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Book Review: Wolf: The Lives of Jack London by James L. Haley

Reading about the life of Jack London had an enormous effect on me when I was a young writer.  Inevitably when I read a new biography of London I compare it with the book that introduced me to him, Jack … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection Edited by Gardner Dozois

This is a huge doorstopper of a book: almost 700 pages, more than 300,000 words of the editor’s selections of the best short science fiction published in 2015.  Unlike other best of the year editors, Dozois sticks strictly to science … Continue reading

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Book Review: How to Write Like Tolstoy: A Journey Into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers by Richard Cohen

The title of this book, although catchy, is misleading.  Personally, I wouldn’t want to write like Tolstoy anyway.  I am perfectly content to write like John Walters.  Anyway, the author makes no attempt to teach writing or techniques of writing.  … Continue reading

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Book Review: Zero K by Don DeLillo

The aftermath of reading this novel is a residual impression of the plot, characters, and imagery as a totality.  However, it is a weak impression. As soon as I heard about Zero K I decided to give it a read.  … Continue reading

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Book Review: Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen by Robert McKee

When I read books on writing, I don’t expect to agree with everything the author says.  There are as many theories on writing as there are writers, and that’s as it should be.  Still, the opinions and advice of others … Continue reading

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Book Review: I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrere

This is a very disturbing book.  It was first published in French in 1993, and the English translation was published in the United States in 2004.  Philip K. Dick died in 1982, and Carrere had several already-published biographies of Dick … Continue reading

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Book Review: Mr. Magic Realism by Bruce Taylor

I met Bruce Taylor at a Clarion West writer’s gathering in Seattle.  Up until then, I hadn’t met anyone in the year and half since I’d begun attending such events that had attended Clarion West anywhere near as far back … Continue reading

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Book Review: Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle by Murray Morgan

I was born and raised in Seattle, but back in the 1950s and 60s when I grew up, Seattle was very different than it is now.  It was a backwater, in fact, compared with many of the rest of the … Continue reading

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