Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickenson, Twain, James, and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates

This is a wildly original collection of long short stories, or novelettes, on the last days of famous writers.  I had never heard of it before, but I picked it up at the library on a whim, intrigued by the … Continue reading

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Book Review: Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson

This is a fairly comprehensive biography on Tagore, starting with a chapter on his grandfather and culminating in his death.  After he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1913 he was an international celebrity, considered one of the two … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I ordered this book as soon as I could after I learned that it had won the 2011 Man Booker Prize and had read some reviews.  The subject matter fascinated me.  I too am aging and am confronted with a sense … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman; Part Two:The Book Itself

In the first post about this book I recounted what the seventies mean to me personally.  Heady times they were, to be sure, and integral to my development as a writer.  Now I will go into an analysis of the … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman; Part 1: What the Seventies Mean To Me

I graduated high school in the class of 1970, having just turned 17 years old.  After a few months of drinking and carousing I was off to university in California.  At the time I hadn’t a clue about what anything … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five Edited by Jonathan Strahan

Last year I reviewed a volume of best science fiction of the year edited by Gardner Dozois.  There were good stories and mediocre stories, but overall it was a good read.  This volume, however, was even more enjoyable.  I think … Continue reading

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Short Story Author Highlight: Cordwainer Smith

Cordwainer Smith was the pseudonym of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, a military officer who specialized in East Asia and psychological warfare.  He wrote non-fiction and spy thrillers, but he is best known for the science fiction he produced in the … Continue reading

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Book Review: Think Like a Publisher by Dean Wesley Smith

I stumbled upon Dean Wesley Smith’s blog about a year and a half ago, and it changed my life as a writer.  At the time he was writing the series “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing”, which is still available … Continue reading

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Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

This is an awesome book.  No superlatives can do it justice.  It’s one of the best novels I have read in years. I haven’t read many of Stephen King’s books – in fact, only one other:  “On Writing”, which I … Continue reading

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Book Review: Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta; Part Two

In the first part of this review I shared some of the memories of my own time in Bombay that the reading of this book evoked.  It’s a long book, and whether you have lived in Bombay or not, it … Continue reading

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