Category Archives: Book Reviews

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

I’m only about a third of the way through this long book, but it has brought up so many impressions and memories that I feel I must write them down.  So this is not so much a review of the … Continue reading

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Book Review: Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison, Part Two: More Ellison Reminiscences, and The Stories Themselves

So then, after having reread “Deathbird Stories” I realize that at least part of the motivation was to pay homage to one of the great literary influences of my life.  Harlan Ellison’s stories are vivid and emotional, and I have … Continue reading

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Book Review: Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison; Part One: Clarion West 1973 Revisited

I honestly don’t know exactly what made me read “Deathbird Stories” again after all this time.  I usually alternate between fiction and nonfiction books in my reading program.  I was just finishing a nonfiction book and considering that I wouldn’t … Continue reading

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Book Review: Life by Keith Richards

When I was growing up I listened to the Rolling Stones sometimes on popular radio stations, and I liked some of their songs but was never particularly attracted to the group itself as a fan.  I was more into the … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

The “Dead Hand” of the title refers to a proposed Soviet doomsday machine that would provide devastating retaliation in the event of an American nuclear first strike. Lacking the technology to make the device completely automatic, the Soviets instead devised … Continue reading

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Book Review: Silence by Shusaku Endo

The first novel by Shusaku Endo I read was “Scandal”, which he wrote late in his career.  It’s set in Tokyo, and is a surreal story of an aging writer discovering the underworld of extreme sex and at the same … Continue reading

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Short Story Author Highlight: Jack London

Jack London was an amazingly prolific writer.  Every day he got up early and before he did anything else he fulfilled his quota of words, which varied between one thousand and one thousand five hundred.  He wrote novels, autobiography, social … Continue reading

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Book Review: Dawn by Elie Wiesel

This book came to me by accident.  I was visiting the library at Anatolia High School in Thessaloniki one day and, as is occasionally the case, there was a pile of books on a table outside the door – books … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Best from Orbit edited by Damon Knight

“Orbit” was a series of anthologies of original speculative fiction stories edited by Damon Knight in the 60s and 70s.  His aim was to expand the genre and select literary stories that would avoid the stereotypical spaceships and ray guns … Continue reading

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Short Story Author Highlight: James Tiptree, Jr.

Most science fiction enthusiasts know that James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon, an employee of the CIA who killed her ailing husband and then herself back in 1987.  A brilliant biography called “James Tiptree Jr.: The Double … Continue reading

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