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Book Review: Spook, by Mary Roach
I’ve just posted my latest review for The Book Book; it covers non-fiction author Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. This was Roach’s second book. The first, Stiff, was about what happens to the human body after death. You can see that she’s attracted to odd, even icky topics; and you may guess from [...]
Review: Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde
My review of Jasper Fforde’s newest novel, Shades of Grey, is online over at The Book Book blog. Maybe I’m just lucky to have read and savored everything else which Fforde has written. His work is without peer, I think — not necessarily in the sense of “none better,” more in the vein of “nothing [...]
Sorting Through an Old Hive
As some of you on Blogger-based weblogs may know, a fraction of those sites recently had to convert from a particular old technology to a newer one. The owners of affected blogs received a series of email notifications from Blogger tech support, and by now any such sites have been converted over to The New [...]
Review: Enlightenment, by Maureen Freely
My review of this novel is now online, over at The Book Book blog. I don’t normally write reviews of books which I don’t recommend. I don’t even like to. It’s possible to have fun with a writing a bad review, yes, a sort of malicious glee. But the fun is diminished — especially in [...]
“What did you do on Sunday, John?”
“Twiddled my thumbs. You?”
Chauncey Totman, the children’s-book author whose name I would least like to share, has done it again in his latest, Margarita, The Bearded Fox. The question for us to ponder, of course, remains (as always with Totman): What is it, exactly? [Caution: spoiler alert! Do not read the rest of this review if you'd prefer [...]
‘Twas the Night Before Cthulhu…
Ryun Patterson of the Bookgasm site/blog (slogan: “reading material to get excited about”) has reviewed ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas as you’ve never seen it reviewed before. Excerpt: Descriptions of human sacrifice and the power of blood magic are commonplace throughout history, but one — Clement Clarke Moore’s ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS — takes [...]
Review: Stuart Neville’s The Twelve
My review of this new thriller is up, over at The Book Book. (Technically, it’s only newish; it came out in the UK several months ago. However, it’s slated for publication here in the US on October 1, under the title The Ghosts of Belfast.) Capsule review: an excellent story, told in what is — [...]
Your Favorite Bookish Blogs?
I first read about this on Twitter last week, via Travis Erwin: the second annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week, sponsored by Amy Riley of the My Friend Amy blog. Among other details at the site are these raisons d’etre: WHAT A week where we come together, celebrate the contribution and hard work of book bloggers [...]
Review: Michael Perry: COOP
My review at The Book Book is up (as promised, weeks ago). I think most of you are probably familiar with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and (with Will Strunk) The Elements of Style, maybe Stuart Little and so on. If you’ve read his book of essays, though — particularly the ones written once he left [...]
Review: How Sex Works, by Dr. Sharon Moalem
By John on August 13, 2009 | 3 Responses
My review of this book is now online, over at The Book Book. Short version: Non-fiction, written by a neurogeneticist and evolutionary biologist. Based on fairly current research. Informative. (Especially on the question of what makes you turn your head at someone, or not — at least if they’re within sniffing range.) Not as provocative [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Science & Medicine, The Missus, The Online World | Tagged bending over backwards, dealing with comment spam, Dr. Sharon Moalem, How Sex Works, The Book Book | 3 Responses