I read M. John Harrison’s Viriconium series recently, and was impressed on a number of levels. The atmosphere of completely pervasive decay that he creates is quite effective, and I suspect that the series was extremely influential. I think that Mieville’s New Crobuzon would have had a hard time struggling into existence without Viriconium preceding it, and I also suspect that Harrison had a big impact on Gene Wolfe.
[more...]
I finished reading Robin Hobb‘s Soldier Son Trilogy last night. I’m a big fan of her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, and so was happy to find that she had another out.
However, I have to say I’m quite disappointed in this one, and wouldn’t really recommend it.
[more...]
High Geekery, this. Webcomics, one about a band of D&D characters rendered as stick figures, the other about a wargaming geek sucked into another dimension… I discovered both of them quite recently, despite friends who are into The Order of the Stick and the fact that Erfworld appears to have garnered critical acclaim.
[more...]
I’ve been re-reading Hellboy, one of my favorite comics. I got into it a few years ago and it took me a little while to figure out why I liked it.
[more...]
I’ve never seen Johnny Mnemonic, but I’ve heard bad things. Terrible things. It is renowned as an absolutely disgraceful adaptation of a beloved short story. That being said, I suspect it has nothing on the Sci-Fi Channel rendering of Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld Saga.
[more...]
Okay, finally, I’m into this millennium. I have no idea why it took me more than a year to go from 2000′s favorite books to 2001′s.
Especially since I only read 39 books in 2001, my second-lowest yearly total of the years I’ve kept records.
[more...]
I finished Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal yesterday. In summary, the book is a statement of Krugman’s views on a modern society’s optimal economic setup, the fact that he believes that the United States of the 1950s–1970s was much closer to that setup than it was before or has been since, and his theories on how that state was reached, lost, and can be reached again.
[more...]
I went to see this tonight (yes, when I should have been editing). It was excellent, and while I can’t claim that it had a definitive Coen Brothers mark (because I haven’t yet worked out what that is), it definitely stood out as “different” somehow.
[more...]
The Pale Blue Eye is a historical thriller set in 1830s America, at West Point Military Academy. A murder there brings a retired police constable, Augustus Landor, back to work, and in the course of his duties he becomes friendly with one of the cadets—Edgar Allan Poe.
[more...]
I recently watched the first season of HBO’s Rome. Like most of the series that HBO produces, the quality of the production is extremely high, including the acting, directing, and writing.
[more...]
I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel, which I consider an extremely important book for understanding how the world came to be the way it is. Collapse is more important for understanding where we may be going.
[more...]
On the Grannan family’s recommendation, I recently read William Bernstein’s The Four Pillars of Investing. It’s really good, and I see no reason not to recommend it to more or less everyone.
[more...]
So the good guys in this movie are the ones who kill off newborn males if they’re “defective” in any way? Hmm…
Despite being a Frank Miller fan, I’ve never read the 300 comic. It just didn’t seem as if it would have enough to hold my interest (plot is rather important to me). Seeing the movie version hasn’t changed my mind.
[more...]
I’m still waiting for Powers 10 to come out—it may be out, but the local comic store I go to (Comix Experience on Divisadero) hasn’t gotten it in yet. So I got some other things instead.
[more...]
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series of fantasy novels by Steven Erikson (and possibly also by Ian Cameron Esslemont). I started reading it way back in late 2000/early 2001.
[more...]
So this is only about six years late…
[more...]
Closer, closer to this millennium…
[more...]
Century Rain doesn’t take place in the same universe as the other Alastair Reynolds books I’ve read (Redemption Ark, Revelation Space, Chasm City). This universe posits an Earth abandoned by humans after a nanotechnological disaster.
[more...]
Slightly late, but getting closer… soon I might reach books I read this millennium.
[more...]
God’s Playground is Norman Davies’ ambitious history of Poland.
[more...]
Penelope Lively’s The Photograph Starts off very promisingly, drawing the reader into a tale of a man who finds a compromising photo of his dead wife while looking for old research materials.
[more...]
I’ve read a ton of comics in the last week or so, and some of them have been amazing.
[more...]