“A masterpiece” — Stephen King
I don’t know how it is with you, but I am often peeved by overly enthusiastic reviewers’ praises for a book printed on the cover (or even on the first couple of pages inside). Mostly, the books with the most over-hyped praises turn out to be the dullest tomes imaginable. [...]
Michael Marshall “The Straw Men”
Orson Scott Card “How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy”
I’m on a bit of a reading binge of books about writing lately. This one is just a slim volume of about 130 pages, so I didn’t expect any deep insights from it.
Turns out, I got pleasantly surprised. Not only does Mr. Card have a very engaging style of writing, he also clearly knows what [...]
Julian Barnes “A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters”
This book left me decidedly underwhelmed. In fact, so much so that I didn’t even bother to finish it. It is not really a novel as such, but consists of several separate stories (my guess would be 11, but I didn’t really check) that are only very tenuously connected by the mention of woodworm and/or [...]
LibriVox – Free Audiobooks
I am normally not a big fan of audiobooks. I often find that my mind tends to drift off and I lose the thread of the story, if I don’t concentrate very hard. The only audiobook I have enjoyed so far has been “Three Men in a Boat”, read by Hugh Laurie. And that was [...]
Myla Goldberg “Wickett’s Remedy”
I can’t remember anymore what prompted me long ago to put that book on my Amazon wishlist (it probably had something to do with the beautiful cover again), but when I recently found it on Bookmooch I decided to give it a go.
This is what Publishers Weekly had to say about the story:
The author of [...]
Harry Thompson “This Thing of Darkness”
Another book I have had on my shelves for more than a year. At 750 pages it seemed a bit daunting. Add to that the fact that it is a historical novel, based on facts, which can turn out pretty boring if not handled right. So it’s no wonder I passed it over again [...]
Cult Books
I just found this list at Puss Reboots, who got it from Bibliobibuli, who in turn found it at the site of The Telegraph.
The allegedly 50 best cult books. What exactly a cult book is defies an easy definition. I thought the Telegraph’s attempts at explaining it were quite funny:
Some things crop up often: drugs, [...]
