I finished reading A Storm of Swords at 12:05am this morning and thought that the intervening sleep would help me write a cogent and sensible review of the book, but as of this morning, I’m still left feeling rather breathless by everything that happened, especially towards the end. The book is so long, with so many…
At present, the book du jour that I read to the Little Man each night is Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. We read it every night and while I’d memorized it as a kid, I’d forgotten a lot of it until I started reading it again. Now I have it memorized…
Not that I need even more to read, but I had a very good offer for a subscription to Time magazine and yesterday, I signed up. I was really on the fence about it, given how much I already have to read, but one-and-a-half things pushed me over. First, free with my subscription is access to the…
For the longest time I denied the e-book revolution. A book was something you held in your hand; you could rifle through the pages and catch that lovely whiff of aged paper. There was some sort of psychological comfort that made me resist the switch to e-books. Then, two years ago, just before the Little…
I hesitated to update the Kindle App on my iPad to the most current version because of a philosophical issue I had with Apple’s in-app purchase policy. And yet I am weak, and cast my morals aside when the right circumstances arise. Two events converged this evening that convinced me to update the app: Event #1: Fantasy…
Since I haven’t posted it in a while, here is what is on my virtual “to-read” stack on my Kindle App for the iPad: And in case you can’t read what’s there, here is the list, in no particular order, except the first item which is what I am reading now: A Storm of Swords…
For a long time, I’ve been a fan of Superman. I’ve talked about how I introduced the Little Man to Superman. But until Friday night, I’d never read a Superman comic. And doing so gave me a nifty little idea. When I heard about the DC Comics “new 52”–their renumbering of 52 of their most…
I mentioned in the previous post that I watched a live webcast of George R. R. Martin at Google yesterday and it was fascinating. I’ve written of how Martin made me a fan of epic fantasy with his Song of Ice and Fire series. During the Q&A session yesterday, he said something that I found…
Life has been keeping me so busy that I haven’t had much time to read outside the reading I do for my Vacation in the Golden Age, keeping up with my science magazines, and reading manuscripts for critique for various writers groups. I last touched George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords well over…
I am not a fan of self-publishing. I have written about why I am not a fan before. But yesterday, a good friend of mine asked me for some advice on self-publishing and you can’t let a pal down. I am biased, of course, so if there’s anyone out there who has corrections or additions to…
Last month, I posted a list of science fiction novels that I should have read, but that I’ve never gotten around to. After going through the various comments, I have culled the list down to five novels and I am asking for you help in choosing which science fiction book I read next.  Think: “You can’t…
So this guy walks into a bookstore and goes looking for Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel. He doesn’t know who Asimov is, but he’s been assured by a good friend that the book is a wonderful mystery story and, being a fan of mysteries, he’ll eat it up.  He makes his way toward the  back…