Derek

Somehow Sandford has transitioned from writing “crime capers” to pure “capers”. I found this book more funny than believable, but the laughter was enough.
Ya just gotta love that fuckin' Flowers.
Incidentally, the archaeological find that underlies this whole story doesn't actually reveal anything new: the connection between the Egyptian Siamun and the Jewish King Solomon has been made before.
Of course, it's another example of the execrable work of the folks who write cover blurbs: “... an Israeli cop [is] tailing a man who's smuggled out an extraordinary relic—a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon.” WTF? It was a great big stone!

I read this because Liz Bourke, Jared Shurin, Justin Landon and Tansy Rayner Roberts challenged each other to make a list of the 25 Essential Urban Fantasy novels, and while three of them totally ignored my favorite urban fantasist, [a:Charles De Lint 8185168 Charles de Lint https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494881016p2/8185168.jpg], Roberts said: “Part of the reason I get a bit cross about the pre-angry-trousers school of magical mundanity AKA urban fantasy being defined as “lovely magical realist novels by Charles De Lint” is that the defining novel of this subset of urban fantasy for me is and always will be Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean.” I shan't attempt to define what she means by the “angry-trousers-school” but felt I should read Tam Lin before telling her that she was full of ... it.  Unfortunately, it doesn't even begin to hold up to De Lint! De Lint's books are true Urban Fantasy. They're (mostly) set in cities (a surprising number of the choices these four critics called “urban” fantasy, aren't), and the boundaries between our world and “faerie” are frequently, and sometimes easily, crossed.  In Dean's Tam Lin, the fantasy element is almost non-existent for the vast majority of the book. There are some hints, but the first real evidence of fantasy comes at the 90% point, and there's no actual confirmation until you're 95% done. So, in 468 pages, there's 31 pages of actual fantasy, and 7 pages of the lyric of the original Scottish ballad it was based on. I feel like I was roped in under false pretenses. On top of that, my library copy has a sticker on it that says “Young Adult”, but the characters are having SEX, which doesn't happen in YA. On the other hand, and it goes right to my next point, we have three girls starting college and sharing a room, and every one of them is a virgin. Our heroine has apparently had one kiss. It seemed very anachronistic—copyright 1991, it describes a kind of liberal arts college that I thought was almost dead when I first went to college in 1976. I mean, required Phys.Ed. courses? Only half way through the book does it mention that it's actually set in 1972 (at that point —it actually covers 1971 to 1974)! Strange, since earlier references to the Vietnam war made it sound as if it was over, which wouldn't happen for more than three more years. I also had some problems with the pedantry. Janet reads some graffiti in the tunnels that connect the various campus buildings:  ‘“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” It always irritated Janet. “All hope abandon,” she muttered.' For heaven's sake! I can be a bigger stickler than most, but the original was in Italian—surely it could be translated either way. I started university very shortly after Janet would have graduated, and as a story of residence life I found this very enjoyable, and I'd probably give this story 3½ stars if I came into it without any preconceptions, but as Y/A Urban Fantasy it's a bust.

I edited the second edition of this book.This is not going to be for everybody. Armas has written a story that will feel decidedly odd to most native English-speaking readers. It's stream-of-consciousness in a conscious that spans the entire universe. If you can work through the unusual presentation, it's an epic fantasy in a pseudo-scientific setting most reminiscent to me of [a:C.S. Lewis 1069006 C.S. Lewis https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1367519078p2/1069006.jpg]'s [b:Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, etc.) 30628 Space Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet; Perelandra; That Hideous Strength C.S. Lewis https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386924691s/30628.jpg 964542], without the religious element.Strictly, the protagonist is unnamed, but he is nicknamed ‘Deceneus' by the people he helps. Deceneus is recruited by an agent of ‘The Universe' to help steer the progress of less-developed races on other worlds. Sort-of. But it's clear that Deceneus himself is considered a savage, and there are far too many similarities between certain periods of Earth's history and events he lives through with these other races for one to be entirely sure it is another planet. And the author certainly isn't going to tell you soon.Deceneus is a rather unsympathetic character (not quite as annoying, say, as Donaldson's [b:Thomas Covenant 179033 The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #1-3) Stephen R. Donaldson https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386920669s/179033.jpg 172962], but he takes some getting used to). He whines a lot and makes the reader wonder why ever somebody would think he'd be worth the investment of their time, but over the course of the novel, he becomes more likable and understandable. In fact, he's a normal human being: he drags his feet when asked to do things outside his comfort zone, but when he discovers he has an aptitude for the task, he complains less and enjoys himself more. Consequently, we enjoy him more, too.This is clearly the first of a series, but this story stands alone, with a satisfactory conclusion.

Marcus Zuzak is in love with metaphor.
If you love to read a book in which everything abstract becomes concrete, you're going to love this. It begins, of course with Death, who narrates this story, but almost any concept you can imagine gets the treatment: particularly voices, which climb stairs or, when yelled from an upper-story apartment, “her voice was like suicide, landing with a clunk at Liesel's feet” (a simile and a metaphor!)
Just too precious for me to really enjoy. With a ridiculously syrupy ending.

I remember my grade 6 teacher reading this to the class (44 years ago), but I've never read it myself. I was pleased to find that it's just about as much fun as I remembered. 
It's hard to imagine kids today being allowed to do almost any of the things Tom and Huck Finn get away with (of course, Huck would have been in the care of the Children's Aid...), or to imagine them being beaten as they were for the things they didn't get away with. But, Tom didn't do much that I wasn't doing at his age (except for witnessing murders), and corporal punishment in school wasn't quite dead yet; so in my childhood, things were not so very different except for the technology....
Still, even in my day I doubt a few dozen young children would be allowed to cross the Mississippi on a riverboat for a picnic, with only a handful of young adults to chaperon, and nobody would count heads when they got back aboard!
The times were certainly different, but while what Twain reports doesn't seem so different from what I remember of childhood, I can't help thinking that a lot of that is because of what he doesn't mention. While the word “nigger” is used often, it's not intended pejoratively, yet nowhere is there any mention of mistreatment of blacks: which doesn't ring true. There are certainly no black children in the school or church, and the closest Twain comes to actually admitting to mistreatment is to have Huck admit that he's occasionally sat down to eat beside “Uncle Jack”, because you just have to do that sort of thing sometimes when you're starving.

Despite the title, this is actually a voyage around half the world: through the Caribbean to Mexico, South America and across Europe.
Except for the near titular “November Walk Near False Creek Mouth” (Vancouver, BC), most of the poems decry the unthinking imperialism of the North American tourist, and Birney is no easier on his Canadian countrymen than on Americans (in “Most of a Dialogue in Cuzco” the unheard American woman is clearly more sympathetic than the Canadian who doesn't stop talking even with both feet planted firmly in her mouth!).  For all that he clearly despises such people, he does it with a great deal of wit .
It's ironic, though, that Birney obviously wrote these pieces while playing tourist. I hope he recognized the irony.

I first read this many years ago—probably about the time in which it is set: it was published in 1957 (just before I was born) but most of the story is set in 1970 and the rest in 2000/2001.  The only thing that really stayed in my memory was the reason for the title.  Dan Davis once lived in Connecticut in a house with twelve doors to the outside. In Winter, his cat Pete (Petronius the Arbiter) would make him open every door, looking for the one that led to Summer. Pete's not present for the majority of the novel, but he's very definitely a major character. I pretty much stopped reading Heinlein after [b:Time Enough for Love 353 Time Enough for Love Robert A. Heinlein http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1218664355s/353.jpg 75443]. He got increasingly misogynistic and right-wing (or else, he'd always been that way and just felt he could get away with writing about it in his old age). But I'd forgotten the immense vision he brought to his earlier stories like [b:The Roads Must Roll 13099926 The Roads Must Roll Robert A. Heinlein http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1322071994s/13099926.jpg 18272413], the very first Heinlein I read, and [b:Waldo and Magic, Inc 121586 Waldo and Magic, Inc Robert A. Heinlein http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1216422511s/121586.jpg 1862678], and this one. My first introduction to Science Fiction was [a:Arthur C. Clarke 7779 Arthur C. Clarke http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg], and Heinlein was my second. They share that vision of the possibilities of the future, and Clarke may actually have been technically more capable (when Clarke suggested satellites in Earth-orbit, I suspect he could have built one, with help—when Heinlein builds a general household robot he's imagining what we would want to have done, and the way it should operate, but I can't imagine he actually could have designed the necessary circuit boards), but Heinlein is far and above the better story-teller. Like many futurists, Heinlein's 50s vision of 1970 was a little too optimistic, and his vision of 2000 was much too optimistic, but still he wrote about so many things that have come to pass almost as he described. It's so stunningly accurate that the few anachronisms that creep in are totally hilarious. “For my money Chuck was the only real engineer there; the rest were overeducated slipstick mechanics.”  Looking back from 60 years into Heinlein's future, it's hard to imagine that anyone would have missed the fact that “slipsticks” (slide rules) would be non-existent in 2000, and were on their way out in the 70s (I learned to use a slide rule in the early 70s, bought a beautiful one in 1977—at a huge discount—and have probably not seen one for sale since). In 2001: “The nearest twenty-four-hour bank was downtown at the Grand Circle of the Ways.” I actually remember when there were less than a handful of bank machines in the whole of Toronto (~1981), but in a novel that centres on the life of an engineer who specializes in automatons, it's funny that he never imagined we could do away with physical banks for the mere dispensing of money. But those things don't detract in the slightest from the things he got right (if not necessarily pinning them to the right time). Heinlein goes into great detail describing “Drafting Dan”—a way to automate drafting, so that an engineer can design without hunching over a drafting table. And what he describes is pretty much AutoCAD, only about a decade and a half too early. He describes Roombas. He places them nearly three decades too early, but the physical description of the way they will ensure that a whole room is vacuumed and then return to their charging stations is uncanny. One thing he got wrong, but it just goes even further to demonstrate his vision. In 2000, he postulates that, for some reason, gold has become very cheap. This leads to a great deal more automation, because all his robots need a lot of gold (perhaps not individually, but certainly in total) and with higher gold prices it becomes cost prohibitive. The prices of gold, platinum, and numerous other metals do in fact currently limit a great deal of our technology. I recently finished [b:The Man who Folded Himself 624122 The Man Who Folded Himself David Gerrold http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344701884s/624122.jpg 610483], a time travel story that's all about paradox. Heinlein takes a different view (and one that, failing actual experimentation, must be just as likely): ‘But I'm not worried about “paradoxes” or “causing anachronisms”—if a thirtieth-century engineer does smooth out the bugs and then sets up transfer stations and trade, it will be because the Builder designed the universe that way.... He doesn't need busybodies to “enforce” His laws; they enforce themselves. There are no miracles and the word “anachronism” is a semantic blank.'  Heinlein's idea of time travel is that you can't do anything that you haven't already done. “Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true”. I've been trying to wrap my head around this idea, possibly even before I first read this story: I remember arguing with Calvinists as a teenager, who insisted that everything was predestined, but that we still had complete free will.  It's actually easier to believe in time paradoxes!  Anyway, this particular story probably doesn't deserve the 5-star rating. I use that for life-changing books, and in Heinlein's case, that is probably [b:The Roads Must Roll 13099926 The Roads Must Roll Robert A. Heinlein http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1322071994s/13099926.jpg 18272413], but somewhere over the decades I lost that book so I can't reread it unless  I find another copy. This one certainly has similarities and can stand in until I find another copy of [b:The Roads Must Roll 13099926 The Roads Must Roll Robert A. Heinlein http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1322071994s/13099926.jpg 18272413]!

Meh. Not much more than a list of actions in a generations-long war.

Thought provoking as always, but rather predictable, with an ending that seemed rather rushed.
And I'd have been a whole lot more willing to overlook its few faults if most of them hadn't been typically American ignorance of their neighbour to the North. Kress makes repeated references to Canada as if it's Narnia before Lucy's arrival: “always Winter but never Christmas”. And she lives in Buffalo! A city that has worse Winters than practically any city in Canada (Winterpeg and Edmonton definitely excepted).
In 2014 (next year!) the Earth suffers a catastrophe. The few survivors believe that Earth was attacked, and almost all life destroyed, by Aliens. The Aliens have provided them with a time machine, and they keep going back in time to bring back babies and young children to help them repopulate the world.
In 2013, Julie is a mathematician trying to predict where the next kidnapping will occur.
Naturally, eventually the two subplots meet. But Julie's research is pure hand-waving, and her conclusion is not only less than scientific, but we're not even given any reason why Julie would believe it.
Really, I mostly enjoyed this, but it could have been so much better.

A funny but believable story about just how the "zombie apocalypse" might start.

Drake has written some incredibly good SF, and some far-better-than-average Fantasy, and then he comes up with this drivel. It's a pastiche of rewritten fairy tales, a typical YA plotline, and a completely predictable ending, with that vague SF-ness I first encountered in [a:Anne McCaffrey 26 Anne McCaffrey https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1323715139p2/26.jpg]'s Dragonriders books: as if the author is embarrassed to be writing Fantasy, so has to place the novel in a degenerated colony world.

I had a few problems with this. It's a good story, but with some serious, and some not so serious, errors that made it really hard to buy the whole plot. I'd give it 3 stars for the story, if not for the fact that the circumstances that kick it off are so unbelievable.
We start with two (armed) EPA agents travelling to small town Wyoming to serve papers—papers that should have been served a year earlier—the men promptly turn up dead. The crime that the EPA is fighting is supposedly the illegal development of a wetland: except that everybody knows there is no such wetland. So we're asked to believe that, first, the EPA has ordered a developer (verbally) to stop work on a “wetland” and to restore it to its natural condition immediately, and that fines of $70,000 a day will be imposed until the site is restored.  In an afterword, Box says that this has really happened to a couple named Sackett in Idaho, and as far as it goes, this is true. However, in the Sackett's case, nobody—except perhaps the Sacketts—denies that the property really was a wetland and a compliance order was issued, which latter didn't happen in this fictional version.  It's also true that only the EPA can define what constitutes a wetland under the Clean Water Act, and that they claimed the Sacketts had no right of appeal. The US Supreme court ruled that they did have a right of appeal in March 2012, well before this book was published. So, really, no, I don't think the scenario described here could have happened.
For the far less consequential, we're told this town is too small to have even one taxi, but a young hooligan that Joe Pickett is looking for is the son of an Episcopalian Bishop. You think? My experience is that Episcopal diocesan seats are in rather larger centres. In Wyoming's case, that's Caspar: population 55,000.
Towards the end of the book, Joe's riding a log down a river that even the best whitewater kayakers only tackle in the spring runoff. That's not the way it works, Mr. Box: if it's dangerous in August, it's worse when the water's high. Think about it. There's more water, moving faster, in the spring runoff than during the dry part of summer : Energy = ½mass*velocity²  — more energy = more danger.
So, that's all a long winded way of saying that I was pretty short on the willing suspension of disbelief.  Outside of that, I enjoyed it....

I'm truly not sure how I feel about this book.

For Ian's sake, I have to point out that it's masturbatory. Which is not at all a bad thing.

Any story about time travel, where the protagonist changes history in his own timeline, is sure to be confusing, but I'm not sure whether the confusion here is in my mind or the author's. I did see where the ending was headed, and that only adds to the confusion.

Part of my problem is that Gerrold seems to be unsure of the consequences of time travel himself (well, unless he has his own time machine, I guess he would be: and perhaps even if he does!). Dan, the narrator, talks about how time is not singular, and how “now” is just the cumulative effect of all the changes that have been made to the timeline, yet he also talks about alternate universes, where every change to the timeline results in a new universe, and Dan can never return to the same place he left. These two ideas seem in conflict, and I'm not sure whether it was Dan or the author who couldn't figure it out!

This made my dad my son-in-lawAnd changed my very lifeMy daughter was my mother‘Cause she was my father's wife...I'm my own grandpaI'm my own grandpaIt sounds funny I knowBut it really is soI'm my own grandpa

Ultimately, the story seemed like a self-indulgent piece intended to see how much he could confuse his readers.

I seriously wondered if I was ever going to be able to finish this.  I like Nalo Hopkinson, but I don't think this is even close to her best work. 
Why would anybody want to read a novel about a seriously disfunctional family? I have my own, I don't need to know about anybody else's. The only likeable characters were Beji and Lars. And Beji.
The ending was completely predictable, from about a third of the way in, and yet it still seemed rushed.

Full disclosure: I edited this book.
Tom's done an amazing job of pulling together a lot of my favorite complaints about humanity and modern society; theorized a very probable path to collapse; and has a provided a small glimmer of hope for a better future.
The plot involves global warming, disease run amok, governments run (some openly, some covertly) by the one-percenters for the one-percenters, have-not nations eyeing the haves for the remaining scarce resources, and biological warfare.
In the midst of all this Dr. Michael Khan sees a chance to improve the human race, both by making them more resistant to disease—whether natural or man-made—and by making them more co-operative, so that they think first of what's best for mankind, rather than what's best for themselves.
As one might expect, Michael Khan—being a brilliant scientist with a plan—can be reasonably accused of having a bit of a god complex. He knows what we need, and he's not always very smart about the politics of achieving his aims. But his heart's in the right place: while he wants to save the planet, his first priority is to save the woman he's loved for most of his life.

The only question is whether the human race is willing to be saved, and whether Khan ultimately thinks they're worth saving.

Why did I enjoy this book? It beats me. As far as I can tell, it broke practically every rule I have for an enjoyable novel.

To begin, it's told from alternating viewpoints: Phil (I'm betting written primarily by Steven Brust) and Ren (Renée - presumably written by Skyler White). I'm a simple sort, and easily confused, so despite the fact that every section is headed by the name of the first-person character, I fairly often got a page into a change of viewpoint before realizing that I was thinking I was reading Phil when it was actually Ren.


Then, I like the basic premises of a story to be explained to me. I don't need it all up front, but by the time I get to the end, I want to be able to have understood what was going on. In this story, we have the titular Incrementalists, and the ‘nemones' (or confusingly, the amnemones), who are every human who isn't an Incrementalist. But we never get an explanation, or even a guess, as to why the Incrementalists are different from other humans. My personal suspicion is that, in fact, Incrementalists are not remotely human; that they're a pure-energy lifeform which lives in symbiosis with humanity. However, the Incrementalists themselves are remarkably uninquisitive about their own origins, so your guess is as good as mine. My guess, though, would help to explain Celeste.
So we come to Celeste. Ren has been selected to be the new ‘host' (Incrementalists call her a Second: another problem—so many words that have special meaning to Incrementalists are never explained, you have to work them out for yourself) for the deceased Celeste's memories. Celeste somehow seems to be manipulating Ren, Phil and others from beyond the grave, and we're never really given a hint how that could be possible (and at least one Incrementalist flat-out says that it isn't possible!)
Incidentally, the cover blurb says “The Incrementalists—a secret society... with an unbroken lineage reaching back forty thousand years.” That's a very debatable point. The Incrementalists' personalities decay over their numerous human lifetimes, and Phil's personal memories only go back 2000 years (and he is the “oldest”). So you might consider it a very broken lineage, but he can access the memories of both his previous Seconds and those of any other Incrementalist.
For all the unanswered questions and confusing, to me, narration, I was hooked from the beginning. Ostensibly about “reincarnating Celeste”, on a deeper level it's about the fact that Phil is, for all intents, 2000 years old, and what it costs a person to live that long and through so much.

I don't read Billy Boyle for the mysteries. The mysteries are no better than “okay”—far too much coincidence for my taste. But I love mysteries set in authentic historical settings, and Benn's WWII settings are as authentic as they come.
That said, once you get past the coincidence of Billy being asked by a friend to investigate one murder, and being sent to the same location by his bosses to investigate another, the mystery is pretty well done.
The most annoying thing about the book is the cover: it depicts Billy being hit over the head and pushed into a canal. A crime that occurs but is never solved in the book. The cover shows the assailant as being another soldier. Why? It seems a little too specific for the usual excuse: which is just that the artist didn't actually read the book.
There are no happy endings. As with most of Benn's books, this is his way of airing historical dirty laundry: in this case the shameful treatment of black American soldiers during WWII—as Benn points out, to the serious detriment of the war effort.

I read [b:American Gods|4407|American Gods (American Gods, #1)|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1258417001s/4407.jpg|1970226], and was unimpressed. Then I started to listen to the BBC dramatization of [b:Neverwhere|14497|Neverwhere|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348747943s/14497.jpg|16534] (with the omnipresent Benedict Cumberbatch) and enjoyed the first couple of episodes ... but I just can't get into audiobooks, and somehow never managed to listen to the rest.
So when somebody on Goodreads started talking up Neverwhere, I figured I really should check out the book. On paper and everything.
I'm glad I did. Gaiman's London Below is definitely reminiscent of China Miéville's various versions of London—particularly King Rat, which Neverwhere preceeded by a year—and there are thematic similarities, and I'm beginning to think that Gaiman may actually be as good as people keep telling me he is! [Though surely not as stellar as His Chinaness.]
Neverwhere is, in many ways, a standard quest fantasy. Richard Mayhew is nothing more than a twice-lifesize Bilbo Baggins. He even returns from his quest with riches and a sword (both, of a sort). There were a couple of times I was howling at the book “this is what comes of a lack of a classical education!” (particularly, I would have been a lot more suspicious of a lady named Lamia), but really that was a good thing.
Like his later American Gods, Neverwhere borrows heavily from much older mythology. Unlike American Gods, Gaiman doesn't hit you over the head with it; it's woven seamlessly into a story of a magical London coexisting with the one we know.
I was struck by one wonderful line: “He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.” Miéville also wrote the wonderful Embassytown, which is all about the very opposite. Miéville's Ariekei can only talk about what is, and are striving, through simile, to reach metaphor. I love the sense that it's a two-way street.

Always enjoyable mysteries, though this one got a little too convoluted toward the end

I just purchased “Don't Know Jack” as an e-book. I'll probably read it, because I paid for it, but because of the outrageous “License” terms, I won't review it, and I won't be buying any more of your books.

“This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people”. I refuse to accept any author's or publisher's right to apply “terms” to the way I read books. I don't “share” ebooks. I don't post them on websites. But I absolutely reserve the right to give away my only copy, just as I would with a paper book. I actually support the idea of paying royalties on every transfer of any work of art (though how it would ever work, I can't imagine), but authors and publishers neither have a moral right nor (in most countries) a legal right to demand that I can not give away a book I have purchased.

I do not “agree” to your terms.

Merged review:

I just purchased “Don't Know Jack” as an e-book. I'll probably read it, because I paid for it, but because of the outrageous “License” terms, I won't review it, and I won't be buying any more of your books.

“This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people”. I refuse to accept any author's or publisher's right to apply “terms” to the way I read books. I don't “share” ebooks. I don't post them on websites. But I absolutely reserve the right to give away my only copy, just as I would with a paper book. I actually support the idea of paying royalties on every transfer of any work of art (though how it would ever work, I can't imagine), but authors and publishers neither have a moral right nor (in most countries) a legal right to demand that I can not give away a book I have purchased.

I do not “agree” to your terms.

He got a Pulitzer for this? I'm sorry, but the story is extremely simplistic, and poorly lettered black text on very busy black and white panels is terribly hard for my old eyes to read. I guess it's OK as an introduction to the holocaust for kids who'll never read a real book, but it's just a gimmick. And, no, “at all levels this is [not] the ultimate survivor's tale.” I've read better. I'd rather read fiction, like [b:Mila 18 42692 Mila 18 Leon Uris https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1359742799l/42692.SY75.jpg 1437605].  What everybody knows about Maus is that Jews are mice, Nazis are cats (thereby upsetting all the cat ladies). I'd never heard that Poles were pigs. People probably avoid mentioning that, as just saying it sounds racist. The most interesting part of the book was that Polish mice, when trying to pass as Poles, wore pig masks.

For all the incredible feats Reacher accomplishes, I don't generally have a problem with suspension of disbelief. I just treat it as fantasy. In this particular story, taking on eight hillbillies at once or disabling two men in a full commercial airliner, without anybody else noticing, isn't the problem. The thing that really didn't work was getting a law firm receptionist to give up the address of a client (without violence). Sorry, that just wouldn't happen!
Still, I love the stories and will keep reading them as long as Child keeps writing them.

I probably never would have read this book, if not for lucky coincidence. I'd been challenged to a treasure hunt that required me to read books in categories including one about song lyrics, and a GoodReads friend happened to review this at the same time.
As a long-time fan of the song, and especially Buckley's cover, I was really quite startled to see how many good covers there are. As one person is quoted about Idol-type contests, there should be a moratorium on them in these contests because the song is so good that anybody can do a competent version. I'm not sure that's quite right. I came across one that Light didn't mention, by J Star Valentine, that had the Idol (or whatever show it was) judges squirming. And even Bono admitted his version was bad.
Virtually all of the performers mentioned in Light's discography are on this YouTube playlist. If you really need to see J Star Valentine, I'll make you look it up yourself.

This might have made a good novella. I just read a blurb that said Anderson will be best remembered for this book. I hope not. Some of his work is very good, some is great. This isn't.

I guess it qualifies as “hard science”, because no laws of physics are violated (though I think nobody actually believes in an eternally, repeatedly, expanding and contracting universe any more). But the laws of probability are given a pretty hard shakeup.

And the whole premise of why their ship is forced to voyage onward forever after an accident makes it impossible to stop at their target star is just not believable.

In a group read with Sci Fi Aficionados, one participant complained that the characters are poorly developed. She was being generous. Our “heroes” travel to the end of the universe, and in all that time, only one character gets developed at all (Reymont) and he is notoriously close about his character.

I just kept hoping for it to end.

I downloaded the complete Mark Twain from Project Gutenberg today, and my eye was caught by this essay (from Harper's Magazine, March 1898).

It's stunning how timelessly he writes, and this piece should still be considered required reading. I'm only sorry that I believe he's not entirely correct:

Point No. 5.—'Will the per­se­cu­tion of the Jews ever come to an end?'On the score of re­li­gion, I think it has al­ready come to an end. On the score of race prej­u­dice and trade, I have the idea that it will con­tinue.

Twain's argument is that anti-Semitism has always been based on envy of the Jews business acumen (a generalization that he is entirely aware is such, but for which he makes a good case). Unfortunately, purely religious hatred continually flares, and those who hate Jews for their religion are more than happy to use others' envy to forward their own ends.

It's particular pleasing to see such a balanced and clearly unprejudiced article from the man who's been called a racist, and had his books banned, purely because characters use the language of the time and refer to “niggers”.