Author: John R. Stilgoe
In the opening paragraph of Outside Lies Magic, author John Stilgoe urges the reader to go outside, take a walk, and pay attention to everything.
And he means everything – everything from the architectural style of barns to the pattern of coffee-shop locations, to the pick-up times on blue mailboxes.
This book challenges us to go outside, explore our neighborhoods, and find the magic in everyday things.
Author: Stephen King
I have a thing for writing books, and when I was younger I was quite the fan of Stephen King’s novels, but it wasn’t until Wil Wheaton quoted some of this book in his blog, that I decided it was worth checking out.
It isn’t the best writing book I’ve ever read, but it was one of the most engaging, and direct. Reading it feels like a conversation with an older and wiser friend.
I definitely recommend it.
Author: Jennifer Weiner
While I really enjoyed Weiner’s other novel, Good in Bed, this one frustrated me – for the bulk of the book everyone’s following their own agenda, and all three main characters are leading completely separate lives. Then, with little subtlety, and far too little substance, a happy ending is engineered, just in time to meet the required page-count for a chick-lit novel.
Chick-lit can be delicious escapist reading. In Her Shoes, is not it.
Authors: Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
The conclusion of the story begun in A Time to Sow.
Authors: Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
Volume three of the NextGen “A Time To…” series, includes a new alien race desperate for survival, and sabotage, as well as some nice interpersonal bits.
by Jacqueline Carey
The second installment of Carey’s trilogy that began with Kushiel’s Dart. Very much a “middle” novel, but with some interesting plot twists.
Read in February; logged in April.
by Jacqueline Carey
Read in February, logging in April.
For the first fifty pages of this book, I was thinking, “This is stupid, this is boring, this is badly written, and oh, God, I bought the sequel!”
But I realized I wasn’t really giving it a chance. I still think the author overwrites, but the story of palace intrigue and alternative-earth politics is still pretty entertaining. Good characters, just too much purple prose.
by Neil Gaiman
John Vornholt
Book two in the “To Every Season” series was a bit darker than book one, but enjoyable nonetheless. Again, I read it in eBook format, which means I have to sit and read on purpose, and not in the bathroom.
I thought it would delve more into Data reacting to no longer having his emotion chip (after all, he’s on the cover), but instead it was a Wesley story. If they had filmed this sort of wrap-up, I think people might have hated Wesley less.
Or not.
Anyway, it’s still brain-candy, but it’s fun brain candy.
John Vornholt
I can’t talk about this sub-series of the Star Trek: The Next Generation novels without hearing the song in my head
To everything
(Turn, turn, turn)
There is a season
(Turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose
Under heaven
Ok, now that that’s purged – I’d resisted buying these until now because the ninth book wasn’t published until October, and nothing irks me more than having to wait for sequels. So, I was strong, and as a result, I get to read the whole series, over the next few weeks.
The cover blurbs tells us that this series of nine novels is designed to fill in the blanks between Insurrection and Nemesis in the TNG universe, and it does a great job. Already in book one we’ve seen what Wesley’s been up to all this time, and found out just why Data no longer had a functional emotion chip in the last movie.
I read it in ebook format in one sitting while half-watching the Monk marathon on television, and I’m not sure if it was the show, or the format, but I feel like I’ve missed something by not having a tangible book in my hands.
Still, it was a great read, and makes me wish they’d filmed THIS instead of the movies they actually made.