reading notes

by Robert Coover
ISBN: 0684830434
The first paragraph of this novel got my attention. I can say I really liked the first two pages. After that, things weren’t so good.
The most interesting question raised by this novel was “how do you decide if an author is being misogynist or if it is just his despicable characters [...]

by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
ISBN: 0262522950
Though at times needlessly academically opaque, the authors do raise valuable questions about the impact of information infrastructure on human lives. They point out that we are surrounded by standards and classifications (everything from turning off your alarms clock in the morning to reading your email is [...]

by Anne Lamott
ISBN:044990928X
I am not a baby person, so it kind of surprised me that I wanted to read this book.
I had read Bird by Bird, Lamott’s book on writing, a year or so ago and liked it, so when I spotted this book for $1.50 I decided to give it a go. Turns [...]

by John Biguenet
ISBN: 0060198354
This book is an unusual collection of short stories. The settings and time periods span continents an centuries, but there is a striving for a bit of a twist at the end that the stories have in common. Sometimes the zinger at the end is more effective
than others.
Biguenet creates interesting [...]

by Mark Doty
ISBN: 0060931973
One thing this book does is hand pieces of your own childhood back to you. At least,
that was one of the effects reading this sharply observed memoir had on me. Do you
remember the sound of kicking one of those red bouncing balls out on the playground? I hadn’t thought about [...]

By Nicola Griffith
ISBN: 0380790882
I read another of Griffith’s books in the science fiction vein, Slow River, which I really liked, so when L (my better half) stopped recommending and starting insisting that I read this book, I bumped it to the top of my to-read list.
This is really a suspense/mystery novel. The author spends [...]

by Kirsten Bakis
ISBN: 0340685964
This is a first novel with an unusual premise: dogs who have been genetically and surgically altered
show up in the Manhattan of the near future. And the dogs are rich.
We learn about the twisted scientist who was driven to create the dogs, and how they came to New York.
Most of the story [...]