reading notes

by Bruce Robinson
ISBN: 0060955406
I didn’t find the stories of Thomas Penman’s memories as interesting as I thought I would.
The story is about Thomas Penman and his awkward journey across that line dividing the men from the boys. This involves learning how to smoke and drink, finding pornography, giving up gross habits for love, and a [...]

by Jim Munroe
ISBN: 1568582080
This was a fun book.
Munroe has taken 1950s science fiction elements, extended corporate greediness to a logical conclusion, thrown in humor, put it all in a blender and hit the “satire” button.
If you only like your sci-fi served up serious, or with hard science, you will not like this book; if you [...]

by John Heskett
ISBN: 0192804448
This book didn’t turn out to be as sexy as I thought it was going to be, but it did turn out to be an interesting book.
Heskett has put together an introductory text for design, sort of survey course in one book, but more interesting than survey courses tend to be. Short, [...]

by Douglas Coupland
ISBN: 1582342156
This book is the literary equivalent of comfort food. For me, that means a perfectly golden-brown grilled cheese sandwich with a side of greasy diner fries.
And that is why I read Coupland — you know, that hip GenX novel writer who is now being positioned as a hip, actually adult novel writer [...]

by Edward O. Wilson
ISBN: 0679768114
This is a Big Picture book, and because Wilson is a conscientious scientist, he presents a well-constructed and thought-out Big Picture.
His focus is the biosphere of planet Earth, the sum total of living matter that is nevertheless “so thin it cannot be seen edgewise from the space shuttle.”
He starts with a [...]

by Adam Johnson
ISBN: 0142001953
This is a collection of nine stories set a world that isn’t exactly ours: things are a slightly fast-forwarded or otherwise skewed in most of these stories.
With one exception, the stories are all a bit long — almost too long for short stories — but Johnson needs the space to flesh [...]

by Timothy Basil Ering
ISBN: 0763613827
This book has all of what I think are the elements of a great children’s (picture) book: honest story, visual interest, words that are fun to say out loud, and an abundance of imagination.
There is also a bit of magic, earnest feeling, specks, and thieves. Oh, and the hunt for hidden [...]