I like to read science fiction, fantasy, poetry, philosophy, romance, and sometimes big-L literature. I'm on Mastodon at sfba.social/@dys_morphia I have a blog where I sometimes write book reviews rinsemiddlebliss.com/tags/book-review/
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The courtship of Vincent Cardworthy and Misty Berkowitz and the marriage of Holly Stergis and …
It was a charming comedy of manners that made me feel good. I might have found it insufferably sappy had I read it at a different point in my life. This weekend my mood was very harmonious with the mood of this book.
It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.
It led to the destruction of two suns …
The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, …
Reread:
I reread this book as comfort food because I remembered the line where Gurgeh, the protagonist, agrees that life is not fair, but we can try to make it more fair. It's wonderful to imagine a people like the Culture coming in dismantling an evil empire.
Original review:
This is the best of the three Banks novels I've read so far. It probably helps that I didn't find the protagonist to be unrealistically badass and yet at the same time sort of whiny (problems I had with Use of Weapons).
Miss Amelia Butterworth prides herself on being an observer of human nature, especially of the …
A middle-aged single woman turns into a gentlewoman detective when a strange murder takes place next door. The story is set in New York City "society" (which is not the same thing as society in general) in, presumably the late 1890s, since the book was published in 1897. The period setting adds to the charm of the book. The period racism detracts from it. The book is purring along nicely, bits of dry humor interspersed with detective work and character sketches, and then Miss Butterworth visits the Chinese laundry for some clues and suddenly things get racist as hell. No, not because the laundry is Chinese--it's the way the Chinese dude running the laundry is portrayed and the inner monologue of the protagonist as it relates to him. If I wanted to be really generous I'd say the author is merely portraying Miss Butterworth a bit backwards but there are …
A middle-aged single woman turns into a gentlewoman detective when a strange murder takes place next door. The story is set in New York City "society" (which is not the same thing as society in general) in, presumably the late 1890s, since the book was published in 1897. The period setting adds to the charm of the book. The period racism detracts from it. The book is purring along nicely, bits of dry humor interspersed with detective work and character sketches, and then Miss Butterworth visits the Chinese laundry for some clues and suddenly things get racist as hell. No, not because the laundry is Chinese--it's the way the Chinese dude running the laundry is portrayed and the inner monologue of the protagonist as it relates to him. If I wanted to be really generous I'd say the author is merely portraying Miss Butterworth a bit backwards but there are no clues that would honestly indicate that. At least the overt racism is contained to one short scene, but if you're like me, once you read that it changes how you see the novel.
Anyway, an enjoyable enough and somewhat unusual mystery novel, though a bit dated in its social attitudes.
Red Mars is the first novel of the Mars trilogy, published in 1992. It follows the beginnings of the colonization …
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. …
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those …
Enjoyable, tightly plotted cyberpunk space opera.
I thought at first it would be one of those classic gothic novels where scary things happen but then later turn out to have rational explanations. But no, it is an actual terrifying ghost story. I normally like to read a little before bed and I loved/hated reading this one
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced …
