Author: John
Guest Review of Ender in Exile

Ender in Exileby Orson Scott Card377pp (Hardcover)My Rating: 6.5/10Amazon Rating: 3.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 3.82/5Goodreads Rating: 3.86/5 Though I am usually a rational sort of person (in a fluffy, out of touch with reality sort of way) I am also sometimes a bit of a sucker. One of the ways I’m sometimes a sucker is my habit of being loyal to authors and stories that have been good to me in the past even when they don’t necessarily deserve it any more. […]

Coraline

Kristen and I saw Coraline tonight…excellent job overall. The pacing seemed a bit off to me, a little slow to get going, a little quick at the finish, but it came through with all the wonderfully screwed-up humor and perspective I’ve come to expect from Neil Gaiman. I haven’t read the book, or any of Gaiman’s “children’s” books, actually–being a grad student and teaching four courses a semester has annexed most of the time I’d normally dedicate to such things–but […]

Twitter Exploding…Oops

If you’re getting a prompt to log in to twitter when you visit this page, please just ignore it. Twitter is apparently having issues right now, but they say they’re on it and will have it fixed shortly. At least annoying prompts are better than getting hacked. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Guest Review of Terry Pratchett’s Nation

Nationby Terry Pratchett384pp (Paperback)My Rating: 9/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.21/5Goodreads Rating: 4.32/5 While I was in one of my grad discussion classes a few weeks ago I said that I consider Terry Pratchett to be one of the great philosophers of the last few decades*. I mostly base that on the Discworld series, but his new standalone book Nation provides yet more evidence to support that statement. Like Discworld and many of Pratchett’s other novels, Nation works on multiple levels; […]

Guest Review of Before They Are Hanged

Before They Are Hangedby Joe Abercrombie539pp (Paperback)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.24/5Goodreads Rating: 4.34/5 Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged is the middle book in his First Law trilogy, following The Blade Itself and preceding Last Argument of Kings (which has an official US launch date of Sept. 23, but is already available from some outlets). Much like The Blade Itself, Hanged is a book that I enjoyed reading for reasons I don’t entirely understand. When viewed separately its […]