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Book Review: Among Others by Jo Walton
Not long ago, I was looking for something to read. Everything I knew I wanted was not yet available from my library. I had lots of holds, but nothing to actually read. So I started combing lists of books from my friends and searching for random “what to read” posts. Somewhere in there, I came across Among Others by Jo Walton. Among Others won the 2011 Nebula and the 2012 Hugo awards for best novel, so I almost certainly came across it in a best of SciFi/Fantasy list. And I can see how you could make an argument that Among Others is an urban fantasy. There are fantastical elements to…
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Geek Culture for my Dogs
A couple of weeks ago, when I gave the dogs a bath, I realized that Junebug’s collar was broken. The clasp no longer worked. We had to make the collar as big as we could and slip it off over her head. This was not unexpected. The clasp on Larry’s old collar (bought at the same time) had broken just a few months before. At that time, I had made a quick dash to the pet store, saw some collars on clearance, picked out a blue-ish one for him, and we were good to go. I spent less than two minutes on the process. We have since moved. So this…
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Book Review: The Peripheral by William Gibson
Just finished reading the new William Gibson book, The Peripheral. I am honestly never certain how to review the newer Gibson books (generally starting with Pattern Recognition). Gibson is one of those authors who the reader must trust. You would think that given the length of his books compared to say, Stephenson’s books, it would be fairly easy to do so. But you have to trust Stephenson through only half the book (roughly) before everything really starts coming together. You often have to trust Gibson through 90%. And while that’s still fewer pages, it can be really frustrating. At the same time, Gibson places absolute trust in the reader. He…
