Books
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline. I have a weird fascination with what I’ll call, in very broad terms, fantasy games. In that I include fantasy sports, traditional desktop role playing games, and online RPGs. I say fascination because I love the idea of creating an alternate world where we are in control of characters and teams. But when it…
Books
Zazen – Vanessa V. File this under books I’ve wanted to read for several years, and when I finally did, was disappointed. Zazen takes place in the near future, with the world on the verge of a mysterious war. People are fleeing the United States as war approaches and energy and individual liberties are severely rationed. Those who remain face…
Spin The Black Circle
You would think, as much as I love music, that I would have some sweet set-up for listening to my tunes. A nice stereo receiver/amp with kick ass speakers and some high end headphones for use when I couldn’t crank it up to 11 You would be wrong Since going fully digital about a decade ago, I’ve relied on pretty…
Reading
Telegraph Avenue: A Novel – Michael Chabon. Chabon has an impossible task. His The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of my all-time favorite books. I was very eager to read this, his most recent novel. But it’s hard not to want it to be as good, as powerful, and beautiful as Kavalier and Clay. And since it…
Reading, Part 2
I finished 2012 with two books about two of my favorite teams ever. Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever – Jack McCallum. This is a perfect accounting of the perfect team: the 1992 US men’s basketball team. The long-time Sports Illustrated NBA…
Reading, Part 1
2012 was an interesting year for me, reading-wise. For the first time since I can recall, I struggled to read. I went an entire calendar month – April – without finishing a book. Where I normally went from one book straight to the next, I had a hard time picking books to read. For the previous four summers I spent…
Reading
How I Became a Famous Novelist – Steve Hely I knew when I picked this up that it was a novel, a satire of our current pop culture where anyone can become famous regardless of how much (or little) talent they possess. But I’ll admit, I just might have been hoping to find the secret to getting published while making…
Reading
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power – Rachel Maddow. I love Rachel Maddow, at least as much as a straight man can love a gay woman. She speaks from a similar political point of view as mine. And I really like her spin on how to run a news/politics TV show: less yelling and screaming and demonizing and more…
Reading
I finished my latest book over a week ago but hadn’t found the time to write about it yet. I sat down to do it this morning, not yet looking at the calendar. When I was at the bank later at saw the date, I realized there was some part of me that had intentionally held off on writing this…
Reading
I’ve hit a wall. I’ve abandoned two books in a row. The first, which got good reviews on Amazon, was so horribly written that I gave up after two chapters. The second, a piece of alternative-history fiction, I gave 100 pages. But I was sure I would get more annoyed and less entertained as I continued. I’m going to start…