Recent Reviews
Lisa Mills
Bicycle Shop Murder
by Robert Burton Robinson
Fast paced with twists I didn't anticipate. A quick read and not at all boring!!!
normb
The Pygmy Planet
by Jack Williamson
The days of the eccentric scientist and his/her private lab are in full bloom. He has created a pygmy planet to study evolution. He even constructed a tiny plane to fly to the planet which can be used for exploration after everyone and the plane gets totally shrunk down by his machine. Unfortunately the planet has become populated by nasty flying crystal and metal beings who want to sacrifice humans to their god-who happens to be an ancient steam hammer! Oy! how to free the damsel and return to earth before she is squished.....
Pulp, pulp, pulp. Fun if you like it.
abhishek
Martin Rattler
by Robert Michael Ballantyne
awesome
good piece of writing.....
i love this book
it's one of its own kind
mangaman01
Tokyo Zero
by Marc Horne
Great book! Serious character development and also gets a bit trippy at times! Lots of action and just a hint of romance.
Generosa Rader
The Titan
by Theodore Dreiser
The Titan is the second book in Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire - the first book being The Financier.
I was disappointed in this book compared to The Financier which I rated 5 stars. In The Titan Frank Cowperwood continues to build his financial empire, stopping at nothing, including bribery of elected officials to further his goals. He engages in multiple love affairs, discarding women at whim, mindless of the effects his reckless behavior has on his wife and marriage. The financial schemes drone on endlessly. He survives all sorts of plots to demolish him and his riches, and starts life anew with a young wife, after discarding the old Aileen. I was bored and could barely finish this book. Still, it merits a 3 rating for Dreiser's superb writing style, but not for the plot.
normb
Blindsight
by Peter Watts
Well, I didn't like this book and couldn't finish it (which is a rarity for me). I'll tell you why. First, let me say that Peter Watts is a terrific wordsmith. Crisp, clear well put together writing. I also liked the concepts. Very clever, creative and philosophically interesting.
Now unfortunately, the criticism. There are endless and unnecessary allusions to technological items and concepts that have no function in the story except possibly to express that the author is on the cutting edge and must show it. Oasa emitters, the noosphere, synthesist, meme management, Parker Spiral (with a tesla reading of 11.2! is that bad?) Necker cubes and
even allusions to game theory. And this is only in the first few chapters. How many of you are familiar with games theory? It is highly technical mathematical probability based grid analysis constructed to find a nexus to win a zero sum game. It served as an adjunct (though incorrectly described) to a decision in the story. It was not necessary to invoke games theory in this story to augment the simple decision the characters needed to make with their own wetware.
In a Star Trek TV show you may have heard something like 'Captain it's engineering!... The plasma conduits have failed and the plasma flux must be re-routed to the warp coils.' We all know there are no such things (at least at present), but also sense correctly this a literary prop to let us know there is an emergency. In Blindsight, I questioned many, if not most of these
props, and felt they were not really relevant or necessary in this way.
What I felt as I read, reminded me of reading an essay by a professorial author who in describing his concepts, laces his text with arcane phrases in foreign languages simply to let you know he is a professor. As if the subtlety and clarity of his own understanding won't permit expressing these nuances in plain English. I know this is harsh, but when reading Blindsight, I felt sort of like I was constantly being pimped in this way, and for me, it really got in the way of the story. A good tale is a good tale, and really doesn't need this kind of embellishment.
If you take this book on, just be aware that you are in for quite a lot of this technobabble.
In fairness, I am going to read other books by Mr. Watts to see if the concepts are devoted the imaginative and complex situations he can obviously create, but without the other Baggage.
gaurav
ABC's of Science
by Charles Oliver
that is the reason why this book is named just abc of science
Gary 449
The Hill of Dreams
by Arthur Machen
This is Machen's masterpiece. Not a word I use lightly. Machen's descriptive powers are at their height here and his ability to decribe physical and psychological landscapes is nowhere more evident than in this book. The writing builds as the story progresses and the ending is the strongest I have ever read; it makes 'The Turn of the Screw' look like a damp squib. If you never read anything else by this writer, please, read this. If there's any humanity in you at all, it will have you staring at the wall for an hour after you finish it. Really.