Archives: Book Reports

From hear­ing all the aca­d­e­m­ic jin­go­ists quot­ing Toc­queville I had the impres­sion that Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca would turn out to be a glow­ing review of the mar­vel that is Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy. In some aspects it cer­tain­ly is; Toc­queville had great admi­ra­tion for the accom­plish­ments of the fledg­ling repub­lic. What I found sur­pris­ing was how crit­i­cal he was not just of the Unit­ed States, but of democ­ra­cy itself.

I should have real­ized that Toc­queville would not have tak­en for grant­ed the … Read the rest

The authors of Rework claim it was edit­ed down from 57,000 words to 27,000, and that the book is bet­ter for it. One of those claims is easy to believe; the lan­guage is clear and direct. But what­ev­er fluff was tak­en out should have been replaced with some substance.

The com­ments sec­tion of on my report on Mal­colm Glad­well’s Tip­ping Point echoes Voltaire that com­mon sense is not com­mon, and attribute Glad­well’s suc­cess to this fact. I … Read the rest

Not yet reviewed.… Read the rest

I’m con­tin­u­ing to enjoy my run of Alas­tair Reynolds read­ing by going back to his first nov­el. Rev­e­la­tion Space is the kind of sci­ence-fic­tion I enjoy. More mys­tery than west­ern-in-space, the tech­nol­o­gy and physics are plau­si­ble and if it does­n’t quite ask the big ques­tions, it does ask the pret­ty big ques­tions, spoec­u­lat­ing about the nature of our uni­verse and the future of humanity.

I’m afraid I spoiled this for myself by read­ing Redemp­tion Ark first. Of course, I had … Read the rest

No review yet.… Read the rest

No review yet.… Read the rest

Not yet reviewed… Read the rest

Kathy Reich­s’s fifth nov­el Grave Secrets does­n’t depart very far from the for­mu­la Reichs devel­oped over the first four. I wrote in my review of Fatal Voy­age, her fourth, that Reichs had hit her stride and come into her own as a nov­el­ist. This fifth book in the Tem­per­ence Bren­nan series con­firms it. If through her first three nov­els she focused just on get­ting the books writ­ten, with her fourth and fifth she’s relaxed into the mechan­ics enough to … Read the rest

Some­how I skipped writ­ing my report on this one. I know I read it after Redemp­tion Ark, but I’m not sure whether it was before or after Heat Wave or Tip­ping Point. So you get my apolo­gies for an out-of order book review.

I was enough impressed by Reynold­s’s Redemp­tion Ark that I went look­ing for more of his work. I want­ed to start with his first nov­el, Rev­e­la­tion Space, but I could­n’t find an eread­er ver­sion … Read the rest