last year

Trade fiction reviewed here in 2020

Things Fall Apart (Africa Trilogy #1) by Chinua Achebe—The classic African novel about colonization Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga—A compelling portrait of Indian society today The Traitor by V. S. Alexander—Dramatizing anti-Nazi resistance in Germany during World War II The Alteration by Kingsley Amis—Alternate history by a celebrated mainstream author The Corridors of […]

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last year

FAQs and commentaries posted in 2019

Literary critics say these are the best books of 2019 The 15 best books of 2019 One dozen First Contact novels reviewed Six new science fiction authors worth reading now Your gateway to my reviews of my favorite novelists Guidelines for authors, agents, and publishers who want me to review a book The decade’s top […]

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last year

23 engaging First Contact novels reviewed here

Since the earliest days of science fiction as an established genre, writers in the field have imagined what has come to be called First Contact with a capital F and a capital C. Most of the early speculation in the so-called Golden Era of Science Fiction (the 1930s and 40s) was laughable. But in more […]

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last year

Seven new science fiction authors worth reading now

Even today, anyone over the age of fifty or so is likely to think of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke when the subject of science fiction comes up. Yet all three have been dead for a long time (Heinlein in 1988, Asimov in 1992, Clarke in 2008), and the field has moved […]

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last year

Your gateway to my reviews of my favorite novelists

A casual look at this blog might give you the impression that my reading runs all over the map. There’s considerable variety, of course. But in fact I’m aggressively selective in choosing books to read. For starters, you’ll find a slew of topics I never read about at What I read (and what I don’t). […]

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last year

Good books about the French Resistance

Type in the phrase “French Resistance books” in Amazon, and you’ll learn that more than 4,000 titles have been published. Naturally, some of these are translations into languages other than English. Many are memoirs, often blatantly self-serving. (There was a lot of that in the years after World War II.) And many are, simply, not […]

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last year

10 best books about innovation

Today innovation is customarily associated with the digital revolution and Silicon Valley. Up to a point, that’s fitting, since how most of us in the world’s wealthy nations now live our lives has changed in major ways as a result of work done in what is generally called the tech industry. But innovation involves far […]

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last year

5 best books about Silicon Valley

It’s difficult not to be alive and aware anywhere in the world today without recognizing the impact of Silicon Valley on the way we live our lives. Half a century ago the Santa Clara Valley that is the heart of what we know today as Silicon Valley was purely agricultural. Orchards of apricots, cherries, prunes, […]

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