There are in this world good books, and there are bad books, but especially, there are mediocre books, novels that briefly entertain and which are then discarded by the reader and quickly forgotten. Nothing right or wrong with them, just disposable products — mind-candy, as some have put it.

And sometimes that is what a reader wants: a distraction, light entertainment to wyle away a couple of hours on a train or bus, when sleep is not to be had but one doesn't have the energy to imbibe something of substance.

If I were a more high-fallutin' reader, I suppose I would disdain mere "reads", but I admit it: I sometimes like to simply distract myself with words and story. What rankles, is when mediocrity is trumpeted as greatness, when light entertainment is likened to Art.

Which brings us to one of Neil Gaiman's first solo novel, one whose blurbs liken it variously to the works of George Lucas, Monty Python, John Milton(!), Douglas Adam, Doctor Who and, most eggregiously, Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland. Does Neverwhere deserve such sometimes lofty comparisons? Read more ...

May 30, 2020 — Some gifts just keep on giving, and this omnibus hard-cover edition of The World of Pooh, which includes A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, is one I have returned to again and again.

I reviewed the book(s) back in 2010 — I see now I posted it on my 45th birthday —, and have re-read the books more than once in the intervening decade, so I can confidently state that I love Milne's masterpiece in my fifties as much as I did in my forties (and thirties, and twenties).

Photo of Kim Stanley Robinson by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia.

Sᴜɴᴅᴀʏ, Aᴜɢᴜsᴛ 9, 2020 — Kim Stanley Robinson became one of my favourite writers with his novel, Red Mars and its sequels. His work has been uneven since then, but not to the point where I have stopped paying attention when he releases a new novel.

Galileo's Dream was released in late 2009, and I read and reviewed it shortly after. This review was originally published on Rex on January 19, 2010.

I have recovered it thanks, once again, to The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Click here to read the full review.

Allen Carr's Way was easy for me

Tᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ, Aᴘʀɪʟ 14, 2020 — I was a smoker for many years, starting in my teens. It seems almost impossible to believe, now, that I was utterly addicted to cigarettes for decades, going so far as to walk around collecting butts during bad times.

I stopped smoking in the fall of 2009, now more than a full decade in my past. And I don't think I would have done it without help from Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Read more ...

Samuel R. Delany (2012?). Photo lifted from his Facebook page.

June 21, 2020 — Now 78 years old, Samuel R. Delany is a multiple award-winning writer and a retired professor of English literature. He is best known as a science fiction writer, but his work encompasses not only that genre, but fantasy, comics and pornography, as well as non-fiction.

His first novel was published in the early 1960s, when he was still a teenager, and his most recent (which I have on order) was published only last week. He is, to my mind, still the best living American writer, and his 2012 masterpiece, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, was a radical (and very successful — I hope to have a review of it up here soon!) fusion of gay erotica with science fiction.

Despite the genres mentioned above, Delany's books are anything but alike; he is a writer forever exploring and both de- and re-constructing genre tropes and conventions.

So, when I bought Dark Reflections back in 2009, I was not really surprised to be surprised by just how very different that novel was from those that had come before.

Read more ...

This review was originally published on June 6, 2009. Links and pricing information may be out of date.