"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
“Leroy bet me I couldn’t find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough.” —Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal When I finished the first Lady Astronaut novel, “The Calculating Stars,” I decided […]
I joined a closed Facebook community called “A Group Where We Pretend to be Boomers.” As you’d expect, members are baby boomers who make fun of themselves by posting as if they don’t understand the first thing about computers, email, the internet, and social media. To me, that’s more of a “greatest generation” thing, but I do know boomers my age who fit the stereotype well. But hey, isn’t Facebook mostly a boomer thing anyway? Aren’t all the youngsters on Snapfilter or whatever?
If I had a rant in me this morning, I’d lay into NPR for its slavish commitment to normalizing Trump, arguably not the worst unelected occupant of the White House (George W. Bush still has that distinction IMO), but certainly the most abnormal.
As a patriotic American, living and working in America, speaking American English, a voting citizen who drives around in a big American pickup truck with Arizona plates, I never felt the need to remind my countrymen I’m one of them.
Six short book reviews: non-fiction, science fiction, mysteries, thrillers
“The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (“The clowns are the dangerous ones,” Perry said.)” —Kate Atkinson, Transcription Transcription by Kate Atkinson I first read about this novel on the literary website The […]
Eight short book reviews: fiction, science fiction, mystery, thriller, horror, young adult, fantasy.
This is going to be a short list. Looking back over the books I read in 2018, only three stand out—and by “stand out” I mean books I’d happily read again. Two are new, published this year or in late 2017; one is from 1998 but new to me. Two are mainstream fiction with historical […]