"Your one-stop source for improper ideology and freedom seeds."
“People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don’t have time. Or the right words. But that’s what books do. It’s as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if […]
“When this is all over I’m going to found an association called ‘The Knights of the Idiotic Table’ and its purpose will be to arrange an annual dinner where we tell stories about Lisbeth Salander. You’re all members.” – Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson The third and final […]
In honor of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week 2010, which starts today, here is a special roundup of banned book news, and a comment on Wilbur Smith’s The Dark of the Sun. Wondering which ten books drew the most fire over the past year? Here’s your answer. Corrected entry (see comment below post): […]
“The ghost was her father’s parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita.” – William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson When I started reading William Gibson’s novels and short stories, I did not realize that they were component parts of larger stories. When I read […]
“Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.” – David Mitchell, Ghostwritten The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins The familiar arguments against the familiar arguments for god, well arranged and cogently stated. If you’re a member […]
“When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written. ‘1984’ is really about 1948. It can’t really be understood outside the historical context of 1948.” […]
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a difficult read. Difficult, at first, for mundane reasons. Names you don’t know how to pronounce (Sethe, Halle). Irritating, non-standard diction (whitepeople, blackpeople). A narrative structure that jumps without transition from character to character, time to time, location to location, leaving you to catch up as best you can. A general […]
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker The Color Purple is a story told in short letters. Letters, at first, from a barely-literate Celie to God, letters that are little more than raw observations of a brutal, degraded, hopeless life. Letters, later, from Celie’s sister Nettie, reminding Celie of their shared history, relating the progress of […]