Paul’s Book Reviews: Truth and Fiction

“On the very day that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine disappeared on Everest, another party of British climbers slowly made their way to the summit of a quite different mountain and in very different circumstances. At 2,949 feet, Great Gable was not a serious or difficult climb, but it was said to be ‘the most […]

An Editor, an Editor, My Kingdom for an Editor

I finished my first real ebook yesterday.  Wait a minute, I hear you saying, you’ve been using an electronic reader for more than a year now and must have read a lot of ebooks.  True, but this time I’m talking about a dedicated ebook, published through Amazon and offered as a $2.99 Kindle download.  The […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: SF & Fantasy

“It’s not me but the world that’s deranged. At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Some of Everything

“Mr. Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.” — Ian McDonald, The Dervish House We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren A tell-all expose of American mismanagement of the reconstruction of Iraq. The author is a career foreign […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Mystery, Fiction, Sci-Fi

“His bun-like face was not made bewildered by grief or fear. That was what he looked like.” — Philip Hensher, King of the Badgers County Line Bill Cameron This was a Free Friday Nookbook download from Barnes & Noble. Bill Cameron’s character is an ex-cop private eye, Skin Kadash, who lives and works in Portland, […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: Montana 1948

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. In the news: US prisoner forbidden to read Pulitzer-winning history book Our Bodies, Ourselves turns 40 In Cold Blood gets okay from Glendale, California school board Another annoyed librarian slams Banned Books Week On Facebook: You Can’t Read That! banned […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Non-Fiction

“If you take a punch at me now: (1) You will break your hand. That’s the beauty of spending just a half hour a day on your muscular-skeletal structure — it turns into kryptonite; (2) I will fall on you. I’m still working on my core and balance issues, so after you slug me I […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Links

How’s that Nook e-reader I got for my birthday last year working out?  Glad you asked.  Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted).  That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are […]