Rating: 3/5 Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010). Well I’ve decided to stop reading books about education for a while. I just get too frustrated and frankly, too hopeless. If Adele and I are ever in a...
Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987). One thing I love about editing is the opportunity to read so many different types of texts I would never normally pick up. Sometimes, even if the book I’m editing is not particularly interesting, I...
Rating: 5/5 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Viking, 2000). I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is beautifully written and I think hits some very powerful points. It’s not a history of walking per se (what would that look like?) but more a history of what walking has meant and how the...
Rating: 3/5 Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (A. Knopf Canada, 2002). If you like reading history, then you’ll enjoy the book. It’s well organized and clearly written—very accessible writing style. If history bores you, then the book will bore you. It is just what it says it is, a book on the history of salt...
Rating: 4/5 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (W. W. Norton, 1997). Well now I know. After 6 months, I’m still not recovered from grad school. After reading some “art for art’s sake” books, I thought I’d try Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book on my to-read list for some time. After 100-odd pages, I finally had to give...
Rating: 1/5 David & Leigh Eddings, The Redemption of Althalus (Del Rey, 2001). In short, don’t bother. I finally put the book down about a third of the way through. I found it on a list of fantasy must-reads. Well it sure doesn’t make mine. It’s not that it is written for a young adult audience, it’s just that’s all it...
Rating: 5/5 S. Joshi (ed.), The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics, 1999). I just finished The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories containing stories of H. P. Lovecraft edited by S. T. Joshi. It does not contain the entirety of Lovecraft’s stories, but it apparently includes the major ones...
Rating: 2/5 William Gibson, Neuromancer (Ace, 1984). I’ve always been a fan of the “cyberpunk” mythos, but I have just never gotten around to reading the archetypal book that really started it all, Neuromancer. I finally did. It’s a pretty quick read (250ish pages in the Ace special edition). It’s written in a gritty,...
Rating: 5/5 Tad Williams, Otherland (4 vols: City of Golden Shadow, River of Blue Fire, Mountain of Black Glass, and Sea of Silver Light) (DAW, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001). An oldie but goodie. Published between 1994 and 2001, Otherland is a massive novel (3000ish pages across 4 volumes). It’s not a series. It really is...
Rating: 4/5 Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space (Ace/Berkeley Pub., 2000). ———, Redemption Ark (Gollancz, c.2002). ———, Absolution Gap (Gollancz, 2003). I recently finished the Revelation Space trilogy by Alistair Reynolds. The other books are Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. I have to say, I really enjoyed the...