by Andy Weir Well, here we are again. Usually I dislike trying to review a book that I don’t particularly care for, but this is an exception. Had it been hard to really hit on what my problem with The Martian was, I’d probably make vague points until something started to make at least a…
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by Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass is another poetry collection for which, like Ezra Pound’s Cathay, I can easily appreciate its importance to the history of Western literature. Wanting to create modern poetry for the New World, Whitman eschewed antique forms and themes, minimizing focus on structured rhymes, instead expressing more of the mundane and…
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by Sergei Lebedev I don’t think I can stress enough the importance of actually getting to the heart of your story in your synopsis. If that little summary on the back of your book sets people up for the wrong expectations, it can really affect the amount of enjoyment readers glean from your story. The…
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by Charles Bukowski At the time of writing this, I just finished getting through a stack of poetry in preparation for an author panel event I was tasked at moderating, and, aside from perhaps Ezra Pound’s Cathay, this was likely my favourite collection. The trouble is I’m having some difficulty getting at the why of…
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by Ezra Pound Cathay is a collection of old poems––mainly Chinese works from the 8th century––translated by Pound, but it’s a bit more complicated and interesting than that. Pound, who at that time knew little to no Chinese, worked from the notes of the Harvard educated scholar, Ernest Fenollosa, a transcript of which is included…
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by James Alan Gardner I didn’t actually know who James Gardner was until attending the 2015 Ad Astra science fiction and fantasy writers’ convention, where I had the pleasure of sitting in on several author panels in which he participated. Despite the clear knowledge he displayed within the intelligent discussions I witnessed, nothing really made…
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by John Pringle Though it’s been some time since I’ve had the pleasure of reading one of Pringle’s short story collections, Spirals starts in a very familiar way, with his story, A Good Boy. Not only was this the only one in the collection that I’d read previously, it’s also a contest-winning story––the 2014 Northwestern…
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by Jack Black This is probably the first instance of Goodreads suggesting a book that I both never heard of and got super excited upon seeing it on my suggestions feed. I initially wondered why I should care about something written by Jack Black. (No offense to the man, but he doesn’t strike me as…
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by Agatha Christie Given that the only other Agatha Christie mystery I’ve had the pleasure of reading was Murder on the Orient Express, I can’t really help but compare it to And Then There Were None. While I definitely enjoyed Orient Express, And Then There Were None was a very clear improvement over it, though…
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by Graham Greene Imagine it now: A virile, young man wanders around the book store. Having recently finished Greene’s marvelous Our Man in Havana, he casually glances to see what else the author may have for him to enjoy, only to find that he wrote Orient Express. Of course, it wasn’t until after purchasing it…
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