A common saying, and I’ve said it lots of times myself: “The book was better than the movie.” It’s short-hand for the way that material that’s appealing at book length somehow loses its depth when adapted into a movie. But what about stories that improve in the conversion […]
The end of the world, via scientific calamity, and falling off the literal edge of the world – that’s one connection between Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. The other link? My attempt to see what two writers, well-known to others, […]
I like massive (and improbable) space battles, and Timothy Zahn’s Conqueror series seemed like just the ticket. Nothing but spaceships in the cover art, always a good sign, and I had memories of lots of space explosions from when I read the series about a dozen years ago. […]
Let’s see: there’s a kingdom of evil invading from the north, there’s a type of thieves’ guild in a gritty capital city, plus a mysterious sword, tons of magic, and much more, all stuffed into that stereotypical fantasy container, the trilogy. How the heck could anyone do something […]
Last time around (An Absurdly Low Number of Books), I was worried because I hadn’t read many books this year. In my search for explanations, I might have missed a key one: maybe I was getting bogged down by reading crappy books! Or, restated: it was too long […]
I keep a tally of how many books I read every year, and I was shocked to find that at the end of June, i.e. halfway through the year, that my numbers were running at about one-third of the usual total. What the heck happened?
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The Cultural Gutter 