Category Archives: Book and film reviews

Sarah Pinsker, Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea. Short stories set in the future. Billed as sci-fi, but these did not appeal to me as much as I had hoped. Nicely done, small moments of human insight. When … Continue reading →

I must say the past few months have, in my opinion, been generally excellent, with many stories that I think are extremely well crafted and profound (many deal with rape), and very little of the silly stuff (yes, I’m looking … Continue reading →

People who knew me back in 2010ish era knew that I liked Lost a lot until the last season. The opening scene with Desmond remains an all-time favorite piece of cinema. I mentioned back then several times: the only way … Continue reading →

I use this blog partly to recall books and papers I have read, but lately I have not been taking the time, so now I have to play catch-up.  Here are three books I finished in last few weeks. Pnin, … Continue reading →

I have been slacking.  For Christmas I got several novels. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Excellent big sci-fi opera, with genetic engineering and big questions. The Peace War by Vernor Vinge. I started skeptical but got drawn in. By … Continue reading →

I saw the book in the library. I hesitated. I seemed to recall it had been received with coolness by reviewers? But I thought to myself, he is such a good writer, can it really be that bad? And so … Continue reading →

The Power, by Naomi Alderman. Thrilling in its conceit and execution. Stumbles towards the end (and what ambitious book doesn’t). Nice to see an interesting short frame device (the letters) in popular fiction. News of the World, by Paulette Jiles. … Continue reading →

I got this for daughter but ended up reading almost all of it before her… 1162 pages of sci-fi.  I was frankly surprised at how bad a lot (most of which I had not read) of the stories were: poor … Continue reading →

Unless you really enjoy conventional, comfortable story telling. I have lot of sympathy for Sean Penn since he was visiting a relative on the same floor of hospital in LA where my mother was for a time. But I can’t … Continue reading →

I finished Against a Dark Background earlier this week. A basic adventure space opera with a sympathetic android and a fairly obvious bad guy who is slowly revealed.  It moves quickly and occasionally the settings are interesting but quite often … Continue reading →

On the Air France flight I enjoyed (the standard on a 10 hour flight is low, but they were all better than Deadpool 2) several films (that incidentally I has never heard of): Les derniers Parisiens: A low-budget film about … Continue reading →

Read this on the flight to Burkina Faso and then over a few days. Entertaining and occasionally compelling but the writing was just not edited enough to really shine. I appreciated the central idea, but the execution left me unsatisfied. … Continue reading →

The Hydrogen Sonata, a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, was a long but good read. Infused with Banks’ theme (in all the novels of his I have read so far) of loneliness and, well I have to say … Continue reading →

This book was circulating in the house so I started reading. Reading and skipping. What is there to say? I mean, did someone challenge Cline? “Hey, bet you can’t write a sci fi dystopia where female characters function only as … Continue reading →

One of my favorite science fiction authors is Robert Reed. His “great ship” series of novellas and stories I found fantastic, and he has lots of other good stuff. But Sister Alice was a mess, at times virtually unreadable.  I’d … Continue reading →

After panning her most recent novel I decided to give an author another chance, and boy did she ever! “The Painted Drum” by Louise Erdrich came out in 2005. The novel has two main parts, and then returns and integrates. … Continue reading →

I have always enjoyed reading Louise Erdrich and when I saw she had a dystopia quasi-scifi novel I thought that might be a good reading experience. So I checked it out from the library and started reading. After fifty pages … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia Smoke & Mirrors (Spanish: El hombre de las mil caras) is a 2016 Spanish thriller film directed by Alberto Rodríguez based on the non-fiction book Paesa, el espía de las mil caras by Manuel Cerdán. The film stars … Continue reading →

I still think Chocolat (not the one with Juliette Binoche) is her best film though it is quite flawed. That seems to be a recurring theme with Denis, amazing parts of films, mixed in with occasional cringy scenes or acting.  … Continue reading →

Well, possibly it does not, but Ha Jin’s War Trash is one very good war novel. Apparently based on the experiences of his father in the Korean War (and it is fascinating to search for the real historical events described … Continue reading →