Re: Accelerando

I’m about to insert one large grain of salt into the 150 page rule. (Ouch.) The rule sounds generalized, but the results are individualized. There are books I can’t finish that you may love. Take Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Please.

Re: Unique Visitors

I’ve encountered “Unique Visitors,” by James Patrick Kelly four times now, and each time I’ve had a different reaction.

Re: The Spray

“The Spray,” by Jonathan Lethem explores the conceit of a spray that makes things you’ve lost visible. As the narrator and his wife, Addie, play with the spray, they tease each other. Then finally they spray each other–and reveal what probably should have stayed lost.

Re: The Edge of Nowhere

What is it with me and talking dogs? In The Edge of Nowhere, by James Patrick Kelly, three sinister talking dogs show up, looking for a book that doesn’t exist. But then it’s doubtful that anything or anyone in Nowhere exists.

Re: Girl In Landscape

Whether they admit or it not, everyone writes with all the other books and movies they have seen in mind and everyone reads with all the other books and movies they have seen in mind. And now we can throw games and comics into the mix. For example, Halting State won’t make a lot of […]

Re: Burn

Have you ever heard the theory that giving away content can encourage people to buy? Well, it worked on me. After I listened to James Patrick Kelly read “Burn” on Free Reads, I bought a copy. In hard-cover. And a collection of his short stories, Strange But Not A Stranger, also in hard-cover. In “Burn,” […]

Re: Luminous

I was wrong about “Luminous,” by Greg Egan. I finally got around to reading it, and I have to say I’m disappointed. Since I read “Dark Integers” first, I was hoping for a little more about what happened in Shanghai, who Industrial Algebra was, and some justification for a defect in math allowing contact with […]

Re: The Collapsium

When you’re reading something that’s so aggressively bad it makes your stomach hurt, it’s no great act of courage to invoke the 150 page rule. But when the book merely fails to entertain you, you can only set it aside with a twinge of regret. For example, I’m sorry that I gave up on The […]

Re: Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush

The weirdest thing about going to the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned is, well, my teeth are clean afterward. For the next few weeks, every time I brush, I’m going to stare at my teeth and think, Where are the coffee stains? What is this alien whiteness? What I really need to keep that […]

Re: The Unsolvable Death Trap

If you’re in the mood for a bit of dark humor, paranoia, and violence, you can get your fix from “The Unsolvable Death Trap.” In it, Jack Mangan paints a picture of a future New York, where the traffic is so bad rolling it up in the third dimension doesn’t help, corporate mergers have produced […]