Re: Japanese Hot Pots

When I went looking for 660 Curries at the library, I stumbled on Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals. It’s a beautiful book with gorgeous photos and clear recipes, that makes you eager to try them. On the book’s website, the authors, Tadashi Ono & Harris Salat, show how quickly it can go. They emphasize […]

Re: Supersense

Supersense by Bruce M. Hood opens with a provoking question: Would you wear a killer’s sweater? The rational part of me wants to say, Of course I would, but mostly to prove that I can ignore the vague sense of unease that idea gives me. The part of us that creates that unease is what […]

Re: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

I liked the look of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen from the moment I first saw it. The book itself is a beautiful production. There’s illustrations on most pages, as well as end-papers and covers, wonderful ink drawings filled with commentary and wit. Even better, nearly every page has further excursions […]

Re: Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

I expected Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, Ellen Rupple Shell and In Cheap We Trust to touch opposite sides of the same coin. I thought the latter would be about how it’s good to be cheap, that is, frugal. (Which it was.) I thought this book would be about how others pay the […]

Re: Moral Machines

Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen raise some interesting questions in Moral Machines. Who is responsible when a driverless train runs amuck? Or when an automated medical system prescribes the wrong drug, or fail to detect drug interactions? Why do we react to a robot displaying emotions as if it could feel them? Does a bomb […]

Re: Genesis Illustrated

The Book of Genesis, illustrated by Robert Crumb by R. Crumb has got to be the most repetitive title I’ve ever seen, almost as repetitive as the “begats” Crumb had to tackle when he decided to illustrate the full text of Genesis. When I heard about this book, I was intrigued because R. Crumb is […]

Re: Inbound 4

Boston is full of local history, odd little stories that add up to a sense of place. A fun collection of some is presented in comic book form is Inbound 4: A Comic Book History of Boston. Assembled by the Boston Comics Roundtable, these Boston-based artists tell a wide assortment of historic tales. It’s like […]

Re: Eclipse Three

I found most of the stories in Eclipse Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan, especially in the first half of the book, disturbing, disorienting, and depressing, but never dull. Over and over, I would get sucked in by beautiful writing. I would keep reading, wondering where it’s going, thinking that if it’s this well done, there […]

Re: In Cheap We Trust

The main thesis of In Cheap We Trust, by Lauren Weber, is that most people live cheaply only when they have to. To a few it comes naturally, like the author’s father. People in comfort, Ben Franklin included, might look back on a frugal past and call it virtuous, but those were people living in […]

Re:SUM

SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman is a collection of 40 flash stories, each packed with dense, lucid, playful ironies about what might come after this life. Many play with SF tropes, like the idea that we can transfer our minds into computers, or perhaps we were created by other intelligences that […]