User Profile

There are books I love. I don't love this book, but it's not just like, either. I have a crush on this book. It's so vibrantly written, the characters are all, without exception, interesting, I was so rooting for Blue during the whole thing ... that it never developed into more than a crush is just one of those things between a reader and a book. You know? I wish she'd hurry up and put out her second novel.

This is the book Heart Shaped Box could have been. You unwittingly find yourself inside these characters, the good ones and the son of a bitch, and the story is thereby an almost visceral experience. Considering what exactly happens at the end, it's amazing that you as the reader are tremendously happy. Well done, indeed. Read Heart Shaped Box if you like this one, not the other way around (that way you're more likely to read both).

Gretchen Whatsername is not Hannibal Lecter; this wouldn't make much of a difference if the author didn't clearly want her to be. The book succeeds not on the serial killer/intended victim-cop dynamic, but because you're genuinely rooting for the young reporter, enough so that when her climactic bit of trouble is kind of stupid, you're still turning pages hoping she makes it ok.

At its root a travel book. Wave away some of those trappings and it's a personal journey toward healing from the deaths of loved ones. Peart is an outstanding writer, never seemingly concerned with propriety, always (it seems) brutally honest. And he's riding a motorcycle, which is exceptionally cool.

Would you believe me if I said this is one of the greatest sports books I've ever read? I've read some great sports books. It's not technically about sports. But outlaw cross-country racing is a competition, among drivers and the law. Right? Read it. My dad loved it, too.

Fourth-best in the series, and unfortunately for the presumptive next two, the previous installment was the worst. Too scattered. Not enough structure. Not enough happening. FOR GOD'S SAKE, GO INVADE WESTEROS AND THEN COME BACK AND FREE MEREEN AGAIN WITH THE MIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS BEHIND YOU IF YOU WANT TO. DAY-AM.

Gould's ideas evolved from the early 80s till he death early this millenium, and this book is situated on his time line in the right place to probably be called his best. Wonderful Life was great, but where that sometimes was strident, or dismissive, or just plain had different ideas in it, honestly held at the time, Full House is an opus to WHY life is wonderful: not because of complexity, but because of variety. It's written more confidently, more empathically, and more accessibly. A fitting book to remember the great Dr. Gould with.

As funny as anything O'Rourke writes, and as he concentrates less on politics and foreign policy and more on family and everyday life, it's probably more accessible to more people. It's written in a style meant to riff off The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.), and in such a way that the style itself makes for some hilarity. I love O'Rourke; if you don't, you probably won't like it, but it's the book of his you have the best chance of liking, I think.

This here is my favorite book. I suppose The Road meant more to me, but when I'm taking my entrance test for heaven, and they ask me what my favorite book was and why, I'll say this one. And it'll be because of the amazing world Heinlein created, and the amazing characters he had populate it, and the ideas, which aren't always new -- in fact, certain of them are awfully old, and crusty from disuse -- those characters have, and the story, oh!, the amazing story of the liberation of the moon. I have a tattoo with a brass cannon over a field or stars with a red bar sinister and the acronym TANSTAAFL on my left arm. This is my favorite book.

This book scared the shit out of me, in places. And it was so, so well done. I knew it had been well done before the Robopocalypse guy tried to rip it off, but after slugging my way a third of the way into that piece of crap I really know how well this was done. There are fits and starts of twee-ness and implausibility, but I read the book hunched over, brow creased in worry, probably breathing fast, from beginning to end. One of the best books of the 21st century.

McDevitt won an award for this book; it's the third in a long series but I read it stand-alone. It's terrific. The discovery of a souvenir cup (!) leads to the most profound discovery in human history, and the layers upon layers, events upon events, actions, reactions and inaction in-between is masterfully written. Again with McDevitt's starting with the acorn of a premise: What if they found an artifact from a ship thought missing thousands of years ago? I need to learn to write that way.

There are books I love on a primally emotional level (The Road, The Passage, A Wrinkle In Time, A Man on the Moon), and there are books I am enormously happy to have had the opportunity to read because they were so good, like this one, even though I never developed that emotional connection. It's not the author's fault, right? You can't set out trying to write a book people will love deeply in their souls, what an incredibly amorphous target, and what hubris that would take. This is a great book. I'm not liking its sequel much.

Gives you the clear vibe of having started out as a what if? premise and the story sort of blurped out from there, without regard to the original what if?. But the story, blurped thereby, is engrossing enough, and while you are never quite rooting for anybody but the dogs to make it, the characters are realistic enough, and do interesting things.

Real interesting concept. Something you would probably read less for fun and more for research. I would go so far as to say it's mandatory reading if you're writing sci-fi. (Ok, so, faster than light travel is impossible according to WHAT WE NOW KNOW about the laws of physics, but we might find out more about those laws and thereby make it possible SOMEDAY? Got it. Precognition VIOLATES an ESTABLISHED law of physics, so will always be impossible? Ok.)