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A comic reflection of society

Although I knew they existed, I recently rediscovered sites like The Digital Comic Museum that make available, for free, public domain Golden Age comics. In the last few weeks I’ve spent far more hours than I should have downloading and reading various comics. One thing that’s clear, they do reflect the society of the day.

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2014 books by the numbers

In evaluating my reading this year, a blanket would be a useful tool. One would cover virtually all the differences between my reading statistics last year and this. The only perhaps notable difference was that my fiction v. nonfiction statistics are almost exactly flipped from last year. For the second year in a row, two-thirds […]

Favorite novels of 2014

I read more fiction than nonfiction this year so discussion of my favorite books is going to be limited to novels. In putting the list together I discovered something interesting: three of the five are about war. Not only that, they don’t share conflicts. One is set in World War I, another in World War […]

Book descriptions that scare me

Anyone who’s read this blog knows I’m a fan of foreign fiction. As a result, I pay attention to book awards involving such books, including the BTBA. But when this year’s winner was announced it got me thinking about things that tend to cause me to prejudge a book.

The NPR review of the winner, […]

In the minority — again

It’s surprising sometimes what the federal government looks at. As the name suggests, one of its latest reports — the American Time Use Survey — looks at the activities that make up our days. Among other things, it shows I’m once again in the minority, this time in “leisure time.”

According to the study, Americans […]