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Unlike some, I don’t think “blind faith” is redundant (although it was one hell of a short-lived “supergroup”). Granted, faith necessarily implies belief without the need for evidence. But “blind” suggests the faith exists without contemplation or introspection and perhaps even through willful ignorance. If the blindness is exposed to questioning, thought or analysis, it [...]            Tim April 8th, 2013 | Tags: Book Reviews, e-books, fiction, Religion | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment |  Print This Post |  Email This PostI am a bit disappointed in myself with this month’s misstep. Enough so that I feel some need to make amends. Therefore, rather than simply identify the books that fail me in a month, I will add those that surprise me or are better than anticipated. Why am I disappointed about the one book I [...] Tim April 1st, 2013 | Tags: Books, fiction, history, illiterati, reading | Category: A Reading Life | Leave a comment | Print This Post | Email This PostWhat if? To me, those two words are one of the keys to good science fiction. The writer looks at a current state of affairs in politics, society or science (or all three), asks “What if?” and their imagination creates the foundation for a story. It certainly seems like that’s the method Ted Kosmatka used [...] Tim March 28th, 2013 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Leave a comment | Print This Post | Email This PostIt was required reading for all three of my daughters in high school. My oldest daughter still considers it one of her favorite novels. It escaped my attention (or I avoided its reach) for decades. I am an initiate now, though. “It” is The Great Gatsby. I’ve know it’s generally been required high school reading [...] Tim November 30th, 2012 | Tags: Books, fiction, reading | Category: A Reading Life | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostThere is a place where the literary world and the gaming industry intersect. It’s the Nobel Prizes. Once again this year you can place bets on who is going to win the Literature Prize. Once again, Albanian author Ismail Kadare is considered a contender. As of this review, he’s one of three authors listed at [...] Tim September 11th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostAlmost of necessity, dystopian literature has its roots in concerns of the times in which it is written. It is an author envisioning a potential future in which something already existing or on the horizon heads in a bad direction. What author Jane Rogers recognizes in her award-winning The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the [...] Tim August 17th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, dystopian literature, fiction, Review Copy, sci-fi | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostKafkaesque. It’s one of a handful of literary terms that is really overworked. But I challenge anyone to read Phillipe Claudel’s The Investigation without that word coming to mind. Ultimately, though, Claudel adds a surrealistic resolution that may baffle readers. Claudel’s book tells of the Investigator, sent to an unnamed city to investigate a series [...] Tim July 9th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostStories can reveal much about a people, culture or nation. They tend to reflect not only tradition but the variety and evolution of beliefs and societal viewpoints. Although Miroslav Penkov now lives and teaches in the United States, his debut collection of short stories provides insight into his native Bulgaria a reader would never pick [...] Tim June 4th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, Bulgaria, fiction, Review Copy, short stories | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostImagine arriving in the afterlife and discovering the analogue to a Gideons Bible is a guidebook urging you to leave. At least in Anthony Weller’s The Land of Later On, the power(s) that be in the afterlife apparently believe that life, so to speak, is better reincarnated back on Earth as an entirely different [...] Tim April 2nd, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostThose who study literary theory view World War I as a key element in the development of modernist literature. And while French author Raymond Radiguet published only one novel before his death at age 20, that work, The Devil in the Flesh, is a prime piece of evidence for this viewpoint. It’s not surprising that [...] Tim March 26th, 2012 | Tags: Book Reviews, fiction, Review Copy, world literature | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This Post |
      
 The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.
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