Blogroll

Midweek Music Moment: Harvest, Neil Young

Millions of people like me grew up with Neil Young being a significant contributor to the soundtrack to their youth. From Buffalo Springfield to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to his exceptional work with Crazy Horse and solo, Young was a pervasive influence. Yet despite so many songs considered absolute classics today — “Cinnamon Girl,” […]

And I think I’ve got too many books

An interesting item in The Guardian today:

More than 9,000 books are missing from the British Library, including Renaissance treatises on theology and alchemy, a medieval text on astronomy, first editions of 19th- and 20th-century novels, and a luxury edition of Mein Kampf produced in 1939 to celebrate Hitler’s 50th birthday.

The library […]

Is it cliché to talk about clichés?

So, someone’s come up with another list of the most annoying clichés book reviewers use. There’s 20 of them compared to the last list, which contained “seven deadly words” for reviewers.

So, how big an offender am I? Here’s what a search of the 158 posts in my “Book Reviews” category shows:

Gripping — 0 […]

Weekend Edition: 3-14

Bulletin Board

Congrats to Terry Woster for the commemoration by the state House of Representatives honoring him for his contributions to the state. Among other things, it accurately recognizes his “healthy cynicism” and that he is “a rural Renaissance Man.”

A note to fellow WordPress users: Don’t be surprised if assholes with an IP address […]

Book Review: Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

A number of the characters in the short stories that comprise Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories don’t look at others straight on or are even hidden in darkness. That seems appropriate. Millhauser’s work tends to present a view of parts of life and the human experience that most others don’t see or for which […]