Unasked-For Book Reviews

  I am currently reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’, The Water Dancer .   I should be more precise; I am listening to the novel The Water Dancer in its audio book form. I thought that I had read some really good books up to this point in my 45 years of life; but upon listening to the words that Mr. Coates so eloquently puts to paper, I realized that I need to reevaluate every “good” book I’ve ever read.   I want to compare Mr. Coates to Mr. James Baldwin, but I confess, I’ve only ever read Baldwin’s essays, and have not yet read his novels.   I imagine, however, that Baldwin is a similar weaver of story to Mr. Coates.   When I read, or listen to, Ta-Nehisi’s words, I hear the truths of Baldwin’s essays manifesting themselves into the lyrical poetry of a well told story.   Something that is profound, and true, even if the characters are false. It's as if Mr. Coates finds the essence of truth, gets to the very heart of the fabric of human reality in this countr...

If you're really not asking for this review, I'd pause here and maybe rethink continuing. This book was... ridiculous. Honestly, I don't even want to write a review of this book.  It's a waste of my time really.  However, I'll give a short one.  I went into this book thinking it was fantasy set in the modern day.  It's not.  It's fiction with a bit of the Occult thrown in to add mystery and atmosphere. Now, that is not a bad thing at all, and if the main character had been handled a bit differently, I wouldn't of cared.  I love good fiction as much as good sci-fi, fantasy, horror and non-fiction. It's just that the description of the book reads like you're going to read fantasy, but in fact, you will not.  You can read the description of the book here:  https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61054804 My problem with the book is that the main character becomes unlikeable, at least she did to me; and the excuse she gives for her actions is cringy a...

I just finished reading the book,  The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn HardcastIe, by Stuart Turton for my SciFi/horror/fantasy book club.  I finished it late, our review of the book was last month.  I was able to attend the first 1/3 of the discussion, and then I hightailed it out of there; not wanting spoilers to ruin the rest of the book experience for me. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn HardcastIe  can be best described as an Agatha Christie novel meets Groundhog Day, meets Quantum Leap.  There's a lot of twists, turns and surprises in this book, so I don't want to delve too deeply into plot, lest I ruin it for others.  It was a wonderful surprise, all of the reveals throughout the book.   I will say that initially, it took me a minute to get really into the book. I'd say I wasn't fully invested until Day 4, which starts at Chapter 11.  This isn't to say that I wasn't interested in the read up to this point; I was, or I'd never have made it to Chapter ...

The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi - A Vintage Unasked-for Book Review Back in 2020, at the height of lockdown, I decided to read all of the books I'd bought over the years, but hadn't yet read.  One of those books, I bought right after it was published, and had it on various shelves for 11 years.  That book was The Windup Girl. I wrote about my experience reading it back in November of 2020, and had some good online discussions with friends.  It was a hard read, and for many reasons. The first, was that it took place in a world that had been ravaged by pandemics. These pandemics destroyed both humans and our food supplies and basically devastated the world. Everyone became very insular, and the value of human life was non-existent. There are about 4 main characters, including the windup girl Emiko.  Emiko is essentially a replicant; smarter, stronger, and more resilient then any non-genetically engineered human, but with built in biological flaws. These flaws were...