Tag: recommended for the enthusiast
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Review: Fasman’s the Geographer’s Library
The Geographer’s Library Jon Fassman This is the kind of popular novel I generally like, a “literary page turner” that in the old days would have been compared to In the Name of the Rose but which is now compared to the Da vinci Code. Its plot driven, but with intellectual pretenses and is right…
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Review: Bruadel’s The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization & Capitalism 15th – 18th Century Volume 2
Ed note: this review was written in 2007, while I was in my first year of law school, for a now long defunct livejournal account I had. The Wheels of Commerce (Civilization and Capitalism: 15Th-18th Century -Volume 2) Fernand Braudel The Phonix Press Reissue, 601 pages (Originally published in France as Les Jeux de l’Exchange,…
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Review: Eichenwald’s the Informant
The Informant: A True Story Kurt Eichenwald I don’t want to say too much about this, because if you read it, you should really get the surprised as they come along. Let’s just say it is about a major price fixing scandal that brought down a bunch of powerful people at the powerful Archer Daniels…
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Review: Martin’s A Storm of Swords
Ed note: This was written for a new defunct live journal circa 2007 before GOT became the pop culture juggernaut it is now. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) George R.R. Martin Basically a soap opera, but my kind of soap opera, with the occasional swordfight/dragon and or touch…
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Review: Martin’s A Clash of Kings
A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) A Song of Fire and Ice Series Book 2 George R.R. Martin Spectra Reissue, 704 pages The second volume in Martin’s massive series of books about conquest and intrigue in his imaginary world of Westeros is even more of a soap opera than…
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Review: Ellroy’s Cold Six Thousand
The Cold Six Thousand James Ellroy The Cold Six Thousand is the second volume of Ellroy’s “Underworld Trilogy” tracing the history of 1960s America through the lives of real and imagined gangsters. Written in an intense staccato style, the books are filled with conspiracies, bad men behaving horribly, and real and imagined dirt on most…
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Review: Mosley’s Long Fall
The Long Fall Walter Mosley Crime novels are very grounded in place. George Pelacanos’s novels sing of DC; Laura Lippman’s of Baltimore of Los Angeles, and until recently, Walter Mosley’s most famous crime novels were set in Watts. For the last decade of so the heavy hitters of crime fiction have mostly been avoiding New…
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Review: Cronin’s The Passage
The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy) Justin Cronin The Passage is a seven hundred page vampire novel written by a novelist who graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop. That makes it a pretty rare bird. It is also a book I enjoyed tremendously. I imagine there is very little middle ground…
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Review: Goodrich-Clarke’s Black Sun
Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke An overview of Nazi inspired right wing lunatics of the post World War II era, covering the heavy hitters and some lesser known individuals. It is a very well researched account of world for which it is difficult to get information, but…
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Review: McAuley’s Quiet War
The Quiet War, Paul McAuley Fans of science fiction often try to place works in the genre into one or more subcategories. It is “space opera” or it is “cyberpunk”; it is “steam punk” or it is “military SF”. It is “Hard SF” or “New Wave”. These distinctions can be helpful to the reader picking…
Milo and the Calf 