“If we take responsibility for the things that cause us pain, we can inoculate ourselves against the temptation towards malevolence.” After eating Christine’s dirt in the last episode of The Constant reader podcast, I’ve been invited back by host Richard Sheppard to do an episode on Needful Things, which I’ve just finished. I’m looking forwardContinue reading “Book Review: Needful Things by Stephen King”
Tag Archives: Book Review
Book Review: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
“His scream is a vivisectionist’s scalpel, and the bloated, poisonous trunk of the Soviet state is his living subject.“ The magnitude of the part played by The Gulag Archipelago in the unfolding of twentieth century is already well known, and I cannot add to the sense of that greatness here. It is well acknowledged asContinue reading “Book Review: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn”
Book Review: Christine by Stephen King
I’m reviewing Christine as I’ve been invited to be a guest contributor on the Constant Reader, a podcast that is undertaking an exhaustive analysis of the Stephen King canon, taking in all of his books, as well as pretty much every film and TV adaptation that has been made. If it sounds like a mammothContinue reading “Book Review: Christine by Stephen King”
Book Review: Our Child Of The Stars by Stephen Cox
Our Child of the Stars is a refreshing adventure which follows alien child Cory and his adoptive Earth parents Molly and Gene, two American sweethearts who are products of the 1960s political upheaval in the United States. The book starts off as a very soft SF, almost a fantasy, and then, as the book progresses,Continue reading “Book Review: Our Child Of The Stars by Stephen Cox”
Book Review: Immortal by Nick M. Lloyd
Immortal is the third novel by British SF author Nick M. Lloyd, following the excellent and successful Emergence, and his follow-up Disconnected. With his first two novels he crafted a niche of tackling big science themes with a British twist, and Immortal is no different. To be sure, it’s a strange beast. Even a bookContinue reading “Book Review: Immortal by Nick M. Lloyd”
Book Review: Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
A suite of light and airy dreamscapes from the master. Usually Murakami’s majesterial and delicate prose is coupled with narrative heft. His novels are usually weighty and imperious so as to provide an anchor of substance to the strands of silk he weaves. Here the silk is untethered from the earth, leaving each of theContinue reading “Book Review: Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami”
Book Review: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
What you’d expect, really. A fiendishly difficult puzzle which has a deceptively simple reveal at the end, leaving one to think, “Ah, of course, well it was obvious really.” I formulated several hypotheses as to what had happened on Soldier Island, and all were spectacularly wrong. It’s easy to deride Christie for her characters beingContinue reading “Book Review: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie”
Book Review: The Magician’s Nephew
As with my review of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (LWW), I’ll be reviewing this tale with the feedback of my five year-old daughter in mind, to whom I read the story over several bedtimes during the past few weeks, as well as my own. The first thing to mind is that thereContinue reading “Book Review: The Magician’s Nephew”
Book Review: The Empyreus Proof by Bryan Wigmore
It’s pretty well known that middle books in series are tricky customers, providing neither a beginning nor an end to a story in which one is already invested. It’s admirable indeed, then, that The Empyreus Proof is a remarkable book. It’s a book that adds not only depth and profundity to its characters but also its world.Continue reading “Book Review: The Empyreus Proof by Bryan Wigmore”
Book Review: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
Over the last few weeks I’ve read LWW to my five-year-old daughter at bedtime, so I’ll be reviewing the book not only through my eyes and understanding of it, but also her reaction to it, seeing as she’s more the book’s target audience than I. And it is, thoroughly predictably, fabulous. Much has been writtenContinue reading “Book Review: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis”
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