Category Archives: Books

Ursula K Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore

The reprinting of works by a beloved author is always a difficult matter. Library of America’s volume of Ursula K. Le Guin novels Annals of the Western Shore represents an excellent reprint of some of the later works of one … Continue reading

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Martin Hughes’ World Food: Ireland

Any musician who has traveled and busked in strange cities, has made use of the Lonely Planet travel guides if they are at all smart, as they are, along with the Rough Guides series, the best travel guides one could … Continue reading

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Kage Baker’s The Bird of the River

The late Kage Baker was one of those admirably unpredictable writers whose stories never seemed to fit into any sort of mold, whether they were part of a series or stood alone. There is, though, a kind of magic in … Continue reading

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Steve Augarde’s The Various

Steve Augarde is a well-known British illustrator and author of children’s books. The Various, the first in a series, treats the adventures of twelve-year-old Midge, sent to stay with her Uncle Brian at the old family farm in Somerset while … Continue reading

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Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw

Jessica Paige penned this review. I love this book. Usually in a review I attempt to be both fair and balanced, but you, dear reader, should know beforehand that Tooth and Claw is a book of the kind I want to … Continue reading

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Jo Walton’s Farthing

Lory Hess penned this review.  Jo Walton has a knack for genre fiction with a twist. In the World Fantasy Award-winning Tooth and Claw, she gave us a Victorian family saga — complete with siblings squabbling over an inheritance, the … Continue reading

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Lavie Tidhar’s The Great Game audiobook

I’ve got a lot of audiobooks in my Audible library as it’s been my primary source for such matters for many years now, so sometimes I forget if I’ve listened to one of them. This is how I came to be listening recently … Continue reading

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Neal Asher’s Prador Moon

When I received Asher’s latest in my mailbox, my first thought was that it looked a little thin. I checked the number of pages: 222. Uh oh, I thought. This isn’t going to last me very long. And it didn’t. … Continue reading

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Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light

Just as her protagonist Thomas Cromwell set himself a near impossible task in attempting to steer the mercurial temperament of Henry VIII, Hilary Mantel set herself a near impossible task in following the first two masterful volumes of this story. … Continue reading

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Elizabeth Bear’s Whiskey and Water

The nice thing about reading the first volume to a really good new fantasy series is that when you reach the end, you know the story’s not over. The nice thing about getting your hands on the second volume is … Continue reading

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