Books & Authors


I COME FROM A FAMILY OF READERS and rarely leave the house without a pa­per­back stuck in a pocket. In this cat­e­gory I address/review/criticize books and the people who write them.

While my fa­vorite genre is science-fiction—especially the so-called speculative-fiction of the ’60s and ’70s—my fa­vorite au­thor is James Clavell, whose Asian Saga novels I read every few years.

 

 

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why does stephen king believe norman mailer and gerald posner? – part 2

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EVEN A CURSORY READ of the facts (“Just the facts, ma’am”) and not some­one’s opin­ions will re­veal a mass of data that would lead anyone free of as­sump­tions to as­sume that things just don’t add up. In 11/22/63, King does not deal with these in­con­sis­ten­cies, con­tra­dic­tions, and con­tro­ver­sies sur­rounding the ev­i­dence or lack thereof.  [Continue reading]

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mark twain on being a writer and a reader

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“WHEN MARK TWAIN OPENED HIS MOUTH, strange things came tum­bling out. Things like hoaxes, jokes, yarns, ob­scen­i­ties, and non se­quiturs. He had a drawl—his ‘slow talk,’ his mother called it—that made his sen­tences long and sin­uous. One re­porter de­scribed it as a ‘little buzz-saw slowly grinding in­side a corpse.’ [Continue reading]