Card – How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

The first two chapters of this slim volume were most helpful to me. “What is science-fiction?” is not an easy question, especially in distinguishing it from fantasy and the broader category of speculative fiction. Basically, Card says sci-fi concerns experience … Continue reading

Service – A History of Modern Russia

The Next Russian Revolution I read this book in preparation for a class I will take in August at the University of Arizona. Reading a course’s books before the lectures gives valuable context. I also hoped the book would answer questions … Continue reading

2016 Election: The Real Crisis

This morning I searched the news in vain for cogent political analysis. I find only reports of what happened. Donald Trump won Indiana and is indeed the presumptive Republican nominee now. Cruz is out, and Kasich too, according to early … Continue reading

Jiles – Rum and Karma-Kola

This little novella is a wonderful train story with a lot of claustrophobic atmosphere and terrific language. I will shelve it with my small collection of “prose poetry,” along with books like Duras’s The Lover, Winterson’s Art and Lies, and … Continue reading

Brain Muscles

I confess, I have recently fallen off the wagon of fiction. I published a brief (1000 word) nonfiction article on the mysteries of visual perception to NFReads.com. The site publishes short nonfiction articles by authors who hope to thereby publicize … Continue reading

Ogawa – The Housekeeper and the Professor

This is a lovely slice-of-life tale involving a housekeeper in contemporary Japan who works for an eccentric and brilliant old mathematician who, because of a brain injury, has a working short-term memory of only 80 minutes. She and her preteen … Continue reading

Helen Keller Meets Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, giant of contemporary thought and inventor of transformational grammar and computational linguistics, has a new book out and it’s mercifully on linguistics, not politics. The core idea in his new monograph is that humans understand language hierarchically, an … Continue reading