Trillin wrote a series of articles for the New Yorker over the course of 15 years called “U.S. Journal”. As part of that, every now and then he’d throw in an article about eating, as he tasted some outstanding local cuisine someplace. Mind you, he’s not necessarily talking about fancy haute cuisine, something which he […]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, ed. by James B. South
As a fairly rabid devotee of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as somebody who likes thinking about deeper issues on occasion, this book was irresistible: a collection of articles by philosophy professors and students discussing how various philosophical theories are exemplified by Buffy. It’s interesting how many different ways the same episodes can be viewed. […]
Characters and Viewpoint, by Orson Scott Card
When I was in high school and college, Orson Scott Card was one of my favorite writers. Several of his books are still among my most cherished re-reads. And one of the main reasons for that was his powerful characterization. He made characters that I identified with and cared about. So when I happened across […]
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
It’s a Harry Potter. What more needs to be said? It’s a honker of a book – 900 pages. But fairly entertaining. And darker. Definitely the Empire Strikes Back of the series. Although my first guess as to what was going on was incorrect, alas.
Partners in Necessity, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
This book (well, technically, books – this is an omnibus edition of Conflict of Honors, Agent of Change, and Carpe Diem) had been lurking at the top of my recommendations list at Amazon for months before I finally decided to give it a shot (mostly because I’d received an Amazon gift certificate for filling out […]
Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, by George Woodcock
I picked this book up at the used book store because I’ve always been interested in anarchism as a political theory but didn’t know much about its history or philosophy. Plus the book was only a couple bucks. It was a decent overview of the writings of several of the prominent anarchist philosophers from William […]
The Dragonlance novels, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
One of the used bookstores near me has a couple carts outside where they put $1 books. One buck. There’s pretty much no book that’s not worth a buck. So every time I walk by there, and scan the cart to see if there’s anything that catches my eye. One day there was. The first […]
Conscientious Objections, by Neil Postman
Subtitled “Stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education”, this book is a collection of essays by Neil Postman. Postman’s best known work is “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, a book describing how television is destroying American’s ability to think critically. Postman’s main interests include semantics (the study of meaning and language) and education and culture. […]
The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida
I can’t remember who recommended this to me, but it’s an interesting book. Richard Florida is a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He loves the Pittsburgh area, and was dismayed to find that high tech companies such as Lycos were moving away from Pittsburgh to other locations such as Boston […]
John Henry Days, by Colson Whitehead
I really liked Whitehead’s first novel, The Intuitionist, so I’d been meaning to read his follow up novel for a while. There’s a nice writeup of it, including an excerpt, at Random House’s website. I finally got it from the library a couple weeks ago. Whitehead is a really good writer. His observations of modern […]
