tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386566332026-04-10T20:51:59.328-05:00A nineteen-year-old book blog offering book reviews and news about authors, publishers, bookstores, and libraries. Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.comBlogger3786125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-14445065927707614322026-04-09T07:00:00.004-05:002026-04-09T09:06:55.506-05:00

 Blasphemy is a collection of thirty-one short stories written by a favorite storyteller of mine, Sherman Alexie. It should be noted, however, that Mr. Alexie got caught up in that whole “Me Too” movement back in 2018 after perhaps as many as fifty women came forward to say that he had sexually harassed them. The ensuing fallout was real and deserved: scholarships with his name on them got

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-8035220027425264642026-04-06T07:00:00.002-05:002026-04-06T12:01:02.491-05:00

 Louise Penny made me do something today, I never dreamed I would be doing in a million years: abandon her latest novel, The Black Wolf, at the eighty-page mark with no intention of ever picking it up again. Now I only wish I could get my $30 back.I have been reading Penny for years, and have read eighteen of the nineteen novels she’s published prior to The Black Wolf, enjoying them so much

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-15729950122891178102026-04-04T12:48:00.003-05:002026-04-04T12:49:47.894-05:00

 “History gives you the facts, and fiction gives you the truth of the facts.” (Unattributed quote from Nancy Pearl in The Writer’s Library)I bought Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet a couple of years ago but forgot I had a copy until reminded of it by the recent release of the book's movie version. That’s a problem I often have with e-books: “out of sight, out of mind.” But I suppose that’s story

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-2501854806576949992026-03-30T16:08:00.001-05:002026-04-04T15:42:13.463-05:00

 I still remember standing in line outside in the dark back in 1973 for a couple of hours waiting for my chance to see the movie version of The Exorcist - and how you couldn’t finally walk inside to your seat without feeling at least a little sense of dread. I had read William Peter Blatty’s novel the previous year, so I knew what to expect, but the buzz around this movie was so hyped

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-52273364830071190522026-03-26T07:00:00.001-05:002026-03-26T07:00:00.136-05:00

 I didn’t realize what a can of worms I was opening up when I decided to read Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy. I don’t remember running across it at all when it was published in 2018, and it really only caught my eye now because of its unusual cover art. Only after finishing Lawn Boy, did I learn (in the author’s short essay at the end of the novel) that it is largely autobiographical. This is a

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-6311326049247252962026-03-23T07:00:00.000-05:002026-03-23T07:00:00.114-05:00

 Despite having seven books going last week, I still found myself in a bit of a reading slump because even though I finished one of the seven, Ben Bova’s Mars Life, I found it tough to get much into any of the other six at all. The only other one that I found consistently engaging was Ron Chernow’s 1100-page biography of Mark Twain - and I’m going to be reading that one for a few more

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-11291325655163569632026-03-21T19:55:22.591-05:002026-03-21T19:55:22.591-05:00

 Big Five publisher Hatchette has decided to pull Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl from British bookstore shelves, and will not be publishing the novel in the United States at all because the publisher is now convinced that Shy Girl is largely AI generated. This is a first, but it will almost certainly not be a last unless publishers get more serious about vetting the manuscripts they take on for

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-44958975006807707232026-03-19T13:22:39.601-05:002026-03-19T13:22:39.601-05:00

I cut my reading teeth on ‘50s and ‘60s scifi authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, and a few others. Probably because so much of his output was aimed directly at the YA market, Heinlein is the one whose work I remember most vividly today, but all of my favorites had one thing in common: a relatively strong emphasis on the “science” part of the term

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-62158640688578200822026-03-16T15:24:00.000-05:002026-03-16T15:24:01.476-05:00

I have been a reader for over 70 years now, and my opinion of the publishing industry has never been lower than it is today.  I realize this didn’t happen over night, that the industry decline was such a gradual one that its impact is only observable in a hindsight of several years. But sadly, I think we are in the middle of a perfect storm that will continue to degrade the quality of mass

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-65071138218656778382026-03-13T16:12:00.002-05:002026-03-13T16:12:42.216-05:00

 Dear Life, published in 2012, was Alice Munro’s last book. She won the Nobel Prize the following year, becoming the first and only Canadian for having done so. At the time, she was called a “master of the contemporary short story,” and I very much agree with that assessment of her talents.Dear Life contains fourteen short stories, the final four of which Munro tells us are based upon her

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-68887436653911193862026-03-09T17:20:00.003-05:002026-03-09T17:20:43.254-05:00

 Yesterday’s time-change really did a number on me. I woke up “late” and then felt sluggish all day long even though I ended up getting the same number of hours of sleep I normally get. It’s going to take me another couple of days, I think, to get into the sun’s new rhythm, and I really wish we would choose one time or the other and stick with that one for the duration. I did manage to get

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-40127291664278448672026-03-06T19:55:00.000-06:002026-03-06T19:55:19.918-06:00

 The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives consists of twenty-two author-interviews during which Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager ask the authors a set series of questions. Twenty-one of the interviews are conducted in person, and one, that of author Donna Tartt, via email. Despite the questions all being pretty much being the same from author to author,

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-50788166771640662402026-03-01T13:58:00.000-06:002026-03-01T13:58:00.055-06:00

Of the six books I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, half of them are still on top of my desk as I type this. That’s not to say that I haven’t read in and out of most of them, just that my wandering eye was caught by some new ones along the way. I did manage to finish The Best Revenge by Gerald Seymour and Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald and write short reviews of both. One hit and one

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-79225468027403925122026-02-28T11:39:00.000-06:002026-02-28T11:39:29.718-06:00

 I am a fan of memoirs, reading at least a dozen of them every year for the last decade or so. Sometimes I know a little (or a lot) about the author before beginning a memoir; sometimes I’ve never heard of the author at all. Isaac Fitzgerald was most definitely not someone I knew of before picking up Dirtbag, Massachusetts, and the more I read of the confessional essays that make up

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-47515789299660204542026-02-23T14:59:00.001-06:002026-02-24T14:25:20.628-06:00

 If James Bond has a direct opposite it would be Gerald Seymour’s master spy Jonas Merrick. Unlike Mr. Bond, Jonas never goes into the field to do any dirty work or to gather vital information about the threatening intentions of foreign governments. Jonas, in fact, so seldom leaves his desk once he arrives there promptly each morning that his colleagues have very little idea what he does all

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-56651305240122898362026-02-21T13:30:00.002-06:002026-02-21T13:30:51.136-06:00

My barber asked me last week if I go everywhere with a book in my hand. She's been cutting my hair for twenty years now and she remarked that she doesn't recall a single time that I sat in her chair without first closing the book that I carried in with me. She's right; I don't recall a single time either. (These days, it is more likely that I’m closing and e-reader cover than a physical book,

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-46106545344378709192026-02-18T14:06:00.000-06:002026-02-18T14:06:06.960-06:00

           In October, 2024, we spent a couple of days in a Dallas B&B that had its own version of a Little Free Library inside the rental. A sign on the container invited us to take a book or two with us when we left, and to leave something behind if we had anything to contribute. The Paris Library is one of two books I took home with me at the end of that

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-6509661918618749942026-02-15T16:40:00.001-06:002026-02-15T17:09:34.169-06:00

 I don’t seem to be finishing many books so far this year, but that’s not because I’m not turning lots of pages. Seems like I’m falling back into one of my old habits of immediately beginning to read a book rather than simply adding it to my TBR for later. The stack of partially read books on my desk seems to be multiplying on its own these days, and even though I read from each of them

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-82438682159804253072026-02-13T14:14:00.000-06:002026-02-13T14:14:36.493-06:00

Sometimes I think I live for road trips, but not just any old road trips. I like to get out and wander aimlessly for two or three thousand miles before doing the same thing on my way back home. That kind of trip has led me to countless unexpected places, and to friends I would have otherwise never known over the last several decades, and it’s still one of my favorite things in all the world to do

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-80931538168411931252026-02-09T14:44:00.000-06:002026-02-09T14:44:57.438-06:00

         My bookshelves have long since reached the point where a book has to be somewhere removed from the shelves before I can add any recent acquisition. And even then, it’s still a matter of shifting books around until a spot opens up in the appropriate section of my shelving. I’ve even tried the periodic book-purge in which I’ve found new homes for ten or twenty

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-64438999944083423712026-02-07T15:26:00.000-06:002026-02-07T15:26:00.488-06:00

 What you need to know about this one:Published in 2006One of Tan’s lesser known novelsLess detail about Chinese history and culture than in author’s more popular booksFocuses on 11 American tourists who disappear into the Myanmar jungle on Christmas morningA satirical look at American tourists (these are all from San Francisco) who naively place themselves in grave danger while expecting

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-34948155961135431132026-02-07T12:31:00.000-06:002026-02-07T12:31:13.974-06:00

 I must be feeling better. I’ve only noticed that in the last few days. Some of my old energy has returned and - even though my health situation is still a precarious one - I opened up my own blog today for the first time in months. Just reading some of the old posts and comments brought back so many great memories, that I wanted to say hello to anyone out there who might still be

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-35115524477666927222024-11-16T14:34:00.003-06:002024-11-16T14:36:08.406-06:00

 Despite (or maybe because of) my continuing struggle with the "blahs," reading continues to give me great pleasure when little else does. I may not have the energy right now to write formal reviews, but that's freed me up to wander rather serendipitously from book to book as things catch my eye. These are the ones I read in October:Beautifully written novelLongtime series fans will

Sam http://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-52176533143784261092024-10-03T12:55:00.000-05:002024-10-03T12:55:24.154-05:00

 OK, so bear with me for a minute because at first glance this is likely to seem more than a little bit strange - and like a lot of work. But, in fact, I didn't even realize I was doing this for a while because it is just a steady progression of something I was already doing to a smaller degree. And over the last thirty days or so, it's been working beautifully for me.I'm lucky enough to

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 What I miss most about having half-a-dozen favorite bookstores to make regular visits to is the pleasure of shutting out the rest of the world for an hour or two while slowly making my way through shelf after shelf of books I'd never seen before. Whichever book caught my eye next was going to, at least for a few minutes, feel like a new gift to be opened. I couldn't wait to see what was

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