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Books

• Books

  No snarky title

  03.04.08 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  The writer Tim Pratt has posted about his son River’s upcoming surgery.  My thoughts are with them.  How horrible for parents to go through something like this so soon in their child’s life (or ever, obviously).  The odds in this case are good but meanwhile the strain is unimaginable to me.  One weeps at how many [...]

• Books, Music

  Thus a mind is wasted

  02.08.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  The greeting banner on my cell phone announces its name as “Vavatch Hub”.  This is a reference to Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas, which is only one of the greatest SF works of our time.  I also have a download of this image of Galaxy M104.  Looks like an Orbital to me, if I squint right.  One day I [...]

• Books

  Buggrit

  12.27.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I subscribe to the Discworld Monthly email newsletter, because I am exactly that kind of geek.  I confess that I have stopped buying each of Terry Pratchett’s books as they are published in paperback here, but only because of a sense that I needed a break from them and could return once a bountiful backlog [...]

• Books, General, Walks with the dogs

  Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?

  12.21.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  Various: I have a heavy bag and a speed bag set up in the basement.  It’s useful exercise to punch things that won’t hit back.  Yesterday evening I was rat-a-tatting on the speed bag when the internal bladder popped.  Reactions: ‘bladder’ is a funny word; I flinched and ducked like I was having a flashback [...]

• Books

  N.B.A.

  11.16.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I see that Sherman Alexie has won a National Book Award this year.  Good on him; it’s absurd but I feel a personal pride when a writer whose work I really like wins a major award.  I suppose it’s the same feeling that comes from backing a winning horse, minus the payout and the years of [...]

• Books

  Nth-rate Post

  10.12.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I think Lessing might turn out to be an inspiration to all authors.  Besides her admirable disdain for the Nobel Prize and its process, apparently lately she has been writing “fourth-rate science fiction”.  Does that mean third-rate or better SF will become deserving of wider acclaim?  Perhaps not, as the quotation is from professional cultural [...]

• Books, General

  Prizes and Gifts

  10.11.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  I’ve not read anything by Doris Lessing that I recall, so I don’t have any opinion whether or not she might be worthy of the prize announced today.  However I do have to wonder if any writer still alive really deserves the Nobel more than John Updike.  I recently read The Collected Henry Bech and clever man [...]

• Books, General

  Lookie thar

  08.17.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  Hey ho, Chochachos, Mrs The Fyd has a new blog, here.  In other news, I am reading Peter Brown’s The Making of Late Antiquity and I wish I was that smart.

Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey

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