The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Black Dahlia is a fictionalized account of the investigation into the real life torture, mutilation, and murder of Elizabeth Short in 1947. It is appropriately dark and deeply disturbing. On balance, I thought it was quite well done. It was consistently engaging and sufficiently challenging throughout. It is not loads of fun unless you really embrace the darkness. Continue reading
Redshirts by John Scalzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I liked this book quite a lot by the end. It didn’t start out that way for me. In the beginning I thought it was way too flippant to have won a Hugo. By the time I’d finished the narrative, I’d completely changed my mind. It was still flippant in timbre, to be sure, but it also maintained a really fine tension between that flippancy and a difficult spin on the various anomalies and paradoxes of time travel. So what I thought I had in hand, by the end, was true genius. Continue reading
The Book Review: Bane or Boon?I’ve been looking for book bloggers and reviewers to give me objective reviews of A Cup of Pending. Reviews are a numbers game for indie authors like me – the more reviews and ratings we get, the more readers we are likely to attract. It’s a snowball effect. It’s the on-line equivalent of word of mouth recommendations.
To this end, I have been trolling review groups on Goodreads. You’d think this would be a fairly straightforward process: find a post by a potential reviewer looking for books to read, reach out, and, if they’re interested, send them a book. There’s more to this than meets the eye, however. For example, you probably don’t want to send your military action adventure story to a millennial fan of paranormal romance. You are not likely to find an open mind in such an exchange. Of course, the reverse is also true.
With this in mind, I try to vet potential reviewers before I approach them. It just makes sense to get a sense of the kind of treatment I can expect before I put the future of my life’s work into someone else’s hands. Frankly, I have been stymied by this process. Continue reading
I cook for my dog, Bean. He eats almost as well as I do. I think this makes me an exemplary human being. Bean seems to agree because he follows me around adoringly from the time he gets up in the morning till he goes down for his first nap 20 minutes later.
Every three days I make a pot of rice and chicken. I cook the rice in chicken broth, which is a by-product of my Tuesday crockpot roasted chicken. I supplement the rice and chicken with additional broth, high quality kibble, and an assortment of flavor enhancers like hard-boiled egg, steamed broccoli, baby food, sweet potato, and an occasional chunk of beef, just to keep things interesting. Bean likes this routine a lot when he is on his feed—more often than not since I started going to all this effort. Continue reading
Jeeves and WoosterI’ve been binge watching Jeeves and Wooster on Acorn. It’s a BBC series based on the P.G. Wodehouse stories about Bertie Wooster, erstwhile English gentleman of leisure, and his manservant, Jeeves. To my thinking, this is excellent television. All TV ought to be this good.
It helps, I suppose, that the series stars Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster. Both established their comedic chops in this series, which originally aired from 1990-1993, and went on to achieve modest fame and acclaim in quite a lot of subsequent offerings.
Personally, I can’t get enough of this sort of thing. The theme music alone is enough to keep me coming back for more. The lines are hilarious, and they’re delivered with droll aplomb, especially by Fry. If that weren’t enough the cars are fabulous, the tailoring impeccable, and, if you watch carefully, you will see the debut television appearance of Highclere Castle, better known of late as Downton Abbey. Continue reading
