Latest from the Blog
“When the Earth Had Two Moons” by Erik Asphaug
When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets, Dreadful Orbits, and the Origins of the Night Sky by Erik AsphaugMy rating: 5 of 5 starsI was worried about Covid brain being able to process books with actual information, but switching this one to audio did wonders and I finished it in one day of coughy/sneezy/phlegmy/achy (insert…
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“The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane” by Marc ‘Elvis’ Priestley
The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane by Marc ‘Elvis’ PriestleyMy rating: 4 of 5 starsYup, I still have only managed to have seen 1/2 of a Formula 1 race. But apparently I’m quite an amused fan of one Kimi Räikkönen (because how can you not be???), and the author was a mechanic on one of Kimi’s teams…
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“Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization” by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse TysonMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThere’s something about Neil de Grasse Tyson’s voice and narrative style that’s captivating for me. I can listen to his soothing yet engaging delivery for hours at at time (yes, he’s narrating his own book, which is perfect as far as I’m concerned), feeling that warm…
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“American Gods” by Neil Gaiman
American Gods by Neil GaimanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars(This review was originally published on Goodreads in 2011 and amended in 2020):Interesting. It appears that this book that I reviewed back around 2011 was deleted off my shelf and readded in 2017 – but definitely not by me. What makes me furious is that it erased the entire long comment…
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“How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” by Mike Brown
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike BrownMy rating: 4 of 5 stars(This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2015):I think in pictures – like I assume most of us do. My mental picture for the solar system has not changed in perhaps a quarter of a century, ever since I got my little…
Keep readingCovid
Yes, it got me. And it’s as awful as I thought it would be. Ugh. On the bright side, maybe I can get some more reading done, once my brain stops feeling all scrambled…
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“Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures” by Stephen Fry
Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures by Stephen FryMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThis was incredibly entertaining.Stephen Fry is such a great narrator, and apparently a pretty great author as well. The voice with the perfect accent and tone and inflections, the wit, the easily accessible conversational style and the excellent ability to common-sense those weird Ancient Greek heroes…
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“Spare” by Prince Harry
Spare by Prince HarryMy rating: 2 of 5 starsA disclaimer before I start: I’m in neither “love Harry/royals” nor “hate Harry/royals” camp. I’m indifferent, and before this book I knew bare minimum of the dramas of British working and non-working royals. So this is a casual reader’s take, based on the book only, with no sides pre-taken.———————When I was a…
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“The Dispossessed: An Ambiguos Utopia” by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars(This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2021):Some books really make me think long and hard about life. This was one of them. I first inhaled it on a transatlantic flight a decade ago and felt that Le Guin, as usual, made my brain run…
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“Letter 44 Vol. 1” by Charles Soule and Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque
Letter 44 Vol. 1: Escape Velocity by Charles SouleMy rating: 4 of 5 starsInteresting, although I may have one or two obstetrics-related concerns about the whole situation here. But hey, childbirth in space is complicated. It’s a comic with two storylines: a political one with the thinly veiled Bush/Obama transition but with added catch of secret aliens in space, and…
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“Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter IsaacsonMy rating: 5 of 5 starsRelentless curiosity. Careful observation. Flights of fancy grounded in reality, centuries ahead of his time.That’s Leonardo da Vinci in a nutshell. The definition of Renaissance Man. The man who gave us the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and even Madonna of Benoit (say what you want, Walter Isaacson, about…
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“30 Days of Night, Vol. 1” by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
30 Days of Night, Vol. 1 by Steve NilesMy rating: 2 of 5 starsTrippy as hell. That’s the best way I can describe the art here. And I gave no idea why, but I liked it.I mean, look at this: But the story — that did nothing for me. Required zero brain power. Vampires, remote Alaska town, people die gorily,…
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“One Day All This Will Be Yours” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian TchaikovskyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars (This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2021): “We were the time warriors, and we killed time.” Somewhere, no – somewhen, at the edge of Time (or whatever is left of it after the time-shredding Causality War) is a peaceful idyllic farm where the…
Keep readingGoodreads: 2022 in review
2022 on Goodreads by Various2022 has been a crappy year on a greater scale. The country I come from got mercilessly invaded by a cynical maniac who somehow commands the loyalty of his “subjects”. My parents have their electricity and heat periodically shut off in winter — and according to Putin, my mother and grandmother – who can fluently speak…
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“Light From Uncommon Stars” by Ryka Aoki
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka AokiMy rating: 2 of 5 starsI really thought I was going to love this one. I really did. I mean, from the beginning I was lured into the expectation of quirky wonderfulness — and once we learned that a spacefaring alien family took over an LA-area donut joint, I was quite excited. “Here at…
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“King Rat” by China Miéville
King Rat by China MiévilleMy rating: 3 of 5 stars (This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2014): “Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.” True to Pratchett’s wit and wisdom, even China Mieville’s frustratingly good writing had to have its beginnings. And so it begins here, in his first novel ‘King Rat’, which – as many readers have…
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“Rose/House” by Arkady Martine
This story left me in a bit of a perplexed daze. Intriguing, atmospheric and yet frustratingly smudged at the edges, just to the point where I feel that if I just squint and think hard enough I’d “get” it — except for I don’t quite do. It’s just too opaquely dreamlike for hard logic. A bit of a migraine aura…
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“Blindness” by José Saramago
Blindness by José SaramagoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars(This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2012):This book left me speechless (which is a rare occurrence). Please enjoy the pictures to illustrate the plot while I recover my gift of rambling. An unexplained plague of “white blindness” sweeps the unnamed country. Initial attempts to hastily quarantine the blind in an…
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“Ancillary Justice” by Ann Leckie
Ancillary Justice by Ann LeckieMy rating: 4 of 5 stars (This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2021): “And you don’t like my saying that, but here’s the truth: luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to…
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“Paradises Lost” by Ursula K. LeGuin (from “The Birthday of the World collection)
The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 5 of 5 starsSo far, at least, this is the rating and review for the longest piece in this collection, Paradises Lost , one of my favorite novellas, perfectly penned by the true master of thoughtful SF.Ursula K. Le Guin wrote anthropological science fiction, primarily focusing…
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books are life 
Hi! I’m Dania Khan, a book reviewer on Instagram and would like to quote a line from your ‘Piranesi’ review. It’s the line – ‘This is like a dream, slow, strange and intensely atmospheric, unbelievably immersive and engrossing.’ I would not be plagiarising your work, but instead, I will be using it to prove or further a point I will be trying to make in my review. My account is @bookomaniacal if you want to DM there about your response as I wasn’t sure as to how to contact you.
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As long as you credit it, I don’t see a problem.
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Ok! Thank you so much!
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