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Monthly Archives: May 2009

Matthew Amster-Burton: Hungry Monkey

Monday, May 18, 2009

(Full disclosure: Matthew is a friend, and I reviewed an early version of the book. A couple of my suggested jokes even got into the final product.) Every non-fiction book these days needs a colon and a subtitle, and the subtitle of Hungry Monkey is “A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater.” Amster-Burton […]

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Brandon Sanderson: The Hero of Ages

Sunday, May 17, 2009

This is the third and final book of the Mistborn trilogy, the first two books of which I talked about earlier. It mostly delivers; there are lots of interesting and surprising revelations (both regular plot ones and ones about how the world works) and things come to a suitable climax. One thing Sanderson does really […]

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P. G. Wodehouse: Carry On, Jeeves

Saturday, May 9, 2009

I needed to kill a couple days before the final volume of Mistborn showed up, so short stories seemed like just the thing. Plus of course Wodehouse is about the most readable author on the planet, so I ended up plowing through all of them quickly. Which is not really the best way to experience […]

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Frank Zappa: The Early Years

Sunday, May 3, 2009

I promised a couple of weeks ago to investigate Frank Zappa. Being the completist I am, I started at the beginning, and holy crap. Freak Out! and Absolutely Free are both complete masterpieces, and everything else so far is at least super interesting. Here, very briefly, are my initial impressions of Zappa’s early oeuvre. Freak […]

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