Category: Notebook
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Some thoughts on book “stickiness”…
I don’t like to write down my thoughts about a book or draft a review immediately after I’ve finished the book. Instead, I like to let the book sit with me for a few days, or even a few weeks. That’s because one of the most important qualities for me in deciding how much I…
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Hell is repetition: The theme of cycles in science fiction
Recently, I have become fascinated with the notion of cycles. We humans tend to regard everything linearly, with a beginning and an end, because that is our individual experience. But taking a wider view, we can see that events tend to happen in cycles, that an end leads inexorably to another beginning. It’s easiest to…
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Lost as book and the books of Lost…
I don’t write about television much, if at all, on this blog. So you probably don’t know that I am obsessed with the television series Lost. Lost, however, is very literary television, which is why it appeals so strongly to me. This is a show that is known for being confusing and misleading, but it…
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Yet another reason why publishing is in trouble…
Ok, time for another rant. I was in the bookstore the other day–I won’t say which bookstore, only that I was buying a coffee, not a book–and I happened to notice something that precisely illustrates what I happen to think is one of the fundamental things wrong with big, conglomerate publishers. Which is that they…
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Top 10 poets?
I have to admit that I am not a big poetry reader. I prefer the meatiness of a novel. But I do harbor fond feelings for particular poets who have really moved me. For me, a poem has to ultimately be about an emotion, and a good poem stirs emotion in the reader. The poem…
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Book abandonment is not a crime…
When I was younger, I had a pathological need to finish every book I started, whether I was enjoying the book or not. Probably this compulsion helped me make it through some very long and quite possibly valuable books, such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Caine Mutiny and Moby Dick. But I’m sure it…
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What is speculative fiction?
The kind of fiction I like to read the most, and that I tend to focus on here, falls under the broad umbrella of “speculative fiction.” I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the traditional genre labels of science fiction, fantasy and horror. The definitions that are most often applied to these genres seem so limiting,…
Shannon Turlington 