Tag: books read 2011

Girl Who Leapt Through Time by Yatsutaka Tsutsui

gordsellar4 Comments

I’ll start off by saying I picked this book out simply because I was looking for something to read while pumping my legs on the stationary recumbent bike at the gym the other day. I figured it looked like a light read, and thought I might even be able to finish it in a one-hour cardio session. I was right. However, I may have been a little distracted while reading the book. That said, I found it enjoyable and compelling enough to keep reading, but I’m not sure I would have if I’d been at home, where tons of other …

Continue Reading

Ayn Rand’s Anthem

gordsellar0 Comments

I have this problem: I’ve been trying to research the work and “ideas” of Ayn Rand, the better to satirize them in this story I want to write. The painful thing is, well… reading Rand is painful. It really is. I read 100 pages of The Fountainhead and couldn’t understand how or why it blew away people who are supposed to be intelligent, educated, and so on. It’s a embarrassingly bad book, mainly because, besides clunky, boring prose, it’s something that could only be a sensible argument if what it were arguing against weren’t a complete and utter strawman. Anthem …

Continue Reading

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King

gordsellar0 Comments

I stayed up late last night — very late, actually — to finish reading Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, and yet, I’m not exactly sure what I want to say about it, or how I feel about it. I really want to love it, to think it’s wonderful and run around recommending it to my friends. I do know of some people I think will really like it, in fact, though I’m not sure I know anyone I can suggest reading it who will fall for it. The writing is, of course, solid. Thomas King knows how to set …

Continue Reading

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

gordsellar6 Comments

I’ve read things by Fritz Leiber that I adore — both Conjure Wife and, more vehemently for me, Our Lady of Darkness are important ones — but The Big Time simply did not work for me. I like the idea of the Change War — familiar though it is —  and the notion of cutting people out of their “lifeline” so that they become pseudo-immortal soldiers in the war — and idea that I think still has legs, and indeed is used these days in time travel narratives; I like the idea of the Place as a pocket universe outside of …

Continue Reading

Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin

gordsellar3 Comments

Of late, I’ve been on a sort of kick where I want to read short books — books of fewer than 300 pages, in general, often even shorter. As I’ve been on this kick, I’ve run into pairs of writings that explore the same basic terrain at different lengths. I mentioned this when I reviewed Patricia Anthony’s Happy Policeman and I’m noting it again as I review this book by Emma Larkin, though in this case the comparable text is this short article from Time, published in 2002 (a few years before Larkin’s book). In this case, I have to say, …

Continue Reading