Writing Brave and Free by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox “If you’ve yearned for the courage to put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, after reading Writing Brave and Free, you probably will.”—Marge Pellegrino, Tucson Weekly (May 25) “What a treasure to have a second how-to book of this caliber enter the world for developing writers. . . . [T]his is a practical, down-to-earth, advice-driven collection of smart, unpretentious chapters on the work of becoming a writer. . . . The section on self-publishing and electronic publishing will be especially important to today’s younger writers. . . . The … Continue reading

Black Gun, Silver Star by Art T. Burton “[This] biography is more statement of fact than tribute to Reeves and no punches are pulled. Bass  had an exceptionally long tenure as a Deputy U. S. Marshal and made a few mistakes along the way. These are covered. But, so too, are the remarkable feats he accomplished. . . . No critic, then or now has been able to show that Bass did not do good and bring law and order to the frontier. Art’s rendering takes on all comers and their questions. The book is a heck of a good … Continue reading

he guys over at SF Signal picked up on my last post and put up their own.  This is very cool, since I’ve been reading their blog for awhile and like it.  It is also uncool, since I now know they are looking and have to give up on my plan of stealing from them.  Oh well. I’m stepping a bit more comfortably into blogging shoes.  And I think Jay is permanently not going to be joining me as the other sf blogger.  Too bad.  I was looking forward to reading what he had to say, but apparently real life … Continue reading Some random thoughts

f you look at the top sellers in science fiction at Amazon.com, and subtract any books that have tie-ins to movies or television, what you’ll see is largely what you have seen before: Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five.  Only a few will be new books with no tie-ins to other media.  Tonight it was The Time Traveler’s Wife, another Dan Brown book called Digital Fortress, and some self-help book masquerading as fiction called The Alchemist.  Otherwise the top sellers on Amazon in the science fiction category were books over fifty years old and tie-in books for V … Continue reading The Golden Age of Readers

Century of Locusts by Malika Mokeddem “Mokeddem’s novel is a gem, brimming with beautifully rendered scenes . . . that remain indelible in the reader’s memory.”— Booklist “Many of Mokeddem’s sentences have the breath of poetry upon them. . . . Indeed, a question worth asking of literature in translation is whether it does not give us an unfamiliar English with powerful new shapes and cadences—the expressive possibilities of another language reinvigorate our own. One believes this to be true of the work of Laura Rice and Karim Hamdy here, as also of Erdag Goknar’s striking translation five years ago … Continue reading

Tarzan Alive by Philip José Farmer “The old vine swinger is one of a handful of fictional characters to rank a biography. Such books give the authors the opportunity to expound on the characters, providing background, side stories, and updates not offered by their creator. Farmer’s 1972 volume borrows from Edgar Rice Burroughs but also adds to the legend by tracing Tarzan’s lineage . . . and extends his exploits beyond the African jungle as an RAF pilot in World War II. Great fun.”—Library Journal, Classic Returns (May 15) Continue reading

  would like to open with a quick plug for a remarkable new book, Arguments for Stillness, by Omaha native Erik Campbell.  I’ve known Erik for years, and in fact we have been neighbors in Lincoln, Washington, DC, and Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I am convinced he is following me around the globe, although he would protest that assertion.  Regardless, he has–at the ripe age of 33–achieved what few mortals do: the publication of a collection of his poems.  He has long been my favorite poet on the planet, and soon he will be yours, too.  Check him out. Last night … Continue reading Nebraskanomics

t the end of the 1942 season, baseball legend Stan “The Man” Musial had to work in the Pennsylvania zinc mills to augment his annual salary of $4,200. And he wasn’t playing ‘A’ league ball. His team was the St. Louis Cardinals, World Series champions. Then again, it was wartime. It was also a time when major league baseball was played by human beings who, despite being acknowledged superstars, still lived pretty much like you and me. The only similarity between Musial and a Cardinal player of today (besides the obvious ones—i.e. they are both carbon-based, bipedal life forms) is … Continue reading The Rogues of Summer

y an odd coincidence, I finished reading this book (finally!  when did I say I was going to post on this originally?) on the same week that one of my short stories, "Gabriel’s Trumpet", was published in The Lamp Post of the Southern California CS Lewis Society.  And it isn’t because the book is long that it took me forever to finish it.  It’s only 160 pages.  It’s just that, at first, it moved slowly.  And don’t get me wrong.  I love C.S. Lewis.  I picked this up because I love his work.  But, Ransom, our hero, is much like … Continue reading Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis