This earned a tea-snort from me this morning: There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with [...]
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Posted 20 March 2009
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I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with an Amazon Kindle over the past week. The Kindle is Amazon’s attempt to bring book reading and distribution into the 21st century. It’s essentially a small, purpose-built, handheld computer that incorporates several interesting technologies to create a compelling experience for the book lover. The first distinctive [...]
Here are a couple of books I’ve quite enjoyed recently: Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical: Shane Claiborne, the author of this book, is an interesting cat. He’s passionately devoted to the idea of living according to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament, especially with regard to the poor and disenfranchised. I particularly enjoyed his [...]
Last week, Liam brought home a small book that he had created in school. I thought it was great, so am posting its entire text verbatim here. Enjoy! Playdate with my dad pg 1 “OOOOOOH” this is going to be fun I said gleefuly on an early summer morning. I am going on a very [...]
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Posted 09 March 2008
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Amazon has just introduced a new electronic book reader called the Kindle, which looks pretty interesting. My thoughts while reading the details: First mass-market use of electronic paper for a display. I wonder what the resolution is like? Ah, 800×600 with 4 levels of gray. (By comparison, the iPhone is 480×320, though it’s smaller and full [...]
Madeleine L’Engle is an author with whom I have enjoyed a long and fruitful (though one-way) relationship. From the early years with her science fiction for children to the later pilgrimages through the linked worlds of faith, science and art, she has rarely failed to both inspire and engage me. It was, therefore with heavy [...]
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Posted 10 September 2007
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This is just a quick shill for Escape Pod, a Science Fiction/Fantasy podcast I recently stumbled across. It broadcasts well-read weekly stories along with a light sprinkling of discussion on top. The stories are of consistently high quality, and feature names such as David Brin, Robert Silverburg and Isaac Asimov which will be immediately familiar [...]
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