Month: January 2014

50 People who Stuffed up Australia

50 People Who Stuffed Up Australia. by Guy Rundle & Dexter Rightwad by Guy Rundle My rating: 4 of 5 stars Guy’s a friend, so I should state this up front, but for me he’s the single most original, creative left-winger in Australia. Rundle consistently comes up with interesting takes on things, even if I […]

Read more +

Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy My rating: 4 of 5 stars The truth is, I didn’t read this book, but I listened to the audiobook book on and off for months. My memory – from years before – was that this was the most ‘perfect’ of realist novels, a wonderfully composed picture of psychological narrative, […]

Read more +

The Summit

I watched the documentary The Summit today, which details the fatal events which saw 11 people die on the second highest mountain in the world, known as K2. The documentary is very similar to events chronicled by John Krakauer in his book, Into Thin Air. Essentially, a group (or groups) of mountaineers scale a deadly […]

Read more +

The Best of Robert Silverberg

The Best of Robert Silverberg by Robert Silverberg My rating: 4 of 5 stars Silverberg is a phenomenon. In many ways he mirrors the SF world as it moved through its permutations of the last 50 years. In the 50s, his stories were mostly pulp-oriented action tales. In the 60s, he reinvented his career with […]

Read more +

Nighttime in Caeli-Amur

You can read my new story over at Tor.com.

Read more +

Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind

Tricks Of The Mind by Derren Brown My rating: 4 of 5 stars For fans for Derren Brown’s television shows – fascinating combinations of magic, psychology and hypnosis – this book is bound to be of interest. Brown outlines quite a bit of the background to his work: the structures of magic, hypnosis (and its […]

Read more +