Category: Book Reviews

In a world where patent companies control the world, Jack pirates drugs for the poor. In the course of cloning a productivity drug, she accidentally unleashes a wave of lethal addictions to banal tasks. But did she make a mistake cloning the drug? No. She learns that big-pharma company Zaxy is trying to expand their reach by addicting high-tech workers to a patented drug -- and to their jobs. As Jack races to engineer a cure, Zaxy deploys a military bot and a human partner to hunt her down and keep their trade secrets secret. Newitz has written a solid 4.5 star book…

Wyldling Hall reaches out to touch the place where music and magic merge. As musicians or lovers of music, we enter this liminal space and feel it prickling our skin, but when we subject it to our rational thinking, it disappears. Many reviewers called Wylding Hall a "ghost story." But it is, instead, a story of faerie—the music of faerie. I loved Wyldling Hall. I couldn't put it down. There are times when the suspense and the flashes of otherness feel a little much, but in a mostly good way…

This book failed to enchant me. Perhaps I have a high bar, prose-wise, for enchantment. Perhaps I am not the target audience. Or perhaps the book rides on Kawasaki's reputation rather than its content. The book is a loosely organized series of maxims with supporting explanations and stories. Throughout all of his advice, I can't help but think about the greasy-palmed corporate hacks on the other side of his advice: "Give for Intrinsic Reasons", "Bake a Bigger Pie", and "Default to Yes"…

I am often puzzled by our culture's need to supersize a story out of the realm where ordinary people can relate to it. Why must we make all things epic? When was the last time you faced an absolute evil that required you to don full chain mail? And so, I was again caught flat-footed by the Peter Jackson Hobbit franchise. Why inject a cosmic battle of good against evil into Tolkiens' humble tale of a hobbit far from home caught in forces beyond his reckoning? Now look here…

People have asked why I critiqued "Idolatry of God," and pointed out that Rollins' earlier works were much clearer on God. Oddly, there seems to be a criticism/dialogue phobia in the emergent church. As for me, I find spiritual and intellectual critique invigorating and healthy and was rather baffled by the strong response Micah Bales' post got. So I found my old copy of "How (not) to Speak of God" by Peter Rollins, and started poking around (it was lost for the last few weeks)…

They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they. I always thought that's what they were. Ahh, my little friends, the little man with his racing snail. The nighthawk. Even the stupid bat. I couldn't hold on to them. the Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed. -Rock-biter, in The Neverending Story…

Michel Foucault is a very popular author in chic lit-crit circles at the moment. A full blown postmodernist, his work is a combination of history and philosophy. In his book Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, he uses theoretical disciplinary texts to paint a picture of the historical French penal system. He traces its evolution right up into Foucault's day, a time marked by massive and unquestioned use of the prison as the primary recourse of the judicial system…

Yukio Mishima's work has the delicacy and grace of a Japanese garden. In his book The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, he sketches the story of a hero who falls in love and is pulled to shore. The story is seen through the eyes of young Noboru who discovers a peephole into his widowed mother's bedroom, and, in the name of objectivity, observes her night-time exploits with her sailor lover. This is not a sappy love story, nor is it a sex story…

Recently another book accosted me and gripped me for several days before I was released, barefoot revolutionary priests dancing at the elusive edges of my vision. The book was entitled Liberation Theology: the Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond by Phillip Berryman…

The Society of the Spectacle is one of the key theoretical works representing a body of work by a group of revolutionary artists called the Situationists. The Situationists are most famous for their role in precipitating the nation-wide French strike (which may have ended in a bloodless revolution had it not been for police intervention)…