Yes, it’s a YA novel; I don’t teach middle school, so why did I read it? The Shadow Cipher (Book One of Laura Ruby’s promised trilogy, York) is clearly aimed at intelligent seventh-graders. Yes, it got great reviews — but still, why would… Read More ›
Books
New York 2140
Most good science fiction takes a single premise (which may or may not be believable) and spins out the consequences of that premise. To be convincing, there should just be that one premise, since most readers are willing to suspend disbelief… Read More ›
I Know a Secret
Don’t read Tess Gerritsen’s newest Rizzoli and Isles novel, I Know a Secret, if you (like someone I know) are prone to having nightmares based on books and movies. The rest of us will find it fascinating and suspenseful. To a large… Read More ›
Confessions
This psychological thriller by Kanye Minato is not a typical book, at least not in my universe. Some say that it’s a lot like Gone Girl — but I wouldn’t know, since I’m apparently the only person on Earth who hasn’t read Gone… Read More ›
Don’t get lost: mark your place!
Who uses paper maps anymore? At least they can be recycled, but what if they’re already laminated? Barbara sliced one apart and turned them into bookmarks!
Damaged
If you’ve never read any of Lisa Scottoline’s South-Philadelphia-based Rosato & DiNunzio thrillers, Damaged would not be a bad place to start. (Note: I really like all the Rosato & DiNunzio books, though I don’t particularly recommend Scottoline’s so-called emotional thrillers. But maybe… Read More ›
The Fight for English
It seems that I have to write about David Crystal once a year or so. This expert popularizer of linguistics always provides well-informed but accessible antidotes to common myths about language, such as the one alluded to in the subtitle… Read More ›
Hillbilly Elegy
What an irritating book! Even if you haven’t read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, you’ve probably at least heard of it, as it made quite a splash when it came out last year and stayed on the best-seller list for weeks… Read More ›
Unseen World
Unseen World, a fascinating and complicated novel, will capture and maintain your attention — if you’re the right sort of reader. Right for this book, I mean of course. You probably are if you’re interested in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, online virtual worlds (as… Read More ›
The Fall
John Lescroart has long been one of my favorite genre authors. This blog has included reviews of two of his large number of San Francisco-based mysteries/legal thrillers — The Ophelia Cut and The Oath — the former in 2015 and the latter way… Read More ›
Snow Crash
The time came to re-read Snow Crash. I had first read Neal Stephenson’s seminal science fiction novel when it came out in 1992, and then again at the end of the millennium, which seemed appropriate. Now, to celebrate its 25th… Read More ›
PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders
How could I resist? Word puzzles, a murder at NYU, some math, a dash of ancient Greek, political intrigue, faculty politics, philosophy, social commentary, and even Will Shortz… obviously irresistible. So I didn’t resist it. The result of all these… Read More ›
4 3 2 1
As soon as I first heard about it, I knew that I had to read Paul Auster’s apparently semi-autobiographical novel 4 3 2 1: not only did the author grow up as a secular Jew from suburban Essex County, New Jersey,… Read More ›
Dare Me and Exit, Pursued by a Bear
“Exit, Pursued by a Bear.” Hmmm… where have I heard that before? It sounded like a Shakespearean stage direction, and it seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it… so of course I looked it up. I’ll save you the trouble: it’s… Read More ›
Too Like the Lightning
It’s definitely necessary to avoid spoilers on this one. Ada Palmer’s dark novel, Too Like the Lightning, is partly fantasy, mostly science fiction, and completely fascinating. Oh, did I mention philosophy? It’s clearly a work of philosophy as well. And sociology/anthropology. And a… Read More ›
Station Eleven
Is Station Eleven a post-apocalyptic survival novel? Well, yes, in a way. Is it science fiction? Well, yes, in a way. But it’s not really either of these. In a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel has… Read More ›
My Stroke of Insight
What a promising book! My Stroke of Insight is an initially interesting but ultimately irritating work of non-fiction by Jill Bolte Taylor; I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by the author herself. The promise is that Dr. Taylor, a brain scientist… Read More ›
Lingo: Around Europe in sixty languages
An informal and totally unscientific poll tells me that most people don’t realize that there are 60 languages in Europe; they are certainly surprised to hear that actually there are considerably more than 60. Dutch linguist Gaston Dorren has written a slightly flawed… Read More ›
Dark Matter
“Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.” Right? This definition, as I’m sure you know ☺, is the opening sentence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a great work that I read at least twice, beginning back in college and then again… Read More ›
Introverted teachers
INTJ … What’s wrong with being an introvert? Nothing, of course. Nothing, that is, unless you buy into the dominant American value: extraversion good, introversion bad. I wasn’t even conscious that that was an American value until I had already been… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 