I recently had the urge to play some old Megadrive (Genesis) games. I dusted off my old Retoflag GPI Gameboy style handheld and, well, just sort of blinked at it for a moment. It was big and chunky, like a…

I love this novel, I think its one of Robert A Heinlein’s finest offerings. I have wrote about it in great depth in the past, but were only here to talk about the first line today. “Once upon a time…

Storm Front (Dresden Files 1) by Jim Butcher. In my discord group there is a room (are they called rooms?) called #book_club where us bookish folks exchange recommendations and thoughts on, you guessed it… Books! It was there that someone…

The Kaiju Preservation Society (by John Scalzi) The Kaiju Preservation Society is the most fun thing I have read in a long time. It is literally joy, in the form of a book. John Scalzi himself writes a little letter…

I know this sounds like an odd question and more of a tweet/toot than a blog post, but seriously, what happens in people’s brains when they go to write an amazon book review? Most products have this sort of review…

Book: Dune Series: Dune (Series 1) Written by: Frank Herbert As much as this is out of character for me I am going to try and keep this brief. The reason is that there is no way anyone hasn’t heard…

There are two opening lines in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. The first is the extract from the encyclopedia Galactica (the fictional book that chronicles the universe. Asimov uses it to fill in the gaps for the reader) and then the actual…

I had a conversation with a friend today. He was talking about writing and how its done, I went off on my usual rant about how I think the opening line of a novel is the scariest moment any writer…

Iliad (By Homer) I don’t have the classical education required to actually write a review of the Iliad. I’ll be honest, while I enjoyed it a great deal I’m pretty sure that I missed a lot of smart culturally loaded…

Deaths End (by Lui Cixin) Does it ever end? Death’s End is the third instalment of ‘The Three Body Problem’ trilogy. The trilogy is not an easy read, its at times an oppressive slog. It’s not cheerful. Its not bright…