At the time of writing this blog, it's exactly one week before Halloween. Spooky season. The best time of year for things that go bump in the night. And if you like horror novels, there is no better time of year to read stories that heebie your jeebies. So, naturally,...
If you're a fan of sci-fi, you've probably heard about Martha Wells' hit Muderbot Diaries series. But Wells began her writing career as a fantasy author. And her most recent fantasy novel, Witch King, is her latest entry in the genre. And it's a good one. Witch King...
I want to begin this post with a short explanation. This blog post is a companion piece to a post I wrote last year about The Backstreets, the first Uyghur-authored* novel to be translated into English. That post briefly touches on the ongoing situation with the...
Evan Drellich's Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds created Sports' Biggest Mess is a book about baseball and a team that changed everything. There are several baseball teams that fans either really love or really hate. Whether it's the Yankees,...
For a number of years now, book publisher Akashic Books has been publishing collections of noir fiction short stories set in cities around the world. From Chicago and Miami, to far-flung cities such as Addis Ababa, Hong Kong, and Vancouver, these collections always...
“Please tell the people of your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.” Have you ever wondered how rechargeable batteries work? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Rechargeable battery-powered devices have become ubiquitous...
In the summer of 2010, I was fortunate to have been part of a month-long study abroad program in China sponsored by my university. The program had us travel through China, following one of the paths of the historic Silk Road. Starting in Xian, the old imperial...
Every genre in literature has a subgenre within it that contains books that can be considered "comfort" or "cozy" reads, stories which are simply fun and don't require too much thought on the readers part. A cozy read helps readers like us get through those inevitable...
There is a phrase which appears over and over again in the novel The Cat who Saved Books that any book lover can instantly understand and appreciate: "Books have tremendous power." And it's true. Whether people like it or not, books do have tremendous power. But in...
When it comes to Jack London, you will mostly hear about his most famous stories, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. I haven't read those stories. In fact, I don't often read "classic" literature. I am unfortunately impatient when it comes to reading the...