The Monsters’ Monster by Patrick McDonnell. I have long been a fan of McDonnell’s illustrations and stories. The Monsters’ Monster is about three very ferocious monsters (or so they think) that decide to build the monster of all monsters (Frankenstein). What they create though, isn’t quite what they were hoping for… Crankenstein by Samantha Berger […]
Archives for October 2013
Review | The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die by Niall Ferguson
2013-10-30 · by ·
One of the most interesting books I’ve read in recent years was Niall Ferguson‘s Civilization: The West and the Rest, an examination of the extraordinary rise of Western Civilization relative to the rest of the world and the causes that seem to be at the root of its apparent decline. Ferguson’s newest book–The Great Degeneration: […]
Review | Short Stories in the Enderverse from the Intergalactic Medicine Show
2013-10-29 · by ·
Editor’s Note: This is the sixteenth in Stephen Olson’s series of posts on Orson Scott Card’s award winning Ender’s Game novels and the last before Ender’s Game hit theaters this weekend . You can find his other posts on the Ender’s Game series here. Be sure to tune in next week to get his review of the movie. Several other short stories […]
Why so quiet?
2013-10-28 · by ·
We’re moving! Our stuff, that is, not the blog. If you’ve wondered why it’s been quiet around Attack of the Books! lately, the short answer is that we’ve been moving. We found a new home just around the corner but still in the Salt Lake City, Utah area, and we’re moving our operation there. Books […]
Review | First Meetings in Ender’s Universe
2013-10-22 · by ·
Editor’s Note: This is the fifteenth (!!!) in Stephen Olson’s series of posts on Orson Scott Card’s award winning Ender’s Game novels. You can find his other posts on the Ender’s Game series here. First Meetings was my first experience with Orson Scott Card’s shorter fiction. I happened upon while looking around at my local library. Having been interested in reading some […]
Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson is an exciting twist on superheroes…and supervillains [Review]
2013-10-19 · by ·
Steelheart, first in the Reckoners series, may have the broadest appeal of Brandon Sanderson’s growing variety of imaginary worlds. At a time when Marvel and DC turnout multiple blockbusters at the movie theater each year–think The Avengers, Iron Man, the Dark Knight, and Man of Steel–interest in superheroes is at an all time high and […]
Review | A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card
2013-10-16 · by ·
Editor’s Note: This is the fourteenth in Stephen Olson’s series of posts on Orson Scott Card’s award winning Ender’s Game novels. You can find his other posts on the Ender’s Game series here. After reading the heavy material in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, I’ve started to really enjoy the simpler material in Orson Scott Card‘s […]
Review | The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
2013-10-12 · by ·
How does one rate a book published thirty years ago, by an author considered among the greats of our day, and that commences one of the most read and popular series in recent times? The Color of Magic introduces us to Discworld, a series that has grown to include forty novels. Given that I didn’t […]
Prediction v. Prescription in Dystopian Science Fiction [Guest Post]
2013-10-09 · by ·
Authors of science fiction are often graded on the accuracy of their predictions. Gibson’s Neuromancer is praised for its prescience, and popular culture is littered with comparisons of contemporary regimes to the government of 1984. But is this the right measure of their success? Hardly. Descriptive accuracy is the province of journalism. Books like 1984 and Brave New World are great not […]
Review | Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
2013-10-08 · by ·
Editor’s Note: This is the thirteenth in Stephen Olson’s series of posts on Orson Scott Card’s award winning Ender’s Game novels. You can find his other posts on the Ender’s Game series here. After a long journey, the patient reader eventually gets to Children of the Mind, currently the last book chronologically in the Ender series. I first read it after […]
