As I read The Lives of Tao, I started to get that sinking feeling that comes when you arrive at the party late. Most of the food and drink is gone, the entertainment is almost over, and people are starting to move on to the next thing…and you can tell it was a good time. […]
Archives for 2015
Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
2015-05-19 · by ·
For the longest time, I had no idea what to say about Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. Not only does it defy description, but the description it does get is pretty accurate …and yet, so wrong. Here, for example, from the last paragraph of the Amazon description: “Spanning decades, moving back and forth in […]
Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
2015-05-18 · by ·
There’s something weirdly cool about the story Jeff VanderMeer tells in Annihilation, and like a bad accident on the highway, it’s impossible to look away. Weighing in at just under two hundred pages, the first in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy reads like something between the Twilight Zone, Strange Tales, and Alien. It is the story of […]
Book Review: Ashley’s War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
2015-05-06 · by ·
At some point while reading Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield, I started to read faster, flipping pages, and almost skimming. It must have been shortly after I realized that Ashley–the title character, but by no means the only female soldier documented in Gayle Tzemach […]
Book Review: Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
2015-05-04 · by ·
Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps my expectations were to down to Earth. Or perhaps Everything Is Illuminated is just a bit overrated. Let the reader beware books that come packaged with literary aspirations and disguised by tricks and strange formatting. There may be something there, but it might just as well be literary fluff. […]
Book Review: 500 Ways to Write Harder by Chuck Wendig
2015-05-03 · by ·
Previous to 500 Ways To Write Harder I’d never read anything by Chuck Wendig, and I still may never. But if you’re looking to kick-start your writing habits, Wendig has the weirdest, most energetic, and, well, most kick butt ways of telling you to write…harder. Yes, harder. It’s a fun, foul-mouthed list of 500 thoughts, insights […]
2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
2015-04-22 · by ·
The Pulitzer Prize is a lot more about journalism than it is about literature, but there are a few categories that are applicable to Attack of the Books! Fiction, History, Biography or Autobiography, Poetry, and General Nonfiction. Here at Attack of the Books! we’ve actually read and reviewed the 2015 winner in the Fiction category–All the […]
2015 Hugo Nominee: The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale by Rajnar Vajra
2015-04-19 · by ·
Every time I let my subscription to Analog expire, like I did in the middle of last year, a story from the periodical gets nominated for an award and I end up kicking myself. Rajnar Vajra’s The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale is one such story. Nominated for the 2015 Hugo in the novelette […]
2015 Hugo Nominee: Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman
2015-04-17 · by ·
I don’t read a lot of military scifi, but if Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry is any indication of what I’m missing, I may start reading more. Nominated for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novella (a story with a word count between 17,500 words and 40,000 words), Big Boys Don’t Cry held me from […]
2015 Hugo Nominee: Flow by Arlan Andrews, Sr.
2015-04-12 · by ·
Arlan Andrews’ “Flow” was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella (a story with a word count between 17,500 words and 40,000 words). “Flow” was originally published in the November issue of Analog and has since been posted on Analog’s site (here). This review is part of my effort to read and evaluate the 2015 Hugo […]
