by Jan Bear | May 26, 2014 | Reading
Time travel to the 14th century and a 21st-century flu outbreak test the resourcefulness of people in both locales in Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book. Kivrin is a young time traveler sent to explore 14th century England at the same time a fatal flu outbreak back...
by Jan Bear | May 26, 2014 | Reading
In Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, young members of a mathematical community (that looks a lot like a monastic community on earth) simply want to live out their bookish lives in the quiet, calm seclusion of the community. But when the once-a-decade Apert celebration...
by Jan Bear | Dec 31, 2003 | Reading
It’s probably the single most useful book I’ve ever bought on large-scale writing projects. Robert McKee’s Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting is written for screen-writers, but it deals with the higher structural...
by Jan Bear | Dec 19, 2003 | Reading
The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce. Culture. and Consciousness by Postrel. Virginia I. ( 2004 ) Paperback Virginia Postrel’s new book is part pop-culture, part economics and part a glance into the human psyche. She lays...
by Jan Bear | Nov 2, 2003 | Reading, Uncategorized
Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, has spurred thoughts about fascism and how it shows itself today, and perhaps tomorrow. The point of the trilogy is that the entire human tradition of good and evil has been turned upside down. God is evil; Satan is...