Kristen Callihan is a hot name in NA, for her Game On series, which are football romances between the athlete heroes — all of whom are as astonishingly dedicated to academic/intellectual pursuits as to football — and heroines who are very outspoken about how little they are impressed with the formers’ football fame. The books tend toward insta-lust that becomes love *quite* quickly. I’m not bothered by insta-lust/love unilaterally, but if you read too many of that type of story in a row, the heat […]
A warm cozy blanket of a book
I resolved to read something I had not read before for This Old Thing, and Goodreads gave me a list of recommended books that are over 100 years old. I picked The Scarlet Pimpernel, because it is famous and important and written by a woman. It turns out that I do not have the reading fortitude I had in university, and I just couldn’t get into it. Despite having promised myself to not do re-reads for CBR10 Bingo, I felt like reading something warm and […]
Space Western
I do love some sci-fi, and I’m fully aware that Star Trek TOS owes as massive a debt to old western serials as sci fi owes to Star Trek. But man, I just can not get into westerns. At all. I watched The Searchers specifically because it’s the best western out there and thought “yeah I’m sure it is, and it took all of my focus to pay attention to it” after the credits rolled. So it’s not scalzi’s fault I didn’t love this, as […]
My favorite Scalzi so far
I hate to be that guy, but don’t judge this book by its cover. The art is lovely enough, so I mean no offense to the artist when I say that this, like so many sci-fi covers, looks like it’s gonna be capital S serious. Red alerts in deep space and stoic men and nary a woman in sight. If you’ve read any Scalzi, you know it won’t be, but if I were a new reader, this would not be a book I’d pick up immediately. […]