Author Archives: Keith West

I’m Starting to Understand Why Barnes and Noble Is Hemorrhaging Money

So my wife and I and have been going back and forth on whether she should get me a tablet for Christmas. She got a Samsung a few months ago, and lately I’ve been playing Mah Jong on it. The reason for this is simple. I’m either too tired or there’s too much noise/distraction/interruption to try to read. (The concentration with simple games and reading is different; that’s all I can say.) I don’t want a tablet because I don’t want to read on a backlit screen. I do enough of that either at work or on my phone if I’m reading to kill a few minutes while I’m waiting in line or something. The game playing thing is usually a sign I need to get more rest and/or have less stress in my life.

I have a first generation Nook. What decided me on that rather than a Kindle is that B&N is only a few minutes from my house, so if there’s a problem (which has happened), I can get help from a person fairly quickly.

For quite a while I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Nook Glowlight. They’re light. The screen refreshes faster. They have a touchscreen. I can read in a dark room. And most importantly, the battery has a much, much longer life.

I’ve gotten to where I don’t read on my Nook much because it takes too long to scroll through things or change between the nookbook folder and the Documents folder which has all the things I’ve sideloaded. Yes, they are in separate folders on the original. But mainly, I don’t use it as much as I used to because the battery life is so short. I don’t like having to put it back on the charger so often. Like before I’ve finished reading. But, hey, waddaya expect? It’s first generation technology. Continue reading →

Rogues, Scoundrels, Grifters, and Unreliable Narrators

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Academic Exercises
K. J. Parker
Subterranean Press
signed limited hardcover (sold out)
ebook $6.99 Kindle Nook Kobo

Academic Exercises is K. J. Parker’s first collection of short fiction, and I absolutely loved it. Many of the stories involve a school of magic, although its practitioners call it philosophy, called the Studium. This where the title of the book comes from. Parker understands academic infighting and all that goes with, although I found that aspect of the book a little tame it.

One institution I was at for a couple of years (many years ago, not where I am now) had an instructor who was running for Congress get arrested in the parking lot of IHOP while waving a machete and screaming about the right to bear arms; one department head murdered in his home by his same sex lover; and one adjunct prof pick up a woman hitchhiker, take her back to his place to do a few lines of coke and instead lock her in his closet for a couple of weeks as his love slave. (She managed to escape; he jumped bail and was caught about a year later after a shoot-out in Oklahoma.) And that was just in a two year period. Like I said, Parker’s academia is tame compared to that. Continue reading →

The Raksura Return

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Stories of the Raksura, Volume 1
Martha Wells
Night Shade Books
trade paper, $15.99
ebook Kindle $9.99 Nook $7.49

Have you ever had one of those books that took you forever to read? Not because the book isn’t interesting, but every single time you try to read it, you can’t get more than a few pages further along before something interrupts you.

That was my experience with this book. It seemed the Fates were conspiring to thwart me every time I picked the book up. But I persevered.

And I can say it was nice to revisit this world. I would also like to thank Lauren Burstein of Night Shade Books for the review copy. There are two novellas and two short stories here plus a couple of appendices. Here’s what you get. Continue reading →

RIP Judy Crider

Happy Thanksgiving

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I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. May it be full of fun, food, family, and joy.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more aware of the role of gratitude in my life, and particularly my need for it. When I focus on what I have and on God’s blessings, I find it easier to have a balanced outlook. When I look at things through a lens of thankfulness, I have a better perspective on the small irritations and disappointments.

Some of the things I’m thankful for:

My family.

Employment.

The readers of this blog and the friendships I’ve made through it.

That I live in the greatest country in the history of the world.

The freedoms that come with living in the US.

Laughter.

For those who aren’t old enough to remember, here’s the clip of the classic episode of WKRP in Cincinnati the above image is from:

An Open Letter to the AAS

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So with the holidays coming up, my reading list – We interrupt this blog post for the following public service message:

Earlier this month, the Rosetta mission made history by landing a probe on a comet. This is slightly more difficult than playing a video game, in case you were wondering.

Dr. Matt Taylor was the ~~spokesperson~~ spokesman for the ESA, the organization which accomplished this feat. He wore a shirt which caused some people to get knots in their knickers. I discussed this at the end of my review of Interstellar. I’d hoped we’d heard the last of this because the stupid, it burns.

Then the AAS (American Astronomical Society) issued a statement. Let’s look at it in detail, shall we? Continue reading →

Dark Screams is Something to Scream About

Hot Lead, Cold Iron: The Best of Two Genres

Robert E. Howard’s Swords of the North Available for Preorder

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation announced last week that their next book, Swords of the North, is available for preorder. I’ve ordered my copy. Is that not a great cover? The book ships in December, so it would make an excellent Christmas gift for the REH fan in your life, even if that fan is yourself. Maybe especially if that fan is yourself.

Here’s what the announcement, lifted from the REH Foundation page:

There is a clear self-consistency among all of Howard’s tales which will readily demonstrate that underlying it all is a coherent vision of a fictional history of the world and mankind, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s term a “secondary” world, internally consistent, full of strangeness and wonder, “free from the domination of observed fact,” yet quite credible, a world rooted in the familiar if populated with the unfamiliar, a world that combines the ordinary with the extraordinary. Just as Tolkien’s “Arda” is our Earth, so too is Howard’s world.

-from Rusty Burke’s introduction

The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Swords of the North, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Celtic/Viking adventure stories. The book checks in at 540 pages, and will be printed in hardback with dust jacket, in a limited first-print quantity of 200 copies, each individually numbered. Cover art by Aaron Miller and introduction by Rusty Burke. This volume marks the first publication of the fragment that begins with, “Between berserk battle rages,” which features Cormac Mac Art’s partner, Wulfhere Skull-splitter. It also collects for the first time in one volume all of the James Allison stories and fragments, both incomplete drafts of “The Temple of Abomination,” and other rarities. The book is expected to ship in December 2014. Pre-order yours today.

Prices

Swords of the North is $45 for REHF Members, $50 for non-members (all prices in US dollars) plus shipping. (How to become a member? Look here.)

Shipping prices and additional details (such as the contents) can be found at the REH Foundation website.

I Look at The Spawn of Cthulhu