31 July 2008 – 8:37 am +0800
Wowio disappeared for a month or so, and I thought the company was going under. Instead, they were going global.
Wowio.com will now give free PDF books to anyone with an email address, anywhere in the world. And not just public-domain texts either. They get copyrighted works, and sometimes damn good ones1 — [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Tagged book, Free, free books, nero wolfe mystery, new books, PDF, pdf books, rex stout, richard mckenna, sand pebbles, steve mcqueen film, Wowio
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18 June 2007 – 10:59 am +0800
Book Seven is almost upon us, so a few random, spoiler-y speculations below the fold.
30 April 2007 – 7:34 pm +0800
Of interest mainly to myself (being that I’m unaccountably a bit of a nut for the baronet’s life and works): Sir Walter Scott: A Lecture at the Sorbonne by William Paton Ker.
Of interest to just about everybody (being that most everybody enjoys imbibing from time to time): The Practical Distiller: An Introduction To [...]
19 February 2007 – 11:03 am +0800
This was strongly recommended to me by Herself, and is at least the third book I’ve read at her instigation1.
It’s pretty shiny. I couldn’t figure out if Coben sometimes used vocabulary in peculiar ways purposely or through Dan Brown-itis, but apart from that and my seeing most of the twists coming a mile off [...]
10 December 2006 – 11:39 am +0800
Edward Cline’s Sparrowhawk series draws to a conclusion — the sixth and final volume in the series hit stores a few days ago.
I’ve only read the first installment, as it wasn’t easily attainable in China. But I’m looking forward to going through the entire series next year. Cline is, as I noted very [...]
20 November 2006 – 1:55 pm +0800
James P. Hogan has three books up in the Baen Free Library, including his excellent debut, Inherit the Stars.
13 November 2006 – 8:51 am +0800
Tom Clancy and I have had a rocky relationship over the years. I read, and totally loved, The Hunt for Red October in seventh grade. After which I got Red Storm Rising and Patriot Games as gifts. Storm did nothing for me. Games, OTOH, so insulted and angered me that I [...]
9 November 2006 – 8:57 am +0800
Oh my.
Oh my word.
Oh my stars and whiskers.
The dedication is cute. Not brilliant, but cute.
Below the dedication is a note, thanking the ghosts of Zora Neale Hurston; a name I don’t know; P.G. Wodehouse; and Fred “Tex” Avery. I don’t get the Hurston reference yet, nor (obviously) the name unknown to me. [...]
3 November 2006 – 6:16 pm +0800
This is a direct sequel to The Third Option and, while you can read it as a stand-alone, I recommend you read the other one first.
Okay, on with the show.
I was somewhat disappointed with this one. While it works overall, it feels like a rush job, and certain elements of the story are handled [...]
2 November 2006 – 5:21 pm +0800
Like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, a good read despite some wonky philosophy.
I’m not sure how this is kosher, since it was published in 1938 and, so far as I know, remains under copyright. But while it’s there, give it a look.
30 October 2006 – 8:12 pm +0800
[Editor's note: OK, here's a little actual content, culled from the trusty old notebook.]
If you read enough Dean Koontz1 you very quickly realize that one price he — or rather, his readers — pays for his profligacy (he frequently publishes two novels a year) is repetition.
From book to book, the same details and insights [...]
19 June 2006 – 2:32 pm +0800
This book has the markings of being a major turning point for Grisham. It shows an impatience with cartoonish thriller-writing (even while indulging in same to a small extent) in favor of grappling with issues and ideas important to Grisham, and attempting to etch characters with more depth than typical thriller inhabitants.
His very first [...]
26 May 2006 – 12:01 pm +0800
Clive Cussler is a bad writer.
Aggressively, enthusastically, spectacularly bad.
He contradicts himself, sometimes within the space of twenty pages. Character development is nonexistent. Plot elements and contrivances range from the extremely unlikely to the flat-out silly. He uses the wrong words, and repeatedly. Had he started writing fifty years earlier, he would’ve [...]
23 May 2006 – 11:23 am +0800
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper.
5 May 2006 – 10:56 am +0800
Prior to embarking on Season Five, the writing staff of 24 called in an outside consultant to brainstorm with them on the season’s story arc and possible reversals. They didn’t bring in Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler. The man they went to was Vince Flynn.
Flynn first hit in 1997 with Term Limits, whose [...]