books

ReV is out!

It’s true! For real, this time! You can buy it here! (You can buy it lots of places: Amazon, B&N, Powell’s, Waterstones, Book Depository, Chapters Indigo, Bakka-Phoenix, and elseswhere!)People have been telling me all day that they’ve received Fed-Ex notices and Kindle alerts, so this is really happening! For real! To those of you who

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All Hallow’s Read recs

Last year, Neil Gaiman & Co decided that for the Halloween season, people should give out spooky books in addition to (or in lieu of) candy. They called it All Hallow’s Read. However, I was far too absorbed in my own problems last October to notice this development, much less contribute recommendations. I’d likely have

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"Rebecca" (1940)

Rebecca isn’t Hitchcock’s best film. Not by a long shot. But everything that made him a good director is visible here: the way he frames each shot, his fascination with the transformation of a girl into a woman, his willingness to trust in the strength of the original source material. (I only wish he could

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"While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion."

A while ago, I Tweeted this message in reply to Adam Rakunas: “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion.” The initial conversation was about contemporary science fiction fandom, readership, and our influences as writers. During my teenage years, when I was “supposed” to be reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion. Adam pronounced this

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Summer reading list

This afternoon after picking up my students’ exams (and spending far too much time wandering gourmet food shops in search of the perfect bar of Earl Grey-infused dark chocolate, and then even more time trying on dresses in shops whose soundscapes were punctuated alternately by concrete drilling, poetry slams, and un-medicated raving), I decided to send

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the rules of fitness

I’ve been thinking about natural selection a lot, lately (and not just because I picked up Natalie Angier’s The Canon the other day). Turns out Bruce Cohen explains Darwin’s concept of “fitness” pretty well: Survival or mortality selection – Organisms that survive at least to the end of their reproductive phase are fitter than those

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