Author: Tim Scheidler

Another productive week!

Bill: This week I read a solid but flawed YA fantasy, The Language of Spells, by Garret Weyr, as well as Hannu Rajaniemi’s more enjoyable but not riveting Summerland.  Keeping up with my “one old TBR book for every two new ones,” I’ve started Fred Cahppell’s A Shadow of All Light.  I also finished a disappointing collection of essays by Clinton Crockett Peters, Pandora’s Garden: Kudzu, Cockroaches, and Other Misfits of Ecology. 

As we roll on toward summer, we’re reading a whole new crop of books.

Bill: This week I decided I was going to try and read one old book off my long-ago TBR shelf for every one or two relatively new or unpublished ones I finish. So I read two excellent new non-fiction works: Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David and Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon (their sub-titles pretty much tell you what they are about),

Some great reads this week!

Bill: In fantasy/sci fi this week, along with some short fiction you’ll see reviewed Monday, I also read Raymond E. Feist’s King of Ashes, a solid if somewhat familiar start to a new series called THE FIREMANE SAGA. Outside the genre, I finished Catherine Nixey’s interesting if too-long condemnation of the Christian “triumph” over the pagans,The Darkening Age; David Sedaris’ newest collection of essays Calypso (a mixed bag but overall I’d recommend it);

Another week has passed, which means…

Bill: This week I read Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a debut YA novel that in many ways was overly-familiar in plotting and character, but that I’m still recommending due to its excellent presentation of theme and its relatively unique setting and background mythos, which are both African-based. I also finished Menno Schithuizen’s Darwin Comes to Town, an excellent examination of urban eco-systems and how cities are driving a fast-paced evolution of creatures and plants. 

More great books this week!

Bill: Much of this past week was spent finishing (finishing—yay!) final papers, now let the summer reading season commence!  I read and absolutely loved Circe, Madeline Miller’s retelling/reshaping of Greek myth while One Pagan’s Strange Survivors was a solid popular science book. Currently I’m reading Darwin Comes to Town by Menno Schilthuizen, a so far fascinating look at evolution centered on urban ecology.

Jana: This week I hosted a Very Important Guest (hi,

Even more books this week!

Jana: This week was pretty productive, reading-wise! I was swept away by Kat Howard‘s Roses and Rot, utterly charmed by Catherynne M. Valente‘s Space Opera, and glued to my chair during Sarah Beth Durst‘s third QUEENS OF RENTHIA novel, The Queen of Sorrow. (Reviews of Valente’s and Durst’s books are in the works.) I’ve begun reading Robyn Bennis‘

Another week, more books!

Bill: Like Kat I’m buried in final papers (only 70 more!). But also like Marion, as soon as  Foundryside showed up on my Kindle I blew off a night of work to read it.  She’s right—it doesn’t disappoint at all, as we’ll elaborate on in an upcoming joint review soon. My other act of self-indulgence was to exit my last class and immediately hit the theater ten minutes later to see the new Avengers movie with my family (And I did not pull my son from his last period in order to do so.