Non-fiction | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

The Secret Life of Wonder Woman: Weirder than I ever could have imagined

The Secret Life of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore has reissued The Secret Life of Wonder Woman, her fascinating non-fiction look at the creator of Wonder Woman, with a revised Afterword that includes information from some new sources. The book is part scholarly work, part Wonder Woman archive and part scandal sheet. Non-fiction is usually pretty slow going for me, but I couldn’t put this book down.

Wonder Woman first appeared in 1941, part of All-Star Comics, a subset of Detective Comics,

July 29th, 2015. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Comics, Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Goshawk: Love the hawk, hated the author

The Goshawk by T.H. White

When I found out that T.H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, had written The Goshawk, a book about training a hawk, I jumped at the chance to read it. I love stories about birds of prey (probably fostered by a childhood obsession with My Side of the Mountain) and have often fantasized about becoming an amateur falconer.

Based on The Goshawk,

The Next Species: Examining humanity’s past and potential future

The Next Species by Michael Tennesen

The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man, by Michael Tennesen, is an engaging, informative overview of the history of life on this planet and humanity’s impact on that life (mostly for ill), followed by a look into the future and what might happen were humanity to go extinct or diverge into a different species.

He begins with a trip to the rain forest in the Andes, cataloging the rich diversity of life in the relatively small area (“The tropical Andes contain about a sixth of the world’s plant life in less than 1 percent of its land area…

April 24th, 2015. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence by J. Richard Stevens

Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence by J. Richard Stevens

Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence, by J. Richard Stevens, is the second academic exploration of comics that I’ve read this week, and while Stevens’ text isn’t as strong as Liam Burke’s look at comic book films (you can see that review here), its sharper focus and thorough exploration of the Captain America character makes it a worthwhile addition to the field.

[note: apologies for what may be a lack of specificity in the review.

April 4th, 2015. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Comics, Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

How to Clone a Mammoth: Highly informative and readable

How to Clone a Mammoth by Beth Shapiro

Those very few times we have covered non-fiction titles here, they’ve all been pretty firmly and directly connected to our main focus, limited to reviews of biographies or critical of well-known fantasy/science fiction authors.

Today though, I’m going to wander a bit further afield with a review of Beth Shapiro’s How to Clone a Mammoth, a straight popular science book. Why? Three basic reasons:

Jurassic Park,

April 3rd, 2015. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

The Discarded Image: An accessible approach to medieval cosmology

The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C.S. Lewis

To me, this might be C.S. Lewis‘ best book. I will have to cop to not really liking the NARNIA books (too allegorical, and those British schoolchildren are pretty annoying), and while I do quite like his SPACE TRILOGY, I think that Lewis was much better as a writer of academic non-fiction than he was as a fiction writer. In The Discarded Image, Lewis is able to tackle a huge subject: medieval cosmology and worldview,

Tolkien and the Great War: An exploration of Tolkien’s early influences

Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth

Tolkien and the Great War is an obviously well-researched book that goes into explicit (at times I must admit tedious) detail on J.R.R. Tolkien’s involvement in World War I and its possible impact on his then-current and later writings. We begin by observing Tolkien’s earliest close friendships formed at St. Edward’s Grammar School under the auspices of the “TCBS” (an acronym for Tea Club, Barrovian Society) where the core group of Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson,

Dreamer of Dune: A faithful portrait of a sci-fi legend

Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert

In 2003 Tor released Dreamer of Dune, a biography of Frank Herbert (1920 – 1986) written by his son Brian Herbert, who has written a number of novels as well. The best known of these are the DUNE prequels and sequels written in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson. Dreamer of Dune is not the only book about Frank Herbert or his works but the others I am aware of are currently out of print.

What is a Superhero?: A nice introduction to superheroes

What is a Superhero? by Robin S. Rosenberg and Peter Coogan (editors)

What is a Superhero?, a collection of 25 essays edited by Robin S. Rosenberg and Peter Coogan, doesn’t aim to present “the” answer to this oft-asked question. Instead, it throws open to the door to an array of answers (some of which are directly contradictory) from people across a wide spectrum of fields: philosophers, psychologists, comic book creators, cultural critics, etc. If, as is almost always the case in any collection, the individual essays vary in quality of insight,

December 11th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations edited by Sam Weller

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, edited by Sam Weller, is actually several interviews, conducted over the last two years of Bradbury’s life, plus a handful of rough essays dictated by Bradbury to Weller, his long-time biographer. Despite this, the book is relatively slim, coming in at about 90 pages, with a lot of white space. This is not meant, though, to be an in-depth look at (or listen to) Bradbury;

Series: Non-fiction

The Secret Life of Wonder Woman: Weirder than I ever could have imagined

The Goshawk: Love the hawk, hated the author

The Next Species: Examining humanity’s past and potential future

Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence by J. Richard Stevens

How to Clone a Mammoth: Highly informative and readable

The Discarded Image: An accessible approach to medieval cosmology

Tolkien and the Great War: An exploration of Tolkien’s early influences

Dreamer of Dune: A faithful portrait of a sci-fi legend

What is a Superhero?: A nice introduction to superheroes

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

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