Author Archives: smellincoffee

Unknown's avatar

About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

Test your mettle: guess books from AI art!

Posted on June 4, 2024 by smellincoffee

Over at Bewitching Books, Ravenous Reads, I saw a fun bookish game in which ten images are generated by AI, using prompts inspired by books. It was originally inspired by the same game at Bowl Owl’s Corner. I fool around … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 20 Comments

Top Ten Books that Inspired a Strong Response

Posted on June 4, 2024 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is about books that provoked a strong reaction. I’m going to try to focus on books from the first ten years of the blog. First, though, Ye Olde Tuesday Tease. For [Antipater], the human being in action is … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 20 Comments

May Moviewatch

Posted on June 2, 2024 by smellincoffee

I’ve been dogsitting away from my PC, hence the delay in posting this… Sweet and Lowdown, 1999. Sean Penn plays a rival to Django Reinhardt.  Unfortunately, I liked All the King’s Men so much that Sean Pean is now indistinguishable … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 7 Comments

May 2024 In Review

Posted on May 31, 2024 by smellincoffee

May proved to be a charming and busy month for reading, and continued the strange trend of my reading more novels than nonfiction, possibly because grad school and a major work project. I did make some progress on the Science … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments

Star Trek: Burning Dreams

Posted on May 30, 2024 by smellincoffee

Decades ago, then-Commander Spock risked a court martial to bring his former captain, Christopher Pike, to Talos IV, in hopes that it would allow Pike to escape his body, so ruined by delta radiation. Now Spock is returning, called to … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Solarpunk stories: a novella and short stories

Posted on May 29, 2024 by smellincoffee

Recently I encountered the word ‘solarpunk’, and learned that it was a subgenre of science fiction that attacks the pessimism of cyberpunk by creating futures that are its opposite. In solarpunk settings, humanity has learned to grow with nature — … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, science fiction | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday: Books We Hyped but Haven’t Read

Posted on May 28, 2024 by smellincoffee

This week’s triple-T is books we were over the moon to buy, but….haven’t gotten around to reading. But first, teases! Volcanoes, then, can be sites of encounter and performance, where history is made. Sometimes their eruptions are so dramatic they … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Star Trek: Savage Trade

Posted on May 27, 2024 by smellincoffee

When Captain James Kirk ordered the Enterprise to find out what happened to the crew of a science outpost that had gone missing, doubtless he never expected to help George Washington with a political revolution, or fight at the side … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sassy galaxies & road-tripping the solar backwoods

Posted on May 24, 2024 by smellincoffee

This week has seen a little action on the Science Survey, as I read titles for the Local Astronomy and Cosmology & Astrophysics sections. First up, The Big Backyard is a short look at the outer reaches of our own … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Reviews, science | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Rosie Project

Posted on May 23, 2024 by smellincoffee

Imagine if Sheldon Cooper wrote a memoir about falling in love, and you’ll have something like The Rosie Project. Don Tillman is a genetics professor with a rigorously scientific approach to life, who has standardized even his meals to simplify … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 10 Comments