Category Archives: Reviews

Crimson Shadow

Posted on December 24, 2017 by smellincoffee

Star Trek the Fall: Crimson Shadow © 2013 Una McCormack 352 pages After ten years of reconstruction, the Federation is preparing to leave Cardassia. Not all the locals gathering outside are there to wish its engineers and social workers a … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Factory Girls

Posted on December 20, 2017 by smellincoffee

Factory Girls : From Village to City in a Changing China© Leslie Chang420 pages China as a whole may have a third more men than women because of the one-child rule and a preference for male children, but in Dongguan … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Revelations and Dust

Posted on December 18, 2017 by smellincoffee

Star Trek the Fall:  Revelation and Dust 401 pages © 2013 David R. George III David R. George takes a bullet for the team in The Fall: Revelation and Dust. First in a five-part series with five participating authors, Revelation … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Country Driving

Posted on December 12, 2017 by smellincoffee

Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory© 2010 Peter Hessler448 pages First things first: that statue on the cover intrigued me enough that I bought both books that used photographs of it.  Emperor Far Away made nary … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Favorite Covers from 2017

Posted on December 10, 2017 by smellincoffee

Although we’re not supposed to judge books by their cover, it still happens. A good cover can draw the shopper’s eye, and impart some feeling of what the book has inside.  Perhaps it’s an atmospheric murder mystery, a  grimly functional war … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

Empires of Light

Posted on December 9, 2017 by smellincoffee

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World © 2004 Jill Jonnes464 pages Empires of Light is less a history of how the United States became electrified and more a biography of three electrical titans – … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Down and Out in Paris and London

Posted on December 7, 2017 by smellincoffee

Down and Out in Paris and London© 1933 George Orwell224 pages “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Welcome to the Orthodox Church

Posted on December 3, 2017 by smellincoffee

Welcome to the Orthodox Church © 2015 Fredrica Mathews-Green  384 pages What it means to be liturgical can’t be encapsulated in a creed; liturgy has to be practiced,  experienced.  In Welcome to Orthodoxy,  FMG creates a fictional Orthodox parish and … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Emperor Far Away

Posted on November 30, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China© 2014 David Eimer336 pages The Emperor Far Away takes readers on a journey along China’s outer rim, beginning in the western steppes where the ‘Chinese’ are a minority,  and following … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Are We There Yet?

Posted on November 25, 2017 by smellincoffee

(I am officially curious about that statue/statues…) This year my study series has been the Discovery of Asia, with a stated goal of reading two books in Asian (primarily Indian and Chinese) history per month.   Other challenges and themes have cut … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 6 Comments