Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Hit Refresh (it’s the F5 key)

Posted on May 15, 2024 by smellincoffee

When I first began using computers in the late 1990s, Microsoft was establishing itself as The Establishment — a successor to IBM, becoming the uncool behemoth. It wasn’t quite there yet, but it would be there soon. A few years … Continue reading →

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Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Posted on May 13, 2024 by smellincoffee

Major Pettigrew’s entire life is being unsettled. He’d just suddenly lost his brother, and after the funeral, the Major’s self-absorbed and materialistic son arrives and declares his intentions to move closer to the village — along with his new finance, … Continue reading →

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al Khamissi’s Taxi

Posted on May 7, 2024 by smellincoffee

Step into a Cairo taxi, circa mid-2000s, and listen to the rumblings of revolution. I can’t remember how this book appeared on my radar — only that it happened recently, and that I bought a used copy almost immediately — … Continue reading →

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Posted on May 6, 2024 by smellincoffee

A letter arrives; lives are changed. Harold Fry and his wife Maureen are retired and struggling: their relationship is dead, their beds in different rooms. Then Harold receives a letter that an old friend and coworker is dying of cancer. … Continue reading →

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The Store

Posted on May 3, 2024 by smellincoffee

At a last huzzah in New York, surrounded by former writers who the modern economy has made superfluous, Jacob and Megan announce to their friends that they are doing the unthinkable: they’re joining The Store. The Store dominates the American … Continue reading →

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The Music Shop

Posted on May 2, 2024 by smellincoffee

In a struggling neighborhood in 1988 London, owners and residents like to gather in Frank’s music shop to hear what he has for them. Frank has a gift of being able to hear the music anyone needs at any given … Continue reading →

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Double play: science-y baseball and Tokyo teenage touristing

Posted on May 1, 2024 by smellincoffee

Diary of a Tokyo Teen is a graphic memoir of a Japanese-American teenager’s visit to her relatives in Japan, after an absence of five years. They live in an area not far from Tokyo, and the memoir covers her visiting … Continue reading →

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Between stimulus and response, there is a space

Posted on May 1, 2024 by smellincoffee

Nearly twenty years ago I stumbled upon Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and the writings of the Stoics. I can’t tell you the exact story because too much time has passed: at the time I was not religious but had an inexplicable … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflection, Religion and Philosophy | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

To So Few

Posted on April 30, 2024 by smellincoffee

France has fallen, the British army barely got out of Europe running from Hitler’s panzers, and now Britain stands alone. Only her brave lads in the Hawker Hurricanes stand between Hitler and global domination! …well, the guys in the Spitfires, … Continue reading →

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The Fall of Roman Britain

Posted on April 27, 2024 by smellincoffee

When we speak of the fall of the Roman empire, we’re usually engaging in hyperbole: Rome’s decline in Europe was more of a slow decay and transformation. In Britain, though, first Rome was there and then it wasn’t — and … Continue reading →

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