Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Top Ten Tuesday: Davy Jones’ Locker

Posted on August 29, 2023 by smellincoffee

Ahoy there, mateys! Today Top Ten Tuesday’s theme be “Water”, so we’ll be lookin’ at me favorite stories of the seven seas, both fiction and otherwise! Hope ye have your sea legs about ye! Oh, but first — a wee … Continue reading →

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Mythic Realms

Posted on August 25, 2023 by smellincoffee

“It’s our duty to search out anywhere the excellent that exists within culture, and to promote it — because the excellent is always going to be in the minority. Excellence is the particular, whereas crud is universal. We find only … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics and Literary, Reviews, Society and Culture | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Worst Hard Time

Posted on August 23, 2023 by smellincoffee

I first encountered the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the same history book, and images of houses covered by drifts of dust and those of men standing in line looking for relief or work are forever twinned in … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Four Winds

Posted on August 22, 2023 by smellincoffee

When the clerk at my local diner coughed at me to remind me that I was standing in front of her cash register, bill and money in hand, but ignoring her to finish the chapter I’d walked up reading, I … Continue reading →

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Woke Up This Morning

Posted on August 21, 2023 by smellincoffee

Ho! Waitaminute. This is a review of a book about The Sopranoes called Woke Up This Morning. It would be wrong to begin it without “Woke Up this Morning”. Alright, wiseguy, you watched the theme? Good. This thing of ours, … Continue reading →

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Warcross

Posted on August 20, 2023 by smellincoffee

Emika Chen is a young woman, desperately in debt because a past criminal record makes it impossible for her to obtain the kinds of work that she’s developed skills for. What’s she’s good at coding and hacking, and these days … Continue reading →

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

Day of Atonement

Posted on August 18, 2023 by smellincoffee

Over a decade ago, young Sebastião Fox was spirited away from Portugal, a freshly-minted orphan. His parents destroyed by the Inquisition, Sebastião came into the care of the now-aged Benjamin Weaver, London’s most accomplished thieftaker. After coming of age and … Continue reading →

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Night Witches

Posted on August 11, 2023 by smellincoffee

The German army has invaded deep into Mother Russia, and Stalingrad itself is a battlefield. Young Valentina desperately wants to use her flying skills to defend her city, joining her sister Tatiana in the skies, but her mother forbids her. … Continue reading →

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Of bones and marooned astronauts

Posted on August 10, 2023 by smellincoffee

Out of Orbit proved, despite the small scope of its subject, to be a most interesting and wide-ranging little history. When Columbia disintegrated in the skies above Texas and Louisiana in February 2003, it not only took with it seven … Continue reading →

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Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard Mir

Posted on August 8, 2023 by smellincoffee

When Jerry Linenger first boarded the Space Station Mir for a five-month stint working with Russia’s finest, the master alarm was blaring. It was a sign of things to come. The aging space station had been continually modified and jury-rigged … Continue reading →

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