I received a review copy of this book from Helvetiq via Edelweiss for which my thanks. Children’s picture books can often be a surprising (and rich) source of new facts and information for both their intended readership and adults, and The Big Book of Pi: The Famous Number You Can Never Know (2025) by Jean…
Book Review: Thorns (2023) by L.H. Kahn
I was kindly sent a review copy of this book by the author Laura Kahn via Booktasters for which my thanks. Dealing with issues of the havoc humans inevitably wreak wherever they go, as also love and acceptance, difference and discrimination, and institutionalised unfairness, Thorns: When Earth Refugees are Aliens (2023) by Laura Kahn is…
Book Review: Mystery in the Metaverse (2023) by Nick Airus
I received a review copy of this book from the author via Booktasters for which my thanks. Set in the not-too-distant future, Nick Airus’ Mystery in the Metaverse (2023) unfolds in a world where like the present, the real and virtual exist parallelly, except that the virtual by this point is far more developed with…
Book Review: The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin #LoveHain
A work of science fiction, which, like most such others, uses the device of alternative times, worlds and settings essentially to critique human failings, the state of society, The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula Le Guin, part of her Hainish cycle, brings to us the story of three societies (two of these more closely than the…
Book Review: Invisible Footprints in Time? (2020) by Irwin Wislesky
My thanks to the author for a review copy of this book via Booktasters. Invisible Footprints in Time? (2020) is a piece of science fiction but with a difference, for it is also about history, humanity, and human (spiritual) connection—what is truly important to preserve humanity in its essence. The story opens some 50-odd years…
Guest Post: Book Review: Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro
Many years ago, I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and was fascinated by his deep examination of scientific advancement, intimate relationships, and what it means to be human. So I was particularly excited to pick up his latest novel Klara and the Sun: his first since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature…
Book Review: Hedy Lamarr by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara and illustrated by Maggie Cole
My thanks to Francis Lincoln Books for a review copy of this book via Edelweiss! Hedy Lamarr is another entry in the Little People, Big Dreams series, and one I was keen to read for two reasons; one because I have been seeing reviews of different books in the series and find them a great…
Book Review: The Belfore Void by Joey Rogers
My thanks to the author Joey Rogers and Booktasters for a review copy of the book. The Belfore Void is a sci-fi story with an element of mystery. Out story opens thirty years in the past in Belfore University where PhD students Jenny and Daniel are setting up for a televised experiment for a battery…
Book Review: Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel
This book is more the story of Galileo than his daughter, but anchored for the most part around the correspondence between the two, or rather what has survived of it which is only her letters to him but not his to her (These I think were destroyed by her order because of the controversy surrounding…
Of Dinos and Men: The Lost World and the Lost World
This is from my reading journal of a few years ago when I found myself with Michael Crichton’s The Lost World as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World on my TBR―both of course adventure tales and both involving dinosaurs. I decided to read them together just to see whether the similarities ran…
Literary Potpourri 