JON READING BOOKS

There are a number of things to like in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven . The structure of the book is scattered, but not overly ...

So much of cyberpunk attempts to ape Gibson's style without realizing what makes it so special. Blade Runner is set in a broken world of...

It was a white moon and covered with scars. Any damn fool could imagine a face there. As I made clear in my review for Will You Please Be Qu...

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. There's so much to like in this book. Hemingway's writing is genuine; his k...

Ove, our narrator, is a grouchy old man, overly obsessed with following the rules. He's curmudgeonly and close-minded. However, he repre...

There's a cardinal sin of fiction in which the writer (or in this case, writers) stop using their characters to work through questions a...

Ah, Murakami-san. I've quite liked some of your work , but the more surreal of your novels have always seemed to fall flat for me.   Ka...

What if I'm wrong? One of the most blessedly introspective questions in existence; intensely important to personal growth and paramount ...

Don Quixote is an odd book. Often considered the first modern novel, it reads more like a collection of short stories. While there are a ser...

The Drop  reads pacily and feels more like a novella than a full novel, despite its multiple viewpoints. Not a huge fan of Lehane's voic...

It's been a while since I last read a book that was so undone simply by its own popularity. Stoker relies so strongly on the air of myst...

More than a decade ago when I first read these books, Martin's A Clash of Kings  was among my least favorite of the lot. The first novel...

I was at a college house party once, more than a decade ago. I had just gotten an insignificant job writing about video games for an online ...

Lovecraft is undoubtedly a master of atmospheric writing. His strength is in setting scenes and crafting an appropriate mood with which to m...

Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on—that is, badly. As a traditional liberal I'm not above admit...

WARNING:  Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read  A Game of Thrones  yet! Some random morning, 2010: I wa...