Category: Books

  • Review: Getting Started with Adafruit FLORA: Making Wearables with an Arduino-Compatible Electronics Platform

    Getting Started with Adafruit FLORA: Making Wearables with an Arduino-Compatible Electronics Platform by Becky Stern My rating: 5 of 5 stars First of all, lots of kudos for the authors including lots of photos. Many of the other microcontroller books I’ve read from MAKE have had illustrations, but this one actually has photos and that’s…

  • Review: Getting Started with Arduino

    Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi My rating: 5 of 5 stars Massimo and his co-writer do an excellent job creating an introduction to the Arduino board. I started mucking around with the boards before reading this book because I’d done some projects with Atmel chips in undergrad (a couple decades ago) and I…

  • Review: Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes

    Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes by Sohui Kim My rating: 4 of 5 stars Beautiful photos and well-written recipes fill this book. I’ve added lots of them to my to-cook list. My only disappointment is that the BBQ section is more about grilling indoors than true BBQ. View all my reviews

  • Review: Love, Fishie

    Love, Fishie by Maddy Gaiman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Since Maddy Gaiman wrote this when she was 8 and I have a nearly-8 year old who loves to read and write, I figured it’d be a fun book to read together. She enjoyed it even though poetry isn’t her thing. I thought it…

  • Review: Double Life (Razia, #1)

    Double Life by S. Usher Evans My rating: 3 of 5 stars I met Ms. Usher Evans at Baltimore Comic-Con a year or two ago and she is a very prolific author. If any particular book of yours isn’t your cup of tea, you can try another – she has magical school YA, fantasy, and…

  • Review: Geekomancy (Ree Reyes, #1)

    Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood My rating: 3 of 5 stars To me, this book is Buffy meets Ready Player One done well. As I discussed in my RPO review, it was just way too overhyped for me vs what it delivered. This one, on the other hand, seemed to come from a more genuine…

  • Review: The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Steampunk

    The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Steampunk by J. Blackmore My rating: 4 of 5 stars As I’ve said many times before – I’ve been exploring more genres recently instead of locking myself into just one. I don’t remember how this ended up in my To-Read list back in 2014, but it’s definitely different than my…

  • Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 126

    Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 126 by Neil Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Two Ways of Living” – A world in which humans can essentially hibernate by eating a ton of calories and then a chemical cocktail to go unconcious. Additionally, the person does not age. The short story essentially serves as a meditation on…

  • Review: Drive (The Expanse, #0.2)

    Drive by James S.A. Corey My rating: 4 of 5 stars Prequels can be a tough thing to get right. The reader/audience already knows where things are going. Can you have any real tension? Well, if you’re JSAC, you know a great way to do it – by having it involve none of the characters…

  • Review: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

    Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I think the best way to describe this book is to reference the last chapter and Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s catchphrase on his podcast – the Cosmic Perspective. Even though I already knew a bunch of the info in the…

  • Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 125

    Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 125 by Neil Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Assassins” – At it’s most basic level, this is a story about people forming emotional attachments with virtual characters. What I think makes this short story so compelling is that this is already the case with much less fidelity than a Star…

  • Review: A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games

    A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games by Dylan Holmes My rating: 4 of 5 stars It was nice to take a break from fiction to read this analysis of the evolution of video game narratives through time. Chronologically, the game goes from text adventure games through point and click adventure…

  • Review: One Night in Sixes

    One Night in Sixes by Arianne “Tex” Thompson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I added this book to my To Read list back in 2014 after hearing Ms. Thompson interviewed on Sword and Laser. I had a slightly different impression of what the plot would be – I think the interview focused on the…

  • Review: Terris: Wrought of Copper

    Terris: Wrought of Copper by Alex Flagg My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you are really into The Cosmere you tend to REALLY be into the Cosmere (just take a stroll through r/Cosmere on Reddit). So it would be a shame to miss out on all this background information about the Terrismen in this…

  • Review: Promise of Blood (Powder Mage, #1)

    Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan My rating: 4 of 5 stars As I work through my To-read list, we come to another book I added around 2014. This one was after Mr. McClellan had been interviewed by Sword and Laser (and 4 years before I’d ever heard of Brandon Sanderson). His idea of powder…