Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Big Idea: Steven Brust and Skyler White

  Disclosure: I liked The Incrementalists, the new novel by Steven Brust and Skyler White, enough to blurb it (specifically, the blurb says “Secret societies, immortality, murder mysteries and Las Vegas all in one book? Shut up and take my money.”); it also received a coveted starred review from Booklist, which said “Call it genius at work.” […]

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Why I Don’t Comment on Everything

As most of you know, I comment here not infrequently about social and political issues, and from time to time I even make stands on things, a good recent example of this being my convention harassment policy pledge. As a result, people will often send me (via e-mail and social media) updates on social/political things […]

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The Value of Negative Reviews

Over at Metafilter they’re talking about this New Yorker article, in which book critic Lee Siegel explains why he doesn’t want to write negative book reviews anymore (here’s the MF thread). I posted my thoughts on the matter there, but it’s worth posting them here too. Here’s what I said. — I was a professional […]

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The Big Idea: V.E. Schwab

In explaining the Big Idea behind her latest novel Vicious, V.E. Schwab notes that the elements (and even characters) that you think are important when you begin the novel are not always the elements that are important when you finish the novel — the writing of the novel itself reveals what’s interesting about the world […]

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Popular Science Kills Online Comments

Because they’ve discovered that trolls and jackasses in comment threads actively work against people taking science seriously. Per this earlier discussion of comments, I think Popular Science is probably doing the right thing. The site doesn’t benefit from hosting dis-and-misinformers, and such folks are becoming more persistent and possibly more organized. Best to punt them […]

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