Category Archives: Books

Take a look, it’s in a book

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I grew up reading, and one of my favorite television shows was, naturally, about reading–I watched Reading Rainbow for at least fifteen of its twenty-six year run, and remember certain books with a definite fondness–The Day Jimmy’s Boa Constrictor Ate the Wash, and one I became reacquainted with this weekend: When I was Young in the Mountains.

So for all of us who grew up reading (and who then recognized LeVar Burton when we saw him on Star Trek), fear not. Our children will not be deprived of Reading Rainbow, as Burton has been working since the end of Reading Rainbow in 2006 to create an app. At midnight, June 20th, the Reading Rainbow app will be available for the iPad.

Why am I posting this here? Well, because to my mind, reading has been pretty integral to being a geek.

And then there’s the part where a Reading Rainbow app is just cool.

Win A Copy of ‘Time Traveled Tales’

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Good news: Authors like Janine Spendlove, Mike Stackpole, Aaron Allston, Tim Zahn, and Bryan Young teamed up to put together a nifty anthology of short stories centered around time travel!

Bad news: The anthology was limited to a 500 quantity run and was exclusive to the Origins Game Convention, so you can’t buy it.

Good news (for one lucky person): I went and bought an extra copy to give away!

How can you claim it? Simple! Follow our Twitter account and retweet this message. We’ll select a winner at random.

 

Science Fiction Legend Ray Bradbury Dies

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Ray Bradbury, author of influential works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man, passed away this morning at 91. Bradbury was a speculative fiction genius and visionary. Numerous short stories and books he created managed to find their way to television and the silver screen over the years.

In honor of his life and career, I’ll be heading home today to read a few passages from my favorite book he wrote, The Martian Chronicles.

A Memory of Light, the final volume of the Wheel of Time

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The US release

I know, this isn’t exactly what we do here normally, but I figure that as long as we’re a blog that puts you, the readers, in the know about geek culture and the biggest and best of novels and other media there is to experience, I simply have to point this out.

The final book of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light,  is dated for release on January 3rd, 2013.  The cover art has been released, pictured here.  The first section of the prologue is available to read at Dragonmount.  If you’re interested, you can find it here.

More after the jump.

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X-Wing Retrospective Part 1: Rogue Squadron

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 If you listen to podcast here at Tosche Station, (and if you do, great, if you don’t, why not?) you’ve heard that in honor of the coming latest addition to the fantastic X-Wing series, Mercy Kill, we’re presenting you a retrospective of the series.  It will provide a great opportunity for those of us who haven’t read the books in a very long time to refamiliarize ourselves with it.  That is actually my own situation—I love these books but somehow I haven’t read them for what must have been a solid decade.

I imagine that there are plenty of you out there that are regulars here at the site that have read my prior material and you’re worrying.  Why is the snarky, jaded guy reviewing the first part of this?  Is he going to rip it apart?  Will he ruin these books for me?

Yes.  I mean no.  Very no.  I love these books and I have an even  better perspective on them now.  And by now, I mean, after I’ve been looking at some of the most poorly written books in the entire saga. I know what bad Star Wars looks like.  This isn’t that.  Praise the Force!

So, without further adieu, X-Wing: Rogue Squadron.

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Why You Should Go Read Mageworlds Right Now

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Beka, aka Tarnekep Portree, wants you to read these books. Now.

Last night, after a marathon reading session, I finally finished By Honor Betray’d, aka the final novel in the Mageworlds trilogy. When I finished the last page, I broke into a grin. A few moments later, when I was able to form a coherent sentence, I thought, “Wow. This is what it feels like to be completely satisfied by the end of a series. I’d almost forgotten what that was like.” My second thought was “everyone needs to go read these books right now.”

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Timothy Zahn’s ‘The Icarus Hunt’ Now Available in Electronic Format

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We’re just going to keep talking about this book until we convince you all to buy it.

If you have ever been curious about an Expanded Universe author’s offerings outside of the realm of Star Wars, the first novel you absolutely must pick up is Timothy Zahn’s The Icarus Hunt, a science fiction noir and chase mashup that’s made its way onto my list of yearly re-reads. If you need a bit more convincing, check out the review I wrote a little while back for Roqoo Depot.

The Icarus Hunt is a fascinating book because it delivers a sense of grandeur but, at the same time, is a rather intimate story. Alien species, futuristic technology, starships and freighters, sprawling locations, and criminal factions. With this setup, it would be easy to delve into a tale about war between species ala Ender’s Game or some sort of galactic apocalypse ala any major multi-author Star Wars series since 1999. The framework was there to tell that sort of a novel. Zahn, to his credit, chose instead to dial back on the type of doomsday conflict that we see far too often in science fiction and tell a different kind of story.

If you have a measly $7 handy, you can get yourself a copy via Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Congratulations to Timothy Zahn as well, I know in talking with him on his Facebook page that he and his agent have been working for a long time to secure the rights to get this out in eBook format.