Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 is a compact history of the island nation, dense with incident and insight, yet also stylishly written. In an animated 177 pages (about 50,000 words), [...]

Jasper P. Duckworth is a critic in an alternate universe Chicago for Chicago Shoulders, a New City-like (or, if you will, Third Coast Review-like) publication — the Associate Media Critic, [...]

It turns out, in Andre Norton’s 1959 Secret of the Lost Race, that the secret about the survivors of the much earlier civilization is pretty eye-popping, biologically speaking.  But, because [...]

The Curious Odyssey of Rudolph Bloom by Chicago writer Richard Reeder is a curious book, and not just because it owes its inspiration to that famous and famously challenging James [...]

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Science Fiction — the generic, er, science fiction novel, written by John Silbersack and published in late 1981 by Jove Books — is [...]

Finally, Tom Cullen comes out and asks Lucy Nichols, “Why would a good-looking girl like you…?” If the 1987 novel Bandits were your run-of-the-mill crime novel, Lucy might be (a) [...]

First of all, a story: In April, 2010, I was in downtown Duluth on a freelance writing assignment, and, by 5 pm or so, I’d finished my interviews and was [...]

Hallie wants Larry Morgan to write a book about her parents Charity and Sid Lang.  After all, he’s a famous novelist, and, for 35 years, Larry and his wife Sally [...]