Columns

Adult Coloring Books: The Great Mystery

November 20th, 2017

Adult coloring books simultaneously fill me with curiosity and snark. What is this strange, very ornate, black and white thing? What does one do with it? Are we really supposed to sit down and color in the pictures? Who does that? Based on the sales—millions and millions of people. Based on anecdotal evidence, definitely fewer than that. It is one thing to buy the thing; it is quite another to do the thing. But obviously, some do, and are very proud of themselves.

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The Birth of Jace Salome

November 20th, 2017

…[Jace]…looked at the cells. Fifty cells on the bottom tier, fifty cells on the top tier. Most nights handfuls of inmates watched the guards. Men and women who couldn’t sleep, who couldn’t stand a silence punctured by the awful dreams and night moans of others, who hated the near-constant whack of the electric locks, who worked themselves into a quiet storm over being locked up. But tonight, with all that had gone on, there was only one man staring out at her. The inmate she’d laughed at.

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'Discovery' vs. 'The Orville': Who Treks Better?

November 17th, 2017

It’s been a long time since Star Trek was on television—over a decade since the finale of Enterprise. The JJ Abrams trilogy was a fun distraction, but barely substantial enough to qualify as a footnote in the rich history of the franchise. While Star Trek has proven capable of producing great films, it has always performed best as a series. Imagine how embarrassingly fortunate the fans felt when we got not just one, but two new shows boldly attempting to carry on the Trek tradition.

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12 "Boring" Books That Are Way Better Than They Should Be

November 16th, 2017

“Boring” is almost always bad. Who wants a boring movie? A boring piece of art on the wall? But sometimes boring is alright. Better than alright. I live in Colorado, land of the craft beer. I've seen it all. Beers with every kind of fruit involved. Beers of all shades. Beers with stuff floating in them. Beers meant to embody seasons, holidays, and dead celebrities. Beers garnished with lemon, lime, or half an orange on the edge of a glass.

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A Modest Pro-POE-sal: Jonathan Swift and Doonesbury in the Age of Poe's Law

November 15th, 2017

Satire has long been part of the realm of the newspaper comic strip, and none do it better than Garry Trudeau and his long-running Doonesbury. Created during the height of ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture when Trudeau was in college, its approach to politics is decidedly liberal and unabashedly tongue-in-cheek. The only problem is these days the lines between the situations depicted in the comic strip and reality have started to blur.

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18 Football Books for Football Haters

November 15th, 2017

You go home for Thanksgiving. You stay in an uncomfortable room—maybe because it’s an unused guest room, maybe because it’s the living room, maybe because it’s your childhood room and you have to facepalm because that Heidi Klum poster is still on the ceiling. You eat some food, and inevitably, Dad or Uncle Bill or whoever sits down to watch about 418 hours of football.

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Why You Should Be More Like Andy Weir

November 14th, 2017

Author photo by Aubrie Pick You've heard of The Martian, right? Read the book, seen the movie? Well, the novel was written by Andy Weir, and you should be more like him. 

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What Do We Call “The Middle East”?

November 14th, 2017

I’d written a book about the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia and Egypt and the Levant and the Horn of Africa and pockets of modern Mesopotamia — and it needed a subtitle. Things like “Greater Middle East,” “Muslim Worlds,” “Arab worlds,” were all options. Vagueness juggled inaccuracy, and mostly not very well. I wrote Reza Aslan, mildly desperate. “Would love to hear your thoughts on names for this part of the world.”

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World Fantasy Con 2017: A Mixed Montage

November 13th, 2017

Last year was my first World Fantasy Convention, in Columbus, OH. This year it was in San Antonio, and it was a very different con, so instead of posting a delayed live blog again, I’m going to go with a montage. In no particular order, then, here’s some of the stand-out moments, at least to me, of World Fantasy 2017.

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7 Powerful & Painful Books That Will Make You A Better Person

November 10th, 2017

Not all reading is easy. Some of it is f-ing hard! If you're like me, on the loooooong list of books you plan to read someday are a handful of difficult titles. Anything about injustice fits into this category. Also like me, you might be waiting for your fellow readers / scholars to vet the titles for you, so you don't have to read too many. Because frankly, I'd rather get back to the safe havens of Alexander McCall Smith or Charlaine Harris. But hiding my head in the sands of safe fiction doesn't work for me forever. Eventually I have to face the world.

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