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Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Phases of Gravity, Dan Simmons

Phases of Gravity - Dan Simmons

This slender, largely understated and unpretencious novel shows Simmons at his best; it's not bloated, doesn't have irrelevant lit. crit. essays stuffed into it and quietly grips despite mostly pretty low stakes.

 

You go to the moon; you walk on the moon; you come back. Now what? Richard Baedecker did it as part of the Apollo programme. Years later he's drifting, divorced, estranged from his son, unable to understand the personal significance of what only 12 people have ever done. Enter the Manic Pixie Dream Girl - except she does defy the cinematic trope in a couple of significant ways.