Books & Reading

"The depressing shallowness of much SF became apparent to me. The time of sheer wonderment at the infinite possibilities of technology was, in my view, over; the substantial theme that remained...consisted in examination of the impact of technological change on the human personality"
---John Brunner, 1972

Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien

Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.
-- Edward Abbey

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)


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Last Modified: May 5th, 1997

 

Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com