Sean

I read the Hamartigenia mainly for theological reasons, and I was not impressed. However, I am glad I read it for the prestige it brings me when I go to the grocery store and tell the produce guy about it. He is so intimidated by the breadth of my reading that he has asked me not to return to his department, to buy my bananas elsewhere henceforth.

Actually, the essay which accompanies the poem in this volume is worth reading if one wants to know a lot about the intellectual and literary context of the poem, and the academese is not as thick as in some critical essays. If I were more interested in the poem itself, I would give this edition five stars, but since it was theologically irrelevant to me, I gave it only three.

I was a bit reluctant to read it, since the term “centering prayer” leaves a bit of a taste in my mouth, but I am very glad I opened this book. It is actually one of the better presentations of what the Good News is all about. I want to give a copy to all my friends, Christian or otherwise. Keating understands the mind-blowing bigness of God's mercy.

This is very much not my type of fantasy. I like my fantasy a bit higher, thank you. So if I judged it strictly by what I normally like, I would give it maybe two or three stars. But I really did enjoy reading this story, and I believe that if I were more into the sub-genre I would have found it to be a four-star effort, so that's what I'm giving it: four stars for what I think it deserves in its own context, not for what I like.

Beautiful. I recommend it for adults who love poetry and lovely pictures, and for their children, who will then grow up to love poetry and lovely pictures.

Does just what it should.

I enjoyed the story enough to keep reading. The difficulty levels of all these books by Ardit are carefully set; they do their job precisely.

Lo leí en español que no intiendo bien, pero a mí este libro es casi hipnótico, las palabras y los dibujos.

Very enjoyable. The ligne claire style of art is nice and easy to read, and the drawings are often quite delightful. The comparisons with Tintin are obvious, but Julius Chancer is in no way a knock-off of Tintin, as I have read in a few reviews, but simply another fine representative of the same genre.

An excellent little book for what I conceive its purpose to be. I would recommend it to typical church-going adults who need an overview of the Apostles' Creed and experience looking thing up in the Bible. The theological understand of my Celtic Catholic tradition means that I would have to provide some guidance if I were to offer it to one of my parishioners, but the format is quite helpful and pleasant to use, and it seems to be a good introduction to the subject. I would like other such books about the rest of my Church's liturgy. I may have to write them, using this book as my model. Good work!

This is the small dictionary I have used for years. It is convenient and almost adequate for my needs, unless it is some odd late Medieval Ecclesiastical word or something similar I am looking for, and in that case I have no right expecting to find the word outside a specialized lexicon.

I am shelving this as “historical fiction,” but Quicksilver oddly satisfies me in the same way an epic fantasy or science fiction book would. It took me out of myself and enchanted me.

I appreciate Stephenson's ability to put the reader into the word of long ago without making it feel strained and pretentious, either with archaisms or painful modernisms. The anachronistic touches did not feel out of place, but rather like a “dynamic equivalence” translation from one language into another.

A lot of fun. It made me laugh.
+

A good mystery, interesting and intriguing.

This book offers several short stories firmly based in old Irish myth and legend, with all the wonder and none of the gooey Celtic Twilight. Good stuff! But there's more! Each story is accompanied by a very short essay which provides the context that we modern non-Irish folk would not know Very well done.

The CCB is an easy-to-read translation that disappeared before my eyes. What I mean is this: with most Bible translations, I am frequently noticing their word choices and translation decisions, but with this, I didn't. Except for a very few spots, I was able to read it without being reminded that I was reading a translation at all. I appreciated that smoothness very much. It is also one the very few Bibles with commentary where I found the comments to be actually helpful and interesting. I recommend this for anybody who loves the Bible or who wants to see what it is all about.

Very funny, and surprisingly accurate depiction of a type. I know the guy and am acquainted with all three robots. Glad I don't have to live with any of them.

This book made me want to be a member of the VFD and a better person. It quite literally is one of the books that has formed me into the person I am–at least the good parts of who I am now.

I certainly understand why this book is praised highly and considered a classic. Sadly for me, I could not find any meaningful way to connect with it, so I abandoned it about half-way through.

Good overview of the history and current state (in the Roman Catholic Church) of the religious habit.

Lohfink's Is this all there is deserves much more of a review than I can or will give it now. I am kicking myself for not having taken notes while reading, but now I just get to read it a second time! I am looking forward to that. If you are concerned with death, life, eternity, eternal life, the integrity of the Christian theological vision in the modern thought climate, and the proper care we should give to our dead (that chapter was by far the most delightful), then I highly recommend this book.

I am enjoying Shaw's world-building and character development. The central conceit, of AI systems becoming sentient, is interesting and well-done.

Unwritten has ended, and I am sad. But also happy, because they did not drag it on. It ended as it should have ended, correctly, with no easy resolution and only a small hint of slight sentimentality.

For the most part, the stories here collected left me with a feeling of “sad” rather than “disturbed,” featuring, as they do, many lonely, lost, middle-aged gay men wandering the world in pursuit of what they never can or will have. The sadness was heightened by a strong tendency to “kill your gays,” but one can hardly hope for happy joy in a book with such a title. But one story was, in its perverse way, really quite beautiful to me, and another, “Touching Darkness” was the most disturbing thing I have ever read and was, on its own, worth the effort of reading the whole sometimes depressing collection.

I can't review this book meaningfully. Sometimes I am reminded that my literary tastes are not all that sophisticated. I enjoyed this collection of stories, some of them more than others, and am glad I read it, even though several times I scratched my head and wondered if I had actually missed something, or if there was maybe nothing to miss.

I am not normally interested in military science fiction, but Shaw's books are fascinating and even delightful. I appreciate his way of dealing with the emergence of artificial sentiences.

Although I think this story betrayed a few signs of hasty writing which have not been evident in the earlier books, it is nevertheless enjoyable and a meaningful part of the ongoing story.