Periscope Depth

50 books: 2011

I didn’t think I made 50 books in 2011, but Goodreads tells me I pulled it off. Goodreads also makes it immensely easy to export my ratings into a .csv file, and that greatly simplified the year-end roundup. Best Nonfiction: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara Tuchman. The most detailed, accessible and enjoyable [...]

a perfect storm in a teacup but you must drink it down down down, drink it down down down

Reading A Dance with Dragons*. I am useless to you for at least a few more days. _________________ * Words I never thought I’d type. It still amazes me that I hold a copy of this book in my hands, that I didn’t have to chase a mad monk through a burning library while he [...]

my sentence begins indented

I started a Goodreads account to track the books I’m reading for 2011. Goodreads has so much of the functionality I need – tracking, tagging, reviewing, sharing – that it would be a waste of my effort to duplicate it by hand here. If you want to track my 50 Books for 2011 progress, sign [...]

50 books: 2010

I made it! Sorta. Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Nominees: House of Leaves; The Book of the New Sun; Singularity Sky; The Name of the Wind; A Princess of Mars; Across the Nightingale Floor; House of Leaves Winner: The Book of the New Sun Not even close. I have plenty of good things to say [...]

o pilot of the storm that leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream

0

I had visions; I was in them; I was looking into the mirror

Infinite Jest Short Version: you really ought to read it. Long Version: I’m having a hard time approaching Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s thousand-page paperweight. I put such a high premium on style that Wallace’s deliberate rejection of it tempts me to write the whole project off. And when you conflate voices in the way [...]

tell all of your friends what you've seen

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Amazing. Gobsmacking. Addictive. One hell of a novel. Many novels begin with some epigram, used to illuminate or foreshadow, before the opening chapter. Stieg Larsson’s posthumous debut novel begins with the following: Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man. No [...]

50 books: 2009

Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Nominees: To Say Nothing of the Dog, The Stress of Her Regard, Accelerando, Earth Abides, Perdido Street Station, The Dispossessed Winner: The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin’s strength has always been to illustrate the odd quirks of human society by depicting them through the eyes of aliens. In [...]

and they brought prosperity down at the armoury

The Dispossessed: One of those novels I wish I’d found sooner. Le Guin has a beautiful economy of language not often found in fantasy writers: making the terse but poetic choice, rather than bombarding a scene. The Dispossessed feels like an epic, though it comes out fairly slim. And like all good science-fiction, the story [...]

and he points to his survival, and he points me down the road

Perdido Street Station: Weird, original and engrossing; a blend of Cronenberg and Dickens. China Mieville builds a city full of fascinating characters and baroque institutions: the steampunk slum of New Crobuzon, where cactus-men jostle with insect-headed khepri and where the militia stalk the skies on tramlines, capturing criminals and sentencing them to Remaking. In this [...]

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  • Periscope Depth

    The website of John Perich, author of TOO CLOSE TO MISS and editor for Overthinking It. He's learning about writing, marketing, publishing and promotion, and he encourages you to learn along with him.

    perich@periscopedepth.com

  • TOO CLOSE TO MISS




    "... opens with a bang and never relents ..."
    "... from chapter one, I couldn't put the damn thing down ..."
    "... already looking forward to Perich's next book ..."

    Mara Cunningham knew that sleeping with a married man was a bad idea. But when her lover shows up in the hospital after his wife and son are murdered, the rumors about her turn dangerous. Now she's the prime suspect in a double homicide, and the real killers will stop at nothing to silence her ...

    Buy the book that readers are calling "a great, suspenseful thriller" at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.



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