books

Chris Knight's avatar

Hey gang!  So a few weeks ago I started a new job.  I’m still doing artificial intelligence training a little bit but that needed some serious supplementing.  Lo and behold I wound up in a position that really plays to my strengths as a journalist and as someone who appreciates precision.  I’m really loving it!

When the first paycheck arrived I celebrated by doing something that I’ve wanted ever since it came out a few months ago: I bought a copy of WillieBoy Eats the World.  It’s written by Steve Schirripa.  Yup, that Steve Schirripa: the brilliant and much-beloved actor from The Sopranos and Blue Bloods.  He’s well know for those roles but in the past number of years Schirripa has become famous again for his dachshund WillieBoy, with whom he often shares photos and videos on social media.

Well, y’all know me: I’m a sucker for anything ...

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The Hollywood Reporter has posted a new and thorough interview with George R.R. Martin, that will be of immense interest to his many fans.  Perhaps even the ones who have practically given up on ever seeing the release of The Winds of Winter, the next-to-last chapter of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga.

As those of you who have been fans of the franchise in its various incarnations from the original books to HBO’s Game of Thrones and follow-up series know, it has been fifteen YEARS since 2011’s A Dance with Dragons, the previous installment of the novel cycle.  Apparently The Winds of Winter was supposed to be out within a year or two, three at the most, following Dance.  That obviously did not happen.  And the wait became longer.  And longer.  And loooonger…

And now?  I’m with the other GRRMblers: I’ve pretty much ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Hey gang!  Got something special for ya…

A very dear friend of mine, Laz A. Mataz, has been working on his first novel for awhile.  Dimensions of Essence is a science-fiction story about what happens when a mysterious disc of otherworldly origins suddenly appears in a field in Ohio.  I was honored to be one of the first to read Mataz’s book and I was thoroughly entertained and also made to think a bit deeper about some things.  Dimensions of Essence strikes me as being part Tom Clancy, part Philip José Farmer, and a dash of Christianity.  And it works quite well.

Well, today is the big day!  As of a short while ago this morning Dimensions of Essence has debuted on Amazon for purchase to read on Kindle and its associated apps.  Click here to purchase it for $5.99.

Congrats Laz!  And I’m really looking ...

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Of all things 1984-ish, this story about Nineteen Eighty-Four itself might be the most 1984 in the history of anything.

Image from the motion picture Nineteen Eighty-Four

Out of all the books that have ever been published, George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (I prefer to spell it out like that when referring to the book or movie instead of shortening it to its numerical equivalent) is the one screaming most against attaching an advisory before reading.  It doesn’t need anything so ridiculous.  Nineteen Eighty-Four speaks for itself, from the first sentence on through the final four words.
I wonder if people like Dolen Perkins-Valdez have ever bothered to try to understand what Orwell was conveying, what his underlying message was, when he first wrote his classic novel about totalitarianism and absolute control of the human spirit.  Perkins-Valdez is the one who has composed a new foreward to Nineteen Eighty-Four
...
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Chris Knight's avatar

This post is going to honk a lot of people off, probably.  Whether it cuts one way or another.  I know and accept that.

First of all, the older I’ve gotten the more I have come to understand something.  Mainly, that the republican form of government that the Founders gave us in the Constitution of the United States is ideal only for a people who believe in something higher than man.  Whether you call that something God, or Yahweh, or the Universe, or whatever, the Constitution is best suited for those who hold themselves accountable to that greater entity.  I believe that the past several decades have proven that in the hands of they who believe that man is the be-all/end-all of law and life, that weak attempt at imitating democratically-elected republican government has led to disaster on multiple fronts.

So yes: I do believe that the American government is ...

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Big League Politics posted a story yesterday about a children’s book titled – and I am not making this up – What’s An Abortion, Anyway?

Does anyone else catch the irony about this?

A book for children.

About abortion.

As if our kids aren’t having enough of their childhood taken away from them already.  Now comes this.

(And I can’t even find a literary agent for the book I wrote about a little girl and her doggie…)

I remember the first time I learned what an abortion is.  I was nine years old.  I asked one of my parents “what’s an abortion?” after seeing it mentioned on the six o’clock news.  I will never forget the answer, it chilled me to the bone so coldly: “It’s when a mother kills her child before it’s born.”

Why?  Why would a mother do that?

Almost forty years later, I still can’t understand.  ...

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Tom Clancy was one of the first authors who I would eagerly await the next novel from.  I was a high school sophomore when the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October came out and I read the novel soon afterward.  I spent the next several months and into the summer devouring everything Clancy that I could find.  The night before Hurricane Katrina hit, I curled up with my newly-bought copy of Executive Orders and by the time the storm’s outer bands were hitting I couldn’t have cared less: Clancy had engrossed me again.

Tom Clancy was a pure American… I’m not going to just say “writer” but also, just leave it at “pure American”.  What do I mean by that?  This is a guy who had dreamed as a kid of being a pilot in the United States Navy.  What kept him from having that dream was an ...

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This past Friday evening saw musical parody genius, pop culture icon and now bestselling author “Weird Al” Yankovic come to Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, North Carolina as part of his seven-city book-signing tour promoting his just-released children’s tome My New Teacher and Me!…

"Weird Al" Yankovic, Al Yankovic, My New Teacher and Me!, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, North Carolina, signing

My New Teacher and Me! is the follow-up to Weird Al’s acclaimed 2011 children’s book When I Grow Up (available as a standard book and as a newfangled iOS app for your iPad!).

I arrived at the store about three hours before the signing (incidentally, Quail Ridge Books is a really nice independent bookstore: I’m gonna make it a habit of swinging by there any time I’m in the Raleigh area) and bought a few copies to get signed.  I wound up reading My New Teacher and Me! in the interim and found it to be a delightful and well-crafted (and funny...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Last spring I added a new vice to my list of stuff worth spending valuable time on. I haven’t spoken about it on this blog yet but those who know me best will tell you that I have become a huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire (AKA Game of Thrones), the fantasy novel series by George R.R. Martin. Kristen gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for my birthday last year and I used it to buy A Game of Thrones. When June rolled around I wound up taking A Feast for Crows along on our trip to Oregon. And just before Christmas I finished the most recent book, A Dance with Dragons.

I am digging the heck out of this series! My three absolutely favorite characters are Jon Snow, Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister. Especially Tyrion: it’s impossible to get enough ...

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We deserve better.  We should have demanded better.  We should have had higher expectations from those who asked to be entrusted with crafting laws, with the public treasury, with judicial integrity, with command of the military.

Let’s stop the bullcrap and be honest.  I mean, SERIOUSLY honest.  With an election looming in the next few days here in the United States, we have been incrementally conned and conditioned to have practically nobody to cast a vote for other than smooth-talkers and snake-oil salesmen.  Incumbents and challengers ready willing and able to sell their soul for a little scrap of power… and fools that we are, we seem only too willing to give it to them.  Sometimes I wonder if most of us like being treated with such contempt by those who allege to serve we the people.

In short: we have a surplus of politicians and too damned few statesmen...

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