Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
A run down of all the cool stuff I’m reading right now.
Many years ago, at the dawn of the podcasting era, my friend Mur Laffery and I were podcasters. We were also writers, me mostly non-fiction, Mur fiction (well, actually, we both wrote non-fiction, but Mur wrote – and podcast – a lot more fiction than I did). She’s written a lot of fiction since then, and I’m … Read more
Dragons of Deceit sees legendary Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman return to their creation. This time, the story focuses on Destina, a young noble woman whose father died in the War of the Lance. Not one to let a little thing like death stop her, Destina seeks to travel back in time to prevent her … Read more
The latest book in the Revelation Space series finds humanity’s galactic civilization all but wiped out by the life-destroying (and alien) wolves.
I enjoyed the world building – and world destroying – in Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, in which alien gods walk the earth, an Empire struggles to survive against an ancient conspiracy, and the Kettral – elite, giant-bird riding warriors – try to stay alive through it all. This book picks up five … Read more
I first read “Manage Your Day-to-Day” after attending David Cameron’s presentation “Human at Work or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Better at My Job” at HighEdWeb 2014. The presentation had a big impact on me and inspired me to look at things like: Blocking out creative/project time on my calendar Knowing when my most … Read more
I first read Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber novels in college, after being introduced to them by my roommate. I’ve revisited them several times over the years. They revolve around the city of Amber, which is the archetypal city and the nexus of all Order in the universe. Everything else is shades of Chaos; any worlds you … Read more
The Rhythm of War is the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. It’s epic fantasy in the vein of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, and at 1,232 pages (57 hours, 26 minutes in audiobook form) it is a hefty tome. I’m planning on alternating between the print and audio versions … if I can … Read more
The follow-up to Patrick Rothfuss’ excellent novel The Name of the Wind is a hefty book, weighing in at just over 1,000 pages. I’m listening to the audio book, which clocks in at 42 hours and 55 minutes. It’s long enough that I spent most of the summer listening to it, typically on my morning walks around … Read more
The novel kicks off with an investigation into “False Memory Syndrome”, in which people suddenly find they have memories of another life. Confronted with these echoes of a parallel life, people become unhinged … or worse. I don’t want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say, things get weirder from there. Recursion … Read more