Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
I don’t often get to say that I’m reading a book written by a friend but that’s the case with Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes. I know Mur from back at the dawn of podcasting, when she podcast Geek Fu Action Grip and I did Nuketown Radio Active. We later wrote columns for Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine. I haven’t seen Mur in … Read more
I read a tremendous amount of Stephen King as a kid and teenager, but I stopped keeping up with him when he finished the Dark Tower series. I do occasionally venture back to that old well, the most recent time being 2013 when I read Doctor Sleep, the follow-up to his classic ghost story novel … Read more
The Fuller Memorandum continues the ongoing saga of Bob Howard, IT professional, British civil servant … and defender of Earth against arcane invasions. In the third entry in The Laundry Files, Bob’s boss has gone missing … and that probably doesn’t bode well for the planet. I haven’t gotten very far in the book, but so far … Read more
I’m finally reading Jim Butcher’s urban fantasy novel Storm Front, Book 1 of the The Dresden Files series. My friends have been raving about it for years, but urban fantasy isn’t one of the genres I typically read. I decided to branch out, and Butcher’s book seemed a good place to start.
A Night Without Stars is the latest novel in Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth series of space opera / science fantasy novels. You’ll be excused if that’s not readily apparent, as the novel is far removed in both time and space from the Commonwealth as depicted in the series’ inaugural novel, Pandora’s Star. The book picks up where its immediate … Read more
Acceptance is the third and final novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy is reminiscent of a novelized version of the TV show LOST, complete with a strange land called “Area X” that’s fallen out of time and a covert agency that’s been setup to study it. Unlike LOST, all of the people who venture into the “anomaly” are volunteers; … Read more
Meet Hank. He’s a Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever puppy that my family and I will be raising for the next year as part of the Seeing Eye’s Puppy Raising Program. Like Olaf, the German Shepherd puppy we raised, we’ll be teaching Hank basic obedience while socializing him to the larger world. As part of that process … Read more
I’ve compiled my summer reading list for 2016. As is normal for me, it’s dominated by space opera and military science fiction, but peppered with some steampunk and superhero fiction. It weighs in at 14 books and 6 graphic novels. That’s one fewer than last year, but that gives me gives me some wiggle room to … Read more
Olaf, the German Shepherd puppy that my family and I spent the last year raising for the Seeing Eye, has gone off to college. He’s being assigned a trainer, and with any luck we’ll be getting status updates about him soon. During his time with us, we taught Olaf basic obedience and socialization. Now that … Read more