Jack Cade's profile

ADD addled author's crackpot book, November 27, 2009

I think this book should be subtitled, "how many quotations from widely disparate souces can I put in my book - and where's my ritalin."

The author's style is a hyperactive, thrusting maniacal prose that made me jittery just from reading a few pages. She jams quote after quote after quote after quote in small easily digestible paragraphs of minor content. Hey, i'm quiting Seneca, then Madonna, then Oprah, then Abe Lincoln...isn't concentrating fun?? There is nothing really new here that you haven't heard better in a dozen other places. It's more of a consolidation of common wisdom, but dispensed by a crack-addict. I truly fear for this woman's sanity...

don't be fooled, August 22, 2009

Another ho-hum entry into the non-Howard Conan genre. Unlike John Maddox Roberts or Robert Jordan, two of the better Conan writers, Hocking writes a very middle of the road fantasy novel that just happens to have Conan in it. He makes the mistake of spending way too much time with villains and other characters and not enough time with Conan. And he doesn't really know the character that well, so Conan seems fairly indispensable here. As a rule, other than Karl Edward Wagner's "Road of Kings," stick with John Maddox Roberts or Robert Jordan when ranging in the non-Howard Conan field.

Too whimsical, overly playful, May 6, 2008

Admirable as Ms. Angier's book is in its attempts to lay out the basics of science, she is far too continually sarcastic in her delivery for anything truly lasting to come from this book. I fear that when you finish 'The Canon,' you will come away with some anecdotes and nothing much else.

Here's an example of an author much too concerned with being funny, and not at all trusting to her subject matter:

"A top of the line radar can pinpoint the whereabouts of a housefly two kilometers away, although clearly this is a radar with far too much time on its hands."

"Fine. They are all light. They are all electromagnetic radiation. They are all - what?"… Read more