best your library

Limits of the Known, by David Roberts. 336 pp. New York: Norton ISBN 978-0393609868 Reviewed by Jonathan Dore After half a lifetime of mountaineering, and another half of canyoneering and writing books and magazine features, David Roberts has pulled together the various threads of his life in a book that is part memoir, part historical anthology of notable exploration, and part meditation on the meaning and limits of adventure and adventuring. Its summatory and valedictory flavour come from the autobiographical element, disclosed early on, that the author is living with an aggressive cancer (he guards us against the well-meant but double-edged metaphor of “battling” or “fighting” the disease), already spread and metastasized but against which, as of late 2017 when he finished writing, he was holding his own. Each of the seven chapters of this artfully constructed book interleaves an account of one or more historical expeditions with an episode or aspect of the author’s own life that r...

Cream of Plankton Soup is a collection of short stories that is, and this is no tired, old cliche, but a genuinely fresh, new cliche, like no other collection of short stories that I have ever read. In fact I think I can say that this collection of stories by Grant Sutton is possibly like no other collection of short stories in the history of short stories. Ever. When I began to read it I

With the help of Google's excellent Google Translate service, you can now view and read the That's Books and Entertainment blog site in your own language. You will find the language translate switch at the top of the blog page, just to the left. Over the next several days there will more style changes to the blog which, it is to be hoped, help give the That's Books and Entertainment blog a

Living With a Jude is a remarkable book by Alice Soule. The book describes how it is for a family that is living with a child who has severe learning disabilities. Jude was born with Microcephaly which brought about Global Development Delay and autism which was not, immediately, diagnosed. In her book Alice discusses, in a light and heartwarmily honest and humorous way, how Jude's issues

After a long contemplation over my family's vacation overseas, I thought long and hard about whether I had the strength and energy to continue reviewing books weekly. When I started reviewing books on my own blog, State of Review , I did it as a way to keep track of what I was reading and my initial thoughts on the books. Over time the audience grew. It was never my intention but it did allow me to meet and become friends with fellow book lovers and reviewers, which I am proud to say are a great bunch of guys and gals. I continued my passion and reached out to some like-minded individuals and started this blog, Speculative Book Review, over the years people came and went as life got in the way, as it often tends to do. While Yagiz and I have done our best to bring fresh, new content each and every week, it is now my turn to bow out and say my goodbye. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of my favorite authors and they in turn have introduced me to their favorite authors and fr...