Epinions Recent Reviews for panguitch

Willy Wonka leaves Panguitch gobsmacked with his Chewy Gobstoppers

Fri, 9 May 2008 13:31:42 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - gob, n.: north. dial. and slang. Of obscure origin; possibly a. Gael. and Irish gob beak, mouth, but cf. gab n. - The Oxford English Dictionary Gobstopper is East-of-the-Atlantic for jawbreaker, and Willy Wonka...

A Paean to Willy Wonka and his Giant Chewy SweeTARTS

Thu, 8 May 2008 14:44:04 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - To a child's mind they were a paradox. They didn't make economic sense. There were only four of them. But those four medallions were worth a dozen boxes of Nerds, a five-gallon bucket of Lik-M-Aid, and a long-stem bouquet of Pixy Stix. Willy...

Brandon Sanderson - Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians: Librarians are evil, and much cooler than dinosaurs.

Mon, 5 May 2008 16:33:53 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - As a professional librarian it is my duty to warn you about a pernicious and subversive novel that you may encounter in the juvenile area of your local library (all copies were to have been discarded; apparently there are some librarians who haven't been...

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness: Loveliness Instead of Loneliness: Abbey's Elegy for the Desert

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:25:28 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Edward Abbey might get under your skin or he might make you want to dynamite a dam. For me it's both. But more than anything he makes me want to flee my office, drive away from the city as fast as my car will go, abandon it when it can't go any...

Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device: Can Amazon Kindle ignite the potential of ebooks?

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:54:15 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - The short of it: Since some people don't like to read long reviews, here's the condensed version: The Amazon Kindle is a significant but not revolutionary improvement over previous ebook readers. It does some cool things. It's also...

Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars: Planet As Protagonist: Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:07:25 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Red Mars is one of those books people talk about in a way that makes you feel like a bumpkin if you haven't read it. I may still be a bumpkin, but I've read it now, and I can understand the hype. The first volume of Kim Stanley Robinson's...

Orson Scott Card - First Meetings: Three Stories from the Enderverse: "There is no teacher but the enemy."

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:24:35 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - "The Enemy's Gate Is Down." "Ender's Game" is the 1977 novella that launched Orson Scott Card's career, spawned its own Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelization, and seven sequels. It's what he's still most known for, and he can't seem to...

Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn: The Well of Ascension: If Hard Fantasy Is the Future, Mistborn Is Exhibit One

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:20:27 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Brandon Sanderson began his <
i>Mistborn
series by turning fantasy tropes on their head: What if the Dark Lord defeated the Hero? And he follows it up in book two, The Well of Ascension, with the subversive...

Tristan & Isolde: Mud, Blood, and Duty: Tristan + Isolde Is Better Than the Bard

Mon, 3 Mar 2008 16:50:30 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - "Before Romeo and Juliet there was . . ." In a marketing campaign almost as disastrous as Bridge to Terabithia's, Tristan + Isolde was positioned as a new (old) Romeo and Juliet. Born of the false assumption that teenage girls...

Orson Scott Card - A War of Gifts: Looking Hard to Find Satan at Christmas

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:12:12 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - What is it about fiery fundamentalist preachers that makes us think they beat their kids? And why on earth did Orson Scott Card think this stereotype would make a good Christmas story, set in a science fictional space station no less? To his credit...

Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Sang: "God Spare Me a Woman's Tears": We Are All of Us Shell People

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:59:56 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - As a kid I spent summers at my grandparents, long days alone, playing in irrigation ditches and the hedges and apple orchard behind their house, or lying on the living room couch, sunlight warming me through the drapes, a Dragonriders of Pern novel in my...

Charles N. Brown - The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Yes, science fiction is important. Shouldn't it be fun too?

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:44:45 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Locus is an insider's publication. Dabblers need not apply. That's reflected in Charles N. Brown and Jonathan Strahan's selections for the 2004 anthology The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy, which...

Torn Curtain: Julie Andrews in Escape From the Germans: This Time I'm Naked

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:20:40 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Men are at a disadvantage if they want to avoid typecasting. A woman can just bare her breasts like Anne Hathaway, do a pole dance like Natalie Portman, or spread her legs for the camera like Meg Ryan to escape fans who are too restrictive in their...

Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light: The Beatles and Roger Zelazny: "Gifts of Chaos"

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:24:32 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - The shutters came off America's cozy cottage in the 60s. The era's guiding principle, liberation through exploration, prompted an insatiable interest in alternative spirituality and non-Western religions. 1967 saw the Beatles take up with the Maharishi...

Orson Scott Card - Wyrms: Wyrms: Better than a Chastity Belt.

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:10:11 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Orson Scott Card's Wyrms came at the peak of his career, just after Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and in the same month as Seventh Son, the beginning of the Tales of Alvin Maker. Smashed between these, Card's two...

Garth Nix - Abhorsen: La Novena Puerta: "Farewell. Go safely. Do not come back."

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:11:20 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Garth Nix has created a wonderful world in his Old Kingdom books. A magical realm that exists just across the Wall, peopled with sympathetic young heroes who wield magic and enter death itself to keep its denizens at bay. The first book,...

David Gemmell - Midnight Falcon: "A small distance for a man to walk between good and evil."

Thu, 8 Nov 2007 15:07:43 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - It has become a truism that complex characters are a hallmark of quality literature. "Moral complexity" is a bromide used to browbeat juvenile and genre literature, and a book where good and evil are not simplistically portrayed is held up as a great...

Garth Nix - Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr: A Librarian, a Batsman, and a lot of Teen-Angst

Thu, 1 Nov 2007 17:23:03 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Lirael is a Daughter of the Clayr, but as each year passes without her receiving the Sight she feels less and less a part of Clayr society. It doesn't help that she isn't pretty like other Clayr, lost her mother when she was five, and never knew her...

Gene Wolfe - Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of the Book of the New Sun The Sword of the Lictor and the Citadel of the Autarch: Sherpas, Stories, and Critics: The Book of the New Sun, Parts 3 and 4

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:55:07 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food . . . are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the...

David Gemmell - The Sword in the Storm: Gemmell's story is better than his storytelling.

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:59:29 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - David Gemmell wrote heroic fantasy in the tradition of Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard. While his writing is far superior to H
oward's,
the comparison does give some indication of where his 1999 novel The Sword in...

Garth Nix - Sabriel: "Everyone and everything has a time to die."

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:08:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - "I have walked in Death to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate." Sabriel has lived most of her life in an Ancelstierre boarding school. Now she's graduating at the top of her class and preparing for university. But news of her father's death...

Randall Wright - Hunchback: Quasimodo for Kids. And for Me.

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:10:51 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Hunchbacked Hodge resides on the bottom rung of castle society. While he mucks out the latrines he dreams of the day royalty will return to this boring backwater. When it does Hodge will kneel to the Prince and be accepted into his service. But when...

Cuckoo: Throw me down on a deerskin.

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:54:18 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Invading the Soviet Union was Hitler's big mistake. Never to be outdone, Stalin had already embarrassed himself by trying to conquer Finland in late November 1939. A year later, Finland returned the favor by invading the Soviet Union, in cooperation...

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia: If this is paradise, why are you running away?

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:55:55 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - It's appropriate that my library's copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed was donated by the professor, now deceased, who helped me see science fiction as literature as well as recreation. Appropriate because Le Guin herself has brought so...

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century: I have a class one brain and a good supply of fissionable materials.

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:20:34 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author panguitch - Orson Scott Card's Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century is, like most short story anthologies, hit and miss. But it's also true that most anthologies are worth picking up, and the collection Card edits here is certainly that...