Blacklin’s Reading Room Reviews & More

In this week’s selection of Blacklin’s Weekly Find from 3QuarksDaily PD Smith reviews Leviathan Or, The Whale by Philip Hoare.  Follow the link at the end of the excerpt below to read the complete review on Smith’s site (review also posted in the Times Literary Supplement on July 10, 2009.)

Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick (1851) is Philip Hoare’s guiding star in this beautifully written celebration of cetaceans, a word that comes from the Greek word ketos, sea monster. He glosses Melville’s fiction as a meditation on “man, whale, life, death”. Hoare’s book, like Moby-Dick, is on one level a rich source of information about these ancient mammals, from natural history to their role in our lives and myths. But Leviathan is also a deeply personal narrative that weaves together travelogue, memoir and literary history.

More here.

Posted by Abbas Raza at 10:34 AM on July 8, 2009.

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Due to the latest Wordpress upgrade, certain features of this site no longer work.  See below:

• Sub pages have disappeared.  I have found something to  restore sub page listings, but this re-work will take some time.
• Indexing of book reviews.  Some links show up and others do not.  Hopefully this function will be updated soon so that it is fully compatible with Wordpress.  In the mean time, I will search for another way to list the book reviews by title, author, genre, etc.

Thanks for your patience.

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Okay. Maybe most of you have already discovered Litopia, but I just discovered this site tonight and I wanted to share my find.  Litopia has two different podcast shows: Litopia Daily and Litopia After Dark—both frequently updated.  A pleasant and easy to navigate site, I found Litopia fun to explore.  If you click on the button I added in the far left column, you will find yourself at the main site where I found all kinds of additional goodies to explore.  I particularly enjoyed the webcomic LiToon – The Spitoon of the Publishing Industry.  Incredibly funny and wickedly honest about all aspects of the publishing industry.

Litopia also has a community discussion board so you can connect with other writers and book lovers.  Check it out.

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On the Literary Calendar today: Robert A. Heinlein. The link will take you to Wikipedia’s entry for basic information about Heinlein. Remember that Wikipedia is a great place to begin your research about this author, but don’t forget to check out additional sites to verify facts. However, if you just need something to read, check out the list below. Clicking on a link will take you to that book’s listing at LibraryThing where you can find reader reviews, ratings, and more.

• Stranger in a Strange Land
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• Starship Troopers
• Friday
• The Door into Summer

Enjoy!

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It’s another quiet Sunday. However, I have been busy.  I have:

• Revamped this site again.
• Watched Federer win his 15th grand slam title by beating Roddick in five sets with the fifth set ending 16-14.  Personally, I was hoping that Roddick would win.
• Prepared to engage in serious spring cleaning project.

And now I’m going to fix myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and read Jim Butcher’s Fool Moon.

Related Posts:

• The Sunday Salon: The Surgeon
• The Sunday Salon: A Time In Life
• The Sunday Salon: Dewey’s Read-A-Thon: The Day After
• The Sunday Salon: Spell Slinging
• The Sunday Salon September 7, 2008