Reviews, Reading and a "Twoem"

I finished a draft of a book review of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton. It’s a guest post for another blog, and I’ll provide a link once it’s been accepted and posted. But de Botton is an interesting writer and a very effective speaker. I first ran across him via a YouTube video. A colleague at work saw the book on my desk and began waxing eloquent – evidently, he’s a huge fan of the author.

In the meantime, I’m waiting on the arrival of two books I’ve been asked to review (kind of cool, that), one of which is a Christmas story and the other which is an edgy, speculative novel. While I’m waiting, I’m reading Offworld by Robin Parrish and published by Bethany House. It, too, would fall in the speculative fiction category, although so far it’s more like science fiction, very well written science fiction. I’ve seen it criticized on a few blogs for not having enough of a “Christian message;” one blogger even complained about how it disappointed the need for edification. Well, I’m not far enough into it to speak to either message or edification, but I can say it is one gripping, fast-paced story, and Parrish writes extremely well.

There’s another “twoem” or poetry jam on Twitter being planned for tonight at 9:30 p.m. eastern, 8:30 p.m. central. You can check #tspoetry on Twitter for any updates and I’ll be tweeting it and posting on Facebook as well.