S.B. Howell

Author: sbhowell

  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

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    sbhowell
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    “Madame Bovary”… recalls “bovine”, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought when I heard the head of the Literature department at UCSC, Vlad Godzich, giving a lecture on it. The connotation is not an accident – the theme of romance mixing with, and being overcome by reality is the main theme of the novel. This is the…

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

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    sbhowell
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    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a fun, short novel written by a writer skilled in coming up with science fiction ideas that comment on ordinary life. I encountered Philip K. Dick once before with Martian Time-Slip, but I found that I liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a lot better because it…

  • Atlas Shrugged – Review, Summary, and Quotations Guide

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    sbhowell
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    So, a little over two months ago, I started reading Atlas Shrugged. It’s a book my Dad has been suggesting I read for almost ten years, and since I’m currently unemployed and don’t have any more college reading to do, I figured I’d buckle down and git ‘er done. What I found is that Atlas…

  • Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear

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    I really fell in love with this book, but after talking to people about it at our scifi book group I’ve heard all kinds of reactions. Some people really liked it, some not so much… it’s a 100-page book, so the plot is very simple. It’s about an Earth soldier who crash-lands with a Drac…

  • The Martian by Andy Weir

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    sbhowell
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    The Martian by Andy Weir is one of those rare cases of indie success that’s turned into mainstream success. Weir wrote the book for fans of his personal website, and thought his book would appeal mostly to hardcore science nerds. When a reader suggested he put it up as an ebook on Amazon, it climbed…

  • Japanese Language Review: 「魔女の侘急便」

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    「魔女の侘急便」が1985年に角野栄子から書いた児童書です。若い魔女のキキの話で、色々面白い瞬間があります。キキは気の強く、おてんばぽい少女ですので、おかしいキャラクタです。でも、私はキキと心が通じる感じがあります。彼女は暖かい性格の少女ですから、彼女の冒険と日常生活について読むことが楽しいです。 1989年にスタジオジブリは「魔女の侘急便」をアニメかにしました。英語で「Kiki’s Delivery Service」と名づけました。アニメバージョンは本と少し違う点があります。諸説には、キキは割りと楽な生活をしている、でも映画でキキは魔法力を失う事である。宮﨑駿は角野栄子に脚本を見せた時、角野さんが断りました。原典と違うすぎるとおもいました。宮﨑駿は角野の家に訪問して、スタジオジブリ。結局、角野さんは賛成して「魔女の侘急便」はアニメにしました。

  • A Canticle for Leibowitz

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    sbhowell
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    A/N: Spoiler text in white, highlight to view. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a novel about Albertian monks living in a post-nuclear-apocalypse world. It is by turns funny and dark – there’s a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the dialogue, but the setting, plot, and narrative passages between sections can get pretty brutal. This novel…

  • Principia Discordia

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    sbhowell
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    Or “How I Found Goddess, And What I Did To Her When I Found Her” Principia Discordia is the central text of Discordianism, a batshit-crazy-awesome pseudo-religion which is part parody and part Zen. It is structured around the worship of Eris, the Greek goddess of Chaos. The book itself is a collage of mock-Biblical chapters,…

  • The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

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    H.G. Wells is my favorite author, but when I tried to read this in high school I had to put it down after a few chapters. The first bit of it is extremely slow and if you’re not reading it closely it comes off as very racist. I must have been really tired the first…

  • Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

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    sbhowell
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    Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein is a bit of a genre-founder, but politically bizarre. It has the prototype of men in powered space-suits fighting an insectoid enemy (“The Bugs”) which would remind a modern reader of StarCraft, but it also has repetitive scenes of the characters in a classroom being lectured to on what may…