Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 16

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a teacher, it’s my job (and my privilege) to assign great literature to my students. They don’t always appreciate what I assign. But sometimes something clicks with them. When that happens, they often return the favor by suggesting one of their favorites to me. When the student is the one who keeps my desktop visible and leaves me notes about things I need to remember to do, her suggestions go to the top of the li...

Christmas. Enid, OK. 1970s.

Christmas. The end of the year. It’s time to look back and be nostalgic, right? Like Ralphie inA Christmas Story. But I didn’t grow up in the late 1940s like he did. My childhood was the psychedelic and disco-infused decade of the 1970s.

Enid, Oklahoma, didn’t have big department stores downtown with windows full of toys like where Ralphie first sees his Red Ryder BB gun. Heck, Enid didn’t even have a book store. Can you imagine a city of 45,000 without a book store? But I digress. We had Sea...

Review: Preacher’s Assault

Preacher’s Assault by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you’re looking for a fast-paced Western set in the days before the Civil War and you don’t care much about character development or clever writing, this is your book.

Preacher’s Assault is apparently the 17th volume in William W. Johnstone’s The First Mountain Man series, but I doubt you really miss much no matter where you start the series. This was my first exposure to Preacher, and to Johnstone. The book lists his neph...

Review: Mojave

Mojave by Johnny D. Boggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think there are three classes of Western novel. There are the books like the John Slocum series written by “Jake Logan” and the Preacher series by William W. Johnstone where the action is non-stop and there really isn’t much in the way of character development or nuance of plot and theme. Then you have most of Louis L’Amour’s work or Elmer Kelton or Johnny Quarles, where there aren’t a lot of subplots, but typically a good amount of charac...

Review: The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I made it a little more than halfway through this and found myself looking for reasons to avoid it. Life is short, so I quit.

I like the concept of a dystopian world ruled by some kind of almost Puritan religious cult. But dear lord, I got tired of waiting for something to happen. There are only so many flashbacks and “This is the way things are now” exposition passages a person can take. I hit my limit after the second Scrabble...

Review: Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I enjoyed this one. It wasn’t spectacular. It wasn’t bad. In places it was pretty interesting, but overall I found Richard Mayhew to be too whiny for far too long, and then there was nothing unexpected about the ending.

That said, I’d love to teach this book in class, having students write about the stages of The Hero’s Journey.

It’s a good story. I didn’t like it as much as, say, American Gods or The Graveyard Book, but it held my int...

Halloween Giveaway

Today through Halloween you can get the Kindle edition of my short story collectionUnholy Womb and my novellaMurdered by Human Wolves absolutely free at Amazon.

I would appreciate an honest review, but even that isn’t necessary.Unholy Womb has one review that is very negative. Considering how the lead story has been copied in multiple places on the Internet, always without permission and sometimes with the copier replacing my name with his/hers, I think the Amazon review is unfair, but … I am...

Review: The Kindness of Strangers

The Kindness of Strangers by Mike McIntyre
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Something about the travel narrative just appeals to our sense of adventure. Add in a quest for self-discovery and most of us will be hooked. Mike McIntyre’s story about traveling from San Francisco to Cape Fear, NC, is a perfect recipe for success.

I very much enjoyed this book. Was it a great book? No. I liked reading about the people he encountered and the things he experienced, but in the end he had it almost too easy, a...

Review: Harpist in the Wind

Harpist in the Wind by Patricia A. McKillip
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A satisfying conclusion to The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy. I’d forgotten so much of the events and details of this story over the decades since I last read it. Re-reading the series yet again was a nice trip down memory lane, even if it did mean I downgraded my rating from 5 to 4 stars.

This is a very good series and would be good material for Hollywood, if Hollywood would get off the remake horse they’ve beaten to death....

Review: Incidents Among the Savages

Incidents Among the Savages by David R. Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Incidents Among the Savages is a book I maybe shouldn’t have liked as much as I did. It isn’t very original in plot. The main character, who comes to be called Walks in Snow, is too much of a superman to really be believable. The line “It is a good day to die” is used so often you can’t help but scream “Stereotype!” when you come to it.

And yet I did enjoy the story. David R. Lewis mixes some of my favorite things, the We...