DD-B's Books Page

Books have been a tremendously important part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember. I remember Stuart Little, and Doctor Doolittle, and Rat and Mole and Toad from before I remember any human friends. I was probably raised by Doc Smith and Robert Heinlein as much as by my parents.

Those who think this is really strange probably never came to this page in the first place. The rest of you, I'm sure, understand. What I want to do with this section is to rhapsodize and reminisce about old friends, and try to spread the word. I'll talk about new friends, too, and some casual acquaintances, and probably some enemies. Often it's best, when you can't say anything nice, to say nothing at all, but sometimes the issues involved are too important. And sometimes my self-restraint isn't up to it.

I've added a "book log" (last updated Thursday, 14-Dec-2023 21:00:25 PST ), where I write short notes on books I've read recently. It's a lot of fun for me so far; take a look, maybe you'll enjoy it too. I show what book I'm reading currently, and sometimes add comments as I go along. So far, my comments tend towards the acerbic.

My reading, historically, runs heavily to science fiction. I've always read some historical novels and some mysteries, and a certain amount of non-fiction. And some other stuff now and then, too. More recently, my SF reading has declined somewhat, while the other genres have held up. I'm not so much tired of SF, as there isn't that much good new SF being written, at least of the types I like. Or maybe the golden age of science fiction is 16.

My favorite books aren't always the ones that have been most important to me, and the books I think are best aren't always either. All these judgements are intensely personal, and mostly I'll be quite polite when you disagree with them, honest. Mostly.

The original version of these pages had Amazon Associate links to the books available in print. Due to changes in Minnesota law Amazon has deactivated my Associates account, so I no longer make any money from you clicking those links. I haven't yet found the time to go in and either take out the associate tag, or perhaps redirect to another retailer altogether.

Regrettably, some of the books I describe here are out of print. You can still sometimes find them in used bookstores, though, and it's worth the trouble. I've provided links to a number of used book sites on the web, like this: .

This site was originally part of the Ouroboros Bookworms webring. That, and the associated mailing list, never really took off, and I finally shut them down 1-Sep-2000. However, these books are still important to me, so I'm keeping these pages up.

One warning: most of these are old books. Many people will have already read them. Many more will have heard all about them. Therefore, I casually discuss a number of things that might be considered "spoilers" by somebody who hadn't read the books yet. I try to flag reviews containing spoilers, but I'm humanly fallible; if spoilers bother you, you probably should skip most of this site.

I have broken out the books I want to write about into separate sections on science fiction, mystery, childhood, and nonfiction,

Having broken them out, I found myself being surprised by the degree of overlap in the careers of some of my favorite authors, so I had to make page about that.