| Recently Reviewed | Previously Reviewed | Why I Don't Like Amazon.com |

RECENTLY REVIEWED
Begun in April 2005, the History Shelf Project.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED
The Curse of Chalion is pretty darn good fantasy.
Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe may make your head hurt a bit, but its explanation of current physics is superlative.
Janet Kagan's Hellspark.
The next book in the series after Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues gets mixed marks.
The insanely popular Bridget Jones Diary does not make for filling fare.
The popular Anita Diamant novel The Red Tent is one I view dubiously at best.
The Exordium pentology is old-fashioned space opera with much to recommend it.
Kathleen Ann Goonan's marvelous Queen City Jazz.
Another Barbara Hambly novel, continuing the Winterlands saga, Knight of the Demon Queen.
Barbara Hambly's Winterlands two-in-one edition gets a mixed reception.
Glen Cook's new Garrett novel, Faded Steel Heat is up under the microscope.
A not-entirely-good review of A Game of Thrones. Contains some spoilers.
See me trash the heck out of the Visual Interdev 6 Bible!
Recommended: Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan

WHY I DON'T LIKE AMAZON.COM
A lot of sites that include reviews or recommendations of books participate in Amazon.com's partnership program, whereby if someone buys the recommended book from Amazon.com, the site that links to them gets a little bit of money. In case you were wondering, I thought I'd explain why I will never, ever do this.

I have had the good fortune to work in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can hardly throw a rock there without hitting a bookstore (or someone with exotic piercing, but that's a different story); the closest one is about two blocks from my office. One day I mentioned to a co-worker that I was planning to go there on my lunch break, to see if they had any new computer books I wanted.

The co-worker looked at me as if I had grown a second head and asked why I didn't use Amazon.com, they were so much cheaper. If I wanted to see the book before I ordered it, he pointed out, I could always go to the bookstore, check the book, write down the ISBN and then order it from Amazon.com.

This is true; I could do this. However, if I do it enough, and enough other people do it enough, there will be no more bookstore two blocks from my office. There will be no more bookstores at all. And call me old-fashioned and reactionary, but I like bookstores, and I don't like buying things online. This has nothing to do with any fear of having my credit card number stolen, and everything to do with my firm belief that, in the grip of our enthusiasm for all things silicon, humanity keeps drifting closer to a world where no one sees or touches anything but a computer. It does a person good to leave the office, to walk a little ways, to enter a place with a different purpose, full of other people going about their own errands. It's good to overhear other conversations, to touch real objects, to hand over real money to real people who smile at you and tell you to have a nice day.

So that's why I don't use Amazon.com.

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