Wat jij niet ziet In this book former photographer Hans Aarsman tries to deduce the story behind a photograph from the photograph itself. Hans Aarsman used to be a photographer until he realised that the essence of his job was to mimic old-fashioned paintings. He sold his cameras, gave away his photos to a museum … Read More

The Dilbert Future Here’s the obligatory blurb that can be misquoted by publisher and author alike: The Dilbert Future is worth every penny I paid for it. As far as I remember, I did not pay any pennies for this third instalment of Scott Adam’s comic ‘business books’ because I paid in Euro cents and … Read More

The Testament I read somewhere, a few weeks ago, that there is such a thing as Grisham’s Law. And although I could find only a single definition—once you’ve started reading a John Grisham novel, it is impossible to put it down—this reminded me I had an unread book of his lying around, The Testament. What a disappointment. … Read More

The Dogs of Riga I know I haven’t been blogging for a while, but I just do not have the time, so I will keep it short. People pay money for this? It’s not that Henning Mankell’s police procedural The Dogs of Riga is badly written, indeed for most of the time, and especially the … Read More

Life Ascending, The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution product What little I remember about the organization of life from my few high school biology classes in the early 1980s is that the realm of the living was divided into animals and plants. The world of biology has not, it seems from this book, stood still … Read More

Joep’s wonderlijke avonturen When I first read Herman Heijermans’ “Joeps wonderlijke avonturen” (Jack’s Wondrous Adventures) I was pleasantly surprised for two reasons. The first was that it was by far not as bad as I had expected based on what little I knew from Heijermans, third hand knowledge I had about his play “Op hoop … Read More

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone review by Branko Collin “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” This must be one of the clunkiest opening sentences I have ever read, and yet it is the opening sentence of one of … Read More

Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, has been terraformed, and enough time has passed to accept pioneers to homestead a piece of land. The conditions are horrible; lose access to outside (read: Earthly) help, and you are condemned to a certain death. But at least you get a chance to get away from overcrowded planet Earth. … Read More

The Robber Bride is a very, very, very slow book. It could have easily been told in 50 pages instead of the 528 it took. The blurbs bubble on about how witty and funny it is; I guess I completely missed what this novel is about. But perhaps I can re-tell the surface story; we … Read More

Neuromancer is about a bank job. Case used to be an ace safe cracker, until he got cocky and took off with his customer’s money. They broke both his hands in retaliation. But that is what makes him perfect for this job: nobody will suspect he is involved. The team that is collected around him … Read More