Agent Palmer

Of all things Geek. I am…

Barker’s Brand of Horror Celebrates The Inhuman Condition

Clive Barker The Inhuman Condition Book Review

The Inhuman Condition is a collection of short stories by one of the modern masters of the macabre – Clive Barker. Published in 1986, these stories are some of the first published by Barker, and they set a tone of dark and delirious, sensuous and sentimental.

The five stories; The Inhuman Condition (of which the collection is also named after); The Body Politic; Revelations; Down, Satan!; and The Age of Desire, all focus on the nature of humanity.

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Don’t Copy Xerox’s Errors as Told in Fumbling the Future

Fumbling the Future Xerox

Fumbling the Future, is a book published in 1988 about “How Xerox invented, then ignored, the first personal computer.” It all starts with three questions: Name the companies responsible for the longest playing series of personal computer commercials? The most creative single commercial? The first personal computer commercial?

The answers, as you find out through the first page and the subtitle, are IBM’s Charlie Chaplin ads, Apple Computers’ 1984 Super Bowl commercial, and Xerox.

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Spoiler Free Review

Evil Genius is a Textbook Example of a Fun Thriller

“Cadel Piggott’s parents thought he was brilliant… and dangerous. His therapist thought he could rule the world. They were right.” This is the description on the back of the paperback edition of Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks, and it’s a fairly decent spoiler-free description.

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Lots of Love and Laughter in Grace Allen Biography by George Burns

I often get people asking me what I’m reading. Perhaps it has something to do with talking to authors on my podcast or other creatives who also read. Either way, I find myself talking about books quite a bit.

When asked about Gracie: A Love Story by George Burns, I described it as perhaps the most romantic book I have ever read. And that was when I was only about a third of the way through it.

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Klosterman’s Raised in Captivity Like an Adult Version of Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Review of Chuck Klosterman Raised in Captivity

Chuck Klosterman is a master of the absurd in the simplest way. He’s truly outdone himself in “Raised in Captivity,” a book full of short stories that read like longer versions of his HYPERtheticals, which are questions intended to start insane conversations.

The front cover boasts this book as “Fictional Nonfiction,” but you could easily argue about what order that should be in or even about what each of these short stories are about. That’s what this book does. And it will get you thinking.

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