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Reminder: My Substack 100-word Book Reviews

Over on my Substack, I’ve done a series of 100-word book reviews, mostly as exercise in saying as much as possible in as few words as possible, but also to share some of my favourite books.

Now, the series has kind of stalled as I’ve had more important things to write about, but I’ll get back to it once I can.

  • An image for my 100-word review of The Book of the New Sun with the caption 'This is the most impenetrable book I have ever read not written by a German philosopher.'
    Shadow and Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun: Tor Essentials.
  • A image to promote my 100-word review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gundrun with the caption 'This is what I say is my favourite Tolkien book because Lord of the Rings is too obvious.'
    Adapted from an image of the engravings at the Hylestad stave church. Photo credit: John Erling Blad — CC 3.0
  • An image of a bust of Hannibal to promote of 100-word review of The Fall of Carthage with the caption 'This book is one of my favourite Roman history books and the one I recommend to people who want to start reading about Rome.'
    Adapted from a Public Domain original image .
  • An image of the mountains of Iran to promote my 100-word review of Alamut with the caption 'I wanted to read Alamut for a while because it's basically Slovenia's greatest export. Finally reading it, I ultimately found it to be, in a way, an extremely frustrating book. It's immediately clear that Bartol is making some kind of major political/philosophical point, but I could never clearly decipher what exactly Bartol's point was supposed to be.'
    Image credit: Alireza Javaheri — CC 3.0.
  • Art of the cover of Dark Horse's The Star Wars graphic novel with the caption 'The best thing about The Star Wars is for the glimpse it gives into George Lucas' creative vision and writing process, like unearthing some ancient tome.'
    The Star Wars: Dark Horse Comics.
  • Art of the female knight Brandamante with the caption 'Of the (many0 books I've had to read for school, the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso has gone down as my favourite.'
    Adapted from a Public Domain original image.
  • Part of the Revenge of the Sith theatrical poster with the caption 'This isn't just my favourite Star Wars book. This is one of my favourite books, period.'
    Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith: Lucasfilm & Disney.
  • Art of Hadrian's wall with the caption '[Occupation] who solves crime in his spare time is a pretty common premise for a mystery series. Ruth Downie puts a novel spin on it by making [Occupation] "2nd century Roman army doctor."'
    Image by Pete from Pixabay.
  • A sand dune with the caption 'I admire Frank Herbert's worldbuilidng. His prose, less so.'
    Photo by Fernando Paredes Murillo on Unsplash

Uploading that image gallery, I’ve realised that there are actually a few of these reviews that I didn’t do an Instagram image for. Mea culpa.

Anyway, here’s all the links to my Substack 100-word book reviews so far.

  1. Gene Wolfe — The Book of the New Sun
  2. J.R.R. Tolkien — The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
  3. Philip Reeve — Goblins
    [I’ve also done a long-form review over on Realmgard]
  4. Adrian Goldsworthy — The Fall of Carthage
    [previously published under the title The Punic Wars]
  5. Jon Peterson — Game Wizards
  6. Vladimir Bartol — Alamut
  7. Dark Horse Comics‘ The Star Wars
  8. Ludovico Ariosto — Orlando Furioso
  9. Matthew Stover — Revenge of the Sith
  10. Ruth Downie — Medicus
    [originally published in the UK under the title Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girl]
  11. Frank Herbert — Dune

Like I said, these shorter reviews have sort of dried up. That’s partly because I’ve been focusing more on rewriting my longer-form reviews, recommendations, and music-related posts that were originally going live on realmgard.com to my Substack.

Honestly, the 100-word reviews are fun and they’re good practice at writing efficiently, but I prefer long-form content. However, I don’t plan on entirely stopping the shorter reviews going forward.

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2 responses to “Reminder: My Substack 100-word Book Reviews”

  1. Emona Literary Services™ 100-word Book Reviews – Realmgard avatar
    Emona Literary Services™ 100-word Book Reviews – Realmgard

    […] Reminder: My Substack 100-word Book Reviews […]

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  2. Live on Substack: My 100-word Book Review of Jaws – Emona Literary Services avatar
    Live on Substack: My 100-word Book Review of Jaws – Emona Literary Services

    […] If you want to quickly recap them and find links to the original Substack posts, I did previously list them all in a post over on this blog. […]

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