Book Review Archives

40 reviews

The Now Playing Podcast Book Review Archive features in-depth discussions of novels, biographies, nonfiction, and other books selected by the hosts. While many relate to films or filmmakers, others stand on their own as memorable stories worth recommending. Whether a book inspired a movie, expands a favorite franchise, or is simply a great read, each review offers the same thoughtful analysis and lively conversation found in every Now Playing Podcast episode.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Everyone knows the movie, now learn about the story!

Reviewed Jan 7, 2011
It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found! Genres: Androids, Bounty hunters, open_syllabus_project, Rick Deckard (Fictitious character), Twenty-first century

First Blood by David Morrell

Sly didn't make Rambo, David Morrell did!

Reviewed Nov 5, 2010
First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn't know whom he's dealing with -- or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky. This book was made into the classic movie staring Sylvester Stalone. The lead character's name has become a synonym for the tetesterone-driven macho man. Genres: John J. Rambo (Fictitious character), Police chiefs

George Lucas’s Blockbusting edited by Alex Ben Block and Lucy Autrey Wilson

Including an interview with book editor and entertainment...

Reviewed Feb 10, 2010
By meticulously compiling the details of how movies have been made and financed since the medium′s inception, chronicling their performances at the box office, and offering expert commentary about the most important trends of the last one hundred years, the authors of this book have given readers a singularly unique perspective on the film-making industry and a superlative blueprint for future successful filmmaking ventures. Taking us decade by decade, this book focuses on the revenues, costs, production and distribution of 300 of the most critically and financially successful movies of all time from the business′s origins through 2005. Its numerous essays examine trends in war, noir, bio-drama, biblical, epic, musical, western, disaster, crime, and action adventure films, as well as the advent the summer movie, auteur filmmaking, and the revolutionary advances that have been made in film technology over time. Furthermore, its full complement of charts, graphs and diagrams presenting such things as salary histories, awards and honors, the number of principal photography days required, advertising expenditures, domestic versus overseas profits and more, also include conversions of past movie-making dollars into current dollar values for easy and relevant comparisons. Genres: Business, Film, History, Nonfiction, Reference

Under the Dome by Stephen King

I thought King was retiring years ago....

Reviewed Dec 19, 2009
Under the Dome is a 2009 science fiction novel by the American author, Stephen King. Under the Dome is the 58th book published by Stephen King, and it is his 48th novel. The novel focuses on a small Maine town, and tells an intricate, multi-character, alternating perspective story of how the town's inhabitants contend with the calamity of being suddenly cut off from the outside world by an impassable, invisible glass dome-like barrier that seemingly falls out of the sky, transforming the community into a domed city. ---------- Contains: - ( - ( Genres: City and town life, Good and evil, Iraq War, Thrillers, Veterans

No Doors, No Windows by Joe Schreiber

If there are no doors, how do you get in?

Reviewed Oct 26, 2009
When madness is your inheritance, how do you escape it?Scott Mast thought he got away--first from a family haunted by a dark fate, then from a dull career writing greeting cards in Seattle. But now he has come back to his New Hampshire hometown only to find that his family is in ruins, his nephew needs a home, and a shattering truth is clawing its way into the light.Fifteen years ago, Scott's mother died in a fire. And now the shadowy circumstances--the bodies buried beneath the ashes, the lives ripped apart that fateful day--are starting to be revealed. The answers unspool in the pages of a peculiar old manuscript--an unfinished ghost story written in his father's own hand that beckons Scott out to a strange house in the woods with a lightless corridor that cannot be seen from the outside. Here Scott Mast will uncover all that has been hidden--and perhaps finish his father's unspeakable work.From the Trade Paperback edition. Genres: Family secrets, Haunted houses, Horror, horror tales, Suspense

Infected by Scott Sigler

A podcast about a novel written by a podcaster. Huh.

Reviewed Oct 23, 2009
Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families. Working under the government's shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common -- they've been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.Meanwhile Perry Dawsey -- a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey -- awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected. The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder. Infected is the first major print release from Internet phenom Scott Sigler, whose podcast-only audiobooks have drawn an immense cult following, with more than three million individual episodes downloaded. Now Sigler storms the bookstore shelves with this cinematic, relentlessly paced novel that mixes and matches genres, combining horror, technothriller, and suspense in a heady mix that is equal parts Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King. Infected will crawl beneath your skin and leave fresh blood on every page.From the Hardcover edition. Genres: Horror, Murderers, Neurobehavioral disorders, Parasites, Thriller