Today I’m going to be talking about a series that we’ve discussed before on the show in brief. Well, more accurately, I talked about the first book during Episode 80, back in the day. The series in question is George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire.

As mentioned on the show, this series is not for the feint of heart. I’ve currently read three and a half of these novels (I’m 300 pages from finishing the fourth book), which comes to the sum total of roughly 2,600 pages. From what I understand, the series originally started in seven parts, with Martin currently writing the fifth installment, but we shall see how it all ends up. It’s very interesting for me to be reading a series that is so well established that also has years and years to go before finishing. I am reminded of Steven King’s Gunslinger series, which has seven novels that took upwards of two decades to complete. I really hope that is not the case here, but only time will tell. Read more…

I didn’t intend to do this post on Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch yet, but I I have to write something on this book. This book was such a hit in Russia that it spawned two movies there before it was translated into English. These are movies out of the recovering post-Soviet film industry, and after reading the book, I want to see them. Read more…

If you haven’t read anything by Robert A. Heinlein, you’ve missed a huge chunk of 20th century American science fiction. You may feel bad about that. Maybe not. Anyway, one of the greatest Read more…

Hiho, it’s time to talk about a book. Here we have the first book I’ve read specifically for Pressed & Bound. It’s called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and it was written by Dai Sijie. Because it’s a brisk, cinematic read, I recommend it if you have to sit anywhere for a long time. Read more…

Alright, boys and girls.  It’s been a rough couple of weeks for updates, but here’s a big damn book for you.

Neal Stephenson is the author of Snow Crash, which Joe and Garret reviewed, and The Diamond Age, which I would love to write up sometime.  He’s a great author and has a huge, nerdy fanbase.  Today’s book, however, is why am not a drooling fanboy for him the way I am for Gaiman and Gibson. Read more…

Happy Oktoberfest, everyone!  I’m drinking hefeweisen on an empty stomach.  Let’s see how it affects my spelling and word choice.  This is Part the Third of the three-part Gaiman-thing! Once again, I am borrowing my girlfriend’s copy of this week’s book.  I have left mine at my parent’s house.  For God’s sake, please don’t tell her. Read more…

Welcome to Part the Second of the three-part Gaiman-tacular! In this riveting installment, we take a look at one of my absolute favorite books, Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman. Read more…

Hey, everybody!  You may remember that a while back, Garret and Joe put out a call for content writers.  They wanted people to write reviews to slake the Internet’s terrible thirst for Pressed & Bound between episodes.  That’s where I come in.  Soon, I’ll have info up on the About page.  For now, here’s a review of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.     -Andrew (not that Andrew, this Andrew)

Upon reading a recent book that was very good and discussion-worthy, we got the idea that we should every once in a while have a roundtable where we can fully discuss everything about the book from start to finish. We’re going to talk about this on the most current show (7/31/07), but I wanted to also have a post dedicated to it as well.

Basically what we’re wanting to do is tell you guys around two or three weeks beforehand what book we’ll be fully discussing in order to give anyone who wants to read it time to. Then on one week when we’d normally do our show, we’ll fully review the book in a roundtable fashion with a couple more people who have read the book, so it won’t just be Joe and myself discussing it. Additionally, because we’re giving you guys time to read the novel, we’d like it if you all would send us your thoughts on the book or various aspects that we could discuss during the show. We really want there to be a lot of interaction during these shows. Of course, participation is up to you, but we think it’d be great to bring together thoughts and opinions of everyone who is watching the show.

For the first roundtable discussion we’re going to have here at P&B, the novel we have chosen is Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. The novel is about 272 pages, but it reads really quickly. Since this is the first time we’re doing this, we’ll give it a full month before we discuss it. Look for the show about this book around August 21st.