A Boomer and His Books

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BLOCK THAT METAPHOR (OR IS IT A SIMILE?)
There’s a stretch of dialog in the 1954 Douglas Sirk film, Magnificent Obsession, that my friend Don and I have long joked about (probably unfairly).
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Kevin Mims
1
R.I.P. MARTIN CRUZ SMITH
The death, on July 11, of Martin Cruz Smith, should have garnered a lot more attention than it did.
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Kevin Mims
DON'T LISTEN TO DAVID BROOKS: PART II
In my previous entry I examined what was wrong with David Brooks’s recent New York Times column titled “When Novels Mattered.” This entry is an…
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Kevin Mims
DON’T LISTEN TO DAVID BROOKS: NOVELS STILL MATTER
On July 10, The New York Times published an essay by columnist David Brooks called “When Novels Mattered,” in which he argued that works of prose…
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Kevin Mims
7
DEFINING DIVERSITY DOWN
NOTE: This essay originally appeared in Quillette in January of 2020 and has not been updated.
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Kevin Mims
3
FRANKENTHRILLER III: GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Last July I wrote two essays about so-called Frankenthrillers, pop-fictions that seemed to have been cobbled together – somewhat like Frankenstein’s…
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Kevin Mims
TECHNOBABBLE
Nothing in popular fiction seems to grow stale as quickly as writings about computer technology.
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Kevin Mims
A FEW THOUGHTS ON ChatGPT AND GOOD WRITING
Back in May, the Chicago Sun-Times caught heat for publishing a summer reading list that had been produced using artificial intelligence.
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Kevin Mims

June 2025

A GRIPPING NEO-NOIR, PARALLEL-UNIVERSE THRILLER
I have written before about my fondness for Ken Grimwood’s 1986 novel Replay, which pretty much invented the time-loop fantasy genre that most people…
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Kevin Mims
1
RIP: FREDERICK FORSYTH
The death, on Monday, of Frederick Forsyth brought to a close one of popular fiction’s greatest careers.
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Kevin Mims
THE EX – A NOVEL BY ALAFAIR BURKE
Some spoilers ahead.
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Kevin Mims
THE BETTER SISTER AND OMEGA: MORE ABOUT COMPETENCE PORN
This post contains numerous spoilers for the TV series The Better Sister.
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Kevin Mims
© 2025 Kevin Mims
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