The famous author's self-review of snippets from his first 100 books... not among his best, which began to look ever more churned-out in his later years, during which he wrote hundreds more. ( )

4/6/22

At one time, I had all but 5 of the first 100 books Isaac Asimov ever wrote. Then I got distracted by college, work, family obligations...the usual case of Life. I still have those 95 books.

This book takes selected quotes from each of those first hundred and intersperses them with biographical anecdotes. I would often recommend it to friends who had never read any of Asimov's work as a starter book. It is true that his unadorned writing style is not to everybody's taste, but I always enjoyed his clear, concise writing in both fiction and nonfiction.

If you can find a copy of this book, I still recommend it. ( )

Asimov's 100th book (eventually he would write over 500), this one is a collection of excerpts from prior books of essays on a variety of topics, including all fields of science and mathematics, the Bible, humor and word origins. Asimov was a true renaissance man, fascinated with all fields of knowledge, and gifted in the ability to transmit this knowledge on paper so as to infect the average reader with this fascination. ( )