Your Humble Blogger was surprised to discover that The Wrong Box, by Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne, is out of print. It’s a lovely little farce, and well worth reading, if you get your hands on a copy. The…
One of the things about the umpty-’leventh time through Isaac Asimov’s Foundation was noticing the short story-ness of the short stories. You know what I mean? When I started the series, reading it in a hardback omnibus of the three…
If Your Humble Blogger didn’t have much to say about the umpty-’leventh reread of Wild Horses two years ago, perhaps there isn’t much to say about the umpty-’elfth. Umptwelfth. Umpty-enth plus one. Of course, really, when you’ve read a book…
OK, Your Humble Blogger has said before that there will spoilers in these Book Reports, without putting special spoiler warnings up, but since this entire note will be about the One Key Plot Point in K.J. Parker’s Devices and Desires,…
Your Humble Blogger had, if you’ll recall, quite enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves, so despite the nasty reviews, when Lynne Truss’s’s most recent showed up on the New Book Shelf, home it came. Reading it was not as enjoyable an…
Hard Times is a short Dickens novel. Which is not really a contradiction in terms, but it does indicate that there is going to be something missing, some essential Dickensian excess. There are some twenty or so memorable characters, which…
One thing about a comfort book is that it helps if there isn’t really much tension in it. Well, one type of comfort book, anyway, is the kind where the baddies are buffoons or otherwise nonintimidating. I wouldn’t call Dark…
I remember vastly enjoying Emil and the Detectives as a child, and then more or less enjoying struggling through it auf Deutsch as a teenager. I was shocked to discover it had gone out of print, and even more shocked…
Your Humble Blogger has always liked The King Must Die. It’s not my very favorite Mary Renault, which is The Mask of Apollo, but it’s probably next favorite. It’s amazing how much I liked the physical daring of Theseus, when…
I happened to come across Belief or Nonbelief at the library, and as I am a reasonably big fan of Umberto Eco, who is one of the authors, I thought I would pick it up. These are translations of, well,…