Another recent pick-up off the New Book shelf was Blacklist, a V.I. Warshawski novel by Sara Paretsky. Now, I thought the first five or six V.I. novels (Indemnity Only, Deadlock , Killing Orders, Bitter Medicine, Blood Shot and maybe Burn…
Every now and then I find myself on the edge of knowing what’s going on. For instance, Gentle Readers will by now have figured out that Your Humble Blogger likes speculative fiction. This is, for the most part, a holdover…
I think I talked about this on somebody else’s blog last time I read it, before I started my book report, but Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion really is quite a book. It’s a romance, of course, and…
Your Humble Blogger is interested in how books are made into movies. Or at least, how novels are made into screenplays. It’s such a strange thing to do, and it seems so difficult. There are a few movies I think…
I was on a James Thurber kick for a while, so I got out Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor, and Himself (New York: Harper 1989), a collection of heretofore unanthologized bits and pieces. Unsurprisingly, there was…
I bought a copy of The Charioteer (New York: Pantheon 1959) six months ago or more, and kept meaning to read it. I’m terribly fond of Mary Renault’s Greek novels, but had heard bad things about her early ‘contemporary’ books,…
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it recently, but I’ve now read all of Dick Francis’ books several times each. That’s a lot; I think he’s written thirty-three mystery novels, but it may well be more. Some of them aren’t…
It wouldn’t be right for me to write an actual review of Hench, because the writer, Adam Beechen, is one of my oldest friends. So if I didn’t like it, I’d feel all awkward. It’s like going round to the…
OK, for any Gentle Reader who has not yet read or seen Ten Little Indians, AKA And Then There Were None (New York: Pocket 1979), let me start by saying it was the judge. The JUDGE! OK? Secondly, Agatha Christie…
In the ramble about airplane books, YHB forgot to mention the really dire part: I have run out of Dick Francis books. They pretty much typify airplane reading, but having read all of them several times by now, they can’t…