The Scarlet Letters & The Glass Village, by Ellery Queen In my notice of (not really) reaching the “500 Books Read” milestone, I mentioned briefly the book we’re looking at today, which consists of two previously published mysteries slammed together in one volume by Signet in an effort to cash in on the seemingly bottomless …
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I’ve just now completed the 500th book since I began tracking my reading back in 2016. Of course, since I don’t really count comics and graphic novels towards my ‘Books Read’ total, I am not really asserting that I’ve read a spectacular half-chiliad of tomes, but just jotting this brief note in any case. (Comics …
If you are looking for a Catechism for your young Catholic friend or family member who thinks that The Lego Movie was cool and who might possibly believe that Raiders of the Lost Ark is still relevant, you need look no farther than Kevin and Mary O’Neill’s Catechism of the Seven Sacraments, a comic book …
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I found it to be a perfect novel, with perfect characters, perfect observations, perfect dialogue … up to a point. Call it the Uncanny Asymptote of Nearly Perfect Fiction.
Trigger Warnings: Bestiality, Cannibalism, Rape, Violence, Murder, Torture, Slavery, Sexual Slavery, Cavity Searches, Child Genital Mutilation, STDs, Religion, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Gardening
Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes, by R. Austin Freeman The impossibly insightful detective is, of course, a staple of the mystery genre, with Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation being the archetype, though the lineage runs back to Poe’s “tales of ratiocination” in which the mental magic is performed by C. Auguste Dupin. Such a superhuman investigator always manages …
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All I ask from from Wacko literature—be it Conspiracy, Secret Society, or other weirdness—is that it a) make startling claims which are b) supported by intriguing evidence that c) almost makes me a convert. St. Paul in Britain succeeds on all three counts.
The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1942, by Anita Brenner, with 184 photographs compiled by George R. Leighton Proponents of revolution—or opponents, for that matter—might soberly consider the course of the Mexican Revolution, the first of the great revolutions of the 20th Century. Like the other revolts in Russia …
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2 novellas by Wilkie Collins: Miss Or Mrs? & The Guilty River How difficult it shall be in our ‘woke’ future to read the literature of the past! For, after ensuring that our book is printed appropriately with soy inks upon hempen paper, and reading beneath an LED bulb powered by solar light stored in …
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Hazell and the Menacing Jester, by P. B. Yuill [Gordon Williams & Terry Venables] I like reading books. Really, I do. I read for enjoyment, to learn stuff, to delay the inevitable minute when I have to return to work, and to distract myself when I’m sitting in the meditation chamber in my house. And …
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