Category: Book Review Monday

“A new Ivan the Terrible?”

The General again ropes Bruno into the world of spies, including Dular, a Russian who can pass for Alaskan (grin), with the requisite beautiful women in peril (all of whom fall in love with Bruno, of course) and a shoot-em-up at the end. Balzac is okay, thank goodness. The description of the St. Denis Saturday…

Read more “A new Ivan the Terrible?”

OK, Boomer.

Man, I never knew there was this much data in the world. Or that it could be organized into that many graphs, or that there were that many different kinds of graphs. As to the story Bump tells–it turns out that I am part of a gigantic pig that has been swallowed whole by a…

Read more OK, Boomer.

We should not start our work by imagining we have the answers; we need to seek them out.

Marty Baron is the Forest Gump of modern day journalism. He was with the Miami Herald during the 2000 election, with the Boston Globe during 9/11 and spearheaded the Globe‘s investigation of the Catholic Church’s coverup of pedofile priests, a story that inspired coverage of the same story to wherever in the world the Catholic Church had a footprint. As…

Read more We should not start our work by imagining we have the answers; we need to seek them out.

One was a victim, the other a villain, but Keefe never forgets that they were also both human beings

I’ve spent a lot of time in Ireland, enough to have what I consider to be extended family there. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to stories (Irishmen tell stories as well as any Bush pilot or Alaska state trooper, which is saying something). The thing about Ireland is best exemplified by the Faulker…

Read more One was a victim, the other a villain, but Keefe never forgets that they were also both human beings

The Brother Cadfael series is held to have begun the history mystery subgenre of crime fiction.

Brother Cadfael is a monk at the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury and the title character in the series of novels by Ellis Peters. By virtue of the fact that unlike most monks he was a crusader and a ship’s captain for forty years before joining the monastery, and, additionally, became…

Read more The Brother Cadfael series is held to have begun the history mystery subgenre of crime fiction.

But as you say, half an oblong wheat-flour product is better than none.

Margaret Atwood’s brain just doesn’t work like anyone else’s, to the everlasting benefit of all her readers. In this selection of short stories she explores, variously– *herself communing with George Orwell through a snoring medium (a little heartbreaking, I found this one) *an alien member of an intergalactic-crises aid package who is also an out…

Read more But as you say, half an oblong wheat-flour product is better than none.