..crisp golden cannonballs of carbohydrate. Which is John Baxter’s description of roast potatoes, one of the items he serves up for Christmas dinner at his French in-laws’ house. The main course is a roast suckling pig, which proves to be too long for the oven. He tells his wife to call Jean-Pierre. Why, she says,…
Seriously? Of course there will be spoilers. *** It’s been a long time since I’ve reread The Lord of the Rings first page to last (as opposed to pulling down one volume or another and rereading just my favorite parts, which I do all the time). It remains as compelling and as thrilling and heartbreaking an adventure…
January 22, 2022 Reread this for the first time in decades. It’s even better than I remembered it, especially the narrator’s editorial asides, among which: …you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. …one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was…
The sixth volume in NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society)’s invitational collections of atlases of real and imagined places. From the quirky to the straightforward, from hand drawn to AI-generated images, these maps are various, beautiful, and new in every edition, beautifully produced and the atlas itself — mirabile dictu!–is reasonably priced. The maps are produced…
Read more An invitational collection of atlases of real and imagined places
I’m rereading The Lord of the Rings as I do every few years since my freshman English teacher gave the books to me in high school. Many years later I stumbled across a copy of this book in a used book store and pounced on it. It is a tremendous reference for all four novels in Tolkien’s…
Read more You will never wander lost through Middle Earth again.
Griffiths sets the beginning of this book at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and totally sticks the landing. Archaeologist Ruth Galloway and daughter Kate are living their lives, socializing with friends, family, and neighbors, going out for coffee and to the cinema and shopping when the rumors of this century’s plague begin creeping in.…
It is books like these that make it possible for unscholars like me to write historical fiction.* My Eye of Isis novels are set in the time of Cleopatra and the research for this book comes from papyrus records buried beneath millenia of sand referring to the title subject, Egypt when it ceased to be…
Read more I think the gods were willing and he did do just fine.
Rerunning my Goodreads review of John Sandford’s Escape Clause here… Any book that begins with Virgil Flowers skinny dipping in a swimming hole works for me. Add in two catnapped Amur tigers, immigrant workers being exploited in a pickle factory, a homicidal animal rights activist, Frankie the farmer girlfriend who is, reluctantly I say it,…
Read more Letty and the Peace-Makers is the name of my next band.
The 5th of Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper series, each of which began life as a serial on their blog. In this reality galactic citizens travel by portal, and Earth, by virtue of being in the middle of the cosmic everything, enjoys a privileged status as a stopover.* Inns grown (literally) with help from magically talented human…
Read more Orro, a gigantic hedgehog and Dina’s very own Red Cleaver chef
The history of flight from its natural origins on the wings of the pterosaur to today’s technological wonders of the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737. Richard Dawkins writes with a sense of delighted discovery, using the tiniest details to illuminate his narrative. Literally. …the smallest flying insect is the Fairyfly (it’s actually a wasp…
Read more Richard Dawkins writes with a sense of delighted discovery