Book Review: Battling the Gods
/The open, even evangelical atheism of the 21st century might be new, but as a sparkling-good new book demonstrates, atheism itself is as old as belief
Read MoreIdol-Bashing in the Penny Press!
/This late in the year, for good or ill, the year’s publishing success stories are fairly well known – both “success” in terms of sales and “success” in terms of critical worth (and the rare, happy instances where the two coincide). So a negative review of one of these success stories jumps off the page, […]
Read MoreGood Old William Dean Howells!
/Our book today is a sturdy, inviting thing from 1910, the “Library Edition” that combines two books by William Dean Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction. The books were published years apart, and this lovely compendium was a thoughtful gift to me recently from the old lady who reviews the same novel every […]
Read MoreBook Review: Russell Kirk
/A big and colorful new biography of modern conservatism's larger-than-life ideological godfather
Read MoreBook Review: The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer
/A penetrating - and bitterly timely - book about the 2011 killing rampage of Anders Behring Breivik
Read MoreThe Art of the Mass Market: Regency Romances!
/Once again, I’m trying your patience by taking the long way around the barn to get to the actual feature I intend to call “The Art of the Mass Market”! That feature will celebrate just what it says on the tin: the art of mass market paperback reprints of books originally released in hardcover. And […]
Read MoreComics! American Alien #1!
/Today’s selection of new comics – reached at my beloved Comicopia through a miserable pining chilly mist – was typically broad and had plenty of interesting-looking new titles, including quite a few ever-optimistic first issues. In one of those, The All-New, All-Different Avengers (as with so much in the new, trendy, app-y Marvel Comics line, […]
Read MoreThe Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo!
/Our book today is a great gaudy thing from a great gaudy decade, The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo from 1978, with an Introduction by the late great science fiction editor Lester Del Rey, a third-rate hack of an author but an absolute impresario when it came to finding, editing, and packaging sci-fi and fantasy […]
Read MoreBook Review: The English and Their History
/A huge - and hugely enjoyable - new book details the long history of the English people
Read MoreBook Review: London Fog
/For centuries, "pea-soup" fog was synonymous with the city of London; a lively new book tells its story.
Read MoreSix Big Fat Summer Biographies!
/Ah, yes: windows open, ceiling fan going, bare feet propped up on the nearest basset hound – all the typical hallmarks of November in New England! And how better to pass a hot, languid November weekend than with a nice fat biography, to take your mind off the sultry weather? Certainly I myself don’t know […]
Read MoreBook Review: Great Soul of Siberia
/A stirring account of one wild family of critically-endangered Siberian tigers
Read MoreBook Review: City on a Grid
/The in-depth story of how it came to be that the Bronx is up and the Battery's down - the grid system of Manhattan!
Read MoreComics: Hercules #1!
/Yesterday’s comics featured – as they now tend to do on an almost alarmingly frequent basis – the first issue of a new series, in this case Hercules #1, written by Dan Abnett and drawn by Luke Ross (the credits also include the rather hilarious line “Hercules created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby”). I […]
Read MoreRomance Roundup – Sparkly Cowboys!
/Romance novels have a long history of, well, romanticizing types of men who are entirely best avoided in real life. Arguably, this began with my beloved Regency romances, since as a matter of historical fact, the typical Regency “buck” or “Corinthian” was a thoroughly deplorable creature, chubby, alcoholic, and positively dripping with venereal disease. Likewise […]
Read MoreBook Review: The Work of the Dead
/A fascinating new history details the changing job description of the dead-and-buried over the centuries
Read MoreThe Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories!
/Our book today is a nifty gem from the old “Oxford Book” line: 1986’s The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert, with its great cover art showing John Atkinson Grimshaw’s endlessly evocative An Old Lane by Moonlight (honestly, what anthology wouldn’t be improved by such a cover? […]
Read MoreThe Art of the Mass Market Paperback!
/Lately I’ve been going through all the mass market paperbacks I own (an ungodly number, which is part of the reason I’ve been going through them, but more of that in a later post), and as I’ve been looking again at all their covers, I realized something more clearly than I’d ever realized it before: […]
Read MoreGenerals in Dark and Snow
/Late in 1944, the defeated Nazis staked everything on one last throw of the dice, a massive assault on the Allied forces in Belgium. Antony Beevor's latest book tells the famous story of the Battle of the Bulge.
Read MoreThe Folio Society Rumpole!
/Our book today is a gorgeous 1994 “Rumpole” volume from the Folio Society, featuring ten classic stories chosen by their author, John Mortimer, who introduces the collection by sketching out the very simple guideline he used to select which bits of his large “Rumpole” canon he wanted to include: In this book I have chosen […]
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