Books Read in 2020: 12 (December)

And so we draw down our list. And finally pass 2020, that kidney-stone of a year.

284. Battleship Yamato: Of War, Beauty and Irony by Jan Morris. A curious essay in which the warship acts as the central symbol for an examination of the aesthetics of warfare. What a contrast with the previous title (The First Blitz, November). (2 December)

285. The Dawn Patrol by Guy Fowler. Bears only some resemblance to the movie. Poor historical detail, overly melodramatic. A curiosity more than an entertainment. (3 December)

286. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. Hard to get too excited about a space opera in which the main characters are overly flawed. Reasonably compelling, but I don’t know if I’m in for the full series. (4 December)

287. The Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography by Ann Thomas. Companion to a Canadian museum display of photos. Not as much material as I’d expected, and doesn’t address all of the issues it raises. (5 December)

288. Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey. Too many POV characters, and not all of them likeable. But the SOB authors pulled a wicked switcheroo at the end, damn them. Maybe I’ll get book 3 after all. (6 December)

289. Masters of the Air: The Great War Pilots McLeod, McKeever and Maclaren by Roger Gunn. Mini-biographies of three Canadian WWI pilots. Not very well written, but there’s enough of A.A. McLeod’s letters to really define his character. Not so much for McKeever and Maclaren, I’m afraid. An editor who knew the subject would have been a good idea, too. (7 December)

290. The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman. The only part of her “WWI Trilogy” I had never read. (I thought it might be her first book; it’s actually her third.) Fascinating stuff about espionage, but also about racist US international politics under Wilson. Still hard-pressed to understand why Zimmermann would admit to having sent the titular message. (9 December)

291. The Urban Fantasy Anthology ed. Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale. Signed out mostly because of who the editors are. Good stories, and they aren’t just about fucking werewolves and vampires. The “noir” fantasies (the last third?) were mostly depressing; bloody hell but I hate werewolf stories. (10 December)

292. *The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett. I just needed something to make me laugh. Would have worked better if I’d remembered (spoiler alert!) the bloody cat dies at one point (though not permanently). (11 December)

293. Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard. A mystery with some nicely steamy (but allusive) sex and a strange SF universe. Interesting to have the McGuffin right in front of me the entire time and not recognize it. I like her writing; it’s very odd and elusive. (11 December)

294. *The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. First of the Five Gods books and still one of the best. I have really been identifying with Caz lately. (12 December)

295. Captain Future and the Emperor of Space by Edmond Hamilton. Almost too pulpy to be borne with. Sort of an early SF version of the Hardy Boys, I guess. (13 December)

296. The Social Life of Coffee by Brian Cowan. Overly academic study of the emergence of coffee house culture in 17th-century England (and Britain). A tougher slog than it ought to have been. Made me want to learn more about the virtuosi of 17th-century England. (15 December)

297. *Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. Does it count as a re-read when the first time it was read to me rather than by me? Fun in a somewhat antisocial way. (15 December)

298. Star Gate by Andre Norton. An SF novel with fantasy tropes, and quite well done. (It does show its age in some respects.) I was impressed with its anti-colonial approach―and with the fact the Terrans are described as being brown-skinned. (16 December)

299. The Coming of the Terrans by Leigh Brackett. She invented a wonderful fictional Mars, and these stories―though they also show their age (there are unfortunate hints of “noble savage” and “exotic primitive” attitudes in some of these)―are great examples of world-building. Last one is best. (17 December)

300. Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell. Short-story collection. Title story didn’t work for me, but I liked most of the others. “U-Turn” was clever, “Dear Devil” nice without being too cloyingly sentimental. (18 December)

301. *Miracle and other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis. ‘Tis the season. “Miracle” is still my favourite, but “Epiphany” is coming up the inside rail, with “Inn” and “Adaptation” close behind. What a lovely book. (19 December)

302. Men, Martians and Machines by Eric Frank Russell. Not a novel, but a quartet of stories involving the same people. Unfortunately pretty much the same plot, too. Shows its age as well. (21 December)

303. Mortal Republic by Edward J. Watts. The downfall of pre-Imperial Rome. Well-written and carefully researched, but a depressing story given the current travails of the modern Rome to the south of us. Decent historical detail as well. (22 December

304. Coffee A Global History by Jonathan Morris. A very brief history, but it does seem to touch all of the bases. Don’t know that it was necessary to give me recipes for Tiramisu and such-like, but I did learn a few things. (23 December)

305. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Believe it or not, I had never read this before. I’ve seen multiple movie versions, I’ve watched it on stage, I’ve even heard “Fireside Al” Maitland read a wonderful scene from Stave III over the radio. But until this week I’d never read it myself. Wonderful story, and what a pity no movie-maker ever tried to make Marley’s lower jaw fall off. (24 December)

306. Knights of the Air: Canadian Fighter Pilots in the First World War by Lt-Col David L. Bashow. More hero-worship than history, I think. The Bishop hagiography is a bit nauseating, despite Bashow’s obvious effort at balance. Most of the paintings are of fairly low quality. Good photo selection. (26 December)

307. Rivers of London: The Fey and the Furious by Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel. Latest Peter Grant graphic tale. Not that successful, I am sad to report. I don’t find street-racing an interesting subject anyway, but this seemed to be all process and no character. Certainly wasn’t at all engaging to me. (26 December)

308. The Portable Paradise by Jonathan Keates. A brief, charming essay on the subject of travel books (notably, Murray and Baekdecker) from the Proud Tower period. Keates just gets it where these books are concerned. (27 December)

309. Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. Based on a series of radio lectures. Interesting but perhaps not all that helpful to this would-be writer; I think it’s more about how to read novels. Forster sometimes comes across as little more than a snob. (27 December)

310. The Space Willies by Eric Frank Russell. Another of his Solitary-Human-vs-Alien-Bureaucracy tales. A short novel and even at that it’s stretched pretty thinly. If anything the alien bad guys are even more stupid than the ones in Wasp. (28 December)

311. Six Worlds Yonder by Eric Frank Russell. More of his Arrogant-Humans-Learn-Better tales. Not an especially strong collection, though “The Waitabits” is fun (albeit overlong). (29 December)

312. Judgment on Janus by Andre Norton. More fantasy-tinged SF. Nice delineation of a nasty religious cult, and I like the multiple personality aspects. Story doesn’t end, though, so much as it just stops. Word-count issues? (29 December)

313. Victory on Janus by Andre Norton. The missing conclusion to #312. Not quite as satisfying as Judgement; I think the story would have been much better as a single novel. (30 December)

314. The Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton. More sword-and-sorcery than SF, I think. And why did it take me so long to realize how much golden-age SF was rural in setting? Not much attention paid to cities in any of these books. Very frontier-like. (31 December)

 And that's all for 2020. Think we'll miss that year at any point down the timeline? Nope, me neither.

Happy 2021?

Hey, 2021 is going to have to work really hard to suck more than 2020 did. With any luck at least some of my readers will have been vaccinated against The Plague within the next 200 days. Rather looking forward to being jabbed myself.

Books Read in 2020: 11 (November)

Getting close to the end of things where this list is concerned. From a plague perspective November was probably the worst month: Covid-19 cases and deaths shot up, and we were tightly locked down, with (at the time) no hint of when things might improve. And at that we in Canada were much better off than many people. Second-smallest total of books read in a month this year, for what that's worth. As usual, asterisks (*) identify re-read titles.

265. *V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd. O the joys of Anarchy. This might be heresy, but I think I prefer the movie… (1 November)

266. Biggles of the Camel Squadron by Capt. W.E. Johns. Was a huge Biggles fan in junior high school. I’m not anymore. WE Johns compares rather poorly with John Harris… granted he wrote in a different period: This book is from 1934, republished in 1968. (1 November)

267. Nieuport 11/16 Bébé vs Fokker Eindecker by Jon Guttman. Because of the aviation fiction I’ve been reading, I guess. Dry but informative. And only 80 pages. (4 November)

268. Reckless Fellows: The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps by Edward Bujak. I had hoped for new info about training, and perhaps a social history of the RFC in the UK. I was disappointed. The factual errors didn’t help. And if I never again see the phrase “Edwardian fox-hunting aristocrats” in connection with the RFC, it will be too soon. (5 November)

269. The Royal Flying Corps in France: From Mons to the Somme by Ralph Barker. Much better written than Reckless Fellows, and while it didn’t tell me much new, it was still a good read. (7 November)

270. Into the Valley: Marines at Guadalcanal by John Hersey. He was really good at this sort of writing. Very little happens in this tale of men running away from battle. But it’s a tremendous tale anyway, and well told. (8 November)

271. A Single Pebble by John Hersey. Novel set in early 1920s China. Not very interesting, I’m afraid: it reads like journalism, and the POV character’s a doofus. Good background material, though. (10 November)

272. Over the Wine-Dark Sea by H.N. Turteltaub (aka Harry Turtledove). Another example of fine background and world-building, without much juice to it. Two protagonists, neither of whom seems to be affected at all by his experiences. (12 November)

273. The Interceptors by John Harris. Penultimate Falconer novel, set in civil-war Russia, 1919. A most depressing subject, and this provides less flyboy action and more of a catalogue of misery. (13 November)

274. The Great War: A Photographic Narrative by the Imperial War Museums. Immense collection of photos, mostly of the western front but touching on most aspects of the war. Text is no great shakes, but it wasn’t the text I was interested in. (14 November)

275. The Revolutionaries by John Harris. A Mexican revolution? Sure, why not? Easily the most juvenile of the five books, and rather a silly way to end the series. (15 November)

276. The War Lover by John Hersey. Much more engaging than Pebble. Much longer, too, but in this case it’s a good thing. Interesting structure, though the final revelations about Marrow’s character seem a bit over the top. (16 November)

277. What’s So Funny? by Donald Westlake. Another Dortmunder novel. As easy to get through as a bag of Doritos. He has a knack for making elaborate coincidences seem quite natural. (18 November)

278. The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century by Jay Winter & Blaine Baggett. Companion book to a BBC/PBS doc series. Fascinating attention to non-battle, non-soldier details. Big, too. (21 November)

279. Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake. Non-Dortmunder comic caper. A most likeable protagonist, and catchy plot. Emotionally deeper than I’d expected. (23 November)

280. Horse of a Different Color by Howard Waldrop. Nobody writes like this, really. I wish I did. A bit surprised: I liked everything in this collection. (24 November)

281. Forever and a Death by Donald E. Westlake. Lorna thought it was a comedy; it wasn’t. To my surprise it was originally a treatment for a Bond film. Protagonist basically disappears in the middle of the book. (25 November)

282. Money for Nothing by Donald E. Westlake. Another standalone thriller, with a very odd plot device. And a protagonist who spends most of the book being passive and boring. Every one of the supporting characters is more interesting. Partially redeemed by a rousing finish. (26 November)

283. The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War by Ian Castle. Military history, not history―there’s a significant difference. Not for the better, I’m afraid. This was like double-entry bookkeeping for violent death. (28 November)

Books Read in 2020: 10 (October)

Into the final quarter of the year, and back under the lockdown thumb. Roddy Doyle was definitely the happy surprise of this month. Though the Westlake book prompted me to start reading his fiction. As always, re-reads are marked with an asterisk (*). But you knew that...

238. Last Page First by Allan Fotheringham. Several decades’ worth of columns, with a fair amount of recycling involved. Found it more entertaining than the previous Foth book, possibly because some of the columns were more recent than 1981. (1 October)

239. Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris by Edmund White. What can I say? I find the man’s style (and forthrightness) charming. This one’s more about him (and his friends) than about Paris, but if anything it’s more entertaining than The Flâneur. (3 October)

240. The Getaway Car by Donald E. Westlake. At Lorna’s recommendation, a collection of non-fiction by a very prolific writer of “detective stories”. Mostly entertaining (and at times funny) but there’s a flintiness at base that I suspect confirms he wouldn’t have been all that nice a person. (6 October)

241. Two for the Road by Roddy Doyle. To my surprise I laughed while reading this. A lot. Most definitely out loud. A simple idea (that ought not to work, but does), brilliantly executed. (7 October)

242. Listen Up! by Mark Howard. Canadian recording engineer/producer gossips about equipment and people he has worked with. Very odd. Shallow, not much depth… almost as if it had been dictated rather than written. (8 October)

243. Nemo: The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Read this out of order, and a lot of the dialogue is in German (fuck off, Moore) so not as enjoyable as it might have been. (8 October)

244. Get Real by Donald E. Westlake. One of the later Dortmunder novels. At first I wasn’t sure, but even if the satire is a bit clumsy overall it’s funny and very well written (10 October)

245. Ghost Stories by Walter de la Mare. Took me weeks (months?) to wade through this. Some good tales, but the style isn't for me. (11 October)

246. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Supposedly the last installment of the story, and Moore’s farewell to comics. Increasingly inclined to go up its own ass, I think, and the 3D stuff was painful to try to read. Still a fair amount of nasty, if self-indulgent, fun. (12 October)

247. The Fledglings by John Harris (or Max Hennessy). Apparently YA fiction about WWI pilots. Picked up on a whim. Not great, and rather dark for YA in 1971. But I’ll keep reading the rest of the series, I think. (14 October)

248. War Planes of the First World War: Fighters vol. 2 by J. M. Bruce. At long last, the Sopwith Camel! (Also the various peculiar Royal Aircraft Factory designs.) Don’t know why I love this stuff, but I surely do. (15 October)

249. War Planes of the First World War: Fighters vol. 4 by J. M. Bruce. French fighter design philosophy was very strange, it turns out. (16 October)

250. War Planes of the First World War Fighters vol. 5 by J. M. Bruce. Very frustrating that this excellent series just stops with this volume. (17 October)

251. Pioneer Aircraft: 1903-1914 by William Munson. Not really very well organized, but lots of intriguing info. Much more personality-based than any other books in this series. (18 October)

252. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not sure if Tempest would have made any more sense if I’d read this first. All in all though I like this volume much more than vol. 4. I’m inclined to be unimpressed by a piece of art that only makes sense if you have somebody annotating it, but perhaps Moore just makes me cranky these days. (19 October)

253. *Monty Python’s Big Red Book by Pythons. A reminder that they weren’t just about TV and movies. Pretty flimsy reminder, but what the hell. Wanted distraction, got same. (20 October)

254. *The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Vol. 1 by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Re-read just to confirm to myself that the first volumes really were much more accessible… and entertaining. (21 October)

255. Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not really sure what the point of this one was. (22 October)

256. Nemo: River of Ghosts by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. Not bad as a wrap-up of the Nemo-Robur family saga. (22 October)

257. The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake. First appearance of Dortmunder, and a comedy of frustration, well done. The ending’s a bit abrupt but I liked it. (23 October)

258. The Professionals by John Harris. Second pseudo-Biggles novel starring Martin Falconer. Reasonably accurate but somehow never gripping. (24 October)

259. The Victors by John Harris. Another quick read, with next to no staying power. Seems fairly serious for 1970s YA, but still not very deep. (24 October)

260. Stranger in the Shogun’s City by Amy Stanley. Fascinating detail about life in 19th-century Japan. Tsuneno does not sound at all likeable, but hats off to Stanley for taking a fairly small amount of source material and spinning it into a most engaging book. (24 October)

261. *Edo, the City That Became Tokyo by Naitō Akira (ill. Hozumi Kazuo). Re-read in order to enhance my enjoyment of #260, and enjoyed it much more the second time around. Lots of useful information for a fantasy world-builder. (25 October)

262. Mr. Straight Arrow by Jeremy Treglown. The career of John Hersey… who wrote a lot more than I realized, including novels I knew of but didn’t know were by him. He may not have been an easily knowable person; this book doesn’t tell me much. (27 October)

263. Down These Strange Streets ed. Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin. Fantasy or New Weird short stories. A higher hit-rate than I was expecting (the Harris and Gabaldon pieces were serious disappointments). Maybe even some inspiration here. (29 October)

264. A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister. Funny on the surface, but a lot of the history she retails is quite horrific. Men are shits; I’ve thought so for a long time. Will try to remember the amusing bits of this instead of the nasties. (31 October)

Books Read in 2020: 9 (September)

The end of summer. For some reason the lowest monthly total of the year. Actually, I know the reason: I became obsessed with the songs and artists mentioned in the first two books of this month, and spent much of the next four weeks assembling spreadsheets of the songs and artists. The next phase of that project required a lot of research on YouTube. This research has fallen victim to the pandemic malaise that has affected pretty much everything else I tried to do in 2020. Again, this month featured only a single re-read (marked, as always with that ol' asterisk*).

224. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music From Bill Haley to Beyoncé by Bob Stanley. 500+ pages, quasi-encyclopedic, and very entertaining (even when I don’t always agree with his opinions). Last quarter not as exciting because I just didn’t care enough about that music. (2 September)

225. Electric Shock by Peter Doggett. More pop-music history, this time covering the whole period of recorded pop music. Not as flamboyant as Stanley, perhaps, but covers much more ground. Now I want to build playlists… (4 September)

226. Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn. Supposed to be a comic masterpiece, I found it very depressing. None of the characters is really likeable, save for the old guy who dies before the halfway point. I can recognize the humour, but it’s all based on a degree of contempt for the characters. All of them. (5 September)

227. Go All the Way (ed. Paul Myers, S.W. Lauden) A mixed bag of essays about power pop. It has given me some ideas for new listening material. (7 September)

228. The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper. Climate change and epidemics in the fourth century? How timely. Liked this more than I’d expected to. Though I can’t fully agree with his arguments. (8 September)

229. Swordfish: The Story of the Taranto Raid by David Wragg. Pleasant enough read but not a great book; too little about the raid itself, and a lot of padding (did we need a full chapter on Pearl Harbor?) (12 September)

230. Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld. A collection of his wonderful, quasi-stick figure cartoons (in a similar vein to XKCD). Huge amounts of fun. (16 September)

231. *Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. Interesting idea: a history that tries to avoid being Euro-centric. Kudos for the attempt, but it seems to me there are a lot of gaps here anyway (Japan is hardly mentioned, and Africa doesn’t get as much notice as in Larry Gonick’s cartoon histories). Interesting to discover I’d actually read this book 4+ years ago, and had forgotten most of the first half. (17 September)

232. Malice in Blunderland, or How the Grits Stole Christmas by Allan Fotheringham. I probably would have found this funnier in 1982; today I was mostly aware of how the thing was constructed. (We’re not supposed to be able to see the wires.) Really took me back, to a time when I actually cared quite a bit about politics. (21 September)

233. A Saint From Texas by Edmund White. Two aspects of the author’s personality reflected in twin sisters from rural 1950s Texas (I caught hints in the family background of that of LBJ from the Hill Country of the 1930s). Amusing and engrossing in a way I don’t normally expect from mainstream fiction. (22 September)

234. The Police of Paris 1718-1789 by Alan Williams. An older book (1979) but full of fascinating detail. Wish I’d had it ten years ago… A bit of a tough slog, though: very academic in terms of prose style (i.e. dull and distanced). A birthday gift from Lorna (24 September)

235. The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London by Hannah Grieg. Another academic history, but not quite as dense as #234. Wonder why the last chapter  focused on women who were bounced from society. Did no Georgian man ever cheat at cards? (26 September)

236. The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. Loved the fuckin’ movie, had never read the fuckin’ book before. I like this ending better than the movie. (27 September)

237. The Flâneur by Edmund White. Quick, gossipy read that told me more than a few things I didn’t already know about Paris. And about the French. (29 September)

Books Read in 2020: 8 (August)

For those of you keeping track, August was when things started Going West again. Only 22 books read this month, but this was largely due to some of them being on the enormous side (for example, the two New Yorker compilations, to say nothing of the Lewisohn book about the Beatles... hundreds upon hundreds of pages, and it stops in 1962?). As always, the asterisk means a re-read. Only one of those this month, so yay for me?

202. The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. The story of the telegraph. Peculiar that such a 19th-century story should be affected by the time-lapse between its writing and the present, but the word “Internet” in the title explains all. (1 August)

203. A History of France by John Julius Norwich. JJN was the son of Lord Duff and Lady Diana Cooper, and this reads exactly the way I’d expect knowing this parentage. It’s informed, gossipy, quite entertaining and very informative for all its relative brevity. (2 August)

204. The Best of the Rejection Collection edited by Matthew Diffee. A bunch of cartoons not accepted by The New Yorker, as submitted by otherwise successful cartoonists. In most cases it was obvious why they’d been rejected. The worst of the book, though, was the idiot question-answer routine that prefaced every cartoonist’s contribution. I skipped most of these once I figured out what was going on. (2 August)

205. Mad Women by Jane Maas. Amusing memoir of an advertising woman who started out in the mid-60s. (Wonder if she’s any relation to Don the agent?) Some of it quite entertaining, the latter chapters perhaps not so much. (3 August)

206. The Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes ed. by Susan Whitfield. Massive (450+ pp) but hugely informative book, with lotsa pix and good captions. (4 August)

207. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield. Agonizingly academic and so a tough slog. Took me three nights to get through this. (5 August)

208. Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute by (ed?) George Stevens, Jr. Amazingly long, with nuggets of information buried amidst mounds of self-serving blather. Not sure why I stuck with it. As it was, I mostly skimmed the last three chapters. (7 August)

209. Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen. Focusing on geography and location, at least as the starting point of the history. I might have overdosed on silk roads history by this point. (9 August)

210. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. I love this guy’s writings about movies. This one’s the story of the five Best Picture nominees at the 1967 Oscars. Well-written and informative. (9 August)

211. Toy Time! by Christopher Byrne. Another of those listicle-type books. Some of the articles (about toys I actually played with) were interesting, or at least potentially so. I would have liked more detail about these items―and less about My Little Pony or Teddy fucking Ruxpin. (10 August)

212. The Beatles: All These Years: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn. About 1,000 pages, and that just gets the guys into their early 20s. Exhaustively researched but a smooth, easy read. Had to borrow it from the library twice in order to finish it. (13 August)

213. The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low. Not long (180+ pp) and not as detailed as I’d hoped. Some interesting bits but no real through-line to it. (14 August)

214. The 60s: Story of a Decade by The New Yorker. Some famous journalism (Arendt, Baldwin, Capote, Carson) and historical moments (assassinations, Woodstock) as seen at the time. Not always wise but definitely interesting. The short stories were a pleasant surprise. Another 700-page monster. (17 August)

215. The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold. Latest Penric novella. On the lightweight side, I’m afraid; she almost seems to be coasting. Of course, Lois is nearly 71; she could be excused for being a bit tired. (18 August)

216. The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold. A Vorkosigan story, only half the length of Orphans. POV is Ekaterin, not Miles. (19 August)

217. The 50s: Story of a Decade by The New Yorker. Maybe not as engrossing as the ‘60s volume. But hey, that’s the 1950s for you. The piece about teenage gangs was fascinating, in a sad sort of way. (20 August)

218. Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison. Sherlock Holmes as an angel? Fanfic? Well, it was a smooth and quick read. (22 August)

219. *The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford. My favourite of his, by far. Every time I read it I discover something new. (24 August)

220. Fanny in France by Alice Waters & others. Turned out to be a YA food- and cookbook. Some basic French recipes, but not hugely interesting. (26 August)

221. Travels With Alice by Calvin Trillin. Not as much Alice as I’d expected, in fact (Abigail and Sarah get more space). Wonderful anyway. And ch. 8 features many of the people mentioned in the Waters book. (27 August)

222. Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. A supposed history of walking. About 30% informative by volume, and maybe 30% entertaining. Seems a bit of a stretch to include garden design and mountaineering and revolutions in this history… (28 August)

223. The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat. Hardly worth the wait, but I wasn’t really expecting it to be. In some respects even worse than I’d anticipated, and not at all comparable to Robert M. Adams. (30 August)