It all began with Master and Commander. And that was so good that then there was Hornblower. And then, between audible and amazon there were recommendations of more and more similar series. The weirdly specific genre of dozen-book-series-about-a-protagonist-in-the-Royal-Navy-during-the-Napoleonic-Wars seems to have a surprising number of ( Read more... )

   So I just finished reading It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis in which a demagogue takes power in the United States in 1936 and quickly brings fascism to the United States, complete with the police state, concentration camps, and aggressive invasion of its neighbors (Mexico) in 1939 after staging false flag attacks by Mexico. I assumed this ( Read more... )

   Let us pick up directly from where we left off, at the airport gate to leave Melbourne, and stressed about whether or not I'd be able to get in to Guinea due to accidentally failing to have my yellow fever certificate with me ( Read more... )

   So I just finished reading (with my ears) The Three Musketeers. I thought I was already familiar with the story because I'd seen the 1993 movie thirty years ago plus all the usual cultural references, but it surprised me a bit. I'll be unrestrained with the spoilers here so if you don't want it to be spoilerized quick throw the device you're ( Read more... )

   I recently finished reading the fourth of four related books, and now I will review them!

Unaccompanied Females in Norway; or, the Pleasantest Way of Traveling There, Passing Through Denmark and Sweden - I had first come across people making fun of the title on Twitter, being as the first part of the title, of which was the only part therein ( Read more... )

This will be a long round up of media (netflix series and books) since I've been meaning to do one since at least December and books keep getting added!

STREAMING SERIESES
Andor   A friend gave me his password for Disney+ so I once again had access to Star Wars stuff. This seems to be what we do now to get around the multitude of streaming ( Read more... )

   So up until recently I think my only familiarity with Sherlock Holmes other than the pervasive cultural references was having read one story in middle school and seeing (one of two?) recent major movies. But it turns out that (all of?) Sherlock Holmes is available on Audible for free with basic membership, 62 hours in all. Having now listened ( Read more... )

   I might pump out several entries this morning since I have several different topics I fancy writing about and a free morning while it rains outside, which is pleasantly conducive to writing.

So I just finally read Gone With The Wind. I had just finished reading Half A Golden Sun about the Nigerian civil war in the 60s, which is told from ( Read more... )

   This past weekend I once again took the six hour train trip to Eastern Victoria, this time for my friend Billie's 30th birthday party. That was fun but I came here to write book reviews. In fact, on my return trip she gave me back all the books I had loaned her to read, having read them, so I returned like a mobile library with six books in my ( Read more... )

   I actually only recently became aware of Robert Graves' book The Golden Fleece AKA Hercules, My Shipmate, which is a tot late to the game for a book originally published in 1944. It sets out to be a retelling of the story of Jason and the Argonauts that reconciles all the myth with plausible reality, which alarmed me a bit because that's ( Read more... )