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The Ocean at the End of the Lane
The book that all the WPF students were to read for June's Residency was Neil Gaiman's 1-grimace short novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Since Gaiman is one of those authors I try to keep up with, I decided to get it, read it, and possibly use it to illustrate elements of my lectures.
I'm glad I made that choice, because it ( Read more... ) -
Stranger Still
It seems they're having Martian trouble in Lincoln, Nebraska. At least that's the impression one takes from Laura Madeline Wiseman's chapbook Stranger Still, from Finishing Line Press.
Pittsburghers will be glad to know that there is, of course, a reference to Mars, PA. There are all sorts of references, because the magic of this ( Read more... ) -
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes
The 31st book of my reading year is 31 years old. Stephen Jay Gould's collection of reflections on Natural History, entitled Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes bears up very well, despite its age.
As always, when his name comes up, I will say that I miss Stephen Jay Gould. I avidly read his essays when he was alive, and got to see him in ( Read more... ) -
The Silver Locomotive Mystery
Edward Marston's The Silver Locomotive Mystery is part of his Railway Detective series, set in Britain in the 1850s. It's the sixth in the series, but I picked it up because of the lovely Early Victorian cover, and then discovered that Marston writes two other series set in interesting times (in this reader's opinion): The Restoration Series ( Read more... ) -
St. Louis in the Civil War
My latest completed work is a volume of Civil War history: NiNi Harris's A Most Unsettled State. (The link is to an independent St. Louis bookstore. The book is also available from Amazon.) I'm not sure whether Harris should be referred to as the editor or the author, because the book is essentially a selection of primary sources from ( Read more... ) -
Libyrinth
As I was wrapping up the paperwork on the thesis novels for the term, I finally plucked from the shelves Libyrinth, written by one of my colleagues at Seton Hill's WPF program, under the name Pearl North. It's a YA Science Fiction novel cleverly set in a Fantasy-like post-apocalyptic setting.
Let me discuss this cleverness. I read a lot of ( Read more... ) -
Tania, or Titania, or Tanne, or Karen, or Isak (or even Pierre and Osceola)
In Savannah we spent a short while in The Book Lady Bookstore and I picked up a copy of Tania (which the cover then informs us was "first published as Titania"), Parmenia Migel's kinda weird biography of Isak Dinesen, otherwise known as Baroness Karen Blixen.
An aside about the bookstore: it's a treasure. We came out of it with only five ( Read more... ) -
The Sinister Pig
I'm down to nearly the end of the Tony Hillerman Navajo mysteries. The Sinister Pig is the antepenultimate Tony Hillerman. I'm not really looking forward to finishing the series.
I seem to be finishing off a lot of dead-author series these days: van der Wetering, Van Gulik, Gur, Gill, and -- in SF -- Banks. Makes my reading-for-pleasure bleaker ( Read more... ) -
Sightseeing
I was impressed by Sightseeing, a collection of short stories by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, set in Thailand. This is a candidate for my World Literature class roster.
There are six short stories and one novella, "Cockfighter." They are almost all set among the poor, though one involves a family well-enough off to bribe their son's way ( Read more... ) -
Apology
I have to apologize for the presentation of recent posts. LJ has gotten wonky again, and mutilates the texts in ways that don't seem fixable.
I'm afraid I'll have to look into shifting to Goodreads, and eventually a self-hosted blog. I've been delaying posts in the hopes that they would fix the latest problems, but it's just not happening.