One little-discussed provision of the pandemic relief bill is that all ad copy and commentary must begin with the words “during these uncertain times.” So. During these uncertain times, I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie. I got the idea after my favorite podcast host, Phoebe Judge, decided to read a chapter a […]
Fifty-two books
and counting
I participate in the Goodreads reading challenge mostly to keep track of the books I read in a calendar year. Why that’s important, I don’t know. At this point in life, I guess, I like to take note of the few challenges I can actually accomplish. Now that I’ve ruled out paddling around the […]
Thar he blows
Call me Ishmael. Or call me Dave. Really, either one is fine. The thing is, I’ve started reading “Moby Dick.” It’s a Lenten exercise. Last year it was “War and Peace,” this year it’s the great white whale. Somehow I’d managed to avoid it until now. Then Lent rolled around and I started thinking […]
Big Book o’ Time
I can’t resist time-travel stories. So when I happened across The Time Traveler’s Almanac on Amazon, I hit the “buy now” button at very nearly the speed of light. If I’d been even quicker, maybe I could have read this post without the trouble of actually writing it. Or something like that. When you […]
A breath of fresh air from Ontario
For a blog that was supposed to be about crime fiction, the subject hasn’t come up much lately. If you’re one of my eight or so regular readers, it must seem that all I do these days is cruise the news sites in search of current events to be snide or self-righteous about. As […]
One for the price of two
Ever pay good money for a book, and then realize two chapters in that you’ve already read it? That’s happened to me more than once, most recently with Ruth Rendell’s The Rottweiler. The bad news: it’s not so great a book that I’d have knowingly bought it twice. The good news: I’ve forgotten how […]
Time to consume some printed content
Read any good books lately? Neither have I. In fact, since the start of the year, I can count the number of books I’ve finished on one hand — and three of them I’ve read before. What’s up with that? The hip, facile answer would be to blame New Media. These days the Web […]