Because I can, I’ve set up a poll (above and to the right). It’s a new feature offered here at blogger.com, and I might as well be among the first to try it. Sorry for the choice in authors; they were the first ones that came into my head. UPDATE 7/25: With a whopping 16 votes in, little-known English author Chuck Dickens came out of nowhere to […]
Norwegian writer impresses local man
At the recommendation of my former colleague Peter (Detectives Beyond Borders), I just read Karin Fossum’s “He Who Fears the Wolf.” I recently decided I needed to broaden my reading list to include more female authors and more foreign ones. Fossum, with her stalwart fans and arsenal of glowing reviews, seemed like a good place to start. I had serious doubts during the first scene: a madman […]
Mike’s verdict: Rankin has done better
My brother Mike, whose unstated mission in life is to read every mystery and thriller ever written, has this to say on Ian Rankin’s latest, “The Naming of the Dead.” “I have to admit I was just a little disappointed. It seemed somewhat disjointed. There were some great lines there, though, some real laugh-out-loud ones. It seems to be setting the stage for a battle royale between […]
A petty crime involving fiction
I’m really not trying to make this the one true Harry Potter blog, but I have to remark on the jackass who took the trouble to (a) obtain J.K. Rowling’s latest tome days before its official release date, and (b) take a digital picture of every freaking page, for the express purpose of posting it on the Internet. Remember, this book is close to 800 pages long. […]
Has Harry Potter cast a curse?
Rebutting the conventional wisdom that the Harry Potter phenomenon is good for reading, writing and publishing in general, Washington Post book editor Ron Charles has written a provocative essay entitled “Harry Potter and the Death of Reading.” In it, he cites a few facts to buttress his case that millions of people reading the same book does not quite portend a renaissance for the written word: More […]
Books with covers you conceal
I’m always a little skeptical when magazines or newspapers run their perennial lists of what celebrities are reading, usually under the rubric of “guilty pleasures.” I mean, if they’re really guilty about it, they’re not going to be totally frank, are they? But Time magazine’s July 23 issue has a nice twist on this: What writers are reading at the beach. Judging by some of the titles, […]
Setting in fiction: It helps if you live there
The fine blog Detectives Beyond Borders recently had a discussion about the significance of setting in crime fiction. Peter was commenting on an assertion by Clive James that many of today’s international crime novels are so crammed with geographic detail that they are essentially guidebooks. I’ve had the same reaction, most recently to “A Small Death in Lisbon,” where the protagonist’s steps through the city are described […]