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- Veritas – Book Review
- Across America by Greyhound Bus – 1970
- Reading Bruegel
- The Tangled Tale of the Mixed-Up Mice
- Fons Americanus – Art For This Time
- On My Bookshelf – The Singing Game
- Hidden Lives in Victorian England
- Update: The Return of the Knife
- The Prostitutes’ Graveyard
- London in the Plague Year
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Tag Archives: Books
Reading Bruegel
I bought this book on impulse because I will read anything about Bruegel. Perhaps it is my Flemish heritage that draws me to his work. I imagine my ancestors among the peasant crowds in his village scenes. It was only … Continue reading
On My Bookshelf – The Singing Game
Perhaps it was the restlessness induced by quarantine that had me prowling my own bookshelves in search of diversion. I needed a break from the world of Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. (I know it … Continue reading
Hidden Lives in Victorian England
In my final blog for MCPL (my former professional home Montgomery County Public Libraries, Maryland) I discuss The Five, a book about the victims of Jack the Ripper, a wonderful piece of social history that restores dignity to the five women. Other titles … Continue reading
Regency Isn’t Just Romance
My latest blog for Montgomery County Public Libraries is about the Regency years in England, a decade that compares to the 1960’s, a time of radical politics, war, social change, and literary experimentation. In other parallels, the 1812 assassination of Prime … Continue reading
Water Water Everywhere
You could be forgiven for mistaking the network evening news for the Weather Channel these days. Night after night scenes of devastating flooding somewhere and everywhere. Hurricanes, cyclones, torrential rainfall, storm surges, rivers overflowing their banks, whole towns inundated, homes … Continue reading
Tales of the Asylum
One day in the early 1960’s I came home to find that while I was in school my grandmother had been whisked away in an ambulance and taken to a mental hospital. The news followed several unsettling days, days of … Continue reading
Gardens of Mystery
“Ever since the first serpent slithered into the Garden of Eden writers have imagined the garden as the scene of temptation and evil.” In my latest blog for MCPL I recommend mysteries with a garden setting: Gardens of Mystery Incidentally, … Continue reading
On My Bookshelf – Witchfinders
Witchfinders – no, not characters in our contemporary political drama. But it could be that hearing cries of “Witch Hunt” almost every day for two years was what led me to this particular book on my shelf. Witchfinders by Malcolm … Continue reading
Veritas – Book Review
The Dispatches have been quiet of late. During election season this observer of “the former new world” was consumed with anxiety. Would the new world go the way of the old, perhaps lapsing into mid twentieth century fascism or reenacting … Continue reading →