1630

Review – Swamp Story

24Apr2025

Hiaasen, Barry, Dorsey. Florida’s Big 3. All writers of crime fiction variously described as zany, madcap, wacky, or simply humorous. Hiaasen has achieved the most renown, and Dorsey is (BY FAR) the most prolific. Barry remains best-known for his humorous non-fiction.

Swamp Story by Dave Barry, published 2023; 306 pages.

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1390

Review – Just Enough Jeeves

21Apr2025

Just Enough Jeeves, consisting of two novels and eleven short stories written by P.G. Wodehouse between 1910 and 1947 subsequently published in collection in 2010. A grand total of 712 pages of light-hearted British witticism.
It’s a lot to take in.

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1583

Review – the Judge and his Hangman

25Mar2025

The first novella in a pair collected as “The Inspector Barlach Mysteries,” this piece is incredibly well-crafted. Surprising. And surprisingly engaging.

Written by Friedrich Durrenmatt in 1950, this edition translated by Joel Agee in 2006; published 2006, 90 pages (of 209 total).

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, 1468

Dreams, a commentary (No. 1)

21Mar2025

Dreams, eh?  They’re just stories, right?  Stories your own brain tries to tell you while you aren’t paying attention.  They don’t really mean anything.  That’s what you’ve got to tell yourself.  Over and over, you’ve got to tell yourself that, that they don’t mean anything.  You have to.  Because if they did actually mean something.  If those stories your own mind was trying to tell you while you weren’t paying attention, if *those* stories meant anything, anything at all….

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1545

Review – Spaceman Blues

20Mar2025

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and like poetry, stories that focus on style over substance run the risk of failing to connect.

Spaceman Blues: a love song, by Brian Francis Slattery. 219 pages, published 2007.

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1430

Review – the Code of the Woosters

09Mar2025

Shades of Jane Austen, with regards to the social set and a certain wryness of wit, but set some 100 years later and with a much lighter tone. This is not the first time I have attempted Wodehouse, but it is the first time I have been all-in on the experience.
The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse. 286 pages, originally published 1939.

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509

Whatever That Looks Like

27Feb2025

Even in the middle of an emergency, and especially in the middle of a drawn-out slow-rolling emergency, it is incredibly important to interact with one’s support network in ways that bear no relation to that emergency. That reminder of what “normal” is supposed to look like is one of the keys to getting back to that state of normality. Someday.

1691

Review – Death in Brittany & Murder on Britanny Shores

06Feb2025

Originally published in 2012, translated to English in 2014, Death in Brittany is the first novel of Commissaire Dupin. The author writes these stories pseudonymonously and is said to split his time between Germany and Brittany, but is obviously deeply familiar with Brittany.
Death in Brittany, by “Jean-Luc Bannalec”; 318 pages; published 2012, trans. Sorcha McDonagh 2014
Murder on Brittany Shores; 380 pages; published 2013, trans. Sorcha McDonagh 2016

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1535

Review – Jagannath

05Feb2025

Jagannath is a collection of short stories by a Swedish writer, drawing on elements of pre-Christian and even pre-Norse mythology to turn modern incidents on their ear.
Jaganath, by Karin Tidbeck; 155 pages, published 2012

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