Patrick Leigh Fermor

February and March 2021: Reading Recap
Well, go figure. The first quarter of 2021 is already behind us, never mind that I’m still having to remind myself on occasion to write “2021” instead of “2020” … (and we’re even a week into April already, but let that go). Anyway, since I never got around to doing a “February in review” post, […]
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Patrick Leigh Fermor: The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos
The third and final part of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s narrative of his three-year trek on foot, begun more or less spontaneously at the tender age of eighteen, from the Hoek of Holland to Constantinople. Unlike the first two parts (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), which cover his wanderings in […]
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Looking Ahead to 2021
Since I posted my 2020 Year in Review post yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and follow up with the preview post for next year — again, taking the relevant “Festive Tasks” items as my cues. So, without further ado: 24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Hanukkah, Task 1: Time to […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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W. Stanley Moss: Ill Meet by Moonlight
The book I’ve wanted to read ever since I visited Anógia village, high up in the Cretan Mount Ida (or Psiloritis) massif, several years ago: The first-hand account of the WWII abduction of German Major General Heinrich Kreipe near his home in Heraklion, after which Kreipe was marched all the way up the mountain and, […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The Rest of the Game and Wrap-Up
Sooo, that’s another bingo game behind us already! Many thanks to our game hosts for successfully moving the game from BookLikes to a new venue and organizing one heck of a game despite that venue’s built-in limitations. I had a great time and would only have wished I could have participated more throughout the game […]
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BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Eighth Roll
Eh. I need some truly poetic sentiment by way of brain bleach after the solution of The Roman Hat Mystery. And since the dice just sent me to the Patagonian Star square for the third time in less than two weeks (even though as a compensation I did also get to collect the Race Car […]
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BL-opoly: Robot Card for Square 17 (“Why?”)
Here’s my robot card selection: 1. Cary Elwes: As You Wish 2. Sarah Bakewell: At the Existentialist Café 3. Banine: Days in the Caucasus 4. Gertrude Bell: A Woman in Arabia 5. Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 6. Helene Cooper: The House at Sugar Beach 7. Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals 8. […]
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16 Tasks of the Festive Season: Square 7 – International Human Rights Day
Tasks for International Human Rights Day: Post a picture of yourself next to a war memorial or other memorial to an event pertaining to Human Rights. (Pictures of just the memorial are ok too.) Anógia village, Crete: the Andartis (resistance fighter) monument near the museum to the village’s destruction in WWII. Crete was occupied by […]
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