France
Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Hoo boy. This starts out really nicely, as the story of two Russian half brothers growing up remote from each other (even though in the same home), from which beginning we segue more or less seamlessly into the surviving younger brother’s quest for the life and identity of his elder sibling, who under the English […]
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Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap
Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot. (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.) So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]
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Agatha Christie: Death in the Clouds
Blurb: From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No. 13, sat a countess with a poorly concealed cocaine habit; across the […]
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May 2021 Reading Recap
Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post). So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May. However, the time-consuming back end […]
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Agatha Christie: The Mystery of the Blue Train
Agatha Christie hated this book. While she was trying to write it, her little daughter kept distracting her and demanding her attention. The plot is not an original idea but, for the first time (of what would eventually be multiple repeat occasions), she had chosen to expand an idea first used years earlier in a […]
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Georges Simenon: Les vacances de Maigret (Maigret’s Holiday)
The Appointment with Agatha group’s May 2021 “side read” theme took us to France yet again, and who better to read in this context than Simenon? Like Poirot in our main (Christie) read, Simenon’s commissaire Maigret has also taken himself to one of the country’s manifold vacation spots in this particular installment of the long-standing […]
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Arthur Conan Doyle: Sir Nigel
I didn’t quite want to limit my “birthday boy” look at Arthur Conan Doyle’s work to the predictable Sherlock Holmes binge, so I decided to take a look at one of his historical novels in addition. Well, I suppose I have to hand it to Sir Arthur for mastering, with panache, genres as diverse as […]
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An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “K”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
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Corsica
24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Task 2: Post a picture from your most recent or favorite vacation on the sea (or a lake, river, or any other body of water larger than a puddle), or if you’re living on the sea or on a lake or a river, post a picture […]
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Happy Halloween!
Seen in a Corsica winery, last week. No pumpkins, but let nobody say the French (well, the Corsicans, anyway) don’t keep the spirit of the season. And with that, I’ll raise a glass to Moonlight and OB for hosting another fabulous Halloween Bingo! I had an enormous amount of fun, and it was great watching […]
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Jeannie Come Lately Post: BookLikes Round Robin — Favorite Pre-1980s Movies
Pretty much everybody has seen it at this point I guess, but anyway, here is Book Cupidity’s idea: “Let’s list favorite old (or older) movies. The list can be long or short, with a narrative or no, anything goes. The parameters is that it has to have been made prior to 1980, I sort of […]
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