Category Archives: Books

Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed, the self-proclaimed “Real Reader’s Quarterly,” explains its name in the editors’ notes of the very first volume: Spring, 2004. It seems that foxed is a term most often bandied about by literary antiquarians, used to describe books whose pages have … Continue reading

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Allan Marett: Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts — The Wangga of North Australia

First, a brief demurrer: “Ethnomusicology” can be a really scary idea, drawing together, as it does, the formal study of music and its forms, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and possibly a couple of “ologies” that I’ve overlooked, all discrete disciplines … Continue reading

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Michael Rose: Berlioz Remembered; Hector Berlioz (trans.and ed. by Alastair Bruce): The Musical Madhouse (Les Grotesques de la musique)

If the Paris of the 19th century was considered the cultural capital of the world, it was with good reason: of the major artistic and intellectual figures of the age, those who did not live there made a point of … Continue reading

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Hector Berlioz’s  Evenings with the Orchestra 

No honest discussion of the Romantic era in classical music can take place without making mention of Hector Berlioz, the great genius from France who seemed to typify Romanticism in casting almost all of his music in dramatic terms and … Continue reading

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Judit Frigyesi’s Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest and Peter Lakii’s Bartók and His World

Any genuine understanding of the role of Béla Bartók in twentieth century music is contingent on knowing about the cultural context in which he was formed — or in which he formed himself, as seems likely to be the case. … Continue reading

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Marion Dane Bauer and Trina Schart Hyman’s Ghost Eye

Andrea S. Garrett wrote this for Folk Tales. Ghost Eye, written by Marion Dane Bauer and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, is a short story-length, charmingly told tale of ghosts, cat shows and lonely little girls — pretty much in … Continue reading

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Carole Nelson Douglas’s Cat in a Kiwi Con 

No’am Newman wrote this for us. First, the facts: this is the fourteenth in a series of mystery books written about a cat called Midnight Louie. Some of the others have alliterative names such as Cat in a Diamond Dazzle or Cat in … Continue reading

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Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Cat to the Dogs

Naomi De Bruyn wrote this fir Folk Tails, errr, I meant Folk Tales. To be honest, I owe Ms. Murphy an apology. The first paragraph of this novel elicited an audible groan from me, and some fast second thoughts. After … Continue reading

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Bookshop: Bookworks

Full disclosure: I first ran across Bookworks a number of years ago when I was faced with the choice of either getting rid of some books or moving into my own apartment and coming to visit them. Among the local … Continue reading

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Phillip DePoy’s The Devil’s Hearth

I’ve a special fondness for mystery series set in the Appalachian Mountains, even though there aren’t a lot of good ones and a lot of not so great ones. Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballads series had some memorable outings, particularly among the … Continue reading

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