Category Archives: Books

Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone’s Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture

Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture, edited by Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone, is, as one might expect, a scholarly anthology focusing on the influence and outright appropriation of Welsh mythology and legends in popular culture through the … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , | Comments Off on Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone’s Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture

Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies

Bring Up the Bodies is the second installment in Hilary Mantel’s novelization of the life of Thomas Cromwell. It follows on the heels of the masterful and award-winning Wolf Hall from 2010, one of my favorite books of the past … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , | Comments Off on Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies

Marta McDowell’s Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life

Like many serious gardeners, I collect books about gardens and those who created them. This one is a recent acquisition of mine that ranks among the best I’ve encountered! Subtitled ‘The plants and places that inspired the classic children’s tales’, … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Comments Off on Marta McDowell’s Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life

Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back; Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone; Five will return, and one go alone… When I was a teenager I often repeated these … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Comments Off on Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series

Robert Holdstock’s Merlin’s Wood, or The Vision of Magic

Merlin’s Wood is not precisely part of Robert Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood series, as it is set in France, not England. For an author whose other books in the Ryhope Wood cycle are English in motif, this is an odd digression. … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Comments Off on Robert Holdstock’s Merlin’s Wood, or The Vision of Magic

Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt 

There are certain works that I read every year,usually even at the same time of the year, as that is when they should be read. Some of them are James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter, a tale set at Christmas time … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , | Comments Off on Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt 

James Goldman’s The Lion In Winter

Don’t go looking to The Lion in Winter for history. Nothing actually happens during the course of the play — no wars are started or ended, no murders take place and no crowns tumble. Yet all these things almost happen, time and … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Film | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on James Goldman’s The Lion In Winter

John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg’s A God Somewhere

Gods have started showing up regularly in comics and graphic novels, everything from Thor and Loki in the various Avengers series to Titania and Auberon in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman andThe Books of Magic (no, they’re not gods now, but they … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Graphic Literature | Tagged | Comments Off on John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg’s A God Somewhere

Paul Harding, Kim Hutchins, Charlotte Orr, and Christopher Pitts (editors) and various Lonely Planet travelers (writers): The World’s Best Street Food

I’ve seen a lot of Europe, the Middle-east, and the now disorganized polities of the former USSR, some as a busker in younger days, lately accompany my wife Ingrid, the Estate Buyer, on her travels on behalf of the Estate. … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Paul Harding, Kim Hutchins, Charlotte Orr, and Christopher Pitts (editors) and various Lonely Planet travelers (writers): The World’s Best Street Food

Jack Vance’s Dangerous Ways

Readers who know Jack Vance strictly through the Dying Earth or Lyonesse story cycles are most likely going to be gobsmacked by the publication (courtesy of the gracious folks at Subterranean) of Dangerous Ways, a collection of three short mystery … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , | Comments Off on Jack Vance’s Dangerous Ways