Category Archives: Books

Andy Gill & Kevin Odegard’s A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the making of Blood on the Tracks

Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks is a landmark album. It is listed on numerous “best-of” album lists, be they of “all time” or the Seventies, or of the rock era. It and its follow-up, Desire, are his two top-selling … Continue reading

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Susan Cooper’s Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children

You back already? I thought you were still rummaging ’bout our book sale. Ah, you found the pile of ARCs and duplicates we sell off every year to be benefit the Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow Fund for the … Continue reading

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Seanan McGuire’s Indexing series: Indexing & Indexing: Reflections

I’m re-listening right now to one of those things that Seanan McGuire does so ever well: she takes a familiar story and make it fresh. (Next on my re-listen list is her Sparrow Hill Road series hwhich she takes on the urban … Continue reading

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Anthony Horowitz’s Moonflower Murders

Anthony Horowitz’s  Moonflower Murders is the second book in the Susan Ryeland series, and like its predecessor it is a nested mystery with two novels within the covers. One is the mystery Susan is solving, and the other a book … Continue reading

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Manly Wade Wellman’s After Dark

Manly Wade Wellman’s stories of Silver John are like snatches of a familiar song: you find them in the most fascinating places, but good luck finding the whole tune in one place when you want to. While the Silver John … Continue reading

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Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land

I’ve been a fan of this author ever since I listened to the oh, so fantastic alternate history of his Bookman trilogy, with its Britain ruled by an alien reptile Royal family, and where every character that you know out of pulp fiction is real. … Continue reading

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Shirley Jackson’s Four Novels of the 1940s & 1950s

Shirley Jackson’s Four Novels of the 1940s & 1950s is a collection by the Librart of America of the authors four novels The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman. the Bird’s Nest, and The Sundial. While these are not Jackson’s best … Continue reading

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Fairport bios: Patrick Humphries’ Meet on the Ledge: Fairport Convention, the Classic Years and Fred Redwood and Martin Woodward’s The Woodworm Era: The Story of Today’s Fairport and David Hughes’ The Fairport Tour

Chris Woods  penned this review. “Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest folk-rock band in the world–Fairport Convention!” These words are attributed to Cropredy host Johnny Jones (in the introduction to Meet on the Ledge) but I’m guessing that the same introduction has … Continue reading

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Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Five Poems

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether … Continue reading

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Karen Harper’s The Queene’s Christmas

Eric Eller penned this review. Adding a new dimension to a real figure adds a kick to historical fiction. The key is to cast the person plausibly, if the historical feel of the fiction is to be kept. The role doesn’t … Continue reading

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