Part 1 of several: The Vagabond – 4/5 Stars The Vagabond is a novel from about 1910 about a Vaudeville/Burlesque performer in her early to mid thirties who, rather being at the end of her long and stories career or getting tired a looking to wind down, finds herself in a strange and scary position of facing the world anew after the radical upheaval of her first husband leaving her. This change does not institute a period of wildness, but does allow her to see […]
Flirting over artifacts and forgeries
I’ve had Bound By Your Touch on my reading list for a long time, probably because at some point it was recommended by Malin or Mrs Julien or both. As per usual, a rec from these ladies turned out to be a pretty lovely romance. Heroine is Lydia Boyce, a spinster bluestocking (my favorite!) who works for her father in the trade of collectible Egyptian artifacts. Boyce Sr. is an academic archaeologist actively excavating, and Lydia is essentially his business manager back in Egypt. She […]
Murky and Dim
This Fritz Leiber novel, published in 1977, seems both of and outside of its time. It appeared after The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Carrie, three books that reinvigorated the genre, but it reaches back to earlier traditions. The slim but still overly long novel tells of Franz Westen, a San Francisco resident who catches sight, through his binoculars, of a strange form. After some scene-setting, he sets off to track the creature down. Looking back at his apartment through those same binoculars, he’s startled to […]
I will commence turning off my faucet of F**ks by not giving one about this book…
This was an odd choice that I randomly grabbed from the bestseller list. The title made me laugh. I didn’t totally hate it and there are a few useful ideas, but overall I found the writer to be an entitled bro whose brand of inspiration did not speak to me. The first chapter, entitled “Don’t Try” used the life of Charles Bukowski as its example. The central point was that Bukowski was a loser with low expectations, failed for 30 years, then took a chance […]