The Hound of the Baskervilles

After a so-so week of reading, I wanted something comforting and satisfying – a “bookish hug,” to borrow from Frances of Nonsuch Book. So, as she did, I turned to Sherlock Holmes. This was just the ticket. A well-written, satisfying mystery. Just enough of Sherlock Holmes’s amusing eccentricities, a good dose of Watson’s observations and [...]

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Last Week in Books

Three books last week, none quite enthralling enough to get their own post. First, Fred Vargas’ latest Adamsberg mystery, An Uncertain Place. I really enjoy this series – there is something appealing about the quirky, odd cleverness of the crimes and how Adamsberg solves them. But this one just didn’t satisfy. Maybe it was my [...]

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The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton

What a book! It has been over a week since I read it, and I’ve struggled to write about it because all I really want to say is, “Read it! It’s like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, only better!” I put this on hold at the library on the basis of a rave review [...]

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Lady Susan by Jane Austen

This novella was the perfect summer reading: funny and light-hearted, with just enough of Austen’s trademark wit and keen observation of social norms that I didn’t feel like it was completely escapist. Also, I love epistolary fiction, and the letters that made up this novella were just the right length for me to dip in [...]

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A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert

I wanted to like this novella. The first sentence intrigued me: “Madame Aubain’s servant Félicité was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l’Évêque for half a century.” As did this sentence that begins part II: “She had had her love-story like another.” But it went downhill from there, as far as I’m concerned. This is [...]

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The Survivor by Sean Slater

This is the second debut crime novel by a Canadian that I’ve read in as many weeks, and another one where the main character is a police detective whose wife has died and where the criminals aren’t Canadian. But this is quite a different book from Erasing Memory. Sean Slater is a police officer in [...]

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The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers

“Unpleasantness” is such an innocuous word compared to “murder.” And it isn’t even misleading, not at first, because when Lord Peter Wimsey discovers General Fentiman’s body in the library of the Bellona Club, it doesn’t seem to be anything other than an ordinary death, albeit one that is a bit of an inconvenience to members [...]

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