June Thomson’s pastiches are also fantastic - very clever, and quite true to Conan Doyle’s style. Start with The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (1990).
I hope you enjoy it! I have since also read the sequel which I liked but not as much as the first one.
I finished Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher and it will easily be one of my favorite books this year. It is peak Kingfisher and I want to find the door or wardrobe to the World of the White Rat.
I will get the new thread up on Sunday, I’m busy the next two days.
Finished I Asked for Wonder, by Abraham Joshua Heschel; and Time Traders, by Andre Norton, both of which I liked.
Next up: American Craftsmen, by Tom Doyle; and Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon, by Jim Paul.
The Return of the Oystercatcher: Saving Birds to Save the Planet Scott Weidensaul
Describes some projects which are successfully restoring threatened or endangered birds in Europe and North America.
A bit drily written in places, but pretty good overall. Nice to read some good news.
Finished An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, and I really thought it was! There wasn’t a moment away from it that I wasn’t jonesing to pick it up again. The sequel’s already waiting for me at the library. However, so is the next Dungeon Crawler, not to mention the books I’ve already got at home, like T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart, and assorted stuff that’s about to be overdue. King’s got a new book out in about a month… I could really use a couple of days off of work to catch up on my reading (not gonna happen).
Yay!!! Brace yourself, I hurt my ribs laughing while reading it.
Oh man! I’m trying to read in order of what needs to go back to the library, and if you can believe it, there’s only me and one other cool person in this library system. Unless everybody else already read it, or bought their own copy… yeah, that must be it.
Finished Holy Ghost by John Sandford (a favorite author of mine), which is a Virgil Flowers whodunit that I obviously missed when it was released in 2019.
I’m gonna again try The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I started it years ago and didn’t get very far.
Finished Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, by Dan Jones. A good overview of how the document came into being. It is a very misunderstood document, generally being touted as a cornerstone of democracy by people who have never read it when it actually had nothing to do with that. Any notions of democracy or egalitarianism of any kind would have proved mightily offensive to the barons who forced King John to adopt it. Winston Churchill probably put it best when he called the Magna Carta, “the foundation of principles and systems of government of which neither King John nor his nobles dreamed.” And there was no signing of it per se. Kings did not stoop to signing documents back then, that would have been unseemly, but rather just nodded their approval. Much of it is no longer even relevant such as the clauses dictating the return of the king of Scotland’s sisters and others, who were being held hostage by England as a security for good behavior. The same for the main Welsh rebel’s son and other of his countrymen.
Next up is Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon.
I quickly gave up on Faulkner (again), because I was able to borrow The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke. (Thanks, @Dung_Beetle!) Looking forward to another good mystery.