Lifelong faves: mysteries, camp, cookbooks, young adult literature, satire. Niches: early film history, lifehacks, The Shadow, codes and ciphers, 20th-c. comic strip compilations, programming/data manuals for nonprogrammers, neurodivergent bright female characters, help for ADHD undiagnosed people. Growing interest in French literature, early 20th century psychological fiction. Top five at present: E. Waugh, R. Chandler, Alan Bradley, Agatha Christie, Gyles Brandreth, T. Sharpe Finished From the Abyss by D K Broster but unable to import it.
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Reading Oscar Levant is like opening a dusty room and allowing fresh air to blow in. Mindboggling the names dropped in this volume of reminiscences: Glenn Gould, Ignace Padarewski, Algonquin Round Table members, the Marx Brothers, Erik Satie, the Gershwins, the Kennedys.
Best enjoyed in small doses. The iambic pentameter verse in Enlightenment custom, the reach for words beyond the Concise Oxford English dictionary, the peregrinations, the catalogues, can weary. If I encountered someone like this in the 21st century I'd dismiss her as a pretentious influencer who is trying too hard. Still, I figuratively clutch to my bosom a person who enjoys hot baths, Sundays, reading, taking umbrage, cinema the way I do.
This is one of the finest books for children, both boys and girls. In 1928, …
At first the deluge of sailing terms slowed my progress, but my memory crawled far back enough to appreciate the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons, not even reaching their teens and camping on unpopulated small islands.
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley is the delightful tale of the bookseller Roger Mifflin, …
I am wowed to see that at time of press, January 1919, bookseller Roger Mifflin dismisses Douglas Fairbanks guide to life book as mere piffle, derides Tarzan the Ape Man as cheap entertainment, and says " to laugh at Fatty Arbuckle is to degrade the human spirit", yet counts among his collected treasures an autographed letter from a Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Not the greatest crime mystery novella, and a lot of ephemeral writer mentions escape me, a few didn't. I do not know if the remark about a cinematic epoch dawning with the Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew's foray into motion pictures is sarcastic or didn't age well. They aren't depicted on many Hollywood history or encyclopedia books.
I read over a dozen Pinkwater novels, and from the 5 Novels for the past three summers (my family and) I read a Pinkwater novel. The Last Guru started out well, but... well, I finished it ad it was pleasant. Delighted to know that Mr. Pinkwater is familiar with at least one work of James Hilton.
Although my name appears on the title page, the real author of this book is …
Sweet, gentle, funny tale of a moving bookshop in early 20th century New England.
Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a …
I learned so much more about the engineering wizardry, pioneering of camera effects, and the pre-studio system era in the seven hours spent reading this book than I had in the last forty years.
Lots of overlap with Walter Kerr's The Silent Clowns for the silent comedians, happy to see a chapter with Reginald Denny.
Written as a sequel to "The Warden", this is the second book of the Barsetshire …
At last! My summer read is read! In the summer! Funny biting book.
Records the relationship of Dewey and Yvette, two high school dropouts working in a hospital.
Paul Zindel: My darling, my hamburger (Hardcover, 1993, HarperCollins Publishers)
Four high school seniors struggle with the responsibilities of growing up, particularly the problems of an intimate relationship
