Sonny's Castle Dangerous

  This graph shows Covid-19 data for the entire USA (source: The New York Times) .  It’s not encouraging.    The average daily case counts g...

With the news of Diana Rigg's death, I've been thinking about why she made such an impression on me. I first became aware of her whe...

  [Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher. The Economist.] Every few weeks, The President of the United States says or tweets something that irritates...

This is the text of an e-mail I was going to send to a close friend. Not wanting to hurt feelings or ignite a feud, I wisely (???) decided t...

Published in 1923, this British detective novel has an ingenious story line and well-drawn characters. For me, however, it was spoiled by un...

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you liked Megan Abbott's "Dare Me" and Tana French's ...

The Outsider by Stephen King My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Outsider is excellent work by Stephen King - his best in quite a while. I read...

Yarrow by Charles de Lint My rating: 4 of 5 stars In this enjoyable work of speculative fiction, Cat Midhir has a foot in two worlds....

Dry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman My rating: 4 of 5 stars This novel has all the merits of Bouman's "The Bramble and the Rose...

The Bramble and the Rose by Tom Bouman My rating: 3 of 5 stars Quarantined at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I read this in about t...

Fox News Channel is the most-watched U.S. cable news network, according to this October 2019 story in Deadline.com .  Viewers in 3rd Q...

Conviction by Denise Mina My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've read most of Denise Mina's novels. For some reason I can't quite re...

Walk the Wild With Me by Rachel Atwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a nice read for fantasy fans, followers of folklore and Anglophil...

A recent article in The Londonist makes the startling observation that "mind the gap" announcements on the Underground were once m...

The Shropshire Hoard These coins, found in a farmer's field in England , are roughly 2,000 years old. The metal detectorists who une...

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2019 ISBN 9781101947753 (ebook) In this splendid novel by one of my favorite writers, three men in their mi...

In recent weeks, much ink has been spilled over the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Among the more interesting tidbits: ...

Dedicated to Walt Whitman I am a man of the narrow spaces There no space remains To breathe, to grow, to live To chew, to brush, ...

Last night, watching Turner Classic Movies, I stumbled across a film that I've been searching for since childhood. I saw part of it on t...

I'm very proud of myself for not posting this on Facebook, which I almost did a moment ago. So I'm going to vent here and now.  Ac...