On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o’clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what’s … Continue reading The Coldest December
Category: Reading
If the first book in Alessandro Gatti’s Sherlock, Lupin & Me series, The Dark Lady was the secret origin (ie., how they met) of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler, and Arsène Lupin as teenagers, the next two (The Soprano’s Last Song and The Mystery of the Scarlet Rose) are in the main Sherlock … Continue reading The Cathedral of Fear
Saturday morning, while browsing Facebook, I found an interested an unexpected article — Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables is being translated into Scots Gaelic. The Canadian dialect of Gaelic was spoken on Prince Edward Island, though in declining numbers, at the time Montgomery’s novels were set, and I did not know that Montgomery … Continue reading Anne of Green Gables, in Gaelic
A few months ago, I wrote about The Dark Lady, the first book in Alesandro Gatti’s young adult mystery series, Sherlock, Lupin, and I, about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin, and Irene Adler when they were children. I enjoyed it — it was more fun and inspired than I expected — and I … Continue reading The Scarlet Rose
Over the last several months, Standard Ebooks has released nicely made, free ebooks of the Holmes canon, except only The Casebook because it’s not in the public domain yet in the United States. They’ve also released several books of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin, gentleman burglar, and since I was unfamiliar with the character (save for … Continue reading Arsene Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes
Recently I read the first two books in a young adult series, Sherlock, Lupin & Me, which imagined Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin, and Irene Adler as childhood friends. (Thoughts on the first book, The Dark Lady, here.) I enjoyed the two books, and I’m sure to enjoy the next two (which are the only books … Continue reading Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief
A few months ago I saw some posts on Twitter that featured the covers to a series of Italian young adult novels under the title of “Sherlock, Lupin, & Me,” written ostensibly by Irene Adler (actually, Alesandro Gatti), about adventures she had when she was young with Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin. I thought the … Continue reading The Dark Lady
In January I rewatched the Sharpe movies made in the mid-90s, based on the Bernard Cornwell novels about the Napoleonic Wars and starring Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe, for the first time in years. The only ones I didn’t watch are the two post-Waterloo movies made about a decade ago that are set in India; … Continue reading The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard
This weekend I read Mark Latham’s recent Sherlock Holmes novel from Titan Books, A Betrayal in Blood. Set shortly after “The Empty House,” Holmes is tasked by Mycroft to investigate the events described in “The Dracula Papers” (ie., what we know as Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula) and determine what, exactly, it was that happened when … Continue reading Sherlock Holmes: A Betrayal in Blood
I would not have been able to hang with Ernest Hemingway when it comes to drinking. A few years ago I picked up a recipe book of Ernest Hemingway-inspired cocktails, To Have and Have Another. Some of the recipes are things that Hemingway is known to have enjoyed, other drinks are based on his work. … Continue reading Drinking with Papa
This afternoon novelist Una McCormack retweeted a link to a McSweeney’s Internet Tendency piece by Rachel Klein titled Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” from “The Girl”‘s Point of View. I don’t read McSweeney’s as often as I feel that I should, so I was glad that I read this. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like … Continue reading Indiana Jones and the Hills of White Elephants
The night the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, I knew, then and there, that there was only one book on the Chicago Cubs and the 2016 season that I wanted to read — David Ross’s. One hadn’t been been announced yet, but it was inevitable, just as it was inevitable that there would be … Continue reading Scott Simon’s My Cubs