Showing posts with label How to Live. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to Live. Show all posts

Monday, February 18, 2013

A Weekend Report



I didn't get as much time to read over the weekend as I would have liked, but I am happy to report that the two books I started are excellent. 

The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson is a much smoother read than his first mystery concerning London brothers and solicitors Reggie and Nigel Heath. Their law chambers share the same address as Sherlock Holmes - 221b Baker Street. Letters still come for the great detective and part of the lease agreement states that all inquiries will be answered with a polite form letter. In Robertson's first  book, The Baker Street Letters, disobeying the strict rule in the lease that absolutely no contact shall be made with any of the letter writers, Nigel and Reggie end up in Los Angeles investigating an appeal for help made to Holmes. In this next episode, the action takes place in London and concerns the Black Cab Killer and the reappearance of Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of that evil genius.

I see that a third in the series, The Baker Street Translation, is due out in April. Oh good.

The other book I started is How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in  One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. I am barely 30 pages into the book (or at nine percent as my Kindle tells me), and already I can see that this is a book I want to own. It is a fascinating look at the über-essayist's life and writings. I want to flip back and forth and mark certain passages. I want to look at certain photos again. The downside of the Kindle is that this is difficult to do for an Old School reader such as I. 

So, as I write this, the hardcover edition of How to Live sits in my cart and is ready to be ordered from Amazon. 

How did your weekend reading go?

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Brothers of Baker Street and Montaigne





Knowing that I have two new books to read for the weekend gives me the same flutter of happiness as does knowing that I have mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer.

From the library, I downloaded to my Kindle How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. I was tipped off about this title in a post by Jenny at Shelf Love. It is 400 pages long and I hope I can finish it before it will disappear in two weeks from my e-reader.

Also from the library, I brought home The Brothers of Baker Street, the second mystery by Michael Robertson that follows the investigations of Nigel and Reggie Heath, two London solicitors. 

I am set for the weekend.