Category Archives: Reading itself

Best Books 1940 – 1950

Posted on September 13, 2026 by admin

The war years, what looked very much like the end of civilization as mechanization and science raised casualties to unbelievable numbers and the pseudo-philosophies of Fascism and Marxism employed that mechanization and science for the wholesale murder of despised populations. … Continue reading →

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Best Books 1930-1940

Posted on March 12, 2026 by admin

Funny, isn’t it, how every decade has its own identity, like we all get together on Jan 1st of the new decade and decide to run things differently than the previous ten years? We’ve got the Roaring Twenties, the Gay … Continue reading →

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Best Books, 1920- 1930

Posted on January 13, 2026 by admin

The Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, flappers and gangsters and speakeasies, a wild and loose decade until it all came crashing down. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches … Continue reading →

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Bleak- er House

Posted on December 3, 2025 by admin

A few weeks ago, I was watching Hilary Layne’s video, How Modern Schools Make Terrible Writers (Deliberately), when she mentioned a study of midwest college literature students who were reading Bleak House. Oddly enough, I had started to read my … Continue reading →

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Review of Reviews

Posted on August 6, 2025 by admin

I often don’t read reviews until after I have read the book. I don’t want any spoilers and I want to make up my own mind. But, after, I’ll look through to see if other readers had the same reaction … Continue reading →

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Eight by Hunter

Posted on March 25, 2025 by admin

I don’t remember when I read my first Stephen Hunter book, but it was probably late 90s or early 2000s because it was Blacklight, which was published in 1996. I’d stumbled across it somewhere, probably the library. I then read … Continue reading →

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Ten Best Holiday Stories

Posted on January 28, 2025 by admin

Well. I’m a little late to this but since every day’s a holiday, I don’t feel so bad. And since a lot of my neighbors still have their Christmas decorations up, even less so. Here, then, are the ten best … Continue reading →

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Ten Best Horror Writers not Poe, Lovecraft, or King.

Posted on December 19, 2024 by admin

Well, no, but one can dream … Note who is not listed here: the usual suspects of King, Poe, and Lovecraft. I mean, they’re just givens, even King with whom I have problems but cannot deny his earlier, better horror … Continue reading →

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What a Messe

Posted on October 30, 2024 by admin

I spent three days at the biggest book fair in the world, the Frankfurt Buchmesse. A ‘messe’ is a fair, which is different from a ‘fest’. I guess; dunno, don’t speak German. A messe celebrates a thing, while fests just … Continue reading →

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Where It All Began

Posted on June 25, 2024 by admin

I’ve told the story, well past the point of boredom, as to how I became a reader. Not how I learned to read, that was from Marvel comics, but an actual reader. In 1962, I was a second grader in … Continue reading →

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