Reader’s Diary

Stephen T. Asma

A wonderful, rambling, and curious book. The author says:

I started this book trying to figure out how to “stuff” a human being for display, an interest that, frankly, I’m rather embarrassed about. Still, it increasingly led me to got behind the scenes of nature collection. But when I got behind the scenes, I found that there was more than just specimen preparation labs and viscera. My journey was also a conceptual venture behind the scenes, with equal shares of animal corpses and abstract ideas.

That - sort of - sums it up. The first section, on the earliest natural history collections, is macabre, the middle, on taxonomy, is dense but not dull, and the final sections, on evolution and its presentation and on museology, are fascinating. It’s history, travel, and philosophy

Jack Higgens

Another Sean Dillon story. The usual one-dimensional characters don’t develop much, if at all, the plot is vaguely familiar, and the villains are implausible. It is mercifully short. I wonder if I would have even finished it if it hadn’t been the only book I had taken on a 4th of July weekend trip. I suppose I’ll read the next one, though, just because I’ve read them all so far.

Raymond E. Feist

In the prologue and old Irishman sees… something. In the first chapter a family - soon to encounter ancient mysteries - moves into an old house. What lives under the bridge out back? What is the secretive scholar of the occult investigating?

A horror story in the classic mold; a page-turner. It’s too bad Feist hasn’t written more in this genre.

Morgan Lllywelyn

A rich book that continues the story, started in her book “1916“, of the founding of the modern Irish state. This is historical fiction with the emphasis on history. The fictional characters live in the midst of a bitter civil war while plausibly encountering major and minor historical characters. I’m looking forward to the next book in “The Irish Century” series.

Bill Holm

Bill Holm’s essays are always worth reading. Here his unifying theme - islands - is less interesting than the essays themselves. His accounts of his travels to Iceland are especially entertaining. He comes across as a guy who really lives his life, a guy you’d like to meet.