Tag: book-review

  • My DNF Pile: Bad Books by Good Writers; and a Happy Free Find by Andrew Taylor

    “Bad” is relative, here. Agatha Christie never wrote a truly terrible book. But my commitment to reading Elephants Can Remember was quickly shaken by the prose style, plotting devices, and endless digressions. This is not a very good Christie, at any rate, and since I’m reading it in an ugly Internet Archive version, with a…

  • When Authors Tire of Their Characters (But Can’t Just Kill Them Off)

    Holmes and Moriarty, 1893 illustration by Harry C. Edwards in McClure’s I’ve been enjoying Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” That’s the one, you’ll recall, based on the famous story where Holmes is tossed over Switzerland’s Reichanbach Falls by Moriarty, his arch-nemesis. Watson is left to re-trace his steps and mourn his…

  • Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Unrequited Passion

    “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!…