Category Archives: Books

KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST BY Adam Hochschild

August 29, 2016 – 6:34 pm

Can you judge a book by its cover? Certainly not KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST, unless you have an inkling that Josef Conrad’s THE HEART OF DARKNESS was based on his six months of visiting the hellish Congo Free State plantation dotting the Congo River and that Kurtz was not one man but many fervently seeking their fortune […]

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Oh You Roue

January 26, 2015 – 12:23 pm

‎ “The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.” Lord Henry Wotton explains to a young Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY

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THE BIGGEST BEAR by Lynd Ward

August 21, 2014 – 5:20 pm

THE BIGGEST BEAR was published in 1952. The illustrated children’s book lovingly described the story of a young boy befriending an orphan bear in the Maine woods. Johnny Orchard’s bear grew to an epic size and ate everything in sight. Faced with the choice of killing his friend Johnny Orchard’s bear is saved by a […]

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THE MAGUS by John Fowles

June 22, 2014 – 2:02 pm

Everyone is planning summer holidays. People ask me where to go, since I have been many places. Camille from the diamond exchange was wavering between Morocco and Turkey. I had been to neither, but heard Morocco was a hassle and Istanbul was a gem on the Bosphorus. “Thanks for the info.” Camilli was the queen […]

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NO LAST NAMES by Joan Ellis

March 2, 2014 – 7:21 pm

I love the cover of this book. A room with a view. 42nd Street or the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. Nothing like the Fortune Club or Lucky’s Bar exist anymore. The author of these books was Julie Ellis. She churned out hundreds of pulp sleaze, supposedly one a week. Acording to vintagesleazepaperbacks.blogspot.com a website […]

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