Reviewing H. Rider Haggard’s "Cleopatra"

Don’t let the title of the book—and, consequently, this blog post—fool you. As its subtitle (Being an Account of the Fall and Vengeance of Harmachis) suggests, this is the story of Harmachis, priest of Isis and last heir of the ancient royal line of Egypt, and how he betrayed the hopes of his family, his country, and himself when he found his fate intertwined with that famous Ptolemaic queen.

 His narrative is written in the first-person perspective, nested within a story of British archaeologists finding his remains and the scrolls he had written. Before the reader can say "Imhotep" this nesting story has introduced all the promising components for a thrilling tale of pseudo-Egyptian history.*

Dear Arthur - Stick with Holmes, This Just Wasn't Your Jam

Despite rumors of unrest in the region, a group of sightseers in Egypt venture too close to Dervish territory, leading to them into the clutches of radical Islamic guerillas. These unfortunate tourists—of American, Irish, British, and French backgrounds, along with their Egyptian servants, tour guides, and “bodyguards”—are forced to travel farther away from friendly territory to a fate of slavery, death…or (for the women in the group) worse. With the chance of rescue dwindling with every sand dune they pass, their only hope is to convert to Islam under duress…or to escape.

Reviewing "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart

When orphan Reynard “Reynie” Muldoon answers an enigmatic advertisement in the paper, he didn’t know what to expect. What he probably did NOT expect, however, was to be swept into an adventure involving three other uniquely-gifted children, a secret mission, dastardly worldwide conspiracies, subliminal messaging, abducted children (and secret agents), and lots and lots of riddles.

Expected or not, that’s what happened. After a few tests, Reynie found himself part of the Mysterious Benedict Society, a team of children hand-picked by the benevolent Mr. Benedict to carry out a vital mission: to go undercover at a shadowy Institute to stop some unidentified—but unquestionably horrible—plan from successfully unfolding.

Somehow, secret messages are being transmitted via television and radio* into people’s minds, and only Mr. Benedict has been able to discover them. Unfortunately, these messages have a protective fail-safe: they convince the people that hear these messages that the messages don’t exist. Only minds that are particularly focused on the truth can detect them at all…which is where the Mysterious Benedict Society comes in.

Reviewing Elizabeth Goudge's "The Dean's Watch" and "Gentian Hill"

After discovering Elizabeth Goudge through Green Dolphin Street—originally the movie, then reading the book itself—I decided that this was definitely an author whose bibliography I would exhaust. Goudge’s writing is unique, complex, and thoughtful. The plots are secondary to the characters, almost each of which is developed in exquisite (sometimes excruciating) detail. The writing is dense, sometimes dry, and so her books aren’t given to binging several in a row.

As I’ve slowly made my way through her bibliography, I’ve finally made it far enough to start recognizing a pattern. Mentally, I can stack her books in distinctive piles:

There is, of course, the Wow I Can’t Believe This Book Actually Exists It’s Like the Holy Grail of Reading pile, which contains Green Dolphin Street and The Rosemary Tree.

Unfortunately, there is also the I Really Tried to Like This For Your Sake, Elizabeth, But Let’s Be Honest I Don’t pile…God So Loved the World, The Child of the Sea and The White Witch are hesitantly, tentatively placed here. A Book of Comfort is also here, not because I didn’t have parts that I enjoyed, but rather that there was just so much that was dull and humorless and failed to strike any chord with me, that I would forget that I’d even read if I hadn’t written a blog post about it!

Finally, there’s the Elizabeth You Have Betrayed Me pile, where the books are not only “meh” but downright impossible for me to think about with a trace of fondness. It’s a small stack, but one that seems to have a general rule that governs it: the children’s books. That’s right, Little White Horse and I Saw Three Ships. That’s where you belong!

And now I have two more books to add to their respective piles.

The Mystery of the Missing Mystery

At the end of December I was nigh-certain I was going to "fail" my self-inflicted appointed reading goal, having been consistently ten books behind schedule since The Brothers Karamazov. (Why I thought that would be a good selection to start out last year, I don't know.) So in desperation, I turned to re-reading some of the Juvenile Fiction I've been meaning to review on this blog. 

It was the T.C.D.C. to the rescue.

"What's a 'teesie-deesie'?" you may ask.