The Written Nerd

Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham (Felony & Mayhem, October 2009) Shop Indie Bookstores I will take a stand and say that the classic mysteries brought back into print by Felony & Mayhem Press (the brilliant publishing offshoot of downtown Manhattan's priceless Partners & Crime Bookstore ) are one of the great small pleasures of my life. The ALP tends to buy the books in F&M's Vintage series for me, for special occasions or as a surprise, and these are always occasions for pure delight. Having read nearly every Agatha Christie novel ever written, it's wonderful to discover that I haven't reached the end of the treasure trove of early 20th century mysteries. One of the pleasures of the Vintage mysteries is the sense of culture shock -- or cultural discovery -- the Western world in their pages presents. Unlike Christie, who has been consistently in print and most likely edited to remain comprehensible to contemporary readers, the works of Eliz...

Note to readers, if there still are any about: I've taken a long hiatus from regular posts on this blog, for the simple reason that I've realized the dream I wrote about in my very first post and opened a bookstore -- which, it turns out, takes up a lot of one's time and energy. But I miss flexing my writing muscles a bit, and I find that sometimes the best relief from the stresses of working in the book industry is the books themselves. So I'm returning to this blog and changing its mission just a little. Rather than speculating about the state and future of the book industry and/or chronicling the events of the literary world (both of which are done more competently by the bloggers streaming down the right-hand side of this page), I'd like to just write a little about what I've been reading. I'll try to write something about every book I read this year, more or less in the order encountered. I look forward to it as a kind of readerly/writerly practic...