The Lone Caner

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” So goes the introduction to perhaps the iconic hero of all Sword and Sorcery tales, themselves a subset – or bastard cousin – of the heroic fantasy genre.  Is there a man alive who has not at some point heard of Conan the Cimmerian? Or seen the vivid paintings of Frank Frazetta and been transported into the mystical and legendary kingdoms of Hyboria?  In penning these tales of [Click here for the full review…]

Dick Francis became a more known quantity in American letters in the last decade or so – one saw his newest offerings on store shelves presented front and center quite often, and they became plumper over the years – but for my money, I’ve always admired and loved his earlier, shorter and tighter works, and have, over the last twenty years or so, picked up most of them. This is in spite of the fact that his name still raises an interrogative eyebrow in most cases when I bring it up: Dick who? Francis is perhaps better known in Britain than [Click here for the full review…]

  Chariots of the Gods (1968) Before you wince, roll your eyes and question my hold on reality, hear me out. I’m aware of the stigma the subject matter has. There were always books around me, lots of them: my mother was a librarian, and my father’s jampacked shelves were treasure troves to be unearthed at leisure (he promised me his entire collection “one day”, years ago, and I’m still waiting).  It was from these sources that I picked up “Steep Paths” by a now unknown Soviet writer called Vakhtang Ananyan; the Enid Blyton “Adventure” series, all of Willard Price’s [Click here for the full review…]

The Coming Plague is a book about disease in the modern world.  Not diseases that originated in the 20th century (though certainly this figures in the writing), but about how diseases in our  world – specifically during the 1950s to the 1990s – spread, were identified, fought, and in some cases, ultimately conquered. It may sound like a dry subject, but Laurie Garrett’s prose, eye for the quirky detail and the topicality of the theme in a world made fearful by SARS, swine flu and H1N1, make it a riveting read. The book is divided up into chapters that focus on [Click here for the full review…]