vivdunstan

Still struggling not to type 2024 at the top of these posts!

( earlier books )
1. Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots by Jade Scott
2. A Middle-earth Album: Paintings by Joan Wyatt Inspired by Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings by Joan Wyatt
3. Could You Survive Midsomer? – A Winter's Murder: An Official Midsomer Murders Interactive Novel by Simon Brew
4. Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen by Edward Parnell
5. Introducing Shakespeare: A Graphic Guide by Nick Groom
6. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
7. The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

I've written reviews of Captive Queen, the Midsomer Murders gamebook and Eerie East Anglia.

Of the others, the Tolkien paintings book was nice, though there were some curious choices, especially re the hobbits. The Shakespeare book was great in parts, but had an almost total blind spot on detailed coverage of the many plays, which felt like a huge omission. Our Mutual Friend was a delight for me, as always. And The Principle of Moments, the first in a planned trilogy, was a heady mix of fantasy, space opera and time travelling shenanigans. Probably more ambitious in its goals than it ultimately achieved. But still a riveting read, and I will read the other books.

I've just started reading The Art Thief by Michael Finkel about a particularly prolific thief of Renaissance paintings and other art works. The first theft of his that the book describes was the 1997 theft of an ivory sculpture of Adam and Eve from the Rubenshuis in Antwerp. Martin went there when we were in Antwerp for me to attend a book history conference in 2014. He was pushing me around the conference in my wheelchair, but exploring the city alone when I was having my rest days in between. And he got to Rubenshuis. And yes, he photographed that stolen item! It had been returned to the museum after the theft some years earlier. Small world.