Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades. This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona. Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food. He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino, Catalun­ya's founding as an in­de­pen­dent nation a thousand years ago by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy, up through the Olympics in 1992. This is no com­pre­hen­sive survey: he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol than on the Spanish Civil …continue.

The first Irene Adler novel by Douglas, im­me­di­ate­ly preceding Good Morning, Irene, which retells Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia from Irene and Nell's per­spec­tive.

We learn how the narrator Nell Huxleigh met Irene; of Irene's early years in London when she struggles with her singing career and develops a sideline as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor; how she meets Godfrey Norton, her future husband; how they despise each other at first, in the best rom-com tradition; her operatic triumphs in Warsaw that draw her to the attention of the …continue.

An Irene Adler book; earlier than Spider Dance.

Suicidal sailors with ornate tattoos, an odd sealing wax, and lost treasure. All these lead Irene, her husband Godfrey Norton, and Nell Huxleigh to Monte Carlo. Irene, with a little help from Sarah Bernhardt and the Crown Prince's betrothed, takes Monaco by storm. Sherlock Holmes finds part of the trail, but completely misses the bigger case.

Fluff, but en­ter­tain­ing fluff.

The Last Light of the Sun takes place in the Dark Ages of a parallel world. The Erlings (Vikings) raid the Cyngael (Welsh) and Anglcyn (Anglo-Saxon). A young Erling flees indentured servitude and becomes a raider, following in the footsteps of his estranged father. A Cyngael prince dies in an Erling raid and is taken by the Queen of the Fairies; his brother is drawn to another fairy; he will enter into a reluctant compact with the Anglcyn when they are …continue.

General Sternwood is old, rich, and crippled, with two wanton daughters. Philip Marlowe is brought in to deal with a black­mail­er. Within hours, he is tripping over dead bodies, live dames, tough guys, and skeletons in closets.

Chandler's famously convoluted story holds up well seventy years later. His style and his stories are much imitated, but retain their freshness. Marlowe lives by his own code of honor, which keeps him going in his dirty, no-good world. He cracks wise and rarely carries a gun while he does what needs doing.

Rec­om­mend­ed.

Sequel to The Purity of Blood.

Captain Alatriste has rejoined the Spanish army in Flanders, besieging Breda in 1625. Íñigo, his follower and later biographer, is still too young to bear arms, and serves as a forager for Ala­tris­te's squad.

There's no glory in this war—Pérez-Reverte is a former war cor­re­spon­dent. The Spanish empire is on the decline. Spain has been fighting in the Spanish Nether­lands for sixty years to suppress the Protestant heretics. The Spanish troops are mutinous and close to starving; they haven't been paid in a …continue.

Thomas Shield is a school­mas­ter in Regency England who becomes entangled in the affairs of the Frant and Carswell families, as tutor to the Frant boy and his friend Edgar Allan. Old Mr. Carswell is a domestic tyrant and the former business partner of Mr. Frant. Frant swindles his own bank and is found murdered; the beautiful Mrs. Frant becomes indebted to Carswell.

Shield slowly, almost un­wit­ting­ly untangles what really happened while he is drawn to both Mrs. Frant and Carswell's il­le­git­i­mate daughter. Edgar Allan, who will one day …continue.

Sequel to Dark Fire. The hunch­backed lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been sent to York by Archbishop Cranmer to meet the Royal Progress, where Henry VIII is to accept formal surrender from those who had earlier rebelled. Shardlake is to hear petitions on the king's behalf, but really he is there to ensure that a high-ranking con­spir­a­tor is brought safely back to the Tower of London. He stumbles upon a cache of secret papers, which leads to a series of attempts upon his life.

Shardlake, once an ardent support of the reform of the …continue.

The Baroque Cycle books were a prequel, of sorts, to Crypto­nom­i­con. In World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is an American cryp­tog­ra­ph­er, a peer of Alan Turing, and someone who will be the father of the digital computer; while Bobby Shaftoe is a US Marine who works on black ops. Now, Randy Waterhouse, computer nerd and Lawrence's grandson, is setting up a data haven in the Pacific. Amy Shaftoe, Bobby's grand­daugh­ter, and her father, Doug, are marine salvage experts working for Randy, who find a gold-filled Nazi submarine off the Philip­pines. Somehow, the events …continue.

Almost two years ago, I read Quick­sil­ver, the first volume of Neal Stephen­son's Baroque Cycle. It wasn't until two months ago, that I read The Confusion and The System of the World, the second and third volumes. By then it was clear that I had forgotten much of the first book, so I re-read it.

The books are suf­fi­cient­ly in­ter­twined that it would have been better had I read all three in quick succession, rather than leaving such a long interval.

Quick­sil­ver stands up well to …continue.