Blogging Around: The Bookish Edition

The Psalms of David
Reviewed by Joseph at Zombie Parent’s Guide.

This particular edition of the Psalms is the King James Version with illustrations by James Freemantle. Freemantle was a British soldier who traveled all over the Middle East. During his second marriage, he began to transcribe the Psalms and illustrate the book for his wife Clara. He included much of the flora and fauna of the Middle East, practically on every page of the book. It took over thirty years to complete and he died the year he finished it. His son decided many years later to publish his father’s work in facsimile edition.

Joseph includes some scanned pages and I now am fascinated by this book. Must. find. copy.

The Spirit of Catholicism
Reviewed by Jeff Miller at The Curt Jester.

It was one of those books I was tempted to highlight every page. If I hadn’t read the ebook version I could have saved myself time by just dipping the book in highlighter yellow.

Been there. Wished I could have done that.

The January Dancer
Reviewed by Will Duquette at View From The Foothills.

There are a number of authors best known for writing fiction whose non-fiction I generally prefer. Mark Twain is first among them; I’m afraid I’d much rather read Life on the Missippi than Huckleberry Finn. And as it happens, Mike Flynn is another. In the Country of the Blind left me cold; there’s much to like about Eifelheim, but I don’t love it the way many people seem to; but what I really enjoy are his blog posts, which are intelligent, witty, and informative. In fact, I enjoy his blog so much that I truly feel a little bad about not enjoying his books more. It’s like admiring Richard Feynman for his bongo playing.

Luckily, he does enjoy this book quite a lot.

Bullet for a Star, by Stuart M. Kaminsky
Lars Walker at Brandywine Books reviews the book and has a valid beef with the publisher.

The good news-almost wonderful news, except for the One Problem that I’ll detail at the end of this review– is that the late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s delightful Toby Peters novels are being released for Kindle by Mysterious Press. I downloaded the very first book of the series, Bullet for a Star, and read it with pleasure.

The Toby Peters novels, if you’re not familiar with them, are light mysteries set in Hollywood. Toby is a very small-time P.I. who nevertheless keeps getting hired for cases involving famous movie stars (and a few other notables) of the Golden Age of Hollywood.