A mostly Poirot-free Poirot novel. It was okay, I guess, but pretty forgettable. What was I talking about?

A short, quick read that goes by even faster because of the blunt writing (or blunt translation as the case may be). A guy’s mother dies, he meets a girl, makes a friend, kills an Arab, is sentenced to die, the end. I guess the point here is that no matter how crazy life is, sit back and appreciate the absurdity of it all and go on living. I don’t know, there’s probably more to it than that but I’m no scholar.

The final Witcher book is a solid conclusion to the series but doesn’t quite stand up to the previous two entries. When it’s focused on one of the main characters it chugs along nicely. Every couple of chapters is a long diversion into background events that are important but draw the reader too far away from the main story. There’s also a series of time/space twists that come off as a bit cheesy and distracting to me. But all-in-all I like the climax and the final twist (which I should have known from the game, but totally forgot).

There are very few books detailing the technical aspects of wood engraving out there. This is about as close to one that I have ever seen. Although it isn’t that in-depth (Moser even says that there really isn’t much to teach, you just need to do it), there are several helpful tidbits that I haven’t read elsewhere including quite a bit on the tools of the engraver and how to print blocks. The whole affair is written in a light-hearted, entertaining style that also serves as a glimpse into the mind of Barry Moser the artist. As one would expect, it is filled with lovely examples of Moser’s work.

I bought this on a whim when I saw the price dropped to $20. Kudos for the completeness and, if all you want is a classical architecture reference book, this book will cover that. But, if you are interested in Piranesi the printmaker and his technique, this is pretty useless. The book is tiny. All the delicate line detail is invisible. The average plate is about the size of a business card with two or three images on each page. Ridiculous.

In the 1960s Fritz Eichenburg illustrated many classics as part of the Heritage Press series of books. This one contains around 17 excellent wood engravings and was worth reading just for that.

This is the first book by Tolstoy I have ever read. I didn’t know what to expect. The translation (Leo Weiner) was very readable and was, with the exception of the ridiculously long Russian names, pretty easy to understand.

Resurrection is about a man who discovers that an innocent girl he seduced a decade ago has been accused of murder. His actions from ten years ago are the trigger that drove her to a life of vice and crime. His mission becomes righting the wrongs of his past. The first book in the novel is fantastic as it follows his efforts to amend his wrongs and save Maslova. The last two books of the novel begin to lose focus on the narrative and concern themselves more with political ideas: the oppression of the poor and mistreatment of prisoners. As thoughtful as this commentary is, it doesn’t make for fun reading. In the end his solution is just to forgive everybody (Jeffery Dahmer would be pleased). At least I now know about Henry George’s Single Tax.