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d‘Artagnan puts it best- “Ah, my friends, it is not civil wars which disunite us; it is that we are all twenty years older. The loyal outbursts of youth have gone, and given place to the din of interests, the breath of ambition, and the counsels of egotism.” It”s been twenty years since the events of The Three Musketeers and time has not suited the famous friends. d’Artagnan is still a lieutenant in the musketeers. Porthos has gained a country estate but not the respect his neighbors. Aramis has taken the cloth and pines for his adventurous youth. And Athos, […]

Mike Krzos is an old buddy of mine – we car-pooled to our rocket-scientist jobs for about two years. You get a lot of time to know someone, an hour each way. One of our biggest (and standing) arguments was about the novel Moby Dick. I reviewed it HERE. Now it’s Mike’s turn… Moby Dick. Every person claims to know the story. An obsessive madman, a madman with one leg, possessed by his obsession to the ends of sanity and, presumably, the end of his life. Moby Dick is not a story however, it is a work of art. Just […]

Captain James Raymond is a retired naval officer and voracious reader – he’s also my Pop. Given his burn rate on books, it’s a natural to ask him to stand in for me while I saw through Twenty Years After. Watch for future reviews by him. A beautiful novel set in New York City during the early post WW2 years. Henry, a young paratrooper returns from war and attempts to reestablish his family leather business. His wartime experiences leading his squad into Normandy on D-day and during the battle of the bulge establishes his character using flashbacks.  Love at first […]

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, is the second of my 3M reviews. Last week, if you’ll remember, we looked at the original, The Three Musketeers. Now we look at this author’s amazing spin on it. I remember watching The Maltese Falcon and being shocked (and delighted) at what a cad Sam Spade (a.k.a Humphrey Bogart) was (including having the sign painter scrape his partner’s name off their practice’s door before his body was even cold). But Lucas Corso goes above and beyond. He’s a ratty book-obtainer, some one you might employ if you wanted a hard-to-get copy of a […]