Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #43

Quick Review

Tales of the Dying Earth: The Dying Earth/The Eyes of the Overworld/Cugel's Saga/Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance

I'm done. I only undertook this because my favorite critic, Michael Dirda, insisted Vance is the great "stylist" of this genre. Oh. I suppose this pastiche of equal parts Malory, theosophy & Moonbeam McSwine might add up to something baroque and exotic -- if one were to never wander too far from the shelf off of which it came. But, how anybody over the age of ten, with a library-card and any curiosity, could find this glutenous, lumpy mess anything but indigestible is a mystery to me.

I still trust Michael Dirda in most things, but here I can not go.

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Daily Dose

From On Conan Doyle, by Michael Dirda

LITTLE DID

"Little did I know then that book collecting is less about acquiring books than about finding the shelf space to store them."

From I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere