Category Archives: eBook

Donna Tartt — The Goldfinch Unchained

Posted on January 10, 2015 by carto

The Goldfinch is a very small oil painting of a finch chained to its perch that is on display in a museum in the Netherlands. It was painted 300 years ago by a student of Rembrandt and is very famous. … Continue reading →

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The 25th Century — A Doom Scenario

Posted on September 10, 2012 by carto

Note: California City was laid out in 1958 by real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn on 80,000 acres of Mojave Desert land. It was never completed, but has one landowners’ resort, one PGA golf course, one prison (the California … Continue reading →

Posted in eBook, Fantasy/Adventure, Fiction, Speculative Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Championship Year—Good Summer Reading

Posted on June 29, 2012 by carto

At the end of this Montana road, at the foot of the Tobacco Root Mountains, sits the small town of Willow Springs. It’s a quiet town with a Methodist Church, a small café, and a very small high school. The … Continue reading →

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John Irving—Twisted River, A Writer Drifts Through Life

Posted on June 20, 2012 by carto

A guardian angel looks down on Iowa. A scene from John Irving’s novel Last Night in Twisted River takes place on a small pig farm not far from Iowa City. A pig was roasting in a makeshift barbeque pit not … Continue reading →

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Illustrated Tales of Nations—German Cigarette Cards

Posted on June 10, 2012 by carto

The Chinese Nightingale is an illustrated folk tale set in ancient China. The charming story is included in Tales of the Nations (Märchen der Völker), illustrations and stories produced as part of a German cigarette advertising promotion just before WWII. … Continue reading →

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Jo Nesbø: Introducing Norwegian Policeman Harry Hole

Posted on May 13, 2012 by carto

The migrating Redbreast is a harbinger of spring in Oslo; seeing one in November is unusual. In the opening scene of the Jo Nesbø’s police thriller Redbreast, two bored police officers are watching an overwintering Robin Redbreast swoop down to … Continue reading →

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A Tourist in Sudan—Intrigue, Duplicity and Murder

Posted on April 25, 2012 by carto

The Sudan has oil for sale; it sells oil primarily to Asian countries, among them China. What if, instead, the sales went to Europe? Or to the U.S.? In Olen Steinhauer’s espionage tale The Tourist (book 1 of the Milo … Continue reading →

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Love, Murder and Ritual Execution: Atwood and Homer Telling the Tale

Posted on April 10, 2012 by carto

Odysseus’ boat riding the waves of Penelope’s flowing hair, illustration by Sarah Burgess Cherry. Once upon a time, in the tiny island kingdom of Ithaca off the coast of Greece, Penelope ruled while her husband Odysseus was away: first he … Continue reading →

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Inspector Chen’s Shanghai: For the Good of the Party

Posted on March 21, 2012 by carto

Two middle-aged Chinese men meet on the Waibaidu Bridge in Shanghai—they look down at the polluted waters of the Suzhou River and reminisce of days past when the river was unpolluted and they fished for carp from the garden park … Continue reading →

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Celebrating Gabriel García Márquez And Ice

Posted on March 6, 2012 by carto

Gabriel García Márquez was born on this day (March 6) in 1927 in Aracataca, Colombia; he is 85 years old. In Spanish, only Cervantes is more widely read than García Márquez. García Márquez is a storyteller and one of his … Continue reading →

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