Arthur Conan Doyle: Through the magic door. Kindle edition
I admit I downloaded this book because I assumed it contained mystery stories, but when there simply was no crime and no sign of Watson or Holmes I discovered that it is even better ;-) Doyle invites us to join him at a journey through his library and to close the magic door behind us: "I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more". I discovered that Doyle and I have something in common: "Personally I must confess that anything bearing upon the Arctic Seas is always of the deepest interest to me". Conclusion: "For the time the magic door is still shut. You are still in the land of faerie. But, alas, though you shut that door, you cannot seal it. Still come the ring of bell, the call of telephone, the summons back to the sordid world of work and men and daily strife. Well, that's the real life after all—this only the imitation. And yet, now that the portal is wide open and we stride out together, do we not face our fate with a braver heart for all the rest and quiet and comradeship that we found behind the Magic Door?"
 | Maia C: "Library door", 27. April 2006, Flickr, CC-BY-NC-ND |
Eduard von Keyserling: Dumala. Kindle edition
Ian Sansom: The Bad Book Affair. William Morrow 2010 (The mobile library 4)
I think this is the best book in the series. I had some difficulties with its predecessors and only bought them for the sake of completeness. But after reading part four I hope there will be a another instalment. Sansom really has wit and a talent for needing few sentences for saying much about a person.
IN PROGRESS
G.K. Chesterton: The man who knew too much. Kindle edition (status: 3%)
collection of detective stories
W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz. Carl Hanser 2001 (Status: page 175 of 416)
No comments:
Post a Comment