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Book reviews next! Hurrah! Nothing like a bit of summer reading to get your gnashers firmly into.

The first is by Jeffrey Jackson and published by Palgrave Macmillon - "Paris Under Water". "Paris Under Water is a riveting account of a natural catastrophe that struck Paris in 1910.  Going far beyond the boundaries of environmental or urban history, it draws on an exceptionally wide array of sources to offer the reader a meticulous, yet rich and personal, reconstruction of what the great flood felt like to contemporaries, what it revealed about social tensions and solidarities, and what it signified on a broader historical scale.  Jackson has succeeded masterfully in telling a fascinating story in a way that any reader will find utterly irresistible, while applying insightful and erudite scholarly analysis in a way that sheds light on a great city’s social, economic, and cultural life.  A tour de force of scholarship and brilliantly creative craftsmanship." --Michael D. Bess, author of Choices Under Fire:Moral Dimensions of World War II. So there, that's the first one.

The second is Stefan Zweig's 'The Post Office Girl' which I read in 48h...couldn't put it down. I thought I had exhausted all of Zweig's works and was really thrtilled to find this on a dark and lonely shelf at Hamden Library. Here are two wonderful reviews from First Magazine: http://www.first-magazine.net/2008/06/the-intoxication-of-transformation/ and The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/post-office-girl-stefan-zweig

My final recommendation for now is Bill Bryson's 'Shakespeare' which really had me rolling in the aisles. Brilliant! Hilarious and so full of fascinating anecdotes that'll make teaching any of his works all the more fun. Here's a review from Philip Spires and I couldn't have put it better myself:

"At the start of 'Shakespeare', Bill Bryson apologises for the fact that there is not much to tell. Every aspect of the bard's physical presence on the planet seems to be shrouded in doubt and mystery. We don't even know what he looked like. We don't know much about where he lived, or what he did with his time, apart from write and act. And, though we think we know a reasonable amount about what Will wrote, we know next to nothing about how his works were performed, alongside zero about what role the writer, himself, performed.

So, having apologised for presenting a non-book with a non-story, Bill Bryson proceeds to fill two hundred pages with pure, unadulterated delight. The text provides context, detail and background. It is less than adulatory on the surface, apparently determined to stay within the bounds of the known and the probable. But when Bill Bryson does offer opinion, he reveals a clear and deeply felt love and admiration, almost worship, for his subject.

The book is an absolute joy from beginning to end. Perhaps there really aren't any new facts or figures to discover, but Bill Bryson's account of Shakespeare's life has enough detail, biographical, critical and contextual, to offer as rounded a picture of the writer as we are likely to get. There are numerous Bryson humorous asides, of course, and these only add to the clarity of the piece.

In this slim work, Bryson offers a potted biography, snippets of literary criticism, some illuminating linguistics, much associated history - both of the era and the scholarship, and even a quick guided tour of the pretenders to the myth.

By the end the reader can only marvel at how much an assumed bedrock of national culture and identity could have been laid down by the sedimentation of so little material. But then, of course, there's the works, which speak for themselves."

Philip Spires
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk

And now back to my current read, Larsson's "The Girl Who Played With Fire"...yes, I know, I know. I'm late. Late and behind and not keeping up at all well with newbies. But you know, I couldn't get into the first one. I tried and tried and just couldn't so I kind of thought the 2nd one would have the same mind-numbing effect on me. So I watched the film for the first book instead and loved it. The second book is so much better as far as reading and ease goes. I don't want to see the film and have zero intention of doing so. I am on the edge of my seat (or will be when I'm through checking my e-mails) from one page to the next and my nails risk ending up gnawed to the elbow!

So, you'll excuse me if I leave you now. Back to that comfy armchair over there and my bookworming!