For most of us, dictionaries simply exist. We don’t think about who wrote them; it is as if they sprang into being fully formed. Obviously, this is not true and this lovely book brings to life the many people who helped create the Oxford English Dictionary. The story here is one of amateurs collaborating alongside the academic elite during a period when scholarship was being increasingly professionalized; of women contributing to an intellectual enterprise at a time when they were denied access to universities; of hundreds of Americans contributing to a Dictionary that everyone thinks of as quintessentially ‘British’; of an above-average number of ‘lunatics’ contributing detailed and rigorous work…

Please admire the cowl I knitted. Isn’t it pretty? I am quite happy with it. It was a very easy pattern but it is the first thing I have made that doesn’t have a bunch of egregious mistakes in it. If you see any please don’t tell me. I am now working on a hat with cabling. My personal knitting consultant (one of my co-workers) showed me how to do cables during a break in a day-long boring work meeting. After that, I would like to try simple colorwork. Knitting is a bit addictive. The book is one of my favorites of the British Library Crime Classic volumes of short…

Johnny Wise drives his car into a wall and dies because he is betrayed by the girl he loves, Perpetua Kirk. Years late, many of the people involved in that incident gather together to put on a medieval pageant at Elysian Hall. Inspector Cockrill answers Perpetua’s plea for help after three members of the pageant, including her, are threatened with death. Slowly, he pieces together how the past is affecting the present but will he be speedy enough in sorting out all the red herrings and false confessions? I read Green for Danger last year and Heads You Lose last week. Both feature Inspector Cockrill and I enjoyed them. I…

When at two o’clock on a sultry July afternoon Athelstan Digby undertook to keep an eye on the contents of the old bookshop in Keldstone High Street, he deliberately forgot to mind his own business. Isn’t that an irresistible opening paragraph? Mr. Digby is on holiday and is waiting for his nephew, Jim, to join him. His landlord and the landlord’s wife must attend a funeral and Mr. Digby agrees to mind the shop. While he is in charge three separate individuals, a vicar, a chauffeur, and an out-of-town visitor, all ask for a copy of The Life and Death of Mr. Badman by John Bunyan. Mr. Digby is unable…

I woke up this morning to my daughter whisper-yelling my name to wake me up and let me know school was canceled because of snow. My morning plans had already been postponed because I knew the storm was coming. I promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. I love snow days. There was nowhere I had to be, nowhere I could be, and absolutely nothing required of me. What more could I ask for out of life today? It has been a day of puttering around, watching All Creatures Great and Small with my husband, and…well, I don’t really know what else. Reading is necessary on a snow day.…