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Good Recent Swedish Popular History
I don’t read much in Swedish. On a whim I decided to check what recent Swedish books I’ve read and liked outside work. Turns out they’re all popular history. Alla rekommenderas varmt för den som delar...
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WorldCon 75 in Helsinki
The 75th World Science Fiction Convention took place in Helsinki and seems to have had the second-highest attendance ever: more than 7000 people in the Messukeskus convention centre, 2000 of whom had...
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LinCon & SweCon 2017
Ascension with its four days off is shaping up to be the geekiest time of the year. This time I had three big events to choose from: the LinCon gaming convention, the Kontur/SweCon scifi convention...
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Best Reads Of 2016
The Detective: Jonathan L. Howard’s second book about Johannes Cabal, the necromancer. Here are my best reads in English during 2016. My total was 42 books and 13 of them were e-books. Find me at...
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Announcing My New Essay Collection
In December of last year I finished a collection of short humorous archaeological essays. It’s my sixth book, my first one in Swedish, my first one aimed at the lay reader. Since then I’ve been waiting...
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The Lovecraftian Horror of French
1972 back-cover blurb I bought a used copy of Maurice Lévy’s Lovecraft ou du fantastique (Paris 1972) at the Fantastika 2016 scifi con, and now I’m picking my way through it with the aid of a...
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Skeptical Sir Richard
Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-90) Yesterday I finished reading the first volume of Sir Richard Burton’s 1855 Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (in the public domain). Here...
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Machen’s Impostors
Arthur Machen (1863-1947) Arthur Machen’s 1895 book The Three Impostors, or The Transmutations, is a delightfully strange read. It consists of a short frame narrative interspersed with six standalone...
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Best Reads Of 2015
Andy Weir’s The Martian. My single best read this year!Here are my best reads in English during 2015. My total was 55 books and 16 of them were e-books. Find me at Goodreads! The Summing Up. W....
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Toby Martin: The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England (part 1)
Toby Martin 2015, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England This is the definitive study of English cruciform brooches. Now and then a study comes along that is so comprehensive, and so well argued,...
View ArticlePoet and Spy
Reading a good book, Charles’ Nicholl’s The Reckoning. The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992, 2nd expanded ed. 2002), about the 16th century playwright. It’s a bit overloaded with asides and covers...
View ArticlePickwick Afterlife
The final third of Stephen Jarvis’s upcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick continues in the same rather kaleidoscopic fashion as before. The asides and Chinese boxes are innumerable. We never do get an...
View ArticleSketches of Boz
In the second novel-length third of Stephen Jarvis’s hefty Death and Mr Pickwick, artist and caricaturist Robert Seymour starts in earnest to put ideas together for the Pickwick Papers. Yes, that’s...
View ArticleGoogle Play Books Ate My Apostrophes
I usually shop around for a good price when I buy e-books, and lately Google’s bookstore has received my custom. It’s not a very high-profile store – you see, this isn’t the well-known Google Books,...
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“Matilda”: Class Perspective
In Roald Dahl’s last book, Matilda (1988), we are invited to laugh at the main character’s parents. They hate books, love TV, dress tastelessly and subsist on microwave TV dinners. Yet only when I saw...
View ArticleMy Bronze Age Book Is Out
Dear Reader, it is with great pleasure that I announce the PDF publication of my fifth monograph,* In the Landscape and Between Worlds. The paper version will appear in April or May. Here’s the...
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Childhood Horrors
Ken & Robin have an interesting discussion in the most recent episode of their podcast, on childhood fears. Specifically, they talk about childhood responses to horror stories and movies. I was...
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Prequel to Pickwick
Stephen Jarvis’s upcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick is a sprawling book, in terms both of its 800-page girth and of its structure. I’ve read the first third and decided to write about it now before I...
View ArticleCover Decided For My Upcoming Book
I’ve finalised the cover of my upcoming book with designer Bitte Granlund! Cover image: detail of a rock-art panel at Hemsta in Boglösa, Uppland. An axe with its characteristic s-shaped haft, an...
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Help Me Proofread My Book
Bitte Granlund of Happy Book has sent me PDF proofs for my forthcoming Bronze Age book, looking bee-you-tiful! If you’d like to help me proofread it, please email me. Everyone who finds ten errors gets...
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