READ: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

I came across this book on the half-price table at Barnes & Noble. When I read the blub and discovered it’s one of the favorite comedic novels in Great Britain and has never been out of print since its first publication in 1889, I decided it was worth trying at only 4 bucks! It was money well spent!

It’s the story of three friends, each the 19^th century equivalent of today’s slackers, who decide to take a boat trip down the Thames River, accompanied by the ever-faithful four-legged friend, Montmorency. It’s one of those anything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong adventures, and I was laughing out loud on every page. There’s the plot, of course, but there are all the side-stories of previous adventures recounted by the narrator that make this so much fun.

If you’re looking for (or need) a good laugh-‘til-you-cry escape, you can’t go wrong with this. If you can’t find it at your library or on a bargain table, it’s available for download from Project Gutenberg.

The book has been turned into a film with a screenplay by none other than Tom Stoppard and starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore, directed by Stephen Frears! It’s not available on DVD in the US, but some saintly person has uploaded it to YouTube. You can start watching it here. (OK. It's not as funny as it should be, and I'm not sure it can be appreciated fully without reading the book.)

READ: Mr Perrin and Mr Traill by Hugh Walpole

Moffat, the fictional boys public school on the coast of Cornwall, is the setting for this story of the conflicts, obsessions, and banalities of the school institution Mr Perrin and his rival, the young, new and popular Mr Traill. A torrent of emotions is unleashed over the "battle of the umbrella." (Pun intended.) The crumbing of Mr Perrin's psyche is a marvel. It's also one of the few novels that deals with the teachers and staff of a British public school, rather than the students. It was originally published in 1911.

I’m a big fan of Hugh Walpole, a writer I’ve discovered late in life. This novel, his third,is considered to be his best, and was praised by many of his contemporaries, including H.G. Wells and E. M. Forester. He also wrote Portrait of a Man with Red Hair, reviewed here.

READ: The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

A birch tree suddenly appears in the Parisian back yard of retired opera singer Sophia Simeonidis. She seeks the help of her neighbors, three post-graduate students named Matthew, Mark, and Luke, to help her. When she later turns up dead, the omen of the tree is only one of the puzzles to be solved. Translated from the French, it's a good mystery with interesting characters.

Fred Vargas the pseudonym of French historian, archaeologist and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau. She also writes the police procedurals with Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, starting with the excellent The Chalk Circle (1996). To fully understand the quirks of the main character, it’s best to start this series at the beginning.

READ: Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

The daily lives of ordinary Germans in Berlin during WWII, and the small acts of simple defiance a few of them chanced. It's a love story, a terrifying study in the workings of a police state, and a police procedural describing the hunt for the perps.

Originally published in 1947 and translated from the German only last year, it wound up on about 20 "best of the year" fiction lists. The 500-page novel was written in 24 days shortly after the end of WWII and Fallada’s release from a Nazi mental asylum. He died before it was published.

The book has been filmed twice, once as a television mini-series for German TV, but these are not available on DVD in the US.

READ: In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

Postwar Los Angeles is the setting for this hard-boiled detective mystery about a serial killer, told from the point of view of the killer, Dix Steele. One of the few pulp/noir written by a woman, it's now considered a classic of feminist literature. The tag line reads: "American Machismo Gone Mad." The violence is very subtle, as it was published in 1947.

It was made into a movie with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham. While it's a good film, it really deviates from the book to the point that the narrative is lost. That being said, Bogart does a fantastic job as a psychologically wounded WWII vet. They should film a new version. Colin Farrell would be great.

READ: Eco Books by Terry Taylor

Subtitled: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin, Taylor has assembled over 40 projects using materials such as junk mail, cereal boxes, luggage tags, dental floss containers and other objects we usually just throw into the recycle bin. Projects combine these cast-off materials with traditional bookmaking techniques and structures, including accordion fold, sewing over tapes, long stitch, and others.

Easy to follow instructions accompany detailed drawings, and several templates are included, as well as examples of works by well-known book artists. A great companion book to Jeannine Stein’s re-bound (below). So, don’t toss out those egg cartons! Make a book!

READ: Memoirs of a British Agent by R.H. Bruce Lockhart

One of the more fascinating characters in the British Foreign Service was R.H. Bruce Lockhart. Stationed in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, he knew everyone of consequence, from writers like and artists, Tsarist loyalists and revolutionaries of all political persuasions. His autobiography, published in 1932, made him an instant celebrity.

He became well acquainted with Sidney Reilly, the (presumed) model for Ian Fleming’s literary character James Bond. Bruce Lockhart and Reilly were arrested, tried and sentenced to death for a plot to assassinate V.I. Lenin. Reilly was executed, but Bruce Lockhart was saved through an exchange of prisoners, supposed Russian spies being held in Great Britain.

The tone of this autobiography is friendly and unassuming, especially considering the cast of real-life characters swirling around its pages – Hugh Walpole, Leon Trotsky, Feodor Chaliapin, Maxim Gorky, Tsar Nicholas II, Arthur Ransome, and Prince Lvov, to name just a few. Now out of print, copies of the 2003 Folio Society edition are available from online booksellers. It’s well worth the tracking down for an exciting and enjoyable time experiencing the secret world before easy mass communication immediately let us all know the latest news from the secret world.