Year of reading 2018: Part 1 – My top 14

Posted on January 1, 2019 by WordsAndPeace

Year of reading 2018
Part 1
My top 14

To follow my tradition, here is part 1 of my yearly recap.
There is a total of 3 parts:

my favorites, with my usual categories, see here below
my stats
my fun list with titles

With only 77 books read, this is my most pathetic year in the last decade.
My final choice is based on the quality of the book, on how it resonated with me and my own experience, and on how it stayed with me. Some of these books may actually have got only 4 out 5 Eiffel Towers at the time I read them.

MY FAVORITES

click on the covers to access either my review,
or the Goodreads page for the couple of titles I have not reviewed yet

PRINT COPIES

Fiction	Historical Fiction	NonFiction	Mystery

EBOOKS

Fiction	Historical Fiction	NonFiction	Mystery

AUDIOBOOKS

Fiction	NonFiction		Mystery

OTHER

GRAPHIC “NOVEL”

SPIRITUAL BOOK

BOOK COVER

DO YOU HAVE SOME FAVORITES
IN COMMON WITH MINE?

MORE FUN RECAP TOMORROW!

HAPPY NEW YEAR OF READING TO YOU!

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Book review: Conan Doyle for the Defense

Posted on October 30, 2018 by WordsAndPeace

Conan Doyle for the Defense:
The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer

by Margalit Fox
Random House
6/26/2018
Genre: Nonfiction/True crime/History/Biography
352 pages
Goodreads

***

This brilliant nonfiction reads like a thriller, both because of its topic and because of the writer’s skill at structuring her story.

Conan Doyle for the Defense is about what was supposedly “one of the most notorious murders of its age”, a bit like a “Scottish Dreyfus affair”.

A case all too common: a rich old woman was robbed and killed in Glasgow, and for various reasons explained in the book, the police targeted Oscar Slater, a German Jewish gambler, even though they soon had evidence he could not have done it.
“An innocent man was pursued, tried, convicted, and nearly hanged”, a “supreme example of official incompetence and obstinacy”, of “judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.” A “disgraceful frame-up, in which stupidity and dishonesty played an equal part.” Nothing new under the sun…