The Watchmaker of Filigree Street Natasha Pulley In  The Once and Future King   T.H. White  introduced his version of Merlin. In all versions of Arthurian legend that I know, Merlin is a wizard and can do magic. But  White 's Merlin was special in another way: he lived backward. He could remember his own future, but the past he could only vaguely foresee, the way that you foresee the future. As a result Merlin could tell Arthur his future, and could tell him how he must act to make that future happen. Keita Mori,  the Watchmaker of Filigree Street , is something altogether more complicated and interesting than  White 's Merlin, but yet there is a kinship in how they live. To avoid spoiling, I will not be more specific. The story revolves around Mori. (That's 毛利 in his native Japanese, pronounced Mōri, probably derived from 森, Mori, forest, a common Japanese surname.) Besides his strange relationship with time, Mori is a maker of extraordinarily complicated clockwork devices

Strega Nona Tomie dePaola I read  Tomie dePaola 's  Strega Nona  because of  this Washington Post  article, in which my sister is mentioned. It's a Caldicott Medal winner, so I grabbed it. Honestly, it escapes me. The story is a fairly generic Sorcerer's Apprentice tale. (In fact,  Wikipedia  identifies it as "Aarne-Thompson type 565, the Magic Mill.") Of course, the Caldicott Medal is given for illustration. Although the illustrations were not bad, they appear to me to be nothing particularly special. Strega Nona  on Amazon Goodreads review  

The Mad Scientists' Club Bertrand R. Brinley I think I was 13 or 14 years old when I first read  Bertrand R. Brinley 's  The Mad Scientists' Club . It quickly became one of my favorite books, and I reread it many times. (It helps that it's short.) It's in the tradition of books of stories about mischief-making boys, like  Stalky & Co . These particular boys call themselves The Mad Scientists' Club, and the mischief they get up to usually involves high-tech (1960's incarnations) tricks like radio-controlled motors, etc. It's all very wholesome -- there aren't even any fart jokes (or if there are, I don't remember). The most risqué we get is loud burping. And the stories are actually good. Each of the boys has a definite and distinct personality, and they do sometimes worthwhile and always fun things. But, yeah, it's about boys. The only girl is one Daphne Muldoon, who is the sweetheart of one of the boys. (Gay relationships, you ask? In 19

Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan Michael G. Waltz I picked up  Michael G. Waltz 's  Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan  because President-Elect  Donald Trump  nominated him for National Security Advisor. I saw that he had written this book and read it to get an idea of who he is. First lesson:  Waltz  is not a buffoon like Matt Gaetz or Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Not a buffoon" is a low bar, but with this administration a nominee who clears it is welcome. In fact, I would go so far as to say that  Waltz  is an intelligent man with serious experience relevant to the post of National Security. If you are more than 30 years old, you have probably had this experience. You know a couple -- perhaps one of them is a friend of yours. Their relationship is always on the rocks. They fight, and the fights are serious. Because you're outside the relationship, you can see what neither of the principals

I, Claudius Robert Graves Robert Graves 's  I, Claudius  begins with these words I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus this-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’, or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, am now about to write this strange history of my life... It is ostensibly an autobiography written by Claudius himself, covering the years of his life until he suddenly and unexpectedly became Emperor of Rome. (The sequel,  Claudius the God  continues the story into his reign.) Claudius is an intelligent and, given his environment and predecessors, surprisingly decent and humble man. Of course, the reader never forgets that we have only Claudius's own word for who and what he is. But his intelligence is beyond doubt -- a fool could not have written this. P

Pyramids Terry Pratchett Yesterday I finished listening to  Terry Pratchett 's  Pyramids  (book 7 in his  Discworld  series, and I find myself doing what I usually do when I finish a  Discworld  novel: scrambling frantically to locate the plot. It's not that  Pyramids  lacks a plot. My problem is  Pratchett 's everything-up-to-and-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to story-telling. The plot of  Pyramids  is surrounded my yards and yards of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. And indeed, most of those things were good ideas. I'm influenced by my background. I have written many scientific papers. My approach to writing a paper is to identify one main conclusion that I want to convince the reader of, then require that every sentence marshall evidence for or against that conclusion. Fiction is different, but not SO different as all that. The corresponding idea in fiction is that every sentence should advance the plot. Now, of course this is not a universal rul

Agent Carter Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Marvel Near the end of Captain America: The First Avenger  Steve Rogers dives his airplane into the sea in order to prevent it from reaching (and destroying) New York City. In a final radio conversation with Agent Peggy Carter, he makes a date to take her dancing next Saturday. Both of them know he will not make that date. Agent Carter  shows Peggy Carter's career after Steve's fall and after the end of the Second World War. The year is 1946, and she is an agent with the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a fictional secret organization that was the precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. It is, I suspect, more or less based on the OSS , which was more or less the precursor to the CIA. Although she is one of SSR's most experienced and effective operatives, having had experience in the SOE  (a real English spy operation in World War II) before coming to the American side, Peggy is relegated to fetching coffee and answering phones by her bosses