Author Archives: Barbara Howe

Reality Intrusions

Posted on 1 December 2017 by Barbara Howe

This has been a spectacular week. First my car broke down. The muffler fell off on Evans Bay Parade on my way to work, the battery died and needed a jump start, and the mechanic said it wasn’t worth replacing … Continue reading →

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Dorothy L Sayers

Posted on 25 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

Dorothy L Sayers is the writer most responsible for my ongoing love affair with British mystery novels. Her primary protagonist, Lord Peter Wimsey, may not be my favourite fictional detective—Brother Cadfael wins that honour—but he runs a close second. Written … Continue reading →

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Answers breed more questions

Posted on 18 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

We made a short trip down to the South Island last weekend, and started off with a question: how do we get from Christchurch to Picton, with Highway 1 still out of commission after last year’s earthquake? The standard answer … Continue reading →

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Rivers of London

Posted on 3 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

In the first chapter of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, probationary constable Peter Grant of the Metropolitan Police Service tries to take a witness statement from a man he doesn’t realise at first is a ghost. Pretty soon Grant finds … Continue reading →

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The Moonspinners

Posted on 29 October 2017 by Barbara Howe

Nicola Ferris, a young Englishwoman on holiday from her job at the British embassy in Athens, goes for a walk in the White Mountains of Crete, and stumbles onto a badly wounded young Englishman, Mark Langley, and his Greek guide. … Continue reading →

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The Lymond Chronicles

Posted on 21 October 2017 by Barbara Howe

I had intended to write on a different topic this weekend, but I made the mistake of looking at Facebook, saw this link to an article in The Guardian about Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, and got derailed. My Georgia Tech roommate … Continue reading →

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Role Models

Posted on 14 October 2017 by Barbara Howe

We hear about the underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, and one of the strategies always discussed for dealing with that disparity is by providing good role models. The number of non-traditional role models, both … Continue reading →

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Tsundoku

Posted on 7 October 2017 by Barbara Howe

I learned a new word this week*: tsundoku, a Japanese word meaning owning too many books that will never be read. I came across the word in the Saturday paper, in an article on home decorating that had me in … Continue reading →

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Drama

Posted on 30 September 2017 by Barbara Howe

Audience: middle school and up Apparently I’ve had it wrong all my adult life. I thought explicit sex involved, well, contact or at least display of private body parts. You know, actual sex. But I’ve just discovered that a simple … Continue reading →

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The Mad Scientists’ Club

Posted on 23 September 2017 by Barbara Howe

As a preteen, I loved Bertrand R Brinley’s The Mad Scientists’ Club. As an adult, I read these pre-MacGyver, Do-It-Yourself stories to my daughter, and still loved them. In these stories, a group of boys, including one wild dreamer, concoct … Continue reading →

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