A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin – Book Review

Back in my teens, I read the Russian translation of this book so many times the whole sections of dialogue and descriptions kept popping up in my brain as I was reading it in English. It was fun to revisit in its original language, particularly as the Russian translation couldn’t really capture the 1950s expressions and quirks.

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Books I’ve read lately

goldGold: The Final Science Fiction Collection by Isaac Asimov

I’ve only read one other short stories collection by Asimov before, so this bunch of previously uncollected stories probably wasn’t a great place to start for a relative Asimov beginner. The stories are rather hit-and-miss; there’s a couple which are more like sci-fi jokes culminating with rather unfunny puns; while others are really good, like the first story in the collection called Cal, about a domestic robot who wants to be a writer just like his master.

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This Charming Man by Marian Keyes – Book Review

I read a few novels by Marian Keyes (a.k.a. the Irish Queen of Chick Lit), but while I enjoyed them all to various degrees most of them fall into the “read once and forget” basket. This book had stuck with me though, I’ve just re-read it for the second time in two years and loved it as much as when I first read it. At nearly 900 pages (set at a pretty large font mind you), it’s a breeze and pleasure to read.

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