I may be keeping the best for last...

... but I seem to make sure the one before is very, very good as well, or else it's not worth spending time on. "Bone Mountain" by Eliot Pattison is an extremely good book, and very much worth reading if you're interested in Tibet, in Buddhism, or in spirituality at all, even if it does masquerade as a whodunnit on the outside. But, as was the case with the best of them from Dorothy Sayers' "Gaudy Night" onwards, the mystery takes an absolute backseat to a deeply moving, inspiring and relevant narrative.

And now the next book on my stack is "The Standing Dead"...

Rasputin Deathday event at the Russian cultural club, Munich - a short report

The Rasputin lecture followed by a Russian folk concert concert on Sunday was seriously weird. That is to say, the Nazgul and I almost fell off our chairs laughing, and it's a pity she didn't dare take out her digicam and record the performance until the flash card was full; it would have become a major hit online or even on TV if she'd actually sent it to the TV show she thought might have a use for it.-
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