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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs

I'm cheating here a bit, because I'm not going to go in depth with this review (which makes it shorter and easier to write). The reason being, fishy and I are going to discuss it for our extremely informal book club, and he reads this blog so I don't want to give him any discussion point spoilers.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine is the first of several books by John Bellairs featuring Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass. It's grand old 1950s American gothic for boys, and it's fabulous. Atmospheric, chilling, and engaging, right up to the very end. I read it in an evening before bed. I kind of wonder how I hadn't really discovered John Bellairs as a kid, except that Bellairs must have struck me as being "for boys" and lord knows I didn't want to read anything for boys. Apparently. One would think that my love for the supernatural would have led me straight to Bellairs.

Anyway, I might post more later about it, but I might not.

(...It's my blog and I'll post if I want to?)

Suffice to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and am looking forward to the next Johnny Dixon mystery.

As for everything else I'm reading, I'm partway through Elizabeth Berg's Range of Motion again, and partway through that Margaret Wise Brown biography, and I'm trying to read more poetry so I've got Neruda's Odes to Common Things beside the bed. There's lots of others waiting in the wings, too. As always.

2 comments:

Ana S. said...

This does sound very enjoyable! I've read some Bellairs, but none of the Johnny Dixon mysteries yet.

Unknown said...

My husband, who was a big Bellairs fan in his youth, assures me that the Johnny Dixon mysteries are the best of a good bunch. I just found another one at the local library's book sale, but it's not the *next* one. I'm doing that thing where I'm hunting down series again...