Quips like this keep me reading (and prove that I am a huge English nerd)

People who dug into graves and carried off the treasures dedicated to the dead were still in those days called thieves and not archaeologists.

Brushing up on my comics theory for work. Not a bad way to spend a long weekend!

Introduction by Calvino, front cover blurb by Cortázar, back cover blurb by Marquez - looks promising.

I picked this up two or three years ago, but I didn't get around to reading it until #BackAlleyBookClub picked it. The descriptions are tangible - you can feel the grit and grime of 1895 New York. The pacing is good, with the characters intertwining at just the right moments, and there is at least one surprising plot twist. My only criticism is the amount of explanation in the epilogue.

And then he would move no more; he read, he read with utter concentration; his whole wretched, dying body seemed to be reading, he read with his whole soul, that seemed to sink and disappear into this book, until the air which had cooled made him cough lightly. Then he would get up and go in. (At the Death-Bed, Guy de Maupassant)

Starting the new year with some decadence.

Utterly charming and surprisingly touching. This collection of letters between a New York writer and a London bookseller is a glimpse into the not-too-distant, but somehow simpler, past.

I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest.