One of our goals for the trip was to see something of rural Japan, since the previous (and only) time my traveling companions came here, they sought picturesque villages and found cities of 400,000. Well, we got rural. We’re on the island of Shikoku, home of the 88 temples of pilgrimage (I’ve managed to check…
Read MoreThis is the last day to submit your description of your library thrills in honor of National Library Week to thrills@laurierking.com. For details, see https://laurierking.com/events/library-week-2012
Read MoreA traveller depends on the kindness of strangers, in the 21st century as in the first. And when said traveller lacks the forethought to have learned the local tongue, and finds him or herself in a situation not covered by the handy Book of Phrases, the kindness of strangers is the only salvation between the…
Read MoreI write this from Okayama, Japan, having first flown 3000 miles east from California to give a talk to the assembled masses at the fabulous Syracuse library in New York: thank you, everyone who invited me, and all of you wh turned out to hear me. I can only hope my voice did not…
Read MoreRosamond Gifford was the only child of a wealthy lawyer, who inherited a fortune in 1917, invested it with care, and left a greater fortune when she died in 1953. The first grant of the Rosamond Gifford Trust was a set of incubators for premature babies; her most recent grant brought me to Syracuse to…
Read MoreWhen I was in high school in the late sixties, a book came out that changed the world of backpacking. These were the early days of REI, when that company was run out of a smallish house in s Seattle suburb, and a person could wander the rooms in a glorious fantasy of compact tents,…
Read MoreMarch 4, 2012. I open a FedEx envelope from my publishers and find this: It is accompanied by a letter, giving a deadline: So I get to work, reading the manuscript aloud, using a red pen to correct spelling errors, change punctuation oddities, and make small corrections to smooth and clarify the story. I find…
Read MoreAs I’m sure you remember, when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are in San Francisco (in Locked Rooms) reference is made to Arthur Conan Doyle’s visit to the city the previous year, during his Spiritualist tour. Well, it seems that the good doctor visited Russell’s very neighborhood during his trip: a house not 100 yards…
Read MoreAt long last, Beekeeping for Beginners is available on audio, here. Also available in libraries, I understand. (It will be out in print as an extra in the Pirate King paperback, later this spring.) Enjoy!
Read MoreLast year we began our series of lectures on religious topics named in memory of my husband, who taught comparative religion in California and before that in Africa. Please join us for the 2012 Noel King Memorial Lecture, next Thursday at UC Santa Cruz. This year’s discussion is centered on the ethics and religious implications…
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