For a number of books I’ve been reading lately I can’t really justify writing an entire review length post on them, regardless of liking them or not. Here are a few shorter than usual reviews of some of those books.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (2009)

I should have waited until I’d read the Black Dossier before diving into Century: 1910, as it dives straight into the newest incarnation of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a few years after the end of Volume Two (which you may recall I loved the ending of, I felt it offered complete closure thus making it difficult to understand the reason for continuing the series.) The literary characters that make up this version of the League, still led by Mina Murray, are more obscure than those in Volume One & Two which is a bit alienating. Here they appear with none of the rich back stories of the earlier League, which makes me feel like the Black Dossier must be a necessary link between the two. Nonetheless, the story of Century: 1910 is as exciting as we’d expect from Moore and O’Neill’s League. Captain Nemo’s daughter escapes to London against her dying father’s wishes and is viciously raped (as most female characters are in this series), and seeks her vengeance by succeeding her father’s post as the captain of the Nautilus and unleashing hoards of violent pirates ahead of the coronation. There are occult secrets, song and some inter-League feuds, but Century: 1910 seems undernourished compared to the narrative strengths of Volume One & Two.

Books Do Furnish a Room by Leslie Geddes-Brown (2009)

Though I enjoy books and well stocked bookshelves, I don’t think that that Books do Furnish a Room is really aimed at the book lover. There is lots of advice on what books to keep in different rooms and how to store them, but the advice on what particular types of books to keep in the guest rooms of your house felt particularly out of reach. This is not so much an exploration of the love of books and how, or why, we keep them in our homes, but rather looking at books serving a decorative purpose. There are lots of gorgeous pictures of bookshelves, some of them featuring some astounding design, but mostly unpractical and completely unattainable for those who do not live in converted barnhouses. Even the erratically placed books seem like they were done artfully, with design and aesthetic in mind. You’re likely to find more practical and realistic ideas on flickr or tumblr, try Bookshelf Porn or Bookshelves instead.

A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi: Words We Pinched From Other Languages by Chloe Rhodes (2009)

I have been coveting this series of books in the bookstore for a long time, they feature a lovely nostalgic design, sturdy hard covers, and nerdy themes. Alas, working in a bookstore doesn’t mean that I get to sit around reading books all day (true fact!), so when I saw A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi on the shelf at the library I couldn’t resist. It is an interesting, if short, reference guide to how foreign words and phrases, some familiar and some not so, made their way into the English language. Rhodes traces each phrase from their foreign root words and the historical contexts which may have lead to their adoption into English. Illustrated by example sentences and cartoons, A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi is brief look at the etymology of foreign phrases but I’m not sure how much of it I will retain. Nerdy wordy fact du jour: did you know that the word LOOT came from the Hindi word “lut” meaning to plunder?