Disclosure up front: I took a Coursera class led by Prof. Bruce Holsinger two years ago.

This is the second of Bruce Holsinger's books featuring poet John Gower as a detective. Like A Burnable Book, the first tale, this book is rich in historical detail and entertaining characters.

There are a couple of subplots that eventually come together. The first plot begins when 16 dead bodies are found in London's "Long Drop" public privy by the night-soil removers. The second involves Stephen Marsh, a skilled metalworker who is indentured to the bell-maker for whom he was once an employee. The third involves Gower himself, who is losing his sight and wondering how he is going to make a living.

The mystery concerning the bodies is complex and really does take the entire book to resolve. There are more twists and turns than can possibly be imagined; every time I thought I had it figured out, it turned out that I was wrong.

Holsinger has taken his expertise in historic novels and applied it to great effect in his own work. He knows how much detail to include in order to set the stage without being pedantic, and how to create three-dimensional, believable characters to love or hate (no one is perfectly good or bad, just all perfectly human ... and some of them kinder than others).

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to fans of historical fiction and/or historical mysteries.

For week 2 of Dr Rabkin's  Fantasy and Science Fiction class on coursera, we get to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

I remember my mom reading Alice to me as a child, and I found it somewhat boring and confusing. And I read it to my older son when he was around kindergarten age, and he found it boring and confusing. So I found it quite fun to get to read this book just for me, as an adult, fully able to understand the story while also suffering no interruptions and having to explain.

And Carroll's wordplay is magnificent. While Alice is 7 and a half in the story, I really think kids may need to be closer to 10 to understand what is going on and to understand the wordplay. This book (or these 2 books, since Through the Looking Glass was written and published several years after Alice) is just fun. From Alice's frustration in the first chapter as she shrinks and grows and forgets her key and grows and shrinks again, to the chess game in Through the Looking Glass, it is fun and games as the reader cheers Alice on and hopes she makes the correct choices and remembers her goal.

I have finished all of my reading and work for the U of Michigan "Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World" course with professor Eric Rabkin. I still have some videos to watch, but I will be getting my completion certificate when they are posted.

The reading in this course is fabulous—I will be getting to the works in future posts. Prof. Rabkin knows his stuff, and his commentary is fascinating. If you have any interest in the topic, I encourage you to go along for the ride!

The downside, as with many coursera courses, is in the peer reviewing. To earn a completion, you must complete 7 short essays (there are 10 weeks of reading) while earning a minimum grade and do 7 sets of reviews/grading. Yes, the grades are coming from the other students in the course. So it is very hit or miss—both in what you receive to review, and which reviewers receive your essays. The class is supposed to require college-level writing, but the bulk of students are not able to do that. Many of the students are English students from around the world. Some have pretty strong English skills, some not so much. So you need a thick skin to take the strange negative comments (I got things from "too many big words" to "your quotes are wrong"), and be patient enough to do your best when reviewing the many people trying to learn English. I found reviewing 5 essays to take much longer than writing my 1.

But that's only if you want a completion certificate! You can always just read and watch. And don't miss the forums, there are great discussions there.