Another Eva Ibbotson triumph, though this one is rather more outlandish than the others I have read thus far. Because there are ghosts in this one, and everyone is cool with there being ghosts, and moreover — spoiler alert for a thirty-year-old kids’ book — at the end, the ghosts become celebrities.
I mean, sure. Okay.
Despite this nonsensicalness, however, I really enjoyed this book. Even if a twelve-year-old Scottish laird is permitted to sell his ancestral castle to an American millionaire. Even if said twelve-year-old then moves in with the American millionaire and his allegedly frail daughter once the castle is transported across the Atlantic. Even if there is a kidnapping subplot enacted by a woman so enamoured of Hitler that she renames herself “Adolpha.”
Even if there are ghosts and everyone is cool with there being ghosts.
It takes a singular talent to make a story of such silliness enjoyable to the adult brain (or, such I have the audacity to claim). But, as has been amply proven to me repeatedly this year, Eva Ibbotson had just such a talent.
I am just sorry it took me so long to discover it for myself.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 299: The Haunting of Hiram C. Hopgood, aka The Haunting of Hiram by Eva Ibbotson
GENRE: Children’s Fiction
PUBLISHED: 1987
TIME ON THE TBR: ~13 years.
PURCHASED FROM: Op shop.
KEEP: Yep!
Surreal is the only word that can be applied to this mind-twisty, somewhat headache-inducing novel, which I bought long, long ago upon the recommendation of the Amazon algorithm that has, to date, found me most amenable to most of its suggestions of books I might like.
In this somewhat strident effort, celebrated athiest Christopher Hitchens argues — very persuasively, very successfully — that humanity has outgrown religion in these science-blessed times, and in fact that religion is far more harmful than it is helpful nowadays.
A third day in a row spent with the extraordinary ladies of the Athena Club was very well spent, as Mary Jekyll and her unlikely associates battle once again against the dastardly doings of the world-spanning alchemist conspiracy, while also trying to discover the whereabouts of Sherlock Holmes — in whom our Mary is increasingly interested, despite herself — missing these several days.
The next adventure of the newly-formed Athena Club, a group of literature-adjacent young women variously experimented on or deeply affected by said experiments, sees them travel to Europe to rescue the kidnapped Lucy Van Helsing.
With the third book in this series just released, I at last decided to read the trilogy, the first two of which I bought on a whim because the title of this one just would not be denied.
The inimitable Bill Bryson’s amiable, often incisive, travel narratives are among my very most beloved books ever, and I love his explorations of the English language, Shakespeare and the like, but his impeccably researched popular science works — first, A Short History of Nearly Everything, then At Home, and now this one — are, quite simply, works of staggering genius.
Famous as the world’s first example of Gothic literature, this book is confusing in that it seems to be a satire of Gothic literature. Can one really satirize a thing as one simultaneously creates it? 
Well, this is yet another intriguing entry into the Poirot canon. A wealthy old lady dies on the brink of making a new will (because, duh), then a young woman close to her is poisoned, and the old lady’s niece is arrested for both deaths.
Michael Palin is, of course, a comedy god, a fact proven again and again not only through his Monty Python hijinks but his travel narratives, and much more. But does he have skill with kids’ books?