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Arsène Lupin is a gentleman burglar character first introduced in short stories by Maurice Leblanc that were published by the French magazine "Je sais tout" in 1905. The first nine stories are collected in this book, published in 1907. This book is in the public domain, so you can find it online for free. (I recommend Standard Ebooks, but you can also get it at Project Gutenberg.)

The Arsène Lupin stories were so popular that Leblanc continued writing more Lupin stories until 1939 (shortly before his death in 1941). Leblanc published a total of 24 books in the series.

The character has been adapted to movies, TV shows, stage shows, comic books, and video games. It has also inspired other characters. The most famous of these is the manga/anime character Lupin III, whom its creator (Kazuhiko Katō) describes as Arsène Lupin's grandson.

This book holds up fairly well. Some of the mysteries feel a little simplistic by modern standards. A few of them are ingenious, though. If you like early mystery novels, you will not feel let down, because you know the state of the art and appreciate it for what it is. (The same way those of us who like older movies appreciate them for what they are and don't denigrate them for simplistic cinematography or crude special effects.) If you've only read modern authors, you will probably feel a little disappointed. I still recommend the book to those readers, because you should stretch your horizons a little!

The book kind of begs comparison to Sherlock Holmes. This is not just because it is crime fiction. It's not just because the years it was written overlap Conan Doyle's active years. It's because the book features Sherlock Holmes as a supporting character!

The last chapter is titled "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late". A man who was afraid of being robbed hires Sherlock Holmes to prevent the burglary. I don't think I'm giving anything away here, but Holmes (who has to travel from London to France) arrives too late to prevent it. Fear not, Sherlockians! The second book in the series is titled "Arsène Lupin versus Sherlock Holmes"! I have not read that one yet, so I don't know if it lives up to the hype.

(A note for sticklers or the confused: The first several short stories were published using the name "Sherlock Holmes". Arthur Conan Doyle got a bit huffy about someone else using his character, so he sent his Lawyer of the Baskervilles to put a stop to it. Leblanc was forced to change the name of the character in his stories to "Herlock Sholmes". Most copies of these stories use that name. As we all know, Sherlock Holmes was a master of disguise, so we are not fooled by the fake mustache. The Sherlock Holmes stories are now also in the public domain, so some ebooks that you can find online have restored the correct name.)

On the matter of the inevitable comparison of this Arsène Lupin book to the stories of Sherlock Holmes, the former, unsurprisingly, is weaker. It's still a good book, and I still recommend it to those who are interested. However, when you look at both, it becomes obvious that Conan Doyle was a better writer. The Holmes stories have endured for a reason. They are well crafted and engaging. Arsène Lupin is more of a beach read or airplane read.

The chapters were originally published as short stories. Unsurprisingly, the book reads more like an anthology than a novel. Although I have given the overall book a score of three stolen Renoirs out of five, I thought it would be fun to rate the individual chapters as well. I also give a short comment.

Ch. 1 The Arrest of Arsène Lupin ★★★ Kind of bland. The denouement is predictable. Ch. 2 Arsène Lupin in Prison ★★★★★ Locked room mystery. The number one suspect is in prison! Ch. 3 The Escape of Arsène Lupin ★★★★ Arsène Lupin promises to escape from prison. Ch. 4 The Mysterious Traveller ★★★ Arsène Lupin is robbed on a train. Ch. 5 The Queen’s Necklace ★★★★★ Locked room mystery with a revelation. Ch. 6 The Seven of Hearts ★★★ A bit convoluted. Ch. 7 Madame Imbert’s Safe ★★★ Dull. Ch. 8 The Black Pearl ★★★ Something cold and dead on the floor. Ch. 9 Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late ★★★★ Sherlock Holmes!

This is, flat out, the best book I have read in the last ten years. Skip the rest of this review and go read the book.

Beavers are a keystone species. We need them. Our lives are worse off for having obliterated them from large swathes of North America.

Beavers once inhabited almost all of what is now Canada, Alaska, and the continental United States (except for most of Florida and the southwest deserts). It's hard to pin down an exact number, but the North American population of beavers before the invasion of European settlers was somewhere between 60 million and 400 million. The fur trade had almost made them extinct by the early 20th century. Fortunately, their numbers have recovered to some degree, and they are no longer in danger of extinction.

One problem is that their range has been tremendously reduced. They just don't exist in may parts of North America.

Streams aren't supposed to go in a relatively straight line, rushing downhill until they enter a major river. Streams are supposed to have beaver dams along much of their length. The beaver dams and their associated ponds made streams meander downhill slowly. This reduced erosion, created habitat for many plants and animals, and recharged aquifers, among other benefits.

The book also talks about the troubled relationship between humans and beavers. Most states view beavers as pests and allow them to be killed to eliminate the "problem". The presumption that the land belongs to the humans and any nature that tries to intrude is a problem to eliminate is exactly the attitude that got us into the ecological bind we're now in.

Fortunately, some states are starting to change their attitudes. The book discusses some of the approaches that enlightened humans and governments are taking to try to resolve these conflicts. There is some hope yet.

I can't do justice to the noble beaver and its important role in our ecosystem. Fortunately, Eager by Ben Goldfarb does a masterful job. You should read it.

This is a fat book about how the allies partitioned the Middle East for their own benefit at the end of World War I.

Its coverage almost exclusively centers on the British. It mentions the aspirations and motivations of the other powers, but that's there mostly to provide context for why the British did what they did. This is probably a flaw in the book. I don't have enough outside knowledge of this subject to know how much that matters. The British Empire was the biggest empire in the world at the time. It makes sense that they would have an out-sized influence upon the outcome.

I chose to read this book because I like to plug holes in my knowledge. Most people are content to go through life with a good understanding of a few things and a vague understanding of everything else. How can you do that, people? How can you NOT want to know how EVERYTHING works? (Sigh. I'll never understand you people.)

Despite what I said in the previous paragraph, I do have my limits. This book exceeded them. This book went into far more detail than I wanted. Reading it was like standing under a small waterfall and trying to drink it. More of it was washing over me than getting in my mouth. I'm not saying that it's a hard read. It's probably somewhere at the high school reading level. There were just lots of facts. Unless you've just been appointed ambassador to Iraq, you probably aren't interested in this much detail.

A few things I observed while reading: • The British succeeded in spite of themselves. Their empire was too big going into the war, and it only got bigger afterward. They had poor communication and even worse intelligence about their far-flung empire. Their various colonies were working at cross-purposes. Their knowledge of the Turkish and Arabic peoples was not only zero, it was actually negative. They had some bizarre misconceptions that only hurt their various initiatives during and after the war. • There were some massive anti-semites in the British government. It seemed to be the opinion of the majority, in fact. They were convinced that a cabal of Jews were pulling the strings behind the Bolsheviks, Turks (and/or Arabs, I've forgotten already), and Germans(!). • The British, French, Russians, Italians, and a few other powers viewed WWI as a great way of expanding their empires. Purely as "compensation," you understand. They had to be paid back for all of the expense of voluntarily expanding the war into the Ottoman Empire. OK. I knew some of that. What I didn't know is that the American position (led by Woodrow Wilson's idealism) was that the European powers had to decolonize. That meant not only should they not gain new territories, but they should give up some of the colonies they had before the war. That proposal went nowhere, of course. (It's an ironic proposal, considering that the U.S. itself was already an empire by this time.) • Before the war, oil was considered a valuable commodity, but no more valuable than any other (such as wheat, cotton, etc.). This is the first major war where much of the fighting was mechanized. It saw the introduction of tanks. Lots of trucks to haul men and materials. The British fleet had recently been converted from running on coal to running on petroleum. All of the European powers came to realize how vitally important oil would be not just for the current war but for its future importance in the global economic and military power balance. At that time, the U.S. was the major oil producer. The Middle East only had a few known reserves. However, it was strongly suspected that there were massive reserves throughout the region. Thus the European powers became aware that they had strong incentives to absorb as much of that territory as into their respective empires as possible. • Zionism, the goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, began in the late 19th century. During the war, the British eventually decided to take up the cause. They cynically felt it would dovetail with their other objectives in the area. I didn't realize that there had been a good chance that Israel could have been established as early as 1922. Ultimately, it got dropped during all of the post-war posturing and deal making.

There's way more complexity to the political jockeying during and after the war than I've mentioned above. If you're interested, try to find a good book about the subject that's maybe half as big as this one.

This is a ghost story written in 1898. The scariest thing about it is the prose. It's terrifying! Seriously. Stay away!

The thing is hard to untangle. It's written in an archaic writing style, with an excessively wordy backward sentence structure. If I hadn't been working so hard to understand the sentences, I probably would have been able to pay attention to the story.

It's about a governess who is hired by an absentee uncle to watch over his niece and nephew in a gothic house. No gothic house is complete without a ghost. This guy got a bargain when he bought this place. It has two ghosts!

This story commits one of the major sins that I occasionally see in books and (especially) movies. The governess can see the ghosts. The two kids can see the ghosts. They refuse to speak about it! They spend the whole book dancing around the elephant in the room. Who does this? No one! If Adolf Hitler moves into your spare room, do you think no one in the house would mention it? No! Especially if he leaves the bathroom a mess!

This is an unreadable, nonsensical vomitorium. Stay away.

@luceliest No, I meant reading the description of the series on Wikipedia. I can only read English.

I remember buying a book in a used bookstore back in the 1980s. It was translated from another language. It was part of a long series. That's why I bought it. I thought that if I liked it, I could really dive into it. I remember almost nothing about it. I recall that the characters were on some sort of large spacecraft. One was an alien who had a very fast metabolism. He was overweight, so he walked back and forth from one end of the ship to the other for several hours or days. Then he was thin again. My recollection is that the story was mediocre, so I never continued the series.

That font is one of the reasons I'm convinced that I read one of the books in the series. That particular paperback had a red cover.

When you finish, please write up a review (even a short one).