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Mark Curnell

@books4maphead

Books are life. Everything else is mere details.

 Pedee, Oregon USA
maphead.wordpress.com
Joined June 2012
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Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)Photo by Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
This morning with coffee it’s Sam Dalrymple’s 2025 book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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Friday Book Snippets: Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #Fridaybooksnippets
Friday Book Snippets: Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple

Friday Book Snippets: Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple

After a long and distinguished run Gilian of Rose City Reader has retired as host of Book Beginnings on Friday. Luckily for us Anne of My Head Is Full of Books and Olivia of Bemused & Bookish h…

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The Empire of Night by Robert Olen Butler maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #LibraryLoveChallenge #historicalfiction #ReadingByNumbers2026 #histficreadingchallenge #CloakDaggerChal
The Empire of Night by Robert Olen Butler

The Empire of Night by Robert Olen Butler

Wanting to read more historical fiction that’s not set during World War II I decided to explore Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. Set against the backdrop of World W…

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This morning with coffee it’s Robert Olen Butler’s 2014 historical novel The Empire of Night. #backlist #HistoricalFiction
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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Library Loot maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #libraryloot
Library Loot

Library Loot

After finishing Katie Crouch’s novel Embassy Wife I should have gone back to reading Phyllis Rose’s memoir The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading.  Sadly, once again I drop…

maphead.wordpress.com
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Friday Book Snippets: The Dark Side of Innocence by Terri Cheney maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #Fridaybooksnippets
Friday Book Snippets: The Dark Side of Innocence by Terri Cheney

Friday Book Snippets: The Dark Side of Innocence by Terri Cheney

After a long and distinguished run Gilian of Rose City Reader has retired as host of Book Beginnings on Friday. Luckily for us Anne of My Head Is Full of Books and Olivia of Bemused & Bookish h…

maphead.wordpress.com
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Friday Book Snippets: Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #fridaybooksnippets
Friday Book Snippets: Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz

Friday Book Snippets: Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz

After a long and distinguished run Gilian of Rose City Reader has retired as host of Book Beginnings on Friday. Luckily for us Anne of My Head Is Full of Books and Olivia of Bemused & Bookish h…

maphead.wordpress.com
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This morning with coffee it’s Katie Crouch’s 2021 novel Embassy Wife. #backlist
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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Library Loot: Memoir Edition maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #libraryloot
Library Loot: Memoir Edition

Library Loot: Memoir Edition

After finishing Robert Harris’s V2: A novel of World War II and Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey I moved on to Katie Crouch’s Embassy Wife and Phyllis Rose’s T…

maphead.wordpress.com
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Friday Book Snippets: The Shelf by Phyllis Rose maphead.wordpress.com/2026/1… #backlist #booksky #fridaybooksnippets
Friday Book Snippets: The Shelf by Phyllis Rose

Friday Book Snippets: The Shelf by Phyllis Rose

After a long and distinguished run Gilian of Rose City Reader has retired as host of Book Beginnings on Friday. Luckily for us Anne of My Head Is Full of Books and Olivia of Bemused & Bookish h…

maphead.wordpress.com
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V2: A Novel of World War II by Robert Harris maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #europeanreadingchallenge #readingbythenumbers2026 #librarylovechallenge #cloakandaggerchal #histficreadingchallenge
V2: A Novel of World War II by Robert Harris

V2: A Novel of World War II by Robert Harris

Back in the early 1990s a friend loaned me a copy of Robert Harris’s international bestseller Fatherland. Set in the year 1964 of an alternate reality in which Germany emerged victorious from…

maphead.wordpress.com
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The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #2026immigrationreading #europeanreadingchallenge #ReadNonFicChal #ReadingByNumbers2026 #VirtualMountTBR2026 #LibraryLoveChallenge
The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen

The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen

Wanting to scratch Turkey off my list for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge I decided to finally take a chance on Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s 2016 book The Hundred-Year Walk: An A…

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This morning with coffee it’s Robert Harris’s 2020 V2: A Novel of World War II. #backlist #historicalfiction
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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Library Loot: European Reading Edition maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist
Library Loot: European Reading Edition

Library Loot: European Reading Edition

After finishing Robert Olen Butler’s The Hot Country and Anthony Pinn’s memoir Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist I felt like diving back into the Euro…

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Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist by Anthony Pinn maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #ReadingByNumbers2026 #VirtualMountTBR2026 #ReadNonFicChal #LibraryLoveChallenge
Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist by Anthony Pinn

Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist by Anthony Pinn

For a long time it felt like my blog featured all kinds of books by authors who’d walked away from their respective religions be it Islam, Judaism or countless varieties of Christianity inclu…

maphead.wordpress.com
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This morning with coffee it’s Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s 2016 book The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey.
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #historicalfiction #LibraryLoveChallenge #ReadingByNumbers2026 #histficreadingchallenge #CloakDaggerChal
The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler

The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler

After having excellent luck with The Star of Istanbul,  the second book in Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb series I thought it was wise to read the first novel The Hot Country. Just l…

maphead.wordpress.com
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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me by Jennifer Teege with Nikola Sellma maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #ReadingByNumbers2026 #VirtualMountTBR2026 #LibraryLoveChallenge #europeanreadingchallenge #2026booksintranslation
My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me by Jennifer Teege with Nikola Sellma

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me by Jennifer Teege with Nikola Sellma

Like I mentioned in a few of my previous posts, I’ve had my eye on Jennifer Teege’s 2015 memoir My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past for the…

maphead.wordpress.com
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This morning with coffee it’s Robert Olen Butler’s 2012 historical thriller The Hot Country and the first novel in his four book Christopher Marlowe Cobb series.
Image from Mark Curnell (@books4maphead)
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Library Loot maphead.wordpress.com/2026/0… #backlist #libraryloot #library
Library Loot

Library Loot

After finishing David Downing’s historical novel The Dark Clouds Shining I moved on to The Hot Country, the first book of Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. On top of…

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