2.5 stars. This is a small collection of interconnected stories that highlight a particular "queer" trade that in the contemporary world would be considered odd at best and crazy by most. Some of the stories were delightfully funny but others fell flat for me. Most put our narrator and his two frien

Not queer as in LGBTQXYZ or whatever

At the time Chesterton wrote these stories, queer was a useful and perfectly acceptable word meaning odd, strange, unusual, etc. It was highjacked, beginning in about the 1920's with the word applied to themselves by homosexuals. The meaning changed to one of scor

Born into a middle-class family, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a British writer of both fiction and nonfiction, much of the latter on religious subjects. (He was a staunch advocate for classical Christianity, ultimately converting to Roman Catholicism from High Anglicanism in 1922.) Artis

C’è una parola che mi si affaccia nel cervello ogni volta che mi gusto un Chesterton, e questa parola è delicatezza.

Chesterton aveva un dono del tutto peculiare e di cui credo abbia avuto modo di ringraziarLo lungamente, dopo la dipartita dal mondo terreno: la capacità di dipingere con pennellate qu

Bizzarra e divertente questa piccola raccolta di storie, devo però dire di averla trovata un po’ ripetitiva e contraddittoria, come il solitario ma estroverso protagonista. È stato curioso assistere ogniqualvolta dove andasse a parare la “stravaganza” di turno, anche se non sempre il mestiere in que

<< Πρόκειται για μια εκκεντρική μποέμικη λέσχη που θέτει μόνο έναν αλλά αποκλειστικό όρο για την εγγραφή, ότι ο υποψήφιος πρέπει να έχει επινοήσει αυτός ο ίδιος τον τρόπο με τον οποίο κερδίζει τα προς το ζην. Πρώτον δεν πρέπει να πρόκειται για απλή εφαρμογή ή παραλλαγή ενός ήδη γνωστού επαγγέλματος

There are very few writers that write detective fiction in the same way as Chesterton. On the face of it, his set up is often quite usual. The Club of Queer Trades has a somewhat similar set up as the Sherlock Holmes stories, an brilliant independent investigator is followed by the narrator, though

How even to review this? And what exactly is the point? For that matter, what was the point of it being written? It certainly wasn't a necessary book. I don't believe the great Catholic ever sat down and said, "How to save England and the rest of the world? Ah, this will do the trick." And if I'm mi