I probably enjoyed Jeremy Clay's book "The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton and Other Singluar Tales from the Victorian Press" a bit more than others would if they don't have a newspaper background.

The book is a series of stories published in the Victorian-era Press-- usually with a bizarre angle. Many are probably made up, others have a bit of a ring of truth to them. It was fun to see sensational stories from that era, even though some were a little silly.

I read this while waiting in the carpool lane at my son's school... it was the perfect book to read there since the snippets are super short and it was easy to stop quickly. ( )

As the title suggests, The Burglar Caught By a Skeleton and Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press, by Jeremy Clay, is a compendium of news stories culled from various newspapers around Great Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, who ruled the British Empire from 1837 to 1901. Most of the stories are short, fanciful and rather silly; some are quite dramatic and a few are pathetic too. I found it fun going, but obviously this is not meant to be read straight through, cover to cover; rather, it is best dipped into a bit at a time, to be enjoyed and then forgotten. Each chapter covers a topic such as animals, love and marriage, arts and entertainment, life and death, etc., etc., and the author provides a brief introduction to each subject in order to give the reader some understanding of how such subjects were viewed in those days. Overall, an entertaining, if slight, reading experience. ( )