One of my Christmas gifts this year was SHE AND ALLAN, a late-life novel by the classic fantasy-adventure writer, H. Rider Haggard, first published in 1921. The problem (and I only confide this because I am confident that the friend who gifted this volume to me doesn't read blogs!), is that I no longer read this sort of book. There was a time in my life when I would have found it delightful. Haggard has a wonderfully vigorous way of telling a story and his imagination stands up in comparison with Tolkien's. Haggard's imagination didn't lead him to world-creation on the Tolkienesque level -- his stories were set in Africa amidst the scrambling of rival empires, and in one classic case he set a tale in Tibet -- but it did lead him to marvels. His character, Allan Quartermain, became the inspiration for Spielberg's "Indiana Jones," and Allan is of course one of the two title characters of this novel, which presumably brings Allan together with the mysterio...