Richardderus 2013 thread 24

A forgery of Bassetti's Old Man with a Book. I suppose it should disturb me how much I look like this oldster.

I have a category called Orphans, which will still catch all the other reading I do in 2013. Thinking 60 reviews as my target.

My 2013 ORPHANED books ticker:




I want to treat the Short Story collection challenge as a ticker-to-itself thread, thinking 48 reviews as my goal. I'll keep the thread over in the Short Stories forum.

My 2013 SHORT STORY collections ticker:




I'm going to keep a mystery-genre thread over in Crime, Thriller, and Mystery forum, with a goal of 50 reviews. Way way way too many of my reviews this year, in all forums, were mysteries and thrillers, and while I love them, I don't want to get too rut-ified and read only those books while keeping up my self-made review writing census.

My MYSTERY & THRILLER books ticker:




THIS THREAD is the 75 challenge for 2013, which will be non-fiction and non-genre-fiction books published in 2012 and 2013, plus recommendations from other 75ers.

My last thread of 2012.

My 2013 NEW books ticker:




Book 1...thread one.
Books 2 & 3...thread two.
Book 4...thread three.
Book 5...thread five.
Books 6 & 7...thread seven.
Books 8-11...thread eight.
Books 12-19...thread nine.
Books 20 & 21...thread 10.
Books 22-25...thread 11.
Books 26 & 27...thread 12.
Book 28...thread 13.
Books 29-31...thread 14.
Book 32...thread 15.
Books 33 & 34...thread 16.
Books 35-38...thread 17.
Books 39-42...thread 18.
Books 43-45...thread 19.
Books 46 & 47...thread 20.
Book 48...thread 21.
Books 49-52...thread 22.
Books 53-56...thread 23.

Books are reviewed in post:

57. Following Tommy...#82.

58. Morgan Kane: Without Mercy...#109.

59. After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse...#236.

60. Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea...#247.

61. The Teleportation Accident...#292.

mine

Sneaky sneaky post to annoy Richard :)

or

First, yay me!

Hi Richard - pleased to hear that you are having a "chipper day". *smooch* for you and strokes for Stella.

Can't beat our Jersey belle, RD but I am glad to be secondthird up to give felicitations on a splendid new thread. If we can have a whip round to buy you a cape then we can determine just how much you look like that guy up top.

Can one be chipper and decrepit at the same time?

Good day to you, oh wise and tasteful Richard the Dear!

Happy new thread, esteemed threadmeister. Good forgery up top. What an extremely handsome fellow, don't you think?

I'm managing to say hi here before there are a million posts! Yay!

And a handsome dude he is in #1...so what's the problem if he looks like you? {{{{SMOOCH}}}

Hey, he's holding a book. What could be bad?

What Judy says. Also, your eyes aren't that sunken. Really.

>4 BekkaJo:

You're safe! *smooch*

>5 calm: Thanks, calm, and welcome to #24!

>6 PaulCranswick: I'd love to have that cape. Looks so cuddlesome, doesn't it?

>7 laytonwoman3rd: I am living, breathing proof that one, in fact, can.

>8 ronincats: *smooch* for the flattering, talented Roni

>9 jnwelch: I do think, since we're essentially twins. Handsome, distinguished fellow. Looks right perspicacious, too.

>10 norabelle414: Nora! Welcome, dearie. Another *smooch* doled out

>11 tututhefirst: Base flatterer! I'm lapping it up, BTW, so don't stop.

>12 ffortsa: In my humble estimation, not a lot.

>13 Chatterbox: You ain't seen me since the Goodreads censorship fight started...

Hiya RD! Lovely new thread you've got going here.

All is good in my world as the BoSox just won!

Thanks, Heidi! I'm glad that your team won. That means the Yank-mes won't, didn't, and can't win. This makes Richard a very happy curmudgeon indeed.

I'm afraid to ask about the GR stuff. I basically have abandoned that place entirely. It reminds me too much of high school. In a bad way.

I'm getting there. I've got over 1600 followers, and that's going to be very hard to rebuild somewhere else, but when they unilaterally delete my reviews without notification, well.

"Old RD with a Book." I love that painting! Congrats on #24!

It's not you. No dog.

It's you. We just can't see the dog. Probably hiding under the cape...

I think this was years before the dog...

>22 msf59: Thanks, Mark! Closing in on year-end. Isn't this amazing? I might get to 26 threads! One every two weeks!

>23 tiffin:, 24 Heh. Stella's out for a walk, that's why she's not here.

>25 msf59: There were no years before the dog. Unthinkable!

I've blogged a long piece about why censorship matters, and how it's affected me on Goodreads, at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

At 3100 words, it's a long one. I have a lot to say about how stupid an idea censorship is.

The Universe must think my quixotic battle against censorship deserves a morale boost. In today's mail, I got a review copy of THE EVERYTHING STORE: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.

This will be fun.

Stopping by and waving hello. Happy Fall...Happy Reading.

>29 Whisper1: Hi Linda! *smooch* Glad to see you!

Hi Richard, great thread topper, hope you are well my friend.

You in maybe 20 years? I love the one of you looking all beardy with Stella. You should post it again.
xo

I read your blog post....well done. You raised some thought-provoking points there. I love the Ray Bradbury quote which is so scary and true.

A new thread? You started without me? *sob*

>27 richardderus: Great post in your Expendable Mudge blog, RD. I couldn't come up with an ID they'd accept, so here's the comment I was trying to post there: "What Linda said. I'm a Librarything guy, but very disappointed to hear a site for readers is censoring like this. What a loss for them if they drive you away."

One weird aspect of the Goodreads censorship is that Amazon doesn't delete reviews that are critical of authors as far as I can tell. Take a gander at the hysterically irate Chinese reviews on Amazon of Ping Fu's Bend Not Break some time (Lies! She's a liar! She's a lying liar!).

I've been reading your blog, Richard, and finally posted a small comment. It makes my eyes cross in my head to think there are any people associated with the world of books who could take the attitude that it's OK to censor what we say about them. It takes me back to the day when, as a senior in high school, I was forbidden to check out a certain book by the school librarian because it "wasn't the kind of thing I should be reading". (It was Jubilee Trail, as I recall.) My reaction to that was, if I can't read it, what's it doing in the school library to begin with? At lunch time that day I left the building (which I was allowed to do), walked half a block to the public library, and checked out the same book. I carried it on top of my stack all afternoon, and left it in open view during my study hall period (which I spent in the school library), but I don't think any notice was taken. I felt really righteous and rebellious though, despite the lack of consequences. Not sure the book itself was worth it, but the principle was.

>31 johnsimpson: Thank you, John! Glad to see you here.

>32 mckait: You like that one? I've always been a widgin grumpus about it. My baldness is on full display. *grumble*

>33 Cobscook: Thank you muchly, Heidi! That Bradbury quote is, IMO, prescient and genuinely unnerving. It's working....

>34 Crazymamie: Smoochling, it's not an Official Thread until you check in. Those are House Rules. *there there, pat pat*

>35 jnwelch:, 36 One of the instigators of this entire kerfuffle is a woman I know in passing, and have a mild fondness for because she's such a mouthy broad. Her response to some bad behavior on the part of some authors was central to the issue blowing up. Now that she's left Goodreads, you'd think she'd be well out of it, right?

No. Her OWN self-pubbed book (YA novel, not my cuppa) was targeted by the nasty trolls from Stop The Goodreads Bullies, she was accused of plagiarism, I think, and Amazon has pulled her book. She has no redress. They targeted her because she led the mean girls' brigade that stood up and said, "NO you can't dictate what my review of your book says!"

Vile people will always find a way to be vile. Whatever avenues of expression I can close down to them, I want to close down to them. There is a difference between not liking what someone says and forbidding them to say it. The best, most socially useful way to silence someone is to point to what they theirownselves have said, or done, and shout at them...embarrassment, shame, contumely are more instructive than disappearing someone's thoughts.

Life is hard for the sensitive. I realize not everyone can deal with the rough-and-tumble of free speech and argument. That's unfortunate. But no one makes a person stand up and be noticed. If you choose to do that, accept the consequences. Otherwise, sit down and use your other means of participation, like voting for or buying from those whose views match most closely your own.

This works in commerce as well. Your patronage is your vote. I won't buy an Orson Scott Card book because he's a public homophobe. Not one dime of my money will go to support him or the people who publish his books, or the people who made his book into a movie. Others make their own choices. But, and this is crucial, I go the next step and write shaming reviews of his books, pointing out that his revolting "moral" stance ruins the pleasures (such as they are) of his writing, and by purchasing his books the buyer implicitly supports his desire to take away civil rights from a group of people he dislikes.

My reviews were taken down. They were "possibly off-topic." (Isn't that a chillingly Kafkaesque phrase? POSSIBLY gets you silenced. *eep*)

I believe, with all my being, that you stand up for what you say believe or you lie down for your dirt nap. What I don't condemn, I condone; and I can't live with passive condoning of what I see as wrong. My only avenue of expression is here in cyberspace. I take my self-imposed responsibility to live up to my principles very seriously. So, wherever someone's right to be a public nuisance is infringed, I have to complain loudly about it, point to the infringer, and say "SHAME SHAME SHAME" because, one day, they'll get around to silencing me.

I won't make it easy on 'em. Which, I've learned over the years, doesn't make me easy for others to deal with. Ah me, that's a shame, but there it is.

first of all, i loved the Cat Woman remark from your last thread. it gave me a much-needed laugh.

read your blog entry and your #38 above and wanted to say "thanks for taking this on."

i responded but the response turned out to be so lengthy that i've put it here on my thread instead of on yours.

>35 jnwelch: in re: Joe's comment, went to amazon.com and found this interesting "gobbet" at the beginning of lin's (sic) review of Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds (Hardcover):

"(Some people may get confused about what happened to my review. Here is the story: My oringinal most popular 1 star review was deleted by Amazon on the evening of Feb 16. I then posted this new 5 star review on the morning of Feb 18, which was voted to be The most helpful favorable review within hours. Then on the afternoon of Feb 21, Amazon restored my original 1-star review. But I like my new 5 star rating review better now, so I'll keep it as it is. I'll continue to put my update of the events on top and let the original Feb 18 5-star review stay at the bottom . . . .)"

http://www.amazon.com/review/R22LIB1HMUDXPB/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R22LIB1HMUDXPB

Okay, I don't have time right now to go read your self-proclaimed long blog post, but I will do so later. I'm very curious about the censorship. I'm not on Goodreads at all (what I don't need is another website to consume my time) but your post #38, Richard, is excellent. Thank you for that wonderful expression of your commitment to use your voice in whatever manner you can. Thank god they can't (yet) drag you off and shoot you for saying what you think. I'm a strong believer in civil discord and respectful dialogue, and I value the ability of speakers and listeners to distinguish between the human being and the beliefs, values, and opinions s/he espouses. That doesn't always happen and that is, I believe, too bad, but it doesn't mean we should take away anyone's right to say what they think. Like you, I use my purse and my voice to avoid supporting someone (I won't purchase Barilla pasta any longer for similar reasons to your decision not to purchase Orson Scott Card's books) who would oppress me. But they get to have their opinion.

Book porn! Shakespeare & Company, Paris

>40 mirrordrum: I can't not, Ellie, but I appreciate being encouraged. It's sometimes a bit like shouting down a well to post things on the Internet. I never know what's been read or what responses it garners because, more often than not, it's just...silence...that greets me.

>41 EBT1002: The short version of the Goodreads kerfuffle is at Salon.com. It's a distressing story, to me at least, because it could all so easily have been avoided by people simply pulling up their big-kid pants and ignoring people one doesn't like.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy The Luminaries arrived a day early!! #happyoldcoot

In the same box were other titles. Um. Several other titles. A-heh. I might have a teensy little biblioholism problem.

We're in the 5%, 75ers!

Pleased that you have The Luminaries. I'm going to have to wait for the library to get more copies or for the people ahead of me to read quickly.

The scary thing about 45 is that means that 22% don't read any books!

Hi calm...actually I'm amazed that it's only 22% who don't read any books at all. I'd've guessed closer to 40%.

...I think I've had a...crisis....

Nice book hangouts!

I'm looking forward to your reaction to The Luminaries. It has gotten a lot of esteem in LT land so far.

I read your blog - WTG! Stand up for what you believe!

I used to go to GR primarily because of the Giveaways. Then, all of a sudden, I stopped winning any books. I assume I did something that they didn't like - probably an "honest" review.

>48 richardderus:: that's not really a chandelier, that's an octopus descending. And a place like that just screams for a butler, doesn't it?

Oh, WAY too formal and dark for me!

Morning RD- Yes, we are proud to be part of the mighty 5%! I am a bit dubious on those other stats. They seem to be more generous than other stats I've read.
Hope you are enjoying this cool fall weather.

Well, my fam would see P.G. Wodehouse as my soul-twin.

I instantly recognized Shakespeare and Co. The little darling fell in love with the place during this phase when we were in Paris frequently and we had to go there pretty much every day......

Yah, that library is a bit too formal for me. I don't like too modern and open either, somewhere in between..... eclectic is more me.

Good Friday Morning, dear! Shakespeare and Co. has me drooling.

>49 jnwelch: So far, I'm in the warbling-its-praises camp on The Luminaries, Joe. I'll know for sure when I'm done, but the five stars are hers to lose at this point.

>50 LoisB: Thank you most kindly! It seems to me that the only way to make change is to stir up trouble. I'm up to that job.

>51 tiffin: Perkins! PERKINS! Miss Tui needs a dividend on her martini, you old sot!!

The butler has been screamed for.

>52 ronincats: I'll ask Ivy to bring a few more lamps in, Roni, and meantime Perkins will bring you a brightener from the bar. A Bellini, perhaps?

>53 msf59: Generous...hmmm...according to the Department of Education, a whopping 14% of adults in the USA cannot read. At all. That's a big chunk of the 22% who never so much as pick up a book. And this poll, unlike a similar one commissioned by the ABA, measures all reading and not simply leisure or pleasure reading. THOSE stats are grimmer by far.

>54 sibylline: There are many worse soul-twins I can imagine, cuz. Wodehouse seems pretty perfect to me, so I'd call that a big compliment.

Dark wood, two story, leather-clad...ooo ooo ooo...suits me!

>55 Crazymamie: Howdy do, Mamieling! Ain't that the truth. How could a bookaholic NOT drool?! *smooch* for a happy weekend!

We loved Shakespeare and Company when we visited. There's a pretty good book about it by someone who recently worked there: Time Was Soft There, by Jeremy Mercer.

>59 jnwelch: It's so beautiful! I am Studiously Ignoring the blue words.

I got some books. Only two, and one is All Joe's Fault: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. And one I don't remember who made me buy: Walking Home: A Poet's Journey.

All. Joe's. Fault.

Ah, hope you like Billy Lynn's, Richard. You know Simon Armitage writes poetry, right? How'd you get talked into that one?

*hides under table filled with comic books graphic novels*

>61 jnwelch: I have no idea whatsoever. I suspect I was drunk and hit one-click. Maybe it will be good.

Perkins! There is a table filled with comic books in here! Dispose of them at once. Mr. Joe can stay.

>62 laytonwoman3rd: Isn't that a pleasure? As little as I like Chris Christie (bombastic buffonery "R" us), I suspect he grandstanded this to appeal to the red-meat right, expecting this to be the outcome, because I've never heard him speak seriously against gay people anyplace there wasn't a gathering of Teabillies.

Good night and good reading!

RD... I too will chime in an encourage you to spend some time with Billy Lynn I think you will find much to like about it. I'm also sure you (who YOU???) will find something to dislike and rant about. Sweet dreams...

Of course RD my eye was caught by the stats produced by the Pew research centre. 5% is not such a surprising figure I suppose because my non-bookreading pals often appear google eyed that I have never failed to read 100 books per year since before entering my teens. What the hell would they make of Suzanne, Luci et al?

22% though is a sad reflection on societal trends. The call to literacy used to be a yardstick of civilisation and to have promoted near universal literacy to then have it unused is a little depressing.

They don't know what they're missing. Voracious reading could lead to places like this and falling under the spell of so many wonderful and like-minded individuals.....and you of course.

>41 EBT1002: civil discord and respectful dialogue
Yee ha. I concur. I love these things. I generally find them here, and as a sensitive type, really appreciate it.

>44 richardderus: hey there you happy old coot. That book is beautiful to hold is it not? I love it. And then you get to read it as well!

Well, a boy can dream, can't he?

>65 tututhefirst: Moi, madame? The soul, the very spit of an even-tempered, balanced, and soft-spoken man?

Stop laughing.

>66 PaulCranswick: A non-pleasure-reader once came (uninvited) into my bedroom, and emitted a most peculiar noise. After strangle-cough-screaming for a moment, she swiveled her bleached-blond head in my general direction, stretched her crow's feet smooth in wide-eyed surprise, and parted her pink-petrochemical-laden lips as wide as they would stretch to emit the following string of English-language words: "No one needs this many books!"

I failed to derive any meaning from the sounds as emitted and suggested that her most recent Dancing With The Stars marathon viewing might have caused a small stroke in her almost-seventy-year-old brain as she appeared to have word salad.

We are no longer on speaking terms.

>67 LovingLit: Civility is a titanic waste of effort when dealing with the stupid, I fear. But I can understand those of more delicate sensibilities would find it difficult or unpleasant to shout at them. I suffer from no such qualms.

>69 richardderus:: or the classic: "Have you read all of these?"

>64 richardderus: >68 richardderus: LOL! If only.

Happy Saturday, mon frere. >69 richardderus: We all should have that many books, maybe petrochemical lips most of all. At least we LTers have the right idea.

>70 tiffin: At least I can answer that one civilly! I'm so used to it, I suppose. I admit that I always have to squelch the urge to say, "Why of course I have. I keep them to remind myself that I'm a literary big-game hunter." ::eyeroll::

>71 jnwelch: This is someone who makes a proud statement that she doesn't read books. She also watches Fox News. And wears clothes suited to a (tacky) 35-year-old from 1988. In short, someone with whom I share nothing but the right to trial by a jury of my peers.

A beautiful truth.

>72 richardderus: Trophy Books...I've seen a lot of those. Meant to be seen, not read. Like whoever it was who had a gorgeous library full of leatherbound books with uncut pages. It's why I'm not overly impressed with special editions, but every once in a while...

I think those are rather sad books, in truth. I feel sorry for them, they never get any love.

...and I suppose that makes me sound like some sort of nutsy animist woo-woo boy...books, though, really *do* have souls.

Autumn leaves and books. Perfection, with a scotch rocks in my hand.

#76...RD???? When did you come to my backyard? Sans table that is exactly the view I have from my dilapidated chaise lounge should I choose to share it with the skeeters, and other critters.

>77 tututhefirst: I'll be there in a few hours. Where's the liquor store?

I might also crash, though it'll def take me somewhat longer to arrive (though I could bring duty free?)... that is a stunning view. We are still more at the rain/mud stage of autumn...

>79 BekkaJo: I'm longing for rain. It's been a much drier year than usual here. I don't want a hurricane again this year, thanks, but a foot or so of rain between now and Thanksgiving in November would be perfect.

>77 tututhefirst: I thought I recognized the beauty of Maine! I actually own a home in Bridgton, but rarely get there, given my primary home is now in Florida.

Review: 57 of seventy-five

Title: FOLLOWING TOMMY

Author: BOB HARTLEY

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Following Tommy tells the story of the O'Days, two young brothers living in an Irish American, working class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side in the 1960’s. As thieves they are the bane of the neighborhood until the arrival of the first African American family.

My Review: This first novel has the virtue of brevity. The language Hartley deploys in service of his story is a model of concision. The story the author tells is, to my ears, honest and true and quite devastatingly probable. The two O'Day brothers are mildly violent, badly educated petty criminals. The working-class Chicago they inhabit is divided between churchgoers and wise guys, and they are the latter, to their mother's despair. Her early death deprives the boys of nothing in the way of guidance, as they are in their late teens at the time. Her contribution to the story is minimal, so the reader doesn't miss her either. This is probably a function of the shortness of the book.

Perhaps my less-than-ecstatic response comes from my inability to relate to Jacky, our first-person narrator. He's a straight teenaged hooligan whose desire for and discussion of the girls he masturbates while imagining grated on me. It might also be that I internalized more completely than I'd like to examine the class prejudices of my family and regard the "family" of drunks and hooligans that the O'Days represent with lips pressed firmly together so as not to curl them while dismissing these common-as-pig-tracks people with labels like "white trash" and "bogtrotting shanty Irish bastards."

Whatever the source of my absence of goodwill towards the book, it took me a month to read its 104pp and I was angry the entire time I was reading it. I suspect that Hartley deserves praise for this, because I responded to the characters as real people, and the story as more of a confession than a novel. Jacky and Tommy commit acts of idiot violence, they get caught and suffer at the hands of a casually brutal neighborhood cop (nicknamed "the Giant"), and while I don't like the cop any better than I like any of the other people, I at least felt he had some purpose in his viciousness that I could relate to if not condone.

The evocation of the early-1960s changing world, the one in which African-American people like the O'Days' new neighbors on Menard Street, were at last imagining a better and fairer world was within sight, was painfully spot-on. Hartley gets the sociopath Tommy's response to an African-American family moving into the Irish neighborhood chillingly accurately, at least from the people I've known over the years who had this experience. The fact that I experienced none of it, as I lived in a lily-white world of privilege and watched the race wars on our 26-inch color TV, makes that observation suspect. But Hartley brings me close enough to these yobbos that I can smell their greasy hair and cigarette stink, so I trust that he's got the responses down pat.

Encountering the O'Day brothers, then, wasn't in any particular a homecoming experience. It was an outrage. Jacky's passive, follow-the-leader nature caused me the kind of pain that sucking on an alum stick causes...puckery-lipped, tongue-curling, bad-tasting spitlessness. Tommy, the sociopathic shitheel older brother that Jacky follows, evoked the kind of nauseated disdain that I find myself prone to when confronted with blank-eyed hate-filled people. That Tommy's violent actions, escalated to new heights, lead to the conclusion the novel presents is a grim reality of life lived on those terms. That Jacky makes his decision about what kind of life he wants to lead in terms of Tommy and his actions is sadly believable.

Hear my passionate disdain for the people brought to life here and decide for yourself what kind of reading experience this short novel will be for you. One thing I am quite sure of: You will not be left indifferent. Angry, perhaps. Not indifferent, not bored. That is a lot more than I can say for most books I'm exposed to. If this debut is a reliable indicator of Bob Hartley's intended career path, his writing will earn him a following among the Jim Thompson and Donald Ray Pollock fans.

>68 richardderus:, reading is keeping me on the level at this current time, without having books would be like having no food, they are a part of my life.

>81 LoisB: It's a beautiful place indeed, Maine...living in Florida is something I would not be willing to do. Much too hot, too humid...I left Texas, which is less of each of those things than Florida, to escape!

>83 johnsimpson: I know exactly what you mean, John. I'm glad books are there to support and comfort you.

The soul, the very spit of an even-tempered, balanced, and soft-spoken man?

*Checks to see whose thread I'm in...*

>85 mckait: Why, mine of course! Whose else could it *possibly* be?

Think carefully before answering....

If I know any biblioclasts, do NOT come out to me. I will not be welcoming or understanding.

I'm a bibliophile striving to be a bibliosopher.

A noble ambition. I'm a biblioholic, a helpless slave to books whether mine or someone else's, though not quite a bibliomane.

Yet.

73 > Love !

As for the Fox news watcher .... there are no nice words

87 > bibliophile striving to be a bibliosopher.

>90 roundballnz: Fox News woman is here tonight, spending the night. I didn't even go down to dinner so I wouldn't have to interact with her.

I'm an awful snob.

: P Not related to any of the above conversations, but you know why!

*noble profile*

*I* am an innocent victim of unjust contumely-heaping!

Morning RD! How is my favorite bibliodemon? Hope you are having a nice weekend. Sorry to hear about Fox News lady. Ugh!
How can those folks constantly moan & groan about the liberal media but only get their information from one place?

>94 msf59: Hi Mark! WHAT liberal media, I keep asking them, where is it, I want some.

I agree! I read the Chicago Tribune every day and follow other news too and don't see it. I think they under-report both sides.
As you know, it's just a gimmick to get people to dismiss everything else but what they are reporting.

Don't get me started on Fox News! I have a sister who actually watches that, and it makes talking to her almost impossible - we have to agree to disagree and not talk about anything from this century. UGH!

Morning, dear!

>96 msf59: The right-wing agenda is overreported by a giant amount, and with little criticism, from what I've seen.

>97 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie, yes...that makes conversation challenging for me. I don't want to talk about television, and I don't care who's sleeping with whom unless I'm intimate with at least one of the participants.

Basically I'm not a party guest anymore. Not that I ever was.

"I believe that there should be values other than money in a civilised society. I believe that truth, beauty and goodness have a place. Moreover, I believe that if businessmen put profit, greed and acquisition among the highest virtues, they cannot be surprised if, for instance, nurses, teachers and ambulance men are inclined to do the same." Jock Campbell, the man who created the Booker Prize.

>76 richardderus: - love it!

Following Tommy - I was trying to figure out why you didn't Pearl-rule it. "Not indifferent, not bored" must explain it.

Hope you're having a good Sunday, Richard.

>100 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. Yeah, a lot of it is the fact that I'm royally bored by most of the stuff I pick up. I've simply stopped saying anything about it because I was hearing so much push-back when I gored someone's sacred ox.

Sorry about the long weekend and difficult guest. :(

xo

I'm holed up, and she's gone, so it's all good. I suppose.

Excellent review of Following Tommy, Richard. Very honest. I like that.

*smooches* for you and Stella.

*waving* at RD

((Hugs)) and xx smooches xx

>104 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. We *smooch* back!

>105 alcottacre: STASIA!!! How wonderful to see you! Hope you're well and happy in the paralegaling.

Wahoo!! for house guests leaving ..... time for pancakes then ?

Only one of three left, Alex, but the other two are semipermanent so it's no big deal. (It says here.)

It's never not time for pancakes!



Carrot cake pancakes. From which to die.

Review: 58 of seventy-five

Title: MORGAN KANE: WITHOUT MERCY

Author: LOUIS MASTERSON

This book was a Goodreads Giveaway from WR Films Entertainment Group

Rating: 3.5* of five

It's an amazement to me that Louis Masterson, born Kjell Hallbing, is pretty much unknown in the US. His character Morgan Kane, violent gambling sociopathic killer, is the perfect expression of a Western hero. I can only guess American publishers in the 1970s were reluctant to bring a Norwegian author's translated works to a market that was moving away from Westerns as a primary entertainment source.

I don't read in Norwegian, so I don't know if the translation is faithful or not. I can say that the plot is the reason to read the book. It's a revenge story, setting Kane against multiple enemies after he loses a rigged poker hand and is wiped out. He's not mad because he's lost a lot of money...$10,000 was a huge fortune for most folks in the nineteenth century, more money than most would earn in a decade...he's wounded in his vanity because he was set up.

The twists and the turns of his plot to revenge himself are unrealistic, and the details of Texas are pretty much not accurate (I'm being polite, the banks of the Brazos were "almost beautiful" oh dear), and there are some what-the-heck moments like a woman smelling of hibiscus flowers...what? she washed her hair in hibiscus tea or something?...but the reason I kept reading was simple. It's a revenge story set in Texas! This is Western-watching and -reading Nirvana. And the bodies of the baddies pile up with agreeable celerity, I must admit.

The movie shoot-'em-up made from this is a-gonna be a hoot. The production is completely locked down, no one associated with it is talking, and there isn't even a release date for the film that I can find. The fun will include Kane making Bond look sensitive and wimpish around women, too.

All in all, a testosterone-fest and a great chance to make the cash registers ring with twenties from every lonely Clint Eastwood-in-the-movies fan alive. Well spotted at last, Hollywood!

I'll go see the movie.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Any of those pancakes left rdear?

Sorry Tommy didn't do it for you. I have to do a review later for Rasputin's Shadow which was surely not a bad book...I just didn't like it. How do I even DO that? But at least I read the thing. Good that Mercy was better for you

Good Monday to you...

eta

no review there for that one :( ?

No review where for what one? There's a review on the book page...am I missing something?

I had a carrot cake cupcake Friday night, Richard, and it was meltingly good.

Having no Texas roots, a revenge story set there isn't enough for me, but good review of Morgan Kane. I did like those old kooky Eastwood spaghetti westerns.

>112 jnwelch: I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone I know here. It's barely novella-length, has no characterization to speak of, and is violent in the extreme. You'd have to enjoy the old Matt Helm books, or Travis McGee books, to get any kind of pleasure out of this one.

The carrot cake pancakes are swoonworthy. Buttered and given just a little dollop of maple syrup...oh myyyyy

Carrot cake pancakes?! Oh my!

Oh, I did like Travis McGee. Not Matt Helm, though. Too mindless.

carrot cake - cupcakes are define .......

>114 Crazymamie: Oh yes!

>115 ffortsa: How long since you've read a Travis McGee novel, Judy? I wonder if the experience would hold up for you now.

>116 roundballnz: I'm not the biggest-ever fan of cupcakes. I want a lot of icing with my cake, and cupcakes are all about the cake. Cake is like bread...slather it in fat and I'll eat it, but plain it's a non-starter for me. Plain pound cake, f/ex, is an "eat to be polite" thing.

Richard, you can have all my frosting except the cream cheese or the coconut kind.

Fight ya for 'em. Cream cheese IS frosting.

I've never heard of carrot cake pancakes! Recipe?

Your latest book and comments somehow made me wonder if you ever read The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything. I'm sure you have.

Hi RD- Just a quick evening check-in. Hope your day went well. The mail was heavy and it was chilly. I think our little indian summer is behind us.

>120 ronincats: The recipe.

Nevahoyduvvit. Should I?

>121 msf59: Boo hiss on the chill setting in. I like it, but I don't have to be out and about!

>119 richardderus: Oh. Well, then. *slips on brass knuckles and gets serious*

Steals plate of pancakes while they go at it...

For the holidays, coffee ice cubes with Baileys and vanilla vodka.

xoxo to you and Stella

>123 laytonwoman3rd: Perkins! Fetch your mace and macerate Miss Linda3rd, there's a good man. She wants my 100% share of cream cheese icing.

>124 Berly: Oh, and a wallop on Miss Berly-boo's broken arm, too.

>125 luvamystery65: OTOH, Miss Roberta may have the run of the sweets table!

>87 richardderus: biblioclast- be damned.

>108 richardderus: you are so right. It never is not time for pancakes! nom nom nom. You have given me the best idea for tomorrows breakfast. I am allowed as I have done yoga twice in three days. I knew it was getting excessive when Little Lenny said to me this evening "mummy not go yoga, mummy stay home". The thing that made it funny (instead of just plain sad) was that he said it like it was a fact, not as a request!

>125 luvamystery65: Oh. My. *hands Richard the frosting bowl she's been licking* TODAY is a holiday, isn't it? Somewhere?

125> *faints* must try

Good day to ya rdear... working today...hope you're day is as painfree as possible and very book filled...

Did you hear that Sebastian Faulks has written a new Bertie and Jeeves? http://www.amazon.com/Jeeves-Wedding-Bells-Sebastian-Faulks/dp/1250047595/ref=sr... PW loved it.

What Kath said, too - hope you have a pain-reduced and book-filled day.

This has been a PSA. Remember to take a good book with you.

>128 LovingLit: Be damned indeed! Rotten sleazy barstids.

Awwww! How completely dear. Mummy will be here when I want her to be. Of course. That's how the universe is ordered.

>129 laytonwoman3rd: Huh! All it takes is something you want more than cream cheese icing, eh?

>130 mckait: Thanks, sweetness! I'm enjoying the journey through leaf-change, and the cool breeze, and the last of the avocados. (Avocadoes? Hell, ahuacatls.) I'm savoring The Luminaries. I'm outraged by...well. *smooch*

>131 jnwelch: I've preordered that bad boy! I can't wait. Thanks for the good wishes!

#125 Wow... *drool*. That looks incredible! I'll take a dozen... with a stack of carrot cake pancakes on the side please.

That sounds like the Breakfast of Champions to me!

Oh I love that Mark Twain. And for some reason that Christmas drink caught my eye. Perhaps because today, here in the north country, you can feel winter breathing down your neck...... something raw in the air.

>132 richardderus:...I'm on my way...good book accompanying...

Two great reviews and some carrot cake pancakes since I was here last...what could be better than that?! I feel like I am that Mark Twain quote today....too bad its only Tuesday!

>136 sibylline: Fall is almost over for you, and I'm about midway through it. The dogwoods and sumacs have passed peak; the sassafras and locusts are full-on; the oaks, Callery pears, and horse chestnuts are gettin' in on the act. *aaah*

>137 tututhefirst: A lovely plan. A sensible plan. Happy reading!

>138 Cobscook: Tuesday. Bleurgh. Shouldn't this be Friday? I keep thinking I'm in a weird time warp...weeks vanish at light speed, days drag on...???

Today was cancelled?! Crap! That's what I get for not checking in. And I WANT that drink in post 125, please. I NEED it.

>140 Crazymamie: Perkins! A Roberta for Miss Mamie, if you please. Poor angel appears to be having DTs on our Bokharas.

*smooch*



If you haven't bought THE LUMINARIES yet, go buy it. So very good.

^Aw shit, I posted that one too! I LOVE it! I am so glad you loved the Luminaries. That book is batting a thousand. I see it is going for 10.95 on Kindle. I might try it that way, although I still won't get to it until December. Decisions, decisions!

Oh, great recipe for pancakes, Richard! I have that bookmarked now.

Check it out for yourself and decide, Richard. The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything by John D. MacDonald. I haven't read it for so long I can't judge, but it was quite a cult favorite back when!

>132 richardderus:: Sounds like heaven.

I don't know about carrot cake pancakes, but P made pumpkin spice waffles this past Sunday and they were remarkable! I've noted that she can make them again if she would like to do so. :-)

And I say read almost anything by John D MacDonald.

>142 msf59: Oh well, great minds....

Really, run don't walk to get The Luminaries.

>143 ronincats: It's a great recipe all right! I'll go look into the book, see what's what.

>144 EBT1002: Pumpkin spice waffles sound very good, too! Very very. Glad you're not fussy.

rd... I think my brain is broken... I can't read, write a review or think beyond 8:30 am then 5 pm or whatever time the workers will depart. All of my LT friend reading and I am bobbling along trying to find a brain cell.

Damn, I wish No. 132 were true. Yesterday was a double, and I could use a break. But it's not to be. I'm off to play my part in Episode 9,702 of "As the Firm Turns".

Just checking in, you know, to see if today has been cancelled or not. Please give Perkins my love, and take some for yourself.

* I'm back-hug *

Book porn!

It looks so quiet. And cold.

>146 mckait: Focus on the house. Books, however delightful, don't keep the snow off you while you're trying to sleep or the rain out of your clothes. This too shall pass, my dear one, this too shall pass. *smooch*

>147 laytonwoman3rd: *cue sudsy music* Today on As the Firm Turns, an inscrutable memo from the boss's boss's boss will tank the morale of the entire company; the office affair will hot up as the copier guy and the CFO will be discovered mid-hot monkey sex by the junior accounting clerk, whose ambition it is to replace the CFO; and the cube farmers will stage a one-hour shutdown during peak call time, causing the firm's stock prices to lose 10%.

>148 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie! Thanks, smoochling, I'll be a little less irked by the world now.

>149 wilkiec: Diana! Glad you're out of the hospital. I hope it's all trending in an upward direction now!

>151 mckait: *blissed-out sigh* Yes.

I just read Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald (it was lying around at the Western MA house we visited) and it was pretty snappy. It's the only one of his I've read - I'll look for The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything.

As the Firm Turns seems to have a lot more excitement going on than where I work.

Nice book porn. Looks like they could use a longer ladder.

Glad you're not fussy.
Indeed, I am generally very easy to please. Except in the last fourth of a novel, wherein I turn into a bear.

I have been doing a slow revisit of the Travis McGee series and my next one up is Pale Gray for Guilt. I admit that I bailed on The Quick Red Fox because it was not set in Florida and John D MacDonald is at his best when the story stays in that state.

>153 jnwelch: More excitement? Hmmm. That means you're a boss. Bosses never, ever know what's really going on among the hoi polloi.

The MacDonald book looks interesting, but for $10, I'll pass.

>132 richardderus: Outstanding. I'm going back to bed now.

Happy Fall Day To You!

>156 kidzdoc: Nighty night. Don't forget your book.

>157 Whisper1: Hi Linda! Happy fall day indeed. Middle fifties!! YUMMMM

>155 richardderus: You've got a point, Richard, particularly as my family likes to call me "Mr. Oblivious". But you'd think I'd at least notice a cube farmer shutdown, if not the hot monkey sex.

Like I said, bosses know last. NEVER tell the boss what's wrong until it's fixed, or unless it's so FUBAR that s/he needs to sign the check.

*gasp* Nook porn!

#152 MY office is never that exciting! Halfway through this never-ending week....

>161 richardderus: YESSSS, my precious!

>162 Cobscook: I didn't know you were a boss, Heidi.

>163 ronincats: I know, right?!

>161 richardderus: Perfect! Somebody somewhere read my mind. That's exactly what I wanted: bright, sunny and comfortable. Just lock me up in there, please!

groundhog day..... sort of.

hope all is well.

>161 richardderus: Yes, please. Everything else can wait.

Hope your day is off to a good start, RD.

...well, okay, I don't have a life and I am a nerd, but that doesn't mean this isn't true.

LOL! I was thinking the same thing that you wrote there. Not about you. About me. Good Thursday Morning, BigDaddy!

>165 avidmom: I wouldn't be hasty about the locking part. Look how few books those shelves can hold! It's more like the TBR Nook.

>166 mckait: Oh dear. Not noisy again, is it? Boo. Hiss.

>167 jnwelch: Ha! You too, Joe? You'd abandon the cafe denizens to their various fates to put your feet up in that snug little bookery and read the day away?

I knew you would. Anyone sensible would.

>169 Crazymamie: Hiya Mamie! YOU?! The head of the Cool Kids Table?! Ha! *smooch*

Well, it's mid-forties this morning and heading for a high of mid-fifties. This will be the pattern for a good while to come. Yay!! Warm coffee, sleeping dog, fun books...*bliss*

The picture in 168 brings back memories. I had forgotten all about Readers Digest Condensed Books! And "Airs Above The Ground" is a very old favorite!

>171 LoisB: Hi Lois! Oh my yes, the Condensed Books were somethin' else. My grandparents bought them every year. My mother snorted mightily at the choices, and the condensedness, but they were idea for a voracious kid-reader. I could whip through one of the hemidemisemi-novels in a few hours.

I've never heard of Airs Above the Ground. A new Mary Stewart to investigate!

Oh, that nook.

Somethin' special indeed, Tui.

#164 HA! I snorted right out loud at my desk at that one. I am the boss of me, its true!

Thank you, Richard! *smooch*

How DO you track Thingaversaries?

>141 richardderus: If you haven't bought THE LUMINARIES yet, go buy it. So very good.
*so proud of our Ellie* (yes, that's what we call her now)

>168 richardderus: lol! (at your comment, not the quote which rings quite true for me- this fact does not stop people accusing me of nerdity and no-lifedness though)

>175 Cobscook: Heh. *smooch*

>176 ronincats: I wish I could claim mystickal magiqk was involved, but it's all right there on your home page every day. *sigh* There goes my rep for omniscience.

>177 LovingLit: Ellie, eh? Not Miss Catton? The Right Reverend Miss Eleanor? Just "our Ellie."

Still I guess a country with a FLIGHTLESS bird as its official Air Force insignia can be expected to do things a widge...differently.

...the stupid...it buuurrrnnns...

>179 richardderus: Stupid people make the world so much fuuuuuunnnnn!!!! :)

It is to me.

179 > Facepalm !!

>179 richardderus: The thing is, in another generation, there will be nothing wrong with that statement. Lab-grown meat is coming.

>180 avidmom: I've had about enough fun, then. Ready for some unfun if it means less stupididifying dumbth around me.

>183 roundballnz: Ain't that the truth.

>184 laytonwoman3rd: And it's not that far off, even, if the prognosticators are to be believed. Before I'm likely to be dead, anyway.

#179 wow...just wow....

Happy Friday night! I am soooooo glad this week is over. I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

>186 Cobscook: I know, right?!

Happy weekend to you, Heidi, filled with books and mulled wine and freshly raked leaves burning.

Hi RD- Just checking in with my old buddy! Hope the week went well and you have a terrific weekend lined up. Any good books grabbing you by the short hairs?

Hmmm...well, this little bagatelle I've been perusing, let me see what was the name of it again...somebody Cat-face's book...it's here somewhere...ah! THE LUMINARIES by ELEANOR CATTON is a tolerably decent read. You might want to give it a glance at some point. No hurry.

Hi Richard, just passing by to wish you a great weekend.

Chilly. Gonna cook chili.

Whatcha doin?

"How do you read so much?!" I don't watch TV.

"But really, why not do something else once in a while?" I have sex whenever I can. That counts, surely. Then there's cooking and eating dinner, and walking the dog. A lovely, full day.

"But...but...television and movies and comic books!" None of those things interest me.

::blank stare::

>190 johnsimpson: Hi John! Thanks for the weekend wishes. Perfect autumn day today, a bit of chill and a lot of sunshine and leaves going red and gold all over the place. *happy sigh*

>191 mckait: Gloating, mostly. I didn't want this round of visits from the Awful Woman, and turns out she's sick and can't come!! I am an *AWESOME* whammymeister. Plus the kids are in Philly visiting a cousin and looking at the Liberty Bell.

High five for the Whammymeister!! Way to go, BigDaddy! And I LOVE post 192. Just saying...

Happy Saturday, dear. May your weekend be full of fabulous!

>194 Crazymamie: *bows* Full of fabulous is aiming a bit high, but I'll take the non-horrible one on offer.

>179 richardderus:: surely that's irony or tongue-in-cheek?

>196 tiffin: Can't be sure, as I don't know the person who wrote it. But I'd have to say that, in light of the stupidity I see every day, I'm going on the "guilty until proven innocent" side.

DOCTOR SLEEP has arrived at last!!!!!!!

I look forward to your thoughts.

>192 richardderus: LOVE IT- watching no TV (although, I do watch a bit, sometimes) is what gives me the time to read. People say they have no time to read, I say they don't make the time to.

>198 richardderus: I just finished Misery, my very first King book a few minutes ago. I am delightfully and thoroughly creeped out now!

I'm looking forward to your thoughts on Doctor Sleep!

Hi RD- You seem to be in a happy place! See, what a damn good book will do? That's what The History of Love is doing for me.
I WILL read the Luminaries. Did you read it on ebook? I think I will go that route. It might be my very first ebook experience.

Boo to TV! Yah, to sex!

Oh, here you go:

Lovely sentiment from Mark.

I'm reading a YA. You don't want to know. After reading some poetry. You don't want to know. But it was all cat-free, if that helps.

Happy Sunday, Richard!

>199 mckait:, 202 So far, only okay.

>200 LovingLit: They probably don't care about reading because TV is so easy. It's all right there in front of you, fed to you, nuanceless nonsense. *shrug* I enjoy laughing at the stuff, but little of it really sticks. As I get older, stuff that doesn't stick is less important to me than stuff that does...like The Luminaries!

>201 avidmom: I haven't read Misery, but I know that feeling very well indeed. Such a talent for eerie narratives can't be overenjoyed!

>203 msf59: Bacon! Yes! Wife, no; kid, yes.

I have the hardcover of The Luminaries because I'm a masochist. I should've kindled it. But it's so wonderful I don't care.

>204 jnwelch: Catlessness is the sine qua non of good reading, clean living, and righteousness. I am pleased for you.

Hi my dear!!! I am so very far behind but I've skimmed enough to comment on the following:

Your thread topping painting looks eerily similar to you, but you are more handsome! Big smoochies to Stella!

Boo hiss on Fox News.

Did NJ actually go through?

Yay for the return of book porn!

I've missed you... I'll try to do better.

Smoochling! You're here now, that's enough for me. That painting looks more like me every day, as my ancientness oozes forth from its many hiding places.

Yuh-huh.

New Jersey is indeed the latest state to join the ranks of the equality-of-marriage locales. I'm happy for the folks who can get married at home now!

I like book porn too!

"Better" would mean coming for a visit. So when will that be?

Flying out in two weeks for my brothers celebration in MN--twelve years after the big event the government is finally going to recognize his marriage!!

As to your posts on my thread….

>208 Berly: Awww! How sweet and how wonderful that they're going to make it legal. Have a wonderful time, sweetness.

What posts? *batbatbat*

It is. Day or night, it's the life.

>210 richardderus: Yes! Maybe with an occasional expedition from the bed to a comfortable chair.

Sounds divine to me.

Book haulage increase:

Trinacria: A Novel of Bourbon Sicily arrived a week early, oh boo hoo, as I'd preordered it when I saw it announced.

And then a random ARC arrived, from a publisher I've never heard of before, and an author I'm ignorant of, and it's not Early Reviewers or First Reads. I **have** to get better about making notes on who, what, when, where, and why I ask for books.

What the heck, it sounds interesting. Solomon the Peacemaker by Hunter Welles.

My review of FOLLOWING TOMMY finally got posted at The Small Press Book Review and within minutes an email came from the author! He said it was a "thoughtful review...{it} was what I'd hoped for in a reader."

That is a nice compliment indeed.

WTG!

Thank you, Lois!

Are you fondling your books Mr D?

Always and ever. Come here to Big Daddy, my little darlings, your bindings need some stroking.

That's some chat up line.

Works a treat in the S&M clubs.

*blushes* Oh, my .......

Is this an X rated thread? Super!

I also need to get better at noting who recommends stuff that I then go off and read. I never remember and then I feel like a dummy. It's happening more and more to me since I joined LT .

>221 avidmom: ...yes...your...?

>222 Cobscook: Always, petite amie. Always.

Oh yes indeed. LT started it, then I got deep into Goodreads, then blogging means authors and publishers have my on their radar. *eep*

Hi RD- Hope your day went well. Bummer about Lou Reed. What an icon! His folks lived in Long Island didn't they?

Vile creatures. Irredeemable scum.

Morning Richard - curiosity moment... are you NaNo-ing this year?

>224 msf59: Hi Mark! About what one could expect. There will be many worse and I hope for many better.

>226 BekkaJo: Every year, like Easter. You?

Yup. Though more concerned than usual about time. I'm pretty fried at the moment - still going to give it my best shot. Hubby will just have some child full weekends coming up! ;)

Heck, they're his kids too. Seems like a thing he'd LIKE to do!

225. I hate stickers on books... it's painful to me to sticker one at work.. painful, I tell you. But at least I always stick them in a corner, hopefully on top of another one. Not on the authors face on the back cover or goddess help me, on the front.

It's awful that they don't make some provision for a place to apply a sticker without damaging the book more than is necessary. Out county system applies a clear plastic patch where the stickers are supposed to go. It's on the inside back cover. Yes, the patch damages the inside back cover, but there is a practical good side: The stickers aren't constantly rubbed up against the other books, peeling up over time and ruining two books instead of only one.

Ah well. Not everyone can be as perfect as we are, eh?

We have some of those, too.. but guess what? Some folks don't put them there.

They should be horsewhipped and left in the stocks for a long, hot summer day.

Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

>234 richardderus: Wish I had this on an easy-to-carry sign that I could hold up at appropriate moments. *note to self: never hold up that sign to wife*

Congrats on that mature response from the Following Tommy author. Not everything you wrote was positive, but he didn't let his knee jerk about it.

Review: 59 of seventy-five

Title: AFTER DEAD: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse

Author: CHARLAINE HARRIS

Rating: four easy stars of five

The Publisher Says: Dead Ever After marked the end of the Sookie Stackhouse novels—a series that garnered millions of fans and spawned the hit HBO television show True Blood. It also stoked a hunger that will never die…a hunger to know what happened next.

With characters arranged alphabetically—from the Ancient Pythoness to Bethany Zanelli—bestselling author Charlaine Harris takes fans into the future of their favorite residents of Bon Temps and environs. You’ll learn how Michele and Jason’s marriage fared, what happened to Sookie’s cousin Hunter, and whether Tara and JB’s twins grew up to be solid citizens.

This coda provides the answers to your lingering questions—including details of Sookie’s own happily-ever-after…

The book will feature extensive interior art by acclaimed Sookie artist Lisa Desimini, including a Sookieverse Alphabet, color endpapers, and several full-page black and white interior illustrations.

My Review: This is the most generous gift I've ever received from a stranger. No, not the book...the loose-end-tying. I pre-ordered the book the instant I heard about it. It arrived today, and after ripping the box to shreds in my eagerness to get the book out, I read it. Twice. All the way through. You see, I love Sookie and the Sookieverse, and I miss them a little bit every so often when I'm reading something else that could use a little *oomph* in the supernatural parts.

I wasn't expecting a story, and I didn't get one. I was expecting a few sketches, and I got those, plus a whole lot of one-line summations of characters I'd forgotten existed. After a minute or two, if I concentrated, I'd get the connection to a book and the floodgates would open. There were a few, however, that I'm just completely blank on.

But think about this. A thirteen-book series, presented over a twelve-year span, has spawned such a passionate legion of fans that the author troubles herself to wind up even the most minor characters' arcs! I suspect Mother Charlaine knows that, based on her fans' passions and involvement with her, if she didn't do this somewhere, her inbox would ever after be chock-full of questions about this one or that one's fate. The first thought I had was a page on her website, let everyone find it as they came to need it.

But a hardcover book...well-designed, nicely printed, with the iconic "look" of all the other entries in the series...her publishers and she clearly read the marketing tea-leaves and figured that hits in cyberspace would cost a little and earn nothing whereas copies of a book would cost a lot and earn even more.

I hope it hits every bestseller list there is. This is the kindest gesture, the most touchingly thoughtful acknowledgment of fan passion and investment in one's own work, that I can imagine. Charlaine Harris gave us, her fans, over a decade of her life, and we gave her our money and our investment in her creations. And that seems like a good trade right there. So for Mother Charlaine to go the extra mile and bring us closure...and a few teasers for future works, or so I hope...well!

Thank you most kindly, ma'am. Like a legion of others, I appreciate the gifts. All of them.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Guaranteed.

When is thanksgiving ??? if tree is lit outside USA does a different rule apply ?

I can't think the southern hemispherics would put up xmas trees in November, like Murrikins does. US Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November. The Friday after is effectively a holiday for non-retail workers, so they can go shop for xmas. It's called Black Friday...for retail droids' moods, and their employers' balance sheets.

Well as Xmas fare is already in the shops here ... best not comment on when trees get put up eh ?

>237 richardderus:: Now if only those elves would find some way to prevent all stores from putting out Christmas merchandise until after Halloween!!!

>240 roundballnz: *shudder*

>241 EBT1002: I'm just astounded they haven't tried to introduce "second xmas" like second breakfast among the hobbits.

Now I'm sad... I read the review and I'm sad, because I miss Sookie-land too. My book is here next to me and I will read it soon. I am frazzled ATM and haven't read as I hoped to.. 2 days of almost no reading :( You know why...

Anyway.... good day to ya! without all the thises and thats ... hope good things fall your way today.

Thanks, sweetness. I didn't play Powerball, so "good things" won't include money. Boo hoo.

The charm of After Dead is in the speed and ease of the reading. Nothing's over three paras in length, so permaybehaps it's just the ticket for your current circumstances.

Sending comforting thoughts to my friends experiencing loss.

>245 richardderus: Yes, I join you on that one.

Glad Charlaine gave you such an excellent Sookie gift, Richard.

Review: 60 of seventy-five

Title: OCTOPUS!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea

Author: KATHERINE HARMON COURAGE

Rating: 3.75* of five

I received an ARC from Current Books for review, but I don't remember why.

The Publisher Says: We eat, study, copy, and idealize the octopus. Yet this strange creature still eludes our understanding. With eight arms, three hearts, camouflaging skin, and a disarmingly intelligent look behind its eyes, it appears utterly alien. But octopuses have been captivating humans for as long as we’ve been catching them. Cultures have created octopus-centric creation myths, art, and, of course, cuisine. For all of our ancient fascination and modern research, however, we still haven’t been able to get a firm grasp on these slippery beasts.

Now journalist Katherine Harmon Courage dives into the fascinating underwater world of these mysterious cephalopods. From her transatlantic adventures to Spain and Greece, expeditions in the Caribbean and back to Brooklyn, she invites readers to experience the scientific discoveries, deep cultural ties, and delicious meals connected to the octopus.

Courage deftly interweaves personal narrative with interviews with leading octopus experts. She provides an entertaining yet informative romp through the world of these infinitely interesting creatures.

My Review: Anyone who's paid me the slightest bit of attention over the years knows I'm a fan of Tentacled Americans. They're delicious. They're delightfully ookie. They're probably the closest things I'll ever have to soul mates: They don't like their own kind, regard other species as prey or enemies, and possess a deeply misunderstood intelligence.

All I lack is six more arms.

And now Katherine Harmon, a writer for Scientific American who appears to have married into the coolest last name ever, writes a Mary Roach-esque monograph on the 'pus! Oh frabjous day callooh callay! I dived (!) into the book the instant the mailman shoved it into the door-slot.

What a dive that was. I landed in the sea-water off Vigo, Galicia, with the seasick Harmon Courage (love that new name!), thinking about the *a*maz*ing* octopus preparations prevalent in the region. The trip to Greece's Octotropolis Gythio was a drool-inducing litany of same-ol' same-ol' octopus preparation: wail on the dead body on the ever-present beach rocks, hurry home and saute the tentacles in olive oil and then make a tasty accompanying sauce. You can not go wrong doing this. It is never-fail deliciousness, with the added bonus of being nutritious and heart-healthy.

I'm drooling. Pardon me, need to clean the keyboard.

So for sixty pages, I existed in a haze of hunger and longing for some fresh octopus instead of the canned smoked stuff from Vigo. Page sixty-one began the lessons, or as a pal of mine says, "the eat-your-spinach part."

Fortunately, I enjoy "eating my spinach" and learning about stuff. The only television I'm really interested in is informational/educational stuff...if I'm going to do something I don't enjoy (sit still in front of a screen and stare fixedly), I'm at least going to get something memorable out of it....so I trotted happily along in Harmon Courage's wake as she chatted up the scientists who study these fascinating creatures. The locations she gets herself sent to are anathema to me, being largely warm-water beachy places, locales I'd pay good money never to have to visit. But the scientists are opening an immense realm of knowledge by living and working there, and no one's making me do it, so here I sit in air-conditioned splendor reading about the fascinating conclusions from this research.

Modern life, for a first-worlder, is excellent.

Octopus skin is near-miraculous in its mimetic ability. Octopus brains are only barely beginning to be studied but are already causes for fascinating discoveries. Octopus bodies are marvels of efficiency, and inspiring research into imitative robotic design.

Wondrous stuff, and that's not even half of the scientific amazement. How does a delicious creature without a shell avoid being din-din for every hungry thing in the sea? We've all heard about the ink-squirting defense, we've all heard of the prodigies of camouflage, but who knew that the wriggly ones could emit a *sound* that distracts vibration-sensitive predators? How? From WHERE?! Still being studied, stay tuned....

All of the above is my yodel of praise and my warble of enticement for you to dash out and buy a copy of this informative, enjoyable book. But the attentive reader will note that my rating is under four stars, while my enthusiasm is (I hope) evident. My rating might then seem ungenerous.

I feel bad about it, but I have to be a little ungenerous. The first sixty pages, with recipes and culinary enticements, do not fit comfortably with the science and research bits in the second part. The transition is handled as smoothly as it can be, but still isn't comfortable, because the nature of the book changes completely at that point. Harmon Courage's amusing, light touch doesn't change. She has a bit less to work with in humor terms. Not to say that, all of a sudden, we're in a textbook. It's simply a change from chatty, dinner-table food discussion, to after-dinner talk with slides and charts. Both are pleasurable, but in very different ways.

I want to be clear: This book gave me a lot of pleasure to read. I immersed myself in the lore and the science and the witty banter like they were a warm, salty bath, easing my literary aches and pains from reading so much forgettable snack-food in search of a good reader's meal. I got what I wanted from this read, and I suspect that any fan of light, amusing, informative reads will as well.

But like an octopus, I'm sensitive to the subtle shifts in my natural medium. Octopus blood is copper-based, which is why the darlings bleed blue. It's a less robust base for oxygen transmission than mammailan iron, and renders the octopus very vulnerable to changes in the ocean's acidity...too far outside its comfort zone, and the octopus dies. The climate change issues we've wished on the world include acidifying oceans.

The problem isn't a disaster, like the mismatch within the book isn't a disaster. But it's there, and it's something that needs mentioning, so that it might be cured for the future.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Always a pleasure to see you dip your toes into the ocean of nonfiction. The natural sciences are always a good source for wonderful info.

A tentacular review, Richard. If only octopi had thumbs, you'd be getting a bunch. You've got one from me.

>246 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. Sad when someone needs support and we can't be there, except in spirit.

>248 NielsenGW: Thank you, Gerard! I read more non-fiction than I review, because so much of it isn't at all interestingly written or about a subject for which I have as much passion as cephalopods.

>249 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe! Octopodes are probably better off thumbless, since they'd have eight. That just sounds horrible. Imagine hammering with eight thumbs to protect!

OH my so very far behind on your thread. Just skimmed and saying Hello another busy day for me. I hope I can catch up soon. XOXO to you and Stella Dear Richard

>251 MonicaLynn: Hi Monica! Glad to see you! Busy days are better than boring ones, but work-busy is a little less fun. Stella sends slurps!

RD - Sorry I haven't been around much recently but slightly ok excuse in that the old peepers weren't working as they should. See you've upped the ante a notch or two (I know an ante hasn't got any notches but mixed metaphors at midnight are very alliterative) with the book porn and have gotten to the fondling stage. As one of the magpies amongst us I would have to admit to similar caresses of my new purchases on the rare occasions that I treat myself to a book or two.

Good to be back. Good to see nothing changes much.

OCTOPUS!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea sounds right up my alley so onto the WL it goes. I have upthumbed your entertaining review as well. I'm not a huge fan of the tentacled ones but I do love me some science and nature writing!

Happy Hump Day!

Sniffing sadly that I didn't have the smarts to pre-order After Dead before the job ended. Now, unless I can convince myself that I must have it straight away I will have to make do with waiting on it from the library!!! BOOOOOOOOOOO....

Okay, rant over. HUGE thumbs up for your stellar review. As usual, of course!

I've applied my thumb to your fantabulous review Richard. I read so much more non-fiction since I joined LT four and a half years ago when I read practically none.

>253 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul! I love the world-class denial of I would have to admit to similar caresses of my new purchases on the rare occasions that I treat myself to a book or two. That is some top-notch self-delusion! Kudos.

>254 Cobscook: Hiya Heidi, hope your taste for science and nature will lead you into an octopus's garden this time. It's a good book.

>255 TinaV95: There there, Mrs. Lisa, the book-stork will provide.

>256 brenzi: Bonnie! How wonderful to see you. I hope my review has persuaded you to get this book out of the liberry, it's a well-worthwhile read. *smooch*

I have read nothing. I am very tired from not caring. Trying. Details later.

I do hope that you are going to have a better day than the one I anticipate. Details will follow..

I don't see how I could fail to have a better day than the one you told me you were expecting. Blech.

*smooch* for courage

Oh dear. Sending you all the positive mojo I can muster, Sis.

Happy Thursday, BigDaddy! *smooch for you just because*

>262 Crazymamie: Hiya Mamie! I'm pleased you're not a slaughterer of the Cucurbitous Americans. *smooch*

Cucurbitious Americans. I didn't even know they were organized and recognized.

What costume is Stella wearing tonight? Do you get many trick or treaters?

Stella will be going as Bad Wolf. She will bare her fangs and leap upon anyone so foolish as to approach our dark and foreboding door.

No, our street has seven houses on it, so no kids to speak of. Thank GOODNESS. This and Mother's Day bring out the snarling curmudgeon in me.

You'd be at your snarlingest at our hacienda. The hordes descend.

>263 richardderus: LOL! I just love how you talk!

Hordes here too. Come on I've just done two hours face painting surrounded by screaming kids at my friends Halloween party - give me a break to sit and drink wine.

I am one pack of children away from bringing in the pumkin, turning the lights on a pretending to be dead. It's only 18.42....

A thumb for your excellent review of Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea, Richard.

Man, I'd love a plate of grilled octopus now...

>266 jnwelch:, 268 *snarl*growl*tooth-baring rageface*

>267 Crazymamie: Heh, thank you punkin!

>269 kidzdoc: OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*drool*

I'm very pleased you enjoyed the review, Darryl!

Hallo, RD! Back from vacation, finally reading How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny. Sometimes ya just gotta wait for the right time to read a book, right?

Horrible! How lovely! And you're gettin' the groove in the book, I'll bet. It's the best one yet, IMO.

So, handing out candy.. Jane's son ( who has autism ) looked at me and said Hi. Boy, you're getting old!
srsly. And its dark!!!!

le sigh

>273 mckait: Ouch!

Go look at Gail's thread.

Hi RD- Hope you are warm & snug at home and have a promising book in your clutches. I am having a shot of Templeton Rye, along with a fine ale, as I make some LT rounds.
I know it's many months off, but we are planning a N.Y. trip, in mid-May, with some friends. It will be our first time but our friends have been there a few times. Would you be able to make a trip into the city? The Strand, perhaps?

>275 msf59: Oh goody good good, Mark! I hope I'll be fit enough to travel. If not, we're a short train ride away...Penn Station to Rockville Centre is 40min of reading time.

It was a quiet night, of course, and now it's All Saint's Day. Whoopee whee! Cloudy and windy, which means the peak-color leaves make mounds in the corners and gutters. Since it's not raining to speak of, the mounds look like piles of pretty-colored stones waiting to be used for jewelry. The sumac leaves are so extraordinarily lovely, long and slim and wildly variegated from yellow-orange-apricot to deep garnet on one leaf!

The oaks are all reddening nicely to stay in the act, and the trash trees like maples and ailanthus are in full wildly colorful change. The eastern redbuds are changing to a bright lemon yellow and the leaves are mostly staying on, to my surprise. Sassafras, those cinnamony smelling exibitionists, are at last fading to brown, but the intense and glorious explosion of Crayola-bright color is hanging on, branch by branch.

And then there's my old nemesis, that damned sweet gum tree with its ankle-spraining, shoe-sticking gumballs from hell. Sixty feet tall and the rotten-souled thing loves nothing better than to heave the stupid, prickly seed casings at me from the top of itself as soon as Stella and I walk out the door. Being a dog, she's a smaller target, so who gets conked with the barbed balls? Puppydaddy, of course. Not to mention the brown stickerballs the damn tree has hidden in leaf-drifts in the driveway, turning my ankles this way and that, but never in any direction that Nature intended.

I still wouldn't trade it for anything.

>276 richardderus: Woo, sounds beautiful, Richard. 'Cept for the shoe-sticking, Stella-bonking gumballs. But it would be tough to be ornery, wouldn't it, without that damned sweet gum tree? It would be pretty lousy for the rest of us if you were feeling all sweetness and light.

Oh, thank you for that dose of Fall, Richard! I have been missing it down here in the Deep South. Overcast and windy here, too, but a definite absence of Fall color and cold. We do have two tiny maple trees in our front yard that are giving us a glimpse of orange and red. What I am missing most is that Fall smell - that crispness in the air...

>277 jnwelch: Ha! Me, me, sweetness and light?! It is to laugh, sir.

>278 Crazymamie: Glad to oblige, me lurve.

I put the same thing up with illos at my blog, if you're feeling especially nostalgic for colors.

LOVED the photos with the writing!! Beautifully paired! Thanks, BigDaddy!

>280 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie!



Book porn!

SO eye-catching.....so...inaccessible.

... and unsymmetrical.

>282 laytonwoman3rd: Ladders exist somewhere in there, I'm sure.

>283 mldavis2: I suspect that has more to do with the photo and how it's framed than the room.

It's Day of the Dead! Pause and reflect...without the dead folk, you wouldn't be here today.

I agree, to an extent, Richard. As a photographer (amateur hobbyist), I'm very sensitive to asymmetry. The trapezoidal lines of the throw rug in the foreground are not quite, but nearly equally slanted. The doors to the room are unevenly askew. Even the ceiling of the A-frame is unsymmetrical, the roof support beam on the left being lower than the right. But the real giveaway is comparing the space from the top of the doorway opening on each side. But heck, I'd deal with it if they'd give me the books.

I'd deal if they gave me the bookSHELVES!

Your description of fall in your neighborhood is lovely Richard. Alas, we have shot past the pretty fall colors here....most of the hardwoods have dropped their leaves and we are left with just the yellows and browns of the American Larch and a few oaks. I hate November and the time change!

Before I go, here's a great big *SMOOCH* for being such a wonderful person!

>288 Cobscook: *smooch* Such a difference 500 miles makes! We're a sandbar sticking into the Atlantic, too, so that moderates our temperature swings a good deal. Delays the color-change to be more in line with Maryland than New York State.

Morning RD! Just trying to make the rounds, before we head out. Hope you have a nice weekend planned, jammed with plenty of R & R.

RD - I have just bought a small piece of land in Kuala Lumpur with the intention (when I can afford it - so not just yet) of building my own home (well supervising it as I am to DIY what George Bush was to World Peace). My focus in designing the house is obvious - how to design the book storage. Your thread continues to provide book porn aplenty to set me thinking.

Have a great weekend dear fellow.

Review: 61 of seventy-five

Title: THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT

Author: NED BEAUMAN

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER.

When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't.

But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.

From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes an historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.

LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT.

My Review: My review, if I was up for it, would be nothing but retyping the entire novel in this space. You don't need to read my yodels of praise and warbles of inducement to buy the book, you need to read the book.

Is the book funny, as is claimed for it in so many "real" review sources? Here's something I marked on page 7:

Klugweil, meanwhile, was a twenty-four-year-old sso languid as to be almost liquid, except when he went on stage and broke open some inner asylum of shrieks and contortions, wild eyes and bared teeth -- which made him perfectly suited to Expressionist acting and almost useless for any other type. He'd been at university with Loesser, who had always wondered what he was like during sex but had never quite had the cheek to make an enquiry with his dull girlfriend.

Page seven and I'm chuckling, building to a snorting laugh. This is my kind of humor, this droll and dry as a good martini sort of language making ironic-verging-on-facetious observations of all those about the main character...and which observations comment quietly on the main character himself.

What about the romance mentioned so prominently in the book's sales materials, and in "mainstream" reviews? Loesser pursues the elusive, rich, and utterly madcap Adele Hitler (no relation) across continents, despite this exchange from page 54:

"You'll fuck the man who brings your coffee just because he's handsome, and yet I chase you for two years and --"
She waved her hand as if to swat him away. "Oh, please let's not get into that again. 'Love is the foolish overestimation of the difference between one sexual object and another.'"
"Who said that?"
"I saw it on the wall at a party."
"Oh, so it must be true! And all my devotion means nothing?"
"I'm flattered, but there'd be no point in us even trying. You're the sort of man who couldn't stand it if I were unfaithful, but you're also the sort of man I couldn't help but be unfaithful to. You're that type. You're an apprentice cuckold."

Well, all righty then! That's him told. Loesser's anguished suspicion that Adele is right wars with his indignation at being evaluated, pigeonholed, and relegated to a non-starter position before he can make so much as a move. This propels the rest of the novel.

For noir tropes, we have Loesser's falling in with one Dr. Voronoff, famous in the demi-monde of Paris for his impotence cure: Insert the testicle of a monkey between a man's own testicles and let its nature suffuse the aging roué with unquenchable virility. For madame, there is a similar cure for the debilities of aging: Skin cream made from the foreskins of newly circumcised babies. Fresh, innocent skin cells from a body part famed for its stretchiness...well, what could possibly make more sense? A can't-fail nostrum for wrinkles and crow's feet! And Loesser, plus an accomplice-cum-con man called Scramsfield (who promises Loesser that he will reunite him with Adele, already vanished to Los Angeles), will happily liberate wealthy, stupid American women from their desperately needed money in order to survive the Great Depression.

After a spectacular failure in the quackery trade makes Paris too hot for Loesser, he continues his pursuit of Adele to Los Angeles, and here the story becomes an extremely strange (even stranger, I suppose) send-up of Golden Age science fiction tropes, decadent capitalist stereotypes, rumors of Hollywood loucheness, all of which so deeply informed the interwar popular culture's storytelling.

Teleportation. Actual physical teleportation. Research and development for same. It's almost incalculably difficult to imagine how this could be done on a macro scale in today's scientific universe, but thankfully Beauman hasn't set his story in our world but in 1935 (as it now is in the story). And here we come to a place in the narrative where, although there is no diminution of the chuckle-inducing phrasemaking or the wince-cringe-and-giggle observation that's characterized the book until now, the window-dressing is just that, decoration.

The heart of this book is yearning. Everyone in the book yearns for something, be it a person, a state of feeling, a quantum of knowledge, a passed opportunity, a deed desperately regretted that's in need of recall; yearning and searching for the way to fill the void left by the object yearned for. Adele, that object of Loesser's yearning, seeks to fill her own void by assisting in the creation of an actual, physical teleportation device, being the amanuensis and magician's assistant to Professor Bailey of the currently rechristened California Institute of Technology. The Professor has the most yearning of anyone in the entire book, stretching back to a time in Los Angeles history when what was then the Throop College of Technology welcomed a Midwestern boy called Bailey....

I don't believe anyone would thank me for the spoiler that completes that sentence. It's worth the trip to discover it yourself.

This novel was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, and I see why. Beauman's linguistic playfulness and inventive use of tropes in ways both satirical and satisfying to trope fans is amazing when one considers his revolting youth. (He is under thirty, which I consider an affront to God. No one born after Man left the Moon for the final time to date should understand the world Beauman builds with deft and dextrous motions. Ain't natural.)

I left this reading experience amused, satisfied, and to my own surprise, quite moved. I liked the process of getting to the end of the story. I liked the scenery painted for me along the way. I liked the moral, or to give it less gravitas, the point of Beauman's engrossing, enfolding, bemusing narrative. I really want to know what happens next in Beauman's career. I hope I can keep all my buttons in the proper buttonholes until he finishes his ideas' fermentation.

I've rated the book under five stars, which all of the foregoing would seem to support, because I wasn't catapulted to a new level of spiritual awareness or aesthetic ecstasy (0.1 off), and because the dust jacket of the hardcover edition is coated in some sort of spoodge that has the hand-feel of the years-old bacon grease that coats the interior of a none-too-clean greasy spoon's range hood (0.1 off, after an entire star disappeared; seemed unfair to Beauman, since *he* didn't choose this icky stuff. If I come to find out he *did* choose it, another star off, and no mistake.)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

>273 mckait: that is priceless, Kath :)

Hi RD, a quick catchup, glad to see an author appreciating your fine reviews. We do too.

I am thinking that now is the time to start posting pictures of guest rooms for Paul's future pad? hehe.

eta: My review, if I was up for it, would be nothing but retyping the entire novel in this space.
More pricelessness! Love it.

>290 msf59: Hi Mark! I'll head to your thread after a bit to see what mischief you're getting yourself up to in Milwaukee.

>291 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul! It's time for you to look at a Facebook page called The BookCase Project. Many, many, MANY ideas for you there! Many. And so many of them soooooooo deliciously bookporny!

>293 LovingLit: Hey Maudie! Glad to see you on this fine Sunday. I'm also pleased that you're enjoying the reviews! *smooch*

Paul... Talk to our Mamie... she had that lovely little hidden book nook in her house, a secret little hideaway. Maybe she can give you some ideas!

Morning, Kath, coffee?

Morning RD- I NEED coffee! I might have to stumble my way down to the lobby and fetch some, while my family sleeps.
Great review of the Beauman book. I remember having his last novel on my WL but never got around to it. Did you read Boxer as well?

I am becoming more addicted to the stuff each day. Terrible!

Off to start a soup pot soon. This week it will be beef veg. Nothing more.. kids day.

>297 msf59: Hiya Mark, I relate to The Need so I say go to it. They'll sleep better for not being axe-murdered in their beds.

>298 mckait: A good day indeed! Soupmaking is, at least, unchallenging. The results are almost always satisfying, too.

Hi Richard, I am now going to look at the Bookcase project for some ideas, knew we could rely on you for inspiration.

so enjoyable to read your praises of autumn color. It wouldn't be reality, would it, with out the gumballs?

Fab review of Teleportation - must consider it. Around our house we use the word loser to describe, well, garden variety idiocy We use the word 'loe-ser' (soft s) to describe loser behaviour that goes far far far beyond the call of duty.

Finally, YIKES, I haven't had my cawfee yet! I've been trying to be quiet so others can enjoy the hibernation hour. I can't have my coffee until I walk the dawg, so I better get a move on.

Ahhhhhhhhh! I feel much better now and my family are safe & sound.

>300 johnsimpson: Hi John, I'm nothing if not practical. My Pinterest boards are almost all about food and books.

>301 sibylline: Hi cuz! I'd strongly recommend The Teleportation Accident to you. So much reminds me of your off-kilter sense of humor....

Damned things. I hate the gumballs with an unruly passion. It's windy today and that means oooch ouch eeeoooowwww for tomorrow's walks. (I'm off for the weekend.)

>302 msf59: See? A public service of the highest magnitude, those breakfast bars with unlimited (crappy, yet free) coffee.

New thread is up!