What are you reading the week of November 11, 2017?

My reading time remains limited at the moment, but I've started The Treasures of Darkness: A history of Mesopotamian Religion, by Thorkild Jacobsen. Jacobsen, a philologist, quotes extensively from old Sumerian and Akkadian poetry of the myths of the ancient near east. He shows how certain myths evolved over time, taking on new and wider meanings over the nearly 3000 years of Mesopotamian history. His interpretations of the sometimes baffling poems are enlightening. However, I believe that he sometimes misses the mark on some of them.

The book is already requiring a great deal of thought and side reading. I really want to write something longer on this when I get the time, particularly on the sacred marriage ritual of Dumuzi and Inanna. The marriage ritual involved the king playing the part of Dumuzi and a temple priestess playing the role of Inanna (later Ishtar in the semitic Assyrian/Babylonian version). This ritual is what gave rise to the Judeo-Christian term "the whore of Babylon".

There is so much to unpack here. What I think Jacobsen misses is an understanding of the biology and cultivation of the date palm. The date palm is one of those species of plants which come in both a male and female variety. The male tree produces pollen while the female produces the edible dates. To increase the date yield, date palm farmers cut the pollen bearing spathes of the male tree and brush them on the flowers of the female date palm to ensure a greater fertilization rate and harvest.

Inanna was known as the "lady of the date clusters." Dumuzi was originally known as Dumuzi-Amaushumganna. The later part of that name means something along the lines of "the power of the dates". (That's the closest I can come from memory, and it's not exact.) It suggests that the scared marriage ritual evolved from an act of sympathetic magic seeking to enhance and ensure the productive power of date cultivation. It's all very interesting.

I doubt that anyone else here finds it as fascinating as I do, but I've been talking peoples ears off all week about this. The fact that my friends don't run when they see me coming is a testament to their patience with my odd curiosity and obsessions. :-)

...Lady of the Date Clusters...srsly?

How things change. All that makes me think of is fruit flies.

Alias Grace re-read accompanied by CBC/Netflix adaptation watch. Both very rewarding.

>2 richardderus: I didn't reread the book before watching the adaptation, but I found it so much better than the pointlessly meandering The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu (which I did not subscribe to but used a free trial to sample.)

In other news, still reading Deathless, The Fortress in the Eye of Time, and The Bear and the Nightingale.

>3 seitherin: I suspect the issue with The Handmaid's Tale adaptation is its open-endedness. I think Alias Grace was so effective because it was structured to tell That Particular Story, not used as the framework for an open-ended series. I too sampled the Hulu show by using a free trial, as I did for 11/22/63. I think I was more fond of Handmaid's than you were, though.

I **adore** Deathless and hope you will as well.

I'm about to begin a book that promises to be quite fascinating. The book is Deductions from the World War by Baron Alexander von Freytag-Loringhoven. According to the website www.firstworldwar.com, von Freytag-Loringhoven "was appointed Quartermaster-General by Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn in 1915. With the latter's downfall in August 1916 Paul von Hindenburg was appointed his replacement, and he brought with him as his new Quartermaster-General Erich Ludendorff from the Eastern Front, where both Hindenburg and Ludendorff had established a popular reputation. This did not however bring an end to Freytag-Loringhoven's wartime career. He was moved to a fresh position as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, a post he retained until the armistice."

Most unusually a year prior to Germany's defeat Freytag-Loringhoven published Deductions from the World War, in which he expounded his opinion that Germany would fail to win the war - and also explained how the country would inevitably win the following world war."

Reading Manhattan Beach while dipping occasionally into Tom Hanks' Uncommon Type.

>3 seitherin: Just finished The Bear and the Nightingale. Thought it was a bit of a slog once it turned into all zombies all the time (not a fan of that genre) but ultimately really loved the book. I read this for the Reading Through Time December theme 'fractured fairytales', and loved what the author did here - took Russian tales with Russian history and made a very readable tale. Very interesting interview with her at the back, where she talks about her research. There is a sequel coming out next month that I am very much looking forward to The Girl in the Tower

Now reading Marriage of the Sea a book that's been forever on my tbr mountain and decided it was time to read

>1 fredbacon: Philology and the biology and cultivation of the date palm. I'm fascinated that you know such widely diverse subject matter.

I'm reading Gillian Flynn's Dark Places, which, as my life continues to be stressful, is engaging and creepy enough to take my mind off the real world for hours at a time. I have almost completely eschewed Netflix in favour of books for the first time in several years, and I had forgotten the wondrous power of a good story there in print, and the compulsive need to have a book nearby at all hours and in all places.

I finished An Available Man.

>7 cindydavid4: I'm only about 3/4 of the way done with The Bear and the Nightingale, but I've enjoyed the read so far. I think I'm just about to hit the part you call a zombie slog. Deathless is also based on Russian folklore tho it takes a different approach. Right now I'm attending a house gnome (domovoi) committee meeting where they explain to the protagonist how the change in the Russian political system caused them to adapt. I'm not very far along in that book yet so I don't really have an opinion about it.

Finished and reviewed on my thread the second installment of a good space opera series, called Heart Scarab.

Starting on Old Filth by Jane Gardam it is the first in a trilogy.

>12 aussieh: This is one of those books that makes me jealous not to be reading it for the first time. You have a wonderful reading experience ahead.

>12 aussieh: There is a sequel and prequel book to it - definitely read this one first, then go in order of publication - sequel, then prequel.Really interesting that way, more powerful I think. Been meaning to read them in chronological order but things keep getting in the way. Anyway, enjoy!

When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II
Molly Guptill Manning
4/5 stars
Who would think a book about the distribution of books to WWII soldiers would be interesting? I certainly didn’t but then I read a review and thought I would give this book a try.

During WWI, there was a book distribution program for the troops but when that war ended the governing body of the program was not disbanded but funding for it ended. When Hitler encouraged the burning of books, librarians were up in arms over the desecration of books and took up the gathering of books to send to the troops and from there it grew until the government and publishers took it over. It certainly was a life saver to the men and women fighting the horror of war and over 141 million books were distributed to soldiers. Manning does a wonderful job in portraying a possibly boring subject into a real page turner and I even found several books to include on my never ending reading list.

Finished The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Enjoyed the story.

Next into my reading rotation is The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey.

>12 aussieh: I loved Old Filth and the others in the trilogy! Enjoy!

>9 snash: I read that one a few years ago and really liked it!

I'm overextending myself this week with Get in Trouble (short stories), My Favorite Thing is Monsters (graphic novel), and Americanah.

Really intriguing, much to the fact that male and female create a civilisation. The principle of Yin Yang.

I am done reading Lord of The Chance, great one. Humor and Romance.

>8 ahef1963: I'm just endlessly curious, and very good with google. :-) Scrounging for information and synthesizing it is kind of what I do for a living. When I was a graduate student that meant spending days in university libraries poring through old reports and journals and books. Now I can do it in an hour while curled up in bed with my Samsung tablet. I found a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on the biology and cultivation of the date palm. It was a great help. I found it in about 15 minutes.

When I was a graduate student I once spent a day in the University of Texas geology library looking for a geological survey of the beaches at Padre Island, Texas. I did that just so that I could find the depth of the water table. I needed it to show that the signals we were getting from an array of geophones on the beach were due to a reverberation from the water table. We were trying to locate buried objects in the sand in an effort to develop a technique for locating land mines. Knowing the depth of the water table, I was able to model the reverberation with surprising accuracy. Once I did that, I could do a coherent background subtraction of the reverberation and out popped the signal from our buried object right where we had placed it!

My parents and brothers still find what I do for a living to be mysterious. They don't seem to believe that it's possible to make a living answering questions for people (usually the government) and writing reports. I try to explain it to them, and I just get baffled looks in response. After listening to me describe my job, my older brother Carl finally responded, "Yes, but what do you DO?" :-)

The simple answer is that I have a lot of fun learning new and peculiar things and then explaining them to people. It's what I've done since I was a kid. My mother still talks about the time that we went to Yellowstone when I was nine, and I explained to the rest of the family how geysers work. A fun evening for me was picking a volume of the encyclopedia off the shelf and randomly reading up on some topic. I was a very weird kid. :-D

>20 fredbacon: No, you were a very unique, curious kid! Many parents would wish that just a drop of your curiosity would fall on their children and get them to seek answers to questions. Google must make all this easier but I'll bet you still spend a fair amount of time in libraries. Not everyone can turn their passions into a career. Lucky guy!

After a run of badly written books, I'm happily reading an old chestnut from Victoria Holt The Queen's Confession a fictional memoir "by" Marie Antoinette. I've read it a million times. It was the first book that got me headed to the library to find out more about the French Revolution.

I've also got the newest translation of The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson. I'm thrilled when a woman takes on the task of translating Homer. Wilson has taken liberties by adding some modernity to the translation and I'm not a fan. Other than that, it is a fine, workman like translation. I'm kind of liking the simplicity and grounded quality of her work.

I also started Uncommon Arrangements by Kate Roiphe, about uncommon famous marriages. I realized that I actually have MANY books on marriages from about 1900-1962. At least four books about various famous, literary marriages! Hmm.

Jury duty tomorrow! This introvert loves being a good citizen but wishes she didn't have to sit in a room full of fellow citizens for eight hours.

You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack needs no introduction to the initiate but here's a review in my thread, post 154.

I love this book immoderately.

Re Old Filth

>13 NarratorLady:>14>17 I know I will enjoy all three novels, for me rereads from many moons ago!!

Still continuing slowly with David Sedaris's Theft by Finding. It's a long read and I hope to finish it by the time I see him perform next week.

I started A History of Loneliness by John Boyne because I recently read and loved his newest, The Heart's Invisible Furies. However, I'm 20% into the book and only read it when I have nothing else to do.

I also started Total Cat Mojo by Jackson Galaxy who I saw and met at a book event last week. He's the host of Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell" & a wonderful animal advocate. I've only just begun it but it's a must-have for any cat lover and guardian.

I am reading 1984 alongside my niece (16 - who is struggling in her English classes). She is doing a lot better now that we discuss the books, so she can understand the issues. It is actually very good!

Finished the excellent Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke.

Next up for listening is What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons.

I finished Donna Leon's Earthly Remains -- nice to be back in Brunetti's world again.

Next up: Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin

>2 richardderus: Richard it is so good to hear from you!

After a lingering stay in hospital, I am home and starting to read on Kindle The Trapped Girl By Robert Dugoni. A welcome escape vehicle.

>29 Travis1259: David! How delightful! I'm sad to hear about the hospital stay, glad you're out. I came home, so to speak, because Trumpbook...that is, Facebook, heh...was knocking me to my emotional floor too often. I needed a respite from reality's many, many horrors so where else would I come but here?

Finished Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Tender is the Night - both books brilliantly evocative of their times and places and both partly based on their author's own experiences - glad I read them but in both cases found aspects of the writing distracting.

Started Paul Auster's New York Trilogy - a third of the way through and it's turning out to be a thought-provoking page-turner - right up my street.

Also halfway through an audiobook of The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared - took an instant dislike to the jollity of the narration, and the story itself, but I've actually chuckled a few times so am sticking with it.

Short of reading time lately so haven't started this quarter's non-fiction, The Highland Clearances.

> 1 fredbacon Sounds interesting! I just started an Old Testament Bible study at my church plus a New Testament beginning class for seminary and Biblical history is becoming a fast growing interest for me personally.

It's been ages since I've posted on this group! I'm delving into Cloudsplitter and will be starting Lab Girl for a local library reading group.

I finished Deductions from the World War by Baron Alexander von Freytag-Loringhoven. von Freytag-Loringhoven, Deputy-Chief of the German General Staff at the time, wrote this book in the waning days of World War One. As far as he was concerned, "The War to End All Wars" was just another chapter in the ongoing saga of the glorious German military. It's a chilling book in many ways. You can find my more in-depth comments, and several quoted passages, on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up will be Wheelworld, the second book in Harry Harrison's "To the Stars" trilogy.

>20 fredbacon: How wonderful to be able to answer people's questions for a living, even if it's the government asking. Sounds like a dream of a job! It does sound mysterious.

I am catching every virus going this year - product of working from home for several years and then plunging into a room of 120 people at cubicles and all their germs at once. I haven't been able to read much due to the high fever, but today I completed Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (touchstones not working). It was enjoyable but not as gripping as I'd hoped.

Next up is probably The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin - the omnibus edition recently arrived in the post and it looks inviting.

Just finished Bluebird, bluebird by Attica Locke

Now starting The angry tide, next in the popular Poldark saga by Winston Graham.

I've inhaled the third of five books in the Taking Shield space opera series, Makepeace. Anna Butler made a rich and well-layered background for her humanity-versus-superaliens stories, and this one really ratchets up the stakes for the earth colony Albion on every front.

I'll tell you a fact about the series that might be considered a "warning": The hero is a gay soldier from a family of soldiers. His sexuality is a problem for him in his family and his career. It's not dealt with in a romance-novel way; this is a space opera that has a love story in it.

For all those who silently mark a big red X through anything remotely related to gay sex, I say, "what about a love story?" There's almost no sex on the pages of the books. Take a flyer on Gyrfalcon, the first book in the series. See if maybe your discomfort doesn't wilt a bit under the propulsive pace of Author Butler's story.

Bellman & Black
Diane Setterfield
3.5/5 stars
Bellman, a young ambitious man, has had a hard life but soon finds himself in a good place with a family and a good job. However, life has different plans for him and the deaths of all but one of his family members occur. That night after they were buried, he meets a Mr. Black and strikes a bargain with him. Bellman than throws himself into his new venture but does not encounter Mr. Black till years later when he realizes he has made a huge mistake. This was definitely a page turner for me and also provoked a lot of thought.

Finished What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons.

Next up for listening is Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon by Henry Marsh.

Such a joy to have you back, Sir Richard. Great review.

>41 CarolynSchroeder: Thank you, Carolyn, that is the loveliest compliment I can imagine receiving.

Finished New York Trilogy - a clever page turner but slightly bamboozling...

Started two other 1001 BYMRBYDs - Veronika Decides to Die and The Country Girls - I think I'll enjoy the latter more.

The new thread is up over here.