Weird_O Bill's 2018 Rubber Room & Library #1

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Books Read: Second Quarter 2018

June (0 read)

May (0 read)

April (2 read)
23. The Nazis Next Door by Eric Lichtblau (4/5/18)
22. Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (4/2/18)

Books Read: First Quarter 2018

March (9 read)
21. The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty (3/31/18)
20. Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen (3/30/18)
19. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (3/23/18)
18. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (3/18/18)
17. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (3/17/18)
16. The Twits by Roald Dahl (3/11/18)
15. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande (3/8/18)
14. This Boy's Life by Tobius Wolff (3/5/18)
13. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (3/2/18)

February (8 read)
12. Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (2/26/18)
11. On William Faulkner by Eudora Welty (2/22/18)
10. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (2/21/18)
9. A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie (2/15/18)
8. Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead (2/12/18)
7. The Hilliker Curse by James Ellroy (2/10/18)
6. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre (2/8/18)
5. Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley (2/1/18)

January (4 read)
4. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (1/30/18)
3. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (1/17/18)
2. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1/13/18)
1. Lucky You by Carl Hiassen (1/11/18)

A message of great social and political import will be placed here.

Surely.

Well, probably.

Never know; I just might.

In January 2017, I posted a list of 24 TBRs that appear on an amalgamated table of "Best Books Lists" published by eight different (self-appointed) book-picking authorities. "If I average two reads a month," I said then, "I'll read them all by the end of the year." As time passed, I had opportunities to read two books on the amalgamated "Best Books" table that I hadn't selected for my 2017 reading subset. So I read them and added them.

By year's end, I had read 15 of the 26 books on the final list. They are:

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (pub. 1949) (4/8/17)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (pub. 1899) (1/11/17)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (pub. 1719) (2/5/17)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (pub. 1861) (8/31/17)
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy (pub. 1990) (5/29/17)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (pub. 1850) (7/31/17)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (pub. 1929) (12/13/17)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (pub. 1940) (5/24/17)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (pub. 1948) (1/30/17)
Ironweed by William Kennedy (pub. 1983) (7/8/17)
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (pub. 1990) (3/2/17)
The Counterlife by Philip Roth (pub. 1986) (3/29/17)
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (pub. 1886) (4/5/17)
Sophie's Choice by William Styron (pub. 1979) (3/12/17)
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White (pub. 1952) (7/31/17)

Eleven books remain in their niche, not yet read. Four have bookmarks in them, indicating that I started reading but stalled for one reason or another. I'll just read them in 2018. I'm adding The Joy Luck Club because that's what I have for Amy Tan month of the 2018 AAC. And it also gives me 12 books. That makes this a one-book-a-month challenge.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (pub. 1868-9)
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (pub. 1958)
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (pub. 1959)
The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy (pub. 1955)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (pub. 1880)
I, Claudius by Robert Graves (pub. 1934)
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (pub. 2003)
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (pub. 1957)
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (pub. 1915)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pub. 1759)
To a Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (pub. 1927)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (pub. 1990)

 Young Hercule Poirot

Got the Christie bug. Not serious, but I don't want to ignore it. I caught it while watching Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express. Having seen three cinematic versions, I wanted to read Dame Agatha's original. At about the same time, Christmas wish lists started circulating, and two grands, who also saw the latest movie, asked for Christie books. Christie wrote a LOT of books. Which were the best?

An acceptable list I found at The Guardian, contributed by John Curran. His selections listed in order of publication:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Hercule Poirot has retired to the village of King's Abbot to cultivate marrows. But when wealthy Roger Ackroyd is found stabbed in his study, he agrees to investigate. A typical village murder mystery; or so it seems until the last chapter with its stunning revelation. This title would still be discussed today even if Christie had never written another book. An unmissable, and still controversial, milestone of detective fiction.

Peril at End House (1932)
The impoverished owner of End House hosts a party where fireworks camouflage the shot that kills her cousin. Which of the other guests is a murderer? Perfectly paced, with subtle and ingenious clueing, and an unexpected but totally logical solution. Of its type, perfection; this is how the classic detective story should be written. Poirot

Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
The glamorous Orient Express stops during the night, blocked by snowdrifts. Next morning the mysterious Mr. Ratchett is found stabbed in his compartment and untrodden snow shows that the killer is still on board. This glamorous era of train travel provides Poirot with an international cast of suspects and one of his biggest challenges. Predicated on an inspired gimmick, this is one of the great surprise endings in the genre.

The ABC Murders (1935)
Despite advance warnings, Poirot is unable to prevent the murders of Alice Ascher, Betty Barnard and Carmichael Clarke. Can he stop the ABC Killer before he reaches D? One of the earliest examples of the "serial killer" novel this classic Christie is based on a beautifully simple premise. But how many readers are as clever as Poirot?

And Then There Were None (1939)
Ten people are invited to an island for the weekend. Although they all harbour a secret, they remain unsuspecting until they begin to die, one by one, until eventually … there are none. Panic ensues when the diminishing group realises that one of their own number is the killer. A perfect combination of thriller and detective story, this much-copied plot is Christie's greatest technical achievement. Mystery

Five Little Pigs (1943)
Sixteen years ago, Caroline Crale died in prison while serving a life sentence for poisoning her husband. Her daughter asks Poirot to investigate a possible miscarriage of justice and he approaches the other five suspects. This sublime novel is a subtle and ingenious detective story, an elegiac love story and a masterful example of storytelling technique, with five separate accounts of one devastating event. Christie's greatest achievement.

Crooked House (1949)
The Leonides family all live together in a not-so-little crooked house. But which of them poisoned the patriarch, Aristides? Murder in the extended family always provided fertile ground for Christie, and this was one of her own favourites. Another example of a sinister reinterpretation of a nursery rhyme with an ending that her publishers initially considered too shocking, even for Agatha Christie. Mystery

A Murder is Announced (1950)
In the village of Chipping Cleghorn, a murder is announced in the local paper's small ads. As Miss Blacklock's friends gather for what they fondly imagine will be a parlour game, an elaborate murder plot is set in motion. This was Christie's 50th title and remains Miss Marple's finest hour. Notable also for its setting in post-war Britain (a factor vital to the plot) this is arguably the last of the ingeniously clued and perfectly paced Christies.

Endless Night (1967)
Working-class Michael Rogers tells the story of his meeting and marrying Ellie, a fantastically rich American heiress. As they settle in their dream house in the country, it becomes clear that not everyone is happy for them. A very atypical Christie, this tale of menacing suspense builds to a horrific climax and shows that even after 45 years she had not lost the power to confound her readers. The best novel from her last 20 years. Mystery

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (1975, but written during the second world war)
An old and frail Poirot returns to the scene of his first case, the country house Styles, now a guest-house. He summons his friend Hastings to help identify the killer he suspects is a fellow-guest. Christie uses every trick in the book to produce a unforgettable, yet poignant, swan song for the little Belgian. This novel was written during the Blitz and stored in a safe to be published after Christie's own death. It was actually published in October 1975 (Christie died in January 1976) and Poirot received a front-page obituary in the New York Times. In a lifetime of literary tours-de-force, this is the biggest shock of all.

The check following the title designates a book I've read, four of them in all. I have a copy of Curtain but haven't read it. Five to shop for. I think I want to read them before summer.

>7 weird_O: HA!!

>8 weird_O: Heh.

Happy to see you in 2018.

>8 weird_O: Aw!

Happy new thread Bill. Wishing you a quick recovery and lots of library sales in 2018.

Happy reading in 2018, Bill!

>7 weird_O: LOL!

Bill, your thread always makes me laugh! Dropping a star because really, how could I not? Love the thread title, and I am looking forward to seeing what you dish out this year. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, Bill!

Happy Reading in 2018, Bill! Hope to see you on the AAC. My final year hosting.

Hi Bill!

Welcome back! Happy new year!

Happy 2018, Bill!

Happy New Year. Looking forward to lots of weirdness from you! :)

Happy 2018!! Be weird. : )

Happy 2018, Bill! I love your Christie challenge. I am in the midst of reading the Poirots in publication order, but when that's done I'm eGer to turn to her standalone books. (I've already read all the Miss Marples.)

Hope your 2018 is filled with good reads!

Happy New Year
Happy New Group here
This place is full of friends
I hope it never ends
It brew of erudition and good cheer.

Hi Bill! Happy new thread in our shiny new 2018 group!

>8 weird_O: Not a bad list at all. Five Little Pigs was published in the US as Murder in Retrospect, which is how I have it on my shelves. It's one of my absolute favorites, along with Nemesis, not on the above list.

Happy New Year! I wish you to read many good books in 2018.

Happy New Year, Bill. I hope your 2018 is fabulous.

Happy New Year, Bill - good to see your thread.


(Sunrise at Newgrange, Ireland)

A Christie challenge and more mobility, things are looking up for you in 2018, Bill.

>8 weird_O: Thanks for the Christie list. I do think you've named her best ones, although I also have not read Curtain:Poirot's Last Case. For a while when I was younger, I read her stuff almost compulsively, but a lot of it was less than stellar, and I put her away. Now I might revisit the titles you've listed.

Hello? Bill?

I've been OFF, just decomposing into a grease spot. Not finding anything I wanted to read on the main floor. A chapter or two a day in Sense and Sensibility but not really into it. I think I need a cheat-sheet on the characters to compensate for my slow read; I forget who people are; too many Miss Dashwoods, for example.

Anyway... Last evening, I took myself downstairs, to the lower-level stacks, and returned with a sack of TBRs that caught my fancy. I'm a few chapters into Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen, about two parties that have won a $28 million lottery, two parties to get $14 million each. Also in the sack:

     Better by Atul Gawande (3/8/18)
     The Hilliker Curse by James Ellroy (2/10/18)
     Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley (2/1/18)
     A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (1/17/18)
     True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
     Double Cross by Ben Macintyre (2/8/18)
     The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
     Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
     Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

I do expect to finish the Austen I am reading, plus On William Faulkner that I expected to finish three weeks ago but didn't, and then also Nicholas Nickleby, all 835 pages of it.

Gotta get som-thin read; it's Jan 10, for God sakes!

EDIT 2/10/18: Check marks the book as read. Plus date completed.

Consider the Lobster should blow away the funky cobwebs, Bill. Had the cultishly adored David Foster Wallace stuck to essays, I'd be in the cult for sure.

Hello, Bill. I just found your thread. Happy new year!

>30 weird_O: Good luck with that TBR stack, Bill. Hope this lights a fire under your behind. I loved Goon Squad, Double Cross and the Krakauer.

I also have Lobster on shelf.

I have Lobster in my collection as well and want to see what all the hoopla is about Wallace's essays. I have plans to read it later in the year. It will be interesting to read what you have to say about it.

I hope the infusion of new titles jump-starts your reading mojo, Bill! Glad to hear the ankle is slowly improving, at least.

Whew! You're back.

Excellent 'haul'. I read Ellroy's My Dark Places and am intrigued with The Hilliker Curse. I love DFW. I don't have Consider the Lobster, but do have Both Flesh and Not. Have fun!

So. What a whirl of activity this year! For example, like, I finished a book the other day. A whole book. All 350 pages of it. I'm exhausted. How many of you out there have read a whole book this year?

Me, me, me! I have!

Once you get your strength back, are you going to share the title of this magnificent accomplishment?

Happy 2018! Hope the book funk flies away soon!
I loved Visit with the Goon Squad!

Huzzah! Slid my butt step by step down the stairs to the lower level and galumphed with the walker out the hall to my private and personal hermity hole. And there...there...I spruced up my books-read-in-2017 shelf and photographed it.



The last time I shot the shelf, I also measured the book array from end to end. That was on October 8, at which time I had read 68 books. The span totaled 5 feet 4 and 3/8 inches. I forgot to do that today, and I'm not going to repeat the trek just to do that. Sorry.

I will say that I finished the year at 93 books.

#40
93 is certainly more books than I read last year. I think I ended thee year at somewhere around 85 total.

>30 weird_O: >34 benitastrnad: When I get to it, Consider the Lobster will be the first DWF book I read. I'm looking forward to it.

>32 jessibud2: Hi Shelley! Glad you found the rubber room. I'll get to your extension of Canada before you know it.

>33 msf59: Are you reading NN? I haven't gotten to the thread yet, but the book is underpinning that TBR stack. I'm a few chapters into Goon Squad.

I don't know why exactly, but I got the notion to show how the rank of books expanded across the shelf as I read in 2017. Photos posted before, but here they are, side by side.



Books read through June 2017: 43 books, 42+ inches. Six months into 2017
 



Books read through October 8, 2017: 68 books, 64+ inches. Nine months into 2017
 



Books read through December 31, 2017: 93 book, 75+ inches. End of 2017

>37 weird_O: I've read 2 books so far this year. Not setting the stacks on fire, by any means.

>43 weird_O: I like this idea of the photo of books read! With your permission, I might borrow this great idea. To give a visual image regarding a yearly accomplishment gives a sense of accomplishment!

I'm not sure if I will make the January Bethlehem Library book sale. After the eighth surgery, I was surprised at how well I was. As three months post surgery nears, I'm taking a down ward trek. I believe the increased pain is related to this nasty cold, snowy weather.

But, on the positive side, resting with the ability to read has netted eight books thus far in 2018.

I hope to see you at the sale if I am able to attend. All good wishes for you and your family for a wonderful 2018!

Our local newspaper had an article in the Sunday paper about how to read more books. One of the suggestions was to join a book club. That made me smile, as I tend to think of LT as one giant book club.

I do think that being a member here and active on the threads has prompted me to read more books. Of course, it also adds to my wish list, but it has really made me up my game on reading. I suspect that the same has happened to you, as there is a significant difference in the numbers (and the picture) from one year to the next.

>43 weird_O: Impressive amount of growth, Bill. LT does that to a person's reading.

>44 laytonwoman3rd: YOW!! Don't burn those books, Linda. I'm up to 3 reads with the completion of A Visit from the Goon Squad. But Nicholas Nickleby is next. All 835 pages of it. (I'm planning to just breeze through it. Ha ha ha.)

>45 Whisper1: Not going to make the book sale this month, Linda. I see the surgeon on Friday the 26th, and even if I can dispense with the boot, I'm not going to be able to hobble up and down even the short flight of stairs up into the sales room, much less drag my little tote around. (Ah. In case you missed my post in December, I fell and broke my right ankle. Surgeon set and reinforced the break with plates, and I've been off the foot since.)

>46 benitastrnad: LT is all the book club I need or want, Benita. I started listing my reads in 2010, and I read 78 books that year. In 2011, 74. In 2012, 68. In 2013, 90. In 2014, I read 80. In 2015, I joined LT and read 102 books. My throughput declined the next year to 85, and last year I read 93.

Too bad about not making the book sale, Bill. Just think how good it will feel to have full mobility back.

Hi Bill!

Yay for starting Nicholas Nickleby. All 835 pages of it. I'm about halfway through.

Sorry you'll be missing the book sale. But you've probably got a few books in the house you haven't read yet, right? After NN? *smile*

Here you go, Bill. As promised.

>49 Familyhistorian: Full mobility is the GOAL.

>50 karenmarie: Karen, I DO have a couple or three unread books floating around the place. Funny.

>51 jnwelch: Oh thanks, Joe. I rather cherish being one among few. So a whole world full of weirdos? Nahhh. Hahahahahaha... :-)

Here, right back at you:

      

>52 weird_O: Heh, I like that one.

Bill, the schedule for the Friends of the Scranton Public Library book sales in 2018 was handed to me at Thursday's SPL Board meeting. Here it is:

Oooh. Thanks, Linda. That end of Feb. date is good. I see the bonefixer Friday.

Bill--Glad to see you are off and running with the reads finally. Although there will be no sprinting through N2. Slow and steady and you have to pick it up first! (Which I have not been doing. I really need to get back to the tome!) Love your shot of books-read and I also have Consider the Lobster waiting for some attention. Good luck at the doctors.

I see that Ursula Le Guin has died at age 88. I've read only one of her many books, but it was very good. I have another on my bedside (literally) TRB subpile.


Ms. Le Guin speaking in 2014 at the University of Oregon. Credit Jack Liu for the NYTimes.

>52 weird_O: Nice one! And true. :-)

>58 weird_O: Big loss. She was a top author for me when I was a young guy.

Hi Bill! Glad to hear that you're a bit more ambulatory. Keep up the good work!

Happy Sunday, Bill. Hope those books have been treating you well. Give us an update and congrats on graduating to the boot. You are mobile.

Howdy, Bill! I'm glad to hear that you are getting around a bit better. I hope it won't be long before you kick that pesky boot to the curb for good!

Our sixth granddaughter, born this morning (1/30/18) at 1:27. Her name is Annalise Marlena, probably to be called Annie. Mom and Dad and her two sisters are doing just fine. Can't wait to hold her.

* B. A. G. *

Oh, congrats, Bill and family! She's lovely.

Aww, congrats!! What a cutie!

Much happiness to Miss Annalise Marlena. A life full of love and smiles and play.

How exciting! She's beautiful. Congratulations to you all.

>63 weird_O: *melt* What a little treasure. Congratulations!

>63 weird_O: Great! Congrats, Bill. Annalise Marlena is a beautiful name.

>48 weird_O: I am so sorry. I didn't know that you broke your right foot. I can only imagine how painful this is. Good luck with your surgery. Please let me know how you feel after the procedure. I have a good idea of your book tastes. If I make it, and see something that you might like, I'll definitely grab it for you. And, you know that your little tote, is not little. It is a HUGE L.L. bean bag and when I see it, I am always tempted to buy one like it.

All good wishes.

63 What a beautiful, healthy baby. Her name is very special.

>63 weird_O:

What a perfectly happy little face!

Congratulations to All!

Lovely baby, Bill! Congrats to you all!

And congratulations from me too. Hope you get to meet her in person asap (if you haven't already!).

Congrats on your beautiful new grand baby girl!

Oh my goodness, what a beautiful little girl and a beautiful name, too. Well done, all of you!

Annalise with her eyes open, showing her lovely head of hair. I'm pretty sure she's going to be a reader.

>79 jessibud2: Edited to make image visible to all. Linked from my junk drawer instead of Google Photos.

She's 'dorable. My daughter didn't even have that much hair at a year.

Of course she's going to be a reader. Have you started reading to her yet?

>77 weird_O: - Not seeing anything except a gray circle with a white horizontal line. Fix please, so we can ooh and ahhhh! ;-)

>78 karenmarie: Annie's dad had more hair than that at birth. Very dark. But it didn't last all that long.

And, no, I haven't read to her, Karen. I haven't even seen her, except in photos. She put her mother through a LOT of painful work, because she was "posterior," meaning she passed through the birth canal face up. Her spine was grinding along her mother's spine, causing a lot of pain and protracting the hardest part of the labor. So Sam has stayed in the hospital an extra day to recover. (Our first-born was posterior.)

I see her now! She looks like she's thinking about what to choose for her first book request from Grandpa!

:-)

So I'm suggesting Dr. Seuss from this moment forward so she'll grow up to love language, sound, and fun.

>82 richardderus: Oh yes, RD. It's good advice, which I will follow. Well, so long as Green Eggs and Ham is not on the reading list. I'm still experiencing a bit of PTSD from the many, many, MANY times I read it to my children in the 70s and 80s.

I will not watch Chicago because my oldest grandson was *ob*sessed* with it and I hadda watch it like five zillion times *broken weeping*

>77 weird_O: Beautiful! Congrats :)

>63 weird_O: Congratulations, Bill. She looks like a little angel!

Annalise is beautiful. Of course she'll be a reader. Look at her contemplating which book she'll pick first in >77 weird_O: ! And shame on you! You could read to her over the phone. In fact, you should insist on it!

Oh dear on the ankle. Heal up soon!

When my niece was living in Germany as a baby and toddler I sent her recordings of books that I had read to her. You might record Green Eggs and Ham and then you wouldn’t have to read it every time but she could still hear you read it.

>77 weird_O: She looks like she's sizing up the situation, and finding it all rather droll...

^What a great win, Bill. Cheers, my friend!

And congrats on the new grand baby! How exciting!

>63 weird_O: Congrats!!!!!

Congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter. She's gorgeous!

Congratulations, Bill!

What a sweetheart your new granddaughter is, Bill! I hope you get to meet her soon, but in the meantime the pictures are darling.

Hi Bill!

You mentioned WWII spies and counterspies - what are you reading?

I've never been here before! Hi Bill thank you for visiting my thread. >77 weird_O: such cutie-pie!

Thank you one and all for liking my newest granddaughter. Forgive me for not responding sooner; I do appreciate your comments.

The year roars on, and I've already read six (6) books. At this instant, I cannot say what I'll try next. I just now finished Double Cross, a narrative history of a handful of spies and counterspies run by British intelligence during World War II. I do have a stack of TBRs beside the bed and on my bedside table; no dearth of candidates.

I'll choose within the hour.

Hooray for finishing 6 books, Bill. And hooray for Double Cross. I loved that one too.

# 6. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre Finished 2/8/18

The Weird Report^TM  

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get something written.

Good morning, Bill, and happy Friday to you!

Did you choose a new book? Enquiring minds and all that.

>100 karenmarie: I did. The Hilliker Curse, a memoir by James Ellroy. Should be a quick read. Sex, drugs, and crime novels.

Hi Bill!

I read My Dark Places, another memoir by Ellroy, and gave it 4 stars - thought it an excellent book and loved his writing style. I hope The Hilliker Curse works for you.

Completed the Ellroy, starting the Whitehead.

Completed the Whitehead, turning now to something else. Hmmmm. What'll it be?

Something exciting? Something soothing? Something utterly unknown to you? What WAS it?!

>105 richardderus: Agatha Christie. She wrote so many books that most of them are utterly unknown to me. It soothes me to know it will be a pretty quick read. It's exciting to me because it is one of her Ten Best. (>8 weird_O:)

Because I can now get up and down stairs with a lot less difficulty, I've been plotting the installation of shelving in my Hermitty Hole on the lower level/basement. I'm concurrently re-evaluating my book catalog, and I'm wondering (just now) whether I can download my LT catalog and merge it with a spreadsheet program like Google Sheets without extensive rekeying. What do all you IT wizards think about that?

Bill, you can't just give the author's name - what's the title? *smile*

I don't know how Google Sheets works, but LT has several export options - Excel, tab-delimited text, JSON, and MARC (whatever those last two are). I would imagine you could use one of them to import to Google Sheets.

>107 karenmarie: Yes I can. Agatha Christie. See? I did it again. *Nanny nanny foo foo*

A Murder Is Announced

Thanks for the export tips. My vaguely more sensible self has turned me against the idea. Sez I should just read a book. So there you go.

How can I keep my mind on bookiness when Mueller is indicting Russkies, getting close to flipping Manafort's partner Rick Gates, and figuratively goosing everyone in the GOP? The answer is that I can't.

However. I do enjoy eating, so I will pull myself away and stroll the aisles of the supermarket, tossing delectables into a cart. Maybe that'll trigger some bookiness.

Ya think?

>77 weird_O: What a beautiful baby!

How are you feeling? Are you healing?

>110 Whisper1: I am healing. Gotta wear a strap-on "boot" but I can walk around while wearing it. I've found I can drive with it on. So we're getting around. I see the doc on the 28th, and I expect to ditch the boot and start physical therapy.

I read about your daughter's work as a high school counselor on somebody's thread. Her commitment is exemplary (obviously).

>109 weird_O: Maybe a book about the politics? Or do you think it is too soon?

Glad to hear the healing is progressing. Are you looking forward to the physio?

Am I the only reader who selects a half-dozen or so books from the TBR and vows to read something from that short stack next. Then two or three weeks later doesn't really want to start any of them. And spends half a day scouring the vast, unsorted pile of TBRs. Then finally picks something from the main bookcase. Lot of lost time there.

What I picked is Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks. I noticed that I have a nice copy of Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year on my bedside bookcase. Maybe I'll go to it next. Or maybe not.

>113 weird_O: Most certainly not. I check a book out of the library, one that came off my Wish List, for 28 days.

And re-check it for 28 more, uncracked.

Then 28 more, uncracked.

Then take it back, uncracked.

In the meantime, 10-12 books get bought and sit. Uncracked.

The Kindle collection gets decimated in the same period...?? Who AM I??

My health insurer sent me a flier: “It’s important we treat you fairly,” a message repeated in multiple languages. I’m pleased—as a resident (and native) of Pennsylvania Dutch country—that Pennsylvannisch Deitsch is one of the languages. Not that I can read and understand it.

I get "This is a free service"!

>113 weird_O: Bill, I tried to join the various threads where specific books are read. I find that I simply cannot follow what I set out to do. And, like you, I may have a pile of books that I really think I will read, but then, I sander to another and read that one.

I'm glad that the boot may come off soon. Good luck with physical therapy. It works!

>99 weird_O: I said I'd write something...Sheesh!

# 6. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre Finished 2/8/18

The Weird Report^TM  

To read British books about World War II— well, okay, some British books—you get the sense that the Nazis were defeated thanks to the British alone. Double Cross by Ben Macintyre, long a correspondent for The Times of London, is one such. The "D-Day Spies" of the subtitle—The True Story of the D-Day Spies—were all run by British intelligence. The "double cross" is simply that most of the spies we're introduced to were recruited by the Germans to spy on the Brits, but were turned by the British to spy on the Germans. A major part of their spying was to spread disinformation.

Between the title page and the text is a chart naming the names: Birthnames, spy (code) names, handler (case officer) names. Since spy each was working for both the Germans and the British, the chart has multiple spy names and multiple handler names. [I attached a Post-It flag to the page and referred back to it many times as I read.] The chart has only the five principal spies; the story involves many, many more, some of whom were fictions.

The primary spies were neither German nor British; rather, one was a Pole, another a Slav, a third a Spaniard. Each had a rationale for agreeing to spy, as Macintyre reports.

Lily Sergeyev, for example, was a Russian transplanted to France; her family were czarists—her grandfather the last czarist ambassador to Serbia; her father a government official in czarist Russia, a car salesman in Paris; an uncle was a commander in the Russian military during WWI, a purge victim in the late '30s. She considered herself French, but wanted to spy for Germany...well, until she was trained, dispatched to Madrid, then ignored by her case officer. The British intelligence operative in Madrid was more attentive and actually got her into England. From there, she transmitted all sorts of disinformation to the Germans, interspersed with just enough verifiable truth to keep them believing whatever she told them.

Lily, we learn, nurtured a variety of neuroses and hurts and grudges that imperiled the trust placed in her. In that, she was not unlike the others in the network. And, of course, the spies themselves couldn't trust their case officers unconditionally. Mistrust between case officers and between intelligence services occasionally surfaced, more frequently on the German side than the British. Surprisingly (to me) most of the spies in this narrative survived the war.

Though not an edge-of-your-seat read, Double Cross is engaging and informative. It gets a thumbs up from me.

# 9. A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie Finished 2/15/18

The Weird Report^TM  

A column in The Guardian, naming Agatha Christie's 10 best novels, had this to say about A Murder Is Announced:

In the village of Chipping Cleghorn, a murder is announced in the local paper's small ads. As Miss Blacklock's friends gather for what they fondly imagine will be a parlour game, an elaborate murder plot is set in motion. This was Christie's 50th title and remains Miss Marple's finest hour. Notable also for its setting in post-war Britain (a factor vital to the plot) this is arguably the last of the ingeniously clued and perfectly paced Christies.

I haven't read a lot of Miss Christie's books, but this gets two thumbs up from me. It does begin as a lark that pretty quickly turns deadly. Police procedure advances the plot, as Inspector Craddock collects each attendee's version of what transpired, as the police check into the victim's background, and examine the informal trade and exchange engaged in by the community. Christie explores personalities, perspectives and attitudes, the nature of observation and memory. Miss Marple, of course, gleans vital tidbits that nourish the mystery on its way to solution, and she nudges the characters to reveal insights and observations they didn't necessarily know they had. Most of this she does out of the reader's view. It isn't a mystery the reader will solve, because much key information is revealed only as the case is wrapped up. Christie even sets up one of those "get all the suspects in a room and unravel the mystery and at last expose the perp" set pieces.

>114 richardderus: I bet you're one of those weird_Os I've heard about. Gotta watch out of them.

>112 charl08: I'm avoiding political books, Charlotte. I get my fill of that from newspapers and leftish blogs.

>116 laytonwoman3rd: Okay, Linda. Did you read that in the Korean or the Cambodian-Mon-Khmer?

>117 Whisper1: I had a bit of a struggle getting launched this year, but I think now that I'm over the hump and rolling free and easy. Happy to see you circulating a little more.

>118 weird_O:, >119 weird_O: Good reviews of Double Cross and Murder is Announced, Bill. I've liked other Ben Macintyre books (Agent Zigzag and the Kim Philby ones stand out), but haven't read this one.

I'm a Dame Agatha fan, and you've nudged me to re-read this one.

>118 weird_O: Good review of Double Cross. I loved that one too.

I am a big fan of Geraldine Brooks, but Year of Wonders remains my favorite. I hope you enjoy it as much.

Happy Monday, Bill.

>121 weird_O: The Pennsylvania Dutch one, of course! I was at a doctor's appointment with an elderly relative a couple weeks ago, and on the counter in the exam room there was a similar poster, offering interpreter services for patients with little or no English. The idea was you point to your language on the chart, and an interpreter would be brought in. I know Hmong and Vietnamese were options, but I didn't notice whether Deitsch was on there. This was at a facility affiliated with Penn State/Hershey Medical Center, so I hope it was.

I had a swell visit with my primary-care doc. We talked about books some; she was a lit major as an undergrad. She's reading Candice Millard, I'm reading about the plague. I also showed her a photo or two of my newest granddaughter. And I got her to show me x-rays of my ankle. Lots of hardware in there now.



All my bloody numbers are terrific, by the bye.

Glad to hear that you are doing well.

Interesting about the Pennsylvania Deutsche in your insurance flyer. Who would have thought that this country would have need of such a language? And for so long a time? The Pennsylvania Deutsche have been around for a couple hundred years. You would think that they would have learned to read and write in good old 'Merican English by now.

Congrats on the good doctor visit. And holy moly! That's some xray! Looks like your ankle swallowed the tool box!

>125 weird_O:

Glad it's all fine, but what's the deal with The Loose Screw?!

Oh wow, your poor ankle! That's a lot of screws!

Hi Bill!

Yay for Agatha Christie. Yay for your ankle healing nicely. And I'm charmed that your health-care provider sends things out in Pennsylvania Dutch.

I rarely plan my reading except for my RL book club reads and the very occasional challenge. I find that once I'm 'supposed' to read a book, my rebellious self comes roaring out and I am rather resentful of the homework aspect. So I mostly just pick what sounds good at the moment and it usually works out, with the occasional reading doldrums of starting and stopping up to a dozen books before getting the right book.

>125 weird_O: Holey moley, that is a lot of hardware, Bill. Lots of luck with metal detectors (I always get stopped because of bionic hips). Congrats on those bloody terrific numbers.

Heal quickly! I see big things in your future:

>132 mstrust: *snerk*

Gee whiz, Bill, when you break an ankle you don't go halfway, do you?! I'm glad that all the healing is proceeding according to Hoyle. Keep up the good work!

>124 laytonwoman3rd: >126 benitastrnad: Highmark Blue Shield is the insurer. I am not sure what led to the inclusion of Deitsch as one of the languages. I'm aware of people in my area who know the language, but not many of them use it exclusively. I think the Amish converse in it, but I don't perceive them as medical insurance holders. Some Mennonites too. It is a language used by community members among themselves, although most do know English. I think that's true of many communities: Hispanics, Asians, Indians, etc.

"To read British books about World War II— well, okay, some British books—you get the sense that the Nazis were defeated thanks to the British alone."

This made me laugh - My Dad's standard complaint about WW2 movies is the opposite ("you would think that the Nazis were defeated by the US alone"). The joys of national memory. I'm kind of surprised that British war books get published in the US - are they popular despite the jingoism, do you think?

>127 jessibud2: >129 ChelleBearss: It is more random than I expected, but I don't guess the installer had a nice rectilinear assembly to work with.

>128 m.belljackson: The loose screw(s) are in my head, Marianne. All of those in the ankle are driven tight into the bones. A couple of them do appear to be adrift, but they aren't. I'm sure I'd know it if they really were loose. :-)

>131 jnwelch: I don't think it will be a problem, Joe. I broke my left upper arm in a car crash in 1990 and it was aligned with three thin rods driven through the bone, shoulder to elbow. They've never triggered a metal-detector alarm. This stuff may be different.

>132 mstrust: >133 drneutron: Never happen, Jennifer. No one would would dump $6 million into this creaking bod. Although the hospital and staff charged a lot for installing what they bought at the hardware store.

>134 rosalita: I broke this ankle before, Julia, but that break only involved the slender bone. Practice makes better, huh?

Finished Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It was good, though I must say I was bushwhacked by the Epilogue. I've read here that many liked this best of Brooks' novels. But I think I prefer March. Have Caleb's Crossing yet to read. And—ha!—my catalog tells me I also have People of the Book on my TBR; have to look for it. Surprise surprise.

Finishing up Eudora Welty's On William Faulkner. Then som'thin' else. Lots of good stuff to choose from.

#138
This was the first book of Geraldine Brooks that I read, and I really enjoyed it. I have read March and People of the Book as well, and I liked Year of Wonders the best of all of them.

I had the pleasure of hearing Brooks speak when she was a debut author. She came to the ALA conference in Philadelphia and was one of the featured debut authors for a breakfast, and at one of the stages in the exhibit hall. She brought a plastic black rat and started her talk by plunking the rat down on the podium and then saying "this is Ratus Ratus. It is the creature that caused all the trouble." (or something approximately close to that.) At that point I had to read the book. It was a very effective introduction.

Hello, O.!

>119 weird_O: I listened to that one on audio last year and enjoyed though realize I never would have survived reading it in print. Just too little 'action' as it were. I have Agent ZigZag in the car now, but not sure when I'll get to it.

I'm not sure if you saw it, but I left you a photo message on Mamie's last thread to encourage you in the direction you thought you were being pulled*.

*Arsenic and Old Lace

I read Year of Wonders many years ago and loved it. I don't remember the epilogue, per se.... I also have People of the Book on my TBR shelves.... had have for a long time.

>125 weird_O: Cool ankle hardware! P has a similar image of her hip. She says it's a bit weird to walk around knowing she has significant titanium in her body but she can't feel it at all. On the other hand, she is able to walk 3 miles without pain. So.

I'm looking forward to meeting you in Philly!!!

I have loved almost everything by Brooks that I have read. Another earlier and apparently less well-known book by her, Foreign Correspondence was a really interesting look back at her early life and how she came to her career as a writer. How, as a young girl in Australia, she turned to pen-pals to learn about the wider world, and how, as an adult, she decided to try to find those pen-pals again. I read this one after having already read Year of Wonders and People of the Book.

>136 charl08: You snuck your post in there when I was replying to the backlog I'd let pile up, Charlotte. Yeah, jingoism. I admit it. I was going to take that out, then thought, "Oh, what the heck." Which is always the easy excuse. Or something like that. As I recall, the primary appearance of the Americans in the Allied intelligence operation was J. Edgar Hoover's resistance to British methods when one of the double cross spies was dispatched by the Germans to the U.S. The Brits were so afraid the F.B.I. would blow a valuable operative.

>139 benitastrnad: Hearing Brooks must have been a treat, Benita. Wish I could have been there (Philly's just 80 minutes away, too). Khrushchev had his shoe, Brooks her plastic rat. Haha.

>140 brodiew2: I read Rogue Heroes last year, enjoyed it, and didn't hesitate to snatch Double Cross when I saw it at a library sale. Yeah, I did see young TR, reporting back from The Big Dig. No, not the one in Boston.

>141 EBT1002: Oh, don't mention hips. I hear from them if I do too much walking. What constitutes "too much' is shrinking. We'll see how Sunday goes, walking the galleries in the art museum. It'll be great fun. Looking forward to the meeting.

>142 jessibud2: Foreign Correspondence does sound good. Have to keep an eye out for it.

>143 weird_O: Bill - sorry! I meant British authored W.W.2 books' jingoism, not a slight on US attitudes.

>118 weird_O: To read British books about World War II— well, okay, some British books—you get the sense that the Nazis were defeated thanks to the British alone. You got me with that one as well, Bill. I read a lot of books about WW2 and WW1 and always look at where they were published. I find that the US books tend to dwell on the US involvement and don't say much about the other countries whose forces were involved in the wars. I put those books back.

What great pictures of your newest granddaughter.

Nice hardware X-ray, Bill!

I look forward to seeing you again next Sunday.

Hey Bill. Happy to say I'm one of the weirder Os you'll meet.

Liked the review of A Murder is Announced very much. It got 4 stars from me, as did its Agatha Christie's Marple episode.

Now I am not saying this is exactly how I broke my ankle, but it is damn close. Well, except I wasn't shoveling the snow. Oh, and there wasn't nearly as much snow. And yeah, this guy walked away. Still, this captures the essence of the occasion. You have to click on the link.

https://vtt.tumblr.com/tumblr_nk035yPnaO1rs7vut.mp4

>144 charl08: No apologies necessary, Charlotte. I believe Americans invented jingoism and remain its supreme practitioners.

>145 Familyhistorian: Gave myself away. Glad you like our Annie.

>146 kidzdoc: I'll see the doc Wednesday, and I hope he'll liberate me from The Boot. Don't want to traipse around Philadelphia wearing it. By the way, I observed that the brunch menu is missing scrapple. Oh, the horror.

>147 richardderus: I believe absolutely that you are, RD. A weird_O I mean. Glad you liked the review; positive feedback is welcome always.

I hope tomorrow results in liberation from The Boot, Bill!

# 8. Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead Finished 2/12/18

The Weird Report^TM  

What's in a name? That's at the core of Colson Whitehead's 2006 novel Apex Hides the Hurt. The plot is this: A name change has been suggested for a town. The proposal comes from a hometown tech entrepreneur, Lucky Aberdeen, who thinks the name Winthrop should be replaced with New Prospera. He needs the assent of one of the two others who, with him, make up the town council. One of the two is Regina Goode, a descendant of a co-founder of the town, which was called Freedom by the freed slaves who settled it. The other is Albert Winthrop, the last survivor of the Winthrop family, which located its barbed wire factory in the town (and contrived to change the town's name to Winthrop).

Is it a surprise that Regina favors a return to the name Freedom, that Albie likes the current name, and Lucky wants New Prospera?

The three seek professional advice from a nameless guy who names things. He's from a very special, very high stakes business, and he is Whitehead's protagonist.

He came up with the names and like any good parent he knocked them around to teach them life lessons. He bent them to see if they'd break, he dragged them behind cars by heavy metal chains, he exposed then to high temperatures for extended periods of time. Sometimes consonants broke off and left angry vowels on the laboratory tables. How else was he to know if they were ready for what the world had in store for them?
   Those were the good times...In the coffee room they threw names around like weekends tossing softballs. Clunker names fell with a thud on the ground...They brainstormed, bullshitted, performed assorted chicanery, and then sometimes they hit one out of the park. Sometimes they broke through to the other side and came up with something so spectacular and unexpected, so appropriate to the particular thing waiting, that the others could only stand in awe. You joined the hall of legends.

Once hired, The Name Guy [my name for the protagonist] heads to Winthrop, moseys about, chatting with denizens and visitors, and the novel settles into exposing everyone's backstories, including TNG's. As the naming work progresses, Whitehead doles out a lot to think about, not least of which is the story behind the novel's title. It is not a linear advance; TNG's attention, perception, recognition and comprehension, and finally understanding are't linear. Whitehead's presentation reflects the episodic nature of research and understanding.

Good book. Not perfect, but good. Thumbs up.

            

I've been liberated from the tyranny of The Boot. Ankle break is 90 percent healed. No physical therapy, which to me is a relief; I did that the last time I broke the ankle and it was a lot driving, lot of copays, but 'twas of sketchy benefit (if you ask me).

To celebrate, we bought us a new mattress, which is to be delivered in the next three hours.

I'm ready for a nap...

>152 weird_O: Congratulations on regaining your freedom!

Hurray! Now you can tap dance again!

Hi Bill!

Congrats on the healing, no boot, no PT, new bed too.

So glad that you're seeing progress and getting free of the boot! My husband broke his ankle weeks ago, and in another week he sees the surgeon to determine if his cast can come off and he can put weight on that foot again. He's got a knee walker cart that is so slick and he is so good at riding around. But he's terribly bored and wanting to get back to work.

And a new bed! Did you have a nap? :)

Karen O.

>152 weird_O: Your happy news and blessedly bootless and nap-filled future makes the Whitehead book review more apt.

>152 weird_O: - Great news, on all fronts! Congrats!

Geez, what a weekend, and it isn't half over. The new monster mattress was delivered on time, just ahead of the rain. Friday, the rain was predicted to turn into snow for us, as much as 6" with high winds. Snow amounted to a dusting and disappeared by mid-afternoon. But the wind! Power went out and is still out 30 hours later. We knuckled under shortly before dark and accepted shelter at Son the Elder. Now that we are here, I'm sure the power is back on at home.

At any rate, I am still planning to visit with some LTers in Philadelphia tomorrow.

>153 harrygbutler: Thanks, Harry.

>154 mstrust: Couldn't tap dance before, Jennifer, so unlikely to master it now. But thanks for believing. :-)

>155 karenmarie: Thanks, Karen. I walked out for the mail for the first time since mid-December (about a quarter mile each way). Felt great.

>156 klobrien2: Ho! I got one of those knee scooters, Karen. A godsend! I picked a pink one on Amazon two days before Christmas and got it the day after Christmas. Called it my pink Cadillac. Our house is all on one floor, so I could zip around the place.



>157 richardderus: I do feel liberated, RD.

>158 jessibud2: Yeah, Shelley. I feel great.

Whilst I was off-line (thanks to our power outage), the I finished Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Started This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, which is enjoyable.

Wow, that is some X-ray, Bill. Glad to hear you are boot-free (the video link of your accident-clone was very funny!). I don't get why, now that you are more mobile, you got a mattress. ???? LOL. And going way back, congrats on the new granddaughter!! Oh, and good reads, too. : )

Congratulations on busting out of The Boot, Bill! Enjoy your re-found mobility but don't get crazy and end up with the boot on the other foot, so to speak.

And thanks for the review of Apex Hides the Hurt. It sounds quite interesting, and I've been wanting to read more Whitehead.

>160 weird_O:

Great to see you are walking again - long-lasting hospital events can make us
really appreciate the things of an ordinary day.
As can a power outage -
our most recent one lasted only 2 hours, but made me wish once again
that they would just bury the electrical lines instead of relying on the phone poles.

Our lantern was barely decent for night reading - what kind and brand did you use?

So what's your verdict on Beautiful Ruins, Bill?

It was very nice to meet you today, Bill. Thanks for making the drive in. I hope you returned home to find the power restored!

It was great meeting you today, Bill!

>164 richardderus: Yeah, I echo that. It was a big favorite of mine, hope you liked it.

UNBE-F*****G-LIEVABLE!!!!

We got The Power. Out at 3:19 p.m. Friday. Back on at 10:49 a.m. Tuesday. Now the cleanup begins. We got two indoor outhouses; lots of pots, pans, and dishes.

But first: Espresso and cappuccino.

Oh, yeah. I did get a little reading in. Read Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life. Started Atul Gawande's Better.

I'll reply to messages later today.

Whoa, that's a long power outage! Hope you don't have too much cleanup to do

I'm glad your power is back, but yeah, that's a really long outage. Welcome back!

Hope you enjoyed the coffee, Bill! I think I'd be heading for the shower...

Yikes. Sorry the power was out, glad it's back.

Ouch - that's a long stretch to live primitively.

# 3. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan Finished 1/17/18

The Weird Report^TM  

A curious novel, like a creative writer's exercise book. There is a ghostly chain linking the chapters together, but each chapter has a different narrator, with his or her own perspective, his or her own tempo. The novel begins in the present in NYC, jumps back to the 1960s in California, pads forward from there, and at one point, projects into the future. It can be disconcerting, moving from chapter to chapter, but I was intrigued by all the shifts, the new starts, the characters who fell from the storyline, only to re-emerge transformed (not always for the better).

"A Novel", the cover says, and I accepted that. But after finishing it, I learned the author, Jennifer Egan, published many of the chapters as independent short stories. Some regard the book as a story collection; I'm content to call it a novel.

Rearrange the plot blocks in roughly chronological order and pull the line of them straight, and you have a history of some teenagers who make rock music (of sorts—you never get to hear it) and compete to perform at various rock festivals. Individuals argue, head off in different directions. Years later, some reconnect, if only for a few days. The novel's central character is Bennie Salazar, who as a California teen organized a band called The Flaming Dildos (sounds like a torture device) and segued into music production, then established his own record label, Sow's Ear Records. Chapters tell us about his first wife, Stephanie, and about their divorce; about Stephanie and her brother Jules, an "entertainment" journalist, who ends up in prison after sexually assaulting an interviewee.

We hear a lot about Sasha, Bennie's long-time assistant, who, in the opening chapter, exercises her kleptomania while on a date with Alex. In a later chapter, narrated by her uncle Ted, we learn of her disappearance from home as a teen and her emergence in Naples, Italy. Ultimately, she reconnects with her college sweetheart Drew, now a doctor; they withdraw to a California desert to raise two children. In what's got to be one of the most remarkable episodes in this or any other novel, Sasha's daughter, Alison, explains life with her younger brother, Lincoln, and their parents in a PowerPoint presentation called "Great Rock and Roll Pauses."

The story's cast includes a Lou, a middle-age record producer who preys on teenage girls; Scotty, Bennie's bandmate, who after a long estrangement, endeavors to reconnect with the Bennie through the gift of a huge fish, freshly caught in the Hudson and personally delivered to the 45th floor offices of Sow's Ear Records; Bosco, a once prominent rocker, now a morbidly obese cancer survivor nobody remembers. There's a murderous Latin American dictator. Ahh, ya gotta read it.

The title, A Visit From the Goon Squad, is a metaphor for the ravages wrought by time and fate. Explaining his comeback album to Stephanie, who he's hired to do PR before its release, and Jules, who is scouting a possible magazine article, Bosco says:

"The album's called A to B, right?" Bosco said. "And that's the question I want to hit straight on: how did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about? Let's not pretend it didn't happen."
   Stephanie was too startled to respond.
   "I want interviews, features, you name it," Bosco went on. "Fill up my life with that shit. Let's document every fucking humiliation. This is reality, right? You don't look good any­more twenty years later, especially when you've had half your guts removed. Time's a goon, right? Isn't that the expression?"
   Jules had drifted over from across the room. "I've never heard that," he said. " 'Time is a goon'?"
   "Would you disagree?" Bosco said, a little challengingly.
   There was a pause. "No," Jules said.
   "Look," Stephanie said, "I love your honesty, Bosco — "
   "Don't give me 'I love your honesty, Bosco,' " he said. "Don't get all PR-y on me."
   "I'm your publicist," Stephanie reminded him.
   "Yeah, but don't start believing that shit," Bosco said. "You're too old."
   "I was trying to be tactful," Stephanie said. "The bottom line is, no one cares that your life has gone to hell, Bosco. It's a joke that you think this is interesting. If you were still a rock star, it might be, but you aren't a rock star—you're a relic."
   "That is harsh," Jules said.
   Bosco laughed. "She's pissed that I called her old."

I liked this book; surprising, challenging, entertaining. Deserving of the Pulitzer it garnered for Egan in 2010. I give it both thumbs up.

>175 weird_O: I'm one of those who felt it was a collection of stories, Bill, pretty good ones though.

Your verdict is clearly heartfelt!

Happy there's power at last.

I'm further behind than it seems.

>161 Berly: Kim, so much you missing, huh? Glad you stopped by. (By the way, we got a new mattress because we needed a new mattress. What better reason?)

>162 rosalita: Hi, Julia. I liked Apex Hides the Hurt, though I see from reviews on the book's page that I'm in a minority. I believe reaction to Underground Railroad was mixed.

>163 m.belljackson: I had more hospital than I wanted, Marianne.

The lamps we got several years ago from LL Bean. They take 4 double A batteries. I just looked at Bean's website and didn't see them. No model number or other markings on the lamps.

I don't see images in >159 weird_O: or >177 weird_O:. Just a gray circle with a white bar across it.

Howdy, Bill. A lot to catch up with over here. Glad you enjoyed your Whitehead selection. Hooray for being liberated from the dreaded boot. Hooray for attending the Meet Up. It was great to see you, in such illustrious company. If this happens again, maybe I will have to fly in.
Glad you loved Goon Squad. I am a huge fan of that one too. I see you are also enjoying This Boy's Life. All is good, my friend.

I started The Night in Question. Wolff knows short fiction too.

>178 laytonwoman3rd: I will attend to this misfortune. What browser do you use? I'm guessing you are not using Chrome. Because I'm guessing the hiccough is in linking to images in Google Photos. I see them here 'cause I use Chrome. But not everyone sees these images.

I can remedy it by putting them on Tumblr and linking to them there.

>177 weird_O:

That old LL Bean one looks strong.

Can anyone else can recommend a good quality one?

Good review of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Bill.

I can't imagine why, but I thought of you when I saw this.

# 16. The Twits by Roald Dahl Finished 3/11/18

The Weird Report^TM  

I have never before read a Roald Dahl book, though I have seen a couple movies based on Dahl's books. The Twits popped into view whilst I scanned the shelves at a nearby Goodwill store, so I tossed it into the cart. It's a kids book, of course, and thus short, with many illustrations done by Quentin Blake. Blake apparently illustrated many Dahl books.

The Twits are husband and wife, living in a ramshackle house on poorly tended ground. Ne'er-do-wells in all regards: Unclean, unkempt, unsavory, grumpy, disagreeable, lazy. Favorite sport is playing dirty tricks on one another. Mr. Twit loves "bird pie", chock full of any sort of bird. The stuff of the story is how he tricks his wife, how she retaliates, and more important, how his interaction with birds he wants for pies ends. Hint: Badly.

It was ok, but I know a couple of young granddaughters who would probably like it.


Mr. and Mrs. Twit

# 15. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande Finished 3/8/18

The Weird Report^TM  

Better is a collection of articles written and published in The New Yorker and in The New England Journal of Medicine. All were published before 2007, since that was when the book first appeared. None seemed dated.

ON WASHING HANDS explores the history, the science, and the psychology of getting medical workers to wash their damn hands!

CASUALTIES OF WAR reports on astonishing improvement in the survival rate of wounded soldiers achieved during Bush-Cheney Iraq War, not because of miraculous new drugs or equipment, but because of the focus and speed of treatment. Doctors just behind the combat lines control bleeding, do essential surgical procedures, and move the patient—fast!—to a field hospital. A patient gets further treatment there, but one with grievous wounds is quickly transported to a permanent facility, say in Landstuhl, Germany or Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. There's more to it, of course, and Gawande explains.

NAKED addresses the issue—currently very topical—of the "etiquette of examination." Should a chaperone be called in to observe, say, a gynecologist performing an internal exam? Or a breast exam? There seems to be no universal protocol, so Gawande writes of his own experience, that of colleagues, and interviews he's had with doctors outside the U.S.

WHAT DOCTORS OWE deals with malpractice, as viewed by patients, malpractice attorneys, and doctors.

PIECEWORK explores how doctors are paid.

To get a sense of the numbers involved, I asked our physician group's billing office for a copy of its "master fee schedule," which lists what various insurers pay our doctors for the care they provide. It has twenty-four columns across the top, one for each of the major insurance plans, and, run­ning down the side, a row for every service a doctor can bill for. Our current version goes on for more than six hundred pages. Everything's in there, with a dollar amount attached. For those who have Medicare, the government insurance pro­gram for the elderly—its payments are near the middle of the range—an office visit for a new patient with a "low complex­ity" problem (service No. 99203) pays $77.29. A visit for a "high complexity" problem (service No. 99205) pays $151.92. Setting a dislocated shoulder (service No. 23650) pays $275.70. Remov­ing a bunion: $492.35. Removing an appendix: $621.31. Remov­ing a lung: $1,662.34.

THE SCORE is about building a base of evidence upon which to frame medical decisions and to evaluate results. Gawande uses obstetrics and what is known as the Apgar score to explain the benefits. The narrative thread tells about the birth of a new doctor's first child, a delivery that features an extremely long (almost 40 hours) labor (for a lot of reasons, each of which is explained), concluding in a C-section that itself is not without a complication or two.

THE BELL CURVE begins:

Finding a meaningful way to measure performance, as Virginia Apgar showed was possible in child delivery, is a form of ingenuity in itself. What you actually do with that measure involves another type of ingenuity, however, and improvement ultimately requires both kinds. One person who has understood this is a Minneapolis doctor who has spent four decades perfecting care for a single, rare, and fatal disease. [cystic fibrosis] His experience holds a lesson for all of us.

FOR PERFORMANCE argues that improved performance by medical practitioners can yield greater improvements in outcomes than great laboratory breakthroughs. This was impressed on Gawande during a two-month tour of medical facilities in India.

…[D]espite the conditions, the surgeons have persisted in de­veloping abilities that were a marvel to witness. I had gone there thinking that, as an American-trained surgeon, I might have a thing or two I could teach them. But the abilities of an average Indian surgeon outstripped those of any Western sur­geon I know...
  On rounds...with a staff surgeon..., I saw patients he'd successfully treated for prostate ob­struction, diverticulitis of the colon, a tubercular abscess of the chest, a groin hernia, a thyroid goiter, gallbladder disease, a liver cyst, appendicitis, a staghorn stone in the kidney, and a cancer of the right hand—as well as an infant boy born with­out an anus in whom he'd done a perfect reconstruction. Us­ing just textbooks and advice from one another, the surgeons at this ordinary district hospital in India had developed an as­tonishing range of expertise...
  Among the many distressing things...was the incredible numbers of patients with perforated ulcers. In my eight years of surgical training, I had seen only one pa­tient with an ulcer so severe that the stomach's acid had eroded a hole in the intestine. But...people eat intensely hot chili peppers, and pa­tients arrived almost nightly...The only treatment at that point is...a big and trau­matic operation, and often these patients were in no condi­tion to survive it. So Motewar [an Indian surgeon] did a remarkable thing. He invented a new operation: a laparoscopic repair of the ulcer­ous perforation, using quarter-inch incisions and taking an average of forty-five minutes. When I later told colleagues at home about the operation, they were incredulous…
  True success in medicine is not easy. It requires will, at­tention to detail, and creativity.

This is a long report on a relatively short book. But it's a good book to read and think about. Two thumbs up.

 

>185 weird_O: - I think this is the only one of his books I have not yet read though it is on a shelf somewhere in this house. The first book of his that I read was The Checklist Manifesto and that one certainly got my attention! He is a good writer, a thorough researcher and has the uncanny ability to make complicated issues understandable for the layperson. I still think the best of his writing, though, was undoubtedly Being Mortal. That one ought to be compulsory reading for everyone who is human.

Thanks for this review. I think I will go find what shelf it is on.

Goodwill buy 3/10/18

I think I let slip that I acquired a selection of used books at a nearby Goodwill on Saturday. No accounting for the choices of a book hoarder, is there? Inspired by David Foster Wallace—I'm reading his essays and journalism in Consider the Lobster—I've footnoted my list. My notes pale in comparison, of course.

The Twits by Roald Dahl (hc)¹
Mrs. 'Arris Goes to New York by Paul Gallico (hc)
Be Happy by Patrick Lindsay (hc)
Lights, Camera, Action! by Louis Goldman (hc)
Schott's Almanac 2007 by Ben Schott (hc)²
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (hc)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (hc)
Forever by Pete Hamill (hc)
Simple Gifts: A Memoir of a Shaker Village by June Sprigg (hc)³
The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (hc)
The Cobra Event by Richard Preston (hc)
Imperium by Robert Harris (hc)
The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss (hc)⁴
All About "All About Eve" by Sam Staggs (pbk)
Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund (pbk)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (pbk)
The Zero by Jess Walter (pbk)
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (pbk)
Richard III by William Shakespeare (pbk)
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie (pbk)⁵
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (mmp)⁶
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith & The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (mmp)⁷

¹Stickers and stamps identify this particular book as an escapee from the Calgary Public Library and the Signal Hill Library. Is the latter part of the former? It is; I looked it up. Migrated from western Canada to eastern Pennsylvania so I could rescue it for 97¢.

²I have a couple of Ben Schott's almanac-y books and love them. This one has standard almanac fare, plus some untraditional surprises.

³June Sprigg is a devotee of Shaker crafts and have has authored several wonderfully illustrated books showing Shaker-made furniture, baskets, and practical objects.

⁴A classic. I've had a mass-market paperback since 1969 or thereabouts, but I couldn't pass up the chance to have a hardcover.

⁵Forgot I have this in hardcover, along with Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great.

⁶Read my daughter's shabby copy of this book last year. Now I have my own copy, and it isn't shabby.

⁷Two 18th century comedies in one slim volume. Liberated, I should confess, from Soundview Branch, 660 Soundview Ave., Bronx, N.Y. 10472. Stamped "Jun 17, 1975". Should I return it? Not unless I'm reimbursed my 97¢.

>187 weird_O: That's a heck of a haul.

>184 weird_O: I've read a bunch of Dahl, but not The Twits. I suggest Danny, The Champion of the World, one of my favorites (if you want to read more of his stuff). He did write some adult fiction, but most is geared towards what would be today YA.

>185 weird_O: I may have to search that one out. I thought Gawande's Being Mortal was so good...
Way back when, there was always a nurse present when I visited the gynecologist. Except for one visit during the last weeks of pregnancy when I was examined by a female doctor because my own OB-GYN was off that day. Over the years however, the attendant nurse simply disappeared. Now, when I see my PCP for that kind of thing, he always asks if I want a nurse present. I would think concerns over malpractice claims (and sexual assault claims) would make a second person's presence in the room for any kind of examination standard. But of course...there's cost involved.

>187 weird_O: Envy-inducing haul, Bill.

>186 jessibud2: I really must pick up something by Gawande. Your summary makes me want to get on that.

Great haul!

# 12. Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse Finished 2/28/18

The Weird Report^TM  

I got to this P.G. Wodehouse novel, Right Ho, Jeeves, by way of the Department of One-Thing-Leads-to-Another. While long being aware of Wodehouse. I'd never read anything he wrote, never viewed the Wooster & Jeeves TV show. Reading Ben Macintyre's Double Cross, I learned that Wodehouse was caught in France when the Nazis invaded, that he was interned, ultimately in a camp near Berlin, and that further, he made several broadcasts on Berlin radio intended for listeners in England. Interesting.

Later on, while searching for a particular Faulkner story, I stumbled upon the transcripts of Wodehouse's Berlin Broadcasts. I read them. A couple of archived news articles I also found on line revealed that there are Britishers who to this day despise Wodehouse, considering him a traitor. I'm outside the envelope of WWII, but when I read the broadcasts, my questions were directed at the Germans: Why would they air this stuff? It certainly isn't complimentary to them. And if you've read them, why would you think the author a traitor to his own country? (If you are interested, here's the link to the transcripts: http://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1954oct-00017/Contents/.

For the second time, Wodehouse is bandied before me. Destined to read him. Indeed. Right Ho, Jeeves was the only book of his I have on the shelves, so that's what I read. Originally published in 1934.

The story centers about Bertie Wooster's plotting to reunite each of two betrothed couples. So much in love yesterday, splitsville today. One party from each couple has quietly solicited the advise of Wooster's manservant Jeeves. I think this is pretty much the crux of every Wooster & Jeeves story: Wooster screws everything up, and Jeeves straightens it all out. There's banter between numbskull Bertie and whoever the straight man of the moment is. In the following case that is Jeeves. (Gussie is a lovesick former schoolmate of Bertie who has been dumped by Madeline Bassett. He is supposed to present awards to pupils at a local school, but suffers stage-fright.)

Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and I was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only just concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bed-chamber.
  'I found Mr Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your clothes, sir.'
  'Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?'
  'Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school with Mr and Mrs Travers in the large car.'
  'Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?'
  'Yes, sir. He laughed heartily.'
  'Good. Had you any other contributions for him?'
  'I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum.'
  'And how did he react to that?'
  'He laughed heartily, sir.'
  'This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I mean.'
  'Yes, sir.'
  'You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in Group A of the defeatists.'
  'Yes, sir.'
  'There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie has been on a bender. He's as tight as an owl.'
  'Indeed, sir?.'

Typical Wodehouse banter. The book was okay, but I'm not on the prowl for any more.

Madeline Bassett! Second only to Honoria Glossop in the All-Time Horror-Movie Harridans (under 30) Shelf of Shame.

>192 weird_O: My favorite line (one of them, I should say) from Wodehouse is when Gussie Fink-Nottle is described as "an inebriated newt fancier." So clear and succinct and just perfect.

My next Wodehouse is a big (!) collection of short stories, The World of Jeeves. I went out and bought a copy (couldn't find it anywhere at the libraries), but haven't gotten to it yet. Now it's back on my radar...

Wodehouse isn't everyone's cup of tea, I guess. Sorry that the book didn't work better for you!

Karen O.

Look out for Aunt Agatha and Stiffy Byng, too. Things can go blooey in a hurry.

>187 weird_O: Nice haul!

>185 weird_O: You've tagged me with the Gawande book, Bill. And reminded me that I have a hardcover copy of Being Mortal that I really need to get around to sometime.

Hi Bill!

It's nice to see your lovely Weird Reports back in full force.

>187 weird_O: Excellent haul, and I am seriously impressed with your footnotes.

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Oh - how's your ankle doing?

# 11. On William Faulkner by Eudora Welty Finished 2/22/18

The Weird Report^TM  

Small, but what's here is choice. I give 'er both thumbs up.

 

Briefly. Eudora Welty, like William Faulkner was born and raised in Mississippi. This book is a collection of her writings and talks about Faulkner and his writing. We read her review of Intruder in the Dust, published in Hudson Review in 1949; an excerpt from "Looking at Short Stories", collected in Welty's The Eye of the Story, on "The Bear"; and a review of Joseph Blotner's Selected Letters of William Faulkner that appeared in the NYT Book Review in 1977. We get the full text of her letter to The New Yorker poking a stick at Edmund Wilson for his unfavorable review of Intruder in the Dust.

Following are some excerpts. First, from Welty's review of Selected Letters…:

...Faulkner put down the best things he ever said about his writing in a series of letters to Malcolm Cowley..when Cowley put to Faulkner his idea of a Viking Portable Faulkner, to be compiled and edited by him...
  "I would like the piece," Faulkner initially replies to Cowley, "except the biography part. You are welcome to it privately, of course. But I think that if what one has thought and hoped and endeavored and failed at is not enough, if it must be explained and excused by what he had experienced, done or suffered, while he was not being an artist, then he and the one mak­ing the evaluation have both failed."
  Then to the letter that's the masterpiece: "I'm trying primarily to tell a story, in the most effective way I can think of, the most moving, the most exhaustive. But I think even that is incidental to what I am trying to do ... I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world . . .I am trying to go a step further than Thomas Wolfe ... I'm trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period. I'm still trying to put it all, if possible, on one pinhead. I don't know how to do it. All I know to do is to keep on trying in a new way . . . Life is a phenomenon but not a novel­ty ... Art is simpler than people think because there is so little to write about. All the moving things are eternal in man's history and have been written before, and if a man writes hard enough, sincerely enough, humbly enough, and with the unalterable determination never never never to be quite satisfied with it, he will repeat them, because art like poverty takes care of its own, shares its bread."
  ...The[se] letters, the best in Blotner's book, can still better be read in Cowley's own 1966 Faulkner-Cowley File, where they appear, along with the other side of the correspon­dence, in uninterrupted sequence, and where, so read, they can move you to tears.

In the same review, Welty cites a different sort letter from Faulkner:

In the occasional—even rare—letter to a literary peer, his feeling for, appreciation of, the other writer's gift—not shop talk—is almost sure to be the subject. Just as it is to a young unknown black poet whose manuscripts Faulkner read and helped him with: "Put the passion in it, but sit on the pas­sion. Dont try to say to the reader what you want to say, but make him say it to himself for you. I will edit the second one and send it to you when I get it right. . . Your idea in both is all right." ("All right" emerges in Faulkner's let­ters as his strongest, surest term of praise.)

From a speech—the Keynote Speech—that Welty presented at the Southern Literary Festival, held in 1965 at the University of Mississippi in Faulkner's hometown, we learn Faulkner's tale about writing As I Lay Dying:

Not too many yards away from where we now sit is still a room about which the author has remarked:
  "I got a job in the power plant, on the night shift, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., as a coal passer. I shoveled coal from the bunker into a wheelbarrow and wheeled it in and dumped it where the fireman could put it into the boiler. About 11 o'clock the people would be going to bed, and so it did not take so much steam. Then we could rest, the fireman and I. He would sit in a chair and doze. I had invented a table out of a wheelbarrow in the coal bunker, just beyond a wall from where a dynamo ran. It made a deep, con­stant humming noise. There was no more work to do until about 4 A.M., when we would have to clean the fires and get up steam again. On these nights, between 12 and 4, I wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks, without chang­ing a word. I sent it to Smith and wrote him that by it I would stand or fall."

Finally, here's a excerpt from her letter to The New Yorker, cited above. (You really must read the entire letter.) It appeared in the magazine's "Department of Amplification." In it, Miss Welty quotes from Wilson's review an excerpt ending: "Faulkner's provinciality, stubbornly cher­ished and turned into an asset, inevitably tempts him to be slipshod and has apparently made it impossible for him to acquire complete expertness in an art that demands of the artist the closest attention and care." She replies:

That last sentence, born in New York, has the flaw of a grammatical mis­take; I don't know what being out of date in feeling means; and I didn't mind looking up "anacolutha"—but to get through to the point, Intruder in the Dust itself having been forgotten earlier in the piece, I shy at this idea of novel writing as a competitive, up-to-the-minute technical industry, if only for the picture it gives me of Mr. Faulkner in a striped cloth cap, with badge and lunchbox, marching in to match efficiency with the rest only to have Boss Man Wilson dock him—as an example, too—for slipshod bolt-and-nut per­formance caused by unsatisfactory home address. Somehow, I feel nobody could go on from there, except S. J. Perelman, and he works in another department.
  It's as though we were told to modify our opinion of Cezanne's painting because Cezanne lived not in Paris but by preference in Aix and painted Aix apples—"stubbornly" (what word could ever apply less to the quality of the imagination's working?).

      

Self-caricature, 1930s. From On William Faulkner by Eudora Welty, University Press of Mississippi, compilation copyright 2003

>199 weird_O: I loved Miss Eu's takedown of that pretentious twat Edmund Wilson.

>199 weird_O: *stands* *claps* *sits down*

When I fall behind, I seldom catch up. I'm going to try...

>179 msf59: Thanks, Mark. I might seek out Wolff's Old School .

>181 m.belljackson: Best I could suggest. It would be nice if you could click on the pic and ask where the item in the pic could be purchased. The next app for Google or Amazon or someone.

>182 jnwelch: Not my kind of weird, Joe. :-) I moved on from that about 60 years ago.

>186 jessibud2: >189 laytonwoman3rd: >191 charl08: >198 karenmarie: Gawande is super. If you are putting off reading one of his books, jump it to the top of you TBR.

>190 richardderus: Shopping for CHEAP used books is my form of retail therapy, RD. Goodwill and library sales. The prices charged by regular used book stores usually give me a jolt.

>193 richardderus: >195 jnwelch: Ah... Ah ha! Honoria Glossop. You forced me, RD, to google the name. And there, Joe, were Stiffy Byng and Aunt Agatha. So maybe... But no, no... I have a sufficiency of reading glowering over my back as I type.

>194 klobrien2: I like Right Ho, Jeeves well enough, Karen. I'm the only reader I know who visits libraries only to shop for cut-rate used books. And Wodehouse books don't seem to turn up.

>200 richardderus: Me too, RD.

>201 laytonwoman3rd: Oh my... Thanks. Those two Mississippians are excellent reading, aren't they.

My last post was Saturday, and here it is Wednesday afternoon. Slug.

We're engulfed by the big snowstorm. Started falling at about 3:15 a.m. and it is still falling 12 hours later. And here I was going to zip over the Bethlehem for the book sale. Have to be patient until Saturday.

I started DFW's Consider the Lobster after completing The Twits, then drifted off into a David Sedaris collection (hadn't read anything by him before) and a Neil Gaiman offering. Now I'm toting around the DWF and Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer novel All the Light We Cannot See. The latter is getting the most attention. The novel could point me in a variety of followup reading directions.

Have a bit of a cold; haven't had a cold since Hector was a pup. Wretched cough.

        

Welcome to Spring!

Bill--Hope you are enjoying the new mattress (which you said you NEEDED!) and the power begin back on. Great book haul--I especially love the after comments like #6. LOL. I have Consider the Lobster in the pile near my fightable...awaiting the Weird Report.

Consider the Lobster is DFW at his finest, I must say, since I loathe his fiction deeply and admire his essays with equal depth of feeling.

>205 Berly: I am enjoying the new, very firm mattress, Kim. It is so thick that when I sit on it, my feet don't touch the floor. Same bed frame. Had to find a wooden box for my wife to step up on to get in bed. :-)

I'm chafing for tomorrow's book sale in Bethlehem. Hope for a choice haul. Six sales a year, always a Wednesday and a Saturday. This particular Wednesday it snowed all day. So tomorrow is it!

I just finished All the Light We Cannot See this morning, and am back to Mr. David Foster Wallace. Lots of footnotes, set in small type, just a little bit too small for me. Ackkk! I had to resort to a magnifying glass.

>206 richardderus: Haven't read any DFW until now. I particularly liked the two pieces about Updike in this collection. Pushing deeper into his review of a dictionary.

Hi Bill!

Sorry to hear about the cold, glad to hear about today's book sale. Score big!

I love DFW's essays. My absolute favorite of all time is Roger Federer as Religious Experience originally published in the NYT on August 20, 2006.

I'll be interested in your All the Light We Cannot See Weird Report. Hmm. Touchstone not working. -edited - opened the message, see the touchstone working, saved the message.

I, too, am interested in your report on All the Light We Cannot See. I read it. Thought it was good. But wondered what all the fuss was about?

What Benita said, Bill. ATLWCS was fine, but why all the fuss. Good luck at the book sale.

>208 karenmarie: >209 benitastrnad: >210 jnwelch: I'll work up something on All the Light We Cannot See. I guess I don't know about "the fuss". It's a fine book, meticulously crafted, good characterizations, some surprises, and so forth. It won the Pulitzer; I haven't read any the three other finalists, so I can't if it is better. Can someone spell out the nature of the fuss?

Holy Moley, Dame Agatha Christie!

My wife and I got mildly interested in Agatha Christie's oeuvre a year or two ago, and we read a handful of her novels that a lit professor friend recommended. I'd pick up any of her books I'd see at library sales. Christie published, according to Wikipedia, 75 novels, 28 story collections, 2 autobiographical books. There's a lot out there.

In the 1980s, Bantam Books published 80-some volumes in a uniform format—dark cover with a gold-colored logo stamped on the front, colorful marbled endpapers. "The Agatha Christie Mystery Collection." Sold through the mail, you'd buy a book and every month thereafter, you'd get another (and a bill that included a charge for shipping and handling). Until you cried "Uncle!" Or you got all the volumes they published.

I found a couple of these books. But I also bought some paperbacks and some omnibus volumes that contained three to five novels. On Saturday, I shopped at a library sale and scanned the spines of two dozen books from this collection, trying to focus on titles I recognized. And then I said, "Eureka! I'll just snag 'em all. A buck apiece. What can go wrong?!" (What went wrong was that I had to make TWO (2) trips to my car.) The free gift was a use-tested file box for just the Christies.



Here's the list, organized by date of initial publication:

The Secret of Chimneys (Superintendent Battle) 1925
The Mystery of the Blue Train (Poirot) 1928
The Seven Dials Mystery (Superintendent Battle) 1929
Peril at End House (Poirot) 1932
Thirteen at Dinner (Poirot) 1933
The Tuesday Club Murders (Marple) 1933
Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective (stories) 1934
Murder in Three Acts (Poirot) 1934
Murder in Mesopotamia (Poirot) 1936
Dead Man's Mirror (Poirot) 1937
Appointment with Death (Poirot) 1938
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories 1939
Easy to Kill (Superintendent Battle) 1939
N or M? (T&T) 1941
The Body in the Library (Marple) 1942
The Hollow (Poirot) 1946
Come, Tell Me How You Live (autobio/travel) 1946
Crooked House (mystery) 1949
The Under Dog and Other Stories (Poirot) 1951
Mrs. McGinty's Dead (Poirot) 1952
So Many Steps to Death (mystery) 1955
Ordeal by Innocence (mystery) 1959
Double Sin and Other Stories 1961
The Clocks (Poirot) 1964
A Caribbean Mystery (Marple) 1965
At Bertram's Hotel (Marple) 1965
Passenger to Frankfurt (mystery) 1970

Being curious about the extent of the collection that Bantam published, I did some google searching, and ended at eBay, where I saw listings for 10 books at $200 and similar. Yoiks! At zBay, I saw a package of 84 volumes for $995.00 + $49.95 for shipping. Hahahahahahaha... Can a seller really expect to find a buyer at that price??

And you know that Judi and I are just going to read them. :-)

An amazing book haul, Bill!!

I remember those sets. I started a similiar thing with the Louis L’Amour titles they offered. Those were brown leather with gold lettering. I think I got about 10 of them before I quit buying them. Somehow in one of my many moves I lost them.

It is always nice to read a leather bound book. You and the Mrs. have fun reading them.

>212 weird_O: Congrats on the book haul, Bill! Our Christies are a mishmash of various hardcover editions at this point, including some of those blue Bantams, and it would take a lucky find like that to consider trying for uniformity. On the other hand, I'm closing in on having all the Louis L'Amour titles in the brown leatherette Bantam edition mentioned by @benitastrnad. Enjoy the books!

Hi Bill!

>212 weird_O: Congratulations, again. Major score and I'm very happy for you. In the 1980s, Bantam Books published 80-some volumes in a uniform format—dark cover with a gold-colored logo stamped on the front, colorful marbled endpapers. "The Agatha Christie Mystery Collection." Sold through the mail, you'd buy a book and every month thereafter, you'd get another (and a bill that included a charge for shipping and handling). Until you cried "Uncle!" Or you got all the volumes they published. As you already know, my mother never did cry "Uncle" and I have them in pride of place in my Library. In addition to being a good collector's item, they are good reading copies.

>215 harrygbutler: I didn't realize Bantam also did Louis L'Amour, Harry.

>212 weird_O: Niiiiice! And I can't count how many of those "use-tested" filed boxes I may have schlepped home from the office over the years. Just right for storing and transporting books and things.

I've seen mentions of authors accused of sexual misconduct on several threads. This day's New York Times has an article on the topic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/business/canceled-deals-and-pulped-books-as-t...

>212 weird_O: Omigosh, what a treasure trove, Bill. So many good memories in those for me. You did the right thing - what a lot of great reading.

Howdy, Bill. Nice book haul up there. You may have to build an annex, to store all those books.

I hope you are enjoying the DFW collection. Have you read Arthur & George? If not, you might like this one. Barnes is a helluva writer.

>212 weird_O: What a great book haul! I love buying collections that look so sleek and uniformly pretty!
I'd like to try and get to Murder on the Orient Express sometime this year. It's out of order (which I usually hate!) but I've been told that it doesn't matter much to read these ones out of order.

Close to the end of Operation Paperclip. Disheartening history. How persistent (and wrongheaded) America's representatives can be in the name of "security."

I have wondered about the wisdom of "Operation Paperclip" every time I enter the Werner Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Al. Or go to the Space and Rocket Museum in Huntsville and see his office preserved just as it was on the day he died. I can't help but think that this is the same man who hired mathematicians to calculate the exact number of calories it would take to keep a skilled worker functioning, and what their life expectancy would be before they would need to be replaced. Yes, we got to the Moon first, but at what cost to our democratic values?

Fortunately, for the tourism industry in Huntsville, I am one of the few people who think about such things when visiting that city.

Someone has shamelessly been requesting smooches on other threads....

*smooch*

>224 karenmarie: That was the dog, Karen. Not me. Although....

>223 benitastrnad: If any of the Nazis smuggled into this country via Operation Paperclip accomplished any good, it would be the aerospace contingent. Von Braun was the glory boy without question. Rocket engineer Kurt Debus, an active SS member, was identified as having turned a colleague into the Gestapo because he wouldn't return Debus' Nazi salute ("Sieg Heil!"). He evaded prosecution, made it into the U.S., and eventually was made the first director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Yes, so many individuals of remarkable accomplishment are scumbags.

>213 ronincats: >214 benitastrnad: >215 harrygbutler: >216 karenmarie: >217 laytonwoman3rd: >219 jnwelch: >220 msf59: >221 ChelleBearss: I'm glad you all approve of my buy. I did get a few other things as well. I was well pleased.

# 14. This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff Finished 3/5/18

The Weird Report^TM  

This Boy's Life is a concise, engagingly told account of the author's childhood and youth. A matter of fact telling. The life was pretty grim, unsettling, dismaying. Wolff's parents divorced, with each parent taking custody of a son; Toby lived with his mother, his older brother with their father, the parents settling as far apart (geographically) as possible. Toby's mother was attracted to men challenged by life: suspicious, small-minded, abusive, apparently unloving. That both mother and son survived is remarkable to me.

Wolff himself was a handful, lying routinely to his mother, school officials, and anyone else it served him (in his mind, anyway) to deceive. Later, after his mother married Dwight, he seemed to lie, cheat, steal, and be otherwise delinquent out of a need for self-preservation. I was struck by the prevalence of guns in his story. I was convinced someone was going to be shot, either by Wolff or by Dwight. Dwight seemed to me to be an angry white man who should be denied gun ownership privileges.

Even before picking up the book, I was interested in his acceptance and years at The Hill School. As the story progressed, with Wolff and his mother trapped in western Washington state, it didn't seem as though he'd make the connection. Then when he did, his assertion that he forged high school transcripts and wrote all his own letters of recommendation—and got away with it— confirmed his literary precociousness. I do want to read Old School to learn more about his time at Hill (yeah, I know it is a novel)

Winter is goin' down. It won't be pretty.

>227 weird_O: Someone's been reading their Watterson.

>226 weird_O: Great review, sounds like someone who lived life as well as writing about it.

"Yes, so many individuals of remarkable accomplishment are scumbags" Seems like it could be the strapline to the #metoo campaign. Sigh.

>228 charl08: - LOL! I also thought of Calvin's snowman series when I saw that!

>227 weird_O: *snerk*

Finished Peril at End House by Agatha Christie just a bit ago. Poirot gets sucked into a mystery, almost blows the case, but redirects his thinking. Kept me puzzled right up to the end. One of Christie's Ten Best. The description in >8 weird_O:, written by Christie expert John Curran, is spot on.

I've now read six of Dame Agatha's Ten Best. I have three more on the TBR; only one eludes me.

>228 charl08: >229 jessibud2: >230 drneutron: *Big smile* Glad you enjoyed that melting away of a winter now passing. I think you are correct; Calvin probably got his shoes muddy with this one. We just had an overnight snowfall of about 5"-6", but it is rapidly diminishing. That snow monster is fighting to the end.

Hi Bill!

>227 weird_O: I like that.

>227 weird_O: HA!

>231 weird_O: Howdy, Bill! I enjoyed Peril at End House very much when I read it last year. Glad to see it hit the spot for you, too.

>232 karenmarie: >233 richardderus: It warms my heart to have you stop by and have a laugh. We are definitely having a hard time getting rid of this guy. Go! Go! Don't come back until December. LATE December.

>234 rosalita: I was a real deplorable about Agatha Christie in most of my reading, until four or five years ago. David Suchet's performances as Hercule Poirot opened my eyes, and reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None won me over. Peril at End House is the second Christie I've read this year that had several suspects in play right up to the conclusion. The first was A Murder Is Announced, with Miss Marple.

>235 weird_O: Yep, that's another of my favorite Christies!

# 20. Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen Finished 3/30/18

The Weird Report^TM  

Operation Paperclip is a disturbing book. When the Third Reich collapsed, and even before the remnants of the German government surrendered, American agents were hustling hither and yon in Germany, seeking out scientists and recruiting them for the "American side." Invariably, the German scientific stars were doctrinaire Nazis who performed heinous acts before and during the war. Among the sought-after Nazis were medical doctors who tested their research on live humans, disregarding the likelihood that the tests would kill their subjects. Others had supervised the construction and operation of war materials factories using slave labor, work that killed tens of thousands. No captured Nazi ever confessed to a war crime; never were they involved, or present, or aware. It was always someone else. None expressed regret or remorse.

Most American, British, and French authorities focused on the Nazi atrocities, the perpetrators, and criminal justice—the Nuremberg War Trials. But some military officers—lieutenant colonels, colonels, generals—medical doctors, chemists, engineers, intelligence types, security specialists—looked in wonder at the scientific and technological achievements of the Third Reich. Instead of seeing the obvious human costs of these achievements and their dubious value to civilized society, these officers envisioned only the worth of deadly diseases and chemical agents in the next war. The inevitable war with the Soviets. These Americans felt they were competing with our next enemy, the Soviets, to enlist the services of the most effective and villainous wizards of the Third Reich, who could create the war-winning chemical agents, rockets, and weapons not yet imagined..

The post-war program dubbed Operation Paperclip was contrived to slip Nazis through background checks and around long-standing immigration regulations. Sought-after Nazis were hidden from criminal investigators in secret camps. Incriminating documents were classified to hide them from prying eyes. The State Department was pressured to issue visas without delay; some Nazis actually were brought to the U.S. without visas, their handlers knowing that once they were in country, they'd be very difficult to deport.

In Operation Paperclip the Book, author Annie Jacobsen documents the conduct of Nazi physicians, medical researchers, chemical and biological weapons researchers and manufacturers before and during the war. She associates industrial facilities and concentration camps, research labs and concentration camps, the escalation of war material manufacturing with slave labor—just work 'em til they're dead.

She also documents the conduct of the Americans who recruited them. I doubt any of them were as credulous as to believe the denials of torturers and murderers. Their attitudes were merely convenient—"Nothing to see here." If a prize scientist denied doing bad things, why that settled it. Jacobsen recounts what one General told an army historian that "sheds light on this question." The general, Charles Loucks, supervised the manufacture of tens of thousands of incendiary bombs dropped on Japan. After Japan's surrender, Loucks was reassigned there, and he made many day trips, during which he photographed the damage and the dead. During an interview decades later, Loucks described a particular photo of himself in front of an enormous pile of dead bodies next to a stack of incendiary bombs. "General Loucks expressed a peculiar kind of detachment. ...Loucks made clear that what interested him in the photograph was noting the effectiveness—or in this case ineffectiveness—of the bombs he had been responsible for manufacturing." Similarly, Jacobsen wrote, Loucks expressed detachment as far as Nazi scientists were concerned. It was as if this general "could not, or would not," see the scientists "in the context of the millions of Jews murdered on the direct orders of [their] closest wartime colleagues." What interested the general about one particular Nazi scientist, for example, was "what an effective chemical weapons maker he was."

As the Cold War supplanted Nazis in American fears, uproar over Operation Paperclip died down. But the details remained shrouded in secrecy. In 1998, the Nazi War Crime Disclosure Act passed into law. It required government agencies "to identify and release federal records relating to Nazi war criminals that had been kept classified for decades." In 2005, a final report to Congress said that "[t]he notion that they [The U.S. military and the CIA] employed only a few 'bad apples' will not stand up to the new documentation." According to the report, the government's use of Nazis was a bad idea; "there was no compelling reason to begin the postwar era with the assistance of some of those associated with the worst crimes of the war."

The terrible story may not ALL be here, but much of it is. The names are named. The sources are documented in pages and pages of notes. A short afterword reports reactions of some children and grandchildren of the Nazis. If you have the constitution for it, it is a worthwhile read.

Happy Wednesday, Bill. Glad you enjoyed the Wolff memoir. Great review of Operation Paperclip. It has landed firmly on my WL.

You might like my current memoir, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, so keep it in mind.

>237 weird_O: Looks like a worthwhile read. You got me with that one.

Bill, I wanted to thank you for posting that list of Agatha Christie's Top Ten novels. I've read a few already and have most of the others on my Kindle. Yesterday I started reading A Murder is Announced which is great fun.

>238 msf59: I'll keep that one in mind, Mark. Ha. Maybe after I read The Martian, a copy of which I acquired last weekend.

>239 drneutron: It is a worthwhile read, Jim. I have run across other books touching on these topics in recent reading, and it seemed to be that I wanted to know more.

>240 katiekrug: My pleasure, Katie.

This seems to be a popular feature here: Weird_O's Deranged Book Buys. So I did buy that whole box of Agatha Christie books at a library sale. But I also toted home a stack of other worthies.

The Portable Faulkner edited by Malcolm Cowley (mmp)
Big Woods by William Faulkner (pbk)
The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty (pbk)¹
Hugging the Shore by John Updike (pbk)
The Martian by Andy Weir (pbk)
The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.D. James (pbk)
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (pbk)
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty (pbk)
The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker (pbk)²
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (hc)³
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (hc)
A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill (hc)⁴
A Man of Parts by David Lodge (hc)
Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr (hc)
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (hc)
Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking by William Woys Weaver (hc)<sup>5

1</sup>Never heard of this one, but Miss Welty is on my radar. And I've already read it! Pretty good, it was.

²A book for this month's AAC.

³Ok, ok. I do have two other copies of this, but now I have a hardcover (even if it is a Book of the Month printing). I've read the first three Rabbit novels.

⁴A month book to read during Pete Hamill month of the AAC. (Actually, I have several from which to choose.)

⁵The butcher we buy from is featured in this book, and they have a stack of them for sale. It's got a recipe for pig's stomach, and Dietrich's (the butcher) always has a pan of pig's stomachs. I am going to have to try the recipe on my own, since my wife does NOT want to make it.

Keep on reading!

Good haul. The Portable Faulkner is essential, as it puts things in a chronological order to give the reader an overview of Faulkner's many families and Yoknopatawpha history. Malcolm Cowley pretty much saved him from total obscurity with this, as I understand it.

Hi Bill!

Excellent book haul! I'm especially envious of Turtles All The Way Down - it's been on my wish list since last November.

>242 weird_O: Excellent book haul. I also greatly admire your use of footnotes.
Not sure about pig stomachs though.

Delurking to say hi, Bill. Lots of good reading happening here, as well as great acquisitions.

I'm with your wife on the pig stomachs recipe, Bill!

>227 weird_O: Love, love, love. I've stolen that photo and posted it on Facebook. We're supposed to have a half inch of rain this weekend. Oh, the lovely mud of it!

Wonderful book hauls, including that great find of the Christie books.

I think your wife is a saint for letting you try a pig's stomach recipe in her kitchen. I have tried haggis - that's enough for me to stomach, and covers the requirement for trying any other stomach recipe from any species whatsoever.

>212 weird_O: It looks like your trip to the library sale was quite a success. I'm trying so hard to cut back on accumulation, so I only bought eight - nine books at the library sale. I like to go on Wednesdays after work. There isn't a lot of people in the aisle and I can meander without the fear that someone will bump into my neck or spine. But, because we had snow on Wednesday, the library sale for that day was not open. Saturday brought a wicked migraine, but I did manage to snag a few..as mentioned above.

All good wishes,

>243 laytonwoman3rd: Although it's a mass market paperback, I was glad to snag The Portable Faulkner, Linda. It is in good shape. For years and years, I thought it was merely an anthology, but the Faulkner bio I read last year straightened me out. And Miss Welty's book—thanks again!—affirmed my corrected view.

>244 karenmarie: I actually paid extra for that John Green book, Karen. $3 instead of $1. I was okay with that, since I'm aware of the high regard many of the folks here have for it.

>245 charl08: I'm happy with the stack, Charlotte. As for the pig's stomach, I actually LOOKED at the recipe and it isn't the variation I've been thinking of. (There's always the internet, isn't there? And my SiL has cooked it and she can talk them through it. If I do it. Heh)

>246 BLBera: Thanks, Beth.

>247 rosalita: Julia! Say it isn't so. (And you an Iowan to boot.) (Say, do you think the hog farmers will finally get Dtrumphf's real message—channeled by the Chinese?)

>248 streamsong: No sweat reposting the photo, Janet. I got it off Tumblr myself. (The unpaved stretch of my driveway is muddy, but not THAT muddy.)

My wife IS a saint, but not because she's "letting" me use "her" kitchen. I'm her personal barista. Usually three double espressos a day. I do some other stuff for her; if you give me a minute one or two of them will come to mind. :-)

>249 Whisper1: Linda! How good to hear from you. I was contemplating shopping Wednesday, but the snow dampened my enthusiasm. Glad I didn't drive there and find the place closed. It struck me as crowded Saturday; I guess the cancellation on Wednesday prompted that. I had to make the trip by myself; Gig and her husband opted to stay in Florida.

Hooray, for another Deranged Book Buy, Bill. Nice haul too. Glad to see the AAC titles in there. I picked up my Alice Walker books from the library. Ready to go.

Happy birthday, Robert Bloch. Born: April 5, 1917, Chicago, IL. Died: September 23, 1994, Los Angeles, CA. Author of Psycho.