Bill's Still Weird_O, 1

 
Annie Granddaughter number six.         Now she is 1, and darn proud of it.

 #39 

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 #18  #18 also  #17  #16 

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 #10  #9  #8  #7  #6 

 #5  #4  #3  #2  #1 

Books Read: Second Quarter 2019

April (9 read)
39. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (4/28/19)
38. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (4/25/19)
37. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (4/21/19)
36. The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (4/14/19)
35. Very Good, Jeeves! by P. G. Wodehouse (4/10/19)
34. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (4/10/19)
33. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (4/8/19)
32. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (4/4/19)
31. The Arrival by Shaun Tan (4/1/19)

Books Read: First Quarter 2019

March (10 read)
30. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut (3/28/19)
29. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler (3/27/19)
28. Slade House by David Mitchell (3/24/19)
27. Autumn by Ali Smith (3/23/19)
26. Grendel by John Gardner (3/21/19)
25. Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (3/19/19)
24. Finn by Jon Clinch (3/17/19)
23. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (3/13/19)
22. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (3/5/19)
21. The Golden Cockerel by Alexander Pushkin (3/3/19)

February (10 read)
20. Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast (2/27/19)
19. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (2/26/19)
18. The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson (2/24/19)
  Yukon Ho! by Bill Watterson (3/7/19)
17. Pigs Have Wings by P. G. Wodehouse (2/21/19)
16. Educated by Tara Westover (2/15/19)
15. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (2/12/19)
14. Diary by Chuck Palahniuk (2/12/19)
13. She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith and School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2/8/19)
12. The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid (2/3/19)
11. Last Friends by Jane Garam (2/3/19)

January (10 read)
10. Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper by Wallace Reyburn (1/31/19)
9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (1/30/19)
8. Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine (1/28/19)
7. The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam (1/26/19)
6. End in Tears by Ruth Rendell (1/20/19)
5. My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (1/18/19)
4. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (1/13/19)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (1/12/19)
2. The Chosen by Chaim Potok (1/4/19)
1. Dali's Mustache by Salvador Dali & Philippe Halsman (1/1/19)

2018 Reading Stats

Books read: 103
Authors read: 94 (including co-authors of 2 books)
Single-read Authors: 85 (including co-authors of 2 books)
Multi-read authors: 9¹

¹6 by Agatha Christie
3 by John McPhee
2 by David Douglas Duncan
2 by Eudora Welty
2 by Jasper Fforde
2 by Kent Haruf
2 by Neil Gaiman
2 by P. G. Wodehouse
2 by Walter Mosley

New-to-me authors: 50

Author gender
Male: 74
Female: 23

Author Birth Country
US: 47
UK: 22
Ireland: 5
Australia: 2
Austria: 2
Italy: 2
Sweden: 1
Norway: 1
Sri Lanka: 1
India: 1
Iran: 1
Ghana: 1
Russia: 1
South Africa: 1
Scotland: 2

Dead or alive
Currently breathing: 55 (afaik)
Deceased: 36

First published
1700s: 1
1800s: 4
1900—1925: 2
1926—1950: 13
1951—1975: 19
1976—2000: 19
2001—2010: 24
2011—2018: 22

Genre
Fiction: 76
Non-fiction: 28
Graphic/Photo/Art: 10
YA: 2
Juvie: 1

Format
Hardcover: 37
Paperback: 58
Mass-market paperback: 9

Source
2018 acquisition: 51
ROOT: 50
Loaner: 3

Yearly Totals
2018: 103
2017: 93
2016: 85
2015: 102
2014: 80
2013: 90
2012: 68
2011: 74
2010: 78

2018 Favorite Reads

        
A Visit from the Goon Squad/Jennifer Egan    All the Light We Cannot See/Anthony Doerr  Amsterdam/Ian McEwan

      
Draft No. 4 by John McPhee              The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes  A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman

        
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak   Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

  
West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Have at it, folks!

Happy new year and happy new thread, Bill!

I'm reading The Chosen right now (and will probably finish it later this evening). I'm really enjoying it.

Welcome back!

Wishing you lots of good reading in 2019, Bill!

Happy New Year, Bill. What an adorable topper.

Welcome back, Bill!

>1 weird_O: Grand baby #6 is a cutie!

I found you!

I am still reading Straight On Till Morning and have to say that Beryl Markham lived a very interesting life.

Dropping my star, Bill...

Hey there you are. Happy New Year.

I don't feel right until all my 2018 starred threads have 2019 counterparts. I think you were one of the last. Glad to see you back!

Happy reading in 2019, Bill!

Stopping by to drop a star and wish you a Happy New Year -- a Year of Reading!~

I very much liked many of your 2018 favourites. I think I've read all but one or two. I find I am not a Barnes fan although I did like Flaubert's Parrot.

Very cute grandchild!

Liked also the "Still breathing" in the category round-up for 2018!

Oh, here you are. Well. Yes, this is nice. I'll be back.

Found you! And starred you!

Happy new one, Bill

Annie's hat looks bigger than her! :-)

Love your topper photo, Bill. She looks like a sweetie!

>6 weird_O: love the images, and the stats preceding. Looks like a bumper year for reading, last year!!

Congrats on the Eagles win, Bill. You called it, my friend and were spot on. I thought the Bears would win this one but they were outmaneuvered, by a solid defense and our lousy kicker.

Happy New Thread! Have a great year of reading. Looking forward to following you around. That grand-daughter is a cutie!!

Loving the Annie topper, Bill. Happy New Year!

Now they're thinking an Eagle player tipped that last kick, so I'm less mad at the Bears' kicker.

Classy group of favorites up there. The Sense of An Ending wasn't everyone's cuppa, but it was for Madame MBH and me.

Hello weird_O!

>1 weird_O: Excellent topper. so cute!

>6 weird_O: I tried The Book Thief late last year and could not connect with the narration. I may give it another try in print at some time in the future.

I read Amsterdam 15-20 years back and it turned me off to McEwan. A little too depressive for me.

West with the Night is a classic. I need to get on that one sooner than later.

# 1. Dali's Mustache by Salvador Dali & Philippe Halsman Finished 1/1/19

The Weird Report^TM  

"WARNING!" is printed on the jacket back. "THIS BOOK IS PREPOSTEROUS."

And it is. In the early 1950s, photographer Philippe Halsman and artist Salvador Dali collaborated on a series of wacky photos of the artist's iconic mustache—a few long strands waxed and twisted to an extreme, forming skewers protruding from either side of his upper lip. Late in the project, Halsman showed their photos to a book editor who urged them to make a book. So they did. The structure is simply a list of questions directed, one after another, to the artist. Dali's answer captions a photo.

"WHY DO YOU PAINT?"



Two dozen more photos make up the book. Originally published in 1954, long before digital technology overthrew traditional chemistry-based photography, long before Photoshop made surrealistic photography relatively easy, the little volume eventually went out of print. Forty years after the original appeared, Dali's Mustache was reissued.

In a "Postface," Halsman explained how the collaboration came about, and how several of the photos were created. For this shot…

The photograph which required the most effort was inspired by the most famous of Dali's paintings, his picture of the limp watches. The problem was to substitute Dali's face in place of a watch. I photographed Dali with his mouth open, made a glass diapositive, melted its emulsion, distorted, rephotographed, melted again, distorted again, till I finally had Dali's face melting the most atrocious way. Together with unsuccessful experimenting it took over 100 working hours.

  

You read some of the most interesting stuff about photography.

I wanted to let you know that I finished Straight On Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham by Mary S. Lovell. I was inspired to read this biography after I read Markham's autobiography West With the Night late last year. The latter title was a limited view with the subject writing about what she wanted to write and leaving out whole chunks of her life. It was a great book and I enjoyed reading it, but I wanted something that filled in the gaps and gave me the facts of Markham's life. I wanted to read an unbiased opinion about this very interesting woman. This biography cleared up many of the questions about Markham that rose from the earlier book. It was a biography with no frills that explained, with documentation, Markham's life. There is no doubt that Markham lived an exciting life but she only told the reader what she wanted to tell - which is the prerogative of the autobiography. This biography is a straight forward biography - just the facts, that acted as a counterpoint to the very visceral experience of reading "West With the Night." I recommend reading the two books as together they give the reader the facts and the full flavor of Markham's life.

Thanks for that report, Benita. I ought to follow your lead and look for Lovell's bio of Markham. I had skimmed the WikiPedia entry on Markham, but a more substantial history of her life is worth a book-read.

I am floundering around sampling books, hoping for one that grabs me. I'll find it. Yes, I will.

Photo books: a life-long interest. I got a copy of Dali's Mustache years ago in a junk shop. Very worn, but costing something like 10 cents. It's just a little book, so naturally I've stashed it in a safe place, one SO safe I can't locate it. Hah. Son the Younger, who used Dali paintings as screen-saver images in his high-school, college years, gave me a new issue for Christmas.

Hello weird_O! I hope your day is going well.

I think you missed me in >26 brodiew2:.

Ahhh, Brodie. I missed everyone. Gimme a poke with a sharp stick.

Penance is due. I gots to go back and catch up.

No worries, sir. *Poke with a pike*

>27 weird_O: I love that they worked so hard to create what is, in the end, a jeu d'esprit. I was unaware of the book's existence, so thanks for this!

Thanks to all of you who stopped by to say hello and/or light a candle star, heh heh, for this thread. This includes, but is not limited to, Karen, Lori, Anita, Harry, Beth, Jim, Linda, Katie, Jeff, Anita, Lucy, RD, Shelley, Meg, Megan, and Mark. Special hat tip to all who noticed, and commented on, how absolutely beautiful, adorable, and cute little Annie is. She's the apple of many eyes in our family.

>9 thornton37814: I noticed somewhere, Lori, that you finished The Chosen and gave it your thumbs up. For myself, I realized it was a novel of substance, earnest and impassioned, but its atmosphere was claustrophobic to me.

>19 sibylline: As Joe points out (>25 jnwelch:), Barnes (or at least that novel) isn't "everyone's cuppa." First Barnes I've read, and I liked it. I do have Flaubert's Parrot in the house...somewhere. As for "still breathing," the other option isn't appealing. :-)

>21 jessibud2: All her hair is bundle up in that hat, Shelley. Or it will be when it grows out.

>22 Familyhistorian: Annie is a sweetie, Meg. She keeps her poise when all around her are whooping and chattering and ruckusing, and even passing her for admirer to admirer. We hear she's crawling now.

>23 LovingLit: 2018 was a very good reading year, Megan. I vow that 2019 will be even better!

>24 msf59: Can't keep up with you, Mark. Your reading years are always stellar.

>25 jnwelch: Glad you like my faves. A bunch of other books were very rewarding reads, but I didn't have a lot of trouble corralling those ten as thee best of a very good lot.

>26 brodiew2: Last but not least, Brodie. My daughter didn't like Atonement (or maybe I should say didn't like it much), so I wasn't overly anxious to read McEwan. But I really enjoyed Amsterdam. Two self-centered bastards who, each of 'em, achieved the dispatch he wanted to deliver to the other. Ha ha. As for Markham, read Benita's post below/above (>28 benitastrnad:). And her comments about Markham posted to my last thread of 2018.

>32 brodiew2: Ohhh. Not a pike. Isn't that what John Brown used?

>33 richardderus: Jeu d'esprit indeed. Halsman published The Jump Book, which is so popular and well known that it doesn't merit a touchstone. It's a collection of photos he took of celebs jumping. At the conclusion of a shoot, he'd ask if the subject would indulge him by allowing him to photograph them jumping.

   

Hello, Bill. I have tracked you down and dropped a star so that I can find my way back. Miss Annie up top is a cutie!

>36 weird_O: It was alliterative so I went with it. *smirk*

>36 weird_O: That is one weird book...and what's weirder is that I remember it! It made Mama laugh. The photo of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in particular is memorable. I had no other memory but the photos, not the book itself or the title had lived in my memory until now. Thanks!

Happy 2019
A year full of books
A year full of friends
A year full of all your wishes realised

I look forward to keeping up with you, Bill, this year.

>40 PaulCranswick: You won't have difficulty keeping up with me this year, Paul. I'm off to a slow start reading-wise, as well as circulating around the threads. It'll speed up a bit, I hope.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a first-rate page-turner. It was just what I needed to boost my sagging carcass over the speed bump. 500 pages in 3 days, which is darn fast for me.

Very cool, Bill. I loved it when I listened to it a couple of years ago. It is my favorite audio to date. I've been doing audio books for almost 20years. There is so much to enjoy but I really connected without Beauchamp and the Count found a way to get out of the duel with Albert.

>43 brodiew2: Glad you enjoyed the talkie version. Despite some effort, I've never gotten into talking books. It was fun. Maybe not be "great literature," but 170 or so years after its initial publication, it is still an entertaining story.

I was just looking up verbiage on the film versions. Filmmakers haven't created a good version, for what I read. A 2002 release featured Guy Pearce was a villain, which seems a good choice, but the story got mangled. Richard Chamberlain starred as Edmond Dantes/The Count in a 1975 treatment, but Tony Curtis as Fernand?

Richard Lester's film of The Three Musketeers—yeah, a different story, but still a Dumas creation— is a rip-snorter. Terrific cast.

Funny you should mention researching the films because I watched the 2002 version as well as and 1935 version with Robert Donat. I never got around to the 1970s miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. However I was pleased with the 1935 version. You might be surprised. Where 2002 over simplifies the Dumas story and of the machinations of the count, the 1935 version adds elements left out of the more recent one. I recommend checking it out.

Edit: I don't want you to think that I am disparaging the 2002 film because for what it is it is very good. I enjoyed James Caveizel and Guy Pearce as adversaries Dantes and Fernand, respectively.

Hi Bill!

Happy Sunday to you. Fun photos from The Jump Book.

Hi Bill! We are even: I hadn't found you yet either!!! Happy new thread. : )



Love #1 They don't come any cuter.

And then there is #27. You read the coolest books.

>36 weird_O: I recognize two of those jump shots--everyone looks like they are having so much fun.

Carry one and Happy Sunday to you!

Happy Sunday, Bill. I have read two 5 star books all ready this month and I have also started These Truths, (just your cuppa) and this one is aiming for a 5 star status, as well, although I probably won't finish it until next month.

Good luck to your Eagles. Yes, they sent the Bears packin' but the Saints will be even tougher.

# 4. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers Finished 1/13/19

The Weird Report^TM  

Whose Body? is a clever whodunit written in the early 1920s by a respected student of classical and modern languages named Dorothy L. Sayers. The book introduced a British amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Sayers would go on to write 10 more novels and many short stories featuring him. According to Wikipedia, Sayers imagined her creation as a mix of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. Yeah, I can see that. About this book:

A naked corpse is discovered in his bathtub by a meek and mild architect. He, Mr. Alfred Thipps by name, has no idea who the dead man is or how his corpse got into his tub. Wimsey gets involved at the behest of his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, who had work—now interrupted—being done by Thipps. The cop assigned to the case, Inspector Sugg, is of course an uncooperative dolt, ill-disposed to Lord Peter, intent upon pinning the crime on Thipps or his housemaid Gladys Horrocks. An investigator named Parker drops by Wimsey's home to compare notes, as he's assigned to look into the disappearance of Sir Reuben Levy, a respected financier. The body in the tub, Parker has established, is not Levy. Working together, Wimsey and Parker work out the puzzle.

One facet of Lord Peter's personality that I liked was his candor and openness to guidance and even correction. When Wimsey talks to Parker about someone he suspects, the detective asks: "Look here, Wimsey—do you think he has murdered Levy?"

  "Well, he may have."
  "But do you think he has?"
  "I don't want to think so."
  "Because he has taken a fancy to you?"
  "Well, that biases me, of course—"
...
  "But perhaps I'm wrong and he did do it."
  "Then why let your vainglorious conceit in your own power of estimating character stand in the way of unmasking the singularly cold-blooded murder of an innocent and lovable man?"
  "I know—but I don't feel I'm playing the game somehow."
  "Look here, Peter," said the other with some earnestness, "sup­pose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that some­thing unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?"
  "That's what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it."

No Hercule Poirot is Lord Peter Wimsey. Refreshing. I'ma gonna read more of him.

>45 brodiew2: :-)

>46 karenmarie: As you can see, I got out Whose Body?, re-read it, and didn't remember anything from it. Maybe I doctored my reading stats from 1914. I'm flummoxed.

Hey, but I really liked it. Now I've got to keep an eye out (eewww!) for 9 other Wimsey books. I do have The Nine Tailors on the shelf.

>47 Berly: Hi, Kim. I love that Annie. She is so much like her dad was at that age. And now she's crawling.

I like those Halsman books. I have an original edition of Dali's Mustache...somewhere. I paid like 10 cents for it. Annie's dad gave me the reissue. The Jump Book is also a reissue. Don't have an original and the reissue is still on my Amazon wish list.



>48 msf59: Yo, Mark. Yeah, the Eagles went down. Rough game. Alshon Jefferies was devastated; kinda like Parkey. There's always next year, though Foles likely will be in a different city leading a different team.

I've had an eye on your reads, Mark. I'm on the fence about These Truths.

Get off the fence and join us for These Truths!! I am loving the more world-wide perspective and it is more of a story. Come on. : )

>51 Berly: I'm not Jack, babes. Neither nimble nor quick. I might, I might.

>53 Berly: LOL

'Morning, Bill!

>49 weird_O: Nice review - I'm glad you dusted it off and enjoyed it.

>52 weird_O: You know you want to join us.....

I am reading a book about the Oxford Inklings (that group of writers that included C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien) and was surprised to learn that Dorothy L. Sayers was much respected by these men. While not a member of their club she did attend their meetings and wrote often to various members of the group. She was considered to be a "serious" student of language by these guys and therefore part of their group. They even quoted her on occasion.

>55 benitastrnad: Iiiinteresting. I did not know that. I wonder if I can astonish my daughter with this bit of Inkling info, or if, as usual, she Knows It All already.

Interesting. I had no idea she was connected with them.

>55 benitastrnad: >56 laytonwoman3rd: >57 drneutron: Yes, interestink. In the back matter of Francine Prose's book Reading Like a Writer is a list titled "Books to Read Right Now." One on the list is Song of Roland in a translation by DLS.

Still reading Testosterone Rex, but I've started My Name Is Asher Lev. Both are holding my interest.

On the other hand, I've read about half through The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid and it is not holding my interest.

One last appeal for people who are attending ALA in Seattle. If you want to meetup with other LT members and two of the LT gods just PM me over on my page. If you want to go try your hand at getting free books here is the URL for the free exhibit hall passes courtesy of LT. Loreanne was kind enough to include instructions for filling out the digital form for the free passes.

Hi Benita,

Thanks for reaching out and offering to set up a meetup! I'm happy to report that we do, indeed, have free, exhibit hall-only badges for ALA Midwinter.

Please direct anyone who'd like a badge here: https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=313&oi=MuXZMs%2BGlqrHoIiGjo9....

That should automatically fill in the exhibitor invitation code. I just tested it out myself and was able to register successfully without any trouble.

If there's anything else I can do to help, please let me know. Definitely keep me posted as details get hammered out, so I can publicize the meetup in the State of the Thing this month!

Thanks again,
Loranne

Loranne Nasir
Member Support & Social Media Librarian, LibraryThing
LibraryThing | Facebook | Twitter

>49 weird_O: I know I read Whose Body? but I can't remember it either, Bill. I'm going to have to get it off the shelf for a reread.

Great shots from The Jump Book. Martin and Lewis look like they just went with it. lol

Lot of talk about Marie Kondo's advice on yer personal library. I'm not taking that advice. Though maybe I should reorganize the ol' book closet.

>62 weird_O: That photo makes me twitch, whether it's truly your book closet or not...

>63 karenmarie: My wife seldom does stairs any more. She knows I have a cache of books downstairs, and she fears this is really what it looks like. It kinda does, but, no, not really.

Love the book closet :)
Would love to rifle through that thing one long weekend....

>62 weird_O: LOL
Reminds me of a picture of the house of a Dutch writer and book reviewer that actually looked a lot like that. He could barely go through his rooms, as there were stacks of books everywhere. I think at that point it might be better if someone culls a few books ;-)

>62 weird_O: Oh. My. Word. I fear my 5'2" self could get easily dead in there. And there you have it - your runaway thriller. You just need a catchy title like The Body in the Books or The Corpse among the Stacks - was it murder or just a very unfortunate accident?

Happy Sunday, Bill!

>62 weird_O: Great picture!

Happy Sunday, Bill. I just watched a terrific game with the Rams/Saints. I am also hoping for a Chiefs win, in the second game.

I hope you are enjoying Asher Lev as much as I did.

Actually my living room looks like that picture of the books. I have filled the shelves and am now stacking them on the floor. (Titles out!). I am reading them as fast as I can and yet I seem to acquire more of them. But for the first time last year, I read more than I acquired.

>62 weird_O: LOL!! Marie Kondo would faint, Bill.

Mamie's post: The Body in the Book Closet? Reading Can Make You Dead?

I'm another fan of Asher Lev. I'm pretty sure you'll have quite the fine time with it.

>67 Crazymamie: That's been done, Mamie. Doctorow's Homer and Langley, based on the true and (sorta) inspiring story of NYC's Collyer Brothers. Good try, though.

>70 benitastrnad: I understand. My personal hidy hole in the basement (ahem, I mean the lower level) features some pretty impressive stacks of books. Even if I do say so myself.

>65 LovingLit: Wouldn't that be fun? I kinda want to rummage through it myself. Maybe I could find some books I didn't know I had. Ha!

>66 FAMeulstee: Couldn't let it take over the house. No no no. Just one little closet is okay. Does anyone remember the radio program called Fibber McGee's Closet?

>68 banjo123: :-)

>69 msf59:. "Foobaw be my life" -- Bob Nelson. Ever seen this guy's comedy routines. Search for him on YouTube.

Yeah, Mark, I watched parts of both games. Very disappointed that the Pats are back in The Show once again. I'll probably watch The Show, but only because I'm weak, weak I tell you. WEAK...

>71 jnwelch: The thing about Marie Kondo is that she lives in a dwelling unit no bigger than That Closet. She ain't got room for anything that does not give her paroxysms of sparkie joy.

>69 msf59: >71 jnwelch: Asher Lev, eh. Better than The Chosen, but still leaves me depressed by the cloistered lives, wherein sons must conform to their fathers' visions for them. Yada yada yada.

I've started MLK Jr.'s Why We Can't Wait.

I went to a bookshop like that >62 weird_O: once in Glasgow. It was amazing, but also full of choices: how much do I really want the book at the bottom of the pile?!

>1 weird_O: I just keep looking at that delightful little person and thinking "How weird can he BE, if his line produces such miracles?"

1000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich Reference Shelf

The Weird Report^TM  

Looking for a Baedeker to reading? One that will lead you from one great book to another? And keep you absorbed in rewarding reads for years to come?

If you're like me, you scour book list after book list. You see author names and book titles both familiar and unknown. Do you want to spend 10 bucks if the title sounds catchy or...well…interesting? Sure, sure. But what's in a name?

For Christmas, a reading couple we've known for decades gave my wife and I this Baedeker of Reading (Judi and I first met in Reading *beat*beat*beat* Pennsylvania; but I digress). It is titled 1000 Books to Read Before You Die and it's by James Mustich. What's so useful is that Mustich explains his selections. He tells about a writer, reviews (in brief) the book, lists other notable works by the same writer, and even suggests alternate or supplementary reading. The range is from Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Homer through Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, and Jane Austen, to Faulkner, Steinbeck, Stephen King, and Philip K. Dick. Both Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe make the cut. Both Ann Rand and Ayn Rand do too. William Gibson and William Gibson. How about Dan Brown, Scott Turow, Gillian Flynn, and Anne Rice? Yes, I've neglected all the Asian, African, and South and Central American writers, but Mustich has not.

I doubt that many will read this book from cover to cover, unless you've read the OED from A to Zed. But I've paged through our new copy often in the last month, reading about this book or that author, pleased when Mustich concurs with my choice of books. My eyes have been opened to re-evaluating books I've declined (so far) to read. I now have a mental list of writers and books to look for at library book sales.

Mustich began his booky career at an independent bookstore near NYC. In 1986, he co-founded A Common Reader, a periodic mail-order book catalog, and for more than two decades thereafter, he was its driving force. According to Wikipedia, the catalog "published up to 17 times a year, with a readership in the tens of thousands. Each edition listed an average of 700 books, accompanied by editorial write-ups. It was notable among general-interest book catalogs for its eclecticism, with large sections of each issue given over to obscure literary classics." All of this to say Mustich is particularly qualified to pick top-notch reads, and to sell you on each one.

  >

  

>75 laytonwoman3rd: Not weird enough to blow up all the other lines in her DNA, that's for sure. I'm only a fraction of her lineage, and I know it. I'm flattered you'd say that. When I contemplate my siblings, my wife, our children and grandchildren, I do think I'm one LUCKY guy.

>62 weird_O: *happy sigh* Ah, memories...the joy of re-discovery when a book one had completely forgotten slips out of the middle of the pile! I always assumed the Bibliogoddesses meant that as a hint to me, and read it immediately.

>76 weird_O: A Common Reader was the source of many of my personal library's books Back Then. I adore his evil-souled, filth-besmeared self for the countless hours of biblioconcupiscence he's inspired in me.

>76 weird_O: Awesome!!!

>77 weird_O: You are one lucky guy, but then all of those people you listed are luck to have you, too.

# 6. End in Tears by Ruth Rendell Finished 1/20/19

The Weird Report^TM  

Not a bad crime novel, but End in Tears, for all its complications, was a flat one. It's the first Ruth Rendell book I've read, chosen simply because it's the one I have.

Teenager Amber Marshalson is found by her father, her head stoved in by a brick. She'd been out with friends. When she didn't return by the wee morning hours, her doting dad walked out looking for her. Her body was only a few yards from home. Investigators soon learn she'd totaled the car her father had given her. A block of masonry dropped from a bridge had crushed a car very similar to hers, killing a passenger. Following closely behind the first car, Amber was unable to stop and backended it. Now, the investigators believe she was the target, not the person who died. Shortly thereafter, a teenage friend disappears, her body ultimately found, her head crushed, apparently with a brick.

A huge team of investigators spread across town to interview family members and friends, as well as friends and acquaintances and co-workers of family and of friends. Stories are shared with police by a couple of citizens who just want to do the right thing. Lots of driving around, lots of verbal sparring, lots of ancillary storylines. In the end, all the secondary plots are resolved happily and the resolution of the case itself has to be explained by the chief inspector in a staff assembly. Nick Charles and Hercule Poirot settle some of their cases with this sort of show 'n' tell, but usually the miscreants are in the audience alongside the cops and we the readers share in the tension and surprises. This one ends in a staff meeting. Boring.

>76 weird_O: I bought myself that one for Christmas, and I love it. Excellent review of it - I have been having a lot of fun dipping in and out of it. And the checkoff list in the back!! Love that.

Sweet Thursday to you, Bill!

Sweet Thursday, Bill. Yep, you are still pretty weird. Sorry, your first experience with Rendell was a sour one. I have not read her in many years, but remember her being a solid crime writer.

Hello Bill. I hope all is going well with you. I shared the Hammet-Red Harvest-film adaptations article with a friend of mine. Thanks, again, for sharing it over at Mamie's.

>80 weird_O: I would encourage you to try some more Rendell. She wrote a LOT. I've read a half dozen or so of her books. Crocodile Bird and A Judgment in Stone were two of my favorites. (Looking back at my threads, I see that Richard recommended The Crocodile Bird after I read my first Rendell (Heartstones).

For RD:

>85 laytonwoman3rd: Lovely! A perfect still-life of midcentury nostalgia/fetish objects.

I very much like the way in which you post the cover of the book you read and attach the photo of the author!!!

>85 laytonwoman3rd: Remind of the film White Hunter, Black Heart by Clint Eastwood. I really need to revisit that one.

>85 laytonwoman3rd: Wow...I must have been sleeping when I posted that...I meant to put it on my own thread. It really doesn't mean much of anything to the discussions going on here! There has been African Queen stuff going on somewhere else, for those of you who are confused.

>89 laytonwoman3rd: Okay. Too funny! I thought I had missed something. I love that Katherine Hepburn memoir about the making of The African Queen.

Hello, Bill! Happy Saturday!

Keep talkin', folks.

>81 Crazymamie: I've been doing the same kind of strolling through Mr. Mustich's catalog, Mamie. I've scoured the list of books, marking those that I've read as well as those in the TBR closet. I've even discovered copies of some books I didn't know I had. Ei yie yie.

>82 msf59: I'll rebound from the Rendell. I think it was published around 2008 (too indolent to check), and she died in the early twenty-teens. Late in her career. If I come across an early book, I'd read it.

>83 brodiew2: Glad to be of service, Brodie.

>84 laytonwoman3rd: Not writing RR off, Linda. See in comment to Mark.

>85 laytonwoman3rd: >86 richardderus: Glad to be of service, you two. I won't tell on either of you. Oh, >88 brodiew2: and you too, Brodie. >89 laytonwoman3rd: Oh, and Linda again. You are always welcome to leave notes for others, so long as you drop them off personally.

>87 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda. Nice of you to say so.

>90 Crazymamie: Saturday was pretty good. Rummaged through Mr. Mustich's book some more. Discovered a vintage Signet paperback edition of A Streetcar Named Desire that I hadn't cataloged. I can read it for the drama unit of the AAC!



That's a Thomas Hart Benton painting of a scene in the play.

I also finished The Man in the Wooden Hat. I'm ready for the Group Read, Karen.

>91 weird_O: LOVE this!!!

>93 weird_O: Bonus! I love Tennessee Williams - just reread that one a few years ago.

>94 Crazymamie: Me, too! But he's already forgotten, evidenced by his tweet this morning with more lies about immigration.

Even more, I love this statement issued yesterday by Madame Speaker:

The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it.

In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially? Why has the Trump Administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?

Lying to Congress and witness tampering constitute grave crimes. All who commit these illegal acts should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. We cannot allow any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from appearing before Congress.

The Special Counsel investigation is working, and the House will continue to exercise our constitutional oversight responsibility and ensure that the Special Counsel investigation can continue free from interference from the White House.

>95 weird_O:

Let's hope that he doesn't find a way to retaliate that we haven't even imagined.

Hi Bill!

>80 weird_O: and >84 laytonwoman3rd: I agree with Linda. So many good books by her. A Judgment in Stone is also one of my favorites.

>91 weird_O: Oh yes!

>93 weird_O: I obsessed over A Streetcar Named Desire a couple of years ago while on a Marlon Brando kick. Saw the movie a couple of times and read the play. Yay for you.

Okay. How about we start February 1? I’m in the middle of a “brain candy thriller” as @drneutron calls it (Reliquary by Preston& Child), plus Amazon has sent the wrong Last Friends ISBN# twice. I think they've fixed it for me, and I should get the correct Europa edition on Tuesday.

>96 m.belljackson: I think The Presidential Pretender is seriously wounded, Marianne. As I've read elsewhere, he is, as are bullies in general, a coward at heart. He isn't brave enough to go the "emergency" route. He lost six GOP senators, who voted in favor of the Democratic CR. He's lost some GOP congresspersons. At least one GOP senator was willing to blame Mitch McConnell for the standoff. The infamous federal tax returns may be subpoenaed by the Democratically-controlled house.

You are from Wisconsin, right? Write or email or phone your senator, Ron Johnson, and congratulate him on standing up to McConnell. Clearly, McConnell is evil. As Kevin in Time Bandits warns the fireman (Sean Connery) at the end, "Don't touch it! It's concentrated EVIL."

Karen. So good to see you.

A Judgement in Stone will have to materialize for me at a book sale. So we'll see.

Haha. The GOP has been terrified of Mrs. Pelosi for years, hence their efforts over the years to demonize and vilify her. She IS smart and tough. If we can sweep Trump and Pence outahere, she'd be president. So grand.

Between now and October/November (whenever AAC drama month is), I'll have to find a readable copy of Streetcar.... The copy I have has that wonderful cover, but its adhesive binding is kaput. It's an assembly of loose, yellowed pages.

"Candy is dandy," as Dorothy Parker allegedly quipped, "but liquor is quicker."

>85 laytonwoman3rd: I remember reading and enjoying this one, many years ago.

>86 richardderus: White Hunter, Black Heart is a good film. An under-appreciated one by Eastwood.

Happy Sunday, Bill. I have been just kicking back with the books today and it has been perfect. Hope you are doing the same.

Good for you, Mark. Just kickin' back. Quaffing a brew or two.



I kicked back with James Mustich's compendium of 1,000 books to read (>76 weird_O:). I pored through the list of books again and again. I've read 192 of the 1000 titles. My TBR closet harbors 178 others. I've got only 37% of the list covered. Whoa. Still, I can knock down the TBR number by 50 books or so this year.

Keeping me alive another 8 to 10 years, say?

>98 weird_O:

Ron Johnson standing up to ANY Republican, dead or alive, is certainly a jaw-dropper - and of course he immediately tried to back track his words.

He and Senator Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin would have been BFF.

The month is almost done. Unless time freezes in the polar vortex and January keeps on going. Jan. 32. Jan 33. Jan 34.

Got nine books in, the last one being C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. A juvie that's a good read for all ages. Been on our shelves, along with the others in the Chronicles of Narnia series. But this is the only one I'll read.

I'm hearing the siren calling from the Bethlehem library sale and I must go. I must.

Hi Bill!

I read the first three of the Narnia series when I got the books as a gift in 1975 - stopped, started again, permanently abandoned. But I still have the MM paperback boxed set on my shelves.

Have fun at the Bethlehem Library Sale. Get many books.

>104 karenmarie: We have the whole set too, but without the box. I'm sure my wife read all of them. Perhaps our daughter. Doubtful that the boys did. But the book was on the list that's kinda sorta steering aspects of my reading. See >76 weird_O:.

Did get to the sale, but it was overrun by Locusts with scanners and enormous tubs clogging the aisles. Made me unhappy. I think they invade the weekday sales, but less so the weekend events. I'm going with a pal on Saturday. Maybe it will be more calm. I'm cataloging books right now.

>101 weird_O: Ooh, that Guinness looks might tasty, Bill.

>107 weird_O: Gives me a lift every time. Haw.

Dealers at sales aren't any fun.

>107 weird_O: LOL! So true.

That Guinness looks mighty good up there, Bill. I loved the whole Narnia series, with Voyage of the Dawn Treader probably my favorite.

Did a little book shopping yesterday. Bought a few books at a library sale first off. Feeling a bit unfulfilled, I stopped at Goodwill on the way home. Got a few more. Spent $31 altogether.

Ha ha! I completed ten reads in January! Read a shorty I bought just yesterday. Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper by Wallace Reyburn. Thomas Crapper "perfected" the flush toilet. His firm manufactured all sorts of plumbing fixtures and supplies, and he himself invented and patented all sorts of gadgets that improved his signature device. W.C. all over England featured Crapper devices and the Crapper brand name. According to this short book, American doughboys returned home after The Great War with a new euphemism for the flush toilet.

Looks like a great haul Bill, a relief to hear after the appearance of those folk with the barcode scanners.

I would like to read some Didion, I've heard great things.

Yeah, that's a few books... 😀

Good morning, Bill!

>105 weird_O: I admire your goal, rock and roll! (and I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, having only had half a mug of coffee…)

Something that I’ve noticed at our book sales, as both a volunteer and a customer – the dealers usually come first thing, run around in a frenzy being rude and arrogant and creating dangerous situations with their blankety-blank tubs, and are gone within 3-4 hours. I still like to enter the fray first thing, but you might want to talk with the volunteers and see when they think you should come for a reduced-or-non-dealer experience.

>107 weird_O: I really like that.

>110 weird_O: Just a few, eh. *smile* I love Stuart Little.

>111 weird_O: Congrats on 10 books read in January.

Thank you for inspiring me to read Old Filth. All the subsequent discussions and interest shown has been rather exciting.

Here's the Group Read thread for Last Friends by Jane Gardam. Group Read: Last Friends by Jane Gardam.

>110 weird_O: *nyah* all over those rude-obstructive-greedy dealers. Your haul's a good one. Blue Highways inspired two decades of road trips I took with my buddy Betsy!

-D’you have your breakfast every mornin’?
-I do, yeah. Although it depends how you define ‘mornin’’.
-Wha’ d’you mean?
-Well today, like, I had me breakfast last nigh’ – if tha’ makes sense. Before I went to bed. I just thought I’d get it out o’ the way. But, yeah, I’d always have a good breakfast.
-The most important meal o’ the day.
-Absolutely.
-It isn’t.
-Wha’?
-The most important meal of the fuckin’ day.
-Says who?
-The scientists – the fuckin’ experts. Again.
-Tha’ cant be righ’.
-So they’re sayin’. It was on the News earlier – before Brexit an’ all.
-My Ma used to say it.
-Same here.
-Eat all o’ it now. It’s the most important –
-Meal o’ the day. Same here – yeah.
-So. The scientists – they’re sayin’ my Ma was a liar.
-More or less.
-The woman who gave birth to me, mind. She was just havin’ us on?
-That’s wha’ they’re implyin’.
-I’d imply their bollixes if I met them. What is the most important meal then? If it isn’t the breakfast.
-They didn’t say.
-An’ that’s typical, isn’t it? I’ll tell yeh one thing. I bet it’s not the dinner.
-That’d be too fuckin’ obvious, wouldn’t it?

Roddy Doyle via Facebook

>116 weird_O: LOL!!

>110 weird_O:

For inspiration- our local library allows only card-carrying members to buy in the evening before a sale.

Hope you enjoy William Least Moon's BLUE HIGHWAYS - a different take on cross-country travels.

ALL of your books look like ones most of us would quickly buy!

I read Blue Highways and liked it. I have two more of his books and just haven't been moved to read them. I do plan on reading All the Kings Men this year.

Yay for All the King's Men---one of my top contenders for the GAN.

>116 weird_O: I’d imply their bollixes if I met them.

LOLOL

Saturday shopping at a library book-sale. Nice mix: first editions of Play It as It Lays and The Day of the Jackal and Kon-Tiki. Along with the recently published Washington Black, I got a couple of Babar titles for balance. I'm happy with this book spree.

>112 charl08: When I sorted out the books and cataloged them, I recognized that, yeah, it was a good haul. Then I added some more on Saturday. By the bye, on Saturday, the evil Book Locusts were not in evidence. But the place was still crowded.

>113 drneutron: Just a few. Did you notice the copy of Masters of Death, Jim, which has been on my WantList since you posted a review of it at least a year ago, maybe two. Now I can dig that slug out of my shoulder.

>114 karenmarie: Thanks for your comments. I'm quite happy with what I was able to snatch from under the noses of the Book Locusts. As I mentioned to Charlotte, I returned Saturday (yesterday) with my book-shopping pal and found a few titles that I'm sure were not on the shelves on Wednesday.

I finished Last Friends this morning. Now I've got to apply myself to Prof. Lepore's little dissertation.

>115 richardderus: Yes indeed, RD. I was glad to come upon that one. Just found out that his last name is Heat-Moon. Least is his middle name. And of course Heat-Moon is an adopted name, first used by his father. But you probably knew that.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is excellent. Nice haul, Bill!

>124 katiekrug: I do so enjoy skimming the titles of four or five shelves of books, finding nothing, nothing, then suddenly seeing one pop out, one I recognize. Especially when I can say, "Oooooo. This is a good one!"

>117 jnwelch: Heehee. I liked it, Joe. Glad you did too.

>118 m.belljackson: I have but two library cards, Marianne. One is for the library at the nearest state university, which doesn't have sales, and the other to my hometown library (my birthplace hometown), which has a little mezzanine with nothing but discards and donations that are for sale. Always open, nary a Book Locust in sight. BUT having a first-night sale for members only sounds interesting.

>119 benitastrnad: >118 m.belljackson: Blue Highways I'll read this year. Well...probably. I am glad I found it.

>120 laytonwoman3rd: I read it in my youth. Need to re-read it. Do you know what a "restored edition" of this book would be? Were there edits the author objected to?

>121 richardderus: Well, that'll fix your roommate. Imply his bolllix. LOL

I finished two books today. First: Last Friends by Jane Gardam. Last: The Autobiography of my Mother by Jamaica Kincaid, which I started in December but had some difficulty powering through. Onward!

>123 weird_O: I missed that one in the stack, but I'm glad you were able to snag a copy!

>110 weird_O: >122 weird_O: Quite the stacks, Bill!

>122 weird_O: Haul! What a!

Happy week ahead, Bill, with excellent reads, astonishing book finds, and the occasional moment of contented reverie.

Congrats on the fine book haul, Bill!

Also, finishing Last Friends first. I was going to 'savor' it, but have revisited that plan. I'm going to continue until I finish it to keep the momentum going.

Annie is one now. Cake is good, right?

>110 weird_O: >122 weird_O: You are a book-buying maniac! But you sure track down some mighty fine titles.

Happy Monday, Bill. I just picked up Last Friends and will be starting it, in about a week.

>125 weird_O: From the Chicago Tribune review of the restored edition of All the King's Men: "The original editors adjusted the novel to the tastes and styles of the time". They were in favor of the restoration of the novel "as it was originally written". This edition was edited by Noel Polk, an editor/critic/Southern literature scholar I have a lot of respect for. I own the restored edition, but haven't got around to reading it yet. I always have a bit of trepidation about such things; I really loved the original version. This was also done to one of Faulkner's novels--Sartoris, which was posthumously re-published as Flags in the Dust, supposedly more in line with Faulkner's original intention. I've read both versions, and still think the editors did a fine job in the first place. It's always a controversial move. One more example of this phenomenon is James Agee's A Death in the Family. Sadly, I haven't read either version of that one yet.

>133 laytonwoman3rd:

For this month's American Authors Challenge, I read An Old Fashioned Girl which moves smoothly, despite the too-good-to-be-true preaching.

The end was the surprise, as Louisa May Alcott directly addressed her readers with a humorous lead-in to stating that she really
did NOT want to end the book in the way that everyone was requesting and anticipating.

>133 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks for this info. I read All the Kings Men years and years ago. When I get around to a re-read, I'll read this "restored edition." I have neither Sartoris nor Flags in the Dust. I note that Wiki tags the former as a condensation of the latter. More book titles to look for. Finally, A Death in the Family. I always considered myself an Agee fan, even though I've never read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I do have a hardcover of A Death in the Family that I bought new in the early '60s in a failing Allentown bookstore, and I've read it at least a couple of times (most recently in 2010). The "restoration" is totally new to me. Put it on my Amazon wish list. Kinda pricey through.

>131 weird_O: Oh, cake is definitely good! Lovely picture.

>136 charl08: I love cake. Looks to me like icing was not slathered on Annie birthday cake.

In other news...

I'm officially out of February's AAC. I read a couple of exploratory chapters of Little Women and cannot imagine reading another 450 pages of it. Very sorry. Doesn't suit me. I have a fairly substantial number of books I DO want to read, including some classics by American women and some recent books by American women writers. Be back for March.

>111 weird_O: Are you saying that taking a 'crap' comes from the inventor of the toilet's last name, Crapper?? ROFL!!

Very nice book hauls!! Your shelving is in danger.

Annie is too cute!

Happy Thursday.

>138 Berly: Well, at least you didn't assert it was a lot of crap.

I'm reading These Truths chapter by chapter, and I do mean to pick up the pace. But between things, I read two 18th century plays—comedies both— that were combined in one small mass market paperback. Oliver Goldsmith wrote She Stoops to Conquer; Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote The School for Scandal.

Hi, Bill.

Nice book spree! I thought The Trial was great. I ended up reading all things Kafka Thank goodness his friend didn't follow instructions and burn them.

Fun photo of Annie!

I just started Last Friends, and once again I'm impressed by her smooth writing style.

Happy Sunday, Bill. I hope you are having a great weekend. I will be wrapping up These Truths tomorrow. What an awesome achievement, she pulled off here. I will also start Last Friends tomorrow.

Watched GrandD #3 a.k.a. Gracie (wearing the orange headband in the photo) play in an indoor field hockey tournament nearby. She did good, as did the team she's on. She was dissatisfied with the play in the summer league and in middle school. The other girls, she said, weren't committed and sufficiently serious. She likes this. They played 20-minute games against three other teams in the Under-14 bracket. The two best teams then faced each other for the tournament title. Their goalkeeper hurt her leg/foot/ankle during the week playing...uh oh...basketball; the coach had them play without the goalkeeper. They lost one game, but got the title.

The coach congratulated Gracie because this was the first tourney in which she didn't get chided by a ref for overly aggressive play.

>110 weird_O: >122 weird_O: Nice book hauls!

Thanks, Lori.

My current whimsy is reading various versions of the Faust tale. I got a poke from James Mustich, my current read-1000-books guru regarding Goethe's version of the legend. I recalled that Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's contemporary, wrote a play about Doctor Faustus (shortly before he was murdered in a bar fight, after which he wrote all the really good Shakespeare plays. But I digress.) While looking for a copy of Goethe's Faust at the most recent library sale I attended, I found a copy of Thomas Mann's take on the legend. And then I looked at by LT book catalog and discovered that I've had a copy of the Goethe since 2015, when I bought something like 125 Heritage Press books. Faust was part of the buy. Checking the Wiki entry on Faust revealed to me that Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita—stashed in The TBR Closet^™— is based on the Faust legend, as is Stephen Vincent Benét's The Devil and Daniel Webster.

I finished the Marlowe play a couple of days ago. The Faustus Folly is underway.

Then I have Goethe's Faust, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. If I come upon a copy of Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster, why I'll read that, too. I don't intend the read these books back-to-back. But I want to do it by the end of 2019.

    

Interesting how a reader gets a “bug” and where that leads. Last year much of my reading centered around trees. I didn’t plan it that way - at first, it just sort of happened. Once I realized it I decided to roll with it and it was amazing the tree connections I made through the year.

>145 weird_O: Oooh. Let me know when you get to the master and the margarita. I got like 40 pages in before I got distracted by something. I want to give it another try. : )

>145 weird_O: That's a worthy collection of reads, that is. I haven't read the Marlowe...plays, blech...but the others are aces.

The Master and Margarita was very very good.

>146 benitastrnad: Thanks for that encouragement, Benita. I hope I can keep it going until all have been read.

>147 Berly: Kim, I will keep you in mind. I have it on good authority that The Master and Margarita is good, but perhaps a bit difficult. Linda >149 laytonwoman3rd: just endorsed it, and she's usually right.

>148 richardderus: I'm through the Marlowe, RD. So one down, four to go. Good to have your endorsement as well.

In reading news, I have finished Educated by Tara Westover. What a god-awful family she survived!

Jumping back to These Truths.

'Morning, Bill!

You're just a reading machine. Good for you.

>150 weird_O: Well, thank you for the vote of confidence, Bill! My advice with M&M is not to start it until a time when you can sit uninterrupted with it for at least an hour, and really get drawn in.

>152 laytonwoman3rd: I will heed your advice, Linda. Thanks.

>151 karenmarie: Hi, Karen.

————

I completed Part Two of These Truths. So much I learned. Not so much in learning "the truths" that I was ignorant of, but in getting a lot of explanations. I especially appreciate Prof. Lepore's quote from Alexander Stephens stating the basis for the Confederacy: That that new nation repudiated "the assumption of the equality of races." Speaking as the just-elected vice president of the Confederacy, Stephens asserted:

Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite idea: its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery...is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

I'm now reading The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. I know a number of readers didn't connect with this novel. But my reading-guru-of-the-moment, James Mustich, lauds it. I'll judge for myself.

>153 weird_O: This isn't the first time I've read that, but Stephens and his modern-day brethren still cause my gorge to rise.

The Stone Diaries is one of my all-time favorites, Bill. I hope it works for you.

>153 weird_O: Good for you to have finished Part 2! I'm about halfway through part 2 and will keep my eyes peeled for that quote by Stevens.

I loved The Master and Margarita, Bill. Our daughter had me read it. I think you’ll get a kick out of its weirdness.

Odd. I finished reading another book.

Back to Shields' The Stone Diaries.

Drove my wife to an appointment Friday. And forgot my book. So I raced three doors down to a thrift store to look for something. Found The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book for 3 bucks. But also burned the hour I had for reading. Finished it an hour ago. Great great fun!

Back to The Stone Diaries, which is quite good. About half through it.

ETA: Family obligation required my attendance at the Pottstown Library used book sale on Saturday. My sister-in-law is a library friend who helps organize and run the sale. She invited me. Sparsely attended, not expansive, but a lot of books that interested me. I guess a photo will follow, along with a list.

>159 weird_O: Hah, am I prescient or what? I guess a photo will follow, along with a list. Here's a photo:



Here's a list:

The Once and Future King by T. H. White (mmp)
Did You Boscov Today? by Amelia Xanthe Boscov, Jonah Boscov-Brown, and Josh Aichenbaum (pbk)
Grendel by John Gardner (pbk)
Elegy for Iris by John Bayley (pbk)
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (pbk)
The Secret Place by Tana French (pbk)
Firehouse by David Halberstam (pbk)
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (pbk)
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman (pbk)
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (pbk)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (pbk)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (pbk)
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (pbk) [Hogarth Shakespeare series]
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (pbk)
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (pbk)
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (pbk)
Abigail Adams: A Biography by Phyllis Lee Levin (pbk)
The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, and Frederic Lemercier (pbk)
Andrew Wyeth by Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (pbk)
Vergil's Aeneid, Books I–VI by Clyde Pharr (hc)
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (hc)
This Is the Hour: A Novel about Goya by Lion Feuchtwanger (hc)
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (hc)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (hc)
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (hc)
Going into Town by Roz Chast (hc)
The Town by William Faulkner (hc)
Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris (hc)
Possession by A. S. Byatt (hc)
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon (hc)
Ghost Town by Robert Coover (hc)
Primary Colors by Anonymous (hc)

Yowzers, Bill! Another great haul.

Salvage the Bones is a favorite of mine.

River of Doubt was a good read, as was The Secret History which I read as a teenager. My book club is reading it in March but I'm not sure if I'll go in for a re-read or not...

Anyway, that ought to keep you busy for a while!

>160 weird_O: Yum. That's all, just Yum.

>161 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie. I was kinda surprised myself at the good stuff available. Even after the dealer pickers combed through the inventory the day before. Salvage the Bones is the third Jesmyn Ward to join the TBR, so I AM SET for the ACC in Ward Month.

>162 richardderus: Agreed!

Wonderful haul, you've inspired me. I've got to find me a library book sale for my Thingaversary in May. :)

>164 mahsdad: Have I got the link for you, Jeff. Website called Book Sale Finder: https://booksalefinder.com/

San Pedro, CA

San Pedro Branch Library
931 S Gaffey St
310-548-7779
March 2; April 6; May 4; June 1; July 6; Aug 3; Sept 7; Oct 5; Nov 2
Sat 11-4
Preview: Friday 2-5 pm Friends; join at door $10
"Several thousand" books; 65% donated; 75% hardcover; sorted; paperbacks .25-.50; $1-5

It's this weekend! Go Nutz!

Ha! Thank you, I just might have to go check it out. That library is about a mile from my house.

>165 weird_O: Love that Book Sale Finder. Just tossing this notice around in a few likely places---The March thread is up for the AAC

Hi Bill!

>160 weird_O: Another great haul.

Even though our Friends of the Library advertises on BSF, I rarely look there. There's a 50,000 book sale at a synagogue in Greensboro, NC next week, but I need to save my pennies for our own FoL sale at the end of March. Sigh.

>168 karenmarie: 50,000 books all at once might be overwhelming anyway...

>169 laytonwoman3rd: It absolutely would be, Linda. I have to pass, but do so unwillingly. It would take the entire day with driving 1.25 hours each way and wanting to spend enough time there to justify it.

Daughter's home for spring break, we were out yesterday, and just want to watch movies and play Yahtzee today.

Shortly, I will be reading Washington Black, spurred on by my daughter, who got it from the library (while I got a copy at a library sale). She told me it is good.

In the meantime, I'm working through two translations of Beowulf. I definitely like Seamus Heaney's translation better than that of William Ellery Leonard. I didn't read too far before all the Lord of the Rings stuff tumbled into place for me. I know, I know: Duh!!! But also Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, John Henry.

So why am I reading to version two versions of the same manuscript? That's a good question.

Ooop! Times up, gotta go.

Happy Saturday, Bill. I hope life has been treating you good. Great book haul up there and I am tickled that you are finally getting to Washington Black and that your daughter spurred you on. Very good book.

I am nearly finished with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which has taken up my print reading, since the first of the month. I am enjoying the ride but I do not think it would be your cuppa.

I laughed when I read that from Mark about Black Leopard not being you “thing.” Science Fiction was never my thing until about 5 years ago. I had read that President Obama read Three Body Problem when he needed to get out of his head. So I tried it when things were really tough at my place of employement. Because of that it has become my “escapist” reading.

I think that reading tastes change throughout our lives. Things I read when I was younger don’t capture me now, and I am sure that some of the things I read now wouldn’t have worked for me back then. Age and experience change lots of things. Including reading material. My rule now is that what I am reading must bring me some kind of joy or satisfaction.

>173 benitastrnad: I quite agree with you about evolving tastes in reading, Benita. I am kinda aware of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, knowing it to be the work of Marlon James, whose previous book I own but have not read. I'll get to it, someday. >172 msf59: BLRW is not really something my Weird Radar is tracking, Mark.

I am in a mood just now. I've got about a half-dozen books started, all of which I do want to read, but I haven't quite been seized by any one of them. Okay, I might be seized by Washington Black, which I started today to try to catch up with my daughter who is at least halfway through it.

What else is going? Two different translations of Beowulf, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Jill Lepore's These Truths, and Jon Clinch's Finn. I've read about 10 pages of that last one, enough to stand my hair tall and trembling. "Ya like that fatback, do ya?" Oh my...

That evolution is strong in Beowulf. I have generally avoided the ancient poetics, but now well into the tale, I see the draw of such works as Lord of the Rings. And now that trilogy is surging toward the top o' the chart.

Anyway, Washington Black, like Finn, is more of a page-turner than Beowulf, shorter than Tris Shandy. And I do need to get back to Prof. Lepore; she's teaching me a lot. But WB is my read for now.

>160 weird_O: Great book haul!! I have or have read the following:

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (pbk)
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman (pbk)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (pbk)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (pbk)
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (pbk)
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (pbk)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (hc)
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (hc)

And of those I read, I enjoyed them! Good job.

>174 weird_O: " I've read about 10 pages of that last one {Finn}, enough to stand my hair tall and trembling. " Oh my, indeed. You know, I think I have to read it again. It's been nearly 10 years.

>174 weird_O: You do sound like you have an awful lot ongoing. I am halfway through The Flamethrowers, and feel too committed to give up, but if it was 100 pages shorter than it is, I'd be happier. It's got loads about protest groups in New York in the 70s who raided shops and gave things away for free. I must have missed that in my history classes.

I am stuck with Lepore. I need to pick it up again.

Happy Monday reading, Bill, and may Clinch keep those hairs in the full upright and locked position.

>175 Berly: Isn't that stuff great? Well, you just said it is; you must be correct. Pleased I was to get American Gods. I had to mail the family copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane to my daughter (well, technically it is hers) because Gaiman is doing some sort of fund-raiser at Boston's Huntington Theater, where she works. She's hoping to get his autograph in it. I'm hoping I'll get to see it (the autograph).

>176 laytonwoman3rd: Haven't gotten back to Finn yet, Linda. But those first 10 pages do mark a departure from Mark Twain. I'm half through Washington Black, and that's quite a book.

>177 charl08: At lot going on, yes. And with a new exercise tossed into the mix over the weekend. See below... Had to check The Flamethrower page, since it didn't ring a bell in my often empty belfry. I see that reviews are mixed, so I understand your mixed feelings about it. Hmmm. I remember shops being broken into, but only during riots and only for the breaker-inners to help themselves. Ah, fiction.

>178 richardderus: Monday was good, Richard. Finn'll be teasing my hairs by Thursday at the latest.

My new project is scanning slides I took in Bangkok when I was stationed there. A draftee. Fifty years ago. A whole lot better place than that other Southeast Asian country. Friends of ours visited Bangkok, plus Laos and Cambodia, a couple of weeks ago. I remembered scanning slides from Thailand several years ago and feeling I was missing "the good stuff." Over the weekend, I discovered slide boxes from Thailand in the bottom of a carton filled to the brim with yellow Kodak slide boxes. I had scribbled "GOOD" on these boxes. Probably 600-700 images. That will take a while.

Peeking at random slides reminds me that my pictures aren't a whole lot like commonplace touristy photos. And that they're 50 years old.

But fun.

>179 weird_O: We're in the process of scanning slides from three households---our own and our respective parents'. My mother's are done; that was the smallest batch. Our own are next; we've sorted which ones we feel are worth the time and effort. FIL's will take forever; photography was his hobby.

I scanned my father's color slides (and quite a few b&w slides) a few years ago. My sister and brother had ceded possession of the collection to me, and of course they got copies of the scans. B&w prints my brother had scanned, then passed the originals to me. Our dad died in 1950, so there's a decade's worth of slides.

>179 weird_O: What are you using to scan the slides. I have boxes of slides and negatives that I should be doing the exact same thing. This curious mind wants to know.

We have an Epson dedicated scanner for slides and negatives. It works well, but it's a slow process. My husband loads it up (it takes several at a time on the flatbed) and then putters with his watches or ship model while it scans that batch, then adds another, and so on. It has some basic software for removing imperfections, enhancing color, etc.

>182 mahsdad: I have an Epson Perfection V700 scanner that I bought from Amazon (for $530) in 2010. It came with software for both Macs and PCs, a copy of Adobe Elements, and a copy of some Russian software that converts scanned text into an editable file. Scans documents and photo prints and transparencies. Plastic holders for 12 35mm slides at a time, 35mm negatives (both color and b&w), 2 1/4 film, sheet film.

I imagine that in the past nine years, much improved (and less costly) scanners are on the market. This one has worked for me.

As Linda (>183 laytonwoman3rd:) pointed out, the tedious aspect of such work is handling the film.

>184 weird_O: Cool thanks for the info!

Hiya, Bill.

Man, way to go finding the "good slides" of Bangkok. I hope you post one or many here. Have you been back? I wonder how much it's changed.

Washington Black also was a page-turner for me, and definitely more so than Beowulf. I missed it - are you reading Seamus Heaney's Beowulf translation? That's the one I read, and I thought he did a good job of bringing it to life.

Tristam Shandy: I enjoyed it, but it's a weird one. Oh, maybe that's a recommendation to you? :-)

Here it is: Pi Day. 3-14.

Interesting to note this is Albert Einstein's birthday. And the date of Stephen Hawking's death.

Finished Washington Black last evening. Picked up and read pages in Finn as well as in Beowulf.

>186 jnwelch: I've been reading mostly a 1930's era translation of Beowulf, but I'm now reading Prof. Heaney's. His is MUCH better.

Happy Pi Day, Bill

Finished Jon Clinch's Finn just a bit ago. An admirable piece of writing. Clinch constructs a backstory for one character in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that being Huck's father, Pap Finn.

Beowulf beckons!

March has been a month of distractions for me, hence only four books have been read. One egregiously short, but all most excellent.

--------------------

I've scanned about 200 of my 50-year-old slides from Bangkok, Thailand. None quite measure up to those in my mind's eye. I can't picture the city's layout as it was in 1967-8; Google Maps is scary, showing just a welter of streets and khlongs and superduper Interstate-like highways. I have to locate a map, one that might materialize in a carton in the catacombs.

Hi Bill!

Sorry you've been so distracted this month. I hope you get a few choice books read in the next 13 days!

Good luck finding a map of 50-year-ago Bangkok.

# 25. Beowulf by Beowulf author Finished 3/19/19

The Weird Report^TM   translated by Seamus Heaney, 1999

              translated by William Ellery Leonard, 1923

Who amongst us has not a single notion of the poem called Beowulf? It is, as Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney wrote (in his introduction to his translation of it), "one of the foundation works of poetry in English." Often classified as "a heroic narrative," the poem tells of carnage wrought on the Danes by a terrifying and seemingly invincible monster called Grendel, and how an epic hero from Geatland volunteers to defend the Danes and how, with his bare hands, he destroys Grendel. The hero, of course, is Beowulf.
And that's just the first of several heroic acts recounted in the poem.

The damper on appreciation of Beowulf is its origin and its structure. Believed to have been composed between 750 AD and 1100 AD, it was a performance piece. Literacy was almost nonexistent, so such tales as Beowulf were memorized, often (usually?) set to music, and presented as entertainment. The oral tradition: think of folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers, American folk tales; every nation and culture has an oral tradition. At some point, someone transcribed the various episodes, weaving them into one long story. A single manuscript exists—just one—and it was nearly lost in a fire in 1731. It's now housed in the British Library. A page of the manuscript is shown below:



I already had a Heritage Press edition of Beowulf when I found a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation. The HP book used a translation published in 1923 by William Ellery Leonard, a respected poet and translator. The translations are obviously different on the printed page, and reading and understanding them differs as well. I chose to read both (the poem is but 3182 lines), but after digesting fewer than 1500 lines of Leonard's version, I turned to Heaney's. So much better.

In his introduction, Leonard explained his intent to recreate as closely as possible the rhythm and rhyme of the original.

  Perhaps the reader would like to see a sample of that old verse. Here are two lines:

    Gewát tha òfer wáeg-hòlm,  wíndè gefýsèd,
    Flótà fami-héals  fúglà gelícòst

  They mean: "Then went over the billowy ocean, driven by the wind, the floater (ship), with foamy neck (prow), very like a (wild-) fowl."
Now, if he'll [the reader] pardon a somewhat twisted translation, I can put these verses into a sort of equivalent English verse. Like this:

    Wént she òver wáve-sèas,  wíndỳ her fárìng,
    Flóatèr fóamy-nécked—  fówl wàs she líkèst.

The observant student will notice: (1) that the lines are divided by a pause in the middle; and (2) that the two halves of each line have words that begin with the same sound (alliteration).
  He will notice, too, the accent-marks over some of the syllables both in the Anglo-Saxon and the English. I just now set them there to help explain the way the verses keep time. In the old days verses were not read to one's self, or even read aloud or recited; they were sung, or half-sung, or chanted, to the accompaniment of the harp, before a group of listeners at festivals, feasts, or parties.

Interesting, but after a thousand lines, not very lively (not to me anyway). Translating the lines into English, and retaining a semblance of the original language's dynamics is difficult. Reading that translation is hardly a pleasure (again, not to me anyway). It's work is what it is! It's an exercise that makes clear the immensity of the challenge that reading Beowulf in the Anglo-Saxon is. Here's a passage in the original Anglo-Saxon (lines 86 through 98).



Here's Leonard's translation of the passage:

But now that bold Hobgoblin, who dwelt in fenways dark,
Ill bore the sullen grievance that he each day must hark
To revel loud at banquet. The noise of harp was there,
In hall clear song of singer. He spake who knew full fair
To tell mankind's beginning, how God Almighty wrought
The earth, that shining lea-land, which waters fold about;
Quoth how God set, triumphant, the sun and the moon
As lights to lighten landsfolk; how he adorned soon
With leaf and limb the fold all; and eke created birth
For every kind that moveth on ocean, air, or earth.

And Heaney's Translation of the same passage:

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man's beginnings,
how the Almighty had made the earth
a gleaming plain girdled with waters;
in His splendour He set the sun and the moon
to be earth's lamplight, lanterns for men,
and filled the broad lap of the world
with branches and leaves; and quickened life
in every other thing that moved.

Heaney's transformed the classic poem—a scholar's trial—into a text that's pleasant to read and easier to understand, a story with emotion and drive. A good read. A delight to anyone.

Nice review! Heaney's is my favorite as well, though I've only read two others. I even like it better than Tolkien's, which also tries to preserve (in my opinion) too much of the structure of the original that just doesn't translate well. Heaney kept the rhythm of the original, but somehow made it come alive!

Thanks, Jim. I came across a mention that Tolkien was completing a translation at the time of his death. I guess I don't really need to seek it out.

Congrats on your team's winning the Armstrong prize.

Thanks!

Fantastic review (and overview) of Beowulf, Bill. I was exposed to it in translation (I'm not sure whose), as well as in Old English, in college, and in recent years renewed my acquaintance with the tale through Heaney's translation. I commend him highly for creating a version that is accessible and enjoyable to the modern reader. I remember being awed by my professor's glib quoting of bits of it in Old English -- I'm sure she was "fluent" and it sounded amazing. But this epic was meant for common consumption, so it would be a shame if only highly educated specialists could appreciate it in the 21st century.

# 26. Grendel by John Gardner Finished 3/21/19

The Weird Report^TM  

In Beowulf, the mythic epic of battles in ancient Scandinavia, Grendel is a grisly monster that terrorizes the kingdom ruled by Hrothgar. Grendel is without thoughts, character, ethics; just a horrible creature that lives deep underground, venturing out to feed on wildlife, cattle, and humans, collecting bodies to drag into any secluded spot, then crunching them up, hair, bones, flesh, and all.

John Gardner, in this novel published in 1971, gives Grendel a life beyond mere animation, as well as a voice. The story, as he tells it, is unlike that of the poem. Men are not very smart and they are not fearless warriors. For his own part, he's bored and puzzled by his own existence.

…"Why are we here?" I used to ask her [his mother]."Why do we stand this putrid, stinking hole?" She trembles at my words. Her fat lips shake. "Don't ask!" he wriggling claws implore. (She never speaks.) "Don't ask!" It must be some terrible secret, I used to think. I'd give her a crafty squint. She'll tell me, in time, I thought. But she told me nothing…

He speaks of his discovery of a sunken door that allows him to escape the den and explore the outside. "I played my way further out…, cautiously darting from tree to tree challenging the terrible forces of night on tiptoe." His first confrontation with men happens when he catches his foot—inextricably—in the crotch of a tree. He survives an assault by a bull, though one leg is gored and ripped. He sleeps. Awaking, he sees and hears men, and realizes he can understand that they are saying. What follows smacks of a Monty Python sketch, in which Grendel is judged to be a fungus growth on the tree that must be chopped away to save the tree. Then he's seen to be a spirit, a hungry one, hungry for...pig! Yes, but also a scary spirit. The men hurl spears and like weapons at him. When his mother appears, coming over the ridge to save her baby, the men run away.

As he continues to grow and mature, Grendel spends most of his time observing the humans, hiding himself in the treetops or outside the huts, peeking through and listening at gaps between logs.

In the beginning there were various groups of them: ragged little bands that roamed the forest on foot or horseback, crafty-witted killers that worked in teams, hunting through the summer, shivering in caves or little huts in the winter, occasionally wandering out into the snow to plow through it slowly, clumsily, after more meat. Ice clung to their eyebrows and beards and eyelashes, and I'd hear them whining and groaning as they walked. When two hunters from different bands came together in the woods, they would fight until the snow was slushy with blood, then crawl back, gasping and crying, to their separate camps to tell wild tales of what happened.

The time comes when Grendel emerges from hiding.

...I come through trees and towns to the lights of Hrothgar's meadhall. I am no stranger here. A respected guest. Eleven years now and going on twelve I have come up this clean-mown central hill, dark shadow out of the woods below, and have knocked politely on the high oak door, bursting its hinges and sending the shock of my greeting inward like a cold blast out of a cave...The thanes in the meadhall blow out the lights and cover the wide stone fireplace with shields. I laugh, crumple over; I can't help myself. In the darkness, I alone see clear as day. While they squeal and screech and bump into each other, I silently sack up my dead and withdraw to the woods. I eat and laugh and eat until I can barely walk, my chest-hair matted with dribbled blood...

Then Beowulf enters the story...

Ok. So. Book sale today. I'm off in 3...2...1.

Happy Saturday, Bill. It looks like I should pair up Beowulf & Grendel one of these days. Sounds great.

I am sure you'll have a great time at the book sale. Did you rent a U-Haul?

Good reviews of Beowulf and Grendel, Bill. How smart to pair them up to read like that. Great choice of quotes. I love the comparison of the William Ellery Leonard and Seamus Heaney translations of Beowulf. My eyes glazed over just trying to get through Leonard's.

>197 weird_O: Yes, I also admired Grendel. Of course, in our house, John Gardner is treated with reverence. He taught my daughter's creative writing professor, who thought Gardner...well....wrote the book, as it were, on writing fiction. On Moral Fiction is worth a look, it really is.

Thank you both, Joe and Linda. Just coincidence that I came across Grendel at a library sale at the end of February. So I said to myself, "might as well."

Right now I'm skittering from book to book. Professor Lepore is waiting patiently for me to get back to her history These Truths. I was fired up by Part II, but I set it aside and haven't really gotten back into it. I got seduced by Grendel, then by Ali Smith's Autumn, David Mitchell's Slade House, and then Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister. Spent an afternoon savoring a collection of squibs Kurt Vonnegut did for NPR, about interviewing historical figures by way of near-death episodes overseen by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian.

In addition to These Truths, I have made inroads in Lincoln in the Bardo, Directions to Servants by Jonathan Swift, which I just got today, Vicar of Wakefield in a tiny little hardcover edition, a Wooster and Jeeves romp, and Tristram Shandy, which I find takes a lot of concentration to follow.

2019 Reading Stats

First Quarter 2019
Books read: 30
Authors read: 33 (including co-authors of 2 books and a single author of 2 books counted as 1)
Single-read Authors: 27
Multi-read authors: 3
New-to-me authors: 17

Author gender
Male: 23
Female: 11

Author Birth Country
US: 10
UK: 11
Ireland: 3
Russia: 1
Scotland: 1
Spain: 1
Latvia: 1
Canada: 2
Antiqua: 1
France: 1

Dead or alive
Currently breathing: 13 (afaik)
Deceased: 17

First published
Before 1700s: 2
1700s: 2
1800s: 2
1900—1925: 1
1926—1950: 2
1951—1975: 6
1976—2000: 6
2001—2010: 4
2011—2018: 7

Genre
Fiction: 23
Non-fiction: 4
Graphic/Photo/Art: 2
Drama: 3

Format
Hardcover: 15
Paperback: 13
Mass-market paperback: 3

Source
2018 acquisition: 10
ROOT: 21

Books Acquired
Total: 158
New: 1
Used: 157

Hi Bill!

>192 weird_O: Well done!

>203 weird_O: Excellent stats. I'm particularly interested in your acquisition of 158 books - you've got me beat. Since my goal is to acquire fewer books than I did last year, this makes me happy; but I'm sure your 158 books makes you happy. At this rate you'll be well over 600 by year end.

Somehow, I lost your thread but that's all fixed up now. At least, before you start a new one!

>204 karenmarie: Thank you, thank you, Karen. You're a wonderful audience... See post 207 for the basics of quarter-closing book acquisitions.

>205 jessibud2: Glad you found me, Shelley. I have trouble with that myself.

From Goodwill last Wednesday, left stack, top to bottom:

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (pbk)
Very Good, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (pbk)
The Magician's Nephew The Chronicles of Narnia book 1 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
The Horse and his Boy The Chronicles of Narnia book 3 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
Prince Caspian The Chronicles of Narnia book 4 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Chronicles of Narnia book 5 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
The Silver Chair The Chronicles of Narnia book 6 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
The Last Battle The Chronicles of Narnia book 7 by C. S. Lewis (pbk)
Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (pbk)
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (pbk)
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier (hc)
Black Alley by Mickey Spillane (hc)
Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins (hc)
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (hc)
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut. (pbk)
Madame Curie by Eve Curie (pbk)
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash (pbk)
Johnny and the Dead The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy by Terry Pratchett (hc)
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (hc)

Failing to appear for the photo session:

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut (pbk)
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (hc w/jacket)

From the Bethlehem Area Public Library book sale on Saturday, right stack, top to bottom:

Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker (hc)
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (pbk)
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (pbk)
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (pbk)
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (pbk)
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (pbk)
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan (pbk)
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth (pbk)
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (pbk)
Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs (pbk)
Charles Bukowski's Scarlet by Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood (pbk)
When I Was a Photographer by Felix Nadar (hc)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (pbk)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (hc)
Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick (pbk)
Jonathan Swift's Directions to Servants by Joseph Low (hc)
Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles (hc)
Munich by Robert Harris (hc)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (hc)
Exiles in the Garden by Ward Just (hc)

Leaning against the wall:

Skyscrapers by Antonino Terranova (hc, oversize)
Library: The Drama Within by Diane Asseo Griliches (hc, oversize)

Left to right in front:

Georgia O'Keeffe by Nancy Frazier (hc, oversize)
The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, edited by Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams (hc, oversize)
In a Sacred Manner We Live: Photographs of the North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis (hc, oversize)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (hc, oversize)

Man, what a haul!! That should keep you busy for quite a while. : )

# 29. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler Finished 3/27/19

The Weird Report^TM  >

Discovering that a favorite now-dead author wrote a novel you didn't know of is exciting. To find out, by reading it, that it's one of the author's best is thrilling. It happened to me. Scanning the bookshelves at a Goodwill store, I found a copy of Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister. New to me...and I was so sure I had copies of ALL his novels. A happy find.

The Little Sister has all the Chandler hallmarks: Philip Marlowe; snappy dialogue; hostile cops; a spectrum of hoods, chiselers, toughs, and gangsters; innocent and/or seductive women; a murder, then another. And another. Add a loon or two, several lunkheads, a whack to the head. Shake or stir (your preference) until noir.

The story begins with a telephone call to Marlowe's office, where he is killing time stalking a fly.

  "Is this Mr. Marlowe, the detective?" It was a small, rather hurried, little-girlish voice. I said it was Mr. Marlowe, the detective. "How much do you charge for your services, Mr. Marlowe?"
  "What was it you wanted done?"
  The voice sharpened a little. "I can't very well tell you that over the phone. It's—it's very confidential. Before I'd waste time coming to your office I'd have to have some idea—"
  "Forty bucks a day and expenses. Unless it's the kind of job that can be done for a flat fee."
  "That's far too much," the little voice said. "Why, it might cost hundreds of dollars and I only get a small salary and—"
  "Where are you now?"
  "Why, I'm in a drugstore. It's right next to the building where your office is."
  "You could have saved a nickel. The elevator's free."

More back-and-forth, with the caller expressing her concerns without sharing any personal information or anything about the detecting she wants done. When she says, "You might at least talk like a gentleman," Marlowe hangs up. "It was a step in the right direction," he tells us, "but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk."

Within minutes, the caller comes through the unlocked office door and faces Marlowe. She's Orfamay Quest of Manhattan, Kansas, a dowdy young woman who wants Marlowe to locate her older brother, Orrin. He left Kansas for a job one of the area's aircraft businesses. She has an address—a shabby rooming house in a seedy neighborhood—but he's not there. She knows nothing else. Or so she tells Marlowe. She won't say where she is staying, she won't provide a telephone number where he can contact her. She neglects to mention a sister who is in town. Or her sister's friends.

A trip to the rooming house doesn't yield Orrin or a forwarding address. A tough in the kitchen gives Marlowe trouble, as does the drunken manager, as does—initially anyway—a man who is in the process of vacating the room Orrin had stayed it. On his way out, Marlowe stops to question the manager, but finds him out cold. On his way back to the office, he stops at a telephone booth and calls the Police Department.

  "Bay City Police. Moot talking," a furry voice said.
  I said: "Number 449 Idaho Street. In the apartment of the manager. His name's Clausen."
  "Yeah?" The voice said. "What do we do?"
  "I don't know," I said. "It's a bit of a puzzle to me. But the man's name is Lester B. Clausen. Got that?"
  "What makes it important?" the furry voice said without suspicion.
  "The coroner will want to know," I said, and hung up.

Yes. It is like that, all the way to the end.

Wow...you really hit a rich vein...twice! And thanks for the review of The Little Sister. It's included in the Library of America collection of Chandler's novels, so I'm going to put it on the list for real soon.

>210 laytonwoman3rd: Actually, Linda, I've still got a vein—not quite as rich—to lay bare. Monday I filled a bag at my old original hometown library. A dozen books (all hardcovers) for a fiver. Details soon.

Okay, Okay (in reference to your post on my thread), Lurky McLurkenstien here, to say; very nice haul, hope you're having a good week!

>212 mahsdad: Okay, okay. Thank you. But what about the dime?

Plus interest...

"My name is ________ and I am a biblioholic."

Lots of lovely books. Congratulations.

Howdy, Bill. Hooray for another kick-butt book haul! You got a great nose for bookish deals. Good review of the Chandler. I have also not read that one.

In one sense, this is the end of it: The end of a 3-day binge. In another sense it's a beginning: The beginning of 2nd quarter 2019 book buying.

Charles Darwin's Autobiography edited by Sir Francis Darwin (hc)
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (hc)
Elvis Presley by Bobbie Ann Mason (hc)
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (hc)
Drown by Junot Diaz (hc)
Abraham Lincoln by Thomas Keneally (hc)
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (hc)
Ah, Treachery by Ross Thomas (hc)
Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley (hc)
Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith (hc)
Absolute Friends by John Le Carre (hc)
H. G. Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times by Lovat Dickson (hc)

Florence of Arabia made me laugh out loud when I read it back in 2004 or so. I don't know if it's a bit dated now, but I hope you enjoy it!

>218 katiekrug: I love Buckley. I haven't read Florence, but I've really enjoyed The Relic Master, Boomsday and Supreme Courtship. I'll have to put this one on the list.

>219 mahsdad: - I've enjoyed all those, too. No Way to Treat a First Lady is also pretty good.

Great book haul, Bill. I hope you enjoy The Arrival. It won't increase your words-read count, but it's a gem, IMO.

Raymond Chandler's a favorite for me, too, and your review of Little Sister makes me want to re-read him. I love Noir-ville and the snappy dialogue.

>221 jnwelch: Haha, Joe. I've just been preparing a few shots of drawings in The Arrival. No words, but a lot to appreciate and absorb. I paged slowly through it Sunday.

>218 katiekrug: >219 mahsdad: Buckley's good all right. The first book by him that I read was Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir. Most memorable in the book (to me) was that Bill Buckley was unable to move past Wordstar, a word processing program first released in 1978. It ran under the C/PM operating system, then was made to work in the Ms-DOS system. Buckley employed a long-suffering techie to cobble workarounds to enable him to continue using Wordstar until he died in 2008. I used Wordstar briefly and did NOT like it.

Supreme Courtship was also good.

Finished Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Very clever concept, well executed.

On to Wooster & Jeeves, already in progress.

>217 weird_O: Oh, my...a Bobbie Ann Mason I don't have....

Listen, if you get a notion to start a new thread, please keep the photo of the adorable cake crumber on it....that face just makes my day every time I come here.

Wooster and Jeeves following Lincoln in the Bardo. Ridiculously sublime to sublimely ridiculous?

Have a great Sunday, Bill.

# 31. The Arrival by Shaun Tan Finished 4/1/19

The Weird Report^TM  

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a silent book. It's filled with hand-drawn images—happy, emotional, informative, mystifying, flabbergasting, wonderful, moving, inspiring drawings. Like a silent movie, the book has no words. Like a silent movie, it has narrative structure and a story to tell. Like a silent movie, it can be funny, sad, moving, and altogether satisfying. Perhaps it is unsurprising that its author has won an Academy Award in 2011 for The Lost Thing, an animated short film he adapted from a picture book (same title) he wrote and illustrated in 2000.

Put briefly, The Arrival is the story of immigration, a story of family separation, of a husband and father leaving his family to journey across an ocean to find a new life in a new society, to find new employment, learn a new language, new foods, new pets, new acquaintances. And ultimately to bring his family to him and their new home.

   

The narrative is bookended by a grid of drawings of family artifacts, as they were in the old setting (above) and as they are—with new-world appropriate replacements—populating the family's new home (below).

   

   

Benign as the artifacts make their homeland seem, life there is overshadowed by fear. Of what? Some vague monstrous danger. It’s just in the air.

   

This new land is radically different. Fantastical. Mind boggling. Navigating the city is confusing, even with a map. But people on the street and in shops are sympathetic and helpful. Many are themselves immigrants.

Updating...

In completing Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward I have met the AAC 2019 for April.

So far, I read the following for AAC:

The Chosen by Chaim Potok (January)
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (January)
Diary by Chuck Palahniuk (February—using the Wild Card*)
Finn by Jon Clinch (March)
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (April)

I still have Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped: A Memoir, both by Ward, calling and waving from the AAC 2019 TBR Roost. They want to be read this month, but I might read other stuff. Lined up on that Roost for the remaining 8 months of the challenge are:

May
The Apprentice Lover by Jay Parini
The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year by Jay Parini**
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner by Jay Parini**

June
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

July
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
The Federalist by James Madison et al.

August
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines

September
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

October
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut

November
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois

December
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Lila by Marilynne Robinson

--------------------
*A.K.A. Get out of reading Louisa May Alcott card.

**Two books, either of which I'd rather read than the one I have. But I'll have to buy new, at retail. Unless a miracle happens. I'm holding out.

You can't find used copies of Parini's books on Amazon or ABE or somewhere? He's a home town boy, so I often find his stuff at our library sales. But there isn't one between now and the end of May, or I'd scout for you here. What is the one you have?

>207 weird_O: >217 weird_O: *quivers with book-concupiscence*

Much terrific reading done, congratulations!

Hi Bill!

>215 karenmarie: Did you fill in the blank?

>226 weird_O: The Arrival is just amazing.

>228 laytonwoman3rd: Oh! I never thought of that. What a concept. Shopping for a used book on the internets. Thanks, Linda.

>229 richardderus: Just a little book porn, the stuff that doesn't provoke outrage, RD.

>230 karenmarie: Oh, does that blank need to be filled in. Can I use "state your name"?

>231 SandDune: It definitely is, Rhian. I got it just a month or so ago at a library book sale, and interestingly, it was placed with the art and photography books rather than in the juvenile section. So much going on it those drawings, so much to ponder.

I always scan the births/deaths list on LT. I enjoy the little coincidences. Yesterday I noted that Corrie Ten Boom was born and died on the same day, just 80-some years apart. I noted too that Leonardo Da Vinci was born 400 years before Lincoln's assassination. I just never placed Da Vinci on that sort of timeline.

You've been quite busy acquiring books. Definitely some Cranswickian hauls there!

          

>232 weird_O: I live to serve. I know the internet is a strange and mysterious place to most of us here. ;>)

Happy Friday, Bill. I loved your thoughts and images, that you shared with The Arrival review. This has always been one of my favorite GNs.

Congrats on keeping up with the AAC. I recently finished my Ward pick too. Good author.

A Special Weird Report^TM  

By Carlos Lozada
Washington Post Book critic
April 19 at 4:30 PM

The Mueller report isn’t just a legal document. It’s also the best book on the Trump White House so far.

The Mueller report is that rare Washington tell-all that surpasses its pre-publication hype.

Sure, it is a little longer than necessary. Too many footnotes and distracting redactions. The writing is often flat, and the first half of the book drags, covering plenty of terrain that has been described elsewhere. The story shifts abruptly between riveting insider tales and dense legalisms. Its protagonist doesn’t really come alive until halfway through, once Volume I (on Russian interference) gives way to Volume II (on obstruction of justice). The title — far too prosaic, really — feels like a missed opportunity. And it hardly helps that the book’s earliest reviewer, Attorney General William Barr, seems to have willfully misunderstood the point of it; he probably should not have been assigned to review it at all.

Read the entire review here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/19/mueller-report-isnt-just-legal...

>238 weird_O: LOL

>238 weird_O: Thanks, Carlos/Bill.

I LOVE your special report! Thanks for directing me here, Bill. I read it out loud to Birdy, and we both got a giggle out of it.

LOL! Next up: a review of The Report by Andy Borowitz. Can't wait.. ;-)

Nicely done, Bill!

>238 weird_O: - Ha! I responded to your post on my thread about this, saying I had seen a funny "review" in the Post and should link to it. Now I don't have to. Great minds...

Enjoy your day, Bill.

>238 weird_O: Ha! Great review of the book of the year, Bill.

>238 weird_O: Nice. I'm not much of a legal eagle (or at all) but thinking ai should pick this one up.

Glad y'all liked the review of The Mueller Report. I've ordered a copy of the report; should arrive Monday. I think I'll have an easier time reading it in conventional book form than on a computer.

Poised to start part four of These Truths. I'm learning so much...

Meanwhile, I'm halfway through Olive Kittridge. Strout is an impressive writer.

Hi Bill!

Glad you're persevering with These Truths. And I really loved Olive Kittridge.

Feeling pretty good today.

• Sorting books after a fruitful hour + in the book sale room at the Kutztown Public Library.

• Took in a high-school production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, which prompted me to get out a copy of the play.

• Planning a new thread. I know. I know. A SECOND thread. Already! I can hardly believe it myself.

>227 weird_O: The Parini thread is live. How's that miracle coming along?

Hi Bill!

Looking forward to your first third stats soon...