richardderus's sixth thread of 2019

1949 Kaiser Virginian

The first four-door hardtop in production, from a company that *should* and *would* have made it. An early example of what we're allowing to happen right now only without any vestige of the social and political opposition to hegemonic corporate domination of the economy. There was very serious anti-trust talk at this time of forcibly de-merging Chevrolet, over 30% of aggregate vehicle sales in the US at the time, from the rest of GM.

If only.

I'm shooting to write 200 reviews for my blog, meaning real reviews not impressions or squibs. At this point it doesn't look like I'll make it. My ancillary goal remains to create some sort of post about the Pearl-Ruled books explaining why I am abandoning ship; I'll set an arbitrary count of 100 of those since goodness knows I abandon a lot of books.







My 2018 Reviews Are Here:
Reviews 1-25 are linked there.

Reviews 26-31 are linked here.

Reviews 32-39 are linked there.

Reviews 40-54 are linked over here.

Reviews 55-70 are linked over here.

Reviews 71-101 (I misnumbered) are linked over here.

Reviews 102-110 are linked over here.

Reviews 111 - 123 are reviewed over here.

Reviews 124-127 are there.

2019's Reviews Are Here:
Reviews 1-4 are here.

My first Pearl-Ruled notice and two reviews are found here.

Reviews 7-15 plus some Pearl Rules are in this thread.

Reviews 15-19 and a Pearl Rule are here.

Reviews 20 & 21 are are here.

22 The Hippopotamus made Stephen Fry even more of a role model for me in post 56.

23 Diplomatic Relations is the fourth silly, frothy MM Regency romance in space, see post 59.

24 My Regelence Rake is the third MM space Regency, less successful than the fourth, see post 68.

25 Something to Write Home About collects six stories by my dote, Rachel Ingalls, who died on the 5th of March, in post 75.

26 STET got a 2019 Hugo nomination, and rightly so, for its supercharged ultradense and very sad story in post 82.

27 Hope for the Best is the tenth St Mary's novel, and really the best to date, see why in post 133.

28 The Porn Critic won't take but ten minutes to read, if that, and might well amuse you, post 142.

29 Tipping scared me more in 30-ish pages than anything since 11/9/2016 has, in post 249.

30 The Hanged Man's Ghost should've lit more of my fires than it did in post 274.

31 The Art of Dying is just gorgeous, see post 289.

32 What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford is also just gorgeous, see post 289.

Via Bookish, here's a list of challenges to #KillYourTBR (note that I've modified a few entries to make them possible for me to meet):

1. A book you bought for the cover
Any Old Diamonds

2. A book by an author you’ve met
The Front Runner

3. A book you’re embarrassed you haven’t read yet


4. A book that is under 220 pages
The King's Evil

5. A book that came out the year you were born


6. A book whose title uses alliteration
When Saigon Surrendered

7. A book in your best friend’s favorite genre


8. A book from an independent publisher
What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, Copper Canyon Press

9. A book you borrowed from the library
The Reluctant Widow

10. A book featuring a fictional language


11. A novel that includes a recipe (Bonus points for making the recipe)


12. A book won in a raffle/giveaway


13. A book about going on a quest
The Burning Page

14. A book set in a city you’ve visited


15. A book with a dust jacket


16. A book by two or more authors


17. A book that is over 1000 pages


18. A book that’s been out for less than a month


19. A book with a name in the title
The Other Boleyn Girl

20. A book from a genre you want to read more of


21. A book written by a Native American author


22. A book with an asexual character


23. A book you were given as a gift
The Art of Dying

24. A book translated from Spanish


25. An award-winning graphic novel
Tom's Midnight Garden Graphic Novel

26. A book featuring a false confession


27. A book you meant to read in 2018


28. A book featuring a memorable companion animal


29. A book set in South America


30. A book with a cover you kind of hate (but a story you love)


31. A book by an author you’ve never heard of before
Coming Through: Three Novellas

32. A book of short stories


33. A book featuring a nonbinary protagonist


34. A book you’ve been waiting for forever


35. A book about intersectional feminism


36. A book with a place in the title
Our Man in Havana

37. A book bought at/from a physical bookstore
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

38. A book by an author you’re thankful for


39. A book with gorgeous descriptions


40. A book signed by the author


41. A book set in Africa
The Making of the African Queen

42. A book about mental health
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

43. A book written by an immigrant


44. A retelling


45. A book about incarceration


46. A book recommended by an author


47. A book with a person of color on the cover


48. A book by an author who uses a pen name


49. A book whose title includes a verb
Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

50. A book recommended by a librarian


51. A book being adapted in 2019


52. A book you found in a Little Free Library

Batter up!

Heeee's Baaaaaack!!!!

Hi, Richard! Welcome home. Cool car up there but surely a gas-guzzler.... ;-)
PS - not sure I'd ride around in anything pink (or orange, or neon-puke-green, either. Just saying...)

He lives!

And has a cool car to boot.

Happy New Thread!

1949 was a VERY good year! And I'm relieved to see signs of life from you, Richard dear. I feared a relapse.

>5 jessibud2: You're the pole-position holder for this thread, Shelley!

I know how appallingly modest y'all Canucks are, so I'm making sure not to tall-poppy you. Well done! (Bot really not any better than the second- and third-placers, except for timing.)

Kaisers weren't gas-guzzlers by the standards of the day, since they were lighter than other cars and had a pretty efficient six-cylinder engine.

Aren't you glad you asked?

>6 katiekrug: It's a really cool old thing, no? Happy to see you, Homeownerincess.

>7 mahsdad: Thank you, Jeff!

>8 ronincats: I had a BAD relapse exacerbated by a gout attack. Am climbing out of the hole very, very slowly.

Happy new thread! Glad to see you back :)

I am very very excited!! I got a copy of Clarice Lispector's third novel, The Besieged City, of which I had only ever heard before now. Some of my oldest sister's more cosmopolitan feminist friends used to talk about Lispector with awe and reverence. I am so thrilled that I'm able to use my decreasingly powerful increasingly monoglot stupidity generator to absorb this truly titanic talent's previously unEnglished work.

>11 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita! It will be awhile before I get back to visiting threads.

Climb slowly but surely and be well! Nice to see you again. Smooch.



>12 richardderus: Nice word-smithing!!

You must be feeling better since you created a new thread!

>9 richardderus: - Teehee. Still, it's such a classy-looking chariot, ain't it?
And wow, my first gold medal. Ever! ;-)

>1 richardderus: I never saw a red/pink/salmon Liberty ship before. Though it does look kinda like a tank.

Glad you are back. Been kinda quiet here.

Happy new one, RD!

>12 richardderus: decreasingly powerful increasingly monoglot stupidity generator to absorb this truly titanic talent's previously unEnglished work. You're back, I can tell.

Happy new thread! That is one seriously beautiful ride!

>1 richardderus: It's almost too sexy for it's tires, but those are some tires.

Happy new thread!

A welcome back cake is in order.

>14 Berly: It feels like for-bloody-EVER since I've been baseline normal! Viral pneumonia is a BITCH.

>15 thornton37814: Enough better to do that housekeeping, anyway, though I'm pretty wiped now.

>16 jessibud2: I gave you a first at first?! Go me!

>17 weird_O: Heh, you know about Kaisers then! I'm compressed. "The Pride of Willow Run" was my favorite of their ad slogans.

>18 karenmarie: I was a bit pleased to be able to make that one make sense, if I'm honest. *smooch*

>19 drneutron: Thanks, Jim, and do I ever agree!

>20 quondame: Oh my heck. If that thing'll fit in my instant pot, I'm orderin' it!

Happy new thread Richard, sending love and hugs from both of us dear friend.

Happy to see you feel good enough to start a new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: I love cars in bright and odd colors, so they are easely found back on the parking lot :-)
>10 richardderus: Sorry to read your relapse was caused by a gout attack :-(

RD has a new thread! RD has a new thread! Yippee!! Love the Kaiser Virginian. I had never even heard of that model, until now. Hope you are feeling better, old man.

Well, my goodness, Darling Man, it’s good to have you back!
Kisses.

Happy new thread, RD.

Good to see you back and newly out of the hole of viral attack.

Checking in with healing smoochies (nice and digital keeping your bugs at arms length smoochies...). I may have missed a thread or so...

>20 quondame: I want this so badly! Would make a fab jelly mould too.

I've been 4 weeks recovering from viral pneumonia. I walked to the CVS today, first time walking outdoors in forever, and made it without 1) dying or b) collapsing before I got home, put away my purchases, and got undressed.

Then slept for 2 hours.

But I did it, and it felt wonderful, and I'm *not* hacking up another lung. I'm so weary of feeling ill! A corner turned, maybe? I hope so.

>24 johnsimpson: Thanks, John, and heartily returned.

>25 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita! The gout attack has ended and I could not be happier about that.

>26 msf59: I am, I am indeed. Glad I could show you one of my favorite "coulda-been-a-contender" cars.

>27 Matke: Thank you, Gail! *smooch*

>28 PaulCranswick: So far, so good, Paul. I'm suspicious now, having climbed most of the way out and fallen deeper than I started.

>29 BekkaJo: Ho Bekka of the sandy shores of Jersey!

Yay for you Richard. Viral pneumonia is a very bad one indeed. Glad to see your ongoing recovery. I read The Unknown Ajax, my first Heyer, at your behest and I loved it just as you assured me I would. Lining up another Heyer for next month. Thanks for your push.

>33 brenzi: That's very happy Heyer news, Bonnie. I'm sure the works will give you some pleasant hours. Overdosing is a real possibility...like most rich desserts, it can sneak upon you.

I'm so thrilled to be halfway back to normal I can't tell you!

Happy New Thread, Richard!

"Kaiser Virginian" - it shows my ignorance, but those are two words I never expected to see together. Love the look of it.

Yay for The Unknown Ajax! Maybe that's a good first book for Heyer neophytes to read? In the past I've suggested The Grand Sophy, which I loved and was the first I read. But I wonder whether this one would be a better starter book.

Hope you're continuing to feel improved, buddy.

Good morning, RichardDear!

I hope that you're continuing to get your strength back and feeling better.

*smooch* from Madamt TVT Horrible

Hope your recovery continues!

>35 jnwelch: Heh...I was a car-mad kid and luckily had an uncle who collected cars, so I got lots of info most people didn't care a fig about.

I think that anytime we run into pre-Heyer readers, we should just send them to Horrible. She's the one got me all stoked about her Heyeness and whose ubervaluable post ranking the ouevre is an excellent place to start looking into that world.

>36 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! *smooch*

>37 katiekrug: I am so stoked that I spent all of my 50-minute therapy hour *talking* instead of 1/3 hacking, 1/3 wheezing, and 1/3 croaking like last week, that I cannot express it in words.

>38 richardderus: - I bet the therapist appreciated it, too!

*smooch*

>39 katiekrug: Heh...I suppose she did...though her own journey through this wretched plague wasn't hack-free! An AWFUL year for viral yuuuks all over. I'm glad it wasn't flu with the attendant superfever, aching, and nausea/vomiting. Breathing problems are bad, but plus all that other stuff makes me understand why old folks die of flu. How many things can a slowing body fight?!

Never, ever been more grateful for flu shots than I was this year.

I just got done reading about viral pneumonia and all the damage it did in the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry. You are doing good to recover from it.

>41 benitastrnad: It's really not a surprise that it took 4 weeks to make a recovery when the severity of the illness is taken into account...but having flu with it?!? No wonder that pandemic killed so many!

Pantry order arrived a day early, not ONE packing issue, NO burst can lids, aaannnd...I dropped a 12-pack of Pepsi ordered for Old Stuff on my foot!

X-ray says not broken. Mouth says many colorful things. Foot says "throbthrobthrob".

R--As a kid, if I was complaining about something hurting, my Dad always volunteered to step on my foot so I'd have something else to think about. (He was kidding!) But now you don't have to think about your lungs anymore, so good job!

Seriously, though, I hope you heal up from EVERYTHING quickly. Hugs and a smooch.

>43 richardderus: Owowowowowow!

Happy new thread, sir.

>30 richardderus: Glad you are recovering. Sounds like a truly hellish late winter/early spring. Being able to breathe without suffering is truly wonderful. May you have an endless number of stressless breaths.

>44 Berly: *eeekkk* The idea of a deliberate foot-stomping is too ghastly to contemplate. My foot's less throbby today so I'm happy as Larry.

>45 kidzdoc: Thanks, Doc!

>46 justchris: Thank you so much. Stressless breathing only matters when one can't, like that Harper Lee quote: "I didn't love reading until I feared I couldn't. One doesn't love breathing."

Happy Sunday, Richard. You mentioned a foot injury? And it was bad enough to keep you from reading? What the hell happened?

>48 msf59: I dropped a 12-pack of Pepsis on my arch. I order the revolting stuff for my roommate so he doesn't spend $1.50 a can on rotting his guts.

It hurt like sixty! I called Rob to come take me to the doc-in-a-box, where x-rays showed no break. SORE yes; broke no. But we made the most of the day, hanging out for the first time in weeks, and eating Kraft mac'n'cheese with Nathan's hot dogs.

Sorry you hurted your foot, Richard dear, glad it isn't broken.
I hope you had a good time with Rob.

>38 richardderus: and where exactly would I find this "ubervaluable post" with rankings my dear Richard?

>50 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita, we spent a lovely day together Saturday. I'm glad we had that time after I was so sick for so long.

>51 brenzi: It's right here, Bonnie.

Silver linings on dark cloud: Rob, mac'n'cheese, and Nathan's hot dogs.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>53 karenmarie: Hey there Horrible! Happy Monday.

I hope you’re feeling even better now, Richard!

I love Nathan’s hot dogs. Yum.

22 The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry

I've been delighted afresh by re-watching the 2017 film of this 1995 read. Author Fry was, I do hope, pleased with Roger Allam (Fred Thursday from the Endeavour TV series) in the role of acerbic, angry, whisky-sodden Ted Wallace, poet manqué; he was pitch-perfect and looks so much like the jowly, slack-bodied Ted of my imagination that I'm still a bit awed by the Universe's mysterious ways.

I wish with all my heart that P.G. Wodehouse's comic novels had ever, or would someday, have such delicious adaptations. Wit is a tough sell on-screen, less so on the page. The book is so witty and sarcastic and sometimes facetious that 1995 me would never have imagined it as a film of any sort. It took until 2017 to bring it to life. I've read the snarktastic reviews and the dismissive critical choppings. I say "pfui" to them all. The novel was a strong story with genuine malice in its heart; the film is milder by nature though it's a lot sharper than most.

The religious are strongly cautioned to give both versions of The Hippopotamus wide berth.

>55 Matke: Hi Gail! Lovely to see you here!

Wow. I just learned something I should have known - I thought Stephen Fry was a comedian and radio personality. I didn't realize he was a writer too. 🤯

23 Diplomatic Relations by J.L. Langley

Rating: 4.25* of five

I had the same issues with inconsistent world-building that I've had with the whole series. I must say I was fully prepared to three-or-less the enterprise, so irritated by the logical lapses was I; then came A Certain Snow Scene with all the sweetness and charm and joie de vivre a withered-souled old hatemonger like me could ever complain of, and back came the star; a later scene of marriage-proposal nature added another partial star; and damned glad the author should be of it, since eight (8) instances of the stinking, wretched, lazy, revolting w-bomb took off a whole star from the realms of possibility.

In fact, I will procure book five when it comes out, I'm that gruntled and kempt by the last 12% of the book.

>58 The_Hibernator: He's a multi-talented man indeed, also being a game-show host.

Good morning, RD! Happy Friday to you.

Stephen Fry is also the reader of the British versions of the Harry Potter Books - another Brit, Jim Dale, reads the American versions. I've listened to comparisons and prefer the Jim Dale ones (since they're the only ones I can easily get here in the US and have listened to three or four times now.)

*smooch* from Madame TVT Horrible

Happy Friday, Richard. I hope you are back to 100% or somewhere in that range. I started Fathers & Sons and was immediately impressed by how smooth and easy the narrative is. This was released when our Civil War was raging. Wow! Glad I finally pulled it down off the shelf.

>61 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! *smooch*

>62 msf59: Hi Mark! I'm hugely improved, thanks for the good wishes. Fathers and Sons is amazing, and I hope you continue to love it.

>62 msf59: Rightly regarded as a classic, Mark.

Have a great weekend, RD.

Good to hear that you are feeling better, Richard.

>64 PaulCranswick: It is justly included among the 19th century's greatest novels indeed. I'm under drizzly skies, so I'm on inside duty with lots of time to read. Pity poor me. Sad to have my life. Hundreds of physical books...thousands of Kindlebooks...the entire internet to read...sad to be a shut-in in this day and time, no?

>65 Familyhistorian: Thank you, Meg! I'm happy to see you here.

>1 richardderus: That is one sharp lookin' car. A rare bird indeed.

24 My Regelence Rake by J.L. Langley

Rating: 3.1* of five

(written on 4 April) This will take me a while.
***
And so it did.

Why a paltry three stars when I went directly into a read of book four?

Because there are nine (9) w-bombs. Because I'm really really really annoyed by the lapses in worldbuilding logic, eg Jeffers the royal AI butler can be ordered to leave a room with a royal in it!! NO!! And the "security" in this spacefaring civilization's societies is ludicrously behind what we have in the 21st century.

Regelence's Regency-society roots aren't making a lot of sense to me, but I'll ignore that if Author Langley will pinky-swear to never ever again write the words "As you know," and will recast the two sentences in here that contain the said offenses against readerly rights and forswear the horrid, stinking, ghastly, unrealistic use of the verb "to w-i-n-k" forever and ever amen.

But I really want to know who's paying for the IN and why.

>67 laytonwoman3rd: You know, Linda3rd, I'd've bought that Virginian in 1949, and even in that color. Boring grey cars infest the world! Put fins on 'em and paint 'em peach, faGawdsake.

1951 Hudson Hornet Brougham Convertible

You know you want to bomb around in one of these. Just suggesting.

What a total spiffmobile! You bet I want to spend a summer day toolin' around in that baby.

>71 richardderus: Isn't it just!

>70 weird_O:
Mercy! My heart is all aflutter overthzt one. What a beauty!

>72 quondame:, >73 Matke: Plenty o' room! Let's roll.

25 Something to Write Home About by Rachel Ingalls

Ms. Ingalls died this past March 5th. I've got this collection of her short stories out of the library for a short while longer. I want to absorb a bit more of what the inspired author left us, and this was the first book I found that I didn't have to get from a different library system.

Theft retells the crucifixion story from one of the thieves' point of view. Horrifying. The details of his dying, the cruelty of the world, all mashed up with the expectation that I was reading about the Jim Crow South suddenly morphing into clarity about the actual subject...the sheer, gut-churning *awfulness* of realizing this story's timelessness has many, many facets and not all of them are facile...the hideous way the world in its unchanging indifference crushes the already fallen and, uncaring, grinds on.

This Easter is a notable one. I've read something about the subject that has instructed me and edified me. All it took was a talented writer telling a coherent story!

The Man Who Was Left Behind follows Mackenzie, a WWI vet whose life was derailed by tragedies. I so empathized with him, I live among people like him, I am myself like him; a man whose life changed stations without warning or explanation or consultation, who carries on without a whole lot of interest in the proceedings and who, in the end, disconnects from the world so he can get on with living his span out.

It was poignant to me that Mackenzie left everything behind to be in the present which, for him, consisted of scraping off the detritus of his past. I liked Mackenzie, but I suspect lots of readers wouldn't and didn't. People who still have a lot to lose don't like people who don't, as a rule; the gulf is wide and the bridges few and far between. I liked that he read old books from the library to use his brain. But of course I would.

Early Morning Sightseer several things...I hated Tilney, and Barney was a bore; England really soaked into Author Ingalls ("pyjamas" and "moving house" from an Indiana boy? Never); and there are so many ways I felt Patricia Highsmith's fingers on this piece it was unnerving. I loved several turns of phrase, though; it is, after all, a Rachel Ingalls piece.

How fast everything had seemed, and how special and different and sophisticated and rich. All the things that had struck me at first—the odd formality that would have been unfriendliness at home, the attitudinizing, the orgies of talk, the tension and snobbery—seemed to make life so complicated. But then you acquire a taste for complicated things, nothing simpler will satisfy you. Go back home, and it's a let-down, there's something missing, everything is slower, duller, the conversation makes you want to bang your head against the wall.

There's an easter egg for the previous story, The Man Who Was Left Behind, in a minor character's name; it made me smile.

St. George and the Nightclub endings are as awkward and full of mistakes and fearful silences and babbling idiocies as beginnings are; the end of a marriage never, ever comes easy. Don cheated, some sleazeball told; Jeanie hurt, then hurt him; no one does it right all the time.

Forgiveness? What's that? A Rhodes nightclub evening with fools and lushes? No. Abandon hope. Just...breathe. And be damned grateful you still can.

Something to Write Home About details the final moments of self-delusion in John's two-year marriage to Amy, whose increasing mental illness is no longer avoidable and ignorable. Their Greek holiday just bashes his nose into the trouble Amy is in, makes him wretched then hopeful then numb; he breaks and stays broken, but fronts so Amy can't tell. Saddest of the sad stories.

All in all, a collection of mournful reflections on the nature and perils of intimacy; to my knowledge, Ingalls was not married nor romantically linked to any one person. I wonder if her father, an academic at Harvard, and mother the homemaker were unhappy. I read these without the great pleasure I read Mrs. Caliban with, but still with a huge sense of their honesty. Ingalls does not seem, on my current knowledge of her writing, to be able to write a dishonest sentence or use a superfluous image. Whence came this deep and fearless knowledge of intimate unhappiness? I'm of the school that says only one who knows can tell with such limpidity. Wherever she came by it, Ingalls understood and empathized with the unhappy. She bounded that experience with walls of words, fences of imagery, and made a dry, hot, bitter art out of unhappiness.

Cars from eras gone by are so lovely to look at. I like my 2019 CR-V but it totally lacks the curves, the elegance, the romance of earlier vehicles.

>56 richardderus: That got my attention. Adding it to the wish list with not the least bit of trepidation for my religious sensibilities (ha). And I love the reference to the BBC series, Endeavor, being a huge fan of all three of the Morse telly series. Hathaway in Lewis. Just sayin'.

Happy Easter weekend, Rdear.

Happy Sunday, RD!

*smooch*

>76 EBT1002: "religious sensibilities" LOLOL "religious sensibilities" LMAO

Enjoy the read! And Netflix the movie sometime, it's delightful.

>77 Ameise1: HA! Thank you, dear Barbara, I love that image.

>78 karenmarie: *smooch*

>75 richardderus: - Well, I recently finished a book with the same title but it was definitely NOT this book! Mine was about baseball memories and was a lot of fun, possibly more fun that the religious one, ;-) Something to Write Home About

>80 jessibud2: Heh...the story collection I'm reading is emphatically NOT religious, Shelley, and the first story took me by surprise. The author wrote one of my very favorite novels, Mrs. Caliban, and now that she's gone I felt inspired to hunt up some of her other works.

26 STET by Sarah Gailey

Rating: 5* of five

Formally like Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine for the hyperlink generation, this is a tiny text telling a titanic story whose layers grow like the lamination in puff pastry. They're as buttery-rich as those layers, too.

Gailey thinks about things we all think about...what happens when something goes utterly irretrievably bad?...and then builds an armature of words to hang the human feelings that always follow things going pear-shaped on. We the audience stand back and look at the shapes while our minds assess and absorb the meanings. Like the best pastry-eating experiences, the mental exercise of consuming a Gailey story involves enjoyment of the whole while remaining aware of the subtle parts.

This is a genuinely moving story, about a universally relatable subject, that asks hard questions about awful predictions of tragedies to come. It's free online and takes at most 10 minutes to read (you'll want to go back and re-experience some subtleties), and fully deserves its nomination for the 2019 Hugo Award for Short Fiction.

I'm late, BigDaddy, but I am wishing you happy anyway. I am glad that you are finally feeling better and I hope the rest of the recovery hurries up already. Ouch to the Pepsi incident but hooray for no brokenness.

>82 richardderus: I had not heard of this one, so thanks for the link. I had to go through it twice to fully appreciate its genius. I agree with your assessment - thumb from me if you posted it.

Hello Richard. I am taking advantage of a rainy Easter Monday to try and get caught up with some threads. Sorry to learn that you had a prolonged bout with viral pneumonia! Not fun! Hope you are well and truly recovered.

>83 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie! I appreciate the kind words. The story isn't listed in the LT database and I gave up modifying stuff after being told I was doing it wrong in most impolite ways (when I wasn't, just not doing it the chastiser's way).

Old Stuff's Pepsis are my residual-guilt monthly supplies for him. I dislike him and am bored by him, so I ignore him and wear earbuds to enable me to drown out his whinings and blatherings. I feel social guilt for it, so I make his soda addiction cost him less.

>84 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori! It seems to be gone for good *knockknockknockknock*

>82 richardderus: OMG. Powerful.

>86 quondame: Agreed! And raises some very cogent, very scary questions I think we, as a society, should find a way to discuss STAT.

Hi, Richard. It was another beauty today. Topping out at 80F. I switched to my shorts today. I need to get some sun on these stark, pasty legs. cooler tomorrow but the rest of the week looks above normal. I will take it!

I should finish Fathers & Sons tomorrow. It is such a good book and completely accessible. Have they ever did a successful film adaptation of it?

>88 msf59: Oh wow, 80°! It was dank and drizzly here, nowhere near so warm, but springlike.

There hasn't been an English-language adaptation of Fathers and Sons; most English attention has gone to A Month in the Country and First Love. Big hole in the market, if'n ya asks me.

>82 richardderus: Thanks for directing attention to STET. Read it. Will need to sit with it. Makes me appreciate short fiction and the artistry to create it.

Morning, BigDaddy!

'Morning, RD!

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>90 justchris: I agree completely, the startling force that short fiction commands is something to appreciate!

>91 Crazymamie: Hey there, Mamie, how's your Tuesday?

>92 karenmarie: *smooch*

Stopping by with waves :)

>95 richardderus:

Turns out writing is eating all my bandwidth, almost as much as the day job. I'd say I was in a reading slump but a slump would be welcome. At least I'm no longer a dilettante. :-) ::smooch::

There you are, Richard. I've found you again. Glad you're feeling better (but, seriously, Kraft mac 'n cheese?). I hope the foot is back to normal.

>70 weird_O: Oh, yeah!

>96 AuntieClio: Hi Stephanie! Use bandwidth wisely, hoard it for the happiest experiences, and there's that Good Life people talk about.

>97 humouress: Hi Nina! *smooch*

I hope you're doing well today, RichardDear. I'm feeling the pollen a bit, even with a lot of rain last Friday, even taking Claritin-wanna-be every day. Nasty greenish-yellowish stuff everywhere.

Hi Horrible...we're in the all-too-brief moment between pollens here. My enemy mold is at its annual minimum; the conifers have pollinated; I'm not terribly susceptible to other tree pollens that're showing up; so I've got 6-8 weeks off!

I love that about living here.

Be sure to take the car to the automatic car wash every few days. You're probably not thinking of all the pollen it wafts at you through the ventilation system. DO NOT HAND WASH. It defeats the purpose; so does spraying the car down. The gas station's car wash will do the job and it's *totally* worth it, as I learned in Austin many years ago.

I've been debating washing the car, but you've convinced me to spend the $20. Thank you!

>82 richardderus: Thanks for the link. That was amazing!

So glad you're finally feeling better.

>101 karenmarie: ...and keep it extra clean during pollen season.

>102 SuziQoregon: Hi Juli! Thanks for the good wishes. I'm deeply grateful that the illness has retreated as well. *smooch*

>59 richardderus: I meant to say: a gruntled and kept Richard. That must be a sight to behold. Long may that state continue.

>66 richardderus: Poor you.

>104 humouress: I know. *noble profile* I soldier on as best I can in the teeth of life's gales.

...why am I hearing gales of laughter wafting from equatorial latitudes...

Happy Wednesday, Richard. I am enjoying a perfect day off. I wish it was a bit warmer, but can't complain. My allergies are hitting me pretty hard too. It was a bit delayed this year but with everything blooming, teamed up with breezy days, it all comes rushing back. Evenings always seem to be worst.

>106 msf59: That's a no-fun thing to ruin a spring day, Mark. Sorry about that!

Sorry to hear about the pollen allergies, Richard. At least you have a reprieve now. I'm not sure that you would get one if you lived here because we have many different kinds of cedars that pollinate at different times which is probably why it looks green here most of the time.

I avoid Pacific Coastal places for that reason. No way do I want to spend my life with swollen eyes and dripping nostrils.

>105 richardderus: No, no, you’re quite mistaken *muffles sniggers*. Very noble, I’m sure.

I do love seeing that green fuzz on the trees as the first leaf buds appear, to tell us winter is nearly over but pollen allergies are no fun, I’m sure.

>110 humouress:

Ahh - suffering nobly. My sympathies.

Autumnal-no-pollen greetings from the south of the south. Just big old leaves falling around here.
*bless you*
(as I assume you must have sneezed recently)

>112 humouress:, >113 LovingLit: Actually, I'm not suffering just yet. The day will come, but today ain't it.

Yay!!

'Morning, RD! We've got a beautiful spring day here in central NC. I hope you have a grand day.

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Is there a deck or patio where you can sit out and get some fresh air, if a perambulation is out of the question?

>115 karenmarie: It's like that here, too! I'm lovin' it.

>116 katiekrug: I sat on the boardwalk from 6.30-7.30 so I could *revel* in the early sunshine!

Oh, lovely. *tamps down jealousy*

>118 katiekrug: *smooch*

Just think...soon that lovely deck will beckon you out to enjoy morning coffee!

I was just thinking about that!

That's what'll make your new home feel best fastest. The ability to really *enjoy* the outdoors is so important!

Morning, Richard. Happy Friday. Back to long pants and light jacket. Our weather roller-coaster continues. I am about to wrap up The Big Sleep. He was such a master of the form, despite the misogyny and homophobia, of course.

>122 msf59: Hey Mark! The roller coaster's looping around here, too. Well it is spring and that means volatility, but damn!

Oh, those are part and parcel of the genre, I think. Casual hatred of the Other is a great way to define your group memberships.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Glad to see you've been reading some good books and that the allergies are retreating. Weekend *smooches*

>123 richardderus: I was a little confronted by The Big Sleep- so much slapping of 'hysterical' women! True though, RD, in that the othering of others is a great way to cement your own identity.

>124 karenmarie: Hey Horrible!

>125 bell7: Thanks, Mary!

>126 LovingLit: It has ever been thus, as I know your rugby researches have pounded into your brain. Israel Folau's recent homophobic nonsense, anyone?

How the hell did I miss this??! I'm in!

I hope you're having a good day, darling Richard!

*smooch*

Happy Sunday, Richard. Just outside topping off the bird feeders and freshening up the bird bath. Still cool out there but plenty of sunshine. The snow has mostly dissipated. Good riddance.

I have been kicking back with Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It and dipping into a little poetry. A nice afternoon.

I hope you are enjoying your day, as well.

>128 SomeGuyInVirginia: ...because you're utterly indifferent to me? Or actively hostile? Dunno for sure...

>129 karenmarie: *smooch* It's sunshiney now, after a gloomy start to the day, but whatevs I'll gladly take it since it ain't no snow!

>130 msf59: ...speaking of snow...hey Mark! I'm 82% done with Hope for the Best and determinedly NOT racing to finish.

I might expire from the effort.

Happy Sunday, RD! Hope it is a fabulous one for you!

27 Hope for the Best by Jodi Taylor

After I've recovered my sanity, I will attempt to review this tenth volume of the Chronicles of St Mary's.

This could take a while. Not least because I need to speak to my therapist about my intense, volcanic rage at the misuse of "pouring" instead of "poring" throughout the book.

>133 richardderus: Yet you made it to the end? I'd probably have chucked it.

>132 lkernagh: I liked it fine, Lori, and Monday's sunshine and breeze are pretty darned good too.

>134 humouress: I am sure that, had this not been such a compelling series read, I'd've bailed when that happened the fourth or fifth time.

Happy late-morning Monday to you, RDear!

>133 richardderus: I just checked my spreadsheet and see that I read the first 4 in the St. Mary's Chronicles in 2014 and the 5th in 2017 and none since then. Pouring for poring is definitely off putting.

I've got two strong (middle-age and senior) men doing stuff around our yard to make it nice for my sissie's visit. Better them than me, and I will be getting my car spruced up tomorrow at the car wash, as per your suggestion sometime earlier this month.

>136 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, happy to see youse. I'm enjoying the pretty, pretty day that yesterday's gloom hath wrought, and reveling in the relative dearth of allergens!!

I've finished Milkman, which I liked enormously but not quite as much at the end as at the beginning. Anna Burns is One to Watch. She's my age, and has a reasonable resume of work, but I hope to see much more from her in the next 15 or so years. This time, her reach might just have exceeded her grasp by a fraction; or I'm just too densely Murrikin and male to follow. I'll need to read the book again to see more clearly what held me and what failed to.

Thanks, RD. Allergens got knocked down here wish a sprinkle or two overnight, so we're both winners.

Two folks, Chelle and ... I forget who else... recently abandoned Milkman. Your hot-and-cold endorsement confirms that I will keep it off the wish list.

I read the first of the "St Mary's" books and found it draggy and dull - and obvious.

Sort of amazed she made to it to ten volumes.

Your mileage may vary

>138 karenmarie: Yay for showers plonking pollen to the dust where the damned stuff belongs.

I'm really clear about why this book isn't everyone's idea of a good time. If it's any help indexing the levels of appreciation I feel for the story, it's very much in the genetic descent of Mrs. Dalloway so you just *know* I'm in. Though with reservations...

BTW this book, Silence of the Girls, and Circe are all shortlisted for what I still think of as the Orange Prize.

>139 magicians_nephew: I'm pretty much the opposite for responses there, so yeah...ten volumes plus as many again shorter works is all good for me.

My review of Rachel Ingalls's 1988 collection, Something to Write Home About in post 75 above, is clearly on trend! I love this Longreads piece describing Ingalls as "recently re-appreciated. And in the article, Theft is mentioned that this was published as a novella and "{i}n 1970, Theft won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award in Britain." I definitely see why. It's a wonderful piece of writing, one that playes with your readerly expectations and delivers a tremendous wallop when the truth dawns on you.

28 The Porn Critic by Jonathan Lethem

Rating: 3.5* of five

Charming, short-short tale of the Wages of Sinless Loucherie. Won't take ten minutes, will make a fun impression on those whose idea of transgressive sex is two ladies ignoring the man they're using as furniture for their Wickedness.

Being well past the age that that's in any way suggestive, still less transgressive, to me, I found the critic-of-porn part to be the one that made the story worth the eyeblinks. The reference to VHS tapes was a blast from the distant past; places the tale in the realms of historical fiction, really.

Not feminist- or woke-friendly, but I don't expect that's in any way a surprise. I don't even think the sex is all that interesting, but again at my age you're waging a rear-guard action in a long-since-over war to make the mechanics or the participants in The Act novel. The point is the point of view, not the view he's pointing out. If that's just too, too tedious for you, don't bother, even for free at the link.

I just bought my tickets to Hunks: The Show. LOL!!! My friend Todd really wanted to go.



I'm skeptical they'll really look like that, though. Those guys are totally air-brushed.

Anyway, happy Monday.

Yeah, there's been some enhancement of the shadows...but you're in for a treat!

>143 The_Hibernator: You are a selfless friend, Rachel ;0)

'Morning, RD!

I hope you have a splendiferous Tuesday. I'm on my first mug of coffee, enjoying the beautiful blue skies and crisp temps.

>145 humouress: Isn't she? Sacrificing her evening plans to go to a live performance of handsome unclothed men performing gymnastic feats for their "entertainment" value. I am moved, moved I say, at this display of unselfish friendship.

>146 karenmarie: Hey Horrible...we're back to dank and sodden. I don't care, it's not icing up and there's no snow involved. G'head, April, do the damp and dismal dance!

Gloomy and grey here, too. But I went for my walk anyway and am feeling all sorts of virtuous :-P

>148 katiekrug: It's perfectly acceptable to be all back-patty when one has performed a Duty Act. Virtue on, sister lady.

>148 katiekrug: A walk...maybe that's what I need. *thinks* Nope. Nap.

>150 laytonwoman3rd: Naps are a Good Thing, and I'll never ask someone to choose between them.

Hey, RD.

I’m intrigued by the idea of Jodi Taylor’s characters pouring over this and that, but once should be enough, right? If it’s wet, it’s wet. Where was her editor, on vacation?

I’m about 2/3 through Faro’s Daughter, a new one to me, and getting, as usual with Heyer, a big kick out of it. It is a little more over the top than some of hers - kidnapping Ravenscar and putting him in the cellar - really?!

>152 jnwelch: ...and Faro's Daughter rockets to the top of the Heyer TBRs...that sounds really amazing!

>147 richardderus: Well, and there are the May flowers to which you are surely entitled!

Done :-)

I'm reading Bug, by somebody. It's about bugs who threaten life on Earth as we know it!

Man I love cheese.

'Morning, RD!

>152 jnwelch: and >153 richardderus: My first Heyer, still on my shelves after 53 years! It may be a little over the top, but it's a favorite. I just love Deborah going vulgar because that's what Mablethorpe's family expects.

Morning, Richard. Thankfully, the rains have subsided for now. It is still overcast but mild. It has been a sodden few days.

Hope you are doing well and enjoying those books.

Good morning, sir! I also hope that your pollen allergies are beginning to improve.

>154 quondame: Flowers are fine. I'm more interested in tomatoes, to be honest.

>155 FAMeulstee: YAY! Double-75 achieved!

>156 SomeGuyInVirginia: The title's a spoiler, then. Back when I thought Book must be Good, which is to say before bad books made a crease in my consciousness, I read a truly terrible horror novel called The Hephaestus Plague. Bugs ruined the world. But it wasn't right there in the title!

>157 karenmarie: Good morning, Horrible, how's the caffeination coming?

I am *stoked* for Faro's Daughter!

>158 msf59: Hi Mark, oh man am I glad for you that the rains have gone down to Africa. Bleurgh!

>159 kidzdoc: Hi Doc! After all, without pollen I wouldn't have peaches and apples and stuff, so I'm just coping with benadryl sleepies by upping the caffeine intake.

Both of y'all read *shudder* poetry, so I'm leaving this cover here to entice you to buy Sarah Tolmie's extrordinarily gorgeously jacketed collection, The Art of Dying:

Someone should tempt Joe with this, too...wonder where he is...anyway, this *gorgeous* jacket is entered in the AAUP's 2019 design contest. Lotsa fantastic university press designs, this one included, and even more of a shopping list.

Joe’s right here, RD. I will investigate The Art of Dying. That is a gorgeous book jacket!

>162 jnwelch: I know, right?!? A bunch of that designer's work was included in the 28 finalists for the design prize. As high as the field set the quality bar, the fact is I see more creative oomph in this guy (David Drummond, I looked it up) than in the rest of the field combined. There's a reason he got 18% of the list's nominations!

>161 richardderus: Way to much pollen here, Frank is very allergic to them, me only mildly. April only had 1/3 of the rain we usually have, so pollen are not washed away.
That is an intriguing cover...

The Hephaestus Plague, that's it! Bug is the movie tie-in title.

Good lord, you really have read a lot.

>164 FAMeulstee: Isn't it? *smooch* for our double-75er

>165 SomeGuyInVirginia: Subtlety, thy name ist notst Hollywood....

Yep. Since 1969, I've averaged a book a day. Fifty years! Gawddam!

>161 richardderus: True. Thank God for pollen, then.

I've added the gorgeously covered The Art of Dying to my wish list, along with two interesting books from the University of Pittsburgh Press (gotta support my alma mater). Thanks, bro!

>166 richardderus: Yep. Since 1969, I've averaged a book a day. Fifty years!

WOW. To me that's as impressive as Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak or Cal Ripken's consecutive game streak.

>166 richardderus: That is amazing, Richard, over 18,000 books in 50 years!

>166 richardderus: I'm also impressed with the 365-366 books/year! Wow!

'Morning, Book-a-Day RD! I didn't realize just how many books you've read over the years. Congrats.

So how many of Georgette Heyer's romances have you read?

Have a loverly day.

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

>167 kidzdoc: So now you see why LT is such a boon! My old review website vanished with Geocities. *sob* And after this many books, I don't always remember the huge bulge in the middle with any clarity. A review piques my interest and brings details flooding back.

>168 FAMeulstee: Considering how many books I'll never get to read, it's always felt like a hopeless endeavor.

>169 thornton37814: It's down to 300-ish...but the average includes the years when I could polish off three and four a day! (Reading in class helped. Also kept my smart mouth shut. Teachers liked that bit.)

>170 karenmarie: Five. I wasn't a romance reader until *you* got hold of me, horrible Horrible.

Can't...I wanted to trundle CVSward and it's drizzling, chilly, and generally vile.

>171 richardderus: Agreed! Hopefully LT won't vanish in our lifetimes...

>172 kidzdoc: *sssssssshhhhhhhh*

the goddesses are watching
no loud happiness
no smiling
they don't like that

>173 richardderus: 😂. Or, rather, 😐.

>174 kidzdoc: ...now you're gettin' with the program.

A book a day for 50 years! Wow. Congratulations! You left me gasping for breath somewhere in the underbrush alongside the reading trail. They're going to send a helicopter for me soonish - or maybe I'll break out my jetpack! (Yes, that was a slick Tom Gauld reference).

The rain here has stopped daring us to step outside, so I may head to the library soon. Some graphic novels came in - you know how it is. Amazing how well eye-rolls travel online these days.

I remember.

>176 jnwelch: Make bibliohay while the sun shines!

Many are the failings of my mother, but she did this thing absolutely right: Backed me up in my request for my own library card when I was only 10; never once sided with librarians saying I couldn't or shouldn't read something (although she often didn't think I should); always, always found a quarter or a dollar to buy me a book. Always.

>166 richardderus: Glerp, and I thought I read a lot.

>179 quondame: I don't, and never have, watched broadcast TV or played pointless games, so there's the biggest time wasters of the modern world. I'd way rather read! So now, when I can Prime or Netflix TV stuff, I can do it late at night when reading annoys my unbeloved roomie. Anywhere I go outside my home patch, I take a book and always have; in short, all the nooks and crannies were populated by bookish things.

>180 richardderus: Alas, I have, but only past tense, spent hours watching TV. Then for way too long I worked at jobs that required more that 40hrs a week. And I danced, partied, went to movies, made clothing, even knitted and somehow even had a kid who somehow managed to survive my minimal parenting skills. And except for the work I don't think my time would have been better spent reading, though it did provide support for all the other. I love having my own mini-library on the Kindle wherever I go, but sometimes still tote physical books around.

>180 richardderus: I'm overjoyed to have my Kindle since I can't drive anymore. It's wonderful! Plus all those years living in NYC I was a straphanger, so books were part of travel. It's been a book-centered life.

Years ago, when I first started working, I always saw this woman hanging out in my office courtyard smoking and reading a book. I saw her almost every day when I went to buy lunch, there she was leaning against a wall, smoking and reading. I noticed that all the books were thick mass market paperbacks ( trash big minus) but each day the book she was reading was thicker or thinner. She read a book book a day and I was so interested I wanted to ask her how it was possible to do that? I never did, but I'm a slow reader and have always been mesmerized by fast readers.

I am loving this conversation. Mine has also always been a book-focussed life. I always have a book with me and will read anywhere and everywhere. I feel almost panicked or naked if for some odd reason, I find myself without a book within reach. I also always have several going at the same time: an audiobook in the car, a lighter-weight book in my bag when travelling by public transit, a heavier tome or hard-cover for reading in bed, a coffee table book for when I am watching tv downstairs and want to read when I mute through the commercials. You get the picture.

I am also a slow reader, though, so those big number readers amaze me, too. LT has helped me up my numbers a bit these last few years and I am kind of surprised, and grateful, for that but with me, the number doesn't really matter that much. I usually just try to beat my own last year's total. And yes, I do keep track, in a little book where I jot down authors and titles. Have done so since the 1990s though obviously, I've been reading a lot longer than that!

>184 jessibud2: I totally understand without book panic! Even if I never open it, I feel stressed at restaurants with everyone else on their cell and I don't even have a book. Technically I can always find something to read on my phone, but it's my last resort. And I think one of the reasons I got burnt out was because work and life left me minimal reading time. It serves as tranquilizer and anti-depressant for me, but if I stop mainlining I feel it within hours.

>185 quondame: - I am a dinosaur - one of the rare few, I suspect, who uses my phone as.... a phone! Oh, I do text and I can check one email account, and I can renew my library books through their app. But that's all I do on it. Oh, plus I use the camera feature. But nothing replaces a real book, right?

A friend just sent this to me and I laughed my head off. It's called *Paper is Not Dead*

https://www.youtube.com/embed/V_gOZDWQj3Q?rel=0&fbclid=IwAR3GBcxhg-7Iv9xQ6Jd...

Sorry for the hijack, Richard... ;-)

*smooch*

>180 richardderus: Reading at night annoys your roomie, but TV doesn't? Ugh!

'Morning, RichardDear!

Great book conversation. I always carry a book or my Kindle with me even though I frequently waste time on my cell phone instead.

Before I retired, I'd go grab something from town (I hated making lunches, hated eating them) and read at my desk for the rest of my lunch hour. I was always overjoyed when I had to do some kind of system back up or restore of files in the computer room on the old HP 3000 where you needed to put in tapes and couldn't do it remotely - I'd smuggle my book upstairs and read while the process was going on. The longer the better, all alone in a remote part of the building.

My one reading regret over the years is that until I joined LT I didn't keep a systematic record of what I'd read and when I'd read it.

Good morning, Richard. I hope weather and health things are going well with you.

>161 richardderus: That’s the best cover I’ve seen in years and I need a new poet, so...

I can’t imagine a life without books. When Mother yelled at me to encouraged me to go outside, I very often took my book with me. But somehow, in a massive slippage of unknown origin, last month I read only four (4) books! Can’t recall the last time that happened.

I feel sad because I’ve tried a couple or four Jody Taylor books and just find them only mildly amusing. That’s a little train I’d like to be on, but just can’t quite catch.

Have a marvelous weekend, you darling Young Man.

I can't say mine's been a book-focused life - too many other things have grabbed my attention ("look -shiny!"), but they've always been a huge part of it. Like oxygen, I couldn't live without them. I try to always have one within reach. Last night we were at a storytelling event, and I was reading my phone at intermission.

>183 SomeGuyInVirginia: ...when you started working...? Heavens, what arms the lady had! Those illuminated manuscripts were usually 12" by 24" at the smallest!

Slow vs fast readers...I am lucky, I guess, that I never felt my reading speed was unusual, since Mama and my sisters were book-in-two-days readers. (Dad read few novels, but had subject-expert reading and the daily newspaper from front to back.)

>184 jessibud2: I am so weird about the lack of a book that I've been known to stop in a drugstore while walking to a rendezvous and buy a paperback from the spinner rack just to be sure I have *something* to read.

I've never felt that the number of books I read in any given period of time was terribly important except as a barometer of my health, mental and/or physical. More books = happier me.

>185 quondame: but if I stop mainlining I feel it within hours Totally understand and agree.

>186 jessibud2: I am even an older dino, Shelley, with an ancient cellphone without internet options. I use it mainly as alarmclock, and for my father to reach me in case of emergency. And I also have always a book (or e-reader) with me, where ever I go.

--
I started reading when I was 4 years old. Until my 16th I did read at least a book a day. Sadly I never kept records. Then "Dutch Literature Class" spoiled it all with required reading of awfull books (for me at the time, I like most of them now). Reading has been up and down since 2008 (when I joined LT), the last 3 years on the UP side. So I hope it will be "she was reading ever happely after".

>186 jessibud2: Emma, you clever clogs!

>187 ronincats: *smooch*

>188 The_Hibernator: There is a good reason he is unbeloved. Plus once he starts talking, there is no surcease from his undulcet croakings lithped through ill-fitting falth teeth. *shudder*

>189 karenmarie: Horrible dear, we share a regret...I wish my notebooks of notes had survived the depredations of Mother (tossed them after I'd moved out the second time...waited a whole week!) and the collapse of Geocities.

Hibernating away from noisy, boring people with a computer humming and clicking in proper-functioning mode with a book. Yes please.

>190 Matke: Gail! How lovely. I'm busily working out delivery kinks for my edition of the book. I'm using up Amazon.ca credits, but they don't want to mail me the book...tiresome.

You spend yours being happy! *smooch*

>191 jnwelch: Marriage—career—fatherhood all distract from reading for most people. As ever I am an outlier. I read on the phone infrequently, as it's not anywhere near big enough to accommodate my reading speed.

>193 FAMeulstee: "She was reading happily ever after" sounds like the perfect epitaph!

>192 richardderus: Kids these days have no idea what it was like when you had to render your own tallow. Of course, they also wouldn't know good tallow if it jumped up and bit them!

By cracky, you're right! And all this low-fat malarkey...why, we worked HARD to make that lard from freshly slaughtered cattle! And don't even get me started on how hard suet is to harvest from their danged ol' kidneys.

>177 richardderus: My cousin recently lent me his copy of Shoah, which I had never seen. It is a super-long (8-9 hours), incredibly engaging documentary, that fascinates and unsettles you, in equal measures. I recently finished the 2nd disc, in the collection. Have you ever seen it?

Happy Friday, Richard. A much sunnier day in Chicagoland, but I wish it were a few degrees warmer.

>197 richardderus: tut, tut, tut....lard comes from piggies.

>198 msf59:
Shoah has been around for awhile. I watched it on PBS years back. However, it gets overwhelming and I experienced sympathy fatigue, or whatever that is called, and there were parts I simply couldn't watch. I think it is an important work, but I found it excruciating.

I carried a book around with me most of my life. I kept one with me in the tractor, combine, and trucks. I read while running he grain augers and any other job around the farm where you had to stand and watch something.

I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Rising Sun while harvesting many acres of milo and wheat. Those were my "harvest" books.

I still keep books in the car and in my purse. I listen to books in my car. I even listen while knitting in the evening, when there isn't something good on TV. I think that driving is an opportunity to spend quality time with recorded books.

>198 msf59: I haven't seen all eleventy squillion hours of Shoah. It's too much for me, I start hyperventilating and screaming obscenities and treating people with German accents very very rudely. Not productive or positive, so I don't partake.

It's dank here today, foggy and blech. I have to make groceries or I'll be reduced to eating refried beans on toast!

>199 laytonwoman3rd: Pigs, cows, not much difference really.

*chuckle*

>200 benitastrnad: +1 on that

>201 benitastrnad: Harvest books! It's a wonder and a mercy you weren't a farm-equipment accident statistic.

I never had fewer than three books in different parts of the car. One in the front seat, one in the bag in the back seat, always one (Often two or more) inside a plastic emergency box with two flashlights, a six-pack of bottled water, thinsulate blankies, gloves, a cap....

'Morning, RD!

Ugh. Refried beans on toast. I do hope you 'make groceries'.

>204 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! *smooch*

I'll make it out to the CVS later...get some hot dogs to go on the toast and under the refritos. All the way to the Stop'n'Shtup is just too much for the achy joints.

>203 richardderus: Hoping you have a productive grocery run today. Love your emergency kit!! It does not surprise me. Smooches.

>166 richardderus: (show off)

>173 richardderus: Richard, Richard; you are worshipping at the wrong altar. We love happiness, smiling, laughing, singing.

>178 richardderus: Ahh; whereas my parents tried to divert me if we went near a bookshop for fear I would go in and get distracted by all the books.

>193 FAMeulstee: We had noticed your numbers are up, Anita :0)

>206 Berly: Sorta productive, the hot dogs're gone, so I got canned chicken for $1 apiece. One can = 2 sammys! Yay.

>207 humouress: If ya got it, flaunt it.

As to the goddesses thing:

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

>209 richardderus: Ha, yes.

*smooch* and happy Saturday to you!

>210 bell7: Hi Mary! Guess what the desk gave me as I walked in today. *smoochity smooch* for it!

>208 richardderus: Mmm, no; you still haven't got the hang of it.

But Tom Hiddleston is much appreciated, thank you.

>211 richardderus: oh excellent! Enjoy!

>212 humouress: Hiddleston uber alles, I see it works even on goddesses.

>213 bell7: :-)

It's Short Story Month! Isn't that divine?

>209 richardderus: Echoed my mood and my appreciation this morning, RD.

Have a great Sunday.

>215 PaulCranswick: Amen, Brother Man. A-blinkin-men.

Good morning, RD! Happy Sunday to you. My sister's visit I going well so far. I've started the dread The Five Red Herrings, my least favorite Dorothy Sayers novel, but so far so good. I'll reward myself with a Georgette Heyer or two when I'm done!

>217 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! How lovely to have sister lady to distract you from the less-than-her-best Sayers read. And when *doesn't* a Heyer read elevate the general tenor of one's day?

Happy Sunday!

I've watched every Bob Ross episode there is at least 900 times apiece. I love his fuzzy head, he's like Mister Rogers, so cool calm & collected...but 1) that art's gawdawful and b) I can recite the darn things. When the Final Trump blows, I shall arise from my dirt nap saying not "hosanna" but "happy little tree" and "this is your world, you decide where it lives."

YouTube to the rescue. A young Russian immigrant took up his palette knife after the end of his runway-modeling career, at the urging of his wife, and began doing for acrylics what Bob Ross did for oils. Yes, the paintings are garish as you'd expect acrylics to be, but he has the same quiet, confident, encouraging demeanor. His patter is a bit less polished but he's only like 30 so time and practice will help. His channel's called ColorByFeliks if you'd like to give it a whirl.

Oh, and he does Instagram time-lapse videos of his paintings as well, but he doesn't narrate them with all the details.

>214 richardderus: Godesses, gods; we are above petty competitiveness. ;0)

>220 humouress: *cackles wildly* Bulfinch's Mythology exists to disprove this theory. As does D'Aulaire's Norse Myths and the Popol Vuh and the King James Version....

I got lost in the woods after your last thread and just found you again! I apologize in advance for the wall of text. I needed to get caught up, you know.

>82 richardderus: You’re killing me, Smalls.

>161 richardderus: My favorites are Paper Gardens, The Blues Walked In, and Buddhism for Western Children - in that order.

>171 richardderus: Re: # of books read a year being around 300 rather than a book a day

Whew, I feel better now. I was feeling a bit inadequate. Especially with reading less than 180 books last year! This year I’m well on my way to 300-ish. Yay!

I’m another that has always had a bookish life. Since I’ve had the capability to read, I’ve been voracious about it. I remember scarfing down five or six Nancy Drews in a day (or the equivalent.)

When I was 10 or so, I wanted a gerbil. My parents said I couldn’t have one until I studied a book about gerbils and could answer any question asked about the information from the book. An hour later - much to my father’s surprise - I stood in front of him, ready for my “exam.” He laughed in disbelief and started rattling off questions. About twenty correct answers later, he had to concede that I really did know the material.

So much for delaying getting the gerbil! (I named him Sam. The song “Muskrat Love” had just come out.)

>192 richardderus: Same way here. It boggles my mind that people read “only” 25 books a year. That’s how many I read in a month! Then I come to find out that’s (generously) twice the amount the average American reads.

Reading fast doesn’t seem like a special thing to me. (Not that I’m all that humble about it at times, I must admit.) But there is another, much bigger part of me, that says, “It can’t be all that special because it’s as natural to me as breathing.”

Not only do I not leave the house without a book, I must have my ereader and TWO books because what if I don’t like/finish the first book? And what if my ereader acts up? I must not be without -SOMETHING- to read!

>207 humouress: That brings back a fun memory. When my parents had to shop and didn’t want to drag me around for various reasons (from Christmas/birthday shopping to “I’m bored!”), they’d drop me off at the bookstore and I’d be set for an hour or more. I know bookstores hate that now, but first, this was back in the 70s; kids were expected to behave themselves in a mall. And, second, I was too absorbed in the books to get in any trouble. (I was 10 - 12.)

*****

I’m sure you’ve mentioned it before but I didn’t see/remember it. Why don’t you like the word *whispers* “wink”?

Morphy!! Language!!

The creepy stinkin' vile overused w-bomb appears in MM romantic fiction an average of nine times per book. One author used in over fifty times in one book. One adult male w-i-n-k-i-n-g at another is...it's simply nauseatingly cutesy-poopsie-woopsie-pie adorbs-a-licious, and therefore an incitement to unswallow.

My revulsion led to intolerance as the (over)usages mounted up; I became so easily repulsed by it that every time I see it I emit a piercing shriek of outrage, pound on any flat surface I can find, and hurl imprecations at the perpetrator aka author.

>222 Morphidae: Reading fast. Well, I don't read as fast as I used to, that's for sure. Since I started my reading life dyslexic though, any speed at all is good speed. I mostly got over it when early adolescence hit, which sometimes happens with girls, and luckily for me the Sanford reading system had just been installed in my school and I was able to ramp up from yellow to purple before they dug me out of the dummy section and dropped me in the honors bin to the horror of my small town contemporaries.

>127 richardderus: Falau is a silly spout-mouth. I can't even believe they offered him $1 mill, let alone that he would be in a position to reject it!

>166 richardderus: Yep. Since 1969, I've averaged a book a day. Fifty years! Gawddam!
Nice!!!!

'Morning, RichardDear! Happy Monday to you. My sister and I will be heading to Asheville today on a 3-day road trip which will include Biltmore tomorrow and lots of fun sister time all around.

When my high school friend Lori and I used to read romances by Grace Livingston Hill (I know, I know...) we always got a great thrill and laugh when a kiss included the phrase "he drew her soul from between her lips."

>225 LovingLit: silly spout-mouth. Lovely.

>224 quondame: I assume most people lose some speed in most areas as they age. I know I can't anything as fast as I did at 30.

>225 LovingLit: Hi Megan! Love the "silly spout-mouth" description.

>226 karenmarie: Happy Moonsday back at'cha, Horrible! Have a lovely time in the gorgeousness that is Asheville.

My goodness gracious me! A paranormal romance back then! Go know.

Morning, RD. I hope you had a good weekend. Our weather was gorgeous, the past couple of days and nice today too, but rain and chilly temps are coming tomorrow. Oh, joy.

I have been watching Shoah in small chunks. It seems to be easier that way.

>228 msf59: Happy Monday, Mark! I'm basking in 63° and sunshine...loving this! I walked around, accomplished errands, and am now enjoying the fruits of my labors by eating espresso chip ice cream for dinch. (Dinner + Lunch.)

Watching Shoah in small chunks strikes me as simple self-preservation. It's so deeply disturbing to realize it's not fiction. Spend a lovely day anyway.

>209 richardderus:. Like! Now there’s a pledge I can get behind.😄

Having gotten hooked on Seanan McGuire’s Mercy Thompson series, I’m now trying her Incryptid one, that starts with Discount Armageddon. I’m not sure yet - have you read any of these?

P.S. Oops - for those reading closely, as Morphy points out, Patricia Briggs wrote the Mercy Thompson series, not Seanan Mcguire. The technical explanation is I got them mixed up.

>230 jnwelch: Hey Joe! Happy to see you here. I'm afraid La McGuire and I are incompatible somehow. I read about half of Rosemary and Rue and hated it; then a third of Every Heart a Doorway, a *huge* fail; then Feed (as Mira Grant), which I finished but wasn't warmly inclined towards. The chemistry ain't there. So no opinions or ideas apart from my gut screaming "RUN RUN NOW RUN FAST GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN" and I'm guessing that's not particularly helpful to your decision-making process.

So.

>224 quondame: I don't read as fast as I used to, that's for sure

WTH is up with THAT? Not only that, but I could remember plot, characters, scenes, etc. forever. Now, if I read a book more than a year ago, I'm lucky to remember if I HAD read it.

>230 jnwelch: >231 richardderus: *GAWKS*

FOR SHAME! Patrica Briggs wrote the Mercy Thompson series!

I love the Incryptid series by SEANAN MCGUIRE (who did NOT write about Mercy *harumph*) and also enjoy the Wayward Children series. (SorryNotSorry, Richard m'dear.) I'm not all that pleased with October Daye having read the first two and I haven't read any of her Mira Grant work.

>232 Morphidae: That had me double checking for sure. Patricia Briggs shouldn't have credit diverted from her!

>233 quondame: Speaking of Mercy Thompson. I am eagerly awaiting her newest, Storm Cursed to arrive on my doorstep tomorrow!

>234 Morphidae: The copy I plan to read is still being processed by SM Library.

>235 quondame: A most excellent LT friend gifts me with a couple pre-ordered novels from my favorite authors (Anne Bishop and Patricia Briggs usually) each year for Christmas. Normally I have them by Feb/Mar but Storm Cursed got put off by two months. THE NERVE!

Oh my, yes, Patricia Briggs and the werewolves. Yes indeed. I'd completely forgotten, Morphy! Anyway, lots of straight people having sex in the first Mercy Thompson book put me off it. Just not something I want to invite into my brain when it's damned near inescapable anyway.

Hi. Just hi. ;-)

>238 ronincats: Hey there.

Hello, Handsome!

CVS sells hot dogs? Do tell. I’d never thought of a hot dog with F.R., but have certainly made my own “beanie weenie” with Nathan’s and B & M. I do love F.R. mixed with a bit of salsa and some cheese melted on top.

Good to know you’re getting out and about. The weather is still tolerable here: mid 80’s. I do my wandering starting at 7:00 to avoid melting in the humidity.

Not good news re McGuire. I have one on the kindle based on recs by some foolish young friends; we’ll see.

I think I’ve put away my childish amusements for now and returned to my true refuge: inside the covers of a book.

>240 Matke: It's a beach town, so the CVS sells all sorts of picnic/cookout stuff like mayo in a bottle, ketchup, mustard, relish, pickles...of course it's also thoroughly stocked with beer. Even the good beers. Now that Ammy takes food stamps for grocery purposes, and waives delivery fees when you purchase $35 (or more) of food, they'll see a lot less of me.

Refritos and salsa warmed together then poured over dog-on-cheddar = meal. I eat two because I'm a growing boy (latitudinally speaking).

I'm an outlier in the McGuire Wars, as usual, so permaybehaps you'll swoon and chuckle like a normal person. It could happen.

*sad hanky-wave* Enjoy the fortress of solitude. Visit again soon!

Latitudinally speaking. Heh, gotta remember that one! 😀

>232 Morphidae: WTH is up with THAT? Not only that, but I could remember plot, characters, scenes, etc. forever. Now, if I read a book more than a year ago, I'm lucky to remember if I HAD read it.

Oh, thank goodness. I thought it was just me.

>242 drneutron: :-)

>243 humouress: :-)

>243 humouress: Ah no, I think it is an age/#of books read thing. When we are young plots and characters are new, now, it's rarer to encounter standouts and the elements get sorted as we read into same-as and ooo-new. Increasingly my memories from books are there was this thing, but what book was that where she got back at him like that....Only a detail or two of even the best reads bubbles up from the stew these days.

>245 quondame: :-)

Sorry for leading you astray on Patricia Briggs and Seanan McGuire, Richard. Luckily, neither floats your boat.😄

>232 Morphidae:. Thanks, Morphy. I added a p.s. explaining how I . . . Ahem, mixed up Patricia Briggs and Seanan McGuire. I just got the new Mercy Thompson, and it was SM’s October Daye series I was thinking of - which I’m also hooked on!

>247 jnwelch: All's well that ends well, Joe, I don't like either of them so no harm done.

29 Tipping by Gregor Xane

Rating: 4* of five

Holy goddesses.

A whole new meaning for cows...a horror story of the most horrifying sort. I would recommend this to horror readers, but NOT to novice readers of horror.

I have had three nights of nightmares taking place in this world. Author Xane will be receiving a bill for my tranq prescription. I am shattered.

So yeah, I recommend it highly! A short horror that really horrifies...and during Short Story Month. What could be better? I know what could be better: It's only 99¢ at the link above. Very low risk, possibly a good discovery for the adventurous reader unfamiliar with the pleasures of being scared witless.

Haven't read it yet, but it's in the Kindle library.

Morning, Richard. Sweet Thursday. Waking up to rain. It is like a broken record around here. Just can't turn the corner. I am loving Say Nothing on audio and The Darwin Affair has been a fun read.

Enjoy your day.

>250 mahsdad: I hope it scares you into Depends the way it did me.

>251 msf59: More rain?! Yikes. You're gonna mold over like the people in Jeff VanderMeer's fungal books. Sorry for your eternal dampness.

Morning, RD!

>253 katiekrug: Hey there Miz Lady!

>252 richardderus: I'll let you know. Hopefully the fact that horror was my favorite genre when I was growing up (King and Barker were my go-to authors) will protect me from harm. :)

Hi Richard, just stopping by to say hello dear friend.

>255 mahsdad: I think you were inoculated early enough with a strong enough strain of Horrorosis blanchedknucklesii that you're pretty safe.

>256 johnsimpson: Hello there John! Lovely to see you here. I hope all is well in your family circle.

>249 richardderus: Hmmmn. I feel about the horror genre as you feel about my fur people, so I think I'll pass on this one.

I have several Seanan McGuire books on my shelves and I finally got around to reading Girl in the Green Silk Gown and it was OK, but I didn't find it that interesting or exciting. I am hoping that the Wayward Children series works better as I have all three of those. I know that McGuire has as huge following but I remain to be convinced.

>259 benitastrnad: Girl in the Green Silk Gown should only be read by McGuire completists. Either read the Incryptid series starting with Discount Armageddon (funnier and lighter) or the October Daye series starting with Rosemary and Rue (darker and more complex). While I like the Wayward Children series (fairy tale-ish and a bit surreal,) it's not her best.

Hi Richard! Happy Friday! Finally! Hope you have a wonderful day!

>258 ronincats: A wise decision. The results would pretty much define "double plus ungood."

>259 benitastrnad: As a convinced, even entrenched, member of McGuire's Loyal Opposition, I'm thinking your quest will go unrewarded...but "your" being the operative word, I'll await dispatches from the Front with interest.

>260 Morphidae: The Ruling Party speaketh!

>261 The_Hibernator: Thank you, Rachel, and more of the same back at'cha!

Hi Richard! Just dropping by to wish you a fantastic weekend :)

>263 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, the same wishes returned with interest.

What's up oldtimer? Have a great weekend! I did my first volunteer stint as a Friend of the local lie-berry yesterday and bought a copy of Disraeli: A Picture of the Victorian Age translated by Hamish Miles, 1928 edition. I just glanced through some pages and the writing is charming.

After I had finished I really wanted to say, 'There! Let that f@$%ing judge find fault with that!'

Hey Lar! I'm just peachy keen since the effin' pneumonia let go. It's cold today and I've got the window open to revel in it. Summer is, annoyingly but inexorably, coming.

Disraeli is unjustly forgotten. Good on ya for fanning his flickering flame of fame.

*smooch*

I didn't see it in your library but I don't always trust the LT search engine. It's jinky. Have you read This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel? I'm halfway through and not quite sure what I think of it.

>249 richardderus: So that's a pass from me.

I might, however, recommend it to my 10 year old. Several years ago, his strain of conversation was 'When you die and I get the house ...' Ah, for those days of lost innocence. (ETA read that how you will.)

Have a great Sunday, RD! It's rainy and cold here too

Happy mother's day to all my motherin' friends.

>267 Morphidae: Hiya Morphy. I haven't read This is How It Always is and am not likely to. NNot calling to me, as they say.

>268 humouress: *chuckle* I hear ya re: little ghouls! But no, this is not the kind of horror story I'd recommend for a ten-year-old. I'd say 14 at the youngest.

>269 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Mom! I'm snuggled up after a day out w/my Young Gentleman Caller. Knees hurt, headache from the movie being SO LOUD and SO LONG. But we had handicapped seating, the food was surprisingly good, the drink was delightful, and Chris Hemsworth fat is worth the price of the ticket to see.

>270 richardderus: - Richard, thank you for this! I will be sharing this with my brother, as it may help us with our mother's sore excuse for a husband...…

(have I ever mentioned that a few colleagues and I had a voodoo doll once, in *honour* of a particular principal-from-hell. It helped us greatly, as we huddled after school in our classrooms, with the doors closed.... Yes, even teachers sometimes need diversion...;-)

Sorry for the soreness, but glad for the snuggling up.

I got that shorty story nightmare. And I’m looking forward to it.

I hope he coming week will be bright and cheerful for you, Dear Young Man.

30 The Hanged Man's Ghost by Missouri Dalton

Rating: 3* of five

Only three stars. That kinda rots. I'll talk about why later.
***LATER***
I love series books that allow me to immerse myself in their made-up world. I adore mysteries that enable me to feel that Bad Guys lose, fail, get punished. I am a complete pushover for gay guys as main characters, a sucker for paranormal stuff that makes common sense, EAGER to see bisexual men in relationships...this book, in short, should light every fire in my mental hypocaust.

And it didn't.

I made forty (40) Kindlenotes, which is either Very Very Good or Really Really Bad news. This time it was both. This is a first novel, and begins the ongoing Night Wars series. There's a downside to revising first books, as was done for this one after its first publisher disappeared. The later books add to the series canon, and that can require first-book additions. The author says in the Author's Note that the changes are minor. I wonder if one result of this is the strange choppiness of the narrative. As my most WTF-inducing example, why is Fynn's father "Da" sometimes and 'Pops" others? In general, people choose a name for their parents and stick to it. My sisters and I called our mother by different names, but never by each others' name for her. (I called her Mama, Sister Old called her Mommy, Sister Middle called her Mom.) It's not A Rule, but it's a distraction from the story to have to take a moment to wonder who is being addressed.

The feeling of being popped out of the narrative also comes when details arise and disagree with each other but are never reconciled. An example of this is the first murder. The body has three bullet holes, the witness says four shots were fired with great confidence, which attitude is pointed out by the author. And nothing ever reconciles the mismatch. That's frustrating to a mystery reader.

A more macro-level issue for me is the damn-near real time narration of the first third of the book. Fynn goes to a bar, sits on a stool, talks to the bartender, reaches for his wallet, gets out his money, pays the bartender, gets off the stool, goes out the door...you get what I'm talking about. It's purely a taste thing, not everyone is annoyed by this, but it isn't a narrative strategy I'd encourage anyone to use. Stage directions in a play aren't usually this detailed.

LOTS of coincidences and unsupported knowledge in here. How does Fynn know where his rescued almost-suicide is? Why is that individual's boss sitting there holding the kid's hand? And what astonishing luck that Fynn's in the same hospital, given that the city of Chicago fairly *bristles* with hospitals and people are triaged to different ones based on injury not on proximity. (This is true for all major metropolitan areas.) The sheer amazing stunning convenience of the existence of some blackmail materials used to manipulate Fynn is unaddressed. Why would these materials exist? In whose possession were they, how did they end up with the blackmailer, and WHY DOES NO ONE ASK THESE QUESTIONS in a POLICE STATION where chain of custody is an ingrained data point to be investigated?!

The latter issue is, I suppose, dealt with by the nature of the series: Paranormal. As in magical, as in manipulating the material world accepted. But this event occurs before the outing, so to speak, of the book's true nature. I can't accept that a cop, especially a senior cop like Fynn's boss, wouldn't bring this up despite the...spooky...nature of the blackmailer. He wants to save Fynn, a good cop from a cop family, from disgrace and dismissal.

Now for the biggest problem I had, and one that came close to closing the book to me for good: Jack, Fynn's cop-partner, serves a fresh-out-of-rehab drunk a drink, *overcomes the drunk's objection to being served a drink*, and proceeds to ply the drunk with four more.

BIG. HONKIN. NO-NO.

It's especially upsetting as this is the same person who expresses loving, tender concern for Fynn's recovery before and after this occurs. It's never mentioned again...like that's realistic!...Jack never asks forgiveness or makes amends. This would be a huge, huge issue in an alcoholic's trust inventory. As would the relationship between Jack and Fynn after this occurs. Not cool. Not realistic.

I hate smoking so I hate the mentions of Fynn lighting up. Personal peeve.

Anyway, from all the above, the question arises: Why'd you bother? What kept you reading, since this isn't a one-star rage review? Because the world the author's building appeals to me, like Charlaine Harris's paranormals appeal to me. I love the world-unseen-by-muggles trope. I grew up gay! In 1970s Texas! Of course I love unnoticed realities, I lived in one. And I understand viscerally the desire of the inhabitants of that world to be left the fuck alone to live as they are. The urgency of adopting a cover story. The skill at verbal deflection. The sensitivity to vibes, to the initiate's gaze identifying Our Own. This book strums my strings the right way in this regard.

I enjoy the Catholic parents of a gay kid making absolutely no waves about his sexuality. Their overbearing controlling behaviors are utterly unrelated to Fynn's man-lovin' just to his whoring around and drinking. Any parent of an addict will look at that and say, "that's exactly it, I love my child and want the self-destruction to stop!" Note the silence about gayness. Refreshing to see religious people portrayed as loving, nurturing, supportive parents. (If a tad on the meddlesome side.)

And last, most importantly, in fact crucially to my pleasure in the read, is the fact that the author dropped two...two!...w-bombs. One of which I felt was appropriate to the situation and was cheekily funny.

Anyone who can make ME, the arch-wink-hater, approve of a w-bomb, is a wizard and deserves a chance to make my eyeblinks focus on their work.

>272 jessibud2: Heh, I'm happy to make any contribution to improved mental health for adults doing end-of-life work with their parents. Sending hugs!

>273 Matke: Thank you, Gail, I hope so too and send the same wishes back to you. *smooch*

I hope you get some sleep after tipping those, um, different cows.

Hey RD.

I just finished said shorty horror tale, and it's not for the faint of heart. I, however, thought it was really good and an interesting premise. Sure its gross and horrific, but I would be interested in reading a full novel from this world.

>274 richardderus: Yes! to the hidden world love. I've never had your need to live in one, just sort of my own spectrum adjacent feeling that my jokes always seemed to be greeted as hostile, rather than friendly, overtures and precious few noticed the blatant peculiarities of their surrounds.

>276 mahsdad: Heh, go tell Gregor Xane so on Facebook!

>277 quondame: Being Othered, thrust all unwitting and/or unwilling into the Outsider role, is all that's required to recognize this trope's lasting and meaningful power over our collective imagination.

"I think you ought to write, in bed, and make use of your unhappiness. I do it. Many do. One should cook and eat one's misery. Chain it like a dog. Harness it like Niagara Falls to generate light and supply voltage for electric chairs."
--Saul Bellow to Bette Howland, on her writers' block and depression. from the Afterword to Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage

Someone who pushes booze on an alcoholic, even in a novel, should be horsewhipped

>280 magicians_nephew: I agree. I'm still wavering about continuing the series for that reason alone.

Hey, Richard. Falling hopelessly behind on the threads. It does not take much. I'll chip away, slowly at a time. Thanks for keeping my thread warm, while I was gallivanting in the woods.

South east Texas is on my birding bucket list, for migration. I heard it is amazing. It is a major flyway for neotropic birds. I think the places are called High Island and Bolivar Flats. Big Bend is on my bucket list too, if Trump doesn't screw it up with his damn wall.

Good morning, Richard Dear! I’m going to slowly creep back to visiting threads now that my sister’s left. I hope you have a super-duper day.

>249 richardderus: Tipping. Nope. Nein. Nyet. There’s enough in the real world that’s scaring me shitless right about now.

>266 richardderus: It's cold today and I've got the window open to revel in it. Summer is, annoyingly but inexorably, coming. It’ a nice crisp 59F here. We’ve got windows open. But yes, summer is, inexorably, coming. It’s a very depressing thought.

>282 msf59: Hey Mark, glad you're recovering from all the fun you've had. South Texas has always been a birder's heaven. Going to the southwest of Houston you can see roseate spoonbills and hummingbirds as they migrate, which is cool.

>283 karenmarie: Horrible! How lovely, when you're still recovering from the strain of having houseguests. It's a strain even when we love the guests. And the depression that accompanies hot weather will come in its own time...I'm hoping for a long, cool spring because YUCK on summer.

It's chilly here in East Tennessee. I have the windows open, and the cats and I are enjoying listening to the birds sing and chirp! I may have to close the windows for a bit if the sun doesn't come out a bit more soon. Today's temp is supposed to begin a warming trend that takes us into the 80s by the weekend.

Just stopping at your thread, Richard dear, to read 64 messages & to wish you a happy day :-)
I will skip the horror story...

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Hope your day is as sunshine-y and pleasant as it is here!

Happy Hump Day, everyone! I'm reading poetry books, plural, on this positively sun-struck breezy day.

Pick y'all's selves up off the floor at your leisure. Meanwhile let me explain.

The Art of Dying was one helluva wallop. Y'all might remember that I fell in love with its cover, enough that I used A Canadian Friend's gift to me to procure a copy after the AAUP awards showed it to me:

So I was reading the short, super-concentrated poems. "Self," I said to myself, "this is the Sh...tuff. This is why all those pretentious pit-sniffers whose only love is self-love (in all its meanings) write their vapid maunderings with silly line breaks."

Most books of poems are far too short.
It's hard to get your money's worth.
How does it make sense in the marketplace

To pay twelve quid for sixty pages?
Or fifteen euros, or twenty bucks?
So poets are shit out of luck.

first two stanzas of poem 22
I know, right?!

Memento mori...and does Sarah Tolmie ever put memory through its paces. I was, and am, compelled to think deeply about ten-line word paintings. That's not the commonest feeling for me. "You too will die" is my preferred translation from the Latin (pace Latinists with exact translations) of the phrase and that thought is ever with me. I think a lot of people shy away from the idea of Death when what they actually fear is the process of dying. We're divorced from its realities by the medicalization of illness. The process is part of Life, not of Death...and that's a Tolmie thought that I think makes the whole fear industry tremble.

Hate to tell you, but you're going to die.
Quite soon. Me, too.

Shuck off the wisdom while it's warm.
Death does no harm
To wisdom.

It's the very first poem, in its entirety; it sets a tone for this collection that the remaining artistry very much delivers on.

You're not afraid of Death. I can almost promise you that you haven't thought about Death much at all. The pain and enfeeblement of illness are the things that inspire most people to flee screaming from the mere mention of Death. Its reality is possibly more terrifying: The Great Unknown, the place we're all going but no one has ever come back from to tell us about. (I am not religious and I don't believe y'all's bedtime story is in any way factual.)

It continues to be fashionable to mourn the death of ritual.
We miss the Neolithinc ochre, smoking censers, silly hats
Cthulhu and Harryhausen prayers, all the mystic flap.

first stanza of poem 10
A Facebook chat with an author of horror novels that I had very recently made me think again about why horror has no fear for me. The silliness of the rituals surrounding Death has always struck my funny bone. I save my sadness and longing for the living. They can make use of it, they can feel my empathy and my lovingkindness and my appreciation. The dead? I suspect they survive in some form. I doubt very much its a form we'd recognize. But the body horror and supernatural horror of the storytelling world, the world that this author and many like her inhabit, have little actual potency and their imaginative powers exert force on our imaginations in proportion to our fear of Death (which, I said above, I believe to be a fear of the process of dying).

Death looks a lot like success.
As in, "I killed that test"
"She slays me" and the rest—

Though it's the act and not the state
Whose power we appropriate,
All us murderous wannabes
In our casual hyperboles.

Poem 42 in its entirety
The attentive will note my approbation of a rhyming-couplets poem.

Pick y'all's selves up off the floor at your leisure.
The New York Times photo
Then, after that delight to my literary sensibilities arose from the quantum foam, I read this article from The Millions and was reminded of Frank Stanford, whose 1978 collection Crib Death I found on my then-boyfriend the much older alcoholic abuser's shelf.

The Neighbor's Wife
Four a.m. and she's still gone
But I'm not going to call.
It's not so bad, until just before morning,
When I see a truck driver
Take a smoke out of his lips
And throw it out the window
And I watch it go to pieces
All over the road.

I read that as a teen and was shocked to my still-forming core that someone out there Got Me. The obsessive need for someone's presence. The intense internal fire that only comes to the surface when mundane reality offers a single, fleeting, unremarkable image of one's inner state and thus crystallizes reality in the same stunning, unexpected way that a chemistry demonstration creates shocking clouds of sharpness from water.

I don't mean to give y'all the impression that I can just *poof* summon up a poem from 40-year-old memories. I got the text from my memory of the book's and the poem's title and then checked out of the library What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford. This kitten-squisher of a volume...750 pages!...collects a thorough and informed sampling of his magic mountain of work both published and unpublished. I got re-interested in Stanford after reading in the above-referenced article that Stanford had committed suicide at 29.

Twenty-nine.

Imagine the life unlived, the art unmade; the world's loss is incalculable when Death takes some unhappy or unwilling soul away from whatever Reality finally turns out to be. Assuming we ever find out, that is.

So the book...elephantine tome!...slogged home in my shoulder tote on a cold and rainy day. I sat right down to look for this deeply meaningful memory, but being a bookish sort, was unable not to read both the Introduction (by one Dean Young, previously unknown to me) and the Editor's Note by Copper Canyon Press publisher Michael Wiegers. I discovered this unlikely-to-be-memed aperçu in Young's Introduction:

Many of these poems seem as if they were written with a burnt stick. With blood, in river mud. There is something thankfully unexamined in their execution. I say "thankfully" because we have been through a long century of self-consciousness and irony, and while their brand of rigor and suspicion have brought intelligence to American poetry they have also brought rigor mortis, they have deadened the nerves and made poets fear the irrational.

What is more irrational than Death? Dying is rational, can be subjected to analysis and quantification, is possible to construct a schema to slot into one's syllogistic understanding of Life.

Death is the Great Unknown. Frank Stanford got that, and wrote with its reality up front and up close and personal:

Putting Up Fence
I believe the moon wades a creek
Like an albino with a blade
Fixed to a stick.

It rises, red as a place
Where a chigger's been.

Voyeur in the loft, leaving your gum
Stuck to a fork in the barn,
Like a porter paid to listen
With his head in a portal
Of a ship returning before it's due.

Then I come down the road with ice.

An unpolished scream of a betrayed husband, a howl of the pain of being unwanted and still alive, a rage-filled hate-fuelled moment in time that Stanford lived and left uncollected in his paper alp. He's dead, he's dying in front of our horrified eyes always and forever.

Or is he the moon.

Or the chigger.

The reddener of millions of feet, ankles bending to bring them within frantic scratching distance of fingers long ago rotted away. The annoying, irritating, sometimes sickening (in all its senses) reminder that we're alive and Life is a Death sentence. Irrationally clawing at the reddened surface of our living corpses, we read poems by artists like Frank Stanford who just couldn't endure the long way home.

>289 richardderus: Hell hath frozen over. You book bulleted me with a farking book of farking POETRY. Adding The Art of Dying to my LT rec list. It will be the second book of poetry I've ever read. Holy biscuits.

Chiggers! *shudder* *runs away*

>285 thornton37814: Hi Lori! It's been glorious here today, sunstruck and lovely cool breezes and more of the same for the rest of the week. I'm hoping the weather-forecasting models are correct and no seaside surprises spring up.

>286 FAMeulstee: Anita my dear! How lovely. Skipping the horror story is probably a good idea. Sleep is important for those recently returned from travel.

>287 karenmarie: *smooch*

>288 katiekrug: 'Twas.

>290 Morphidae: Heh. My life's work being accomplished, I herewith hand in my resignation and request transportation to the Invisible Library to begin my Calling there.

>291 katiekrug: Heh. Feelin' a little Texas nostalgia, are ya?

>291 katiekrug: Yep. I would like the c***s left to my adequate imagination.

>294 quondame: At least it's imagination and not memory!

>295 richardderus: Admittedly, the reports of insect activity have been an element in my avoidance of Southern climes. Mostly the politics, then the (moist)heat, but the insects were in there.

>293 richardderus: - Nope, not even a little bit. Never have, never will!

The evacuation muster spot for our office in Dallas was an empty field across the road. After a drill one day, we all trooped back to our desks and a bunch of us began itching like crazy. Chiggers! It was awful.

The field has now been taken over by a new housing development because Texas.

>296 quondame: They are every bit as irksome as you're imagining they are. I don't miss them at all.

>297 katiekrug: Oh, what a *lovely* memory! Dallas...that garden spot...that demi-paradise upon the face of the world!

*retch*

>298 richardderus: The politics, the weather, and the c***s, I assume.

>299 quondame: Yeup. All those and add in the religiosifyin' and the homophobia...external to the politics.

Wow. The Art of Dying goes onto the "must buy" list, and I'll keep my eyes out for What About This and Crib Death. Fantastic reviews, Richard.

>300 richardderus: To me politics, religion, and intolerance are just different chunks in the same stew - us for us and you ain't us.

I haven't hosted a series or an author for a while. I'd like to do so this summer, during a month when the most interested folk have the time to do at least the targeted book, which is only 200 pp. long. I'd like to expose as many people as possible to the works of James H. Schmitz, a science fiction author who wrote from the late '40s through the 1970s. He is best known for The Witches of Karres, but imho has written much better works. Here is my bookshelf.


Many of his works, especially his shorter ones, were very hard to find for quite a while, but in 2000 and 2001, Baen published almost all of his oeuvre in a collection of 6 books, seen to the right of the shelf above. The book I would like to feature is Demon Breed, also found in the Baen collection The Hub: Dangerous Territory. Schmitz is known for his kick-ass female protagonists long before they became the current ubiquitous status quo in his stories about Telzey Amberdon, Trigger Argee, and the hero of Demon Breed, Nile Etland.

See my thread for more info if interested!

>304 ronincats: No, no there is not. Absurd notion. Codswallop. Perish forbid.

I have yet to see a single episode of Game of Thrones, but I still thought this was funny.



Muchas smooches.

>306 SomeGuyInVirginia: I love that sentiment. Love. It.

My sister's new t shirt:

Her name is Winter. She wears it a lot. My entire family has a warped sense of humor.

>37 katiekrug: Too good.