richardderus's eighth thread of 2019

1949 Willys Overland station wagon in non-factory refurbishment. I heartily approve.

I'm still, perhaps insanely, 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.

Reviews 22-32 are back there.

Reviews 33-38, Pearl Rules 6 & 7, and a random review are all back yonder.

This thread's reviews are:

PR8 of Red, White, and Royal Blue is in post 27.

39 Any Way the Wind Blows marks the passing of an era in publishing, see post 32.

Doesn't Count Good Omens the miniseries and the book in post 35.

40 Faro's Daughter was simply perfect, a delight from beginning to ending, in post 63.

41 Lady of Quality was Heyer's last book, and it shows, in post 131.

42 The Demon Breed is a 1960s space opera with a woman hero! Imagine! in post 149.

43 Black Sheep was the last truly top-flight Heyer Regency, discussed in post 162.

44 The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh is all gay all the time, so I won't go into details in post 185.

45 Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror was a good read that I neglected to review until months later in post 199.

46 Come Hell or Highball made me ill with fury in post 208.

47 Peter's Pence was a 1975 Edgar-winning thriller that flouted logic but made excellent use of excitement in post 254.

48 Heart Berries is my 2019 6-stars-of-five read, barring a miracle, post 265.

49 The Murders of Molly Southbourne was a successful adventure into horror novella reading in post 288.

50 A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies delighted me in direct proportion to its brevity, see post 304.

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
With Walt Whitman, Himself

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
The Murders of Molly Southbourne

21. A book written by a Native American author
Heart Berries

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
West

28. A book featuring a memorable companion animal
The Demon Breed

29. A book set in South America


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

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

Happy new thread Richard.

Happy new one!

>4 johnsimpson: Good gracious, John! You are a marksman indeed.

>5 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita~

Happy new thread, Richard! That's a good handling of the Willys Overland — vibrant without being a hot-rod treatment.

>1 richardderus: - Mama want!

Happy new thread, RD!

>8 harrygbutler: Thanks, Harry! Isn't that a great restomod? They carried the colors to the inside, just like Willys did, and made it look like a factory job.

>9 katiekrug: I relate...but it would be *painfully* slow. 2.2 liter L-head four cylinder pushing 3000lb of steel? You could walk faster than it drives.

But you wouldn't look as cool.

Thank you!

>1 richardderus: Wow. Now that's a green! As I recall, that format was kind of hard on passengers who all had to climb behind the front seats to get at the back ones. Easy enough if you're 4-8, but it gets harder after that.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread!

Happy new one, RD.

>1 richardderus: I could easily see me driving one of those!

Wowzers. Yet another new thread.

And another old car made new again. Nice.

Happy newest, RichardDear.

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

Happy New Thread, Richard! And you are just determined to celebrate my natal year with your cars all year long, yes?

>11 quondame: Isn't that a corking shade? I never was much good at crawling into back seats. Not that many two-door regular cars these days, are there? Mostly people drive SUVs and sedans.

Thanks!

>12 drneutron: Thank you, Jim!

>13 PaulCranswick: They are just amazingly uncomfortable, especially there in the tropics, but once you're back in the UK it's a viable option.

>14 weird_O: Hi Bill, yeah it makes me happy to see people restoring old machines to their glory days. That one sold for $29,000, which is about what a blah econobox costs, and there's no way you'd lose your car in the parking lot if it was that one!

>15 karenmarie: *smooch* Have yourself a merry little sleeptime.

>16 ronincats: It's been *coughcough* years since 1949, so it seems like a good moment to look back and appreciate some of the good things no longer available to us.

Happy newest!

To refer to your last thread....and that W is highly reluctant to be photographed at the best of times, I doubt that i will get him to *pose*. We will see though, as he 'needs' a new scooter ;)

Love that top car! (lorry? van?) SO cute!

Happy new thread, Richard!

I like the color combination of the car at the top, our house has that combination. With cream window frames, and the windows that can open and the doors in green (a little darker).

Happy Thursday, Richard. Happy New Thread. Love the Willys up there. That would be a perfect birding vehicle.

We are in the midst of a stretch of beautiful weather, in Chicagoland. Yah!

Happy new thread, Richard! Can I borrow that gorgeous station wagon to drive to Philadelphia next week?

>19 LovingLit: Nothing like a little maternal blackmail, is there?

I expect it's best described as an SUV.

>20 FAMeulstee: Oh, what a lovely image you bring to mind! I think those are ideal house colors.

>21 msf59: Hi Mark! YAY for beautiful weather. I'm experiencing the early-warning signs of impending summer. BOO. HISS.

>22 kidzdoc: You'd be **wretched** before you got out of Atlanta. Bouncybouncebounce and a weak-kneed powerplant and a top speed of about 50...no a/c...three-on-the-tree means rowing through the gears to find a wee tiny bit of acceleration...14mpg...best not.

>24 richardderus: Oh. Right. Good point. Forget what I said.

Happy new thread, DarlingMan.

>25 kidzdoc: Yeah, good choice. Much much misery spared.

>26 Matke: *smooch* Happy Thursday!

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Pearl Ruled #8 (p108)

No. Not one more irritating page.

It's not *bad* per se, the writing is adequate and has moments of superior detail, but the characters speak in what, in my early adulthood, would've been Valley Girl speak. I don't know what y'all call it. I *do* know that it also annoys my twenty-*mumble* year old Young Gentleman Caller, so I don't feel as much like a cranky old man as I would otherwise. I handed him p84 (which begins with "HRH Prince Dickhead" in 20pt bold type) to read, he read it, handed it back to me, and asked if there was more radish slaw.

"What did you think of the book?"

"mm...I really want some more slaw, why don't other people use radishes?...and can you put it on another ham-on-rye, please?"

And *he* is the book's target audience, a twenty-something voracious reader. I cry uncle and move myself on.

Ha! Compelling book review by your YGC, Richard. I'll avoid the Valley Girl nonsense and order the slaw.

Happy New Thread! I heartily approve of those toppers. You make me want to go all Jay Leno and own one of each you post. (Maybe a model toy version?)

>29 jnwelch: You know it's bad when a book-reader can't even muster a "meh" and is more interested in snacking.

39 Any Way the Wind Blows by Seanan McGuire



Rating: 4* of five

Tor Books is leaving the Flatiron Building! They've been there since, goodness, some one of the 1980s, so over 30 years. The wrench that has to be for the staff, well I can empathize. Moving rots, moving a company is horrendous.

Seanan McGuire commemorates the end of an era with this short, sweet vignette à clef. It is a lovely little read, and being a Tor.com Original, is free at the link above. Won't take you 10 minutes but you'll click away smiling.

>32 richardderus: Oh my, that's lovely Richard.

>33 brenzi: The Flatiron Building is lovely. It's one of those "only in New York" kind of sights. The painting romanticizes it, of course, and the airship is cool but...well...who cares, pretty is pretty, ain't it?

Good Omens by...well, y'all know

2019 UPDATE The miniseries on Amazon Prime gets 4.5 out of five, and a strong encouragement to go watch it. I mean, what is all this kerfuffle about the ending?! Episode 6 ended perfectly, with the loveliest touch of smarm and some real guffaws...wise choices indeed. The series misses on one count, we could do with more of the Them, but really now! Child labor laws and all that. Episode 3's epic cold open is, by itself, worth subscribing to Prime for. Episode 4's delight is Gabriel's red red robin bob-bob-bobbin' along...that was lovely.

All in all a delicious Queen of Puddings worthy of Mary Berry herself.


Book Rating: the least annoyed three stars I can muster out of five

The Publisher Says: According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

My Review: The Son of Satan is coming, and that's gonna be that. Except the angel who's supposed to defeat him and the demon who's supposed to make sure he triumphs have mainstreamed and don't much feel like giving up their cush jobs. HQ on both sides isn't having any, and hijinks ensue.

I got this book at "New York Is Book Country" in 1990. Workman had a big push on to make the book a hit...their booth that year had a bunch of editorial assistants and editors all dressed up funny, waving signs about the world ending tomorrow, passing out fliers promoting the book, yelling provocative predictions drawn from the book at passers-by. I loved it as street theater, and bought the book because I liked their energetic promotion of it.

I chuckled several times, laughed out loud once, and put the book away from 1990 until it was lost in the move in 2008, and never once in 18 years remembered that I owned it or had read it. I found the above para and was mildly surprised I'd bothered to review such a slight bagatelle of a book.

But credit where credit is due: The fact that Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, retired when penicillin was introduced and was replaced by Pollution, made me laugh and laugh hard. I'm still giggling 22+ years on.

I was going to comment on the several posts on Richard's thread today but I think the whole point is that this is Richard's thread and he should be safe to discourse on what he wants to.

Have a good weekend RD.

On a totally different subject -

Here is the link to the LT Meetup at the ALA conference in Washington, D. C.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/307549

>39 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul, and you're correct...my space isn't for anyone else.

>40 benitastrnad: Hi Benita! I so wish I could physically endure travel. My disability makes sitting for extended periods...more than a half-hour...not practical. I hope it's the best meetup ever.

Hi Richard! Just dropping by to wish you a wonderful weekend.

Here's something to get you started :)

>1 richardderus: Holy cow! That's a gorgeous vehicle! If it were a guy it would be Tab Hunter.

Happy Pride Weekend, my friend!

This is a note to remind members that personal attacks are forbidden by the TOS. We don't care about context; we care what's said and by whom. Members are warned. Further abuse will not be tolerated. The people talking here know the rules. Further violations will trigger suspensions.

A reminder: If you see violations of the Terms, let us know. We don't read every flagged post; we need your help to point us to problems.

>43 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita, the wine's a welcome sight indeed.

>50 SomeGuyInVirginia: That's perfect, Larry, the Tabhuntermobile is blond and blue-eyed and ruggedly handsome. Heh.

Have a happy weekend!

Happy weekend, Richard dear, I hope the storm is over now.

>54 FAMeulstee: Happy weekend, Anita, I'm finishing Faro's Daughter and that delightful dose of Heyer makes any day brighter.

Morning, Richard. It feels like a war zone around here, so I will tip-toe in and wish you a Happy Weekend. Time to get back to the route, and soak up some sunshine.

Ah, Faro's Daughter! I just read that one recently, and it was a delightful day brightener for me, too.

Enjoy the weekend, buddy.

>56 msf59: I'm not able to read the posts that cause the problems, so I'm just here doing my thing.

>57 jnwelch: Your dratted warbling was what led me to it, Joe, and while I tut over the unkindness of anyone who warbles excellent books to a group of biblioholics...well...I couldn't do without them.

Hi RD!

Happy Saturday. I'm going to read a bit and eat Gummi Bears. Ordinary Grace, for my book club meeting at the beginning of July, is turning out to be a very good book.

>59 karenmarie: How lovely! His Cork Smith mystery series was hit-or-miss with me, but I don't recall ever feeling his writing was sub-par. I hope you end up as happy as you are now.

*smooch*

>18 richardderus: Yes, I AM that much older than you are, young whippersnapper, so show some respect!

>32 richardderus: What?!? Something Seanan McGuire wrote that you like?!??!! And thank you for pointing it out--I'd missed it somehow.

>61 ronincats: I *am* Respectful, Roni dear, I didn't mention the fact that among the things no longer available to us that we could procure in 1949 were woolly mammoth steaks and dodo eggs.

Oops. Look at me, forgetting.

I was as shocked as you were that I liked the McGuire piece. It was charming, and amusing. I damn near checked myself into Emergency for a once-over. But credit where credit is due: This was a successful short work and I liked it.

40 Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer

Rating: 5* of five

Scrumptious.

I can't type it here, the Spoiler Stasi would waterboard me, but Z.O.M.G. this entire ending is the outside of enough! I pity the fool who doesn't indulge in the occasional Heyer. A diet of them would be akin to steamed pudding for breakfast, Queen of Puddings for lunch, and a Pavlova for dinner, but damme how they are like vintage champagne served with an exquisite entremet.

'Morning, RichardDear! So glad you like Faro's Daughter. I'm especially fond of it because it's the first Heyer I ever read, and as I've probably mentioned way too many times here on LT I still have my original now-ratty Bantam paperback.

>64 karenmarie: It was delightful, Horrible, a scintillating gem of a read, a beautiful and elegant tale.

Happy Monday!

The first sentence of Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya:
I AM NOT COMPLETE IN THE MIND, said the sentence I highlighted with the yellow marker and even copied into my personal notebook, because this wasn't any old sentence, much less some wisecrack, not by any means, but rather the sentence that astonished me more than any other sentence I read that first day on the job, the sentence that most dumbfounded me during my first incursion into those one thousand one hundred almost single-spaced printed pages placed on what would be my desk by my friend Erick so I could get some idea of the task that awaited me.

Have you abandoned it yet?

>67 karenmarie: Heh. Not at all, I feel I am at home, among my Own Kind, in a place of great comfort and familiarity at last.

>63 richardderus: and I now know what my next Heyer will be. Thanks Richard.

>69 brenzi: You won't regret it, Bonnie! What fun it was to visit Heyerland.

I'm in a minor book funk. I have an Elly Griffith that's holding me, but I have been muddling through this and that. I feel more muddling coming on.

So Senselessness is about curmudgeons? A lot of them? Is it a berry day?

'Morning, RD! I hope you have a good day.

I'm having lunch with some former coworkers today. It's a beautiful day so far, only supposed to get to 79F.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Hiya Richard!
Nate and I plan to start Good Omens on our next day off together. We were very happy to discover that on his new play station we have an app that we can watch Amazon prime through! I thought we would only be able to watch it on our computer

Speaking of Good Omens, I just downloaded the book from Audible. My husband and I plan a re-read before watching the show..

>69 brenzi: Georgette Heyer's Georgian and Regency novels are a great delight to me. So nice to see you and RD extolling your faves. I have so many 'best-liked ones' that it is never possible to pick a single favourite.

Here are some recently-reread faves ~ April Lady, Cotillion, Frederica, These Old Shades, Devil's Cub (sequel), The Masqueraders, The Unknown Ajax, Arabella ~ in case you are looking for recommendations. Some are very amusing romps.

I've read Simon the Coldheart and it's later continuation Beauvallet, which are set historically in an earlier period. They were 'good reads'. In my review, I noted that Simon the Coldheart had a well-characterised theme, and rated almost 4-stars (I was expecting to find the story laborious). It was a surprisingly compelling story, set in the 1400's.

>71 mckait: Muddling is an excellent alternative to simply not being able to focus enough to read. After all it's muddling that lets you discover a great read. The one that snaps your funk into kindling for the exciting read you need.

No no, not curmudgeons, rather those of a more prolix and discursive turn of mind, the elitists unafraid of the dictionary and the thesaurus.

>72 karenmarie: That sounds like a lovely day, Horrible! Only 79° would be enough to make it perfect, and the lunch sounds very pleasant.

*smooch*

>73 ChelleBearss:, >74 The_Hibernator: What a pleasure I expect you will discover. I will say that reading or re-reading the books isn't a necessity, but surely can't hurt.

EDITED TO ADD This article describes some of the under-recognized resonances between the book and the mini-series.

>75 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! I'd forgotten Heyer's Beauvallet series, of which I've only read Simon the Coldheart, in the irrational exuberance of reading the Regency and Georgian books. Thanks for the timely reminder that there is so much more of Heyer's work to explore.

>77 richardderus: It's always fun to give a shout out to my "Heyer faves", in case someone wants a BB!

Hijacking occurring for a minute.

Message from Abby regarding the passes to the exhibit hall at ALA.

Okay - passes are here! These are good for exhibit-hall only access to ALA on Saturday, Sunday, & Monday.

https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=291&oi=IQruTjvKoFzHoIiGjo9vo....

The "code" is V134 but you shouldn't need to enter that - the URL above populates it for you in the form.

>78 SandyAMcPherson: I completely concur.

>79 benitastrnad: I shall Loftily Ignore hijackings in a good cause. (While secretly vibrating with jealousy.)

>75 SandyAMcPherson: I've only read one Heyer so far Sandy and that is The Unknown Ajax for which Richard wrote an excellent review. Now he's recommended another one, namely Faro's Daughter which will be my next Heyer. So far that's how it's worked. I'm happy to see your recommendations too.

Happy Tuesday, Richard. Late day check-in. I hope you had a good one. I have been trying to finish off, Emma, so I am reading snippets whenever I can. I like it, but it is taking me forever to get through.

You remind me that it has been too long since I read Faro's Daughter, Richard. It must be due a re-read by now. I don't re-read many books just Heyers and Agatha Christies (I'm not sure why I can't remember whodunit most of the time, but it makes revisiting better.)

>81 brenzi: I'm happy that this will be your next Heyer, Bonnie, because that reassures me it won't be your last.

>82 msf59: Hiya Mark! Emma isn't the easiest Austen to love. The Woodhouses are ninnys and noddycocks to a person. NOT excepting La Emma.

>83 Familyhistorian: I can see this being a very successful re-read, Meg, with details and intricacies that will arise anew in re-experiencing the story after an absence. I hope it's a rousing success!

Morning, RD. Like, Meg, I re-read Agatha Christie a lot, and I like her idea of adding Heyer to that. But first I need to get to Karen-recommended Heyers I haven't read yet. I think The Unknown Ajax would be one of the first I'd re-read. I laughed a lot reading that one.

Totally agree with you on Emma. Not the easiest Austen to love, and the Woodhouses are ninnys and noddycocks to a person. NOT excepting La Emma. Ha! So true.

Morning, RD!

'Morning, RichardDear! I'm happily contemplating a day filled with coffee, reading, and not much else. I've earned it after all the FoL activities this week.

I hope you have a loverly day.

Happy Tuesday. Here is a summer shirt I found for you.

>85 jnwelch: I thought the basement scenes of Faro's Daughter, and the attendant dialogue, would fair do me in from laugh-ache. Don't forget it in your retirement re-reading, I do beg of you.

>86 katiekrug: Yoo-hoo! *smooch*

>87 karenmarie: Oh my gosh yes, you've only semi-retired what with the FoL job. I understand that it's not really A Chore, since you love the cause so much, but it's still a demand on your powers. Still and all, a day of no plans and no people for a solid stretch of hours is delightful.

*smooch*

>88 quondame: Merry WEDNESday, Susan! I covet that shirt. The only issue I can see with someone my size wearing it is the near-certainty of the Aquarium folks being summoned to net the gargantuan raft of Tentacled Americans coddiwompling the boardwalk.

>90 richardderus: Ah well, I'm so wishing I could stuff in some days between now and whenever.

I'm pretty sure everyone who visits here knows I'm not the biggest poetry fan. This poem is different:
The untitled poem
Though you have left me, I’m not yet alone:

For what you were befriends the firelit room;

And what you said remains & is my own

To make a living gladness of my gloom

The firelight leaps & shows your empty chair

And all our harmonies of speech are stilled:

But you are with me in the voiceless air

My hands are empty, but my heart is filled.

It was written by Siegfried Sassoon, a war poet whose work I didn't like (shockhorror) when forced to read it decades ago. This Guardian article explains the circumstances of Sasson's authorship. It is a tender, quiet moment remembered with the glow of dawning love. It speaks to the withered little knob I call a heart.

>91 quondame: A-women, Soul Sibling.

>89 richardderus: It made me laugh just to think about those basement scenes again. I know a re-read of Faro's Daughter is in my future.

>92 richardderus: That's a beautiful poem.

>94 jnwelch: Those were some hilarious moments, and I *yearn* to see them on a screen with Tilda Swinton as Ravenscar and Tom Holland as Miss Grantham.

You had me interested enough in Faro's Daughter to almost use an Audible credit on it. However, it apparently has terrible narration, and I do not have much sit-down-and-read time right now.

'Morning, darling Richard!

>92 richardderus: I've read quite a bit of Wilfred Owen's poetry, but never Siegfried Sassoon's. Thank you for sharing.

Edited to add: The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon is available on Amazon Kindle for $0.00! I snapped it right up.

>96 The_Hibernator: Bad narration? Oh, that's disappointing, Rachel. I am sad you won't get to enjoy Faro's Daughter, but not so sad I'd say risk bad narration.

>97 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, what's new?

I've never read another poem of Sassoon's I liked anywhere near so well as that one.

I've just packaged up two Bookmooch books (Faro's Daughter being one, ironically. It will henceforth live in Dearborn Michigan.)

I may or may not like any more of Sassoon, but a free Kindle book will at least give a chance to try him out...

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Fly, little joy-bundle, fly! A good life awaits in Dearborn!

*smooch*

Morning, Richard. Happy Friday. Glorious day in Chicagoland. I hope you are enjoying the same.

The BBS has been quiet this week but I just saw some crows, first, being mobbed by a single red-winged blackbird and then by a pair of fierce blue jays.

Hiya Mark! It is supremely gorgeous here today as well. Perfect, sunshiney, breezy, dry air...all in all I can't imagine a better summer day.

Stone the crows! (I've always wanted an excuse to say that.) Poor things, gettin' beat up by those colossal meanies the jays.

>92 richardderus: Oh isn't that lovely, though. Thanks for sharing. Isn't Sassoon a character in Regeneration as well? I've been meaning to look into his work since reading that book and may just have to find one of his collections for some late-summer reading.

>103 bell7: It is lovely, isn't it. He was so very in love with that young man, and the glory is that his feelings were returned!

I'd say read The War Poems since the collection is 99¢ and famous. Don't expect to leap about and carol your delight.

>92 richardderus: Delightful poem, Richard, even though it is a surprise to find it on your thread but the war poets had a certain something. It probably came from their public school upbringing and the despair of trench warfare.

No cobbler pics?

>105 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg! It was a surprise to me to find that I wanted to post a poem at all. Given the story attached, I guess the poem there had the best chance of getting the nod.

No, my cobbler didn't make it far enough into the day to be memorialized. Short work was made by Rob the blueberry lover. I, of course, was not sitting with my hands in my lap...flashing forks and gnashing molars.

>92 richardderus: I'm just doing some catching up on Talk threads...

That poem is sooo amazing. Sassoon was very evocative, the way he created the atmosphere surrounding his relationship with the absent lover. I'm not much of a poetry fan, but this one you posted convinces me to be less adverse to reading poetry again. Thank you for posting it.

'Morning, RichardDear, and happy Saturday to you. We're getting ready to watch Women's FIFA World Cup Soccer - Netherlands vs. Cameroon, then errands, then some reading and hammocking for me.

>107 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! Poetry is far from the genre I'd expect to lure someone back to on my thread, but whatever works. Sassoon's love poem made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could endure another crack at a collection of his. They're long out of copyright so the Kindle editions are cheap and the library has a few as well.

>108 karenmarie: Happy Saturday, Horrible, and have fun watching people running around and occasionally ripping off their shirts for no obvious reason.

I'd rather do errands. But I get taken to Father's Day lunch today, Rob's on his way so I'm off.

Morning, Richard. Happy Saturday. Cloudy and a bit humid today, on the route, but no complaints, plus "The Milkman" has been terrific company.

>110 msf59: Hi Mark! It was a happy Saturday indeed.
***
Rob came to pick me up for a special Father's Day lunch out. We drove to Montauk, which I figured out in advance (thank goodness, that meant I was prepared with extra pain meds to carry me through 3.5hrs in a car and whatever amount of time in chairs) but was still delightful. I am now thoroughly lobster rolled and donutted. The gout tomorrow will be horrendous, and I don't care. He made a special day for me and, apart from that, was thoroughly pleasurable to be with.

Tomorrow he'll go to his grandpa's house for what everyone expects to be the man's last Father's Day. I am again impressed with him, as a person, still less a twenty-*cough* year old man. I'm happy he wants to spend time with me. I want to spend time with him, too.

>111 richardderus: - Oh, that sounds very nice indeed! I'm glad he gave you a special day.

>112 katiekrug: I am too. And touched, and moved. Goodness knows it was way above and beyond the call of duty, and inexpressibly dear.

I have gone a-Heyering, Lady of Quality (he last published Regency, and the last book to appear while she was alive) to be specific:
"Well, I don't scruple to say that I never had the least turn for scholarship," Ninian somewhat unnecessarily disclosed. He added a handsome rider to this statement, saying, with a beaming smile: "And I promise you, ma'am, no one would ever suspect you of being bookish!"
Overwhelmed by this tribute, Miss Wychwood uttered in a shaken voice: "How kind of you, Ninian, to say so!"
***
The ol' Heyer razzmatazz still there!

Hmm, curious. I am sure i left a wee message here yesterday!! It was about the poem above....I'm sure there is a Pat Barker book which deals with Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. I remember studying Wilfred Owen's poetry at high school, it stuck on me then, and i still like it now.

>111 richardderus: sounds nice :) We don't have fathers day here til September and I always panic a little when I see mention of it here in LT, and think- yikes! I have forgotten!!! *phew* I haven't.
Glad you had a nice one.

Happy Father's Day, Ricardo!

The moon was full last night and its shining on the river was the kind of thing that cried out for haiku. Quite lovely, really. A river of silver. No gunshots to duck.

Yesterday sounds like a very special time indeed. Lobster rolled and donutted sounds fantastic. I hope today isn't as gouty as you anticipate.

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

>114 LovingLit: That's unpleasant, Megan, because I lost a message as I was posting it yesterday as well. Must've been a glitch.

Sassoon is indeed part of the Regeneration Trilogy's first two books...can't remember about The Ghost Road...and is a much admired War Poet beloved of Commonwealth educators. My favorite thing about this poem is ABAB CDCD isn't a lilting trochaic seasick metrical nightmare!

I had a lovely one, thank you, and am most contented.

>115 SomeGuyInVirginia: Thanks, Larry, and back at'cha. (Not that you know of, I suppose.) As for your gunshot-ducking days, give it time. The new neighbors don't know you well yet.

>116 karenmarie: Horrible my lovely Italian meringue Spanische Windtorte! (I had dreams about The Great British Bake Off last night...I had to make Spanische Windtorte

and used real pansies instead of sculpted sugar ones on it, as well as goji berries in it

instead of strawberries and Mary Berry came after me with a cattle prod!)

I took a double dose of colchicine yesterday and another today, so the gout is still manageable. My poor tum is unhappy, as is inevitable, but it's not crippling the way gout is. It's worth it to be the object of someone's desire to make a special treat for me.

*smooch*

Those cakes look amazing, but I’d do unspeakable things for some chocolate about now.

>118 drneutron: ...sorry, what were you saying? I was eating a CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKE a la mode.

Ahhhh, that’s better!

Somehow I came to your thread and gained ten pounds. Knock it off Richard;-)

>120 drneutron:, >121 brenzi: ...oh hi y'all! I didn't hear you come in, I was finishing up the eclairs:

I baked some killer Oatmeal Date cookies yesterday. They got just a little dark on me, but they taste so good.

As soon as the dough chills I will bake some Molasses Ginger cookies that have a bit from lots of black pepper.

I am going to take these with me to the conference so I don't have to buy cheap crap in the airports.

>123 benitastrnad: Expensive cheap crap at that! Always better to bring one's own. Healthier, cheaper, much more pleasant...the advantages roll along.

Morning, Richard. I hope you had a nice weekend. 4 more work days and then this book/birding dude is on vacation. AND, for eleven days!! Yahoo!

'Morning, RichardDear!

I've never been called a Spanische Windtorte before and am flattered: fluffy and complicated. *smile*

I hope you're over the effects of lobster rolls and donuts while happily remembering consuming them with Rob.

Bill's home sick, so I've got a barking seal in the living room. I've got lots of errands today so can avoid most of the germs.

Sounds like a great Father's Day with Mr. Rob, Richard. What a good guy.

My bride loves The Great British Bake Off, and she just made a great mochi(?) cake with coconut.

>125 msf59: Hi Mark! It was a perfectly fine weekend, and I'm ready for the rains to come.

>126 karenmarie: You forgot sweet through and through...I would imagine that almost no one you know is aware of the existence of the Spanische Windtorte! I myownself hadn't heard of the thing until this year. Insanely complicated desserts are more a part of my vocabulary than ever before in my life thanks to Netflix.

I'm not surprised at the upset tum after all that colchicine, but I'm most pleasantly surprised that the gout was minimally exacerbated and has almost entirely vanished!

>127 jnwelch: It was, and a surprise as well. A lovely one. I'm so grateful to have someone around who makes my crow's feet dance.

'Morning, RD! Awww, sweet too? Thank you. I hope you're feeling non-gouty and non-stomachy today.

So here's my question: do they ever show any of those phantasmagorical desserts once they've been whacked into?

Glad you had a good father's day, and I hope your week has started out well!

41 Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

Rating: 3.25* of five

Heyer's last book. It was published in 1972, before a series of strokes and a fatal bout with lung cancer (80 cigarettes a day will do that to one) carried her off in 1974. Definitely not the best work she did.

Interestingly, Dame Agatha Christie's last book came out in 1972, the absolutely execrable Elephants Can Remember, and Dame Ags died in 1975. These ladies were contemporaries, though I know of no evidence showing that they ever met; I'd've paid top dollar to be present when they did! Your attention please, time-travel agencies, I want a cut of the bucks from that alternate-timeline tour.

The books were not the finest in the respective authors' ouevres. Heyer's not-best, however, was about as far from her normal output as any other author's not-best; as Christie was suffering from dementia, she headed a great deal farther down from her own peak. In this book, Heyer's accustomed subtlety and witty misdirection are entirely absent. There are pleasant passages of smile-inducing drolerie, but few standout moments and then almost always deeply familiar from past works. Ninian, the very-recent schoolboy whose arc to maturity resembles that of Nicky Carlyon from The Reluctant Widow, has probably the most memorable humorous lines in the book:

"Well, I don't scruple to say that I never had the least turn for scholarship," Ninian somewhat unnecessarily disclosed. He added a handsome rider to this statement, saying, with a beaming smile: "And I promise you, ma'am, no one would ever suspect you of being bookish!"

Overwhelmed by this tribute, Miss Wychwood uttered in a shaken voice: "How kind of you, Ninian, to say so!"

Nicky's boyish enthusiasm for espionage in that earlier work contrast tellingly with Ninian's fuddled motivations and interest in this story. Ninian, graduated from Oxford as opposed to Nicky's rustication therefrom, is as bumptiously energetic as Nicky though considerably less interesting. He's a Regency dudebro, out with the boys and making light work of his childhood friend Lucilla's Bath coming-out sort of season. He is no patch on the juvenile leads from earlier Heyers, but he is energetically amusing whenever he's in the frame.

Miss Annis Wychwood and Mr Oliver Carleton are peas in a pod; they recognize kindred free spirits in each other from the first. Neither of them was much given to conformity; each has economic independence; both are older and wiser than all of the conventional folk around them, regardless of calendar age. Does this sound familiar, Heyerites? Black Sheep, anyone? (I should probably review that one one day soon.) They are crashed into each others' spheres of influence and, as a result of their shared indifference to Society (within the bounds of propriety in Annis's case! can't go too far from reality) discover they will do nicely as spouses to each other. (In a tellingly complete rundown of his character flaws at the end of his proposal to Annis, Oliver fails to promise Happily-Ever-After and Annis accepts him with clear eyes and a happy heart. I can but hope that represents Heyer's own marriage to George Rougier.)

Here's the thing: None of this is accomplished with the subtlety and panache of previous iterations. It's just out there from the first, and so there's no tension or conflict to resolve that's worthy of the name. This book is a canter down the bridle path on your oldest horse, a treat for the old creature and for you, a visit to the site of many familiar pleasures.

But how one longs for the fences and the hedges of one's steeplechasing youth.

>129 karenmarie: Yes, of course, but it's so much less aesthetically perfect:


>130 The_Hibernator: It's been cloudy and rainy since Sunday, so it's not my personal favorite weather. Still and all, this week was never going to match up to Saturday!

Have a lovely week, Rachel, thanks for stopping by.

>191 karenmarie: What a good review of Lady of Quality, Richard. If you decide to post it, I'll thumb.

This book is a canter down the bridle path on your oldest horse, a treat for the old creature and for you, a visit to the site of many familiar pleasures.

But how one longs for the fences and the hedges of one's steeplechasing youth.

What a lovely way to put it!

I'll be reading this one - and cantering - soon.

>133 jnwelch: It's posted, Joe, and thanks for the kind words. I'm persuaded that the scariest thing about growing seriously old is the nigh-unto-irresistible appeal of Nostalgia. It is death to new experience and to vibrant and meaningful participation in Life.

But oh so sweet....

>117 richardderus: oh Richard! You promised no more pansies would be hurt in your baking! You really are a beast.

My friend, I wish we lived closer. I think baked goods are the only food worth splurging on. We could go on a baked goods tour of the give boroughs.

>135 SomeGuyInVirginia: And Nassau and Suffolk...my gawd Larry we'd be spherical in a month! Between cronuts and kouign amann and the Donut Factory's Voodoo Donuts ripoff flavors...you'd plotz over the mango-iced mango curd filled donuts!...and the Portuguese custard tarts and...and...well, insulin dependency here we come!

Yours ever, the Beast to the Pansies.

Have a cup of:


Psst, click on the picture!

>137 quondame: "There's nothing more delicious than a cup of tea" is a patent untruth so pernicious as to need no further comment. That's a great graphic design! The website booted me off for refusing to whitelist their ads.

>138 richardderus: Well, yes, I know of many more delicious choices, but it's sad you couldn't see the wiggly tea bags or the squid one. My version was add heavy, but I kinda ignore that.

>138 richardderus: Well, yes, I know of many more delicious choices, but it's sad you couldn't see the wiggly tea bags or the squid one. My version was add heavy, but I kinda ignore that. Or you could go to the source with no adds and little English here

>140 quondame: How cool! I'd even order a cup of tea to see them do their party piece. Drink it, no; watch it, yes!

>134 richardderus: Thumbed, by gum.

All those sugar cakes are making me seriously want to bite my computer's face off!!! I can just feel the meringue dissolving in my mouth.....
D-rool, is all I have to say ;)

Morning, Richard. Happy Wednesday. 2 more work days. Just sayin'...I am going to start West, which I know you liked. Looks like my cuppa.

'Morning, RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

>132 richardderus: Thank you. My immediate thought was that they should have used a heated knife to cut it. Silly widgeons.

>137 quondame: I checked out the website. I liked the Penguin ones for Jenna, but all the fees and complications seemed like Too Much.

>131 richardderus: I like some of Heyer's books, but others fall flat for me. I think it's because she wrote in a couple genres, and I prefer mystery.

>142 jnwelch: Thank you, Joe!

>143 LovingLit: Heh...I'm deeply grateful that they're zero-calorie treats, aren't you?

>144 msf59: Mark! The Birdster! What gives, ol' man? I hope West gives you a good reading experience. I enjoyed its strangeness. And strange it is, filled with some weird and wonderful "types."

>145 karenmarie: I suspect they did or the mess would be unimaginable! That's Italian meringue...cooked by beating hot sugar syrup into the egg whites...so seriously set and able to hold its own. But it's still a big ol' pile o' cream inside. I myownself would've put some genoise layers in there just to keep the inevitable mudslide of sugary berry cream from being a rout.

...imagine that marvy at a church picnic in the sun...oy!

*smooch*

>146 thornton37814: I don't think this book would do for you at all. In fact, I'd say only true completists should bother with it at all.
***
Happy Humpday, all!

42 The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz

Rating: 3.5* of five

In 1968, this book's original version appeared as a two-part novella called "The Tuvela" (which title I prefer) in Analog magazine. The author was, at that time, fifty-seven. He had spent most of his early life in Germany, where his American family was based and his father sold International Harvester equipment. He was the very rare optimistic writer of Space Opera, whose characters were thrown into extreme situations; but they came from, and one is left to feel returned to, ordinary and reasonably pleasant lives.

The main thing everyone latches onto, however, is the fact that a Schmitz Hero was as likely to be female as male. And when I capitalize Hero, it is deliberate and thoughtful. A heroine is thrust into a situation where she must Rise Above her femaleness and save the day. Schmitz had no time for suchlike goins-on. Nile Etland, the Hero of this book, starts out as the omnicompetent person she remains; her ascension to Hero status comes from her willingness to overcome her *human* responses to stress and thus save the day:

She was frightened; and knowing that now of all times she couldn't afford to be frightened simply was making it that much worse. For moments her thoughts became a shifting blur of anxieties. She tried to force them back to what she would say to the Everliving, to anticipate questions to which she must have answers. It didn't work too well. But the physical reactions faded gradually again.

She's not a girl making girl-noises as she forces herself to do what needs to be done. She's a human being with human responses and she quells them in order to make the world safe for democracy or humanity or whatever. I was clear that her fight against the enemy was about survival but never really cottoned on to the bigger picture until after the battle.

The battle in question takes place on a water-world that's been colonized by humans. As we know now, water worlds are common as pig tracks in the universe, appearing in many if not most other star systems. Like a Hot Jupiter and a Super-Earth, it's something our own solar system failed to produce or retain, we can't figure out which as of yet. Schmitz, probably all unknowing unless he was a time traveler (an eventuality I do not scorn to entertain, given his attitudes), posited the existence of a water-world with a terrestrial atmosphere:

Nandy-Cline's pelagic floatwood forests, forever on the move about the watery planet where one narrow continent and the polar ice massifs represented the only significant barriers to the circling tides of ocean.
***
Beneath the surface they were linked by an interlocking net of ponderous roots which held the island sections clamped into a single massive structure.

So more or less they're pelagic mangroves on an Earth-in-Pangaean-times. That was nothing short of prescient in 1968. It's extra impressive given the fact that the man was born in 1911. Isn't that about the time the last plesiosaurs died out? Nandy-Cline is a part of a pan-Galactic human polity, seemingly similar to the colonial world of the Bronze Age Greeks and Phoenicians. The ships of the Overgovernment are like the ships of the Athenian or Carthaginian (aka Phoenician) navies, they fly the homeland's flag and squash the most egregious floutings of the social contract. Of course, being so far removed from the nuts-and-bolts of daily living, the Overgovernment takes a necessarily broad view of what the social contract holds:

The Overgovernment evidently isn't interested in establishing a paradisiac environment for the harmless citizen. Its interest is in the overall quality of the species.
***
"It's been a long time between wars," Mavig said. "That's part of our problem. How about the overall Hub reaction, Director?"

"We'll let it be a three day sensation," said Sindhis. "Then we'll release a series of canned sensations which should pretty well crowd the Nandy-Cline affair out of the newscasts and keep it out. I foresee no difficulties."

That sounds grimly familiar, doesn't it. Your individual well-being is none of their business, but the functioning of human society as a whole is, and a carefully managed business it is. The plot of this book is, well, direct and pared-down compared to what we're accustomed to in this age of book bloat:

"In brief," Ticos said slowly, "the Great Palach intends to discredit the Tuvela Theory by showing he can torture the Guardian to death and add her to his collection of trophies?"
***
A very different type of mentality seemed involved. A mentality which systematically tortured human minds and bodies, leaving the victims degraded in death and carefully preserving their degradation, as if that were a goal in itself. . . .
***
Roles were distributed and the party set off.

We could call that shorthand for much longer and possibly more interesting scenes of character development. Of which there is comparatively little for anyone except Nile. She is notably endowed with powers of observation and analysis in abundances not ascribed to any other person or being on the page. It was a novella when in came out, so this is comprehensible. It's not ideal in today's world, and for once that's a shame because this story is one the modern marketplace would like, with its gender-neutral heroics.

Because this story takes place within Schmitz's shared-worlds universe called "The Hub" there are connections to the broader story of humanity in colonized space. This is dealt with in an end section, I don't think it's exactly considered a chapter, titled: "Conclusions of the Evaluating Committee of the Lords of Sessegur, Chiefs of the Dark Ships—Subject: The Human-Parahuan Engagement of Nandy-Cline". This purports to be the minutes of a governing body's committee charged with the observation and assessment of species' behaviors and their consequences, as they pertain to larger issues of cohabiting the galaxy with the aforementioned Lords. So this short tale assumes larger and more resonant meaning in the Schmitzverse, and therefore illuminates the true nature of all aspects of our existence. We are not alone. As we judge, so we are in turn judged...and the judges aren't always known to us.

Sobering thought, that.

>131 richardderus: Well she had to run out of gas at some point. Great review Richard. I'll probably never read this one since I have all her better novels to get to.

Hey, Richard. I am really enjoying West, (more than halfway done) and I am not finding it strange, at all. Does that say something about me? Grins...This spare approach, is my jam though. For an English writer, she nails the tone.

>150 brenzi: DEFINITELY not a required read, Bonnie. Too many good Heyers to waste the time.

>151 msf59: Yay on liking West! I agree, Davies does a tremendously admirable job getting 19th-century Americana to be believable.

>117 richardderus: That is an amazing cake and I love The Great British Baking Show almost as much as I like Heyer's novels, except for the mysteries. Too bad Lady of Quality was not up to snuff. What a thoughtful young man Rob is.

Good morning, RD!

>149 richardderus: Excellent review of a book I probably won't go out of my way for - way too many SF already on my shelves just waiting to be read. But, well done, you.

Speaking of SF, I'm reading The Punch Escrow. Lots of fun, intelligent, and mind-expanding.

Nice review of The Demon Breed, Richard. The plot of this book is, well, direct and pared-down compared to what we're accustomed to in this age of book bloat. Ain't that the truth! I wish our current authors would follow his lead. (Neal Stephenson, anyone?) It does make me think of the very different Nnedi Okorafor, who also can say a lot with a little.

>153 Familyhistorian: I have trouble thinking of it as a cake, since it's all meringue and whipped cream, but it's spectacular and amazing as a visual spectacle! I'd run a mile before I ate any, since I don't like meringue too terribly much as a food. As a decoration, yes, but the stuff itself is like a hybrid of marshmallows and styrofoam.

>154 karenmarie: *smooch* Glad to see you, Horrible dear. I'm even more glad The Punch Escrow is punching the proper buttons.

I don't think Schmitz's books or stories would do much for you so I'm all behind the decision not to seek them out.

>155 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe! I'm less irked by Stephenson's prolixity than I am by George R.R. Martin's, for example...the blathering blahblahblahing of a mediocre writer varnishing actual history by sticking a dragon or two in it is much more offensive to my readerly sensibilities.

>155 jnwelch: >156 richardderus: My wife and I have similar convesations regarding book bloat. We often wonder if, when authors gain notoriety, is it more difficult for their editors to talk them off the wall of spending 50 pages describing something that could really be done in 2.

Though conversely, I sometimes wish there was a bigger discount on books based upon page length.

Paperback of Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (the shortest novel I had handy) 144 pages - $14 ~12 cents per page
Seveneves by the aforementioned Stephenson a doorstopping 861 pages - $18 ~ 2 cents per page

I know that's not the way books are priced, but maybe they should be (keep a consistent price per page)

Of course, Heinlein was the first egregious book bloater in the genre, back in the 70s!! And probably for that very reason. Glad to see The Demon Breed was an interesting read for you, Richard dear. Back when most books were that length, I often read a book a night. Right now I'm forging through a 768 page fantasy and it is taking forever even though it is moving at a pretty good rate.

Yes, Lady of Quality was a pale rework of Black Sheep, unfortunately. Heyer was sick and needed money--as you say, it was her final work. It's a pity she wasn't able to go out on a high note.

I've missed a few threads due to extreme awolling. Taking it to the next level this month. But hola! Hope all is well with you.

Oh and even just skimming down your thread I am now hungry. Fooooooooooood!

>155 jnwelch: >156 richardderus: etc. I plunged into Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash two nights ago. I'm pretty close to the half-way mark and I am quite entertained by it. It's only 438 pages, of course. Is this a book written before fame bloated his verbiage?

>160 weird_O: Snow Crash is one of my favorite books. I've read it at least 4 times. Yep, its before he started bulking up. Cryptonomicon is another favorite that is right on the cusp of getting LARGE (but its 900+ pages). Right after that came the Baroque Cycle, 3 books that top out at 2600+ pages total. I don't think I ever finished that series.

Now do I even dare mention James S.A. Corey? The Expanse series certainly is very expansive, page count wise. :)

43 Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer

Rating: 4.3* of five

There are reads, and there are Reads. Among the Heyerish, this is a Read. It's a 1966 publication, so after the author's health decline picked up speed, but before its near-twin Lady of Quality exemplified how far the mighty can fall, so it's a late work and (in my never-humble opinion) her last near-great book. It misses the astonishing, glittering peaks of Devil's Cub or Faro's Daughter or The Reluctant Widow, but not by a large margin; its verve and panache are the equals of those earlier works but, and this is my only complaint, the ending is very clearly signaled from the beginning and, by the middle of the book, is even outlined. It diminishes the forward propulsion of the reader's interest.

That said, Heyer's prose style hadn't lost its lustre quite yet:

He did not defy convention: when it did not interfere with whatever line of conduct he meant to pursue he conformed to it; and when it did he ignored it, affably conceding to his critics their right to censure him, if they felt so inclined, and caring neither for their praise nor their blame.

***

She had every intention of maintaining her punctilious civility, and might have done so had he not said, as he took his seat beside her in the carriage he had hired for the evening: "I wish I had ordered a hot brick to be provided."
"Thank you, but there was not the least need to do so: I don’t feel at all cold."
"I daresay icebergs don’t feel cold either, but I do!”

Quite at her most perspicacious and wittiest best. I love reading prose like this, the kind that says what it means and no more; yet makes the reader part of the world being written about by presenting it as reality, not an artificial stage-play version of itself.

A particular peeve of mine is authors who don't use, for want of a literary term I turn to music, the leitmotif to draw the reader into a deeper, more nuanced appreciation of the text's world. In science fiction, this is an element of worldbuilding. It's fair to say that Author Heyer, widely acknowledged as the creator of The Regency Romance, did that task without having a name for it. She was, at her height of powers, a skilled user of the leitmotif both as a character marker and as a means of worldbuilding:

“Talking to you is like—like talking to an eel!"

"No, is it? I've never tried to talk to an eel. Isn't it as waste of time?"

"Not such a waste of time as talking to you!”
***
“You’re surely not going to tell me that eels find you more entertaining than I do?’ he said incredulously.
***
She said despairingly: "I see that I might as well address myself to a gate-post!"
"What very odd things you seem to talk to!" he remarked. "Do you find gate-posts less responsive than eels?”

These are not from the same page, or even passage. It's lovely to see this quiet, unheralded harking-back technique used to assert a greater and growing sense of intimacy, of sharing a joke, between the parties. It's not a hunting horn blasted at the reader, but a birdsong heard as one passes through the woods. Effective and charming and woefully uncommon in literature that takes itself far more seriously than Author Heyer's confectionery ever would.

Nothing on Earth resembles the pleasure of reading a kindred spirit's stories. I am kin to Mrs. Heyer's deep, beautifully researched works because I, too, enjoy the quotidian details that bring fiction to life. Nobody did it better, though many others were inspired to try; reading masterworks, even those of the second rank, is thus a tonic and a balm to the oft-disappointed bookish soul.

>157 mahsdad: Editors gave in to Anne Rice's and Stephen King's desire to bloat their stories because readers *lap*them*up* and ask for more. The trend accelerated and infested other genres because, well, we buy the darn things! I doubt you'd remember Helen Hooven Santmeyer's mammoth tome ...And the Ladies of the Club from the 1980s, but it was a big bestselling "women's fiction" title of over 1100 pages.

FLEW off the shelves.

So bloat, like genre marketing, is driven by what we-the-people approve with our spondulix.

>158 ronincats: Hmm. Dunno...he started bloating after Stranger in a Strange Land and that was, what, 1961? Then came Herbert's Dune in 1965, no one can say THAT's not a chunkster....

It was sad that the need for money caused an inferior book to come out under her name, indeed. And did you get a look at the jacket of the US edition?!

Revolting! The entire 1972 publishing effort was dreadful and ill-conceived. Very saddening indeed.

>159 BekkaJo: Bekka! I'm delighted to see you! My thread, Joe's thread, well all around you'll run across food. Blessedly zero-calorie food. Tummyrumbles aside, I hope you're thriving in your busyness! *smooch*

>160 weird_O: It was indeed so timed, Bill. It is the book whose colossal sales propelled him into chunksterdom. Cryptonomicon was his first kitten-squisher, IIRC.

>161 mahsdad: So many words, so little necessity for them....

Hi RichardDear!

I swear it's early autumn here in central NC. Crisp, not too warm, not humid, breezy. As my friend Louise said, "Just wait." In the meantime, I'll enjoy it. My hammock's calling...

>163 richardderus: Dune my good man is Frank Herbert, not RAH. Its only 400 pages or so, not too much to complain about, but then I've never gotten past the first book. Now if you include the 5 books that he wrote (not even counting the ones that others wrote in the "world"), there's probably a lot of bloat.

>164 richardderus: I will be the contrarian - I loved Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Cryptonomicon was fantastic too.

>165 karenmarie: *smooch* Go hammock, Horrible, no sense wasting a single instant of perfection. And on the solstice, no less!

>166 mahsdad: Oh yes, I know, and I didn't make it plain in that sentence did I. I'll go edit it immediately.

>167 Oberon: I like Stephenson! But it's no good denying he's a kitten-squisher-writer. Seveneves, anyone? I don't buy tree books by him, only ebooks, because OW.

>168 richardderus: A slap on my wrist for doubting your scholarship. :)

>163 richardderus: IMHO Heinlein started bloating with I Will Fear No Evil (1970) and Time Enough for Love (1973), so that's why I said 70s for him. Dune was big but I wouldn't call it bloated--how I loved it. Read the first two sequels back in the day and couldn't love them so haven't read on. And they weren't bloated, at least--smaller than the first book, as I recall.

Yes, a regrettable cover but at least that is a recognizable Royal Crescent in the background.

>169 mahsdad: Hardly scholarship, more just age and its attendant memories.

>170 ronincats: I think of Dune as bloated in comparison to the standard reads of the day: it felt like a monster because the other SF paperbacks on my shelves were one-third the size!

I can't disagree that I Will Fear No Evil and Time Enough for Love were saggy-baggy reads, but Stranger in a Strange Land was (IMO) about 20% too long for the story it was telling. I think the trend accelerated as the years went on.

Have you reread Stranger in a Strange Land over the years. I've read it 3 times, I think. Once when I was probably in college, well before I started tracking things. Then again in 2009 and finally in 2014.

I loved it when I first read it, but each subsequent reading has found me disliking it more and more. I guess as I age, I'm finding less and less to identify with

>172 mahsdad: There were only two reads for me: One in the early 1970s when I was blown away by it, and a 21st-century one that...to put it mildly...wasn't successful. Heteronormative (probably invisible to most people) and actively objectionable in many of its assumptions.

I read Stranger in the late 60s in college and loved it--after all, I read it during the Summer of Love. Probably reread it twice in the next decade. Haven't read it again and am sure it wouldn't have aged well for me.

>173 richardderus: "actively objectionable" I like that. It about sums up my final take as well.

>174 ronincats: Mama always said the book that made her laugh the hardest she'd ever laughed was Barefoot Boy with Cheek. We'd both enjoyed Rally Round the Flag, Boys! so, for her 60th birthday, I hunted up a copy of the boy in question...and while she loved the gift, she was completely underwhelmed by the re-read almost 40 years on. I read it, and was simply bored. It was a book of the moment, that moment being 1943.

So I'm in total agreement. You'd find things that didn't work for you now that were invisible in 1967.

>175 mahsdad: Thanks!

>163 richardderus: I rather like the cover. And the book too. The cover is more historically evocative and less bodice ripper or over the top romantic or just sketchy than many subsequent editions, and I don't find the book such a drop of expectations as you do - some of Heyer's books just push too hard on twinkling eyes and/or overbearing heroines. All your praises of her are valid, but there are different aspects for others to prefer.

>177 quondame: In this, as in all things, one's own taste is the final arbiter of what constitutes a good experience.

What about that jacket image appeals to you? As a piece of art, or as an inducement to buy?

>163 richardderus: I would never pick up a book with that revolting cover Richard. That said I'm happy to add Black Sheep sometime after I finish Faro's Daughter, which is up next for me.

ETA: another excellent review.

>179 brenzi: I don't like the artwork, it feels clumsy to me, but it's the way the publisher typeset the author's name that offends my eyes the most! The wrongness of it from a communication standpoint and the wrongness of it as a signal of Heyer's style and purpose...it looks like some stodgy, dreary thing, not a sparkling draft of champagne! (Not that this book was quite top of the trees, but it's not stodgy or dreary by any stretch.)

(And thanks for the kind words.)

>178 richardderus: Well, the colors of my copy aren't quite so bright yellowish tinted, so it is easier on the eye, and it expresses the time period and a young woman who feels herself to be able to take on the city - and anything else. The clothing is always something I check on covers and illustrations on historic novels and that outfit is about as good as it gets without being an image from the period. She shouldn't be on her own with no carriage in sight, but well, it's better than all the bare chests breathing heavily in the afternoon.

>181 quondame: ...it's better than all the bare chests breathing heavily in the afternoon.

LOLOL

Point granted! Most sales artwork is pretty terrible from an accuracy point of view, no smallest question.

'Morning, RD!

The best thing about Stranger in a Strange Land is that I get to use grok.

I'm slowly collecting the new trade paperbacks of Georgette Heyer's romances. I really like them. Some of my old mass market paperbacks are almost too tanned to read.

Ha! What a charming review of Black Sheep. I love the excerpts, especially the cleverly pieced-together eel-gatepost one.

>160 weird_O: It looks like Jeff answered your Neal Stephenson question, Bill. Yes, Snow Crash, along with The Diamond Age, are two reasonably-sized and really good books from him (for me, Snow Crash is the standout) before fame and book-bloat.

44 The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by K.J. Charles

First story in a series of Regency stories and novels set in a concurrent world of man-lovin' men. The issue is sex, so I won't get into the whys and wherefores, but I will say that this tale charmed me and I will be reading the books.

>183 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I'll agree about that being the best thing all right. Happy weekend!

>184 jnwelch: Thank you, Joe, it was an easy book to love.

To continue with the unwarranted/warranted (you decide) book bashing of Stephenson. I was just in B&N and his new book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is on the shelf. Its another serious kitten crusher (~880 pages). But from what I heard, its really two books (a fantasy novel told within a scifi story), so maybe I'll give him a little slack.

>187 mahsdad: He's always got enough to say (eg, Anathem) that I don't mind his tendency toward prolixity as much as I do in others' works (eg, Robert A. Heinlein as bashed above). One thing's for sure, I'm deeply grateful for my Kindle when it comes to the kitten squishers.

>137 quondame: That is so weird.

I still haven't jumped on the Georgette Heyer bandwagon but I clearly need to do so. I won't start with Lady of Quality.

And I need a short (no squishing of kittens!) fantasy novel to read for my SeriesCAT challenge. Thoughts?
I read the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy way back when and quite enjoyed it so I'm not incorrigible but I admit that it's not my go-to genre.

>183 karenmarie: Are those the "Georgette Heyer Signature Collection" editions?

Thanks, RD! So far a pretty nice weekend, always excepting that the AC went out last night and the repairman is on his way...

>190 EBT1002: I had to look up the signature Collection editions on Amazon. The ones I'm collecting are the Sourcebooks Casablanca editions.

Been a while since we had some book porn...

>189 EBT1002: The teabags are strange, but in such a cool way!

I'd tell you to commence a-Heyering with The Reluctant Widow or The Unknown Ajax.

How does a $2.99 217pp Kindle-only fantasy sound? Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch pleased literally everyone including fantasy-resistant me. It's MM, sort of, though the fact that it's not romantic (which is to say low sex content) should make the love affair more pleasant for non-gay-male readers. I loved this line:

If one has a selkie’s affinity for the sea, and the man lying next to one is a magician with an affinity for salt—perhaps, when you are both at peace, even the ocean will sleep.

So maybe that one?

>191 karenmarie: YOW!! No a/c! But you've mentioned it hasn't been awful there yet, so repairs will come betimes.

I love the Sourcebooks Casablanca editions. They chose such lovely cover art!

>192 ronincats: O.

M.

G!!!

Glorious. I love the shape especially. Thanks, Roni!

I'm totally loving this library porn at >192 ronincats:. Except ~ more cushions please ~ so I can loll around.

>163 richardderus: Also, catching up after being AWOL, I wanted to say I rather like the cover of that edition of Lady of Quality, except it comes across as too yellow on my screen.

My edition was from 1973 and less distinctly filled in. Our local library had a lot of hard covers in that format (at #163) which I admired. Sadly, these volumes were cleared out by the most asinine CEO library person it has been our misfortune to have. Not even sent to the F of L as withdrawn. Grumpy.

I liked L of Quality but it bore remarkable similarities of Black Sheep. I suppose when a theme enjoys great success, it is tempting to write another in a similar vein. Notice I have retained nearly all of my Regency collection of G-Heyer, so obviously I am am not dismayed by a more of same theme!

>193 richardderus: Sounds just about right, Richard. Thank you!

ETA: I need it to be part of a series....
Not your job to find one for me, just checking to see if anything occurs to you. xo

>195 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! I'd say yes to more cushions as well, though I suspect they're kept inside the seat itself so as not to get all messed up.

"More of the same" is what all series reads provide, with enough changes to tart the basics up...come down to basics, all reading is "more of the same" since there are, what?, ten or so fundamental plots in existence?

>196 EBT1002: There's a series threatened based on the selkie/human romance....

>197 richardderus: Perfect! I will count it.

45 Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole

Rating: 4* of five

I made 65 notes on this book and never wrote the review! That's terrible. A waste of note-taking not to use them for their intended purpose.

I enjoyed this fluid, fluent recounting of the modern horror genre's explosion after the nightmarish experience of WWI. The rise of the film industry, its ability to offer a new take on the Gothic tale and meld it to the lived reality of millions...well, that's a tale worth telling. Poole told it well, but used a choppy technique that might be off-putting to some readers; it does feel a bit like reading someone's index cards for a high-school research paper. To me, it reinforced the currents in culture that Poole was highlighting, and allowed him to be pithy but thorough in making his points about the whys and wherefores of the evolution of Gothic stories into horror stories.

At all events, it bums me out that I didn't write a real review months ago while this book's pleasures and strengths were fresh in my mind. Now I can't recapture that impetus. But I can and do say that anyone with more than a passing interest in horror storytelling would do well to read the text closely.

Morning, Richard.

I'll have to take a look at Salt Magic, Skin Magic.

The first author that came to mind for me for short fantasy books was Nnedi Okorafor. I loved the Binti and Akata books, although I guess the former could be considered more sci-fi.

>200 jnwelch: Hiya, Joe, I recommend a Kindle-sample of Salt Magic, Skin Magic to see if the first-novel-ness impacts your reading pleasure. Not that $2.99 will break the bank, I suppose, but the principle of the thing.

ME: *coddiwompling along enjoying the gorgeous day at the Pride Parade*
YGC: *makes a hard left*
ME: ...what...?
YGC: You've enjoyed that guy's {callipygian assets} long enough
ME: *innocent blink*
YGC: Nice try
Happy Pride Month, everyone!

I had to look up callipygian.
Who knew ~ the extent of my vocabulary has increased by leaps and bounds with reading LT!

I read a couple of copies of Stranger in a Strange Land to tatters. It has issues and things read differently as the years pass, but nostalgia kept me at it for years. I haven't done a reread for a decade or more

xo/rd

And a Happy Pride Month to you, too. I’m steadily becoming more vocal, even, perhaps, adamant, about these issues. I despise unfairness and stupidity drives me mad, so I can’t help myself.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the older I get, the further left I lean.

And a good week to you, dear boy.

>203 SandyAMcPherson: As it does when among the bookish, I've noticed.

>204 mckait:, >205 mckait: Nostalgia makes all sorts of read delightful that might not appeal if we encountered them today. Mary Lasswell's books, f/ex, wouldn't make it past my "ew" response, especially the homophobia in Let's Go for Broke. Saddens me, but there it is.

>206 Matke: Hi Gail! That's what happened to me, as well. I grow less forgiving of intolerance and ignorance and more tolerant of stupidity (which is innate and unchangeable).

46 Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance

0.5 star

THIS IS A BIG-ASS SPOILER AND I DO NOT CARE
DON'T BOTHER ME WITH YOUR WHINY COMPLAINTS

The faggot did it. For LUUUV of his pretty-boy movie star boyfriend, the studio guy killed them all.

This is the cheapest, crappiest thing for a 21st-century writer to pull that I can imagine.

>189 EBT1002: My favorite fantasy recommendation is Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

>192 ronincats: Drool!

>208 richardderus:, It is a source of continuous amazement to me that such appalling manuscripts even find a publisher.
Let alone, how on earth did such a poorly-conceived plot earn all those 4+ stars in the reviews?
Not expecting an answer ... rhetorical questions, doncha know.

About Judith Krantz's Scruples- I remember being told that it was based on Gail & Fred Hayman's Gorgio's when I read it. In 1991 Gail Hayman became my sister-in-law. A real beauty, but the marriage didn't work out.

Got me with #45.

And thanks for today's vocabulary word: "callipygian." I rarely have the sort of conversation in which it'd come up, so I'll have to look for one.

>209 quondame:, >211 quondame: Oh gosh, Giorgio! What an instant, visceral response to that scent memory. I remembered that Krantz's mammoth success with Scruples had led to it becoming a scent. Had no idea that Hayman's firm was the one that brought it out!

>210 SandyAMcPherson: Oh well, that's easy: The author had a good track record with books published before this one, and the undiscriminating bulk of the mystery readership won't care a fig for my main issue with the story. My other issues are likewise invisible to most readers, like the Model T Ford going 60mph *snort*!

>212 swynn: I'm glad to have expanded your conversational horizons!

I'm fairly sure you'll enjoy Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror and moreso if you keep in mind the fact that the author's a history professor and is likely using lecture notes to organize the text.

'Morning, RD! It's a beautiful, if warmish, day here in central NC. I worked up a sweat vacuuming but am done for the day. I am rewarding myself by watching Carlos and his FiL spread mulch. Soccer's coming up and I'm happily reading Good Omens after watching the series last week with Bill. Pretty cool day so far.

I hope you're having an excellent day.

callipygian - another new word.

*smooches* from your own Horrible

>214 karenmarie: I seem to be broadening a great number of peoples' vocabularies today!

My day will consist of finishing a quite decent little Kindle read, The Falls of the Wyona, and writing a review thereof. Not a bad way to spend a day at all.

*smooch*

>213 richardderus: Nope, it was Fred Hayman and George Grant who started Gorgio's in 1961.

>215 richardderus: Also broadened my vocabulary (or how do you call it if you only read the word and will never speak it?).
I was a little disappointed there is no Dutch wiki page about Venus Callipyge/Aphrodite Kallipygos.

>216 quondame: Yep, knew that, but the miniseries based on Krantz's book Scruples was a key event in launching Gale's Giorgio Beverly Hills scent. Wow, it was EVERYWHERE (and lingered and lingered) for most of the 1980s.

>217 FAMeulstee: Not in Dutch! That surprises me greatly, your country's history of artistic and cultural leadership being what it is.

>218 richardderus: Oops, my dyslexia strikes again. I read *bought* it out. Well, the perfume Gail was selling when I met her was quite nice even though I can't be in the same room with most scents. Lovely leopard on the bottle.

>219 quondame: Oh yeah! Beverly Hills was its name. Pretty bottle, though I think it was a 1990s scent not a 1980s one.

>220 richardderus: That's it. The wedding was in February 1991. She is responsible for the destruction of my teal suede boots - because she insisted on a central park walk after the wedding breakfast at the Plaza. I'm not particularly forgiving.

>221 quondame: From what I've gathered over the years, that lady was the definition of high-maintenance princesses.

>222 richardderus: She wasn't a favorite, that's for sure. She has good, if very conservative, taste. I'm not saying my brother was much a prize either, though he too has good taste at least as far as appearances go.

>223 quondame: I will now trot out my favorite platitude: "Good taste is the enemy of Art."

>112 katiekrug: Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is a young man's book and i do mean man. He went back and book bloated it even nmore in his later years. Reading it now I find the implicit sexism and the cynical politics outweighs the We are all one message"

But he really needed an editor and after Campbell was gone he never really had one

>199 richardderus: the great war sounds like a good one - added it to the TBR. Calls to mine The Great War and Modern Memory which will hit you right between the eyes if you are any kind of a historian.

>225 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim! Yes indeed, Fussell's book was a huge part of the historiography on the Great War. It was from him I learned not to use the retronym when discussing WWI in any but the most casual discourse.

I live!! Just wanted you to know. : ) Smooch.

'Morning RD!

Jenna's coming home for a few days to help me mark #66 in this vale of tears... Much fun is anticipated. Callooh! Callay!

>227 Berly: Berly-boo! Yay on skates, you're okay!


>228 karenmarie: That will make the day complete, won't it...all the years dedicated to having and running a family need to be celebrated.

birthday *smooch*

>229 richardderus: O.M.G. I think that belly has been permanently seared on my retinas. Thanks a lot, bro.

>230 kidzdoc: I live to serve.

Drive-by *smooch* from DC

>229 richardderus: that guy has one talented belly

>232 bell7: *smooch* Hey there, Mary!

Mail call! I got a surprise book today. A Philosophy of Ruin by Nicholas Mancusi arrived. I had no memory of asking for it, not that it was unwelcome, just...hm. A search of my mailbox turned up no publicist contact for it. An essay by Mancusi was featured by LitHub...and the penny dropped: I entered the LitHub giveaway for it! How weird. A random act of mild interest netted me a book. Fun thing to discover.

>229 richardderus: He could poke an eye out with that belly if you got too close!

Yay, for surprise books. Hope you enjoy it, Richard.

>234 Familyhistorian: No danger for my eyes, then, since getting closer than the GIF is just not gonna happen over here.

I do too!

There can't be many surprises better than an unexpected book that arrives at your doorstep. I hope you enjoy it!

I've had three unexpected book-in-the-mailbox experiences. Twice the books were in Russian, once in Korean. Each was a copy of a book I produced in 1998 for Rodale Press, just before being ushered out the door (*retired*), along with dozens of others (most of whom weren't eligible for the retirement deal). Twenty years later, the current holder of the rights in the book has sold rights to a Russian publisher and a South Korean publisher. The three books were MY return on my investment in the product. (Well, I do get a pension.)

'Morning, RD! Wishing you a good Thursday.

>233 richardderus: Surprise books are always fun. Mine usually take the form of going back to Amazon and seeing when I pre-ordered it, like The Snakes, which showed up earlier this week. I ordered it in March. I have no memory of doing this. CRS. Sigh.

>236 kidzdoc: I'll enjoy it more than I would've if I'd bought it...so yeah!

>237 weird_O: Those are odd surprises to receive, though welcome ones. And since you created it in the first place, who cares what language the book's in, you've already read it.

>238 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible! Worsening CRS was the reason reviewing became necessary. Just today someone "like"d a review I wrote a decade ago, of which I had retained no memory...not the book, nor the review, rang a single bell. It was only 3 stars, so I guess there was a reason.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. The Satanic Bird Warbler is back, after my whirlwind, but very rewarding trip. I read less than a 100 pages, in the past week, so I need to hit the books. With this blast of heat and humidity, I should get plenty of opportunities.

Thanks, for keeping my thread warm, while I was away. I hope to start sharing some personal photos, later on today.

>240 msf59: Happy that you enjoyed your vacation, Mark, and got to do some very interesting unbookish stuff as well as the ALA.

Best of luck with the photos, as that is pretty much always a pain.

Wishing you a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend ahead, RD.

Um .... happy new thread Richard!

I did have some comments to make on posts upstream but I’m just too far behind.

>242 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori!

>243 humouress: Hiya, Nina, happy weekend!

Love, make some coffee before you open the blinds.

I hope this weekend is just what you like, Richard Darling.

I’m reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. You’re certainly spot on in your assessment of Anne Fadiman!

>245 SomeGuyInVirginia: What means this "open the blinds"? To understanding I fear I am not. Is summer out there. Screw open blindsing.

>246 Matke: It's summer. Next time it'll be what I like is September sometime, but thanks for the well-wishes.

Fadiman's a joy and a treasure indeed. That book made me question all my assumptions, and I've never entirely gotten answers...but I'm asking more interesting questions.

I need caffeine before I can adult. The guy who delivers my Saturday am bagels thinks I'm under adult supervision.

I'm not! Coffee then daylight!

Good afternoon, RD! My daughter has returned to Wilmington, we watched 2 World Cup matches today, and it's about time I got some reading in.

I didn't particularly like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, but it's one of those books that has stuck with me since I read it in 2007 for book club.

>248 SomeGuyInVirginia: Adulting! Faugh! Overrated, underpracticed, unattractive thing that it is.

I had to order more coffee...the good kind...and felt safe doing so only because the month is over and the widow's mite comes in soon.

>249 karenmarie: Sticking with you is a better index of quality than is affection, IM(never remotely)HO.

*smooch*

Safe travels for Jenna.

Happy Saturday, Richard. I went on a bird walk early this morning, with a hardy group, but it is very hot here. We did manage to see some gems, including Indigo Buntings, which I featured here. I plan on going again, tomorrow.

Happy Weekend, RD.

It took me a long time to get around to reading A Spirit Catches You, but I'm glad I finally did. What a job she did of getting to the crux of the differing world views and the failures to understand.

Her Ex Libris remains my favorite - a book lover's delight.

>251 msf59: Hi Mark! A great day of birding makes the heat endurable, then. I'm holed up avoiding it to the best of my ability.

>252 jnwelch: Thank you, Joe, same back atcha. I'm always down for fanboying over Fadiman's manifold talents.

47 Peter's Pence by Jon Cleary

Rating: 3.5* of five

At the end of May 2019, Criminal Element ran its weekly piece on the past winners of the Edgar Award for best crime/mystery novel of the year. They were up to 1975, and the winner was this title by Jon Cleary. A thriller set in Rome and the Vatican, it details the accidental kidnapping of the recently-elected Pope, a German survivor of Dachau and the first non-Italian in the job for over 450 years. Unpopular with the Vatican bureaucrats and conservative Catholics, a liberalizing and revitalizing figure beloved of the people, the Pope's past in Germany was going to come and play merry Hell with his present.

So Cleary, Australian and Catholic, clearly saw the election of John Paul II in 1978 and foresaw that the controversial figure would be the subject of much opposition as well as adulation. Way to go, Cleary!

This story, however, goes deeper into geopolitics as it involves the IRA, then in the midst of that bloodbath we call The Troubles, although I myownself would call it "the stupid bloody pigheaded gobshites killing anyone they damned well pleased and calling it patriotism," but there you are. The Vatican's oodles and buckets of treasures are to be raided from within. A Vatican insider, American so immune from suspicion (that would NOT have flown in 1975 Italy, BTW, paranoid in the grip of its own terror from the "Communist" Red Brigades), one Fergus McBride helps identify a way in to the Vatican's storied hoard and co-ordinate the holding-for-ransom of the objects. This is all in aid of stopping the killing of The Troubles. With the Vatican's ransom money retrieving their objects, the IR-no-longer-A would resort to bribery and intimidation instead of murder and mayhem.

So we can see this is a fantasy.

The Pope throws a wrench into the doin's by deciding to send these very objects (just think! such a coincidence!) on a world museum tour that he's just thunk up and is going to send the stuff off the very day the IRA dudes planned to steal it, so their plan goes into 24-hour-earlier chaos.

I'm not going to belabor the obvious idiocy of this turn of events because I expect anyone old enough to care about this book will also be worldly-wise enough to know that musea take YEARS to set up exhibitions, the insurance companies require *detailed* plans and proof of adequate security before they'll insure a move, and no museum on the surface of the Earth would *dream* of touching uninsured relics. Not even in 1975.

The forgotten basement of the Vatican is breached (!) and there is a major structural collapse, yet all our IRA thieves are alive! And then the Pope decides to wander downstairs to have a look at the goodies he's blithely consigned to unknown destinations (apparently far and wide, again not remotely realistic as stuff like that in the Vatican's hoard moves in curated bunches or not at all), thus putting himself in line for kidnapping.

Like Aldo Moro, ex-PM of Italy, just three years later. Only Moro ended up dead after 55 days, not rescued in two.

Anyway, onward the plot careens, a juggernaut crushing many vestiges of realism in service of excitement and action. That is this book's raison d'etre: Excitement and action, which Cleary delivers. Sensible plot developments, no; fun set-pieces and chases, yes.

Cleary brings us into the station with a skeleton crew (y'all who bother to read the book will now wince) but the Pope intact. There was no doubt from the get-go that the Pope would not die. That's not the way of the thriller in 1975. Assassinations are headlined, not thrown in as plot twists. But the point was the ride, no doubt about it, and if you're up for a midcentury misogynist's fast-paced and exciting romp, this is a good choice. It didn't win the Edgar for its intricate plotting. But win it did, and judged by the purpose the book was written to serve (action thriller), it deserved the accolade.

>254 richardderus:, Hey ~ Jon Cleary! One of my first fave mystery novelists. And what a great synopsis, with so amusing asides. Thanks for posting your thoughts on Peter's Pence.

I actually came "here" to ask for some help... how does one start a thread continuation? I wanted to make a Part II to my "75 Books Challenge" thread but haven't the foggiest idea where a wiki is that explains this.

And PS. yes that Cleary is a BB for me!

>254 richardderus: Clobbered by a book bullet.

Have a good Sunday, RD.

>255 SandyAMcPherson: Sandy...to make a continuation thread, you must have 150 or more posts in the thread you are continuing. Once that threshold is crossed, directly below the message box there appears text saying "Continue this topic in another topic" that links the current thread to the next one.

The thread's title will be the same as this thread's title, so make sure you change the title to reflect the fact that it's the second thread (or third or fourth later on) before doing anything else. Once the thread is created by you making your first post, the title is permanently set and can't be changed or edited.

This makes sure that your threads are easily found by you as well as you visitors.

>256 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul, Monday happiness wishes to you!

'Morning, RD! I see you were up when most folks on the East Coast of the US were just getting in some good dreams.

>254 richardderus: "the stupid bloody pigheaded gobshites killing anyone they damned well pleased and calling it patriotism," Yup. Excellent review, a pleasure to read.

>258 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible! I'm was diverted by the book. It was not a shining exemplar of perfect writing, but it was an enjoyable-enough diversion.

I woke up at 1am and stayed awake a bit longer than the standard prostate-pee-then-sleep. It's now quite unusual for me to have that happen, thank goodness.

>257 richardderus:, Hi Richard. I saw your reply on my thread. Who knew! I had no idea there were post minimums. Thanks so much for the guidance.

I was finding my thread a bit tedious to sort through and thought a new one for summer would fix my problem.
I wanted to conclude older topics when I *finally* finished reading something. I'm that sort of a tidy-up person!

I have often scrolled back the threads where I've posted or seen interesting comments about books and then can't find which thread it was. I guess I need better notes to myself separate from LT. Someone told me way early on that the 75-books group are a chatty bunch and this is very true. I should have cottoned on a few weeks (or months) ago that I needed a link list to follow up on.

It's probably a developer's nightmare to even think of designing software for LT that would allow a member to "search Talk group threads" for key phrases. But wouldn't that be awesome?!

My plan today is to do re-reviews on my '75-books' thread that are are bit more candid and flesh out some angst I had with what were otherwise "good reads". Not the sort of thing I wanted to put in the main LT reviews for books. More of a talking thing. LT threads are fun that way.

>260 SandyAMcPherson: I completely understand your befuddlement. My own technique for organizing posts I want to refer back to by "favorite"ing them. Using the "More" link under a post, I'll click on "Add to favorites". Then, on the main "Talk" page's left-hand column, click on "Favorite messages" and the Talk page reorganizes to show you only the threads that have "Favorite"d messages. It reduces the hunting time! You can also create a wiki page to track what the topics of messages you've "Favorite"d are.

Mary Robinette Kowal has won the Locus Award for Best SF Novel of 2019! Congratulations to Author Kowal!

Hey, Richard - I am simply far too far behind to catch up so hopefully (hint hint) I will jump back in when the new thread hits the boards.... ;-)

Just skimmed and I want (and NEED) >192 ronincats:. Just sayin'......

>263 jessibud2: Good heavens, don't we all!

48 Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

Rating: 6* of five

Shattering. Beautiful. Agonizing. Necessary.

I will never, ever read this book again. I'm glad I borrowed it from the library so it will not be in my home. This isn't a story I want to have exerting its metaphysical gravity on me while I'm sleeping.

>262 richardderus: thanks for the heads up, Richard. Not only did Kowal deservedly win for best SF novel, I also agree with the Best Fantasy novel selection, Spinning Silver and the best Novella selection, Artificial Condition! Although once again I am amazed by how many of the nominees in all the categories that I have NOT read.

>266 ronincats: I was rooting for Deep Roots by Ruthanna Emrys to win on the Fantasy front, but love their picks for the other categories.

>266 ronincats: Oh wowzeroo. I'm not surprised that Spinning Silver won a Locus award.

I just finished that novel and gave it 4* (I'm stingy with star-award in ratings). That it won the Best Fantasy category is not something I can - or should - comment on because I didn't recognize even one other title there!

Looking forward to other folks' appraisals of the Fantasy titles.

>260 SandyAMcPherson: >262 richardderus: Recently I've kept track of smoking guns of BBs by selecting the post number, right-clicking for 'view selection source, copying the message # from that, appending it to the thread URL, and saving the result to the private comment section of my 'Wish List' book.

>268 SandyAMcPherson: It's a Worthy choice, just not one I'd've lobbied for; a bit too traditional for me. I like the Cthulhu mythos repurposing that Ruthanna Emrys is doing.

>269 quondame: That's a terrific suggestion!

Happy Sunday, Richard. I hope you are having a great weekend. One more day left on my vacation. I will probably spend a chunk of it, doing some outside and inside chores, something I have avoided, the past couple of days. At least it will be a short week, with the holiday on Thursday. Continues to be hot & steamy here.

>269 quondame:, now this is a great suggestion, seems very do-able for me.
And I liked this (>261 richardderus:) idea too, since I never really knew how I would use that favouriting option. I had never clicked the see more link to note its utility.

So all good from here on out...

>271 msf59: Hi Mark! It's been hot and not entirely pleasant here, but the weird week ahead with the Fourth on Thursday will throw things into chaos and that's always good for a laugh.

>272 SandyAMcPherson: :-)

I’m dreading the Fourth with all the illegal fireworks. I don’t mind but the pets do, terribly.

However, we soldier on. A good week to you, with maybe a break in the heat.

>274 Matke: Thanks, Gail, send that memo to the Weather Goddess's suggestion box and let's see what she does with it.

Being by the beach, the fireworks will be pretty much non-stop for a few hours. I stay inside. It's cooler and I can see the (hugely superior) NYC ones on the boob tube without having to dress myself.

>265 richardderus: I put this on my wish list in April of 2018, courtesy of @streamsong. I just put a request in for it - our library has one copy. *gulp*

Ever since we stopped going to South Carolina when Jenna was little, we haven't gotten good fireworks. The NC ones are expensive and boring. We used to light off the good ones in our driveway, facing down our fields to the creek. Man, that was fun. Now we don't bother.

>276 karenmarie: *gulp* is le mot juste. I'm still wobbly from that read hours later. I made a special trip to the library to return it, it scares me so much.

>262 richardderus: Thanks for the heads up on the Mary Robinette Kowal award, Richard. SF is not my thing but I do like the author, she is a good teacher.

>163 richardderus: that book cover looks very....of its time.

>229 richardderus: how could I scroll past that!!? I mean, really ;)
That lady in the bottom right hand corner sees the image herself on the screen and basically enacted what i was thinking!!!

>269 quondame: genius! This place is populated with them :)

'Morning, RD! Happy Monday and First of July to you.

Good Morning Richard! Go away for a few months, and boy! — what a lot of catching up there is to do. Lots of BB dodging, too.

Wishing you a lovely Monday!

>265 richardderus: I might try this. When I feel a little stronger.

So. If you were by yourself in a well-equipped kitchen what meal(s) would you concoct? Nothing outre, and available ingredients. By available I mean not truly exotic.

2Q19. The quarter started well. My first reviewed read was Alice Payne Arrives by the estimable Kate Heartfield. My 4.5* review is as heartfelt (!) a tribute to a skilled practitioner of a difficult literary art as they come. A good quarter was in the auguries...I got Hope for the Best, tenth Chronicle of St Mary's. I note with sorrow the misuse of "pouring" for "poring" throughout the book, a colossal editing error. The rest of the read was *stellar* as expected. Much to love in series read-land, as I also picked up more Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth; nowhere near the pinnacle of excitement that St Mary's offers, but solid entertainments.

I also perved out on poetry. It is perverse to me, anyway. Poetry is the pit-sniffing cliquish stuff that the insufferably self-important and far-too-sure of their own erudition invent shedloads of words to dissect. (Amusingly, it is almost always true of these very souls that they criticize slang they don't use and scientific jargon for being obfuscatory.) Two collections, The Art of Dying and What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, made my heart leap and my eyes widen this quarter. Excellent, excellent stuff. May 31st was Walt Whitman's 200th birthday as well as the kickoff of Pride Month for us QUILTBAGgers. This also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Fancy retronyms like "Uprising" are not for me. It was a riot, a disorderly and rage-fueled fuck-you fight against the cops by the faggots they'd felt comfortable abusing for basically ever. In Whitman's "yeah, so?" spirit, if you ask me...and I got the joy of With Walt Whitman, Himself this quarter. It was a LibraryThing Early Readers giveaway, and I am so delighted that I received it from Circling Rivers. This wasn't a biography, perish forbid, or worse yet "a life" (someone please explain what genre this trendy term describes, I am frankly at a loss with this one); it's a guided ambling tour of the world and the wonders of the places Walt Whitman lived, the times he lived in, and the people he knew. It's beautifully illustrated. It's a great read.

But this year's 6-stars-of-five read will be, barring miracles, the short, violent, unbearably sad and breathtakingly beautiful Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. Agony to read. Gloriously messy life served in angry bites of beautiful word-pastry. Sherman Alexie praised and mentored Author Mailhot and she, to my admiring surprise, does not use this as a #MeToo moment. Her love for and praise of the many damaging men in her life was a surprising undercurrent in the story of her life. I was fully prepared for her to shout her rage at the world; she does so in a musical wolf's-howl, a screamed incantation of lonely outraged bereftness. But it's so very honest and so utterly pure, a Fragonard écorché whose flesh was flensed while the victim was still living. It was agony to read, as it was and is to live; reading it is necessary.

>278 Familyhistorian: The series she's started with The Calculating Stars is science-heavy but I'd hesitate to call it science fiction. It's more alternate history. I guess that, like science fiction, is a subset of "speculative fiction."

>279 LovingLit: As I am *also* of that book jacket's time, I bristle at your implication of tastelessness!

Oh. Um. Yeah.

*smooch*

>280 karenmarie: Happy Canada Day!

*smooch*

>281 michigantrumpet: My my my, it's Miss Marianne the Michigander! Hello dearest, it's lovely to see you back in the fold.

>282 Matke: Oh, yes...I think this is a book that will touch you deeply, Gail. It's unsparing but, unlike most books that epithet gets applied to, it isn't self-indulgent or score-settling. I hope it's a good read for you.

So, Gail asked what I'd make for a Perfect Meal.

Phyllo-dough caprese cups

Aglio olio with fried garlic and red-pepper flakes

Apricot-and-fennel stuffed pork tenderloin

Broccoli rabe sauteed with garlic and lemon sprinkled with red-pepper flakes

Roasted parsnips and carrots
all with bottles of

2013 Sangiovese from Frank Serafico

Green salad with radishes, mangoes, black olives, parmesan dressed in oil-and-tarragon vinegar

Queen of Puddings
served with

Ca'del Bosco Franciacorta prosecco

See? Simple, homey fare, one trip to the grocery store and one to the wine store.

And about $500 later....

>265 richardderus: Geesh every time I come over here I get dinged by some phenomenal book. Sigh. Ugh waiting list at my library naturally. Thanks Richard.

Also, why am I suddenly starving?..

49 The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

Rating: 4* of five

A near-enough future novella that blends the horror inherent in a mutating, collapsing Earth and the human response to it with the species-level will to live no matter what.

I was utterly sucked into the narrative early on:

An example has aspects of a thing, but is that the thing itself? The mollys have aspects of Molly, but that doesn't make them Molly, does it?

I'm not going to tell you what mollys are because this is a very difficult concept to get across. I want the whole reading experience to be as full and rich for you as it was for me. And I want to encourage you to spend $3.99 on a novella of surpassing strangeness, violence, and transcendent oddness.

What isn't odd, though it sometimes is transcendent, is Author Tade's writing. He finds angles and corners where others don't look, or if they look, don't see.

Her shoes wait in formation for her feet to quicken them.
***
Alarms are going off like the mating calls of robotic insects.
***
As she cuts the cadavers on the slabs, she realizes there is no sense to be made out of life.

With the exception of one, and only one, hideous and disfiguring instance of the w-bomb, the text is chillingly, even eerily, smooth and flawless. It resembles in its affect the narrative monologues of Rod Serling. You know the point is there, you can see it rising like the number Pi is said to do over all knowledge, glimpses above foggy lowlands of text, but it shifts and your gaze has to slip away from it as you negotiate the steps of the ziggurat.

Climb, I urge you; the view is fine and the journey's toll is just the beginning of a quest.

>287 brenzi: Heh! My purpose in life is fulfilled. Especially the starving part...I spend much of my time wanting to feed myself and my chosen few the most delicious and surprising foods and drinks.

>288 richardderus: I just got that one from TOR's ebook club. I'll have to actively go read it, instead of just it collecting virtual dust on my Kindle book shelf. :)

>286 richardderus: Substitute the pork for beef and I'd happily chug along with that feast RD.

Oh yes, Heart Berries. It's a memorable and amazing read.

>286 richardderus: It all sounds wonderful. Especially the Sangiovese. :-)

I hate Waking Up at 2am.

>290 mahsdad: It's really worth it. Hop to!

>291 PaulCranswick: mmm dunno about beef...maybe lamb?

>292 EBT1002: So places for you and P next to Paul and Hani! The party's shapin' up.

Morning, Richard. Happy Wednesday. Still working on my first cup of coffee. Another HOT one here today, but at least I have tomorrow off, so I can watch "You Know Who" and his stupid parade. I hope someone flies the blimp.

It is probably on your radar all ready, but I highly recommend The Nickel Boys. His writing has really taken off.

'Morning, RD!

>286 richardderus: I'm with Paul about not pork, but I think I like your idea of lamb. Everything else looks absolutely scrumptious.

>286 richardderus: Glad Frank is preparing our lunch, as I got hungry :-)

>294 msf59: You're not seriously going to *watch* that! Although I suspect that it's a coup...the Veep rushed back to the White House, 45's ordered tanks into DC...smells like banana republic coup time to me.

>295 karenmarie: Yeah, lamb's a good way to present this preparation though figs might be better than apricots and celeriac instead of fennel.

*smooch*

>296 FAMeulstee: Heh. That's not so unusual around here. Happy Wednesday, Anita.

Good afternoon, RD! Just crusing around, trying to duck into as many threads as I can....

I have nothing to do until tomorrow. Any preference on Chinese?

>298 katiekrug: Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes. Are you re-entried well?

>299 SomeGuyInVirginia: Lemon chicken with jasmine rice, please. Split a Buddha's Delight too? And a lychee ice cream.

>286 richardderus:
*faints*

>301 Matke: ? you linked >268 SandyAMcPherson:
I missed something...

>301 Matke: ...too much for you, dear? Portion control!

>302 SandyAMcPherson: Follow the link to post 286 by clicking on the number. Gail thought I might have a good idea for a dinner menu made out of unweird foods.

50 A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow

Perfect. Read it free.

(There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the history of the world: the prudish, bitter ones with lipstick running into the cracks around their lips who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches.)
***
Agnes always does the “we will be closing in ten minutes” announcement because something in her voice implies that anybody still in the library in nine minutes and fifty seconds will be harvested for organ donations, and even the most stationary patrons amble towards the exit.
***
(All you people who never returned books to their high school libraries, or who bought stolen books off Amazon with call numbers taped to their spines? We see you.)

Delight and deliciousness confected for your unworthy gaze. Don't let it slip out of your grasp.

>304 richardderus: Hmm; Agnes sounds interesting. Not sure if I want to meet her. Or not...