richardderus's thirteenth 2020 thread

Judith Merril with two of her books; credit to Alchetron.com for the cover of her autobiography Better to Have Loved: Life of Judith Merril

Back to Women of SF!

Judith Merril (1923-1997) was an anthologist, editrix, and writer of stories. If you've been around fandom for a while, you'll remember her as Frederik Pohl's best friend and ex-wife; in total, she was married three times and none of them "took." I think she was, like her suffragette mother, not quite reconciled to the role allotted to women in the domestic sphere and thus unsuited to the eternity of compromises that marriage demands. Her two daughters are probably better suited to tell us this tale but I can't readily find any public place where they have done so.

But let no one doubt that Merril was A Force, as she was successful in the uber-misogynistic world of the Futurians and was powered by plutonium in her conquest of the anthologist's markets. Even a partial list of her anthologies will make an ordinary person droop to contemplate: Every last one of those titles has at least seven stories in it; every one of those stories has an original publisher, an author, and a whole slew of negotiations to reckon with; and then there's the simple fact that, to be aware of something, one has to have encountered it, so pause and contemplate the *mountain* of reading these titles imply.

Plus she published twenty-six of her own stories during her life. One of them, "Dead Center," was included in Martha Foley's Best American Short Stories 1954. Only two SF stories were *ever* included in that editor's series. The story "That Only a Mother" (1948) has been anthologized many times; it's a Cold-War atomic nightmare writ domestic, and was very very disturbingly real. The Cold War's end and the lack of an atomic war rendered it sort of, well, moot in a curious way. Ear readers can experience it here.

Her role in the world of SF was crowned by her stint as the Books editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1965 to 1969. The end of that job was the moment when Merril signed an anti-Vietnam-War ad in Galaxy magazine. Continuing her opposition to the waste of an unwinnable war occasioned a move to Canada, where she spent the rest of her life. While living there Merril became the Undoctor, hosting local Toronto broadcasts of Doctor Who. If there is a geekier fandom moment than that, I'd like to know what it is!

Judith Merril was a Trotskyite Marxist, a Hadassah follower, and a damned fierce spirit in a world that doesn't make a lot of room for women with personalities as uncompromising as any of those traits require. Thank goodness for her. She did Right whenever there was a choice; she didn't sit quietly and wait for permission but got up and did whatever it was that needed doing.

In 2020, I wanted to post 10 book reviews a month on my blog. I already read a book every other day, as this year's total of 155 (a lot of individual stories don't have entries in the LT database so I didn't post them here; guess I should do more to sync the data this year) reads shows; so it was doable, and I've done better than that in the past. Regrettably, there's no way I'll even approach that goal now.

I've Pearl Ruled books I'm not enjoying, but making notes on Goodreads & LibraryThing about why I'm abandoning the read has been less successful. I give up. I just don't care about this goal, so out it goes.







My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

Reviews 1 through 3 are thataway.

Reviews 4 through 8 reside thitherward.

Reviews 9 through 11 are back here.

Reviews 12 through 20 existen allá.

Reviews 21 through 24? Go here!.

Review 25 in all its lonely splendor is back yonder.

Reviews 26 through 40 are doin' it for themselves.

Reviews 41-46, plus a Pearl Rule can be seen elsewhere.

Reviews 47 through 68 are back there.

Reviews 69 through 76 present themselves for inspection behind.

Reviews 77 through 94 await your pleasure.

Reviews 95 through 103 cannot be found in this thread, but in that one.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

104 Spellswept made me smile, post 30.

105 That Only a Mother disturbs and unsettles, post 33.

106 The Roo was a fun horror novella, post 38.

107 Red Heir delighted me, post 97.

108 Stillicide is brilliant, post 109.

109 I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf was a perfect b-day gift, post 125.

110 The Last Summer of Reason was a magnificent failure, post 161.

111 The Long Dry is perfect, post 177.

112 Night of the Mannequins made me laugh when I didn't want to, post 217.

113 The House in the Cerulean Sea was...it...I..., um, post 229.

114 Wait for Night is FREE and should be costly, post 247.

115 Boyfriend Material made me smile, laugh, and cackle, post 290.

2019 was a *stellar* reading year! For the first time ever, I had two six-stars-of-five reads: Black Light: Stories, a debut story collection that gave me so much pleasure I read it twice (ever rarer occurrence that), and the wrenching, gutting agony of Heart Berries, a memoir of such honesty and such vulnerability that I was a wreck after I finished it. I went back and forth a dozen times, first Author Parsons was the sixer, then Author Mailhot; neither book could possibly "win" for long because I couldn't get either book out of my mind.

I handed out 34 5- or damn-near-5-star reviews out of 155 reviewed books; that's 22% and that is a LOT. Many, even most of these (10+) were for short stories, for end-of-beloved-series novels, or for story collections. But hold on to something heavy: TWO, yes that's t-w-o dos due deux zwei два were...POETRY COLLECTIONS. Sarah Tolmie's The Art of Dying and the late Frank Stanford's collected poems, What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford. Both were peak reading experiences. Another was cultural monadnock George Takei's graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, which could not be more important for young people today to absorb.

What a beautiful year it was, to bring so many delights to my door. I hope, greedy thing that I am, that 2020 will repeat this performance. For all of us, really...honest! I didn't just add that on the end of this summing-up to make it sound less solipsistic.

In 2020, I wanted to post 10 book reviews a month on my blog. As of 1 September, I haven't posted nearly enough to make the year-long goal! There are a few mitigating factors (a mild COVID-19 infection is one), but I don't think the deficit's recoverable. Even so, I still read a story every other day, as 2019's total of 155 (a lot of individual stories don't have entries in the LT database so I didn't post them here; guess I should do more to sync the data this year) reads shows; so it's doable, and I've done better than that in the past.

I have not done better at Pearl Ruling books I'm not enjoying with notes on Goodreads & LibraryThing about why I'm abandoning the read. I think I'm going to bag this one, as I am not interested in performing the task. I don't like a book, I close it and discard it. Enough.

...and that's me done. My reports will continue to be quarterly, the day after the end of the quarter, as follows:

2Q20. Forty-five books read this quarter; I started and finished with five-star reads, lucky me! Sharks in the Time of Saviors was a beautifully made Hawai'ian family Bildungsroman. (Can one have a group Bildungsroman? it's not a family saga but a map of the coming-to-consciousness of a family...well, debate as you will, Imma call it that.) A great way to start the new quarter, with a new author's first book that belted the ball out of the park.

The end-of-quarter delight is You Exist Too Much, the fumbling attempts of a queer Palestinian woman to fix the damage done by a borderline-personality-disordered mother and an ineffectual, uninterested father. Like I could relate much? So much of the story felt like me wandering destructively through my 20s and 30s that the next events felt foreseen, if not predictable.

This quarter also brought my dote, Murderbot, in its first-ever full novel appearance. Oh Murderbot *swoon* you're so dreamy

Anyway, Murderbot did not disappoint (as if!) and Author Martha Wells maintains her standing as my go-to AI-story spinner of webs.

Author Kai Ashante Wilson wrote The Devil in America six years ago, but I just got around to reading it. I loved the bitter tang of the story's search for escape from a curse. It's inevitable that the search ended in defeat because curse. I find the curse-breaking triumphalist fiction so very prevalent today savorless and silly and really quite dangerous. But anyway, Author Wilson (A Taste of Honey, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps) earns my approbation by placing Black queerness at the heart of his fiction. His is a point of view we need to see more of to break free from the curse (!) of Othering in ficiton.

And a different five stars entirely for the coda of a series set in 19th-century London and Scotland, The Bequest: David and Murdo's Epilogue. It's a short piece that ties a neat little bow on the fanny (US sense) of three historical novels featuring lawyer David and aristocrat Murdo as they negotiate the pitfalls of queer love in their world. It's not a recommended-read-now five because it will make no sense whatever if one hasn't read the previous three books. Squeamish straight people should not attempt to summit this mountain, there is significant steamy sex and y'all pretty much lose y'all's shit when gay sex is presented at anything like the frequency or graphicness of straight sex.

Plenty of four-and-a-half star reads and four-star reads.

And the heinous ones. Oh my. The Fear Hunter was severely mistitled. Elise Sax wrote a forgettable and pretty pointless rom-com with a few gestures towards mystery. AWFUL. Penny Serenade barely lifted its dreary stringy mop of dirt-colored hair off that book's place on the basement floor because a film was made of it that was at least pretty to look at. The story was not good reading. I suspect I wasn't in the mood for The Code Book so I won't excoriate it for having AN ENTIRE PAGE OF NUMERALS in a comma-separated-value list. I was recovering from my mild dose of COVID-19 so I'll assume it was me being fussy not the author being a complete putz.

And that, my olds, is a very good quarter's reading.

1Q20. Twenty-six reads done, three posted on my blog, or 10% of the goal I set myself. Bad performance. Really bad.

I re-read the four Murderbot novellas by Martha Wells, and loved them just as much as when I first read them. Because Network Effect is coming in May, YAY!!, it felt like time at last to put down some thoughts about them on my poor, neglected blog. Murderbot is a delightfully antisocial being and I am honestly more impressed by Author Wells's beautiful and deft worldbuilding than I am by the lit'ry stylings of many a crowed-over Next Big Thing.

But this quarter's surprise and joy is reserved for a Smashwords COVID-19 sale find, a freebie I completely accidentally stumbled upon: A Justified State by Iain Kelly, a Scottish television editor about whom I had not heard a peep and from whom I expected not a lot.

He overdelivered on my expectations. This could be a six-stars-of-five read; I have a long way to go, so no decisions yet, but this medium-term futuristic dystopian thriller set in a nightmarish Soylent Green-ish Glasgow is $2.99 and cheap at twice the price. Do your distracted self a favor and get sucked in to Author Kelly's hellish world...ours seems paradisical!

I really hadn't considered doing this until recently...tracking my Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winners read, and Booker Prize winners read might actually prove useful to me in planning my reading.

1918 HIS FAMILY - Ernest Poole **
1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington *
1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton *
1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington **
1923 ONE OF OURS - Willa Cather **
1924 THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS - Margaret Wilson
1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber *
1926 ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined) *
1927 EARLY AUTUMN - Louis Bromfield
1928 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder *
1929 SCARLET SISTER MARY - Julia Peterkin
1930 LAUGHING BOY - Oliver Lafarge
1931 YEARS OF GRACE - Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck *
1933 THE STORE - Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1934 LAMB IN HIS BOSOM - Caroline Miller
1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 HONEY IN THE HORN - Harold L Davis
1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell *
1938 THE LATE GEORGE APLEY - John Phillips Marquand
1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings *
1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck *
1942 IN THIS OUR LIFE - Ellen Glasgow *
1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
1944 JOURNEY IN THE DARK - Martin Flavin
1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey *
1947 ALL THE KING'S MEN - Robert Penn Warren *
1948 TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC - James Michener
1949 GUARD OF HONOR - James Gould Cozzens
1950 THE WAY WEST - A.B. Guthrie
1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
1952 THE CAINE MUTINY - Herman Wouk
1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway *
1955 A FABLE - William Faulkner *
1956 ANDERSONVILLE - McKinlay Kantor *
1958 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee *
1959 THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS - Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury *
1961 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee *
1962 THE EDGE OF SADNESS - Edwin O'Connor
1963 THE REIVERS - William Faulkner *
1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau
1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter
1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
1968 THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER - William Styron *
1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday
1970 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JEAN STAFFORD - Jean Stafford
1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner *
1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty *
1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara *
1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow *
1978 ELBOW ROOM - James Alan McPherson
1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever *
1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer *
1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole *
1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike *
1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker *
1984 IRONWEED - William Kennedy *
1985 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Alison Lurie
1986 LONESOME DOVE - Larry McMurtry *
1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison *
1989 BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler
1990 THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE - Oscar Hijuelos *
1991 RABBIT AT REST - John Updike *
1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley *
1993 A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN - Robert Olen Butler *
1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx *
1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields
1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY - Richard Ford
1997 MARTIN DRESSLER - Steven Millhauser
1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth
1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham
2000 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES - Jumpha Lahiri
2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon
2002 EMPIRE FALLS - Richard Russo
2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides *
2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones
2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson
2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz *
2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout
2010 TINKERS - Paul Harding
2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD - Jennifer Egan
2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson
2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt
2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr **
2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen **
2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead **
2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer *
2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers *

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

1969: P. H. Newby, Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1970: J. G. Farrell, Troubles ** (awarded in 2010 as the Lost Man Booker Prize) -
1971: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist ... and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey, Saville
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea *
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children *
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac *
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People **
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger *
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda *
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day *
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance *
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient * ... and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road *
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin *
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang *
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little **
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty *
2005: John Banville, The Sea
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering
2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question *
2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending **
2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
2013: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings *
2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout
2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo *
2018: Anna Burns, Milkman
2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

NIX!

And now you may address the court.

Please, sir, can we have some more?

Happy new thread, Richard!

>7 weird_O: Hi Bill! You're first in, so more I shall provide with a fillip of weird to sauce the pudding:

>8 harrygbutler: Thank you most kindly, Harry, I hope it will be one.

Happy new thread!

>11 drneutron: Thanks, Doc!

My favorite number! 13!! Happy new one, Ricardo. Smooch.

>13 Berly: And you're post 13 on thread 13! How lucky is that. *smooch*

Hi RD, great topper fun, and I enjoyed the summary @ #3.
Hope the autumn weather and reading add joy to your life.

Happy New Thread 13!

Happy New Thread, Richard!

Happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: A great tribute to a most accomplished person!

>15 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy, I'm glad you liked the topper. It's a lovely day, not quite as cool but still not *brutal* like the summer was.

>16 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary!

>17 ronincats: Thank you most kindly, Roni!

>18 quondame: Hi Susan, thanks for the kind words...I hadn't known until today that she left behind an autobiography. Must read soon.

Happy new thread, RD.

>20 PaulCranswick: Greetings, PC, and thank you.

Happy new thread, Richard!

>22 bell7: *smooch* TYVM, Mary!

Nice to be reminded of Judith Merrill who i had the pleasure of meeting a few times at cons when i was a young 'un.

Fierce but fair as i distantly recall. With a certain fondness for bayonetting the wounded.

"That Only a Mother" is not her only amazing story it's just the one that lazy people anthologized.

I don't think I knew about her Doctor Whoo-ting up in the Great White North - bet she was fun at it

Happy 13th thread, Richard!

>13 Berly: >14 richardderus: When I was in junior high, we lived at 1313 Cochran Road. Damn! And we all survived.

Happy new one, RD!

Happy New Thread, Richard. I hope you had a fine weekend, sir. I know I have been MIA, while roaming the Northwoods and matching wits in Trump country but we had a great time and I will slowly catch up on LT. BTW- I am finally starting Burning Bright: Stories which I recall, you were a big fan of.

Happy new one, Richard!

104 Spellswept by Stephanie Burgis

Rating: 3.75* of five

Quite an enchanting tale of the reversal of gender roles in a magjickqal England.

I've mentioned before that I take careful note of the identity of a book's blurbers. Praise from someone whose work I don't like is an effective warn-off; in this case, two authors whose work I very much appreciate (K.J. Charles, Aliette de Bodard) blurbed this book. My tasteful friend Roni, however, gets all the credit for making me aware that it existed at all!

This short fantasy novella set in a Britain ruled by a Boudiccate of powerful women supported by magical, but emotionally volatile man-mages, is a refreshing and very amusing start of series. I'll be on the ride with Author Burgis. Coming along?

>24 magicians_nephew: I think the Zeitgeist preferred a woman's story about the beguiling monomania of motherhood than about hubristic women who happened, more or less by accident, to be mothers like in "Dead Center." (Which is an altogether superior story.)

>25 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita!

>26 weird_O: "Cochran" as in "Gangster Steve" Cochran from the mooobeees?! The Force is strong in this one, clearly, or you'd be squooshed by Fate!

>27 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie!

>28 msf59: I'm glad you had a good time up there. I hope you left a trail of scorched ear-hairs behind you. And yay for getting stuck into Ron Rash's stories!

>29 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, for the good wishes!

105 That Only a Mother by Judith Merril

Rating: 3.5* of five

A very ableist take on the burdens of parenthood. Wouldn't do so well in today's climate.... A Cold-War atomic nightmare writ domestic, though very very disturbingly real. The Cold War's end and the lack of an atomic war being actually fought after 1945 rendered it sort of, well, moot in a curious way. I think the Zeitgeist preferred this, a woman's story about the beguiling monomania of motherhood, to a polyphonic tale about a husband without a lot of affect, a child with A Fate, and a hubristic woman who happened, more or less by accident, to be a mother, like in "Dead Center." (Which is an altogether superior story.) Ear readers can experience it here free.

Happy new thread! I've never heard of Judith Merril before, I'll have to read some of her stories soon.

Hanging a dusty star

>33 richardderus: yes the huge body of work of "After the atomic war" fiction does seem a little shopworn in today's climate.

I expect it will be replaced by "after the pandemic burns out" fiction as a genre soon

106 The Roo by Alan Baxter

Rating: 3.5* of five

Good, violent fun from an Aussie horrorista with a Twitter cadre of loyalists who all have excellent credentials as writers. I hadn't considered one of Author Baxter's tales for my own entertainment before chancing on a well-loved writer's tweet encouraging all and sundry to do so. I did; I'm glad.

Quite a ride! Curses, death wishes, and a lot of rage. Gore galore and the weirdest monster yet. But all in all, a sad take on the prevalence of hatred in the world. Roots go deep, cures don't. Author Baxter wrote a touching Afterword, one that says more in fewer words than any sermon ever could.

The cover of this story is just about the coolest thing on my Kindle. Elderlemon Design (aka horror biggie Kealan Patrick Burke, who appears in the text as a publican) made it; what I love about that is the origin story that Author Baxter tells us...a joke, a cover, a story, and now a fictional exploration of the ungovernability of hate let loose.

Plenty of gore, lots of rage, and throughout the proceedings, a steady heartbeat of caring, kindness, and acceptance. Not what I expected, in the best possible way.

>34 SilverWolf28: Hi Silver, well...all I can say is, "the journey ahead is full of adventures." A wee bit jealous that you get to experience them for the first time.

>35 mckait: *dustwipepuff*

*smooch*

>37 magicians_nephew: And we'll get heartily sick of that, then back will come "after the Singularity" stories, etc etc etc

*sigh*

Happy Tuesday and happy new thread, RD!

Thank you for the interesting info about Merril, someone I'd never heard of before.

*smooch*

>40 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, and Merril as a writer might appeal to you more than her chosen genre repels you...try a story or two.

*smooch*

Happy #13, Richard. Have a pleasant day or at least an interesting one - in a good way, of course.

Happy new thread, RD!

>42 Familyhistorian: A trip to the store in the sunshine was delicious, Meg. Plus my favorite sandwich meat was on sale! Minor annoyance: They had bleach for the first time in forever, and I had the wrong card to pay for it. Boo.

>43 lkernagh: Thank you, Lori!

Happy new thread my dear friend.

Thread's half over by the time I get here but I'll drop off smooches anyway.

>30 richardderus: I still have the last one, Moontangled, to read, Richard. I'm so glad you enjoyed Spellswept.

>45 johnsimpson: Thank you, John! I'm happy to see you here.

Sending hugs to you and Karen and family.

>46 MickyFine: Ha! I know the feeling, Micky..."wait, what? how many threads am I behind?!"

>47 ronincats: It was a lot of fun, Roni, I'm very glad I read it, and enjoyed it, too.

Happy new thread!

>49 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori!

Happiest of Wednesdays to you, RDear!

>51 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible! I'll take "least irritating of Wednesdays" with deep gratitude. My ambitions aren't that high-flown.

*smooch*

Good morning! I'm not super adept at Goodreads so figured I'd just come over here and thank you for the cookbook rec. I've put it on my Amazon list :)

>54 katiekrug: Happy Wednesday! I'm very glad you liked the sound of it...if mine wasn't a hazard to the circuits here, constantly tripping the lights, I'd be using that one too.
***
If anyone wonders about the source of my abiding antipathy to poetry: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/art-of-one-word-poem/

::eyeroll::

Happy New Thread, Richard! Thanks for the bio background for Judith Merrill. I remember the name, but knew nada about her.

How did white men come to think that they owned science fiction? Seems like a common thread, somehow. Good to get to know one of the fighting pioneers better.

>55 richardderus: You know, there are poems that are not just a few words; some are even booklength. Oh wait, you did know that. :-) Just as you don't need to look at "conceptual" white canvases framed on a museum wall when there are lots of more interesting ones with color to be viewed, you can ignore the minimalists and go on about your business. Oh wait, you did know that. Well, I'm glad at least you enjoy exceptions to the rule. I just recently re-read that graphic version of Howl that you tipped me off to, and enjoyed it even more than the first time.

Happy new thread! I am aware of Judith Merrill, but I don't think I've read any of her fiction (ought to fix that); mostly recognize her name from anthologies. Your introduction makes me want to find more.

SEPTEMBER 2020 UPDATE Read all about the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of the film based on Nomadland! FRANCES MCDORMAND STARS!! There is a link in the CBC article on how to watch the Festival offerings via web from 10 to 20 September. My 3.5* review can't contain my fanboy SQUEE about McDormand starring in this film.
***
>56 jnwelch: Thank you, Joe. White men think they own everything, even stuff they hate and/or are indifferent to. This is changing, blessèdly, and I (not one of Those white men) can. Not. WAIT. for them to bark their shins on the rearranged furniture. (And no, I don't mean the loud-mouthed stupid ones, I mean the besuited bastards in boardrooms whose come-uppance cannot possibly hurt them enough for my vicious, fanged, flammable loathing of them.)

I'm so glad you've enjoyed that comic book about a poem! I sent my copy to Erik ages ago and he liked it, too. More people should discover it.

>57 swynn: Thanks, Steve, and hunt up the NESFA Press edition of Homecalling and Other Stories: The Complete Solo Short SF of Judith Merril via your astounding librarian-fu. She's well worth the time to get acquainted with.

>56 jnwelch: >58 richardderus: A good number of my fellow white SF fans don't feel they have a place in US popular culture (but they want one??) but felt SF was theirs. Even us wimem were only tolerated, welcomed only for well, wimem things. Rather than welcoming more friends, they feel like their property has been violated. Poor dears. NOT!

>59 quondame: EXACTLY

yuck

it's a seriously suckass attitude.

I unfortunately haven't had time to read as of late, but I've been making Youtube content for the Magic: the Gathering community and this is something we deal with there as well. Some of the enfranchised males complain that more women don't play the game while simultaneously making them as unwelcome as possible when they do. It seems as though they want women to hang around at tournaments and be impressed by the men's skills but DEFINITELY NEVER PLAY EVER OH HOW HORRIBLE.

Nonsense.

>61 Ape: That's no surprise, Stephen, because they're not interested in changing anything but in complaining about things as they are. Tiresome.

It's pernicious and nonsense indeed.

Hi Richard! This book just popped up in one of my recommended book emails and I thought that you might be interested in it: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B003WUYR9K?_bbid=16662912&tag=bookbubemail11-20. It seems a bit heavy for me right now, but I'd be interested in what you think of it.

>63 SilverWolf28: Hello! I read Invisible Man twice and never liked it. What others call recursive storytelling I call repetitious tedium.

So there it is in a nutshell.

>64 richardderus: Thanks!

Happy Thursday, Richard! Interesting discussion of science fiction and its keeping out women - I think >59 quondame: hit the nail on the head, and I find it a frustrating facet of humanity that we can start a group/fandom/whatever around a common interest and eventually become so clique-y that we exclaim, "But it's MINE!" as soon as someone different has a different take on it. I have found, since actually paying attention to the fact in my reading, that I tend to read mostly white women in any genre. Most of my science fiction and fantasy, as a result, has been by women and people of color, and I find it so rich and interesting that I really don't have to read some of the classic stuff out there by old white guys *shrug*.

Also, since The Writer's Library came out on Tuesday, I can now mention that one of the funniest moments for me was reading an author's interview where he recounted the time that Ursula K. Le Guin explained to him how not to write a woman in his novels.

What about “Least Irritating of Thursdays to you, RD!”?

>56 jnwelch: How did white men come to think that they owned science fiction? White men think they own everything.

>58 richardderus: I like the analogy of them barking their shins on the rearranged furniture.

Fascinating discussion here. I can relate to that attitude ("the game is crossed and you can't join in") in my life, as well. Scientific research and publishing is replete with this attitude.

>66I loved that comment about Ursula K. Le Guin (thanks for that book link, Mary; I'd have never known about The Writer's Library).

Diana Rigg has died. Vale Emma Peel!
***
>65 SilverWolf28: :-)

>66 bell7: You'd experience culture shock if you read Asimov or the Golden Agers. I don't recommend the exercise.

Oh to be a fly in that wall as UKL took him apart!

>67 karenmarie: Too late. But thanks anyway.

I like that analogy too, so I'm glad you noticed it! *smooch*

>68 SandyAMcPherson: Well, Sandy, as always, "follow the money." Wherever the bluebottles congregate, there's gonna a ton of shit for 'em to eat.

Have a splendid Thor's Day!

>66 bell7: My list of read authors is also mostly women and has been growing more so for some time as I will readily pick up a book by a woman I haven't yet read than by a man. But I've also added a few men who have been recommended or maybe I just like the cover on the new book shelf at the library. Not much of that happening lately though. Sometimes an author shows up in a collection, like Charles de Lint in Flights and I have got to go read everything. And back a few years now, a friend recommended Jim Butcher. And Ben Aaronovitch is a welcome addition.

Happy Thursday! Here's the readathon for this weekend: https://www.librarything.com/topic/324181

>70 quondame:, >71 SilverWolf28: :-)

>68 SandyAMcPherson: Oh good, always happy to pass on a good book! I hope you enjoy it :)

>69 richardderus: Yeah, can't say I really have a hankering to try them out *shrug* There's sooo many books out there, I'm much more prone to pick up the ones I really want to be reading. Oh and like a good librarian, of course I have to cite my source. It's part of the conversation with Luis Alberto Urrea where he talks about his relationship with Ursula K. Le Guin who was a bit of a mentor of his in college, where she would give him "these insane bits of wisdom" and she gave a bit of very funny (but absolutely true) advice.

>70 quondame: I didn't mean I never read men, but it's not what I gravitate towards: my total reading in 2020 has been about 25% male authors. I agree with you about Ben Aaronovitch, I've read the first two Rivers of London books and enjoyed them very much. I also like what I've read by Daniel Jose Older (though he certainly wouldn't fit the "old white men" appellation).

I hope you had a good Thursday! Our morning was a little gray but a nice, light breeze, then it rained and was oppressively humid all afternoon. Very odd, though it seems to have cooled off quite a bit now.

It was one of the most annoying days of the month to date.

UKL mentored Urrea? Oh dear, why don't I like him then? That poor mentally ill child used by the revolting adults in that one book turned me into a detractor for good.

Not big on Aaronovitch either, though I started out enjoying the Rivers of London. *sigh* Such a grumpy old man.

>74 richardderus: Oh I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully the rest of the month improves for you.

Yeah, apparently she was a professor at his college and really encouraged his writing. I haven't read him, so can't speak to that. Actually, I hadn't read most of the authors featured in The Writer's Library and contrarian I am, I often don't like the books that Nancy Pearl loves as much as she does, so I also am not going to seek them out too immediately. Oddly enough, I enjoy reading interviews with authors that I've never read or that I loathed almost as much as I enjoy reading interviews with authors I *have* read.

I'm only basing my assessment of Aaronovitch on the first two Rivers of London books, so I may eventually agree with you. Though I notice we have a different set of boxes to check for much of our reading (I like what I've read by Connie Willis, and I know she's, hm, not your favorite), and I have a higher tolerance for magic, so who knows, maybe it'll be a series we diverge on. One of the things that makes reading and readers endlessly fascinating, our different approaches to books :)

Something-or-another-Friday to you, RD. I hope it's less annoying than yesterday.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>75 bell7: Hi Mary! A new day, so here's to hoping that it won't be irritating.

I'm with you on the "like to read about people I haven't read" quirk. It's much more, I dunno, informative? Somehow it has more weight, I think because I have no preconceived idea for it to bump into. As to writers I loathe, well...I do read DFW's essays, but no power on Earth could convince me to dip my toe into Franzen's mind.

Yep, some like spumoni, others cajeta. Connie Willis puzzles me...on the surface, I should be her loudest warbler. And as you observe with such acuity, I am not. I enjoy learning about the ways we all differ, too!

>76 karenmarie: *smooch*

No reason to suspect today will be different in a worse way, Horrible, so onward I soldier.

Our DIL started me on DFW with his Consider the Lobster collection of essays. That I loved, and I should get myself reading more of his essays.

Seems like the excellent female sci-fi authors greatly outnumber the male ones right now, with N.K. Jemison and Martha Wells being two that would head my parade, with many others like Ann Leckie, Becky Chambers and Nnedi Okorafor close behind.

Seanan McGuire is normally a fantasy author, like her irresistible October Daye series, but I'm reading her Middlegame now and it's quite different. I'd categorize it as sci-fi.

Hey Richard. I love the conversation about women sci-fi authors. I have a copy of The Fifth Season on the shelves, had planned to read it this summer, but.... Anyway, you know that sci-fi is not my go-to genre but I was going to follow up on a comment you made on my thread, and ask you to list some of your favorite female authors (especially any you think I might enjoy). I think it's absurd to think either that we, as readers and reviewers, can (or should) leave our identities and life experience behind as we respond to written works, or that we cannot criticise a written work that originates from outside our identities or life experience. Taking critical POVs into account makes sense, of course, and I think it's important to acknowledge nuances we may not understand based on our own experience, but eschewing the responsibility to respond to works honestly just doesn't cut it for me. Also, I don't think I "should" want to read literature just because it emerges from experience different from my own. I think LT is largely populated by folx who read at least in part because of the places reading can take us, places we could not otherwise visit (and I mean places in the physical, emotional, cultural, and imaginative senses). But sometimes I just don't want to read about something that I don't want to read about. That doesn't mean it's not good writing or a worthwhile read, but it may not be my cup of tea.

I'm not sure this exactly fits but many many! years ago when I read She's Come Undone, I was frankly astounded by how effectively Wally Lamb "occupied" the female psyche. I don't know how I'd respond today (did I mention that this was many years ago?) but I always think of that as one of my most poignant experiences of a writer reaching across identity boundaries and doing it superbly. I also happened to love his I Know This Much Is True. Having a sibling with schizophrenia, it was another "he nailed it" moment for me as a reader.

I think I digressed but I trust you'll forgive me. ;-)

>78 jnwelch: Hey there Joe! Your list is a great start...see below for some more ideas. And have yourself a merry little Friggsday!

>79 EBT1002: Hi Ellen! There's a book on Kindlesale today only that I really, really want you to try out: Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford

I like Kelly's Twitter persona, I love her lesbian take on Winter's Bone, and it has the *huge* plus of being un-male-gazey about the central love story.

Yxta Maya Murray's work is outstanding. The Conquest and The World Doesn't Work That Way But It Could are both deeply satisfying fictions.

Kate Heartfield is a Queer writer of SFF whose novellas about Alice Payne are delights; she also wrote an alt-Shakespeare novella The Course of True Love that makes me all funny inside.

A few to be gettin' on with....

Happy new thread, Richard!

>69 richardderus: Vale!

'Morning, RD.

*blinks*

More coffee.

*smooch*

>81 humouress: Hi Nina, yes it was sad that Emma Peel had to leave us. But she *was* 82 and failing in health, this *is* a plague....

>82 karenmarie: Coffee Hoooooo!

*smooch*

Blue, of course.

>84 richardderus: - LOVE.

Happy new thread, Richard. >84 richardderus: is excellent! That's Some Pig!

>85 katiekrug: I thought that would appeal to a bookish crowd.

>86 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley! I'm always here for Charlotte fannery.

>RD and >Mary Thanks for the recommendation of The Writer's Library. Put it on the ammy wish list. Scanned the list of authors, not too many that I've read, quite a few I've never heard of. Good!

By the bye, all the japes about "old White men" is hurting my fee-fees

>88 weird_O: *baaawww* Poor ol' whitey. Sad for you itty hurt fee-fees.

>80 richardderus: Thanks for the recommendations!

>84 richardderus: But of course. :-)

I LOVE >84 richardderus:.

>90 EBT1002: De rien, ma amie...and I'm not too terribly worried about you catching Trumpism, P would soon sort that out.

>91 SilverWolf28: Isn't that wonderful? I got a huge laugh then a real buzz of Message off that. Share widely!

>61 Ape: Interestingly, I notice that both my boys often pick female 'skins' as their avatars on Fortnite. Not sure what this means, if anything, but I was pleased at least that they don't go "eeeew, girls" os some such nonsense.

>84 richardderus: Charlotte knows her stuff!

>84 richardderus: You might cure some of arachnophobia!

>77 richardderus: So, I may have been a little strong with "loathe". I was thinking of this, specifically: I did not like Slaughterhouse-Five. I found it too hard to read in a variety of ways and felt like I was missing the point that the author was being too vague about, like snatching candy from a reader. But I read the first Paris Review Interviews book and one of the ones I really liked was with Kurt Vonnegut. I gained a greater appreciation for the book (though I still don't like it, nor have I tried any of his other books), and decided that for the parts I was confused, he was too. Rather liberating to discover that!

Happy weekend *smooch*

>84 richardderus: LIKE!

Happy Sunday, Richard. I hope you are having a good weekend and enjoying those books. My current reads have been a perfect fit. I am heading out for a guided bird walk and then I am home for the Bears & Lions game at noon.

107 Red Heir by Lisa Henry

Rating: 4.5* of five

Once there was, in a Kingdom called Aguillon, a petty thief with a penchant for picking pockets and, um, seducing one could euphemize every male human with a purse that looked fatter than flatter. He's a mouthy git, prone to making it up as he goes along, and as we all know, loose ropes on deck mean nasty falls. Lies and thievery land a lad (not quite as young as once he was, prone to crow's feet) in chokey:

“I suppose you’re wondering how I got into this mess,” he announced loudly in the gloom. The pile of straw on the other side of the cell rustled, and a grubby face appeared.
“I wasn’t. I don’t care.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Loth said to his cellmate.
“Then who were you talking to?” his cellmate demanded, jutting his jaw out.
“I was soliloquising,” Loth said. “Well, I was hoping to, but somebody won’t shut their mouth.”

And there it is, from the very first lines: What to expect, who's doing what to whom. Gadfly meets bloodmeal. Oh what fun it will be. Banter, bizarreness, and boys...yeup, I'm in a Lisa Henry novel.

So we've met Loth. (I suspect his placeholder name was "Loudmouth" and it got elided.) We've met the cellmate, who has bestowed upon him the utterly unlovely name "Grub" by Loth. Lovely, no? He'll have several other names as the book goes by. He soon gains a, well, unsavory reputation that will come back to haunt Loth, who bestowed that as well.

And then!!!

Where there had once been a wall, there was now a mountain of rubble, with an orc standing on top of it. He was big and ugly by human standards—possibly he was very attractive to other orcs—with two teeth in his bottom jaw protruding from between his lips like tusks.
–and–
The braids woven throughout the beard made Loth think the dwarf was possibly a woman, though it wasn’t always easy to tell with dwarves, and it was considered rude to ask—a lesson he’d learned the hard way.

Dave, the orc, and Ada, the dwarf, have arrived. Dave is dim, but deeply good. Oh, of course he's strong, he's seven feet of greenish-skinned muscle (good luck casting that, Hollywood) and prone to hurling people who don't meet his standards of not-murdering-his-friends like they were shot-puts. Ada, being a dwarf, is one tough customer, and she very quickly makes it clear to all and sundry that she is here to collect a fee for the service of rescuing the red-headed prince in the cell.

But both the rag-bags in the cell are red-headed. One natural, and Loth. But there's a rescue party, a wall that's a functional imitation of a door, and a guard party...tell me you didn't think Loth wouldn't try to be a long-unseen prince held hostage by a murderous, wicked uncle called Lord Doom if it meant getting out of jail.

Together with the anarchist-collectivist elf, Calarian, and the "hero" of the piece (in his own mind) Scott the cowardly dimwit, the six of them skedaddle from the (curiously uninvestigated) scene of the rescue. It's just like the quest that Ser (Bene) Factor promised Scott when he talked him into this lunacy! And as for the Houses and Humans-playing elf, well, his mother slung him out of the house with instructions to move his damned game on the road, so he was ripe for Ser (Bene) Factor's coins as well.

The Swamp of Death (a volcanic overturn with Calarian's studly cousin Benji, more anti-social than most elves, playing monster to keep people away), the ruined royal hunting lodge with a secret passage, the former jailer Ser Greylord who shows up at the lodge...it's a quest.

And is it queer! Good lawsy me, the number of subverted power structures here is epic. Heh. Nothing, not one single thing, is made of anyone's sexual nature. Their behavior gets ribbed a lot...Loth and Grub, later Cue, still later Quinn discover a mutual attraction and go at it hammer and tongs, Benji the faux monster and Calarian the Housemaster (remember the game!), all come in for their share of ribbing but none of it homophobic. In fact, the entire universe the story operates in is laissez-faire regarding sexual behavior, and in a throwaway line we even learn it's no big deal for men to marry each other. (There is an almost complete absence of females, and a complete absence of heterosexual sex, throughout the story. Blissful for me.)

The quest proceeds to the royal capital, Scott gets abused quite a lot, we meet Loth's parents (I loved them and hope they can have a book of their own, Mum would be a great narrator hint hint), we encounter Lord Doom and Scott ends up putting the pieces together for all the merrie band (and gets a broken nose), and all ends up Right With This World. (It's a quest, that's not a spoiler.) And would it surprise you to learn that Dave the orc strikes the final blow for liberty? Only he isn't in the room...there's you a mystery to ponder.

The one question I cannot bear not to have answered is: WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL SCOTT?!? WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU, AUTHOR HENRY?!?

>93 LovingLit: Don't she just! Happy to see you, Megan.

>94 quondame: Haw...I kinda doubt that, but cure them of the urge to splat even the most inoffensive spiders....

>95 bell7: Ahhh...I see...the chemistry-mismatch authors can be very interesting to learn about. Thanks for the weekend wishes, and *smooch* right back.

>96 msf59: I know, right?!

I hope the birdwalk is a good 'un and whichever beast you prefer prevails.

Catching up here. I saw a mention of spumoni up there somewhere. That sounds tasty! My menu has been less diverse since COVID. I've been trying to "think outside the box" and come up with some other things I can make to diversify my menu at home. I made stromboli this past week. It turned out reasonably well, but I still like what I get at In and Out Pizza better.

>99 thornton37814: Hi Lori, happy Sunday. It's rough to keep the creative juices flowing when they're so heavily drawn upon, isn't it? I'm amazed that some people stay creative and inspired enough to work in kitchens, like my Rob. He's a guy with a creative palate like no one's business. And even he says, "tae-out tonight!" once in a way.

'Morning, RichardDear. Happy Sunday to you.

>84 richardderus: I still have a strong memory of Mrs. Shigeta, my 3rd grade teacher, reading Charlotte's Web out loud to us. I've read it many times since.

I've done quite a bit of experimenting in the kitchen since Covid-19, but today will be an old stand-by, angel hair pasta with spaghetti sauce and a bit of salad.

>101 karenmarie: Nothin' wrong with old standbys, especially delicious ones like pasta with sauce which, let's be clear, is God's Most Perfect Creation.

>102 richardderus: I almost married the wrong man because his pasta sauce was so good. That I still miss.

>103 quondame: You didn't lift his recipe?! I am shocked, shocked!, at such carelessness.

>104 richardderus: There wasn't really a recipe, more of a procedure. It required slowly cooking chicken pieces in the tomato sauce with cheese and ground beef for two full days, then removing all bones and cooking more. I just never had the patience.

>105 quondame: Yeah. Days and days of slow cooking? Um. Hey, look at that shiny new thing!

>97 richardderus: Well, I see I can borrow this for free from Ammy...

>107 ronincats: For free, absolutely give it a whirl, Roni. You might enjoy it, but at any rate I don't think you'll hate it.

108 Stillicide by Cynan Jones

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The review is live now on Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud. It is in Author Jones's wordless interstices that the reader is invited to exist inside the story. A long chain of change/loss/compromise extends into that past, our future; he says, "Is this the world you wish to see come for your family?"

It is *much* too long to post here and *much* too personal to hack into gobbets to fit the space here. If you're a click-a-phobe, well, I don't know what to tell you. Except that I want you to pre-order a copy of this beautiful book, and I don't think just me telling you to is likely to work, so I wrote some of my best stuff to talk you into it.

Delurking on a Monday to say hi, hope all those hurricanes and tropical cyclone-y things are giving you a miss.

I'm doing very little reading these days but still fitting in a chapter every now and then of TKaMB. I like the Atticus Finch character. It's a book I'm glad to read slowly. The writing is so vivid of ordinary things that one feels 'right there'.

>110 SandyAMcPherson: Howdy there, Miz Sandy! I'm glad to see you. I completely agree about TKaMB...vivid, intense effects got from truly visceral writing. It's no wonder to me that she was silenced by performance anxiety after that! How could anything else she ever wrote feel like anything except an abject failure? But she did it, and it's her monument.

That said, I expect it's about to enter the shadows for fifty–seventy-five years, before emerging as Uncle Tom's Cabin in whatever Brave New World we're witnessing the birthing-blood of now. Will my grandsons be called "Atticus Finches" in 2060? Possibly....

'Morning, RD! I hope your day has started off well, continues well, and ends well.

>111 richardderus: Lee's performance anxiety is well documented in Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, which I know I've mentioned before. Have you had a chance to read it yet?

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>112 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible...I'm still on the hold list because it came available too soon and I put it back into circulation.

It's a pretty day today, I saw Rob on Saturday for a minute, and today's mail promises to be entertaining.

>109 richardderus: Nice review over on your blog. Got me with that one!

Amazing review. I love, for instance this sentence (quoting RD):
It is in Author Jones's negative spaces, his wordless interstices, that the reader is invited to exist inside the story...

So Richard, I get the idea now and then when I read your reviews, that you are an author yourveryownself, but have never 'owned up'. Your wordsmithing is so articulate and I've never met a person with such a grasp of the English language vocabulary. I do not intend to prod you on this authorship point, btw. Just saying...

Hope your week to come is delightful.

>114 drneutron: *fistpump*


>115 SandyAMcPherson: *blush* Aww gee thanks, Sandy.

I was known to commit felonious bookery once upon a time. But no longer...too much changed, it no longer fits.

Thanks! You have the same.

>109 richardderus: Stillicide defintely sounds like something I would like, Richard. I read his short novel Cove, awhile back, although I don't remember a lot about it.

>109 richardderus: That is a great (and long) review, Richard. I liked The Long Dry.
The good thing is that there is a Dutch translation AND I can get it at the library. Hope to read it soon :-)

>97 richardderus: adding this one to my TBR list. Thanks.

Asimov always liked to point to Dr. Susan Calvin when people said he couldn't write female characters. Ain't enough, Dr. A.

Harlan Ellison wrote a wow-holy-shit-this-is-good screenplay for I, Robot that never got within a mile of being produced. But His Susan Calvin was a real flesh and blood woman. Difference between the lightening and the lightening bug, as someone said once.

>119 magicians_nephew: From the first read I hated how Dr A used/abused Dr. Susan Calvin. I grew up knowing a number of women scientists and mathematicians who had quite decent personal lives, at least from the outside. Though the one who lost one of her brilliant small sons to leukemia could be said to have real problems. It took me a second read to hate how he used Arkady.

>120 quondame: no I hated Arkady right from the jump. Dr. A's daughter Robyn did too

>117 msf59: I really think you will like it, Mark. I hope it can make its way home to you soon.

I haven't read Cove yet, so I'm looking forward to that.

>118 FAMeulstee: Yeah, I had a lot to say about that one...glad you enjoyed it, Anita! *smooch*

>119 magicians_nephew: I hope you will enjoy it, Jim. And as for Susan Calvin, she was barely distinguishable from any other Asimov character. It wasn't his long suit, character-building.

>120 quondame:, >121 magicians_nephew: Who didn't hate Arkady?

>122 richardderus: When I read it at 14 I thought Arkady was just fine, there being almost no other female central characters in any SF I could get to.

>123 quondame: That's completely understandable. Not being in that audience segment, I loathed her the instant she got so repeatedly lucky, and ended up being Big Revealed as mentally enhanced so she could complete Selden's plan when she returned to Trantor.

109 I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider

Rating: 5* of five

My old friend Stephanie sent me this! W00t!

I loved this. I love the collection!


This resonates....


Too, too right, Grant Snider.

I love his cartoons almost as much as I love Tom Gauld's cartoons. I don't want either of them to stop cartooning for a very, very long time.

Thanks, Stephanie! *smooch*

And POWER TO THE PANGOLIN!!

>109 richardderus: Yes! Except for penguins and dogs. I always want penguins and dogs.

I bought myself that book awhile back. And love it, too. Especially loved *Books Are*...

'Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

*smooch*

>126 quondame: Penguins and dogs? Weeelll...okay. I'm always down with more doggage. Penguins, in reality, stink and are clamorously noisy, but graphically they're cute.

>127 jessibud2: I adore Grant Snider, and have since forever, Shelley. This collection is so perfectly chosen, and it even has an index! I love the way it's designed and thought out and produced.

>128 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! It's a happier day now that you're here.

>125 richardderus: That sounds delightful! Off to library request it...

>130 bell7: Yay! Book-bulleted an *actual*librarian*!! My work here is done.

>131 richardderus: I can directly blame, er, thank you for six titles currently on my TBR list, and probably for quite a few more that I put library holds on more promptly.

*preens*

I didn't think we'd get it until November/December!

>134 katiekrug: Oh WOW!!
*overjoyed fantods*
*shrieks of rapture*
*blissful anticipation*

I tried an experiment yesterday. I turned 61 on the 14th, and I kept mum about it (as I'm more or less wont to do) here but announced my age to complete randos on a subtweet.

What will strangers do, I wondered, when someone just blurts something personal out? I've seen some serious nastiness happen but the tweet I responded to was put up by a young woman (43) with ~2,500 followers. Considering I have a thousandish more followers, and I get pretty sparse responses to my tweets....

To date, 29 people have wished me a happy birthday and six have started following me. One guy sent me a dick pic. (Misguided...not his erm uuuhhh best side, shall we say.)

Because I just plopped that boring fact down in public.

I am doing something wrong with my tweets, or the @jack-offs are in fact shadow-banning me because I'm a leftweeter.

(Misguided...not his erm uuuhhh best side, shall we say.)

Snork.

Shall I ask my favorite @jack-off about the shadow banning? ;-)

*snerk*

Poor TW...how much stuff he has no contact with/control over must he get taken to task about. Still, take the devil's silver, wear the tarnish for all to see....

>138 richardderus: - I'm just glad he doesn't work for The Really Evil One with the Other Blue Logo...

Happy belated birthday, Richard. See, there is life after 60!

>139 katiekrug: Oh GODDESSES yes. I mean, could you even? Let's not so much as conceptualize that.

>140 Familyhistorian: *creakmoanSNAP* owwwwww

...sorry, what was that you said, Meg?

:-P

Happy belated! What Meg said. :-) I am not on other social media of any sort so it's easy for me to steer clear. Less stress that way, and more than ever, I am all about less stress.

>142 jessibud2: It's probably best to avoid the contentious places at this moment in time. I don't miss Facebook!

*creakmoanSNAP* ooochie owowwwwww

...sorry, what was that you said, Shelley?

:-P

A belated happy birthday, Richard dear!

Well a happy belated birthday to you!

>144 ronincats:, >145 figsfromthistle: *creakmoanSNAP* whimper

...sorry, what was that y'all said, Roni and Anita?

:-P

Belated happy birthday (I never actually remember on the day because your *party* was on September 11, and I always remember on that day and then forget)!

Twitter is really odd about what it will show, I've found. I've got my feed set to as chronological as it can be, but I'll miss tweets entirely (never saw yours re: birthday), and then I'll see the same tweet five times because mutuals liked or retweeted it recently, and then again in the "just in case you missed it" section. Like, if I wanted to see the same things over and over I would've let the algorithm pick instead of setting it to chronological. Ahem. Anyway, glad you got mostly nice responses.

>136 richardderus: Welcome to a next year! I'm wavering between considering it b-day abuse and inspired b-day opportunism, but it's your birthday, hope it was happy, it sounds like you had fun with it.

>147 bell7: It *was* a great party, wasn't it. Ten years ago!

Oh, no one who follows me would've seen it, the response I made was to someone else's tweet and never showed in my timeline. I got notifications of responses only. The Great and All-Knowing Algorithm is either capricious or evil, I can't make my mind up which better suits its weirdness.

>148 quondame: I just wanted to see what would happen...so really neither was my motivation. I can't honestly say I cared much, I'm waaayyy too old to think the enforced jollifications of the random day I was born are all that interesting. But that utter strangers would send me good wishes (except Mr. Teeny Peeny) was a complete surprise.

Hippo Birdies, Two Ewes

Hippo birdie deer-meat, hippo birdie four sweets

Happy belated birthday!

Same as >142 jessibud2: this is the only social media I follow.

>146 richardderus: Oh, come on, YOUNGSTER!!

>149 richardderus: Truly wonderful, and amazing that it was ten years ago!

My timeline sometimes shows those I follow's replies to people I don't so *shrug* I've given up on trying to understand how the mighty and extremely weird Algorithm works.

Happy Wednesday! *smooch*

>152 SilverWolf28: One of the best ways to keep stress low is to limit what enters your orbit, for sure.

>153 ronincats: I shall, of course, heed the words of an old, old, OLD friend.

>154 bell7: That way madness lies....

>84 richardderus: *Love* I stole it for Facebook; I knew you wouldn't mind. I have a wild yearning for people to vote. There's a sentence I never expected to write.

>97 richardderus: Great review of Red Heir. Not my cuppa - the almost complete absence of females would do me in by itself - but I sure enjoyed the review.

Grant Snider - love the ones you posted. You convinced me. I'll have to find it. The Murakami bingo is perfect. I'm tempted to laminate a copy and carry it with me, so when someone asks, do you think I'd like Murakami?, I can respond: does this look at all intriguing to you? If not, Murakami may not be your kind of author.

>156 jnwelch: It is a very, very weird sentiment, Joe, but these are very, very weird times. The people who *are* turning out are the ones I least want to vote, so...everybody to the polls!

You'd *hate* Red Heir.

That's a pretty good litmus test! I think you've hit on a way to get the right people to become Murakamistas.

Hallo, RDear! Happy Wed-nes-day to you.

>129 richardderus: You’re right, penguins are graphically cute. Benedict Cumberbatch famously couldn’t say ‘penguin’ correctly, calling them ‘peng-wings’ throughout an entire documentary. He was teased unmercifully on The Graham Norton Show for it. It’s one of my go-to videos when I need a bit of cheer.

Peng-wings. The penguins bit is from 3:28 – 4:36 because I had to watch it again, of course.

And thank you for saying it’s a happier day because I was there.

>136 richardderus: I just turned the page to this week on my desk calendar and saw that I’d gotten your birthday correct, so in the spirit of warm personal wishes, a Belated Happy Birthday to you, youngster.

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

>158 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, it was an interesting experiment to see what would happen on Twitter, but I'm really not that fussed about my birthday being acknowledged. It's a long time since getting older was a Good Thing.

YOU know.

*smirk*

Well, it *is* a brighter day when you come around! Means all's right (enough) in your world, so I can not-worry about one care-cell.

*smooch*

>155 richardderus: I cannot deny it!

110 The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: This elegant, haunting novel takes us deep into the world of bookstore owner Boualem Yekker. He lives in a country being overtaken by the Vigilant Brothers, a radically conservative party that seeks to control every element of life according to the laws of their stringent moral theology: no work of beauty created by human hands should rival the wonders of their god. Once-treasured art and literature are now despised.

Silently holding his ground, Boualem withstands the new regime, using the shop and his personal history as weapons against puritanical forces. Readers are taken into the lush depths of the bookseller's dreams, the memories of his now-empty family life, his passion for literature, then yanked back into the terror and drudgery of his daily routine by the vandalism, assaults, and death warrants that afflict him.

From renowned Algerian author Tahar Djaout we inherit a brutal and startling story that reveals how far an ordinary human being will go to maintain hope.

THIS WAS A BIRTHDAY GIFT (ALBEIT UNWITTING!) FROM A FRIEND. THANKS, YOUR KICKASSNESS!

My Review: First of all, let's clear up something that could cause a lot of people pleasure-robbing confusion: This is not a novel. It is a récit. The narrative is so limited in its focus that there is no sense of a world larger than itself, which makes the reader aware at all times that they are reading a narrative. This is not an insult or a criticism of the technique used, but of the marketing decision to call this a novel. It will disappoint novel-readers who buy it hoping for that immersive, multi-faceted experience of a story.

The Introduction by Toumi and the Foreword by Soyinka are essays fully worthy of reviews of their own. I will not be providing those reviews because I am not a scholar. The context they present is the infuriating context of the murdered Author Djaout's life and times. The facts of his all-too-brief life are on Wikipedia for monoglot English speakers. There is so much that US citizens have simply ignored or willfully shut out of their experience of the world, and as a result we seem to be willing to leap over high precipices to fall into fathomless oceans of rage and hatred, as Djaout warns his readers against. Boualem, his PoV character, is thrown over the edge willy-nilly, but he's got just enough time to form himself into an arrow.

The dive one takes while reading the book is deep, though, so don't think it's not profound and perception-altering to experience Boualem's deep dive into despair as his world, his entire life's work of defining and refining himself as a moral actor in that world, is fractured and flattened by a social earthquake. The depths of despair Boualem plumbs will be familiar to book-lovers watching the steady, pernicious, and malicious attacks on education, intelligence, and erudition we're seeing in the US.

I used up about half a can of Book Darts (may the goddesses please bless my kind friend Stephanie for gifting me this timely top-up of my supply for this past birthday!) marking beautiful passages to quote in my review. The lovely translation done by Translator de Jager is almost too rich a confection to be devoured in a sitting...but I did it. Yes, it was like a breakfast of rich brownies topped with lemon curd and served with a café viennoise, but it was also a heady experience of glorious phrase-making. I was Zooming with my Young Gentleman Caller while I was writing an earlier draft of this review. He said of my Book Darted copy, "I don't dare take it to the airport like that."

"Hmm?"

"It's got more hardware than a Goth biker."

Oh. Well, yes. Permaybehaps I'd better make the point sharper and more targeted:

Books—the closeness of them, their contact, their smell, and their contents—constitute the safest refuge against this world of horror. They are the most pleasant and the most subtle means of traveling to a more compassionate planet. How will Boualem go on living now that they have separated him from his books, his most invigorating nourishment? He is like a plant that has been torn from the soil, separated from liquid and light, its two vital necessities. He has been excluded from the life of books. He has been exiled from all the landmarks of his childhood: values, trampled, symbols corrupted, spaces disfigured and wrecked.

That, my olds, is what's right and what's wrong with this récit. If you ran across the first two sentences in a novel, you'd think, "oo, that's pretty." Put the rest of the para behind it and you're in a récit not a novel, and one that needed a developmental editor's unkind attention. There is so very much of this sort of pretty, pretty phrasemaking that just goes on that little bit too long, that says what's already been said (“For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”–Cicero, b. 106BCE, and a famous enough quote that Author Djaout can reasonably be expected to have read it during his education) in a not hugely fresh way.

That said, one is disinclined to hammer the hell out of the book because it was incomplete and fished out of the author's drawers after his murder. I know, and I can't explain how, that this book would've been absolutely earth-shattering had he lived, and had the chance to work with an editor to bring its many strengths and beauties into a finer, sharper focus. There is about this read the ozone smell and static crackle of greatness. The sadness that follows reading it is rooted in the sense that this promise is undelivered, in fact undeliverable, because Author Tahar Djaout was murdered by the pro-ignorance, anti-beauty forces that ran roughshod over his country.

Do not think the same can not happen here, happen again, happen to the resisters and artists and truth-tellers you're ignoring, skimming, marginalizing today. Vote Blue in November 2020 and allow Author Tahar Djaout's sacrifice of his life to be worthy.

>161 richardderus: - Excellent review! You did the book waaaay more justice than I did with my brief comments. I'm glad it was, if not a perfect read, a worthwhile one.

>162 katiekrug: *blush* Thanks, Katie, it really is an extraordinarily good book. I'm very happy that I had the chance to read it.

After looking carefully at my blog stats, I discovered that (on average) I am accessed from plagscan.com twice a day.

This is the "service" that teachers and others use to scan the web for sources of unusual turns of phrase or out-of-character analyses of books.

Yay me?

Good grief. I came here for a speedy hello and fell down the Tahar Djaout rabbit hole.
Fab review. I haven't read any of Djaout's work. And I never heard of a récit before now.
Thanks.

Oh yeah and ... "hello" 🙄

(Edited because auto correct thinks it's so damn smart; of course it isn't)

>165 SandyAMcPherson: Those good intentions..."I'll just duck in and out"...are doomed around this place. There are far, far too many pretty little whatnots waiting to ensnare your attention and ensorcel your executive function into mindless purchase-me obedience.

Ain't it dandy?

>166 richardderus: Yup. :D

>161 richardderus: Wow. Also new word récit which applies to one of my recent reads, had I only known what to call it.

Hello!
(that is all for now)

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Getting ready to head out on my final bird ramble of the week. We leave for the Carolinas early tomorrow afternoon. Same trip we took last September but this time my daughter and my SIL will be joining us. Nearly finished with Migrations which has been very satisfying and then I am starting Tiny Love: Stories. You are a Brown fan, right? Have you read it?

Good morning, RDear. I hope your Thursday is a good'un.

We're being Sally-ed. Woke up to rain, expect rain most of the day and night. 3-6". Ah well, reading weather!

*smooch*

>167 SandyAMcPherson: :-)

>168 quondame: It's one of the few vocabulary words I've actively used from Theory class days. It's so useful and so many American récits are miscategorized so therefore mismarketed that I'm a bit militant about trotting it out.

>169 LovingLit: *smooch*

>170 msf59: Hiya Birddude! Oh, a lovely migration to climes still warm. I hope you see some storm-tost petrels or whatever the spaces on on your life list for those latitudes.

I do indeed enjoy Larry Brown's work, and I possess that collection. I'm doing the dipping thing with it, though, because when it's gone, it's gone. I don't know of any mediums who work with authors for postmortem publication.

>171 karenmarie: Oh my, six inches of rain's a wee teeny bit on the overkill side, innit. Don't submerge. Will Bill be working from home until the crick goes down?

Paulette's waves are, apparently, being joined by Sally's, so surferboy might just move back to get better access!

Spend it splendidly, my dear Horrible.

>170 msf59: I'm glad to hear Migrations is good. It's on my radar to read.

Happy belated b-day

61 sounds like just a mere "yoot" to me these days.

>174 thornton37814: :-)

>175 magicians_nephew: Thanks! I live in a place, Jim, where I am almost the youngest resident, so I actually feel "what? old? me?" more often than not.

111 The Long Dry by Cynan Jones

Rating: 5* of five

Every part of this book is as concentrated and as perfect as Mrs Dalloway or Montana 1948 is. I am so delighted to re-read it and find more than I saw the first time through.

Over the hills behind the farm the light started. Just a thinning of the very black night that made the stars twinkle more, vibrate like a bird's throat, and put out a light loud compared to their tininess.

Like those brief, compact stories, The Long Dry is without waste and bedizenment. The language is perfectly clear, the sentences flow elegantly, the imagery and the observation so sharp you can cut yourself on them but not feel it until later. A simple story, like all the best ones are; a man owns a farm, loses a calf, then a cow, then a dog, then a life.

What it means to lose a life...it sounds almost casual, "go back and pick it up, silly"...is what Author Jones explores in his trademark beautiful sentences. I can't induce you harder than that. Beautiful books happen seldom enough that I am always hopeful they'll simply levitate in front of people as they're browsing for their next read, that some fanfare will blare through their speakers when cruising online, sourceless recommendations that simply demand the fractured attention of 2020 people. A thirteen-year-old book. Yeah, right.

But it should. It deserves your eyeblinks.

Read the rest at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

Boom headshot 😆

'Morning, RichardDear. And all of a sudden it's Friday.

We ended up with about 3.5 inches of rain. It's still overcast this morning but not raining. The creek did not rise to the point where I could see it from the house.

*smooch*

>178 mahsdad: ...is that a *good* thing, Jeff...?

>179 karenmarie: So gawd WAS willing cause the crick didn't rise! Yay! We've got a more-or-less sunny day today, with 20°-below-normal temps in store for the weekend, so you *know* I'm deeply gruntled.

Happy Friday, Richard! I loved the foreword to Tiny Love. I don't always read the introductions first, but this one was perfect. It gave me an ideal snapshot of Mr. Brown and what to expect with this collection. We are leaving shortly...

>180 richardderus: I'm gruntled too.
It's sunny, headed for 23 oC (~74 oF) and warm overnight. No haze from high level smoke. Yay!

The weekend is going to be even warmer! I may sit on our back patio and *read* instead of doing fall-garden clean up.

Today I'm starting The Truth About Stories (Thomas King).

>181 msf59: Safe journey, happy visit, and safe home, too.

I love Larry Brown's muscular prose. I have, but haven't read, Jonathan Miles's The Wreck of the Medusa, so this is an extra incentive to pick that up too.

I really need to be Durga to pick up all the books I *really*need* to bookhorn into my reading time.

>182 SandyAMcPherson: That's pleasant indeed, Sandy, but I'm talkin' "not even break 20C"-level gruntled. I want to live on a planet where there is one week of 30C, one month of 0C, a week of blizzards, then between 15C and 20C every day. *sigh*

Oo, Thomas King! I've heard such good things about his thriller/mystery/suspense books. I'll hope for a good report soon?

Aw, I missed it! Belated birthday wishes, Richard, you young whippersnapper you! Hope you had some fun on your special day! Was your birthday wish for cooler weather? Because we seem to have gotten to late fall a lot sooner than usual.

>184 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary, it was weird and fun, so no complaints from me!

You *know* I'm one delighted camper when we won't even be breaking 70° for three days!

It hit 14C today and the same predicted for the next few days.

Cool enough for long sleeves but not so cold as to need a jacket. Yet. Single digits at night but I am not outside in that, at night. Breezy and fresh enough to keep windows open during the day.

I could live in this weather forever, thankyouverymuch. I wish this on everyone. Well, everyone who detests the heat and humidity as much as I do. And I know you are one of them! :-)

>186 jessibud2: I am indeed one of them, and think this is just divinely delicious. I'm sure that somehow or another the space-stork got discombobulated and left me on the wrong planet. I detest all these tacky shouty verminacious critters, and crave to be among my own again.

>183 richardderus: I had the great fortune to meet TK a couple times when I went to hear him speak (he was an invited lecturer at the university here and his son lives here). Such a great fellow ~ thoughtful, articulate, kind but doesn't suffer fool-politicians gladly!
If only the people who can enact change at the Federal level would listen, I am confident they would have the path laid out to resolve so many Indigenous issues.

As for my reading TK's work, The Truth About Stories is a compilation of his Massey Lecture (2003). I'm just a little way into the book so far, and already very engaged in his premise.

I've read The Inconvenient Indian and a few of mystery novels (pen name, Hartley GoodWeather). His children's book, A Coyote Solstice Tale is very amusing - haven't yet gotten into any of the other coyote books. Can't say I'm much of a fan of the DreadfulWater Mysteries. I didn't review any of his mysteries on LT, but I guess at the time I was reading them, I just reviewed books physically on my bookshelves.

I think folks who are reading the antiracist literature at this time would find Thomas' Inconvenient Indian good reading (peek at what I had to say in my review, posted June 3, 2018). Caveat: the narrative was rather overwhelming in regard to the extensive historical recitation. One can skim a bit and focus on the message, hey? Oh yes ~the re-released book has wonderful photographs, taken by TK, so go for that edition.

>188 SandyAMcPherson: I've wishlisted the 2017 Kindle edition, thanks for the tip!

Happy weekend ahead.

>135 richardderus: *Joining the party*

>136 richardderus: Belated happy birthday!

Heh. Time to party! Thanks.

2020 if it had a face.

Have you tried the Pirate Treasure Hunt yet, Richard?

>177 richardderus: Since I loved both books cited (and am still thanking you for pointing me to Montana 1948, The Long Dry is going on the WL immediately.

Happy Belated Birthday, my Dear Young Man. I hope the upcoming 360 or so is better than the previous.

>192 richardderus: Exactly

>193 ronincats: Hi Roni...no, I'm usually unsuccessful at those, I fear, so I just don't anymore. Was it a good one?

>194 Matke: Hi Gail! That's great, I think you'll like The Long Dry. And I'm ever so pleased Montana 1948 made another convert.

I'm no longer making predictions, as Steve said to me earlier...the last one was that 2019 had to be worse than 2020, and we see how that worked out.

>195 richardderus: I don't know if it's a good hunt or not, but it's the most difficult one for me so far. I guess pirates aren't my thing.

>193 ronincats: >195 richardderus: Really? I would think it would be a walkover for you with your bookish knowledge. Is it the poetry that stumps you?

>196 quondame: I'm uninterested in most things pirate, except Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. Apart from that ~meh~

>197 humouress: Didn't know there was poetry, but that would've cased me to stalk away offended. There were probably c-a-t-s as well.

But the real issue for me is impatience. "Oh whatever" is where I get to pretty fast.

Good morning, RD, and a happy Sunday to you, as much as is possible in this annus horribilis.

*smooch*

>199 karenmarie: Thank you, Horrible, and the same back at'cha.

*smooch*

Hope you're having a good weekend, Richard.

>161 richardderus: Another great review, and I'd never heard of the recit subgenre before. The Long Dry sounds good, too.

>192 richardderus: That's a scared "yes" from me.

>201 jnwelch: As good as can be expected, I suppose. Lovely weather we're having, he said without a trace of irony.

Thanks re: reviews. The best books can be the toughest to review, but these two were easier most.

*snerk* Yeup.

Well, it's still your birthday month, so



Happy Birthday! What, are you like 43 now? Smooch.

>203 Berly: Forty-three! Haw. Eyes out of the mirror, m'love, I'm sixty-one now and perfectly content to be so.

I **adore** my cupcake! Glad it's not a whole cake, I'd have to make a stab at eating it all and frankly them days is gone.

>204 richardderus: I'm only 5 behind ya, so my eyes were not in the mirror. LOL

And, yes, not much guilt in a cupcake. : )

>205 Berly: Of course, age is but a number, but you've always looked like you're twenty years behind the calendar and I, for one, resent this unfair genetic superiority. Bitterly.

*smooch*

>196 quondame: agree that the Pirate Hunt is the hardest hunt i have tackled on LT

>198 richardderus: Hah! I like treasure hunts though I don't really like pirate stuff at all, especially the romanticized 17th cent. Caribbean stuff I grew up on. When a favorite author, say Gene Wolfe or Tim Powers, takes them on I'll join the voyage though.

>207 magicians_nephew: :-)

>208 quondame: It's good to have standards.

One day I'll try it out.

>177 richardderus: Got me with that one, Richard. Adding it to the wish list with note that you recommended it highly. The comparison to Montana 1948 is a compelling one; I admit that I still need to "get to" Mrs. Dalloway.

And >125 richardderus: Oh my! I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf looks delightful and I love the title because, well, yes.

Sunday drop-by *smooch*, Richard!

Happy Monday, Richard!

>210 EBT1002: Well, don't rush Ellen. Mrs Dalloway is a wonderful book, not one to sigh and plop into a chair to pick up in a fog of Duty. Try it in spring with all that floral excess around?

Like any of us are guiltless of that judgmental behavior....

>211 ronincats: Thanks, Roni! *smooch*

>212 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, and to you as well.

I know you're enjoying this weather as much as I am... *grin*

>214 katiekrug: It's GLO*RI*OUS* today, isn't it? I love this massively.

Glad to see happy-making weather is in your area. I'm loving today's sunny weather and 18 oC. It's a dry climate (relatively) and a light breeze so I wore my summer-weight jacket when I went for a walk. So very golden out there!

Continuing to alternate reading fantasy and non-fiction this week... plan to post more reviews by the weekend.
BTW, >192 richardderus: was absolutely spot on!

112 Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

Rating: 4.5* of five

Stephen Graham Jones channels his inner brat, not for the first time, and with his usual success. He even mentions in his Acknowledgments that a bestie of his complimented him on his teen-voice...in such a way that he couldn't quite tell if it was a compliment. Of course it was, those are the best kind.

You don't need a book report from me, read the publisher's synopsis. So while Sawyer is caught in the nightmare of this book's reality, the thing that I loved was how often Author Stephen made my mouth-corners lift and little strangled brays of grudging laughter come out of my throat. I could follow every step of this unfolding tragedy, and there were many because, comme d'habitude, Author Stephen uses this tale to write multiple stories with intersecting messages and lessons that you can totally ignore if you want. Like the best horror/slasher/ZOMG reads, this book delivers Thoughts on America with its hijinks. I can't abide pointless murdery crap. This is NOT that.

Everything about this read was satisfying. I understand why Sawyer was so screwed up and so scared. I get the point of a smart kid being alienated by the creepy way his world works and how easy it is to find solutions in Fantasyland. After all, religious people do it all the time.

The ending is a kick in the balls, a cry of desperation, a moment of pure need unmet. How much better can a story get?

>216 SandyAMcPherson: Wasn't that image just *perfect*? I am reveling in my coolth, since it lasts such a brief moment before biting wintertime winds arrive. I don't mind those nearly as much as summer heat, though.

"This usually fixes things."
Navied Mahdavian, The New Yorker, 21 September 2020

For everyone who, like me, was eager for more from P. Djèlí Clark's alt-Cairo (The Haunting of Tram Car 015), there is excellent news: A Master of Djinn is coming 11 May 2021! AND it's a full-length novel!

>220 richardderus: That's something to look forward to!

>221 quondame: Ain't it? I'm very excited. I need to write my review of Ring Shout, I guess....

>206 richardderus: >219 richardderus:
(How old do I look now?)

>217 richardderus: Excellent write up!

>217 richardderus: I second Kim’s words.

And a good morning to you, Richard. It’s the second day I’ve been able to have the windows and sliding glass door open when I got up. Glorious indeed!

I hope your day goes well.

'Morning, RD! It's downright cold here, 46F outside, and 62F in the Sunroom before I put the propane heater on. It will warm up to 72F, so we'll be able to sit on the porch and socialize with some old friends who are stopping by on their way back home to Tennessee.

I hope you have a good day.

>219 richardderus: You can have my share of the Ranch dressing - can't abide the stuff.

*smooch*

>219 richardderus: I don't like Ranch dressing either.

And confession - I didn't "get" the cartoon. Was it an in "Ranch" joke?

>223 Berly: Heh, barely legal as always. *sigh*

>224 Matke: Thank you, Gail, I hope my day goes well as well. The transition to fall was, um, abrupt, but I do not care.

>223 Berly:, >224 Matke: Thanks, y'all! I really like this young guy's teenagers...and how often have you heard me say anything like that?!...because they're so definitively abnormal. Reading about typical teens with typical problems makes me homicidal.

>225 karenmarie: Gorgeous gorgeous weather, and so glad that it came at last. How nice to be able to meet up with your friends! The weather couldn't've cooperated at a better moment.

>225 karenmarie:, >226 SandyAMcPherson: I don't much care for Ranch either, except as pizza or veggie dip once in a while. Or tuna-salad binder, if there's no good mayo around.

And Sandy, the joke isn't so much "in" as "American." The knock on us is that we drench everything in either ketchup or Ranch dressing so we don't have to taste how terrible our cooking is. So gawd is "fixing" the awful state of the world with a flood...of Ranch!

Ha? Haha? See, it's...
...
...just a joke. Don't give it any more thought.

113 The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

THIS BOOK WAS A SURPRISE GIFT FROM AN OLD FRIEND. THANKS NORA!

My Review: I am defective. There are so many good lines in this book, aperçus and aphorisms and nostrums for your soul, and they're just terrific!

“Sometimes our prejudices color our thoughts when we least expect them to. If we can recognize that, and learn from it, we can become better people.”
–and–
“Just because you don’t experience prejudice in your everyday doesn’t stop it from existing for the rest of us.”
–and–
“Your voice is a weapon. Never forget that.”

See? That's quality stuff right there! Author Klune makes sense, and aims it at the vulnerable, the different, the othered-by-the-mobs. I laud this, I support his aims and his aim. Author Klune is very well-thought-of in the QUILTBAG writing community, deservedly so, and is always able to deliver a quality story that hits the proper beats, satisfies the story-hunger we all have as humans, and makes the very best out of his queer cast's longings. He does it again here! I promise you, if you're in the mood for a feel-good story of genuine lovingkindness defeating po-faced meanness, you have come to the right place.

But I don't want to read it. I've stopped and started and stopped and started and, frankly, I just can't. I read the book in four months. It can take a day to read a 400pp novel I'm really into.

Four months.

I don't want to read about kids. I don't care about adults who rescue kids...I think I might resent the numerous adults in my own life whose actions were the opposite of saving me...but whatever deep psychological things the book smacks into smarting, I just didn't enjoy reading it.

I hope you will, though.

Listen to Author Kerri Arsenault in conversation with Andrew Keen about Mill Town and the inexcusable tragedy of Mexico, Maine: https://lithub.com/a-decaying-toxic-river-runs-through-it-on-mill-towns-and-popu...

>229 richardderus: Good book at the wrong time is such a depressing feeling. I am looking forward to my turn with this one, which I already have on hold at the library. *hugs*

>226 SandyAMcPherson: I love Ranch dressing, but no, not as much as all that! And I also didn't get the cartoon, though it seems whimsical.

>231 MickyFine: It is never going to be time for me & YA. All those Lessons and all that "you, too, matter" make me impatient. No you don't; your friends will drift away; your asshole relatives will be assholes until one of you dies; your unique talent will not make you popular/rich/independent.

And quit telling them it will, because unmeetable expectations are as lacerating as the rage and hate suffusing the adult world.

>232 quondame: heh

>232 quondame: It's awesome to admit when one doesn't understand a joke that "everyone" else seems to "get" (or at least know sort of what the point is).
I'm glad we can say so and no-one sneers at us. Isn't it a great joy to *not* have that young-person angst anymore? Or was that just me who didn't fit in?

>234 SandyAMcPherson: +1, Sandy

>234 SandyAMcPherson: I'm totally with you on jettisoning the young person angst, but boy could I use the young person body.

>236 quondame: Yeah, do I ever "get" that one!

I would like a new skeleton with no arthritis or osteoporosis, if anyone is handing out replacement parts.
Pretty please?

>2237 My sister just verified that there is a mutation she and I probably inherited from my mother that causes our bones to be heavy and our lipids - or at least one of them - to be high. We always noticed that people underestimated our weight, or did, as no one bothers estimating past obese in my case.

Good morning, RDear, and happy humpday to you.

>229 richardderus: No. Just no.

>233 richardderus: your asshole relatives will be assholes until one of you dies At least my asshole relative is only by marriage, and I plan on outliving him by decades.

But on the bright side, books, coffee, new books from the library, and a quiet house.

*smooch*

>236 quondame:, >237 SandyAMcPherson:, >238 quondame: :-)

>239 karenmarie: I don't think you're really going to enjoy the Klune, dearest, but might you be responding to >230 richardderus: the Arsenault? I actively discourage you from picking that book up. You would not benefit from its cynicism-reinforcing narrative.

Happy quiet coffee-and-book fest! *smooch*

I'm definitely responding to the Klune. a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist.

I'm already not interested in Mill Town, simply because I've read so much muckraking journalism and exposés over the years that I'm frankly outraged out on that front. Sad, but there it is.

Coffee, book, and, unfortunately, cookie fest. I need to tape my mouth shut.

>241 karenmarie: Heh, OIC

Confession time: I ate a 10.6-ounce box of peanut butter-pecan cookies for breakfast.

I was going to have four.

Um. Well, I did give myself permission to enjoy breakfast today, so I guess this isn't a *huge* surprise.

Hi RD, Great batch of reviews since my last visit. You got me with >161 richardderus:. I will be keeping an eye out for Djaout's book(s).

Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday!

>243 lkernagh: Thank you, Lori, and you do as well.

I'm planning on reading the TJ Klune one of these days, but atm my library stack is glaring at me for even typing this.

*smooch*

Good morning, cookie monster! Yum to PB&P cookies.

It's overcast here today, was drizzling earlier. I'm enjoying the 9th and most recent in the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series by Julia Spencer-Fleming.

*smooch*

114 Wait for Night by Stephen Graham Jones

Rating: 4* of five

...I approached the root pan. It was taller than me by half. This tree had been standing for…a hundred years? At least. Meaning this skeleton was older than that by a little bit.

A dollar sign ka-chinged distantly in my head, and when I centered on it the slot machine of my hopes opened, clattering possibility down into my throat.

Greed is a bastard, isn't it. Blood-price to pay for being greedy changes with the era, but the fact is that you're going to pay when you try to make money off the dead.

Chessup, the latest of Author Stephen's inept, greedy fools, pays a heavier price than usual but gets something I think serious readers everywhere long for in return. All the books I could finally read...and Chessup'll watch TV and drink! Such a waste.

This round goes to Burned Dan. Maybe Julian will have to reckon with Chessup next one. As always, I got so much more from Author Stephen than he had to give. The man's generous like that.

Another Tor Short so it's free to read.

>245 bell7: Oh, those possessive library books! Such grumpy things.

>246 karenmarie: Hey there Horrible! Yeah, that binge was a surprise, and not to be repeated. Deliberately, anyway, and since I shop for myself I can prevent it by not buying more cookies.

'Morning, RD. It's raining here. Coffee in hand, I'm going to exit stage right after a few posts and read. I'm barely awake...

I hope you have a good day.

>249 karenmarie: Hi, Horrible, have a happy, if heavy-lidded, day of Frys.

I'll settle for "not catastrophic."

Quiet day around here, I see. Whatcha ben doin'?

>251 laytonwoman3rd: Hi Linda3rd, nothing much. I'm still above ground, still hate 45, y'know.

It's a leper-colony day. (As in, "do I have to go to a leper colony for a minute's peace?!")

Hi, Richard! Just stopping by to see how you're doing. Since you are wanting peace, I won't stay to disturb it, but wanted you to know I am thinking of you. *hugs*

*smooch*

>253 Storeetllr: Hi Mary! No worries about disturbing the peach, the coup-planning treasonous scum currently squatting on pricey public land has ruined all hope of peace for me.

>254 karenmarie: *smooch*

Watched GBBS last night. I don't have a favorite yet, but The Wayne likes Lottie ;-)

>256 katiekrug: Heh, I'll bet he does!

I've a small secret fondness for Mak, myownself; he's such a thinker.

And the first elimination? TOTALLY agree. Copied from Nadiya, no less, flavors and colors and all! That Battenberg looked *vile*, didn't it?

TBH, all Battenbergs look terrible to me. I LOATHE marzipan.

TW and I couldn't stop laughing at some of the busts in the showstopper. Some valiant efforts, but....

With ya on the marzipan...which was why I first noticed Mak, he made his out of pistachios. Which is scrummy. (So is pecan-based marzipan with butter-pecan flavored buttercream under it.)

Oh dear, Freddy Mercury...and Ziggy Stardust gave me nightmares.

And poor Lupita Nyong'o!

*gasp*

-Carolina Chickadee (NMP)

Happy Sunday, RD! The Bird Dude returns. As I am sure you could tell by my posts, we had a fine trip. Spent 4 nights in 4 different states. Nice spending time with my daughter and my siblings. I adore this part of the country, as long as I steer clear of the trashy, touristy areas. The birding was best in SC, when I could do my solo rambles daily.

I am LOVING Tiny Love! 300 pages in. Yes, every story is about drunken misfits, doing dumb shit, but you can tell these are his peeps and he knows them well.

Happy Sunday, Richard! *smooch*

>262 msf59: It's a wonderful thing to have a great memory made in this less-than-stellar time. One thing the South does well is give you space and quietness.

Welcome, my little chickadee!

>263 bell7: Thank you, Mary, and a fun, busy week ahead! *smooch*

>225 karenmarie: Right there with you.

You and Katie can send me ALL the marzipan. (Ouch! Hey! I didn't mean you should THROW it at me!) *smooches*

>265 Storeetllr: Here ya go!

A rose-and-pistachio battenberg, enrobed in just ***oodles*** of yechhh marzipan! *shudder*

>219 richardderus: Oh my goodness, that is hilarious.

Hi Richard!

'Morning, RichardDear. I hope you have a reading-filled escapist sort of Monday, although the NYTimes' Trump tax revelations are scrumptious and I hope they sway the election in a decisive enough manner to put an intelligent non-traitorous adult in the White House.

I find cooking elimination shows stressful to watch.

>265 Storeetllr: We may be the only two 75ers who don't like Ranch dressing, Mary. I'd never heard of it before I moved to NC, although it was first commercialized in my home state of CA. One of my daughter's friends asked for Ranch to go with the carrot sticks I gave the kids for a play date in about 1999 and I was nonplussed. And Ranch-less. I have been known to provide Ranch when we have dinner guests and I'm serving salad, but other than that, just no.

>266 richardderus: Marzipan is wretched stuff. Battenberg cake? To me battenberg is lace. I have many fine example of it, inherited from various members of my husband's family.

>267 EBT1002: I laughed until I stopped! Happy new week.

>268 karenmarie: Lace, marzipan-polluted cake...it's all just yuck. Boo battenberg! AND it's the UK Royals' last name, or was until the whomped up "Mountbatten" to disguise their Krautly roots during WWI.

Ranch *comes*from*SoCal* and you'd never encountered it?! How? The little Hidden Valley herb-blend packets were everywhere (except y'all's house, I guess) and were deliciously repurposed for roasted potatoes and fried chicken coatings. The dressing's okay, only not on salads please because ew. I don't mind green goddess dressing, but the general run of "creamy" salad dressings isn't much to my taste.

Cheeto Benito, when it bothered to pay tax at all, paid less in total than the ordinary Murrukun did in sales tax on their lattes. That *has* to sink in on the reachable-by-greed.

Stressful? And you watch football?! We have wildly different ideas of stressful. Young, largely (!) Black, men get repeated closed-head injuries for the thrills of the fans...THAT is my idea of horribly stressful.

>266 richardderus: Oh! That looks AMAZING! I kind of like my marzipan plain, tho I'd eat that cake if offered it. There's a little chocolate shoppe in downtown Nyack where they make little marzipan fruits, some dipped in chocolate and others plain. As a special treat earlier this year - maybe for mother's day or the like - my daughter got me three of the little fruits sans chocolate. It was sooo good!

>268 karenmarie: >269 richardderus: Yeah, ranch is an acquired taste, I guess. I've tried it, not a huge fan, but it's okay with wings. My daughter (child of the 80s that she is) loves it on pretty much everything dippable.

I haven't seen the news about Drumpf's taxes yet. I'll be checking it out as soon as I get off LT. My opinion, tho, is his cult members will say he's so smart for figuring out a way to avoid paying tax. I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns for giving us the Orange Slug. (Yes, I am still bitter about '16.) Him I simply loathe.

Happens that a friend of mine once had a side hustle of jumping out of cakes for men's parties.

The cakes were often made of martzipan and pretty well glazed so that my friend had to sometimes really put her back into it to smash through the top and jump out as per her assignment.

I tell you hearing her talk about it put me off marzipan for life.

>270 Storeetllr: The news might spell bigger trouble for Cheeto Benito than he expects.

I hope.

>271 magicians_nephew: Marzipan! That really surprises me. I'd expect it to be fondant (soft, gooshy, but holds its shape well) or royal icing (brittle, easy to crack, colors very easily). Plus marzipan is really expensive. But hey, the cake-buyer dictates.

I found your catthulu!

>268 karenmarie: and >265 Storeetllr: Y'alls missed >226 SandyAMcPherson:! (wrt Ranch...)

This Ranch discussion is to distract me from getting too wound up about "Cheeto Benito's" tax trouble. I hope it's like lead boots for the guy.

Oh and don't anyone miss out on >271 magicians_nephew:. Talk about an hilarious anecdote, Jim.

>273 quondame: Love!

Never had any Battenberg cake, have seen the lace, and yes, it's first and foremost a place. A place from whence came the Georges. Don't know that I've had any marzipan ever either.

>273 quondame: Wonderful! Now is that going to make Richard love cats or hate octopi?

And no Bake Off talk, please. I'm still waiting for news of when we get the new series on cable - they've been doing reruns of the old series of GBBO and G Australian BO on BBC World that I still watch avidly. I'm sure I could find some fuzzy, shaky pirated episodes on YouTube but that's not how I usually roll. No fair; I want my Bake Off.

‘Morning, RD.

>269 richardderus: The ‘English’ monarchs are from the German House Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Elizabeth II’s husband is a Mountbatten, and was born a Greek and Danish Prince. Their rebranding was a phenomenal PR coup.

We do watch football. It’s a violent sport played by violent men. There is no real excuse for me. 29 years of marriage has taken a non-sports woman and turned her into a Panthers fan. Sigh.

>273 quondame: REVOLTING

*shudder*

Is this how you people feel about octopuses? That gut-wrenching feeling of *wrongness* and evil? Cuz that's the vibe that thing's givin' off....

>274 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! *smooch*

>275 ronincats: Oh, you'd remember marzipan if you'd had it. In Kansas it'd be in German or Norwegian ethnic desserts. It isn't a flavor one overlooks....

*I* like this guy:


>276 humouress: What inhumane torment is this?! Has Channel 4 simply abandoned you lot there in the Sweaty Pits Capital of the Universe? I suppose they imagine there's no need to tell people who live in 40C/100% humidity climes about hearty, sugary baked goods...but it's still cruel.

Spoiler tags will be employed.

>277 karenmarie: Happy Tuesday, Horrible. Philip's enmity towards the old Queen was down to her seriously vicious opposition to every single thing he ever wanted to do. She's the one who, apparently, seeded the slur "Phil the Greek" in the media (carefully concealing her enmity *just*enough* was a specialty of hers...see "the Duchess of Windsor").

As the ancient Chinese said, "we are all as Heaven made us." *smooch*

Koren's 5 Oct 20 cartoon masterwork. Heh. Suddenly I want a portcullis. And a catapult.

Good Tuesday, Richard!

>274 SandyAMcPherson: Hi, Sandy! I think that cartoon could be titled "ranch makes everything taste better," or something like that. I disagree except wrt (I LIKE that shorthand) wings.

I for one am highly pleased with the disclosure of Drumpf's tax woes. The implications, if handled correctly by the Dems, could be deadly to Drumpf and his entire gang. (Key words: If handled correctly by the Dems.)

>278 richardderus: LOVE the skeletal octopus. Perfect for Halloween.

>280 Storeetllr: Isn't that skulltopus wonderful? I'm so pleased to see mass-market merch made with my belovèd Tentacled Americans as their theme.

The problem with trusting the dems to fight a good fight is how wussy they are when it comes to coming out swinging. Obama did nothing aggressive in eight years and got less done than he could have with some nasty bare-knuckles brawling.

We need LBJ right now.

I don't think Trump's taxes are a home run. What IS a home run (or should be if more Americans had a f*cking brain) is the debt and the national security threat that poses.

When I got my super-duper low level security clearance (which still involved a field investigation by the FBI), I had to provide all sorts of documentation about my debt (I was 22 - it was student loans and a credit card I had to use when my work/study job didn't cover everything), and they seemed way more interested in that than in (hypothetically speaking, you understand) any marijuana use I may have admitted to...

Sad to say, the *real* threat you've identified will swish right past most people. "Everybody has debt," they'll say.

It's a much much much bigger problem than just Atgolf Twitler, of course. He's merely the one whose debt's due dates can be used to upend our entire country.

It's not like I don't think the country needs upending, mind, it's that the *direction* matters more to me than the upheaval and its many inevitable casualties and tragedies. I fully expect to be one of the casualties, disabled old and dependent on the RoI of my taxes; if I'm going to suffer I do NOT want it to be for the greater aggrandizement of Zuck et alii but for their collective downfall. Or at the very least extremely painful humbling.

I almost died laughing at Atgolf Twitler.

>284 katiekrug: I'm sure it's not original to me, but it makes me laugh too. I wish I could be so amused at the actual being.

>284 katiekrug: Hi Katie, Definitely a great 'play on words' name. I laffed too.

Note re the Marzipan commentary:
back in the day (when living in the Middle East), we ate a baklava-type dessert made with an almond paste preparation ~ so delicious. It was made from crushed almonds and since they were so freshly harvested (I surmise), they made the most amazing layer in a desert. I think the other aspect was that honey (very moderately) was used instead of sugar.
I also adored almond paste cookies from the Chinese bakery on Keefer Street in Vancouver. The bakery is still there, but with a different name now (139 Keefer St), in case you LM peeps want to check it out.

'Morning, RDear.

I agree about needing LBJ right about now.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Reeling from last night’s shit show.

But I hope your day is good, Young Man.

Oh! I got up this am to a bright and breezy 66F.

It was...a tiny bit chilly but oh so welcome

>286 SandyAMcPherson: Almond paste *ptooptoo* is, I think, the source of my discontent with marzipan. Roasted almonds coated in spicy salty stuff are delightful, and then there's the paste which, against all laws of physics as I understand them, turns into foul-tasting, poisonously sweet glop. I do like "marzipan" made from pistachios or pecans, though, so it's not the sweetness and texture per se that offend me mightily.

*shrug* Go know from these weirdnesses.

>287 karenmarie: *smooch* So, you know where there's a crude, rude, effective politician stashed away? Looked in your closets, under the doormat, on the top shelf in the garage? Cuz we *really* need one now.

>288 Matke: I didn't watch it. I don't want to imagine it.

Can I go back to the good timeline now?

It's windy and cool and sunny here today, so I am most gruntled and kempt.
***
Well. THAT was exhilarating! In the midst of my morning Zoom with Rob, *BAM*
Blank black screen.

The wi-fi went off.

Of course there are backups and we weren't done talking, but he was a tiny bit miffed as he thought I cut us off! After laughing myself into a sore belly, I reminded him that I'm not a slammer I'm a seether and a sniper.

Long silence.

"You scare me a little."

Heh. Best to keep 'em on their toes.

So I read 55% of Boyfriend Material and y'all! This is hiLARious stuff. I have laughed and laughed and grinned and texted Rob about 500 lines that made me go, "wooooow" so you know I am really into it.

115 Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

So it's sweet & cute & sneakily hilarious...but really, a 4.75* read for me.

I'm about done with 2020 and its shuddering horrors. I opened this library book to get away from nastiness and grimness. It was a pretty good decision. I slept four hours & even dreamed of these two. The pace dragged twice, once in the Cadwallader Club, once in Milton Keynes, but what a joyous rollicking ride it was getting there then getting away.

I loved laughing so hard it hurt, I loved misting up because the foolish boys couldn't find their common sense with both hands, and mostly I loved and treasured my time away from reality and its ugliness.

While there was, thankfully!, no redemption for the dreadful, awful people here, there was also a bit more "aren't men dumb, when they aren't awful" stuff that didn't ring true to the genre of M/M romance. Not confined to the screwed-up main characters, I mean, that's the entire joke of the book so no downs on that. The mens' fathers, for example, were insensitive boorish users. Yes, one of the mothers was truly ghastly and irredeemable too. But the arch-twit Alex, the caricature hair-trigger Welshman, the delightfully dotty old Earl, well...it felt like there was a really short supply of nuance outside the PoV couple.

But you know what? I laughed so hard it hurt more than once, and if these absurd wankers come around again I will definitely read their further fuck-ups with great hopes and expectations. This is a solid hit. Someone give it to Henry Cavill and tell him to study up on Oliver.

Just dropping by to say hello.

>290 richardderus: Glad that this brought you fits of laughter! We all need that in this day and age :)

>289 richardderus: (wrt#286), just a thought and then I'll quit blabbing about almonds: your dislike is similar to my reaction to walnuts. I know, I know, shocking isn't it?

Turned out that I am actually quite allergic to this specific tree nut (pistachios and almonds too, so I don't eat any of these, in any form). I can eat pecans and hazelnuts just fine, though.

Just saying' (in case you encounter problems sometime). Gotta keep ya' safe and healthy, hey?

>278 richardderus: That's sweet of you, but no need to employ spoiler tags - I'm sure I'll have forgotten what you wrote by the time the programme comes around to us. Carry on discussing the GBBO and I shall live vicariously.

That's a cute skulltopus although he does look a bit miffed too.

'Morning, RD. I wish you another day of being gruntled and kempt.

not a slammer I'm a seether and a sniper.. Me, too. Passive-aggressive to the core.

*smooch*

>291 figsfromthistle: *smooch* Happy to see you here!

>292 SandyAMcPherson: I'm no fan of the walnut either, Sandy, but I don't shrink from it as Dracula from a crucifix (which, TBH, I've always thought was a demonstration of the Count's frugality...what a waste of all that yummy blood! but I digress). The walnut merely does not head my list of nut choices.

As of today, I have no signs of nut allergies (blessedly) and hope this condition will be life-long.

>293 humouress: Doesn't he look narked? It's appropriate to the season, I suppose, but it gives me pause...what the HECK could annoy a skulltopus?!

>294 karenmarie: And, bless their cotton socks, the targets never have good enough memories to even attempt a (successful) rebuttal.

Spend a happy Thursday! *smooch*

>289 richardderus: >294 karenmarie: Count me in too.

>295 richardderus: You could experiment and get back to us. You know, progressively annoy him a bit more until you find out ...

Please sign me up for the "I don't like ranch dressing" club. I'd be happy to be the A-V guy, as long as we don't show ranch dressing.

>279 richardderus: Funny, but I wish he had "trebuchet" in there. Love that word.

Walnuts are fine by me. A little bland, but I like them in yogurt. Pecans would likely be my #1.

>296 humouress: I don't think "testing a skulltopus's patience" is something I much want to do...I grew up reading Cthulhu stories....

>297 jnwelch: It's just so...blah. I mean, the stuff one made from the packets wasn't blah, but the lettuce-spoodge from a bottle is plain ol' plain and deeply uninteresting.

"Trebuchet" is a much much more delightful-to-say word, isn't it. I wonder why it lost out to "catapult."

To me, walnuts taste spoiled. Like fungus grew in the wrinkles before they got cracked.

>298 richardderus: Walnuts taste spoiled because they are stale. The oils have oxidised and become like rancid fish oils or deep-fryer fat that is loooong past its best by date.
Oh! Sorry, I said I wasn't going to be blabby on the nut topic, although that was about (whisper) almonds.

>278 richardderus: Alas for the arthritic skulltopus unable to enjoy boneless contortions of his flabbier friends, corralled in cages they effortlessly escape. I pity the poor dear.

3Q20. Forty reads completed and reported for the quarter; two five-star novels read (The Long Dry and The Mercy Seat), and I five-starred I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf because really? How could I not with that title and subject matter?

I re-read two five-star stories, I Stand Here Ironing and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. They are both still exemplars of excellent observation and elucidation, domestic and societal by turns, each making its quiet way down into the core of one's ongoing reading experience. I find their echoes in so many "new" or new-to-me voices.

I have two book reviews on submission, so I won't count them as reads until they're either rejected and I put them on my blog, or accepted. I had to abandon a tree-book read, The Perfect Fascist, because in a month I was able to read 47pp of 528pp. I asked for a Kindle file and was informed no such accommodation would be made...not so long ago, before the latest round of gout-crystal formation, I asked and asked for tree books and was offered Kindle files! Crazy times.

Many very good reads, like Dr. Mary Trump's book about her nightmare family, were simply not tippy-tippy-top quality writing or storytelling. I am not about to dis anyone for needing less challenging reading, considering how much of it I hoovered up. But I was stalled in many superior reads because the world today is for stepped-in dog crap, and I was not prepared to do any heavy thinking.

EXCEPT my two five-star novels, one about capital punishment and one about the slow, sad decline of Life into cold lifelessness. I urge you to read those books, read my reviews to see why I think you should, and to support a world where art is possible by voting on 3 November 2020.