richardderus's fifth 2021 thread

est réservée

In 2021, I stated a goal of posting 15 book reviews a month on my blog. This year's total of 180 (there are a lot of individual stories that don't have entries in the LT database so I didn't post them here; I need to do more to sync the data this year) reads shows it's doable, and I've done better than that in the past.

I've long 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 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

First five reviews? 1st 2021 thread..

Reviews 6 all the way through 25 can be viewed in the thread to which I have posted a link at left.

The 26th through 36th reviews occupy thread three.

37th through 44th reviews belong where they are.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

45 How Much of These Hills is Gold didn't please me, post 39.

46 How to be Both maundered, post 121.

47 Rebel: An Outlaw Story delighted, post 171.

48 Forget the Alamo! was okay, post 214.

49 Persephone Station triumphed, post 224.

50 Blue Eyes, Black Hair was weird but good, post 226.

51 The Malady of Death struck a sour note , post 226.

52 The Sailor from Gibraltar blew me off course, post 227.

53 The Little Horses of Tarquinia shocked me, post 227.

54 Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less frustrated me, post 244.

55 The Queens of Animation enlightened me, post 259.

56 Cry of Murder on Broadway had its problems, post 272.

57 Unlikely Angel delighted!, post 277.

58 The Delicate Ape surprised, post 297.

2020's five-star or damn-near five-star reviews totaled 46. Almost half were short stories and/or series reads. While a lot of authors saw their book launches rescheduled, publishers canceled their tours, and everyone was hugely distracted by the nightmare of COVID-19 (I had it, you do not want it), no one can fault the astoundingly wonderful literature we got this year. My own annual six-stars-of-five read was Zaina Arafat's extraordinary debut novel YOU EXIST TOO MUCH (review lives here), a thirtysomething Palestinian woman telling me my life, my family, my very experience of relationships of all sorts. I cannot stress enough to you, this is the book you need to read in 2021. A sixtysomething man is here, in your email/feed, saying: This is the power. This is the glory. The writing I look for, the read I long to find, and all of it delivered in a young woman's debut novel. This is as good an omen for the Great Conjunction's power being bent to the positive outcomes as any I've seen.

In 2020, I posted over 180 reviews here. In 2021, my goals are: –to post 150 reviews on my blog
–to post at least 99 three-sentence Burgoines
–to complete at least 190 total reviews

Most important to me is to report on DRCs I don't care enough about to review at my usual level. I don't want to keep just leaving them unacknowledged. There are publishers who want to see a solid, positive relationship between DRCs granted and reviews posted, and I do not blame them a bit.

Ask and ye shall receive! Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >7 richardderus: below.

I stole this from PC's thread. I like these prompts!
***
1. Name any book you read at any time that was published in the year you turned 18:
Faggots by Larry Kramer
2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long:
The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream
by Michael Wood
3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover?
Wasps' Nest by Agatha Christie
4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?)
The Perfect Fascist by Victoria de Grazia; paper book of 512pp, can't hold it
5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you?
Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump
6. Name the book that read either this year or last year that takes place geographically closest to where you live? How close would you estimate it was?
The Trump book; set in Queens and the Hamptons, so just down the road a piece
7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read?
The last successful rebellion on US soil and caffeine
8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book?
The Only Good Indians, a horror novel that's really, really good
9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it?
Restored, a Regency-era romantic historical novel about men in their 40s seizing their second chance at luuuv
10. Name a book you read that led you to specifically to read another book (and what was the other book, and what was the connection)
Potiki, which Kerry Aluf gave me; led me to read The Uncle's Story by Witi Ihimaera
11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with.
P. Djeli Clark
12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year?
Hawaii and PNW
13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)?
The Fighting Bunch; WWII
14. What was the last book you acquired or borrowed based on an LTer’s review or casual recommendation? And who was the LTer, if you care to say.
There isn't enough space for all the book-bullets y'all careless, inconsiderate-of-my-poverty fiends pepper me with
15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way?
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason
16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall?
Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky by David Connerly Nahm
17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere?
Red Heir by Lisa Henry
18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover?
please don't ask me this
19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die?
Agatha Christie, 1976
20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read?
good goddesses, I don't remember...Goodnight Moon to my daughter?
21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read?
Poirot by Dame Ags
22. What was the shortest book of any kind you’ve read so far this year?
The World Well Lost, ~28pp
23. Name the last book that you struggled with (and what do you think was behind the struggle?)
Lon Chaney Speaks, because I really, really don't like comic books
24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT?
see #23
25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics)
see #23
I liked Sandy's Bonus Question for the meme above, so I adopted it:

26. What is the title and year of the oldest book you have reviewed on LT in 2020? (modification in itals)
The Sittaford Mystery by Dame Aggie, 1931.

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 GOON 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
2020 THE NICKEL BOYS - Colson Whitehead

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
2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

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

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think's important and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

The next one? Yes, fine, go right ahead.

Happy new thread, Richard!

Sneaking in while the placeholder posts are still in place. And they're just as adorable as you, RDear. *smooch* Happy new one!

Happy new one!

Happy new thread!

>9 ronincats: First past the post!

Congratulations!

>12 drneutron: Thank you, Doc!

>11 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

>10 MickyFine: *smooch* Silver-tongued Canadian, you....

FEBRUARY IN REVIEW

Sucked. I needed to post 13 reviews, got to 12 here...but only one on my blog. Ew. COVID vaccination, plus some other distractions, made this a terrible month. March needs to be better...I'll need to post sixteen a month instead of thirteen!

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

Good luck posting enough reviews in March.

Happy new one, Richard.

After finishing up Lupin I am going to give good omens a shot prime. I've stutter started the book a couple of times. I guess I have to be content with game in writing the teleplay for the miniseries.

Happy new one, Richard.

After finishing up Lupin, I am going to give good omens a shot on prime. I've stutter started the book a couple of times. I guess I have to be content with game in writing the teleplay for the miniseries.

>18 brodiew2:, 17 Hi Brodie, I hope you'll get the kind of pleasure that I did from Good Omens. It was a hoot!

>16 FAMeulstee: Anita! Thanks...I've got one up on the last thread but I'll need to get more cued up soon.

Thanks for a new thread (that gets me back into the swing).

I agree that February sucked.

But I am getting some reading done. Just began The Splendid and the Vile.

I have successfully navigated here to wish you a happy new one, dear fellow.

Happy new thread Richard!

Happy new thread!

>23 quondame: Thank you, Susan.

>22 humouress: Bless you, La Overkill, for the sins you will no doubt have committed in your Supervillainy.

>21 PaulCranswick: Thanks, PC!

>20 weird_O: Yes indeed, Bill, it was a horrid month for you most of all. The Splendid and the Vile has such a great title, doesn't it? And Larson's a steady hand on the reading tiller.

Have to be fast, no elaborations, just hit the post button! Been a while since I managed first though.

Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread, Richard! *smooch*

>27 bell7: Hiya Mary! *smooch*

>26 SilverWolf28: Thanks, Silver.

>25 ronincats: What a great little room that laundry room is!

Hiya RD.
I always find it a big laugh with the "First Post" thing.
Back in the early days of commenting on Userfriendly (a geeky Vancouver-(BC)-based blog with a comic strip), my elder daughter was a moderator there.
Apparently there was such a pride-of-place to be first, that young geeks would hover on refresh at midnight (Pacific Time) just so they could be at the top.

My amusement is seeing how pervasive this is amongst an older group here (mainly). Maybe no one else finds it funny... and I'm not dissing anyone for hopping into the new threads with delightful alacrity. Just smiling about days gone by really. The website is actually dormant now, although you can still read the old comix.

Cheers.

Happy New thread, Richard!

Happy new thread and happy new month. Hoping March exceed February in all sorts of ways.

‘Morning, RD, and happy new thread!

>15 richardderus: Sorry February was so sucky. Here’s to a better March.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Driving by honking the horn and hollering "Howdy"

Happy new thread, RD! And cheers to a better March. *smooch*

Happy New Thread, Richard. Cold start out there but plenty of blue sky and sunshine. The feeders are hopping too. No birding plans today, but I will get out for a lengthy stroll.

>7 richardderus: I love this. Thanks for sharing.

>35 msf59: Hi Mark! It's a cold one here, too, because of the winds from the sea. Gusty and oh-so-chilly.

It's the gift that keeps on giving, for sure.

>34 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie, it's not like it was a surprise to feel so flattened by the second vaccination but it really was horrible.

>33 magicians_nephew: Ha! Howdy do, Jim.

>32 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible! A better March for us all, says I, distributed equitably as much as possible. Like the checks we should get starting in April.

*smooch*

>31 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen, the same wishes heartily returned to you.

>30 swynn: Thank you, Steve!

>29 SandyAMcPherson: I think it's amusing to most, if not all, my visitors, Sandy. At least I hope it is. Being first at most anything is usually a good thing for others to acknowledge, as it feels like an accomplishment no matter one's age.

I'm not looking for the claim of "first across the Styx," or "first to lose my mind," but there are a lot of firsts left!

And that comic strip's very funny.

>24 richardderus:

45 How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

Rating: 2.5* of five

I think there's bleak, and then there's misery porn. Sam's trick with the half-carrot at the beginning is all I needed to know it's misery porn we're gettin' to here. Gave up at Lucy finding the fingers in the chest and never once looked back.

This quote seems to get a lot of love:

And wasn’t that the real reason for traveling, a reason bigger than poorness and desperation and greed and fury—didn’t they know, low in their bones, that as long as they moved and the land unfurled, that as long as they searched, they would forever be searchers and never quite lost?

It's an excellent sample of tone and style; if you're into it, this book's for you.

From the last thread...I too loved Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and I too liked the first quoted passage in your post. Sad to see that overall her other book disappointed :(

>29 SandyAMcPherson: that is so funny (the hovering to refresh at midnight)- oh for the LT accolade to be so coveted.

>39 richardderus: huh. And the cover was so promising ;)

Happy new thread Richard, dear friend.

>41 johnsimpson: Thank you most kindly, John, and much happiness to you and yours in the renewed lockdown.

>40 LovingLit: The cover's gorgeous! I was only put off by the unrelentingness of the story, and wasn't impressed enough by the writing to bull my way past it.

>38 humouress: :-)

Good morning, RD!

>39 richardderus: Heh. Misery porn. I haven't heard that phrase before. That describes most fiction to me, mysteries/thrillers/suspense and romances excepted because there's usually a happy ending of some sort after the murder and mayhem or the misunderstandings and obstacles to overcome. Must be the reason I rarely read contemporary/literary fiction.

>43 karenmarie: I'm pleased to have introduced a new phrase to you! *smooch*

Have a lovely Humpday, dear Horrible.

Oh yay, ice cream with lunch!

*KOSHER* ice cream, made in accordance with dietary laws therefore with the texture of styrofoam.

*SUGAR FREE*KOSHER* ice cream, made with aspartame.

In other words, unlike the usual fruits we're served as dessert, inedible disgusting wood-chips-have-better-flavor cold drain-plugs.

My joy is unbounded.

>37 richardderus: And that comic strip's very funny
It really is, even though the in-jokes are very dated now...

>46 SandyAMcPherson: I'm pretty sure we're dated as well, so it really doesn't matter too much.

A cold and rainy winter storm here today, Richard. We badly need the rain so it is a good thing. MORE clothing down out of the attic. It is totally ridiculous. I got it organized in the bins that were down, and then started on the wardrobes, and that has flummoxed and kerfluffled it all over again. Should have all the clothes down by the end of the week, though.

>48 ronincats: Wow! That is a blessing of clothes, indeed!

Take care of your back.

>39 richardderus: I think I'll give it 3 stars but love the phrase you have taught me: "misery porn." I'll now be on the lookout for it.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

>45 richardderus: Oh bah humhug.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I hope the week is humming along for you, despite the icky, ice-cream. I plan on getting out for a solo bird outing, for some fresh air and exercise.

>53 msf59: Oh boy, fresh air, exercise, and some birds! I hope it's a lovely outing. Goodness knows something *normal* is a pleasure to be treasured as COVID winds down.

>52 London_StJ: Yeup. It was a true Grinch moment. I was plenty p.o.'d.

>51 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita!

>50 EBT1002: As ever, much more generous and forgiving than I am. I had to drag my rating up from a squeaky-two in order to be fair to the author's genuinely interesting and urgently needed story.

It is, however, still the dreary ashy-gray misery porn sink of tedium that made me so annoyed as well.

'Morning, RDear! Happiest of Thursdays to you. I've got blue skies, birds, coffee, and books.

*smooch*

Another new Thread! Have a Happy one, Richard.

>56 connie53: Hi Connie, and welcome to the new thread.

>55 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible! I got grey skies, dank breezeless blahness, and if there are not-seagulls around they're laying low.

This Twitter thread:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1366449816042102787.html/
is about cartoons and classical music, and it is delightful.

>58 richardderus: Intriguing!

>1 richardderus: Intriguing!

Happy New Thread, Richard. I continue to be glad of your many and varied interests, and erudite wit.

>57 richardderus: - I'll go outside and tell the lovely sunshine we are enjoying to go visit you. xx

>60 katiekrug: pfui
"lovely sunshine"
bah humbug

>59 jnwelch: Hiya Joe, see above for my more mordant moments writ large.

Happy to see you forging into March in a big way, Sir. May March bring you some joy!

I have nothing to say. Having said it, I'll hope to be back sooner rather than later.

Hey there Miss Peggy, happy to see you here...seems to me you've said a gracious plenty, so thanks!

I Ran across this review of an old book of Mama's when cleaning up the jerkishness of a Goodreads troll and realized I never posted it here! Must've been in the dark epoch after I left the goofy garage. Anyway:

The View from Pompey's Head by Hamilton Basso

Rating: 2.5* of five

There are over 400pp of words, more or less elegant, telling this story of snobbery, racism, infidelity, and unhappiness. The prose is mid-century bestseller (forty weeks in 1954 on the New York Times list; finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction) bog-standard stuff, with a very few memorable lines; here's one:

The white man could not accept the Negro as an equal—he simply could not, and yet, since the Negro was walking, talking, living, he could not deny his reality as a human being.

Why I wouldn't rate the book lower is the Southern transplant sent "home" to solve an apparent embezzlement wrote a book as a young scholar called Shinto Traditions in the American South, which is fucking genius and, in fact, needs to be written ASAP.

The 1955 film gets the same 2.5* of five

Go listen to the love theme from the film. It is gorgeous, lush, intense...all the things the film just...isn't. It's beautiful, and curiously empty. But goodness me, what a spectacle!

Hey Riccardo! I'm glad to see you so cheerful and that you enjoyed the ice cream.

Speaking of dated, I saw somewhere that Eddie Murphy is planning another 'Coming to America' film. I thought the first film was when he turned unfunny and a spectacular example of racial/ cultural stereotyping. I wonder why he's thinking of redoing it now - unless he's planning to reverse all that?

Just dropping in a Friday hug :)

Happy Friday, Richard. Just popping in to keep up with your fast moving thread.

Good morning, RD! Happy Friday to you.

Off to a new chiropractor this morning, back to read, putter, and probably make shrimp risotto for dinner.

>64 richardderus: "Shinto Traditions in the American South" is a book that MUST be written.

The ancestor worship, the endless creation of and worship at shrines, the refusal to embrace new technology or new ideas, the objectification of women - hell, I've got three chapters and an outline already!

>69 magicians_nephew: I know, right?!

>68 karenmarie: Happy Friday, Horrible! I hope the adjustment fixes what ails you.

*smooch*

>67 connie53: Hi Connie! I hope you're headed for a lovely weekend.

>66 BekkaJo: Howdy do, Bekka, and good-weekend wishes heartily returned.

>65 humouress: Indeed, the lump of luscious fake food is still stopping up the drain most efficiently.

What an extraordinarily bad idea that is! I've never been a fan of his, homophobes aren't amusing to me, so all I can think is, "does anyone care about this anymore?"

>70 richardderus: I think it might be a quiet one, Richard. Just reading and groceries.

>70 richardderus: - Oh, dear. I just mentioned over on my thread that I was considering the CtA sequel for movie night tonight....

>72 katiekrug: Well, why not? If you think he's funny, watch the films. That's why they're there.

>71 connie53: Enjoy the peace and quiet, Connie.

Happy new thread! Hope you enjoy your weekend!

Hiya, RDear, and happy Saturday to you.

The shrimp risotto was fantastic. I had a largish glass of wine to go with, and having become a cheap drunk since my 30s, went to bed early. I can feel my back and hip, but know the adjustment will 'kick in' as the day goes by. I've got a followup visit on Tuesday, too. Sure wish I could go to the chiropractor regularly, but Medicare doesn't cover preventative, only injuries. Silly Medicare - preventative would help prevent the injuries.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>75 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! It was the Repulsivecans who rammed through all the idiocies about Medicare...no dental, f/ex, was a gift to the orthodontists' lobby back in the day...but the single biggest one is not covering preventive and wellness care. That was Pharma's doing, to keep vitamins from being covered for a generation...while they got their brands set up. And CBD oil, all the cannabis stuff we're seeing now? That wasn't legalized until Pharma's supply chain was in place.

If something Government does is stupid, look for which GOP donor profits most from it.

>74 ChelleBearss: Thank you, Chelle! *smooch*

>43 karenmarie: Right there with you. I was all excited to find a local literary journal, then read a couple issues that were nothing but sadsack miserable lives and wondered WTH, though the woman who set all her husband's treasured belongings on fire was pretty amusing. Returned to genre fiction.

>75 karenmarie: Mmmm. Shrimp risotto.

>76 richardderus: Not that it's exclusive to the Republicans, though they get most of the pie. It's not just one party that eats while the status quo has stagnated so damn long. Democrats might not set the house on fire, but they're right there with marshmallows while complaining all the while about Republican antics. /rant

>77 justchris: Wouldn't an actual, functioning leftist party be lovely? Dems now are what, in the far-better 1960s whose politics I crave a return to, would've been "limousine liberals" of the Rockefeller Republicans.

>78 richardderus: Yeah. People in my building are happily signing a fan letter to Biden/Harris. I just can't. Don't get me started on the nice, white, well-meaning liberals of this city with some of the worst racial disparities on any measure in the entire damn country and a well-entrenched white power structure of all us do-gooders.

>79 justchris: The Eternal Problem...rightward drift as Money waves *just*enough*wealth* at the acceptable revolutionaries to distract them.

Happy Saturday, mon frere.

We've actually got sunshine, blue skies and reasonable temps here. We've been out once on a ramble, and may do another. I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, and have Elly Griffiths' new Harbinder Kaur one going right now.

Hope the weekend treats you well.

Happy Sunday, Richard. I think you mentioned Central Park's Pale Male, awhile back, right? I am reading Red-Tails in Love based on that great story.

I also read your review on Nomadland. I have not read the book but I saw the film and it was wonderful. This young director is an incredible talent and of course, Frances is a National Treasure.

>78 richardderus: & >79 justchris: I am always amused at how dangerously radical Bernie Sanders was portrayed when his policy prescriptions are at best considered centrist in the UK.

Happy Sunday, RD.

I like Bernie. I wish I could live in Bernie's vision for America. It just won't work, though. You see what a mess it was just trying to get this covid assistance bill through the Senate. It's disgusting how partisan and selfish the right has become. Maybe someday, if all of the Republicans are abducted by empathetic space aliens.

>84 mckait: "The Right" now including "moderate" Democrats. It nauseates me.

>83 PaulCranswick: The US millionaire class started a very successful long-term radicalization of the lower class in 1964 with Barry Goldwater (a centrist Democrat by today's obscene, perverted US political standards) after LBJ enfranchised Black people. The results are as we see them.

Your millionaire class has farther to go, but Thatcher did a bang-up job wrenching the Ship of State to the wrong, I mean right; BoJo would've been unelectable in 1991, or even 2001, at national level.

>82 msf59: The film's the way to go, Mark. Stick with it! I'm so glad a book was made about Pale Male. He was a great pioneer for his species.

>81 jnwelch: Hi Joe! Yesterday's clouds have given way to today's lovely blue skies. It's still colder than I expected, but at least it's pretty.

>82 msf59:
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder is a good book. I think the movie misses the mark because it ignores the subtitle of the book. You should read the book. It is very pertinent to the current news. Here in Alabama the employees of the Amazon distribution plant are currently voting whether to unionize or not.

'Morning, RD.

Supposedly the Annie Dillard should arrive today, but you just never know any more.

*smooch*

I finally got Ptolemy Gray into the mail for you on Friday.

Happy Monday!

>88 katiekrug: Hiya Horrible! *smooch*

>87 karenmarie: Katie! Thanks for that! *smooch*

But the P.O. here is hard-hit by the deJoy de-joyification. I expect things when I see them...it's seldom the day they *should* be here, but if I know they've been sent then I can report safe arrival as and when.

What a gorgeous Monday it is...sunshine, pleasant temps, and I should be getting new windowsills sometime today. I hope so! I've moved a lot of stuff to make way for the workmen.

Glad it's beautiful there, too. Isn't it a wonderful change from a few weeks ago?

Howdy, Richard! Beautiful day in Chicagoland. It could hit 65F! Yah! And FYI- Your package is in the mail, but BOO to "deJoy de-joyification." What a scum-bag, that guy is.

>91 msf59: Hi Mark! It's nowhere near that warm but I am so thrilled to have the sunshine that I just don't care. An hour's walk around, reveling in full COVID protection...I masked, of course, and funny thing I realized is I've always, by preference, socially distanced!...what a lovely feeling to *know* that I might get ill but I won't die of the disease or variants as yet known.

>90 The_Hibernator: Hello Rachel! I'm pleased to see you around and about. Yep, I'm so ready for spring I just can't tell you. Brig it Weather Goddess!!
***
Rob was off...Monday, his restaurant's always closed...so we literally wandered around looking at Long Beach and said next to nothing, just held hands and enjoyed both of us being vaccinated and safe as it's possible to be.

Glad you had a nice day to wander around! I’m stuck inside working this week and the weather’s supposed to be warming up. But Saturday’s supposed to be gorgeous and we’re gonna get the bikes out!

Sounds like you had a nice sunny day! May the whole week be full of sunshine and warmer weather :)

>92 richardderus: That sounds like a great way to spend a Monday, walking with Rob.

>95 quondame: It was a treat and so so welcome, Susan.

>94 figsfromthistle: Hello Anita, that's a great though to carry through to Tuesday. I'll put it out there.

>93 drneutron: It was a beautiful day to be outside, just cold enough and just sunny enough. What a gift a beautiful day feels like now that I can be out in it. And, not least, because I can share it safely!

Sounds like you had the best of Mondays, Richard. It was even sunny here on the other coast and so warm I didn't need a jacket.

Glad you were able to enjoy the sunshine today, Richard! Today was still cold here, but tomorrow it starts warming up for a short time, at least. I'm so looking forward to spring!

>98 bell7: The burgeoning bulbs here lead me to believe that they believe it's already sprung, Mary, so permaybehaps they know stuff we don't. Happy Spring!

>97 Familyhistorian: It was unusually lovely, Meg, and that suits me down to the ground.

No jacket! We're quite a ways from that milestone.

Good morning, Richard. I hope you have a good Tuesday!

'Morning, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

I'm off for a follow-up appointment with the chiropractor later this morning, can't wait. Back and hip are vastly improved but reinforcing the adjustments will help.

The post office is ridiculous - I mailed your book the same day I mailed a box with 12 books to my friend Karen in Montana, both media mail. Yours was due to be delivered Monday and hers on Wednesday. Yours is delayed, and hers arrived 2 days early. Sheesh.

*smooch*

Hope Tuesday is doing you proud. Sunny(ish) here and I have washing drying on the line outside my study.

>102 Helenliz: Hello there, Helen, and thanks for the good wishes. I'm still replacing the stuff I had to move for the workmen to install new window-sills...fancy faux marble ones, for some reason...so it's mostly a painful day on my hands. I am delighted, though, that I had a chance to clean underneath things I wouldn't ever have moved just to clean under.

>101 karenmarie: It's down to where I live, Horrible. DeJoy the UnJoy targets liberal-voting locales for service reductions/interruptions. I hear the actual P.O. here is down to two clerks at any given time. In a city of 35,000 with ONE post office already.

...but of course it's not partisan...

I hope the President will start the laborious process of packing the USPS board with his own people so we can get this asshole out of power.

Have a great adjustment!

>100 connie53: Hello there, Connie, I'm happy to see you!

Hi, Richard.

I'm with you on Biden packing the USPS board and dethroning the idiot. I still don't understand exactly why there are such widespread problems with the mail.

I'm impressed you're doing some spring cleaning. I haven't felt the inspiration yet, but I'm sure my better half will supply it.

>104 jnwelch: It can't happen soon enough. And I mean that literally. DeJoy is a disaster and a goddamned soulless sleazeball.

Not, you understand, that I have a strong opinion or anything.

It's really more a case of making a virtue of necessity, not some wild impulse to do some deep cleaning...I'm possessed of the opportunity to get at places I've normally got covered in books, so why not? I've hunted down the facility's vacuum cleaner three times to get the carpet decently sucked over. (Where does the gunge come from after the vacuum's already been over the territory?!)
***
The Devil in the White City's on sale today for $1.99 and it's cheap at twice the price. A truly chilling, and fascinating, and very readable book. Erik Larson deserves our unwavering attention.

I've been cleaning and organizing too. I went after kitchen drawers yesterday and threw away a pile of unused things that had been hiding in them. They are still full. le sigh. I moved a crock full of stirrers and scrapers etc in where I took things out. So, better.

I love Larson, as you know...

At the minute I'm reading Paper and Fire (The Great Library book 2) by Rachel Caine

>106 mckait: I've had to hit pause because apparently the gents will be back tomorrow to grout the sills. I hope they actually do...I've stored the crates in the shower & I'm ready for one.

I hope you love the series as much as I ended up doing! Rachel Caine did a good job with the idea; but the books were a wee bit saggy in places. I forgave them. Like when Genevieve Cogman moves a bit more, erm, magisterially shall we say than I myownself would prefer...I forgive because there's so much else I adore.

*smooch*

>105 richardderus: That makes another Kindle book I won't be getting due to the boycott. I'm not surprised Amazon is strewing temptation about.

I suppose I should know about boycotting Ammy, but I don't.

>103 richardderus: Your new windowsills sound impressive. I hope they are, in practice.

>107 richardderus: ... when you can use them.

>105 richardderus: Never known you to have an opinion on anything. At all.

>108 quondame: >109 richardderus: Yes; I'm puzzled too.

Folks have been boycotting Amazon in support of the workers in Alabama trying to organize into a union

Happy Wednesday, Richard. No birding plans set for today...yet. Yesterday was quite the adventure. Have you read the IQ series? These are a lot of fun. Just sayin'...

>105 richardderus: " Erik Larson deserves our unwavering attention." Amen!

>111 magicians_nephew: I have absolute sympathy for the people trying to form a union. But consider the authors, and you know...I love to read and I have been there with boycotts and activism. I'm not going to deprive myself of books. I do hope that they find a way to get a union for themselves.

>113 mckait: I know! Don't think this boycott will disturb Amazon Management a whisker and can see where it would hurt the authors and small businessmen who make their living through the Amazon pipeline.

I enjoyed reading your profile, mccait

'Morning, RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

I personally won't boycott Amazon, but to each her/his own. I would definitely like to see Amazon unionized even if it costs me more. That's one of the things I really liked about the Democratic Platform for 2020 - support of workers' rights to unionize.

Never had an Amazon account. Not a fan of mega corporations. Prefer to give my money to the independents, where I can.

>116 Helenliz: I would love to shop indie! My city of ~35,000 has zero (0) bookstores, not even a chain. And I can't drive anymore, don't have access to a car, and when I *do* get to see Rob, book-shopping is pretty low on the list of things we want to do.

The library, and Ammy.

>115 karenmarie: I am in the greatest imaginable sympathy with the workers, and believe there should be employer-funded independent unions at every company that meets certain criteria. Those criteria are always the problem.

*smooch*

>114 magicians_nephew:, >113 mckait: The country needs to be yanked forcibly back to the farthest possible left...if at all possible nationalizing banks and military contractors...so it will take the greedy motherfuckers more than a lousy 35 years to break everything again.

>112 msf59: I tried IQ, first in the IQ series, Mark, when you first warbled your fool head off about it. Barely scraped a 2.5 and I didn't care enough to review it. But it's always good that we have differences in taste, isn't it.

I know, right?!

>111 magicians_nephew: mmm

>110 humouress: I gave up. It's been two days so I moved everything back again. I need a shower!

Yes, I'm such a reticent, retiring sort that I'm surprised you noticed me at all.

>117 richardderus: No book shop, not at all. Gulp. Don't get me wrong, I know that I'm lucky to have the option of an independent butcher, baker, coffee shop and book shop all in my town or the next one, plus a regular farmers' market for local producers. And the money and time to use them. It's a luxury that I intend to make the most of.

Have been drifting by, mostly just to read the comments.
Not much reading going on at my end. Just going with the flow and spending time on other pursuits. Sun rising earlier and staying light until well past our dinner hour. *Joy*.

Looks like lots of books coming your way in the snail system. I was glad to read the deadwood at the top of the USPS may be deactivated. I hope that is successful. We need the whole system re-organized in our country, too. I'm especially sympathetic to those living in cities where they've been forced to use 'group' boxes instead of house-to-house delivery.

46 How to Be Both by Ali Smith

Rating: 2.5* of five

Just not what I would describe as a successful experiment; more a failed gimmick. "George"'s androgyny and Francesco's response to it probably sounded good in 2010 or so, as the book was being planned, but it comes across as queer-baiting in 2020. Also, connections reaching through time is a trope well-established (which, to be fair, wasn't anywhere near as much the case in 2014) and thus in need of something *not* negative to distinguish it from the mass of others like it.
***
I thought to review this one because I saw the author mentioned on Rhian's thread and that jogged my memory of having read it.

>120 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy, drift in any time. And some times just aren't reading times, for whatever reason(s), so no stress necessary. The Urge will come back.

I'm very pleased to have goodies to anticipate! A few books have gone out via the snail force, too, and Rob left with some others still. I keep a very few books deliberately and share things I'm done with widely. I'm trying to stir up trouble with Ammy's idiotic Kindle doctrine...that we only have the right to access the files, not own them...now that artists and hipsters have given us an opening by creating "NFT"s. No one's paying attention yet, but who knows who's seen the idea and having it germinate.

>119 Helenliz: Do, by all means, as many of us don't have/can't access some or all of those things.

But keep in mind that calling for others to use "independent" or "locally-owned" in place of giant corporations is ableist and shaming for those who can't.

>122 richardderus: What??!! "Ammy's idiotic Kindle doctrine...that we only have the right to access the files, not own them..."

If one has paid for the e-book, how on earth could 'Ammy' claim the buyer doesn't own the "book". It's not a trespass of copyright to "own" an electronic version anymore than "owning" a published copy.
I get it with the lending libraries not allowing sharing to others and preventing downloads, but that's ridiculous when one has made a purchase. What is the basis for this. It is threatening since Ammy could yoink the files (time-expire the electronic version).

>45 richardderus: I am sorry to hear you are subjected to ice cream of dubious quality. I just found that my mist recent purchase of a 2L tub isn't even allowed to be *called* ice cream as it must have a serious deficiency of cream (and/or ice?). It's called frozen dessert! So, it's back to the good brands for me.
When I was at high school we had an exchange student come for a year from Sweden. She thought so much of NZ ice cream that she ate half a tonne of the stuff and gained more than a kiwi experience, if you know what I mean. Haha, she was always trying to resist.

Sorry also to hear about the postal service woes. I thought that whole thing was history now that the postal votes have been counted. Can we (i.e., you) not please just get back to having a functional postal service? What the heck does anyone have against mail!?

>123 SandyAMcPherson: Perzackly. And they have reached into people's Kindles and yanked out a book that was the subject of some nonsense or another, and I know it won't surprise you to learn that gay titles have it happen rather more often than others.

Also...if you listen to music on Spotify etc the same thing applies to those files. You've purchased nothing. You've paid them a highly nominal fee to license access to a file until...they don't want to give it to you no more. Tomorrow, 2030, or the heat-death of the Universe, no matter...it is never yours.

>124 LovingLit: Oh, my dear, my dear...this is the endgame of the crapping-up of Murruhkuh that Ray-gun and his band of Vandals began in 1981. It's far from the last hand...but this hand is pretty much overplayed and even the dimwitted GOP dupes have woken up. How come there are billionaires when there are people going hungry and unhoused? Why can two of them afford to play with model rockets that will actually reach space?

Another round of viciousness isn't far off, but for today, the sheep have, in fact, looked up.

'Morning, RDear, and happy day of the Thurs.

I don't understand why the USPS should be a profit center of the government instead of a cost center. It's a cost of doing business. If it loses money, oh well, it's a cost of running the government for governmental agencies, citizens, and businesses.

>127 karenmarie: After Nixon started the process of screwing up the Post Office in 1970, the right-wing war on essential services began in earnest. It pisses the bosses and banksters off that efficient and cheap services should be available to the Great Unwashed because it means they aren't profiting from lower efficiency, lower wage, higher cost services that are "in competition" with each other.

Why is your phone bill over $100 a month? Why does TV cost over $100 a month? Because the bosses and the banksters are picking your pockets. Not because it needs to cost that much. The PO is the same.

Stopping in to say hello. I think I can be pretty safe at an indie bookstore here on the Outer Banks. I see they are limiting number of customers as are other businesses and that they are requiring masks as every other place does. Looking forward to my first bookstore visit in over a year!

>129 thornton37814: The Outer Banks! Are you near Duck, NC? There's a bookshop there!

Have a lovely vacay.

>130 richardderus: There is a bookstore in Duck, but I went to the one in Corolla instead. It's a little larger than the store in Duck.

>131 thornton37814: Enjoy, he muttered enviously.

I am a bit late with wishing you a happy Thursday, Richard dear, so I will add a happy Friday to it ;-)

>132 richardderus: I enjoyed. Who knows when I'll be able to browser in a store again? It is certainly not safe in East Tennessee where most people are against masks from the get-go.

I knew that you didn't own music on Spotify, but I didn't know that Kindle books had the same kind of policy. No wonder I don't do e-books. I like having the actual physical book which is why I have too many stacks of the things.

>135 Familyhistorian: I love tree books too, Meg, and I'd never've switched to ebooks barring the hand-crippling effects of gout.

>134 thornton37814: I truly wonder at the stupidity of Personkind.

>133 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita!

Everyone!! TIME TEAM IS COMING BACK!!!

-Rusty Blackbird

Happy Friday, Richard. I had my FOY Rusty Blackbird, as this species migrates through. I did get a few photos but nothing usable, so I used this image instead. Are you a fan of the IQ crime series? I just finished and enjoyed the 3rd entry, Wrecked.

>138 msf59: Handsome boid! Are they going north at this point?

No, IQ didn't click with me for some reason. It certainly seemed as though it should. I was disappointed that it didn't.

Happy weekend's reads!

'Morning, RD.

*blinks*

Coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>140 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Just had a burger with onions for lunch, so you can tell Rob won't be visiting today. I'll be contentedly reading my free Kindlebooks...I took advantage of SF publisher Tachyon's "Humble Bundle," 44 of their press's titles for $28. The trick is that I allocated $1 to the publisher, $1 to the vendor, and $26 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to support their efforts to reinstate Net Neutrality in LAW not policy. So it's a charitable donation!

Back to it. *smooch*

If you haven't, I'd suggest making tracks to see the 2010 Norwegian found-footage mockumentary Trollhunter on YouTube's official free-movies channel. It's fun, funny, and also quite well-made as a serious entry in the genre "monster movie."

>137 richardderus: I love that show!

Anyhow have a great week ahead!

A bit of bling.

"{The home-town gossips} would take whatever words I stammered out, piece an “inside” story together, their unkissed mouths breathing the smell of cigarettes and coffee into their telephones, making little secretive sounds to each other. I remembered how small termite mandibles were, and how, if you lean close and pinpoint attention, you can hear them, how their combined tenacity can crush a building. These women were moving close to trouble, chewing at it because they had, that week, none of their own to feed the others with."
Mary Lee Settle, Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday

Genius.
***
>144 quondame: Ooooooooooooo

Beauteous! I love the way the artist has woven the Tentacled American among the baroque pearls.

>143 figsfromthistle: I know, right?!? I can't wait, Anita. They're doing two shows to start with. Here's to hoping we'll get more after.

Good morning, Richard dear!

>146 ronincats: Ciao, bella, come stai? *smooch*

Hiya, RD! Happy Monday to you.

I've checked one thing off my list for today - chair the Friends Board meeting - and have two smallish online things to do before the end of the day. Other than that reading, perhaps watching Major Crimes with Bill, who's home with a bad headache today. He's taking some new eye drops recommended by the surgeon who will be doing his cataract surgeries, but 3 days and 3 headaches later, I think he'll have to do something different.

sorry about the unintentional yelling - it's amazing what a / will do.

>148 karenmarie: The eyedrops are in dire need of replacement. If he's dilating his eyes, they need to tell him; if not, he's allergic to whatever they're giving him! I hope you've made him call the doc.

Be well. *smooch*

Hello Richard my friend.

Ask Again, Yes arrived in the mail today and I was so pleased to receive it! Thank you!!! It will accompany me on our little vacation to the Metolius River (Oregon) in exactly 13 days. :-)

>150 EBT1002: Oh yay!! I'm delighted you'll have it to get stuck into. *smooch*

Hi RD. Just dropping by to check how things are in these parts.
Re the Kindle scam ~ I asked the Kobo folks if I "owned" the books which I bought for my e-reader. I still haven't had a definitive answer. I received a form-message, that didn't tell me anything.

I'm trying to figure out, if I download the pub on a computer (not just keep it on my e-reader), and my computer isn't connected to the wifi, then do ya think it could be snagged?

I suppose some script or other could be built in to expire it no matter what... this whole thing means, I won't buy e-books that I want to own. I'll use the e-reader and just borrow from the library.

Morning, RD. You asked me about the rusty blackbirds. Yes, they migrate through. There may be a few that summer here, but I am not sure. I am glad you got the books. I hope they both work for you.

*I know you are a fan of oyster-catchers, so I wanted to share one, from my last Mexico trip.

>92 richardderus: This sounds positively dreamy - what a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

>105 richardderus: A student recommended this to me some years ago, and it was a hit - I really enjoyed it.

Amazon is a lifesaver to many, has horrendous labor policies, and is now refusing to sell ebooks and audiobooks to libraries because letting people read for free is unfair. Washington Post, The Verge.

I personally stopped buying ebooks in general because I don't feel like the cost reflects the product, and its ownership is tenuous (what >122 richardderus: said). I do love ebooks, though, because I always have multiple books on my phone, and I borrow them from the public library. For print books I now cycle through Books Shop.org, and Better World Books. I'm expecting What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat to arrive from BookShop today.

I ... don't know if we have a local book shop. I know of a Barnes and Noble 20 minutes away? And while I used to love going and browsing the aisles for long stretches of time, being locked away in my home for a year certainly hasn't made my social anxiety any better. We do have an excellent comics shop.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Tuesday to you.

>149 richardderus: He called, they referred him to an article on JAMA and said they'd mention it to the surgeon when he came in today for office hours. Bill said he’d try the drops for a few more days and didn’t have a headache last night. Keeping our fingers crossed.

I seem to be in an exclusively mystery/thriller/suspense mode right now. I guess I'll go with it - the word 'should' has been so much in use in the last year that I won't apply it to my reading.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>155 karenmarie: I'm crossed right along with you. No headaches one night is good.

"Should" is such a crappy concept. I'm glad you're exempting your reading choices from its hagfish-slime-drenched grasp.


>154 London_StJ: I think the ebook scam is due for a fall. The creation of NFTs and their weird, contorted expansion of the idea of "ownership" might spell the idea of licenses' doom. I hope so, anyway.

bookshop.org is a worthy idea and one I hope succeeds. As I'm out of the physical book market unless the library doesn't have a copy of what I want in e- or tree-editions, I'm sorta wishy-washy on the idea of going back to paying for delivery. Better World lost me when they listed a book at one price and canceled my order at that price while offering me the same book for 2x the price.

You get once, and when that's used, I won't use you and WILL talk about why until I run out of words.

>153 msf59: Hey Birddude! What a lovely oystercatcher. Their pipipipipipipi call is a sign of spring I've yet to hear. They build their nests near the boardwalk's base to keep their eggs cozywarm. It means they give a lot of passing humans the stink-eye.

I relate, birdo, I relate.

>152 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! A script can be written to self-destruct a file, yes, but whether or not it has been is transparent to you-the-consumer until it kicks in.

A world where one owns nothing and must rely on a corporation for every necessity is the end of capitalism...in all senses of the word.

>153 msf59:
>157 richardderus:

I think the phrase to look for is "DRM-free." Books without Digital Rights Management should be readable on any device, without time limitations, and not subject to recall. I don't think Amazon sells any DRM-free titles, not even the freebies they generate from Project Gutenberg books. I know other vendors and publishers do sell DRM-free content. Kobo has its own category for such:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/drm-free

That said, I have low confidence that content marketed as "DRM-free" is always such in a strict sense.

>158 swynn: Most Macmillan titles are DRM-free, but that doesn't mean that they can't be retracted at will. It just means you won't get an edited file unless you ask for one, f/ex if lots of typos needed fixing or something similar. Any digital license can be revoked. Publishers want to be able to un-publish certain books, after all, such as when a license ends or when they decide someone is too toxic to continue to profit off of.

Oh man, I can't catch up. I'll simply say that there's got to be something in the "DE" - as in DE-Vos and DE-Joy. May the current admin. move quickly to lose the latter.
Further, I have one word for you with my Italian: clitics.

Flourish, Richard!

>159 richardderus: Thanks for this information. That publishers can retract "DRM-free" books, both contradicts my understanding of "DRM-free" and also surprises me not at all.

>161 swynn: It's more than just that, it's also a way of cocking a snoot at Ammy because the publisher doesn't have to create MOBI files. You can read your DRM-free books on any device you choose.

Just...well...you own nothing digital. You can't sell anything digital. Only the corporations can do that. It revolts me, but here we are.

>160 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! There's no such thing as behind here...you are where you are, so no pressure allowed...you need not "catch up" because, well, what's gone is gone.

I shall do my utmost to flourish! *smooch*

Agreed re Erik Larsen deserving our unwavering attention (>105 richardderus:). Ice cream of dubious quality? Oh my. That's one product where that should never happen. It takes Cruella Deville to a new low.

I'm sorry IQ didn't click with you. It happens. Have I asked you a million times whether you like the Liaden books? Probably. Just ignore me. I liked the newest one a lot, and miss being in the midst of it.

Right now I'm having a grand time with The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson's new one about Jennifer Doudna and CRISPR and gene editing.

>162 richardderus: Yeah, there are several concepts associated with "DRM-Free", and different users want it for different things so that vendors will sometimes call something DRM-Free or imply it is, when it satisfies one desired use but not necessarily others. One major academic vendor sells some titles as "DRM-Free, Watermarked," meaning that you can read them on different devices and store the files indefinitely, but that they can also track you down if they find the content posted on a pirate site.

>164 swynn: When it all boils down to "you own nothing" they'll dress up the pig however you want to see it if it means your wallet flattens and theirs fattens.

>163 jnwelch: Oh, that's a great way to spend eyeblinks! Doudna will be remembered for a long time to come. We just don't know which way...saint or sinner.

Liaden wasn't a success for me. It was a LONG time ago, Crystal Soldier had just come out, but I was left completely cold. I don't recall why. I might borrow it from the library to see if my ideas have changed since you're on a warblefest about it. It sure can't hurt.

Oh, dear, I think I've been lurking and not posting greetings. How rude of me.

Did you finish the Mosley?

>166 katiekrug: Has anything lurk-worthy happened? I don't gate-keep, so it's an at-will environment.

I have not finished it yet because a favorite MM author sent me a novel, and alsp steered another of her clade to send me a short story...I get distracted by pretty men falling in love with each other.

>167 richardderus: - An excellent reason to get distracted! I approve.

>168 katiekrug: The two lads falling in love ATM are in Revolutionary-era Rhode Island, fellow clerks in a law office. Of their mutual boss, the more passionate of the two says, "At best, {he} is a walking aphorism. If I hear 'A lie has one leg, the truth has two' one more time I won't be held responsible for my actions!" and I thought, "oh dear, guilty as charged."

I like the author's willingness to honest without cruelty.

>156 richardderus: " Better World lost me when they listed a book at one price and canceled my order at that price while offering me the same book for 2x the price."

ExCUSE me?! Shame on BWB.

I also hope that digital content rights get some support, and I'm hopeful that they will (especially as we see more waves from things like the Google Music move). But I'm especially invested in my library still offering copies, since so much of my reading is borrowing...

47 Rebel: An Outlawed Story by Sally Malcolm

Rating: 4* of five

What mattered to me most, in this precursor tale to what I expect will be a very interesting and exciting series, was that the men who fell in love with each other weren't just...okay with it. Right before the Revolutionary War in a provincial backwater Rhode Island town? Yeah, right, I was prepared to think.

Instead I was treated to a genuine coming out. Nate Tanner, Harvard educated Boston sophisticate, was exiled to this little burg to keep him from the fleshpots of a sinful city (Boston! sinful! *snort*). Apparently his father, the exiler, didn't know the whole of it or the exile would've been a lot more severe. Nate is all his father isn't: a nascent revolutionary, a free-thinker where gawd is concerned, and an avid shirt-lifter. He reads novels, and Richard Barnfield's The Affectionate Sheppard and Rousseau and Plato and...thinks about them. Ponders what he's read. I think he's my ancestor.

Sam Hutchinson is a bottom. He believes what he's told; he doesn't question, does internalize the guilt and nastiness of his preacher father's revolting religion, feels he's Bad and Wrong and Must Be Punished. For all that, he's powerfully horny, and that speaks louder than gawd's blatherings when the near occasion of sin is seducing you with words and ideas and the promise of loosening that horrible knotted rope around your mind.

It's the first of a romantic-novel series. There was no mystery that the two were going to get their freak on. It was in an adorably eighteenth-century-virgin way, and it wasn't yee-haw-the-organs-go-mad. I still do not recommend the read to the squeamishly heterosexual. But it's 99¢ so if the idea of two men learning to love each other fully clothed and then learning to pleasure each other doesn't make your gorge rise, spend the buck.

>165 richardderus: Crystal Soldier is pretty run of the mill SF. Local Custom or Conflict of Honors are what I would suggest for a start, but if you are more into lots of shots fired and absurd aliens Agent of Change has more fans.

>172 quondame: ...not feelin' the luuuv...maybe just accepting I'm not the right reader and slidin' on down the slide is the proper course.

>173 richardderus: Well, I was just saying because L&M publishers said the market for books like LC & CoH wasn't good and they would only buy them if they were more like AoC, into which CS falls. So LC & CoH along with Scout's Progress are mostly centered on two people working things out romantically with lots of family drama in 3 very different mileus and less about big conflicts.

Just parking this here. I thought it was apt.

>175 humouress: Beautiful! And very apt. Those are very well-designed, considered as bookends, in that they're suited to many sizes of book. Very satisfying indeed. Thanks!

>174 quondame: ...still not feelin' the luuuv...I think I'll just scuttle past right quick-like.

Happy whatever-day-of-the-week-it-is, RDear.

Actually, I know it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday because Bill is at the office instead of working from home. *smile*

I'm lucky to have the space to keep tree books. I do have zeros-and-ones books, but they are purely functional.

I posted some more nudibranches on my thread... your comment on my last thread, I'm just a giant person-sized nudibranch of laziness and basking in the UV rays. has inspired me. They are so gorgeous.

THOSE INTERESTED IN THINGS HEYERESQUE: Simon the Coldheart is a whopping 99¢ on ereader platforms.

>177 karenmarie: Well, it's the middle one today, for your sense of temporal orientation.

I would keep acquiring tree-books by preference, since they can as easily leave as come, but the hands...well...the book-pillow helps A LOT. Not enough to make them my go-to anymore, but enough to keep me from avoiding them altogether.

More nudies! Oh goody! I shall coddiwomple thitherward directly.

>178 richardderus: That was one book that Heyer wanted to supress, as not being up to standard. And, while it's true that the romance is less equal than in a lot of her later books, a mediocre Heyer still knocks the socks off a lot of other authors' output.

>180 Helenliz: Good luck suppressing anything that'll make publishers money!

Have certainly noticed that the quality of Heyer's work exceeds the norm....

>181 richardderus: she managed in her lifetime, it was published once and not again until after her death, when her estate chose to have it re-issued. I think that's what the intro to my copy says.

>182 Helenliz: If they did, it was unnecessary...the book's out of copyright now. Hence the bargain price!

>176 richardderus: OK, but you have heard that L&M are Heyer fans, yes?

>184 quondame: That fails to raise a gasp...lots of writers admire her chops, eg China Mieville. She was a mistress of construction. Even her failures were, as noted before, superior to run-of-the-mill writers' successes, eg John Scalzi, who writes SF for people who don't like SF.

Driveby *smooches* and hoping you're enjoying a pleasant day.

>186 bell7: Hi Mary! Thanks for the well-wishes...a bit on the gloomy side here, but pleasant at the least.

>183 richardderus:
Copyright is usually the life of the author plus 75 years. Heyer died in 1974 so her books won't go out of copyright until 2049. Even if Simon the Coldheart was published in 1925 it still goes by the life of the author. In the U.S. British copyright laws are different but in the U.S. this book would still be under copyright.

>189 richardderus:
That's true if the copyright was not renewed on the works in 1978 when the laws changed. But surely her estate renewed the copyright on her work? They wouldn't have been so foolish as to NOT renew. Would they?

You don't imagine that Fitzgerald's estate failed to renew copyright on Gatsby. It's in the public domain and can be up/downloaded freely. The laws have changed any number of times but the latest was 95 years and done.

In 1997, Congress introduced the Copyright Term Extension Act, which proposed to extend corporate copyrights again -- this time, from 75 to 95 years. To ensure the bill passed, Disney cozied up to legislators.

It's a HUGE expansion of the term of copyright and was done at the behest of Mauschwitz's legal scum. I mean team. It protects their revolting rodent until 2024, by which time it really won't matter because most of their profits will come from elsewhere and they'll be spending legal fees going after trademark violators.

>177 karenmarie: zeros-and-ones books
Love that description. (I like the tree books one , too, but I'd never thought of what to call digital books).

Edited to make sure RD knows I delurked for a second.
I'm wallowing in a book rearrangement and falling victim to a cascade ~~

Happy Thursday, Richard dear. I hope the books treat you well.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. The rain will keep me indoors today, but since I got very little reading in yesterday, due to birding and other distractions, this is a good thing. The Chilean story collection has been really good so far.

‘Morning, Rdear! Wishing you a wonderful Thursday.

I have a Fawcett Crest copy of Simon the Coldheart printed in November 1980 on my shelves. I think I’ve only read it once.

Happy Thursday, Richard!

>196 leperdbunny: Thanks, Tamara!

>195 karenmarie: Hey Horrible. I don't think it's one that needs reading more than once, is it?

>194 msf59: Hi Mark! You're on a rare ol' roll, eh what? Seems to me you've managed to get the creamiest cream of the crop while still birding your binoculars into joining your brain!

>193 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, and thank you.

>192 SandyAMcPherson: Sandy! Howdy do. Hoping life in SK is treating you well.

>128 richardderus: "
Why is your phone bill over $100 a month? Why does TV cost over $100 a month? Because the bosses and the banksters are picking your pockets. Not because it needs to cost that much. The PO is the same."

Sadly true. And the kindle thing is simply heinous. I resort to library books and some months KU. It's a rare thing for me to spend dollars on borrowing pixels

>114 magicians_nephew:
HI! and thank you for the comment on my profile. It's a sort of diary for me. I go there to store thoughts and things I like or find interesting. I do this assuming no one is going to look through all of that! lol

>148 karenmarie: I strongly recommend that you read up on those eye drops. They may well be fluoroquinolones ( Black Box Drugs) ( Don't be surprised if the surgeon never heard of black box drugs) and landed me and others in the hospital.

Best to you rd.

Hi Kath! Glad to see you here, smoochling.

Hi Richard. I just want to wish you a happy weekend.

Happy Friday!! With smooches. : )

>204 Berly:, >203 connie53: Thanks, y'all! *smooches*

Delurking to wish you a happy weekend!

Happy weekend wishes heartily returned, Anita!

Happy Saturday, Richard. This may all ready be on your radar, but I just read a New Yorker review of 100 Boyfriends and thought you might be interested. No birding plans for today but I am really looking forward to this nice warm-up.

Hi RDear! Happy Saturday to you.

>199 mckait: Thanks, Kath. I’ll check with Bill about what he’s being prescribed.

Hope you can enjoy the sunshine today. Looks like a beautiful weekend!

>210 katiekrug: Hiya Katie! I've got a trip to the Little Free Library scheduled...some drop-offs. Then a leisurely stroll back to the Home. It's gorgeous out there, isn't it?

>209 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible. *smooch*

>208 msf59: Oh, he smacked my windshield a while back!

I, being what one therapist jokingly referred to as a “clinical sex addict,” am no stranger to the thought of wanting to be washed over by a nameless void of men, but the consistently unreliable variable that one can never count on in any sex scenario is other people. I know this from experience.

I don't quite get how he's "punk" so much as what we called "radical faerie" back in the day....

>176 richardderus: You understand that I'm only lending you the octopi, right?

>212 humouress: *snort* Just TRY and collect 'em! I defy you! G'wan g'wan try!!

48 Forget the Alamo! by Drew McGunn

Rating: 2.5* of five

Interesting idea, which is why it's an evergreen (see Lest Darkness Fall & Related Stories for a very early iteration of the idea); the execution was competent. What I missed was some deftness in the writing: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” That's as good as it gets, but also as bad as it gets, so there is no fair way to say it's poorly written just...uninspiring.

I borrowed this book via Amazon Prime Reads.

Cocaine Blues, the first Phryne Fisher mystery, is on sale today. It's not my favorite book, but for 99¢ it doesn't have to be. Good way to test the waters.

>213 richardderus: Fine!

Just see if I bring you any more cephalopods in future, then.

>216 humouress: Ha! They will come to me, my Children of the Deep...they know their Master.
***

Tom Gauld, International Treasure, strikes again.

One big reason I miss Austin: BookPeople and their wonderful lists, like this one of translations.

Well Richard I'll be in trouble if Amazon stops letting libraries borrow books because probably 90% of what I read are library books through Overdrive/Amazon. I of course wouldn't stop reading but I'd have to go back to running to the library to get many of my books. And I do LOVE my Kinle so there's that. Greedy capitalists

>219 brenzi: Greed is, as it always turns out to be, right at the root of all the worst things people do.

Good morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you.

>215 richardderus: I read Cocaine Blues after watching and loving Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and so far haven’t pursued the series.

>217 richardderus: It’s always a pleasure to see something by Tom Gauld.

>221 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, I found Kerry Greenwood's reliance on children-in-jeopardy-from-men irritating quite quickly, and her inability to portray most women as victims the deal-breaker. Yes, Phryne is a woman, but she's almost alone among them as possessing agency.

"It's a reflection of the times!" Maybe; but it's also A Message that I don't care to read againandagainandagain.

Tom Gauld, though, is always welcome.

*smooch*

I got the first four Miss Fisher books in an omnibus edition they're fun but not the fun that the TV show is. (was)

The Modern Miss Fishers what ive seen of them are pretty bad

a good friend of mine was physically evicted from the Alamo site for venturing to disagree with the jingoist bombast of the docent.

49 Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

Rating: 4.75* of five

My review of PERSEPHONE STATION's up at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud: https://tinyurl.com/26h2f5s2

It's too long to get read here, so there it stays. I recommend it, if the rating doesn't say it all.

>224 richardderus: That was already a BB from your comment on @LizzieD's thread.

I discovered the joys of reading Marguerite Duras after I began working for John Calder at Riverrun Press in New York. It was a fabulous fringe benefit indeed.

50 Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Rating: 4* of five

To be honest, it felt to me like this was a book whose existence was not to entertain others but to codify and clarify Duras's sense of women's interchangability to men. Men LOVE and with a weird intensity in all Duras's stories of whatever stripe. But the objects of their love, their obsessive needy desperate addiction, can...shift.

All the way to gay, in this book. But what does he do, our impassioned and exquisitely aesthetic lover? He seeks and finds a woman who looks like His Man and talks about it to her.

Very, very French. And it's in a squalid, down-at-heel seaside resort. Very, very Duras.

I believe this could very easily be the most profound idea Duras ever uttered in her novels:

She says people ought to learn to live like them, with the body abandoned in a wilderness, and in the mind the memory of a single kiss, a single word, a single look to stand for a whole love.

51 The Malady of Death

Women are the bitterest, cruelest, most reductive misogynists known to Humankind.

You say she mustn't speak, like the women of her ancestors, must yield completely to you and to your will, be entirely submissive like peasant women in the barns after the harvest when they're exhausted and let the men come to them while they're asleep. So that you may gradually get used to that shape molding itself to yours, at your mercy as nuns are at God's. And also so that little by little, as day dawns, you may be less afraid of not knowing where to put your body or at what emptiness to aim your love.

I discovered the joys of reading Marguerite Duras after I began working for John Calder at Riverrun Press in New York. It was a fabulous fringe benefit indeed.

52 The Sailor from Gibraltar

Rating: 4.75* of five

A lush, louche, languid read about a woman who can't be bothered to make up her mind what to do with all the world's goods. A rich American, a bored French dude, a yacht, and Africa. It went straight to my head like any cocktail with too many ingredients will. The hangover was Calder's lack of desire to reprint and sell it...I wanted to tell people about how cool it was.

Give it to your COVID-addled college-age nephew to scratch the itch for adventure safely and vicariously.

53 The Little Horses of Tarquinia

Rating: 4.5* of five

Not for the young. It is brutally frank and unspeakably cruel. It possesses itself of, in, a kind of soporific addictive ennui that someone who has never been in love with an other for a long time can dare to conjure, still less enact.

This is the burden of the book's refrain:

“There are no vacations from love,” he said. “That does not exist. Love, it is necessary to live it completely with its boredom and everything; there are no vacations possible for that.”
He was speaking without looking at her, facing the river.
“And that is love. To distract yourself from it, one cannot. Like life, with its beauty, its shit and its boredom.”

If that frightens you, read it; if it confuses you, don't.

>227 richardderus: Frighteningly confusing.

>217 richardderus: Love Tom Gauld :)

Hope you had a good weekend.

Now you've offended me, you'll never know what this looks like.

RD, please try to drop a message to Hani today on FB as her dad passed away this morning. Poor girl is devastated and I know she'd love a message from one of her besties..

'Morning, RDear!

I hope you have a loverly day.

*smooch*

Hi RD. Life proceeds here and the snow melts slowly (always a blessing because a fast melt can flood folks basements).

>217 richardderus: Love that Tom Gauld. I snagged it, since I am so prone to faffing with font instead of just writing....

In recent LT-type activity, I had to abandon The Debatable Land (Graham Robb) but was successfully engaged in The Way of All Flesh. Reviewed Parry's story over on my thread. Guess I'll post it on the book page, too. I liked it 4-stars worth.

I think I'll pass on The Little Horses of Tarquinia, though.
Best wishes for a good week.

>233 SandyAMcPherson: Hiya Sandy, happy to see you here. I think The Debatable Land sounds more interesting than it probably was...something about "flawless execution or death" topics militates against the former.

Glad you liked the Gauld, will check on your thread, and what.do.you.mean! about skipping la Duras's beautiful words!

*smooch*

>232 karenmarie: Horrible! *smooch* I was just on my way over to visit.

>231 PaulCranswick: That is sad, sad news, PC. I've sent my condolences via proxy.

>230 humouress: ...what what looks like? :-P

>229 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka! Glad to see you!

>228 quondame:, >225 quondame: My eville plotte to ensnare you is complete.

Though I am not sure about the Duras...it almost seems as if you're saying you *won't* read it...but that's impossible, it's too delicious and you're too omnivorous.

I can't for the life of me remember which Duras I've read.Does she have one with "piano" in the title? (Yes, I could go look this up...) I keep having a niggling "piano" memory when I think about her. The mind is weird...

ETA: Nope, I don't see one. Hmmm.

>236 katiekrug: Le Piano Oriental? No, wait, you weren't in middle school in 2015, were you. Huh...I wonder what you're thinking of!

>217 richardderus: I love it!

It looks like the books are treating you fine, my friend. May that trend continue.

>238 msf59: Thanks, Mark, and may all your wishes come true.

Like seeing these American gallinules.

ETA size!

>235 richardderus: See? You’ll never know.

>239 richardderus: Colourful birds. I’ve never seen them before. It looks like one is consoling the other (or about to shove him into the water).

Hiya, RDear, and Tuesday salutations to you.

>239 richardderus: To me it looks like the one on the right is scratching the back of the one on the left. "Just a little bit to the right, please."

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

>239 richardderus: Love the reflections in that pic :)

54 Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by James Hamblin

Rating: 3 solid stars of five

There are three books in here. Any one of them would be very interesting to read sequentially; simultaneously, there is too much and too little information on each topic. I'm interested in all three books...history of "cleanliness", politics of "health", and research into the existence of astonishing worlds we haven't been able to see until quite recently...but am satisfied by none of them in this busily overstuffed and distracted narrative.

I use lots of quotes and so I think I'll leave the whole review up at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud: https://tinyurl.com/844kaeuw

>243 BekkaJo: Aren't they spectacular? The birds are beautiful, the photo is beautiful, it's hard to be the combination.

>241 karenmarie: Ha! That's a great interpretation of...whatever it is they're doing...I confess it's not my first thought, though my first thought is a lot less, um, salubrious. "I wonder what this tastes like..."

*smooch*

>240 humouress: Deprived. I am deprived. You truly are a supervillainess.

I think the shoving idea is mostly correct, but I am a cynical old party.

What There Is To Say We Have Said edited by Suzanne Marrs

Rating: 4.75* of five, not *quite* perfect but swimmin' in the same pond as it

How the hell have I never posted my review of this deliciousness here?!? *aaarrrgh*

Anyway, my 2017 blog review has been sitting there wondering why you don't come by when a lonely old man's day would be **MADE** if you did....

>246 richardderus: - The link to your blog review is not working - it goes to a new topic thread on LT...

>247 katiekrug: Must've been a glitch! I looked at it, grammar's fine, and tried it and went where it pointed.

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up, link issues make me quake with fear. This one's resolved.

>248 richardderus: - Works for me now!

>246 richardderus:
I read that book several years ago and it did much to change my mind about Eudora Welty. It also introduced me to William Maxwell. He was not an author on my radar. It is also the first time I heard of Elizabeth Taylor and some of the other English and Irish women authors who were also in the book. It was a pleasure to read the letters and think about communication by letter. It sure gave everybody time to think about things and decide how to handle things. It also served to remind me of the beauty of the written letter.

There is a newer volume of the letters of Welty. This one is the letters of Welty and MacDonald. It has a different editor, but it is one I have on my wishlist.

>250 benitastrnad: Ooooh, I'll have to look it up! And book-bulleting a person in his own thread...naughty you.

>249 katiekrug: Good! I hope you liked the review.

>251 richardderus:
It is titled Meanwhile There Are Letters by Suzanne Marrs. ( I was wrong it is the same editor) I heard her speak over at the University of Mississippi back in 2012. At that time the book on Welty and Maxwell had just come out. I was so intrigued by it that I had to purchase it. Then it sat on my shelves until January of 2019. I started reading it a letter at a time, and about half-way through I found myself reading more and more and ... Then I finished it. I really liked it. I think I liked it because, well, who writes letters nowadays? And yet, you could follow the trajectory of their lives through this book. It was one of those wonderful quiet reads that sneaks up on you and really sucks you in.

>239 richardderus:. That picture made me smile. And those colors are awesome.

'Morning, RD! Happy Wednesday.

>245 richardderus: Having been dealing with back issues recently, that was my first thought.

*smooch*

Richard, oh vocab guru, I need your help. I know there is a word for this but for the life of me, I can only remember that it ends with *-chor*. The strong smell in the air before a rain.

It was very strong this morning when I went outside to hang up the bird feeder and it was on the tip of my tongue but I just couldn't grab it and pull it out (the word, not the tongue).

Merci. :-)

>255 jessibud2: oh oh oh, I know that one. Petrichor.
Sorry, I'll settle back down in my corner again and do dull work stuff (which is why I was here in the first place, seeking distraction)

>256 Helenliz:, >255 jessibud2: Yeup, Helen's got it for you, Shelley. "Petrichor" is le mot juste!

It's such an evocative word, it is (in my mind) almost onomatopoeia with the plosive p, the ticks of the t and the c, the wideness of of the e and the o and then that motorboaty r to finish it off!

>254 karenmarie: Happy Humpday, Horrible! *smooch*

>253 connie53: Hi Connie, it's good to see you here. The colors alone are enough to brighten one's day, and then the movement the photographer caught really makes is something extra special.

>252 benitastrnad: Duly wishlisted, since Ross MacDonald isn't someone I associate with Miss Eudora. Whatever they've had to say to one another is bound to be fun to learn.

55 The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt

Rating: 4* of five

I didn't start this book as a Walt Disney cultist. In fact, quite the opposite...I know about his obnoxious labor practices and frankly was unsurprised at his appalling gender politics, both generationally as well as personally...but WOW. The details of what happened to Bianca Majolie are, in a word, repugnant. (And it's really played to the hilt for nastiness in the book...there's no certainty that it happened as written because it's not from the horse's mouth, as it were.)

This is another long'un and there's nothin' like a long read to get skipped over, so visit Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud for the whole thing: https://tinyurl.com/svuuek9k

>258 richardderus:
You are in for a treat! I won't spoil the excitement of your discovery, but I will say that you should do a Wikipedia search and see what you think. There is also a wonderful review of Meanwhile There Are Letters in the July 13, 2015 edition of the New York Times that is really titallating.

>257 richardderus:, >257 richardderus: - Thanks, Helen and Richard. That's IT!

>261 jessibud2: Yay!!

>260 benitastrnad: Yay!!

Saw your message to Hani, RD, thank you for your kind words dear fellow. Please also thank your lovely "proxy" for us both - one of my favourite ladies.

>263 PaulCranswick: I'm so sad about her father's passing, PC, mostly because it's the passage that comes to us all sooner or later(if we're lucky): WE are the elders now.

I'm glad that something as simple as words of support made a difference.

>264 richardderus: She has been greatly bolstered by the kind words and actions of her many friends. I was touched that the senior management of both my sites give a token for my FIL yesterday as it is an Asian thing to do so (Korea and Malaysia both practice this). I didn't always get along with my FIL as is, I suppose customary too, but I appreciate his importance in the life of the woman I love.

Your comment about elders is on point too as I am now easily the senior male in my immediate family on my wife's side of the family.

There have been a handful of good books lately about the women who toiled pretty much anonymously, in the belly of the Disney (and other animation shops too) beast.

They did tedious painstaking work under pretty terrible conditions and turned out good stuff that made the world laugh. Good on them. Good that people are writing about them now.

>266 magicians_nephew: Awomen! And *excellent* that a few of them are still around to tell their version of events. One failing that this book had was its singular lack of sources...not in-line cited, but that was sort-kinda to be expected for the pop market. Just, well, most of 'em are dead and a lot of what they could've told us they can't now. I gather family memories were, um, deemed iffy.

>265 PaulCranswick: That Asian custom is appropriate and appreciated indeed. Considering the value you're adding to their bottom lines, it's not out of place.

...I just this second thought of this...will this impact y'all's ability to retire in the UK? Traditionally you're the Big Cheese now, and that has responsibilities even more than you've shouldered. And Hani's family might have a tough time relocating with y'all given the vile ppl in charge of the UK's government.

>255 jessibud2: >256 Helenliz: There's a word for that? Of course, there must be. I was appreciating the petrichor just the other day because we seem to have headed back into rainy weather again.

You learn something new every day.

Is there a word for the coolth before the heat? That always gets me feeling like there's an adventure around the corner.

I think we will enjoy petrichor today. It seems the grounds people decided to mow earlier today. I think they expect a couple of inches of rain and possibly strong storms this afternoon.

Hiya, RD, and a happy Thursday to you.

Not much going on in my small corner of the world, but coffee is always a joy. And there are always interesting things going on over here, of course.

*smooch*

>267 richardderus: It won't materially change our plans, RD, but it does have the capacity to delay it a little. Hani's mum will be welcome to pay extended visits but she certainly wouldn't want to relocate with us.

Islamic inheritance laws make my brother in law master of all including bizarrely my unmarried and much beloved gay SIL. So he technically is the big cheese but without funds and I will never put him in charge of any given that he is a dope fiend. The family house in JB technically belongs to him now and I am expecting trouble for my MIL. She and my SIL will always have a place with us anyway.

56 Cry of Murder on Broadway by Julie Miller

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

Rating: 4* of five

The thing about writing books about illiterate people is that one has no direct access to their thoughts. While a diary, or a body of correspondence no matter how quotidian, might be suspect in it honesty, the lack of such a diary or correspondence makes the project feel removed, remote, untethered to the person in the crosshairs.

This is a built-in, and serious, structural flaw. I believe Author Miller chose Amelia Norman as a subject anyway because she was a woman who attempted to revenge herself on the man who callously and cruelly deprived her of a woman in her class's only possession: Her reputation. Her story attracted a great deal of attention from the press and the reality-TV-watchers' ancestors who went to trials expecting to be entertained by "...what amounted to a serial drama." Establishment pillar and publisher of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, was among the media fanners-of-flames who, not coincidentally, are the only reason we have any idea who she was or what the heck Amelia Norman was thinking at all.

Publisher Bennett's initial sympathy for Ballard, Norman's victim, softened over time; one senses that he was a bellwether and as famous popular writer, abolitionist, and national newspaper columnist Lydia Maria Child inserted herself into the proceedings, felt the wind of opinion changing direction. As a circulation-seeking businessman, he trimmed his sails to catch the new wind.

As the trial parts of the book get going, the pace of my reading picked up as well. The reason is as simple as the legions of reality-TV watchers goggling at The Bachelor and The Bachelorette as they go through their race-relations horrors, their allegations of many kinds of abuse, and the unexamined tawdriness of pruriently peering into the complicit cast's intimate moments.

So we're moving through a trial that, in its well-analyzed in this text result, affected deep and abiding injustices in the law and society of the United States. A woman's right to bring a lawsuit on her own behalf in the circumstances Amelia Norman found herself in was immeasurably advanced by the "Not Guilty" verdict returned on that January day in 1844. The crowds were jubilant, having decided that ugly-souled narcissist and seducer Ballard brought this assassination attempt on himself by his callous actions. It helped shape the public sentiment of a time of great change, and of increasing progressive social activism. In 1848, a mere four years after this trial's conclusion, Lydia Maria Child took part in the Seneca Falls Convention, the pioneering women's rights convention. This was a moment of revolution, and its sparks would ignite much action for the rest of the century and much of the next. One of those sparks was the passage of New York's "Act to Punish Seduction as a Crime." That was the beginning of developments that Author Miller spends the last third of the book contextualizing and analyzing with what, to me, was deft and involving erudition of prose.

I'm quite certain you will all be shocked, shocked!, to learn that Norman wasn't just allowed to sink back into anonymity. She, her family, and in time the country riled themselves up about tawdry secrets carefully hushed during the trial itself. More ink was spilled when a woman resembling her was seen in, um, compromising circumstances for the day. But Child defended her in every forum against all charges and, in the end, it was her success that allowed Norman to vanish from the public records.

Which fact, in and of itself, tells me that the verdict of Not Guilty was indeed right and just. Absent her own words expressing her own thoughts on the subject, I believe her complete vanishing act...no arrests, no documentation of criminality...tells us she was just an ordinary woman who wanted, and ultimately was able to, live an ordinary life.

>271 PaulCranswick: Oh how awful...I had forgotten, if indeed I ever knew, of the brother's existence. In my mind it was Hani and her sister, and you as the husband of the eldest would inherit control. Poor MiL! Her chickens are on their way home to roost.

>270 karenmarie: ...there ARE?!? Why don't *I* know about them?! Humph...it's my thread and y'all're off having fun somewhere in it without me!

*smooch*

>269 thornton37814:, >268 humouress: Yesterday was the more petrichor-laden of the week's days. It's building itself up to rain on us again.

Shelley, the pre-front cool snap doesn't have a name that I know of. Any ideas for one we should beat the drums for?

R--Not much to say. Just keeping current and dropping off smooches.

>274 Berly: *smooch*

Glad you're here!

>273 richardderus: - No idea. But I know there is a specific smell of snow in the air before it snows. No idea if that has a name, either. ;-)

57 Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton by Lydia R. Hamessley

Rating: 4.5* of five

I RECEIVED THIS DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

I was a teen in the 1970s, when Miss Dolly was really gaining fame. In my social circle, such as it was, country music was not the first choice of listening on the car stereo. We ran to Rick Wakeman and Electric Light Orchestra and show tunes. (Drama fag here, if you're wondering.) As I, almost alone among my friends, had much-older sisters, I'd hear things overlooked by the pop-pups. Joni Mitchell wasn't big among them, but my sister gave me her old copy of Hejira when she moved, starting a love affair with Mitchell that's lasted to this very day. Then came the day she played "I Will Always Love You" and we laughed our snobby selves silly! "She sounds like a 45 played at 78," I commented, and got an approving laugh from the older audience. But that's a beautiful song, and if one is even a little bit susceptible to sentimental love poems, it's a gripping story. It's been remade and made into a hit in every decade since its first release in 1974.

Let's us have a come-to-Jesus about the parts of Miss Dolly you've been ignoring, were foolishly dismissive of (like me), or were unaware of. The lady acts and performs and sings. But she IS a songwriter. "I Will Always Love You", written to mark the end of her early and formative loving partnership with Porter Wagoner (man charted eighty-one singles in his life, betcha most people reading this blog never heard of him!), is in the American Songbook by virtue of it ubiquity and popularity with singers and audiences alike.

Author Lydia Hamessley is a musicologist, a scholar of Southern Appalachia's musical heritage. She is a thorough academic, and that is not bad thing because her subject here isn't the media star Dolly Parton!!! but the creative dynamo songwriter behind the entertainer. Many thousands of songs have come forth from Parton's pen. Many hundreds have been recorded by herself, and many other artists. (By the way, did y'all know Miss Dolly wrote a song called "Backwoods Barbie"?!

"Don't let these false eyelashes lead you to believe
That I'm as shallow as I look,
'cause I run true and deep"

This is the same smart businesswoman whose public persona uttered the deathless aperçu, "You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!" and variations thereon, in countless interviews.)

Oh, sorry. Anyway, Author Hamessley's text is academic in purpose and execution, so I won't lie and say it flowed past my eyes like limpid creek-water down a holler. Miss Dolly wrote an autobiography for you, if that's what you're looking for; I wasn't, and I asked for this book because I wanted to know about the creative, and also the businesswoman behind the persona.

And that is precisely what I got. Say hallelujah and bring the jubilee!

So, there's more, but I left it at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud: https://tinyurl.com/3f9a3jpn

>277 richardderus: - One of the greats!

>278 katiekrug: Agreed!

>276 jessibud2: I wish I could whomp one up...it's such a lovely sense-memory.

Good Morning, RichardDear. Happy Friday.

>277 richardderus: Excellent comments. I’ve read enough about her over the years to get glimpses of her intelligence, kindness, creativity, generosity and business acumen and not pay attention to most of her songs.

G'morning. All's fairly smooth here. You're lookin' good.

Just leaving a footprint so's you know I was reading through the thread.
That's about as much as I'm reading, except a chapter a night of an amazingly engaging noir work, The Bride Wore Black. I'm really enjoying Woolrich's writing style.

>282 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! Thanks for delurking to let a sad old shut-in know he's not *totally* isolated. Oh, Cornell Woolrich is indeed worthy of savoringly sipping at a slow rate. His prose is potent.

Happy weekend ahead!

>280 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! I'm glad you liked my comments on Miss Dolly. Her persona is only a small part of her personhood. The whole enterprise is inspiring and joyful, thank goodness!

Enjoy your weekend's reads. *smooch*

Still remember the Dolly Parton - Linda Rondstat - EmmyLou Harris "Trios" albums -- musical gold!

Her songwriting is often overshadowed by her larger than life persona - and her time with Porter Waggoner is part of that - but she is DOLLY and God Bless every little bit of her

>277 richardderus: "Me too" as someone who underestimated or misunderstood Dolly Parton until I was old enough to know I should have known better. In my case it took Mrs. swynn, who told me to shut up and what to listen for.

>285 swynn: Awomen! I can't imagine why anyone could hear Wildflowers and not understand one is in the Presence of Magnificence.

>284 magicians_nephew: My favorite from that album is linked above, Jim, and it's just about the most perfect description of being Other and moving away from home to be yourownself.

^A very vocal red-winged blackbird, from a recent solo jaunt. A fierce male marking his territory.

Happy Friday, RD. Great review of Unlikely Angel. I am also a Dolly fan and I think this would make a fantastic audio companion.

>288 richardderus: Wow! he's about to bust somethin' hollerin' like that!

I'm so glad you liked the review. Miss Dolly's a treasure on every level and appreciating her builds bridges between the most unlikely souls! My dearly beloathèd roommate listened while I played "Wildflowers" a little while ago, and was beside himself with glee at discovering a new-to-him Dollysong. We listened to the whole album while eating our dinner. It's the most peaceful it's been for me in weeks.

Gawd bless Miss Dolly Parton!

Happy Weekend, Richard.

You have been quite a busy reader. Already 57 books!

>277 richardderus: Dolly Parton is quite an interesting singer/songwriter.

>289 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, the same back at'cha. I'm pleased with my pace this year! If nothing else I'm getting more memory-fixing reviews done thanks to >7 richardderus:.

She is an amazing songwriter! I'm so delighted to have learned more about the importance of songwriting to her sense of herself. It was a delightful read.

Hi Richard, Happy Saturday

'Morning, RD, and a very happy Saturday to you.

I've just started sipping the elixir of life and looking forward to the day.

*smooch*

>292 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Glad you're on the road to Personhood. I'm slurping a bit just now, as well.

Spend Saturday splendidly. I intend to make the most of the sunshine!

*smooch*

>291 connie53: Thanks, Connie, the same wishes heartily returned. I hope you have a great read going and have time to get into it.

I realized today that I never wrote a review for Spider in a Tree by Susan Stinson! I read it shortly after my stint in the goofy garage, which explains my carelessness; I saw a craft note by Stinson in Poets & Writers, and thought, YES! Fatness is implicit in her characters. So I wrote this about that read:
Bodies are meaty things. These characters have bodies...most writers give characters mouths to speak, occasionally brains to think, but very seldom bodies that take up space. Stinson's writing is full of proprioception's quiet contrails. I enjoyed this book quite immoderately.

Enjoy that sunshine!

>294 richardderus: That sounds worth looking at.

58 The Delicate Ape by Dorothy B. Hughes

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Terror of the Hunted

Piers Hunt was followed—by a rat-faced little man, by a detective named Cassidy, and by a dark, soundless shadow, felt rather than seen. But worse than the fear of his followers was Hunt's terror of a beautiful and passionate girl. With his emotions he loved her violently; with his mind he hated her. She was evil—a seductive force in evil hands. They all wanted what he had: information which no one but himself must know for a week. On Sunday he would tell it, not to a chosen few, but to the entire world.

This story by Dorothy B. Hughes, author of The Fallen Sparrow and Dread Journey, is more than just a whirlwind tale of spies and intrigue. As Will Cuppy said, "Miss Hughes offers an exciting story wrapped in an idea that is certainly on the side of the angels. Complete with murder, valuable papers, problems to solve, and not one scrap of nonsense. A necessity for Grade-A addicts."

(The above is the back-cover copy of the 1947 Pocket Books mmpb edition that belonged to my father. I think it's better than the modern editions' efforts, so here it is.)

My Review: Look at her Wikipedia entry...you'd never know how much of a Thing she was back in the day. She was Miss Hughes by the "courtesy" of the times; she had three children with her husband, Lewis Allan Hughes, Junior. Her burst of creativity came in the 1940s, when twelve of her fifteen novels appeared. The last was published in 1963, The Expendable Man; it had been eleven years since the novel before it appeared and none would follow. (A far better condensation of Author Hughes's affect and effect is in the LA Review of Books, not paywalled.)

Hughes was, however, astonishingly prolific as a writer of criticism (winning an Edgar for it in 1951); she was awarded a Grand Mastership by the Mystery Writers of America in 1983 for her decades of critical work, and, I believe, in no small part for her 1978 biography, Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason. It remains my very favorite biography—it's really what we'd call today "a life" in that it's not full of footnotable "and on Wednesday the nineteenth came a surprise" stuff—of a mystery writer. It's got the insider-thriller-writer knowingness and the loving appreciation of a fan, coupled with a woman (who rejected the label "feminist" her entire life) who sees what he's doing there's tolerant tutting.

I decided that this book, an oddity in Author Hughes's career, needed a review. Most of Author Hughes's most popular works feature a woman lead. Here, not for the first time, she writes from a man's point of view, though honestly Piers doesn't feel like a man so much as a machine-part, a character without that much character. It's no one's favorite of her works, poor thing, though possibly for that reason. She wrote it in 1942-1943, set it in 1955, and made a lot of assumptions about how the post-war world would work. They are all completely wrong.That should surprise no one. After all, SF writers get *gleefully* bashed and pointed at when they get things wrong, so why exempt Author Hughes?

In a weird way, this 1947 printing is a near-future story about the US Secretary of Peace and his dealings with an about-to-be de-occupied Germany. And that, we're let in on, is a Very Bad Idea...one that even gets people killed for so much as conceptualizing. If there is to be a change in Germany's occupation, you see, it must be one that allows Germany to rise again or it will cause more wars! (If they're released from under the occupation, of course, there will be more wars...so, one might wonder, what the hell's the difference?)

Piers is in possession of evidence that will somehow derail the whole peace convocation. It isn't like anyone doesn't know he has it...the femme fatale Morgen, the love of Piers's life, is sent to violate her marriage vows to collect the information from him on her husband the German General's certainty that he is still besotted...but Piers isn't having it. The Germans must be kept down! Like the Chinese are keeping those losers the Japanese in their place!

See? She really got everything seriously wrong here.

But what she didn't get wrong is the pacing of the chases. As Piers dodges bullets and babes, as he does every-damn-thing in his power to prevent a murderous cabal of powerful profiteers from returning this peaceful 1955 to the charnel house-filling state of perma-war Author Hughes cynically posits they want, she never once takes her foot off the gas pedal. In under two hundred pages, she delivers a set-piece of an ending that wraps the speeding car of story around the lamp-post of inevitability.

It's a weirdo, a little misshapen bump in the road of her career. I think it's all the more fun for that. I also think that the pleasures of reading it are sharpened if one deals with it as alternate history of World War II's ending.

Don't be fooled by Dorothy B. Hughes's factually unsupported claims for her fictional 1955...she saw what was coming. She wasn't a fan of the Germans. She wasn't fooled by the industrialists' patriotic mouthings. She was limpidly clear about what a raw deal ordinary people will always get, especially when they're standing up to be counted for the Right Thing to be done (read The Expendable Man!!).

And she wrapped it all in clear, clean prose that ages like single-malt whisky.