richardderus's fourteenth 2021 thread

I periodically participate in the Internet-wide read-and-review year-based "Clubs" that some book bloggers do. This one coming up is The 1976 Club.

The link will take you to Stuck in a Book's blog post about the concept of a shared read centered on one particular year. I decided to read Marge Piercy's feminist SF time-travel classic, Woman on the Edge of Time. It's been on my TBRadar since ~1977, has come so close to being read that I have purchased it at least twice, but somehow hasn't made it to the top of the pile...until now. If not for Neglected Books, Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings, and Simon from Stuck in a Book (linked above), who knows when/if it'd ever have happened.


My edition's new cover, which I like better than the old cover I have:


So, anyone else want to try something from 1976? Look at your library (you can sort your catalog by copyright dates!). Wikipedia has a handy-dandy listicle of "notable" things published that year; the various awards given all have their honorees listed by date, eg the World Fantasy Award, the Hugos, the Pulitzers.... There's no reason to limit yourselves...read a/some/all the novel(s)/story(s)/poem(s) on the Pulitzers list, or any other list of Awards/Prizes/Medals given in 1976 at the Awards Archive.

This is a chance to read something unexpected, read something new to you, read something exactly like/opposite to your usual preferred length, category, genre. Or embrace your guilt, choose something you already own that was published that year. Do it, in other words, however the heck you want...and still have a special time period to do it in (or by, if you read slowly)...with as many or as few others you'd like to tell about this fun Internet Event.

Sounds pretty much can't-lose-ish to me.

I'm delighted to introduce, laddies and gentlewomen, my new spirit animal:
The Fucktopus.

**********************
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.

Reviews 45 through 58 are listed here.

Reviews 59 through 65 present themselves in that spot.

Reviews 66 through 75 reside in this thread.

Reviews 76 through 98? Seek them before this.

Reviews 99 through 110 remain becalmèd thitherward.

Reviews 111 up to 123 actualize their potential in the linkèd thread.

Reviews 124 through 136 locatable in this locale.

Reviews 137 to 147 (inclusive)? Back up.

Reviews 148 to 155 are available here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

Burgoined Book The Venetian Affair charged me up, post 62.

156 The Body Scout enhanced, post 69.

Burgoined Book 157 The Actual Star delighted, post 90.

158 Cloud Cuckoo Land disappointed, post 102.

159 The Wrong End of the Telescope thrilled, post 120.

160 The City Beautiful gruntled, post 140.

161 Warsaw Fury enlightened, post 169.

162 Black Irish Blues pleased, post 170.

163 Shelter unsettled, post 179.

164 Underneath stunned, post 180.

165 Sourcery wittered, post 186.

166 Never Silent gave me nostalgia, post 209.

167 A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year: Hundreds of Stories on the Pandemic enlightened, post 240.

168 Guards! Guards! flopped, post 257.

169 Woman on the Edge of Time disappointed, post 291.

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 190 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...hands too feeble now
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 Connerley 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!

Good puppy! Now you may have your treat: Post away!

Yay! Happy new thread, RDear.

*smooch*

Happy New Thread, Richard! Man, you're even lazier than I am when it comes to starting a new thread. i like this sparkly new one. You may have already hit me with a BB. I never did read Woman on Edge of Time,and yours is the first time I"ve seen it described as sci-fi. I've probably been hanging out in the wrong places.

Happy new one! Interesting idea to read by publication date - I have Interview With a Vampire in the stacks, so I might join you. Seems like October would be the perfect month to read that one in.

Happy new thread, RD.

Love the bookmobile!

>9 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! You're first, so here's your imperial crown:

*smooch*

>12 PaulCranswick: Isn't it spiffy? I'm glad you enjoyed the blast from the past, PC.

>11 Crazymamie: Oh, excellent! Be sure to let me know if I don't see your posts about reading it.

>10 jnwelch: I'm goin' with sci-fi, Joe...I think La Piercy never liked being genre'd because of SF's long, long tradition of misogyny. Any book where someone wakes up a hundred years in the future is sci fi to moi.

SEPTEMBER IN REVIEW

I read and reviewed fourteen titles this month, including the effed-up blog post of The Antidote for Everything. (Grrr! I hate screwing up simple, obvious things...but I am, in my own defense, really, really tired from my delightful visit with Valerie.) Only ten made it onto my blog. This means I have 55 posts to make to reach my 2021 goal of 190 reviews blog-posted, or a slightly daunting 18 per month! I'll do it...but it will be a strain.

Nothing got five stars this month. I think the book I read that most delighted me was Awake by Harald Voetmann, a species of novella translated from the Norwegian starring the revered Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder. (Whose nephew Pliny the Younger comes across as a major pill in this text!)

Happy new one, RD. xx

>16 katiekrug: Hiya Katie! Thank you most kindly. Have a happy weekend-ahead's reads.

I'm up for reading from 1976's bookshelf. Several years ago, I compiled a list of one book for each year of my life (so far). And since I lack self-control, most years have multiple books. For '76 I listed The Face of Battle by John Keegan, The Amazing Bone by William Stieg, and The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner. I reread the Steig a few months back.

Have to see what I have, what I might look for.

Happy new thread, Richard! Friday *smooches*

Happy new one!

I have 12 unread books on my shelves/Kindle that were published in 1976. I'll add a couple to my list of possible October reads...

Happy New Thread. Head's up, my Friday post might be delayed a little bit. Its the new quarter, so I will create a new thread, but probably not til this afternoon.

>22 mahsdad: Since I was about to coddiwomple thitherward, I'll put that visit off for a few hours. Thanks for letting me know!

>21 katiekrug: Yay! I'm hopeful that one of 'em will get you going.

>20 drneutron: Thanks, Jim!

>19 bell7: *smooch* Happy weekend's reads, Mary.

>18 weird_O: The Spectator Bird is an *outstanding* read, Bill. Just so's ya know.

Happy new thread, Richard dear!
Previous thread: Such a nice picture of you, looking good!

>1 richardderus: Went through the 1976 wikipedia and awards lists. Humbolts Gift is the only one I would consider, as it is on the shelves. I might read it if I have some spare time near the end of October.

Happy New Thread, Richard. Another gorgeous day here in the Midwest. Keep 'em coming.

Happy new thread. 1976 my little brother came into the world. Oh well, I'm sure the year was good for some things. >;-)

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
If you haven't yet, this is your chance to read THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME BY DONALD RAY POLLOCK for $1.99 on Kindle!
My almost-5* #BookReview: https://tinyurl.com/hx6dsujx
The non-affiliate link to the sale: https://smile.amazon.com/Devil-All-Time-Donald-Pollock-ebook/dp/B004J4WM9A

>26 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen! It was a better year for me than you...I got my first car.

>25 msf59: Ain't it just! Thanks, Mark.

>24 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita. I hope Humboldt's Gift makes the list, and pleases you, too.

Even I can read 26 posts on a Richard thread! I will also tell you that I'm already a member of the '76 club, currently reading R.B.W. Lewis's biography of Edith Wharton. I'll likely still be reading it in November too.
Continue this one in good health with good reading!

>29 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! Well, it's a good choice for a read no matter the month, and Wharton's a fascinating writer.

EVERYONE should check this "What Hubble Saw on Your Birthday!" link: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/what-did-hubble-see-on-your-birthday
On my birthday in 2005, Hubble saw:

It's called the "Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey", South Field. In case you was wonderin'.

Happy new thread!

>31 richardderus: Thanks, Susan!

I can't remember if I've shared this before

Happy new one!

>31 richardderus: For me, in 2009, it took a picture of Neptune.

>36 mahsdad: Cool!

>35 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, it's lovely to see you here!

>34 quondame: No, and I'm delighted that you have, it's adorable.

>31 richardderus: ohhhh! Nice. I could waste a lot of time there.

Happy new thread Richard!

>39 humouress: Thank you! It's moving right along, isn't it?

>38 Helenliz: It's a time-suck, but I myownself feel that it's somehow okay for it to be. After all, it's NASA and therefore de facto educational.

...please don't mess with my denial...

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Saturday to you.

>27 richardderus: And from one day to the next, up $10. Today it’s $11.99. Sigh.

>31 richardderus: Even though space stuff doesn’t often intrigue me, that one did! Thank you. I’ve forwarded the link to my all-things-space husband. Hubble saw Seyfert’s Sextet on my birthday in 2000, so different years for different dates.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>41 karenmarie: Yeah, the regular price isn't within what I think of as "reasonable." It's why I tell folk about the sales, like Joe does. This group has an entire "SALE" thread, and we never seem to use it. Next year I'll link sale announcements on my thread to it, thence to Ammy. Get its profile raised a hair.

Oh honey! Not so fast! Hubble will return a different picture for your birthday each time you ask for it! It's got thirty examples of your birth-date, and literally hundreds of images taken on each of those days. Bill will be in heaven.

Pardon the pun.

*smooch*

Well, I feel deprived. I've tried it on 3 different browsers and it shows the same one for my birthdate. Harrumph.

Oh; I was assuming it picks the best for each day of the year and just has 366 images. Mine (for 8th October 2012) is quite glorious. I’ll have to investigate further ....

>44 humouress:, >43 karenmarie: Remember: It's random. Sometimes it will show the same thing for a week at a time. They really need to do what Spotify did and make the image rotation algorithmically selected, so not truly random. That way we'd perceive it as random.

Silly ape-brained colonial creatures, us humans.

Cranswickulus has a personal-best of the Teens listicle up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/335543#7617415

He was inspired by LitHub's 2019 listicle, which honestly I agree with him was created a widge too soon (there are several books on it I think should not be, and more than should in place of some of their choices). It's here: https://lithub.com/the-20-best-novels-of-the-decade/

So I decided to give it a go: I do my annual six-stars-of-five awarding at the end of the year, as you've seen. My list, then, has ten entries...but there are so many almost-theres that I will cogitate upon the topic and add to them.

2010: Letters to Anyone and Everyone
2011: The Song of Achilles
2012: I didn't give a six this year...the two closest are The Yellow Birds and The Teleportation Accident and there's little to choose between 'em.
2013: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making barely edged out 11/22/63, a really fine read but just slightly less of a flawless story than Valente's.
2014: Matterhorn barely edged out An Unnecessary Woman, that unforgettable beauty!
2015: The Sympathizer
2016: Margaret the First
2017: Missionary (link; the book is too obscure to merit an easily-findable touchstone with such a common title)
2018: Circe
2019: Milkman

Now...to see if there are some others published any of those years that I think deserve to be included in "Best of the Decade" listings. Thank you, PC, for this listicle idea! I shall ponder upon it.

I am another one up for a 1976 read and why ever not - that endless summer and the West Indies making Tony Greig and our cricket team grovel.

Here is what I have unread on t'shelves

Doctor Copernicus
The Nichovev Plot
The Turncoat
Hymns in Darkness
The Modigliani Scandal
The Four Swans
Roots
How I Became a Holy Mother
The Face of Battle
The Boys from Brazil
The Plantagenet Prelude
The Glittering Prizes
Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Saint Jack
Sadler's Birthday
The Main
1876
The Mind Reader

John Keegan (which Bill also has handy will probably be my pick)

>46 richardderus: Thing I realised the most in thinking about my list is just how little I read from the last decade. There are so many books I want to get to but haven't yet managed.

6 books mentioned on your list are unread by me but staring moodily out at me from my rather over stocked shelves.

Helllo again, RD. Thought I would stop by and see how you are trucking along these days. ((Hugs)) and xx Smooches xx

'Morning, RDear. Happiest of Sundays to you.

I can't for the life of me find a 1976 book on my shelves, read or tbr, that is screaming out at me. Fun challenge, but I'm passing. I've downloaded my catalog twice on this, but nope. Sorry.

*smooch*

>27 richardderus: Thanks for posting. I love Pollock, especially his short fiction. He is far overdue for a new book, right? His last novel was 2016.

>46 richardderus: Yep, Matterhorn has to be on this list! Hands-down. Sadly, I have not yet read An Unnecessary Woman. WTH?

Happy Sunday, Richard!

Morning, BigDaddy!

>52 Crazymamie: Hey there, Mamie me darlin', enjoying your Sunday?

>51 msf59: hi Mark! Yeah, DRP's due for another one, but five years is a poor prognosticator for a sixty-seven-year-old's finishing something new.

c'mon c'mon prove me wrong

Matterhorn is a terrific book...Waino Mellas's life in death is engraved on my memory. But hustle your bustle to acquire An Unnecessary Woman! What a great book, and such a good read.

Sunday, Sunday, who's got a Sunday? Enjoy yours!

Hi Richard. Just letting you know I was here (kind of like Kilroy, huh?).

>50 karenmarie: It's perfectly fine with me, Horrible me lurve, I'm all about reading what calls to you when it calls.Stay tuned for thoughts about Woman on the Edge of Time to commence soon-ish.

Sunday-dinner-level happiness today!

>49 alcottacre: STASIA!! Dear lady, I'm so very glad to see you! I hope you and yours are all keeping well. Please drop by whenever you take a notion to.

>48 PaulCranswick: Makes sense to me, PC, there are soooo many new books every year that I very much want to read that entire decades get stratified in unreachably sealed deposits of literary treasure.

If, through some major bureaucratic cock-up, I am granted Eternal Reward in heaven, it will involve the leisurely, outside-of-physics, ability to read every book I've ever wanted to (re-)read while still making inroads into the current lists.

>47 PaulCranswick: That's a FABULOUS list! Wow...I've read Roots, 1876, The Boys from Brazil (the movie's better), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and The Main (Trevanian was working at UT Austin when it came out, my sister offered a reading/signing at her bookstore, and Prof. Whitaker *threw*a*fit* because he was supposed to be Anonymous ::eyeroll::).

Many of the rest...the Tremain, the Raphael...I've never heard of...y'all's choice of The Face of Battle made it home from a bookstore run to The Strand when there was one downtown (the Seaport area of Manhattan, where I lived most of my life there) but never got read and has since disappeared.

>54 SandyAMcPherson: Greetings, Kilpherson. Your welcome presence herewith acknowledged. Feel free to return at will.

>56 richardderus: OK. :D

>55 richardderus: Thanks, Richard. I hope to be dropping by more often now that I am done being a pouting child, lol.

>58 alcottacre: Pouting only gets drool on your front, as I used to tell a pouter of my acquaintance.

*smooch*

>57 SandyAMcPherson: :-P

Hoping the weekend has been treating you well RD.

I hoping you don't mind if I ask you and your thread a language usage question. There's plenty of knowledgeable people to come to my aid. I might be about to cause some (necessary, imo) trouble. Can you think of a common usage of the term "lightweight" that does not have negative connotations? And is the negative connotation a UK-centric usage or is that common in other territories?

>60 Helenliz: Howdy, Helen! Happily weekending away here, I hope you are as well.

There is no un-insulting or -dismissive *human-referent* use of "lightweight" outside of the sporting world (boxers, wrestlers). If one means to describe some physical thing as having low mass, the more usual form is "light-weight" or simply "light." It isn't unknown for "lightweight" to be used to describe an object of low mass (eg, Ferrari's "Superleggera" cars of the 1950s), it's just not as commonly appearing as the hyphenated version (eg, carbon-fiber components of vehicles).

It's all the Regency's fault. The first use of it as a synonym of "inconsequential" is dated to 1809. Needless to say the Victorians (nasty, judgey bunch) expanded it to mean "piffling, useless person" around 1885.

It's Anglophonia-wide, I believe. My Nigerian friends aren't in the habit of using it though it appears to me the meaning is clear to them. Indian friends do use it, and I mean they are *in* India not of that descent. Anglophone Caribbean countries don't seem to have any unusual weight for it...I've seen it in the Daily Gleaner, f/ex, used exactly as described.

That's what 15min looking around my inboxes tells me...did that help?

Burgoined Book: The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes

Rating: 3.5* of five

Solid Cold-War thriller, though very much a book of two halves. About 160pp are your eat-your-kale-and-like-it investment...learn the names, and there are more than usual, get a grasp of the stakes...but the last half-plus is a race to the finish line that was unputdownable.

Author MacInnes wrote superior thrillers. Her deft touch with characterization was so economical that I left the read thinking, "how did so few words tell this whole story so satisfyingly?" She did it time after time, too.

I heartily recommend dropping this $1.99: https://smile.amazon.com/Venetian-Affair-Helen-Macinnes-ebook/dp/B00BO4GE7Y/

>61 richardderus: Thanks yes, I got to the bottom of the ironing pile, which meant I could get to the sewing machine and start a table runner quilt I've been plotting for ages. >:-)

And thank you, yes that is helpful. On questioning I was told that the author is Australian and probably isn't aware of the negative connotation. That sounded like b*ll*cks to me.

>63 Helenliz: That excuse? Bollocks is the least of it. Sounds like disingenuous special pleading to me.

Glad I could help. Name the table-runner after me.

Hi Richard my dear friend, happy new thread dear fellow.

'Morning, Rdear! Happy Monday to you.

I'm off to have blood drawn for my Oct. 14th annual exam. When I get home, coffee will be my reward.

>60 Helenliz: and >61 richardderus: Who knew I could be so fascinated with lightweight? Pre-coffee, too!

*smooch*

>66 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible, I hope you're properly caffeinated at last. I'm still absorbing my pot's elixir of life.

Luckily I'm happy as larry because it's a cloudy grim day outside and I can't go out in it! Take THAT Weather Goddess.

>65 johnsimpson: Thank you, John, and I'm very happy to see you here.

Morning, RD!

156 The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the future you can have any body you want—as long as you can afford it.

But in a New York ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, Kobo is barely scraping by. He scouts the latest in gene-edited talent for Big Pharma-owned baseball teams, but his own cybernetics are a decade out of date and twin sister loan sharks are banging down his door. Things couldn't get much worse.

Then his brother—Monsanto Mets slugger J.J. Zunz—is murdered at home plate.

Determined to find the killer, Kobo plunges into a world of genetically modified CEOs, philosophical Neanderthals, and back-alley body modification, only to quickly find he's in a game far bigger and more corrupt than he imagined. To keep himself together while the world is falling apart, he'll have to navigate a time where both body and soul are sold to the highest bidder.

Diamond-sharp and savagely wry, The Body Scout is a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future.

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

My Review: First, read this:

"We build better livers, and someone concocts stronger booze. We get sun treatments, then our chemicals burn up the ozone even more. Cure one disease, and another pops up. The pitcher juices up his throw, and the batter juices up his swing. On and on it goes."
–and–
“We’re all trapped in these forms, aren’t we? Our minds get poured into them without anyone even asking us. We grow and live in them, and yet in many ways they are as incomprehensible to us as the cosmos.”
–and–
"We've got 'em all. Mammoth burgers, teriyaki tyrannosaurs wings, saber-toothed gyro platters. Those cocksuckers thought they could avoid being eaten by going extinct. Bunch of buffoons. Didn't count on human ingenuity. We can eat anything these days. Eat the past, present or future."

The flavor of the writing is right there...wry, world-weary, ever so slightly facetious...and if that ain't your jam, baby, move along. Author Michel, whose story collection Upright Beasts earned praise from me, fails to shock me with his writing and planning chops. It's very clear why he offers writing advice for a living.

What would happen if Gattaca and Moneyball had a bastard love-child? This book. From the off, I loved the choices Author Michel made. Baseball is my only organized sport love. Having the Mets (my team since the 1969 Miracle Mets defeated the BodyMore Inc....I mean Baltimore!...Orioles in the seventh game of the World Series) owned by Monsanto was, while revolting, not entirely unthinkable. Choosing baseball for the body-modding corporate shills to play made perfect sense because there's so much more to work with in the prowess-enhancement department. Baseball players are required to specialize in this day and age...don't get me started about the designated-hitter rule!...and yet by the very nature of the game there is a constellation of skills they still need to possess to some degree, like running and fielding the ball. The development of modifying tech, driven by the need/want of the Big Pharma owners, gets laid right at present-day capitalism's (and its political stooge class's) door, as the present-day pandemic accelerated the mad dash for corporate ownership of everything into sports. It's not at all unlikely, given that corporations own teams in Japan....

But the fact that the world Kobo Zunz lives in, the one that allows him to modify his body to an absurd degree despite having become a talent scout thus no longer playing baseball, is chock-a-block with delightfully pointed choices embodied in other characters: Dolores ("sorrows" or "pains") is Kobo's friend/kinda-ex, a Deaf person who elected not to restore her hearing but to enhance her sight (GoogleGlasses-esque modifications to one eye that present speech translated into ASL); Natasha the Neanderthal, the Big Pharma enforcing muscle and that's not a nickname but a descriptive label as she's of the genetically engineered re-introduced Neanderthals; Lila, the Angry Young Girl who, like Greta Thunberg, is outraged into incandescence at the gigantic mess her elders are leaving for her to clean up. I love that, when Kobo the expert at foreseeing trends in body modification (always ask an addict to get an accurate vision of the addiction's course) is summoned to solve the gruesome and very public murder of his adopted brother, Monsanto Mets batting (aka "slugging") star JJ Zunz, it's by a manager whose only name is "the Mouth." Ha! Kobo's debts incurred in body modding will be paid in full...if he pins the very public, obviously message-sending murder on a particular rival team. That will get the scary, violent loansharks who have been funding his biomechanical enhancement addiction, Brenda and Wanda, off his terrifying-nightmares list.

So what am I saying about this read? Much delighted me, mentioned above. There are things that didn't delight me near so much. The length of the story, for example, would support more exploration of side characters who got little (JJ's mother, who adopted Kobo). But in all honesty I'd've been much happier if some of the amazing ideas and snarky asides had been held in RAM for a sequel, leaving a fizzier and more propulsive through-line. It's not like it's a slow read, or wasn't for me; it's just densely packed with irresistible shiny baubles and it could've been told in less time and at a more spanking pace. I presume this is not the start of a series because the publishers would've trumpeted that fact if it had been. If Author Michel chooses to make it into a series, which I really hope he will, quite a lot of the underexplored material will be very expandable.

What isn't expandable is the ending. A very weird change of tone takes place as we're coming in for our landing. It becomes...sweet. Kind of sentimental. This felt so very wrong to me, like Philip Marlowe got a hit of some opiods and turned into Ted Lasso.

What I will say is that you're going to love The Body Scout if you loved George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran books, or the early William Gibson. I did; I do; and all cavils aside, I'd encourage any baseball fans, bleak/noir fiction lovers, and anti-capitalists to hop on board. A few bumps on the journey shouldn't detract from the way-cool scenery.

Morning, BigDaddy! I want a cloudy grim day. *pouts a bit*

>68 katiekrug: Howdy do, Miss Katie ma'am. I trust I find you well this fine mornin'?

(It's only "fine" if you are discussing the mist, I realize...)

>70 Crazymamie: I'm so sorry I can't ship it to you, Mamie my sweet. I promise I'll sacrifice a few kittens to the Weather Goddess to see if she can be persuaded to send you one.

Never mind!

>72 Crazymamie: Ahhh...I see we've reached the Line in the Sand.

Very well, felidae of the town need not fear me (more than usual).

I'm in for the 1976 Read, Richard. Took me a while to make a list of candidates, but here are my TBRs published/copyrighted in 1976. Not going to read them all, but I expect to enjoy at least two or more.

Adolf Hitler by John Toland
Roots by Alex Haley
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights From the Winchester Manuscript of Thomas Malory and Other Sources by John Steinbeck*
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut*
Passages by Gail Sheehy
Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver*
On Writing Well by William Zinsser*

The three titles I mentioned in >18 weird_O: have been read; no longer TBRs. Some others—like those listed by Paul in >47 PaulCranswick:—are not on my shelves, in my stacks, nor hiding in the boxes. Most likely to be read are marked with an asterisk.

>74 weird_O: Aha! The starred ones would make a fine reading month indeed. I hope you'll come back to let me know when you've posted any thoughts on the one(s) you end up reading.

>69 richardderus: Someday-Swamp'd. Thanks!

>76 swynn: I think this one's worth bumping from "someday" to "ILL that bad boy" because it's so trenchant and amusingly satirical.

FWIW.

Well! Staying up late to get stuff accomplished paid off!

ELLEN DATLOW COMPLIMENTED MY REVIEW OF Night of the Mannequins (over here)!

That is so very agreeable.

>62 richardderus: I bought it!

>69 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, RD!

>78 richardderus: It really is very agreeable. Kudos, Richard!

>78 richardderus: Cool!

'Morning, RD, and congrats on >78 richardderus:!

Coffee's being consumed, and I might have an outside visit with a friend today at her house. Otherwise, reading, puttering, and etc.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>78 richardderus: Cool!

>78 richardderus:

>82 drneutron: Agreed! SGJ retweeted my come-on for that review, which is nice of him, and Editor Datlow saw it, retweeted it, and offered a "Great review."

*giggle*

>81 karenmarie: A lovely day indeed. I hope it's Louise, the older pal...I feel real concern for older people in rural areas getting isolated by both age and COVID.

I'm giving myself a treat for breakfast: blueberries and yogurt. Yum! And the coffee Valerie bought me as a treat, Lavazza Dark Roast, got breached this morning, I simply couldn't not mark my special occasion with something.

Ellen Datlow!

*smooch*

>83 weird_O: Thanks, Bill!

>80 quondame: Ain't it?! Thank you, Susan.

>79 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia!

I think you'll enjoy it when its turn arrives.

Yay for getting the MacInness! Her stuff is really much better than I remember thinking it was as I devoured it wondering why I was devouring it.

>78 richardderus: Congrats! That's a nice start to your Tuesday (I think, since your comment came after midnight) *smooch*

>47 PaulCranswick: Boy Even Cowgirls get the Blues Remember when Tom Robbins was in everyone's backpack? Haven't heard his name for ever.

and 1876 was just a so-so follow up to the glittering Burr the previous year. Hey if Lin-Manual Miranda had picked up Burr instead of Ron Chernov's Alexander Hamilton what a difference it would have made to Broadway

and the Trevanian spy novels beginning with The Eiger Sanction. Yes his secret identity wasnt so secret even to the casual reader. But boy those books had a voice that was unique and wonderful.

and anything from John Keegan (sez me) is always worth a look.

Yes, I'm visiting Louise this afternoon, on her porch. I'm also loaning her twelve of my books. She keeps them for a while, picks and chooses, and I eventually get them back.

>88 karenmarie: I didn't know Tamsie was Louise! I've always thought they were different old ladies. Okay, datum processed. *smooch*

>87 magicians_nephew: Oooo, never thought about the Lin-Manuel shift. Burr was a far, far better book, IMO, but 1876 had its charms. It was just...messy.

Tom Robbins is, like Richard Brautigan, one of Those Guys...the ones who sorta-kinda hang on to people's attention in a small way. Kurt Vonnegut's still a bit bigger in the writerly pantheon.

John Keegan fanboydom duly noted.

>88 karenmarie: Hi Mary! Yes, thanks, it was a great turbocharge for my Tuesday early a.m.
***
I got a gig writing an author-friend's humorous bio for her Guest of Honor-dom at a convention. I got it done last night, reasonably polished, and sent to her. Now I wait...if the bailiffs and/or the butterfly-net boys don't show up I guess I'll have made her happy.

Burgoine Review
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because the economy of presentation packs the punch of Dune into the space of Cloud Atlas.

Three timelines, three souls, three moments in Humanity's journey. Author Byrne has made all of them into one beautiful braid, glossy and dark and heavy...crackling with energy...predicting a path that We-the-People must walk to fulfill our personal and communal purpose. I've seen the comparisons to Cloud Atlas but to be frank, a better comparison is, to my own mind anyway, what would happen if one gave A Canticle for Leibowitz to David Lynch and said, "...but make everyone queer."

There is a Glossary; use it. Xibalbá will no longer just be a weird-looking word to you when you're done with this read, and you'll be much the richer for it. I salute you, Monica Byrne, for risking so much in showing us this beautiful tale and not telling us every last thing. Trusting your readers pays off as they morph into fans, the way I have.

>90 richardderus: I will have to see if I can find a copy of that one. I very much enjoyed Cloud Atlas each of the times I read it.

>91 alcottacre: It came out in September, so I'm guessing it's in your local library by now.

I expect it'll give you a lot of pleasure to read! Such a wonderful use of timeline jumps. Really, each timeline could've been a stand-alone novella. That's how well-developed each one was.

>91 alcottacre: Nope, I already checked. Hopefully my local library will get it soon!

>90 richardderus: Ouch! BB. It's on the TBR (library holds).

>94 quondame:, >93 alcottacre: Yay! (And boo.) I'm always glad that the Good Ones get extra eyeblinks. (She was so pleased with my review on NetGalley that she came to Twitter to say thanks! That's a classy author indeed.)

I will contribute to the 1976 challenge by the weekend by finishing The Face of Battle by John Keegan, RD.

Superior and fascinating stuff.

>90 richardderus: Darn it! There is no way my library will have that :( Hmmmm.... now I do need to do an Amazon wishlist for the in laws for xmas...

Edited to add: Double darn it's not out for another week
And triple darn, too expensive. Poop :( I'll have to wait.

Also - have you seen there is a St. Mary's cookbook - for charity but with a foreword by Jodi Taylor - it's called And the Rest is Cookery.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Wednesday to you.

>89 richardderus: Sorry for the confusion. Louise lives next door and will be 87 this month. Tamsie is a year or two older than I am (I’m 68), is in my moribund book club, and lives about 25 minutes away.

*smooch*

>89 richardderus: I will fight any man in this bar who dares to compare the dazzling inventions of Kurt Vonnegut with the smart cracker foolery of Tom Robbins or the faint fey whimsey of Richard Brautigan. There's no comparison. Fair Warning!

Morning, bearded wonder.

Good review of The Body Scout up there. "early William Gibson" - oh, how I wish he'd go back to those halcyon days. I've hung with him through his recent near-present ones, but they haven't been nearly as enjoyable.

158 Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.

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

My Review: My rating seems mingy, doesn't it. It did to me...I was fully expecting to five-star this bad boy. I wanted to five-star it. I five-starred All the Light We Cannot See, and it was (like this book) a braided-perspectives structure telling a deeply felt and emotionally fraught story.

I blame it on the sci-fi bona fides I have learned to demand of mainstream writers.

Author Doerr's gorgeous sentences are all here:

Almost overnight, the streets glow with meaning. She reads inscriptions on coins, on cornerstones and tombstones, on lead seals and buttress piers and marble plaques embedded into the defensive walls—each twisting lane of the city a great battered manuscript in its own right.
–and–
“Repository… you know this word? A resting place. A text—a book—is a resting place for the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.”
–and–
There is magic in this place, the owl seems to say. You just have to sit and breathe and wait and it will find you. He sits and breathes and waits and the Earth travels another thousand kilometers along its orbit. Lifelong knots deep inside the boy loosen.

His gift for the pithy aperçu is on display, too:

“Fear of the thing,” Maher murmurs, more to himself than to Omeir, “will be more powerful than the thing itself.”
–and–
"Boil the words you already know down to their bones," Rex says, "and usually you find the ancients sitting there at the bottom of the pot, staring back up."

That last is particularly resonant to me. Cloud-cuckoo Land, invented by Aristophanes in his play The Birds, never existed (as far as I am aware) in the form posited by Author Doerr in this story. Big ups to him for actually fooling me into looking up "Antonius Diogenes Cloud Cuckoo Land" to be absolutely sure of it, though.

So what was the problem? It was the generation-ship element in which Konstance, in all our future, resides. An Earth that can muster the resources to create such a massive object, which has AIs as sophisticated as Sybil (I had to check...I'd've named it "Sibyl," so I verified that it wasn't before typing this), would not need to flee their home world. (Also, is running away from home because we've made a mess really all that hopeful a message in the first place?) It's part of the charm of 1950s sci fi that there were generation ships launched to escape nuclear-war ravaged Earth without anyone saying, "waitaminnit waitaminnit all those resources would be just ducky used on Earth to help people!" but it's 2021 and those sorts of naïve assumptions are scrapheap-of-history material. And yes, I got to the end... I know about the twist...but it comes very late and, for me at least, doesn't change the jarring code-switch from its intended if not entirely successfully sold hope-full to hope-less. The point of making this last-minute course correction was simply lost on me. It ended up making the whole narrative line feel like a cheat.

Another thing that *needs* to be scrapheap-of-history'd is the coding of villains as neurodivergent. One entire star vanished for that. This is all I will say on the subject.

In the end, though, it's the gestalt that doesn't happen that costs this beautifully told tale another of my stars. I expect, if I'm following five (or six, depending on your take on Aethon in the ancient play) main threads, to experience a coming-together, a thematic unity that makes each strand of the story stronger after I've reached it. This was, I'm very sad to say, missing in my reading experience, much as it was in my unhappy read of Cloud Atlas. A much more successfully gestalted example from my own reading is the near-future India of SF chunkster River of Gods, or the outstandingly exciting present-day crime-story chunkster also set in India, Sacred Games.

It verges on misery porn to use children's PoVs in highlighting the cost to innocents of the great human-caused upheavals of History. I'm very glad Author Doerr presented the misery of unnatural change from both sides of the 1450s fall-of-Constantinople story; no triumphalism allowed here. I was less convinced that the overarching thematic reach for Hope was successful, in that these children are all facing the awful, wrenching adjustments whether or not the world actually collapses around them. I mean by that, that the collapses are hard-wired and the survivors are going to be powerless to do more than respond to the New World Order. This vitiates any real hope, at least to my mind it does. That's more than the usual problem for me in this book's case because by its very nature...a story about stories and libraries and words in their eternally exciting welter of meaning, connotation, metaphorical freight...Hope should be the one thing that each character finds, retains, develops, has by the end of the tale.

In the final analysis, this is an Anthony Doerr book. Reams and reams of printer paper, a metric ton of toner, all used to commit the MS's supremely descriptive language to the page. Deeply felt and beautifully written dialogue. Thought-provoking and well-presented explorations of significant thematic concerns of the world right now. But this many pages in the present tense? I felt pummelled with the immediacy! urgency! of that choice, the sense that I was being asked to move through the story at far too rapid a clip. Your book club will, I am pretty sure, love it anyway or even because of this, will discuss it for the required hour and probably go over.

In a life you accumulate so many memories, your brain constantly winnowing through them, weighing consequence, burying pain, but somehow by the time you're this age you still end up dragging a monumental sack of memories behind you, a burden as heavy as a continent, and eventually it becomes time to take them out of the world.
–and–
It's never easy. Past tense literally causes him back pain, the way it flings all the verbs into the dark. Then there's the aorist tense, a tense unbound by time, that makes him want to crawl into a closet and huddle in the darkness.
–and–
Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one—that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes.

I needed things I didn't get...a faster pace in each timeline, fewer flowery passages (though they are gorgeous!)...got things I didn't want (coughSeymourcough), and yet read the book from giddy-up to whoa. Never once did I so much as contemplate abandoning the read, and that is saying something.

This title is a FINALIST for the 2021 Best Novel National Book Award! The winner will be announced on 17 November 2021. My most sincere well-wishes to the author and the publisher for their success in this contest.

>101 jnwelch: Greetings, Your Eggness! I think Gibson fell into the "I will NOT be a fancy Xerox machine!" trap and determinedly left his strongest points as a writer behind. I can understand, since the desire to expand and to leave tropism behind is endemic in artists. The issue is expectations of one's audience not being met...and the new tropes not finding as significant an audience.

Hence name value for publishers.

>100 magicians_nephew: *chuckle* "Faint fey whimsey" is a spot-on definition of Brautigan. "Smart-cracker foolery" is, if anything, more generous than Another Roadside Attraction's perpetrator merits.

Of all the gimcrack, brummagem untalents produced by the 1970s "counterculture" he ranks as the lowest in my esteem. He's a purveyor of literary fart jokes, and his books deserve to sink into the aeration tank of the sewage-treatment plant servicing the Home for Hacks.

>99 karenmarie: Happy Humpday, Horrible dear...I get it, I was right the first time and Tamsie isn't Louise! *whew* I confused myself needlessly. Eighty-seven! That is a gracious plenty of years. She's been a good friend over the years.

Sixty-eight! heavens, how time flies (in reverse)!

>98 BekkaJo:, >97 BekkaJo: Heck, Bekka, it's a WISH list...put the book on there and let *them* decide if it's too spendy. It's a very good read indeed.

>96 PaulCranswick: Hi PC! I'm glad that you're going to give that book some air-time.

As >87 magicians_nephew: says, it's not like the man wrote many (if any, can't think of one) duds.

>102 richardderus: I also gave this a middling rating and though I'm sorry you didn't like it more, I'm selfishly glad I'm not the only one!

>78 richardderus: That's awesome!

>102 richardderus: Hmm. I was looking at this one today and was not sure about it so I did not take it home. I think I will wait for a while on this one. I too, enjoyed All the light We Cannot See .

>102 richardderus: Hmmm, not sure if I wanted to go there. I had some real problems with River of Gods but it also was gorgeous. I think I'll try Sacred Games which is at least not written by a White-Guy™️.

>105 bell7: Hi Mary! I was just summoned to the desk to retrieve An Envelope....

We're not totally isolated, but there are a lot more amateurs than nay-sayers. It would've hit me wrong no matter who wrote it because I dislike Seymour's autistic coding being a big factor in the "villainization" of Others.

I am Disappointed and therefore more harsh in my rating.

>102 richardderus: Really appreciated your review, RD.

Isn't it strange how we can recognise the wonderful technical skill of a writer but still be unmoved by his words or not in the least compelled by his story?

>109 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC. It does puzzle me, that.

>107 quondame: Oh yes, Susan, go for it...and use that Glossary. It's a great investment of eyeblinks.

>106 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita! It's a perfect library borrow but not something I'd say to buy.

>108 richardderus: Yeah, I gave him a little slack for that because I read Seymour as less the actual villain than the pansy taken in by the real villains who planned to let him take the fall all along. But I'm not sure, in retrospect, that it really makes it that much better.

>102 richardderus: Yep all the reasons I've felt might be a problem with Doerr's new book Richard, even though I loved All the Light You Cannot See. Thanks for that great review.

>1 richardderus: I love the 1976 project and actually follow Simon and Kaggsy on bookish Twitter. I'll have to look and see what I have. Thanks for promoting the idea.

In addition to my list in >47 PaulCranswick: this may be of assistance in deciding what 1976 books to read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_in_literature

>102 richardderus: I took the book back without bothering to crack the cover. Both you and Lynda (carmenere) gave it lukewarm reviews and since I trust your opinion, I decided not to waste my time. Thanks for the heads up, RD!

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

>102 richardderus: Well I din't like All the Light We Cannot See, gave it a generous 3 1/2*, and didn't read any of his other books. For me Doerr, like some other American writers, can't write believable stories set in European countries. To many things are just about not right, feels like looking through a distorted mirror.

'Morning, RDear!

Happy Thursday.

*smooch*

>116 karenmarie: Happy Thursday, Horrible! *smooch*

>115 FAMeulstee: I'm not in any position to comment on his Eurotake, but this book is entirely set in the US in the present; I'm not sure any of us know enough to comment on his historical-novel chops re: 1453; and the future, well...anyone's game, really.

Still, I don't urge the read on you with any seriousness.

>114 alcottacre: It is my pleasure, Stasia, the book simply isn't important enough to get yourself into a lather over...and that long, it's a lather for sure.

>113 PaulCranswick: An excellent addition indeed, PC.

>112 brenzi: Thank you for the compliment, Bonnie! I look forward to seeing what you'll choose if you come on board.

>111 bell7: Y'know, in that connection, I just don't feel there's a better to get. A sadly failed book, and that's what makes me feel like I'm kicking a dog when I say I don't like it.

I have been fussing and fuming and assuming the worst about human nature, my own especially, as I've wondered why my review of The Wrong End of the Telescope wasn't appearing on my blog! I had the most baroque conspiracy theories...I was sure it was swallowed whole like the one for The Antidote for Everything was...worked myself into a proper lather, I did!

It occurred to me at 1.45pm to look at the post. I'd set it to appear at 6.30, like always. So what was wrong here? More anxiety! More conspiracy theories! (I think I even imagined the Tralfamadorans were After Me.)

Six-thirty P.M.

Oh. Well then. Yes. Um. So! Here it is.

159 The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

Rating: 5* of five (but watch this space...)

The Publisher Says: By National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman’s journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island

Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.

Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When you are faced with an overwhelming event...say, the Syrian refugee crisis of 2016...which is, in itself, the result of a series of overwhelming events outside the control of any individual who is suffering the consequences of others' bad decisions...where do you even begin to process the emotional and psychic overwhelm of the event?

In Rabih Alameddine's The Wrong End of the Telescope, you begin by finding the voice you need to make alienation, victimization, and the abjection of fleeing everything you've ever known against your will, truly personal. Enter Mina Simpson. She is a trans woman in a lesbian relationship (one thing I found ever-so-slightly on the nose was setting a lesbian's tale on Lesbos...but that's where it happened in reality) with a Haitian psychologist, and fellow Chicagoan, Francine. She is a physician summoned to help with the overwhelming floods of refugees from Syria's dissolution by her friend and fellow transwoman (but heterosexual), Emma. Also a doctor, Emma cries for help that Mina arrives to offer exactly as the Holidays result in a vast sea of wealthy-Westerner disaster tourists showing up to "do their bit" to help...Them.

Mina's life as a trans person in Lebanon was harrowing, as I expect most trans people's live are everywhere. There is so much hate directed at trans people all over the world, from every imaginable quarter, that it was a genuine pleasure to see Mina's older brother and sole remaining family member was loving, accepting, and even if not capable of going against the Will of the Family in public, honestly supportive of Mina as her real self. What it has done *for* her, however, is made her adept at navigating the undercurrents of family life. Mina's actions relating to Sumaiya, one of "Them" and possessor of a powerful will in a dying body, prove that Mina is a woman of the most beautifully tender spirit, capable of understanding that love for another can not conquer all and does not confer metaphysical or physical superpowers...but does summon forth reserves of strength that inspire awe in her, and in me.

The story isn't always obvious. I mean by that the presence of the author, Alameddine, on the page is second-person and the main character, our narrator, is addressing him. (He includes a very amusing, exaggerated self-caricature at 12% in the Kindle file that does not give him near enough credit for being so delightful a persona.) The pattern of addressing "you" in MSS is one I am generally not in favor of...I've gotten out of bed, dressed myself, and driven to a charity-box run by people I dislike to deposit a book told in second person so I wouldn't ever run across it again...but done as Author Alameddine does it here, makes me feel included, a part of a larger story. That alone would merit all five stars!

There are many other reasons I loved this read as immoderately as I did. The Lesbian setting makes the fact that this refugee crisis isn't the first in the area, bringing up events that not that many of his readers will know about like the Anatolian expulsion of the millennia-old Greek population and the tragedy of Smyrna, both in 1922 at the birth of modern Turkey. The 2016 refugee crisis, likewise a manufactured event meant to hurt vulnerable people, and similarly is still ramifying through European society (goddesses please bless the departed Chancellor Merkel for her willingness to commit to rehoming a million Syrians in Germany, however self-serving it was in light of their collapsed birth rate), though not always to Europe's credit, is powerfully involving. But they did *something* and we, in the USA, did bugger-all. Like we're doing for the Afghans we abandoned. Like we did for the Kurds we abandoned.

But I digress. And disagreeably.

Author Alameddine's Lebanese queerness allowed him to be Mina in more ways than another writer could. This results in a series of beautiful insights:

...the aforementioned Mediterranean, yes, glorious. Or was this the Aegean, which Aegeus threw himself into when he thought his son Theseus had failed against the Minotaur? The clouds were such that both the asphalt and the water had the same color, a bluish slate, the color of oxidization on copper with a tinge of periwinkle violet.

Tinges of violet...the Minotaur, who ate both boys and girls equally, whose one weakness the ineffable Theseus found by penetrating his labyrinth...the despair of a rigid father setting his son a path in life and imagining that, despite the boy's strength and his quick wits, that he has failed to achieve the father's goals for him...the clouds of obfuscation, the sense of the Present being a fog-bank and only the keenest senses can suss out the proper course (whether it be towards or away from some obstacle). And more, given that this is a moment that Mina's just arrived and is in her car, trying to navigate while overwhelmed by the vastness of clouds obscuring her path to be of service...I could go on, but why? You'll read it, you'll find your own reasons to love the words on these pages.

Mina's marriage to Francine, which she dates to thirty years before the book's events...January 9, 1986, to be precise...began when, as Mina says, she saw Francine "...{dancing} as if she was exploring her body in space." Anyone, anyone who could inspire such a sentence is a worthy object of love as well as partner in commitment! And to make Mina, the awkward and the marginal, the object of reciprocal love and attention, was a stroke of genius. How many of us have the experience of marrying in accordance with Iris Murdoch's deathless marriage (and writing) aperçu: "One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."

Possibly the wickedest moment of the book is the ending, where the story of how the story came to be told is told at last: The question posed by psychiatrist Francine to the writer (whose "...default state of being" is whining), in her comfortable Chicago apartment:

"Have you considered writing about an American couple in suburbia to help the Syrian refugees? If you did a good job, Syrian refugees would be able to inhabit the skin of Americans, walk in their Cole Haans, empathize with their boredom and angst."

And this, more than anything else Author Alameddine wrote in this beautiful work, stopped me in my tracks. Like the people in the scene, I bolted upright. Isn't this what we who read voraciously have always claimed Literature does? Allows its devotees to live a million lives, not just focus on one (probably tedious and humdrum) little existence? I like to think it can, and does, and clearly so does Author Alameddine.

But I caution the gentleman against pursuing the Frankenstein retelling he posits...Ahmed Saadawi already staked that corner out, don't you know. (That whole scene of writerly angst and desperation was slapstick funny, and made me chortle chuckle and guffaw...thanks!)

What I'm getting at here is a simple thing: I gave this book five stars, and I think it could get the annual nod of "six stars of five," barring something else this amazing coming across my field of vision. That means, in case I'm not quite making myself clear, that I think this book belongs on your shelf, reading device, or library holds list, wherever you triage the must-read-nows of your literary life. It is profound, profoundly beautiful, and fearless in its ambitious scope and craftsmanship.

I wait for this experience every time I open a book. It is a thrill to get it.

>119 richardderus: Better late than never? For some reason that was more often said better never than late in the household where I grew up, but well, us.

>120 richardderus: Hmm, I'm considering. I found out yesterday that my holds allotment at LAPL was exhausted but I can still put a hold on it at LACOPL. Though 20 week wait is sorta long.

>121 quondame: I'm guessing it's a military-brat thing. My father, after his Navy years, was never, ever, ever on time for anything ever again. To the entire rest of the family's intense disgust.

>120 richardderus: - Wonderful and intriguing review. Onto the list!

>120 richardderus: I still have not managed to read An Unnecessary Woman yet, a mere 8 years after it was published. I really need to rectify that fact now that another Alameddine novel is being added to the BlackHole. Thanks (I think), RD!

>124 alcottacre: Oh gosh, Stasia, what better way to wile the hold-time away than to read that gorgeous book before this gorgeous book! Do it! Do it quick!

>123 katiekrug: Thank you, Katie, that's lovely to hear. Now go get you a copy. Go on. I'll wait.

>121 quondame: I'm guessing it won't be 20 weeks but could get there without quick reservation....

I saw a tree with a LOT of upward-facing branches the other day, and it reminded me of an octopus, and that then reminded me of you.
That is all.

From a friend... 

>120 richardderus: Now *that* one is on its way to me.

I loved The Hakawati and enjoyed I, the Divine. So I'm pretty persuadable for another Alameddine.

>128 swynn: Oh, that's excellent! I really hope it'll turn you into quivering mass of snot!

...I know you know what I mean, but that came out funny...

>127 weird_O: How GORGEOUS!! Thank you for sharing, Weird One!

>126 LovingLit: That's enough. *smooch*

>120 richardderus: Oh my gosh I absolutely loved An Unnecessary Woman and now you come up with five stars for this new one so I need to get to it soonish Richard. Temptress.

Fabulous review of The Wrong End of the Telescope, Richard! That's definitely one for my wish list.

>131 kidzdoc: Great, Darryl, I hope you'll enjoy it when it gets up the TBR Mountain.

>130 brenzi: *tosses wavy locks of shoulder hair* you know it, mama *come-hither book-flashing*

Well, it's been a day hasn't it. I was left depressed and repulsed by this New Yorker explainer on the Pew survey of Murrukun christers' awful little fantasy world: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/what-american-christians-hear-at-chur...

And the circuit breakers tripped from the carpet cleaner. Thank goodness all my appliances were already charged up and ready to fly solo.

Mercury is retrograde through the 18th, I found out today, and suddenly I don't think astrology is bunkum any more.

>124 alcottacre: The good news is that my local library has them both!

>134 alcottacre: Best possible result. Go Stasia!

You can bet your sweet bippy that I've checked the publication date and time for The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros sixteen times to be sure it's set for 06.30 Friday 8 October 2021. Not 18.30. Not 2022. Not November. And ALL THE TEXT SHOWS UP.

The chances of me sleeping past 06.00 are almost nil. I do NOT want another surprise like today's.

>127 weird_O: So cute!

>137 humouress: I so agree!

Well...you know what...I took almost 15min this morning for me to get away from Twitter. Monica Byrne, author of The Actual Star, really likes my review! Go look: https://twitter.com/monicabyrne13/status/1446315176639225859

But The City Beautiful review posted on time and in full, to my relief.

160 The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania.

But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows.

Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter’s body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer—before the killer claims them next.

Death lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows of the past that bind them both together.

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

My Review: I think there's nothing more delightful to me than queer representation in historical fiction. We were there, too, and deserve to be written into the zeitgeist.

This is Young Adult queer representation in the 19th century, and in my ongoing quest not to die above the neck before I do below it, I got the DRC. I'm really very glad that I did...this read was a great pleasure to me. The use of Jewish folk cultural touchstones...matchmakers, dybbuks being the most horrifying...the sprinkings of Yiddish, the focus...fierce focus...on family and loyalty, were all tastes of delight for this reader. The author doesn't spend inordinate time explaining things but he does provide context and some factual stuff for the more, um, ethnocentric stuff.

It is a sheer joy to see the story being set away from a) World War II, b) New York's Lower East Side, or c) the shtetl somewhere in Eastern Europe. The Jewish population of Chicago has never been teensy...the Great Lakes ports were as much a destination as New York, but they get less play. I'm also, since I read The Devil in the White City and read The Man Who Made Parks: The Story of Parkbuilder Frederick Law Olmsted by Frieda Wishinsky to my oldest grandson, a big aficionado of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition (aka "the White City") in Chicago. That venue plays quite a role in this murder mystery, though exactly how and why shall remain a secret lest I be set upon by spoilerphobes next time I go grocery shopping.

What I will say is that the squeamish should not pick the book up. There are graphic moments of bloodyness, there are awful physical violences, and of course the element of supernatural possession can't be left out. There are more 21st-century concerns like homophobia and anti-semitism (this last pervades the end of the book to a sometimes uncomfortable degree), but this is Spooktober! A few scares, some terrible spooky goins-on, that is what this month is for! Be prepared, also, for the politics of the book. It's solidly anti-capitalist, despite MC Alter's determination to earn earn earn so he can bring his mother and sisters to the Promised Land...Chicago! imagine...because that's really situational not aspirational capitalism. And Alter's failed match-cum-bestie, young Raizel from downstairs in his apartment building, is there to keep him from falling *too* deep into capitalism's cess pit. (She is, in fact, one of the book's most delightful characters, propensity to splash tea onto laps notwithstanding.)

Putting on my YA-unlover's hat, the usual prolixity...why say in ten words what can make an entire chapter?...is fully present, the stakes are APOCALYPTIC ZOMG THE UNIVERSE WILL END!! and that gets really tiring to an old fart like me who knows that, after I and you and the author are all dead the planet will keep spinning on. Probably all the better for our absence.

But that is an elderly person speaking, the audience that's here for YA is going to *eat*this*up* because every one of the elements are handled with aplomb and without the edge of tweeness I've reacted to in other YA books like they're coated in cat dander. I don't at all recommend giving this to a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old. The realities of sexual abuse aren't in any way soft-pedaled. The realities of sexual desire, that it doesn't obey rules or orders, are best left to the older end of the YA spectrum, which I think of as sixteen and up. I know y'all know y'all's kids better than I do, so understand I'm speaking in generalities and not prescribing anything.

The mystery aspect of the story, the resolution to the murders and disappearances of Jewish boys, is very well-handled and was solidly made in serious mystery form. If you're up for it, match wits with the author; if you're not, read the spooky book or the coming-out (sort of!) book or the immigrant-makes-it book. They're all here.

I think my point should be clear: Read The City Beautiful. It will please at least 80% of the folks who read my reviews.

‘Morning, Rdear! Happy Friday to you.

>119 richardderus: Those pesky a.m. and p.m. thingies…

>120 richardderus: On my wish list. I’m stingier with stars than you are and gave An Unnecessary Woman 4.5 stars in May of this year. I didn’t realize that Alameddine has published so many books.

>133 richardderus: Thanks for the link to that article, RD. I’ve saved it to read later.

*smooch*

Glad the blog technology decided to play ball. Shame the rest of it went pffft!
Here's to the weekend, which starts right about now.

>140 richardderus: Into the BlackHole it goes! Thanks for the review, RD. Now if only my local library will get it.

>143 alcottacre: I suspect The City Beautiful will appeal to you, Stasia, as a person of great curiosity and deeply interested in matters religious. I hope so, anyway...though there is disturbing material about sexual violence and pedophilia, none of it is played for sensationalist purposes. It's a very well-made book.

>142 Helenliz: "Now" certainly works for me, Helen. I'm just not finding where I hid my screw-up post's text. I seem to have titled it something obscure and a date-range search hasn't popped the answer out at me. I'll do more digging over the weekend.

>141 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Enjoy the article, and I hope your new Alameddine encounter will boost your opinion of him.

That article was very eye-opening to me.

*smooch*

You have been busy over here, BigDaddy! SO many good things - the reviews, as always, are full of fabulous.

>78 richardderus: Too cool for school!! Most exciting! Of course, I followed the linky thing, and then kept scrolling and reading, so now I have added a few more to The List. Um...thanks?! Your blog is a dangerous place. I immediately snagged Night of the Mannequins, Mapping the Interior, and New Amsterdam. I really loved your review of A Clockwork Orange.

>90 richardderus: Adding this one to The List, and I gave my thumb to your review.

>119 richardderus: Glad you figured it out - this is totally something I would do.

>120 richardderus: This one also sounds good.

>139 richardderus: This is just so excellent. How lovely.

I think I am all caught up now - sorry to have gotten behind. Hoping that the weekend is full of fabulous for you. *smooch*

>145 Crazymamie: Sweetiedarling, you know The Rule: There is no "caught up" with its implicit 'SHOULD' around this thread. You're here when here is where you want to be and that's that.

I'm so glad you enjoyed your hop around my blog! Over 1,000 reviews gives you plenty to peruse indeed. I know I need to make an index for the ease of location of others but the task is *daunting* and the upkeep eternal. Still....

I see when someone has found me and likes what they've seen...suddenly there are a whole bunch of reviews with one view in the last 24 hours. That's always so happy-making!

Enjoy those new purchases! *smooch*

Please drop everything and go read this review of a memoir about a *young*opera*composer* Matthew Aucoin. The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera comes out on 7 December.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/matthew-aucoin/the-impossible-art/
The line that made me take notice of the book: his "...introduction on opera’s basic ingredients, including “the most primal human needs: song and narrative.”

>139 richardderus: Two great things, but one of these is more great!

>140 richardderus: The list lengthens.

>147 richardderus: I feel music is beyond a door to which I have no key. I hear it and am moved by it, but into it I cannot get.

>148 quondame: Thank you, Susan! I'm really very pleased indeed with all my happenings. Except the stupidity of losing that review!

Opera is, puzzlingly to me as we live in rap/hip-hop musical universe, a tough sell. I love a lot of it. Some isn't great, but is listenable; some is awful (Nixon in China, I'm glowering Glass-ward). But that's true of all music. Why do people who listen to the violent cruelty of {insert rapper here} balk at the murderous doins of Carmen?

>147 richardderus: - Thanks for the tip! My best friend loves opera, so now I know what to get her for Christmas :)

>150 katiekrug: Oh, you will get such major brownie points for that! Aucoin's Macarthur Grant has made him quite the ambassador for his artform.

>144 richardderus: Good to know you think so. I have ordered the book although I am unsure of when I will actually get it read.

>147 richardderus: Review read. Book on pre-order.

>152 alcottacre: *screenshots comment*

Hello Book Bounty, Inc.? yes I'm filing a claim for a double shot...yes I'll hold for the president...

>153 richardderus: Lol. Go ahead and claim the bounty! I do not mind in the least.

>154 alcottacre: My 89¢ is on its way!

***

Y'all go play with this fascinating free web tool, "Just the Punctuation"...put in a piece of your own writing and see what looking at JUST the punctuation can show you. Fascinating.
https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me/
Or copy-and-paste a piece of one of your favorite books! That is amazing!

I learned about it here: https://lithub.com/this-new-web-tool-gets-rid-of-everything-but-punctuation-so-y...

And here's today's review, just the punctuation:

Hiya, RDear, and happy Saturday to you.

We've had almost 2 inches of rain since midnight. It's overcast and gloomy - in other words, a perfect reading day.

*smooch*

>156 karenmarie: It's deciding between cloudy and overcast here...either way, the summer's definitely Over. It'll be just under 70°/20C all day which, I hasten to add, is my idea of perfection and the Weather Goddess needn't trouble herself to make changes just to make changes.

Happy Saturday's reads, Horrible! *smooch*

Hope your weekend is off to an excellent start, RDear. *smooch*

>158 MickyFine: Thank you, Micky, so far so good. I'm happy that the day is shaping up to be overcast because it's so much quieter here near the beach when that's the weather.

Read well!

Happy Saturday, RD! **smooches**

>133 richardderus: "and suddenly I don't think astrology is bunkum any more."

ha! told you

>161 mckait: I LURED YOU OUT OF THE WOODWORK! *victory dance*

*smooch*

>160 alcottacre: Thank you, Stasia, and the same to you. *smooch*

xo

>163 mckait: Go look at Twitter, pls?
***
I don't know about *you* but I've been appallingly productive today. I've put the polish on two reviews for tomorrow...Black Irish Blues and Warsaw Fury...and finished the rough for Monday's, Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism...and boned up the templates for Wednesday's, Madder: A Memoir in Weeds and Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot!

Sacred Games? I've never known anyone else who's read that one. Very good, even if purposefully goofy at times. Obsessed with penis enlargement? Really?

Lucky you getting an arc of Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I wish it'd gone better for you. Like you, I loved it.

*some unnamed dummy neglected to post this when it was ready a long time ago.

>165 jnwelch: Ha! That does rather strain credulity..."it's just not that important, Little Dude," doesn't help though.

I wanted so much to have the All the Light We Cannot See experience again! *sigh* Just, well, guess it was too much to ask of the Muses.

*chuckle* at your clever evasion of responsibility

I read Woman On the Edge of Time in the early 80s (I think). I remember nothing about it except that I loved it at the time.

I impulsively bought a copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land last weekend. P has started it. Both of us loved All the Light We Cannot See although I think all the hype around that one made it fall just the wee-est bit flat for me. Sorry CCL didn't live up to its predecessor -- and somehow I'm not surprised. Still, I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Oh, and there are at least two other novels titled Cloud Cuckoo Land. Who knew?

>167 EBT1002: It's a good read so far. I'm happy I chose it for #The1976Club.

I hope against hope that you and P are bowled over sockless by the new Doerr!

I wonder where one would go to research the number of actually published works titled Cloud Cuckoo Land....

161 Warsaw Fury by Michael Reit

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Warsaw, 1939
We mustn't let darkness win.

Natan Borkowski has it all. In line to take over the successful family business, his future is set.

Julia Horowitz lives in poverty. The daughter of a shoemaker, she dreams of a different life—a different world.

Everything changes when Hitler’s armies invade Poland. Natan’s future is ripped away by the flick of a switch of a Luftwaffe pilot. When the smoke clears, Julia and her family find themselves locked within the walls of the newly-formed Jewish ghetto.

On opposite sides of the wall, Natan and Julia’s lives are not so different anymore. As the Nazis unleash a reign of hunger, terror, and death across the city, they must now decide what’s more terrifying:
To die on their knees, or go down fighting?

Based on true events, Warsaw Fury is a story of love, courage, and resilience in the face of unimaginable evil.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR, THE BOOK WHISPERER, AND NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: World War II and the Final Solution and German/Polish antisemitism. All the things I claim repel me like kryptonite does Superman, garlic does Dracula, and Old Spice does a metrosexual. What transreversal of my brain was enacted by which Doctor Who aliens, what cabal of soap-opera writers flipped my script, whose malign curse on me altered my tastes? None. All these tropes are in this thriller, and I still read it.

They all still do repel me, though.

So how did that rating appear up there, the one that doesn't have a minus sign in front of it, the one that's above three but below five? Perspective. Not just mine, the story's as well. I'm down for a story whose *background* is WWII, but whose events while factual and tied to WWII, are not using WWII as the reason for the story.

Natan is a rich kid, a guy with social skills and connections; Julia is not possessed of either of those things; what brings the two of them together in this story is how they each hate and fear the Germans who have invaded their country and are murdering their people. Both lost their parents, each has a wise (if young) head and a fierce heart to avenge those who are unjustly dead. The whole story isn't about the brutal regime trying to exterminate all the Poles, every Jew, anyone who isn't Just Like Them.

We are instead told the two interlinked tales of resourceful young people motivated by a catastrophe they never asked for and weren't consulted about doing every single dangerous, difficult, and deeply necessary thing to stop, reverse, and fix their world. The planet needs them, or their great-grandchildren, now. These two characters, people on either side of a literal and metaphorical wall, are united in their purpose to resist, to expel, the invaders wreaking graphically told havoc on their home. They unite despite their "differences" because the goal they serve is more important than the surface dissimilarities that actually make each well-suited to their respective roles. And, because of course they did, these two crazy kids fell in luuuv. Despite their wildly different backgrounds, though, at least this couple could never possibly lack for something to talk about....

The story doesn't belabor the points I'm calling out here. I am doing so. I am explaining how, despite being a story told in a setting I'm ever so sick of, I got involved in and inspired by Warsaw Fury. Author Reit clearly knows his subject inside out, which adds to the pace of action he achieves and sustains. There is never a lack of action, and it's all grounded in real events.

So that's the story. What about the writing? Well, what indeed. It is unexceptional but unexceptionable. It isn't stellar and it isn't execrable. It is the high end of serviceable, the lower edge of inspired. Occasional phrases made me cringe...a Varsovian, a Pole, and you'd fight to the bitter end, oh now really...but it got the job done.

You're looking at that rating right now, aren't you. Thinking about the times I've said much harsher things about much milder stylistic infractions. You know, you're correct, but you're also looking at this from the ordinary perspective. This is an extraordinary case. I gave a book whose writing I reluctantly allowed to happen to me four full stars...doesn't that say something a lot bigger than "read these pretty sentences" would?

We need this story of coming together to resist an overwhelming, unstoppable crisis. We need to read things that stress our only hope being to find the good intentions and best practices in those we'd normally never so much as fire a neuron for. This story, a fact-based one, tells us that when we're pulling in the same direction, we can move the damn Nazis and their weapons on down the road.

Uncurl your lip, Sunshine. Get the memo here: Fight now, fight hard and with all your power...but aim it where it will help not where you think you want to.

162 BLACK IRISH BLUES: A Caesar Stiles Mystery by Andrew Cotto

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Black Irish Blues is the return-to-origin story of Caesar Stiles, an erstwhile runaway who returns to his hometown with plans to buy the town's only tavern and end his family's Sicilian curse.

Caesar's attempt for redemption is complicated by the spectral presence of his estranged father, reparation seekers related to his corrupt older brother, a charming crime boss and his enigmatic crew, and—most significantly—a stranger named Dinny Tuite whose disappearance under dubious circumstances immerses Caesar in a mystery that leads into the criminal underbelly of industrial New Jersey, the flawed myth of the American Dream, and his hometown's shameful secrets.

Black Irish Blues is a poetic, gritty noir full of dynamic characters, a page-turning plot, and the further development of a unique American character.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER AT THE AUTHOR'S REQUEST. THANK YOU.

My Review: The first Caesar Stiles mystery, Outerborough Blues, was a big hit with me. I liked the atmospheric evocation of places I knew, at the times I knew them. I really enjoyed the writing Author Cotto clearly enjoyed writing...I hope that makes sense, I can't figure out how to fix it. Let me try this: When a writer can evoke a specific and precise feeling in me, attached to a specific and precise location in space and time, it comes across to me as that writer is sharing their own pleasure in that image, that moment.

It was too much to hope I'd get it again. I steeled myself as I opened the Kindle file. "It's not going to be the same, don't load that onto this book, it won't be as fresh as the first time," I gently self-talked myself off the ledge of inflated expectations.

"You know what my mother used to say about martinis?" I asked him.
...
We locked eyes until a small smile creased his face and he spoke in a bemused tone.

"No, no. Tell me. Wha'd your mother used to say about martinis?"

I put the knife down, wiped my hands and leaned into the bar, toward the man who needed to know the two Martinis rule.

"They're like boobs," I said. "One's not enough, but three are too many."

And just like *that* I'm right back in Caesar Stiles' world.

What happens next is the kind of thing that happens in the world of people like Caesar: running from, finding out they ran to instead; people don't know you, until they show you how well they got you pegged; a world that doesn't care about you until you find out how much they care what you do, and to whom. (And Foghat on the jukebox! Gawd...it was the 90s, all right.) But what makes this feel so familiar is also what makes the plot work. Get the tropes? Got the course.

Is that a good thing? It is in Author Cotto's hands. I like what he does with the way you're expecting something to happen, to come from a specific direction and involve some pretty familiar events...and that's what happens, only not the way you thought it would. The reason a trope (eg, the Irresistible Outsider Hero bagging all the sex) is an evergreen is that it works. It's not like one needs to challenge the evergreens to prove one's Talent. It's more like, "give 'em what they want but make it 60° off the straight lines."

This is what Author Cotto does with Caesar's story.

Helping out fellow-returnee Mike the local cop (home from LA) in solving the vanishing act pulled by Dinny, the unloved rich-guy Martini-story recipient; learning how Sallie, the dead brother from Outerborough Blues, continues to screw with his life; discovering good dirt on the long-vanished father he really didn't miss...all the noirness any committed reader of 'em could want. And delivered in the same compact form! Today's book-bloat has downsides, like heft and prolixity; it has upsides, like room to explore characters' motivations and present the world of the book; but best of all, in my opinion, is finding someone who can make Fat Elvis work in a few sentences without the bloat.

And here we are. Come for the atmosphere, stay for the story. And pray like hell that we get more Caesar in our lives.

Happy Sunday, RDear!

Congrats on the reviews. Well written as always. Both dodged, but that shouldn't surprise you.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>171 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible! Nope...surprise ain't even in it for a look. Neither would appeal to you, I'm quite confident in saying might even repel you.
***

...this is what scares me...

>172 richardderus: - Why isn't he in jail yet? Weren't they waiting for him to be out of office so all manner of lawsuits could begin? Taxes, chief among them but others, too. How come I haven't heard a word about any of that? He is like the proverbial cockroach - he will outlive humanity. Heaven help us...

Checking in to report that I've ventured into Steinbeck's King Arthur for #The1976Club. I dodged King Art for more than seven decades, but I got caught. Not being a book-a-day reader, it'll be a while 'til I'm through it.

So far: Good.

>174 weird_O: Ah, that is a great choice, Bill. I'm not the Book Police, so you'll finish when you finish and I'm interested to hear how it's going.

>173 jessibud2: There's a steady hum of activity here in New York, Shelley, that won't necessarily make itself heard outside. The various legal teams are working their way through the evidence to build a good legal case to whack the bastard at last...that's different from "we all know he's a liar and a crook."

But to my mind he should've been deemed a flight risk and had his passport publicly pulled on 7 January.

While I myownself can't afford the almost-$100 that this rare, but necessary, book Going Under, retails for in the US, I'm very grateful to Brad Bigelow's Neglected Books page for alerting me to its existence. It's the eighty-first (81st!) entry on my list of goodies he's dangled before my tsundoku-dilated eyes. Y'all go follow him on Twitter and at his blog. I'm worn down from suffering alone. Share the burden...I mean joy! heh joy of course I mean joy.

Just wanted you to know Richard, that I'm hoping to read Speedboat by Renata Adler for the 1976 Project. Yes it's been on my shelf forever but there you go.

>177 brenzi: Excellent news, Bonnie! I hope you'll really enjoy it.

163 Shelter by Catherine Jinks

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Meg lives alone. Her little house in the bush outside town is the perfect place to hide. This seclusion is one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, a young women escaping an abusive ex-partner. The other is that Meg knows what it’s like to live with the looming threat of a violence at the hands of someone you love.... Nerine is jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. This tells Meg all she needs to know about where they’ve come from, and she’s not all that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it’s unnecessary. They’re safe now. Or so Meg thinks… Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine’s ex tracked them down? Has Meg’s husband turned up to torment her some more? By the time she finds out, it’ll be too late to do anything but run for her life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the first time the old aphorism, "No good deed goes unpunished," held real, tangible, awful Truth for you? Strap in....

Meg is the kind of friend you hope you'll have in an emergency or crisis. She's been there, she's done what she could, realizes how important the mere fact of showing up is. She'll give you shelter, she'll offer support, she will feed you and listen to you and Be There in the psychological, supportive sense of the words.

That's because she did not get those things when she so badly needed them during her devastatingly abusive marriage.

Nerine and her two daughters are, as we're shown, in a situation where Meg, her home (which she's ever so aptly named "Bolt Hole"), and her way with others are just exactly what they need. In they come; settle they do not. Nerine is in constant motion, constantly talking taking talking about how horrible the girls' father is (right in front of their scared little faces), how bad their lives were, how the courts have...insanely, incomprehensibly...given this vile predatory abuser visitation rights! Can you even imagine! she asks Meg, never waiting for an answer.

Then the nightmare turns real...awful things having been said, there are suddenly weird and unnerving things happening...frightening but, as yet, not violent things...footprints and noises where and when they shouldn't be, and all the time Nerine's talk talk talk about the horrors of the past makes little Analiese and Collette, her very young daughters, scared and jumpy. Meg, a grown woman with an estranged daughter living in England (can't forgive Mum for staying with the awful narcissistic personality disorder-having Dad), empathizes with all three, tries her best to distract and entertain the girls with rural life's many pleasures. Nerine? Nothing changes her focus. She is wound way too tight, experiences all things as threats and blames everything on the violent, awful ex who will, it comes to seem, jump down from a tree onto them with a machete!

As the unnerving stuff escalates into actual violence (CONTENT WARNING: ANIMAL CRUELTY), Meg begins to piece together some very, very strange facts and comes up with a truly frightening picture.

As I read the story, I was genuinely unsettled and disturbed. I can't say I expected the twist, having thought from the get-go there was going to be one. What it was, however, surprised me. Author Jinks deserves big ups for her unnerving choice of an ending. It was not what I'd thought it would be, and made the story that much more appealing to me.

Animal cruelty cost the book a star. I understood why Author Jinks made that choice, and I wasn't inclined to put the book down for good because of it, but it was dreadful and I warn my more sensitive readers (Kathy!) not to consider this tale for their own shelves.

The topic of incest and the crime of rape are factors in this story. They are hot buttons for many. I will say that Author Jinks does not sensationalize them. They aren't dwelt on with ghoulish and repugnant "look! LOOK at how AWFUL men are!" glee. They are presented as facts, and as crimes; they are part of the women's experiences, and are told to us, the readers, as such.

I quite liked the pace set by Author Jinks. We're not in a hurry to get where we're going; there are interesting side characters and the land itself is a character of a sort. That, from my point of view, set the stakes effectively high for Meg, and for the reader. Anything that disrupts this lovely woman's Bolt Hole is a Bad Thing. And boy oh boy, the bad thing is very, very bad indeed. As Spooktober reads go, I think this one is as scary and as nightmarish as they come. Perfect for y'all ghoulies looking for a safe place to be wound up and scared witless!

164 Underneath by Lily Hoang

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Martha Johnson wants to be a good mother and a devoted wife. It’s all she’s ever wanted in life, and she tries her very best, but when her husband threatens to leave her, her desperation reveals only one strategy that can save her family, punish her ungrateful husband, and earn power: murder.

Over a five-year period, Martha Johnson murders her four children, one by one, in order to punish her husband when they argue, but Martha is no ordinary serial killer. She murders her children by using the bulk of her 250-pound body to suffocate them. Unlike other fictionalized true-crime novels, Underneath neither valorizes nor focuses on the specific acts of violence. Instead, it attempts to understand how feelings of powerlessness, the residue of trauma, and the need to find justice in a world that refuses to give a fat body justice finds its only respite through murder.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Disturbing story of disempowerment's most extreme and appalling cost. That it is based on a true story made me feel ill.

...I'm pretty sure this isn't purgatory, either. It's more just like, extension. Continuation. We the murdered continue on, right underneath the living, but we aren't alive anymore. We're just here: bodies, but not bodies, too. So far as I can tell, the living can't see or hear or feel or smell us, but sometimes, if I get close enough to Martha, I swear she can taste me. ... Because we were murdered, this is our punishment.

As one expects from stories published by Red Hen Press's Kate Gale, there is a weird and unsettling tension between the lovely language and the sheer awfulness unfolding inside those pretty phrases and unnerving images. Why should the murdered, especially these child-victims, be made to suffer punishment? Discuss amongst yourselves after reading this intensely book-clubbable book.

Incest...prostitution...child-murder...maternal child abuse...domestic violence...and told through a dead child's point of view. "Is this old man round the bend for good?" I hear y'all thinking, as you read my sentence above about the book being "intensely book-clubbable." No: I'm hoping to make it plain to you that this story is so viscerally real, so eye-wateringly honest about the actual experience of mothering for a not insignificant segment of women, that y'all bougie book clubbers could do with a corrective lens to all the saintly, rise-above-it-all, succeed succeed succeed "women's fiction" guff that gets Oprah'd and Reese'd. Please note that I am not attempting a knock on these book clubs, they are hugely popular for a reason and their choices are not all in one and only one vein...but they are very fond of a certain type of story (described above) and return to books telling it quite often. Don't fix what ain't broken.

I want people to look past the usual and see the raw edges where things have failed and fragmented in different ways. Where the fault lines that exist in much of the world go at a different angle. I include myself in this, as my periodic reviews of *shudder* poetry and *urp* YA stories demonstrate. Successful for me or not, these reads are in areas I'm hell-bent-for-leather not to ignore simply because I so very often find them...unpleasant...to read. As I've said many times, I do not want to die above the neck before I die below it. So I'm out there sayin' "yes" when people offer me the damn things instead of running away like I want to...challenging my prejudices is the only way I know to prevent them from becoming part of the bone structure.

With Underneath, Author Hoang very much did that kind of challenging. We're not innocents, readers all, we've read The Lovely Bones and/or seen its movie. Dead narrators in fiction go a long, long way farther back in time than that. I'm not sure this take on the story she's telling here, a sort of slo-mo In Cold Blood, is one I'd've recommended to her. (I sure as hell wouldn't've recommended using w-bombs.) But when you're fully in the flow of the story you can see why this choice was exactly right, and possibly the only one she could have made. There was no other structure which would've enabled the Bernice-to-Martha-to-Arlene transmission of woman-violence to come clear. It needed an eyewitness whose eyes weren't in the same place they used to be. Like, Earth.

The pace of storytelling...well...I don't exactly know what to tell you. This isn't a novella, but it's not a long book. It doesn't linger on any scene. It simply is Arlene...talking to you. The story seems, in my experience of reading it, to tell itself to you in some peculiar way. Maybe the narrator being a child, who specifically says she's a child but one whose, um, existence after death keeps her learning, is so disorienting that the story becomes more of presence than she is? I can't be sure...but to me, the story was its own narrator, and it called itself Arlene. (If that makes any sense to you, could you explain it to me?) It doesn't repeat itself. It doesn't leave stuff out (for long). It's got a pull like a river's current, not dramatic but inexorable and powerful, like it won't let you go once you're there.

So go with it.

The structural facts of a novel told in vignettes...in discrete story-slices, layered with the sadness that floats under the surface of the ever-expanding skin of mother eating, of child growing, of marriage to a man who loves only what he needs and not what he wants bloating as its death-gases seek escape...is irregular, like the crumb structure of the best bread is. Not for Author Hoang, writing about cake...endless cakes made and eaten, made and eaten, never ever shared...the dense, regular, sweet crumbs left on an unused party-plate. The coarse and unappealing crumbs, food for scavenging ants, of hollow-sounding adulterated loafs of dollar-store bread; these make Martha's and Arlene's lines as they slip and catch and form shapes no one wants to see, just sweep into a trash can or, at best, into a crumb-catcher for possible crushing and reuse after they're fully hardened and useless as food in themselves.

There is a crisis in this world. It's a crisis of unlove. There are so many, many people in the world who are unloved. Who can't love or return love or even conceptualize it. They're incapable of it; they need it the more desperately because of that. But they don't and can't and won't get love. They are love-less. Bernice? Martha? Even, in the end, Arlene...love-less. Love, you see, isn't a word or a fancy chocolate bar, or a birthday card. It's action, investment of time and emotion. And the tragedy, in the ancient sense as well as the modern, of this story is that It. Is. True.

Beautiful sentences telling a dreadful, tragic tale of love, in its absence and its perverse, incomprehensible to normies, twisted shapes. Read this and be very, very glad you are none of these people.

Read this and shudder to your bones: You are all of these people. Happy Spooktober.

Phew! I managed to doge some convincing BB's!

>176 richardderus: What an interesting list. Thanks for the link.

>180 richardderus: I think you got me with that one!

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you!

>176 richardderus: What a treasure trove of information! I can see getting lost on this website for days at a time.

>179 richardderus: and >180 richardderus: Yikes. Nope. See >171 karenmarie:.

*smooch*

>179 richardderus: >180 richardderus: A couple of spooky ones there. Not for me, I’m afraid.

>184 humouress: OMIGAWD Nina, NO! Don't even...I think you'd need counseling if you read Underneath!

>183 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible! Yeah, Brad's site is a honey-trap for the tsundoku set.

Stay away! Don't even THINK about reading those books!

*smooch* for a happy, avoidant Monday.

>182 drneutron: Hey there, Jim...I think you will really *get* Underneath. It's a smashing book. You'll be smashed; you'll badly want to smash things. But it is real and we can't afford to look away.

>181 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! Thank you for visiting on Thanksgiving. I'm predicting that Brad's site will cause some wallet-pain chez vous. But glory be is it worth it!

I don't see those two titles as inside your wheelhouse somehow...maybe the Jinks...?

165 Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

Rating: 3* of five

Yes. I listened to an audiobook. I got to 3:37:19 of approx 8:00:00 before I said "enough" so, what? 40%?

It took over six and a half hours to get there because I kept falling asleep and waking up 45min later with no earthly idea what this narrator-man was talking about. I ***HATE*** Coin! The Serif, Creosote, amused me, as did the Vizier. DEATH is always fun. But in the end, it's got two strikes and three balls against it for being Pratchett, having Rincewind, and being an audiobook.

I really tried, and I made it a LOT further into the tale than I expected to. I wish I liked Pratchett more, and I just cannot believe that there's no audiobook on Earth that can convince me of the medium's pleasures.

>180 richardderus: Oh, was this a treat...Lily Hoang liked my review! She even retweeted it! It does so matter to me that authors, if they choose to acknowledge reviews, appreciate that I *got* their book-babys.

>186 richardderus: Audio is a funny format, imo. Narrator accent or voice can male or break it. A book with too much dialogue can make it can be hard to tell who is speaking at any one time - and narrators doing funny voices usually gets up my nose quicker than you can say "bogey". Something that's very descriptive can just blur into the background and anything too heart rending is probably a bad idea for when driving... I tend to go for short stories, such that the attention span is limited into shorter blocks. When I was commuting more I went through a couple of Dickens on audio, listening to a chapter at a time. That probably mimics the original experience for many people, having the latest episode read to the group. Neil Gaiman has had the voice I enjoyed listening to most - he could read the telephone book to me and I'd be entranced.

>188 Helenliz: All of those are reasons I articulate for not wanting to ear-read books. I decided that, since I've not cared about to actively disliked all the Pratchetts I've tried to tree-read and e-read, maybe the perfect match could be ear-reading the man's stuff.

Um.

Well, Nigel Thingummy was a perfectly fine reader, I wasn't put off by the audio cues they used to indicate footnotes f/ex and he does DEATH without "doing a voice"...and I just really hated the experience. A Goodreads friend who's a Pratchettian Pooh-Bah told me it could be this story, that it is not one he'd've picked for me to read, try Guards! Guards! on audio. It's queued up. If htat doesn't work I'll stop trying.

>169 richardderus: Since WWII and the Jewish experience are both areas of interest to me, Warsaw Fury is a definite BB. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD!

>170 richardderus: You also hit me with that one, darn you.

>179 richardderus: >180 richardderus: Nope, absolutely not. I do not think I would deal well with either book.

>190 alcottacre: I agree with you on all fronts, Stasia. Avoid both of today's, get both of yesterday's, and call it good. *smooch*

Wednesday's, well...maybe, but not too likely....

I'm positively *glowing* with delight. My recent spate of review-writing has paid off...today's blog audience is 5 times yesterday's! That was a surprise but a pleasant one for once.

>192 richardderus: Greatly gratifying! Good going!

>193 quondame: Thanks, Susan, it was a real surprise...no prize-winners recently reviewed, no one's mentioned me someplace high-profile that I know of, or that tracks back...I'm also just crested 400,000 blog-views since day one. Guess it's just Mercury's way of saying "oops" about the retrograde thing...?

>173 jessibud2: There is a good case to make that only Carter and Obama of Presidents in my lifetime are blameless enough to not deserve at least a little jail time or be dismissed from office in disgrace.

Surely the GOP can serve the country better than to put that wind-bag up again for re-election?

>176 richardderus: What a brilliant cover! Reminds me of the 1972 Fleetwood Mac, Bare Trees album cover.

>192 richardderus: Your reviews deserve a sizeable audience RD.

>192 richardderus: Well-deserved congratulations, Richard! **smooch**

Big waves from over the pond.

Hi Richard. Finally arrived at your thread which I've neglected in a terrible way. So glad you came over to mine. Some big hugs for you.

>192 richardderus: Congrats on the increase in blog readership.

‘Morning, RD, and happy Tuesday to you.

>192 richardderus: Congrats, dear one.

>194 richardderus: Do not tempt the gods – Mercury’s still in retrograde until the 18th.

>195 PaulCranswick: He’s more than a windbag, Paul, he’s a dangerously charismatic man along the lines of Hitler. He has hoodwinked millions of stupid and thoughtless people and a few of genuine goodwill with his narcissism, mental instability, selfishness, and childishness.

>200 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori, it was a surprise but a nice one.

>199 connie53: Hi Connie! I'm glad to see you whenever you're here, no worries.

>198 Ameise1: Hi there Barbara!

>197 alcottacre: How do, Stasia, and thanks for the congrats.

>196 PaulCranswick: You flatterer, you...thanks for those kind words.

>195 PaulCranswick: They can indeed better serve the country by nominating a morally upstanding and politically and socially and fiscally left-of-mainline socialist candidate. As they have never, in the sweep of History, approached those desiderata since one A. Lincoln, junior Senator from Illinois, I doubt that they ever will.

>201 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! We cross-posted. Thanks for the congrats, today's been good reader-wise as well but not like yesterday. Still, I take your point, don't let the gods know I've noticed....

Happy Tuesday! Here's to hoping 45's future looks more orange than his present.

Hey, Richard. We are back. I got very little reading in, on the trip, so I hope to make up for lost time. I also would like to catch up on a few threads. No easy task. Of course, I am going over to Bree's this afternoon, to visit the BOY and my niece, who flies back to Oregon tonight.

I hope all is well, in your world, my friend.

>204 msf59: Hi Mark! I hope you've enjoyed the visits and the baby-dandling time. It's been a packed day for me. I'm tired, so off to my couch of carefree slumber I go.

Until tomorrow!

>192 richardderus: Way to go! I have to say that you put a lot of thought and effort into your reviews. I always enjoy reading them and many many others should too :)

>201 karenmarie: Karen, Uncle Joe got elected on the basis that he wasn't Chump and that he would bring the country together and be a safe pair of hands. The first part is fine but he has demonstrated little in the way of competence so far unfortunately.

>202 richardderus: Is the US ready for a decided shift to the left, RD? I'm not sure. What we take for granted in parts of Europe in terms of welfare and free health care is still considered by many of your countrymen and women as dangerous bolshevism and not the socially responsible and caring society it seems obvious to yearn towards. The progressives have a few months left to get something of import done before the mid-terms after which at the rate of knots backwards that they are travelling they will not be able to legislate.

>207 PaulCranswick: The US has never been "ready" for any change. No matter where it shifts, someone doesn't like it and don't we all get to hear about it.

Recall the scornful sniffs of "we won, get over it" when 45 was elected? Then compare that to the response to 45's loss in 2020. The only change that will be welcomed across the board is...is...um...I can't think of one.

>206 figsfromthistle: That's very kind of you to say, Anita. Thanks.

166 NEVER SILENT: ACT UP and My Life in Activism by Peter Staley

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The previously untold stories of the life of the leading subject in David France’s How To Survive A Plague, Peter Staley, including his continuing activism

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex.

A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives.

Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group’s most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.

Never Silent is guaranteed to inspire the activist within all of us.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is a certain kind of person who becomes a Wall Street "Master of the Universe," in their self-perpetuated self-applied description of their glorious, oversexed, hyper-entitled selves. The Eighties were the moments of national nightmare, both the ones we saw in Wall Street embodied by poor Michael Douglas delivering the "Greed is good" speech that haunts him to this day, and the ones we ignored, eg the S&L crisis whose little brother grew up to become the GFC of the Aughties. There was the moral crisis of the horror of the Reagan Administration's heinous, vile diplomatic disasters and raid on the Social Security Trust Fund. But these are large, generation-spanning structural and systemic disasters, unfolding on time scales not really important to ordinary people.

Then there was the AIDS crisis. Or, as it was at one point called, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. This relates to the fact that the largest, most concentrated population suffering from the awful plague were urban gay men, whose "lifestyle" (how I loathe that term!) was recently, partially, and conditionally destigmatized. It burned through the New York gay-male community, it flared and killed in other gay-friendlier outposts across the country, and it was never a "gay disease" at all. Science, in its slow and ponderous way, had already established that the primary sufferers were Haitian and African heterosexuals by the end of the 1980s; this helped the disease get onto the Federal radar screens not at all.

Enter Peter Staley. Here's a Master of the Universe, a white male with all the privilege that conveyed then. And he's got AIDS-Related Complex. It was, in 1985, a kind of death sentence, a sort of scientific shrugging of the shoulders..."you ain't there yet, but it's where you're headed." And the poisonous priorities of the tax-cutting and faggot-hating "leaders" of the time meant little was being done, and that without much urgency, to discover and research the strange new disease.


This hateful cover, dated July 1985, was the moment I myownself realized why there were so many people I knew dying but not being discussed..."oh, that's them, that's something they get...not me, not my family. Sad, of course, but..." It's that poisonous little "but..." that makes the real source of the problem obvious. "As long as it stays among them, well, who really cares?"

So here's where Peter Staley was in the Eighties. He had an enviable future, one most white men regarded as dream-worthy; he had a fatal disease; and he had a country whose leadership wasn't interested in making his disease's cure or management or even treatment a priority, because by having it, he was Othered.

And he got mad.

Don't piss off the Peter Staleys of this world. They know how the world works, what value symbolism has, whose words will matter to the average person and whose story will move mountains. And, when they get mad, you will hear their voice. Loud and clear. ACT UP...AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power...was born when Staley had had enough of being told he was a dying victim, either of malevolent chance or a vengeful god or even a US government conspiracy to kill Africans. This book, in all its glorious (yet strangely not angry) insiderness, fills in a huge, huge gap in the history of a movement that forced the entire Federal medical-research machinery to create and implement more humane disease-treatment and prevention protocols. Part of that work has, no doubt, saved many many lives in the current COVID pandemic. Drug treatments and vaccine development are where they are, in part, because of a ten-year fight by the brave young men and women of that powerful coterie of angry queers.

The personal stories Staley tells, the intimate truths he reveals about the personal triumphs and sacrifices and battles that attended every step of ACT UP's early years, make the massive organization that it is today feel so much more important to me. Its continued work is very, very different from its genesis because it can be...ACT UP changed because it succeeded, and because it could start fighting for different things in this new millennium. And Staley, while no choirboy in youth or age, has never stopped fighting his demons and the dragons outside himself they light up. His life has had loss and tragedy and deep, dark passages...and he tells us about them honestly. What he doesn't do is score points off people who were once allies and friends. I admire that.

I admire Staley's work even more. ACT UP's safe-sex messages reached me, a Manhattan-resident sexually active queer in the Eighties, and very likely saved my life. The love of my life was an AIDS suffering Bajan wrestler, Bland (which he refused to answer to, "my name is B.J.!" he insisted). He was already diagnosed when we met, so all our sex was the safer sort. I lost him thirty years ago, when he was thirty-four; I miss him still.

But I am HIV-negative, and alive to do so, in no small part because of Peter Staley and the work he and his cohorts did. Thank you for my life, Peter Staley, all the awful and painful and joyous and rewarding moments of it happened because you wouldn't sit down and shut up. So now's your chance to get the story behind why he made the choices he did, what happened and to whom and when. But don't expect the unpleasant grinding noise of axes being honed to killing sharpness. A long life, longer than you ever thought it would be, teaches one the value of letting go of grudges and the futility of settling scores. Despite his own more recent challenges, Staley remains fully aware of grateful for the gift of his life. It is this that I hope our COVID-ridden youngers will absorb and embody. All who read NEVER SILENT: ACT UP and My Life in Activism have a great head start.

>209 richardderus: - Great review, Richard. I started All the Young Men yesterday - a memoir by a woman who cared for AIDS patients in Arkansas in the 1980s. She sort of fell into it but became an activist and advocate for patients.

'Morning, RDear! Happy Wednesday to you.

>209 richardderus: I've added this to my wishlist. Powerful review, thank you.

*smooch*

>211 karenmarie: I'm glad you enjoyed it, Horrible...I hope the book will elucidate some things that, in COVID times, went far differently than they would have if ACT UP hadn't done what it did.

>210 katiekrug: That's a related and equally emotionally raw topic...caring for the dying bodies of people who were told (often by their families) that they should never have lived is hugely wearing.

Morning, BigDaddy! I'm hoping Wednesday is being kind to you. Much happiness about the blog traffic - way to go, you!

>209 richardderus: Oof! Excellent review. Onto The List it goes!

I am going to add my congratulations on the blog traffic. Your reviews are always interesting and I hope that others reading your blog postings will notice that fact. Even if they don't notice, I do, so please keep writing them.

>214 benitastrnad: That's very kind of you to say, Benita, thank you. No worries...I like what I'm doing so I'm highly likely to keep doing it.

>213 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie! I hope Staley's memoir will make its way to you soon. It is very interesting as well as good reading.

*smooch*

>209 richardderus: Great review, Rdear. I hope your mid week is going well.

I've been lurking, I mean, reading your thread but not commenting. Thought this might be a good time to stop and say hi, let you know I'm paying attention.

Those are some really fine reviews, Richard! I think I dodged all the BBs (except maybe the Jinks), though the Polydorus (what a cool name!) and the Staley are tempting.

Hope you are having a lovely week! I'm sure you are enjoying the cooler weather, as am I.

>217 Storeetllr: Hi Mary! I'm glad you uncloaked, you thread-Romulan you. I'm glad I can at least tempt you. It's what I live for, to quote Arthur's butler Hobson. *smooch*

>216 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara. Midweek is treating me well, as it is you.

>209 richardderus: That sounds like an amazing telling!

>219 quondame: It really, really is. I recommend it.

>209 richardderus: I need to read that one. Thank you for the review and recommendation, Richard!

Happy hump day, Richard! Glad to see you're getting in some good reads, and experiencing more blog traffic and nice responses from authors.

*Smooch*

>222 bell7: Thanks, Mary! I'm inordinately pleased when authors notice how well I've caught their meaning. It's so warming.

I've got more...you know I do...and one will come tomorrow that I think your population would really enjoy.

>221 alcottacre: My pleasure, Stasia, and I really hope you'll enjoy it when you get to read it.

Hiya, RDear. Happy Thursday.

Coffee, a bit of reading, then off for my annual exam this afternoon.

*smooch*

Hi Horrible! I must be nuts. I thought today was Friday, and was fully operating on a Friday schedule, until I got to my therapy appointment and there was no therapist.

Because today's Thursday.

Oh. Well then.

I hope you ace your exam. What're you doing over winter break? *smooch*

>225 richardderus: Well, you have that to look forward to for tomorrow.

**smooches** for today, RD, whatever day it is!

>227 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia, the same to you, only twice.

>226 humouress: Heh. Yes, it does take the sting out of being temporally unmoored. I have my Friday routine to be lived yet!

Howdy, BigDaddy! I have braved the pharmacy, the library and the Publix, so now I am ready to just sit a spell. I have started my 1976 read - Interview With a Vampire. Been in the stacks for ages, so I am happy to finally be getting to it. Thanks for the nudge.

>229 Crazymamie: Hey there Mamie, I'm glad you're joining in the fun. It's a terrific book, that one. I read it in a sitting. What a lightning bolt! Like Dark Shadows only smoking meth. Whew...some *humid* scenes!

Sweet Thursday (Not Friday), RD. I have one to recommend- Tears of the Trufflepig. It landed on a list somewhere and once I read a short description, I was sold on it. Just 30 pages in and I am hooked. Had you heard about this one?

I thought I'd pop in and say HI! before this thread is over!! And happy THURSDAY!! LOL. Smooch.

>232 Berly: Happy yesterday to you, too, Berly-boo! ...wait...it IS Thursday...sorta? Still?

>231 msf59: I got that book in 2019, and...didn't get into it. I don't remember why now, 3yrs later.

>209 richardderus: Terrific review Richard. I lost my 38 year old brother to AIDS in 1993 and not sure I'm up to reading this but you sure make it sound tempting so.....

Congrats on your increased blog traffic. You certainly put a lot of work into your reviews.

How go the review-reads on your blog today? Great to see they are increasing! Can you ever tell why one is more popular than another? (as in, does a link get shared, or google's algorithms get busy?)

Or in your case, it's Friday again. Have a great one, RD!

>237 alcottacre: Again...wait...is this Groundhog Day?!

>236 LovingLit: It's gone back down, Megan, as expected; it's usually not directly traceable to a site or link but rather to a phrase or term that leads Googlers to my lair. When Jimmy Fallon chose the Korelitz book for his book club, I'd recently published my review of it; the algorithms preferentially look for my book reviews thanks to a weird quirk, my Simenon romans durs review that's become a regular feature on searches for the phrase; so I got over ten thousand views in a week and a half.

In this case I can't figure it out. Google searches aren't helping as no term jumps out. It's just clicks on my blog's name. ...??...

>235 brenzi: Well, Bonnie, it's not about the awfulness of the plague, it's about fighting to get care for the victims of it. That's different to me, in that it's focused on the positive quest to get help and alleviate suffering.

I'm happy enough with the blog traffic being 200-300 views a day, where it's settled. It's about double what it was before. I don't think book reviews as such are fascinating enough to command four-digit daily audiences without fancy stuff to tempt them back.

Friday at last! Weird how that happened twice in one week.

Don't mess with my denial, y'all.

I'm convinced there's a time bump somewhere, like a speed bump in the fabric of the Universe, that stumbles those moving too fast. There. That's my Nobel Peace Prize won...slow down! You move too fast! Got to make the mornings last.

And on that note (!), I'm off to therapize. *smooch*

167 A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year: Hundreds of Stories on the Pandemic edited by Larry Smith

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The tenth book in the Six-Word Memoir series tells the story of a world we never expected to be in and can’t stop talking about. Told through the lens of students, teachers, and parents around the world, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year offers hundreds of inspirational, playful, and profound takes on life during the pandemic. For some, this book will be a window. For others, a mirror of their own experience. For all of us, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year is a time capsule to be read, shared, and discussed and is certain to prompt friends, family, and neighbors to ask each other: “What’s your six-word pandemic story?”

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

My Review: November 2006...a date that should live in...whatever the opposite of "infamy" is...that's when Larry Smith started SixWordMemoir.com, and unleashed the haiku poet in every English-speaker's soul. My own first one: "Not quite what I had planned" submitted on Twitter in 2013.

Six words doesn't leave room for prolixity and overdramatization. It's what makes the idea so irresistible. It's what makes the original challenge, issued legendarily to Ernest Hemingway, to tell a six-word story (his, if you need refreshing, was "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn") so deeply memorable. We're creatures of story and we love to immerse ourselves in language. When we take a short, sharp plunge into the Otherness of others, we're happy, happy souls. As witness to this truth, the collection I'm reviewing is the tenth brought into print! This is like that delicious, anonymous, yet public confessional, PostSecret. It's similarly public, it's more concise, and it's possibly even more revealing...but it's all part of the same urge, the need I know so many feel to unburden themselves, to celebrate their milestones, and to be seen and heard where it feels safe, especially when it doesn't feel safe to be any of those things in their community.

So here we are in a pandemic. Over a year without anything like normalcy. I guess it's no surprise to anyone that there were some feelings that needed to be bled out, and SixWordMemoir was exactly the right tool to lance the thing. The choice to direct this collection at educators, students, and parents trapped in the nightmare of too much togetherness plus too little social contact was inevitable and also genius. I read these wondering how the hell I would even begin to cope with kids, job, spouse, house, and the free-floating anxiety of not knowing what the hell was happening and how soon it would kill someone I love!

For a measly $2.99 on your Kindle, get one for yourself. But if you want to give a paper copy to someone special, ORDER NOW! (And the tree book would be great because illustrations are just *better* on a paper page.)

Some SixWordMemoirs to show you what I mean:

Six feet never felt so far. — Ava Russ, 15
A young woman whose entire adolescence was interrupted by this awful event makes her private pain part of a national conversation. I admire her. I know many, many young people will relate to her.
It goes over your nose, pal. — Stina Perkins
Yes. Yes, it does.
Getting handle on pandemic. Need lid. — Krystyna Fedosejevs
Budding philosopher. Also comedian. Needs job.
For sale: prom dress, never worn. — Caroline Richardson, 19
Extra poignance points for emulating the Hemingway original. Brava. Now go get your MFA.
How can emptiness feel so heavy? — Lincoln H.
Turning friends to strangers...all alone. — Chelsea P.
Not happy. Not sad. Just empty. — Tristan N.
These are all culled from the same elementary school. No one ever gets to tell me how kids aren't ready for the way the real world works, or that they don't have the skills to process the adult world. This gives those lies their brightest exit sign.

I was very touched by the essays written by teachers and other education professionals. They're not long, maybe 500 words at most, but they pack a wallop in their palpable grief and frustration at not being able to do what they love doing. One librarian here in New York shared that their students were able to come together to have Zoom sessions (and may I just say that Zoom has earned my undying gratitude for keeping me in touch with my Young Gentleman Caller on the regular?) with writers and poets after reading their work. One such writer was Luke Dani Blue, whose story about a trans person crossing the country (Canada, one presumes, as they're based in Alberta) by Greyhound bus elicited this question from a student:

"You and your characters seem to thrive and dream of uncertain circumstances because they hold so much possibility, yet very often in life we are disappointed and miscalculate the trajectory of our new paths. What would you say is your margin of error when it comes to dream versus actual trajectory?"
Blue was so stunned by the question, all they could say was, "Woah, I feel so seen by that question. I'm going to have to think about that one."

Yes, "seen" is the right word for it. Seen, seen through, seen off, seen! Seen indeed. Teenagers are, and we forget this at our societal peril, adults without perspective or impulse control. Their intelligence will never be sharper. Their training in how to use it is all we have left to offer them...and this goddamned plague means we can not offer it to them in the same, personal way. But, and this is the reason I bring it up, permaybehaps this new, screen-intermediated way will offer the young learners some advantages. I doubt that question would've come out of the asker's mouth with that level of fluency. A chance to think about it, try different ways of phrasing it, probably made that the best question it could possibly be.

So there's a hopeful side to this misery after all....

Now I'm a barber. Who knew? — John Tehan
Golden lining. Career opportunity? Probably not.
Masks protect us from farts, too! — Ruby Bryan
Special Ed teacher whose kids are profoundly disabled. But still kids...farts are hilarious to kids.
Numbers rose, but SUN did too. — Paloma Lenz
Yes. It did indeed. And it rose a little higher for me today. Thanks, Paloma, although we'll never meet you've made an old, disabled stranger a lot happier than he was before he read your words.

That, in a nutshell, is the magic of the internet.

Morning, Richard. Happy Friday. Good review of "A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year". Those SixWordMemoirs examples are wonderful.

Morning, BigDaddy!

>234 richardderus: This made me laugh, but I would also like to know the answer.

>239 richardderus: You got two Fridays? I got two Thursdays this week. I am slightly jealous.

>240 richardderus: This is the tenth in a series, and I had not heard of it until now, so thank you. Your review speaks to me. I loved "We're creatures of story and we love to immerse ourselves in language. When we take a short, sharp plunge into the Otherness of others, we're happy, happy souls." It was so good, I read it out loud to Birdy. Well done, you!

>240 richardderus: - Love this. My library doesn't have it but maybe a trip to the book store is in order.....

‘Morning, RD, and happiest of Fridays to you. So I hope today’s therapy appt goes well…

>239 richardderus: Ear worm alert! Gaagh…

>240 richardderus: I have no willpower. I wrote a nice paragraph saying that I’d already tsundoku’d myself into a hole this month and would ask somebody for it for Christmas, but the lure of Amazon credit card points made my good intentions go by the wayside. It’s on its way to me.

*smooch*

Hey buddy. We made it- Happy Friday! It's the real, genuine one, not the Thursday-flavored facsimile. I've started Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I'm hoping it goes a little bit better for me than it did for you. Matrix, btw, was excellent. Indomitable Marie de France.

>245 jnwelch: Fri-YAY! I'm glad Marie's tale got your approval. I'll library it up next year, no one seems to say even slightly iffy things about it. Though it certainly hasn't been for each of its readers.

>244 karenmarie: No-self-control-itis only matters if it's the rent money or the food budget. Buy! Be free with your futuredollars!

#sorrynotsorry about the earworm....

Therapy went just fine...except I didn't have time to eat my oatmeal first since Old Stuff got up and out later than usual. I left a bit early so I could EAT!

>243 jessibud2: Oh my yes! I think this would be something you'd enjoy a lot, Shelley. I hope so!

>242 Crazymamie: Mamie me lurve, how perfectly Friday to see you here! Two Thursdays definitely does not have the same savor as my two Fridays.

Thank you for the nice words about my words about words! *smooch*

Um...well...let's just say that baking might want to figure more heavily in your cookie-consuming future, and adjust to less chocolate and coconut. And candied fruit.

>241 msf59: Hiya, Mark, thanks for the kind words...I'm pretty sure any of the ones Editor Smith chose would've made a good impression but those were my very favorites.

TGIF(Again), RD! Love the six wood memoirs you shared. I'd not heard of this project before.

>248 katiekrug: Really?! Oh wow...SixWordMemoir.com is a treasure trove! I love them. I would, though, wouldn't I, being the quote-collecting aperçu-gathering proverbialist that I am.

The Kindlebook's only $2.99....

I hope you finally got to enjoy your therapy RD :0)

>240 richardderus: There have been times in the past 18 months that I've only been able to stay focused for 6 words, and occasionally not even that long. I'm going to look into buying this Kindlebook.

>239 richardderus: I would not dream of messing with your denial, RD. I am encouraging it. Groundhog Day it is!

>240 richardderus: Into the BlackHole it goes. Sounds like a must read to me.

>252 alcottacre: It really, really is a must-read, Stasia. It's not all sweetness and light but is so honest and so cleansingly *present* that it's just too good to pass up.

>251 Storeetllr: This is the book series for you, Mary. We're all processing as best we can. Let's get our support where and how we can!

>250 humouress: I did, I did...the usual good chat, the usual gift of blueberries, the usual sense of having made myself about ten pounds lighter by divesting myself of my secrets.

>253 richardderus: I ordered a paper copy from Amazon :)

Well, here I am, operating under the philosophy of better late than never. 1976 was the year I got my first (and only) divorce. The Fifth Head of Cerberus was published that year, which at the time I remember being totally blown away by it, and I've been afraid to reread it ever since. Also The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which is definitely due for a reread!

>255 ronincats: Hi Roni! Well, I think most of us have had a divorce, some of us more than one. Everyone's entitled to a starter marriage.

I don't know what's missing in me but Gene Wolfe just doesn't speak to me in any good way. Well, why not re-read McKillip's magnum opus? The point is to enjoy the reads....

>254 alcottacre: :-)

168 Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett abridged audio read by Tony Robinson (I mean! Baldrick reads Pratchett?! What could be better, right?)

First, though, my 2013 review:
Rating: 3* of five

The Book Description: Here there be dragons . . . and the denizens of Ankh-Morpork wish one huge firebreather would return from whence it came. Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all . . .).

Meanwhile, back at Unseen University, an ancient and long-forgotten volume--The Summoning of Dragons--is missing from the Library's shelves. To the rescue come Captain Vimes, Constable Carrot, and the rest of the Night Watch who, along with other brave citizens, risk everything, including a good roasting, to dethrone the flying monarch and restore order to Ankh-Morpork (before it's burned to a crisp). A rare tale, well done as only Terry Pratchett can.

My Review: I just don't care.

Mildly amusing most of the time, smile-inducingly punny some of the time, and just...well...so what? Trenchant satire? Not to me. More like amusing cocktail party chatter.

This is it for me and Sir Terry. I've tried, and frankly at 53, I don't see the need for me to read stuff that's as bland as unsalted rice.

So, that in mind, this is my 2021 ear-read review:

Rating: 3* of five

This ear-read will decide my fate vis-à-vis Pratchettites.
***
Okay. I've listened to Tony Robinson read the best third of the book, laughed about eleven times and chortled more. I just don't get it, y'all. It's amusing, there are some *brilliant* puns and double entendres, and...well...nothing impels me to listen to or read more. It's clearly me, not Pratchett, but as y'all love it so much I won't say any tarnishing things.

That, as the saying goes, is that. But, and this cannot be overstated, this second one was an EAR READ! I listened to a three-plus hour ear read! And stayed awake! Nothing short of miraculous.

Also, these quotes are important:
“The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”
Yes indeed, Sir Terry-to-be. Yes.

“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”
Rule 3 isn't one I'm likely to break, but the others...welllll....

“If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.”
Um. Well. Yes, why yes, I do indeed feel Seen. What led you to ask?

>257 richardderus: I am one of the people that Terry Pratchett does not get along with either. I was mildly interested in the Tiffany Aching series, but not enough to continue past the first couple of books. I did not get on with the Discworld series at all.

>258 alcottacre: We are few, but we are real. Most everyone else seems to be falling about the place every time there's a Pratchett something going on.

>259 richardderus: I know. It is the same in the board game industry when a game comes out based on one of his books. I do not get the love at all.

Speaking of board games, I played Glass Road again yesterday. If I thought you would actually play it, I would buy you a copy.

I also do not Terry Pratchett. The only thing of his that has worked for me was Good Omens which he co-authored with Neil Gaiman. Even then, I'm not sure I would have loved it as much without the fabulous tv series. I watched the tv series first and then read the book. Birdy and I both love the tv series.

>255 ronincats: Yes to Eld love!

>256 richardderus: Well, Wolfe has more than one voice. Maybe one of his modern books, An Evil Guest or A Borrowed Man?

>257 richardderus:->261 Crazymamie: I do love Terry Prachett and think he got much, much better after Guards!, Gurads!, though I enjoy it whenever I'm feeling like retracing Vimes journey. It suits my sense of humor and self-righteous streak.

>262 quondame: There was a good deal of winning humor in the read. It just didn't add up to much. I've done the trip twice, laughed a bit, and come away profoundly uninterested in reading more. Fin.

>261 Crazymamie:, >260 alcottacre: I love the series, too! I got the book at New York Is Book Country the year Workman published it...they dressed their assistants in silly costumes and had them yelling at passers-by about the world ending...one of them was even Agnes Nutter! And never recalled the read. Ever. Sat on my shelf for decades. Not so much as a twitch of recognition.

*shrug* I don't like Gaiman or Pratchett, and never have.

>262 quondame: Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer is so repugnant to me that, as far as I care, his books can all spontaneously combust and leave their fan/owners with nasty property damage uncovered by insurance. That's how offensive I found them.

>263 richardderus: Your reaction to Wolfe is like mine to Gor. A torturer as a protagonist was a risky choice which, if that was it, in your case didn't justify the risk. But the man could write and sometimes made far different choices.

>264 quondame: I'll take your word for it.

'Morning, RDear, and yay for the weekend.

I've got most of the bags of books back into the Library, and will soon be able to use the Dining Room for its named purpose soon. Not that we eat in there very often, but just in case we decide to do a smallish Thanksgiving, I'll be ahead of the game. I've still got 3 bags of books to move back in there, and one huge box of VHS tapes to probably put into smaller boxes and move upstairs because even though we don't even have a usable VHS player, I can't bear to get rid of them for some stupid reason.

*smooch*

VHS tapes! Wow. I can't even pretend to think that makes sense except on a sentimental level. The quality would just not work at all on a digital TV.

Actually dining in the dining room! You wild woman you. I wouldn't know how to behave any more.

Morning, darling! VHS tapes take me back.

I like Gaiman - his stuff works for me, and I love what he writes about his love of reading when he was younger. I think I have read more of his non-fiction than his fiction.

Hoping your Saturday is full of fabulous! *smooch*

>268 Crazymamie: Hi smoochling! I don't think I've read Gaiman's non-fiction...? I can read David Foster Wallace's essays but can not abide his fiction. I wonder if this might be the case with Gaiman. I'll have to try it out.

Happy weekend!

Happy Saturday, Richard. We just got back from attending our nephew's high school football game. Boy, it was chilly. I don't think it hit 50F. Now, we are off to see the latest Bond film. I have not been to a movie theater, in more than a year and a half. Enjoy your day.

Hope you're having a happy (or at least decent) Saturday, RD!

I made some brief comments about GBBO/S on my thread. You were so right.

Happy Saturday, RD! I hope it is a good one!

>272 alcottacre: Hey there, Stasia, thanks for the well-wishes...I'm pleased to report they're in the process of coming true. *smooch*

>271 katiekrug: I shall coddiwomple thitherward directly, Madam Katie. (See above re: Saturday.)

>270 msf59: Oh wow! Early winter is being good to y'all! I'd love some forties and fifties. It's lowest-possible seventies here today.

Have a great movie-theater trip. Let us know if knife-wielding maniacs hold you hostage or something exciting like that.

>249 richardderus: - So, neither my library nor my local big box bookstore has this is their catalogue or system. And the store apparently can't order it if it isn't in the system to order. I looked at the six word memoir site and I suppose I could order it from there but I hate paying shipping costs for something like a book if it's available or if I can get it here without shipping. And I don't use amazon ever so that's out, even though it appears to be available from them. I could ask a friend who does amazon but I may as well just wait. Unless it's one of those books that won't ever be in the stores, only on their website. Oh well...

>274 jessibud2: Oh, that *is* sad. I'm so sorry it's not more readily available!

Maybe it's just too soon. Maybe if I keep asking, at different stores, they will think there is a demand and order it! :-)

Since you received it as an early copy, maybe that means it hasn't come out in stores yet. Is there anywhere in your copy that gives a publication date? That might help

It is a digital reading copy...the publication date was last Tuesday, the 12th, but as we all know shipping dates are several weeks before that. I don't know who their distributors are; in fact, their trade distribution appears to be non-existent which I regard as bizarre. But I have looked on every page of their website and it's just...nowhere!

How annoyed would I be if I ran a bookshop and had to order each time from their own pick-and-pack!

Oddly, I went to sixwordmemoirs.com and it popped right up. It shows it as available from amazon, but, you know...;-p

I think I will try to call one of our smaller indie stores tomorrow and see if they can do better than the big box.

Didn't make it to this thread until now, Richard. 1976, that takes me back to a darker time. That was the year we got spooked on a visit to a friends place in Vancouver and ended up moving to Calgary. It wasn't until we came back for a visit that we found out she was murdered in that apartment.

>279 Familyhistorian: Omigosh! That is a weird, unsettling story, Meg. *shiver* The 1976 Club read will be up tomorrow...Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time...oh heck. I didn't quite finish Shakespeare's Planet or it would be up tomorrow, too.

>278 jessibud2: I hope they'll get one for you, Shelley.

The comments about VHS tapes reminds me of several "dated" things in older books I've recently read. Someone used a cassette tape to record something in one. I think "film" in a camera was developed in another. I believe one mentioned a chain store that has been out of business a couple decades. It makes me sentimental at times. At other times, it brings me back to the reality this is an "older book" because otherwise, it might have been happening today.

>281 thornton37814: Indeed, Lori, there are many technological things that blow up big and then wither, like VHS, and any story with them in it isn't going to age well. Of course we can't know that in advance.

I sold a terrific book, Scorch, in the late 90s. It was about a near-term future. It did not have ubiquitous cell phones. Oh heavy heavy sigh...

May I ask what the deal is with 1976?

Happy Sunday, RD!

Since I wasn't around last Thursday, I want to wish you a happy Sunday instead, Richard dear!

>240 richardderus: Great review, Rdear. I wish you a wonderful Sunday.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Sunday to you.

>267 richardderus: Yup. Sentimental reasons. I remember the first VHS tape I bought – The Emerald Forest. I paid something like $75 for it…

There was a cassette tape in a box of stuff Aunt Ann gave to me the other day. I simply chucked it, although we do have scads of cassettes around here somewhere.

We have every medium used in the US since the 1940s here in the house somewhere – 45s, LPs, cassettes, CDs, reel-to-reel tapes, Beta tapes, VHS tapes, laserdiscs, DVDs, and BluRay DVDs. Possibly some 78s, too…

*smooch*

>286 karenmarie: - 8-tracks? ;-)

Uh-oh. I don't think we have any 8-tracks. Good catch, Shelley. I misspoke.

It says something that out of all the formats that I saved my PhD thesis in, only the paper one is still readily readable. The 3&1/4 inch disks, and a Zip disk have long since bitten the dust. Good old paper and ink still doing it's job.

>289 Helenliz: And that's exactly the problem with 'advanced technology'.

169 Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy’s landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures—and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before.

Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity—and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow.

THIS READ WAS PART OF A LOOSE BLOGGER READ-A-THON CALLED THE 1976 CLUB. THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING BELOW.

My Review: I began this read eager to know why I've owned several editions of this book over the decades...one from my bookstore-having sister in the Seventies, one from my Manhattan years in the later Eighties, a British one from the Aughties...but never remember reading it! And now that I've read it again, I remember why I don't remember.

What a disappointment.

The ending just...isn't. The sense of resolution, of the fit between story and ending, is unsatisfying to me. And it took over sixty pages to get there.

You know from the publisher's synopsis that Connie Ramos, our third-person-limited PoV character, is a mental patient. It's the 1970s and psychopharmacology wasn't as advanced as it is now (I'd argue it's still roughly where surgery was in the pre-Lister 1840s). Much that is wrong with Connie is situational, and it's utterly unsurprising. She's "treated" by the standards of the day, which is to say confined and contained and circumscribed so she can't act out her acute agony. She's in need of psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; she gets diagnosed as schizophrenic and the full machinery of experimental psychology gets to work on her.

But are they wrong? She claims she's been to the year 2137. And the world is....

Off we go! Luciente reaches her to show her a beautiful, granola-and-grown-out-hair Seventies egalitarian-hippie-commune future that I loved. "Gender" roles? Umm...what is per (their all-purpose pronoun, love that!) talking about, Luciente? Sex is biological...what is gender role? Part of the false dichotomies we've left behind.... What *wasn't* left behind was the of-the-time disrespect for sex work and workers, equating them to slaves. Reductive, shown to be inaccurate, but very feminist-70s. What isn't left behind is the disrespect of the future for the past. Luciente and all per people in Mattapoisett seem to know less than a US grade-school child about their own history. Connie says things that dumbfound these folk regularly...did all the books and digital records get destroyed? Then find a way to tell me so! (Goodness knows Author Piercy isn't afraid of infodumps.)

What I mostly didn't love was the way Connie, my PoV!, didn't look around and note things! But...well...this is a story about an abused and frankly impoverished and ethnically othered, therefore expendable, woman. All of those things are still stigmas, but they were a great deal moreso in the Seventies, and as Luciente's world (is Mattapoisett a Utopia, really, because war and societal conflict still exist there and then) bleeds into her own reality the Seventies Bellevue staff become less and less empathetic, more and more afraid of and for her, and act with more controlling behavior. It wasn't a joyride for Connie before but, as the life with Luciente recedes and Connie becomes mired in the mental hospital's horrors, the way she copes is...awful.

The aforementioned sixty-plus pages. I didn't like 'em. I did, however, recognize 'em. The months I spent in a locked ward in 2014 were a real eye-opener for me, and this might be why I didn't much enjoy the ending. My roommates were schizophrenic men. I had a really strong introduction to the hopelessness of schizophrenia and its utterly ineffective treatments. I think a big part of my getting my own brain back under my control was my sense of deep, abiding gratitude that I don't have *that* problem.

But does Connie? Is that really what's going on here? In her records, which we see, it says her intelligence is "Average" and is this detailed, consistent fantasy really something a person of average intelligence could come up with? It was here that I began to think the ending, besides just not being to my taste, actually missed a trick. What occurs isn't unrealistic. What it is, though, is without nuance. It asserts that Reality Is Reality. That's what we've just spent over three hundred pages interrogating! Taking that tack over quite an extended ending is...well...why not keep the interrogation, is Connie mad? is Connie telling us the truth? is Connie ever going "home"? going, that is, back to Mattapoisett. Instead the story ends with a THUD. And that wasn't at all on my Bingo card.

Author Piercy's prose is adequate.

“Never in your life have you been helpless—under somebody’s heel. You never lived where your enemies held power over you, power to run your life or wipe it out. You can’t understand. That’s how come you stand there feeding me empty slogans!”

Luciente bowed her head. “You crit me justly, Connie. Forgive me. I’ll try to see your situation more clearly and make less loud noises in your ears.”
–and–
“Only in us do the dead live. Water flows downhill through us. The sun cools in our bones. We are joined with all living in one singing web of energy. In us live the dead who made us. In us live the children unborn. Breathing each other’s air, drinking each other’s water, eating each other’s flesh, we grow like a tree from the earth.”
–and–
Every day was a lesson in how starved the eyes could grow for hue, for reds and golds; how starved the ears could grow for conga drums, for the blare of traffic, for dogs barking, for the baseball games chattering from TVs, for voices talking flatly, conversationally, with rising excitement in Spanish, for children playing in the streets, the Puerto Rican children whose voices sounded faster, harder, than Chicano Spanish, as if there were more metal in their throats.

Never that I saw did it get better than that, and those are peaks that I've chosen. They're good, they're good, before someone says I'm saying otherwise. What they aren't is...tingly. That feeling you get when someone writes something that spears you with its sounds and feelings. I never got that in this read...and I'm pretty sure most others didn't either. What I saw praised, when I read the reviews others had written of the book after I finished my own read, was the ideas Author Piercy presented for the future, the cold analysis of the present...but not the prose. It's fine! It's not awkward, or lumpen; it's...fine.

But that's all it is. And that, I think, is my best summation of this read: It was fine, it had much to recommend it, but its heights weren't all that high and its lows weren't low.

It was fine.

Happy Sunday to you all, Nina, Helen, Horrible, and Shelley!
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>290 humouress:, >289 Helenliz: Remembering that paper and ink were sorcerous, magical High Technology for most of humanity's existence...we're really really really overdue for an upgrade. The last time we had one was ~1450 with the printing press. Refinements thereon don't really count.

The argument that, with printing technology, we were able to have the Reformation and its subsequent and accidental liberalizing of knowledge acquisition, is well-founded. Had the same tech been available to the Lollards, we'd be looking at a two-century head start on the Renaissance. Piss on the Black Death!

>288 karenmarie:, >287 jessibud2:, >286 karenmarie: Oh my heck! I'd forgotten about 8-tracks. Miserable things, terrible sound quality. Likewise the weird quaveriness of the 78.

A cassette tape! Wow, I can't even recall the last time I had the ability to play one of those. Or a DVD. I'm pretty thoroughly online, it would seem.

>285 Ameise1: Thank you most kindly, Barbara! The same wishes heartily returned.

>284 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita! Thursday...wait...that was the day that wasn't, wasn't it?

>283 alcottacre: I discuss it here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/335023#7601576

Or the link in >291 richardderus:, if you want the for-public-consumption version. Happy Sunday, Stasia!

Morning, BigDaddy! 8-tracks?! I had quite the collection of those back in the day. And a stereo system that could play records, 8-tracks and cassettes. I loved that stereo.

Sorry that your 1976 read was not better.

>294 Crazymamie: Hey there, Mamie! I skipped the 8-track part and went from vinyl to cassette. I could record the vinyl onto the cassette and have an eternal personal master, which was my Holy Grail.

Wore out a lot of cassettes in those years but never lost the tunes. My own cars, the ones I bought, always had cassette players in them so I didn't have to listen to ads. (I've always resented commercials. It's the reason I stopped watching TV.)

Happy Sunday *smooches*, Richard.

I have no cassette tapes anymore (got rid of those when I moved out of my parents' house), but I do have a couple of VHS I saved despite the fact that I have nothing to play them on. They're personal though (school assignments mostly) and at some point I'd like to get them converted to DVD.

>296 bell7: Thanks, Mary! I'm very pleased with this slowpoke of a Sunday. I need to make a trip to CVS but frankly can't be arsed. Must not need anything all that much, eh what?

Getting the VHS tapes converted to DVD should also entitle you to an mp4 file. Having both will make sure you're able to access them.

I can't imagine the chaos of a Carrington Event happening nowadays....

>257 richardderus: >258 alcottacre: I completely agree about Pratchett. It just did nothing for me. One and done. I know a lot of people enjoy them and at least I won't be tying up the library copies!

R--enjoy your slowpoke Sunday! Me too, since I am recovering from my Friday ER visit. Ugh.

>298 Berly: I'm glad you're doing well today, Kimmers, and glad you're not on Team Pratchett like so many...it feels kinda lonely, just the two of us in this corner...all those big, toothy grins start to feel menacing....

>209 richardderus: What a terrific review. And an important read.

Also a great review of Woman on the Edge of Time. I read it a loooooong time ago.

Hi Richard! *smooch* from your AWOL friend. (Me.)

>300 EBT1002: Thank you, sweetiedarling! I'm so pleased you enjoyed the review. It *is* an important read, especially for those of us who lived through it.
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Thread fifteen is operational and out of beta.

>291 richardderus: An acquaintance back in the late 1970s told me I just HAD to read it, even gave me a copy of the book. For some reason, I never did. Now, having read your review, I believe perhaps it was fine to have not read it.

ETA you can add me to your "not-a-fan-of-Pratchett" club.

>302 Storeetllr: Honest and truly, hand on heart: you ain't missin' nothin' good.

>291 richardderus: I have already read that one, so dodging a potential BB there.

>293 richardderus: Thank you for the link, RD. I will check it out.