richardderus's seventh 2022 thread

Magnolia grandiflora blossom (via Wikipedia)...it's the season for them to bust out in their gorgeously scented and visually delightful cream-colored blossoms. Their coumarin-laden leaves act as blood-thinning agents in tisanes, and the lumber of older specimens is used in many commercial applications, having a pleasing yellowish-green color.

Native to my old home, these trees are so ancient that they've developed the ability to survive pretty much anywhere. They chose the opposite tack from the extreme specialists like Amborella, their close contemporary evolutionarily speaking, thus taking over the world instead of being confined to a teensy li'l island that'll be drowned in a decade or so.

The famous Central Park magnolia trees in bloom. Simply STUNNING in the middle of NYC! Hardy beasts with leathery leaves, magnolias snort contemptuously at air pollution and acid rain and snow.

For 2022, I state my goal of posting an average of 4 or 5 book reviews a week on my blog, for an annual total of 250. This year's total of ~200 (I need to do more to sync the data on my reads between my blog, Goodreads, and here this year for real) posts in 50 weeks of blogging shows it's doable. My *actual* blogged total for 2021 was 229.

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 gave up. I just didn't care about this goal, but I need to learn to because I *re*Pearl-Ruled five books after not remembering picking them up in the first place. What I've decided to do is have post >7 richardderus: be the Pearl-Rule Tracking post!

And now that I've gotten >6 richardderus: Burgoineing as a habit, I'm going to make a monthly blog-only post with my that-month's Burgoined books. It will appear the last Sunday of each month.



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.
My Last Thread of 2021 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

Reviews one through eight? Seek them thitherward.

Looking for nine through sixteen? Click that link!

Reviews seventeen up to twenty-six? You know what to do.

I know you think reviews twenty-seven to thirty-three are here...well, you're right, they are.

Seekest ye the reviews entitled thirty-four to thirty-eight? They anent just so.

I understand you're curious about thirty-nine to forty-seven. Go back there.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

048 Slash and Burn infuriated, post 69.

049 Who Will Comfort Toffle? weirded me out (in a good way), post 99.

050 Underland: A Deep Time Journey sufficed, post 109.

051 The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice enraged, post 116.

052 Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America destroyed, post 128.

053 See, Solve, Scale: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success energized, post 155.

054 The Charm Offensive slapped, post 190.

055

I've decided to use BookRiot's 2022 Read Harder Challenge as a spice-me-up of meeting my reading goals. Since I'll post 225+ reviews (posts aren't the same as reviews posted, as some posts cover as many as four books!) on my blog this year *easily* I think I need to get a little more pushy. 225 reviews posted seems like a cheat as a goal since I'm on track for that now. I'm thinking 250...approximately 10% increase over this year's actual total.

This is the list:

1. Read a biography of an author you admire.


2. Read a book set in a bookstore.


3. Read any book from the Women’s Prize shortlist/longlist/winner list.


4. Read a book in any genre by a POC that’s about joy and not trauma.
   30 Things I Love About Myself FTW!


5. Read an anthology featuring diverse voices.


6. Read a nonfiction YA comic.
   The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is illustrated and that'll have to do.


7. Read a romance where at least one of the protagonists is over 40.


8. Read a classic written by a POC.


9. Read the book that’s been on your TBR the longest.
   Central Station was awarded to me on NetGalley in 2016!


10. Read a political thriller by a marginalized author (BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+).


11. Read a book with an asexual and/or aromantic main character.


12. Read an entire poetry collection.


13. Read an adventure story by a BIPOC author.
    We Could Be Heroes did the business


14. Read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you’ve seen (but haven’t read the book).
    Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story out on Netflix now...saved the book for me, no smallest doubt.


15. Read a new-to-you literary magazine (print or digital).


16. Read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes.


17. Read a memoir written by someone who is trans or nonbinary.
    High-Risk Homosexual! What a read.


18. Read a “Best _ Writing of the year” book for a topic and year of your choice.


19. Read a horror novel by a BIPOC author.


20. Read an award-winning book from the year you were born.


21. Read a queer retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, folklore, or myth.
    Briarley FTW! I can start 2022 with one task accomplished.


22. Read a history about a period you know little about.


23. Read a book by a disabled author.


24. Pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat!
    I choose 2018: Read a mystery by a person of color who is also LGBTQ+
    

I liked all of them except the comic and I'm still looking for GNs that don't make me want to scream and barf, so it's a good challenge.

I'm wondering if, in lieu of setting a numerical goal for Burgoines (see >6 richardderus:), I could just agree with myself to use the technique on 3-stars-and-under reads about which I don't much care and count them as reviews here. I've decided that I'll post 'em & collate them in each thread's post #6. Then I'll just blog 'em in gangs, once a month on the last Sunday in the month...I dunno, but I read a lot of books I don't talk about because someone loved it & I loathed it or just didn't care much about it, or I simply have no useful response...it filled time, it failed to offend or delight me. Is that information useful to anyone? Would you care if I did that and gored your reading ox?

I suppose we shall find out.

2021's five-star or damn-near five-star reviews totaled 28, a marked decrease from last year's 46. Fewer authors saw their book launches rescheduled, but publishers still had to cancel many of their tours and events because COVID-19. The inflationary pressure that supply-chain issues are exerting causes a lot of economic drag on the market, though there is as of yet a lot less trouble than I expected getting tree-book copies of things.

My annual six-stars-of-five read is Cove (my book review), a perfect, spare, evocative story of the pain of existing when you genuinely can't process what is happening to you, around you, despite your best and most well-practiced efforts there is just no righting the boat. I cannot stress enough to you, this is the book you need to read in 2022. I can not forget this read. I refer to it in my head, I think about its stark, vividly limned images. I am so deeply glad Author Cynan wrote it. To quote myself from my review: "This is the book I wish The Old Man and the Sea had been, but was not."

In 2020, I posted over 215 reviews here. In 2022, my goals are:

to post 250 reviews on my blog

to post three-sentence Burgoines of books I don't either adore or despise

to complete at least 275 total reviews of all types

Most important to me again this year is to report on DRCs I don't care enough about to review at my usual level. I still 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 >6 richardderus: below. I just need to keep getting better about *applying* it!

I stole this from PC's thread in 2020. I like these prompts, so I've decided to re-do them every December!
***
1. Name any book you read at any time most recently that was published in the year you turned 18:
The Street Where I Live by Alan Jay Lerner (2010)
2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird
3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover?
St. Mary's and the Great Toilet Roll Crisis by Jodi Taylor
4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?)
Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond by William Dalrymple & Anita Anand because I lost interest
5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you?
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard...how easy it is to fail, to do the wrong thing
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?
Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow by Christina Henry...Sleepy Hollow's about 100mi from here
7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read?
Queer people's history and the Quaker resistance to slavery
8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book?
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard which I managed to get several LTers and tweeple to pick up *buffs nails*
9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it?
Briarley by Aster Glenn Gray, a gay WWII-set retelling of Beauty and the Beast, that I finished this week (and reviewed!)
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)
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy was a #The1976Club read, and was so disappointing that I went on to read The Malacia Tapestry by Brian W. Aldiss to cleanse my reading palate
11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with.
Aster Glenn Gray
12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year?
The Multiverse in Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series
13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)?
How to Catch a Vet; the Afghanistan War
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 (bold added for emphasis)
15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way?
The Toast of Time is part of The Chronicles of St Mary's by Jodi Taylor, so it involves the future, the past, and the Multiverse
16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall?
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere?
Ife-Iyoku, Tale of Imadeyunuagbon by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover?
Your Honor, it is my intention to assert my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to any and all questions pursuing this subject
19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die?
Brian Aldiss, 2017
20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read?
good goddesses, I don't remember...Goodnight Moon to my daughter?— STET
21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read?
Officially it's part of the Jack Lennon series, though he barely even appears in it, so The Ghosts of Belfast via Stuart Neville gets the nod.
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?)
see #4. I just...quit caring.
24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT?
see #9
25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics)
Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker, art by David Lester

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 2021? (modification in itals)
The Sleeping Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, 1962.

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 is the most important idea of the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!


APRIL'S FIRST BURGOINES

31 March (first of April, officially) The Commandant's Daughter intrigued, post 260.

The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong befuddled, post 219.

MARCH 2022's BURGOINES

20 March The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream delighted, post 122.

The first 4 in March are back-linked here.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's BURGOINES (through #12) are here.

***
JANUARY 2022's BURGOINES are here.

This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. I just didn't care about this goal as a separate goal, but I need to learn to because I *re*Pearl-Ruled five books this December just passed after not remembering picking them up in the first place. I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to really track my Pearl Rules!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each thread's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

MARCH 2022's PEARL-RULES

It counts as April's first Pearl-Rule: Conventionally Yours just failed, post 241.

1 March (officially) Central Station failed, post 103.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

***
JANUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

Après moi, le deluge.

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: I noticed on our walk today, that the magnolia's are nealy blooming!

Happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: I love magnolia's! As a kid, I used to dry the petals and put them in a pouch. The smell lasted a long time.

Lovely magnolias!

Have a happy new thread.

Happy New Thread!

>9 FAMeulstee: You're first, Anita!

Enjoy your crown, my fellow Magnolia fancier.

>12 SandDune: Thank you, Rhian!

>11 katiekrug: Aren't they pretty? I do love them. *smooch*

>10 figsfromthistle: Isn't the smell glorious, Anita? I'm always amazed at how many memories it evokes.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, RDear.

Second *smooch* today.

>13 richardderus: Thank you, dear Richard.
Ah, the crown of the Netherlands, how appropriate :-)

>17 FAMeulstee: I thought it felt appropriate....

>16 karenmarie: Happy to be smooched a second time!

>15 ArlieS: Thank you, Arlie!

Happy new thread.
There was a magnolia tree in a garden over the road when I was small. I thought it was a tree of tulips. Unusually large tulips, I grant you. I'm not a lot better at gardening now either. >:-)

Happy new thread Richard!

If it’s excess weight you’re wanting, I’ve got some I’d be more than happy to give to you as soon as I can work out how to ship it over :0) I hope all that’s been worked out now?

>1 richardderus: I do love a magnolia RD.

>21 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caroline! I know few who don't like them, mostly southerners who associate them with cemeteries.

>20 humouress: Hi Nina! I hope it's going to be permanently worked out. I'm happy with puttin on a few pounds, though if you figure out how to get the fat onto me I'll gladly take a stone or so.

>19 Helenliz: Helen, I think gardening's an overrated skill set myownself. And goodness knows your thinking wasn't in any way alone. Look up "tulip tree."

Salutations dear fellow on your new thread.

>23 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC, it's a wee bit disappointing not to be able to get to the Ides on one thread. I know it's an artificial goal, but still....

Happy new one!

>25 drneutron: Thank you, Jim!

>24 richardderus: Well, then. I’m a step ahead of you there.
:0)

Happy new one, Richard. Thanks for the reminder that it is almost time for the trees to be in bloom.

>22 richardderus: Ah well, I like cemeteries too RD.

Morning, Richard. Happy New Thread. I LOVE the magnolia toppers. We have a lovely, mild week ahead. Now, I want to see some color!

'Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

We have a tulip tree near the house, a gift from my work group in 2006 when my dad passed away. It was a teensy thing in a 1-gallon pot, and is now quite gorgeous.

*smooch*

Wordle 268 3/6

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I'm very glad I used my initial strategy of AEONS then MIRTH as it gave me four of five letters!

>31 karenmarie: Moon's Day orisons, Horrible. I think the magnolia family gives us so many gorgeous trees that we should do something nice for them, don't you?

>30 msf59: Color's the best thing about the general unsettledness of spring, I agree. I hope the mild week treats you to more of it!

>29 Caroline_McElwee: They don't bother me, I just avoid them. Who knows what's outgassing....

>28 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg! The color's on the way...hang in there....

>27 humouress: So you are, La Overkill. So indeed you are.

*smooch* for the new week.

I also got Wordle in 3 today.

Wordle 268 3/6

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Happy Monday, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Happy new thread Richard!

Yay hooray! It's Monday. We made it to the start of the WORK week. I gots to get busy.

Congrats to you, since you are ALWAYS busy.

>38 weird_O: "Busy" was always the way not to be bored, so the habit got set early. Purely a selfish, self-caring behavior.

>37 swynn: Thank you, Steve!

>36 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! *smooch*

>35 katiekrug: Fellow threevian! I'm so pleased the streak I've got now got that emotional boost.

Happy week-ahead's reads.

>34 richardderus: I used to walk them with my dad as a kid, and still visit them abroad, especially if a literary or creative hero resides within. A cemetery can tell you a lot about a culture. I've visited with Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde, to namedrop just two.

I used to visit Avebury a lot, and there is a family there called Paradise, so I enjoyed wandering down Paradise alley in the churchyard, 200 years of one family history.

>40 Caroline_McElwee: The existence of a cemetery, a special piece of land surrendered to the use of the dead, tells one a lot about a culture. The Romans and their "outside the walls, please" not-burials (until the damnfool xians got hold of the reins) make some sense...but acres and acres and acres of carefully tended grass over dead people is an offensive misuse of water to dry-adapted me.

Hi Richard, Happy New Thread dear friend.

Beautiful magnolias up top. I don't think I've ever seen one in real life - hardy they might be but I'm not sure could survive my growing zone. :P

Glad to see you're back on Wordle form today. It was yet another 4 for me.

>43 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Glad you're here, you 4er you. *smooch*

>42 johnsimpson: Hi John! Thanks!

The Four Basic Regrets in Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenxg8j-Rc0

1. Foundation...things that did not set you up for the future..."if only I'd saved/eaten/worked on..."

2. Boldness...things never risked doing...don't play it safe!

3. Moral...not doing The Right Thing.

4. Connection...relationships that fail but never get fixed.

Really interesting!

>45 richardderus: 4. Connection...relationships that fail but never get fixed.

I have one of those with my father and am not sure that I really want to "fix" it. I stay as far away from him as I can these days just for my own mental health.

>46 alcottacre: Then, by definition, it's not a regret. People don't necessarily have one from each column, it's not the combo plate thank goodness.

I never fixed, or tried to fix, my non-relationship with my own father. It was not ever going to do one damned good thing for me. And it's not remotely a subject for regret, which is sad but not my doing.

>47 richardderus: Agreed. I cut my grandfather out of my life and life was much the better for it. Not a regret. Some relationships fail for a reason and are destined to remain failed, imo.

>45 richardderus: Not many regrets living my life, Richard dear.

The lacks in foundation where not within my reach to correct.
Mostly playing safe is my nature, a few regrets where I didn't play safe.
Some regrets in not doing the right thing, when it could have mattered.
In the never get fixed is my sister, she can stay there! Others are not important enough for regrets, you move away, and friendships and connections fade away, making new ones in the new place. The two who died way too young are still missed.

'Morning, RD, and happy Tuesday to you.

>45 richardderus: I occasionally think about things I regret, usually in the wee hours of the morning.

*smooch*

Good morning, Richard.
Like Anita, I have no basic regrets. I did the best I could with what I had, and I'm grateful and content to be where I am with pretty much all I ever wanted. Does that sound smug? I do regret my failures as a teacher, but again, I did the best I could at the time. I think that most people who aren't badly damaged try to do that. Maybe badly damaged people try too, but they have to spend their energy trying to heal themselves and don't have a lot to give anybody else. Anyway, losses ahead, and I hope to meet them bravely, knowing that I have had a miraculously gracious life.
Goodness!
And I got the Wordle in three today, thus breaking the dreaded six and five chain.

Tuesday *smooches*

>45 richardderus: This looks really persuasive at first glance.

But on second glance, something important seems missing. I just haven't figured out what yet.

Certainly you can do too much foundation, too much boldness, etc.

But I don't think that's what my gut's trying to point me at.

Wordle 269 4/6

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I was so sure that I had the right answer YEAST at number three! Sigh. Still...streak is alive....

Happy newest one, BigDaddy! Love the magnolia up top - so full of gorgeous.

We were recently discussing regrets on my thread, and that is an interesting list. I do have regrets but not many. And failed relationships, although no regrets there. Detaching from my mom was an excellent decision which served me well and is one of the best thing I ever did for myself.

>53 ArlieS: In the context of the whole talk, the opposite...too much...is also a regret. So it's either angle on the same idea.

If your gut chooses to let you in on the issue, please come and say...I'm curious to know.

>52 bell7: *smooch*

>51 LizzieD: Your regrets, then, aren't strong, and that points to a life well lived and people who were positive influences (or you used their influence positively) around you. That's the best one can hope for out of a life, and you've had it! That is a delightful outcome.

>50 karenmarie: Happy Tuesday, Horrible, and hopefully the 2am wakies are less and less common. That can be some awful time. *smooch*

>49 FAMeulstee: The attitude towards regrets, Anita, is what the talk is about. The way you and Peggy discuss the inevitability of regrets' causes means you've each handled them as well as anyone could ever hope to, and that's just the best!

>48 Helenliz: Some people just don't belong in our lives. It's a good thing to know that, and act on the knowledge.

>55 Crazymamie: Hiya Mamie! *smooch*

Getting rid of toxicity, that is allowing relationships to fail, is a key skill in maintaining happiness in life. It makes everything else so much easier.

>45 richardderus: I think the only value to focusing on regret is to learn from it. You can't change the past. Beyond that, learn & move forward.

I am always surprised by the number of us who have awful relationships with our parents.

>60 AuntieClio: Well, given the complexity of parenting and the sheer overwhelming neediness of children, I'm amazed more of us don't.

And readers at our level are likely to have a strong motivator for this weird behavior.

>59 ChrisG1: That's really the point of the video talk, Chris. He's giving the categories we most all have regrets surrounding, and then bringing the value of learning from, coping with them, as a means to go on with our better lives.

>57 richardderus: What helped me best against regret, was to think good and extensive before making any important decision. That way it is easier to remember why you did something, and what other factors played a part in it at the time.

>61 richardderus: And readers at our level are likely to have a strong motivator for this weird behavior
I had to laugh when I read this, it is probably true ;-)

>62 FAMeulstee: Heh...well, the weirdness of the massively consumptive reader's behavior does appeal to wounded folks.

Your native good sense shows through, Anita. Thinking things through is a very valuable trait to have, and the earlier in life the better!

I know some avoid my thread because I don't stay shtumm about politics.

I haven't started.

I've been getting spoiled. Catriona Ward and J.J. Bola and several other authors have responded to my recent reviews with such warmth and appreciation that I had allowed myself to forget the others who have felt they were hard done by or simply don't like what I wrote about their book.

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

I was, this evening, rather comprehensively insulted by a writer who simply wouldn't accept their precious darling was anything except perfect. I sent back a communiqué that was nothing but that E.M. Forster quote from Aspects of the Novel. But really, what a thoroughly unpleasant surprise it was.

I've used it, to take out the sting of being insulted, as a reason to get my commonplace book for Forster transferred to Goodreads' quote database. It's quite soothing.

>65 richardderus: perfect response to a poor show from a would-be author.

>1 richardderus: I love the magnolia tree! I look forward to them blooming here, and like to pay attention as the first southerly wind (cold, from Antarctica) will usually blow the blooms to smitherines. Some years they only stay on for a few days at full bloom.

>65 richardderus: a writer who simply wouldn't accept their precious darling was anything except perfect
Wow, I so cannot relate. I am quite convinced that everything I write is junk. It is all I can do not to kill *all* my darlings!

>65 richardderus: Happy for you that the nice writers outnumber the one's that can take critique, Richard dear. I love your response :-)

048 Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández (tr. Julia Sanches)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Through war and its aftermaths, a woman fights to keep her daughters safe.

As a girl she sees her village sacked and her beloved father and brothers flee. Her life in danger, she joins the rebellion in the hills, where her comrades force her to give up the baby she conceives. Years later, having outlived countless men, she leaves to find her lost daughter, travelling across the Atlantic with meagre resources. She returns to a community riven with distrust, fear and hypocrisy in the wake the revolution.

Hernández’ narrators have the level gaze of ordinary women reckoning with extraordinary hardship. Denouncing the ruthless machismo of combat with quiet intelligence, Slash and Burn creates a suspenseful, slow-burning revelation of rural life in the aftermath of political trauma.

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

My Review: I think you'll get the real gestalt of this read, of this review and possibly...just possibly...this story, if we listen to Author Horacio Castellanos Moya (my review of his book, Senselessness, will give you a feel for his own emotional-overload storytelling chops) praise Author Hernández:

“Claudia Hernández is one of the most groundbreaking short story writers from Central America, with a way of approaching the story that is closer to Virgilio Piñera or Felisberto Hernández than to the realist tradition. Her five story collections prove this. Now, with her first novel, Claudia Hernández takes on a new challenge: telling the recent history of El Salvador through three generations of women scarred by civil war, poverty and emigration. A pulsating feminine universe, full of strength and courage, in permanent wait of the violence that surrounds it. An intense and moving novel, and a very revealing way of storytelling that will captivate the reader.”

Castellanos Moya links Author Hernández to men marginalized by their poverty, and sexual natures, whose immense talents were never appreciated in their lifetimes. They were foundational figures in the creation of a magical realist Latinoamericano fiction, famously and fully developed in the hands of Julio Cortázar and García Márquez. That's some heady company Castellanos Moya puts Author Hernández in...and not without reason.

But let me be clear: This read is not a spoon-fed milk-toast cinch. I know a number of people found Anna Burns's name-free labels of her characters in her 2018 Booker-winning novel of civil war, Milkman, to be difficult and off-putting. I am not among their number. Heck, I enjoyed Robert Pinget's The Inquisitory, and that has no names and no punctuation at all. This read is spang in the middle of a continuum between Burns and Pinget. There aren't names ("A name was just a name. In times of war, it served the same purpose as a number or a tattoo or a dog tag you wore around your neck: it was a way of identifying the dead," we're told very, very early in Slash and Burn), but you've got dialogue tags and punctuation...just no clear path to knowing instantly and unequivocally who's speaking, when we are supposed to be...it all makes a lot of sense, in my opinion, as the entire point of reading a woman's take on war is about getting into the stakes of her participation.

She's not anything more than one woman among the thousands, the millions, the billions whose world is trying to defend the girls she's doing her goddamnedest to get through childhood into their own womanhoods.

She'd wake up in a sweat with tears in her eyes because she always lost one of them in the dream. Sometimes it was the eldest girl she'd raised; sometimes, the littlest. Sometimes she lost the girl she'd actually lost, and sometimes the girl lost her. The only one she never misplaced was the third girl she'd raised. Her daughters asked why. She could never say. The girl in question said it was because she loved her more than he rest of them, though she'd later complain that she loved her least of all: she didn't spoil her like she did the littlest or support her like she did the eldest daughter she'd raised; she didn't search the world for her like she had the first girl she'd given birth to or let her study in the capital like the second sister she'd been brought up with.

These aren't happy-clappy figures of Survivorhood. These aren't the women who run charities and organize microlending cooperatives. Author Hernández's women are the ones that make the world, the vicious one they inhabit, function in spite of and in parallel to the wars destroying the world.

To her mind, it was soldiers who raped. They were always the culprits in the stories she’d heard of assaults. But what her neighbor had said was true, at least partly. The boys had been at the camps. But as soon as they'd earned the guerrillas' trust and their weapons, they'd set off on their own path and followed their own goals. They took advantage of the fact that everyone was busy running from soldiers and advancing their positions to go to unprotected zones and take as many women as they could.

They'd take the girls to the hills for three or five days. Then they'd bring them back and take others. They'd rape grown women in their homes and make them cook for them while they raped their young daughters. Later, it became known that just one of the boys also raped elderly women. His compañeros abstained, one out of fear it would mean some additional kind of punishment at the final judgment (if it ever arrived) and the other because he found no pleasure in a woman without the strength to resist or a future to compromise.

Nor did the boy rape all the elderly women he found or come down from the hills to search them out. It was more a matter of circumstance, of making the most of their efforts, so long as the woman looked at him badly for it. He'd never touch her grandmother, for example, because, even after he'd provoked her a little, he didn't see in her the sort of response that inspired him to humiliate.

It's simple, to her. It's the world, it's not going to do her a blind bit of good to do more than make her odds, of being murdered by these uncontrolled armed fearless and foeless monsters, as low as she can. But there is nothing in this world that isn't violent and abusive on levels unthinkable to most of us reading the story in our warless, unchaotic surroundings.

She turned to face the enormous body of water and said, Thank you, Lord, even though she didn’t know who the Lord she was thanking was, or if there was any Lord to thank. It felt incredible to be on the other side. Her sister, meanwhile, had started crying, not because she’d choked on any water, but because she’d lost a little bit of masa as they crossed. She thought her mother would punish her for it. The girl convinced her sister that nothing would happen. She was certain her mother wouldn’t notice any masa was missing. And if she did, she’d take the blame for it. She swore to her little sister that their mother would believe her, even though she herself wasn’t convinced. She was sure her mother had keen instincts (although what she actually had was a watch) and that they’d be found out one way or another. So instead of telling her, she told her father, who’d come home early that day.

Days later, they moved away. The official story was that her father didn’t want to keep living on her maternal grandpa’s land now they had their own parcel in a place named after a plant. But she suspected he was trying to protect her: there were no bodies of water to cross around there. She was his little girl, the first of the daughters who’d survived.

In that region, where her dad’s sister also lived, she came across more people who hit her, such as the girls next door. They picked fights with her because she was new and because she was always the first to arrive to fill her earthen pitchers, and always clean and buttoned-up. They called her vain. Then they pulled on her skirt until it fell to her feet, knocked over her pitchers or stuck their muddied hands in them, spoiling all the work she’d done and making her task harder. She wanted to defend herself, but her mother had warned her never to hit anyone. She didn’t want any trouble. She didn’t want her to respond to their attacks, not even with words. If anyone said or did anything to her, she was to take it in silence. If she didn’t, she’d hit her even harder.

This is just...life. Life the way people in a war zone that hasn't been anything but a war zone for a generation know it, and so how they do the mechanics of living. It isn't sweet, it isn't about redemption or Coming To The Realization That x; this is what gutting it out, putting food on the table and a roof of some sort over your heads, means.

I've said I don't find the unmoored "she"s troublesome. The reason is that I don't do more than the minimum to associate the references to a general roster of possible identities. I think the read made sense to me because I realized these aren't Characters. These are types, a sort of massive and mostly undifferentiated Woman-ness. Author Hernández isn't telling Maricela's story then Marisol's story then Ludivine's; she's telling their story as the topology of the War they're doing their individual bests to avoid dying in brings them into relevance.

It isn't easy to adjust the novel-reader's expectations to this, or the wealthy-country educated book-consumer's preferences for delineated and labeled identities. Accustoming myself to a more base, earthen interchangeability, fungibility of women playing similar roles at different times was the best adaptation I could make. It felt unnatural for about 30 pages, 10% of the Kindle file. But thinking it through and considering the magical-realist underpinnings of flexible identities and the feminist rage of reducing women, the centers of this unnatural Life, to faceless nameless utilitarian labor units added a nauseating note of indifferent and amoral cruelty to the entire tale. And that is, I strongly suspect, a good deal of Claudia Hernández's point. The title...Slash and Burn is sort of the sense of it, "Roza tumba quema" or "fondle fall burn" in that order...feeling indicative to me of a soldier checking out the goods, knocking them over, not-quite accidentally, not entirely purposefully, but carelessly in all its senses, setting them on fire. This is a solid preparation for the hard, unyielding world that the mass of women, the Woman if you will, simply bends herself into whatever shape she has to so as to make her way into another morning, through its day, and out on the other side of another night.

I found great value, solid art, and a seriously important and timely reminder of the way that war's costs are distributed is violent and unconscionably cruel, in this intense read.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy mid-week to you.

>64 richardderus: Yup.

>65 richardderus: I'm sorry you were insulted, glad you found the perfect quote.

>69 richardderus: For all sorts of reasons I’ll pass, but as always I appreciate your review.

*smooch*

>70 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I'm glad I could, with a minimum of effort, put my finger on the most august source, from the most à propos work, the perfect summation and explanation of my snort of derision for their attitude. It's an advantage to being well-read: one needn't think up one's own put-downs, the greatest writers in a multiplicity of languages have already done it. Cut, paste, send, delete.

*smooch*

>68 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita! Like I said ^^^ it helps to have the collected brainpower of centuries at one's disposal.

>67 LovingLit: Heh...I suspect that really explains this person's *real* problem since I was pointing out their actual lapses.

Nothing bothers the insecure more than saying that which they're insecure about is just the truth.

>66 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen. I do love me some Forster! And I got A Room with a View and Maurice nicely settled into the database as a side benefit.

>64 richardderus: So we are not allowed to express political views or thoughts on our threads? I keep mine to a minimal but that is my choice. BTW- I completely agree with that meme.

Happy Wednesday, Richard.

Excellent review of Slash and Burn (I think your touchstone is wrong up there). And EW! to the over-sensitive author. Your response was perfect.

>74 katiekrug: Thank the goddesses you told me! I didn't review the Cotterill near so well as the Hernàndez.

I really think this book's in its timeliest moment.

I was pretty self-satisfied about that response, I confess.

>73 msf59: No, nothing as formal as that, but some folks aren't down with it for any number of reasons. It's certainly their privilege, no matter their reasoning.

Humpday gladnesses, Birddude.

>68 FAMeulstee: What Anita said! It is hard enough to write reviews without the authors coming down on you. I am so glad that the good outweigh the bad.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Over here the work in the front garden will be done today, so one more day keeping up with work being done near the house. And starting to pack, last time I forgot a few things when I packed on the day we left.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

We had quite a bit of rain yesterday afternoon and overnight. The creek's flooded, but it's too far away from the house to be worrisome. I loved hearing the rain every time I woke up, very soothing.

*smooch*

Wordle 271 4/6

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So sue me: I thought MOXIE was a better choice than MOVIE

>64 richardderus: Hahaha. But also hmmmm.... er, isn't that snitched and tweaked from a P.O.E.M? See, ya love 'em really.

>80 Caroline_McElwee: ...what...? It's not ptooptoo poetry, it can't be, it makes sense!

>78 karenmarie: Mornin' Horrible, it bids fair to be a peaceful day then. Nothing like that sound to keep one in a good mood. *smooch* for a nice Throughsday

>77 FAMeulstee: Pack well, Anita, and enjoy your walk...your walking trip...the hellish death-march you and Frank are going on...one of those fits but it just depends on my mood. *smooch*

>76 alcottacre: Thank you, Stasia, it really was just the unfairness of it that stung.

Anyway. Anyone can take one shot but no one gets a second.

>79 richardderus: I got today's in 3, but it was a hunch after looking at the results of the 1st and 2nd ones.

>82 thornton37814: I was hoping against hope my third guess was going to be the correct one. *sigh*

‘Morning, RD! Happy Friday to you.

>79 richardderus: I frequently choose a less common word, too. I frequently am wrong. Today is a good example. It took me 5.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Wordle 272 4/6

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...I must be hungry....

>84 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Happy Friday. *smooch*

I chose SABRE before SAUTE.

Morning, Richard. Happy Friday. It is Jackson Day! Yah! So, I will be heading out shortly. I hope you have been feeling good.

Morning, RD! Gorgeous day out there; too bad it heralds the eventual arrival of summer :(

I also got Wordle in 4.

>85 richardderus: in that case I must be hungrier. >;-)

Wordle 272 3/6
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Happy friday, hope the weekend is looking promising.

>89 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen, I hope Friday is your gateway drug to a happy high of a weekend.

I want mushrooms....

>88 katiekrug: We're utterly socked in by fog! I mean, "can't see your hand in front of your face" socked in! Weird how different weather can look so close, isn't it.

>87 msf59: Happy Jackson Day, Mark, enjoy yourself with him. I'm pretty much in holding pattern for now. Nothing big planned. And believe me, that's just fine!

Oh, well, boo to that. We had some fog earlier this morning. I hope yours clears out soon.

>91 katiekrug: Me too...it feels so boring!

>65 richardderus: High road, Richard. Good for you!

>69 richardderus: I'm not sure when I'll be able to read that one, but you make me want to. I have Milkman on the Kindle and feel the same reluctance to go there.

Wordle 272 3/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Redemption of a sort, however short its life.

>64 richardderus: I like that RD. I think Dylan Thomas would like it too and especially you sort of promoting his poultry.

I thought Joe Biden's performance was hilarious yesterday when he confused himself, the First Lady and Kamala Harris in the same sentence and couldn't remember where the hell the Governor he was talking about was from or her proper name. What an antidote to Putin; like something out of Saturday Night Live Sketch. I am concerned about the decline in his acuity but still relieved he is sitting there instead of that other fella who kept the twit in twitter.

I think you know well I do not want the right in power but I do want the centre and the left to do so much better.

I got it in 3.

So far the internet is fine in the Hill Station of Fraser's Hill or Bukit Fraser as it is now known, but if I do have some issues, I'll take this opportunity to wish you a lovely weekend, dear fellow.

>96 PaulCranswick:, >94 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the weekend wishes, PC, and YAY for good internet!

Biden's not my idea of a good president, but he has Filthy McNasty beat all hollow. I worry about him, not about what he'll do to the country and the world to protect himself.

>95 thornton37814: Yay for good Wordleing!

>93 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! Happy to see you...and please push Milkman up the list, it was such a terrific read. I think you'll appreciate maybe-boyfriend as much as I did.

Slash and Burn might not be as delightful a read for you, there's a lot more violence in it, so...well...maybe slide on by that one.

Yay for a good Wordle day!

Y'all might remember that I subscribe to Morning Brew...a business newsletter...and enjoy many things about it. One of them is the games and puzzles they put in. This one especially:

What nine-letter English word remains a word each time you remove a letter?
Startling → starting → staring → string → sting → sing → sin → in → I

I spent 15min figuring out a half-dozen almosts but never got this one. Loved the puzzle.

049 Who Will Comfort Toffle? by Tove Jansson

Rating: 5* of five

Absolutely wonderful little-kid version of "you won't know unless you try." I love Tove Jansson's art, and her words always seem to speak directly to my inner weirdo.

Now, go watch the musical version (subtitled in English and Spanish, as you prefer) from 1980. It, too, is an absolute joy.

Happy Friday!. Thanks for the recommendation about >99 richardderus: I'm going to go check it out.

I read The Summer Book by her a couple years ago, really enjoyed it

>100 mahsdad: It's a delight of a book...and so is The Summer Book. One of those memorably built beautiful reads.

I hope your pack-muling for Laura gets a good carrot or two in reward.

>85 richardderus: >89 Helenliz: >93 LizzieD: Does that make me hungriest?
Wordle 272 2/6

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>99 richardderus: I love the look of that artwork! I will have to see if I can track down a copy of that one. The only Jansson book I have read to date is The Summer Book.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**, RD. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I am going to be off doing. . .stuff.

>98 richardderus: Coïncidence: my younger daughter Julia just started a job with Morning Brew about a month ago. She's on the sponsor/advertising side of the house. Her boyfriend works in video. She likes the company, so far.

>99 richardderus: Ooh, I may have to pick up Who Will Comfort Toffle? for Jack. Unless it is a bit too dark? Stunning illustrations.

Happy Saturday, Richard. The rain is keeping me indoors today. More book time, right?

Hiya RichardDear. Happy Saturday to you.

*smooch*

>106 karenmarie: Good morning, Horrible, and a happy Saturday to you and yours.

*smooch*

>105 msf59: I don't think things can be too dark for under-one-year olds. It's mostly comfort, visual stimulation, and language acquisition.

I'd definitely run it past Bree and Sean first. Some people are violently offended by Jansson's art for some reason.

>104 lauralkeet: Ha! Well, I hope Freyman & Co treat her well. It seems to me, based on the product they produce, that the workplace would be a pleasant one.

>103 alcottacre: It's in print, Stasia, so you should be able to get one without too much hoop-jumping. I hope.

*smooch*

Wordle 273 5/6

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As always, trying the fancy one first just meant a 5 not a 4. AGLOW then ALLOW.

050 Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

The Publisher Says: In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time—from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come—Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.

LITTLE FREE LIBRARY ACQUISITION...AND BACK IT GOES, TOO.

My Review: I don't think this is as wonderful as most of y'all do. It isn't awful, certainly, though I was heading in the "two-stars-get-it-away-from-me" direction at the end of Third Chamber (p248). I left it on my TBR pile for a couple years after the white-hooded guy with the film gets irradiated.

Part Three—Haunting (The North) was, unexpectedly, a much different reading experience. It's still too long, it's way too ornately wrought for its subject matter...Robert Mulvaney and his "haven't sailed the east (British) coast unless you've grounded" shtik almost got the book put down again...but there is a simple and essential heartbeat of passion for the planet that came through to me more clearly after the hauntings began.

(No, not ghosty-ghouly hauntings.)

I won't re-read it, and I doubt I'll knock over any little kids to grab the last copy of his latest, but the book ended up feeling like time well spent. As that was not the direction I was headed for over half the read, I think it's a minor miracle I kept going long enough to find that out.

>109 richardderus: You piqued my interest with Underland--onto my TBR it goes (sooner rather than later).

Karen O

>110 klobrien2: Oh good! Someone else who will enjoy it, has found it, so that's a net good for the world.

>108 richardderus: This is getting repetitive.
Wordle 273 2/6

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Probably means I won't get the next one at all.

>112 Familyhistorian: Or it means you're on a super-hot streak, either way it's all in fun. We're lucky, I suppose, that Wordle wasn't around in the early internet days or we'd be out of fodder by now! What, 7400 days in 20 years? So no, not out of, but more than halfway through the trove of 13,000.

Happy weekend, Richard!

>109 richardderus: Ah little free libraries can be a hit or miss. There is one on the way to work and I usually end up putting recent fiction in. I have found some great reads in that particular library- others not so much.

>114 figsfromthistle: I was plenty excited to get it for free! I wasn't expecting to find it so, um, tedious.

Happy weekend, Anita!

051 THE OTHER DR. GILMER: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice by Benjamin Gilmer

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A rural physician learns that a former doctor at his clinic committed a shocking crime, leading him to uncover an undiagnosed mental health crisis in our broken prison system—a powerful true story expanding on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time.

When family physician Dr. Benjamin Gilmer began working at the Cane Creek clinic in rural North Carolina, he was following in the footsteps of a man with the same last name. His predecessor, Dr. Vince Gilmer, was beloved by his patients and community—right up until the shocking moment when he strangled his ailing father and then returned to the clinic for a regular day of work after the murder. He'd been in prison for nearly a decade by the time Benjamin arrived, but Vince's patients would still tell Benjamin they couldn't believe the other Dr. Gilmer was capable of such violence. The more Benjamin looked into Vince's case, the more he knew that something was wrong.

Vince knew, too. He complained from the time he was arrested of his SSRI brain, referring to withdrawal from his anti-depressant medication. When Benjamin visited Vince in prison, he met a man who was obviously fighting his own mind, constantly twitching and veering off into nonsensical tangents. Enlisting This American Life journalist Sarah Koenig, Benjamin resolved to get Vince the help he needed. But time and again, the pair would come up against a prison system that cared little about the mental health of its inmates—despite an estimated one third of them suffering from an untreated mental illness.

In The Other Dr. Gilmer, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer tells of how a caring man was overcome by a perfect storm of rare health conditions, leading to an unimaginable crime. Rather than get treatment, Vince Gilmer was sentenced to life in prison—a life made all the worse by his untrustworthy brain and prison and government officials who dismissed his situation. A large percentage of imprisoned Americans are suffering from mental illness when they commit their crimes and continue to suffer, untreated, in prison. In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer argues that some crimes need to be healed rather than punished.

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

My Review: The carceral economy that makes corporations wealthy is evil.

That's my bias, right there; I make no apologies for it, and if your opinion is otherwise, this review will make you angry and upset, and feel (correctly) that you are being shamed and blamed for your absence of empathy and decency. Doubled if you claim to follow a religion.

A man with Huntington's disease, who was sexually abused by his parent, is serving a life sentence in prison for murdering that parent. Here is what the incarcerated man said to the author, when asked what he wanted this book to show the world when it was written:

Before I left the prison that day in 2018, I asked Vince to tell me the most important things he wanted this book to say. This is what he said:
Prison is torture.
Sexual abuse changes you forever.
We are all at the mercy of our brains.
Listening is healing.

Dr. Vince Gilmer will, it is almost certain, die in prison. There is no cure, or really any treatment, for Huntington's disease. His entire lifetime of service as a family physician in a poor area counted for nothing when weighed against the awful crime of strangling his abuser.

That's the nature of the system. For-profit prisons need prisoners; mental-health services cost a lot of money but make no one any profits. Guess which one we-the-people fund, generously? Mental health services can't guarantee good outcomes, some people can't be helped (Vince Gilmer, for example), so spending taxpayer money on the off-chance that this specific person who has committed a violent crime might be able to benefit? What a waste...there are corporations whose bottom lines could get fatter if he's jammed into jail.

As a result of untreated intergenerational trauma, exacerbated by a fatal degenerative neurological disease likely inherited from the parent who abused Vince Gilmer in childhood, he will die alone, in misery, in a corporate profit center. At the very least his life should end in a cold, uncaring corporate medical-profit center. (There is, at long last, some glimmer of hope for those crushed by medical debts; tiny, inadequate steps towards economic justice are better than the great race backwards occurring on so many fronts.)

If you've read The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row and enjoyed it, you're in the target demographic for the book. If you're thinking "oh pew! this is too hard, too much, too unhappy" then you *should* read it...because your empathy circuits need a bit of exercise. If you're sure people who commit murder belong in jail, what on Earth are you doing here in the first place?!

Wordle 274 3/6

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*aaahhh* I love that feeling: "Ohhh! THAT's the word!" and it is.

‘Morning, RDear.

>109 richardderus: The last book I read about ‘nature’ was The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson. It was marvelous and understated and fascinating. This one, though - why are descriptions of books so over the top? “epic”, “extraordinary”, “urgent” Makes me want to run in the other direction, frankly. But I’ve always been rather contrary.

>116 richardderus: I listened to the This American Life episode and was moved by it. I don’t think I want to read the book too, but thank you for an excellent review. I hope people either read the book or listen to the This American Life episode.

*smooch*

... well hello, other early bird! Congrats on 3. Took me 4.

>118 karenmarie: Sunday orisons, Horrible. I'm just too curmudgeonly to respond well to hype, especially around the very overheated (!) nature-writing so prevalent at this time. I'm excited enough about nature that I neither need not want to be whipped into the requisite frenzy they aim for.

Having listened to the podcast, I'd guess you'd have all the main facts. The story makes me boiling mad!!

Happy Sunday, Richard. I am glad you came around a bit on Underland. I am a big fan of that one and in Macfarlane in general. We warm back up today and tomorrow, after all the rain. Looking forward to it.

>120 msf59: Hi Mark! I'm very hopeful you'll have a beautiful end-of-weekend weather-wise. That would mean we'll keep having lovely stuff, too!

Burgoine #17

The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream by Michael Wood

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today.

Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China producing a magisterial new book that combines a sweeping narrative of China's story with the stories of its people, the history of its landscape and commentary from his extensive travel journals. He begins with a look at China's prehistory--the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the teachings of Confucius. He looks at particular periods and themes that are being reevaluated by historians now such as The Renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He offers a revaluation of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China's rich and diverse culture was at its height. Wood takes a new look at the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, clashes with the British and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century as to which path China should take to move forward into modernity.

Finally, he brings the story up to today by giving readers a clear, current account of China post 1949 complete with a more balanced view of Mao based on newly-opened archives. In the final chapter, Wood considers the provocative question of when, if ever, China will rule the world. Michael Wood's The Story of China answers that question and is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country amassing power on the world stage today.

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

My Review: I got a DRC just as COVID hit and, in the mishegas of having it twice and wanting to make a review commensurate with the book's quality, have so far failed to get any review at all done. It really is a terrific job of work, just as writing almost a thousand pages goes. One expects Wood to be top-flight at research, given his forty-plus years of making and presenting TV shows about history (his In Search of the Dark Ages series easily being my favorites!) but the clarity and the wit of his sentence-by-sentence storytelling really brings his anecdotes alive.

>119 richardderus: Count me as a third person who responds negatively to hype. My first instinct is to presume that the thing hyped probably has nothing real going for it - that's why those selling it feel that the hype is required. But of course hype is habitual, and the standard way to say "this is an average commodity object" is something like "this brilliant, game changing, ....". I understand that well enough to create a resume that's accurate after translation from resume-speak to standard English, but I still react badly in all other domains.

>122 richardderus: Your BB scored before I even finished reading the review - 5 stars and in an area I read a lot of (history), with a bonus for being a part of history I don't know as well as I know others.

>123 ArlieS: Hi Arlie! I think most engineering types are hype resistant. Something about solving problems for a living militates against the unquestioning acceptance of anyone else's word for anything...the heart of successful hype.

If you haven't read Michael Wood before, I hope he will hit your literary sweet spot. I like the way he phrases things, but be aware that he's very much a man of the 1960s.

>109 richardderus: I have several of McFarland's books here to read already, so I think I will bypass that one for now.

>116 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD.

>122 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole too. My library has a DVD of the same name by the same guy, but I would rather read the book!

Have a wonderful week, Richard. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Morning, Richard. I hope the week gets off to a good start for you. Party sunny and 70 here today. I am hiking the trials for Trail Watch today, another volunteer task and one I enjoy.

'Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

I've got a busy day ahead without much time for reading, alas. I've got about 10 minutes before I have to start the festivities.

*smooch*

052 ALREADY TOAST: Caregiving and Burnout in America by Kate Washington

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The story of one woman’s struggle to care for her seriously ill husband—and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.

Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.

Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors’ appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: “You’re already toast!”

Through it all, she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly.

As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast—with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers—is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill.

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

My Review: There's a slightly dystopian feel to reading this book. It's as though all the parts that were deemed too dark for fictional post-apocalyptic nightmares during the editorial process were snipped out then dumped into this tale. I mean, reading about a young wife and mother whose entire life was redefined by her fit young husband's horrific, aggressive cancer's near-success in driving him into the grave as she worked and raised their kids and managed his increasingly horrific treatments, all while fighting their insurance and medical providers? That's a bridge too far! It's too painful, it's too appalling!

Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a confusing, uniquely modern ailment, like the inverse of rejection in a solid organ transplant. If you were to need and get a kidney donated from someone, for instance, there’s a good chance your immune system would identify it as a foreign body and attack it. Thus, organ transplant recipients are given immune suppressants. In a stem cell (or bone marrow) transplant, sometimes the new immune system (the graft), in its unfamiliar environment, looks around and sees the entire body around it (the host) as foreign. It then, in unscientific terms, freaks the fuck out. GvHD can pop up in the liver, skin, gut, eyes, and plenty of other spots; its attacks, as with many autoimmune responses, often seem random.9 The possibility of GvHD—which is termed “acute” when it arises within the first 100 days of transplant and “chronic” when it continues in the longer post-transplant period—is why stem cell transplant patients are kept on immunosuppressant medications even though the effectiveness of the transplant at fighting the cancer depends on the immune response. The medical team has a delicate balance to maintain: just enough immune response to keep the cancer from returning but not so much that GvHD gets out of control.

Yet it's completely factual.

On one bad day I ran into {her husband's} nurse coordinator from the Cancer Center in the elevator. I told her about how bad Brad seemed, and how much pain he was in, and how hard it was to watch. “The good news,” she said with gentle compassion, “is that he won’t remember much of it.” She was right; he doesn’t, at least not the worst of it. But I do. Part of the onus of caregiving is carrying memory.

But, as insurance-company "care managers" will constantly remind you, "your family will be there for you! After all, you'd do it for them." Newsflash: No, they aren't; and, knowing what I know, I would never, ever do this again.

The love of my life died of AIDS thirty years ago this May. I was in Kate's shoes, sans legal rights, as his bizarre diseases racked up their tolls on him...trying to find answers at that time wasn't the impossible task it was a decade earlier, but it wasn't easy and it's amazing to me how many people will ghost you when you're most in need of support.

I needed a human connection of some kind in order to face the next frightening day, which felt like a closing trap. So I called a suicide hotline—the thing we tell all people experiencing despair to do. There’s help out there, we’re assured. I called, nervous. The voice at the other end of the hotline asked if I was actively suicidal. I said I wasn’t planning anything right then but I was in despair. She asked if she could place me on hold to continue talking with someone in more serious crisis. I thanked her and hung up.

–and–

What chafed the most was not the private demands from my husband, but the public, official ones from nurses, doctors, and therapists, many of whom seemed to discount my personhood in any other realm than as a caregiver. I wanted them to recognize my humanity. I felt, on every level, unseen in my life, even as I was holding together the lives of four people. The longer I acted as a caregiver, the angrier I found myself at that erasure.

Oh yes...that rang a bell. The eternal demands, the unceasing needs, the fact that one simply needs...lunch. A shower. A half hour alone.

Burnout kills empathy and makes worse caregivers of all of us who suffer from it. More than that, it made me a worse person: less kind, less patient, less fun to be around. Being so depleted made me miserable and being miserable made me, frankly, a bitch. The trouble is that if you’re burned out you can’t take care of yourself very effectively, either. I was coping as best I could: going to the gym, trying to get enough sleep, maintaining a few supportive friendships—at least by text and online. But during the summer of 2016, often the only solution I found for my burnout was to leave home at every opportunity.

I was so very deep into caregiving that I cared not at all. And so was Kate. So are so many, so are the ones who (unlike Kate) can't pay for help and can't rely on anyone...it's a vicious and unforgiving system of "health"care" because it's neither interested in anyone's heath nor in the smallest degree caring.

For many caregivers, their duties end only with the death of their beloved, a fact that necessarily comes with loss and grief and sometimes a guilty, perhaps half-smothered relief.

–and–

Despite the obvious value of {caregiving} there is no remuneration for most American caregivers. The time spent helping a family member is typically uncompensated by public programs or insurance, though there are states with programs offering caregivers economic support. Some families arrange to pay a family member by pooling resources. But our healthcare system and government programs do little, and in most cases nothing, to support caregivers.

There is nothing, not one single thing, that I read in this book that did not feel as though it had been ripped out of my brain and splashed onto Kate Washington's computer screen in the mixed gall and bile of my outrage at the horrors of this "system" and the sheer overwhelm of the few who try, really try, to offer helping hands to those drowning in their pain. She clearly understands things now that aren't very fun to know about yourself...where one's limits are, how hard it is to be there, really be there for children...and has come to terms with them. She exists in a new reality. Kate Washington is a different human being now than she was before Brad, her husband, got cancer and became a chronically ill patient.

At times, feelings of profound loneliness within the marriage have brought me to the brink of ending it. A lot of things kept me from leaving: the thought of our girls, deep senses of guilt and responsibility, the thought of how hard people (even readers of this book, I imagined) would judge me, and—a painful truth—the presentiment that a separation or divorce would just be another hard project of emotional and logistical work I’d have to do.

–and–

We’ve both had to compromise our approaches to emotional labor and mental load in attempts to build a newly equitable marriage. The results have been mixed. I still feel put upon a lot of the time; Brad still feels defensive and like he’s trying his best a lot of the time. Maybe he is. Maybe I need to lower my expectations some more. Some days are fine. But other days I don’t know how much lower my expectations can get.

I encourage anyone who has not faced the worst health crises imaginable to read this book. I encourage you to see, from the inside, how much your fellow human beings are being asked to do. Then I hope I won't need to encourage you to do something, anything, to improve life for these suffering souls, be it spending time or giving money or even haunting GoFundMe and its siblings to do more than the nothing most people do.

>128 richardderus: After struggling as a family to care for my disabled nephew, I certainly don't need to read this horror story - I've lived it. With the added wrinkle that he'll be around much longer than we or his mom are able to care for him as we age. Unless someone has been in the situation, it's impossible to understand how all-consuming this can be. So yeah, if you haven't lived it, read the book.

>122 richardderus:
>128 richardderus:

Wow, two very tough reads. Both TBR'd.

>130 swynn: My dear boy! "Tough" is a steak of poor quality and/or preparation. These are epically soul-disfiguring, spiritually annihilating agony-fests.

Do let's use our terminology properly.

>129 drneutron: Agreed...having lived it, the utility of having it in writing is being able to recommend/hand it to people who speak ignorantly of things they wot not of.

>127 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible! I'm really glad it's a full Monday for you. Being bored is far worse.

>126 msf59: Gorgeous weather, Mark, and what a way to spend a March day. Enjoy!

>125 alcottacre: Enjoy the reads, Stasia. *smooch*

>128 richardderus: - Oof, I don't think I could read that one. Wonderful review, as always, though!

>133 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! It's not a cheery little bagatelle, a read tossed off in an afternoon.
***
I didn't Wordle when I awoke! First time in weeks.
Wordle 275 3/6

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Look at that pattern...

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>135 mckait: Yay! Fellow 3peater!

*smooch*

It took me 4 today but I started with nothing.
Wordle 275 4/6

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>128 richardderus: The lot of caregivers isn't much better north of the border, Richard. It's a hard go all round. But my role at least was recognized by one care giver, a psychiatrist. It was his recognition which ultimately felt like permission to leave.

>137 Familyhistorian: It's really down to the fact that it's usually women's work. Therefore no amount of effort is enough, and no kind or sort of compensation is necessary. Because of course.
***
Wordle 276 4/6

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I didn't do so badly...

Happy Tuesday. Sunny here, but crisp. Love it when it's like this, just makes the world feel better (even when it clearly is going to hell in a handcart)

Wordle 276 3/6
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same ~

I am having trouble landing on a read, might have to go back to St Mary's..
xo

'Morning, RDear. Happiest of Tuesdays to you.

>128 richardderus: Wonderful review. With all due respect, I'll pass.

>138 richardderus: Today was unusual for me - I got it in three.

*smooch*

>138 richardderus: Why were you up at 1:53 am?

>142 mckait: Valerie's 40-yr-old stepdaughter died suddenly.

>141 karenmarie: Good Tuesday, Horrible me lurve. I'm not sure you'd get much out of the read, TBH, given the complexities of your own times of caregiving.

Three! Well done you.

>140 mckait: Re-read Greetings from Jamaica! Sounds like a good need-filler to me....

>139 Helenliz: Humanity is well-advanced down the path to Sheol but the planet is throwing herself a party to celebrate our imminent departure.

Oh no! I am so sorry to hear this. Sad news xo
Gentle journey to her spirit ~

>144 mckait: It was indeed saddening, on so many levels...not at all what one wants to happen...but out of it has come new life for four people. Organ donation is a modern miracle.

Best of all, the hospital can now do the donor walk again. It was a profound and uplifting experience for them all.

>128 richardderus: I am adding that one to the BlackHole. I fear the day is coming that my parents are going to need me for this. If it is my father, I am not sure what I am going to do as my relationship with him is and always has been, awful.

Happy Tuesday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>146 alcottacre: It's a question that faces many of us, Stasia. It's a hugely demanding process. It's not a decision you can take lightly, either. I'm sure you'll think it through and decide what you should do with your usual thorough and exhaustive moral inventory.
***
ESQUIRE's list of the fifty greatest SF novels of all time starts with a book I really disliked. It contains many others I don't agree with. But it mentions two books I don't see getting anywhere near the amount of luuuv they should: Radiance by Catherynne Valente and The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel, both very high-quality SF and very solid writing, as well.

Check it out: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39358054/best-sci-fi-books/

>147 richardderus: Thanks for that link, Richard. I struggle to get enough sci-fi read and I really need to catch up on that front!

>148 alcottacre: Excellent! I hope the reading list will give you lots of inspiration.

>116 richardderus: Darling Richard, If you're thinking "oh pew! this is too hard, too much, too unhappy" then you *should* read it...because your empathy circuits need a bit of exercise.

It is because my empathy circuits get so much exercise to this is too much for me to read. Whoever decided murdering your abuser is worthy of prison needs to be sent to prison themselves. Because no, killing your abuser is not a bridge too far.

>147 richardderus: I need another project like a hole in the head, but 50 always looks like an achievable number. I've also read a handful already - which surprises me, I don't think I read a lot of Science Fiction

>143 richardderus: Sorry to hear that. >145 richardderus: I hope that brings her family and friends some comfort in the longer term.

>151 Helenliz: Hi Helen! I hope it gives you some fresh perspectives on something you're not familiar with.

I think being acknowledged as doing something that's actually, literally, life-saving is important and deeply nourishing.

>150 AuntieClio: I don't really think you're the target audience, deario.

>152 richardderus: Most likely not.

Re the 50 best sci-books, boy do I have some quibbles. But since "best" is purely subjective, I'll leave it there.

>153 AuntieClio: Quibbles! Quibbles, she says...mercy mercy me, quibbles.

053 See, Solve, Scale: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success by Danny Warshay

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Inspired by Brown University’s beloved course—The Entrepreneurial Process—Danny Warshay’s See, Solve, Scale is a proven and paradigm-shifting method to unlocking the power of entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneurial Process, one of Brown University’s highest-rated courses, has empowered thousands of students to start their own ventures. You might assume these ventures started because the founders were born entrepreneurs. You might assume that these folks had technical or finance degrees, or worked at fancy consulting firms, or had some other specialized knowledge. Yet that isn’t the case. Entrepreneurship is not a spirit or a gift. It is a process that anyone can learn, and that anyone can use to turn a problem into a solution with impact.

In See, Solve, Scale, Danny Warshay, the creator of the Entrepreneurial Process course and founding Executive Director of Brown’s Center for Entrepreneurship, shares the same set of tools with aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. He overturns the common misconception that entrepreneurship is a hard-wired trait or the sole province of high-flying MBAs, and provides a proven method to identify consequential problems and an accessible process anyone can learn, master, and apply to solve them.

Combining real-world experience backed by surprising research-based insights, See, Solve, Scale guides the reader through forming a successful startup team and through the three steps of the process: find and validate a problem, develop an initial small-scale solution, and scale a long-term solution. It also details eleven common errors of judgment that entrepreneurs make when they rely on their intuition and provides instruction for how to avoid them.

Leveraging Warshay’s own entrepreneurship successes and his 15 years of experience teaching liberal arts students, See, Solve, Scale debunks common myths about entrepreneurship and empowers everyone, especially those who other entrepreneurship books have ignored and left behind. Its lasting message: Anyone can take a world-changing idea from conception to breakthrough entrepreneurial success.

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

My Review: The best, measured by their own success metrics, entrepreneurs are the same kind of people who become cultural anthropologists. They are more interested in what you have to say than in putting forth their own ideas. They are deeply curious about things, lots of things, and like asking questions designed to elicit explanations not simply answers. They like building on those explanations, fixing those unfulfilled needs, by getting the needy in contact with needed commodity.

This is a radical departure from the existing models of entrepreneurship. These focus on the item to be sold and thus focus on salesmanship, on taking A Widget and getting together the right talents and teams to make it. Think Shark Tank. It's a hit-and-miss process...it depends on selling selling selling, on creating a need where none might've been before.

Warshay says the best results come from starting at the end of the traditional process: Identifying the need that a widget satisfies. He requires his students to form teams, which is already a huge lesson in observing, asking questions, and solving issues; the teams must then identify an issue (See) that they can imagine a way to improve, to add value to (Solve), and then create a structure to both implement the solution and make it replicable for others (Scale).

So, you know what it says, now you can go do it, right? Ummm...no.

The value Warshay adds in his course at Brown University, of course, is access to his extensive knowledge base in person and the presence of other motivated and creative people on one's own level. The book is a great way to pick up many ideas, and Warshay is as generous with his experience as he is with his expertise. The case analysis of failures is as valuable as the rah-rah of support and cheerleading. (I contend it's actually more valuable, but I'm a cynical old party.) What Warshay's written version of the course has over the lived experience of it is, one: cost...a $30-ish book purchase is a lot less than a Brown University course...two: time, as in "read in your own." Some of us aren't great at sprints like a class represents. Some of us aren't able to thrive in the distracting atmosphere of competing ideas and purposes. A book is a great way to determine for one's self if a technique will work for us, our own special needs and conditions of life.

There are, inevitably, downsides to reading a book about a dynamic thing like developing one's innate entrepreneurial methodology. Those multivarious points of view? Distracting, perhaps; but urgently needed to avoid making the echo-chamber error. (Look at the great failures in History, eg: Napoleon, Hitler; they heard no dissent, brooked no argument; they Were Right. A faster road to failure I do not know of.) And let's not forget that other people have other social networks. The social aspect of entrepreneurship isn't to be underestimated. There need to be converts and believers to get any action from plan to performance, no matter how many or few, no matter what is needed from them or required of them.

There's a major disconnect for me in Warshay's insistence, at the very beginning of the book, that no pre-existing resources are needed for entrepreneurs to begin their journey. I contend that these social networks and the luxury of time to spend developing their skills are resources, and the glibness to sell others on a vision isn't exactly something everyone just *has*. The book does the work of developing whatever innate abilities one has a disservice by not acknowledging it as a precious resource, and one that not everyone possesses.

Since, however, the book and the course it's based on exist as a means of doing that developing, I suppose it's simply so basal to the ability to benefit from it that Warshay doesn't feel it needs belaboring.

One thing Warshay addresses (but doesn't belabor, either) is that the contents of the book can be applied within existing businesses or organizations. This strikes me as something that is supremely valuable in the post-COVID economy. One's role in an existing business might not be the same now as it was three years ago. What better moment to introduce something major and unexpected than this one? And this is the resource that can make that vague idea you've had since 1999 a reality at last.

A business doesn't need two people with the same ideas. So be the one with a new idea. Read this book, apply its precepts, and survive the layoffs. Or read this book, realize your idea is workable but can't be done while wage-slaving, and find the path to the door. It's never the wrong time to bet on yourself and your own creativity.

Parents with college undergrads or recent graduates could do a lot worse than give them a copy of this book (graduation season being close upon us); those with younger kids, high-schoolers let's say, could do worse than let them in on the way professors, later on bosses, will be looking at them and the yardsticks those seniors will use to measure them.

If there's been an employment gap in your life, this $30 might be more than you can splash out...but the library can, and will, help out there! This isn't some self-published marvy by a distinctly second-rank creator. This is a major-publisher product, well made and vetted by generations of successful and satisfied students. If it's not already on the library's acquisitions list, recommend the purchase to them. No one can know about every single book that's coming out. Who knows but what you might find yourself wreathed in glory for suggesting something that will help many.

The overall point I'm making is: Read it; try it out; and don't wait any longer to make a move to get your vision made manifest.

‘Morning, RD.

>145 richardderus: I’m so sorry to hear about Valerie’s stepdaughter, glad about the organ donation and donor walk.

*smooch*

>156 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Happy to see you here. *smooch*

If a tragedy must occur, let's make something better out of it than just tragedy...that's what happened here, so that's a good thing.
***
Wordle 277 4/6

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Got so lucky on that fourth guess!

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Our last day in Braamt, tomorrow we will go home. Can't believe the week is almost over, time flies when you are having fun.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I know you mentioned The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird a couple of months ago. Well, I snagged an audio version and I just started it. You are spot on, it should be a good fit for me. Rainy and cool here in Chicagoland.

'Morning, Rdear. Happy Thursday to you.

>155 richardderus: You might assume these ventures started because the founders were born entrepreneurs. You might assume that these folks had technical or finance degrees, or worked at fancy consulting firms, or had some other specialized knowledge. Yet that isn’t the case. Reminds of me of the series that Bill and I are watching The Food That Built America.

Not much going on, Wordle took 6 today.

*smooch*

>155 richardderus: be the one with a new idea

If I had any ideas, I might. However, I am now retired and my brain has gone into hibernation and I am rather enjoying it.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Happy Thursday, Richard. I honestly thought this was going to be my first failed Wordle after only getting the same two letters right and in the wrong place, but I managed to get it in 5.

Wordle 278 4/6

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This one waited until I had all four to suggest itself.

>162 bell7: see >163 richardderus:...it felt sneaky, this one, and not for any particularly good reason.

*smooch*

>161 alcottacre: Sometimes that's enough, and yay for those moments! *smooch*

>160 karenmarie: see >163 richardderus:...I think I've watched that docuseries with Rob. Is it on Prime? Fascinating, IIRC, and really a good companion to the book.

*smooch*

>159 msf59: I'm really glad you're enthused by The Bald Eagle! It's gotten a lot of good attention. Davis came in for considerable appreciation among his early reviewers for the way he uses descriptions.

Chilly, misty, cloudy...none of the predicted rain, though.

>158 FAMeulstee: Oh yay, Anita, I'm so pleased that it was a good walking vacation! Get home safe.

>161 alcottacre: I have IMO an excellent idea.

In particular, digital devices that older people actively *like*, rather than the worse-every-year disimprovements Apple, Google, and Microsoft have chosen to inflict on their users. Imagine an interface that used the same UI language you learned in relative youth, and used for most of your career - and doesn't change with every forced "upgrade". Imagine a phone that doesn't constantly do things you never requested, whether due to butt-dialing or artificial "intelligence". Imagine a UI that was easy to use even if your hands tremble a little, or your vision isn't what it used to be, or you've had cataract surgery and now don't see certain types of contrast as readily. Imagine a device with text - not just cute little icons that change regularly. You could google to find out what something was or how to use it. Or there could even be a manual.

Note I'm not referring to the dummed-down phones for idiots, marketted in places like the AARP magazine. Those may be better than I expect from their ads - I've never had a chance to examine one - but they aren't what I want, and believe a lot of my fellow baby boomers also want.

But it's not implementable by one individual from their garage, and most of the folks who could do it, don't see the need, even when I try to convince them.

Most developers don't want any such thing - they'd find it old fashioned and hard to use, having grown up typing with their thumbs, with their text auto-corrected to gibberish, and all the other negatives of the modern phone or tablet. And neither do their age mates.

And that's the problem with every paen to entrepreneurship I've ever encountered. Unless it's something one person can do from their garage or dorm room, you have to sell the idea long before you have a product, and you have to sell it to people like venture capitalists, who don't want to fund anything that is expected to merely provide value to customers at a fair price, rather than having the goal of becoming the next unicorn. (Simply targetting a niche market, such as older people, seems to be the kiss of death for potential funders.)

These devices need different hardware. They need real keyboards. They need to be physically protected from butt dialing, including triggering some random operation when trying to get the thing out of one's pocket. If it were just software, it might be possible for something to be done as an open source project. But producing hardware is expensive, in ways that can't be solved by developers donating their time.

I simply can't get there from here. And that seems to me to be normal for anyone who wants to develop any product I'd be likely to actively want to buy.

>165 ArlieS: ...remind me never to tell you about my dreams...

>128 richardderus: Putting it on my TBR list, though I'm not sure I'll read it anytime soon. As an aside, having seen the havoc caused to her family when my sister took my dad in when he became too unstable to care for himself, I pay an exorbitant sum every month for Long Term Care insurance so my daughter will never have to care for me if/when I get to that point. Because, although she has said she would do it, I don't want to put that kind of onus on her ever.

Got today's Wordle in 4, having chosen the wrong word of two possibilities for my 3rd guess.

*smooches*

>166 richardderus: Err - sorry.

>155 richardderus: Interesting, on the list it goes RD.

>169 Caroline_McElwee: I hope it earns its keep!

>168 ArlieS: You're nothing if not thorough and scientific in your methods.

>167 Storeetllr: No matter how expensive it is, it is WORTH IT. That tsurres is very deeply not fun.

>165 ArlieS: I absolutely LOVE that idea, Arlie. Just this afternoon I discovered that the upgrade Apple installed on my laptop whilst I slept won't let me use an old piece of software (acquired in 2010). #*%!!&

>165 ArlieS: I am with Bill, Arlie. I hate upgrades that we have to have even when they are completely unwanted or unwarranted.

Happy Friday, Richard!

Hope you have a weekend filled with great reads!

Hiya, RDear, and happy Friday to you.

>164 richardderus: Yes, The Food That Built America is on Prime.

I'm on my thank-goodness-I-didn't-get-rid-of-it old laptop since my new laptop seems to be hosed. I'll call Dell because I pay $5/month for the right to do that, sometime today. In the meantime, it's weird to be back on the old computer.

*smooch*

Wordle 279 3/6

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Nice to get it in three. AEONS--DETOX--DEPOT

>174 karenmarie: Oh yuck! I'm sorry about the hosing, and YAY for keeping the old one!

I thought it was. Maybe I'll revisit it soon.

>173 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

>172 alcottacre:, >171 weird_O: :-)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** to keep you going.

>175 richardderus: Congrats! Took me 5 tries today.

>170 richardderus: Thanks, learned a new word today! (Had to look up "tsurres.") And, yes, I agree. It's definitely worth paying for.

>174 karenmarie: I need a new laptop and have been considering Dell. (After I spent nearly $1,500 on an HP with everything I thought I would ever need for however long I lived, and then it fell apart after 2 years 11 months, and then how HP refused to repair it though I had 3 years of warranty, I swore I'd never buy another HP product, and I am sticking by that vow, even though HP laptops are a lot cheaper than most other brands.)

How long did you have it before it went kaput? What line was it?

>178 Storeetllr: Initial purchase price isn't all that goes into making something cheap. The HP I have is a Chromebook, so I don't worry about too much other than replacement cost. This one was the lowest purchase price in its screen size and processor speed, so it won out.

I'd had Acer Chromebooks before and they were more than satisfactory for their stunningly cheap purchase prices. The Acer one with this size screen was optimized for gaming so it was a lot more than this HP. Hence....

>177 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! *smooch*
***
Welp, it's time for the monthly wifi woes. I'm using my poor phone's hotspot function. Not the best but it's all down to this to stay moderately online.

If I can't make it back very often, this is why. Have good weekends!

Sorry to hear about the wifi woes, Richard!

Have a good weekend, Richard. Hoping the wifi woes resolve themselves with, you know, the paying of the bill and other stories. You can let us know all about it when you get back to a reliable connection.

Did anyone else get tortured by "News" on Monday morning at primary school? Every Monday morning, we had to write what we had been up to at the weekend and read it out to class. I found my school books when I cleared Mum's house and it seems that I'd written the same thing every Monday for years. "We went to Granny's/Grandma's* and went to a coffee morning"

In reality our weekends were far more interesting than that, we might go to a coffee morning in the morning, but the afternoon would go to the sea, or up into the Downs or to one of the fairly local museums (I must have been round HMS Victory so many times I could do the tour guide thing myself!). It was a small act of rebellion, as I didn't see the point of writing it down & reading it out, I could just tell you what I did at the weekend...

* Delete grandparent as appropriate, we alternated visits.

Anyway, hope you have lots to write for "News" next time we see you. >:-)

‘Morning, RDear!

Dell and I will be working on fixing the laptop today. I had to get a 16Gb flash drive (drove to Wally World where of course tech/electronics were all the way in the back) and think we’re going to have to reinstall the operating system.

>178 Storeetllr: I have a Dell Inspiron 3593, Mary. I got it in March of 2020 in anticipation of my old laptop dying and Covid supply chain issues, but didn’t open the box until May. I have had a few problems with it, admittedly, but I pay $5/month for Premium support and have more than gotten my money’s worth. I think it cost me ~$900. I bought it by calling Dell and ordering it. I got a few bells and whistles. My daughter also got a Dell Inspiron 3593, bought at Best Buy in early 2020, and I think she paid ~$450 for hers. I find it mildly ironic that my old 8.1 laptop is working great right now and the 'new' one is kaput.

>179 richardderus: Friend Louise was given an Acer by her daughter/SiL, and it gave her nothing but grief. I think there’s an element of luck in any tech acquisition. I don’t think there are lemon laws for tech, are there?

Sorry about the wifi woes. See you when we see you. *smooch*

Happy Saturday, Richard. It is currently 30F, with a dusting of snow on the ground. WTH? We do have Jack for an overnight visit, so he is helping warm our little hearts. Have a good weekend, my friend.

Dropping off weekend smooches.

I hope your internet blues end soon! We have spotty internet coverage in this house, and it drives me crazy. Connection is always being dropped at various moments during any given day, and it's maddening. I see why you write your longer posts on (I think you said) Word so you don't lose them if/when connection drops.

>182 karenmarie: That is interesting! I don't know what kind of laptop I'm going to get, but, if my calculations are right (finding out on Tuesday when I talk to an AARP tax person), I'll be getting money back from my taxes this year, and I've already got it earmarked for a laptop.

>185 Storeetllr: Hiya Mary! I write in Google's Word-equivalent. It's just too darn disheartening to lose an entire review...so I make SURE all but the proofreading is saved now!

*smooch*

>184 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Thanks for the weekend smooches!

>183 msf59: It's fiftyish here today! Wow...you're back at the beginning of March and I'm into the second week of April. Climate change is a hoax, though.

Happy Jack-time today!

>182 karenmarie: Well, sweetiedarling, let me offer you a tech suggestion that has saved my sanity more than once: Get an external hard drive. 2Tb ought to do. Make sure it's WiFi enabled and Dell compatible...no way in hell will ANYthing ever get lost again, nor will you ever need to worry about whether your on laptop one, laptop two, tablet, or desktop.

Huh! My Acers were fine. (They died of overuse, as cheap computers will.)

>181 Helenliz: "News" sounds like fun to me...but hey, we all already knew I'm a weirdo. Mostly I've been phone-listening to the BBC podcast "In Our Time." It really rocks my world to hear Melvyn Bragg say, "just a second! what about..." every fourth or fifth sentence. Because that's always what I want to know, too.

>180 alcottacre: My thanks, Stasia me lurve.

I have an Acer laptop now which is fine. We do not speak the name of Dell in our house because of a computer buying incident that happened in 2011, but was so irritating that we have never forgotten it.

Sorry to hear the wifi woes are back, Richard, and hope they get sorted out sooner rather than later.

I *might* actually finish a book this weekend.

>72 richardderus: Nothing bothers the insecure more than saying that which they're insecure about is just the truth.
You have just explained the rift the my sibling has with their *entire family*. Having forced a response from us, they found out that they did not in fact want to hear what we said.

Wordle today was a tricky little number. I shall try not to rage about it, but I got it in 5 rather than 4 (which is my usual minimum standard) because of one pesky letter.

054 The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star.

Charlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love, and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. In front of the cameras, he’s a stiff, anxious mess with no idea how to date twenty women on national television. Behind the scenes, he’s cold, awkward, and emotionally closed-off.

As Dev fights to get Charlie to open up to the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find to happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LIBRARY. THANK GOODNESS FOR LIBRARIES...USE YOURS SOON!

My Review: Reality TV isn't. I realize that's just the most startling thing you've ever read, but it is true. What it is, though, is made by real people and it features real people, with real emotions and feelings; they aren't dolls or puppets or robots. And while that's not something I expect most adults really need telling, intellectually, it's not...um...real. Somehow. (There will be, one day, a better vocabulary for these feelings-at-a-remove. I live for that day.)

But the thing that Author Cochrun did, in creating gorgeous OCD-having anxiety-experiencing Charlie, is something I think the world of reality TV, Romancelandia, and the entire entertainment world could do with a lot more of: She humanized the beautiful façades in a kind, supportive, and genuinely entertaining way. Her decision to make gawky, geeky Dev into a multifaceted man, her decision to have these two men, fractured and frantically trying to keep their heads above the dark, cold waters of mental illness's difficult times, find and learn about and accept each other is something still too rare. It is laudable, and the way she made it believable earns my admiration.

I can see a lot of eyes rolling at the idea of a gorgeously chiseled six-pack-sportin' tech millionaire having anxiety and OCD problems. Truth is many beautiful-looking people are beset by issues that onlookers don't think to wonder if they experience. The very idea is foreign..."if I only had money and/or looked like X I'd be happy all the time!"...but it honestly should shame us how much stock we put in that nonsense. People have problems. And when they're rich or beautiful or famous, they shouldn't. So when they do....

Brava, Author Cochrun, for slapping an ace on top of that tired old trick.

Then there's the Fun-Guy trope! Life of the party, always a laugh...he couldn't be depressed, he's got this great job and look at how many people he laughs his nights away with!...but the same logic applies. It's another good deed done to remind us that there's no one immune from the hurts of being alive. Putting the two of them together in this highly artificial, addicted-to-surfaces world was a great idea, and one that Author Cochrun pulled off with admirable aplomb.

What works well, works well. There's a minor plot-point left dangling, and there were two (2) foul, heinous, scum-dripping w-bombs. So there went that half-star. But there's no reason to go full-tilt ramming-speed mental when a medium-steam rom-com featuring two genuinely love-worthy, genuinely love-giving, thoroughly sweet men gets told in sentences like this:

Charlie hasn’t met many people like this—people who don’t make assumptions about you when they discover your brain doesn’t work like theirs; people who don’t judge you; people who simply stay with you and ask what they can do to help. People who trustingly hand you all of themselves in PDF form.
–and–
{He} curls into the fetal position inside the shower. This is what regret tastes like: regurgitated tequila and dirty cotton balls.
–and–
“It doesn’t have to be,” she says, “and you’re not obligated to figure it out, or come out, or explain yourself to anyone, ever. But also”—she drops her hands from their spectrum and tucks an arm around his shoulder—“labels can be nice sometimes. They can give us a language to understand ourselves and our hearts better. And they can help us find a community and develop a sense of belonging. I mean, if you didn’t have the correct label for your OCD, you wouldn’t be able to get the treatment you need, right?” {hear the Gospel of Saint Parisa, everybody!}
–and–
He pauses, and {his lover} explodes. “That’s such bullshit! There are so many people who have done actual terrible things who are actively working in tech! Mark Zuckerberg exists! And firing someone for having OCD—that’s got to be illegal."
–and–
"I don’t think happily ever after is something that happens to you...I think it’s something you choose to do for yourself.”

There's just no reason not to get this book, sink into it, and let the beauty of its fantasy world soothe crappy, warlike reality's wrinkles and creases right out of your face to be replaced by smiles.

>190 richardderus: - I think I picked this up in a Kindle sale a couple of months ago. I'll have a look.

(You're touchstone goes to the wrong book, FYI.)

I've finished Bridgerton season 2. Am composing my thoughts....

>189 LovingLit: It's sad that it came to that, but that's how this weird thing called Life goes some days.

Glad you came to visit!

>188 bell7: Yay! you came by! And YAY!! a book gets done! And *smooch*

>187 SandDune: I'm not their fanboy, either, Rhian. Not quite a "besmirch the welkin not with this foul verbiage!" hate, but a distinct absence of fondness.

>191 katiekrug: *popcorn bowl* I'll slither by on the morrow to see what's what.

>190 richardderus: You got me with that one, Richard. I'm number 26 in the hold line at my library.

‘Morning, RDear!

>186 richardderus: I do have an external hard drive, did take a complete system backup quite a while back, and take documents backups daily. I haven’t taken a complete system backup in a very long time. I’m hoping that re-installing the operating system is what’s needed so that everything else is still there as I left it Thursday night.

>190 richardderus: Excellent review. I love the quotes. edited to add: Onto the wish list it goes!

Today's Wordle is fun.

*smooch*

Wordle 281 4/6

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AAARRRGH!! I played on my phone yesterday, so it thinks I skipped a day. Too much effort to fix it but it annoys me.
***
>195 karenmarie:, >194 Familyhistorian: I'm so glad I zapped y'all with The Charm Offensive! Very sweet story. I can see each of y'all liking it.

>195 karenmarie: It wasn't until I'd used all my options that I thought, ...waitaminnit...could it...naaah...and it was!

Happy Sunday, Richard. The magnolias up top are beautiful. Callia told me yesterday that the magnolias at Willamette (and presumably everywhere?) are edible and that people pickle them like ginger. Huh. I never knew.

You've had some outstanding reading lately - lots of 5 and 4.5 stars. But you absolutely got me with Already Toast. Sounds like a very necessary book, and I was saddened to hear of your personal journey through the world of caregiving and especially of your loss.

>190 richardderus: This sounds delightful.

Happy Sunday *smooches*

Tried to read it all, Richard dear, but ended up skimming. A week away is too long...

*smooches*

>199 FAMeulstee: I understand, of course, as a weekend away (wifi woes again!) leaves me scrambling.

*smooch*

>198 bell7: It is delightful, Mary, and I hope against hope you're able to bookhorn it in...I expect the library system has at least one. *smooch*

>197 AMQS: Hi Anne! Happy to see you here! Yes, pickled magnolia parts do indeed exist and, if one can overcome the Wrongness of eating such a gorgeous entity, taste...like pickled anything else.

Just don't see the point...I'm not particularly hungry on the regular, so don't need emergency supplies quite that badly.

I miss him every day, and have for thirty years. Life can be quite a trudge sometimes, can't it.

>190 richardderus: I agree RD, thank goodness for libraries. Intend to use my Wakefield library card liberally when I get back to the UK but, but, but what about all the books I already have?!

‘Morning, RDear!

>197 AMQS: I’ve probably permanently lost all my Wordle stats because the hard drive is corrupt and when I get my laptop back it will no doubt think I’m a new person. No biggie, actually, for me, since my stats are not as stellar as yours are.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Morning, Richard. Very cold on my bird walk yesterday. WTH? Getting close to 40F today for my Trail Watch duties but it should be in the lower 50s. Sighs...

Wordle 282 4/6

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AEONS--CORNY--MOUNT--FOUND
***
Still on my phone-as-hotspot. Staff still saying "oh, it's all over Long Beach," like I don't have the sense to look it up on my damn phone whether a weekend-long outage got onto the news. Which it didn't. ::eyeroll::

>203 msf59: It's 25° and really, really windy today...about 10° with wind chill. This battering I could do without.

I wonder which plants will simply expire....

>202 karenmarie: Your hard drive is corrupt?! Oh hell. I'm so sorry. I'm also glad you paid extra for the ability to have people back you up! I hope like hell all your data's on the external hard drive...the Friends stuff, etc...or it could be really, really tedious to re-authenticate yourself so many times!

>201 PaulCranswick: Lucky for you, the UK has been busily shutting down libraries and cutting staffing and collections. Can't have an educated populace, you know, the smarter they are the less likely they are to vote Tory.

>190 richardderus: Well, my local library does not have a copy of that one, so I am out of luck there.

Have a wonderful week, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that the wifi problems are gone for good.

Sorry to hear about your wifi woes. It must be quite annoying not to have a reliable service.

Happy week ahead reads.

No way to catch up, so I'll just wish you wifi soon and warmer weather too!

*smooch*

Hiya, RD! Sorry about your continuing wifi woes. They must think you’re all senile and/or tech impaired. And your weather. Brrrr.

*smooch*

Wordle 283 6/6

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I tried logical choices but took six anyway...simply the price of playing the game, eh what?

Unlike yesterday, where I struck out - just too many first letter choices. I got today's in 3.
Hope you're back in the land of the connected. >:-)

>211 Helenliz: I'm not, I'm still using the poor old smartphone as a hotspot. But it's still working, so yay for that! Of course, I have to power-wash it back to factory settings every night, which gets irritating.

>209 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I'm glad to see you here. It's actually already warmer...34°...now than it was all day yesterday, and the wind's died down. Yay!

...now if they'd sort the wifi out...*smooch*

>208 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy! I'm glad to see you here! *smooch*

>207 figsfromthistle: Hiya Anita! Thank you for the well-wishes. From your keyboard to the goddesses' inbox....

*smooch*

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today - and a pox on your wifi!

>210 richardderus:

My lucky day ?

Wordle 283 2/6

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Sorry to hear about the wifi woes ~ smh.

Thanks, Stasia! *smooch*

A pox indeed...more than the usual pox, too.

>214 mckait: Well, the two is a great result! I'm not sure why they think this is fun, just not paying the bill, but it's not the first time. The first time was way back when I moved in, 2015, when the cable company went around the building flyering notices that the cable would be off in x days. *sigh*

It just makes me a crazy person.

>216 richardderus: I would be crazy too. Worrisome and annoying.

>217 mckait: Mostly annoying, honestly, as I do still have the phone. But for how much longer will it consent to function this way? So far, so good, and that's where I stop worrying about it.

Burgoine #18

The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong by John Mitchinson John Lloyd

4.0 out of 5 stars

The Publisher Says: Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.

Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following:

How long can a chicken live without its head?
About two years.

What do chameleons do?
They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states.

How many legs does a centipede have?
Not a hundred.

How many toes has a two-toed sloth?
It’s either six or eight.

Who was the first American president?
Peyton Randolph.

What were George Washington’s false teeth made from?
Mostly hippopotamus.

What was James Bond’s favorite drink?
Not the vodka martini.

My Review: Once upon a time, I was smart...then I got this book. Now I am reduced to a mere mouth-breathing lump of proteins and acids and the majority of them aren't even human.

Abandon all sense of smug superiority, foolish mortal, if you succumb to the desire to get your triviality tested against The Elves. Ask not how I know.

>219 richardderus: Got to wonder about the chameleons. Did someone ask them?

I don't think I want to risk that book; my general knowledge is too precarious as it is.

>220 humouress: Most wise indeed. It's just too easy to bonk one's ego-shins on the furniture therein.

I don't know who did the asking re: chameleons. Someone with *excellent* hearing...?

>219 richardderus: wait wait wait wait do you mean to tell me that the "divorced, beheaded, died" rhyme is not actually helpful? How many wives does it say Henry VIII had?

>222 bell7: The final, official count is:

TWO or three

Katharine of Aragon might be the third, though that was annulled by the Church of England which, well, might be overstepping their authority since they didn't solemnize the original contract. Then there's that Seymour girl who died, and Katherine Parr who he died on, these are the only absolutely inarguable ones.

He annulled three marriages: Annes Boleyn & of Cleves, and Catherine Howard.

Oh I see, so the divorced and beheaded were technically annulled first. Huh.

Edited to correct an extraneous apostrophe

>224 bell7: Actually the annulments happened *after* because the divorce would've been obviated by the annulment; and Henry was super-extra ready to kill Anne for reasons I really don't understand. He knew the "case" against her was twaddle. What really happened?

Catherine Howard was, more or less, understandable. A teenaged girl isn't likely to be faithful to her reekin' creakin' barely-not-a-corpse husbeast. She overestimated her own charms...unless she'd got herself a son, then everything would've changed.

>223 richardderus: Katherine of Aragon might be the third? Who were 1 and 2?

His problem with Anne is easy, she was smarter and more political than he was. She could have been a danger to the throne. Yes, most men in that age were sexist, but Henry VIII led the parade.

ETA: I think it's been underestimated how much Henry's open suppurating wound was off-putting all those years. Gross.

>225 richardderus: Hmmmm, now that sounds a little more like splitting hairs about the definition of marriage - though as I type that, I suppose that's also how the Church of England came to be, isn't it? Fascinating bit of history that I really should read more about.

>226 AuntieClio: No, no, not the third wife! The two annulments previously discussed were very clearly and legitimately granted by the proper authority, ie the one that solemnized the marriage. Katharine of Aragon wasn't married by the church that annulled her marriage to Henry; that's really iffy, legally, when the grantor of the annulment wasn't the solemnizer of the original marriage. Plus Queen Katharine was very definitively NOT a convert.

...though I wonder what History would be like if she *had* converted....

>227 bell7: Precisely so. A whole lotta hair-splittin' goin' on.

>223 richardderus: Hmm … I think I know a couple of people who would dispute that!

We have a Catholic friend who made her second husband get an annulment of his first marriage (he was already divorced) so that they could get married in church. I’m afraid all of us non-Catholics in the guest list thought it was ridiculous. Of course, the marriage hadn’t simply disappeared in a puff of smoke just because of an annulment - they’d been married for years and had 2 grown up sons to show for it. I’m afraid we all regarded it as a get out of jail free card to get a divorce while pretending you weren’t getting a divorce.

‘Morning, RD, and happy middle-of-the-we-don’t-work-anymore week to you.

>219 richardderus: Well, bust my britches. I started reading this book on my Kindle in January and finished it up on the 11th of this month. I loved it as much as you did and am just as humbled as you are.

>225 richardderus: He annulled the marriage with Anne of Cleves without having her beheaded. She was called The King’s Beloved Sister, and Henry provided for her for the rest of her life.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>231 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! What a treat of a read...and three months is about right. It's a dip in, pull out kind of a read. I like to leave off between questions, come back when the itch of curiousness gets too powerful.

...and I know where that one came from....

>230 SandDune: Was this recently? I can't feature an American Catholic priest caring a fig about suchlike goins-on. Religion's such a load of malarky.

Wordle 284 3/6

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Fun one today!

>224 bell7: That feels to me like a semantic quibble. 6 different women were, at different times, "Henry the VIII's wife".

That doesn't attract me to reading this book, so I've dodged a book bullet. Yay!

>234 ArlieS: Yay for a good bob'n'weave, Arlie!

*resumes scheming how to book-bullet Arlie soonest*

Morning RD.

My most epic fail, to date. LOL. Did not pay attention to the letter placement. Just saw a word and went for it. Oh well.

Wordle 284 X/6

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>230 SandDune:, >232 richardderus: I have a friend whose mother bullied her priest into granting an annulment after a few decades of marriage and two grown children. She just wore him down.

>232 richardderus: I can't feature an American Catholic priest caring a fig about suchlike goins-on. It was about five and a half years ago. Our friend was a widow but her husband-to-be was divorced and the priest would definitely NOT marry them until his annulment, which I seem to remember took some time.

>238 SandDune:
It may depend on the diocese in which you reside. In my local diocese, Catholics who get divorced and want to remarry must get an annulment from the church for the first marriage. It doesn't matter if they had children or not. The kicker in the deal is that in the eyes of the church, children from the annulled marriage are bastards and the church declares them illegitimate. All of the official church records are changed and even on baptismal records the word illegitimate is inserted. There are some Catholics who bulk at that idea. One famous case like this was one of the Kennedy's. The woman in the case refused to get an annulment because doing so would have made her children illegitimate. These nuances still matter to some people.

>239 benitastrnad: It does seem ridiculous to an outsider!

Conventionally Yours (True Colors, #1) by Annabeth Albert

PEARL RULED @ 19%

I'm almost 20% in and I actively dread opening this book. I hate admitting to it but there's just too much of a gap between 22 and 62 for me to care about bridging.

Your mileage may vary. The angst that is sending convulsive shudders down my abdomen may strike just the right chord for you. If you read a lot of YA, it's that but college boys. Driving their my-age professor's 1999 Town Car. By themselves. From New Jersey to Las Vegas. I will actually die of annoyed boredom before they make it into the sack together.

Stop smirking. I am *not* being an old drama queen.

Cool! I won the book I wanted from March's ER offerings: Ordinary Equality: The Fearless Women and Queer People Who Shaped the U. S. Constitution and the Equal Rights Amendment by Kate Kelly, Nicole LaRue

>241 richardderus: - *smirk*

>240 SandDune: It is, objectively, ridiculous. The Divine Omnipotence is reduced to being a Cosmic Database with check-boxes for the most inane, unimportant things?

Even taking it on their terms, this is absurd...and I reject the premise they start from as worse than faulty. It's evil and cruel.

>239 benitastrnad:, >238 SandDune: ::eyeroll::

>237 AMQS: Good lawsy me! I thought Americans were out of that box.

>219 richardderus: This is the kind of useless knowledge that I need to know - now! Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD. Into the BlackHole it goes!

Happy Wednesday, Richard! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>245 alcottacre: Happy Wednesday, Stasia! *smooch*

>233 richardderus: I got it in three, also! And I thought it was fun, too! That’s probably because I was able to solve it, eh?

Karen O

>247 klobrien2:, >236 mahsdad: We all had terrific lessons in luck today.

>243 katiekrug: *defensive* Whaaaaaat?!

>248 richardderus: - I couldn't resist. *smooch*

>249 katiekrug: ...eville...pure-D unadulterated, to boot.

Do you have wifi?

Why do you still have a dying phone. We have to figure that out. Dead phone is not acceptable.

>251 mckait: Not yet...no responses from the PTB. *sigh*

Dying is not dead. I have a few annoyingly complicated tricks that get me back to where I need to be, including a regular "powerwash" to factory settings. It was supposed to be handled but Life got in the way.

>236 mahsdad: Agree that the game today was a bit of a farce. It is irritating, RD/Jeff, when we are given words which have so many permutations possible if you have some of the words in place. I got lucky with it and guessed it in 5 but I could just as easily have lucked out too.

Enjoying the discussion on the terrible Tudors and their marital machinations. I'm not sure that Stephanie's assessment of Anne's political faculties quite pass muster. She was easily out manoeuvred by Cromwell and naivety certainly played a role. To be fair there was some desperation there borne out of the inability to provide a son. She had shone so brightly and forced a King to foreswear his religion and to see him still casting eyes at Jane Seymour despite this told of a King exculpating his guilt by compounding it.

Happt Thursday, Richard dear!

Sorry the wifi troubles still continue.
*smooch*

Hiya, RD! Happy Thursday.

Today's Book Sale prep. I'll be gone pretty much all day.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>241 richardderus: Gosh, no. I would never think that of you. Never. (Did I say 'never'?)

So, a new one for Wordle-clone fans; this one is for film buffs. I knew, going in, that this wasn't my forte and, to be honest, I hadn't a clue and gave up early on:

Framed #20
🎥 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥

Framed

Sorry about the continued wi-fi woes. That's rotten.

Bittersweet, Thursday, Richard? Sorry, to hear about the wi-fi issues. What a bummer! I hope they get you back on track. Rain continues here, keeping me off the muddy trails.

Wordle 285 5/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
BUT only because I tried Jowly before Lowly.

>259 richardderus: - I also tried JOWLY before LOWLY. Unfortunately, it was my 6th guess :(

>260 katiekrug: Sixth or fifth, it's the "after" that galls the most!

>258 msf59: Mud and rain! Yes, avoiding sounds very sensible.

>258 msf59:, >257 katiekrug: It's very annoying that the facility does this on the regular now. I mean, do they think people (meaning me) are so stupid as not to see the pattern here?!

>256 humouress: OMIGAWD no! Not a damn chance will I risk my ego on that one!

"Never" is duly noted, and filed away as future ammo.

>255 karenmarie: WHEEEE!! A chance to futz around with the books!!

Have a marvelous time, Horrible. *smooch*

Burgoine #19

The Commandant's Daughter (Hanni Winter #1) by Catherine Hokin

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: 1933, Berlin. Ten-year-old Hanni Foss stands by her father’s side watching the torchlit procession to celebrate Adolf Hitler as Germany’s new leader. As the lights fade, she knows her safe and happy childhood is about to change forever. Practically overnight, the father she adores becomes unrecognisable, lost to his ruthless ambition to oversee an infamous concentration camp…

Twelve years later. As the Nazi regime crumbles, Hanni hides on the fringes of Berlin society in the small lodging house she’s been living in since running away from her father’s home. In stolen moments, she develops the photographs she took to record the atrocities in the camp – the empty food bowls and hungry eyes – and vows to get some measure of justice for the innocent people she couldn’t help as a child.

But on the day she plans to deliver these damning photographs to the Allies, Hanni comes face to face with her father again. Reiner Foss is now working with the British forces, his past safely hidden behind a new identity, and he makes it clear that he will go to deadly lengths to protect his secret. In that moment Hanni hatches a dangerous plan to bring her father down, but how far she is willing to go for revenge? And at what cost?

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

My Review: First in a series, flawed, and still...something in here honestly made me think twice about the eternal eyeroll I've developed for plucky spying heroines. I concur with the sales bunf, if you liked The Alice Network you'll do well to give this one a shot.

Not that it's quite up to the same literary standard...the plot wanders a bit midway through...but it has that compelling quality that is so frequently missing in other WWII fiction I've read.

>235 richardderus: :-)

>241 richardderus: Quite emphatically dodged that one too.

>252 richardderus: Life has a way of doing that.

>254 FAMeulstee: I know I typed "Happy" wrong, but is that a reason to miss my traditional Thursday message?
Probably just because of the wifi still not behaving ;-)

and again *smooches*

>264 FAMeulstee: You are correct to blame the dratted wifi...it's slow-loading stuff and "skipping" (collapsing loaded threads by 5-10) posts.

Happy Thursday, my dear friend! *smooch*

And >253 PaulCranswick: You got lost, too, PC. I suspect Anne's out-maneuvering wasn't easy; after all, it was a plot laid alone and executed in record time by the rat in the trap. Cromwell was for the chop if he didn't vanquish Anne and her patrons.

>263 ArlieS: I'm shocked, shocked that you would not drop everything and set sail for the Amazon ports to gobble down a gay-male NA romance.

Shocked, I say.

MARCH IN REVIEW

I reviewed twelve books on my blog in March...darn good thing I was way over in February!...and while I got a lot out of The Story of China, The Other Dr. Gilmer, Already Toast, and Against the Ice, I wasn't really able to do more than appreciate them, accept their teaching, respond to their information with deep and thoughtful interest.

Nothing, in short, for my annual six-stars-of-five derby. Fiction was mostly pretty dismal (except The Charm Offensive) this month, for me, and there are a few books I've pushed into April because they're Burgoines and a Pearl Rule. That window closes on the last Sunday of the month, so they'll get their dues in April.

About The Charm Offensive, I was unambiguously entertained, I was definitely pleased with the mental-health rep and its simplicity...yes, both men in the inevitable couple faced different challenges, no, it didn't mean they were not worthy of or capable of sustaining happiness in their relationship...but honestly, it's just competently written:

“It doesn’t have to be,” she says, “and you’re not obligated to figure it out, or come out, or explain yourself to anyone, ever. But also”—she drops her hands from their spectrum and tucks an arm around his shoulder—“labels can be nice sometimes. They can give us a language to understand ourselves and our hearts better. And they can help us find a community and develop a sense of belonging. I mean, if you didn’t have the correct label for your OCD, you wouldn’t be able to get the treatment you need, right?”

This isn't bad. It isn't terribly exciting, either. And that's about as good as anything I read this month. *sigh*

Please be so good as to navigate yourself to the new thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/340911