richardderus's fifteenth 2022 thread

This Cretan olive tree is 3,000 years old. Its trunk measures 41 feet in circumference. The Vouves Olive Tree is still producing fruit.

It is incredible to me that this grande dame is still fecund at her age, but somehow unsurprising. The blessing of Nature is so seldom withdrawn without cause.

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 >3 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.

Longing to view reviews forty-eight to fifty-four? Advance towards the rear.

The reviews numberèd fifty-five through sixty-four are por detrás.

Sixty-five, -six, and -seven, eh? Seekest thou in arrears.

Sixty-eight up to seventy-four aren't hard to find by using that link.

There are reviews numbered seventy-five through ninety, you know. This post links you to them.

Ninety-one through one hundred ten? Try that link, it'll sort you out.

111 through 131? Go back there.

Those reviews numbered 132 up to 142 will be found at the linked post.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

143 The Lisbon Syndrome rocked, post 29.

144 Upgrade wasn't, post 30.

145 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street rocked my world, post 70.

146 40: A Novel slammed, post 108.

147 Sphinx gobsmacked, post 132.

148 In Concrete amused, post 133.

149 The Besieged City slammed, post 171.

150 The Bruising of Qilwa enlived, post 213.

151

152

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!




JULY 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #52, Kill For Me (Victor the Assassin #8), is in post 46.

#44 through #51, Any Other World Will Do, are linked in this post here.

#37 through #43, are linked in this post here.

JUNE 2022's BURGOINES

#37 through #43, are linked in this post here.

#36 is in thread twelve, post 279.

***

MAY 2022's BURGOINES

#34 and #35 are linked in this post here.

#31 through 33 stay linked right here.

***

APRIL 2022's BURGOINES

#25 through 30 are backlinked here.

#20 through 24 are backlinked in this post.

The first two for April are linked here.

MARCH 2022's BURGOINES

The last one for March is linked here.

The first 4 in March are back-linked here.

***

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

***
JANUARY 2022's BURGOINES are linked 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.



AUGUST 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rule #37, Thoreau in Love,is in post 215.

JUNE & JULY 2022's PEARL-RULES

#36 is in this post right here.

Pearl Rule #33 through #35 are linked in this post here.

***

MAY 2022's PEARL-RULES

#32 is linked in this post right here.

#31 is linked here.

***

APRIL 2022's PEARL-RULES are backlinked here: post 75.

The first one in April is linked here.

***

MARCH 2022's ONLY PEARL-RULE

It's linked in right here.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

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

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. I've set 288 reviews as the new goal.

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.

Flying Solo is close enough.

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+).
    The Fourth Courier, though sadly not a supergood read


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.
    Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda is just flat terrifying!


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.
    The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R. chilled me with its January 6th parallels only 90 years earlier.


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.

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.

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 288 reviews on my blog

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

to complete at least 288 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. To 1 June 2022, I've posted 136 reviews of all types on my blog. That makes an annual total of 275 requiring only 139 more posts (almost exactly the same amount!), and a goal of 288 seem attainable.

Ask and ye shall receive! 'Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >3 richardderus: above. I just need to keep getting better about *applying* it, being less prolix and more productive!

I've made a tentative plan for reviews to write this month (August), since it's #WomenInTranslation Month:

For August, from NetGalley
The Half-Life of Valery k by Natasha Pulley
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Finding Dora Maar by Brigitte Benkemoun
In the Shadow of Power by Viveca Sten
In the Name of Truth by Viveca Sten

For August, from Edelweiss+
The Law of Lines by Hye-Young Pyun
City of Ash and Red by Hye-Young Pyun
Sphinx by Anne Garréta
In Concrete by Anne Garréta
Pleasantview by Celeste Mohammed
Vivian by Christina Hesselholdt

July titles I didn't get to:
from Edelweiss+:
Invasion of the Spirit People by Juan Pablo Villalobos
Denial: How We Hide, Ignore, and Explain Away Problems by Jared Del Rosso — pairing with Gun Barons
When Time Is Short: Finding Our Way in the Anthropocene by Timothy Beal
from NetGalley:
The Grand Illusion by Eoin Dempsey
Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them by John Bainbridge Jr. — pairing with Denial

Okay! Go to it.

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>10 FAMeulstee: First in, Anita! In keeping with this thread's theme, have an olive crown:

Happy new thread, Richard!

>12 katiekrug: Thank you, madam, I am most grateful that you have come to visit.

Happy new one, Richard!

I'll peek my nose in while it's early and I'm not panting to keep up. *smooches*

>11 richardderus: Thank you, Richard dear, it looks lovely.

Btw, the olive tree at the top is amazing.

>16 FAMeulstee: I'm so pleased that you like it! Isn't she amazing?

>15 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Welcome, come any old time.

>14 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley, and come back soon.

Fifteenth thread already; that's more than two per month. Enjoy the new one.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Richard!

A new thread! A happy one too. That is so fine. I plan to follow with one more closely than the last. My vacation is over and done. My back has been poked and prodded and manipulated, and I am confident that the nerve that's still jangling (not the sciatic nerve, I learned, but a similar one rooted in the right hip flexor) soon will just stop with the jangling already!

I might even read something.

Happy new one, RD.

>1 richardderus: That is amazing. I am a lover of olives / olive oil and anything that is still bearing fruit after 3,000 years shows itself as something magical.

>20 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

>19 swynn: Welcome, Steve!

>18 ArlieS: Thank you, Arlie, it's a bit busy, I guess.

>22 PaulCranswick: Magical indeed, PC, a living being that old must barely even register our puny little selves.

>21 weird_O: Thanks, Bill! I hope your non-sciatic owwie repents of its ways and leaves you in peace to get back to reading soonest.

Happy new thread, Richard! Love the olive tree - how impressive to have something so old still alive and producing. Amazing, this world of ours!

Re: reviews, I'd be interested in knowing what you read and thought if you included some pithy ones on books that maybe were 3 stars and below. I think sometimes it's interesting to see why something didn't quite work for someone, and I would enjoy getting your thoughts on them (though... I mean, sometimes it's completely a mood thing or we don't know, and that's okay too).

*smooch*

Oh, that tree!!!! What an inspiration when I'm feeling old at almost 78!

Thank you, and Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread, Richard.
I love the Olive tree in >1 richardderus:. Also I quite like olives.

Happy new thread, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Count me in amongst the lovers of the old olive tree. . .

143 The Lisbon Syndrome by Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A sudden catastrophe in Europe exposes the slow-motion destruction of a generation of Venezuelans and their struggle against repression.

In The Lisbon Syndrome, a disaster annihilates Portugal's capital. In Caracas, Lisbon's sister city and home to many thousands of Portuguese, few details filter through the censored state media.

Fernando runs a theater program for young people in Caracas, teaching and performing classics like Macbeth and Mother Courage. His benefactor, Old Moreira, is a childless Portuguese immigrant who recalls the Lisbon of his youth. Fernando's students suffer from what they begin to call "the Lisbon syndrome," an acute awareness that there are no possibilities left for them in a country devastated by a murderous, criminal regime. A series of confrontations between demonstrators and government forces draw the students and their teacher toward danger. One disappears into the state secret prisons where dissidents are tortured. The arts center that was their sanctuary is attacked, and Fernando is pulled into the battle in the streets.

The Lisbon Syndrome is the most trenchant contemporary novel to offer a glimpse of life and death in Venezuela. But Sánchez Rugeles's bleak vision is lightened by his wry humor, and by characters who show us the humanity behind stark headlines.

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

My Review: The Lisbon Syndrome, in this novel, is defined as "...knowing that the things we love are finite, knowing that there is no tomorrow, knowing that we won’t have enough time to do anything worthwhile, that we will disappear without leaving any kind of mark, because we don’t matter to anyone, because our existence has no relevance." It sounds like a variation on saudade to my old-white-guy ears...but the key to the novel is this sense of existential irrelevance.

It's hard not to see the Syndrome all over the post-January 6th world. It's amazing to me how Author Sánchez Rugeles built this sense of the fruitlessness of expecting change to come and simultaneously supporting the acts of making the world however much better you can where you are, using what you have. A schoolteacher whose wife leaves him in the midst of the awful disasters that follow an asteroid obliterating Lisbon uses drama, à la Station Eleven, to instill humanistic values in...anyone, everyone, especially young anyones. It's exactly what one would expect from a somewhat ineffectual intellectual. It makes a positive difference, too. And that draws attention from the Powers That Be—never a good thing. There is, at the end of Author Sánchez Rugeles's rainbow, a pot of fool's gold guarded by a troop of evil sidhe. Yet the point, the salient characteristic, of this story is Hope. Big, capital-H Hope, the kind that comes from recognizing that yes, it's hopeless, people are bastards and the ruling class is scum, but Sra. Gomez needs help with her garden and little Pepita needs eyeglasses so get it in gear and fix the small things.

Brutal world events and brutal governmental responses to them make this a sometimes disheartening read. "How much more can a human endure?!" I asked myself more than once in these seven chapters. The truth is: A lot more. The novel's inspiration was the astonishingly awful year, 2017, when the Venezuelans threw themselves a constitutional crisis and an acceleration of the protests ongoing since 2014. This explainer will give you some context, if you're curious, but the simple truth is that Author Sánchez Rugeles is fictionalizing, not reportage-ing.

I'm pretty sure a lot of you are staring at the screen wondering if I've lost my mind recommending this read to wobbly weary North Americans in the midst of an unfolding crisis of our own. Permaybehaps. But I'm not doing so in the "eat-your-spinach" Savonarola-of-storytelling mode. I think Translator Paul Filev has done an extraordinarily good job of making this Spanish-to-English story clearly and succinctly Author Sánchez Rugeles's story while imbuing it with English-language prosody of clarity, compactness, and elegance. The subverbal vocalizations of the lines are rhythmic and the sounds of the words used are poetic in the best sense of the word.

Why, when the novel's set in Caracas, is the title The Lisbon Syndrome, and why is the catastrophe that has changed the city set in Lisbon? I'm speculating when I say this, but to me, the sizable Portuguese community in Caracas and its reason for being...Portugal's long, tortuous fascist dictatorship resulting in lots of exiles, which was ended by a revolution that caused chaos and produced more emigrants...gave the author his loud echoes of modern Venezuela and its convulsions.

While it's possible that your battle-weary eyes might not get aimed at such a dark corner of our literary world, I'm here to say I hope you'll visit Author Sánchez Rugeles's "believe me, bad as it is, it could be worse!" story universe. He's done post-apocalyptic fiction right.

144 Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

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

My Review: I loved Dark Matter. I really, really liked Summer Frost. I was lukewarm about Recursion, to my distress. And now I'm conflicted about Upgrade. It's a good story, one I liked reading. But it's very dependent on your being willing to listen to medical-terminology-laden lectures to get the full impact of.

That isn't an easy ask. Genetics is a field where the Acronym Anteater sends his tongue into overdrive, clawing down mound after mound of random alphanumeric snippets and that incredibly long, sticky tongue smooshing them into a lumpy paste of confusing same-but-different ever-shifting compounds. I got lost multiple times.

But the work I put in looking stuff up and the time I spent reading whatever "for Dummies"-level materials I could kept me grounded in Author Crouch's not-distant future of humans suffering for the hubris of a few visionary souls. It's important thought-experiment material, all of it, and Author Crouch doesn't think we should wobble blindly on our unicycles down a cobblestone alleyway when we could, and should, think and talk about what can and what might should not be done to our bodies.

I know it sounds like I am trying to foist an "eat-your-spinach" book onto you this time. I promise that I am not. What I am asking each and every one of the book's potential readers to do is to be ready to think about how a man whose hubristic scientist mother was his idol, his exemplary scientist-in-service to humanity, would reach the conclusions and decisions he does when he learns he's been used as a genetic experiment...like the one that got her reviled.

When he grasps that his continued existence has been rendered debatable by the unauthorized, illegal actions of people with an agenda that he will serve, whether dead or alive.

He's no longer himself, husband-father-government agent of law enforcement. He is An Example, a Test Case, a now-capital-lettered being without any say in the matter, and the matter is life and death for us all.

Those stakes got your interest? They got, and kept, mine. Up, in fact, until 4am they kept mine.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy new thread.

>1 richardderus: Ah, an ancient olive tree. Absolutely stunning.

Wordle 4 for me today. Hanging with Jenna, regular errand-y types of things. Same old, same old, in a good way.

*smooch*

>28 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! I'm sure almost all of us will fall on the "how wonderful!" side re: the Old Queen, but even her detractors have to admit it's an amazing feat to live 3,000 years.

>27 Helenliz: I wonder what *that* tree's olives taste like, don't you?

>26 LizzieD: Yeah, makes "78" sound like a snap of the fingers, don't it? *smooch*

>25 bell7: Hi Mary! That's more-or-less what I try to do with the Pearl Rules, even though the ones I've been Pearl-Ruling aren't all that bad nowadays.

Happy new thread!

>33 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori, it's amazing how fast the last one flew past.

>31 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, happy nothing-doing day. I haven't Wordled yet, too little caffeine on board. I'm just pokey today.

Wordle 403 3/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
It was easy with that pattern. AEONS, MIRTH, MOTTO

>35 richardderus: Excellent Wordling, Richard! Double double letters!

Have a wonderful week!

Karen O

>144 MickyFine: Ehup! Another bb, Mr. RD. I liked Dark Matter a lot, and have Snowbound and Recursion in amongst the TBRs. Now I must add Upgrade to my most wanted list. Got me with Author Crouch's not-distant future of humans suffering for the hubris of a few visionary souls. Thus it has always been, eh? And continues to be (Putin, Xi, Clarence Thomas, etc.).

>144 MickyFine: I also liked Dark Matter, and enjoyed Recursion more than you did, so Upgrade was already on my radar. Now I need to get it into my hands.

Happy new thread! Love olive trees! We had three beauties when we lived in Southern California. They were messy as heck, but I didn't care. They were probably part of the groves planted by the early settlers so not nearly as old and venerable as the one up top, but still. If I can find a pic of them, I'll post on my thread.

>30 richardderus: I really liked Dark Matter but just couldn't get into Recursion for some reason. Glad to know he's got a new one that sounds good. Onto the TBR list it goes.

ETA I scored a copy of Upgrade from the library! The borrow period is only 7 days because, they say, it's a popular book, but I can get through it in that time no problem if your experience (staying up till 4 am to read it) holds true for me.

Happy new one! I just love the twist of the olive tree trunk.

>40 drneutron: Hi doc, thanks! She's very graceful, for all her age.

>39 Storeetllr: Oh, I really hope it grabs you straight away Mary. I'm not sure what makes a book exert that power. I'm guessing it's a different thing for different readers.

>38 swynn: I'll bet you'll have a wait, Steve, unless you give in and buy it. I expect you'll find it well worth it, though.

>37 weird_O: Wow, you're moving aside directly into the path of 'em, no?

Yeah, it's so seldom to the overall good of the many, though. I'm not sure the vision of prfection that humans chase isn't proof that there is in fact a gawd. A malevolent, sadistic one.

>36 klobrien2: Thank you, Karen O.! I'm pretty pleased with my spotting the double-double, too.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear.

*smooch*

Good morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

Nasty heat today. At least we didn't get rain overnight, so Jenna will be able to do a bit of mowing this a.m.

edited to add: No 31 is up.

*smooch*

>29 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD!

>30 richardderus: My local library has several of Crouch's books, although not that one. I will have to get to them soon!

Have a thunderous Thursday! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

Burgoine #52

Kill For Me (Victor the Assassin #8) by Tom Wood

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Lethal assassin Victor lands in the middle of a Guatemalan cartel war in the latest nonstop thriller from the international bestselling author of The Final Hour.

Victor is the killer who always delivers...for the right price. And Heloise Espinosa, patron of Guatemala's largest cartel, is ready and willing to pay him just that to eliminate the competition--her sister. Heloise has been battling Maria for control of the cartel in an endless and bloody war. Now Victor decides who survives. An easy job if it weren't for the sudden target on his back.

Victor's not the only one on the hunt. Someone else has Maria in their crosshairs and will do anything to get the kill. In the middle of cartel territory with enemies closing in from all sides, Victor must decide where to put the bullet before one is placed in his head. His only chance at survival is to team up with the one person who may be as deadly as he is...

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know how it's always the civil wars with the most casualties? You know why that is? Family hates with more passion than any other enemy. And Victor the Assassin has just taken a job to kill one sibling at the behest of another. (They're criminals. Don't stress.)

You don't often find series novels based around an amoral assassin that are simply unputdownable. This is one, though the pinnacle is still Tom Ripley. We're not up that high. But the story being told, with all its rage-fueled violence, is really shockingly...moral! The right things happen to the proper victims, the best thing that could ever happen being the end of this feud between crime-boss sisters and it does.

In a very unexpected way. Lots of fun to read, perfect for the beach, and written with a deftness that renders the experience invisible and effortless. (But *really* violent...so much so I was squicked a time or two, which is why it's not a higher rating.)

Thursday morning *smooch*

Pearl Rule #36

The Happier Dead by Ivo Stourton

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In the very near future the rich are able to extend their lives indefinitely, but the price of eternal youth is one that they can get others to pay. A political thriller, crime novel and stunning SF story.

The Great Spa sits on the edge of London, a structure visible from space. The power of Britain on the world stage rests in its monopoly on "The Treatment", a medical procedure which can transform the richest and most powerful into a state of permanent physical youth. The Great Spa is the place where the newly young immortals go to revitalise their aged souls. In this most important and secure of facilities, a murder of one of the guests threatens to destabilise the new order, and DCI Oates of the Metropolitan police is called in to investigate.

In a single day Oates must unravel the secrets behind the Treatment and the long ago disappearance of its creator, passing through a London riven with disorder and corruption, where adverts are transmitted directly into the imagination. As a night of widespread rioting takes hold of the city he moves towards a final climax which could lead to the destruction of the Great Spa, his own ruin, and the loss of everything he holds most dear.

A political thriller, crime novel and stunning SF story.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I gave up on p92.

There's nothing really *wrong* with the writing. There's nothing too terribly right with it, either. I think anyone who liked Brave New World or Altered Carbon would be okay with it. I found its Englishness wearing, the sheer and evident disdain for Muslims and Africans got on my tits (as they say Over There). It's like the US's homegrown Brad Thor and ilk with different targets.

I confess that I read the ending. It was as I expected, remembering I stopped reading on p92. I don't think that's a great recommendation, myownself, but there is a certain charm in knowing what the end of a thing will be before it arrives. I just am no longer in that place in my reading life. I want to be surprised (rare) or contented with the journey (far more frequent) to get where I expected to go. I was not contented and that is not fixable after a certain point.

>47 katiekrug: Happy Thrusday, Katie! *smooch*

>45 alcottacre: It's Crouch's latest book so I expect your library will be some time actually getting it, given manufacturing bottlenecks.

I'm pleased you're interested in The Lisbon Syndrome, too, Stasia! *smooch*

>44 karenmarie: We're expecting an oppressively hot day today, Horrible, but thundershowers this evening should break that cycle at last. I hope, anyway.

I'll be around directly to see Hamilton's handiwork.

>43 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita!

>48 richardderus: Skipping that one. Sounds less than impressive. Nice use of the colloquial, btw.
Hoping Thursday is treating you well.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Happy New Thread. I appreciate you keeping my thread warm while I was gone. We had a good time. Hiking, biking, brewery-hopping and some reading. Yep, heavenly. I like the olive tree up there. Wow! There was an old sycamore at one of the breweries we visited that dated to 1865. Sycamore Sid.

I hope everything is going well for you, my friend.

>51 msf59: Hiya Mark! "Sycamore Sid"! Is it that brewery's logo? I think it ought to be.

Having a lovely, if very restricted, time...it's so effin' hot and sticky that I spend most of my time indoors.

>50 Helenliz: I suspect that's wise of you. Thank you for the colloquial validation, BTW.
***
Wordle 404 3/6

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Four of five letters, I'd've been embarrassed not to get the word in 3. AEONS, MIRTH, STOMP

Happy Thursday, Richard! Wow! You sure are cranking out those reviews!

>52 richardderus: Good job on wordle! By some miracle I got it in two tries.

>53 figsfromthistle: TWO! Wow, that's luck I seldom see.

Happy Thursday, Anita. I'm in a productive phase so I'm enjoying it.

Good morning, Richard! Count me as a Dark Matter lover too. I'll read Upgrade at some point, but I won't rush right out to pay a new book price for it.
If I ever had a Wordle touch, I've lost it. Got this one in 6, and I have no idea why I didn't do better. *sigh* But *smooch*.

>55 LizzieD: Wow, 6 feels not good enough? I say not-X is all good. I hope the idea of the game itself isn't giving you a sense of pressure....

Anyway, good decision on the Crouch. I say it's a library borrow myownself.

Words with double letters are my Wordle downfall

>57 magicians_nephew: Two sets of them must be special torture!

Happy new thread Richard!

That's an amazing tree up there at the top. I have to say I'm not a fan of olives. Once, just once, I had some that hadn't been pickled in brine (I'm definitely not a fan of brine) and they were delicious! Sadly I've never been able to find any since. So actually, I am a fan of olives; just not the ones in brine.

>52 richardderus: I was not impressed by today's Wordle word. It took me five tries.

The black, or ripe, ones aren't usually brined here. I like brine so I'm good either way, but the olive in general is a delight of mine. I'm happiest eating them as whole fruits but will chomp on the salad versions with the greatest pleasure.

Their oil is a delight to me as well.

Five is still not X, need I mention....

We love olives here, too. Last night we had some delicious fresh rolls with kalamata olives baked in, which we dunked in some slightly peppery EVOO. What a treat!

Happy newish thread, Richard, and thank you for that stunning tree up top. I'm sure it's actually a goddess. My MIL had some olive trees in her yard and they used to collect olives to press for oil. The trees are gone which is a very sore spot for us. They're magnificent.

I had a Mediterranean Greek Salad for lunch yesterday which featured Kalamata olives. Yum!

Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend, Richard!

>63 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! You do as well. *smooch*

>62 AMQS: Hi Anne! I can see that being QUITE a sore spot. I hope it isn't something political...but boo hiss no matter what.

>61 laytonwoman3rd: I do so love good bread dunked in EVOO, Linda3rd. It's not something they do in Italy or Greece, but I think it's a great idea. Happy to share my favorite oil-dip: 1T EVOO, 1t ETA dried tarragon, 1/2t each ETA dried thyme and fennel seed steeped at least overnight.

My favorite EVOO dip is EVOO, a ribbon of really good balsamic swirled through, and freshly grated parmesan. *smacks lips*

Friday greetings, RD!

‘Morning, Rdear, and happy Friday to you.

>46 richardderus: But the story being told, with all its rage-fueled violence, is really shockingly...moral! The right things happen to the proper victims, the best thing that could ever happen being the end of this feud between crime-boss sisters and it does. I became inured to extreme violence with Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake, Jack Reacher and Orphan X. All those series worked for me. Funny, because I remember reading Silence of the Lambs and was completely squicked out, to use your phrase. I have evolved. *smile* And I’m reading a crime boss series right now although there’s much more romance than violence. Who’da thunk?

>48 richardderus: I want to be surprised (rare) or contented with the journey (far more frequent) to get where I expected to go. 👍

>52 richardderus: Your three enforces the strategy of not necessarily using previous clues to get where you’re going. Bravo.

*smooch*

Wordle 405 4/6

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I got it because I was it. AEONS, MIRTH, STELE, UPSET

>66 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! Happy to see you moving along down the desensitization trail. It's one of the benefits of aging, I think...realizing there's stuff to care about and much more stuff not to.

*smooch*

>65 katiekrug: Ooo that's a delicious one, indeed! I'm quite a fan of the balsamic family. Some of the really old ones, the $40 bottles, are like liqueurs in their potency. A tiny drizzle of one of those on a hazelnut fondant then dipped in dark chocolate ganache...
...
...
...I think I had a crisis.

Anyway, happy Friday!

I got freaked out reading the Harry Potter books because in one of them he had to write "lines" one thousand times or something and each line he wrote cut into his skin like a razor blade. Can't imagine what kids made of it. I almost put the book down -- physically ill.

145 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.

I CHECKED THIS ONE OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. USE THIS FREE SERVICE OFTEN. THEY'RE ALREADY PAID FOR.

My Review: I was hoping this would be a five-star read. I hope that every time I open a book, albeit often with a forlorn sense of the hopelessness of such a thing. But this one, with Queer desire and relationship on offer? Yes please! Gimme!

Mori and Thaniel, the men in question, are indeed heading down Relationship Road. In no kind or sort of hurry, mind you. They live in *London, *Victorian times, with...magic? sort-of kind-of magic...that involves seeing the multiverse and manipulating your present to bring about a future you like the best from the possibilities. I love this idea, and the use of this trope alone would've gotten the book four stars!

The way it's handled is also really compelling to me, with Mori making his odd little machines to nudge reality into new shapes. I was also fascinated by Thaniel's kinesthesia...D# is yellow, for example...but too little was made of this for my taste, more of a small grace note. In particular I was sad that Thaniel didn't twig to something he heard being the proof he needed of what was happening around him...but he was simply too stressed out, I think was the reasoning behind that failure.

Quite a lot that I missed first time round.

I was sure I recalled this read pretty accurately, and was mildly taken aback by the amount of information I glided past before...for example, the way Thaniel says things to his, um, er, to Grace that, um, kind-of unhappen as the ending approaches...and now, on a years-later re-read seem *hugely*significant* and almost spoilery.

But that's because I really already knew them, and how they'd play out.

So what would I call this read, a re-read or a new read? It's kind of both. I've read The Kingdoms between that initial experience and this one, I'm hip to the author's tricks in a way I wasn't before; I was revisiting the story because I'm reviewing The Half Life of Valery K now, as well. It's clear as crystal that any author develops stylistic tropes, won't call them tics unless they irk me somehow, and Author Pulley's a one for hiding relationship signals in plain sight. It's a bit disappointing that Grace, after her *horrible* behavior, isn't made to suffer any consequences. Given that there's a second book with Thaniel and Mori at its center, which I haven't read, that could be possible.

I've got the best of both worlds, then, revisiting an older read that's altered in interesting ways in light of later reads by the same author. It made this meditation on the etheric reality of chance and destiny intertwining so much richer than it was at first.

>69 magicians_nephew: Ah yes, Dolores Umbridge...the most vile character in the series. Margaret Thatcher in a witch suit.

It was effective, though, since we both remember it two decades on.

>69 magicians_nephew: >71 richardderus: I don't much believe that kids are familiar with writing lines as punishment --- could be wrong. Those of us who remember though ("Due to circumstances beyond my control I failed to remember to report to the auditorium on a rainy afternoon." 100 times) really feel the pain.
Margaret Thatcher in a witch suit. --- perfect!

Hmmm. I've seen *Filagree* offered as a Kindle deal fairly often in the past and skipped it. Next time I might not. Thanks, Richard.

>72 LizzieD: Hi Peggy, you'll probably like Watchmaker if you do get around to it...but the way the author slides the memory differences/things said "unhappening" might not make it light reading.

Idiotic punishment, if you ask me. I resented the pettifogging rules so much that I incurred it, though.

Happy newish thread, Richard. You’re reviewing some tempting books.

Early morning greetings, RD!

>69 magicians_nephew:, >71 richardderus:, >72 LizzieD: and etc. I had to write lines in a 7th grade Language Arts/Social Studies 2-period brainwashing fest (1965-1966), the brainwashing part being when I think back to what Mr. Johnson had us learn, watch, and listen to. Especially abhorrent was Up With People. *shudder* The lines in question were part of Language Arts, not punishment, and I remember faking sick on a Friday morning to stay home and write the lines I should have been writing all semester to get credit. I even changed pens and writing styles, although in hindsight I probably wasn’t as clever as I thought I was. Still got credit, though.

>70 richardderus: Read it, thought it okay, and released it to the wild.

*smooch*

Wordle 406 4/6

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Weirdest one yet. AEONS, MIRTH...nothing?! Not ONE?!?...FLUKE, BLUFF

>67 richardderus: I posted mine for yesterday on my thread. I got it in two, but only because I had a very lucky first guess--4 correct letters with one in the right place. After rearranging, I only needed to add the first letter.

>77 thornton37814: *chilly silence*

How...delightful. Yes. Indeed.

>75 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible...writing lines like that, for a project, doesn't seem to me to be an excessive ask. Do this sentence 100 times is.

I don't think Pulley in general will offer much you're eager to have. No harm, no foul! *smooch*

>74 Familyhistorian: Temptation is my game, Meg. *biblio-leer*

Happy Saturday, Richard. Another beautiful day here in Chicagoland. I am going to stay close to home and tend to some chores and get some reading in. I am really enjoying The Cold Cold Ground.

Thanks, Mark, and a delight-filled day sounds like it's ahead for us both. I'm pretty pleased with the new Prime series, Paper Girls, which is based on the GN series. The first episode's got the stakes right.

Enjoy the puttering and reading and the nice summer weather (for a change).

>80 richardderus: Oh I'm glad to hear you're enjoying Paper Girls. Haven't quite figured out when we'll slot it into our viewing schedule but I'm looking forward to watching it.

>81 MickyFine: The first two episodes are pretty good indeed. I haven't read the books, though, so there's no framework for me to judge how faithful they were to the spirit.

Hoping they work for you as well as they did for me.

Liked "Paper Girls" a lot as a GN, looking forward to sampling the TV series

>83 magicians_nephew: I think you'll enjoy the watch, Jim.

You're making me wish I had Prime, Richard. Another Papergirls fan here. I found today's Wordle surprisingly easy. Guess it depends on your strategy going in.

I'm sure you could rent an episode from Amazon without buying into Prime, Meg. It would be worth a few dollars to see what the fuss is about...?

>80 richardderus: I've just started the Paper Girls graphic novels, and I just watched the first episode of the show! Wow! I'm loving them both.

Karen O

>87 klobrien2: I'm so delighted to hear it! I like, as noted, the series, but haven't read the GNs. Someone who's experiencing both together has a great p.o.v.

Just popping over to say hello!

>70 richardderus: The watchmaker of Filigree Street sounds fun. I think we've have that around the house somewhere.

Wordle 407 4/6

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*sigh* Stuck at 4 again. AEONS, MIRTH, GARUM, CRAMP

>89 SandDune: I'm glad to see you here, Rhian! I suggest going on a search round and about for it...good fun indeed.

'Morning, RDear.

>90 richardderus: Your 4 beats my 5. I played alphabet soup with champ and clamp.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>92 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible. I'm glad I got it at all...but your alphasoup ideas were logical, had I not eliminated them by excluding the second letters.

*smooch*

JULY IN REVIEW

Thirty-three reviews posted on my blog...annual goal upped to 288, from 250. I'm happiest that I read Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath because, after really feeling verschmeckeled about why Putin's doing all this idiotic stuff, I am finally enlightened: Money. Unimaginably immense piles of money. As much money as the US Government spends in a year level of money. Also...bonus!...Brexit is now explained as well, since London's Putin's favored laundry for his ill-got gains and the EU has some serious anti-laundering laws.

Also: China. Too chilling to think about...the road-and-rail development they're paying for will enable Russia to turn off Europe's gas meter entirely after they're through exterminating the Uighurs. Deeply chilling stuff.

Lots of deeply ~meh~ novels, a few bright sparks like Katie's recommended Flying Solo and Remarkably Bright Creatures, a few non-fiction reads that were okay but I'll forget in a month (eg, The Draper Touch and Nazi Wives), some I've already forgotten (eg, You'll Always Be White To Me: A Memoir and A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings), and some re-reads I quite enjoyed (eg, A Trail Through Time and Arabella). MUCH more productive month than I expected it to be given the pace of June's #PrideMonth festivities.

In >8 richardderus:, I've put up a list of August...#WomenInTranslationMonth...books I want to x off my DRC-reviews-due guilt list. I left a few July entries behind as well, at least two of which (Denial: How We Hide, Ignore, and Explain Away Problems and Gun Barons) I want to get on to in order to make my midterms project happen.

So, how was your month?

>94 richardderus: You are posting so many reviews, Richard dear, and even upping your 2022 goal!
I can dodge the BBs, as it is rare to find a book here that is available in Dutch translation ;-)

I had a very good reading month with 25 books read, and giving 3 books 4½ stars. Only 2 of those available in English translation.

>94 richardderus: - Ooooh, I got a shout-out! Go me!

*smooch*

>94 richardderus: Congrats on a stunning July and thoughtful recap. I honestly do not understand why Putin would require more money than I assume he already has, but at least from his viewpoint Brexit is explained. I suppose it’s explained for many rich and influential people, and it doesn’t say much for the people who actually voted for Brexit in a fit of boredom or pique. IMO, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

My month was a continuation of bodice rippers, although I’m now calling them extreme romances. *smile* I’ll probably finish one more before midnight, so am waiting to post stats.

In the meantime, I've put up No 32.

>96 katiekrug: It's an "out" this time, but on current TBR-fattening performance I can easily see it becoming an "at"...my eyeblinks aren't regenerating, I'm not the Doctor, and no studly young vampires are offering me Eternity to read in.

More's the pity.

Your aim has been, however, excellent for a while now. I console myself that I gotcha with Did Ye Hear...such a terrific read!

>95 FAMeulstee: Only a few good Dutch books ever make it into English, for some nutso reason. I can never reproduce in my mind the mental process that leads publishers to pass on some translations but pursue others that, um, don't seem resonant to my American reader's soul.

>98 richardderus: I'm convinced that people who make decisions about "what customers want" are living in some alternate universe. And not just with regard to books being published or translated.

I suppose with a steady diet of advertisements, I might *think* I wanted some of what they produce - until I tried it and was disappointed, that is.

It's amazingly easy to save money, when the PTB refuse to sell what you regard as good ;-)

>99 ArlieS: It's amazingly easy to save money, when the PTB refuse to sell what you regard as good ;-)

Yeup! +1! Abso-blinkin-lutely agreed.

>97 karenmarie: I'll come have a gander at #32 directly. Your bodice-ripper streak is ongoing! Somehow I thought it would've burned itself out. But hey, needs must....

*smooch*

Yikes! Three BBs in two days.

I got today's Wordle in 3, with only 2 clues from the first two words, neither of which were in the right place (Adieu, stoRy, CRAMP). I have no idea how I managed it, except perhaps being a woman and having experienced them monthly for 35+ years of my time on this earth the word is well-known to me?

Hope your Sunday is fabulous!

>101 Storeetllr: What?! Only three?! I was sure I reviewed four books. *preens*

Today's word gave me one, for sure. *grumble* But I suspect your reason for familiarity is a big boost in getting the word in so few.

Have a splendid Sunday, Mary! *smooch*

>90 richardderus: I was happy to get it in 4. Don't grumble!

My July was very busy, first traveling with very little reading, then getting back into real life. Is it usually this busy? Well, at least the reading picked up, probably because my library holds started coming in again and I have to keep up!

Happy Sunday, Richard. Thanks for the heads up on Paper Girls. I had my eye on that one. I remember enjoying 2 or 3 of the GNs. Do you get Hulu? If so, check out the British series "Taboo" with the wonderful Tom Hardy. I am about 3 eps in and really like it.

>104 msf59: I shared Hulu w/Rob for a while but when he went to CIA we had to economize and dropped it. Maybe we can pick it back up when he comes home next year. I'll add Taboo to our list, thanks!

>103 Familyhistorian: Well, reading would be about all I could bear to do after the month you've had! Such a lovely trip, but travel demands a lot of energy no matter that it's a fun time doing it.

'Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

>100 richardderus: I've changed it from bodice rippers to extreme romances. But yes, still on the streak. And I've broken down and am trying Kindle Unlimited - 2 months for $4.99, then $9.99/month. Should have done this in May, but better late than never. *smile*

>105 richardderus: Yay to Rob coming home next year.

*smooch*

Hi Horrible! YAY indeed. It'll be nice to be in the same room at the same time for a change.

Hoping the Kindle Unlimited thing works out for you, then. *smooch*

146 40: A Novel by Alan Heathcock

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author Alan Heathcock comes an American myth of the future: a vision of civil war, spectacle, and disaster of biblical proportions.

In a future America ravaged by natural disaster, pandemic, and political unrest, a fundamentalist faction emerges. As the Novae Terrae gain power, enticing civilians with bread and circuses, a civil war breaks out between its members and the US government.

Mazzy Goodwin, a young soldier, only wants to find her little sister, Ava Lynn. One day, she wakes in a bomb crater to find wings emerged from her back. Has she died? Been gifted wings by God? Undergone a military experiment?

The world sees a miracle. Mazzy is coaxed into seeing it as an opportunity: to become the angel-like figurehead of the revolution, in return for being reunited with her sister. Her journey leads her to New Los Angeles, where the Novae have set up the headquarters for their propaganda machine—right in the ruins of Hollywood. Aided by friends old and new, she must navigate a web of deceit while staying true to herself.

Told in sharp, haunting prose, as cinematic as it is precise, Alan Heathcock’s 40 is a dizzyingly fantastical novel about the dangers of blind faith, the temptation of spectacle, and the love of family. In a tale by turns mythic and tragic, one heroine must come to terms with the consequences of her decisions—and face the challenges of building a new world.

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

My Review: Regulars to this blog will recognize the name Alan Heathcock from my warbling my fool lungs out about his collection, Volt: Stories. One big reason for that is that Author Heathcock does not mess around when he makes his imagery work your brain:

"...I knew it'd come to this, you say. I knew I was right. The power of knowing the despair you ordered has finally come to pass makes you feel like a god. Let's be honest. It's what you want. You want this world to collapse. Want people to be every awful thing."

–and–

Grief was a demon of possession. When people talked of time healing wounds, they only meant that over time you become accustomed to that demon inside you, and what at first felt like an invasive presence, alien and nefarious, slowly became integrated into your being, the imp of sorrow crouched within you for the remainder of your days.

I don't know how much clearer the man can be than that. I can feel these words, see the world through their gravity lens, perceive the distorted light that comes from every other direction than the original one to form the ghost of the initial thought behind them.

Which is why I, devout atheist and committed anti-religion crusader, read a whole novel about a post-apocalyptic world run by and for evangelical evil-doers with hearts colder than emptiest space. Which is why I'm here telling you to go and get one of these books, these beautifully designed books (that jacket design!), or to pre-order the Kindle version so you'll open the device tomorrow morning and join Mazzy and Ava Lynn in the hellscape that Jo Sam the evangelist of doom designed and brought forth.

Betrayal is only the beginning of Mazzy's journey. It's certainly true that she's not a trusting, sunny-hearted soul for a single second of her life. Her sister Ava Lynn calls out the only tenderness she allows herself to externalize. The child, whose fate is not ever easy, confounds Mazzy in her extremely self-possessed certainty. Mazzy being incapable of a single sustained good mood for more than the absolute minimum of time, she envies Ava Lynn and vows to protect her. Which, this being a novel, means that Mazzy is unable to do so.

The amount of manipulative chicanery Mazzy experiences after she (unexpectedly and without external stimulus) becomes winged is, of course, the bulk of the novel's action. Her bewingèd state makes her very valuable to the evildoers around Jo Sam the evangelist, unsurprisingly, and so they use Ava Lynn to extort obedience out of Mazzy. The sheer outrage I experienced over this...! It's an effective tool, of course, the safety of one's child (dead mother) being hard coded into our protective circle by evolution. That it is never a violent threat, "we will hurt her," made me able to continue to read the story. They keep Mazzy from being with Ava Lynn to keep her working for their vile controlling cause.

The day dawns, of course, when Mazzy is no longer suitable for their use; a series of things occurs that, in several moments, made me think I was being played by Author Heathcock. It's a pleasure to report that he played fair...but the ending of the story is still a major surprise. Yes, I saw the twist coming, but I think that's to be expected. A truly successful twist, in this case, means the expected event occurs but something you-the-reader would've dismissed as improbable happens after. Job done, Author Heathcock.

I'll say that, after reading many, many chosen-one narratives and even more post-apocalyptic religion-used-for-evil tales over the past seven decades, I'm not sorry I read this one. I think it's well-made and well-written, I suspect it's something the author has allowed to simmer for a very long time before committing to words for others to read, and I'm pleased with the results he has achieved.

>108 richardderus: Alan liked my review! Yay!
***
Wordle 408 5/6

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Irritating letter. AEONS, MIRTH, TRAWL, APART, QUART

mmm. Not a measure we usually use. I got the last 4 letters and must have mentally gone through every letter that could fill the first position, none of them made a word. Finally the penny dropped.

Wordle 408 4/6

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>110 Helenliz: ...and you STILL took one fewer tries than I did to get there!

Kindle Monthly Deal: The Little Cornish Kitchen by Jane Linfoot. One to appeal to you AND Rob, what with the setting and the cooking...

Ha! Payback!

>112 katiekrug: LOL

Rob bought it the second I told him about it, so you win.

>113 richardderus: - I'm ridiculously pleased to hear that!

>114 katiekrug: You know what inordinately pleased me? Rob sending me a text saying "she used 'complEmentary' when she meant 'complImentary! grr" (I had to go look at the book to see what he was talking about but he's correct)

And the idea of a plus-sized English mermaid just...there are no words. I've already had 99¢-worth of fun from this. Your stock rose on the Biblioexchange!

*preens*

Hi Richard. I wordled and phoodled in 3 today! Luck for sure but I'll take 'em!

>117 jessibud2: Hi Shelley. Three, goodness gracious me! How delightful.

>116 katiekrug: *smooch*

>1 richardderus: wow wow wow. That is impressive. Also, I *love* the word fecund.

Yes...post #1 is where I am up to so far. I shall return :)

>94 richardderus: Great July in review!

I have Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath on my radar and hope to read it this year. It sounds like a very important book to read.

Anyhow, happy Tuesday.

>120 figsfromthistle: Oh, get that one into your brainbox soon, Anita. So much of what's going on makes a lot of sense once one does.

Happy Tuesday back at'cha.

>119 LovingLit: Hi Megan! She's an impressive old grande dame, isn't she. Seen more civilizations rise and fall than we've had hot breakfasts. And "fecund" is a great word, I agree, one that was coined for beings like that one.

*smooch* see ya later

Wordle 409 5/6

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This one was hard to believe. AEONS, MIRTH, FOLLY, DOILY, COYLY

>70 richardderus: That one is already in the BlackHole or I would be adding it again. Thanks for the reminder, RD!

>108 richardderus: Added to the BlackHole. I still cannot buy any books though and my local library has nothing by Alan Heathcock, more's the pity.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD!

>123 alcottacre: The gravity anomaly that is your book-concupiscence list is truly epic, Stasia. I'm so pleased I get to pile more on to it, too!

>122 richardderus: - Second day in a row that I beat you?! Unheard of! ;-) Smooch...

>122 richardderus: Well, so much for 3-try Wordle days. I completely crashed and burned on today's. Grrrrrrr.

>126 Storeetllr: Completely understandable, given this crummy word.

>125 jessibud2: ...where *is* that voodoo-dolly-making kit when I need it...

>122 richardderus: Got your warning, Richard. I ended up with a "phew" on today's Wordle.

Phew > skunked, Meg!

>122 richardderus: Indeed, an completely unknown word to me. Even the dictionairy I use didn't have the word.
The next Wordle is much easier :-)

>130 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! I'm very pleased that COYLY was unknown to you. What a revolting concept that ugly set of sounds represent.

Happy Hump Day!

147 Sphinx by Anne Garréta

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sphinx is the remarkable debut novel, originally published in 1986, by the incredibly talented and inventive French author Anne Garréta, one of the few female members of Oulipo, the influential and exclusive French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints, and whose ranks include Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, among others.

A beautiful and complex love story between two characters, the narrator, "I," and their lover, A***, written without using any gender markers to refer to the main characters, Sphinx is a remarkable linguistic feat and paragon of experimental literature that has never been accomplished before or since in the strictly-gendered French language.

Sphinx is a landmark text in the feminist and LGBT literary canon appearing in English for the first time.

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

My Review: First-novel longueurs are here, but they are eclipsed by the astonishingly ambitious project that it represents. It's not a spoiler, or if it is it's already occurred in the blurb above, to say that a sexy novel about lovers written without any gender markers is a very different challenge in English than in French, a very strictly gendered language.

Translator Ramadan took a trait that eased Author Garréta's trajectory to accomplish this complex feat, the use of a grammatical tense that English does not have and that makes the speaker sound ever so pretentious, and then she runs with its effect on the prose.
Soul heavy from too much knowing, body tired from feeling pensive and powerless at the same time, so riven by this obsessive ennui that nothing, or almost nothing, can distract from it anymore. Back then, if I recall correctly, I used to describe the world as a theater where processions of corpses danced in a macabre ball of drives and desires. My contempt and ennui did not, however, keep me from observing how this dance dissolved into an amorous waltz. Languid nights at the whim of syncopated rhythms and fleeting pulses; the road to hell was lit with pale lanterns; the bottom of the abyss drew closer indefinitely; I moved through the smooth insides of a whirlwind and gazed at deformed images of ecstatic bodies in the slow, hoarse death rattle of tortured flesh.

That is, I think you'll all agree with me, pretty mannered writing. I like it, but then I would; the semi-colons, the layering of clauses...well! My Christmas came early with this read! It felt like I was reading a good translation of Proust.

Yes, that is so a compliment.

What shines through in this croquembouche of a story is the way that eliminating the simple fact of gender enables a love story, a passionate, consummated love story, to take on layers of meaning that otherwise wouldn't be available to readers. It enables the narrator to muse on the unsuitability of their fellow theology student, a man, as a target for a fling, a little light sexual fun...but because the fellow student is set on becoming a celibate priest, or because he is a man? It doesn't necessarily matter, but the two possibilities are very different even today. They were even moreso in the France of 1986.

And now we butt up against the one real issue I can see someone taking with this read: A***, lover of our narrator, is Black. It's a fact that we're made aware of, and that plays a significant role in the narrator's attraction to and arousal with A***'s body. I'm not quite convinced it's exoticization, in the fetishistic sense. It's present in the narrator's arousal, though I can't see that being any other way...after all, the object of one's lust is always possessed of traits and qualities that are arousing, including physical ones; and there is not a single thing about the narrator's other appraisals of A*** that suggest a less-than-genuine interest in all their facets. What is more troubling is that the ending is what it is. There is a racialized account of violence and the actions in question take place in Harlem. Granted that the book appeared in 1986 and that was a historically extra-violent time in Harlem, in New York, and in multiple other major US cities as the crack epidemic was reaching its peak.

Still, it's a thing that is present in the story and that could present a very different impression to a Person of Color. I give the information to you for your consideration. I lived in New York City at that time and was routinely very cautious for my personal safety, so it's permaybehaps down to my own familiarity with the milieu that prevents me from seeing it as anything but a reflection of the reality I lived here, and then.

I will say that what happened, and how it went down, knocked a star off my rating. My respect for the project of creating an ungendered love story that still contained passionate pleasure is undimmed. It's the manner in which Author Garréta chose to dismount the story-horse that did not meet with my whole-hearted approval.

Nothing is ever exactly as one would wish it to be, though, is it.

148 In Concrete by Anne Garréta

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Garréta’s first new novel in a decade follows two young sisters who are dragged into one adventure after another when their father finds himself in possession of a concrete mixer. As he seeks to modernize every aspect of their lives, disaster strikes when the younger sister, Poulette, is subsumed by concrete.

Through puns, wordplay, and dizzying verbal effect, Garréta reinvents the novel form and blurs the line between spoken and written language in an attempt to modernize—or fundamentally undercut—the elasticity of communication.

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

My Review: I'm old enough to remember reading Zazie dans le Métro by Raymond Queneau during the early-1980s height of Valley-Girl speak. It was snortingly urged on me by an older film-school-attending friend, whose encounter with Queneau's 1959 breakout novel was prompted by seeing Louis Malle's 1960 film of the same title. He said that Queneau did it better than the Valley Girls. I was, after reading Barbara Wright's translation, inclined to agree.

So here's Anne Garréta pulling the same stunt as Queneau, her spiritual godparent and co-founder of Oulipo, to which organization she belongs, pulled sixty years before. Is that hommage or le plagiat? After chortlesnorting my way through In Concrete, I'll go with hommage and a darn funny one at that.

I'm not at all sure, to be honest, that our narrator is a sex-linked girl; there's nothing in the text that specifically says she is, and there's a certain je ne sais quoi to the narrative voice that leads me to wonder if she isn't trans. It just *feels* that way. And given Queneau's Zazie has impeccable gaydar, ascertaining Gabriel is queer in seconds flat and constantly offering him chances to own up to it (he's a married drag entertainer, so there's your ambiguity for you) which he declines repeatedly (it was 1959), it would fit well with Mme Garréta's presumptive model and her earlier project (see above) for this to be so but unsaid.

Anyway. Manic energy, fun little not-quite-right malapropisms in a precocious kid's foul mouth, a family life that (for once) is loving while still being supremely dysfunctional...and all just as French as bœuf bourguignon. Does that sound like fun? I did to me, and I'm delighted to report that Translator Ramadan delivers verbal pyrotechnics that land just right. I know they did in French, not from having read them...waaay too advanced for me!...but because they were lauded by French critics for their anarchic jubilance. Having them come anywhere close to the original is a major achievement. Though not a surprise, given the nature of her translation of Sphinx as a linguistic exercise in French coming through in English as well.

Here, try this piece:

Lucky, they say, are those to whom the favor of the gods—or if not the favor of the gods then paternal klutziness—grants the privilege of experiencing things that deserve to be scribed!

Lucky also, it seems, are those who are entrusted to scribe on the tablets the things that deserved to be recorded, such as paternal klutziness and lapidary scatastrophes!

And even luckier are those, like Poulette and me, who are given the double privilege of finding themselves encased in greasy mortar and feeding the koalas.

Yup, the koalas . . .

Don't ask me why koalas . . . Can't you see it snot a good time?!

As for klutziness, if you don't know what that is, let's just say to keep it short that it's the specialty of generals, of top brass and rulers. But snot just them. Klutziness worms its way into everything. No need to be a high roller to be swimming in it. Klutziness has no end, no limit, and it's within the reach of any ol' poodle.

Epic klutziness, imperial klutziness, the lurid panache of klutziness pushed to heroic apogee and even to entropic scatastrophe—I fear we're the last of the klutzes.

We're not the last, are we, but we might just be looking at 'em.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Great review of 40: A Novel. I thought the author sounded familiar and I was correct- I loved his story collection Volt from a few years ago, (2013). This new one sound terrific. I hope the week is going well.

>134 msf59: Hi Mark, thank you re: review...it's a delight of a read.

'Morning, RDear.

Yesterday got away from me, today will too because it's Jenna's birthday. I have noted Sphinx and will come back to the review a bit later, but now it's off to make scratch buttermilk waffles.

*smooch*

>132 richardderus: >133 richardderus: I think I would read those books, if my local library had them, just for the word play!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today. Off to eat breakfast!

>137 alcottacre: I can not conceive a Texas public library investing in French translations. I just can't. But hey, maybe Dallas has them and would ILL them...Deep Vellum is local to them, after all.

>136 karenmarie: Scratch buttermilk waffles?!?! I'll be there in a half hour. Make extra.

Wordle 410 4/6

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Mary's troublesome letter FTW!! AEONS, MIRTH, COUTH, YOUTH

>139 richardderus: heh, glad I could help in some small way. Did you know they accepted FOUTH and ROUTH? That's what I get for playing pre-caffeinated.

>140 bell7: ...!!!...

They mean the same thing, in 15th-centurese...abundance. Just use abundance, I'd say to anyone who used either of those ugly survivors. There are certain charms to the French Academy's stranglehold on neologism. Weeds out and keeps out the uglier ends of lexical misbehavior.

>140 bell7: They accept a lot of strange words but if you check Wordlebot, it will let you know if either of them are on the list of 2,309 that are actual responses.

>142 MickyFine: There are over 11,000 real five-letter words in English and they accept them all, but just not for the final answer.

Happy to see your post!

>143 richardderus: Whoops! Posted and only talked to Mary. How rude of me. *apology smooches*

I hope your A/C has made the day pleasant. I'll try to send our grey and drizzly weather winging your way soon. I had soup for lunch, it was that level of cool.

>144 MickyFine: *hmf*

I'm just climbing into my dirty old bed-cardy. The temp control was removed by the management to keep people from using the "December Tundra" setting...it's below that, and I am chilly! How weird is that...and no, I have no fever, can taste my food (dinner *was* chili and refritos, so there's that), and feel perfectly fine.

*smooch*

>139 richardderus: You did one better than me. It took me five tries. I should have really gotten it because after all I am quite youthful :)

Happy mid week, Richard!

>146 figsfromthistle: You ARE? Goodness...here I thought those were all behind you. Huh, go know from this.

>133 richardderus: You got me with that one, RD, antennae out already seeking it out.

Stay warm dear fellow.

>148 PaulCranswick:
*brrr*

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Still hot outside and rather cold inside?
In Spain they have a limit now, A/C at 27°C and for heating in winter 19°C, because of the energy shortage.
That winter limit would not be a problem for me, but I am glad I can still sleep in room that is kept under 21°C.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I am getting ready to start Young Mungo. I know you gave it a resounding 5 stars and I am not expecting a "love story". Grins...

Bree and Jack are coming over shortly. They are having their roof done at their house. I will suffer silently...

'Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

I'm sorry that management has removed the temp control.

When Jenna moved home and took over the guest bedroom, we had to compromise on 72F for the upstairs - I wanted 75F and she wanted 69F. I use extra blankets and she uses fewer blankets.

Not much going on here. Day after Jenna's birthday. We still do have homemade pumpkin pie with scratch crust. Not much going on at all. I like it that way...

*smooch*

>132 richardderus:
>133 richardderus:

Those sound like fun, and the sort of thing where a translation has to be just as creative as the original. I'm aware of, but haven't seen, the film Zazie dans le Métro. Maybe I'll start with that.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD!

Wordle 411 3/6

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Getting four of five letters in my two traditional starter words was priceless. AEONS, MIRTH, RHYME

>154 alcottacre: *smooch* It's Thursday, so it'll be Just Fine.

>153 swynn: Greetings, Steve! About Zazie...it's an anarchic story, fun and funny...but it's Louis Malle, you'll feel the sadness and desperation, too. I hope In Concrete gives you a warm happy, too.

>152 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, happy Day After. I'm quite sure you're snug as a bug in a rug under those blankies. I'm also sure that Jenna's sweating her way through the nights until her thermostat adjusts.

The temperature control knobs removal was, in the aggregate, a good decision. Most of the population here isn't really capable of making good decisions about practical matters. These are 7,500 BTU units. After 90° they can't keep up with the desire to feel cold, only cooler, or the condensers freeze in all the water they're trying to wring out.

>151 msf59: *aaawww* Poor Grandpa, forced into proximity with his darlings! My heart weeps for you.

Sweet Thursday, indeed, ya big softie!

>150 FAMeulstee: Thursday orisons, Anita! I'm not in the same climate as poor Katie is, being next to the beach, but I'm pretty hot here...almost 32C. It's sticky heat, and that makes every degree of air temperature cling to you, suffocating and sweating but not cooling one's skin by evaporating.

It's logical, what they're doing in Spain, but miserable. In the 1970s, the US set almost those same limits on a/c and heat, and (since I was living in Texas) it felt like punishment. Here in my facility, they've set the thermostats to keep it at 20C. The issue is that, without solar heating most of the day as I'm on the west side of the building, it feels quite cold! (Until 4pm)

>155 richardderus: Excellent Wordling, Richard! I did it in 4, but I had a giant metaphorical lightbulb over my head when I got the answer—it just clicked on all fronts (oh no, mixed metaphors!) Congratulations!

Karen O

>155 richardderus: Second day in a row I got Wordle in three :-)

Wordle 411 3/6
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I use an other word first, and your second word: peony, mirth, rhyme

Wordle 410 3/6
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peony, mirth, youth

>157 richardderus: I didn't know the US had those limits in the 1970s, Richard dear.

>159 FAMeulstee: Yay for three-peating! *smooch*

The US went up against Saudi Arabia in 1973 on Israel's behalf. The Saudis and OPEC retaliated by increasing the baseline price of oil 600%. Our 8mpg (2260L/100km) behemothmobiles became VERY expensive VERY quickly.

Lots of limits were placed on power usage and gasoline refining and so on and so forth. The energy industry realized how much money they could make by pretending their costs went up and so many of the limits stayed in place...even now, the US Gov't *recommends* keeping your home hot in summer and cold in winter, but there aren't any enforcement measures in place.

>158 klobrien2: Wonderful light-bulb-clicking, Karen O.!

>160 richardderus: I remember the Oil Crisis of 1973, the Netherlands did the same.
The speed limit on the highway went to 100 km/h, and the Sundays without cars, or any other vehicle on gas, on the road (autoloze zondag). On the highways people were walking, biking and roller skating on those Sundays. A bit dangerous, as public transport and emergency services did go on as usual.

ETA: Funny, in my mind it was in summer. A quick search tells me those 10 Sundays were from November 1973 until January 1974. Memory is not always reliable.

Hi Richard, a belated happy new thread dear friend.

>162 johnsimpson: Thanks, John! Have a cooler August than July was.

>157 richardderus: (>150 FAMeulstee:) Welcome to Singapore.

Actually, today it's supposed to be cold, with the thermometer predicted to be all the way down to 28ºC (but, of course, 'feels like 32ºC' - instead of the usual 'feels like 40ºC') in the day time (ie the equivalent of normal night time temps. which are usually 27ºC)

Happy Friday, Richard!

Hope your weekend weather cools down for you. We are also in a heat wave. 30C and factoring humidity at 38C yuck!

>161 FAMeulstee: I didn't see this post! I'm sorry, Anita.

I was unaffected by the colder-house winters since I want it to be 60° when I sleep no matter the season. Our country being the size and developed the way it is, "auto-free" days ain't in it. Most of the country, and all of the Sunbelt, was developed for car usage. It was a guarantee of steady profits for GM and Ford.

Have a fantastic Friday, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for the day. Stay warm!

>165 figsfromthistle: I hope it cools down, too, Anita. Yesterday there were "brown-outs" in the late afternoon when a/c usage hit records and most people went home to eat, therefore use electricity.

YUCK on 38C humidex!! YUCKYUCKYUCKYUCK

>164 humouress: You have sussed out the reason I left the South, Nina. This same weather, transported to Austin, Texas, would be normal, if on the cool end. To quote myself from above: YUCKYUCKYUCKYUCK

'Morning, RDear, and happy Friday to you.

No real relief temperature-wise here through next Thursday, alas. Low 90s with heat index of 100-105.

*smooch*

Wordle 412 4/6

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Crappy word, crappy result. AEONS, MIRTH, LURCH, BUGGY

149 The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Seven decades after its original publication, Clarice Lispector’s third novel—the story of a girl and the city her gaze reveals—is in English at last. Lucrécia Neves is ready to marry. Her suitors—soldierly Felipe, pensive Perseu, dependable Mateus—are attracted to her tawdry not-quite-beauty, which is of a piece with Sao Geraldo, the rough-and-ready township she inhabits. Civilization is on its way to this place, where wild horses still roam.

As Lucrécia is tamed by marriage, Sao Geraldo gradually expels its horses; and as the town strives for the highest attainment it can conceive—a viaduct—it takes on the progressively more metropolitan manners that Lucrécia, with her vulgar ambitions, desires too. Yet it is precisely through this woman’s superficiality—her identification with the porcelain knickknacks in her mother’s parlor—that Clarice Lispector creates a profound and enigmatic meditation on “the mystery of the thing.”

Written in Europe shortly after Clarice Lispector’s own marriage, The Besieged City is a proving ground for the intricate language and the radical ideas that characterize one of her century’s greatest writers—and an ironic ode to the magnetism of the material.

I RECEIVED A REVIEW COPY FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Lucrécia Neves of São Geraldo belongs to a place as only a woman who exists in Clarice Lispector's bitter, resentful, passionate novels can. Her town exists, barely, as we learn of her early life in it. During the course of her narration, we learn that São Geraldo is a place in the throes of explosive, exponential growth. This novel's bitterness is directed at the sights of Life, of Nature, being subsumed and defiled by Human actions, for Human aesthetics:

Behold the flower—showing its thick stem, the round corolla: the flower was showing off. But atop the stem it too was untouchable. When it started to wilt, you could look at it directly but by then it would be too late...

The author's organizing principle in this visually driven narrative seems to me to be the manner in which Man, used in the sense of "all humanity" but (*I* think) really aimed at human males, rapes the entire natural universe to get what he needs to be in control. Only then will he be comfortable, on the way to being contented. And I chose that pronoun consciously and exclusively, as I am of the opinion Author Lispector did as well.

It's true that Clarice Lispector, born in Ukraine in 1920 but raised from infancy forward in Recife, Brazil, spoke and thought in a highly gendered language, Portuguese. It's also true that her Jewish family was part of the long patriarchal march of the religion. Clarice was intellectually gifted, gaining admission to the best schools in Pernambuco State, and later into the law school of the national university...I think it's pretty safe to assume she was formatively aware of how little women matter to the men who make the laws and set the course. I see no evidence in anything I've read by or about Author Lispector to suggest she was anything but keenly sensitive to women's absence from the discourses that directly impacted them all her life.

The struggle to reach reality—that’s the main objective of this creature who tries, in every way, to cling to whatever exists by means of a total vision of things. I meant to make clear too the way vision—the way of seeing, the viewpoint—alters reality, constructing it. A house is not only constructed with stones, cement etc. A man’s way of looking constructs it too.

I could be reading into these words what she did not put there herself that "man's way" spoken with an authorial sniff of annoyed disdain. But, reading this least-loved of her novels, I am struck by her absolutely fierce anticipation of the ecofeminist ethos. I can't prove it. I readily admit that her life and its mysteries are outside my knowledge base. But it just *feels* like an angry woman's denunciation of the uncontrolled cancer of unrestrained capitalist "development" destroying the natural world.

I will also note that the critics whose reception of the novel were characterized as "lukewarm" were all males and writing in the 1940s. I suspect they responded to Lucrécia's rejection of two perfectly adequate suitors, Felipe (who disrespected Lucrécia's hometown quite insultingly) and Perseu (whose world was circumscribed by the few words he could be arsed to speak to her), for what felt to a man of the time like frivolous reasons. Mateus, older and "wiser" than Lucrécia, is her eventual ticket to the Big City. Where, mirabile dictu, she discovers that "{e}very man seemed to promise a woman a bigger city," but the promise carries a grim, undiscussed reality with it: She must give up her sense of place and surrender to the city's vast impersonality. It is not in Lucrécia to want this for herself. Her influence with Mateus leads them back to what was São Geraldo...and there to discover that it is not that place, that its development has created a place that is not the one Lucrécia's memories conjure when she thinks of São Geraldo.

A woman of 26, a Brazilian Jew living in Bern, Switzerland, wrote this novel. No, São Geraldo wasn't the Recife of her childhood, nor was the big city exactly Rio de Janeiro where she came of age and married. But she was a person cut off from Home. The nature of Lucrécia's relationship to her world is visually oriented. She speaks of and in images, shapes, sights and vistas; they evoke secondarily and (it feels to me) tangentially emotional responses in her. This makes sense in the context of Author Lispector's dislike for the Swiss countryside...it does, to be honest, live in my memory as shockingly, even surreally, tidy and manicured. Nothing about the place appealed to her, nor if I'm honest did it appeal to me. Visually spectacular, aesthetically wanting.

Is it, then, any wonder that woman Author Lispector looked at the astonishingly male (built, controlled, made to fit a purpose not the spectacular place it's sited within) world of Bern, of Switzerland, and wrote the story of a rather dull, fairly dim girl recording visually, passively, the consequences of male dominion on her world? Even when, after a dull marriage to Mateus palls, she finally falls in love with a man, it's one without a shred of agency to offer her. He is unavailable and uninterested in making himself so.

The world, then, is a place that acts on Lucrécia, a world made by, of, and for men, and she is reduced to eyes without a face recording recording recording the deeds of others, the way they wreak havoc and call it progress:

Upon the rubble horses would reappear announcing the rebirth of the old reality, their backs without riders. Because thus it had always been. Until a few men would tie them to wagons, once again erecting a city that they wouldn't understand, once again building, with innocent skill, the things. And then once more they'd need a pointing finger to give them their old names.

It's not what you call me, it's what I answer to. Lucrécia, her life a response and a reaction, then becomes only a queen in her imagination. She orders her mental world to suit her vision, her view...circumscribed, as always, be men and their power.

>170 richardderus: - 4 is not a crappy result! It's respectable.

*smooch*

>172 katiekrug: Thank you, sweetness, I needed that cooler-head assessment. I'm just so irked by using that word...it feels more like normalized jargon to me, but of course it has many much older uses. Still....

I also got it in 4 and feel like I should have gotten it sooner, given that it's one of my complaints about summer. And the great outdoors, in general... :-P

>174 katiekrug: ...I quibble with the word "great" as used there...

>175 richardderus: - I should have put it in quotation marks :)

>174 katiekrug: I choose to tell myself that I too was influenced by our typical August weather when I had that Wordle down to 4 or 5.

Happy, cool, reading weekend, Richard, with some good food too! *smooch*

I felt today's word perfectly describes today's Wordle. (Got it in 6, though I had 4 letters in their proper places at the fourth guess. adieU, storY, BUmpY, BUlGY, BUnGY, BUGGY Ugh.

Hi, Richard! Hope you're keeping cool enough. All I can say is thank heavens for air conditioning!

Edited to correct the Wordle word order.

>178 Storeetllr: *chuckle* without a/c, we'd all live in Canada until September. Ugh! indeed on Wordle today.

*smooch*

>177 LizzieD: Thank you for the kind wishes, Peggy. I'm afraid the wet heat is going to be weekend-bustingly present. I'm an indoor animal for now.

>179 richardderus: - Ha! Here in Canada, without a/c, I'd say let's live in the Arctic but that too, is melting...:-(

>180 jessibud2: ...not to mention the flies and mosquitoes...and the really hungry polar bears...

>181 richardderus: - Mosquitoes and polar bears got nuthin' on the BLACK FLIES:

https://www.nfb.ca/film/blackfly/

Ask any Canadian (at least, any Ontarian) ;-)

I have experienced The Dread Blackfly in northern Maine.

*shudder*

Kostja Gatnik has died at 77.

Slovenian artist and illustrator.

His book Magna Purga, in a German edition, made it to me in the Aughties:


Very sad news.

Blackfly--State Bird of Maine.

>185 weird_O: It's an awful thing to say, but...yeah. Awful! Miserable things.

Happy Saturday, Richard. I sure had a good time with Jack the past 2 days and even took him on the trails to do some birding. Nothing much planned for today. I hope to sit out the heat of the day with Young Mungo which I am really enjoying, despite its heavy tone.

Wordle 413 3/6

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Well, that was an easy one! AEONS, MIRTH, ALIEN

>187 msf59: It *is* heavy in tone, I completely agree, but not for effect...some books throw down rocks from some narrative heaven just to create atmospheric disturbances. I *felt* this heaviness in each event, memory, action.

Author Stuart was gifted with a lot of ideas and it's a real pleasure to me to discover them. I'm glad this one's better able to catch you than Shuggie Bain was.

Huddle up by the vents, stay cool, and enjoy!

0.o

...!!...

What the what?!?!

>192 katiekrug: *chuckle*

Wisconsin party house decor...rentable for a mere $1700 a night. I was sure you'd love it and want that bedroom suite for y'all's own bedroom.

Why literally everyone should watch/read/consume "horror" entertainment:
https://crimereads.com/this-is-your-brain-on-horror/

Really good article! Really *interesting* decor. Is it just me, or does that chair look reeeally uncomfortable? Or maybe that’s the point… 😀

>195 drneutron: Thanks for saying, Doc...I was fascinated by the article. It seems to me people should be more aware of what the reason horror is so appealing before dismissing it.

I think anyone more than four feet tall wouldn't fit in that chair!

Not a fan of horror. Have read article, which is very interesting, I'm still not going to venture into horror anytime soon.
I remember watching Nightmare on Elm Street in my late teens and having nightmares for weeks. For someone who very rarely wakes remembering a dream, it was really quite upsetting.

I still need to do today's Wordle. I guess I'll see how I do. I forgot to do it yesterday. I meant to do it in the afternoon and got sidetracked. I had the Zoom genealogy chat last night, so I didn't do it then.

>198 thornton37814: Hope it's a good time, then, Lori. It's really not that urgent a task so you're clearly in the right headspace for it.

>197 Helenliz: It's not something that everyone enjoys, and we all know our own limits best. I'm not going to watch underwater movies ever, ever, ever again, so I get it.

Vale Judith Durham, of the Seekers (Georgie Girl, Another You). She died 5 August 2022, at 79.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Durham
Another You was such a great song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmactMIhrRM&list=PLXasWXbWx9Z3LSHu47UW1eL-_R...

>200 richardderus:
Front page of the July 29, 2022 Tuscaloosa News featured the rock band ZZ Top. They have added a 29 year-old bass guitar player to the band to replace an original founding member who died a year ago. This new band member has grown a long beard so that he can fit in with the other members.

ZZ Top is a local favorite in this town. I have no reason why since they are from Texas, but the natives around here love that band.

>201 benitastrnad: College towns go for ZZ Top because it's good raucous party music. And them adding a 29-year-old to the line-up...well, I wonder which of their grandkids came up with his name? The dude's parents probably danced to "Sharp-Dressed Man" at their high-school prom.

‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Sunday to you.

>191 richardderus: Party house makes sense, especially with the pole.

>194 richardderus: I rarely consume horror, and the last horror movie I watched was The Exorcist in 1973 at the movie theater. Came home to my only-I-live-there apartment, turned on all the lights, grabbed my Bible and white-knuckle clutched it all night, wide-eyed and scared to death. Of course that’s the same apartment I was in when a demon came out of a Santana poster after a night of heavy drinking with my roommate…

Ah, memories!

*smooch*

Happy Sunday, Richard. I am a big ZZ Top fan. I saw them 2 or 3 times in their heyday, including once in Germany. I had not heard that they replaced the bass player. Interesting. Looks like another day with the books, since the rain will be moving in.

Wordle 414 3/6

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I'd've needed to be insentient not to get it in three with all five letters between 1 & 2! AEONS, MIRTH, SMEAR

>204 msf59: Well, they kinda hadda replace him. He died. Makes replacement mandatory.

I hope the rains bring happy birds, and the books happy hours.

>203 karenmarie: The Exorcist scared me to death, too. I don't think any film since has bothered me so much. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was gross, but not terrifying. Oh wait...Jaws. I *still* to this day will not go into the ocean deeper than my calves. Doesn't help that we've got a population of hungry juvenile Great Whites off the Long Beach coast this year!

*smooch*

Most horror doesn't terrify me. Sometimes it horrifies me, sometimes it grosses me out, occasionally it makes me root for the monsters, but terrify? Nah. However, Stephen King's Salem's Lot scared the bejebus out of me to the point I dug out my mom's old rosary and wore it around my neck anytime I had to go out after dark for weeks after reading it back in the 70s. Nothing since has affected me like that.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend in your frigid air conditioning.

>207 Storeetllr: It's so weird, Mary, that even those of us who don't really scare so easy have that *one* story, that *one* thing that wallops us. 'Salem's Lot did absolutely nothing to me! The Exorcist was unspeakably terrifying. The Omen and all that other Heaven-vs-Hell stuff? It's okay, sometimes it's interesting and once in a while it's well-paced so it gets exciting, but nightmare-inducing it just isn't.

>208 richardderus: Maaarrrinnn

I admit that The Exorcist was scary; just not the same terrifyingly scary as my first reading of Salem's Lot. Same with Jaws. Other horror by the likes of Lovecraft, LaValle, Poe, Kirkman (The Walking Dead), Boone (The Hatching), Cary (The Girl with all the Gifts, and even King, may be creepy scary or icky scary or gory scary or campy scary, but not the scary that makes you afraid to go outside at night without a crucifix around your neck. Which is why I love to read new (to me) horror, especially in October, hoping to find something that will scare me as much as Salem's Lot once did.

>209 Storeetllr:
I agree with you about Salem’s Lot. I had to stop reading it because I couldn’t go to sleep. I have never tried to read another book by Stephen King. Horror just isn’t for me.

>210 benitastrnad:, >209 Storeetllr: We're not all reading the same book, are we! The words make very different pictures for us all.

Wordle 415 4/6

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Interesting! AEONS, MIRTH, TUNIC, UNFIT

150 The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family.

Firuz-e Jafari is fortunate enough to have immigrated to the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa, fleeing the slaughter of other traditional Sassanian blood magic practitioners in their homeland. Despite the status of refugees in their new home, Firuz has a good job at a free healing clinic in Qilwa, working with Kofi, a kindly new employer, and mentoring Afsoneh, a troubled orphan refugee with powerful magic.

But Firuz and Kofi have discovered a terrible new disease which leaves mysterious bruises on its victims. The illness is spreading quickly through Qilwa, and there are dangerous accusations of ineptly performed blood magic. In order to survive, Firuz must break a deadly cycle of prejudice, untangle sociopolitical constraints, and find a fresh start for their both their blood and found family.

Powerful and fascinating, The Bruising of Qilwa is the newest arrival in the era of fantasy classics such as the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Four Profound Weaves, and Who Fears Death.

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

My Review: I am all the way here for a Persian storyverse-inspired QUILTBAG-inclusive secondary world with a not-silly science-cum-majgickq system based on blood. This idea has me all excited, with the nigh-on irresistible urge to send the author CARE packages of food and crowdsourcing their laundry so they will not have to leave their writing desk unless answering the call of nature.

What keeps me from offering the story all five stars is the first-publication longueurs that are so very common as to feel universal. The storyverse is astonishingly successful in compelling my attention, given how brief the story here told is. There is a depth to Firuz's native Sassanians, a minority group not beloved in their world, and named by the author after the last pre-Muslim Persian empire in our world...echoes of the religious monopoly being enforced in many parts of the world, the intolerance that entails and encourages. The blood-magic system, with its science-tinged presentation, was presented as a source of fear and persecution; yet, during the plague that strikes Qilwa, it is urgently needed to help fix the problems this plague presents. The tables are turned and those so recently deemed outcast are needed to fix what the many are suffering. Always a great direction to aim a story!

So you can see that the story possesses many layers just from the little I've said; there are other normative things (eg, introducing one's self with pronoun and name, like I'd be "him–Richard" then just Richard after that...a lot like royalty gets to explain how they're addressed to us mere commoners on those rare occasions we're presented to them) that can unpack over the course of a long series of stories set in this place while instantly adding a lush richness to the present reading experience. What doesn't work so well is Firuz's social anxiety/awkwardness being borne down on narratively at every turn. I get it...they're very awkward, it's not necessary to repeat this every other page. There are points where their trans brother could've taken the stage more completely and thus enriched the read's texture; seeing him only from the outside is fine, like all inclusion, but his transition is so very much a driver of the story that allowing him to take center stage could've given me so much more. Satisfying my curiosity about how he sees this world would've given the plague, the clinic where Firuz practices healing, and what it is that Firuz and Kofi share that makes the clinic so real-feeling, needed dimensionality.

The surprisingly secondary character Afsoneh is a wild child, we're told; we're never really shown this facet of her character. Firoz mentors her and so should've had more of a struggle with her acting out if she's such a chaotic person. Instead it's brushed past. I know it's a function of the novella format. I'm even willing to go along with the clipping of storylines that this format requires uncomplainingly...IF I can trust that the characters are going to get more stage time later. Not too much later.

I bestow on this deeply involving read my most difficult-to-earn accolade: More, please.

'Morning, Rdear, and happy Monday to you.

All quiet down south - Jenna and I are going to take everything out of the guest bedroom (Jenna's bedroom) closet this morning assign "keep/donate/throw out" to everything and pile the 'keep' stuff in the hall until we can deal with it. Other than that, same old same old.

*smooch*

PEARL RULE #37

Thoreau in Love by John Schuyler Bishop

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1843, a repressive puritanism still hangs over Concord, Massachusetts, and Henry Thoreau, twenty-five years old, wants out. When his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, gives him an opportunity to move to New York City, the lively center of the growing nation, Henry leaves Concord with no thought of ever returning.

In his journals, the 250-some pages about his trip to New York have been ripped out, the only substantial number of pages missing from the forty-seven journal volumes. What was so scandalous that Thoreau—or, more likely, his literary executor—decided no one should see it?

And why did Thoreau stay only six months in New York?

Thoreau’s biographers go out of their way to convince us that the writer was heterosexual, although he never married and wrote freely in his journal about the beauty of men. His poem “Sympathy,” one of the few published in his lifetime, is a love poem to a boy who was his student. About that poem, one celebrated biographer went so far as to say, “When he wrote ‘he’ Thoreau really meant ‘she,’ and when he wrote ‘him,’ he really meant ‘her.'” When in his journal Thoreau wrote, “There is more than maiden modesty between us . . . I have no feature so fair as my love for him,” that same biographer said, “There is little doubt that ‘her’ was meant. . . . There are, indeed, many passages . . . where Henry’s emotional experiences with women are memorialized under a camouflage of masculine pronouns.”

By denying Thoreau's real sexuality, scholars have reduced him to a wooden icon. But this sexuality can humanize the man.

“Thoreau in Love” imagines the time of the missing pages, when Thoreau emerged from his shell and explored the wider world and himself before he returned to Concord, where he fearlessly lived the rest of his life and became the great naturalist and literary giant.

My Review: I do not remember how I came to be given this book, but it has been on my Kindle since 20 June 2013. Nine years! And no review! Sinful wicked shame and contumely be heapèd upon me.

My response to the 18% I read is best spoken in the deathless phrase of a writer whose words are endemic to Goodreads: "the words and the sentences curled themselves into knotty shapes that did not fit the shape of my brain."

I am out.

>214 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Practical day, spent away from the icky-icky ptoo ptoo heat...yeah, that works.

Enjoy y'all's selves being all productive and stuff.

Good afternoon, Richard. (I know where I am here.)

>215 richardderus: For heaven's sake!

>213 richardderus: A BB. You have helped me clarify my thinking about pronouns. My whole being revolts against my life-long practice of using "their" as singular. I never, ever told my classes, "Everybody get out their book." But. I do respect people's right to choose how to be addressed. I will, therefore, not use pronouns for one who says that one's pronouns are "they/their." I'm accustomed to avoiding gender pronouns for God, so I hope others will consider that they are in good company from my mouth.

>208 richardderus: I pretty much don't watch movies, but The Shining was the S. King that scared me witless. (Reading King also made me feel dirty in the early years. I've changed enough that that's no longer true.) I was also terrified by The Exorcist and maybe scared the most by The Haunting of Hill House. No movie could do justice to the horror in my mind with that one. I'm creeped out just thinking about it.

>217 LizzieD: I'm so pleased the pronouning issue could be clarified for you! It's thorny...I don't guess Sphinx by Anne Garréta attracted your attention, but it's proof that as complex as it feels to English-speakers to revamp our usage, the highly gendered languages like French are about to hit a wall with the force of millennia of habit!

I didn't like >215 richardderus: very much because it was clumsy. Sigh!

Have a happy afternoon being coddled by the a/c.

50+ posts behind and not even trying to catch up, RD. I hope you have a marvelous Monday!

>219 alcottacre: It's been an un-Monday-y Monday, I must say, so that's a win.

Welcome back! *smooch*

>212 richardderus: I Wordled in 4 today too but it took way too long to figure out.

Glad you're enjoying your un-Monday day. Hope the rest of your week follows the same vein.

>212 richardderus: gotta love the various ways we get to the same answer 🙂
*smooch*

Happy Tuesday, Richard!

My mind must be stuck on Monday because I keep on writing happy Monday everywhere and had to go back and edit. *sigh* I have a feeling it's going to be a long day. At least I wordled in two.

>213 richardderus: BB for me.

>220 richardderus: Sounds like a win to me, RD!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

'Morning, Rdear. Happy Tuesday to you.

Coffee in hand, I have some Friends stuff to do that I'm not happy about doing and even woke to an alarm to get started on it. Blech.

*smooch*

Wordle 416 5/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, TATTY, FATTY, PATTY

>225 karenmarie: Well, you'll be done all the sooner for piling in and accomplishing it, then.

Tuesday orisons, m'dear.

>224 alcottacre: 'Twas indeed a win, Stasia. I'm starting Tuesday without a nasty Monday hangover.

>223 figsfromthistle: Weird little Groundhog-Day moments like that are slightly unsettling, no? Like some sort of time-hyphae got into your brain to pull it apart.

>222 bell7: It's a fascinating thing to look at the path we take towards a goal compared to others. Have a lovely time with our Tuesday gifts!

>221 Familyhistorian: I made up for it today. *grumble*

>226 richardderus: Love your guesses today, though I’m sorry you had to do them. This game does seem to give some honor to poor little five-letter words, doesn’t it ?!

Karen O

>228 klobrien2: My #3 choice was just me being irritated again and using something I thought was insulting...and lo...!

Glad to see you, Karen O. I just got back from visiting yours.

Hiya, RD, and happy Wednesday to you.

I did get all my Friends stuff done. Had a few errands in town and used the treadmill at the Senior Center closer to home, now reopened. My left knee and right ankle are protesting.

*smooch*

Good morning, Richard! I fumbled around a bit on Wordle this morning, so here's hoping you do better than me. *smooch*

Wordle 417 5/6

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I like the pattern on that one.

Hoping Thursday treats you well.

Morning, Richard. Happy Wednesday. Still adjusting our lives to life with Juno. Slow but sure. I finished Young Mungo. I liked it a bit less than you. I think Shuggie is the stronger more confident one but it was still an impressive read.

>227 richardderus: I think I got your Monday hangover yesterday. I felt awful all day long.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Wordle 417 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, PLINK, CLING

Back to 4!

>234 alcottacre: Oh, uggghhh, I hope it burns off quick, Stasia.

*smooch*

>233 msf59: It's always an adjustment. I hope all y'all settle in comfortably soon.

I think your point about Shuggie feeling like the more confident work is very interesting. I'm of the opinion that Mungo was his first novel and Shuggie the first one he showed to the world...so yeah, it makes sense he'd feel more in control of the material. Of course, we're not likely to get confirmation of this being as old as we are, but time will likely bear us out.

>232 Helenliz: It's a very satisfying pattern, isn't it.

I'm resigned to being the 4 guy forever and ever, world without end. It's not awful, but does feel a little humdrum.

>231 bell7: Hiya Mary! I'm not quite up to visiting yet but I'll go look a bit later. *smooch*

>230 karenmarie: Jeez, those ingrates. Your joints should've gotten the memo by now: All hands, feet, and toes! We need to pull up our socks and let the Boss have her exercise without complaint!

*smooch*

>235 richardderus: Love your third word! It sounds like itself!

Karen O

>238 klobrien2: Ha! Yes, I am a fancier of the onomatopoeia. They amuse my (just-barely) inner ten-year-old.

Have a happy Humpday, Karen O!

Popping in again to let you know that, after you and Katie got me with the Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, I had the audio and book out from the library and started it today. My co-worker, who listens to some audiobooks on his commute, asked me to tell him about it and I had him read the passage on fruit cake. He chuckled through it and decided to buy it for our library.

>240 bell7: Oh, yay! I'm so pleased.

>239 richardderus: That made me smile, RD, you lover of the poetic you!

>235 richardderus: Now I understand how you got that in 4. I had the first three letters and there were so many more combinations possible.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear.

An early round through the threads this morning, it will be to hot today to have a laptop on my lap.
Wordle in six today, I blame the weather.

'Morning, RDear, and a very happy Thursday to you.

I got Wordle in 3 today. I cancelled going to book club today because it's going to be indoors because of the heat and our county is at high risk for Covid according to the CDC. Sigh. I really loved the book, too, when I read it in August 2018. I know you didn't like it at all, (Less), but ATD and all that.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>213 richardderus: Ooh, that one sounds good.

>215 richardderus: Hooray! One I can resist!

And congrats on your second lap!

Wordle 418 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, CLEAN, GLEAN

Humdrum ol' 4.

>246 swynn: It *is* good! You'll enjoy it. And no loss on the Thoreau book. I'm in agreement with the author's premise...Thoreau was a homosocial and homoerotic person...but his prose wasn't up to the task. So disappointing.

Thanks!

>245 karenmarie: You're far from the only person to enjoy the book and this isn't our first ATD, of course, but I'm still spitefully glad someone who liked the book isn't able to warble about it and make converts.

Horrible, do not read this spoiler: And NOW he's got a frickin' sequel on the way! Imagine the Authors of Color the advance they wasted on his no-talent ripoff of gawd knows who this time hodgepodge of malarkey could've brought to brighter lights and bigger cities. There. I've said all I'll say about that.

*smooch*

>244 FAMeulstee: I'm sorry it's going to be that awfully hot there today, Anita. I have a USB-powered laptop cooling pad to keep its batteries from getting too hot and that doubles as a body-fan when it's really hot. I use the rubber feet on the laptop to keep it perched on the underside of the fan with the place where the laptop usually sits in a column of moving air blowing instead on me. It still keeps the laptop cooler than no fan at all.

Anyway, Thursday orisons, my dear lady.

>243 Familyhistorian: That's why I enjoy comparing more than the patterns, pretty as they are, with the people who spoiler-tag the words they used. I find HOW they got there more interesting than THAT they got there!

>248 richardderus: Come on, RD. Don't hold back. Tell us what you really think of it. (I didn't really like it either.)

I'll simply say that 4 Wordling is better than 5. *sigh*

I was never attracted to Less, but that doesn't mean much these days. I am liking Slow Horses, and I always enjoy E. Larson.

>251 LizzieD: Wordling in 5 is still better than 6 or X!

>251 LizzieD:, >250 weird_O: Its backstory made me angry but then reading it was just terrible! What a selfish, stupid man Less was...and Greer appropriating his "friend" John Boyne's unhappiness and marital dissolution was Beyond The Pale.

Horrible dear, don't look.

>247 richardderus: Twins for our third and fourth words today, RDear.

Hope your Thursday is full of good things. *smooches*

>253 MickyFine: Hi Micky! It just feels inevitable in retrospect, but of course that's always the case isn't it. My Thursday wasn't as great...my therapist had to cancel tomorrow's session, but that's the only thing I can really complain about, the rest is just irksome being-alive stuff.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD!

*smooch* Happy Thursday!

>249 richardderus: After I burned my right upper leg with the previous Toshiba laptop, I bought a thing (don't know how to call it in English) to put the laptop on. I think it is pressed wood, black painted, with a kind of cushion under it.
My present HP has a cooling feature to keep it from getting hot, but it hasn't been needed yet. A fan connected with USB sounds good, I will look for it.
Today was the first time the temperature in the living room went above 23°C. All our efforts to keep it cool inside do work well.

>257 FAMeulstee: That thing you have is a lap desk in English.

I'm referring to this thing:

If you want to go look at it, here's the link: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NNMB3KS/

>258 richardderus: Thanks, Richard dear!
I don't need it yet. A few days with less laptop time, and reading a bit more is bearable ;-)

>247 richardderus: I went ADIEU, STARE, CHEAP then contemplated a bit and almost chose a throwaway word to use up some letters before coming up with GLEAM and finally GLEAN.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD. Have a fantastic Friday!

Wordle 419 4/6

🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
AEONS, MIRTH, LEACH, LABEL
Very interesting!

Happy Friday, Richard. I had a great day with Jack yesterday. We spent 3 hours on the trails. He got in 2 naps. My boy. I got no reading in, so I was bummed about that. Very interesting point about Young Mungo being the first of his novels. It sure fits. Our weather has been gorgeous. I hope you are starting to cool down.

'Morning, RDear, and happy Friday to you.

*smooch*

>261 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! *smooch*

>260 bell7: An interesting path, Mary...each step makes a lot of sense based on the one before. I'm often less logical and just bung in a word to see where the vowels are (or aren't, just as usefully).

>259 FAMeulstee: It's a cool (!) gizmo, Anita. They aren't expensive for the usefulness they bring.

>264 karenmarie: Hiya, Horrible! *smooch* Spend a splendid one.

>263 msf59: Hi Mark! We're not brutally grimly sticky anymore, so it's bearable. It sounds like a glorious day with Jack. The books are all still there, so no harm, no foul.

I think it's likely, just because it feels so...accurate. But, like I said, I don't expect we'll *know* for a long time.

Your Friday is already better than mine, I X'd out on wordle.
We're having another hot spell this week, it's been in the low 30s (high 80F), but it's due to break this weekend. And with it should come some much needed rain.

>265 richardderus: Some days I'm more logical than others, but knowing where the vowels are and aren't is most useful, for sure.

>262 richardderus: Took me five, but I got there eventually.

>268 bell7: Some days logic doesn't pay off big, but it's always reliably going to get you home. The vowels, like today, being the two most common ones, were more useful to me when I stumbled on the first letter while hunting them down.

>267 Helenliz: Ick on the skunking, Helen. The 80s are shocking for y'all, I know...I still remember visiting in 1973 when, one day, it got to 82°; I was hugely amused that people were *wretched* in their woolens and I was comfy in my cottons.

>247 richardderus: It was 4 for me too. Our #3 and #4 were the same.

>270 thornton37814: It just feels like the natural way to find that word, doesn't it? Happy weekend-ahead's reads, Lori.

Talk of banning books. Salman Rushdie was attacked on the stage at Chautauqua by a man with a knife. Couple of hours ago. Flown to a hospital. Attacker in custody. I read Joseph Anton, his account of living under the fatwa. That rippled through the book industry as warehouse workers and bookseller feared being caught by an attack or bombing or arson. And way too many pooh-poohed his concerns.

>272 weird_O: I saw that on twitter - as I was watching a recorded documentary about him. Unsettling coincidence.

Hi Richard! We are still sweltering here, 32°C today but the house isn't getting above 25°C, which is manageable. I had to walk to the hairdressers and back this morning though, which I did not enjoy.

>274 SandDune: Ewww 32C sounds horrible for a non-air-conditioned world. I hope y'all survive, Rhian.

>273 Helenliz:, >272 weird_O: Oh my goddesses. How revolting! I hope he came through the ordeal.

'Morning, RD, and happy Saturday to you.

I've posted #35. Slow and steady wins the race. At this point, I figure I'll finish by the end of the year.

*smooch*

>275 richardderus: Oh don't be such a baby; you're not also living with 110% humidity. Put the fan on.

:0)

Wordle 420 3/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
...!!!... AEONS, MIRTH, HUNKY

>277 humouress: I'm not anything like that hot here, thank goodness, and my a/c is blasting! It'll struggle to get past 26C today. Thank GOODNESS!

>276 karenmarie: Happy Saturday, Horrible. *smooch*

I'll take a look at #35 a bit later. By the end of the year? Ambitious! It's a helluva goal, a worthy one, and a scary proof that no time is ever peaceful until it's dead...like any other living system!

>278 richardderus: You did better than I did, Richard dear, although I was pleased with my 4/6
peony, mirth, handy, hunky

>280 FAMeulstee: It is a respectable score, Anita. I was quite pleased with my ever-rarer 3 today, but expect to be back at 4 tomorrow.

Ohhh, I made a note, but forgot anyway....

Belated happy Thingaversary, Richard dear!!

Hiya, RDear. Happy Sunday to you.

All quiet over here today. I made low-sodium chili yesterday and paired it with garlic toast. We were happy and have leftovers for tonight.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Happy Sunday, Richard. I am glad to hear that you have cooled off a bit there. Our weather continues to be perfect and that will stretch out through next week. B.A.G. Not much on the agenda today, but some house chores and book time. I will probably take Juno for a stroll too.

Wordle 421 4/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I stared and I stared and I stared. Only one word fit, but I was sure it was wrong. It wasn't. AEONS, MIRTH, CHAIN, KHAKI I think it was a good choice, since it took me so long to run through the options.

>284 msf59: Hey there, Mark! It sounds like The Best retired-guy weekend you're having. A pleasure to be able to putter, isn't it.

I'm delighted that I can go outside without the sense of being in a convection oven. Long may it last.

>283 karenmarie: Chili and garlic toast! Ooohhh, yum. It's funny how some tastes just *fit* and chili with garlic is a prime example. Maybe this evening's meal, though it'll be canned chili....

*smooch*

>282 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita. It's been an extraordinary ride with this group...sixteen years. It's made my life better in every way to be here.

My list of seventeen August additions will follow.

>285 richardderus: - I have 3 letters, 2 in the correct spot and am stuck. In my head, I have tried every possible combo and come up with nothing. I will go back again later with fresh eyes and maybe get lucky. At this point of the day, nothing is working.

>285 richardderus: Yay for Wordle! I had the same feeling about the solution—how could it be?—but Wordle has been doing that to us lately, right? And slowing down and thinking sure seems to help me.

Great Sunday to you!

Karen O

>285 richardderus: Agreed. I spent a long time excluding other possible letter combinations as impossible before coming up with that word. Once letters 2, 3 & 5 were fixed there were very few options. AUDIT, SHONE, CHAIR, KHAKI

>286 richardderus: Happy thingaversary, I look forward to seeing what you decide to add.

Just checking in after being away.

I missed your Thingaversary? Belated happy wishes... *smooch*

SIXTEENTH THINGAVERSARY KINDLE HAUL

Today I received a surprise in the gmail! A Civil War: A History Of The Italian Resistance from "The Book Whisperer", a publicity person I'm friendly with...I got in good when I coined "Foul Bibliomage" as a nickname, for some reason.

A fantasy trilogy about The Hanged God gave me pause, so I picked it up:
Northern Wrath
Shackled Fates
Slaughtered Gods

Some upcoming non-fiction I'm drooling after:
The Atlas of Atlases: Exploring the most important atlases in history and the cartographers who made them
Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies
1980: America's Pivotal Year
The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

Some series starters because I'm running low on fast-read mysteries:
Secrets Hidden in the Glass
Bulldogs & Bullets
Killer Cannoli
A Witch Too Late

And some gay romantic escapism:
Lucky – won't front, it was the cover that landed it on my Kindle for 99¢
My Policeman – Harry Styles is the lead in the (?forthcoming?) film
Dom of Las Vegas – it's a mystery series featuring a good representation of D/s relationships, from the 22% I've read so far
Wanna Bet? – I'm a complete sucker for bisexual-awakening stories

Horrible's voyage into The Federalist Papers made me think about how little real contact I've maintained with the fundamental foundational documents of the system the Founders were trying to erect. So, #17 is:
The American Founding: Core Documents

Thingaversary haul report: Complete.

>290 katiekrug: 'Twas indeed, and I've started Year 17 with a new thread here.

*smooch*

>289 Helenliz: Go take a look, Helen! I've added covers to the post, now #1.

>288 klobrien2: We've only used a little over 400 words out of the 2300 they allow out of over 11,000 there are...and it *still* feels like I'm scratching my head more and more often!

>287 jessibud2: Taking some time away might help...I'm using that technique more and more often and getting good results from it.