richardderus's sixteenth 2022 thread

I joined this home-from-home on 13 August 2006 after reading about it in Poets & Writers Magazine on my bus commute home. It's been a wonderful ride...no exaggeration, this group's wonderful folk have saved my life as well as enriched it immeasurably. Thank you all, so very much, for all of it.

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.

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.

Reviews 143 up to 150 can be found in a specific post back there.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

151 Anybody Home? slammed, post 46.

152 Bronze Drum resonated, post 50.

153 Falter Kingdom clicked, post 52.

154 Mickey7 buzzed, post 64.

155 Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line chilled, post 73.

156 Home Grown Talent tickled, post 99.

157 The Kingdoms ripsnorted, post 133.

158 The Half Life of Valery K boiled, post 138.

159 Real Bad Things scorched, post 193.

160 The Spear Cuts Through Water sliced, post 220.

161 Rabbits slapped cheeks, post 234.

162 Kraken Calling chilled, post 249.

163 Burning Blue happened, post 261.

164 In Veritas moved along, post 262.

165 If I Survive You slammed, post 289.

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!




SEPTEMBER 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #59, Husband Material, in post 241.

AUGUST 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #58, The Golden Hour, in post 182.

Burgoine #57, Winter Haven, in post 175.

Burgoine #56, All Things Cease to Appear, in post 158.

Burgoine #55, Son of a Gun: A Memoir, in post 157.

Burgoine #54, Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive, in post 141.

Burgoine #53, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, is in post 127.

JULY 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #52, is in this post here.

#44 through #51, 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 #40, The Happy Numbers of Julius Miles, in post 159.

Pearl Rule #39, Shutter Man, in post 156.

Pearl Rule #38, The Discomfort of Evening, in post 142.

Pearl Rule #37, is in this post here.

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

And, with that, the floor is yours.

Happy new one, Richard!

Happy new thread and thingaversary! Nice haul, too. Bet those *core documents* in >1 richardderus: weren't being sequestered by anyone... ;-)

Happy new thread, Richard dear.
How appropriate, your 16th thread, celebrating your 16th thingaversary :-)

>10 katiekrug: Thank you, Princess Katie!

>12 FAMeulstee: Isn't it lucky the two things aligned so well? I'm very pleased indeed. *smooch*

>11 jessibud2: Ha!! I'll bet not. But they're all under threat so it pays to study up on 'em. Nothing gets threatened with banning unless it's good somehow.

“The scariest part is knowing that someday something’ll come along that will make us go, ‘Even the spider mutants weren’t this bad.’ ”

Happy new thread, RD.

I think the touchstone to The Kingdoms in >8 richardderus: has the wrong book. I'll be interested to se what you make of that one. I have read it.

Excellent mixture of books in >1 richardderus:. Enjoy each one on its merits.

>16 Helenliz: Oh, good catch, Helen. I've enjoyed Pulley's book...it's 3/4 of the way to outstanding, a lot like everything else of hers I've read. Never quite all the way there.

Happy Thingaversary, you handsome man you!

!

ETA I just checked, and turns out I joined 3 days after you! And I've been following you ever since. :)

Happy New Thread, Richard. Happy Thingaversary! Wasn't LT launched in 2006? I think we became chums in '08 or '09. Sound right?

Happy Thingaversary RD. Enjoy your haul. You joined a year before me.

What, no teal t-shirt! I don't have one at the moment either.

Hi again, and happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: Congrats on 16 years! I’m so glad we’re friends!

Yay for Max and Ethan. You got me with Wanna Bet, and I’m flattered that my voyage into The Federalist has inspired you to get The American Founding: Core Documents. And, bonus for me, it’s $0.00 on Kindle, so I just got it for myself, too. Thanks.

>15 richardderus: *hurriedly scrolls past the f***ing spider.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Congrats on 16 and 16, Richard!

Good to see you looking hale and hearty up top.

It’s fun to read your list of intended lighter reads. I’m in the midst of one you’d enjoy: August Kitko and the Mechas from Space. Fast-moving space froth.

I’ve added Cove to the WL. I’m already intrigued.

Happy new thread and congrats on your 16th Thingaversary!

Happy Thingaversary, Richard dear. It looks like you did yourself proud and I'm happy to see it.

>24 ronincats: Hiya Roni! Thanks! *smooch*

>23 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, it's *amazing* to me that I've been here for so long.

>22 jnwelch: Hi Joe, thanks! I'm almost sure I got offered a DRC of the Alex White book but I don't seem to have said "yes" unless I'm just not seeing it in my Kindle.

>21 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible. Sorry about springing on you your fellow female...I didn't think about her effects. Upside is you never have to look at her again! *smooch*

>20 Caroline_McElwee: Nope, no teal t-shirt but Tim did say he'd see if they had one that would fit me.

Thank you, Caro! *smooch*

>19 msf59: We did...over on WAYRN? and you talked up this collection of strange-o's reading 75 books a year. The rest is History.

No, the site was founded in 2005. I arrived a wee bit less than a year after it started up.

>18 Storeetllr: OMIGAWSH! What seventeen titles are you treating yourself to, Mary?

*smooch* and thank you!

Happy new one, dear fellow.

Touching opening words and I must say reciprocated by my own feelings - this group has been a huge part of my own life too since I landed on these shores in 2011 and so many of you are people I worry about and laugh with on a daily basis ever since.

Happy new one!

Happy new thread and Thingaversary, RDear. Sounds like you rewarded yourself well.

>30 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky, I feel more than contented with my haul. *smooch*

>29 drneutron: Thank you, Your Supervisory Excellency!

>28 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC, it's lovely to be among good people and good friends, no?

>31 richardderus: It is indeed, Richard, and this wonderful group is filled with such good people.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Monday to you.

Today will be a quiet day with just Jenna as Bill's up and will be heading off to work soon. That won't change what I'll be doing today - reading and puttering.

*smooch*

Wordle 422 4/6

⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
AEONS, MIRTH, ROPEY, POKER

It's quite interesting to me how the way I *feel* impacts my word choices!

>33 karenmarie: Happy Putterday, Horrible! *smooch*

↓↓↓Arachnid-free zone declared↓↓↓

>32 PaulCranswick: ...with a few exceptions...*glares at twenty-fifth message*

Hi Richard, Happy New Thread and congrats on your Sixteenth Thingaversary my dear friend.

Happy new thread and happy 16th thingaversary, Richard. I'm not far behind you as I'll reach my fifteenth in November.

>37 bell7: Thanks on both scores, Mary!

>36 johnsimpson: And John!

Happy new thread and congrats on your thingaversary, Richard.

'Morning, Rdear! Happy Tuesday to you.

I have marked your thread as read at post 29. I'm just a big baby when it comes to arachnids. Snakes, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable, although I do prefer to not have them physically within about 5 feet of me unless in a terrarium or at the zoo. Of course, that brings up the 'should we have zoos' question, but it's way too early in the morning for that.

More coffee on the way...

*smooch*

Wordle 423 5/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
*sigh* AEONS, MIRTH, REFER, CRUEL, GRUEL

>40 karenmarie: Weenie. ::eyeroll:: I see them everywhere, each time it's a day-darkening experience (despite everyone else's luuuv for the wretched things), and I just...move on.

Well, whatever, you've got it handled.

Coffee! Oh yeah...no wonder it was a 5-day.

>39 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg, have a lovely week-ahead's reads.

>41 richardderus: my last two were the same. *smooch*

>43 bell7: I was just at yours and said the same thing!

>44 richardderus: I laughed when I saw your message. Couldn't have planned it better. Happy Tuesday!

151 Anybody Home? by Michael J. Seidlinger

Rating: 4.5* of five

I am on record as loathing the chest-pokey, accusatory second-person narrative voice. Looking at the rating above, you're entitled to wonder what happened to that vat of extra-thick contumely I keep simmering away on the Stove of Rage firing my soul.

Author Seidlinger (MOTHER OF A MACHINE GUN, the ineffable six-stars-of-five THE FUN WE'VE HAD) pulls it off better than I have seen it done elsewhere. This post-apocalyptic Clockwork-Orange level story of the inevitable end of surveillance capitalism's seemingly unstoppable rise...Siri, Alexa, Ring, Google's absolute right to track your every move to earn more profits ring bells?...by poking your chest to remind you of who it is, exactly, who's consuming these "conveniences." The second-person feels accusatory because it is an accusation, a Zola-level J'accuse...! to our corrupt, passively complicit consumer ethos.

The joke here, it's no spoiler to say, is an "unscripted reality show" based around a home invasion. No one would watch that for real, would they, a group of people being terrorized for our amusement? I present In Cold Blood, book and film, as countervailing evidence for the antiquity of this trope being used for entertainment...there are other, older, examples of hostage-taking entertainments like Key Largo but they moved the action to a slightly less personal sphere...so no one's got any sound footing to tut and scoff at the premise. Not even me, the maharajah of TutAndScoff.

So what happens? You know already what happens, there's a family of sorts that gets home-invaded and different things happen to them. Nothing, in keeping with the reality-TV format, is personal. It's all done for the viewers, the audience (note that these words are from different senses and this should be very closely attended to), the dramatis personæ having only designations like "Invader #1" or "Victim #4". In his usual "you didn't imagine this would all be on the surface, did you?" style, Author Seidlinger slings his arrows into the tiniest cracks in the jaded consumer's armor, making this a book far better delectated than consumed. It is, in fact, horror in the sense it's really quite horrifying in what it says, but a supernatural-horror fan will leave the read unhappy, while a revenge-driven horror fan won't get far into it before discovering their needs are not being met. This is more existential horror, a horror that eases the bathroom door open inch by inch before ripping open the shower curtain and flinging cold water on you in order to elicit the screech of terror, outrage, and angry embarrassment at Being Caught.

Make no mistake: You're caught.

You're the one watching; you're the one there's a meta-home-invader to explain to, and to coach "Invader #3" and cohorts. You're the reason this story exists, is being enacted before your "horrified" eyes. You, consumer of the fear and anguish of others.

Which is why I will now say something I have never said before, and never expect to say again:

Second-person narration rocks.

I was reading Bookpage's recommendations of SF&F for this fall and saw this one I thought might catch your interest...

https://smile.amazon.com/Marvellous-Light-Last-Binding-Book-ebook/dp/B08PSSWS4Z/...

And here's another:
https://smile.amazon.com/Winters-Orbit-Everina-Maxwell-ebook/dp/B0879GHMW7/ref=s...

>47 ronincats:
Winter's Orbit has been on most of the YA Best of lists this year. Lots of buzz about how good it is in those circles. I have it in our library collection, but I haven't read it yet.

‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Wednesday to you.

>42 richardderus: Yes, I’m a weenie when it comes to arachnids. Last night Jenna and I discussed arachnids and your absolutely-correct calling me out as a weenie. However, we decided that when I do actually have to remove one of them from the house I am a Brave Honey because being brave is overcoming your fear.

*smooch*

152 Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen

Rating: 4.5* of five

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

My Review: The Trung sisters are actual historical people who lived in 1st-century CE Vietnam. The country we know as Vietnam is, in fact, largely their legacy...these two women were the tutelary spirits of the local ethnic group's desire to be out from under the extremely heavy burden of the Han Empire, ruled by the Han Chinese people. ("Han" in Chinese just means "people" so you certainly know you're not ethnically labeling them when using the term.)

What Author Nguyen has done with this retelling of the Trung Sisters' legend is, given where and with whom he's published his novel, to offer the wider American public something that has been lacking all my life: A sense of Vietnam as an actual country, not simply a state created by then screwed over by, colonial masters. The Viet people are distinct from their neighbors in many ways, not least of them their foundational myth retold here. The sisters were daughters of a local aristocrat whose claim to fame was instilling in them a sense of themselves as different from the Han people oppressing them with taxes and slave-labor demands. This led to the sisters, when their father was murdered by the colonial masters, being made an example of. (A thing thoroughly unpleasant, I needn't remind you...the powerful don't and have never stinted in their cruelty towards those they wish to make examples of.)

What makes the Trungs different, in the sweep of two thousand years of History, is that they didn't command men. Other women have done that. The Trungs had no truck with pusillanimous men, knuckling under to the Han overlords to stay alive.

They raised an army of liberation. Made up of women. As traditional Viet women, that is to say the rulers of their world, they were simply doing what came naturally. Protecting your homeland on the fierceness of those who stand to lose the most by its subsumation into a foreign empire makes a lot of sense.

Not, as you'll imagine, to the Han. The rebellion wasn't successful in all its aims, freedom and matriarchy lost to the simply overwhelming military might of the Han, but the sense of the VIET as a PEOPLE was deeply ingrained.

There is a much-needed glossary in the book; I've seen some criticism of the author's use of formal, seemingly stilted language. Honestly, it seems that way to me too. Then I consider an important fact: This is a legend. It's the distilled essence of the legendary founders of the Viet people's sense of themselves as a unique, valid, culturally rich polity. Rules of twenty-first century grammar and usage, even in Viet which most decidedly this book isn't written in, would be inappropriate. And, let's face it, if you are the kind of reader who blenches at a modicum of work being asked of you to experience this, or any other, story, there's a sea of bland, blah word-blobs out there. Go fish.

Me? I'll be here with the Trungs, a little in awe and a lot in love.

>1 richardderus: Congratulations on the Thingaversary haul, RD! I cannot imagine this group without you. I am so happy we lucked into it together :)

>50 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD.

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

153 Falter Kingdom by Michael J. Seidlinger

Rating: 4* of five

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Make friends with the Darkness Within. There's never going to be a way to get rid of it, so pick a coping strategy: Denial will fail in quicktime; submission will have dreadfully uncomfortable consequences; but making friends with the Darkness Within, making its vision and its urgings (not to mention urges) a source of strength...that way billionairedom lies!

The real question this book presents to its younger-skewing audience is: Who exactly is it that's possessed? What makes someone a possessor? Where, in other words, does the real power lie? (Wordplay decidedly not optional)

What makes this a four-star read but not a five-star one, for me, is Hunter as a stream-of-consciousness narrator. He doesn't think like a high-school senior, said the grandfather of more than one such being. It's only problematic, to be honest, because it's a book aimed at the high-school aged crowd. If it were simply another of Author Seidlinger's unease-inducing, perception-defying novels, I'd never even bring it up. But aimed where it is, I expect it to go there; it didn't make the trip in this reader's perception.

The story itself...how the Falter Kingdom is accessed, what the Falter Kingdom represents...is the usual Author Seidlinger-esque mindfuck of "sure, look at the pretty surfaces, but remember that this author dude laughed through the entire Saw franchise." It's perfect, in terms of believably attracting the teen-boy victims these demons are in search of. It's believable metaphorically..."don't go into that tunnel," says Adult, thus guaran-damn-teeing the kid will and thus will learn from this initiation...it's handled in a quite amusingly perfect way, and it satisfies the narrative need for a driver of action.

I'm all for it. Read, remember, respond with the desired shivers and frissons and half-laughs of memory.

***As an aside, this review vanished from Goodreads last year which caused me no little amount of angst. Must've been a victim of the stupid-people-friendly redesign's early stages. Luckily it's been safely parked on my YA tab, but this year's publication of ANYBODY HOME? brought it into the full glare of public scrutiny.

>15 richardderus: Yuck! We are looking at lake front properties for our upcoming move and Nate introduced me to something called a Dock Spider. (Don't google it). Debating the wisdom of waterfront now.

Hope you're well!!

Well, hasn't this been fun. I've been ultrasounded and had new-doctor appointments and blood work in the offing and...well, it's been just such a *corking* good time.

The advantage, as y'all've seen, is I got to do some reviews that've languished. Sitting sitting sitting is very painful for me so I distracted myself productively and feel quite smug about it.

Anyway, I think that flurry of fun is done. I hope it is anyway. Now let's see if I get any results from the various tests, or they simply disappear into the informational black hole that is this place's idea of good practice.

>50 richardderus: ohhh, tempted. Sounds as if it would be interesting. Founding myths can be fascinating.

>54 richardderus: urgh. I got an invitation for a physical recently. It comes with hitting significant milestones, apparently. Putting it off.

>55 Helenliz: Helen! You go schedule that physical instanter! It's the gift of peace of mind and should be everyone's birthday gift to themselves. Whatever the news, it's way better to know than to be surprised.

>53 ChelleBearss: Hi Chelle!! I'm so happy to see you around and about! It's been a while, so it's good to know y'all're up and running.

Familiar with dock spiders. I'm not a fan. *delicate shiver*

>51 alcottacre: Hello smoochling! I'm pretty sure we'd've ended up in the same cyberplace at some point...some meetings are fated, aren't they.

Quite a haul, wasn't it? Even I am a little surprised at how much truly fascinating reading is out there that I won't have a hope of looking at before the Grim Reaper does her worst to me.

>49 karenmarie: We were both awake far, far too early today, eh Horrible? I had the excuse of doctors, but you're not appointmenting far enough away to need that extra wakey-wakey are you?

Weenie. *smooch*

>48 benitastrnad:, >47 ronincats: I got a DRC of Winter's Orbit and found the execution didn't match the premise. I was SO BUMMED because, as you note Roni, it's pretty much aimed directly at my sweet spot!

Freya Marske's series is on my radar but hasn't yet made it to my Kindle. It, too, sounds like Me. Your aim is, as always, true!

Wordle 424 3/6

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Well, that one was easy! AEONS, MIRTH, TWICE

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

>54 richardderus: I hope you get the results soon.
*smooch*

>56 richardderus: *grumble grumble grump*. Yes, you're right, but there are only so many times I need to hear I'm overweight and have hit "that" time in life. One of them I can't do anything about.

Wizard word today.

Wordle 425 3/6
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AUDIT, SHONE, TWANG

>54 richardderus: I hope you get some helpful results RD. I know about that blackhole!

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Some very interesting reviews up there. I love the diversity. I needed a short novel to read before starting my reread of Angle of Repose, so I plucked Ask the Dust off the shelf, where it has resided for a number of years. Of course, I was elated to see your positive review on GRs. I am really enjoying it and blow away by how dark, edgy and modern it feels, especially for 1939. Wow! I am surprised that Fante isn't as well-known as Salinger or Kerouac.

Hiya, RDear. Happy Thursday.

>54 richardderus: I hope all the stuff provides some actionable results.

>53 ChelleBearss: and >56 richardderus: I will absolutely and categorically never duckduckgo Dock Spiders.

>57 richardderus: I don’t know why I was awake so early. Last night made up for it. Even after a 1.45 hour nap yesterday I slept almost 9 hours straight last night. And that’s without pain meds. Feeling perky this a.m. New weenie material in this post, see above.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

154 Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Rating: 4* of five

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

My Review: Well, what can I say. I liked THE END OF ORDINARY well enough...inventive use of science, interesting personal stakes, but curiously flat. I wanted to read this book because I loved the science premise (remember Doctor Who's Gangers? My favorite slave race, narrowly displacing the Ood). Also because, well, look at the title of my blog and tell me why I might be interested in the story.

I was particularly taken by Mickey7's job on Niflheim, the planet where he...um...where the action takes place. Oh dear...the Spoiler Stasi will be after me...look, I'm kind of hamstrung here by the endless whinging of the spoilerphobes. So, let's just say, if the possibility of knowing something about a read will utterly devastate your pleasure in it, go somewhere else.

Mickey Barnes chose life as an expendable because, frankly, it was the best way to get on a colony ship away from Earth. This particular colony ship has religious nuts on it, however, and as is always the way with those sort of people, they've decided their imaginary friend doesn't like...really, hates, though for poorly explored reasons...expendables. They're abominations. After all, I thought to myself, once you're dead, their big bully in the...wait, they're on a a spaceship, where the hell is their gawd in such immense skies? how's she keeping tabs on 'em, some sort of spiritual Ring or Alexa?...anyway, your eternal torments are supposed to begin with death (unless, that is, you're one of Them, and even then it's not 100% guaranteed you'll get the post-mortem goodies). Mickey7, whose previous six deaths were pretty horrific, is still up for doing his job now they're on the ice planet Niflheim. Problem is he's gone and fallen into a crevasse. No one's going to bother rescuing an expendable. That's sort of the point of them...he'll be reconstituted into Mickey8, the cycle will continue.

Mickey7's luck is that he survives and makes his way back to the colony, somehow thinking they won't have reconstituted Mickey8. He's handed the religious nut in charge the lever he needs to bludgeon the colony into following his hate-filled plan for the colony to be expendable free. After all, their resources are strained to the limit and, even though expendables get less to eat and fewer material benefits than the religious nuts, they really can't afford another mouth to feed.

But someone please explain to me again how religion is a force for good and compassion in the world.

What results from this unprecedented situation is a kind of slamming-doors farce, with 7 and 8 agreeing to take on the task of splitting their Mickey-duties to both stay alive; needless to say, that fails. What made it fun to read, and the source of my four-star rating, is the sheer propulsive power of Author Ashton's use of Mickey7 as the first-person narrator. It was immediately clear to me that I was going to be investing in this character. His matter-of-factness was endearing to me, where a more emotionally fraught close third-person narration wouldn't have given me the impetus to keep reading.

The filmed version we can expect in, permaybehaps, 2024 is set to star Robert Pattinson and Steven Yeun. Brad Pitt's company is set to produce, and Bong Joon-ho is set to direct. IF, that is, David Zaslav's flensing knife spares the project now that Plan B Entertainment's new home Warner Brothers is owned by his philistine self. Star power isn't much to Discovery, they like cheap and flashy.

We'll always have the fun, funny, and very provocative-idea-laden book.

Wordle 425 4/6

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That was a funny word! AEONS, MIRTH, PLANT, TWANG

>63 karenmarie: Morning, Weenie Woman, I'm delighted you're well-rested today. It makes literally everything easier.

Your sanity-preserving instincts are well heeded. I, meanwhile, am going to get steadily more insane waiting to learn if I have a fatal embolism in my future, or possibly merely a balloon angioplasty, or a mitral-valve prolapse...y'know, nothing major, not like one needs to prepare or anything, safe to let me just hang here all unknowing....

>62 msf59: Oh good!! Fante never scaled the heights because he was very, very explicitly a socialist and so was not to be celebrated in this country. Principles aren't to be tolerated by our capitalist masters. Makes 'em look bad.

>61 Caroline_McElwee: *gnawgnawbitebite* ...sorry, Caro, what was that? *churnchurn*

>60 Helenliz: Ha! I put an extra step in because I flat couldn't believe what my pattern-sensing sense said to me. But my #3 fit the known parameters, just wasn't it. *snicker*

>59 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita, I really hope so too.

*smooch*

Thursday hugs and smooches, RDear.

I get the New York Times's free daily newsletter. Today it is focused on the failings within the CDC that has contributed to the current awfulness called "monkeypox" (though we really need to think up a better name for it). Rochelle Swirsky, current head of the agency, has put her finger on a huge one: it's a publication factory, not a public-health agency, as currently constituted.

The problem is that this suits very, very rich and powerful interests...eg, looney-tunes right-wingers will screech about how masks infringe their liberty, fuck a bunch of our liberty not to be ill (possibly fatally); pharmaceutical companies who make money when you're ill...like it that way, and decades of the culture getting entrenched has filled the place with inertia-ridden bureaucrats. (Fauci, no one gay and my age can forget, was NOT a hero during the AIDS epidemic's early days.)

Very, very instructive that this fact has FINALLY been identified as something to address not endure. It's only taken three bungled plague responses.

>68 MickyFine: Hi Micky, thanks! *smooch*

‘Morning, RD.

>66 richardderus: Yipes. I did not realize that all the stuff was in aid of diagnosing something potentially major. Fingers crossed that you get an answer soon.

XO Horrible

>66 richardderus: - Eek. Crossing everything for false alarm or at least, a not serious outcome.

(gentle) smooch

155 Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: One of my take-aways from living through the twenty-first century as an immigrant to its reality is that there are a *shocking* number of souls that just...vanish...with no explanation, no investigation, and no closure for their families or friends. Author Anappara knows this...she is a journalist, she hears the howls. The question I have is the same one I had when the Ciudad Juárez femicides first came to light: What the actual fuck are the police doing?

That being an unanswerable question without delving into immense mountains of sociopolitical research and studies, I'll go to the next part of the issue raised in the story: Caste and sectarian animosities and prejudices come in for scary, extra-believable spotlighting in here. It's like the awfulness I really wasn't privy to before Katherine Boo's book came out (whatever the criticisms Boo gets, I for one hadn't heard anything about these issues before I read it) sprang to life in the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. He's the only one who cares that Bahadur has gone missing...as much, that is, as the child's mother cares.

Very much raised by TV while being resentfully and carelessly monitored by his gifted older sister (a quietly important strand is the terrible, sexist manner that the capitalist system exacerbates her mistreatment, the not terribly bright but terribly endearingly bumptious and energetic Jai gets a scooby-group of kids together to seek out Bahadur. What unfolds is proof that kids are great narrators, if lousy cops. The scooby-group is convinced (well, two-thirds convinced) that there's a Djinn on the eponymous Purple Line of the city's subway. No, there isn't; if you came hoping for a fantasy read, go in peace. What they do discover is, however, very relevant.

There are things in the telling of the story that didn't work well to make it into a satisfying read: The neglected sister who watches Jai does something that removes her from sympathy to distaste. It's not pretty, it was perfectly understandable, but it actually made the central search more complicated and showed that adolescents are not the best choices of parent subsitiutes. The final solution of the mystery at the heart of the book is desperately sad; it's also not what was signaled as one of the book's themes, the complicity of the capitalist world in the destruction of families and ways of life, as well as exacerbating the existing sectarian horrors plaguing India. In my view, this was a narrative error, since it took the wind out of the sails of at least half the book's points. And, perhaps most tellingly, the multiplicity of narrative voices was less an enrichment of the story than a lessening of tension. This is very often the case in crime fiction.

This explains a lot of why this carefully crafted and involvingly told story didn't get all five stars from me.

What was so enriching in this read was the manner of making evident the luxury of a safe, secure childhood anywhere not already rich. What made me think the hardest was the additional, personal light shone on the family of a disappeared child, the struggles of parenting while extremely poor, the harshness of communities that, under threat, are coldly calculatedly indifferent in their actions if not always their hearts...they simply can't afford to be fully realized communities such as existed before capitalism fastened its teeth in India's neck.

Wordle 426 3/6

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Well...it wasn't what I expected it to be, but it beat HARPS...AEONS, MIRTH, SHRUG

>72 jessibud2: Hi Shelley!

>71 karenmarie: Happy Friday, Horrible!

It's probably nothing. I'm never *really* seriously ill without much worse symptoms. I'm just not used to my various issues being taken so seriously, and our new doctor is apparently not funnin' when she says, "we'll check it out."

They do this test with such *cold* stuff slapped all over one's torso! I, me!, wanted a binky!

>74 richardderus: Took me 5. I went via oysters and vegetation.

>75 richardderus: like you said, better get it checked out than not know. And the Dr taking it seriously is what should happen - and yet it's a surprise when they actually do.

I haven't wished you a Happy Thinga, and I do! What a boon your presence is in this group!

Nor have I echoed your impatience with getting medical results. May today be the day, and may the results all be good for you!

I'm still Fiver. *smooch* anyway.

>77 LizzieD: *smooch* back

I'm pretty sure the group will go on fine without me, when it's my turn to leave gawd's waiting room...which, I hasten to add, I am not eager to occur. Results come when they come, but what I am hoping for is that the doc gets them and then wants to discuss them with me. I'm accustomed to echoing silences that're meant to function in the place of actual reassurance.

>76 Helenliz: Hi Helen! 5 is still not skunked, and your route was very amusing to travel.

I'm not sure this doctor will last. She's actually listening, and that can lead to burnout when the people being served aren't listening in their turn. This place is full of folks who simply can't and never could. They aren't going to start trying to get better now, and that gets so wearing...I know *I* couldn't do it.

I got lost in the thread on what all's actually doing with you, RD so I hope your physician sorts you out and it is all good. I haven't been by in aeons but I did post a number of book reviews based on what wasn't a re-read (updated my profile book list). TTFN and take care.

>56 richardderus: some meetings are fated, aren't they.

Ours definitely was and my life would have been much poorer without it. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>73 richardderus: I really need to get that one read. It has been in the BlackHole far too long!

Have a super Saturday, RD!

‘Morning, Rdear! Happy Saturday to you.

>73 richardderus: And onto the wish list it goes. Excellent review, as always.

>75 richardderus: Ugh to cold stuff all over. Binky, pacifier, boppy – I understand.

>78 richardderus: I hope your Listening Doctor talks with you soon and with good news. And I hope she stays. My cardiologist scheduled an echocardiogram for me in March, and she assured me she’d call when she’d reviewed the results. And, she actually did! In a timely manner! Miracle of miracles.

*smooch* from The Weenie

Wordle 427 4/6

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I enjoyed this puzzle. It really was both words 3 & 4. AEONS, MIRTH, GREAT, TREAT

>82 richardderus: I got it in four too, and thought it was a very pleasing result

Happy Saturday, Richard. We have some rain in the area this weekend. We surely need it. I am getting ready to start my reread of Angle of Repose. Once again, I saw on Good Reads, that you were a big fan of this novel, despite reading it decades ago. You must have been pretty young. You don't do many rereads, right, or am I wrong?

>81 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! We'll see on the happy-Saturday part. The weather's sure doing its part, I must say, since it will reach a blistering 83° today. *swoon* How ever will I cope.

I'm unsure about the world's contributions being that nice....

*smooch*

>81 karenmarie:, >80 alcottacre: Yeah!! The Djinn Patrol rolls on the tracks!!

>80 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia, and you know I feel the same way about you. It's lovely to find one's clan, no matter the distance between us. *smooch*

>79 SandyAMcPherson: Sandy! Hi there, glad you de-cocooned or whatever. I'll come look at your new reviews directly.

>84 msf59: Hi Mark! I am so glad you'll be reading Angle of Repose this weekend...it has a lot to say about the world we live in, quietly and beautifully, that is really quite devastating.

I don't re-read a lot of books. I'm not getting younger, or even staying the same age....

>83 bell7: Great word today! I enjoyed getting there. *smooch*

>82 richardderus: ha! Words 1 & 2 were different, but we tried 3 & 4 in the same order.

>78 richardderus: I'm not configured to be one of the caring professions either. When the husband spent a night in an induced coma, I went in to see him in ITU. I managed about 20 minutes before it freaked the hell out of me and I had to leave. No response to anything. The nurse, however, was talking to him the entire time, telling him everything she was doing. Yup, no way I could do that.
Hope the listening doctor stays.

>87 Helenliz: I lack the reserves of lovingkindness and the ability to delude myself that I'm helping to listen patiently while someone I'm not fond of recapitulates their traumas. Just...pull your socks up, do something unselfish and useful, and belt the fuck up.

Not a natural counselor, me. Need a problem solved, OTOH, and I'm your boy.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Sunday to you.

>88 richardderus: Not a natural counselor, me. Need a problem solved, OTOH, and I'm your boy. Gotcha. I've always felt like I'm a natural counselor, but do admit that the older I've gotten, the fewer people I'm willing to have broad shoulders for. The ones I do let dump on me in turn let me dump on them.

My first instinct is to solve problems, too.

No. 37 is up.

*smooch* from your own Horrible. My weenie-dom being confined to arachnids, I'll leave it for a while.

Wordle 428 5/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, PASTE, TASTE, WASTE
One day I'll decide to go in reverse alpha order. Then it will be BASTE and I'll be screwed from the other direction.

>89 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible. I'll come look for #37 directly.

It's part of Stegner's letting-go theme for aging gracefully, that drawing-in of one's gifting. For whatever the gift is worth, I think it's best spread thickly not thinly as we head for the exit.

Anyway...a gift to me today was finding Scholastique Mukasonga, author of my 5*-reviewed Cockroaches, liked my review and retweeted the link to it! Always a thrill.

Popping back in to say "LT is my favourite social media place" even though I'm not visibly here very often.
Life is improving for me, somewhat in terms of overload. Mind you this polio and monkey pox business is in many ways more worrying than Covid has become. Thanks for the messages btw, 😊

>92 SandyAMcPherson: *smooch*

Polio is super-scary to me. I'm relatively unlikely to catch it. Rockland's unvaccinated Ultraorthodox Jewish population isn't close to me (I don't interact with the ultraorthodox people who *are* here) and it's not shown to have moved from the primary outbreak.

Your unease is understandable...there's no treatment except palliative measures for the too-often-for-comfort lethal polio. Monkeypox is to be avoided but, honestly, ought not to worry those in monogamous relationships who aren't health-care providers. It's also unlikely to be anything except unpleasant. So, no huge worry.

>90 richardderus: Exactly, Richard, except that I had to use all six tries.

>94 LizzieD: Well, still not-skunked, so yay for the streak! *smooch*

>88 richardderus: Made me smile; you are just a big softie really.

Wordle 429 3/6

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That was a mulligan, in golf terminology. I'd've needed to be insentient not to get it in three! AEONS, MIRTH, MERIT

>93 richardderus: This was such a nice (=pleasant, reassuring, credible, sensible) reply. Thank you!
Did I tell you I'm reading Walt Harrington's Crossings?
What an amazing book, great author. The stories he tells are so insightful and have really helped me see 'from the inside to out'. Much relates to how Canadian whites need to see first nations people and how hard it is to navigate confidently in today's society. Socially, there are advances, but overall, it is not enough.

156 Home Grown Talent by Sally Malcolm and Joanna Chambers

Rating: 4* of five

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHERS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the story of Lewis and Aaron, the grumpy/sunshine boss/PA delight set in the TV world? It lost enough points for its SIX w-bombs not to get to five stars despite my deep affection for its story line and its delightful silliness. All that was wrapping a quite serious love story between two sad, lonely men whose lives are dedicated to a world that uses them for what it can get.

The authors? Nice people, one supposes, but severely addicted to carpet w-bombing the reader. Six was bad. TWELVE IN THIS STORY. Twelve! Using any word not a conjunction, pronoun, proper name, or toponym (and that one's iffy) twelve times in one's story is simply too damned many.

Anyway. The story, as expected from these two mavens of the genre, was a cracker. Owen raised his teenaged brother after their mother's death; as a barely fledged kid himself he...did a great job. He worked. He protected. He never left his brother in the lurch as he got left. His brother's grouchy personality, built to withstand misery and grief, was just more than he could handle. I think it's the most touching story I've ever read, and Owen's power as a character largely began from that base. When we meet him in this story, he's along for the ride at an awards show for Lewis's hit TV show, Leeches. One of the participants' plus-ones is young Mason Nash...Lewis's ex, met at the beginning of episode one, a model/Instagram influencer. Owen judged him harshly while Lewis was dating him. Mason rather curled his lip at Owen, too.

So guess what happens!

It's a rom-com. You know what you're getting, you know when you're going to get it, and this being 2022 we know we're in for some sex. The sex scenes add to the relationship drama, and the last one in particular was deeply, deeply relatable to anyone who's ever had a long-term relationship. So used well, written well, satisfyingly up to snuff on the heat-level scale...nothing tepid about these guys!...and exactly the proper amount of smexytimes for the story. (It doesn't hurt that I identify with Owen, either.)

One of the surprises in the story was the deeply sympathetic portrayal of "an influencer" or massively online person as a regular guy trying to make a living in a very cut-throat industry...two, really, as he was modeling as well as Instagramming his life. Or lifestyle, I suppose...like all the surface-gloss purveyors of Fantasy, there's a lot of effort behind the Glamour. Then there's Owen, simple son of the soil that he is, who runs a gardening business that doesn't require him to tart anything up for the cameras and likes it that way. But...key realization...Owen is a caretaker, with all the control and trust issues that implies. So, funnily enough, is Mason (real name it's not, but you'll find that out for yourself). Different angles, same path, and Owen'd been on it longer so has much, much more invested in the identity without really taking in his façade's effects on others. Mason's simply never, as a twentysomething, thought much about anyone he wasn't responsible for.

What draws the men together is what ultimately causes the only serious explosion neither is equipped to handle: Working together on something neither has any control over. It was a shock to me that Owen said yes, but thinking about myownself in my thirties, well...yeah, I see it. Mason's early-onset adulthood led him to reflect, "Responsibility, once assumed, was almost impossible to put down." This being an eternal verity known to most all of us who've taken it up as Owen had to do, as Mason must do, left me nodding along. Not for the first, or last, time, either. The authors are quite able to repackage Received Wisdom as new knowledge to their characters. It's one of the things that makes me enjoy these stories of younger people more than many, if not most, others.

The unfairness of Mason's life, as it leaks little by little into Owen's awareness, makes their estrangement that much more painful for them both. It was, TBH, about as blatantly signaled as can be. For a wonder, that actually worked to heighten its effect because of a choice I imagine was organic to the process of writing a series with two authors: Dual narrators. It's surprising to me how well the technique, mated to this story line, caused me to flip the pages past faster and faster. Kudos! By the end of the story, each knows the other's burdens, and it truly works as relationship binder. And the happily-ever-after that is part and parcel of the genre's promises to its readers arrived in a welcome, more grounded way than I thought it would...if at the expense of feeling a wee bit rushed.

Rein in the w-bombing, please, and bring on #3 soon!

>98 SandyAMcPherson: When are "advances" ever enough, Sandy? It was an advance when marriage equality was enshrined in law. The day I hope for is the day it simply doesn't matter who turns up where, for what reason, whatever gender/sex/skin color/ethnicity they may be, and simply gets whatever thing they are entitled to under the law. Housing...employment...marriage license...library card...job...whatever.

That's equality. Everything else is privilege, shared or denied. And, whaddaya know, privileges can be revoked.

>96 PaulCranswick: Pshaw! Faugh! I am a rotten-souled curmudgeonly porcupine and don't you forget it!

>100 richardderus: O.K. ---- but you're our r-scp and deserving, therefore, of a *smooch*. Done.
>97 richardderus: 4 for me - an improvement. I knew you'd have it in 3.

>101 LizzieD: *smooch* back

Wellllll, it *was* incredibly easy given the three letters I had in the correct places and the two letters that were correct but in the wrong places.

It was as easy as it will ever get.

>85 richardderus: It's lovely to find one's clan, no matter the distance between us.

I have been so extremely lucky in finding this clan!

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

Hi, there, Mr. Porcupine! I don't have anything really to say but wanted to let you know I've been visiting your thread regularly so thought I'd just delurk to say hi. So, hi. Oh, and thanks for your sage advice you left over on my thread.

*smooches*

>104 Storeetllr: Hi Mary! Glad to see you...I saw your response and responded to it. *smooch*

>103 alcottacre: Awomen, Sister Lady! *smooch*

Happy Tuesday, Richard!

>91 richardderus: Congrats on the retweeted review! It's always great to receive validation and praise once in a while :)

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD. I hope you have a terrific Tuesday!

'Morning, Rdear. Happy Tuesday to you.

>99 richardderus: Not abandoning it and even giving it 4* after TWELVE w-bombs is impressive. I am recently spoiled with Kindle Unlimited; however, I just broke down and spent the $4.99 on it as a pre-order, due on my Kindle on the 25th.

*smooch*

Tuesday *smooch*!

>109 katiekrug: *smooch* back!

>108 karenmarie: *self-congratulatory pat* Yes, yes, I'm quite a Noble Soul, so willing to put aside all my misgivings and crotchets when True Art is placed before me.

*snort*

Actually, Jo and Sally are really good at conveying the thing I look for most in my reading: A reason behind the events that is both simple and complicated. Something that makes the involvement in the story easy to spot but has resonance and adds complexity. They did it very well in these first two stories.

KU is a terrific bargain for the voracious romance or mystery reader. I myownself do very well with Prime Reads, and Kindle Firsts. *smooch*

>107 alcottacre: I hope I do, too, Stasia, and thank you for adding to the scale on that side. *smooch*

>106 figsfromthistle: Oh, it's very validating when the *author* retweets my review come-ons...that my discussion of their Preciousssssss met with their approval to that level does make it feel like I *got* them.

Tuesday orisons, Anita!

Wordle 430 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, NOBLE, WOVEN

Hey, RD. I did my mini-review of Ask the Dust, I hope I can hook someone else into reading it. I am also deeply entrenched in to Angle of Repose, with Juno lying at my feet. Another beautiful day in Chicagoland.

>89 karenmarie: Those (the ones that return the favour) are the best ones to accept dumping and venting from. Currently the main one in that category for me is my youngest sister, who can tell me all about things and people I'm not involved with, and may never encounter. (She and I now live in different countries, 3000 or so miles apart.) Plus we both vent about the more annoying behaviours of our local household members, with the listener eventually offering a funny way to look at the irritating behaviour. (Both of us deal with stress by finding humour. And none of these behaviours are objectively *very* bad. Or at least, not bad enough for either of us to prefer living alone, or finding new living companions.)

And I'm not a natural counselor either. Unlike the sister in question.

>93 richardderus: I presume we were both vaccinated against polio, long ago and doubtless far away. What I don't know is how well the immunity lasts.

>115 ArlieS: I was wondering about that myself. May need to talk to my PCP about it.

Hiya, Richard! Just got back from voting. Only one race/issue to vote for (Dem Primary for State Rep), so polling place wasn't at all busy, but I saw a lot of campaign signs along the way so maybe the fact I voted at 1:30 pm on a Tuesday had something to do with it? I hope.

>116 Storeetllr: I hope, too. Our facility has poll workers come early to assist us get our votes correctly cast. I love living in New York!

>115 ArlieS:, >114 ArlieS: Long, long ago...there's nothing I can find about that.

Happy new thread Richard! And happy Thingaversary!

ETA: gosh, just checked my own calendar. I see new books in the offing ...

Have a wonderful Wednesday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Happy mid week Richard!

Happy Wednesday, Richard! *smooch*

Wordle 431 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, NEWLY, NEEDY Surprising to me to see "Mary's Problem Letter" again so soon.

>121 bell7: Thanks, Mary, we'll see what we'll see today.

>120 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, same back atcha.

>119 alcottacre: I sure hope so, Stasia! *smooch*

>118 humouress: They're a lovely tradition we're whomped up for ourselves, aren't they? An excuse to be addicts all together! Wheeeeee

>122 richardderus: Different pathway, same result for me, Richard. Enjoy the rest of your week!

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

I hope this is going to be the last hot day this summer, it looks like we will return to more reasonable temperatures tomorrow.
If predictions are right, August 2022 is going to be the hottest August ever in our country :-(

*smooch*

‘Morning, RDear. A Very Happy Thursday to you.

*blink* I can’t believe I didn’t visit yesterday. I feel like a Bad Girl, but will get over it quickly, I imagine. The Federalist No 38 is fairly long, but the house is quiet, I have coffee, and I feel like reading a James Madison effort. That’s in addition to the 4 fiction books I’ve got going. And, it just took me 19 minutes to read and post about #38. Hmmm. At that rate, it will take me about 15 hours to finish The Federalist.

>114 ArlieS: You’re lucky your main dumping/venting person is your sister, Arlie. My only sister and I live about 2600 miles apart, a very similar situation. There are taboo subjects, however – politics, religion, ivermectin (!), her husband, among others – so my current d/v person is my friend Karen in Montana. We met when I was 18 and she was 20, and probably talk about 4-5 hours a week.

*smooch*, RD, from your own Horrible

Burgoine #53

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

I CHECKED THIS AUDIOBOOK OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. THANK GOODNESS THEY EXIST.

My Review: I would never buy an audiobook, so this was a perfect solution. I wanted to listen to Dr. Tyson reading his own work, since he knows what he wants to convey and to stress. I had some problems this week that made reading problematic for a few days. This 3h42m listen was a great way to keep my hand in. It was also an enjoyable experience.

Like all ear-reads, I retained about 30% of it, though.

The things I was most interested in learning more about were the particles, and that bit stuck with me just fine. "Charm" and "strange" are opposites, apparently, in the particle zoo. I myownself think of them as two sides of the same coin.

I find Dr. Tyson's voice to be easy on the ears. I am confident, as I listen to him, that he is in full possession of the fact and I can rely on him to educate me. He has a sense of humor that goes down well with me, so that really helped my concentration.

>126 karenmarie: I wouldn't tell my sisters a single damned thing I didn't want to have weaponized against me/blabbed to the world.

I wasn't here much yesterday. It was...frustrating. My issue was resolved but not until the afternoon. Still, it's only on the upswing right now! *smooch*

>125 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, August was a skunk of a month for so many of us. I'm pretty sure this year will be in the record books for all the worst reasons all over the world. Ick!

Happy Thursday, anyway. *smooch*

>124 Familyhistorian: Thank you, Meg! I hope to.

Morning, Richard. Sweet Thursday. I did drop by yesterday but I may have got lost in the shuffle. I did get some Jackson time in yesterday and today will be mostly reserved for the books. Enjoy your day.

>129 msf59: Hi Mark! Have a lovely bookish Thursday. I'm going to finish up Natasha Pulley's latest, The Half Life of Valery K. If I can get my stuffing together, I might even review it today.

Oh, forgot to post this.
Wordle 432 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, BLOWN, CLOWN

Good morning, Richard, and good news that you're feeling better. Take care! *smooch*
(That neat alpha order will get you every time except when it doesn't. Grrrrr.)

157 The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved.

Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English—instead of French—the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer.

The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.

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

My Review: An exciting visit to the Aetherverse, to which we were introduced in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (below)...or so it seemed to me.

It cost me so much to read this book, with its star-crossed lovers, its perception of time as layered and mutable, and its grotesque unfairness, the first time. It wasn't easy a second one, either, even though I knew what was coming.

Yes. I, testy oldster with less than two decades left to him, read a book twice.

There is that much to unpack. There is that much to process. There is that kind of thought put into the structure of the story. All that makes an investment of eyeblinks that big both desirable and at some level necessary.

The nature of Time (as the Tenth Doctor called it, "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff") and the nature of family feature heavily in this tale. Two men whose fates...whose lives entangle across timelines of startling "points of divergence" or "PoDs" but never forget each other. Imagine loving someone enough, with so much of yourself, that you remember them when you don't remember yourself.

That is the definition of the stakes in this alternate history/time travel novel. There's a weird place, in Scotland for once, where time doesn't behave as we think it should. This remains a weird, slightly underexplained, phenomenon throughout the iterations of the story. In every timeline, Man A meets Man B, falls in love with him, then for Reasons leaves him. Man B doesn't change much, if at all. His name is Kite. His past isn't fixed, though it's the little things that change. For Man A, the one who does the leaving, the past, the present, and the nature of each is...mutable. The world is, oddly, full of people like him who come to themselves in a place where they have no memories and no trauma to explain that lack.

We, readers, know what it is. We know because there is a man, red hair, terrible burn scars, and Man A...call him Joe, call him Jem, what you will...recalls him with love. He doesn't really know why. He isn't happy anywhere. He can't find connection to anyone around him. He floats, unanchored, away from Kite. Who is a Napoleonic-Wars naval officer with a bad past. He's building a better future, he hopes, by letting Jem/Joe go through the Scottish time gate. But it's at his own expense. He's so used to that, to doing hard and painful things, as a result of his bad past.

What came through to me most strongly was the nature of Love. There is a scene early in the book where Joe, as he was at that time, was raped. By his wife. Who should've been his sister-in-law. And she gives birth to his daughter Lily, whom he adores. He struggles against his love for Kite for several years to stay with her. In the end, he can't fight it and they reunite...and Lily is never born. Yet always alive to Joe, Jem, Man A.

What the hell! A man getting raped by a woman?! What's the old lunatic talking about? My own life: It's happened to me, perpetrated by my mother. And that is how I know that Author Pulley got the sensation, the misery of that kind of coercion, exactly and precisely correct. It was shattering to read. It was the very first time in my over-sixty years on this planet that I have read anywhere my private and unshareable truth. It healed and soothed me in a way I didn't anticipate ever experiencing.

If that is not enough to convince you to read the book, then how's this? These men are very dishonest with themselves. They can't afford not to be. But neither man has ever, for a single moment, lost his love for the other.

Come for the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff. Stay for the family that only love can form. Revel in the struggles of true lovers to live their truth.

>132 LizzieD: Happy Thursday, Peggy! *smooch*

Oh, that damnèd alphabet...bit me on the ankle more than once, she has.

>133 richardderus: - Oooh, a 5-star read! *makes note*

>133 richardderus: you liked that a whole lot more than I did.
I struggled with the "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff", which didn't feel, to me, self-consistent.

>136 Helenliz: It wasn't...and that was a problem for me, too...until I really *got* the scene where Kite mentions the light bulbs to Joe. *blink* OOOOOooooohhhhhhhh, sez I, I seeeeeeee, sez I.

Kite's in the Beatrix-and-George London with Joe and mentions that, while they've been talking, the lightbulbs have changed shape...right before Joe goes home, falls asleep, and wakes up with Toby and Alice dead of malaria in India. It's right before he races with Beatrix and George to the station to meet Kite. The description she makes at that point of the memories being flimsy when they first show up and slowly hardening did the trick for me.

>135 katiekrug: In case you were worried, Katie, there is only the one (brutal, cruel) s-e-x scene. I know how little you like such things.

*chuckle*

158 The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots to avoid frostbite, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won’t go insane. But on one ordinary day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps Valery from the frozen prison camp to a mysterious unnamed town that houses a set of nuclear reactors and is surrounded by a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.

In City 40, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: why is there so much radiation in this area? What, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?

Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley’s inimitable style, The Half Life of Valery K is a sweeping new adventure for readers of Stuart Turton and Sarah Gailey.

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

My Review: There is nothing one Earth more appalling to me than the attitude "My ignorance is better than your education, training, and expertise." It's not just wrong-headed. It is dangerous. It leads to very, very deleterious results for the people who have no say in...often no awareness of...the risks they are being subjected to by the wilfully ignorant. The Yucca Flats, Nevada, nuclear-bomb testing disaster that People magazine broke the story of in 1980...the 1956 filming of The Conqueror ring any bells, fellow oldsters?...wasn't the only such official-denial event in the world. In the USSR, there was the Ozyorsk disaster, outed to the world in the New Scientist magazine in 1976 by a brave scientist called Medvedev. (I have to say that Siberia has a very unlucky past. This disaster occurred in 1957; the Tunguska event in 1908 was a holocaust; and sixty miles away from Ozyorsk is Chelyabinsk, of 2013 meteorite explosion fame!)

The story of the many "closed cities" in the USSR, and in today's Russia, is similarly grim, similarly marked by denial and obfuscation and outright lying. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was going to be treated that way, only it was far too big to tamp down and deny. So, Author Pulley has me by the nose-hairs again. Again! I am putty in this wicked writer's hands. She tells stories that make my ears perk up, the hair on the back of my neck do its wolfman imitation, and my breathing to become labored in eagerness.

Valery K. the nuclear scientist, exiled to a colder and less hospitable part of Siberia than City 40/Ozyorsk is in, is suddenly ripped from his wretched routine without explanation or preparation. He's in the gulag...this is terrifying. But his worst fears...interrogation? execution?...aren't realized. He's sent to this comparative demi-Paradise of a place to study field mice. To assess them for effects of radiation exposure.

So, all is explained. He's a criminal, but also a thorough scientist trained in matters nuclear. Trained, talented, expendable.

What follows is a litany of nuclear-waste exposure nightmares. The effects on people, on the environment, are grisly. In the one plot strand I am absolutely sure is fiction (it says here) the authorities conduct radiation-exposure experiments on the people of City 40. The other plot strands, the environmental disaster, the carelessness and mismanagement that led to and characterized the ongoing handling of the disaster, are real. (Follow the links!) And gosh golly gee, wowee zowie, those sorts of things don't *ever* happen now. Especially the official lying and misleading! That could never happen in any authoritarian state in the twenty-first century, we have satellites and technology to sniff out problems, and scientists who would *never* lie to us here in the West.

So, the timing of the title's publication is now explained.

As one expects from Author Pulley, there are two men falling in love with each other amid the chaos and carnage that they are powerless to stop. Also as one would expect, there are events that occur that cause them trouble personally and interpersonally. I've said it before, the curse of adulthood is one never, ever has an unmixed emotion. Valery tries, in his what-got-him-gulaged way, to force officialdom to face up to the scale of the disaster. He wants to help people, to save them. Shenkov, his belovèd, is a married father, is in the game because it's the way to get ahead. And stay out of the gulag. The story, in other words, of generations of gay and bisexual men. Hide! They won't kill you if they don't have to notice your deviance.

But like calls to like. Valery knows that Shenkov loves him; he knows he loves Shenkov; things won't go well for City 40, but can things go well for them as men, as people, as...a couple? Fortune, as always, favors the brave. There must always be blood sacrificed before one gets one's rewards.

Morally grey characters, men past pretty on life's curve, the necessity of moving the world's blockages to make room for your authentic life: boxes all checked. The life you want, well...what do you know about how much it will cost, about what it will extract from you. You'll find out, if you're lucky. Or maybe unlucky. Most likely both. Consider, after reading the book, the title and its layers of meaning.

The right kind of read for me, right now, and it went down like the oldest, smoothest, most deceptively sweet tequila there is.

>128 richardderus: Happy Thursday, Richard! Hope you continue to experience upswing in being!

Karen O

>139 klobrien2: Thank you most kindly, Karen O. My entire focus is on swinging the up and not get to headin' down.

Burgoine #54

Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The mental wellbeing of children and adults is shockingly poor. Marc Brackett, author of PERMISSION TO FEEL, knows why. And he knows what we can do.

“We have a crisis on our hands, and its victims are our children.”

Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University’s Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults – a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he’d endured. And that was the beginning of Marc’s awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn’t alone, he wasn’t stuck on a timeline, and he wasn’t “wrong” to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it.

In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc’s development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works.

This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.



My Review: The author's credentials are impeccable. I quite enjoyed the read, though I found it very repetitive when read straight through. It occurs to me, however, that the target market...the women who would read Marge Simpson's iconic magazine from the ancient opening credits, Fretful Mother...do not ever have that much time to themselves to read a book straight through. That, plus the simple, direct language and the really easy to remember acronym RULER (see below), make this a very, very useful and helpful read for the trackless wastes of Parenthood that ZERO people are really ready for.
RULER stands for:

RECOGNIZING the emotion in the moment...can't do anything until you name it.

UNDERSTANDING the source..."why this? why now?"

LABELING encourages the use of precise, descriptive language...eg, "bummed out" not just "sad...to get at the root of the emotion.

EXPRESSING out loud, in words, what the emotion experienced really is. Hardest thing in the list to do.

REGULATING the expression of emotion into situationally, socially appropriate channels. Another difficult task.

None of these tasks are unattainable goals. Each one, in my opinion, would be more effectively done with a professional counselor within a theraputic setting. Nothing to say one can't, or shouldn't, make a start on the process by reading this fascinating (but repetitive) book.

Pearl Rule #38 (p79)

The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (tr. Michele Hutchison)

Rating: 3* of five (I guess...)

A LITTLE FREE LIBRARY FIND. IT'S GOING BACK RIGHT NOW.

My Review: Excrement, depression, religious nuttery, what I strongly suspect is a suicide...all still within my tolerance. Then Obbe is disgustingly cruel to his hamster in front of his very young sisters and Jas says:

'Right,' Dad says, 'off to your bedroom, you, and pray.'

His shoe hits my bum; the poo stuck up it might have shot back up in my intestines now. When Mum learns the truth about {the hamster} she'll get depressed again and won't speak for days. I glance at {her brother and sister} one last time, then the Lego castle {where the dying hamster is hidden from their father). My brother is suddenly busy with his butterfly collection. He probably just beat them out of the air with his bare hands.

That's page 79. Add in a parent hitting a child with a shoe and I am just not here for it. I don't think others will have my sensitivity to animal cruelty or using an object to strike a child, and the imagery is so well-rendered into English I forgot it was a translation; whatever there is to recommend it, I can not, and do not wish to, go there.

>142 richardderus: That's a big NO then.

>127 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. It sounds like something I might enjoy.

>133 richardderus: I really must get some of Pulley's work read!

>142 richardderus: Absolutely NO.

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

>142 richardderus: A very discomfortable read it was, Richard dear, and I did finish it, despite the triggers.
It was very well written, and very depressing. I haven't had any urge to pick up an other book by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld...

Well, moving Pulley's books up the list to "hope to get to soon".

Happy Friday *smooches*

>144 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! *smooch*

Start your Pulleying with The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, is my considered opinion. The intro to layered time-clues is less demanding than The Kingdoms so less likely to let important stuff slip past one.

>144 alcottacre:, >143 humouress: Absolutely concur that neither of y'all should try to read this one.

>143 humouress: Hi Nina! *smooch*

>146 bell7: I commented to >144 alcottacre: above...I think that's the proper place for one to begin one's journey if continuing it is the desired outcome.

Happy Friday! *smooch*

>145 FAMeulstee: It...wasn't pleasant. I don't want to go to those places at this moment, and I don't think I'm going to want to go there any time soon.

However well-written something is, it can't make me long for a shower, then a bath, followed by a radiation-decontamination shower, and expect me to plow on.

Wordle 433 3/6

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4 of 5 letters, 2 in their proper positions...this was a really fun way to start Friday's mood upswing! AEONS, MIRTH, IRONY

‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Friday to you. I hope your reading is back on track. I got Wordle in 3 today.

>128 richardderus: I’m sorry your relationship with your sisters is as it is. Mine with my sister works out well enough – we love each other, we sympathize when we can, celebrate when we can, reminisce about our reasonable childhoods. I wish we were more in sync about politics, wish she’d not be an Evangelical Christian who is ignorant about her religion, and wish her husband hadn’t dissed me in 2017.

>133 richardderus: I read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and was mostly unenthusiastic about it, so won’t read this one. But your 5* make me wish I felt differently about the author and her books.

>141 richardderus: ‘permission to feel.’ Nope. Not in my family. Feelings were the enemy. Hard beginning to overcome, and I’m not always successful. Sigh. I like the concept of RULER.

>142 richardderus: Nope. Just nope.

>148 richardderus: However well-written something is, it can't make me long for a shower, then a bath, followed by a radiation-decontamination shower, and expect me to plow on. A very good way to decide whether to finish a book or even start one.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>148 richardderus: Sadly it felt very real, families and environments like that still exist here... :-(
To me that was also reason to finish it.
Anyway, I think it was a wise decision to Pearle Rule it.

Good morning, Richard, with a wish that you may find yourself approaching 100% normality in the feel-good department. Another 3-day for me too! I revel in it.

I am touched every time you reveal something about your childhood. You are the poster man for "I Will Be Responsible for Who I Am."
All respect.

>152 LizzieD: Why, thank you Peggy! That is a lovely compliment indeed. (And the opposite of what my sisters say whenever they get the chance.) I mean, at my age more than 75% of the Earth's population is younger than I am, so isn't it sort of, y'know, time to own it?

I'm over the 50%-back level and, frankly, that is adequate because the trend is towards better. I can be patient when I sense movement in the proper direction.

Aren't 3-days fun? It feels like a li'l gimme from the goddesses.

>151 FAMeulstee: Oh goodness me, Anita, the setting and the people were so real I felt like slapping their ignorant faces. That was, in fact, part of my problem with the read. There are squads and fleets of people like that here, I know I won't surprise you by saying. I simply don't want to spend time with them!

It was an easy decision to Pearl-Rule it for that reason. It's my time; I'll spend it how I feel best about the results of the spending.

>150 karenmarie: My sisters were much more like aunts who swanned in and out of my life, being 10 and 9 years older, so it isn't like I lost all that much more than I'd've lacked in the first place. The eldest did her best to make up for Mama's deficits, though not with great skill; still, she tried.

I don't see Pulley's storytelling as a good alchemical match for you, Horrible. Her worlds aren't going to make the effort you'd have to expend overcoming your impatience with the characters a net positive.

*chuckle* on the Rijneveld...yeah. No.

RULER can work without reading his piffle, trust me.

Friday orisons, smoochling.

>148 richardderus: by happy chance, I own the book (a SanthaThing gift from just last year) and hadn't managed to put it together as the same author as The Kingdoms. I shall endeavor to make it a priority to read it soon...after I finish up a few overdue library books.

>149 richardderus: I had three letters all in the wrong place but also managed in three 😊

>154 bell7: 3-days are good days, no matter the path we take to get there.

Ha! Well, then. Pop 'er on the pile, and honestly if it's not a supercalafragilisticexpialadocious read, remember it's her debut novel. It's a great way to get into her thematic head.

Pearl Rule #39 (p115)

Shutter Man by Richard Montanari

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Plagued with a rare disease that prevents him from recognizing faces, Billy carries a photograph in his pocket that is his only way of identifying his next target. Killing is in Billy's bloodline, as a member of Philadelphia's dangerous Farren crime family.

While Billy stalks Philadelphia, Detective Kevin Byrne is assigned to a series of bizarre home-invasion cases and is joined by his former partner-turned-assistant district attorney, Jessica Balzano. Their investigations circle Byrne's childhood neighborhood of Devil's Pocket, and they find themselves revisiting a crime from Byrne's past that has haunted him for decades. What Byrne witnessed as a child in Devil's Pocket jeopardizes the Farren family--which makes him the next target on Billy's hit list.

A multigenerational story of hardship, guilt, and redemption, Shutter Man is Byrne and Balzano's most tense and personal case to date.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Maybe I should've said "no" to this ARC. It's #9 in a series. That doesn't usually go well for me, does it for you?

Byrne, the cop, is trying to chase down a man who kills women, apparently for fun. Byrne keeps...checking out...and there are these portentous passages that Mean Something™:

Byrne knew what he should be doing, where he should be pointing his day, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew that what {a guy} had seen today in the Pocket would remain between the two men. {The guy} was a brother cop, and Byrne didn't have to concern himself.

He tried to get back to work, but that small cardboard box, and its contents, kept calling out to him like a dark specter from his youth.

I honestly don't think there's anything in there that does a good job of making me turn the page to see what's next. It's not terrible writing; it's bland to me and, like a ginger-infused blancmange, doesn't work the way it was obviously meant to.

Burgoine #55

Son of a Gun: A Memoir by Justin St. Germain

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the tradition of Tobias Wolff, James Ellroy, and Mary Karr, a stunning memoir of a mother-son relationship that is also the searing, unflinching account of a murder and its aftermath

Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001. Debbie St. Germain’s death in her remote trailer, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, is a passing curiosity. “A real-life old West murder mystery,” the local TV announcers intone before the commercial break, while barroom gossips snicker cruelly. But for her twenty-year-old son, Justin St. Germain, the tragedy marks the line that separates his world into before and after.

Long after his mother’s death is “solved,” closure still seems missing. Distancing himself from the legendary town of his childhood, Justin makes another life a world away in San Francisco and achieves all the surface successes that would have filled his mother with pride. Yet years later he’s still sleeping with a loaded rifle under his bed. Ultimately, he is pulled back to the desert landscape of his childhood on a search to make sense of the unfathomable. What made his mother, a onetime army paratrooper, the type of woman who would stand up to any man except the men she was in love with? What led her to move from place to place, house to house, man to man, job to job, until finally she found herself in a desperate and deteriorating situation, living on an isolated patch of desert with an unstable ex-cop?

Justin’s journey takes him back to the ghost town of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, to the trailers he and Debbie shared, to the string of stepfathers who were a constant, sometimes threatening presence in his life, to a harsh world on the margins full of men and women all struggling to define what family means. He decides to confront people from his past and delve into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother’s life and death. All the while he tries to be the type of man she would have wanted him to be.

Brutally honest and beautifully written, Son of a Gun is a brave, unexpected and unforgettable memoir.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I've read a goodly number of memoirs about hardscrabble childhoods...The Glass Castle for one, Cockroaches for a memorable other...but I was not entirely sure what to make of this one. Violence against women isn't uncommon, and the domestic violence that led Author St. Germain's mother to her death was part of an established pattern in her life. It seems very likely that she was an adrenaline junkie, a person whose emotional needs are met by the powerful stimulant our brain feeds us when we're afraid.

Seeking out the fear isn't that uncommon a trait. Many of us climb mountains or watch horror films. The author's mother seems to have gotten her high from relationships with abusive men. It's very sad and very dangerous, and in this case lethal.

The enormous trauma of Author St. Germain's upbringing, the immense psychic wound of his mother's murder at the hands of the man she chose to marry, and the...the strangely deficient paperwork trail her murderer's fellow cops present him with when he returns to the scene of the crime a decade on, all left me...flat. I wasn't used up, wrung out, the way I would've been if I'd been sobbing from the awfulness and waste of it all. I was just...flat.

I suspect the reason is that I wasn't fully drawn in to the story. I did not get past the stage of reading where I lost my sense of separateness, of being outside looking in. It's an alchemical thing that happens when I'm reading certain things. I can't identify why it did not occur this time.

I wished that it had; I expected it to because I liked the guy; if I ever met Justin, I'd want to hug him. But I was outside, looking in, and thus not 4-star-giving wrapped up in his story.

Burgoine #56

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A dark, riveting, beautifully written book—by “a brilliant novelist” according to Richard Bausch—that combines noir and the gothic in a story about two families entwined in their own unhappiness, with, at its heart, a gruesome and unsolved murder.

Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone—for how many hours?—in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll.

George is of course the immediate suspect—the question of his guilt echoing in a story shot through with secrets both personal and professional. While his parents rescue him from suspicion, a persistent cop is stymied at every turn in proving Clare a heartless murderer. And three teenage brothers (orphaned by tragic circumstances) find themselves entangled in this mystery, not least because the Clares had moved into their childhood home, a once-thriving dairy farm. The pall of death is ongoing, and relentless; behind one crime there are others, and more than twenty years will pass before a hard kind of justice is finally served.

A rich and complex portrait of a psychopath and a marriage, this is also an astute study of the various taints that can scar very different families, and even an entire community. Elizabeth Brundage is an essential talent who has given us a true modern classic.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: A domestic thriller, and a darn unsuspenseful one. There is, as we're all aware, a long tradition in fiction and in fact of men who kill their wives for what seem to outsiders as heartbreakingly trivial reasons. This is one of those stories. It's not in the least mysterious that the murderer is the murderer. It's the reason I didn't give the book more stars.

I gave it as many as I did because Author Brundage writes about how the people in a small, gentrifying community deal with the end of their safety net of decent jobs and affordable housing. The influx of yuppies from the nearby rich-kids' college who just are not like them at all adds stress to the community. The families who figure in the murder case are tied together by their state of limbo. No one ever is charged for the crime. Although, I remind you, there's really just no doubt at all in the experienced reader's mind who did the crime.

Anyway. The way the author slowly, slowly brings the beginnings of justice to the town's unresolved wounds makes it a worthwhile read.

Pearl Rule #40 (p59)

The Happy Numbers of Julius Miles by Jim Keeble

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Julius Miles is a mathematical genius, but he is hefty of frame, awkward with the opposite sex and struggling to bring his existence into balance. When he stumbles across the girl next door naked and dead on her Victorian tiles, he starts to unravel the one equation that’s eluded him: that of his own life. And so it is that with the most unlikely of assistants – a transsexual Cupid with a penchant for drugs – he embarks on a quest to find the truth about love, death, family and how, ultimately, you make your numbers happy.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Try this on for size:

Even murder cops get bored. They're as keen as the rest of us to go home and watch television. It's not the gunslingers who solve crime but the pedants and the bores, my old man explained. "The evidence is is always there, son. Most cases are solved by a pig-headed copper going back one last time.

There is one more thing he told me, my cop father. Because it acts as an alibi, and because they get a kick out of seeing the pain and grief they've caused, killers often attend the funerals of their victims.

This is A Confederacy of Dunces plus equations, divided by Ignatius J. Reilly's nasty attitude towards others, times neurodivergent Othering plus fatphobia. There are a lot of characters. They speak, or think, in short bursts. There's a transgender woman playing matchmaker...and called a transsexual. Well, to be fair, this came out in 2012 and that was okay then.

But it just is not doing it for me at all. I am releasing the tree book into the Little Free Library as of now.

You've been busy reading. I should have used your starting word yesterday. I think I would have solved the word more quickly. I managed to get 2 of the middle three letters out of place in the first guess. I added a third letter in the second guess, but all were still out of place. I managed to get the three middle letters in place with the lovely word frond on the third. But I guessed wrong on the 4th before getting it correct on the 5th.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Saturday to you. I hope that you’re feeling much, MUCH better.

>156 richardderus: Ooh, the idea of a serial killer with Prosopagnosia makes me perk up, but your description of it and its being the 9th in a series is just a huge no. That, on top of your Pearl Rule-ing it, of course.

>157 richardderus: Seeking out the fear isn't that uncommon a trait. Many of us climb mountains or watch horror films. The author's mother seems to have gotten her high from relationships with abusive men. I’m back in weenie mode – I do not seek out fear. No physical dangers, no horror flickers, very few truly macabre horror books – Silence of the Lambs was a huge mistake. I’ll pass on this one, although Ellroy’s My Dark Places was a strong 4 stars for me, and in hindsight I might should have rated it 4.5 stars.

>158 richardderus: Nope. I’m beginning to feel that ‘worthwhile reads’ aren’t my thing. With this one, especially since no one is ever charged for the crime.

>159 richardderus: I can see why you Pearl Ruled it. Probably an exception in the group, I personally didn’t like A Confederacy of Dunces. neurodivergent Othering plus fatphobia. seal the deal. Hard pass. And really? killers often attend the funerals of the victims? Silly me. Never occurred to me. *eye roll*

*smooch* from sort-of-cranky and Wordle-in-4-today Horrible

Happy Saturday, Richard. I read Son of a Gun: A Memoir a few years ago and gave it a high rating. I do like these "tough" memoirs. I never hear of Cockroaches. Good?

We had a busy day with Jack yesterday, so got in zero reading. Hope to do a little catch-up today.

Wordle 434 4/6

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...the fuck was that...? AEONS, MIRTH, RULER, RUDER

I admit that I had to use my 2,309 word spreadsheet to find the word.

>162 msf59: Hi Mark! I wish I'd liked Son of a Gun: A Memoir more. I have the author's latest, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, on deck. I can imagine now why he was tapped to write it. Few people have both the experience and the life experience to tackle that analysis.

I really, strongly recommend Cockroaches.

ETA >164 karenmarie: Heh. If I had that spreadsheet I'd've wanted it, too!

>161 karenmarie: You and me both, Horrible. I thought it was a scream in ~1980, but found it intolerable and insufferable on another go.

About >158 richardderus:...Twenty years pass. The killer has, at last a stroke of bad luck; now an old man, he's informed that his wife's murder investigation is being reopened because of new evidence and he sails off in his boat, seeking the storm that will kill him. She has him think, "Maybe, at last, he will suffer." *gag*

I was 4 today as well. Strange choice of word. *smooch*

>160 thornton37814: Oh my! I really like your third guess-word, Lori. I'm going to add it to my "must-use" document. It's a word that evokes specific images of elegance to me.

Most of these are books I read a while back, made notes and bookdarted passages, and then just...couldn't be arsed to write something. It's unnerving to me to realize how many of those there are on my shelves. I'm clearing them out and getting the ARCs to the Little Free Library now that summer's winding down and beachgoers become thinner and thinner on the ground. Or parking lot, to be precise.

How many of y'all have heard of, or read, The 5 Love Languages? I have found it incredibly helpful since I read it THIRTY YEARS AGO...and the New York Times newsletter this morning had a whole section on its thirtieth!

...why no, I don't feel old at all...

So there I was, wincing in overfamiiarity, when I read Lisa Taddeo's Opinion piece:

“Sometimes I feel as if, these days, for women, the love language should be getting whatever you want,” Lisa Taddeo wrote for Times Opinion.

I can't offer subscriber links because I can't subscribe, but trust me it's worth burning a freebie on!

Good Saturday morning, Richard. Once more I am with you and Karen (literally with you in our 3rd and 4th words, of course) in Wordling in 4 and disliking *Confederacy*. I had to try 3 or 4 times before I could finish it. I am finished with it. *smooch*

>167 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! I don't know if you watched the Britcom Absolutely Fabulous last century. I *adored* it!

Then, at ~40, I rewatched it. A little bit of it.

Awful people being hateful and spiteful to each other, and I thought it was riotously funny? Why? Then I tried Keeping Up Appearances again...ghastly! I think, not long after BJ died, I shifted into some other band of humor. Ever since "cringe" comedy and insult comedy and the like just...revolt me, honestly.

Intensely violently disliked A Confederacy of Dunces and only finished it the first time (only time) through for a Book Club meeting. Boring (and boorish) characters and turgid (and turd-ish) writing. Not on my shelf you don't.

>169 magicians_nephew: LOL

Perfect summation, Jim, and the best response yet: Not on my shelf you don't.

100%

>163 richardderus: umm. I agree.
Wordle 434 3/6

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AUDIT, SHONE, RUDER Not at all expecting that to be a valid word, let alone the answer.

Hope Saturday is treating you well. Sunny here. >:-)

>171 Helenliz: It wasn't at all, even a little bit, what I expected. But...hey, the streak's alive!

Sunny out, just edged over into too-hot territory @ 29C a half-hour ago but not soppingly humid so I'll take it.

BUT there's the small matter of getting to the Little Free Library with the deaccessioned ARCs to contend with. *sigh*

>159 richardderus: "There's a transgender woman playing matchmaker...and called a transsexual. Well, to be fair, this came out in 2012 and that was okay then."

Here's a a bet - 10 years from now, someone will be saying something like "there's an xxxxxx referred to as transgender. But to be fair, this came out in 2022 and that was OK then."

It might be 20 years rather than 10 - IIRC, there was no obviously correct term in 2012, just a bunch of terms, and a bunch of people who had a strong enough preference among those terms to flame each other for using a different one. Whereas in 2002, the flame festival about terminology hadn't really started.

Burgoine #57

Winter Haven by Athol Dickson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Thirteen years after Vera Gamble's little brother ran away from their Texas home, his body washes ashore on the remote island of Winter Haven, Maine. Vera goes to claim the corpse and discovers the impossible: her brother hasn't aged a day since last she saw him. Determined to uncover what happened, she is confronted by unearthly fog, disturbing locals, and stories of lost colonies and a vengeful witch.

Beyond the forest where no creature dares to live, her only hope is the mysterious owner of a dilapidated mansion on a rocky cliff. But will this solitary man assist her, or is Vera Gamble doomed to disappear forever into yet another Winter Haven legend?

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: In my ongoing, possibly misguided, quest not to die above the neck before I do below it, I asked Bethany House for an ARC of this author's latest (in 2008) christian-themed mystery. I don't know why they said yes, but they did, and then I never reviewed it. Sinful wicked shame on me!

There was a time in the early Aughts that I made a concerted effort to believe in the whole christian malarkey-fest. (I was pursuing a most callipygian, but Jesusy, guy.) It was a complete and abject failure on every level, since he didn't give up the goodies despite my going to church with him! The nerve! But I found some very interesting books....

Supernatural shenanigans? Teased; not delivered. Much depends on the voice the author creates when reading a first-person narrative. Vera Gamble is a ninny, the spit-and-image of a Mary Sue. Hanging the story on her was not satisfying. The death of her brother seems to me to be a weirdly xianized form of fridging. The entire story resolves into an address to the Problem of Evil. It is, as I am sure you've already twigged by now, utterly unconvincing as such. (I've never read anything, even straight-out apologetics, that resolve the Problem of Evil.)

There is a great deal of cartoonishly overstated Wickedness imputed to the townspeople of Winter Haven. It is, peculiarly enough, this over-egging of the pudding that gave me the "in" to this book's successful level: Gothic fiction is heightened, exaggerated, and therein its charm. It's a feature, not a bug, of the Gothic tropes that they're over every kind and sort of top. Without that the story would collapse under the weight of its silliness. Once I got that spark to light the brain-fuse I began to enjoy myself. I read the christianizing bits as irony, though they were decidedly not meant that way. It gave me a way to derive enjoyment from what was otherwise a truly dreary slog.

>173 ArlieS: ...or it might be five...I'm sorta-kinda inclined towards that lower figure. The problem is no one knows what the next sensitivity shift will go towards. I'm resigned to the fact that good intentions matter for nothing with the flame-warrior brigades. It is, in fact, why I mentioned the subject at all. No sense not providing notice of a potentially offensive thing.

I myownself am very grateful when people warn me of reads with animal cruelty. I don't necessarily need to know *what* but I am glad to know *that* there's material in here that's gonna push my button.

The best answer to the Problem of Evil I have ever seen is atheism, preferably complemented by modern evolutionary biology.

The next best answer is that any god or gods is no more concerned with human welfare than a human is about the welfare of an individual unicellular organism living in their gut.

The third best is that any god (or gods) is non-good, and quite possibly actively delights in suffering; this one has little to recommend it expect that it appears to be consistent with the behaviour of many "god fearing christians." You should support It in hurting others, because that might motivate it to hurt you less.

FWIW, my personal answer is to discard Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omni-benevolence entirely, along with monotheism. If deities exist outside of human culture and imagination, then they are much more likely to be similar to the reports of pre-monotheists and the inconsistent-with-theology experiences of modern members of supposedly monotheistic world religions. I.e. you might call me an agnostic polytheist.

>176 ArlieS: +1 to all of the above. I'm pretty much an Epicurean when it comes to philosophies of living my best life. Agnosticism is, in point of fact, the only intellectually defensible response to the god question. One can not prove a negative, therefore there is no presently available way to rule out the existence of a god. No matter the preponderance of the evidence on either side.

Unless we know all the laws of Nature, and know that we know all the laws of Nature, and someone forgot to tell me about it.

In the "...but isn't Twitter a total cesspit, the haunt of devils and scum...?" conversation, I posted a come-on to read my review of Scholastique Mukasonga's memoir Cockroaches. She "like"d the post, most kind of her!, and an African man commented:

Kay Makope 2h

Thanks. I'll definitely read this book. Mukasonga is a talented writer. I just love her.

I said that the read was "...a gut-punch to my fat old white man self...this horror happened to her, her relatives & family, while my life just...sailed on." And expected that would be an end to it.

He followed me, which was nice, and then tweeted:

Kay Makope 1h

Please don't defined yourself as fat...you are a uniquely created being regardless of the body size. Back to the topic in question, Mukasonga writes bravely and cares not whether it's painful or not. She's the quintessence of bravery and candour.

Breathtakingly kind words from a stranger...a genuinely kind effort to reach out in fellowship. On TWITTER.

I explained the US idiom "fat, dumb, and happy" to him, and we each understand the world a little more completely. But *I* was floored and delightedly so that someone would be so very thoughtful and concerned about a person a continent away.

That Taddeo piece was very good. I actually bought a copy of Chapman's book several years ago (but still haven't read it). TW and I definitely have different love languages. I also think these things can change over time and it's important to recognize that.

159 The Stars at Oktober Bend by Glenda Millard

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: i am the girl manny loves. the girl who writes our story in the book of flying. i am alice.

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone. Something inside Alice is broken: she remembers words, but struggles to speak them. Still, Alice knows that words are for sharing, so she pins them to posters in tucked-away places: railway waiting rooms, fish-and-chips shops, quiet corners. Manny is sixteen, with a scar from shoulder to elbow. Something inside Manny is broken, too: he once was a child soldier, forced to do terrible, violent things. But in a new land with people who care for him, Manny explores the small town on foot. And in his pocket, he carries a poem he scooped up, a poem whose words he knows by heart. The relationship between Alice and Manny will be the beginning of love and healing. And for these two young souls, perhaps, that will be good enough.

Beautiful, lyrical prose, told in two voices, lifts up a poignant story of two traumatized teens who find each other in a small riverside town.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: The end of 2015 was a time that I, personally, was healing from some awful emotional and psychic wounds. At that moment, I wasn't really up to reading adult-level books. I thought that, since they're aimed at people of (say) twelve or thirteen, YA books would be about perfect for me. Not too rough, not too simplistic.

You idiot, I want to find my younger, more naïve self and shout at him.

This is a charming story of young love, of the viperous depredations of haters inculcated in a sense of their own superiority and imperviousness to blame, of the astounding prices we exact from those too weak to resist. They're all done up in ribbons of florid language in this book, and the use of typographical tomfoolery...Alice's narration is without capitals, while Manny's is in a blocky sans-serif type and in very English-as-a-second-language words...is pervasive. In fact it sort of defines the ethos and the aesthetic of the story. Which explains the missing stars.

Yes, it will appeal to the target audience. No, it did nothing but detract from the touching story being told. The stars stay gone.

Small-town stardom and the general veneration in US culture for sports stars at all levels is under very effective attack in this story. Manny is a child soldier being gentled into mainstream society by some very good souls. His father figure, Bull, is a former high-school sports phenom. It's natural that Manny would map his own efforts onto Bull's pattern. That he is good at it is the source of his worst, most believable crisis.

Alice is, it's fair to say, a social outcast from a family of them. She's neurodivergent, she's a poet, she's all sorts of things people feel skittish about. She has Bear, a medical-assistance dog, which frankly was something I'd been largely unaware of the existence of for people like Alice. So it was natural and inescapable that their outsiderness calls each to the other. There really is no way to argue that it would ever be otherwise, either in reality or in fiction. Alice's father is in prison, her mother ran the hell away from the troubles, and her brother Joey has designs on a girl above his station. That girl's brother, the sports star, decides he'll make absolutely sure he drives a spike into these designs and uses Manny and Alice as his sledgehammer.

Stuff gets ugly. Stuff happens that inevitably will happen in every life. And all of it in the silly-buggers typography that caused me, too many times to count, to go back and forth and back and forth to figure out if we're still in the same sentence because NO CAPS = NO BREAKS!

Well, anyway, that's the old man speaking. And you'll notice that I finished the book, so the story obviously offered me something I wanted enough to keep laboriously decoding the damn thing.

That it did. Alice and Manny. Joey and Tilda. Bull and Louisa. People doing more than the minimum, for no reason other than it's the right thing to do. People reaching into each other's dark places and standing with the whole person not just the pretty, easy bits.

It's a well-made story that takes us on a realistic enough journey through a culture in the throes of challenge and change. So much for a simple, easy-to-process little story, eh what?

>163 richardderus: oh good, you were as confused as I (though I was more surprised that my third guess was accepted, at that point the answer was the only possible word).

Saturday *smooch*

Burgoine #58

The Golden Hour by T. Greenwood

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: On a spring afternoon long ago, thirteen-year-old Wyn Davies took a shortcut through the woods in her New Hampshire hometown and became a cautionary tale. Now, twenty years later, she lives in New York, on the opposite side of a duplex from her ex, with their four-year-old daughter shuttling between them. Wyn makes her living painting commissioned canvases of birch trees to match her clients’ furnishings. But the nagging sense that she has sold her artistic soul is soon eclipsed by a greater fear. Robby Rousseau, who has spent the past two decades in prison for a terrible crime against her, may be released based on new DNA evidence—unless Wyn breaks her silence about that afternoon.

To clear her head, refocus her painting, and escape an even more present threat, Wyn agrees to be temporary caretaker for a friend’s new property on a remote Maine island. The house has been empty for years, and in the basement Wyn discovers a box of film canisters labeled “Epitaphs and Prophecies.” Like time capsules, the photographs help her piece together the life of the house’s former owner, an artistic young mother, much like Wyn. But there is a mystery behind the images too, and unraveling it will force Wyn to finally confront what happened in those woods—and perhaps escape them at last.

A compelling and evocative novel with an unsettling question at its heart, T. Greenwood’s The Golden Hour explores the power of art to connect, to heal, and to reveal our most painful and necessary truths.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am sad to say that this pretty well-written story is the one that tipped my dislike of the woman as obligatory victim trope into a hard and fast opposition to it. Wyn's long-ago rape and violent assault was the reason this story existed. (Perpetrated by a man, of course, and a lying sack of shit without a moral in his entire body.) Her logical way to cope is to run away and bury its trauma. Well, okay. I get it. But...really, is there anything less appealing than spending a few hours with a character whose first response is to run away? It's a common response but reads like this character is, now and always, leaning in to her victim status by allowing it to overtake every other thing in her life.

There's a lot of occupational therapy in here. Wyn is an artist. At her new hidey-hole, there are canisters of undeveloped film. The author goes bonkers focusing on these images, on the art Wyn (isn't) creating, her artist ex-husband's...oh look, let me just say it plainly: In a thriller or a mystery, the *issue* should take the focus (!) of the storytelling. Wyn's attacker's retrial? Run away! The perpetrator of the attack from long ago? Offscreen always. The revelations that do come along the way, the identity of the perpetrator, the way in which the character opts to cope with all the changes required by the revelations (spoiler: not), all conspire to leave me with a terrible taste in my mouth. Author Greenwood joins a select company of mysterians named Greenwood (Kerry Greenwood being the other) whose books just do not work for me. That pernicious, disempowering victimization of women/girls trope in both the Greenwood writers' oeuvre just does not work for me.

>181 bell7: I was indeed, Mary. I really did not expect the answer to be an acceptable one!

Ah well. Such is Wordleing.

*smooch*

>178 richardderus: Made me tear up. I'll have to go search for that exchange so I can "like" both. (If it wasn't in messages.)

So, I put holds on both Pulley's. Whichever one shows up first is the one I'm going to start.

BTW, I ended up going to Long Beach Island. I am embarrassed to think I ever thought it was close to you. lol It's like at the other end of the universe. Sort of.

Wordle 435 4/6

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Lesson: even if you start it before coffee, wait until you've finished the pot before completing Wordle. AEONS, MIRTH, EAGLE, GAUZE

‘Morning, RD!

>166 richardderus: Never ever heard of it before yesterday, but I was able to check out the article and Jenna and I had a fun discussion about it.

>167 LizzieD: Bonding over disliking a book is almost as good as bonding over liking a book. I still have a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces for some strange reason, although it’s on a shelf that requires a ladder in a room with things blocking access to that shelf. Nice hardcover copy, too.

>174 richardderus: Pursuing a guy by going to church, although never my thing, is a time-honored way of finding either love or a spouse or both. *smile* I had to look up what a Mary Sue is, but she’s simply a female Wesley Crusher. I’m not a serious Star Trek fan, but watched Star Trek: The Next Generation religiously when Bill and I got married. He’s a serious Trekker. For me it just takes up brain cells otherwise better filled.

Aaargh. Bethany House. I asked for a couple of ER books a long time ago and that was the publishing house. Both times I started them and abandoned them. However, both of them got great reviews with lots examples of things that irritated me.

>178 richardderus: What a wonderful post to read. Genuine kindness and reaching out.

>179 katiekrug: Good point about a successful marriage, Katie. Bill and I, too, have different love languages.

>180 richardderus: It's a well-made story that takes us on a realistic enough journey through a culture in the throes of challenge and change. So much for a simple, easy-to-process little story, eh what? I’m nearing the end of a fantasy series - me reading a fantasy series! - that could have the same said about it, although with Romance and Sex. I’m mostly skeevy about YA.

>182 richardderus: I am in the fortunate position, at the ripe old age of 69, of having never been sexually assaulted. How I escaped this when living in bad parts of Los Angeles, in seedy Sunland/Tujunga, and in New London CT, a Navy base, makes me frequently thank my guardian angel. Hard pass.

And No 39 has been read and posted.

*smooch*

>186 karenmarie: Sunday orisons, Horrible. I'm sure that #39 will be a winner; I'll be there directly to get your take.

You are, if not the only, one of the very, very few I've ever known who's made that statement. How fortunate you are!

A fantasy series! At your age! Gracious goodness me, did they card you before allowing you to buy it?! "Sorry lady, you're past the cut-off date for this material. Put it back and we won't call the cops. This time."

I can understand not being a fan of Trek or, really, of SF in general. Fandom has always been exclusive but it's progressed into a toxicity that I can see anyone just wanting to avoid.

The love languages thing is pseudoscience. I keep telling myself that. And then, when stuck for a response to a sticky wicket, I tap into the simplistic, prescriptive thing and *boom* issue resolved. So even if it's the placebo effect, then I am good with it.

>184 Storeetllr: *chuckle* It's an example of how very unimaginitive the settlers were. Long Beach, California, was where a Eurofriend thought I lived. Confused him to no end why I was awake at 4am California time!

Hooray for Pulleyland expeditions!

>179 katiekrug: I was so busy posting stuff ahead of the unload into the Little Free Library that I didn't notice your post! I'm sorry, Katie.

Every couple has communication wrinkles to iron out or they'll have brow and lip wrinkles from trying to figure out what not to say.

Weekend salutations, mi amigo.

I can’t believe that Mickey 7 is already lined up to be a movie! Good review; I’ll take a look.

I loved Astrophysics for People in a Hurry:

I find Dr. Tyson's voice to be easy on the ears. I am confident, as I listen to him, that he is in full possession of the fact and I can rely on him to educate me. He has a sense of humor that goes down well with me, so that really helped my concentration.

Well said. I agree; someone reliable in a world of unreliable narratives is so refreshing, and like you I enjoy Neil deGrasse Tyson’s sense of humor.

>188 jnwelch: Hiya Joe! I'm pretty chuffed that Mickey7's been spotted as the cinematic pleasure it could be, and by a very august team. Now they need to cast Channing Tatum as Mickey.

He's one of those guys whose dad jokes are smarter than most people's bookshelves. My kinda guy!

Hiya, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

Coffee in hand, I'm going to trundle off to do a bit of reading.

*smooch*

Happy Monday Richard! Thank you for visiting my thread while I've been shamefully absent.

>191 SandDune: Hi Rhian! You've been away Augusting, so check-ins weren't really feasible, were they. So I got to enjoy the photos you made time to leave! Winning, from my PoV. Happy to see you!

>190 karenmarie: Trundle well. *smooch*

159 Real Bad Things by Kelly J. Ford

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes an evocative suspense about the cost of keeping secrets and the dangers of coming home.

Beneath the roiling waters of the Arkansas River lie dead men and buried secrets.

When Jane Mooney’s violent stepfather, Warren, disappeared, most folks in Maud Bottoms, Arkansas, assumed he got drunk and drowned. After all, the river had claimed its share over the years.

When Jane confessed to his murder, she should have gone to jail. That’s what she wanted. But without a body, the police didn’t charge her with the crime. So Jane left for Boston―and took her secrets with her.

Twenty-five years later, the river floods and a body surfaces. Talk of Warren’s murder grips the town. Now in her forties, Jane returns to Maud Bottoms to reckon with her past: to do jail time, to face her revenge-bent mother, to make things right.

But though Jane’s homecoming may enlighten some, it could threaten others. Because in this desolate river valley, some secrets are better left undisturbed.

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

My Review: Like her previous novel Cottonmouths (my review linked above), this book is set in a rural area that could be anywhere but undeniably is the American South. At no point do we feel the curiously unmoored sensation that many crime-centered stories have, that eternal-now anywhereness. It starts from when Jane is released from steerage, I mean the commuter plane, onto the hot tarmac of a regional airport. Her mother's nasty phone message hissing in her newly single, newly homeless ear, "don't even think of running." Why Ma didn't say "again" is beyond me, because Jane's running hasn't stopped since it was "away to Boston, there a lesbian to be."

So now she's coming back to face the music for confessing to her stepfather's murder a quarter century ago. Note: confessing to. Not murdering. And that demented witch of a mother believes her, always has, she's been squatting in this nowhere town stewing in her rage and hate for the abnormal daughter who (she said she believed) murdered the abusive man who probably would've killed Ma by now had he lived.

Ah. Family ties.

Like many women with no options, her Ma had never met a nice guy and this latest one was the most violent yet. And the whole town knew it. Not a soul stepped in to help...except Jane's young love, Georgia Lee. Things go very Beautiful Creatures for a minute...Jane's brother Jason gets pulled in...it's all a major clusterfuck, in fact, and when it all settles down there's no Warren. I mean, he's dead, but there's no body. So, no body = no crime. Confess til ya turn purple, Janey luv, no body = no crime. She does spend a goodly amount of time in juvenile detention. The second that ends, she gets the hell out of Arkansas.

What is really clear while reading this book is the quiet insanity of country life. People are all up in each other's hip pockets, they know what's happening, but not a soul interferes. Wouldn't be proper, if a woman lets a man beat her up that's her lookout. Those kids won't amount to anything anyway, so what they suffer.

It's really like this, folks. This is what the world is. And it's ugly as all get out.

Now that everything changed because there's a body, surfaced after twenty-five years, Jane's home to face the music.

What music? She was a juvenile, she was in state custody until charges were dropped, and now there's *a* body but no one knows if it's that right one. (Lotsa men disappeared from this town over the years. No one seems to've looked into it. Not like they were anybody much.)

So we have ourselves a problem. What's Jane facing? Trial? Still no body...conviction? LOLOL

Her life. Her mother. Her ex, her first true love Georgia Lee. Even the little brother who simply existed throughout this ordeal, offering nothing to Jane. All that and more; vaster than oceans and more deep is the need in Jane for answers rather than lies or silences. The answers she finally gets are deeply unsettling. I could never call the last meeting of Jason and Jane a case of healing by honesty, but it was certainly an explanation of parts of their past that seemed weird and random.

Kelly J. Ford was formed by Arkansas and she has never forgiven it for that. As revenges go, this book is a great step.

Forgot to post Wordle!
Wordle 436 3/6

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From 3 correct-but-misplaced letters. I am well chuffed. AEONS, MIRTH, CHIEF

>194 richardderus: At least someone is chuffed. Monday smoochings.

>193 richardderus: Oh, my, that does sound good. I don't usually enjoy books set in the South, mostly for the reasons that are clear from your review. However, as a tale of revenge... Yes, I think I'm going to read this one.

>194 richardderus: Today was only my 3rd time in 212 plays getting Wordle in 2. I am, as you might imagine, stoked. adIEu, CHIEF

Happy Monday!

>152 LizzieD: I agree completely and absolutely. There are some people that can just stand up against what life throws at them and RD is one of them.

>156 richardderus: Giving that one a pass.

>157 richardderus: That one, on the other hand, is going into the BlackHole.

>158 richardderus: And that one.

>159 richardderus: Happily skipping that one.

>174 richardderus: I patently refuse to read so-called "Christian" fiction because even I, a died-in-the-wool Baptist, do not need to be beaten over the head with some people's version of Christianity - and some of the most un-Christian behavior ever. Hard pass from me. A good book is a good book and can stand on its own merits. It does not need to be labeled as Christian - just make it good to begin with!

>180 richardderus: I got all excited because my online library catalog said that the local library had that one - and then I pulled the book page only to find out the book was overdue and has been since August 2021. Really? When is it officially missing??

>193 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**, RD. I hope you have a marvelous Monday!

Hey, RD. Just checking in and making sure your week is off to a good start.

>194 richardderus: oh nicely done! It took me five today, but better than X. *smooch*

Been a truly craptastic day, sadly. I feel horrid. I'm glad it's not COVID again, but no symptoms align with it so I'm confident it's not. Anyway, dig I must. I'll come around tomorrow to respond to everyone.

I'm sorry you are feeling rotten. And on your 16th Thingaversary, too! Harsh.

>200 richardderus: - Ugh, I'm so sorry. I hope things improve soon. xx

>200 richardderus: Sorry you feel so bad, Richard dear, I hope today is a better day.

>200 richardderus: I do hope you are feeling better today, RD. Gentle ((hugs)) and soft **smooches**

Hiya, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>193 richardderus: I have a love-hate relationship with Southern fiction. Each region of the country can plumb the depths of despair, heartache, and depravity, but the Southern version is so … humid… and … Gothic ... and frequently perverse. I’ve added this one to my wish list for when I’m in the mood for despair, heartache, depravity, and perversity Southern style.

>194 richardderus: Congrats!

>197 alcottacre: Our county Library system finally went fine-free last year. The benefits of getting books back outweighs the nickle-and-diming fine collection/bank deposit activities they were burdened with. I don’t know when our Library officially declares a book uncollectable, but I just sent an email off to our Branch Librarian to ask her that very question.

>200 richardderus: I’m so sorry you’re feeling horrid, dear one. So glad it’s not COVID, but still. Craptastic is craptastic. I hope you’re doing better today.

*smooch* and (((hugs))) from your own Horrible

Dear Richard, I'm concerned that you're not here yet. I think you would be if you were feeling better. You know that I participate in my friends' ills by saying, "Take care of yourself and get help," a thing I know that you're already doing and by praying. And by sending a *smooch* to you.

Sorry to hear you're not well, Richard, and hope to hear you're on the upswing soon. Please do take care and rest up as best you can.

Feel better, Mr.D.

I'm here, however briefly, to say thanks for the well-wishes. Now I've got a fist-shaking scheduled contra the goddesses. Not *hugely* comforted by the doc (a different one) saying "well, it's not {this}, and you're negative for COVID, so go lie down and get more sleep."

It's what I was planning to do but, well...one like answers not nostrums. And sometimes nostrums are the answer but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Wordle 437 4/6

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I must be dreaming...AEONS, MIRTH, STONE, ONSET

Five yellow to five green. Bravo.

Thanks for making it here, Richard. Here's hoping that sleep is the nostrum!

>210 richardderus: Mine was almost the same. RADIO, MENDS (two of my usual starting words), STONE, ONSET

Soooo....

The NYT added World to the crossword puzzle app, so I've joined the cult. Three days, three wins - a five and two fours.

Guess I'm not in the control group anymore. 😀

Feel better, Richard. I'm glad to see that Wordle got you vertical, if only for a short while.
Crossing the crossables for a happier day later or tomorrow and sealing it with a smooch

>193 richardderus: This and Cottonmouths both look swampable. Done.

Adding my get-better wishes.

Morning Richard, Hope you are feeling better.

I await your view on today's wordle with interest. Mine was somewhat annoying...

Wordle 438 5/6
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 AUDIT, SHONE, PRIME, PRICE, PRIZE

Happy mid week, Richard!

Hope you are feeling better.

I hope you have a better day today, RD, and are on the mend. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

160 The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

But that god cannot be contained forever.

With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.

Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.

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

My Review: How do you read your books? Tree book, ebook, ear reading? Where are you when you experience the stories you consume...bed, chair, front seat of the car, public transportation? All of these factors will come into play while experiencing this read.

I myownself am an obligate librocubicularist. It was a little challenging at first, reading this magisterially paced polyphony while within easy reach of the off switches on all my lighting devices. I was lights-out far more than once in the first quarter, maybe because I wasn't sure this story was going somewhere I entirely wanted to go. Especially as there's a hefty salting of second-person narration to endure as the price for learning how love animates and exculpates both lover and belovèd. What one receives for this benison bestowed on the narrative is a story of the impossibility of eternal power, unending dominance, unchallenged imperium. In the end, glory is fleeting because humans are ephemeral.

The roles we accept, and even eagerly seek, aren't unique to us. I think Jung was by far the closest to grasping the eternal truth when he posited archetypes, those massively misunderstood and mischaracterized patterns of being. But each of us seems to seek a pattern, a focus of individuation, and that seems or feels to us and to others as an inevitable end-point of a life-long search. Is it? It is for Jun and for Keema, whose story this (ultimately) is.

Echoes from a distant past? This story is. Explicitly. Designs for a present? This story is, not so explicitly though. It's decolonization writ personal; it's the massive machinery of culture caught in the tsunami of rage arising from inequality. It's deep, and very dark, and shot through with the awful truth of violence. It's just like, in other words, the real world around you.

Jun and Keema, the men whose love animates the story from beginning to end, aren't going to do the wild thing for your amusement. They are going to manifest for you the eternal story of accepting the love patiently offered you, in spite of believing you're not worthy of it. If you believe you're not worthy, you aren't; because the offering is not to you, but to the one you will become with the gift accepted.

That's not a truth I expected to see made so plain in a fantasy novel. A lot gets heaped on all the players in this astoundingly violent tale. It's shocking what hatred, spurned love, multivalent deprivation will drive a person to enact on the world. It's far and away the hardest of life's lessons to see that without one's own rage obscuring the real source of the problem. Othering and disempowering might be the means to gaining temporary, temporal acquiescence. They do nothing to improve the long-term odds of success for those who Other, who disempower, who use their own weapons against those they need to succeed. Those who use the weapon forget the other edge, the power of the spirit.

And that is the ultimate truth of the spear, the artifact and symbol of the disempowered, the metaphor for power as it is transfered in the world of rank and division. It is, in its very nature, a symbol of what enables leaders to become dictators. It is supremely easy to pass the spear on through family lines. It is always the case that the spear is turned against its user.

Never forget that. Who lives by the sword, dies by it as readily.

But Jun? His Keema keeps him safe from the spear. In spite of everything they've seen, they've been to and for and against each other, Keema is the one whose patient offering of love never wavers even when it morphs. That's how you know it's the love Jun needs, and that's how Jun finally knows he is not Jun, but Keema's Jun.

No one who has the patience, the fortitude not to check out of its reality back into ours, to read this uniquely told story will leave it the same person as they entered it. That's the best thing I can thnk of to say about a story.

‘Morning, RDear. I hope that you’re feeling much, much better on this end-of-August Wednesday.

>220 richardderus: How do you read your books? Tree book, ebook, ear reading? Where are you when you experience the stories you consume...bed, chair, front seat of the car, public transportation? All of these factors will come into play while experiencing this read. All of ‘em. I’ve somewhat reluctantly added this to my wish list. Perhaps I’ll find it at a Friends sale down the road, or Kindle will offer it for less than the $13.99 it’s currently being offered at. Of course, it only officially came out yesterday, so perhaps next year? If I’m in the mood?

Wordle in two.

*smooch*

>220 richardderus: You are spot on RD - where and how we read will obviously impact our reception and enjoyment of what we are reading. I am pretty exclusive a physical book guy and my problem is getting comfortable to read - sometimes the lighting in my reading nook is a bit off or flickering and this distracts me. Hani's selection of a big round sofa is not the most conducive to sustained reading bouts either. Downstairs on the pool deck I can read productively if it isn't too hot (if there is a slight breeze) but at the wrong time of day the kids will whoop and holler and drive me back upstairs. Reading on the balcony is another option but the metal chairs hurt my bum after a while and the final option of reading in bed is fine in the morning but at night with the positioning of the bed (again my good lady) means I have to lay with my feet at the headrest to stop the glare from the lights shining too obtrusively at me.

Book sounds a good 'un too.

Hi everyone! Thanks for the kind wishes. I'm much mended after almost eleven hours' sleep. I feel more myself. I'll try to get all replied to, but it might take some time as I'm still a bit fragile and prone to unplanned naps.

PC, the next place you live stake out a reading space with either a recliner or chair-and-ottoman that you select, position, and light entirely yourself.

Hugs and smooches all round!

Well, RD, you need not reply to me, so that's one off you. I'm delighted that you're much mended. Keep up the good work!

I'll keep *Spear* in mind but won't hurt myself chasing it down. Great review though!

Wordle in 4.

*smooch*

Wordle 438 5/6

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...better than 6, infinitely preferable to skunked! AEONS, MIRTH, PRICE, PRIDE, PRIZE

>225 richardderus: Same score as you today, RD.

I'm sorry to my lovely visitors, but my hands aren't happy chappys and I need to preserve my keystrokes for a spate of reviews that need a coat of powder and a light tweezing.

I've read them all, and am very happy y'all've come to wish me well! Huggings and smoochings all round.

AUGUST IN REVIEW

Twenty-five reviews this month and six books read for future months' reviews. Productive beast, no? Not quite as productive as I'd've liked to be, I must say. In #WomenInTranslationMonth terms, it wasn't a resounding success. I'm on pace to get to 288 reviews blogged, thank goodness, but I really wanted more of my translations to get their time to shine. Not this month.

My favorite read of the month was #WITMonth-related, though: The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector, ably and elegantly translated by the relentlessly male Johnny Lorenz, was a joy of a read. I've decided to put my Viveca Sten reviews into #Noirvember, and get some of the rest up as and when I can.

I think I was most surprised to like THE STARS AT OKTOBER BEND as well as I did, given its verse-adjacent YA-through-and-through prose.

The Worldcon in Chicago means some sci fi and fantasy reads are getting their reviews in while Twitter's talking about things SFnal. Got no dawg in the Hugo fights, for the reason that I reviewed a whopping two of the novel candidates. *sigh* Either of them wins...A Master of Djinn or Project Hail Mary...and I'll plotz. I'm bettin' heavy that one of the worthy women will win. But my #Midterms2022 reviews are piling up in September and October....

This has taken me all day to type because the issues with pain are still on the bad side, if a LOT better today. I've been able to sleep several times, and that feels like heaven.

Yow, RD. Get to feeling better quickly.

>228 richardderus: The only one of the Hugo novels I've read besides the two we've both read was She Who Became the Sun, and I wasn't as enamored with it as others were. I still need to read A Desolation Called Peace, though I loved the first book in the duology. And I'm waaaay behind on the Becky Chambers series (only read book 1) so have a bit to catch up with before I can finish out the group.

I would be very happy to see A Spindle Splintered win novella though.

Hope you sleep well tonight and continue to improve.

>227 richardderus: good to hear you're feeling better. Hope that continues.

And I must get around to A Master of Djinn... too many books, not enough time!

I hope you wake up after a good sleep, Richard dear, and the improvement continues.
Happy Thursday!

‘Morning, RDear.

>225 richardderus: Alphabet soup. Reverse alphabet would have been better in this case, for sure.

>228 richardderus: Gentle hugs for the pain issues, glad for healing sleep.

*smooch*

161 Rabbits by Terry Miles

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.

It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.

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

My Review: There is no possible way to explain the effect of this book to someone who's never dropped acid, consumed ayahuasca, or been down the psilocybin road. If you know, you know; if you don't, quite a lot of what is happening here is simply...weirdness. Which, to be fair, it is; but it is so much more than merely ornamentally weird.

If you're the one who read Ready Player One and thought, "hey, that could be me!" then you're prime meat for the story's more esoteric references. And you'll probably like it even more if you loved The Matrix but less so the sequels. I'm betting that, if you've read The Trial and/or Kafka on the Shore more than once, you'll read this book with relish.

But, crucially, absent a strong desire to seek out and complete patterns in the world, and in your head, the main pleasure of the book will slightly elude you. K (hi, Franz!) who narrates the book to us, isn't gendered. K's girlfriend Chloe is not inclined, under the circumstances of the book, to compliment K on diagnostic body parts. When talking through the extreme weirdness of life inside the rabbit hole of a planet-wide conspiracy with the stakes being your very life, suchlike stuff ain't no big. But in fact, there are little indicators that K is more than a gendered presence, is in fact a Jungian archetype, several in turn by my count. But that's a discovery for the reader to make. I will say this: I liked the hunt for those tells, too.

What worked best for me in the read was that very sense of patterns hanging from the trees, drifting in the air, making explicit shadows on the sidewalk as you're coddiwompling among the words. I enjoy the sensation of being led and misdirected to get to a story that won't take a final shape. I don't know Seattle, I took a serious aversion to it during my 1990s foray there, so a lot of the subtext from the locale was simply lost on me. (Greenness and verdant growth are menacing in two places on Earth: The Pacific Northwest and Ireland.)

There's something very soothing about conspiracy theories. One is assured of being Right: no evidence will ever penetrate the bunker mentality. There's a Reason for the random shit that happens: THEY want it to! And, if it's too random to fit into the pattern, THEY lost a round (which is scary and satisfying) or the computer introduced a new variable. Standing on the edge, looking down, and seeing Something is the only way most people can keep going. (I myownself see nothing, and absolutely vibrate with eagerness to lose myself in it.)

So on so many levels, this isn't a book aimed at me...I'm too old, too cynical, and too disinclined to believe there's a Purpose...but it's told in that densely imagined and deeply felt way that draws me in every time. That there are trappings I could do without, well, that's because they're there for others to enjoy. That there is no rush in Author Miles's unfolding of the story is a net good thing. He could've told the whole megillah in 200pp and had room for the publisher's entire catalog of SF/F titles. But the point of the story would've been violated.

Go on a journey. Listen to the people around you. I don't mean keep your ears open, I mean *listen* as the words come towards you. It takes a lot of practice to get good at listening, but this book is both a good place to practice and a rewarding discovery when you practice the skill here. I expect a lot of readers didn't fare well with the book because it simply doesn't follow ordinary trails to get between the start and the finish. If you're a Neal Stephenson reader, if Cryptonomicon and Reamde delighted you, here's another scratcher for that itch. You're not likely to be disappointed, either, Murakami readers. And best of all, you can get a paperback to take to the beach for Labor Day!

Wordle 439 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, DRINK, FUNGI I stared and I stared and there was no better fit.

Hi all...hand function returning steadily. Pain, well...it's lower every day, but it started out bad so there's still a way to go.

I hope everyone I know over 50, and those in public-facing positions, are getting the COVID booster next week. Or as soon as it's available where you are.

>233 karenmarie: Today was 4, but there really needs to be some built-in something to account for the time spent staring and thinking and thinking and staring.

>232 FAMeulstee: Happy Thursday, Anita! *smooch*

>231 Helenliz: "Too many books" *gasp* "and not enough time" OIC well, yes, that's surely the case. I have a selection of books that a medieval monastery would kill for and still acquire more because, in Stasia's memorable formulation, "there's a world-wide book drought a-comin'" and I for one plan to be stocked up.

>230 bell7: I Pearl-Ruled She Who Became the Sun but never reported it because the shrieking furies have a habit of descending on men who don't like their yummies.

One day I'll get to the others, maybe, but I ain't feel no rush. I was pretty blah about the field.

>229 weird_O: I'll take progress, Bill, so long as it's uninterrupted. So far....

Ya missed me up there (>215 jessibud2:) but no worries. I just won't tell you about my 4-day streak of wordling in 3. Fluke but who cares. Glad you are on the upswing.

I missed everybody, sweetiedarling...mostly it's because I just couldn't but your streak of 3s moves you into the "you are dead to me, and do not exist" category.

>239 richardderus: - smooch! ;-)

Burgoine #59

Husband Material by Alexis Hall

Real Rating: 2.5* of five, rounded up because I'm soft-headed

I GOT A SAMPLE FROM THE PUBLISHER, THEN CHECKED THE WHOLE BOOK OUT OF THE LIBRARY TO BE SURE IT WASN'T A GOOF. IT WASN'T A GOOF.

My Review: Mean-spirited instead of snarky; cruel instead of incisively observed; slightly distasteful because the men aren't even in the same language family, let alone on the same page of the same book. (The Moomin references and the jigsaw scene probably got both whole stars.)

It had a tough act to follow, it's true. I expected much more from Boyfriend Material's sequel. But the only scene that had the same touch as that book was when Luc and Bridget talk through his options before the last chapter.

Saddens me to find the heart of Luc and Oliver's strange brew missing.

Good to see you're feeling less fragile, Richard. I had a hard time believing today's Wordle word myself!

>241 richardderus: Oh no, I was looking forward to that sequel.

>242 Familyhistorian: I was, too. I was *crushed* by the tone change. I'm sure it's hard to follow up a huge breakout hit, but this one was very very disappointing.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I hope you are having a good day. I have not read much the past couple of days, due to other commitments but I hope to catch up over the long weekend.

>244 msf59: It's sometimes the case we can't be present enough for reading, but it's fleeting.

Happy Thursday.

‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Friday to you.

>234 richardderus: I consumed much alcohol, some weed, and more hash in my 20s and 30s, but never took psychedelics. It hurts my brain to think of this one. I loved Reamde, read some Murakami, but my current rabbit hole is much different, as you well know.

>237 richardderus: I will be calling my doctor’s office today. Last time a booster was recommended for seniors, it took the UNC Healthcare system a while to ‘authorize’ it, although I suppose I could have gone to the local pharmacy. We’ll see what they say.

Today’s Wordle took me 5.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>246 karenmarie: Happy FriYAY, Horrible! I hope your county decides to get the willing boosted ASAP to avoid another wave as much as possible. We're all at the mercy of the resisters, now. *sigh* It's why I wear my mask when I am leaving my lair for more than a trip to the desk to pick up mail or packages.

Rabbits would irk you beyond endurance. Avoid!

I am inadequately caffeinated to Wordle yet. Might need a second pot. I'll come and talk about it when I have. *smooch*

162 Kraken Calling by Aric McBay

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A sweeping near future dystopic fantasy in the Octavia Butlerian vein of the Parable of the Sower novels.

Political activist and anarchist author Aric McBay (Full Spectrum Resistance) toggles between the years 2028 and 2051 to give us the experience, with breathtaking realism, of what might happen in the span of just one generation to a society that is already on the brink of collapse.

In 2028 environmental activists hesitate to take the fight to the extreme of violent revolution. Twenty years later, with the natural environment now seriously degraded, the revolution is brought to the activists, rather than the other way around, by an authoritarian government willing to resort to violence, willing to let the majority suffer from hunger and poverty, in order to control its citizens when the government can no longer provide them with a decent quality of life.

So it is the activists who must defend their communities, their neighbors, through a more humane and in some ways more conservative status quo of care and moderation.

And the outcome here is determined by the actions of those who resist more than it is by the actions of the nominally powerful.

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

My Review: Non-fiction writer (Peak Oil Survival, Deep Green Resistance) Aric McBay makes his points in fictional form. What he has done is not the usual thing for him, analyzing and contextualizing social and political trends for a left-leaning audience; this has always been his forte as a writer.

I think it still is. This novel makes a very trenchant attempt to put human skin on the bones of social movements for change, favoring equitable and reasonable restructuring of our self-evidently unsustainable lives.

“It’s always hard to tell, isn’t it? How the future could change from the smallest actions,“ Simón mused. “I believe we made things better. We bought time. Breathing room. We stopped one more. We didn’t improve things as dramatically as we hoped. But we made room for a hundred other movements to flower. Some of them failed, but some of them are amazing....”

“The tides always rise and fall for us,”Simón said. “That’s the nature of struggle. There is no guarantee, no permanent victory.”

“The work of the revolutionary is to plow the sea,” Addy quoted.”

It is indeed, Addy. It is indeed. To see your best efforts subsumed under the heaving mass of humanity in its indifference and fearful rejection of change. To know you're not ever going to prevail, no matter how many times you win. But to be sure you're harrowing the surfaces of the waters plowed and allowing things buried to come to the surface? It's a reward beyond price.

Dystopia, then, is inevitable? I don't think it is, though a lot depends on the individual's concept of "dystopia" and their tolerance for ambiguity. Most revolutionaries are absolutists, and should be kept far, far away from the levers of power. We're seeing that in the House of Representatives in the US during 2022. Revolution is hard, and requires people to be very, very hard...and these revolutionaries are obdurate, but brittle.

This means that, like Evelyn in our near-term future (2028), we need to be sure to combat that obduracy effectively. Or the 2051 sections of the story won't be a warning klaxon but a sad prediction.

>220 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, RD.

>223 richardderus: Glad to hear that you are feeling better, even if not back to full health.

>241 richardderus: Giving that one a pass. Does not sound like it is worth anyone's time.

>249 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole too.

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

Wordle 440 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, CHARM
First 3-day in a while...4 appears to be my groove.

>250 alcottacre: I think >241 richardderus: would irritate you beyond endurance...too mean-spirited.

I'm a lot better, thank goodness, and each day I add a little more "better" to how I feel. It's a process. Happy Friday, smoochling!

Too much going on! Too much going on! Take care of yourself and enjoy a cooler weekend, which I wish for you! *smooch*

>251 richardderus: - My 4-day streak is over, you will be pleased to learn. I join you back in the 4-spot.;-)

All of my friends thought that Ready Player One wol dbe just my cup of tea and I could not bear to read it - forced myself through the first three chapters and then released it to find its own level. Hated the movie too.

so Rabbits I thank you for taking the bullet so i won't have to.

>255 magicians_nephew: It's all very pretentious, really, and that doesn't necessarily go down well when it's not played for laughs. Wise man. Avoid.

>254 jessibud2: How are the mighty fallen! Dear me. A mere 4, such a fall from grace. *smooch*

>253 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! It's already cooler, topping out at 75° today. For us it's almost always this way...Labor Day it's like some kind of switch gets tripped and the brutal part of the heat is off. I love this climate! The weather sometimes sucks, but I love the climate here.

Glad you're feeling better, Richard!

Wordle 441 6/6

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Ten letters gone...it could only have been a U for a vowel, and I was ticked off enough to use BULLY. Then the guessing game began. Luckily the streak is alive with GULLY (as in Jimson).

‘Morning, RD! Happy in-process Saturday to you.

>248 richardderus: I’ve been out in public four times in 2022 without a mask. Each time I questioned my sanity. Fortunately, I dodged the bullet every single time. Now, back to masking full time when out.

>249 richardderus: left-leaning audience. That I am, and after a frenzy of reading left-leaning books during the t***p era, I’m sorta done with it again. Preaching to the choir, and I’ve been to church a lot recently, metaphorically speaking.

>251 richardderus: Congrats on your 3.

Took me 5 again today.

*smooch*

>259 karenmarie: It gets wearing, this bearing witness to the attempted undermining of the country's moral fiber. Dig we must, though.

I expect we'll get the booster here pretty quick, given the rate of deaths here when the plague started. I don't even go unmasked on the boardwalk! Two rounds, lots of people I know dead. No, don't think I'll be risking that.

>257 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary, I'm pretty much up to the world's standards as of now. Thank goodness...not a minute too soon.

163 Burning Blue by Michael J. Kannengieser

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Jack Chase is a cop who betrayed his badge when he took money from a drug dealer. Only his late father's legacy as a department chaplain might prevent him from being prosecuted. When Jack is shot in the line of duty, he has a near-death experience. What he does not see, however, are deceased loved ones or Pearly Gates - he goes to Hell.

When Jack awakens, the woman he loves, Terry, discovers his crime and leaves him. Jack is haunted by images of Hell and demons taunt him in both his dreams and while he is awake. He knows from his father's sermons that redemption is the only way to escape damnation, but he is afraid to confess his sins or go to jail. Not only must he escape the nightmarish images that haunt him, he must make Terry trust him again and bring her back.

Jack's friend, Danny, devises a plan to help him avoid jail and hide from the drug dealers that are looking for him. In this thrilling story, Jack fights to save his life, redeem his soul, and reunite with the love of his life.

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

My Review: I wonder why there are so few urban fantasy tales set on the edge of Damnation? Especially featuring law enforcement personnel. The opportunities to lose your moral compass are not inconsiderable...well, here's one for you. I'll say this, though, you'll be seeking it out for quite some time as it's been allowed to go out of print for some reason.

What works in this story is that set-up. It's not common, and it's got the charm of being sincerely presented. It's not in the least in doubt that the consequences Jack sees for himself are, in fact, real and really terrifying. I would've been aware of the quirked eyebrow or smothered smirk of the unbeliever, being one of those; the author apparently is not like me.

What this short, but quite deliberately paced, novella offers is a fascinating look at what someone who's been scared straight, so to speak, will set himself to do in order to make himself over into a better person than the one he's lazily allowed himself to become. That he does so to win back a woman is, I suppose, to be expected but rather doesn't work in the 2020s. Makes a person into a reward, a thing.

Autres temps, autres moeurs.

164 In Veritas by C.J. Lavigne

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this fantastic and fantastical debut, C.J. Lavigne concocts a wondrous realm overlaying a city that brims with civic workers and pigeons. Led by her synaesthesia, Verity Richards discovers a hidden world inside an old Ottawa theatre. Within the timeworn walls live people who should not exist—people whose very survival is threatened by science, technology, and natural law. Verity must submerge herself in this impossible reality to help save the last traces of their broken community. Her guides: a magician, his shadow-dog, a dying angel, and a knife-edged woman who is more than half ghost.

With great empathy and imagination, In Veritas explores the nature of truth and the complexities of human communication.

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

My Review: A novella with a fascinating conundrum at its heart: Do we ever really know what it is that others are experiencing? Can even the most earnest desire to understand someone who isn't yourself to fully get you? Now, make the head you're occupying for this story one organized differently from you. And make it impossible for those around the head to emit the usual clouds of lies we all fog up the welkin with.

Oh boy. This will be good.

Luckily it was good indeed, though very deliberate in its action. The point is that we're in a world that isn't consensus reality because of a wiring difference. Not expecting a fast-paced series of events will make this a better reading experience. Going with the lovely, lush prose will help your enjoyment build as well.

What matters all occurs in The Between. It is, and isn't, a semi-mythical rock group; it is, and isn't, a place in a theater called the McLuhan (!) that Verity (!!) reaches with the help of Santiago (!!!), whose difference is more materially oriented than Verity's. (Shadows aren't just shadows in his care.)

Each of these, um, aptly yclept entities is carefully, almost lovingly, drawn. The action isn't very exciting for the adventure seeker. This is more ayahuasca journey than meth motormouth mainline. Go with Verity, be in her head; it's not like most people's and it's such a fascinating experience to be outside the outlier for a change. I think the world Verity finds is as true and as factual as any world is. I'm also old enough to believe that consensus reality isn't, so there's that point of commonality between me and Verity. Mostly, though, go on the journey because learning how Othering works when it's your own interior processes that cause it.

What stakes the story posits are, in a word, apocalyptic. The missing fifth star I wanted to give the story lies in that mismatch of affect and effect. When the Fate of the World is on the line (with examples of what can and will happen if Verity fails) I expect to have that make things move right along, please. They don't...they can't, given the processing speeds of the main character.

But the events Verity has become integral to haven't made the single slightest sense of hurry in her. And they shouldn't. Because one thing that Verity is, like her namesake, is inexorable. Everything is put right, right enough, and there are no existential threats to Verity or the world that she has so much difficulty navigating. At her gift, the world goes on; life keeps happening; and there is no one but Verity who has all the pieces of how and why.

She's not talking.

>258 richardderus: I'm still stuck on 5, but you remind me of how much I loved and adored The Horse's Mouth and how I need to reread it and read the other two. My aunt totally identified my granddaddy's Irish humor with Jimson and Co.

Happy Weekend!

Sorry you have been unwell RD, but glad you are heading back to wellness.

>264 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you, Caro, it's been a trudge but it appears to be mostly over. I'm taking steps to make sure it won't happen again!

>263 LizzieD: Oh, I'm so glad you liked Joyce Cary, Peggy! His books were delights to me when I found them.

Happy Sunday, Richard. We spent some quality time with Jack, the past couple of days but today will be a chill day with the books. I am enjoying Mercury Pictures Presents. The dude can write. A cold front moved through last night, so we should also enjoy some very nice weather.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Sunday to you.

>261 richardderus: I.Want.This.Book, but the only option available on Amazon is hardcover for $200+. And, of course, as with many of your reviews, I learned a new phrase – autres temps, autres moeurs.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Your post about the Hugos made me go back and check the Edgars. I've read one and had only about three others on my radar. Some, of course, are in mystery genres I dislike, but I may end up with a few on a wish list.

>268 thornton37814: Never let it be said that I have failed in my sacred duty to tempt persons into bibliosin. See below.

>267 karenmarie: It's a LOT cheaper here, Horrible! Like, orders of magnitude cheaper.

>266 msf59: Cooldown plus a new Anthony Marra! A great deliverance on all fronts, Mark. Some downtime is necessary when one gets up in years.

Wordle 442 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, INTER

>270 richardderus: Excellent Wordling, Richard! First word(s) are tres important!

Happy Sunday!

Karen O

>271 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O, it's certainly unusual to get all five letters in one's first guesses!

Happy Sunday indeed. Fall is on its way.

>270 richardderus: ha! I got it in four and I said to myself, "I bet Richard gets it in three." Sunday *smooches*

>273 bell7: You win that bet, and with the same luck I had.

Sunday *smooches* back!

>269 richardderus: (and also, >267 karenmarie:)
Astoundingly priced for a 164 p. book. And published in 2013, too. Surely a public library has it for loan, even if it's got to be sourced as an interlibrary loan. Or is Kannengieser a rare bird generally?

'Morning, Rdear. Happy Monday and happy Labor Day to you.

All quiet here so far. I think Bill and Jenna are going to watch the first episode of The Rings of Power today. I'll head off to the Retreat, wireless earbuds, cell phone, and Kindle in hand since LoTR is not my thing.

>275 SandyAMcPherson: Sandy, my Library, small and sweet, does not have that book. Even $35-$40 is a tad rich for my blood. Nothing on BookFinder or eBay that's reasonable either. Sigh.

Wordle in 5, alas.

*smooch* from your own Horrible.

>276 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible, and a happy Labor Day to you! I hope they like the show. I can't. I physically can not make myself watch it...$715MM for the season, including $250MM for the Tolkiens, means it's over $70MM an episode...for a TV SHOW.

I can't participate in that. It's obscene.

>276 karenmarie:, >275 SandyAMcPherson: Far as I can tell, Kannengieser wrote the one book. I have literally no idea why authors think pricing their work on the secondary market is somehow status-y. (Look into who's offering the book at that price.)

John F. Carr does that...he trolls Bookcrossing and the swap sites looking for his H. Beam Piper-verse titles and buys/swaps for them so he can keep the Kindle editions selling by making sure it's always cheaper than a paper copy. Far from the only one to do so.

>275 SandyAMcPherson: Hiya Sandy! *smooch*

WORDLE!! I forgot to Wordle today! Old Stuff's PT was in the room this morning, to my irritation, so I'm all aflutter.

Wordle 443 4/6

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So, I Wordled...it wasn't stellar. AEONS, MIRTH, SHOWY, WHOOP

>278 richardderus: Also in 4 today peony, mirth, chops, whoop

Sad trombone for me on Wordle today.
Hope that Tuesday treats you better.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>277 richardderus: Comments about LoTR on my thread, won’t beat a dead horse here. I did not realize authors bought up copies of their own books to manipulate the price/get people to buy Kindle. Sigh. My bubble has burst, I am devastated.

>278 richardderus: Better late than before it goes to the next day’s word. You still beat me. Took me 5.

And today’s Wordle took me 6. Sheesh.

*smooch*

>261 richardderus: >262 richardderus: Both of those sound like interesting reads, RD. Too bad my local library does not have either book.

Have a terrific Tuesday! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Hmm. I came here yesterday, but it looks like I was a non-speaker. That's cold.
Good Morning, Richard!!!!! I Wordled in 3 today, so there's a challenge for you. (I asked Mama if she wanted to get right up or wait until I had Wordled and started breakfast. She said, "You go ahead and gurgle, and then I'll get up.")
Meanwhile, I pulled Herself Surprised off the shelf, but I really can't start it now. I'm still waiting for the new Cormoran Strike, hoping to finish at least one thing before I get it.
*smooch*

Rainy Tuesday *smooch* for you!

>284 katiekrug: Rainy indeed, though here it's the good, ground-nourishing kind. I need to go out in it later, but later is later...we'll see if it's "nicer" by then. In the meantime, it's another week of strangely intense reviews. Deciding whether to load them here or use them to start next thread's shenanigans.

>283 LizzieD: Hey Peggy! Glad you disengaged the cloaking device, Book-Romulan. *smooch*

I haven't gurgled (!) yet, so have no results to share. I'm pretty sure I'll stay at 4, though, since it's more than 60% of my net results. Hooray for Joyce Cary coming off the shelf!

>282 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! I'd say neither one is a Must Read but share your frustration about libraries curating collections to suit them, where they are those who don't read.

Tuesday-disfruiting *smooch*

>281 karenmarie: I have burst your happy bubble of Writing Isn't Commerce, have I? *tsk* shame on me.

Wordled in 6! Must be a good'un! *eager hand-rub*

>280 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen, and I'm sorry about that skunking. It's such a strange, unhappy feeling to simply miss isn't it?

>279 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Your path makes perfect sense to me, so I looked at it and couldn't tell which words were guesses. Happy Tuesday, dear lady. *smooch*

Wordle 444 6/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, DAUNT, GAUNT, JAUNT, TAUNT Guessing game day, yuck.

>287 richardderus: I had the luck of the first word that popped into my head and got it in three instead of going through the guessing game. (Actually, HAUNT was the very first word that popped into my head, but fortunately I'd woken up to remember I'd used the H.).

It's raining here, too, but I can't be too mad for a very good reason not to mow today. Tuesday *smooch*

165 If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller.

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”

Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper—himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica—Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn’t want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.

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

My Review: When I think about braided-stories novels, there's always a little frisson of fear in my response. I don't always think it's the best idea to try to make a novel out of things that don't fit together naturally. If there's an organic flow among stories, what stops the author from making it into a regular novel-style novel? Why this technique, not another that doesn't make The Market shudder deep in its bones? All we ever hear is that stories are hard to sell, collections are death in the stores, writing stories is just as hard as writing novels but even less remunerative. I'm inured to this cant of can't by now. It's done its damage. I look askance at connected collections.

What, then, is the reason I decided to read this iteration of the story-novel? There's no one thing, there's a constellation of tweaks and trips. I find the idea of books others can't "understand" tempting. I am all for creative uses of the many kinds of English out there waiting to make my acquaintance. I'll walk a mile for a good story about people who just...can't...because they're my people. Because whatever else divides us, we have one thing in common: We don't Belong, and others do. That's worth a lot of effort...which, for the record, I did not think was needed in reading this book. The second story is in patwa but the rest? Not a bit of it.

It pleases me to use my time-honored technique called the Bryce Method to explicate the wonders herein to feast upon at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

>287 richardderus: Wordle 444 6/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 raise, gamut, daunt, haven, jaunt, taunt Hmmf.

>290 humouress: *hmmf* indeed, though always better than getting skunked. *grumble*

>288 bell7: Hi Mary! I'm so glad you got today's Wordle in 3! Really really *glad*!

*whammys up a flood*

Truly delighted! Sending *smooch*es!

*ups the order to "Biblical level"*

Don’t know if you saw my post above since you were under the weather - NYT added Wordle to my crossword app, so I’m no longer in the control group. Today was a 4 for me… 😀

>292 drneutron: I shall, as you are still working on your first streak, restrain my more base, evil urges and simply say "your turn will come" while stirring a steaming cauldron.

Thanks for stopping by!

>287 richardderus: & >290 humouress: My score was exactly the same and I went a similar way to the same result as you did RD.

For what it is worth I found the following day (not with you guys yet) to be much more straightforward.

Glad to note that your hands are operating more like hands again, dear fellow.

We had my book club meeting last night to discuss The Hired Man. Initially I was expecting four people after me and Mr SandDune. I was a bit disappointed with that number, but thought it would be OK. Then within two hours of the start another two people pulled out so we were four in total, which I was not happy about at all. We have some people in our book group who have been in it for ever but now their lives have changed and they really aren’t around much at all. But they won’t resign and keep saying they will turn up and then don’t. We really need new members but the last two people introduced to the group were introduced by me and Mr SandDune so we don’t feel we can really introduce more of our people at the moment.

Wordle 445 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, REEDY, LEERY I'm so glad I've made an effort to include Mary's Troublesome Letter™ in my guesses! I think I'd've floundered if I hadn't.

>295 SandDune: There comes that moment in every book club's life, Rhian. New blood can't come if old clots are wedged solid. I'm so sad about the demise of mannerly behavior, a simple "I won't be attending" email would do the job if inelegantly.

*sigh*

>294 PaulCranswick: Hi there, PC. Yes, this one was indeed a lot more straightforward in its resolution.

Gratefully they are back to being hands. It really makes life easier for me when they retain at least double-digit percentages of function.

From the multi-decade archive of A Word A Day comes this life-organizing aperçu:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. -Edith Sitwell, poet (7 Sep 1887-1964)

>295 SandDune: I actually meant to write that on my own thread rather than yours Richard! Trying to do things too early in the morning!

>299 SandDune: Ha! Well, that is a first!

Good Morning, Fellowordlefourder. I have a fondness for Dame Edith, and that thought reinforces my affection.

As a teacher, I used to say that arrogance with stupidity was the killer combination for learning failure. DES is a lot more elegant.

Hi RDear. Happy Wednesday to you.

>296 richardderus: 4 is decent. I got it in 4 today, too.

Jenna and I had a laugh this morning when I came out in a full length hooded long-sleeved lounging thingie sent to me by my sister just after my heart attack. We took pics, then she wanted a pic of herself in it as a Sith Lord. I'll sully my thread, not yours, but she's still cackling, which makes me very happy.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>302 karenmarie: It was that cool there this morning?! Fall hath fallen, then. (Actually it fell the second week of August as it always does, when harvest season begins. And six weeks before the Equinox, or the midpoint of the season in traditional ag-based societies.)

*smooch*

>301 LizzieD: I'm in august company, then, Peggy, and shall wear my 4fer badge with pride. *smooch*

IF I SURVIVE YOU's Jonathan Escoffery talks Life, Writing, his processes & progresses on @lithub:
https://lithub.com/jonathan-escoffery-on-navigating-identity-blackness-and-liter...
"When I think about what I want to write about, I’m plucking stories from real life, perhaps my life, perhaps from a post I read on Craigslist, from which I imagine my way forward. Exciting things are happening all around us and that’s what holds my attention."
Supporting my contention that the daily news is the truly inexhaustible well of Story. "I don't know what to write about!" should be the cry of despair at having so many stories clamoring for one's attention.

>298 richardderus: Thank you. I've added this quote to my collection of email signatures, which are chosen from at random when I compose an email.