richardderus's seventeenth 2022 thread

This is a continuation of the topic richardderus's sixteenth 2022 thread.

This topic was continued by richardderus's eighteenth 2022 thread.

Talk75 Books Challenge for 2022

Join LibraryThing to post.

richardderus's seventeenth 2022 thread

1richardderus
Sep 7, 2022, 2:39 pm


September Sun varietal of yellow peach is the last to ripen in my climate. Starting about now through the end of the month, they show up in farmers' markets, beautiful and juicy and so so sweet.

They're mostly grown in China, the motherland of the species...about 62% of the world's crop is from there...but New York has a large variety of the fruit grown here but not shipped far.

—image from The Peaches of New York

2richardderus
Edited: Sep 30, 2022, 11:08 am

For 2022, I upped my goal of posting an average of 4 or 5 book reviews a week on my blog to an annual total of 288. 2021's total of 229 (I need to do more to sync the data on my reads between my blog, Goodreads, and here this year for real NB this goal's officially dead because Goodreads has implemented its hideous user-unfriendly redesign and lost portions of my data) posts in 50 weeks of blogging shows it's doable.

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.

Oh, are you looking for 151 up to 165? Follow that link!

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

166 The Portable Veblen resembled Dharma and Greg too much, post 15.

167 The Reader droned, post 18.

168 My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare...happened, post 21.

169 Lessons learned, post 73.

170 Invasion of the Spirit People slammed, post 111.

171 Quesadillas rocked the Casbah, post 114.

172 Miss Iceland chilled, post 128.

173 The Sleeping Car Porter excelled, post 218.

174 Cabin Commotion held steady, post 221.

175 The Pachinko Parlor succeeded, post 243.

176 My Brother: A Novel blew me away, post 252.

177 FEN, BOG and SWAMP: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis slapped, post 264.

178 RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths That Made Me flopped well, post 266.

3richardderus
Edited: Sep 26, 2022, 9:55 am

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 #68, Tehran at Twilight
Burgoine #67, Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays
Burgoine #66, The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan
Burgoine #65, Celebrity Werewolf
Burgoine #64, A Dance of Cranes

All are linked in post 214.

Burgoine #63, Holly Prince, is in post 65.

Burgoine #62, Foxy Heart, is in post 56.

Burgoine #61, David and Goliath, is in post 44.

Burgoine #60,
QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance, is in post 43.

Burgoine #59, is linked in that post too.

AUGUST 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #53 through Burgoine #58 are linked in this post right here.

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.

4richardderus
Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 2:53 pm



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.



SEPTEMBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

AUGUST 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rule #37 up to Pearl Rule #40 are linked in this post right 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.

5richardderus
Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 3:07 pm

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.

  8. Flying Solo is close enough.
  9. Read a classic written by a POC.

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

  11. Read a political thriller by a marginalized author (BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+).
    The Fourth Courier, though sadly not a supergood read

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

  13. Read an entire poetry collection.

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

  15. 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.

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

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

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

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

  20. Read a horror novel by a BIPOC author.
    Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda is just flat terrifying!

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

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

  23. 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.

  24. Read a book by a disabled author.

  25. 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.

6richardderus
Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 3:07 pm

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.

7richardderus
Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 3:08 pm

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!

    8richardderus
    Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 3:46 pm

    I'll be planning in this spot...though my plans all too seldom turn into reality, don't they.
    This Friday's from Edelweiss+: Pleasantview by Celeste Mohammed
    Next Thursday's all from them, too, in honor of National Hispanic Month starting on the 15th:
    Invasion of the Spirit People
    Quesadillas
    I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me are all by Juan Pablo Villalobos

    The August plans I didn't get to, from NetGalley
    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

    And from Edelweiss+
    The Law of Lines by Hye-Young Pyun
    City of Ash and Red by Hye-Young Pyun
    Vivian by Christina Hesselholdt

    July titles I didn't get to:
    from Edelweiss+:
    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

    9richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 2:40 pm

    Okay, now the floor is open and your words are welcome.

    10ArlieS
    Sep 7, 2022, 2:50 pm

    >1 richardderus: Yum!

    Happy new thread Richard.

    11katiekrug
    Sep 7, 2022, 3:03 pm

    Happy new one, Richard!

    12humouress
    Sep 7, 2022, 3:10 pm

    I seem to be early, for once. Happy new thread Richard!

    13richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 3:11 pm

    >10 ArlieS: Well, apparently there is a cartoon character called "Peach" that wears a really goofy-looking crown. I didn't think that was terribly à propos or attractive...so here's your first-poster-per-thread traditional crown:

    14richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 3:12 pm

    >12 humouress: Thank'ee mos' kindly, indeed, La Overkill.

    >11 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! *smooch*

    15richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 3:21 pm

    166 The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

    Rating: 3.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that’s as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage—the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist—find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other’s dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel.

    Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption”) is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and “freelance self”; in other words, she’s adrift. Meanwhile, Paul—the product of good hippies who were bad parents—finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma—an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity.

    As Paul is swept up by the promise of fame and fortune, Veblen heroically keeps the peace between all the damaged parties involved in their upcoming wedding, until she finds herself falling for someone—or something—else. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that squirrel really thinking? Replete with deadpan photos and sly appendices, The Portable Veblen is at once an honest inquiry into what we look for in love and an electrifying reading experience.

    I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

    My Review
    : A debut novel that, for its subject, takes on greed, Othering, and intergenerational family toxicity. While Author McKenzie published stories before this book appeared in 2016, the appearance of the novel was warbled delightedly about by Jeff VanderMeer, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Karen Joy Fowler. Reviews from the New York, and Los Angeles, and Seattle Timeses, the Boston Globe, Library Journal and Kirkus and NPR...several programs!...was longlisted for a National Book Award...you get the idea, it was down as The Next Big Deal.

    But I forgot it existed. I read it in the dark year, and I came up dry on things to say about it.

    In having a clear-out, I found the ARC again. It's such a strange title that I remembered it straight away. How many people in 2022 recall who Thorstein Veblen was? Not a lot more, or fewer honestly, than did in 2016. It's an odd and slightly off-putting thing to first-name your main character. It does efficiently Other her from the get-go. I wasn't sure that I liked that. I remember thinking that it was a darn good thing that she was the sort of person who could, in all seriousness, ask “Do you think wishful thinking is a psychiatric condition?”

    So why did I resurrect this long-ago gift from a publisher who clearly never thought to hear from me about it again? Because, in flipping through it, I was caught by some unusually persuasive turns of phrase:
    She had once concluded everyone on earth was a servant to the previous generation—born from the body’s factory for entertainment and use. A life could be spent like an apology—to prove you had been worth it.
    –and–
    Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was the greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners—yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.
    –and–
    The sharing of simple meals and discussing the day's events, of waking up together with plans for the future, things that feel practically bacchanalian when you're used to being on your own.

    This is a writer speaking her truth. I love finding these moments. I think I left the book by the wayside because I couldn't, in the dark year, process the anticapitalist message as anything but the confirmation bias of my brain. In the decades of being steadily more and more radicalized by capitalism's failures of me, my chosen people, and the world my descendants will live in, I've resharpened that mental blade many times. This time I felt Author McKenzie's edge slash closer to me than before.

    Author McKenzie reserves her loudest klaxon, her angriest blast of Gabriel's horn, for we-the-consumers. The sneaky message under Veblen's dithering disconnectedness is there. It's not unique, nor even original, but it's heartfelt and it's eloquent...and she's correct:
    “I pledge allegiance, to the marketplace,
    of the United States of America. TM.
    And to the conglomerates, for which we shill,
    one nation under Exxon-Mobile/Halliburton/Boeing/Walmart,
    nonrefundable,
    with litter and junk mail for all!”

    Awomen.

    16johnsimpson
    Sep 7, 2022, 4:31 pm

    Happy New Thread Richard my dear friend.

    17richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 5:20 pm

    >16 johnsimpson: Thank you, John!

    18richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 5:24 pm

    167 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (tr. Carol Brown Janeway)

    Rating: 3.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

    When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

    I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

    My Review
    : Another read I fastened on as I got my Little Free Library bag ready to go. When I won this from, I think, a website now long gone's giveaway, I was under no obligation to review it. I didn't want to...my ephebeophile mother's long, long, long shadow over my life, her dead hands on my emotional neck still tightening spasmodically should I dare for a moment to forget to be unhappy, gave me a terrible and utter avoidance complex for this story.
    Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
    –and–
    Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame.

    There it is, the unvarnished solipsism of Surviving. The truth is we're all young Berg, we're all fucked-up Hanna. We can't make clean breaks with the past because the past is our inner self, our scaffolding. Young Berg learns this before Hanna puts him under the pressure and painful obligation of loving a broken thing.
    The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.

    And the tectonic pressures are too much for him to bear. They always are, he's not weak or defective. He's just...selfish:
    I didn't like the way I looked, the way I dressed and moved, what I achieved and what I felt I was worth. But there was so much energy in me, such belief that one day I'd be handsome and clever and superior and admired, such anticipation when I met new people and new situations. Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill? Sometimes I see the same eagerness and belief in the faces of children and teenagers and the sight brings back the same sadness I feel in remembering myself.

    One expects this in a boy. But young Berg will only ever be a boy. Hanna did that to him...Hanna enabled that in him.
    Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?
    –and–
    At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.

    And there, at the end of the book, was my source of discontent made plain to me: This entire louche passage in Berg's life...has not meaning whatever. Neither did the similar passage in my own life. They just...were...and they don't mean much to anyone but me.

    So why'd I read this again?

    19msf59
    Sep 7, 2022, 6:54 pm

    Happy Wednesday, Richard. Happy New Thread! Nice peaches. Now, I want one. Good review of The Portable Veblen.

    20richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 7:34 pm

    >19 msf59: Hi Mark! Thanks, re: the thread and topper. I'm always down for fresh peaches. Yum!

    21richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 7:36 pm

    168 My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare by Jess Winfield

    Rating: 3* of five

    The Publisher Says: A tale of two Shakespeares . . .

    Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of . . .

    Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs.

    Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard’s life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome . . . This, at a time when adherents of the “Old Faith” are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.

    Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the “Shakespeare” each is destined to become . . . but the very course of history itself.

    I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

    My Review
    : Tediously moralistic look at how Society tames us by taking hostages.

    Heteronormative...shocking, I know...look at Will Shakespeare as horndog, transformed by Time (and parenthood) into...ya know what, if you like this kind of stuff you already know you like it. I don't much. Catholicism is a major vector for evil in this world, there's no denying that to anyone not an apologist; but Catholics ran the risk of horrible deaths in order to enact their fantasy of Religion. On the modern side, academia comes in for a lot of unkind "ribbing" that's meant to make one see that everyone is, at heart, a spoiled brat. These things are crumped together like they're somehow morally equivalent. They are not.

    But worst of all, from my personal point of view, is the fact that I had to agree with the author about something:
    Shakespeare, in some sense, helped create the modern man, didn't he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is the very one we hold ourselves up to.

    Stop with the deification already, recognize that there was a man called Shakespeare who wrote a bunch of cool stuff and take the rose-colored glasses off, he did whatever he did in his personal life and we can not speak about it because we don't know. Guessing is misleading, because you're going to think he did what you'd've done. Maybe...maybe not.

    I didn't like it; I don't particularly recommend it; but it was not a waste of eyeblinks for that one excellent insight.

    22bell7
    Edited: Sep 7, 2022, 8:26 pm

    Happy new thread, Richard!

    I read The Portable Veblen back in 2016 and remember finding it very odd.

    Edited to get the touchstone to work.

    23PaulCranswick
    Sep 7, 2022, 8:54 pm

    Happy new thread, dear fellow.

    >1 richardderus: One of my absolute favourite fruits to kick off this episode of one of my absolute favourite threads.

    24richardderus
    Sep 7, 2022, 9:12 pm

    >23 PaulCranswick: Ha! Well, that makes a very peachy blush rise, PC.

    >22 bell7: Hi Mary, I can see that reaction very easily. It's just like the longest episode of Dharma and Greg ever.

    25drneutron
    Sep 7, 2022, 10:28 pm

    Happy new one, Richard!

    26ArlieS
    Sep 8, 2022, 12:10 am

    >13 richardderus: Yum again!

    27Helenliz
    Sep 8, 2022, 1:55 am

    Happy new thread, Richard. Mouth watering peaches.

    >21 richardderus: I find dual timeline books generally not as good as they think they are. There is always some forcing of the story or character to get the parallels or the interaction to fit which is more convoluted than convincing. Or else I'm just being fussy.

    28FAMeulstee
    Sep 8, 2022, 3:22 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear, and happy new thread!

    >1 richardderus: I love peaches! For a long time peach beer (Mort Subite Pêche) was the only kind of beer I did drink. Until they changed the recepy, and replaced the real peach with artificial flavor :-(

    29karenmarie
    Sep 8, 2022, 7:08 am

    Hi RD, and happy new thread. Happy Thursday, too.

    >1 richardderus: Sigh. Sun-ripened peaches are the best. I envy you your local crop.

    >2 richardderus: I like the idea of your monthly Burgoine report. It’s an expanded version of my idea-stolen-from-Mark’s Lightning Round.

    >9 richardderus: I could never come up with as many scrumptious and have-to-look-up words as you do.

    >15 richardderus: I knew the name, couldn’t remember that he was the one who created the phrase conspicuous consumption. I actually used it the other day. And I love this bit:

    “I pledge allegiance, to the marketplace,
    of the United States of America. TM.
    And to the conglomerates, for which we shill,
    one nation under Exxon-Mobile/Halliburton/Boeing/Walmart,
    nonrefundable,
    with litter and junk mail for all!”


    >18 richardderus: This was my choice for my RL book club in 2000, and I remember being moved by it. Can’t remember a single detail, but thanks for the reminder AND thanks for ‘ephebeophile’, although I’m sorry such a word even has to exist.

    >21 richardderus: Intriguing review, but I’m not going to bite. I’ve read two books about Shakespeare – Bryson’s and Willard W. Martin’s - and those were enough. I also own and have listened to an audiobook by Elliot Engel called How William Became Shakespeare, which is highly entertaining and informative.

    *smooch*

    30richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:17 am

    >29 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Thursday's a beaut here. Sunshine, mid 70s, just perfect!

    I wouldn't recommend the damned thing (>21 richardderus:) to anyone, really. I thought it was pretentiously moralistic and quite pleased with itself for little reason I could see. But, in fairness, it did have something to say. Just something I think is precious and judgmental about Reality.

    "Ephebeophile" isn't my invention, but it does fill a need. Sadly.

    My Veblen reading in college was eye-opening. Him, and Vance Packard, and JK Galbraith, weren't wrong. Hayek et alii sounded wrong to young me and have proven disastrously wrong to old me, so good foundations lead to solid structures that weather the storms.

    Sun-ripened peaches *drool* are, indeed, the best. And they do not travel well at all. I accept that my indulgence peach every September is going to cost $2-3 and have a bruise or two, and it's perfectly fine with me. Once a year means it means so much more! Canned peaches are actually preferable to grocery-store cropped ones because those are artillery-strength pellets of disappointment.

    >28 FAMeulstee: Peach beer?!? New one on me...never encountered it before. Artificial peach flavor, using extremely sparingly, is fine for some baked-but-not-yeasted things but not at all for yeasty, or drinking like sodas and liqueur, purposes. It resonates with the sourness of yeast and turns *horrible*.

    Anyway, happy Thursday! *smooch*

    31richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:22 am

    >27 Helenliz: They truly are, Helen. I'm so eager for Saturday! It's the local farmers' market day and I really hope they'll have peaches. I'll check every week now to be sure.

    re: >21 richardderus:, it's often a device to Make A Point and Make It Stick, so it starts off with a strike in my book. Some books use it well, but this one ain't one of those. Thursday orisons!

    >26 ArlieS: Awomen, Arlie!

    >25 drneutron: Thanks, Jim, and a happy Thursday!

    32katiekrug
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:24 am

    I hope you can get out and enjoy this gorgeous day!

    33FAMeulstee
    Edited: Sep 8, 2022, 10:29 am

    >30 richardderus: Yes, it was a lovely, slightly sweet, peach flavored beer :-)
    Not long after the change they stopped making it. The only fruit beer they still make is Kriek, which is with Morello cherries. Oh, nearly forgot, they still have Mort Subite Framboise, made with raspberry.

    34richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:29 am

    Wordle 446 4/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
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    AEONS, MIRTH, PLAYS, CLASS This one made me chuckle. I've used this word quite a lot the past few days, all in pejorative ways.

    35richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:32 am

    >33 FAMeulstee: It must be wheat beer, then. I've heard of wheat beers here in the US that add fruit syrups to the served beer to a customer's taste. Never tried one, though, being a bock/stout drinker by preference.

    >32 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I'm happy to report that I got out for a walk at 7.30 and *gloried* in the fallness.

    36FAMeulstee
    Edited: Sep 8, 2022, 10:47 am

    >35 richardderus: The basic beer is called Lambic, a beer made from a mix of barley and a bit of wheat. Most special is that it is brewed with local wild yeast in open air, only found at one place in Flandres.

    ETA: The syrup kind is also known here, usually a German wheat beer with grenadine.

    37richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:47 am

    >36 FAMeulstee: Fascinating! I can see peach, or other fruit, combining well with such a liquid sourdough. Thanks for increasing my knowledge base about foods.

    38katiekrug
    Sep 8, 2022, 10:54 am

    I love lambics. Lindeman's (Belgian) is pretty easy to find here and comes in several different fruit flavors.

    https://www.lindemans.be/en_US/beer

    39richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 11:09 am

    >38 katiekrug: There is nothing on Earth that will ever make me happier than having the Internet to amuse, entertain, and educate me. Not infrequently all at the same time.

    I can't drink anymore but I'd sure try a sip of one of those!

    40LizzieD
    Sep 8, 2022, 11:39 am

    Happy Peaches, Richard! Our season is long gone, but we had a wonderful few as a gift from friends who ventured out to West End, NC's peach-growing capital.

    41alcottacre
    Sep 8, 2022, 1:20 pm

    >18 richardderus: Already that one, RD, so I get to dodge that BB.

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

    42richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 2:14 pm

    >41 alcottacre: ...but there are two others, if you happened to glide past them...

    *smooch*

    >40 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy, I hope to get there early enough to snag the least funny-looking one for my annual treat.

    I'm just gobsmacked that anywhere in NC is cool enough to grow peaches at this point. Not even Asheville, it would seem to me, is still possessed of Springtimes long enough for them to ripen.

    43richardderus
    Sep 8, 2022, 7:20 pm

    Burgoine #60

    QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

    Rating: 5 or 4 or what-have-you...if you like this stuff, you'll like this particular iteration of it.

    The Publisher Says: Just when you thought it was safe to start showing off again, the bestselling authors of The Book of General Ignorance and 1,277 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off are back. With a foreword by Stephen Fry, this parcel of unimaginable information is here to solve a few common misconceptions, mistakes and misunderstandings.

    Octopuses have six legs, oranges aren't orange, bats aren't blind, napoleon wasn't short, vikings didn't wear horned helmets, there is no such thing as a fish.

    QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance is the essential set text for everyone who's proud to admit that they don't know everything, and an ideal stick with which to beat people who think they do.

    John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are the bestselling authors of QI: The Book of General Ignorance and 1,277 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off. Here they present a wonderful collection of astonishingly interesting facts, perfect for pub quiz lovers, trivia buffs and general knowledge experts alike.

    ROB GAVE ME A PRESENT! (IT WAS ON SALE SO I SAID IT WAS OKAY.)

    My Review
    : You're still stupid, not ignorant, if you're still not buying these trivial delights. They're flawed gems that get their character from their inclusions. What startling chatoyence awaits the discerning browser.

    44richardderus
    Edited: Sep 8, 2022, 7:31 pm

    Burgoine #61

    David and Goliath by Edie Montreux

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Self-Publisher Says: Fantasy M/M Spider Erotic Romance

    NOTE TO ARACHNOPHOBES...PASS ON. CLICK NOT.

    This story was originally written for a defunct submission call. This is your chance to read the story for free! Please join my newsletter, confirm your email address, and on the follow-up email, select the fantasy romance option as your reward when signing up for my newsletter!

    FREEBIE. FOLLOW THE TITLE LINK IF YOU'RE INTERESTED.

    My Review
    : Spider sex? What I knew about the topic was 1) I'm SOOOOO glad I'm not a spider 2) Charlotte's Web.

    I know more now.

    Hm.

    Well, what I *can* say is that my w-bomb aversion has reached capable-of-detonation heat. I can deal with a spider fucking a man. I can even see what that could do for someone's libidinous lexile activity, though not mine.

    But FOUR EYES W-VERBING is an image that will give me nightmares for months!

    45bell7
    Sep 8, 2022, 8:32 pm

    Wait, stouts have something that regular beer doesn't? I like very little beer, actually (most leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth), but one I've enjoyed is a chocolate stout.

    Happy Thursday *smooch*

    46figsfromthistle
    Sep 9, 2022, 6:04 am

    I'm finally here!

    >1 richardderus: I love peaches! Sadly, none of the peach trees I planted ever produced.

    Happy new (ish) thread!

    47msf59
    Sep 9, 2022, 8:04 am

    Happy Friday, Richard. I am getting ready to start my Jackson day. Like you, our weather continues to be gorgeous. We have had a nearly perfect 4 weeks or so. Reading has been slow but I will catch up. I should start Post Office soon.

    48karenmarie
    Sep 9, 2022, 8:18 am

    Hiya RDear, and happy Friday to you.

    >43 richardderus: I read the first book and have added this one to my wish list. I've loved QI since you put it on my radar last year. And another new word for me – chatoyence.

    >44 richardderus: Thank you, darling man, for letting me avoid you-know-what stuff. Fantasy M/M Erotic Romance is good, of course, but ewwww to the other word.

    *smooch*

    49richardderus
    Sep 9, 2022, 9:19 am

    Wordle 447 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
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    AEONS, MIRTH, THEME Heh.

    50richardderus
    Sep 9, 2022, 9:33 am

    >48 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible! *smooch*

    I'm so glad you love QI as much as I do. The format, the content, the delivery...all just keep me gruntled. I am glad you heeded my CW, too. It wouldn't be pretty....

    >47 msf59: I do so love the early fall. It's a perfect blend of sunshine and pleasantly warm but not brutalizingly hot weather. Have a wonderful Jackson day, Mark, and a happy weekend's reads.

    >46 figsfromthistle: Did you plant males AND females? They are monoecious, but for many varietals the setting of fruit is heavier, and also easier to start, if you have pollinators close by.

    Happy weekend, Anita!

    >45 bell7: There are stouts with lactose added in their fermentation process, or oatmeal, both of which create a sweet and powerful drink. But stout, the thing, is simply stronger, darker porter-style beer. I like it to make soda bread with because one needn't use sugar to get the proper crumb structure. Can of stout, 2 cups self-raising flour, mix and bake. I've been known to add a teaspoon of salt to it but it's really not necessary because self-raising already has the salt in it. I just like my sammy bread a little saltier.

    51humouress
    Sep 9, 2022, 10:20 am

    >44 richardderus: I took your warning and did not click.

    >50 richardderus: Stout and SR flour and that's it? Why did I not know this before? Any kneading?

    52jnwelch
    Sep 9, 2022, 10:23 am

    Happy New Thread, Richard!

    Those luscious peach photos make me want to dive right into your thread through the computer screen.

    53richardderus
    Sep 9, 2022, 10:44 am

    >52 jnwelch: Ji Hoe! I'm glad to see you here. I'm all about the peaches fer sher. Yummmmmmm

    >51 humouress: None. Mix and bake. It's soda bread so no need to knead but speed is essential...get it in the oiven fast. I confess: I like my crust crispy so I use butter inside the loaf pan.

    54thornton37814
    Sep 9, 2022, 9:11 pm

    That peach atop your thread looks so tempting! I wonder if Chick-Fil-A still has peach shakes?

    55richardderus
    Sep 9, 2022, 9:53 pm

    >54 thornton37814: I hope they do, Lori, that would taste so good...peaches'n'cream Blue Bell ice cream has been in my peripheral vision all day for the same reason.

    56richardderus
    Sep 9, 2022, 9:58 pm

    Burgoine #62

    Foxy Heart (Cursed Hearts #0.5) by Rhys Lawless

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: "Chance brought us together, fate bonded us for life."

    Troy
    I knew there was something wrong with my latest job.
    When I finally manage to hack into the system I'm supposed to protect, I don't just find out my current employers are assassins, I also find their next target.

    Easton
    I can't help that I look for my one true mate at every corner. It's what familiars are supposed to do.
    But when my fated mate finds me, not only is he not a witch but a mortal, he also brings the cavalry of witch hunters with him and now I have to explain the paranormal world to Troy, my handsome human, and save us both from certain death.

    Warning: This short story contains a hot ginger fox, a nerdy hunky hacker, a lot of spells, fated mates and one hell of a ride.

    The Author's website was having a freebie day and I hoovered this right on up.

    My Review
    : Knowing you're reading a short, and adjusting to the knowledge there's a full novel already queued up, makes the speed with which this mouthful passes endurable. Charmingly uses the conventions of instaluuuv and Fated Mates to get to the point. Which is the endlessly fun Neverwhereesque things are not as they seem so keep up! technique.

    One heinous, evil w-bomb chucked like a puke balloon at my shoes later, I'm still giving it a 4* rating. Author Lawless gets my eyeblinks for the first in the series, and quite probably more.

    57PaulCranswick
    Sep 9, 2022, 10:06 pm

    >55 richardderus: Peach crumble would be Hani's way of turning fresh peaches into heaven. For me they stand alone well enough, but I'll take her crumble anyday too. Reminds me I'm missing the bad tempered so and so and her cooking.

    Have a great weekend, dear fellow.

    58karenmarie
    Sep 10, 2022, 7:58 am

    ‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Saturday.

    >55 richardderus: I have a wonderful peaches and cream pie recipe from a 1950s cook book by Meta Givens. Alas, it’s hard to get really good peaches here unless I want to patronize a local peach farm owned by right-wing vaccine deniers/trumpers. Nope.

    >56 richardderus: Yay for Kindle Unlimited. I’ve downloaded another book by the same author. And a book by his other writing persona Rhys Everly.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    59richardderus
    Sep 10, 2022, 10:06 am

    >58 karenmarie: Happy Saturday, Horrible! I'm glad you're discovering Rhys's work, he's a lovely soul and a deft writer.

    If I **KNEW** the politics of the local(ish) farmers I'd 99.99% likely never eat again. I avoid knowing by not asking, they (so far) avoid telling, we're all better off that way. No peaches today but next week looks good, I'm told.

    *smooch*

    >57 PaulCranswick: Offered a fresh peach, I'll usually accept; offered peach crumble, I'll usually accept; not a fusspot of spoiledness, me, you want to feed me yummy treats you got my permission.

    The rest of your weekend well-wishes, PC.

    60richardderus
    Sep 10, 2022, 10:52 am

    Wordle 448 4/6

    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
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    AEONS, MIRTH, LOTTO, LOFTY #3 was a total shot in the dark. I'm still a bit surprised it worked!

    61bell7
    Sep 10, 2022, 6:54 pm

    Huh. I'm a little surprised your guess #3 was allowed as well.

    62richardderus
    Sep 10, 2022, 8:15 pm

    >61 bell7: We each decided to be weird with that space and got away with it!

    63richardderus
    Sep 11, 2022, 7:59 am

    Wordle 449 4/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
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    AEONS, MIRTH, TIDAL, TIBIA Interesting...I really thought #3 was going to be the answer!

    64richardderus
    Sep 11, 2022, 9:32 am

    Irritatingly, it's both accurate and true. Drat you, Gauld!

    65richardderus
    Sep 11, 2022, 11:20 am

    Burgoine #63

    Holly Prince by W.M. Fawkes

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: This pauper has never faced temptation like a fae prince. The snowfall thickens, and Lord Lucian tempts Henry out of the stables and into his arms. Henry Smith never hoped for anything more than a hot plate of food on his table, but when the winter season falls on Byrn, the nights stretch longer and the villagers whisper of faeries. He never dreamed those stories might be real, but the arrival of a noble stranger casts a spell over the countryside. With his quick wit and striking features, Lucian makes Henry question every belief he’s ever had. The road he walks may be strange, even dangerous, but if Henry can gather the courage to step off the beaten path, all the lord promises may prove worth the sacrifice.

    The Author's website was having a freebie day and I availed myself of it.

    My Review
    : Y'all remember Maurice? Book or film, either one; fantasy fulfillment about men crossing class boundaries for Love. I enjoyed it, while every moment thinking, "what the hell are these two going to talk about at dinner?"

    Henry Smith is a big lad, son of the late village smith, and quite perspicacious. Not educated, not well-bred, and not a bad catch for some young tradesman...but a Lord? And a half-fae lord at that? AND the son of the Winter Queen by the mortal whose love she returns?! Preposterous! He knows it, too.

    Lucian's half-human heart isn't warmed by the fae males he's grown up among. He decides to upend millennia of Custom to win himself the freedom to walk the human world. He knows his man is out there and he means to find him. Henry, lucky lad, is te one.

    Now...Lucian has to get past the certainty in Henry's practical human brain that he won't be the partner to Lucian that he wants to be to his man. Stakes set, off the story canters to the HEA. Wonderful little romp, some sex to keep us, umm, warm, and a nicely sketched fantasy world that I can easily imagine returning to as often as the author allows.

    66msf59
    Sep 11, 2022, 12:01 pm

    Happy Sunday, Richard. Lots of rain moving through, keeping me indoors with the books. Of course, it is also football day. I am really enjoying Post Office. I can't believe I have not read this.

    >64 richardderus: I love Gauld!!

    67karenmarie
    Sep 11, 2022, 12:24 pm

    Hiya, RDear, and happy Sunday to you.

    >64 richardderus: Clever. The last two are my favorite categories.

    *smooch*

    68richardderus
    Sep 11, 2022, 1:31 pm

    >67 karenmarie: *chuckle* The only books I never discuss are the ones I don't read.

    *smooch*

    >66 msf59: Hey Mark! Perfect intro to Bukowski, so I'm hopeful you'll be on to Ham on Rye ere too long.

    69bell7
    Sep 11, 2022, 9:20 pm

    >64 richardderus: Bahaha that's a good one

    *smooch*

    70PaulCranswick
    Sep 11, 2022, 10:14 pm

    >68 richardderus: Some of his poetry is also interesting, RD, although I am not so sure you would agree with me. Lofty and highfalutin it is not but his imagery is vivid and unmistakable.

    71richardderus
    Sep 12, 2022, 9:18 am

    Wordle 450 4/6

    ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
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    AEONS, MIRTH, CLOUD, BOOZE The Booker of Wordle days.

    72karenmarie
    Edited: Sep 12, 2022, 9:19 am

    'Morning, RDear. Happy Monday to you.

    I'm still trying to wake up. Coffee's not quite winning the battle yet.

    edited to add congrats on Wordle in 4. Took me 5.

    *smooch*

    73richardderus
    Sep 12, 2022, 9:23 am

    169 Lessons by Ian McEwan

    Rating: 3.75* of five

    The Publisher Says: From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.

    When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

    Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

    Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?

    Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

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

    My Review
    : Sometimes gambling on a less-than-loved writer's work, when it's a story one really resonates with, pays off; other times, not so much. This experience, after my deep dislike of Solar and Atonement yet genuine appreciation for The Children Act, split the difference.

    It's not news to regulars here that I was sexually abused by my ephebeophile mother when young. Quite recently I read The Kingdoms, an alternate history novel by Natasha Pulley, which contained a truly astonishing scene of unwanted intimacy between a man (the victim) and his wife (the violator) that, for the very first time ever in my experience of reading, contained the truth of coercive heterosex where the man's the coerced partner. It was...healing...for me to see that on the page. It gave me the inner resources to request this book back in June.

    Lessons comes out tomorrow, and I recommend it to you as a good, solid novel of reckoning with emotional damage across a lifetime.

    What about that equivocal waffle above? Well. Now. Author McEwan hasn't suddenly burst forth from a chrysalis and become a wildly passionate and gloriously sensuous prose stylist. He's still a man of his age and class. He's not built for flights of fancy or even particularly emotionally available prose stylings. It's one of the main reasons I haven't become a fanboy of his. But, and this is where I sound weird to my own inner ears, when there's a story to tell that *needs* to be kept buttoned up, he's the writer to do it. That was completely evident in The Children Act, another flat and affectless person's attempt to contextualize the wildly ungovernable emotions of others as they rampage through her (in that case) carefully designed lifestyle. It's the technique that was needed to tell this story and, blessedly, Author McEwan used it.

    What happens to young Roland isn't all that unusual. I know we, as a culture, like to think men are perpetrators and women are victims, but this has never been true. It's time we faced up to it in the post-#MeToo moments. It isn't at all surprising to me that the pace of this story varies as much as it does. The youthful disasters are the ones that set the stage, often act as the pattern, for the hurts and buffets of the future. The manner of Author McEwan's telling of the different stories was quite clearly meant to reflect this. Where something happens for the first time, it is given narrative weight; when it comes around again, it gets less of it. I approve, if that needs saying, of this strategy.

    No one is immune to the stresses and strains of The World as it runs amok and periodically threatens to kill us all. This life, Roland's years on this planet, contains all of my own years on it. I was at different stages of life than Roland, of course, being two decades younger; but the fact is I was formed by the same things Roland was. It felt to me as though Roland trudged and slogged a lot of his life away. Given the emotional damage he carries with him, that was perfectly logical to me. It wasn't, however, a chucklefest. When you're going to take me on a five hundred-plus page trip inside one man's skull, I as a reader would like some lightening of the shadows, say with humor. Author McEwan doesn't offer that to us; this is something to be aware of in deciding whether you'd like to read the book.

    Many other early readers seem to have a problem with Alissa, the wife who abandons Roland with their infant son to become a writer. I'm entirely unsure what the heck the problem they have with that subplot is. It's not like it can't happen, since it's something Doris Lessing (eg) actually did. I myownself wasn't in the least surprised that Roland would marry someone who could calmly walk away from messy emotional realities in order to serve her own needs. Like calls to like, after all.

    The one moment I felt Author McEwan really rather overplayed his emotionless hand had to do with the Chernobyl disaster...it felt, in its handling, like something was finally just off in the manner of his weaving the event into the story. But honestly, as said above, this book is telling a story about the reverberations of an emotional cripple's awkward flailings, and nobody I can think of could do it better than Ian McEwan has done.

    74Helenliz
    Sep 12, 2022, 9:24 am

    Happy Mondays to you
    >71 richardderus: I snuck in a lucky 6.

    75richardderus
    Sep 12, 2022, 10:00 am

    >74 Helenliz: A 6 is not a skunk, so yay for lucky 6 Helen.

    >72 karenmarie: Monday, Monday, Horrible. Can't trust that day. I'm pleased for your 5 since the word was so very not-what-was-expected.

    More coffee for us both, I see. I'm not sure why Monday rankles more today than is usual. *sigh*

    >70 PaulCranswick: I'll take your word for it about Buk's poetry, PC. I think it would do me no good whatever to find out for myself.

    >69 bell7: Hiya Mary! I love Tom Gauld's viewpoint on the world. It looks a lot like my own. *smooch*

    76katiekrug
    Sep 12, 2022, 10:23 am

    Morning, RD!

    I might have a look at the McEwan. I've read a few of his and liked (or at least appreciated) them all.

    *smooch*

    77richardderus
    Sep 12, 2022, 10:49 am

    >76 katiekrug: Excellent, Katie, I hope it works for you in all its chunksterness. May I recommend eye, not ear, reading it? The sentences sound...a lot the same.

    78alcottacre
    Sep 12, 2022, 12:49 pm

    >43 richardderus: I went to find Lloyd and Mitchinson's books at my local library, found it carried The Book of General Ignorance, went to put it on hold and discovered it is a mere 2 years overdue. Geez louise.

    >44 richardderus: Passing on that one for sure.

    >64 richardderus: Love it!

    >73 richardderus: a good, solid novel of reckoning with emotional damage across a lifetime. I am fairly sure I will never read that one - I have had enough emotional damage dealt to me by my father across my lifetime that I never need to read about it.

    Have a marvelous Monday, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

    79richardderus
    Sep 12, 2022, 1:44 pm

    >78 alcottacre: A mere two years! Gracious of them not to call it "lost" I suppose. ::eyeroll::

    I don't think McEwan's stories are likely to mean much to you, Stasia, He's an above-it-all writer, one who doesn't connect with his characters so we-the-reader can't do so too well, either.

    Re: >44 richardderus:, you startle me. I figured you'd be heading for the website to get your freebie.

    *smooch*

    80Caroline_McElwee
    Sep 13, 2022, 6:20 am

    >18 richardderus: I read it when it first came out RD, and liked it better than you did I think.

    >73 richardderus: I'm looking forward to this. My favourites of his were the dark The Cement Garden, and Enduring Love. I think there are two I haven't read. The one I felt the least believable was Saturday.

    81msf59
    Sep 13, 2022, 7:52 am

    Happy Tuesday, Richard. Great review of McEwan's latest. I have had mixed feelings about his work too. In regard to Bukowski, I have also added Ham on Rye to my TBR. I appreciate the nudge into finally reading this unique writer.

    82karenmarie
    Sep 13, 2022, 10:43 am

    'Morning, RDear.

    >73 richardderus: Pass, but excellent review. Dare I say it's me not you? *smile* I still have Atonement on my shelves waiting for the right time.

    I got Wordle in 4, have errands to run, and as Jenna puts it, a nap in my future.

    *smooch*

    83richardderus
    Edited: Sep 13, 2022, 10:47 am

    >82 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! A pleasantly busy day, then. I'm fully boostered and armored against flu, so my day is working just fine.

    Yay for 4! I'll go and Wordle soon. *smooch*

    >81 msf59: I don't think McEwan's ever going to be a favorite around here. It's too much to expect lots and lots of readers to become passionate about someone whose work requires an archaeological excavation to find the emotional core of.

    Enjoy your Bukowskifest!

    >80 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caro...I don't imagine many people read Schlink's book without, in part, seeing the film in their mind's eye. My eye was simply less approving than most.

    I hope you'll really dig (!) the new McEwan.

    84richardderus
    Sep 13, 2022, 10:59 am

    Wordle 451 3/6

    🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, ALPHA when you have a vowel to start with and so many others eliminated, then the answer floats to the top.

    85bell7
    Sep 13, 2022, 11:11 am

    >84 richardderus: As you know I have different starting words, but in the end I got the same result as you did.

    *smooch*

    86richardderus
    Sep 13, 2022, 11:22 am

    >85 bell7: Ha! I was just over at yours saying the same thing. Great minds....

    87karenmarie
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:25 am

    'Morning, RD. Happy Wednesday.

    Coffee in hand, Bill at work, Jenna still asleep. Joy in central NC.

    *smooch*

    88richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:25 am

    Wordle 452 4/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, THEME, THYME I got a chuckle out of this one.

    89richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:26 am

    >87 karenmarie: It sounds like a lovely and peaceful start to your day, Horrible.

    *smooch*

    90alcottacre
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:29 am

    >79 richardderus: My local library is notorious for not marking the books as "missing" no matter how long they have been so. I found one book that had been missing for 8 years, but was still in the catalog.

    As far as McEwan goes, I have read at least 3 books and enjoyed them all.

    Have a wonderful Wednesday! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today.

    91bell7
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:37 am

    >86 richardderus: Great timing lol.

    >88 richardderus: two days in a row! Though to be fair AEONS and MIRTH versus ADIEU and MONTH gives us eight out of ten the same so there are several puzzles that could potentially work out that way. It's when brains go in absolutely different directions that amuses me most.

    Happy Wednesday!

    92richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 9:49 am

    "Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows." -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (14 Sep 1917-1986), of whom I'd never heard until today's A Word A Day newsletter.

    93richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 9:52 am

    >91 bell7: Hi Mary! It's always fascinating to me that people think so differently. Fun to chart how, isn't it?

    >90 alcottacre: Hey there Stasia. That means, to me, that the people who run your library are not to be trusted. What above-board reason could there be for not maintaining an honest catalog? What my mother used to call "stealth censorship," I'll wager.

    94ArlieS
    Sep 14, 2022, 10:00 am

    >93 richardderus: Hmm. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Or incompetence. Or extreme budget and staffing issues.

    95LizzieD
    Sep 14, 2022, 10:15 am

    >94 ArlieS: Wise - at least as a starting place until proved wrong.

    Good morning, Richard! You know my second word, so it was 3 for me today after what feels like a long drought. *smooch*

    96richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 10:26 am

    >95 LizzieD: Yay for your 3day! *smooch*

    >94 ArlieS: That nostrum is fine when one assumes good will, which (in Texas, my native land) I do not. Far, far too much experience with the way right-wingers think and plan to believe stupidity is an adequate fig-leaf for something being missing, unreported, with an unchanged record for eight years.

    97ronincats
    Sep 14, 2022, 3:07 pm

    I really wish I could get one of these for you, but I guess we'll both have to be content just looking at it.



    https://odditymall.com/giant-crochet-octopus

    You might have gotten tired of sharing a room with it anyway...

    98Berly
    Sep 14, 2022, 4:24 pm

    >92 richardderus: LOVE that quote!! Okay, and the octopus. Happy Hump Day! Smooch.

    99SandDune
    Sep 14, 2022, 4:39 pm

    >97 ronincats: I have a giant crochet octopus on my list of things to make. But I have to make a flower hippo and a Christmas gnome first.

    100richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 5:29 pm

    >99 SandDune:, >97 ronincats: I love that lovely octopodic creation! I think it would be more of a roommate than a decoration, though.

    *smooch*

    >98 Berly: I know, right?! Gorgeous!

    101Storeetllr
    Sep 14, 2022, 6:22 pm

    Hey, there, Richard! I could have sworn I checked in when your thread was relatively new (you know, 4 days ago), but apparently I only imagined it. Oh, well, the thought was there. I haven't been on the laptop since then, either, so I'm very late in wishing you a happy new thread. So sorry.

    Love the white octopus. I'm sure it would make a better roommate than most.

    The peach up top - just seeing it makes my mouth water. I can almost taste it.

    102richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 6:50 pm

    >101 Storeetllr: ...oh...hi...well...::chinwobble::

    ...of course I quite under...stand that, that, that you would ::teardrop::

    ...have m...more important...things...to...do ::muffled sob::

    I mean, after all, what's a little thing like, like, like having a...birth...day :::snivel:::

    103FAMeulstee
    Edited: Sep 14, 2022, 7:04 pm

    >102 richardderus: Happy Birthday, Richard dear!!!

    A Minoan clay bottle showing an Octopus (1500 BC) for you :-)


    104richardderus
    Sep 14, 2022, 7:58 pm

    >103 FAMeulstee: Ooo, isn't that a beautiful thing! I shall cherish it always. *smooch*

    105bell7
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:52 pm

    Ohhh and happy birthday! Meeting in person for your birthday twelve (!) years ago is still a cherished memory of mine *smooch*

    106Berly
    Sep 14, 2022, 8:56 pm

    Is today your birthday? Goodness! Happy, happy!

    107katiekrug
    Sep 14, 2022, 10:07 pm

    Did I miss your birthday?!?!!?

    Many happy returns, my friend!

    108FAMeulstee
    Sep 15, 2022, 3:55 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear!
    I finally managed to get my reviews done, all up to date now :-)

    109figsfromthistle
    Sep 15, 2022, 5:51 am

    Happy Birthday! Here, have some cake......

    110Helenliz
    Sep 15, 2022, 6:07 am

    Happy Thursday and happy birthday.
    Hope that both treat you well.

    Wordled in 3. Feeling rather smug. >:-)

    111richardderus
    Edited: Sep 15, 2022, 8:44 am

    170 Invasion of the Spirit People by Juan Pablo Villalobos (tr. Rosalind Harvey)

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: Juan Pablo Villalobos’s fifth novel adopts a gentle, fable-like tone, approaching the problem of racism from the perspective that any position as idiotic as xenophobia can only be fought with sheer absurdity.

    In an unnamed city, colonised by an unnamed world power, an immigrant named Gastón makes his living selling exotic vegetables to eateries around the city. He has a dog called Kitten, who’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a good friend called Max, who’s in a deep depression after being forced to close his restaurant. Meanwhile, Max’s son, Pol, a scientist away on a scientific expedition into the Arctic, can offer little support.

    Faced with these dispiriting problems, Gastón begins a quest, or rather three: he must search for someone to put his dog to sleep humanely; he must find a space in which to open a new restaurant with Max; and he must look into the truth behind the news being sent back by Pol: that human life may be the by-product of an ancient alien attempt at colonisation . . . and that those aliens might intend to make a return visit.

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

    My Review
    : Alien invasion! Gastón's shared son, Pol, is freaking right out (wouldn't we all!) as he tries to get through Max, his depressed father's, fog to...to what? Gastón, his other father, isn't quite sure what to do about Max's decline into dissociation from his failing business and crumbling participation with the world. But is Gastón sure he believes Pol? Aliens from space made us humans what we are?

    Add to the stress of trying to prop up Max, comprehend the influx of aliens from Earth (...or are they...?) and what that means for his and Max's attempts to survive as feeders of the people via growing and cooking food, his quest to find someone he trusts to give Kitten (his aging, ill dog) a good death. This is entirely a story of the humanity of all people, regardless of where they come from or how they define themselves.

    A casual reader might see the Asian stereotyping, with mentions of slanting eyes etc etc as endorsing this world-view. I don't think that is accurate, or fair. It seems to me that every step of the story's progress is made in the harsh light of Judgment. No one here, from Gastón (whose exploits we're following closely, as the third-person narrator advises us early on) on down, is spared an unflattering shadow.

    As is the norm for Author Villalobos, there is stuff to shock and offend those prone to such histrionics. Avoid the read, then, if you're not prepared to look closely at your own responses to the events unfolding here. I myownself think it's another, less raucous but more reflective, take-down of the structures and maintainers of Power as it's used in the twenty-first century end-stage capitalist world.

    112richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:34 am

    >110 Helenliz: Hi Helen! Thank you for both. My birthday was very pleasant and uneventful, which is always good.

    A 3day is always a good thing, Wordle-wise. I'll hope you're in a new phase of mostly 3days!

    >109 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! What a cake that is!! I've never seen anything like it...I hope the tentacles are edible...*smooch*

    >108 FAMeulstee: I shall coddiwomple thitherward here directly.

    113richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:39 am

    >107 katiekrug: No, you hit it, Katie. I'm hoping for returns that are happy. Those're the best kind.

    >106 Berly: Ha! What a fun beast he is, Berly-boo! I think someone got a gift they didn't quite know what to do with, and got creative. I love it! *smooch*

    >105 bell7: TWELVE!! Wow...that was a lovely party, wasn't it. I'm glad I had one nice birthday party. The others stank.

    Oh well, it's all behind me now, so who cares! *smooch*

    114richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:43 am

    171 Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos (tr. Rosalind Harvey)

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: It’s the eighties in Lagos de Moreno—a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows—and a poor family struggles to overcome the bizarre dangers of living in Mexico. The father, a high school civics teacher, insists on practicing and teaching the art of the insult, while the mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas to serve to their numerous progeny: Aristotle, Orestes, Archilochus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor, and Pollux. Confined to their home, the family bears witness to the revolt against the Institutional Revolutionary Party and their umpteenth electoral fraud. This political upheaval is only the beginning of son Orestes’s adventures and his uproarious crusade against the boredom of rustic life and the tyranny of his older brother.

    Both profoundly moving and wildly funny, Juan Pablo Villalobos’s Quesadillas is a satiric masterpiece, chock-full of inseminated cows, Polish immigrants, religious pilgrims, alien spacecraft, psychedelic watermelons, and many, many “your mama” insults.

    I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

    My Review
    : I do not think there is another author alive who can make such a painfully, angrily critical book about inequality so damned funny. Foul-mouthed Oreste blasts your wimpy Norteño eyes with some deeply "offensive" cursing, swearing, and blasphemy.

    I, of course, loved it.

    You need to be warned, though, lest you fall into one of those performative swoons that are so absurd and typical of the US readers. Lots and lots and lots of pearl-clutching fun to be had, of course, howling about your delicate sensibilities! But you can't claim to be blindsided. I'm telling you clearly, now, before you pick it up, that this teenager's mouth is not going to sound good to you.

    To me, it was a welcome return to honest, gut-deep youthful outrage at the hideous, genuinely offensive to proper sensibility calibration, social crimes and thefts. Nothing in this flensingly honest shout of outrage should shock you more than the cruelty, the sheer shocking indifference, of the economic elites.

    I encourage the easily-offended pearl-clutching fools to read it because it will offend them. They need offending.

    115richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:53 am

    Wordle 453 4/6

    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, TODDY, DOUBT Fun word today!

    116SandDune
    Sep 15, 2022, 9:06 am

    Happy Birthday for yesterday Richard! 🥳🎂🎁🎈

    117richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 9:22 am

    >116 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian!

    118karenmarie
    Sep 15, 2022, 11:04 am

    Hiya, RD, and happy Thursday to you.

    Well, I totally blew the Birthday Thing and here I am a day late with a Happy Birthday. That's what I get for not looking at my desk calendar yesterday.

    I hope you had a wonderful day.

    *smooch* from your embarrassed Horrible

    119richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 11:41 am

    >118 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Really, at my age, the natal anniversary isn't that big a pleasure...cast your mind back to when you turned 40, you'll recall what it means. I'm fine, really, it was a nice, quiet day and Old Stuff's off at the dermatologist for much of today getting his skin cancers dealt with or something. Whatever, who cares, he's gone that's my biggest treat!!

    120alcottacre
    Sep 15, 2022, 12:14 pm

    >97 ronincats: That is so cool!!

    >111 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole.

    >114 richardderus: That one too.

    Have a thunderous Thursday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

    121richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 1:40 pm

    >120 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! *smooch*

    I hope your Thursday doesn't thunder, given all the stuff going on in y'all's lives just now.

    122Storeetllr
    Sep 15, 2022, 3:12 pm

    >102 richardderus: Aw, there, there. There. *pat pat pat* I wasn't ignoring you on purpose. I didn't get online because I couldn't leave my bed for longer than trips to the bathroom (and fridge, which is only a few steps further) and back, and to feed and water Nickel, using my stupid walker. Luckily, my entire apartment is only about 25 steps from one end to the other, so I managed. Barely.

    Not to make it all about me, but last Friday I went with my daughter and my grandkids to a playground. While there, I ran around after the kids like a 20-year old. (Yes, I actually ran - great lumbering grandma running.) That evening, I could hardly walk for the pain in my left knee, and it got worse over the next day or two. It just started to get better yesterday. Anyway, I just couldn't manage to do more than lay in bed and listen to comfort reads and play mindless Spider Solitaire games. It was maddening.

    Belated birthday wishes!



    This morning, I serendipitously came across this wonderful octopus area rug (because I happened to look at an ad for an area rug once last week, and now my FB and IG feeds are chock full of rug ads) and thought of you. Couldn't wait to show it to you.

    123richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 3:50 pm

    >122 Storeetllr: Ooo! That's a fabulous rug indeed, and now I want one...despite the carpeting on the floor. *smooch*

    I truly know about that overdoing-it collapse, so I return your *there there*patpat*. Albeit with a teensy sniffle.

    :-P

    124Storeetllr
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:09 pm

    It is a pretty cool rug, isn't it. I confess, I'm tempted. There's one that's just cream and green, and, since my walls are sea foam green and white ...



    125jessibud2
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:22 pm

    Happy belated birthday, Richard!

    126richardderus
    Sep 15, 2022, 8:39 pm

    >125 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley!

    >124 Storeetllr: I really don't know how you can say "no" to that, Mary...perfect "statement" piece for a small space.

    127karenmarie
    Sep 16, 2022, 8:26 am

    ‘Morning, RDear! Happy Friday.

    >119 richardderus: Hmmm. When I turned 40 I was 8+ months pregnant with Jenna, so I was completely thrilled with my life and turning 40 was nothing. I had a hard time with 33 (third of a century) and 36 (for some bizarre reason all I could think of was 3 dozen eggs). Every birthday after 40 has been either wonderful or accepted as better than the alternative.

    Knowing what getting alone time means, although you do have other people in the same building, I hope you enjoyed your non-OS time yesterday.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    128richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 9:30 am

    172 Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (tr. Brian FitzGibbon)

    The Publisher Says: Iceland in the 1960s. Hekla is a budding female novelist who was born in the remote district of Dalir. After packing her few belongings, including James Joyces's Ulysses and a Remington typewriter, she heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. There, she intends to become a writer. Sharing an apartment with her childhood and queer friend Jón John, Hekla comes to learn that she will have to stand alone in a small male dominated community that would rather see her win a pageant than be a professional artist. As the two friends find themselves increasingly on the outside, their bond shapes and strengthens them artistically in the most moving of ways.

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

    My Review
    : It's always been true that, to be a success, a woman must do twice as much and can expect half the reward a man would get for the same labor. Hekla, cursed with both attractiveness and intelligence in a smugly patriarchal culture, learns that to be a writer who is taken seriously while also being a pretty female is a Sisyphean task. The 1960s were not yet times of change in Iceland....

    Hekla's ambitions lure her away from her rural home and, when she arrives in Reykjavík, her efforts are...Herculean. Yes, lots of mythology referred to here, and honestly it's only down to the fact that there isn't a better metaphor for what she is required to expend. Jón John, her gay BFF, preceded her to Reykjavík because if there's a worse thing to be in rural Iceland than a smart, ambitious, pretty woman, it's a queer man. They take up residence together while he does the kind of labor he can find, gets laid when someone's horny and their wife isn't willing, and ponders with her why they should be reduced to such crummy exigencies for getting mere crumbs of what they really want.

    I was ready to give the book five stars until I got to the ending. What happened there, I fear, was me smacking my nose on the sad, true realization that Jón John's deeply ingrained homophobia will, in fact, be the death of him; and that Hekla, in accepting a very terrible and unfair life for herself, has resigned herself to the way the world is. Is this how the book should end? Yes, I can certainly see that it would make the most sense for it to end as it has. I still wanted, on an emotional level, to feel the striving I'd seen the characters enact pay off. I expected Surtsey to come roaring up faster than it did and give the characters new, hot, fire-powered land to live their new, hot, fire-powered lives on.
    “Men are born poets. By the time of their confirmation, they’ve taken on the inescapable role of being geniuses. It doesn’t matter whether they write books or not. Women, on the other hand, grapple with puberty and have babies, which prevents them from being able to write.”

    No, not for humans as fully, honestly drawn as these humans were, to be given a fairy-tale ending. They got reality. It felt like a cheat; it wasn't, of course, but it felt like one. I will say that the emotional core of the book is sadness and that was not the source of my half-star docking. It was the changes Jón John and Hekla made not amounting to an improvement of their lives. It could have; it seemed to me that, once the Faustian bargain of marriage was struck between them, they could've used that energy to propel themselves to happier endings. But the core of sadness was too powerful. The end of the story is, in this book, really and truly an end. Hekla's book being published? A major achievement! And it's all her ex-boyfriend Starkadur's because otherwise, without his man's name on it, the book won't *get* published. Miss Iceland was beautifully, poignantly sad all the way through. But when a story has one note, it's hard to maintain one's taste for that, and only that, note.
    The skylight has misted up in the night, a white patina of snow has formed on the windowsill. I drape {Starkadur}'s sweater over me, move into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe it up. A trail of sleet streams down the glass, I traced it with my finger. Apart from the squawk of seagulls, a desolate stillness reigns over Skolavordustigur.

    Understand your journey, don't undertake it if you're not in the mood for exactly that journey. If you are, this will repay your attention with exquisitely lovely, painfully honest images and you'll be honestly unable to see for sad tears that won't quite fall.

    129richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 9:54 am

    >127 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! It was lovely to be in my space, unmolested by the smell, sight, or sound of someone I do not like. Lovely! I treasure those moments.

    I don't much care about birthdays at this point...the early ones were all disappointing or actively awful, and now I'd really just prefer not to think about finally approaching the Gates of My Forties. *delicate shiver*

    *smooch* for a lovely Friday!

    130LizzieD
    Sep 16, 2022, 9:57 am

    Another birthday misser. I'm glad that it was a decent one, and I wish you a fabulous B-day+1 in which you get to enjoy some extra freedom in your place! I also wish you a better personal new year with more of everything you enjoy and less pain.

    Wordle Failure. Oh well.

    *smooch*

    131katiekrug
    Sep 16, 2022, 10:30 am

    Have you watched the new GBBS yet? We have it on tap for tonight :)

    132billybobman
    Sep 16, 2022, 10:32 am

    This user has been removed as spam.

    133klobrien2
    Sep 16, 2022, 10:57 am

    >128 richardderus: I think I’m going to give Miss Iceland a try, Richard. I’m glad to have your review to prepare me!

    Have a lovely weekend!

    Karen O

    134richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 11:34 am

    >133 klobrien2: I hope you enjoy the read, Karen O. I'm sure it will move you!

    Happy-weekend *smooch*

    >132 billybobman: ...okay...

    >131 katiekrug: Yes. Yes, I have.

    I look forward to your appraisal of the dramatis personae...and, may I direct your attention to David Atherton and Michael Chakraverty's podcast? The Sticky Bun Boys: https://linktr.ee/stickybunboys

    Most amusant.

    >130 LizzieD: Omigawd I forgot Wordle! Entirely! I'll have to go do it now. *smooch* for reminding me before the swiss cheese that replaced my brain completely scrod me.

    135richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 11:39 am

    Wordle 454 6/6

    🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
    🟨🟩🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS. MIRTH, EARLY, FARED, RARER, PARER Phew indeed!

    136Storeetllr
    Sep 16, 2022, 12:35 pm

    >135 richardderus: I blew it today. 😒 I also managed to lose Quordle. (Not enough sleep last night. That’s my excuse anyway.) Discovered a new one: Phrazle. Which I got in 5 out of 6 tried. So…

    137richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 1:03 pm

    >136 Storeetllr: I am totally unsurprised. This one was a bear!

    Anyway. Happy weekend-ahead's reads. *smooch*

    138Helenliz
    Edited: Sep 16, 2022, 1:44 pm

    >135 richardderus:. Well done (she says grudgingly). Sad trombones for me. Spent a long time not getting the middle letter.

    139ArlieS
    Sep 16, 2022, 2:31 pm

    >128 richardderus: I won't be reading this one. I'd rather have upbeat fiction than a view into another time or place - ideally both, but I get enough downers from my non-fiction.

    140richardderus
    Sep 16, 2022, 3:40 pm

    >139 ArlieS: It's wise to listen to your inner voice, Arlie, and goodness knows your NF reading isn't a chucklefest.

    >138 Helenliz: It was a really hard pattern to accept as valid, Helen. *there there, pat pat*

    141karenmarie
    Edited: Sep 17, 2022, 6:09 am

    Hi RDear, and happy Saturday to you. A quiet day is planned here in central NC.

    >135 richardderus: I guessed rarer before parer too. I thought they might be tricksy and use 3 Rs in the same word. Alas.

    No 41, long delayed, is now read and on my thread.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    142thornton37814
    Sep 17, 2022, 7:58 am

    >135 richardderus: You are one of the few people I know who got yesterday's word at all. I had three options for my last two guesses, and I picked the wrong two.

    143richardderus
    Sep 17, 2022, 10:34 am

    Wordle 455 4/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, THETE, CHUTE Weird things float through my head....

    144richardderus
    Sep 17, 2022, 11:18 am

    >142 thornton37814: It seems to have flummoxed a lot of people, Lori. I don't think it's that hard, but I wouldn't would I.

    >141 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I'm come and look in here directly. *smooch*

    145richardderus
    Sep 17, 2022, 1:00 pm

    I still think a delight called The Tome Home is a good idea. Here's a 46-bedroom, 27-1/2 bath perfect choice in Oneonta, New York:
    https://www.corcoran.com/listing/for-sale/19-emmons-hill-road/68815144/regionId/...




    146Caroline_McElwee
    Sep 17, 2022, 7:12 pm

    Belated birthday greetings RD. I hope you had a few bookish parcels.

    147drneutron
    Sep 17, 2022, 10:57 pm

    We’ll, thanks to driving back from family visits, I missed your birthday. Hope it was a good one!

    148LizzieD
    Sep 18, 2022, 12:13 am

    >143 richardderus: You can't escape a classical education, can you????
    .145 Yes. That's pretty nice.

    *smooch* for your Sunday

    149karenmarie
    Sep 18, 2022, 7:50 am

    'Morning, RD! Happy Sunday.

    I love the Library in that house. I, too, have books over a door, although mine is are not over a door leading out to a screened porch. And the rest of the house! Sigh.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    150richardderus
    Sep 18, 2022, 8:07 am

    >149 karenmarie: The top three photos are the one, oldest house, with the library. The fourth is a second house, of the four other ones dotted around the 270 acres, that had the best views (IMO) and then the restaurant is the money-making end of the operation. (I'd say it's the one-meal-a-day cafeteria as well as a money-maker.)

    >148 LizzieD: Nope. No escaping it. Stuff gets cemented in and...stays.

    Happy Sunday! *smooch*

    151richardderus
    Sep 18, 2022, 8:13 am

    >147 drneutron:, >146 Caroline_McElwee: No big deal, at least not to me, I'm not hugely birthday oriented since the numbers keep piling up to *alarming* heights.

    My sister sent me some money to get Kindlebooks with, so I took advantage of a few expiring sales.
    THE BORROWER by Rebecca Makkai...great writer, book of hers I hadn't heard of.
    HIGHFIRE by Eoin Colfer...Percy Jackson's writer does Cajun swamprat-meets-dragon story for grown ups, so yeah.
    ANCESTOR STONES by Aminatta Forna...early book by a writer I really enjoy
    THE GREEK WORD FOR LOVE by Rhys Everly because I like him and want to support his career.

    152richardderus
    Sep 18, 2022, 9:01 am

    Wordle 456 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    I was firing on all cylinders! AEONS, MIRTH, STICK

    153LizzieD
    Sep 18, 2022, 10:02 am

    Congrats on 3! I'm happy with 4. Enjoy your Sunday.

    *smooch*

    154FAMeulstee
    Sep 18, 2022, 11:42 am

    >152 richardderus: Good Wordling, Richard dear, way better than I did.
    I had my usual first two, and then needed 4 more to get there peony, mirth, stair, still, stiff, stick.
    It was a narrow escape today.

    155richardderus
    Sep 18, 2022, 12:31 pm

    >154 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita! I was quite pleased with my 3. But "phew" works, too, since it means the streak stays alive.

    >153 LizzieD: Hi Peggy, happy indeed with your 4 since it means the streak stays alive.

    156karenmarie
    Sep 19, 2022, 7:23 am

    Hiya, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

    >151 richardderus: I’ve added Highfire to my wish list. I’ve already checked out The Greek Word for Love via Kindle Unlimited although 99¢ is not a bad price.

    >152 richardderus: Congrats on your 3. I took 4. Today’s another 4, too.

    *smooch*

    157bell7
    Sep 19, 2022, 8:36 am

    Happy Monday, Richard. Hope it starts off a good week for you. And I *love* the Tome Home possibility.

    158msf59
    Sep 19, 2022, 8:52 am

    >145 richardderus: Wow! I LOVE the Tome Home! You know I love that back patio. Reading and birding.

    Morning, Richard. We are back after our whirlwind weekend. Hoping to get back to the books this PM. I have been neglecting them.

    159richardderus
    Sep 19, 2022, 9:17 am

    Wordle 457 4/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, TRIED, TRICE I do so love that word! Started my day in a good mood, that did.

    160LizzieD
    Sep 19, 2022, 9:37 am

    Good morning, Richard! Wanted to speak before I'm going in a -----. (4 for me too)

    161magicians_nephew
    Sep 19, 2022, 9:42 am

    Always remember Zero Mostel in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"

    MILES: We raped Thrace, and then we did it again, and then we did it again

    PSUEDOLUS : You raped Thrace Thrice?

    162richardderus
    Sep 19, 2022, 10:01 am

    >158 msf59: Books are perfect for neglecting purposes. They never hold grudges! New-week orisons, Mark.

    >157 bell7: Isn't that a gorgeous locale? Have a happy week ahead! *smooch*

    >156 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, how's stuff? 99-centses mount up, so best to use KU since you're already paying for it. If you *adore* it, then the 99¢ won't be frivoled away but wisely invested.

    Happy week-ahead's reads! *smooch*

    163richardderus
    Sep 19, 2022, 10:03 am

    >161 magicians_nephew: ...and in a trice! Heh.

    >160 LizzieD: *smooch* Happy week-ahead's reads, Peggy!

    164Helenliz
    Sep 19, 2022, 4:28 pm

    I stitch for a charity that produces quilts for children with lifelong or life threatening issues. The child (or, more likely, their parents) chooses a theme and we stitch squares for that theme. I thought you might appreciate some of the elements of a recent quilt that's just been delivered.

    https://www.lovequiltsuk.com/childquilt.php?qid=3484

    Hope the rest of the week goes swimmingly. >:-)

    165richardderus
    Sep 19, 2022, 5:21 pm

    >164 Helenliz: Oh, that is such a lovely quilt and such a charming idea! The notion is very touching. Thanks for showing it to me, Helen!

    166richardderus
    Sep 19, 2022, 6:53 pm

    Watching BladeRunner 2049 before it and the original leave Netflix on the 25th. Ridley Scott's cold, dead fingers of shame and abuse reached out to squash this perfectly good film. Undeservedly.

    Oh well, it's still there and still good.

    167karenmarie
    Sep 20, 2022, 8:02 am

    'Morning, Rdear, and happy Tuesday to you.

    >166 richardderus: Ooh, I just looked at the trailer and since we were all in a snit last night about what to watch, I'll suggest it for tonight.

    *smooch*

    168richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 8:44 am

    Wordle 458 3/6

    🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, ALIKE One of my enjoyable 3-days!

    169richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 8:45 am

    >167 karenmarie: It's a very enjoyable film, Horrible, and not as bloody as I remembered. Have fun! *smooch*

    170LizzieD
    Sep 20, 2022, 10:11 am

    >168 richardderus: I shall now have to call you William*. Very nice!

    *WordleMan=WM.=William

    171richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 10:18 am

    >170 LizzieD: Ha! Well, that's a new one. I have been called "Charles" a lot, seems to be the consensus that I could've been named that among many who know me. "William" is different, and probably more Lucy-Bartonish than I'd love to acknowledge.

    *smooch*

    172bell7
    Sep 20, 2022, 11:13 am

    >168 richardderus: Gotta love a 3-day! *smooch*

    173richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 11:33 am

    >172 bell7: Ha! Yes, I do indeed love me a 3day. They are infrequent enough that I get a real kick out of them.

    174katiekrug
    Sep 20, 2022, 11:46 am

    I Wordled in 5...

    Re: your comment on my thread, it is a bit warm for the time of year, but here, at least, it's not at all humid and there's a nice breeze.

    Have a good Tuesday, RD! *smooch*

    175richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 1:24 pm

    >174 katiekrug: Yay for not-skunked days! It's fall, it's been fall for weeks, I'm tired of global warming already so gawd needs to make with the highs in the 60s!

    176Storeetllr
    Sep 20, 2022, 7:03 pm

    Hi, Richard! Love those 3-days! Today, I got it in 4. I tried it with a "v" first. *shrug*

    177richardderus
    Sep 20, 2022, 7:20 pm

    >176 Storeetllr: I'm really pleased that my alpha-order fetish paid off for once, Mary.

    Hoping you're not shvitzing too hard. *smooch*

    178figsfromthistle
    Sep 20, 2022, 9:46 pm

    >168 richardderus: Nice!

    Happy ( almost) mid week!

    179PaulCranswick
    Sep 20, 2022, 11:12 pm

    >114 richardderus:
    To me, it was a welcome return to honest, gut-deep youthful outrage at the hideous, genuinely offensive to proper sensibility calibration, social crimes and thefts. Nothing in this flensingly honest shout of outrage should shock you more than the cruelty, the sheer shocking indifference, of the economic elites.

    I encourage the easily-offended pearl-clutching fools to read it because it will offend them. They need offending.


    That sort of comment is one of the reasons why visits here will always be a priority for me, RD.

    180Berly
    Sep 21, 2022, 2:39 am

    Just dropping in to admire the reviews, new books, Wordling brilliance and to leave a smooch or two behind. : )

    181msf59
    Sep 21, 2022, 7:09 am

    Happy Wednesday, Richard. I have been a bit busy this week but I am squeezing some reading in. After a very hot day yesterday, our temps begin to plunge. Only low 60s the next 2 days. I hope your week is going well.

    182karenmarie
    Edited: Sep 21, 2022, 8:26 am

    ‘Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday.

    >168 richardderus: Congrats on 3.

    Took me 4 today, but I was pleased anyway.

    We started watching Travelers instead. First two episodes are intriguing.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    183richardderus
    Sep 21, 2022, 10:31 am

    Wordle 459 4/6

    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    MIRTH, AEONS, RELAY, RECAP So that happened.

    184richardderus
    Sep 21, 2022, 10:40 am

    >182 karenmarie: Oh, I liked Travelers...there was a lot of story left to tell about that world, and a lot of good stuff in the concept of how they came to do their time-traveling things. The sign of a great idea, one that keeps on giving.

    4day for me, too. Perfectly fine. Weird when a word just...emerges...like Dracula from a coffin, isn't it.

    >181 msf59: Low 60s! Chicagoland got the memo about its being fall, thank goodness. I hope the sunshine's sticking around.

    >180 Berly: Hi Berly! *smooch*

    You won't see much of that other stuff, but the smooches I can supply.

    >179 PaulCranswick: Heh. Well, the hits keep comin' then, PC.

    185weird_O
    Sep 21, 2022, 12:03 pm

    I know you're going to be upset, Richard, to learn that your state's attorney general has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump, his children, and executives of The Trump Organization for fraud and cheating and all that. She (note that SHE) wants the court to bar the family members from serving as executives of any business in New York State.

    Whoop!

    186richardderus
    Sep 21, 2022, 12:10 pm

    >185 weird_O: It's shocking, it verges on lèse-majesté, it is quite, quite evident that she is getting uppity and needs to be taken down.

    All sentiments I've actually heard, translated into smart-person speech. I do not traffic in their demotic suppurational tongue.

    187Helenliz
    Sep 21, 2022, 12:17 pm

    >185 weird_O:/>186 richardderus: deary deary me.

    I was amused to read in the paper that T____ thought that he'd have had a better seat at HMQ's funeral had he been in charge that Biden was allocated. Um. Let me think about that for a moment.

    188Storeetllr
    Edited: Sep 21, 2022, 1:09 pm

    >185 weird_O: >186 richardderus: >187 Helenliz: The day I don’t hear that name again can’t come too soon. Like Limbaugh. Someone posted on another social media site about how we never hear his name “because what he did had no value. It contributed nothing worthwhile to the culture. Nothing of lasting value.” -Dana Gould. Same with TFG.

    Edited to correct typo.

    189richardderus
    Sep 21, 2022, 1:10 pm

    >188 Storeetllr: I might've typed 45's name a few times since 2021, but only when it was *ab*so*lute*ly* unavoidable. I still refuse to acknowledge that sex criminal's existence with a personal name.

    >187 Helenliz: Ha!! That is the most hilarious thing I've ever read! Better seat ROFL

    190FAMeulstee
    Sep 22, 2022, 2:48 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

    All good here. Temperatures are great, I read some, we walk some. What more could I want?

    191karenmarie
    Sep 22, 2022, 8:20 am

    'Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

    I got Wordle in 4. Darned alphabet soup.

    And I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that NY has gone after t**** and co.

    *smooch*

    192bell7
    Sep 22, 2022, 9:06 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard! I'm enjoying a mostly-lazy rainy day off today and Worlded in 3. *smooch*

    193richardderus
    Sep 22, 2022, 11:10 am

    Wordle 460 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜🟩🟨
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    Well, I got all 5 letters between the first and second words...how hard could it be? Heh.

    194richardderus
    Sep 22, 2022, 11:35 am

    >192 bell7: Thanks, Mary! I'm lightly misted, not rained on, but feel your fall-time damp (with relief).

    >191 karenmarie: I wasn't quite so challenged in Wordle-world, Horrible. *smooch*

    Once Weisselberg flipped, it wasn't a case of "if" but "when" and I'm very, very pleased to say it was soon! I'm glad as glad gets that 45's still in the hot seat and still running scared.

    I'm less thrilled that 45's minions are still seditiously active.

    >190 FAMeulstee: ...umm...a puppy? Not much, for sure! Have a lovely fall weekend ahead, Anita!

    195LizzieD
    Sep 22, 2022, 12:21 pm

    > 193 Me too, Richard! Happy day!

    Is it schadenfreude when the object of my glee is finally being invited to face judgment?

    196richardderus
    Sep 22, 2022, 1:45 pm

    >195 LizzieD: Not by my lights, Peggy. I'd consent to attend a christian worship service offering thanks for 45's conviction and imprisonment, though, so take that into account.

    197Helenliz
    Sep 22, 2022, 3:23 pm

    >193 richardderus: Mine looked very similar today. all 5 letters in 2 words, got it in 3.

    198richardderus
    Sep 22, 2022, 3:31 pm

    >197 Helenliz: Wheeee for a solid result in each Wordle!

    199thornton37814
    Sep 22, 2022, 9:19 pm

    >193 richardderus: I got it in 3 with all the letters by 2 today also.

    200PaulCranswick
    Sep 22, 2022, 9:46 pm

    >193 richardderus: We all seem to have done well with #460. I got a two guess win with #461.

    201richardderus
    Sep 23, 2022, 8:29 am

    Wordle 461 3/6

    ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    A victory thanks to Mary's Toublesome Letter™!

    202LizzieD
    Sep 23, 2022, 9:31 am

    >201 richardderus: I did too, Richard.
    I'm reeling from reading that Hilary Mantel died yesterday. One of my LT friends had tea with her once and said that she was thrilled that we discussed her work here as "literature." How else would we have discussed it?

    203richardderus
    Edited: Sep 23, 2022, 9:35 am

    >202 LizzieD: I'm not surprised that she felt that way, Peggy, because she was a very deeply-dyed craftsperson not a dilettante artist. Her manner of building stories would seem (to her) very engineered...and somehow that doesn't make Literature to some strange views of the subject.

    Vale Dame Hilary.

    >200 PaulCranswick:, >199 thornton37814: It was a good day for me, today, so I expect for most of us it will be/was as well.

    204richardderus
    Sep 24, 2022, 8:55 am

    Wordle 462 4/6

    🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, CRATE, GRATE Another four-of-five day made this a relative breeze.

    205LizzieD
    Sep 24, 2022, 9:50 am

    >204 richardderus: Yep, yep, yep. Happy Weekend, Richard! (I have Mama's heat on this morning!)

    206richardderus
    Sep 24, 2022, 9:59 am

    >205 LizzieD: *bliss* I do so love the moment when the space heater clicks on for a moment, warming me up just enough to wonder if I *really* need the long sleeves yet.

    Happy weekend's chills, Peggy!

    207bell7
    Sep 24, 2022, 12:06 pm

    >204 richardderus: I swapped out my usual second word and managed to score a 3, which was pleasing. (And you'll be proud of me in the long run, it uses my Troublesome Letter!)

    It's cool enough here today that I'm planning on bringing my sweaters out of storage and swapping out some t-shirts for long sleeves. I refuse to turn the heat on until later in the season hehe.

    208richardderus
    Sep 24, 2022, 12:44 pm

    >207 bell7: I should do something similar, Mary. I've been lazy about it, keeping only my cardigans out of the storage bin, but this year may change that.

    Oh! A new second word with Mary's Troublesome Letter™ built in? I'm having trouble imagining what it might be, so I'll come look soon. *smooch*

    209FAMeulstee
    Sep 24, 2022, 3:15 pm

    >204 richardderus: I needed one more word at third guess, and I used my usual first one, so it was five.
    peony, mirth, trade, crate, grate

    >207 bell7: >208 richardderus: My first word is used because of Mary's Troublesome Letter™ ;-)

    Happy weekend, Richard dear!

    210richardderus
    Sep 24, 2022, 3:25 pm

    >209 FAMeulstee: Ooohhh...that makes perfect sense, now.

    I'm glad every day when my streak stays alive. I'm really not hugely interested in the number of steps to get there at this point, somehow it's more entertaining for me to focus on getting the longest possible streak before banging into a weird one I just can't suss out.

    Happy weekend!

    211karenmarie
    Sep 25, 2022, 7:27 am

    Hiya RDear, and happy Sunday to you.

    Lots of books acquired, lots of revenue generated for the Friends, at the book sale. Only a few small accounting/reporting errands before it's completely wrapped up early this week. Whew!

    Wordle took 3 because I guessed n instead it t. sigh.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    212msf59
    Sep 25, 2022, 8:16 am

    Happy Sunday, Richard. I am enjoying my second cup of coffee, in a quiet house. Even Juno is still snoozing in her crate. I have been getting a good amount of reading in and today with be books and football. Enjoy your day, my friend.

    213humouress
    Sep 25, 2022, 8:59 am

    Belated happy birthday Richard!

    And ... no, I'm just too far behind. I shall just have to try harder to keep up.

    214richardderus
    Edited: Sep 26, 2022, 9:50 am

    It's the last Sunday of the month...time for a few short Book Reviews!
    Each month I do a few Nancy Pearl-inspired explanations of unenjoyed books; a few 'Nathan Burgoine-inspired quick takes on enjoyed ones.
    This month's crop of seven is only Burgoines, lucky me, as nothing came close to being laid aside forever.
    https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2022/09/september-2022s-burgoine-reviews-pe...
    Husband Material got 2.5* because I was so deeply disappointed.
    Burgoine #64, A Dance of Cranes got 3.5* but, as #6 in the series, probably clonked the rest of the books off my life-list.
    David and Goliath: Fantasy M/M Spider Erotic Romance got 3.5* but landed the rest of its Universe on my life-list.
    Burgoine #65, Celebrity Werewolf got 3.75* and a loud laugh. Levels of fun to be had.
    Burgoine #66, The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan got 4* because it's very interesting and quite poignant. I would've been even louder about it if I'd felt it delivered stronger analysis and weaker drama.
    Burgoine #67, Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays got another 4* encomium. It truly gave me pause to realize how very differently these essays hit me after 45's term and post-COVID.
    Burgoine #68, Tehran at Twilight got 4*, too, and a strong nudge to Amazon for to procuring it at $2.99: https://smile.amazon.com/Tehran-at-Twilight-Salar-Abdoh-ebook/dp/B00LRHWY36/

    215richardderus
    Sep 25, 2022, 10:45 am

    >213 humouress: Hi Nina! Please...don't stress about any of it. Just start where you are and move on. You can always go look for something if you see a topic you'd like to know more about.

    >212 msf59: Hiya Birddude! I think today's review post might have a book for you...see above!

    Fall is nap season, so Juno's got the proper notion. I'll emulate her without guilt.

    >211 karenmarie: Ooo...Wordle in 3 is great! I haven't tackled it yet since I'm feeling a bit woozed out today. Benadryl eyes...so I'll be lucky to fit two reviews into tomorrow's post. I had hoped for three. *smooch*

    216richardderus
    Sep 25, 2022, 10:57 am

    Wordle 463 3/6

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    ...really didn't take much out of me today...AEONS, MIRTH, ADMIT

    217karenmarie
    Sep 26, 2022, 7:21 am

    Hiya, RDear. Happy Monday to you.

    >214 richardderus: Thank you for hiding spider behind quote marks. I can see the word but shudder at actual images. This does NOT mean you have to hide images on your thread, although you’ve kind about my phobia.

    >216 richardderus: Congrats.

    218richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 8:52 am

    173 The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr

    Rating: 4.75* of five

    The Publisher Says: When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair

    The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.

    Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.”

    On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter’s memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.

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

    My Review
    : The burden of racism lands without rhyme or reason. In no way does R.T. Baxter, dentist in training, want to believe he needs to be "George" to the oblivious white people his job as a porter on this particular cross-Canada trip from Montreal to Vancouver. They call him George anyway; he knows better than to correct them. And he knows that he's retaining a degree of his selfhood by allowing them to use a name that isn't connected to his self. It's not his self the oblivious don't see. It's not his self the crude jeer at, demean, demand from. It's George, the porter.

    The beginning of the book makes you, a twenty-first century reader, ill with the shame of being a witness to a man's humiliation at the whims of people no better and mostly significantly worse than he is. There's a repugnant attempt at sexual assault; there's a nasty trick played regarding a tip; most of all, Baxter...George, really...is w-bombed by one of the continent's most repulsive specimens of whiteness. And you're only on your first leg of the trip, Reader! BaxterGeorge is so very not on his first, fourth, fifteenth even. And the hits keep comin' with the company's Bartlebys announcing he has new demerits. New ways to risk losing this job that could, if he just makes himself stick the landing enough...enough more...times, get him closer to the goal of becoming a dentist.

    What transpires in this 1929-set tale of oblivious, privileged people behaving as badly as they are capable of without tipping too far into actual malice...even their obliviousness is used to shield them from the reality of those who serve them!...is seen through the stream of Baxter's desperately fatigued consciousness. His never-ending round of service isn't met with thanks, gratitude, or praise; just with demands for more. His brain serves up the memories of men he's cared for, he's served in the manner he's happy to serve them. He can't always connect the "reality" outside himself with the needs and wants of the young man he really is. He doesn't have a second to himself to dive back into The Scarab from Jupiter, for heaven's sake, even though a landslide trapped them...train-them, keep up!...in a pass and the Egyptologists are just finding out where on Jupiter they've been taken by their captors. Esme, little newly orphaned scrap of flesh that attached itself to him to escape a Gorgonops of a granny, won't let him go long enough to keep Pulp and Paper, those pompous bombastic business travelers, keep them from complaining about his unconscionable lack of information as to why the railroad allowed their train to be delayed by an Act of God, and then there's Mad Mary making all the sorts of noises as only his conductor-queen self can about Baxter also watching over Templeton's sleepers-only car...but in Baxter's car the Doctor's having A Crisis over his David, his colleague David, being arrested and, well, couldn't Baxter...you know...stay?

    It's a sadly unchanging situation. People who, themselves, want and need are instead wanted and needed at, and only the right ones get those needs met. What Baxter gives up in his one wild and precious life is meant to be an investment in a better personal as well as social tomorrow as a dentist caring for needful peoples' teeth. What happens to him in the meantime is the out-of-body experience of sleep deprivation, the absolute and utter abnegation of meeting the needs of people who can't so much as bother to learn, still less use, your name, the all-consuming pandering demanded by those whose lives are built on shoals of "I PAID FOR THIS" without ever seeing the vast deeps of suffering the shoals stand in.

    Capitalism is cruel, and the comfortably fixed for money like it that way. There's nothing wrong with the system, says the pale faces and pink gums of the privileged. Look, I tipped George, didn't I?

    Simultaneously moving, infuriating, beautiful, and deadly, this is a superb choice for the 2022 Giller Prize. Shortlist announced tomorrow!

    219richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 9:09 am

    >217 karenmarie: Hiya Horrible! I'm happy not to make your phobia worse, dearest. It was a good result, yesterday's Wordle! I wasn't expecting too much from today's. Good thing, too.

    Monday *smooch*

    220richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 9:13 am

    Wordle 464 4/6

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    AEONS, MIRTH, SKIRL, BRISK

    221richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 9:16 am

    174 Cabin Commotion by Brina Brady

    Rating: 3.75* of five

    The Publisher Says: High-paid escort Marcus graduates college and he’s ready to leave The Manor. Working for pimp Kalepo for four years, Marcus believes there’s no way out without paying a fatal price. When Kalepo ends Marcus’s apartment lease and moves him into his home as his full time escort without his permission, Marcus leaves California on a train to New York City and a bus to a rented Vermont cabin for one month to hide from Kalepo and to think about his future.

    Playboy Blaze is the son of Sal Bossio, a New York City Italian mobster. His father orders him to his Vermont cabin for one month while he settles mob business. Blaze hires a rent boy for one month, but unexpected events occur and he finds himself alone in Vermont. When he reaches his cabin, he finds a stranger sleeping in his bed. The gorgeous gingered-haired man could be a hitman sent by his father’s enemies.

    Two lonely men solve the cabin commotion by sharing the only bed in the cabin during their sex fest, saving hidden pasts and tough decisions until the month ends.

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

    My Review
    : One of those "join my mailing list, get a free book," come-ons that worked out just fine. It's a meet-cute, with a slutty edge to it, kind of story about how hard it is to break the habits of a lifetime's training and trust people, talk to people, who stay long enough to listen to you.

    Marcus's parents aren't. They left him with a nasty uncle whose rage at him for being a faggot (a word we see a lot in this short book) led to his living the life of a highly paid escort. I mean, it's good to earn your keep by using the weapon that got you chucked out, right? Talk about lemonade from lemons!

    The life of a seriously pricey escort isn't materially deprived. Marcus still feels abandoned, feels rejected, and then feels everything in the world reorient itself when he meets Blaze (and Blaze's anger issues). Blaze's dad is a mafioso, and is perfectly aware that his son's a hothead who gives men head. Yeah, so? My son, my priority, not you and your stupid issues.

    Well, it's a romance, you know we're gettin' our HEA. You also know we're gettin' our drawers warmed up, some smexytimes and a little helping of spanking kink along the way. These guys don't waste a lot of time fully clothed. Their sex wasn't fresh or new to me, but it wasn't rote or mechanical. I believed these two characters would have this sex. And I believed they'd have these exact, precise miscommunication problems, one prideful and arrogant (Blaze) and the other wary and untrusting (Marcus). What I didn't expect was that Blaze's Pop would adopt Marcus with such tenderness. He genuinely sounds pissed off when Blaze acts the dickhead and drives Marcus away. He even gives Marcus the plan to make Blaze pay for it by igniting his jealousy via a fake date!

    Anyway, a free treat for signing up on Author Brina's newsletter list made this a just-fine Sunday afternoon-passing story of young, horny hotties finding out early that the family you give yourself is worth fighting for.

    222LizzieD
    Sep 26, 2022, 10:14 am

    You may have hit me with *SCarPorter*, Richard. I'll remember it for when I'm braver.

    >220 richardderus: Ah - hem. Three for me today. My not-so-innard Scot appreciates your third word.

    223richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 10:46 am

    >222 LizzieD: Oh, I hope I did, Peggy. It's such a fascinating side-light onto the Canada we don't think much about.

    Happy week-ahead's reads!

    224Caroline_McElwee
    Sep 26, 2022, 1:49 pm

    Just waving, not drowning.

    Had a quick catchup RD.

    225richardderus
    Sep 26, 2022, 3:01 pm

    >224 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caro, glad to see you! I hope you enjoyed ogling my wares.
    ***
    New favorite word of all time: eingeschleppte..."in-schlepped"...imported in blah ol' English (well, Latin really).

    226Familyhistorian
    Sep 26, 2022, 8:47 pm

    You got me with Sleeping Car Porter, Richard. Of course, my library has it on order.

    I Wordled in 5 today but should have got it sooner.

    227PaulCranswick
    Sep 26, 2022, 9:00 pm

    Please to inform you, RD, that this is your 5,000th post to your threads in 2022, you are second over that particular line with Katie "hot on your heels" and probably two days behind you.

    228karenmarie
    Sep 27, 2022, 7:28 am

    ‘Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

    218. Intriguing book and excellent review. Onto the wish list it goes. And he knows that he's retaining a degree of his selfhood by allowing them to use a name that isn't connected to his self. It's not his self the oblivious don't see. It's not his self the crude jeer at, demean, demand from. It's George, the porter. Gaining power for one’s self any way one can - yes.

    >221 richardderus: Mobsters and rent boys. Two of my favorite new things, with Kindle Unlimited just a couple of clicks away. *smile*

    229msf59
    Sep 27, 2022, 7:41 am

    Morning, Richard. I hope your week is off to a fine start. A definite autumn chill in the air, as I work on my second cup of coffee. Only 45F and might make it up to 60. Getting ready to head out on my volunteer gig.

    230bell7
    Sep 27, 2022, 8:15 am

    Good Tuesday morning, Richard! Hope you're having a good day.

    231magicians_nephew
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:01 am

    One of the Updike books refers to a man as "One of those bald pates or streaked grays who have been calling Pullman porters "George" for generations."

    232ArlieS
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:16 am

    233richardderus
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:34 am

    >231 magicians_nephew: I am completely unsurprised, though I don't recall ever having encountered the line. I wish I could re-experience Updike with enough new information to see what makes Rabbit Angstrom so archetypal, without all the stuff I already think about his useless, nebbishy hide.

    >230 bell7: Merry Tuesday, Mary! I hope I'm having a good day, too. When do you suspect I might know this for sure?

    >229 msf59: Have a great time among the wounded, Mark. It's slightly less autumnal here, but only slightly. I am reveling in it.

    234bell7
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:40 am

    >233 richardderus: *snort* by the end, I guess. However you measure it 🙂

    235richardderus
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:40 am

    >228 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! There's a lot worse stuff out there on those topics, I'm quite sure. Enjoy it!

    The Sleeping Car Porter *should* be on the Giller Prize shortlist, due to be announced in a few hours.

    >227 PaulCranswick: I echo >232 ArlieS:: Wow....

    >226 Familyhistorian: 5 is not at all a bad score, Meg. It's easy to forget that we're all playing against ourselves here...no sense grumping about the opponent when she's you.

    I expect you'll enjoy Mayr's book when it comes in!

    236richardderus
    Sep 27, 2022, 10:55 am

    >234 bell7: I used your Troublesome Letter to solve today's in 4!
    Wordle 465 4/6

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    AEONS, MIRTH, SOCKS, SOGGY

    237richardderus
    Sep 27, 2022, 3:25 pm

    DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SPOILER SENSITIVE: #GBBO RANT
    Rebs getting a free pass to next week makes me incandescently outraged. Abdul, well, not so bothered...he's actually done all his bakes himself, she's needed help (which she completely expects to be forthcoming) that goes unacknowledged, every single time.

    Pizza toppings that're outraging people? ~meh~ *I* won't eat baked beans on a pizza. But you do you, boo. REBS NOT GETTING THE IRON BOOT TO THE KERB (note intentional misspelling to conform with the wrongness of UK usage) makes me want to beat people with tire irons. Any old random blonde, over-made-up people better not test my tolerance....

    But I will totally snarf down Maxy's lamb pizza!

    238PaulCranswick
    Sep 27, 2022, 8:31 pm

    >237 richardderus: Don't have it available yet here, RD, but there are certain things that do not go as toppings on most anything.

    239SandyAMcPherson
    Sep 27, 2022, 11:03 pm

    Hey RD. I see you are in top rant form (at no. 237). Does it help letting it all out?
    Been awhile since I delurked. Nothing much to babble about, having been thoroughly distracted with things other than reading. Autumn is supposedly coming so should it ever actually cool down, I'll get back into some read-erly activities. The Sleeping Car Porter sounds a good book for my "try new stuff" approach to widening my reading genre.

    240karenmarie
    Sep 28, 2022, 7:12 am

    'Morning, RDear, and happy Wednesday.

    >237 richardderus: *gentle pats* I've watched one episode with Jenna, and it was interesting and fun, but I still find competitions with emo decisions and timed events stressful from my Chopped days. Yes, GBBO is less stressful, but still.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    241katiekrug
    Sep 28, 2022, 7:38 am

    >237 richardderus: - Not looking until after I watch the episode, but now I'm intrigued!

    242richardderus
    Sep 28, 2022, 9:40 am

    >241 katiekrug:, >240 karenmarie:, >239 SandyAMcPherson:, >238 PaulCranswick: re: >237 richardderus:...I'm still livid. Moreso than I was when I typed that.

    Anyway.

    >241 katiekrug: You'll see on Friday.

    >240 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! It's still a competition show, and maybe those are best avoided by you...? Just as a matter of policy? No sense adding to the pile of things not good for you, after all. Life's handed us all quite a pile of those without seeking out more. *smooch*

    >239 SandyAMcPherson: Oh yes indeed, Sandy, do try The Sleeping Car Porter! I was so pleased when it was announced as a shortlist nominee for the Giller Prize yesterday. It's a very good read.

    Be well, however that needs to look. *smooch*

    >238 PaulCranswick: Heh. I get invested in the fates of the bakers. (Well, the ones I can discern one from another, anyway.) When something absolutely unfair happens, it really, really bothers me.

    243richardderus
    Edited: Sep 28, 2022, 10:01 am

    175 The Pachinko Parlor by Elisa Shua Dusapin (tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins)

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: The days are beginning to draw in. The sky is dark by seven in the evening. I lie on the floor and gaze out of the window. Women’s calves, men’s shoes, heels trodden down by the weight of bodies borne for too long.

    It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko, in an apartment in an abandoned hotel, and lying on the floor at her grandparents: daydreaming, playing Tetris and listening to the sounds from the street above. The heat rises; the days slip by.

    The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlor. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, a tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlor builds.

    The Pachinko Parlor is a nuanced and beguiling exploration of identity and otherness, unspoken histories, and the loneliness you can feel amongst family. Crisp and enigmatic, Shua Dusapin’s writing glows with intelligence.

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

    My Review
    : I'm aware of two things about this read, two very strong responses that wouldn't be elicited by any other read I've encountered this year: 1) Food looms very, very large in my experience of a story. This book, it's Claire and her inability to enjoy any food she encounters in Japan. 2) Author Shua Dusapin builds very intricate clockworks of interdependent imagery to support her stories of women without pleasure in the worlds they're in. The recurring fish-object images in this book join Winter in Sokcho's cold, echoing spaces. I mean, when a child's desire to act on the world is performed in explicit imitation of a cleaner fish, and a train pulling into a station summons from its immensity and speed the idea of a fish in Claire, our main character, then the author's going about her business with a degree of bravura that demands to be noted. As to whether it worked, I cannot say. I noticed it...I never thought of not noticing it...but derived nothing but the most facile conclusions from its obviousness. Me, or the choice? A case is readily made for either.

    Claire's visit to her Korean grandparents, whose lives have taken them to batten on the economic lifeblood of their erstwhile colonizers, is always...off. Claire has little knowledge of Korean to offer in her attempts to connect with them. None of them deign to speak Japanese among themselves. So, to skirt around the grandparental reticence with their native language (a reticence they did not demonstrate with Claire's Swiss boyfriend, she notes) and still manage to communicate, they use English. Another colonial tongue...one associated in Korea with the US...another occupying power, though perhaps more palatable (!) because it's used by the Japanese's modern overlords.

    Pachinko earns profits for her Korean grandparents...the only legal way for Japanese to gamble, or Koreans to earn...Japan making an apology for its colonial past? Or simply making it obvious who the vampires sucking the country's vice income into themselves are. Both...either...not for nothing is Japan's food disagreeable to Claire. Its artifice (a description of a raspberry atop a dessert was so revolting I had to put the book down:
    I look down at my tart. A single raspberry glistens atop a lump of whipped cream. Compact and rubbery-looking. I pick up my knife, cut the tart into sections and start eating. It tastes fatty. I spit it out into my napkin. The raspberry stares up at me, still intact, coated in a film of jelly.

    ...it made something lush and luscious sound so unheathily slimy!) is removed from nature, is devoid of dirt or even signs of human hands in its preparation...something very Japanese about that. And Claire's not having it inside her, not willingly anyway.

    Mieko serves as Claire's out, her means of contributing something to this life she's temporarily trapped in (it's a visit, not an emigration!) and unhappily isolated within. Mieko is a young Japanese girl whose mother hires Claire to teach French. (Which is odd, given the mother's fluency...permaybehaps seeking a genuinely French accent? from a Swiss Korean?) Mieko's, um, a little odd. Her ordinary-kid desires, eg going to theme parks or eating, are all as not-Japanese as is Claire's role in her life of teaching her a European language. Mieko is for Claire, unsurprisingly, the friend whose strangeness meets one's own in silent weirdo communion.

    Claire's main failing as a character is simply that she is so passive. She drifts, she causes nothing to happen...teaching Mieko French and acting as her escort to theme parks aren't things Claire causes or even proposes...and, in the end, her presence changes nothing. The grandparents she's there to visit aren't communicative, make no demands and accept no role in the granddaughter who came around the world to enable a much-mooted visit to Korea for them's life while she's there. The visit itself, a "return" to a country that the grandparents left before there was a North or a South or an American- or Chinese-backed state, is...inconclusive. Did it happen? We aren't vouchsafed that information...Claire's climbing a gangway, thinking her grandparents are behind her...and they aren't.

    What makes me not-best-pleased about that ending, that tunnel Claire's climbing to visit a place she's not been to, she's there to allow others to experience before they die...is the fact that it does nothing like an ending to resolve the family's generational hurts. It's a story about a disintegrating family's stop at a roadside attraction on its way somewhere and suddenly the stop's over but not everyone's in the car.

    It is, in other words, a bit too much like Winter in Sokcho to be ignored. That tale's very French-feeling plot of plotlessness as families unite around the goal of making everyone feel as miserable as possible worked because it was the author's introduction to the Anglophone reading world. It's no less beautifully wrapped in sentences here, the imagery is lovely, but...it's not my first trip to the well.

    I am glad I read this story. I am eager to see what else the author has in mind for me to read in future. I hope it will ring more than a change of scenery on the story next time. Once was enough; twice a bit troublesome; no more now, if you please.

    244richardderus
    Sep 28, 2022, 10:07 am

    Wordle 466 5/6

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    AEONS, MIRTH, SCRUB, PRUDE, USURP Good one for my brain. I wouldn't have got it without that third guess.

    245alcottacre
    Sep 28, 2022, 11:26 am

    I am 120+ posts behind and not even trying to catch up. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today. Thanks for keeping my thread warm!

    246richardderus
    Sep 28, 2022, 1:04 pm

    >245 alcottacre: Sure, Stasia! *smooch*

    247humouress
    Sep 28, 2022, 7:27 pm

    >237 richardderus: *sigh* Avoiding… for the next three months.

    248SandyAMcPherson
    Edited: Sep 28, 2022, 9:28 pm

    >242 richardderus: So today I visited my favourite Indie bookshop and had a little sneak perusal of The Sleeping Car Porter. I liked the writing (from the sneaky-read sample). I didn't want to 'ruin' the story, so no comment on the theme/plot/characters. But enough of a sampling together with your review, Richard, that I placed a hold at my PL.
    They're still processing the books (the PL bought 10 copies for our province wide-system). No idea where I am in the queue until the processing is completed. I up-thumbed your review: besides it being your usual great analysis and honest commentary, but also because I sense there was a genuine balance in what was expressed. Not to mean that your balance isn't always genuine, just that I liked how the balance of the review emphasized points which hooked me. Normally I wait to read the book myself, but I was *inspired*. So all good here.

    249FAMeulstee
    Sep 29, 2022, 3:56 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

    We don't watch GBBO, but have seen some seasons of the Dutch one "Heel Holland Bakt".
    Back to my book, I hope to finish Balzac before the end of the month. It takes a bit longer than anticipated.

    250msf59
    Sep 29, 2022, 7:33 am

    Sweet Thursday, Richard. I have not watched GBBO. Bad Mark? I am enjoying "Hacks" on HBO. Have you seen this sharp, witty comedy?

    251richardderus
    Sep 29, 2022, 8:52 am

    >250 msf59: Hi Mark! I don't know about GBBO and you...it might be a bit too staid to appeal in any but your most wearied-by-life moments...? Give it a try some cloudy Sunday of the soul. It's on Netflix.

    >249 FAMeulstee: I'm totally sucked in by GBBO, Anita. Is the Dutch one any fun? I can see it going either way....

    Balzac be conquered *whammy*

    >248 SandyAMcPherson: Oh, excellent news Sandy! I hope your provincial system gets a lot of use from those copies. It's an excellent read.

    You're very kind to say those lovely things. *smooch*

    >247 humouress: They make you wait three months?!? Those utter rotters!

    252richardderus
    Sep 29, 2022, 8:54 am

    176 My Brother: A Novel by Karin Smirnoff (tr. Anna Paterson)

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A Swedish publishing phenomenon: a literary noir of extraordinary power follows the discovery of a young woman’s body in the long grass behind the sawmill...

    Which part of the story is not for telling?

    Jana Kippo has returned to Smalånger to see her twin brother, Bror, still living in the small family farmhouse in the remote north of Sweden.

    Within the isolated community, secrets and lies have grown silently, undisturbed for years.

    Following the discovery of a young woman's body in the long grass behind the sawmill, the siblings, hooked by a childhood steeped in darkness, need to break free.

    But the truth cannot be found in other people's stories. The question is: can it be found anywhere?

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

    My Review
    : First, read this:
    We were born just a few minutes apart and are alike in many ways. Especially in how we look. We are thin and gingery, with straggly unpigmented hair. We are so bleakly unremarkable that nobody used to remember either of us as somebody. Only as the twins.

    –and–

    So the police were looking into her death I said.
    Of course they did. What did you expect. A dead woman found in the grass near the sawmill and it turns out she has slept with most of the married men in the village. And a number of others as well. On top of that one of the suspects is a convicted murderer.
    Who I asked. Me of course he said.

    You're now familiar with the author's voice in this, the first of three novels set it the Arctic Swedish town of Smalånger, where Bror and Jana are from...Jana has left...Bror hasn't bothered, he can drink himself to death in the comfort of what was the family's home. With, now, the company of his twin, as she chooses to come back to, to, help? Anyway, bear witness if not accelerate the crash. To keep herself in food (Bror worries about booze, nothing else) she starts working for the local social services department, which she calls smalångerhomecareservices, thus making herself useful while getting fully up on the local gossip from the people she works with and the ones she's helping to survive whatever time is left to them in a modicum of physical comfort. No one in Smalånger lives in psychic comfort, she discovers early, and often.

    My idea of what I was in for was too weak-kneed. I thought I'd get something dark, but not my-eyes-my-poor-eyes dark! A woman suffers a dreadful childhood; returns to the scene of the crime to be there with the brother ("Bror" is Swedish for "brother"; unlike Jana, he has no personal name) whose life was stalled, stopped, and never had any particular reason to start it again. He drifts aimlessly, but reasonably harmlessly...yes, he sleeps with his best friend's wife, but it's not like he was the only one who did; he's drinking himself to death, sure, but when the woman he loved but who was murdered by person or persons unknown, what else is there to do except hang out with her widower and drink?

    No, not chuckle one in this book. But there are two more in Swedish and I need to read them now!

    What the heck? I need to read them? Yes, while I wouldn't have predicted that I'd get invested in this Nordic grimdark saga of terrible, sad, claustrophobic life in a tiny, remote, and dark (physically) place, that is exactly what happened. What more there is to learn I want to learn it.

    It's that kind of a read, y'all. You won't leave the same as you entered.

    253karenmarie
    Sep 29, 2022, 9:12 am

    ‘Morning, RDear.

    >242 richardderus: Oh yes, it’s now a policy, although I hadn’t quite thought of it like that. I can watch the nastiest of crime stuff (except weird medical shit, which I simply look away from and wait for the all clear from Jenna or Bill), both documentary and fiction. I can read the most emotional of romances and other strong emotional books, yet watching real people put themselves on the line for money/humiliation/accolades is currently beyond me. Fortunately, I can just not go there. However, I remember the rush of enjoying Chopped and etc., so keep enjoying/loving/hating GBBO.

    >252 richardderus: Hmmm. I’ve added it to the wish list, but Nordic grimdark saga of terrible, sad, claustrophobic life in a tiny, remote, and dark (physically) place will have to wait a while.

    In the meantime, we’re going to do a bit of Ian-related storm prep for the wind/rain of tomorrow. Reading and errands.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    254FAMeulstee
    Sep 29, 2022, 10:20 am

    >251 richardderus: The Dutch one is fun, Richard dear.
    At first Martine Bijl hosted the show, she was funny in a subtile way. Sadly she had a stroke, and died. So now Andre van Duin is the host, he is a comedian who is more straight forward funny. The type who makes you laugh by just being there.
    A professional pastry chef and a culinairy writer are the judges.

    We do watch now and then, but not very often. We don't do sugar, so watching many cakes and cookies being baked is a bit counter productive, as it makes us long for sweets.

    255richardderus
    Sep 29, 2022, 10:36 am

    >254 FAMeulstee: Oh my heck, watching GBBO on an empty stomach and without snackables nearby would be impossible. I couldn't make it through an episode without running to a vending machine and spending WAY too much on WAY too awful crud just to get the sugar-rush. Cinnamon toast solves the problem nicely.

    >253 karenmarie: The beauty of television in today's world: You can edit your consumption to whatever levels and content you're in the mood for. I love it, especially as I left TV behind from 1972 to 1989. I'd watch what other people were watching if I was there but...sit and watch the stupid stuff available then? Nuh uh. Books are the best.

    Hoping Ian blows himself out before he gets to you. *smooch*

    256richardderus
    Sep 29, 2022, 10:55 am

    Wordle 467 4/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟨🟩🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    AEONS, MIRTH, SLACK, SCALD I was, yet again, grateful for taking things in alpha order. Otherwise I'd've been looking at a 5day.

    257klobrien2
    Sep 29, 2022, 11:00 am

    Good job on Wordle! I had a fiver, but have such fun with the audition words, that I didn’t mind as much. Have a great day!

    Karen O

    258laytonwoman3rd
    Sep 29, 2022, 12:26 pm



    Just dropping by with a friend to say hello.

    259richardderus
    Sep 29, 2022, 1:26 pm

    >258 laytonwoman3rd: Oohhh, that's a gorgeous piece of art. Thanks, Linda!

    >257 klobrien2: Hi Karen O., glad to see you visiting me. I was really interested in this puzzle...it engaged me. So it was fun, as you say.

    260jessibud2
    Sep 30, 2022, 7:30 am

    Good morning, you logodaedalist, you. :-)

    * MEANING:
    noun: One skilled in using or coining words. (they omitted including a photo of you but I recognized you there anyhow;-)

    261karenmarie
    Sep 30, 2022, 7:34 am

    'Morning, Rdear. Happy Friday to you.

    We're already getting Ian-related rain although no winds yet.

    Off to visit a few threads then read.

    *smooch* from your own Madame The Vile Temptress Horrible

    262richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:24 am

    >261 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I hope it's a whole lotta nothin' by the time Ian slogs all the way up to you. Have a lovely reading-day. I love it when I can read in the rain! Sitting by the window with pitterypattery rain...lovely.

    *smooch*

    >260 jessibud2: Oh, I *like* that one, Shelley! "Logodaedalist" will now go on my email sig-line. *smooch*

    263richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:31 am

    My logodaedalic self saw today's birthday AWAD thought for today, and felt...less logodaedalic.

    There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

    Elie Wiesel trumps mere poseurs like me.

    264richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:35 am

    177 FEN, BOG and SWAMP: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx

    Rating: 5* of five

    The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx—whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth—comes a riveting, revelatory history of our wetlands, their ecological role, and what their systematic destruction means for the planet.

    A lifelong environmentalist, Annie Proulx brings her wide-ranging research and scholarship to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important yet little understood role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four stunning parts, Proulx documents the long-misunderstood role of these wetlands in saving the planet.

    Taking us on a fascinating journey through history, Proulx shows us the fens of 16th-century England to Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, and the 19th-century explorers who began the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Along the way, she writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands—the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever—and the surprisingly significant role of peat in industrialization.

    A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is a stunningly important work and a rousing call to action by a writer whose passionate devotion to understanding and preserving the environment is on full and glorious display.

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

    My Review
    : First things first: Those title words aren't synonyms, exactly, so much as a family tree of naturally occurring wet places on Earth.

    fens, fed by rivers and streams, usually deep, peat-forming, and supporting reeds and marsh grass

    bogs, shallower water fed by rainfall, peat-forming, and supporting sphagnum mosses

    swamps, a peat-making, shallow wetland with trees and shrubs

    This information is important to fully understanding the scale and cost of wetland losses we've inflicted on the planet. Author Proulx (whose use of "yclept" in this book I note here with a big smile, as it's a favorite underused word of mine) is an experienced campaigner when it comes to putting English through its paces to evoke a sense of place and a perception of mood:
    The fen people of all periods knew the still water, infinite moods of cloud. They lived in reflections and moving reed shadows, poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummeled the land edge in storms.
    –and–
    It can take ten thousand years for a bog to convert to peat but in only a few weeks a human on a peat cutter machine can strip a large area down to the primordial gravel.

    Nothing made by human minds is ever perfect. I'm glad the title gave Author Proulx, eighty-six at this writing, an opportunity to mourn publicly the fens of her Connecticut childhood. I was fascinated by the information about the vanished English fens. But the bogs came in for a cursory examination in comparison, seen mostly through the lens of bog bodies. I acknowledge the personal element of the fact that they're bodies probably gave more heft to the science of peat bogs that really needed to be presented. I found it a distraction, though, while others may think of it as an enhancement.

    It is with the swamps and bayous of my erstwhile stomping grounds, Southern Texas and its adjacent lowlands, that the short shrift became apparent. Houston and its urban sprawl could, and should, form a book of damning indictments of greed and stupidity. New Orleans was, for reasons I simply can't understand, rescued as a human habitation after the death of the many bayous and wetlands south of it resulted in its near destruction...an expensive playground for rich people. Another book that should be written (again).

    But take away from any read the best, accept that not all of it was made with your taste in mind, and Author Proulx's essential message shines a harsh lime-light onto the instrumentalist Judeo-Christian worldview that's landed us in this awful mess:
    The attitude of looking at nature solely as something to be exploited—without cooperative thanks or appeasing sacrifices—is ingrained in western cultures.

    Our addiction to Being Right, to understanding the uses but not the purposes of this, our one and only planet, is killing us. And the death sentence has fallen on our generation. Lucky, lucky us we have Author Proulx to bear witness: "The waters tremble at our chutzpah and it seems we will not change."

    265klobrien2
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:40 am

    >264 richardderus: Wow—you got me with this one (Fen, Bog and Swamp). Going off to look for a copy!

    Have a lovely weekend!

    Karen O

    266richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:48 am

    178 RUNAWAY: Notes on the Myths That Made Me by Erin Keane

    Rating: 4* of five, all for the startlingly apt and pointed phrases about her mother

    The Publisher Says: From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell.

    In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six.

    Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What’s true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are?

    Whether it’s talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell—both personal and pop cultural—create us.

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

    My Review
    : Memories are, by definition, the things that form us, the things we re-member our selves from. A memoir descends to us from French, mémoire, which can mean:

    memory: "the ability to retain information or a representation of past experience, based on the mental processes of learning or encoding, retention across some interval of time, and retrieval or reactivation of the memory" (APA Dictionary of Psychology)

    memorandum: "a short note designating something to be remembered, especially something to be done or acted upon in the future; reminder" (dictionary.com)

    store: "something that is stored or kept for future use. articles (as of food) accumulated for some specific object and drawn upon as needed : stock, supplies. something that is accumulated. a source from which things may be drawn as needed : a reserve fund" (Merriam-Webster)

    mind: "broadly, all intellectual and psychological phenomena of an organism, encompassing motivational, affective, behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive systems; that is, the organized totality of an organism's mental and psychic processes and the structural and functional cognitive components on which they depend" (APA Dictionary of Psychology)

    remembrance: "the act of remembering and showing respect for someone who has died or a past event" and/or "a memory of something that happened in the past" (Cambridge Dictionary)

    dissertation: "a written essay, treatise, or disquisition" with special reference to scholarly use (Wordnik)

    report: "an account or statement describing in detail an event, situation, or the like, usually as the result of observation, inquiry, etc." (dictionary.com)

    ...as well as the sense Anglophones use it in; it's a word, in other words, for lots of things that mean "parts of a whole thing, or place to put those parts." Memories are like that, bits of a whole thing that often, when reassembled, aren't the thing itself. We can bless the French for allowing us the use of this multi-warheaded weapon of a word for reifying the brain's peculiar technology of making meaning from the electromagnetic stew we all swim in. Some of us more successfully than others, as Author Keane's researches into her family have vividly taught her.

    Had Author Keane's memoir, in any of those senses, of her life in pop-cultural mythic tones appeared two or even three years ago, it would be a triumph. As it is, it's a beautifully written memoir in the "store" or "report" sense, in the "place I've put fragments and pieces of things I want to remember and keep in some meaningful context." What it isn't is a successful book.

    You can take it from me that the author's chops as a phrase-smith are solid, impeccably pointed sentences darted into the hides of slow-moving shambolic man-things that ruined the lives of her mother, then her, with their thoughtless trampling solipsism. It's not the least bit arguable that this is a writer, and a journalist, of talent and training, of tenacity and fascinating insight.

    When she's talking about her mother, and her seriously screwed-up life.

    When she tries to connect this with her pop-culture fascinations, clearly re-evaluated in adulthood after #MeToo blew the blinders off the unwilling-to-see and forced them to look, look, at the cost their pretty little fantasy exacted. On everyone, really, since a damaged person does damage, too; but inarguably on women the most tellingly, the most vilely.

    What I can't make work in reading the piercingly honest redefinition of the author's life is why the John Ford/Woody Allen/et alii men are there. Yes, we know, they were ghastly people and treated women as playthings, they baked that attitude into their art, but...we know this. It's part of your mental furniture? Mine too. I swallowed it whole (though I never warmed to Woody Allen, too nebbishy for me). So did a few billion others. But you're talking about these men as though the betrayal of trust is fresh, without telling me why it *is* fresh for you, or putting into a time-context that would explain your palpable sense of betrayal.

    Some wounds aren't best explored too often because the sympathy of the audience goes from victim to monster. This is a tipping point to be avoided at all costs with the #MeToo men. Keep beating the drum, and it will reverberate on you more strongly than the intended audience.

    Anyway...very much a book of halves, one half excellent and the other...not.

    267FAMeulstee
    Sep 30, 2022, 10:52 am

    >264 richardderus: I hope this one gets translated soon, Richard dear, as it sounds like a great read. I loved Barkskins.

    268richardderus
    Edited: Sep 30, 2022, 10:55 am

    >267 FAMeulstee: I can't find any record of a Dutch rights sale, Anita, though I'd be stunned if someone didn't pick it up for the market...there's definitely a German edition coming, though.

    >265 klobrien2: Thank you, Karen O...I'll settle for a no-hurricane kind of good weekend, considering the awfulness Ian's spread over Florida.

    I'm glad you'll go off a-Proulxing. It's such a lovely piece of elegiac writing, and the scolding bits are well-thought-out so sting less. She never came across to me as a finger-wagging nag. It's so easy to slip into that mode when you've been hollering your fool lungs out for literal decades about the crisis looming over us all.

    269katiekrug
    Sep 30, 2022, 11:04 am

    Morning, RD. The Proulx looks great. I'll keep an eye out for it. Stay warm and dry!

    270laytonwoman3rd
    Edited: Sep 30, 2022, 11:09 am

    "an experienced campaigner when it comes to putting English through its paces to evoke a sense of place and a perception of mood" And you ain't so bad with the language yourself.
    Thanks for bringing this book to my attention. I didn't know Proulx had written another. lycomayflower and I were just discussing this morning, as Hurricane Ian wallops one coastal community after another, how idiotic it is to concentrate populations in areas that are destined to see more and more of this type of destruction. Sanibel Island residents will return, open their wallets, fix things up and resume their lifestyle in their substantially constructed condos, while residents of poor Pine Island whose mobile homes and "economically built" apartment blocks have been flattened look around and say "where do you even start?" And Gov. DeSandis makes the point that the causeway to Sanibel didn't "fail"....the sandbar underneath it just washed away. Ummmm...

    271richardderus
    Edited: Sep 30, 2022, 11:14 am

    >270 laytonwoman3rd: *baaawww* you silver-tongued devil, you

    I hope y'all'll get this one ASAP because it's exactly what you're talking about...the ***idiocy*** of using land unwisely! And it puts the problems as simply, as unobfuscatedly nakedly dumbed-downedly simply, as it's possible to do.

    >269 katiekrug: Warm I might give a miss to...I treasure my cold breezes...but dry is on my list of things to stay for the weekend, for sure.

    Katie...this is one you should just buy. Like, now.

    272richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 11:19 am

    Wordle 468 3/6

    ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
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    When I get 4/5 letters in the first two guesses, and one of 'em in the proper place, it would feel more like failing to take more than 3 than winning to take fewer than 4. AEONS, MIRTH, SCORN

    273MickyFine
    Sep 30, 2022, 11:51 am

    >272 richardderus: It was 3 for me today too.

    Happy (almost) weekend smooches!

    274richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 12:50 pm

    SEPTEMBER IN REVIEW

    It was interesting, to say the least, to get twenty-six reviews posted in thirty days! I'm not sure how it happens...there's always a lovely surprise when I'm given more than a few lovely surprises.

    The Sleeping Car Porter was such a great, great read, so calmly weird and so intensely emotionally real. It deserves the Giller. Miss Iceland was terrific; Invasion of the Spirit People was excellent; The Pachinko Parlor sounded so beautiful as I read it. Lessons, by my unloved Ian McEwan, impressed me and damn near got a great rating; just too buttoned up, too divorced from itself, to get past my guard.

    What a stunning amount of pleasurable reading, not up to the impressed bliss of those above; surprisingly good stuff in the M/M arena, if nothing that rose above just being good reading time. I liked a few more than others, but generally three-to-four star rated reads haven't got that Certain Something.

    But it's Annie Proulx's latest...possibly last, she's 86 after all...and, while flawed, awesomely written book, Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, that gets all my love. I think it's likely to sit atop the hill of 2022's reads...might could...but I just can't call it yet.

    A generally fine month.

    275alcottacre
    Sep 30, 2022, 1:32 pm

    >252 richardderus: That one sounds a bit too grim for me.

    >264 richardderus: Well, rats. I was hoping that my local library would have a copy of that one. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD!

    ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today. I hope you have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend!

    276richardderus
    Edited: Sep 30, 2022, 6:31 pm

    Interesting. I was playing with the HTML codes for superscript numbers. Anyway...it's GBBO Day in the US:
    FOR ABSOLUTE FUCKSAKE!! IT WAS BREAD WEEK AND THEY MADE PIZZA, PASTRY, AND SOME SWEDISH WEIRDNESS. I mean, yes, the smurblethinga had bread in it. But Good God from Gulfport, GBBO, where's the loafstress?! Where's the underproved/overworked/OMG-it-sunk!

    *fume*

    And sorry Sandro, your Brazilian behind (!!) needs to be without that tacky little skive-off Rebs (might be dating, Twitter/Insta is agog) as of next episode. Her *coughcough*I'm*sick* thing for BREAD WEEK is unconscionable!

    *fume*

    Anyway. Janusz making a fish-n-chips smegmatrollop or whatever (Maxy said it right but it refuses to stick in my brain) deserved star baker because Prue's face when he talked about what it was going to be was priceless...and he pulled off the full-English pizza! That was impressive. Pain au raisin doesn't have icing, y'all. If you get a pain au raisin in a bakery and it has "icing" on it, the baker is trying to kill you and has used the orange-zest odor to hide the smell of arsenic. Flee!

    Poor straight-Scot had a HORRIBLE week, would've gone if it hadn't been Rebs who it deffo needs to be (Michael and David's podcast called her the "driver of the struggle bus" and I am just now able to take deep breaths), though blah-hair oldster might've pipped him because her pizza was shocking. Lizzie-hair oldster made that glorious cheese-fest pizza that Paul hated..."too many toppings" my lily-white one!...but her pain au raisin was, um, politely put uneven.

    Maxy's lamb pizza looked *incredible* and Sandro's smoochietroop was gorgeously beef-filled.

    ...sorry...lost track of...um...yeah so the whole episode was a ridiculous travesty and they should be ashamed of themselves. Paul's critique of Maxy's pizza crust being too "American" was, I thought, fair. We do tend to eat doughier pizzas here. But it looked perfectly baked, and nothing said it shouldn't be thicker...anyway, the whole exercise steamed my buns and scalded my cream. Hmpf.

    277richardderus
    Sep 30, 2022, 6:32 pm

    >275 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! I think you're exactly right re: >252 richardderus: and give the library time, it's only out on Tuesday!

    *smooch*

    278richardderus
    Oct 1, 2022, 8:49 am

    Wordle 469 4/6

    🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
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    AEONS, MIRTH, BEADY, LEAVE Interesting! LOTS of words packed off by having at least one letter eliminated.

    279msf59
    Oct 1, 2022, 9:07 am

    Happy Saturday, Richard. I was a bit under the weather yesterday but seemed to have rebounded a bit today. I will still take it easy. Getting in lots of book time. Hooray for Fen, Bog and Swamp! I am a big fan of Proulx and this sounds excellent.

    280bell7
    Oct 1, 2022, 9:24 am

    >274 richardderus: Nice summary, Richard, and glad it was a satisfying reading and reviewing month.

    >278 richardderus: I took all six to get it today, but there were many options.

    281FAMeulstee
    Oct 1, 2022, 9:40 am

    >274 richardderus: 26 reviews is more than I did this month, Richard dear.
    A generally fine month sounds good to me.

    >278 richardderus: So did I today, I was happy with a four!
    peony, mirth, sweal, leave
    I have no idea what the third word means, but Wordle accepted it, and it brought me what I needed.

    282richardderus
    Edited: Oct 1, 2022, 9:51 am

    >281 FAMeulstee: "Sweal" is a very old English verb meaning to melt, as in a candle or a block of ice; like when a candle's reached that point where the wax is causing the flame to gutter and is making a giant mess. "The rushes are a-sweal" is a line in an old song.

    It was a solid performance of a month. I got 84 reviews posted to the blog in the third quarter and *should* make my goal of 320 total, at least 288 blogged, reviews. I'm not far out....

    >280 bell7: Hi Mary! Thanks for the kind words...I'm glad September had as many good books in it as it did, too.

    I had knocked so many options out with my go-tos, and by making sure I used your Troublesome Letter™, that I was pretty confident by #4. Relieved that I was right!

    *smooch*

    >279 msf59: Rebounding is always good, Mark, and to be protected. You're being sensible and also using this as book time, so it's really kind of a blessing in fancy make-up if not full disguise.

    Go! GO!! You NEED this Proulx, Mark, like now immediately on Kindle need. Don't hesitate! It's worth full price.

    283LizzieD
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:05 am

    >274 richardderus: Your September reading sounds more than satisfying for you and amazing to me. I've favorited the post so that i won't forget any of the best of the best. Thank you!
    5 for Wordle today - so sadly stupid. Like Anita, I tried a word (clave I didn't think would be acceptable, but it was. Fine with me.

    284richardderus
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:07 am

    >283 LizzieD: Ha! I was just over at yours talking about the same thing! Great minds....

    285FAMeulstee
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:14 am

    >282 richardderus: Thanks for the explanation, Richard dear. So I stumbled upon a very rare word ;-)

    286katiekrug
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:20 am

    I'm sorry this week's episode was so irritating for you. I'm assuming next week will be a double elimination, which I always hate....

    287ronincats
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:24 am



    What do you think, too much?

    288richardderus
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:34 am

    >287 ronincats: ...!!!...

    No, no, not too much, just...WOW! I love the colors and the idea of the tentacles being your face-warmer is hilarious and very clever at the same time. Plus, and this will shock you, those colors really work well for my taste. (His expression does a lot to sell the whole look, too!)

    >286 katiekrug: *chuckle* It's not like I couldn't use a good shake-up every so often. And re: spoiler, they're gonna have to do that, so it's highly stressful for bakers and audience. I'm now trying to figure out how to get a full-English pizza....

    >285 FAMeulstee: Always happy to help. *smooch*

    289laytonwoman3rd
    Oct 1, 2022, 10:59 am

    >287 ronincats: If that beard were reddish, that could easily be my nephew. I'm going to send him that photo and suggest he get himself such a hat. He might do it---he's just this side of crazy.

    290richardderus
    Oct 1, 2022, 11:46 am

    >289 laytonwoman3rd: I say he has excellent taste indeed, Linda3rd. *smooch*
    ***
    A new thread is up!

    291Caroline_McElwee
    Oct 6, 2022, 2:11 pm

    >287 ronincats: (excuse me leaning across you RD), love it Roni. Maybe we ould persuade Rhian to knit a job lot!
    This topic was continued by richardderus's eighteenth 2022 thread.