richardderus's nineteenth 2022 thread

via https://www.tuinplanten-oudsbergen.be/
It's coming to the end of fall, and its colors are fading day by day. Rhus typhina, the eastern or staghorn sumac, is a holdout...they color in waves, and so very vividly! Thanks to Shelley, whose Ontarian self suggested sumac, for the nudge. (A bunch of other great ideas were bruited, but this one's dear to my heart. For obvious reasons.) Not only is the foliage gorgeous, as most of the northern hemisphere knows because it's a garden plant almost everywhere, the fruits are edible to humans:

...among other things one can soak the fruits in cold water, strain the water into a pitcher that has at least 2 cups of light Karo syrup in it, and blend blend blend for a tasty tart lemonade-y bevvie. Dried and powdered, the fruits add the same sort of tartness that citrus does to baked goods and cooked foods (Romans and Persians and South Asians use(d) sumac a lot).

Mostly modern landscaping uses have survived...but remember that, like so many other trees, its leaves, bark, and roots are very tannic. Need to tan something, just go do the raking, prune some branches, and you got the tannin you need. It's also perfectly usable as a vegetal dye, if you need something turned a singularly uninspiring shade of brown. (Disappointing, isn't it. Should be brilliant red, or at least a rich, lovely brown...but no, it's basically dark beige. *sad sigh*)

Thanks to all who left me such great ideas!

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!

Interested in 166 on through 178? This post should be your goal.

So, it's reviews 179 up to 188, is it? This is a dry hole, go back there for links.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

189 All the Quiet Places: A Novel shone, post 23.

190 What Is Left the Daughter ensorceled, post 24.

191 The Wall rocked, post 68.

192 The Horizon rolled, post 69.

193 Last Tango in Cyberspace ruled, post 102.

194 The Devil's Dictionary waned, post 106.

195 Earthlings nanu-nanu'd, post 113.

196 Is Mother Dead chilled, post 114.

197 Before All the World ruled, post 137.

198 Fracture (Kindle Edition) ended badly, post 138.

199 Dead Letters From Paradise rocked, post 153.

200 My Policeman served, post 154.

201 Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect explicated, post 168.

202 The Twittering Machine disquieted, post 169.

203 Twitter: A Biography explained, post 177.

204 Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest elucidated, post 180.

205 The Body Falls (Inishowen Mysteries) deeply satisfied, post 189.

206 Death on the Pier rolled along, 231.

207 The Plotters ripsnorted, post 234.

208 The Cold Summer shivered, post 250.

209 The Measure of Time elided, post 252.

210 Blackwater Falls shuddered, post 278.

211 Now Is Not the Time to Panic slammed, post 288.

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!




OCTOBER 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #71, The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind Star Trek's Most Popular Episode, is in post 94.

Burgoine #72, Out of the Cage, in post 95.

Burgoine #73, A Tale of Two Omars: A Memoir of Family, Revolution, and Coming Out During the Arab Spring, in post 96.

Burgoine #74, Reality Testing, in post 97.

Burgoine #75, Jabberwocky: A Novella, in post 98.

Burgoines #69 & #70 live in that post there.

***

SEPTEMBER 2022's BURGOINES

All (through #68) are linked in this post right here.

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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.

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.



OCTOBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rule #44, Branches, in post 50.

Pearl Rule #43, The Killing Fog, in post 49.

Pearl Rule #41 & #42 live in this post right here.

SEPTEMBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

There weren't any! I love months like this.

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.

I've decided to use BookRiot's 2022 Read Harder Challenge as a spice-me-up of meeting my reading goals. Since I'll post 225+ reviews (posts aren't the same as reviews posted, as some posts cover as many as four books!) on my blog this year *easily* I think I need to get a little more pushy. I've set 288 reviews as the new goal.

This is the list:

1. Read a biography of an author you admire.


2. Read a book set in a bookstore.


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


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


5. Read an anthology featuring diverse voices.


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


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

Flying Solo is close enough.

8. Read a classic written by a POC.


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


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


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


12. Read an entire poetry collection.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


22. Read a history about a period you know little about.
    The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R. chilled me with its January 6th parallels only 90 years earlier.


23. Read a book by a disabled author.


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

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

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

I suppose we shall find out.

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 accomplished; on to stretch goal below

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

to complete at least 320 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 November 2022, I've posted all 288 reviews I wanted to; that makes the stretch goal of 320 seem attainable. Only 22 more to go, and I've already written 16 of them.

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

I'll be planning in this spot...though my plans all too seldom turn into reality, don't they.

The current plans for November/#Noirvember posts of DRCs from NetGalley
Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan
The Storyteller's Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal
Dead and Gondola by Ann Claire
Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell
Death on the Pier by Jamie West
Murder on Monte Vista by David S. Pederson
Murder at Union Station by David S. Pederson
Outside by Ragnar Jónasson
The Plotters by Kim Un-su

And from Edelweiss+
The Body Falls by Andrea Carter
The Law of Lines by Hye-Young Pyun
City of Ash and Red by Hye-Young Pyun
Dead Letters From Paradise by Ann McMan
The Measure of Time (Guido Guerrieri #6) by Gianrico Carofiglio
The Cold Summer (Pietro Fenoglio #1) by Gianrico Carofiglio
Diver's Paradise by Davin Goodwin
Paradise Cove by Davin Goodwin
The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo
The Inugami Curse (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #2) by Seishi Yokomizo
The Village of Eight Graves (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #3) by Seishi Yokomizo
Death on Gokumon Island (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #4) by Seishi Yokomizo
***
Here we are in November 2022...thinking about 2023...and I'm already getting a weentsy bit anxious about my reading totals.

So so many DRCs to review. For 2022 I set a goal of 250 reviews of all sorts written and posted to my blog; blew past it, set 288; blew past it, set 320. I'll get there no sweat at all. So...*gulp*...given that reality, I've got to make next year a challenge as well, so...*gulp*...I'm setting my goal at 350 reviews of all sorts written and posted on my blog.

I haven't read that many books in a year since the 1980s when I was doing the school thing.

Well, it's my goal so I can always re-set it if I need to. But it does feel ambitious. That's a good thing, right?

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.

Oh, very well, you were good. Go on and speak your minds.

>1 richardderus: I quite like sumac. I also use it as a spice on my scrambled eggs!

Happy new one!

Happy new one, dear fellow.

>10 figsfromthistle: I quite like its culinary uses, too, Anita, though more towards the summery drink.

I thought a no-nonsense not-in-your-way fall oak-leaf crown would work for a busy person like you.

>11 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC!

Happy new thread! *smooch*

Happy new one, Richard!

Happy new thread, Richard.
Is Sumac the one that has almost soft downy layer on new twig growth? If I've not lost my marbles, it feels soft & furry to the touch.

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: The staghorn sumac is a great choice for this time of year. It is known here as fluweelboom (velvet tree).

Hi RDear, and happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: Ooh, gorgeous tree.

>5 richardderus: Your Burgoines and plan on posting/collating them as post#6 are similar to my Lightning Round. I shamelessly stole the idea from Mark when I was feeling internal pressure to write reviews of every book I read but didn’t feel like it. It’s freeing, for sure.

I hope you have a loverly day.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Happy new thread, Richard, and I am honoured that my flaming sumac made the topper! (I've only ever known it by that name). I don't actually know anyone who grows it as a garden plant and can't say I've ever noticed it for sale at garden centres - here, it grows wild in parks, along walking trails, and the sides of roads. I have never tried it in a culinary manner; I have only dried leaves between pages and then used them in crafts to decorate. The leaves stay remarkably soft even after dried, unlike other leaves that turn brittle even if keeping their colour.

Stunning toppers RD.

Happy New Thread, Richard. Love the sumac topper. The fall colors have been stunning in the Midwest but they are already starting to lose their luster. We expect rain all day here.

Happy new thread, Richard! I like the sumac. I'm trying to remember if that's what we had in the woods at the edge of our property growing up or if it was poison sumac, which has some major differences.

189 All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Brian Isaac's powerful debut novel All the Quiet Places is the coming-of-age story of Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy, told through the young narrator's wide-eyed observations of the world around him.

It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. The boys learn from Ray's funny and dark stories. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely.

Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. Grace is determined to have him learn the ways of the white world by sending him to school in the small community of Falkland. On Eddie's first day of school, as he crosses the reserve boundary at the Salmon River bridge, he leaves behind his world. Grace challenges the Indian Agent and writes futile letters to Ottawa to protest the sparse resources in their community. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship.

In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure—he finds a job, and his long-time crush on his white neighbour Eva is finally reciprocated. But every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him. The cumulative effects of guilt, grief, and despair threaten everything Eddie has ever known or loved.

All the Quiet Places is the story of what can happen when every adult in a person's life has been affected by colonialism; it tells of the acute separation from culture that can occur even at home in a loved familiar landscape. Its narrative power relies on the unguarded, unsentimental witness provided by Eddie.

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

My Review: This beautifully written debut novel, telling a deeply affecting story of a boy's coming of age amid loss and deprivation, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2022. I'm a bit surprised that it didn't make the shortlist because it's got the power and the credibility to impress any judging panel. Still...however they chose, the judges chose this story to stay longlisted.

Eddie Toma is a character I recognize...a youth whose rudder isn't calibrated like he's told it's supposed to be. It's an adolescent trait, of course, but the issues Eddie is coping with are his life are those unique to an unvalued Indigenous male. In a settler-colonial society he isn't going to find a lot of validation. What he has, in compensation, is a formidable grandmother who models a moral compass nonpareil. He spends his entire growing-up time torn between the need, like all of us, to figure out what the world is about, and the impoverished person's need to find enough food to fill his hunger. His life in the white-people school in the nearest town is a nightmare of bewilderment...how is he supposed to know about racism? until he started school he'd never even been to the white people who lived across the road's home!...and there is no one to explain anything to him at home or at school.

Except Eva, the white girl who lives across the road...she's kind, and she's weird, and she's got something Eddie can't quite figure out going on in her mind. (That remains true all through the book.) Eva is a beautiful, willful, intelligent girl caught in a place too small to hold her talent, still less her interest. As Eddie and Eva continue to knock their corners together and as Life gives them nasty buffets and blows, they simply get on with getting on. Growing up. Learning and wondering and trying stuff out.

When I think about the way the story unfolds after reading the ending of the book, I feel so much more as though Author Isaac brought his bluntest weapons to the tale's wordsmithing. I was always involved in Eddie's solitary life, weirdly lived among the crowds of people who were Others to Eddie and who in their turn Othered him. I wished, at every failed opportunity to make a connection with someone, that I could go into the pages and hug Eddie. I wished his family had seen him, the "him" that this novel builds, the real him. His mother was challenged at every single step by single motherhood, by racial prejudice, by the judgment and unkindness of the world; her treatment of her sons was only marginally better than their treatment at the world's hands, and it's there that I wanted to go be a White Savior.

It's not, then, the happiest of lives that Eddie and his family live. He loves, I think, almost no one but he crushes on Eva and still can't connect with her. She, in her turn, is both kind and cruel. She's a kid...she's a rebel...she's a privileged white lass whose feelings for an Indigenous lad are titillatingly forbidden, yet came across to me as sincere. As the years progress, Eddie can't make sense of her, can't make sense of his burgeoning feelings for her, can't take in the manifold cruelties he's undergoing on every level except one quiet refuge: His grandmother.

His mother's mother is a calm center of this chaotic bunch. Even her white racist neighbors feel respect for her, though they never express it without nastiness. Eddie loves her, in the best way a deprived and neglected heart like his can love. Only to her can he turn in all his bewilderment and rage, with all his confused longings for nameless-to-him caring and nurturing. From her he absorbs respect for the wild world, and her son Alphonse (whose life doesn't include much voluntary time spent with any kids) leads him by example to knowledge of and connection with his environment. These factors enable Eddie to get through the disasters of most all colonialism-, racism-, and poverty-blighted lives. He is, at base and at heart, only truly, trustingly at home in the wild world.

The ending of the story is, I confess, a bit downbeat for my taste; it's the reason I'm not giving the read all five stars. It makes perfect sense. It is exactly what, I suspect, happened to someone, somewhere in Author Isaac's own past. It is not false; it is just...so very, very sad. I wouldn't recommend this as a read for someone needing a cup of cheer. But I do recommend that you read this tender, loving, cruelly realistic tale of life lived in racism's ugly glare.

190 What Is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Howard Norman, widely regarded as one of this country's finest novelists, returns to the mesmerizing fictional terrain of his major books—The Bird Artist, The Museum Guard, and The Haunting of L—in this erotically charged and morally complex story.

Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda.

Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents—including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling—lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story.

Wyatt's account of the astonishing—not least to him—events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It's a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one.

An utterly stirring novel. This is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY LIVE AND DIE ON OUR PATRONAGE.

My Review: When an author of Howard Norman's stature uses the epistolary storytelling technique, the chances of disappointment...always higher when this difficult-to-master form is used...shrink back into insignificance. As expected, then, this read was a master class in what and how to make of the epistles in question.

Wyatt's parents aren't alive as we meet him. I got a strong intimation that he, looking back on a whole family's life pretty passionately (if unhappily) lived, didn't feel they were alive before they each committed suicide for mixed-up love of the same woman. If I had to guess (Author Norman doesn't over-explain anything, ever) I'd say Wyatt's life more complicated than most from the very beginning. His letter to his largely unseen daughter, however, is all about putting forward the facts of her paternal family's life as he recalls them. It felt to me as though Author Norman's telling of the tale was direct and honest; so Wyatt, then, wasn't aware even in retrospect of his life's peculiarly high levels of complexity.

In The Highland Book of Platitudes, Marlais, there's an entry that reads, "Not all ghosts earn our memory in equal measure." I think about this sometimes. I think especially about the word "earn," because it implies an ongoing willful effort on the part of the dead, so that if you believe the platitude, you have to believe in the afterlife, don't you? Following that line of thought, there seem to be certain people—call them ghosts—with the ability to insinuate themselves into your life with more belligerence and exactitude than others—it's their employment and expertise.

With all the arousal hormones Wyatt's story begins with, and given the fact that he's writing to his twentyish daughter, this is a story pretty much guaranteed to be about the erotic charge that a messy life provides and more importantly about its costs. Wyatt's unrequited love for a person in his family circle who is not a relative is the stuff of life. I suspect it was deeply relatable to anyone who's ever been part of a blended or a found family. The object of his affections, herself an added person (one whose family isn't a birth family), falls madly in love with someone socially inconvenient: A German émigré, and this story's set during World War II. So there's another level of relatability, as what adult has made it this far without an unrequited love?

My whole life, Marlais, I've had difficulty coming up with the right word to use in a given situation, but at least I know what the right word would have been once I hear it.

The problem this inability brings with it, or perhaps the character trait it points up, is that of passivity. Wyatt is not a doer but a done-to. Nothing that happens in his (passive, epistolary) account of his life to the daughter he doesn't know is as a result of his actions. The one truly, damningly awful thing he's involved in, and for which he is now seeking his daughter's forgiveness, is a result of his inaction, his inability to stand for something.

I realize I've sometimes raced over the years like an ice skater fleeing the devil on a frozen river.
–and–
I refuse any longer to have my life defined by what I haven't told you.

But what he does, this man of inaction, is write the young woman a letter. How typical of him...make an effort but make it ineffectually. What a letter does is enable him to remain inactive yet still offer, as if from behind a wall, an accounting of the young woman in question's heritage. What happens as a result? We never know; Author Norman's story is of Wyatt, not Marlais.

You'll have to decide if that's a deal-maker or -breaker for you. I fall on the line between those poles. I need to feel a story is complete, fulfilling its brief, to really lose myself in it. The musicality of Author Norman's line-by-line creation can draw one along for a good while but there's always that need to have some story pay-off for me. I was not all the way satisfied...I wasn't dissatisfied...there was a strange liminality in this tale of passive inaction's consequences. I would recommend you read the book. I wouldn't recommend it to you, however, of you're in the mood for a propulsive plot-driven thrillride. Does the read repay the effort? It did for me—mostly.

I think Author Norman turned me into Wyatt!

>23 richardderus: I have this one on my reading pile from the library. Glad you liked it. I will read that one next after I am finished with the book I am reading now.

Happy Tuesday!

>25 figsfromthistle: Yay! I hope it works as well for you as it did for me. Happy-Tuesday *smooch*

>22 bell7: Hey there, Mary. If it was a tree, it wasn't poison sumac...which has three-leaf twigs. Long, skinny leaves are our native staghorn sumacs.

>21 msf59: Hiya Mark! I'm glad the colors were powerful this year. I've been rained on since Sunday night, but can't really muster a complaint because we need it so very badly.

>20 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you, Caro! Aren't they gorgeous trees? Their leaves, when green, look very Jurassic Park to me...simple, alternate, drooping flops of things, perfect at hiding predators. But let 'em put on their party colors and it's pennants and streamers of glory!

>19 jessibud2: We're in the native zone, Shelley, so there's no need, or impetus, to grow the darn things...they just volunteer to come right on in to the yard. It's places like the UK and Europe where they plant them. The goddesses gave those poor bastards such dreary, grimly brown fall foliage that they snatched up as much colorful stuff as they could when they snatched the land from the native inhabitants.

ETA the reason the leaves stay more flexible than most is their high tannin content, which I looked up and then thought, "well, of course" when I read it...what else is tannin for in leather tanning?

>18 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Thanks, that topper was a showstopper when I found it.

Yeah, it's a huge weight off when we realize "I am a grown up, I can do this however I want!" And then execute the plan.

*smooch*

>17 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita!

>17 FAMeulstee:, >16 Helenliz: Velvet tree! What a perfect name for it. So many different bits of it are velvety. Yes, Helen, this is indeed the tree with velvety shoots. They're edible, and steamed they taste a little like asparagus crossed with collards.

>16 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen!

>15 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg!

>14 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary, and I'm glad to see you around and about. I hope it means your back closer to 100%.

Wordle 493 3/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
AEONS, MIRTH, FOGGY LOL

I was feeling the way the word of the day describes, looked outside and saw the word of the day, and voilà! A 3day!

>29 richardderus: WOW I didn't take the hint!

>30 LizzieD: Some several of us have the same conditions, Peggy, and I haven't seen anyone else who got inspired by it the way I did.

*smooch* thanks for visiting!

>29 richardderus: Great job with the Wordle and with your new thread!

Karen O

>32 klobrien2: Thank you, Karen O.! I love the colors that sumac gives itself to rage against the dying of the photosynthetic light.

Wordle was a lucky one today no doubt.

>29 richardderus: Ha! That's great.

>26 richardderus: I think it was poison sumac. I'd've remembered the lovely red fruits.

>34 bell7: It sounds like it was the unpleasant urushiol-bearing kind, then. *shudder* That stuff is nasty!

Happy you appreciated my stroke of luck. It seemed like too clear a message from the goddesses to ignore, especially since they included your troublesome letter.

>28 richardderus: No. I wish, but every time I get a little ahead, something happens and I have to use the money for that emergency rather than for a new laptop.

>29 richardderus: !!!!! 👏👏🎉 (I got it in 4; it was a guessing game day for me.)

Happy new thread!

>37 drneutron: Thanks, Doc!

>36 Storeetllr: It's just the way things always seem to go. *sigh*

I'm glad you got your streak extended, whereas X = over!

>24 richardderus: I think you might have got me with this one RD. I loved the first two novels you mentioned, though the one I read most recently, The Ghost Clause, didn't hit the spot. I do however like epistolary novels.

>29 richardderus: It took me all 6 today. Looks like I do better after wine than caffeine.

>40 Familyhistorian: Oh, I got SO lucky w/today's Wordle! I was truly delighted, but honestly I'm all about my streaks now.

If I drank wine nowadays I'd pass right out...I'll stick to caffeine.

>39 Caroline_McElwee: I haven't read The Ghost Clause, Caro. I don't think it's my kind of story TBH. Missing kids, ghostly former owners, just a bit overstuffed for my comfort.

But I can recommend What is Left the Daughter.

Love your topper choice, RDear. *smooch*

It was almost a 2 day for me as I thought about using the answer as my second guess by opted to eliminate more letters with FROSTY instead. A 3 is nice after a long string of 5s though.

>42 MickyFine: Awomen, Micky. A-women.

*smooch*

Happy new thread, Richard

#GBBO Thoughts

Well, to no one's surprise, the Twitterverse went mental over Custard week including ice cream (which starts with a custard base, ya dimwits) in home-baked cones. That's what a waffle baker, as the appliance is called, is for. I was so pleased that Sandro won the technical! His first one!

The signature was floating islands. Creme anglaise with poached meringue on top...gag...and no one did better than mediocre on the challenge. I can see why, it was hot and the meringues need to steam in the custard but can't when they're weeping moisture from the basic room-heat! I will say, though, that Syabira's floating islands really did look like breaded chicken cutlets. And Janusz and Sandro having their hiss-off...! I think I wet myself laughing.

The ice cream technical challenge points up a large, bad memory from 2012 when Iain got sent home after the #icecreamgate incident...Diana claimed she didn't take Iain's ice cream out for long, but got stitched up by the producers. What she wasn't ever allowed to say, and which I heard by being where I wasn't supposed to be on Twitter, is that the late Louis saw the whole thing with Diana taking the ice cream out and said nothing to anyone including Iain or the producers. So I blame him for that debacle...and Iain's tantrum was very unattractive, I'll admit.

So this year the crappy fridges did their thing again, Janusz ended up with a sad little puddle of goop, and Sandro's win was based more on luck than on skill. This was a crappy challenge because the show won't buy decent appliances. As a result nothing that needs chilling can chill in anything like the time they allow for it! No one did anything I'd call memorable, honestly. I mean, floating islands are boring, but ice cream isn't, and the flavors Prue chose were...okay. I mean I'd eat every cone but wouldn't order them. Sandro's cones probably won the challenge, now that I think about it...perfect looking.

But the custard gâteau showstoppers...! I thought all five were lovely, but Syabira's was Art. Abdul's SPECTACULAR mille feuille was so to-die-for that I wanted to reach into the screen and snag it. And puir wee Straight Scot...well...the meme of his fellow bakers rallying round to see if they could save him will live on but that cake was a truly appalling earthquake-zone building collapse of a thing. There simply was no other person who *had* to go...though Janusz and his drip-icing did a creditable job, he was truly crap in the other two challenges! I'm getting Jürgen vibes and it worries me. Maxy's Promised Land theme was nicely executed but just too monochrome and her flavors sounded icky to me; Sandro's "Tribute to a Friend" was *flawless* but, compared to Syabira's perfect art-piece, not *quite* enough. Syabira got, and honestly deserved star baker. I think it was all down to how gorgeous the piña colada cake looked, and apparently tasted.

Five left...and I know all their names now!

>44 ArlieS: Thank you most kindly, Arlie.

Great review of All the Quiet Places. I love indigenous stories and this looks excellent. I will seek it out.

>47 msf59: Merry Tuesday, Birddude. I'm very sure you will enjoy Eddie's story...if I had a tree book of it, I'd send it to you.

Pearl Rule #43 (10%; Chapter 3 did it)

The Killing Fog (The Grave Kingdom #1) by Jeff Wheeler

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Kingfountain series conjures an epic, adventurous world of ancient myth and magic as a young woman’s battle with infinite evil begins.

Survivor of a combat school, the orphaned Bingmei belongs to a band of mercenaries employed by a local ruler. Now the nobleman, and collector of rare artifacts, has entrusted Bingmei and the skilled team with a treacherous assignment: brave the wilderness’s dangers to retrieve the treasures of a lost palace buried in a glacier valley. But upsetting its tombs has a price.

Echion, emperor of the Grave Kingdom, ruler of darkness, Dragon of Night, has long been entombed. Now Bingmei has unwittingly awakened him and is answerable to a legendary prophecy. Destroying the dark lord before he reclaims the kingdoms of the living is her inherited mission. Killing Bingmei before she fulfills it is Echion’s.

Thrust unprepared into the role of savior, urged on by a renegade prince, and possessing a magic that is her destiny, Bingmei knows what she must do. But what must she risk to honor her ancestors? Bingmei’s fateful choice is one that neither her friends nor her enemies can foretell, as Echion’s dark war for control unfolds.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME READING LIBRARY.

My Review: At 10%, Bingmei sees a pickpocket steal coins from a yokel she's got to help. The clunky dialogue, with her fixing a hard gaze on the yokel before dashing off leaving him in a crowd by himself so she could flex her badassery etc etc just wore me down. I flipped through the rest of the book to see if there was something not-tedious going to happen. It didn't.

I give up. There's a lot of good fantasy written by Asian women these days...why read mediocre time-sucking fantasy by an old white guy writing in an Asian woman's voice?

Pearl Rule #44 (16%; chapter titled "Tuesday")

Branches by Adam Peter Johnson

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A mindbending page-turner in the tradition of Dark Matter and The Midnight Library, this surprise bestseller will make you question everything you know.

SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE LIFE TOOK A WRONG TURN … WHAT IF IT DID?

This isn’t your life.
This isn’t your reality.
And there’s a way out.

For one man, the past few years have delivered one shock after another. The election of an authoritarian president. The sudden loss of his mother. A series of debilitating seizures. Now, as America descends into a nightmare, he’s shocked to discover the explanation for his seizures: He’s in the wrong universe.

A drug trial promises to return him to the timeline where he belongs. With his family life strained, his job gone and tanks in the streets, he jumps at the opportunity. But what will he find on the other side?

Take a reality-bending trip filled with surprises and second chances. Visit alternate timelines where life played out differently. Explore the roads not taken. Question the nature of fate. And find an answer to the biggest question of all: in a world that feels like it’s spinning out of control, what would it take for one person to make a difference?

Now an international bestseller, Branches is at once a twisty cerebral drama and a deeply personal journey through fear, grief and redemption.

First in a series.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME READING LIBRARY.

My Review: This one hurts. I love this idea. I suspect this is, in fact, reality and we haven't discovered it yet because there's just no way to test it scientifically.

And I bailed. Because the way the author has his PoV character handle the discovery process is...by phone: "I have more questions but the call drops. I try again, but after letting it ring for several minutes with no answer, I give up."

By phone, the calls drop, important words are obscured...in a multiverse-travel story. And we're already on Tuesday of the week we're spending in the story. I take exception to this, since it feels oh-so-conveniently deployed...and pat...and that leaves me wondering why, if I could write this for/with him, why I am spending my time.

Short answer: I'm not. And I really wanted to.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday to you.

>23 richardderus: Pass, but your review is marvelous.

>24 richardderus: And onto the wish list it goes. Compelling premise, all wrapped up in one of my favorite writing styles, epistolary.

>50 richardderus: I'm always amused at the hyperbole of book descriptions, and mindbending page-turner always makes me suspicious.

*smooch*

Wordle 494 4/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
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AEONS, MIRTH, CLOUT, FLOUT When you've eliminated eight letters, it narrows the field quite considerably.
***
I got more Pearl-Rules written up. I took today off from posting full reviews to do some research chores. Those accomplished, I'll now start my male-menopause hormone replacement therapy treatments next month. Yay! I hope this works smoothly.

"Onward through the fog" never had more literal meaning here...really dank outside...but march on, march on.

>51 karenmarie: Ooohhh, I book-bulleted you?! That so rarely happens! *fiesta*

As for Branches, it was such a sad thing to realize that I didn't want to spend any more time on it. It's a story that was *made* for my interests. And it failed to hold them. *sob*

Hyperbole is eroding people's confidence in most things. Hyperbole is deployed in inappropriate places with malicious intent. But trying to sell one a book is probably the most pernicious overuse it endures. "Deathless story that will ring down the ages" for something you only want $20 for? Uh huh.

Anyway, hoping it's a terrific day chez vous.

Good morning, Richard! Our fog is lifting, and I hope yours is going too. I don't know about the particular book, but I'm certainly off to see what I might like of Howard Norman's. I'm pretty sure that I have the *Bird* book on hand, but it hasn't called me yet.

Our last two Wordle tries match. I wish I had come to them sooner!

*smooch* for the day!

>54 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! I think, if the fogs lifts, it's going to be to let rain come down...which is no bad thing.

The Bird Artist remains my favorite of Howard Norman's books. I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place, his memoir of learning life well enough to write it down, is a really good read and quite short. I sometimes wonder if we're not over-memoired but sometimes nothing else will do.

What was that goal up there? 288? I forget because it was so large I can't even imagine. I'm so proud of my one book a month. 😂🤣

>53 richardderus: People adjust to hyperbole; the problem is the transition, when some folks say X while others hear 2X, and vice versa.

Eventually "deathless story that will ring down the ages" will be understood by everyone to mean "you'll probably decide to finish it", just as "I'm excited to announce", from a tech executive, is already known to mean "this is a routine announcement of what's most likely a 'me too' product, routine decision, or similar".

>57 ArlieS: It's understood that way now, Arlie, and that's the problem. It's devalued the basic contract between seller and buyer, "I'll tell you the truth if you'll buy my {thing}" down to "you don't need it but buy it anyway because it won't bore you as much as TV". I see this as a dreadful loss. There is nothing gained by the hyperbole now but something lost without gain.

*sigh*

>56 The_Hibernator: I understand that perfectly, Rachel, but I'm a LOT older and have no kids or inescapable demands on my time. 288 felt like a stretch but I've met the goal as of yesterday. I'm on to the 320 stretch goal!

Happy new thread Richard!

>49 richardderus: I slogged through the first 'Kingfountain' book and wasn't impressed.

Me and Valerie and the oinkfest!

Old Westbury Gardens...relaxing in the lovely sunshine.

>59 humouress: Thank you, Nina! I'm glad someone else was underwhelmed by his writing chops. Annoying when one is rooting for something to be great, and it's just blah.

>58 richardderus: I expect that there will eventually be a way to say "this really is exceptional" that is commonly understood. And some time after that, the hype-and-lies crowd will adopt that term to mean "it's not quite terrible", and we'll start over.

I see this as the opposite of the euphemism treadmill, where well-meaning people invent new terms for people with specific handicaps, and others recycle those terms as generic insults, leading to new not-yet-insulting terms being coined.

>62 ArlieS: Ah...the Treadmill of Futility...that e'er-present reward for mediocrity! I look forward to the day it can be burned on the scrapheap of misery, I mean history.

...I should live so long...

>60 richardderus: Love the photos! You both look great. Hooray for oinkfest!

>64 msf59: Thank you, Mark! The duds I'm wearing are the new ones Valerie bought for me in a trip to *shudder* a clothing store *wince* in a *gag* mall near here. I was amazed at how different my sizes are now!

>60 richardderus: My, don’t you look dapper! Glad you had a great time with Valerie (except for the mall).

>66 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary! I loved the feeling of looking presentable for the special occasion. Not ordinary for me.

191 The Wall (Sumer #1) by Gautam Bhatia

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Mithila’s world is bound by a Wall enclosing the city of Sumer—nobody goes out, nothing comes in. The days pass as they have for two thousand years: just enough to eat for just enough people, living by the rules. Within the city, everyone knows their place.

But when Mithila tries to cross the Wall, every power in Sumer comes together to stop her. To break the rules is to risk all of civilization collapsing. But to follow them is to never know: who built the Wall? Why? And what would the world look like if it didn’t exist?

As Mithila and her friends search for the truth, they must risk losing their families, the ones they love, and even their lives. Is a world they can’t imagine worth the only world they have?

For fans of Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed comes an astonishingly powerful voice in speculative fiction that explores what it means to truly be free.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: The author is a social-media acquaintance of mine, one whose work in the world of Indian Constitutional law I admire unreservedly. He is also among those who run Strange Horizons magazine, which work I admire immoderately as well. I think it's fair to say I approached this read with the dread of a fan...

...who then became a stan. The pace of this book probably puts a lot of sci-fi fans off but, for me, it was a perfect and languorous introduction to a two-thousand-year-old utopia whose principles hadn't changed but whose use of them had. The oppressive weight of a society that is sure that it's Right can not be overdramatized. What Author Gautam did, choosing a pace for its affect on the reader, was evoke a deep and abiding dread, a building sense of wrongness, that worked so much better than a more whiz-bang approach would have done. I found the legal sections, pertaining to Sumer's laws, to be the grace notes I've always enjoyed in my speculative fiction. They set the stakes of the rebellion against the status quo better than any other choice...rebelling against a government, after all, is rebelling against its laws.

Mithila, our PoV character, is a woman on a mission: GET OUT OF SUMER. Her rebellion isn't against intolerable and burdensome living conditions, there's enough food and plenty of stuff that one actually needs. It's a deeper rebellion: Mithila needs to be free, to have the chance to make her own choices and decisions. It's simply too much for her spirit to bear to conform.

Young people have ever felt thus, it's true. In a utopian society where you simply can not speak your mind or ask questions that deserve and require answers, it really becomes a Hell for the Mithilas of the world. She and some like-minded friends aren't glad to be safe inside the walls of Sumer. They want OUT, and the ever-threatened consequences seem like small potatoes to them.

The Powers That Be can't take that challenge lying down...and don't...but the end of the story sees Mithila and her faction winning the war because, once you introduce doubt into the world, things fall apart pretty quickly. The eternal verity that monoliths aren't stable and can fall with a well-placed shove is demonstrable using physics (Stonehenge hasn't always been the way it is now). People's hearts and minds, once engaged on a project of destruction, are very powerfully motivated to see the project through. (There's a recent example of this in the US.)

But in the end, even a novel of ideas needs to bring its concerns to a personal level or it fails to entertain...a novel's first duty. The concepts of Wallrise and Wallset, exactly what you are thinking they are, break a seaside-dwelling ocean lover's heart. The concept of a horizon is so utterly beyond the ken of people who have always lived inside encircling walls...Imagine water extending from your feet, buildings and fields receding and disappearing, imagine the water filling the empty space elicits exhilaration in a few, terror in many...and doesn't that just scare you! And, lest you wonder if the world-building is dry and flavorless, I present you the concept of the Towers of Rebirth...remembering that Sumer is a closed society, with limited resources, imagine what "rebirth" might entail for a *real* scare....

Enough to move on to the sequel, it did, and procure same with my very own United States dollars.

192 The Horizon (Sumer #2) by Gautam Bhatia

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: ‘Did we not once promise that we would always be honest with each other?’

‘I no longer ask for honesty. Just tell me a lie that I can forgive.’

After 2000 years, the Wall has been breached. As Mithila steps into a world unknown, her sister Minakshi tightens her grasp on a city bracing for chaos and violence under a red sky. The ghost of an old Revolution stalks the streets, while the shadow of a new one threatens to tear Sumer apart.

Spreading word about this historical transgression, Alvar and Mankala find themselves facing new perils in a City they can barely recognise—one torn between old fears and new desires, while caught in a deadly power struggle. But soon, they will know that the crossing of the Wall has consequences not just for the City, but for the world.

My Review: Be careful what you ask the gods for, lest the answer be "Yes."

Mithila's prayers were assented to; now she must live in the aftermath. The Walls of Sumer are no more; this doesn't mean Sumer is no more, of course, any more than the ending of Constantinople's play-Roman society meant it didn't exist anymore. (What do you imagine sparked the Renaissance if not the sudden outflow of people and books that had been behind Constantinople's walls?) The discovery that there is...stuff, people, a whole Universe...outside Sumer's walls doens't mean that Mithila and her peeps just win because Mithila has a sister. Sibling rivalry will do more than a little to prevent things from moving too fast, and Minakshi (Author Gautam! These names, so many are so similar! NOT COOL, DUDE) is a sibling in the throes of serious rivalry. She uses Mithila's discovery of the outside to force a confrontation with Powers That Be who previously defeated *her* attempt to take over Sumer and she is ripe and ready for revenge against them. And if Mithila suffers too, well, omelettes, eggs....

Writing about chaotic change in a society whose stasis was thoroughly established earlier should feel, I don't know, complicated. It does here. I was also very pleased that the read was propulsive, violent where necessary and exciting throughout, and driven from the real-feeling needs and desires of characters unafraid to throw their hearts and bodies into the future. There is no landing in safety, there is no landing even, visible to them. But Mithila and Rama (her lesbian lover) do it anyway, commit themselves and their people to a brave new world. (Arrogant, of course, as one must be to be a rebel.) What became difficult for me as I read this book is my sense that I am empathizing with people who aren't in sympathy with the world they were born into so they...tear it all down...? That's a very big step to take with no plan for the future. I understand that Author Gautam has said he's done with this storyverse. I'm really not sure if the characters agree with him. I predict sleepless nights flipping the pillow, looking for some way to cool their anger as they struggle to get out of his brain.

There is an appendix where Author Gautam goes through the sources and inspirations for Sumer, and it by itself should be required reading for aspiring fantasy/speculative fiction writers. It is thorough without feeling like a course syllabus.

All in all, two books telling one story in a deeply, empathetically imagined alternate reality to our own. Spending time in this place poised on the brink of rebellion is, strange to say, a great escape from a darkening world.

>60 richardderus: How perfectly lovely! Such a classy-looking breakfast table and I don’t mean the food (or the table)! Looking good you two.

>60 richardderus: Very, VERY nice!!! You had such a lovely day, and you both look completely content. I'm happy for you!!!

I think you got me with the Bhatias. *sigh* Thank you, I guess.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

>60 richardderus: Your long beard is gone! Can't remember you told us, but it looks good :-)

>68 richardderus: You got me with a book bullet for The Wall! I’ve got history in really enjoying books of that name: the one by Marlen Haushofer makes my all time favourite books list, and I also really enjoyed the one by John Lanchester.

(Can’t get the touchstones to point to different books of the same name in one post though.)

>60 richardderus: Great picture of the two of you!

Sorry to see so many pearl ruled reads. Hopefully, you have a string of excellent reads coming your way!

Happy Thursday!

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Thursday to you.

>53 richardderus: Yesterday was terrific, marvelous, awesome, the ultimate in living. *smile*

>60 richardderus: Looking VERY good, my dear. Sigh for the oinkfest.

I got Wordle in 4 today.

*smooch*

>60 richardderus: Looking good there, RD. My mind went to the same place as Mary's: Dapper, indeed! That's a very nice photo of you and Valerie.

>60 richardderus: - Elegant and joyful, however painful the process of *shopping* to get there! ;-) Certainly worth the cost, I am sure!

>76 lauralkeet: Thank you, Laura...we're the oldest of friends and she generously loaned me a mother when mine proved inadequate to my needs, so the connection runs deep. I think it shows in that photo.

>75 karenmarie: "sigh" of envy for the oinkfest, no doubt...such good bacon, the sausages were *perfection* and all assisted by cottage fries made with onions and peppers. *happy sigh* Once a year I can afford the bad-for-me foods I adore. I just need to be extra careful for a week before I indulge, and remember to take benadryl before I eat (iodine makes me sneeze and most places use iodized salt).

4! Well, I'll do it soon and post, but I am feeling pretty chipper today what with cooler, sunnier weather pushing in.

Lovely-day *smooch*

>74 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, I'm ever so happy when I can have a Valerie-visit for all the hours talking and laughing together.

I think the Pearl-Rule reads are sort of the price I pay for being willing to try a lot more stuff. Not all of it can be a hit. Seems fair enough to me. (Today it does, anyway.)

>73 SandDune: That touchstone issue has bugged me any number of times, Rhian, but I'm resigned to it. I think Gautam's books would appeal to you based on their immersive world-building. It's fascinating! (It didn't hurt my feelings any that he was pleased with the reviews, either.)

>72 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, happy Thursday! I had to drop what I was doing and fix up Old Stuff's bed. Finally had to send him on a fool's errand to get him out so I could finish up, and the cleaning staff got the laundry all bundled off. So that's MY Thursday.

I trimmed my beard MUCH against Rob's wishes, but I pointed out he's coming home in six months so there will be plenty of time to grow it back. Lovely day *smooch*

>71 LizzieD: Oh yay, Peggy! I'm so pleased you're going to give Gautam a try. I think you'll find something that resonates with you in The Wall, but be in the mood for a slow, immersive read before opening it up.

>70 Copperskye: Thanks, Joanne! We're both so happy to be tucking into the weekend breakfast buffet at the Allegria Hotel...we love their lobster rolls, and that buffet. What we do other than eat and talk is, well, not a lot...but that's what found-family is for!

>77 jessibud2: OMIGAWSH you snuck in there, Shelley! The dratted shopping *ptooptoo* is the price one pays for clothes that actually fit...I looked like I was wearing my fifth-grade brother's hand-me-downs in second grade or something.

Thanks for the validation. I think it's fun to know you look okay after so long of just NOT.

Wordle 495 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, CARRY Eight letters gone, one in its proper position, the answer appears like magic!

I'ma have to add a star or some highlight to (>24 richardderus:) What Is Left the Daughter. It's already on my WANT! List™ thanks to Katie and Linda, who spoke well of it. My pleasure in reading The Bird Artist was a benefit, too. Your review prompts me to bring it to the fore. Gotta get a copy.

>60 richardderus: Adding my approval (?!!) to the photo of you and your life-long friend Valerie.

Can't reinforce any approval of sumacs, however. Count me among those who regard any sumac as a weed, an invasive weed.

>82 weird_O: Thanks, Bill! And move What is Left the Daughter higher up the "acquire" pile...it's a terrific read.

I console myself that the Elizabethans thought of tomatoes as weeds when I think of your opposition to sumac.

>60 richardderus: I wondered if those were the new duds when I saw the picture, Richard. Further reading showed that they were. Great pic!

>84 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg!

Love the photos from your visit with Valerie.

Happy Thursday *smooches*!

>86 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! I send smooches back.

>81 richardderus: That's a really clever first word!

>88 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel, it gets the three most common letters in English...E, S, A...in one swell foop.

>89 richardderus: not to mention 3 vowels. Brilliant!

Wow, 90 posts before i get here, Happy New Thread Richard, my dear friend.

>91 johnsimpson: Well, it was 91 for me because you posted first!

Richard, your thread is just booming!

>92 thornton37814: It seems to do that when I post photos, Lori. *shrug* I don't think I'm all that interesting but somebody out there does!

>91 johnsimpson: Hi John! Happy to see you here.

Burgoine #71

The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind Star Trek's Most Popular Episode by David Gerrold

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: David Gerrold, the creator of "Tribbles," recalls how this popular episode of Star Trek was made, from conceptualizing the first draft to the final script, shooting on set, and explaining the techniques and disciplines of TV writing. Plus, receive 32 pages of photos, original illustrations by Tim Kirk, and much more!

My Review: Start with this excellent advice:

Taking something seriously means immersing yourself in it and treating it with respect and making it part of yourself.
–and–
Once you make a decision to do something or to be something, start preparing for it immediately.

The mix of advice and anecdote, of trivia and trivialities that absolutely make a fanboy's day, make this a perfect package of fan service with a redeeming dose of wisdom. It's a terrific gift for a young Trek fan, or someone seeking a blow-by-blow of television's peculiar ways with words.

Burgoine #72

Out of the Cage by Fernanda García Lao (tr. Will Vanderhyden)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Out of the Cage opens in 1956, in Argentina, with the freakish death of Aurora Berro, and descends into a dark philosophical exploration of humanity and mortality. In the midst of her family’s celebration of a national holiday, an LP, careening through the air like a “demented boomerang,” severs her jugular. Her family—an agglomeration of perversions, deformities, and obsessions—seems at first not to notice, singing on. Aurora is left behind in a voyeuristic limbo as an omniscient first-person narrator, to observe the depravity of her family and reflect on the farce of her life and human existence.

Fernanda García Lao has been called “the strangest writer of Argentine literature,” and in Out of the Cage, she lives up to that distinction. The book is saturated in strangeness, a blend of formal experimentation, eroticism, grotesque theatricality, and dark humor that evokes the absurdist fictions of Witold Gombrowicz and the style of Silvina Ocampo. The result is a macabre and fantastic vaudeville, a tragicomedy, a kind of Dadaist opus against ideas of eternal beauty and fixed identity, against absolute concepts and universality.

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

My Review: Whatever you're thinking about this book from its cover and/or title, stop thinking it now. Aurora is our cicerone through a family of grotesques, a collection of tics and crotchets defined by their obsessive, angry sexual energy. They—Aurora's husband and conjoined-twin sons—are locked inside a bizarrely passionate, deeply damaged psychosexual cyst on Argentina's Body Politic...and that is the clue to what this book is on about. Noting the years in which this hideous agglomeration of sideshow freaks...brothers locked in sibling rivalry inside one body, a father who manufactures a glamourous Lana Turner sex doll to replace the wife he's simply forgotten has died...the next generation, son of a prostitute fathered by one of those men...all take place in 1956 (post-Perón), 1975 (Los Desaparecidos and the Dirty War), and 1989 (hyperinflation and Menem's economic crisis). Major turning points in the history of the country, all embodied in the person of Aurora of the truly peculiar death and even weirder substitution, Norma the pregnant prostitute with the paralyzed leg seeking one of the Berro men's support for her child, then finally Severino the child of Norma and...?... left to make sense of the previous generations' mishegas and puerility.

I can't recommend it to the sexually prudish, or the easily distracted. It was ably, and intelligently, translated by Will Vanderhyden.

Burgoine #73

A Tale of Two Omars: A Memoir of Family, Revolution, and Coming Out During the Arab Spring by Omar Sharif Jr.

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The grandson of Hollywood royalty on his father’s side and Holocaust survivors on his mother’s, Omar Sharif Jr. learned early on how to move between worlds, from the Montreal suburbs to the glamorous orbit of his grandparents’ Cairo. His famous name always protected him wherever he went. When, in the wake of the Arab Spring, he made the difficult decision to come out in the pages of The Advocate, he knew his life would forever change. What he didn’t expect was the backlash that followed.

From bullying, to illness, attempted suicide, becoming a victim of sex trafficking, death threats by the thousands, revolution and never being able to return to a country he once called home, Omar Sharif Jr. has overcome more challenges than one might imagine. Drawing on the lessons he learned from both sides of his family, A Tale of Two Omars charts the course of an iconoclastic life, revealing in the process the struggles and successes that attend a public journey of self-acceptance and a life dedicated in service to others.

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

My Review: Everyone, no matter their looks, their socioeconomic status, or their talents, has got somethin' to carry that just won't quit hurting them. In Omar Sharif Jr.'s case, it was a lot of things based on expectations he was not going t meet and things he simply couldn't see how to fix or avoid. Yes, his life was privileged compared to most lives; yes, he had a lot of advantages that he seems to shrug off as unimportant; but in the end he was a damaged gay kid who fell for traps and snares that did him harm.

The happier part of the story is the gentleman's QUILTBAG advocacy in a country very much on the bubble socially. Egypt's neighbors are not especially stable democratic societies and that has an impact on the country's ability to deal effectively with its unpopular minorities fairly and equitably. To his credit, Sharif is in the trenches swinging his ax at the offenders and working his hardest to fix his chosen corner of the world. Very clichéd writing doesn't dull the gleam of his message of hope and his call to act, to support our QUILTBAG siblings around the world.

Burgoine #74

Reality Testing (Sundown, #1) by Grant Price

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Welcome to Berlin. Population: desperate. In the throes of the climate crisis the green tech pioneers are king, and if you aren't willing to be their serf then you're surplus to requirements.

Carbon credit for sleeping on the job. That's the offer a dreamtech puts to Mara Kinzig, and she jumps on it. After all, the city ain't getting any cheaper.

Then somebody changes the deal while she's dreaming in the tank.

Now Mara has a body on her hands, an extra voice in her head, and the law on her tail. Only the Vanguard, a Foreign Legion of outcasts seeking an alternative path in the dust between the city states, might be able to help her figure out what went wrong. First, though, she'll have to escape the seething streets of Berlin alive.

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

My Review: Another day, another dystopia. SF loves its dystopias, almost as much as YA does. The reason I rated this one three-and-a-half stars out of five is simple: I like the lesbian lead. She is a cool soul, struggling to make sense of her life while living it in a Grim New World that won't ever let her up or give her a break...and she doesn't carry that weight like it's a burden. She wants better for herself and her loved ones, like all people I've ever known. Daniel, another PoV, wasn't to my liking when I met him but he was compelling, driven by understandable needs and wants. He grows into someone I never expected him to be.

Also terrifically effective was the worldbuilding's slow-burn sensitivity to the plot. Permaybehaps the hardest adjustment was to the mixed slang spoken throughout, a heady brew of Chinese and German and so on and so forth. It's well deployed but still requires effort from the reader. We're in a climate-changed Berlin, a place not hugely resilient or possessed of reserves of natural diversity even now. Technology, that savior of all saviors, is pervasive in this climate-stressed world; I'd even say rampant. Its "blessings" are, as ever, unequally bestowed and frequently mitigated to the point of not being helpful.

Burgoine #75

Jabberwocky: A Novella by Theodore Singer

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A double award winner! Best Novella in both the 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and the 2016 Best Indie Book Awards!

Inspired by the Lewis Carroll poem, this is a dreamlike fantasy quest through strange landscapes, where the hero gradually grows into an understanding of himself and the true nature of the quest.

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

My Review: A kind of mashup of Lewis Carroll's poem of the same name, his Alice in Wonderland series, and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. The protagonist, Astreus, sets out on a quest and discovers that all is not as he believed it to be, and that must be the basis of his decision to act or not. I don't think anyone who's read much surrealist fantasy fiction will find anything new here, but it's nicely done and entertainingly silly. Don't think too hard...go with the story-logic, ride the waves, and enjoy.

>98 richardderus: I'm not really into fantasy, but I do like that this one borrows from Stevenson's classic work!

>60 richardderus: Lovely to see your precious get-together Richard.

Sorry you had a couple of back-to-back pearl ruled's.

>100 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caro! Thanks for the "precious get-together" phrase. That's exactly what it was, and is every year. I hope we can continue to do these precious get-togethers, they recharge her batteries (so her husband says) and they make me feel so happy, too.

>99 thornton37814: I really don't recommend it to you, Lori, I don't think the picaresque elements would please you very much. It's just not exceptional enough to make it over the probably offensive parts.

193 Last Tango in Cyberspace by Steven Kotler

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It was a new skill…

One that might change the world.

What could a person do who could track empathy?

His friends call him Lion, he is the first of his kind. Some describe it as emotional foresight, but really, he can see cultural trends before they emerge. What he didn’t expect was for Big Pharma to come calling.

In 2025, technology has made massive leaps forward.

Not every group wants to use it for good.

Arctic Pharmaceuticals has a new drug and a bad idea. They call on Lion, because he is the key to getting the formula they need. But when he starts to sense their hidden agenda, will they take drastic action?

Then Lion discovers a decapitated human head…

Is he being hunted?

Can he stop a global disaster?

You’ll love this edge-of-your seat cyberpunk thriller, because it will keep you turning the pages late into the night.

Get it now.

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

My Review: The first paragraph reads:

He steps off the plane and into a shimmering world. They've hidden the airport beneath a thick coat of dazzle. A parade of razor-thin screens, angled atrium glass, and staccato mirror work. Everything scrolls, winks, and blinks, but softly, like Sunset Strip on mute.

I knew from the off that I was in for one of Those Reads, the ones I bore people with by shoving it in their faces despite innumerable social cues...sighs, eyerolls, signs scrawled in orange crayon on a Big Chief tablet reading "GO AWAY"...that they would greatly prefer I not.

A book with chapter titles like "The Double Tap of Holy Exclamations" and "Residual Goat Shit" and "Shut Your Mouth When You Talk to Me" simply must be read. A book that weaves Dune references throughout its text for the Fremen to follow. A book that centers empathy, that commercially rewards empathy, that perverts empathy into a product that enables empaths to resist and rebel and still get paid...that is, this is, a book that demands your eyeblinks. Demands, and rewards. Lion Zorn, he's just this guy, you know? About like Zaphod Beeblebrox was.

The early researchers described em-tracking as a hardware upgrade for the nervous system, maybe the result of a genetic shift, possibly a fast adaptation, Studies revealed an assortment of cognitive improvements: acute perceptual sensitivity, rapid data acquisition, high speed pattern recognition. The biggest change was in future prediction. Normally, the human brain is a selfish prognosticator, built to trace an individual’s path into the future. The em-tracker’s brain offers a wider oracle, capable of following a whole culture’s path into the future.

Ripsnort through our world (almost) with Lion and see what things really look like when you drink the Water of Life. There's nothing specifically tech-SFnal about the world Lion roams, but the psychopharmacology is waaay trippy. Lion and his ladyfriend Penelope are always on the move because Lion's empathy skills are so useful...he can spot the newest tendrils of a social movement, he can pinpoint who's coming up with what and when and why that's a thing...Lion is, in other words, a bloody nightmare of a gifted and talented drug user. It's Sietch Tabr that expands him, and honestly I think I'd prefer the reality where he's shrunk back inside his skull. I'm already angry about surveillance capitalism.

“Buckminster Fuller said don’t try to change human behavior. It’s s a waste of time. Evolution doesn’t mess around; the patterns are too deep. Fuller said go after the tools. Better tools lead to better people. Arctic doesn’t develop products. We may cultivate them, occasionally, in our own particular way, but our business is change. Significant change.”

Only Lion's subversive....

Lion was the one who pointed out that naming hotels after Millennial values—the Truth, the Purpose, the Community—now that his generation had reached the age where the luxury of billboard ethics had been derailed by the verities of life, might be lucrative. "Aspirational nostalgia," he dubbed it.

Okay, cyberpunk, one expects that. But there's an AI involved in this picture that, well, it's AI so it's got to be bad. But somehow this isn't dystopian. There's a lot of interesting animal-rights activism information and action...there's a little bit of information about how pharmaceutical companies pharmaceut. There's a little bit about Penelope and her life; there's not a lot more about Lion. The characters are the weakest links in the story. They exist, they are differentiatable, they aren't very compelling. I found that, the longer I spent with them, the less that mattered to me. I don't know exactly what that says about the read or this reader. I'm not at all sure I want to find out.

Lots of people believe consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like space and time. If that's the case, then it is turtles all the way down. We'll have this debate about our microbiome. About rocks and atoms and quarks. Until we have Gaia consciousness, there will always be an us-them divide, always a next frontier for empathy.

So find space on your Kindle, or order a used tree-book, but get this story inside you.

“Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.”

Oddly enough I felt more hope after the read than I did going in to it. I think you might, too.

>65 richardderus: The duds look good. You are shrinking. I am thickening. I guess I like my beer too much.

Happy Friday, Richard. Getting prepared for our trip and managing to sneak in some Jackson time, as well.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Friday to you.

>78 richardderus: Interesting about iodine making you sneeze and iodized salt. The Morton Lite Salt I have used for decades has potassium iodide in it. Glad it doesn’t make me, Bill, or Jenna sneeze. Pearl-ruling books works for me, too. So far this year I’ve abandoned 22 books/2553 pages.

>94 richardderus: My mother loved the original Star Trek, and her favorite episode was The Trouble with Tribbles. Wouldn’t it be cool to have one of the Tribbles used in the episode?

>95 richardderus: I could definitely handle the sexual stuff, but not, perhaps, the grotesques and sideshow freaks at this time. I’m still caught up in romances. *smile*

>96 richardderus: Excellent review of a man I knew nothing about.

*smooch*

>104 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! Thanks for the kind words re: reviews. I think I'd *plotz* if I got an actual prop tribble...but the sheer forge-ability of them, well, I don't think I'd stand much of a chance with them being authentic and sold honestly.

Omar Sharif Jr. is a GRANDson of the famous guy, but he looks like a refined and prettified version...the gene pool is excellent, clearly. I admire him. And lust after him.

You stay in your happy place, sweetness. The world doesn't need what stress does to you. Avoid it, stay happy and healthy, and that will be your act of service to Humankind. *smooch*

>103 msf59: Hiya Mark! Happy Friday! I'm gonna be a skinny old man, who knew? I expected to be a fat, jolly old soul. Well, it is what it is, and I'm just glad to be here to enjoy it all.

...maybe if I could still drink...but that way many, many deaths have occurred so, on balance, no.

194 The Devil's Dictionary by Steven Kotler

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Hard to say exactly when the human species fractured. Harder to say when this new talent arrived. But Lion Zorn, protagonist of Last Tango in Cyberspace, is the first of his kind—an empathy tracker, an emotional forecaster, with a felt sense for how culture evolves and the future arrives.

It’s also a useful skill in today’s competitive business market.

In The Devil’s Dictionary, when a routine em-tracking job goes sideways and em-trackers themselves start disappearing, Lion finds himself not knowing who to trust in a life and death race to uncover the truth. And when the trail leads to the world’s first mega-linkage, a continent-wide national park advertised as the best way to stave off environmental collapse, and exotic animals unlike any on Earth start showing up—Lion’s quest for truth becomes a fight for the survival of the species.

Packed with intrigue and heart-pounding action, marked by unforgettable characters and vivid storytelling, filled with science-based brilliance and cult comic touches, The Devil’s Dictionary is Steven Kotler at his thrilling science fiction best.

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

My Review: Okay, same drill:

"People," says Ramen, like they're some kind of disease.

He jabs the air with his chopsticks, pointing at something behind Lion's left shoulder.

Ramen is ancient, Asian, and given to blaring Billy Idol out of cheap speakers duct-taped to the top of his decrepit food cart. He wears an old chef's coat over a dirty t-shirt, the sleeves pushed back, revealing arms flecked with burns and scars. Still, there's truth in his advertising. Ramen makes ramen. "Best in London," according to the sign, even if you have to sit in the cold rain, under a cheap plastic awning, on the rotting edge of Chinatown, to enjoy it.

Rotting—that is definitely the right word.

There's a reason, not an instantly obvious one, to begin this book in exactly this way at precisely that spot. I think a lot of y'all might not find that an easy sell...it means Author Kotler's work repays close attention. I hasten to add that it isn't *required* to understand what's going on. It's a lot like the easter eggs in y'all's video games, or the post-credits scene in those Marvel movies. Laugh along, or howl until it hurts if you're in on the joke.

The WhistlePig? The snow snake? No, explaining isn't necessary now. You just need to see the words, parse them, slot their shapes into a spot in your brain. Just take it easy, read one chapter at a time, and always be prepared to go with the flow.

Unlike the Humans-First scumbags, who are serious major buzz-kill nasties after shutting down the entire existence of Sietch Tabr, the huge empathy uptake of humanity, and the inevitable knock-on effect of people and animals coming to realize we're all one big Gaia. And their (I think) creation, the anti-Sietch Tabr, EVO. It harshes everyone's buzz and it is brutal about it.

But this book, second Lion's Story, gets more in its own way by making a bit too little effort to connect me to more of the cast than even the first one, light on character attachment, did. People are labeled, not named, and the ability to invest in them as more than handy props is limited. So I took a half-star off the rating because I really want to be swept up in the reasons the story's being told. That doesn't happen for me unless I can invest in the characters...positively or negatively.

That is the big gritch. The smaller ones are really not important to me, so definitely not likely to be to you...I'm pretty sure anyone who's read Last Tango in Cyberspace will be eager to get to this one, and I won't say don't. I will say adjust your speed to match the bumps...if technospeak is not for you, these stories aren't either. But, and this is important, taking the story in slowly is a very successful reading strategy with Author Kotler's books. It allows you to marinate his ideas in your head without being bombarded with too much verbiage. Try the stories. This storyverse feels predictive to me, and I suspect we'll be back in Lion's head willy-nilly as the years fly by.

Silly me. I thought I was going to get out of here unscathed. Nope *Last Tango* at bargain price is now being processed for me. Thank you!

Wordle in 4. I much prefer being a 4der rather than a 5er. *smooch* for a fine day and equally good weekend.

Wordle 496 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, SNEAK That was easy...too easy...what does the Great Wordle Beast have in store for me...?

>107 LizzieD: Heh! Well, "unscathed" is relative. You only took one book-bullet out of what, seven? Seems to me you got off easy, Peggy.

See above for my Friday treat from the Great Wordle Beast. *smooch*

>110 richardderus: Snort. And it only gets taller every year. The cheek of it!

*smooch*

>111 MickyFine: I'm pretty sure it's just our plea to the divine allparent to let us live forever.

195 Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than a million copies worldwide, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a young girl who believes she is an alien

As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Each summer, Natsuki counts down the days until her family drives into the mountains of Nagano to visit her grandparents in their wooden house in the forest, a place that couldn’t be more different from her grey commuter town. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial and that every night he searches the sky for the spaceship that might take him back to his home planet. Natsuki wonders if she might be an alien too.

Back in her city home, Natsuki is scolded or ignored and even preyed upon by a young teacher at her cram school. As she grows up in a hostile, violent world, she consoles herself with memories of her time with Yuu and discovers a surprisingly potent inner power. Natsuki seems forced to fit into a society she deems a “baby factory” but even as a married woman she wonders if there is more to this world than the mundane reality everyone else seems to accept. The answers are out there, and Natsuki has the power to find them.

Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata’s status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.

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

My Review: If you go read my 2019 review of Convenience Store Woman, you will probably wonder why I asked for this DRC. I was impressed by Author Murata's very pointed prose and her determined, dogged almost, pursuit of delineating characters who violate every.single.standard. of maleness and femaleness in Japanese society. I think of that as the most successful part of both Murata's earlier, and this, novel.

"I must use my magical powers to stay alive," she thinks, "I must become empty. I must obey."

–and–

Grown ups had it tough, too, I thought. Miss Shinozuka functioned well enough as one of society’s tools, but maybe wasn’t functioning properly as one of society’s reproductive organs.

She was in the position of educating me and ruled over me, but at the same time she herself was also being judged as a tool of society.

This time, a female character isn't simply alienated, unable to find Woman inside herself. This time, Natsuki is actually a vessel for an alien. (Or so she's decided after her cousin Yuu tells her he's from another planet...in playful terms that she does not get.) She then decides that her role is as an emissary from that planet, and reports to her handler via Piyyut, one of her stuffed toys. It's another level of weird, y'all. It's disturbing, it's startling, it's just damned strange.

I hadn’t told my family, but I was a magician, a real one with actual magical powers. I’d met Piyyut in the supermarket by the station when I was six and had just started elementary school. He was right on the edge of the soft toy display and looked as though he was about to be thrown out. I bought him with the money I’d received at New Year’s. Piyyut was the one who’d given me my magical objects and powers. He was from Planet Popinpobopia. The Magic Police had found out that Earth was facing a crisis and had sent him on a mission to save our planet. Since then I’d been using the powers he’d given me to protect the Earth.

–and–

I hugged my backpack to me. Inside it was my origami magic wand and my magical transformation mirror. At the very top of the backpack was my best friend, Piyyut, who gave me these magical objects. Piyyut can’t speak human since the evil forces put a spell on him, but he’s looking after me so I won’t get carsick.

So of course, this is where I buy in and get ready for the ride. Translator Tapley Takemori is gonna let off the verbal incendiaries!

Love is a drug made in the brain to enable humans to mate. It’s simply an anesthetic. In other words, it’s an illusion made to prettify the painful mating act, to reduce the suffering and disgust of the sexual act. We might be able to use this anesthetic if we’re ever in pain. But for now I don’t think it’s necessary.

–and–

The Baby Factory produces humans connected by flesh and blood… Once shipped out, male and female humans are trained how to take food back to their own nests. They become society’s tools, receive money from other humans and purchase food. Eventually these young humans aso form breeding pairs, coop themselves up in new nests, and manufacture more babies.

The fact is I don't entirely disagree with Natsuki...society, as presently constituted, is a Baby Factory. She lives through a dreadful, abusive childhood and the blighting horror of an unloving mother. She still manages to make herself get married to a man, a boring, ordinary man, whose mother is clear-sighted and indifferent to her husband, a loutish and judgmental lump we'd call a redneck in the US.

"Look, Tomoya. Do it a lot and make a family, then once the relationship has cooled, you play around outside of marriage. That's the way it is for lots of couples, isn't it? Playing around is a man's reward. Your father has had his fair share, haven't you dear?"

–and–

"I hate people who insist on their rights while neglecting their duty."

Tomoya, their son, is what these days we'd identify as a demisexual. Here in the US he'd find increasing support for that variant identity. Not in Japan. Tomoya and Natsuki find each other on an anti-dating site and enter into a consensually sexless marriage. At least, if they're married, they reason the families will finally stop making their lives hell about it. Of course, then comes baby talk. Predictable, no? Well...that is how Author Murata rolls. She does the expected, the predictable, and lards it into the weird and the uncomfortable. At the end of the story, things have happened to Natsuki and things have passed her by; it's really not obvious to me that her world is not, in fact, reality seen from an unexpected angle. Some of the most uncomfortable scenes and subplots...can one have subplots in this kind of narrative, digressive and discursive but more or less chronological?...are clear and honest bashings of the patriarchal society we have allowed to rule over us for far too long. There is violence and there is horror, but it is nothing you haven't read before and is probably more powerful for that. Because, in this story, those sharp blades of rage are all rising from a garlic-flavored custard, a durian-marmalade slathered slice of toast, a radish you find inside your cupcake.

What a way to spend a day. Immersed in a soup of very, very maladjusted people. People whose full strangeness isn't even dented by what I've said so far, what I've quoted. There are some shocks to your system headed your way when you choose to read a Sayaka Murata novel, that's part of the reason one does it. This time, I give the read more stars than Convenience Store Woman because Natsuki's struggles with overcoming her deeply unhappy childhood and her maladaptive attempts to "fit in" are so reminiscent of Vigdis Hjorth's Johanna in the review above. They aren't in any cosmetic or surface way alike...Johanna's mental illness is from a similar source but is NOT dealt with internally through the fantastical inventions of Natsuki...but these women, betrayed by those whose job it was to protect them and abused for daring to try to be their authentic selves, deal with it all internally. Outward signs aren't visible to the people who don't look at them properly. We, the readers, are privy to things we want to believe would make a happier outcome for these women.

But I will bet you money that, given access to our point of view, no one in these two women's ambit would change their damaging behavior in any significant way. Nor would the women themselves. Ultimately that led what was for reader-me an almost-five-star review to drop to a solid four stars of five. I wasn't put off by Author Murata's weirdness. It was the helpless and hopeless ethos of the story that, in the end, dimmed the anarchic luster of the prose.

Tragedies are so much more interesting than comedies, no?

196 Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth (tr. Charlotte Barslund)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middle-aged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controversial modern classic, Will and Testament.

'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed and back in Oslo after a long absence as she prepares for a retrospective of her art. The subject of her work is motherhood and some of her more controversial paintings have brought about a dramatic rift between parent and child. This new proximity, after decades of acrimonious absence, set both women on edge, and before too long Johanna finds her mother stalking her thoughts, and Johanna starts stalking her mother's house.

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

My Review: Twenty-ish books is a damned fine career. Author Hjorth and Translator Barslund are quite a team of creators, bringing this still-expanding storyverse from Norway to the US English-language market. They do it skillfully...and they do it, thankfully, quite often.

"Do I confront my deepest self?" asks Johanna, our narrator, in a passage that honestly sums up the entire experience of reading Author Hjorth's writing. She is in a deep personal crisis, reaching out to her long-estranged mother after decades of ill will that she caused with her art. Paintings Johanna created caused her mother, as well as her sister, to see things that family amnesia demanded be kept silent. Johanna was, and still is, unwilling to be silent. She has reached her sixties, though, a time in life when time itself looks and feels very, very different than it does even five or six years prior. Building bridges between ourselves and those responsible for our present-day being can, in many families, present challenges that feel insurmountable.

Johanna, as a visual person, sees her aging self as partly her mother "...on whose model my body is being shaped, as if I were clay contained in a form." She is facing mortality, and seeing how morality is molded within our relatively short-term bodily accommodation. She is finally reckoning with her mother's and her sister's deep sense of betrayal at her hands...while never believing she was wrong, she recognizes at last that they are hurt. As Johanna thinks through her complicated life, she muses on the natural surroundings her Norwegian home is in; any time she says, in that context, anything about "Mother" I wonder if she's talking about her mother, or OUR Mother-the-Earth...and these moment of being Mothered in nature are so sharply contrasted to her family-mother's unhappiness-making unmotherly ways.

But at such a cost to her own mental health...she obsesses about the family she broke, and did that deliberately, then ran away from the consequences for half her life. The author's formatting, daunting looking as it is, actually serves as a strong support for the story. Johanna is in the throes of a crisis. She doesn't think like a normal person. She is quite simply disintegrating into the pieces she reassembled through her art. The pages are designed to make concrete what could be lost in any other design choice.

But if the daughter sees her future in looking into the mirror of her mother, that mother sees a past that failed her in important ways, and sees herself and her failures writ live and large. Johanna's mother's rancor and rage aren't going to go away, and she (and her other daughter) have had decades to "get their story straight" as it were. The entrenched narratives of hurt on both sides bode ill for a meeting of the minds....

This beautifully written and translated book serves as a reminder to us all that we don't get to be victims all by ourselves. All damage done is reciprocal, and there is no escape from retribution. Self-delivered retribution, most commonly of all.

It's not a perfect book, as none ever can be. I rate it four of five stars because it's not a long book but it is a repetitive one. We hear the entire story in Johanna's internal voice. It's an excellent way to convey the dark night of the soul, the anger and hurt of betrayal...from one side. It takes a bit of work to contextualize the non-standard layout. It is worth the effort, in my never-humble opinion, but be prepared for it.

I recommend this latest salvo from Vigdis Hjorth's seemingly bottomless well of personal fiction to you, all the daughters and all the mothers and all the siblings whose home lives weren't always the happy-clappy-sappy greeting-card kind. Accept Vigdis Hjorth's gift of seeing yourself in her mixed, complicated feelings in this storyverse.

Morning, RD! We've made it back from vacation and I'm easing back into my routine.

*smooch*

>115 katiekrug: I was just at yours talking about the weather's little welcome-home gift to y'all!

*smooch*

Wordle 497 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, BIBLE, LIBEL Funny path I took to get there, wasn't it.

‘Morning, RichardDear! Happy Saturday to you.

>110 richardderus: I personally have 2,490 books tagged tbr. To get them read at 100 per year, which will never, ever happen, especially with my current romance binge, I’ll have books still tagged tbr when Jenna looks here on LT after I can't read anymore or am gone.

>113 richardderus: and >114 richardderus: After reading The Publisher Says for both of these, I’ll pass. You know me well.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>118 karenmarie: Hey Horrible...I'm glad you're clotless because that pushes Jenna's peeping farther along the trail. Seventy is looming for us all....

You know me well. After 13 years, wouldn't it be a bit weird if I didn't?

*smooch*

>100 Caroline_McElwee: - Yep!

>117 richardderus: Had to look at your path after your comment on my thread. Have to say your #3 didn't even occur to me, but perhaps I'll get a chance to use it as a guess later now that I know it's an accepted word (at least as a middle guess). Helped that my first guess gave me the E in the right place, though.

Happy Saturday *smooches*

>121 bell7: It's the not-occurring vs occurring mismatch that surprised me. Once I had the I in the proper position I could see the shape of the word...well, it's just so much easier.

*smooch*

>120 jessibud2: :-)

‘Morning, RDear, and a happy Sunday to you.

>119 richardderus: I’ll be seventy next June. Yikes. The ones that end in a 0 are always interesting to process, although celebrating one is better than the alternative, at least so far.

*smooch*

Happy Sunday, Richard. We will be leaving in a couple of hours for the airport. Hold down the fort, my friend.

Two reviews of books I want to read in a row!

>113 richardderus: Earthlings is already available in Dutch translation, and on my list because of her previous book.

>114 richardderus: I do hope Is Mother Dead will be translated, as I loved her first book in Dutch translation Will and Testament, where the main character is also silenced and ignored.

Happy Sunday, Richard dear.

>125 FAMeulstee: Happy Sunday, Anita! I'm glad you're going on those journeys. The books are something strange and special. I was surprised to like the Murata as much as I did after Convenience Store Woman's middling impression on me. The Hjorth was expected. Her work is like Annie Ernaux's and that is a good thing to me.

>124 msf59: I shall endeavor so to do, Birddude! Bag that Yucatan jay this year!

>123 karenmarie: We don't really need to discuss numbers, just dates, at this point in our lives. I'm delighted you'll be around to welcome in a new decade but really...just another number. We've still got Turkey Holocaust and Yule to feast our way through before then!

*smooch*

On the last Sunday of the month I post 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.

October's crop: https://tinyurl.com/2xnw8na6


Ossian's Hall via the National Trust for Scotland

Wordle 498 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, WALTZ It is *amazing* how few words I know that fit the pattern of that particular letter in next-to-last place...that don't involve other letters I've already eliminated. Two hours of pondering, typing-then-erasing, pondering some more..."well, this one fits, but..." and it was the answer.

>128 richardderus: Good morning, and happy Sunday, Richard. I didn't take as long as you, but I took a long time. Your 2nd word would have helped me move on. Oh! Got it in 4, and that letter in that place was the challenge. I could think of proper names, but no common word until it suddenly popped into mind.

Relax! Maybe read something good! *smooch*

>128 richardderus: Yay! It was a three day for me as well.

Happy Sunday, Richard!

>130 figsfromthistle: Yay! 3days are fun, but man-o-mighty did I *work* for this one. It's easier on many a 4day!

*smooch*

>129 LizzieD: That pattern really lends itself to two of the most-common letters I eliminate by using my chosen two starters, Peggy. It's frustrating sometimes but it's ALWAYS been helpful to have them either located, indicated, or eliminated early.

*smooch*

I had a tough time today.

Wordle 498 5/6

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>132 Storeetllr: How do, Mary...I'll say you had yourself a tough one today! Still, as so often, I burble my cheery little mantra: The Streak Is Alive, Aaaalllliiiiiiiiive (in my best Colin Clive-1931-scenery-munching voice)!

>110 richardderus: yup!

>132 Storeetllr: It took me 5 too, but I managed a 2 today.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Monday to you.

>126 richardderus: You make me laugh – Turkey Holocaust and Yule. I know how much you love turkey, but I always make a whole one here for T-day. It may just be the three of us this year for TH day, perhaps Bill's friend Geoff and his wife may join us, perhaps Louise if her daughter/SiL have completed their move to Florida.

>128 richardderus: and >129 LizzieD: I’m too impatient to expend time across many hours and admire you guys for it.

*smooch*

197 Before All the World by Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old.

"ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh."
"I do not believe that all the world is darkness."

In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a former speakeasy called Cricket’s, a bar that welcomes, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles—fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep—a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma’s, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion.

Lion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed.

Then, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness of Philadelphia. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings.

Flowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?

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

My Review: I fear what I am about to say will doom a very fine read in too many of y'all's eyes: This isn't a standard-English-only novel. The characters sometimes speak Yiddish, sometimes speak as though mentally translating Yiddish into English on the fly, and all of it at the author's preferred energetic pace. The best I can say about those whose reading doesn't often stretch to variants of English is, there are very helpful footnotes.

Oh well. I had to say it despite the fact that most of y'all just clicked over to I Can Has Cheezburger? for a chuckle or two.

If you're still here, let me assure you that there's a lot to love about this story. Leyb/Lion, a gay Jew, is really and truly alive for me; his on-again, off-again love for the surprising Charles, a Black labor-organizing socialist-sympathizing Yiddish-speaking multihyphenate whose precarious identities are beautifully balanced. Their love story, to my gay eye vanishingly light on sex, is only one of the story's love stories. Gittl, a poet/seer of angels, is Leyb/Lion's nowsister who was presumed killed in a Red Army pogrom he avoided by being thrown out of Zatelsk for his faggoty ways. She shows up in Philadelphia, mirabile dictu, and is fêted by the middle-class Jewish community led by a soi-disant Baroness there as a harbinger of socialist paradise...despite almost dying at the hands of the "socialist" Soviets. This lionization ends when Gittl and Charles, um, well.

How this dissonant collection of adherents and believers and practitioners harmonizes their modes of being, their inner identities, and their actions is as one would expect: inconsistently and imperfectly and, all too often, inconsiderately. Every adult has learned to accept that others love in their own ways, or has been carted off to a safe place with lots of lovely pills to manage the aftermath of refusing the lesson. Leyb/Lion and Charles with their utterly amazing intersections of identity are, to no one's surprise, among the most wounded. Charles's belief in the socialist revolution survives the movement's apathy towards acknowledging the hideous harm caused by slavery, and its continuing horrors and cruelties. Leyb/Lion's gayness, well...Jews weren't mad for it then, though I understand there are more accepting branches of Judaism in modern times, and have no reluctance about letting him know he's less than, lower down in their esteem because of it. Gittl's a woman. What else needs be said, that fully explains the horrors she has and will endure before, during, and likely after amerike, philadelphiye, the doctor who slurmed out (of) his amerikanische, toothjutting mouth the horrible, cruel orders to sedate her...are all in Life's past. It is this dissonance, however, that shaved a half-star off my rating. I wasn't as convinced as I thought the author expected me to be that these people would enact the steps they danced to. I was close to believing it for Gittl and less so for Leyb/Lion; Charles, the man made of and for Love, perhaps least of all. It wasn't an existential, "what are you even talking about?" level of dissonance but a quietly uneasy mental drumbeat of "...really...?" throughout the read.

“What will you do before all the world?”

That is the heart of the novel; that is the wisdom the reader is offered by the read. It's not clear to me that the characters *answer* this question. It is clear to me that they live in its words, that they think inside the whorls of that question mark and fall onto the finality of the period at its base.

198 Fracture (Kindle Edition) by Elyse Hoffman

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A heart-wrenching WW2 story of forbidden love and torn allegiances.

Franz Keidel is a monsterous SS soldier: loyal, hateful, and devoted to Hitler. With a cold heart, he hunts down his Führer’s enemies, but one fateful mission will fracture his shield of ice.

While hunting for Jews, Franz stumbles across a familiar face: Amos Auman, his childhood friend. Amos is the only source of joy in Franz’s life, but he is also a Jew. Unable to bring himself to kill his friend, Franz vows to protect Amos from his fellow Nazis.

As Franz spends more time with Amos, bringing him food and books, he falls in love with his kind-hearted friend. How could he fall in love with a man, a Jew? How can he continue to hate Jews when a Jew has thawed his icy heart?

And what will Franz do if he has to choose between Amos and his loyalty to Hitler? What choices does he have when he is already beyond redemption?

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

My Review: I think a lot of us in the QUILTBAG community have forgotten, or at least not paid much attention to, the fact that Jews who were gay during the Nazi era were doubly endangered by their identities (where do y'all imagine the pink triangle symbol still widely used in our community came from if not a repurposing of a hate symbol?). It's simple, really, to focus on the six-million-dead mantra; there's no such count, either kept or kept alive in the public's awareness, for QUILTBAG or other victims of the eugenic nightmare of Nazi Germany and its eager hench-rats all over conquered Europe.

Amos is doubly blessed, then, as a gay Jew...two targets on his thin shoulders. Franz, abused and brutalized all childhood long, found such refuge as was possible with Amos and his family. But events conspire to separate the boys, as is usual in life. What counts for more with Franz than any memories of happiness is the community and sense of belonging that he finds in the hate-filled and -fueled ideological mob of brutes and bastards that replicate his abusive family...from the inside this time, as he gets to be the abuser instead of the abused.

Meeting fugitive Jew Amos again, knowing it's his friend Amos, and being in the position of power over Amos instead of dependent on him, his family, for such kindness as he ever knew, enables Franz to find a way through the maze of rage and pain he's carried inside for his whole life. He chooses, in a split second, a course of honor and love when he has accepted the course of hatred and violence that come naturally to him. To all humans, really. His decision to lie in order to save Amos's life is the crack in his armor that will lead him to accept the truth about himself and thus about his world. He loves Amos as a friend, he desires Amos as a lover, and he must then reject the lies and distortions he's been embracing as fundamental to his sense of himself to be the self who deserves Amos's return of love.

The first-kiss scene between the young men was very moving.

That might have made the inevitable ending more saddening, more painfully awfully real. One knows this can't, outside the realm of fairy tale, end in Happily Ever After. But the actual events are a gut-punch of reality after a honeymoon of discovery and love. (Side note: The Epilogue wasn't successful to me. It's a full-star deduction for silliness.)

But the four-star rating above should tell you what you need to know about my opinion of the story. It's a shame nothing made by human hands can be perfect, or at least not often, but perfect is the enemy of good. This is a good story told well. If it didn't actually, factually happen this way somewhere, I'll be surprised. And that ain't nothin' in my reading life.

>136 karenmarie: Howdy do, Horrible dearest. I'm glad my own special naming conventions for holidays have tickled your funnybone. I can't speak for Peggy, but I don't *only* stare and ponder when I'm Wordleing, I do email chores, come back, write notes on reviews, come back, cruise threads, come back...it would feel too much like the SATs if I just sat and stared and stared.

*smooch*

>135 PaulCranswick: TWO!! Those are such great days, aren't they PC...too bad it's not more common among us ordinary folk, no?

>134 Caroline_McElwee: :-)

Wordle 499 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, ATTAR, APTLY The third word was to see if there was a letter in a specific place, which narrowed the field to two possible words. There was. I chose right for my fourth guess! Whee.

I also got it in 4. Feels like ages since that happened!

OCTOBER IN REVIEW

Quite an interesting month for my reading. I am not terribly interested in "horror" reads, it turns out, and need to space them out if they're going to get past my guard. That led to an ignominious fizzle on #Spooktober. I read and blogged thirty reviews in thirteen posts. I'm well on the way to meet my stretch goal of 320 reviews blogged this year! My last-Sunday-of-the-month Burgoine & Pearl posts are clearing out the just-fine and the just-awful reads at a healthy clip.

My favorite of the bunch for October is Before All the World (except for the^^^jacket image, which is frankly puzzling). It's such a creative and original and playful use of English! I was equal parts charmed and horrified by the characters. I was equal parts charmed and horrified by 2022 Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux's Do What They Say or Else, but it wasn't as playful or as exuberant a story. It had the structural disadvantage of being about a girl's coming of age, not men in their thirties, and I lack interest in girls that age in any but the most superficial ways.

I'm always tickled pink when authors notice my reviews favorably, and this month's pleasure is Mariah Fredericks...her latest, The Lindbergh Nanny, comes out on 15 November but I had to review it as soon as I read it because it's that kind of read. She liked my review, retweeted my come-on, and followed me on Twitter! *IN*SPITE* of my taking her to task for making a wicked character, based on a real person, gay. It was explicitly done to give the character a thing that would explain him wanting to hide his actions...period appropriate, certainly, but the real person wasn't gay. Since I posted the review she's liked and retweeted others, so she was genuinely not hmmmfy about it. In marked contrast to others I could name....

Looking at >7 richardderus: above, you'll see the starter list of planned DRC reviews for #Noirvember. I'm focusing on mysteries and thrillers, and will be doing more single-author gang posts. Seishi Yokomizo's might tie for all-time crowdedness...I have four of his to review before #5 comes out next April. Goddesses please bless Pushkin Vertigo. I love the quantity of international mysteries in translation they publish!

And not to forget a newer publishing house here in the US, Oceanview Publishing of Sarasota, Florida (ugh). Their huge list is all mysteries and mostly series. There are several that I like a lot, eg Benedicta "Ben" O'Keeffe in Inishowen, Ireland, whose fifth instalment The Body Falls is coming out tomorrow. (Review Friday.)

Too bad about Spooktober, but now I know that I can't build a month around horror reads. Just not in me. Mysteries and thrillers, hooo-oooo-ooooooo!

>141 jessibud2: Oh yay, Shelley! I'm pleased for you. It wasn't an obvious word for me, but since I go by patterns it wasn't truly weird. Yay for a streak alive!

>140 richardderus: I did something similar with my #3, using AVAST both to check where the T was and determine that there wasn't a second A in which case I was fairly certain there would be a Y involved.

Nice October in review! I'm taking personal time today and not sure if I'll finish another book or two, so mine will get posted either later today or tomorrow depending on how things shake out.

>139 richardderus: Oh, absolutely Wordle a bit and do other things to give the old brain time to poke around in the depths on its own. Three for me today because of my starters. I'm awed at Paul's two! SO much fun when it happens!

Enjoy your Monday, Richard.

I'm also awed by your October reading and reviewing, but that's nothing new.

>145 LizzieD: Heh, "awed" at my piddly little thirty reviews written, hawhawhaw...well, Peggy, I started this project twenty-three years ago as a means to fixing more than the amorphous vague clouds of impressions that I was retaining about my reading. That's a lot of practice writing reviews! And I'm still learning really, really important skills to help me do it more and better. (I wish I'd archived my Geocities site. I did find a bunch of old reviews on the hard drive of my last desktop computer...I've never done anything about un-retiring them. Daunting amount of effort.)

Monday orisons to you, too, my dear. *smooch*

>144 bell7: I'll just bet you're taking personal time! I'll coddiwomple thitherward to see what's going on with the Subie here directly.

Thank you re: October in review. It's a great habit that I picked up somewhere, probably Horrible since most of what I do is copying her work. It gets things in order, psychologically, and *completes* the task of reading for the month. I found that it reduces my stress levels a lot to do it. I have a clear, actionable course to take; it enables me to think through my goals, where I am in relation to them, and my overall relationship to specific sub-goals leading to or feeding into the overall annual goal. Each of those on its own feels like an accomplishment, all of them together feel like I'm building something successful for myself.

Living here, among people who don't have so much of what I do have, makes this extra-important for me as part of a daily gratitude journey.

Saw your message on my thread, answered you there!

>140 richardderus: I got it in 2 today gadzooks!

As Jim, I also put some comments on my thread as requested, dear fellow.

>148 PaulCranswick:, >147 drneutron: Thank you most kindly, gentlemen. I'm very grateful!

I've asked a few folk for their opinions of my book blog. In April 2023, I'll have been doing a single-author book blog for ten years. I'm stuck on Blogger because the idea of moving my archive to Wordpress gives me giant urticaria. I mean, I could do it, but *shudder*

So, as I've had a very few select souls tell me what they think and it matching pretty much what I thought, I'd really appreciate any- and everyone who wanders through here to follow this link: https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2022/10/
That's all my blog posts for this October. I don't expect you to deep-dive into them but I am seeking your input about the balance of single-author group reviews, single-title reviews, and multi-author reviews on my blog.

I'm curious to know how the month's presentation strikes you...do you like the mix of single-vs-multi-title posts, single-vs-multi-author posts, is there anything that particularly rankles or gruntles you? I'm aware you're a busy human and it's a lot to ask...I hope you'll take a fast whip through the month and let me know here on this thread what strikes you as effective. I really appreciate any and all feedback (that isn't "you suck wookiee balls and your mother was right you're ugly as a monkey's ballsack").

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>137 richardderus: “What will you do before all the world?”

That is the heart of the novel; that is the wisdom the reader is offered by the read. It's not clear to me that the characters *answer* this question. It is clear to me that they live in its words, that they think inside the whorls of that question mark and fall onto the finality of the period at its base. The writing in this book cannot be any better than what you wrote here.

>138 richardderus: Excellent review as always. Of the two, Imagonna go with the 4.5 star read that had Yiddish in it and add it to the wish list. And before you say “Why not both?”, the time period and locale of the first appeal more than the time period and locale of the second.

>142 richardderus: Having not scrolled down far enough to see your October Month in Review, I am ridiculously pleased that I added Before All The World to my wish list.

>146 richardderus: Thank you re: October in review. It's a great habit that I picked up somewhere, probably Horrible since most of what I do is copying her work. Also ridiculously pleased.

>150 richardderus: And there’s my new word for the day. Urticaria. 😎

To answer your question, I do love the variety of reviews – two books with the same theme, the Pearl-rule books grouped, the Burgoined books grouped, and the individual book reviews.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>151 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible...glad you're pleased that I shamelessly nick your ideas, you weirdo you. :-*

I expect you'll find a lot to admire in Before All the World, especially its inventive use of Yiddish and Yinglish and its loving, protective found families.

Good to know, thanks. I'm always thinking of what I imagine others will want. It only recently occurred to me to ask what y'all *actually* think.

199 Dead Letters From Paradise by Ann McMan

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: April 1960.

Gunsmoke is the most popular show on TV. Elvis Presley tops the Billboard charts. A charismatic young senator named John F. Kennedy is running for president. And, in North Carolina, four young Black men sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and demand service. Enter Esther Jane (EJ) Cloud, a forty-something spinster who manages the Dead Letter Office at the Winston-Salem post office. EJ leads a quiet life in her Old Salem ancestral home and spends her free time volunteering in the town’s 18th-century hortus medicus.

One sunny Spring morning, EJ’s simple life is turned upside down when the town’s master gardener unceremoniously hands her a packet of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden and expects EJ to “tend to them.” This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer—and into a surprising head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden.

When EJ is forced to read the letters to look for clues about the anonymous sender, what she discovers are lyrical tales of a forbidden passion that threaten to unravel the simple contours of her unexamined life. EJ’s official quest soon morphs into a journey of self-discovery as she becomes more deeply enmeshed in the fate of the mysterious letter writer, “Dorothea.” Her surprising accomplice in solving the mystery of the letters becomes one, Harrie Hart: a savvy, street smart ten-year-old, wielding an eye patch and a limitless supply of aphorisms. Together, Harrie and EJ make seminal pilgrimages to the tiny town of Paradise to try and uncover the identity of the mercurial sender and, ultimately, learn a better way to navigate the changing world around them.

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

My Review: I love Ann McMan's way of approaching a story. I understood I was reading about a closeted-even-from-herself lesbian instantly, from the moment EJ was introduced to me. I had a lesbian couple as "grandmothers" of a sort, best friends of my mother's for decades. They were Southern ladies, they were clearly a couple, and it...just didn't matter. They came to our house for Thanksgiving. They were constantly in our conversations about family, and had one name between them: "Sara-Lucy" since their names were Sara and Lucy; we just didn't need to say "and" because they were always a unit to all of us.

EJ and her friends were the kind of people, then, that I grew up knowing and loving. I strongly suspect Author McMan had someone(s) similar to my belovèd Sara-Lucy in her young queer life. She loves EJ as much as the child Harrie, EJ's shadow-cum-sidekick, does. Fay Marian is my nominee for that treasured role...the Moravian Herb Garden is such a perfectly chosen project for a group of lesbians to choose as a social hub.

What made the story itself, the dead letters that EJ receives to unite with their intended recipient or reunite with their sender (both unknown at the start), so beautifully chosen was the way Author McMan used these artifacts of thwarted love and strangled passion to bring EJ into a fuller understanding of Life as she *could* live it. She is living, no really she's just spending her one life unsatisfyingly, incompletely, almost entirely in the Dead Letter Office. As great a contrast as you can imagine is the child Harrie, so curious and open, so wise and still so innocent. She is a character I simply wanted to hug every time she came on the page.

I'd've rated the book a full five stars had I not felt that the period-appropriate race relations issues been less integral to the story than it was used as a grace note within the story. The issue isn't meant to be foregrounded...so the smart money says don't use it. In the present moment, the in-between handling of it comes across more as a detraction from than a point in favor of the read.

Still leads me straight (!) to Ann McMan's extensive backlist. I want more and I mean to have it. Thanks to my dear old reading buddy whose nudge pointed me in this direction. You're the best, Sister Woman.

200 My Policeman by Bethan Roberts

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Now a motion picture starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin, an exquisitely told, tragic tale of thwarted love.

It is in 1950's Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim, gently guiding her through the water in the shadow of the city's famous pier and Marion is smitten—determined her love alone will be enough for them both. A few years later near the Brighton Museum, Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted, and opens Tom's eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world of art, travel, and beauty. Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion and meet Patrick in secret. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.

In this evocative portrait of midcentury England, Bethan Roberts reimagines the real life relationship the novelist E. M. Forster had with a policeman, Bob Buckingham, and his wife. My Policeman is a deeply heartfelt story of love's passionate endurance, and the devastation wrought by a repressive society.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY LIVE AND DIE ON OUR PATRONAGE.

My Review: This is a fictionalized version of the actual lived life of EM Forster, his policeman lover Robert Buckingham, and his lover's wife May.

This is also gay trauma porn, a film starring a straight(ish) actor in a gay(ish) role AGAIN, and an accurate presentation of the ways and means used by gay men in the past to muddle through this rough thing we call Life. I had a gay uncle in Buckingham's generation, so I've heard the stories firsthand.

I'm not going to tiptoe around the fact that this book was written more than a decade ago, which means the cultural landscape was quite different. This true story, only lightly fictionalized, has lost none of its power to move someone whose desire is to be let in on the hard, terrible work of loving someone more than they love you back, and the horrible, disfiguring things that jealousy can lead a person to do. I was appalled by Marion's actions in the book, which were NOT the actions of May Buckingham. I truly understand why Author Roberts chose to make this shift, though. The story's drama would've been more literary fiction-lite without it. As it is, this read is much more like sudsy, beautiful Ethan Frome in its impact.

I'm also not going to tiptoe around the fact that Mr. Styles, whose public presentation of self leads me to think this story's lineaments resonated on a deeply personal level with him, is still publicly straight and playing a role where the character's only assuming the mask of straightness where his heart and his cock are engaged elsewhere. Same old, same old...but let me say this now: He does a damned fine job of playing Tom, and he deserves credit for doing the job at all. We're sliding into another darker age for QUILTBAG people, it seems, after some modest gains were made. Mr. Styles's metrosexual-shading-into-heteroflexible persona is very risky, and he doesn't seem to shy away from it as hard as, say, Tom Hanks did after Philadelphia thirty years ago.

The book will be overshadowed by the film for many reasons. Not the least of them is that the film has pretty people who enacted simulated sex for our collective titillation. (Something Mr. Styles does with, erm, style and verve.) That is not, to be blunt, a terrible loss. This book is nicely written, tells an involving story, but it disappeared for most of a decade without leaving a ripple...for a reason.

Because when you're in love with someone for the first time, their name is enough. Just seeing my hand form Tom's name was enough. Almost.

–and–

In those days it was rare, wasn't it, Patrick, for Tom's voice to become what you might call serious; there was always a lot of up-and-down in it, a delicacy, almost a musicality (no doubt that's how you heard it), as thought you couldn't quite believe anything he said. Over the years, his voice lost some of its musicality, partly, I think, in reaction to what happened to you; but even now, occasionally, it's like there's a laugh behind his words, just waiting to sneak out.

–and–

I'd almost forgotten the joy of waking up and, before you've even opened your eyes, knowing by the shape of the mattress beneath you, by the warmth of the sheets, that he's still there.

Nice lines, precise observations, a deft touch in siting them within the storyverse. Nothing at all wrong, or even clumsy, in any of it; take my word for it, were Bethan Roberts to have dropped a clanger I'd've gleefully snipped it out and plopped it here, dripping venom and blood, for your (oh okay, my) delectation. I'm a grouchy old curmudgeon who wanted to dislike this book, and couldn't. I also wanted to dislike Mr. Styles playing Tom, and couldn't. I'm in the nasty, frustrating position of needing to praise, however grudgingly, the film and the book, the actor and the characters, that I wanted to bash.

The film, out on 4 November 2022 via Prime Video, is very much worth your time. The book is as well...buy it if the Kindle edition is on sale, or borrow it from your library if not. Reading the book first will not damage your appreciation for the film nor will seeing the film first make you wonder where the hell they dug that story out of the book from in the first place.

I just wanted excellent, not very good, so I'm out of sorts. That is, however, my issue and not the book or its film's problem.

Wordle 500 4/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
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AEONS, MIRTH, FINED, PINEY Straightforward path to an offbeat place.

>153 richardderus: A direct hit! I'm on the hunt.

>155 richardderus: And, ahem, I did it in 3 because of the troublesome letter and alpha order. This is as smug as I get.

>156 LizzieD: Heh...well, you've earned your smug, so revel in it, Peggy. Brava!

I so hope you'll find it, and enjoy it as much as I did...such a delight of a read!

>155 richardderus: Today my first word payed off :-)

Happy Tuesday, Richard dear!

>158 FAMeulstee: Happy Tuesday to you, too! *smooch*

>153 richardderus: Although I don't like reading about this era, because I, you know, LIVED it, I may have to make an exception in this case. Good review, as usual!

>160 Storeetllr: You? You remember 1960?! But...but Mary! All ladies are forever 21, wear a size 6, and must be given jewelry and expensive clothes to put up with big, gross, stinky men!

(Or was my mother lying to me....)

Hah! Funny. I don't LIKE to remember 1960, and I try not to, but, yes, I'm afraid I do.

#GBBO Thoughts

Pastry week's Signature...vol-au-vents! I luuuuuuv vol-au-vents...Maxy's were a disaster, an *epic* fail. Then the Technical...spring rolls (?!)...Maxy's were horrifying. Then the Showstopper...Maxy's "Spicy Twinkling Stars" were, to put it mildly, underwhelming. That bluish-greenish thing lumped up in the middle which I myownself thought looked like a cheap swimsuit washed in hot water, crinkled and wrinkled and surrounded by the butt-ugliest meringuey-pie-looking things...well, ta-ra Maxy, pretty as you are you ran out of gas this week and there's no time for that in the quarter-finals tent.

Syabira doesn't even need to do next week's Technical. She won star baker despite, IMO, doing even worse spring rolls than Maxy (who came last) from an aesthetic PoV, whereas Sandro *nailed*it* and got bubkes. ?? And Poo and Prawl saying that Sandro could've gone, when he came FIRST in the Technical which is judged blind?! His vol-au-vents didn't look a whit worse than Syabira's and looked better than Janusz's!

Well...if tonight's any indicator, the final will be Sandro, Syabira, and Abdul.

>162 Storeetllr: My mother blamed me for JFK getting elected instead of Nixon, her hero. She was so so sick while pregnant she couldn't fund-raise.

I consider it my finest hour, and I wasn't even born yet.

>161 richardderus: On so many levels that's a wrong as a very very wrong thing. I'm not 21, not a size 6 and will buy my own expensive jewelry and clothes thankyouverymuch. I put up with my big, gross, stinky man for a whole different set of emotional reasons that we will not go into here (they'd only make you barf).

>164 richardderus: Way to go RD!

Hi RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

>160 Storeetllr: Mary, I also am not particularly thrilled with reading about the late 1950s - early 1960s because I lived them.

>161 richardderus: I have vivid memories from 1960, all relating to school – the spring of 1st grade and the fall of 2nd grade. I think your mother was lying to you. I was never a size 6, and etc.

>164 richardderus: OMG, RD, your mother… Thank you for staving off Tricky Dick and getting us Camelot and The Great Society before we got Watergate.

*smooch*

>166 karenmarie: My mother was, indeed, a reason to say "OMG" on so many levels. Nixon! Of all the scum floating on top of the rendering vat, to choose that one...and her reasons were next-level awful. (Douglas deserved what she got for running against him.)

She was being funny about my blame, but you know those "jokes" that land wrong because the joker means it? That was one of 'em.

Happy Humpday *smooch*

>165 Helenliz: Her "reasoning" was almost always suspect, Helen, because it was never reasoned out. Impulse and mood ruled her world.

LOL re: JFK.

201 Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect by Mick West

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Earth is flat, the World Trade Center collapse was a controlled demolition, planes are spraying poison to control the weather, and actors faked the Sandy Hook massacre….

All these claims are bunk: falsehoods, mistakes, and in some cases, outright lies. But many people passionately believe one or more of these conspiracy theories. They consume countless books and videos, join like-minded online communities, try to convert those around them, and even, on occasion, alienate their own friends and family. Why is this, and how can you help people, especially those closest to you, break free from the downward spiral of conspiracy thinking?

In Escaping the Rabbit Hole, author Mick West shares over a decade’s worth of knowledge and experience investigating and debunking false conspiracy theories through his forum, MetaBunk.org, and sets forth a practical guide to helping friends and loved ones recognize these theories for what they really are.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the most successful approaches to helping individuals escape a rabbit hole aren’t comprised of simply explaining why they are wrong; rather, West’s tried-and-tested approach emphasizes clear communication based on mutual respect, honesty, openness, and patience.

West puts his debunking techniques and best practices to the test with four of the most popular false conspiracy theories today (Chemtrails, 9/11 Controlled Demolition, False Flags, and Flat Earth) — providing road maps to help you to understand your friend and help them escape the rabbit hole. These are accompanied by real-life case studies of individuals who, with help, were able to break free from conspiracism.

With sections on:

the wide spectrum of conspiracy theories

avoiding the “shill” label

psychological factors and other complications

(and concluding with) a look at the future of debunking

Mick West has put forth a conclusive, well-researched, practical reference on why people fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and how you can help them escape.

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

My Review: Okay, I thought as I read The Twittering Machine, I've got the stakes clear in my head and I know where I fall in relation to the problem of social media's misuses by conspiracists. Now what?

The reason I love social media, in a nutshell, is: This book's existence would never have made it to my attention without social media, specifically bookish social media eg, LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Edelweiss+. I am clear enough on the issues created that I saw immediately how useful this book's message and techniques would be to me. This leads me to a confession: I am very much in need of help figuring out how to speak to conspiracists respectfully, or even just politely. My contempt and derision for and of them is part of what entrenches their adherence to these beliefs. How better to express one's rejection of being rejected than to double down?

Help me Obi-Mick West, you're my only hope, I thought as I began this read. My prayers were answered with a "sure, no sweat there, Grasshopper." (Have I used enough ancient-history media references to make my age obvious? I got more if you want 'em.) Author West is clearly in the business of debunking for a considerable span (see his amazing site Metabunk.org). He's lauded by the publishers of Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines, as well as producers of The David Pakman Show, The Skeptic Zone, and even The Joe Rogan Experience. He is, in short, in command of his material.

It’s also tempting to simply label conspiracy theories as either "mainstream" or "fringe." Journalist Paul Musgrave referenced this dichotomy when he wrote in the Washington Post: Less than two months into the administration, the danger is no longer that Trump will make conspiracy thinking mainstream. That has already come to pass. Musgrave obviously does not mean that shape-shifting lizard overlords have become mainstream. Nor does he mean that Flat Earth, Chemtrails, or even 9/ 11 Truth are mainstream. What he’s really talking about is a fairly small shift in a dividing line on the conspiracy spectrum. Most fringe conspiracy theories remain fringe, most mainstream theories remain mainstream. But, Musgrave argues, there’s been a shift that’s allowed the bottom part of the fringe to enter into the mainstream.

Finding someone else's words to make your central argument for you requires deep involvement in and command of the landscape you're describing. And describing the landscape is the first part of the task of teaching others what you know. An equally urgent need is to show the potential future debunkers what the stakes are, simply, directly, and convincingly:

These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, in terms of money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing citizens’ genuine participation in democracy.

–and–

Helping a friend break free from the spiral of conspiracism is not easy and it will take time. No matter how politely you do it you are still challenging some fundamental aspects of their identity. They will push back, and they may fight you. But it is an immensely valuable thing that you are doing for them. Freeing their minds from the burden of conspiracy theories and letting them see and participate in the world more as it really is. Do not give up. The stories in this book prove that people do get out with help.

What he does in the text that follows is provide simple and easily absorbed ways to get your embroiled friend or loved one to engage with you on their chosen "alternative facts" so you can get past the initial resistance that is inevitable. Anyone who seeks out alternative facts is already feeling lost, or powerless, or just fed up. The rabbit holes they fall down are coping mechanisms and become, like any group identification, part of their identity and sense of self and purpose in the world.

This is something literally all of us seek. Some choose religious affiliations to build social networks through; others politics; still others identity issues. All of us, without exception, build identities. It is here that Author West does something I very badly needed done: He states that conspiracists aren't stupid, as a rule, but simply lack a wide array of "relevant information sources." It can be fatal to anyone's objective thinking to limit the sources of information one consults...it reduces the opportunities to compare and contrast the sources' sources, so to speak. Do I trust Fox News? Not to tell me the truth; but I still engage with it, in a limited fashion, to learn what will be floating past my deck chair as the great liner United States sinks.

Where I got to after reading this book was someplace I really wanted to get: Accepting that, while I am sure there are conspiracies out there in the world, there are no reasons to accept conspiracies as the one true explanation for the events of the day. I think that belief, here reinforced, is the solid rock to stand on when speaking to people who aren't moored in consensus reality. It's a lot harder for me personally to engage with the people involved deeply in some of the conspiracy theories politely. That being a personal issue, rooted in my own mishegas, I didn't expect Author West's book to help me address it as much as it did.

Most people can escape the rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking because most people who get stuck down there are ordinary people like you and me. They are not, as a rule, any more or less crazy than the general population. People don't get sucked into conspiracy theories because they are mentally ill or deficient, they get sucked in because they watched some videos at a point in their lives when those videos resonated. They stay down there because they lack exposure to other information sources. They lack relevant facts, they lack context, and they lack perspectives on, and other ways of thinking about, the issues. These are all resources you can bring to them. The most effective way to bring that information to your friend is with honesty and with respect. Mocking and harsh criticism do not work because people push back when they feel threatened. Even if you feel their position is ludicrous, respectful disagreement works better than derision.

Simple. Actionable. Applicable to me, on a personal level. Maybe it can give you the support you need in resisting the encroachment of this dangerously misguided thinking deeper into the Body Politic of a threatened democracy.

202 The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience.

The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think.

Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

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

My Review: The author, a trenchant leftist social and political analyst, refers in his choice of title for this book to artist Paul Klee's watercolor painting, "Twittering Machine," from 1922:

Art critics have deeply divided opinions and interpretations of this small MoMA-owned piece of paper infused with artistic imagination, ink, watercolor paint, and gouache. Biomechanical pastoral, oppressive and unnerving enslavement of nature to the machine, triumphant use of machine for nature's purposes...it's not clear to anyone (except the Nazis who labeled it "degenerate art") what we should make of this cool-blue musically evocative strangeness.

In many ways, Author Seymour couldn't have chosen a better image to hang his leftist social analysis of social media on. The facts of modern social life are such that we're enmeshed in the internet to a greater degree than even when he was working on this book, or even when the publisher brought it out in September 2020...the middle of the crisis times of COVID-19's ongoing plague. I literally can not interact with the bureaucracies that control my life without internet access. My assisted-living facility has always provided wi-fi access and a bank of desktop computers...recently they've upgraded our wi-fi to better serve an increasingly online population of elders. This is the best time to think about the issues surrounding social media's impact on the societal world we all, regardless of age or level of active participation, live in.

If the social industry is an addiction machine, the addictive behaviour it is closest to is gambling: a rigged lottery. Every gambler trusts in a few abstract symbols—the dots on a dice, numerals, suits, red or black, the graphemes on a fruit machine—to tell them who they are. In most cases, the answer is brutal and swift: you are a loser and you are going home with nothing. The true gambler takes a perverse joy in anteing up, putting their whole being at stake. On social media, you scratch out a few words, a few symbols, and press ‘send’, rolling the dice. The internet will tell you who you are, and what your destiny is through arithmetic ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘comments’.

It is this weird truth that dictates our modern media landscape. It is a symptom and a cause, simultaneously. Gamblers don't gamble because gambling is available, they gamble because they must. Addicts aren't getting high, in whatever way they do so, because the means to do it exist; they do it because they must.

The Twittering Machine may be a horror story, but it is one that involves all of us as users. We are part of the machine, and we find our satisfactions in it, however destructive they may be. And this horror story is only possible in a society that is busily producing horrors. We are only up for addiction to mood-altering devices because our emotions seem to need managing, if not bludgeoning by relentless stimulus. We are only happy to drop into the dead-zone trance because of whatever is disappointing in the world of the living. Twitter toxicity is only endurable because it seems less worse than the alternatives. "No addiction," as Francis Spufford has written, "is ever explained by examining the drug. The drug didn’t cause the need. A tour of a brewery won’t explain why somebody became an alcoholic."

What this book does, and does well, is present the case that the social media landscape, while it requires social media to exist, doesn't exist in a vacuum but in an economic system that needs growth of use and therefore numbers of users to make its owners as powerful as they desire to be. The platforms offer us a digital space that enables connection and rewards separation from all but those we most want to be like.

Yet, we are not Skinner's rats. Even Skinner's rats were not Skinner's rats: the patterns of addictive behavior displayed by rats in the Skinner Box were only displayed by rats in isolation, outside of their normal sociable habitat. For human beings, addictions have subjective meanings, as does depression. Marcus Gilroy-Ware's study of social media suggests that what we encounter in our feeds is hedonic stimulation, various moods and sources of arousal—from outrage porn to food porn to porn—which enable us to manage our emotions. In addition that, however, it's also true that we can become attached to the miseries of online life, a state of perpetual outrage and antagonism.

What I enjoyed about this read was the sense that, in detaching his analysis from blaming Social Media™ and attaching it to the capitalist profit-motive driven mindset, he validated my sense that it's all, au fond, about greed...theirs for money and power, ours for meaning and purpose. The result is, as Elon Musk tweeted after his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter was completed last week, a situation in which a capitalist says that Twitter "...cannot become a free-for-all hellscape." I quibble with "become" in that sentence:

...if we get hooked on a machine that purports to tell us, among other things, how other people see us—or a version of ourselves, a delegated online image—that suggests something has already gone wrong in our relationships with others. The global rise in depression—currently the world's most widespread illness, having risen some 18 per cent since 2005—is worsened for many people by the social industry. There is a particularly strong correlation between depression and the use of Instagram among young people. But social industry platforms didn't invent depression; they exploited it. And to loosen their grip, one would have to explore what has gone wrong elsewhere.

How this Brave New Twitter will cope with the simultaneous free-speech absolutism of Musk, the capitalist need to growgrowgrow, and the social need to reduce harm to the people who make up the ailing Body Politic will be a fascinating collision to watch. Armor yourselves against the smaller pieces of social-fabric shrapnel with the wise words of a man of principle, intellectual clarity, and a powerful communication style.

I'll leave the last words to Author Seymour at his most openly anti-capitalist (thereby closest to my heart):

The internet's history also shows us that when we rely on the private sector and its hallowed bromide of 'innovation,' quite often that will result in technical innovations that are designed for manipulation, surveillance and exploitation.

The tax-evading, offshore wealth-hoarding, data-monopolizing, privacy-invading silicon giants benefit from the internet's 'free market' mythology, but the brief flourishing of Minitel shows is that other ways, other worlds, other platforms, are possible. The question is, given that there's no way to reverse history, how can we actualize these possibilities? What sort of power do we have? As users, it turns out, very little. We are not voters on the platforms; we are not even customers. We are the unpaid products of raw material. We could, if we were organized, withdraw our labor power, commit social media suicide: but then what other platforms do we have access to with anything like the same reach?

Wordle 501 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, INEPT It was a "gimme" today.

>168 richardderus: and >169 richardderus: *sigh* onto the TBR list both go. The former is, sadly, necessary in this day and age and applicable in both my personal and work life.

The latter sounds like a fascinating take on technology and social media that goes behind the good vs. evil that many make it out to be. Being Constantly Online is what we make of it - I'm VERY aware that what I put on Instagram is curated, not my whole life (it's funny, 'cause one of my friends asked me about posting book reviews, but I generally don't because that's when I get the *least* engagement). And I love that being able to Skype means that my niece and nephew know who I am and it's not a constant re-acquaintance when we visit a couple of times a year. But also, pile ons and doxxing and how much Google/Facebook know about me are real threats to privacy and more. I'm still on Twitter but don't know for how long as people I follow are leaving and I'm already locked down because people out there are piling on librarians for *gasp* allowing access to books by people of marginalized identities. And don't even get me started on how complicated it's gotten to be not online in some fashion - I end up having to help people at the library who don't have a computer, or don't have email, or don't have a smart phone and can't get into their email because everything wants to text them a code. Anyway. Seems like it would be compelling reading.

>171 bell7: It's a sad, terrible thing to watch the steady slide into sectarian violence that's occurring. The ideals underpinning the existence of libraries are, not for the first or probably the last, time under sustained attack. It's scary as hell.

Both those books were well worth reading. I would love to think that I'm capable of approaching people whose views I disagree with (eg election deniers) with respect and the desire to help but I am not that self-deluded. I want to scorn and humiliate them for being stupid and gullible (making me, at best, part of the problem I'm bemoaning). Best that I just stay shtumm in general and boost voices whose moderation I can only wistfully admire as I'm incapable of emulating it.

George Booth, he of Omnibooth, has died at 96.

I will miss his bizarre, off-kilter humor.

>161 richardderus: Your mother did not lie ... precisely.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Not much to say today, *smooch*

Hi RDear. Happy Thursday.

Still dark. Wordle in three. Coffee at hand. Onward! Upward!

*smooch*

203 Twitter: A Biography by Jean Burgess & Nancy K Baym

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The sometimes surprising, often humorous story of the forces that came together to shape the central role Twitter now plays in contemporary politics and culture

Is Twitter a place for sociability and conversation, a platform for public broadcasting, or a network for discussion? Digital platforms have become influential in every sphere of communication, from the intimate and everyday to the public, professional, and political. Since the scrappy startup days of social media in the mid-2000s, not only has the worldwide importance of platforms grown exponentially, but also their cultures have shifted dramatically, in a variety of directions. These changes have brought new opportunities for progressive communities to thrive online, as well as widespread problems with commercial exploitation, disinformation, and hate speech.

Twitter's growth over the past decade, like that of much social media, has far surpassed its creators' vision. Twitter charts this trajectory in the format of a platform biography: a new, streamlined approach to understanding how platforms change over time. Through the often surprising, fast-moving story of Twitter, it illuminates the multiple forces—from politics and business to digital ideologies—that came together to shape the evolution of this revolutionary platform. Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym build a rich narrative of how Twitter has evolved as a technology, a company, and a culture, from its origins as a personal messaging service to its transformation into one of the most globally influential social media platforms, where history and culture is not only recorded but written in real time.

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

My Review: The hashtag. The @. RTs and subtweets and "blue" (actually white) checkmarks. All of the detritus, or furnishings if one is feeling charitable, of social media are Twitter-invented or -popularized. It's a simple, basic idea, Twitter: Let people bloviate for a limited space (pictures added sometime in the 10s) about anything they want and let them find each other, build communities (and form lynch mobs), coordinate revolutions, all via the hashtag. TikTok was called Vine, and introduced by Twitter before their idiot management shuttered it. I got my Twitter account in 2007. Reading a tweet of mine is most likely why you're reading this review.

Now #MuskyTwitter is trending and this very concise book, only two-and-a-half years old, needs a second edition.

What I enjoyed most about the authors' treatment of the history of Twitter is that they were as focused as a good tweet-thread. They didn't succumb to bashing or whitewashing Twitter's many quirks. Aesthetically Twitter's changed itself, and the social-media world, the most. It's not like it's a design-heavy UI, right?

Wrong.

Twitter's look, and its effect on your engagement, is carefully calculated. It's part of a subtle message...stay, look, seek and find...that messages a deep sense of satisfaction with the activity itself, the results really are secondary to Twitter. So why is Twitter so awful at generating money from advertising? Ask Elon, he seems to know...but seriously, Twitter's main issue has always been about defining itself, when the authors contend (and I agree) that the three features in the first line of my review actually made Twitter a mutiple personality. There's a way to use each of those features to reinforce one's group identity...BookTwitter, HorrorTwitter, BlackTwitter...and thus make a broad-based ad-watching public pretty elusive. Creating ads for small, not-very-numerous communities isn't usually cost effective.

And here's Elon, steppin' into the buzz-saw. Heh.

What these Australian academics set out to do was set a protocol for biographizing (my ugly word, not theirs) technology. Take it innovation by innovation, look at the drivers of the innovations and the results from their adoption and/or morphing uses. They'll lead to larger conclusions about the platform, its users, and the social-media-verse we and they all exist within.

My idea of a well-presented technology book. Not too long, not loaded with tedious jargon, and not so basic as to cause me to wish it was just an owner's manual not an actual book. I liked the read, I liked the methods the authors used, and I enjoyed myself all the way through. (Except the endnotes, I didn't read those.)

Morning, RD! I've been lurking here every day but thought I should maybe drop a *smooch* so you'd know I've been by.

>178 katiekrug: Hiya Katie! I'm glad to see you today, on my "Twitter-book day."

*smooch*

>176 karenmarie: Onward and upward indeed with that Saturn-5 combo of coffee and Wordleing in 3! *smooch*

>175 FAMeulstee: That's a gracious plenty to say, Anita, and thank you for it.

>174 humouress: She was imprecise in all things, Nina, so I'm unsurprised she was there, too.

204 Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From New York Times opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, a firsthand account and incisive analysis of the role of social media in modern protest

To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today’s social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change.

Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE LIBRARY. USE THEM OFTEN, OUR PATRONAGE IS THEIR JOB SECURITY.

My Review: What with #MuskyTwitter becoming a real thing and then "reassuring" advertisers that "Twitter cannot become a free-for-all hellscape" while then saying that "Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise," all of which pretty much add up to something just like a hellscape to me, minus the "free" part.

What went right about this read for me as a reader was its blend of "I-was-there" anecdotal reports and a sociologist's academic assessment of what leads the riled-up masses to fail in achieving their aim. As they are not conflated, as in attributing to her eyewitness statements the weight and force of academic analysis, I found them mutually enriching to my read. I was equally convinced that the author was, in openly acknowledging her left-leaning bias and explaining why it informed her analysis, transparent in reaching her conclusions.

Since the advent of social media in the Aughties, we've undergone a startling tectonic shift in the public conversation about politics and current events. Loud voices (eg Alex Jones) predominate; their usually right-wing extremism (save the both-sides and what-about crap, it's more effort than I care to spend to debunk their fundamental wrongness politely) echoes and echoes while picking up force without ever gaining any meaning or truth. Alex Jones's lies about Sandy Hook are going to cost him nearly a billion bucks which he doesn't have, and is proof that Author Tufekci's central thesis is correct: Attention is the main currency of social-media movements, not information which was at the heart of previous propaganda drives. If Jones's grip on the attention of millions hadn't been so finely tuned and thus successful, the bogus information he was peddling would've vanished in its own ripples. Revolutionaries using social media to spread their word have succeeded insofar as they've grabbed attention and even inspired action based on it...but have failed to make consolidatable gains in opposition to their enemies because that step requires information to reach people ill-equipped to comprehend or act on it.

This last fact, evidenced by the failures of many current social-media-driven movements, are failures to create systems and get buy-in from the protestors. There are no "network internalities," a term I learned from reading the book that's basically the opposite of the well-known term "network externalities", derived from the easy and showy online "organizing" that barely outlasts the social media post. In olden days, when organizing was a rough and effortful slog of meeting after meeting after committee upon speech-giving bloviation, the fact that 500 people showed up to a protest said something very loud about how this message they organized around resonated with them. Now that the message is reduced to an attention-grabbing snippet to get your engagement to it in place of simply doomscrolling on, there's very little investment on the consumer's part.

Another signal failure on the reliance of protests on social media is the interruptibility of attention-based engagement as opposed to information-based buy-in. The model she uses for this is the Tea Party...an online scattering of loudly outraged racist scum (my term, not the author's) whose "movement" (in the same sense as "bowel" in my never-humble opinion) transcended the attention-based group's ephemerality by embracing older techniques of protest: accepting hierarchical thinking, coalescing their ideas into clearly stated goals, etc. They've been stunningly successful in fomenting their ignorant, evil, putrid "ideas" and getting mainstream buy-in for them. More's the pity. The strength they rely on for their success is pounding away at the attention-grabbing "messaging" while accepting the behind-the-scenes scaffolding of disciplined application of information-based knowledge.

It's a model for success against the effective countering of the attention-grabbing social media rebellion: Drown the attention out in a flood of irrelevant, often false, and designed to distract "information." It is a very effective technique, as current political tragedies have shown again and again. Records, as in "lists of factual things," are judged fake insofar as they disagree with the hearer's agenda, and thus require time and effort to deny, explain, or simply distract from in return. That's time not spent doing the real job. And that is he entire plan for success of the right-wing nightmare machine.

Academics aren't going to like this abbreviated treatment of the topics the author covers, or appreciate the absence in-book of notes and a bibliography. Lay readers aren't going to be thrilled that the author doesn't spoon-feed them conclusions that agree with their established prejudices. But if you invest in the author's central thesis, the revolution that can be televised is doomed to co-opting and failure, there is a lot to be learned from discovering why and why you should care. That's the point of the book. It makes its point very well indeed. And, as #Midterms2022 approach, it behooves us all as voters to learn what our manipulators want us *not* to see, to attend to.

NB there are hyperlinks to citations and definitions on my blog page.

Wordle 502 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, ALOUD Eight letters gone and two in proper position, well...it really does simplify the choices.

>177 richardderus: I’ve added Twitter: A Biography to my TBR. Thanks for the heads-up!

Karen O

>182 klobrien2: Oh yay! I hope you'll enjoy it. Thank you for stopping by!

>154 richardderus: I've got My Policeman on kindle, but haven't got around to reading it yet. Didn't realise it had anything to do with E.M.Forster though. Or that it wasn't a newly published book.

>180 richardderus: Saw this here, then saw it on FB (in case you're keeping track of where your posts hit), from your blog posting. Went out and borrowed it from my library. Couldn't get the biography one yet, but that looks interesting too.

>185 mahsdad: That's great news, Jeff! Thanks.

>184 SandDune: It's a dilly of a story, that one. I wasn't kidding when I said Mr. Styles attacked his part with verve...and they made a lot more of the 1950s because of him, I suppose. It's a good story!

>177 richardderus: *sigh*

"Since the scrappy startup days of social media in the mid-2000s,"

Yeah. Right. I got onto social media (not so identified) in 1985.

My memory suggests that the term "social media" was already in use by the early 2000s; livejournal was founded in 1999, and by the time I first encountered it (in 2002) I believe it was already called "social media".

The term's meaning was later changed, such that nothing before FaceBook counted, and (coincidentally?) nothing counted where the user had decent control over what they saw.

I'm not impressed with the publishers of this book. That may not mean it's a bad book though - innaccurate blurbs are probably normal. But this one pressed one of my buttons.

Wordle 503 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, PHOTO There was no other option in my vocabulary after those two letters in those positions with one misplaced correct letter being what it was.

205 The Body Falls (Inishowen Mysteries #5) by Andrea Carter

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Bridges Down—Roads Impassable—Killer Trapped

April in Florida and Benedicta (Ben) O’Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures during the last few days of a six month stint with a U.S. law firm. A week later, she returns to Glendara, Inishowen, where a charity cycle event is taking place. The town is abuzz with excitement, but it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event and stay overnight in the town. The rain doesn’t stop—it becomes relentless, torrential.

In the middle of the night, Police Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto a passing vehicle. It is identified as Bob Jameson, a well-known charities boss and the organizer of the cycling event. Stunned, the local doctor finds evidence of a recent snakebite. Terrible weather persists and soon bridges are down and roads are impassable. Glendara is completely cut off and since there are no native snakes in Ireland, could there be a killer trapped in the community? With no help from the outside world, it’s left to Molloy—with Ben’s assistance—to find out who is responsible for Bob Jameson’s bizarre death.

The novels in the Inishowen Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order.

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

My Review: I don't entirely agree with the publisher that these books can be read in any order. I myownself suggest that you begin at #1 Death at Whitewater Church, and progress in an orderly fashion to this one, #5. But that is, of course, merely a recommendation.

I think, though, that without having seen Tom Molloy the Garda sergeant and Ben develop their feelings for and about each other, I'd've missed a major pleasure of the series mystery. Going back to earlier books, knowing what's happened in this book, would negatively impact my pleasure in the read. After Ben's return from Florida, which is totally unexplored in this book but where groundwork has been laid for future troubles to come Ben's way, she gets right back to trouble in her parents' home: The Usurper, as she mentally refers to him, has moved in and taken over the day-to-day running of their lives. They met in a group for grieving parents that all belong to. Ben, jet-lagged and knowing she's out of line to speak about the living arrangement of compos mentis adults, still feels...weird...about the situation.

However, Inishowen and six months' absence-worth of work to catch up on the disposition of ring a loud bell. To her own mild surprise, Ben is really looking forward to her homecoming...it's really home, she knows after leaving it. The locum, Marina, and her legal assistant are no doubt going to need to spill a lot of tea. Yay! Except for the filthy weather forecasted for the whole of Ireland that she must pilot her Mini (befouled by having been lent without her knowledge or consent to The Usurper) through, this is a great day.

Oh Ben. Sweet summer child.

Based on the factual Irish flooding and resultant disasters of 2017, there's really no let-up of either rain or trouble for Ben, Inishowen, Tom Molloy, and a certain murdered party. (Whom I loathed from his first appearance. Though I found Author Carter's description of him perilously close to body-shaming.)

What mostly happens in this entry into the series is rain. Ungodly, Biblical-flood rain. Stuff falling over, people needing rescuing rain, and all of that's real. The author even points us, in her Acknowledgments, to national Irish papers doing the story in 2017. Everything that happens to the deadie happens because gawd let loose a strong stream of atmospheric water on Inishowen. How's that for a ready-made plot?!

What we get, in book five, is a reckoning of sorts between Ben and Garda Tom Molloy for their very tentative relationship's new course. I loved the way it led Tom, in extremis with the flooding, to resign himself to Ben's usual snooping...even saying at one point he needed the help given the tragic weather-disaster consequences.

As this book deals with someone being murdered whose murderer(s) I found delightful for their willingness to do it at all...cleaning the gene pool, I call it...that I was almost ready for an Orient Express solution. I didn't get one. Darn it. But instead there were more deaths to Inishowen's people revealed. I am always glad that the author does this for us, makes the characters matter to us and still tells the tough stories that require resolution.

I'd say this entry was the best in the series. I feel more clear about Tom and Ben and their whatever. And the ending makes me think there's a lot of mileage in the couplehood they have set course for. In many ways they remind me of Mr. and Mrs. North, the Lockridges' sleuthing pair, in their earlier adventures. I hope that vibe continues.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Friday.

>188 richardderus: I got it in three again today, too. Simple pleasures, eh?

*smooch*

>190 karenmarie: Hi Horrible. Happy Friday's-simple-pleasures to you, too!

*smooch*

>187 ArlieS: I am not sure what I am expected to say, Arlie. Sorry? Oh dear? I'm just at a loss how to respond to your statements and be a good host.

Good morning, and good weekend to you, Richard. I hope that your day starts well and grows better and better. I have fallen from the Wordle grace of 3, but I don't mind the 4 at all. Sometimes my words work well; I can't complain about today when they weren't stellar.

*smooch*

Un-spoilery GBBO thought after listening to the Sticky Bun Boys podcast: The challenges have always been juuust short of the real amount of time needed to complete them in a home baking situation. That's what makes it a competition! But here lately, the times have been A LOT shorter and the judges aren't making allowances for that...they set the times, and then tell the judges what they are, so these two baking professionals know there's no way to do a really creditable job in that amount of time!

I recall getting in "The Internet" in 1992 via Internet Relay Chat and posting on "Messages boards" via telnet through cranky 300 baud modems.

"LYNX" was the first text based "Browser" I used.

you told me then what The Internet would be like today I would have fallen down laughing.

Can't recall when i first heard the phrase "Social Media" .

Where is Bill Safire when you need him.

>194 magicians_nephew: Safire's dead. I again have no clue how, if at all, I'm supposed to respond to your reminiscences...I was high-school besties with @pooh, and @mudge snuck his handle off me...?

>163 richardderus: I look forward to Friday so that I can watch Great British Baking Show, and THEN come back to your thread and read the spoiler-y comment (thank you for "spoiler"ing it!) that you posted! Where do you watch it early? Is it on Youtube?

I am in agreement with your comments. It's just heartbreaking when someone has to leave, but they all seem to have such a sweet camaraderie and well-balanced thinking about it.

This is my first year watching GBBS, and I really like it.

Karen O.

Safire printed a long letter of mine in one of his Language Books, which gave me a spoonful of notoriety in some circles.

Just looking back at "Social Media" and the world striding behemoth it has become and the tiny little tin whistle it started out as.

>197 magicians_nephew: Tin whistle to stomping Godzilla in a generation...that's pretty typical of tech's adoption curve. A few rich people buy in, then it works out its teething problems, then the horror of wide adoption by the great unwashed and subsequent vile behavior amplification...see: telephony, horseless carriages, radio, television....

>196 klobrien2: It's down to (this is a serious spoiler) Janusz or Sandro for next week's elimination. I watch all my TV via a virtual private network. NordVPN is one such.

Currently they're re-running season 12 (last year's) of the GBBO here. Hmph.

ETA: I also appreciate you keeping the spoilers under spoiler tags.

>199 humouress: VPN, dearest.

>200 richardderus: I think I may have to succumb.

>201 humouress: It's pointless not to.

Well Richard, I totally bombed today's Wordle. I literally had the last four letters and couldn't figure out what the first letter was because I was in the middle of an anxiety attack. When I realized what it was after cheating (my husband told me), I just laughed at myself so hard.

All caught up!

Happy weekend reads, Richard!

'Morning, RDear. Happy Saturday to you.

Not much to say except that I did get the Easton Press books cataloged and have moved them into the Library, where they'll take up residence once I figure out shelving. Of course, then I'll have other books to move around. It's all good, though.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Wordle 504 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, CREAM, DREAM...I rejected "bream" because it's a fish's name and that struck me weird so....

>205 karenmarie: Ooohhh, book-arranging! So much fun. I know it pleases you as much as me, so "happy Saturday" has real force today! *smooch*

>204 figsfromthistle: Good heavens, Anita, you read the thread?! Wow. Well, you *deserve* a terrific day after that!

*smooch*

Good morning, Richard! I guess the top of the morning is gone, so "The rest of the day to you!"

In fair play, I Wordled today in 3, which I was able to do because my usual first word gave me 3 letters, one in the correct spot. My rule of play says that with 3, I must use them and not fish around with my second word - unless I get desperate. (I use "fish" on purpose because that one occurred to me too before I went alpha as you did.)

I saw this and thought you might appreciate it:

Bingo!

>210 weird_O:, >209 humouress: LOLOL

I lurve it!

>208 LizzieD: Morning (barely), Peggy! *smooch*

It just could not be the one we thought it might be. I'd be so verschmeckeled I'd never recover!

>209 humouress: - Oh, that is brilliant!!

Happy weekend, Richard! I hope that your weekend is going well!

>213 The_Hibernator: Hi Rachel! I hope it is, too. I can never tell until weeks later how things are going....

>212 jessibud2: Heh, I agree completely.

>209 humouress: Haha, good one!

Hi, Richard! Happy weekend!

>215 Storeetllr: Hi Mary! *smooch*

Posted in my planning-post spot >7 richardderus: above, as well.
***
Here we are in November 2022...thinking about 2023...and I'm already getting a weentsy bit anxious about my reading totals.

So so many DRCs to review. For 2022 I set a goal of 250 reviews of all sorts written and posted to my blog; blew past it, set 288; blew past it, set 320. I'll get there no sweat at all. So...*gulp*...given that reality, I've got to make next year a challenge as well, so...*gulp*...I'm setting my goal at 350 reviews of all sorts written and posted on my blog.

I haven't read that many books in a year since the 1980s when I was doing the school thing.

Well, it's my goal so I can always re-set it if I need to. But it does feel ambitious. That's a good thing, right?

I think you should go for 365 next year.

>217 richardderus: Stretching targets can be good, depends how much you might beat yourself up for not making it, should circumstances change. I'm rubbish at it, hence I don't set a numerical book goal anymore.

>209 humouress: *snigger*

>117 richardderus: & >180 richardderus: both look worth a look. Staying with twitter or looking around for other options?

Happy weekend. It's wet and miserable here, if that makes you feel any better. >:-)

Early morning greetings, RD, and happy Sunday to you.

>209 humouress: Heh. Clever.

>217 richardderus: Bravo for setting such a high goal. It is ambitious, and that is a good thing.

*smooch*

>220 karenmarie:, >219 Helenliz:, >218 The_Hibernator: I'm saving 365 for my stretch goal next year. I've pretty much written a book review of some sort every weekday this year. The idea of setting a goal of one a day upsets me so I'm going to wait and see how I feel as '23 progresses.

*smooch*

>220 karenmarie: Happy Sunday, Horrible! I'll coddiwomple your way to see what kind of sportsball you'll be watching today.

>219 Helenliz: Ha! Well, it's a dank day here though not at all cold. I've got my socials set up. I'm waiting to see if MuskyBoy decides to be extra about his hellscaping before I abandon fifteen years of work. Meantime, I'm off a-Tumblr-ing and even cranked up Faceblech in spite of my extreme distaste for That Fuck Zuck (whose 2016 Cambridge Analytica shenanigans I still regard as seditious). I just can't with Instagram. I really, really, really hate Instagram.

Wordle 505 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, STAGE, STALE Perfectly satisfactory result. Annoyingly I forgot to sign in yesterday so my streak-counter is back to 1! *sigh*

>222 richardderus: Your streak counter is one ahead of mine, Richard dear ;-)

>150 richardderus: Will revisit later.

>153 richardderus: As I was born May 1960, Itgink you have me with this one RD!

>224 Caroline_McElwee: Oh goody good good, Caro, I think you'll really appreciate this trip into the American South's recent past...EJ and Harrie are the loveliest people to spend time with I can conjure.

I'd love to hear from you about the thoughts you have.

>223 FAMeulstee: *there there, pat pat* It will tick up tomorrow, Anita.

>217 richardderus: My reading totals for the year are not what I expected - though I did hit 75, and am now at 83. Before my sister introduced me to That Game, 100 was going to be a shoo-in, and 125 likely.

If I'm still playing That Game in 2023, I may struggle to hit 75. So I'll change my criteria, to include rereads as legitimate ;-) After all, most people here seem to include their re-reads.

I'm also going to reduce the level of per-book detail I try to tabulate. I'm currently months behind on that tabulation, which rather suggests I don't really care. So I'll go back to little more than what I was tabulating in 2021.

Good luck with whatever goals you set. And remember, if you aren't enjoying your reading and reviewing, you might just be doing something wrong. (Really, that's a reminder for me, of course.)

>226 ArlieS: Very sensible reassessment, Arlie, and that's what we should all do often: Reassess. There's a reason to get detailed in your break-downs...but there's also a reason to let some of it go when it's standing in the way of other goals. And I couldn't agree more: One votes with one's feet. If something's fallen by the wayside, leave it there.

That Game does tend to obsess me, too, but it's not time I'd spend reading...it's not enough of my day to make that difference. ...Yay...? Maybe it's just easy for me...?

I'm hoping for 350 without a lot of drama next year now that I use my version of the Burgoine review. Three sentences would feel like a straitjacket to me! I'm more prolix than that, but it reminds me that I don't *need* to write a critical essay every time I sit down to write a review. I'm not A Critic, I'm a book reviewer.

Doing it wrong = not enjoying it is an equation I'd encourage every living one of us to post prominently!

Hiya, RDear. Happy Monday to you.

>221 richardderus: We watched soccer off and on all weekend. I bailed at halftime of the Panthers-Bengals game. Bengals were up 35-0. It ended up 42-21, but still. Dare I say I’m enjoying soccer more right now?

I’m glad you are stretching to 350, glad you’re not stressing to 365.

Oh, I might just add that I got Wordle in two today.

*smooch*

Wordle 506 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, BEGIN I'm well pleased with this one!

>228 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible, Wordling in 2 is maaahvelous, dahling!

Yeah...it feels scary enough to think of having 350 as a goal but one a day...!

Spend your Moon's-Day well. *smooch*

206 Death on the Pier by Jamie West

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A murder mystery playwright turns real-life detective when, during one of his plays, an actress is shot and killed, while an unsuspecting audience watches on.

This theatrical murder mystery debut from Jamie West introduces Bertie Carroll, one of the most successful playwrights of the 1930s, and his old school friend Chief Detective Inspector Hugh Chapman. Together they team up to see if they can solve the mystery.

During the performance, the audience watches former Hollywood star, Celia Hamilton, as she is shot onstage, unaware that a real murder is taking place. It’s only when the curtain falls that the cast realise that something has gone horribly wrong.

Did someone swap the bullets in the prop gun for real ones, without anyone noticing? The actress who fired the gun doesn't seem to have any reason for wanting her dead, but is she hiding something?

Together, Bertie and Hugh must unravel the clues as they interview their suspects. As they do, their own friendship is rekindled. But is there something from their own past that needs to be uncovered? Why did Hugh want to meet up after all these years apart?

The story is set in and around The Palace Pier Theatre in Brighton, which no longer exists. This "lost" theatre has been lovingly recreated in the pages of this book.

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

My Review: I do love Golden Age mysteries. This one, a modern author's take on one of the best tropes for a murder mystery set in 1933 I know of, satisfied me in almost all ways.

The play as the scene of a crime trope is one I genuinely love. All Star Cast, a Golden-Age mystery I read via the Internet Archive, uses the same plot with a few embellishments that, frankly, this book didn't need and doesn't miss. I was enchanted by Bertie, our PoV character, being so absolutely down-to-Earth and commonsensical...I think playwrights absolutely must be both those things or they simply can not do the complex and complicated job of telling a story while moving people around the stage without feeling clanky-creaky-affected. There's so much of that delight present here, even in the descriptions of the action.

What I also loved was Hugh's evident pleasure in Bertie's company. He's a senior policeman...he knows what's at stake in dropping as many hairpins as he does for Bertie to notice! But he still does it, and he still affords Bertie's insights and insider knowledge of the play (which he wrote) and the players (with whom he's acquainted) and theater's many strange, invisible-to-outsiders customs and crotchets that explain how the murder was accomplished.

I believe with all my heart that we'll see these two together in some fashion at a later date. (Especially after Hugh engineers that swim. He clearly wanted a look!)

Why the murder was accomplished, now, that was pure Golden Age stuff. I thought there was nothing left to surprise me in Mysteryland...but there certainly was. The motive for the murder was straight out of Ngaio Marsh! I loved it, because I was reading (by that time) as though I was in 1933. It's just delightful to get that level of buy-in out of an old, tired grouch like me. And to have a real Golden Age detective who is One of Us, a Friend of Dorothy's, a queer gent...appropriately discreet but unmistakably gay, as minor character Teddy proves in his bluff, blokey-jokey way.

I so delighted in this experience. The author's evident love for theater, and his perfectly achieved evocation of a theater in Brighton long gone, came clearly through. It felt as though I was not only in that vanished theater, but in 1933, and among actors exactly like the ones in the story. Murder at the Matinee can't come early enough in 2023 for me!

Morning, Richard. Of course, I returned from our trip with a cold but after laying low yesterday, I hope to rebound today. Nice to have Juno back. We missed our girl. We have officially become empty nesters too, with my son moving out, to live with his girlfriend. Yah!! I hope you are doing well, my friend.

>232 msf59: Ugh, the dreaded travel cold! I'm so sorry. Stay down, though. Nothing works better than rest and watering yourself heavily to get that cold under control.

Yay for the empty nest! Sleep! Sleep!

207 The Plotters by Kim Un-su (tr. Sora Kim-Russell)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the novelist dubbed "the Korean Henning Mankell" (The Guardian) comes a fantastical crime novel set in an alternate Seoul where assassination guilds compete for market dominance. Perfect for fans of Han Kang and Patrick deWitt.

Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind—a plotter—working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want?

Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library," Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women—a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian—Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot.

Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.

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

My Review: Oh, you're gonna love this:

As if it wasn’t ironic enough that the country’s top assassination provider was brazenly running his business in a building owned by an international insurance company; the same assassination provider was also simultaneously managing a bodyguard firm and a security firm. But just as a vaccine company facing bankruptcy will ultimately survive not by making the world's greatest vaccine but, rather, the world's worst virus, so, too, did bodyguard and security firms need the world's most evil terrorists in order to prosper, not the greatest security experts. That was capitalism, Hanja understood how the world could curl around and bite its own tail like the uroboros serpent. And he knew how to translate that into business and extract the maximum revenue. There was no better business model than owning both the virus and the vaccine. With one hand you parceled out fear and instability, and with the other you guaranteed safety and peace. A business like that would never go under.

–and–

“People think villains like me are going to hell. But that’s not true. Villains are already in hell. Living every moment in darkness without so much as a single ray of light in your heart, that’s hell. Shivering in terror, wondering when you’ll become a target when the assassins will appear. True hell is living in a constant state of fear without even knowing that you’re in hell.”

Witty, trenchant, and true. I would go so far as to say tendentious. The wonder of meeting Reseng is that his existence is so extreme, committing murders for a living, and yet so extremely simple. Show up at this place at that time and do your job...kill. Like working at a meat-packing plant or a fish cannery. People aren't in any significant way more important than cattle or catfish. In this hypercapitalist alt-Seoul, there's little enough difference paid to any even notional difference between them, when it comes to one of the Plotters making a meticulous and scrupulously untraceable plan to off the person they're being paid to murder.

Make no mistake, these are murders, and they are violent. Author Kim does not stint on the violence. What makes it different from all those ghastly Stieg Larsson clones is that it's not sexual violence. There's a modicum of sex, and even a brief interlude where Reseng, having gotten himself in the crosshairs of nasty competing assassins because his boss (and sole parent figure since he was orphaned) is getting shoved out of the business, explores domesticity. It's...bizarre. To him as well, which is why it doesn't last.

The whole novel unfolds at the strangest pace. If you've watched Squid Game or Parasite, you'll see it here: the off-kilter way pacing is handled for us calibrated to US norms. It serves the plot in all of these cases, and it makes this story's universe really *feel* genuine, lived-in, and solid. I think that's a major plus compared to most of the violent thrillers I've read.

What caused me to give the read four stars in place of another half was, in fact, the mismatch between the violence of Reseng's profession, his philosophical musings about it (I chose one illustrating what I'm talking about above), and the cool remove of his actions and reactions. These things don't work together as well as it seems to me others believe they do. It's like watching a Godard film with a boy you want to bonk and then not getting any after you've invested unrecoverable hours trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

For all that, this here's a terrific entertaining read. Alienation, outrage, warped filial devotion, blood and gore...all present and accounted for. It's a weird trip and I'm glad I took it.

I'm behind on threads (as usual. Love the cartoon in >173 richardderus:.

>231 richardderus: Added Death on the Pier to my TBR. Thanks for the heads-up!

Have a lovely week!

Karen O

>236 klobrien2: Thank you, Karen O.! I really hope you're going to love Death on the Pier. It made me feel like the author was channeling the Golden Age!

>235 thornton37814: Heh. Yep, that's a perfect cartoon indeed. I'm glad you made it around, Lori.

>231 richardderus:
You got me! You got me!

I have been reading some Golden Age mysteries of late. Mostly the reissues from the British Library and Poisoned Pen and they are fun non-threatening reads - which is something that I need right now since there is lots of turmoil going on in my life right now.

>238 benitastrnad: I think you'll really appreciate this read, then. It's such a warm-blankie of a read!

I hope the life-tsurres calms down a bit, Benita, so you can go back to swanning through your days unruffled and serene. (In other words back to...to...has life ever been that way for anyone?!)

I cannot add more mysteries, but I'll wishlist them, especially the pier one. Oh wait! I have Kindle credit and can get it for very little. Yay!

Good morning, Richard. Wordle in 6 for me today, and I was greatly relieved. I went by "begin" fairly early, but I was pronouncing it "BEG-in", which is not a word I know. The brain. The brain.

>240 LizzieD: Yay for credits to spend! It's well worth the investment, Peggy.

Heh...I've done that very thing on multiple occasions but I'm just too embarrassed to admit it, unlike you. Brava for a streak-extending day!

>231 richardderus: that sounds well worth an explore. Thank you.

>242 Helenliz: Oh yay! I hope it works well for you, Helen. The author's a West-End stagehand, so we know his craft presentation is accurate.

>60 richardderus: wow, is that you!!? Maybe it's because you are wearing white, but you look so different.
I'm glad you got your bacon though :) We are fans around here and got into the bad habit of daily bacon and eggs and hashbrowns during the 2020 lockdowns. It took us a good 18 months to get out of that particular daily breakfast habit. It was costing a bomb!

I got todays Wordle in three! (stoked)

>231 richardderus: Oh! Looks like one more for my TBR

>245 ArlieS: Oh excellent! I suspect you'll enjoy the way the theater is presented, and the subtleties of the author's clue-planting.

>244 LovingLit: Yup...me. I'm about 35-40lb lighter than pre-covid. It appears, after **months** of stuffing my face and eating snacks every single night, that I am gonna be a skinny old man. Who knew.

CONGRATULATIONS to Coach House Books & Suzette Mayr for THE SLEEPING CAR PORTER, a #queer #Black & #Canadian (got my almost-5* #BookRecommendation here: https://tinyurl.com/2p8sj6hk) being THE WINNER OF THE 2022 Giller Prize! Watch the shining moment here:
https://youtu.be/o_b9OK5b2R0?t=3248

Good morning, RDear. Happy let’s-hope-things-aren’t-as-awful-as-they’re-predicting-for-Democracy day.

>239 richardderus: I hope the life-tsurres calms down a bit, Benita, so you can go back to swanning through your days unruffled and serene. (In other words back to...to...has life ever been that way for anyone?!) I want to be swanning. All day, every day.

>247 richardderus: You got me on this book in late September, but I haven’t actually purchased it yet. Thanks for the reminder, though.

*smooch* from your very own Horrible

Morning, Richard. I decided to skip Rehab today, to rest up. We have some seasonal weather for a couple of days, one very warm one and then the bottom drops out for the weekend. Only in the 30Fs. WTH?

You got me with The Plotters. Sounds really good. Go Blue today! We NEED a big turn-out.

208 The Cold Summer (Pietro Fenoglio #2) by Gianrico Carofiglio, tr. Howard Curtis

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The summer of 1992 had been exceptionally cold in southern Italy. But that’s not the reason why it is still remembered.

On May 23, 1992, a roadside explosion killed the Palermo judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three police officers. A few weeks later judge Paolo Borsellino and five police officers were killed in the center of Palermo. These anti-mafia judges became heroes but the violence spread to the region of Bari in Puglia, where we meet a new, memorable character, Maresciallo Pietro Fenoglio, an officer of the Italian Carabinieri. Fenoglio, recently abandoned by his wife, must simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and the new gang wars raging around Bari.

The police are stymied until a gang member, accused of killing a child, decides to collaborate, revealing the inner workings and the rules governing organised crime in the area. The story is narrated through the actual testimony of the informant, a trope reminiscent of verbatim theatre which Carofiglio, an ex-anti-mafia judge himself, uses to great effect.

The gangs are stopped but the mystery of the boy’s murder must still be solved, leading Fenoglio into a world of deep moral ambiguity, where the prosecutors are hard to distinguish from the prosecuted.

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

My Review: The cold summer indeed...very cold for those whose Earthly remains could, thanks to massive bombs killing them, be measured in teaspoons. Author Carofiglio was, during that memorable summer that turned the tide against the Sicilian Mafia and its other regional affiliates, a working prosecutor fairly early in his career. His story, as told here, is one that truly feels like it happened exactly this way despite its being fiction. When one knows the author's history, it does inform the experience of reading the author's words. In this case, I've been on Team Carofiglio since I first discovered the Guerrieri series a decade-plus ago.

In this book's case, it's the second Fenoglio novel written but the first translated into English. In Italian, the first one's called Una mutevole verità or literally "A Changing Truth" but I'd probably call it "Slippery Facts" or something similarly indicative of dishonesty. It's a much shorter work and isn't about Fenoglio so much as about how a man in his position...a "foreigner" to the Barese he works with since he's from Piedmont-Savoy (basically France to the Southern Italians)...can see but not get what he's seeing. This outing, being about a gigantic trauma that shook Italy to its core, makes more sense to have come out first in the series.

The set-up for the story is Author Carofiglio's usual quiet, meandering walk through the detective's days as the crime is committed and he begins to look into the causes and results of it. About midway through, a huge shift happens. In this story, the shift is a break in the wall of silence around organized crime's activities. All it takes is one lousy creep afraid of getting punished for a particularly unpopular crime (child harm is a death sentence in most prisons around the world) to blow open the stalled cases he knows about.

Structurally, the way Author Carofiglio manages the case-breaking event in this book is to spend several chapters on the scumbag's interrogation. This isn't flash-fast, as I imagine you're thinking it might be. Italian crime fighting moves at a different pace and to a different rhythm than the US version. The cast of characters is different because the legal system is organized very differently, with responsibilities split in different directions. That, for my dollar, is one of the selling points of these books. I am absolutely enrapt in the cast of legal characters and eager to hear more about what they do and why they do it...I suspect Translator Curtis, having worked on a half-dozen or more Carofiglio novels in several series (as well as no series at all), is responsible for the ways some characters discourse explanatorily...as it sharpens the pleasure of being swept up in a very different world. That being something I look for, and forward to, in my reads, I'm happy as Larry while it's going on. YMMV, of course, so don't forget to account for your own tolerance for exposition when choosing these reads.

The reason I'm fond of Fenoglio, and I suspect I'd be fond of Author Carofiglio, is the way his policemen philosophize:

“I like finding out what happened. In so far as it’s possible. I like that people trust me and decide to tell me what they know, even in the most unexpected situations. I like it when what I do – and it does happen – gives a little dignity back to those who’ve lost it. It gives meaning to chaos.”

–and–

The problem is that we like to control everything: a stupid, pointless, unhealthy idea. We need to have the opposite attitude, accept the fact that nobody really has any control over his or her own life: that was what the barman Nicola, from the Caffè Bohème, had said to him once.

One day at a time. He had also added that it’s a good rule not to take anything personally. We think that everything revolves around us: both what other people do and what they don’t do. It’s almost never true. Things happen and that’s it; most other people are uninterested in us, for good or ill.

The quiet musings of Pietro Fenoglio, an intelligent man, as he works his way through the complexities of human venality and evil, demanding a reckoning for those not able to demand one for themselves. I like this pace, this path, and this person's journey. I will say that I found the bad actors all a bit interchangeable. I can't for the life of me remember one's name without looking it up to be sure I'm not misassigning another one's name to him. Nothing made by human hands can ever be perfect, can it. But very damned good, this one's got locked down.

>249 msf59: Hey there Birddude! I'm sure the rehabbers were grateful to you for not sharing your cold among them. And who knows which one of the animals might be susceptible to the particular virus you've got....It was almost 80° yesterday and today it's going to struggle to get past 55°, so *quite* the change.

I hope The Plotters works for you when you get to it. I was surprised to feel so completely invested!

I'm crossing all the crossables that the turnout makes me squeal not sob.

>248 karenmarie: Consider this the Goddesses' way of pants-kicking you to the Ammy cart, Horrible. It's a lovely book, a good story well-told, and a deserving Giller Prize winner.

209 The Measure of Time (Guido Guerrieri #6) by Gianrico Carofiglio, tr. Howard Curtis

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The latest in the Guido Guerrieri series.

The setting is Bari in Southern Italy. Against his own instincts, defence attorney Guerrieri takes on an appeal against what looks like an unassailable murder conviction. The alleged perpetrator is the son of a former lover. A taught legal thriller and a meditation about the ravages of time.

One spring afternoon, defence attorney Guerrieri is confronted with an unexpected spectre from his past. In her youth, Lorenza had been a beautiful and unpredictable girl with dazzling charm. A changed woman faces him in his office that day. The ensuing years have ravaged her appearance and embittered her mind. As if that weren’t enough, her son Jacopo, a small-time delinquent, stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. Her trial lawyer has died, so, for the appeal, she turns to Guerrieri as her last hope.

Guido is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza’s son, nor does he have fond memories of the way their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth. His old friend Carmelo Tancredi, a retired police inspector, and his girlfriend, the charming investigator Annapaola Doria are once again by his side.

A masterful, compassionate novel, striking a balance between a straightforward trial story—some say the purest distillation of human experience—and the sad notes of time as it passes and exhausts itself.

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

My Review: Last time we met Avv. Guerrieri, he was feeling his age and feeling Time's Arrow poking him between the shoulders. I think he, and Author Carofiglio, are winding down their association. That feeling is stronger having read this latest entry in the series.

As Guido reacquaints himself with the lyrics of "What a Fool Believes," he works his dogged best to ignore the ancient and life-changing on his side relationship he had with Lorenza while her son languishes in prison for a crime he swears he's innocent of. The trouble is he simply can't. I don't guess we ever can. Meeting someone special from long ago is inevitable, I suppose, but more often than not unsatisfying. It's Lorenza's son's bad luck to have a mother his new lawyer can't get over.

Yet get over her Guido does...it takes a lot out of an old-flamehood to go painstakingly over the present's ugly realities with her. And, lest you forget, Guido's feeling his age in many ways these days. When one does something, even does it well, for a long time there creeps in a staleness and a tedium to make the world just a bit darker all around. That's where Avv. Guerrieri is in his life, doing his dead-level best for Lorenza's sake and to satisfy his bone-deep conviction that everyone deserves the best representation possible. He knows young Iacopo did not get that. But...is he, after all, guilty? Could this just be time-serving, motion-going-through? It's an unnerving truth that Guido doesn't know. He just does not know.

Scary place for a defense lawyer to be.

At any rate, the story is told in vintage Carofiglio style...we are there, we are never kept in the dark about the developments that Guido himself isn't kept in the dark about. I am on record as liking this style of telling a procedural story, especially one that's set in a legal system very unlike the one I'm accustomed to by six decades' reading of mysteries. It's also interesting to me that Author Carofiglio (a lawyer by trade before becoming a writer and a Senator) goes through Avv. Guerrieri's speeches to the judges and, in real-time, gives us his second-guessing internal monologue. That is very much to my taste, and it's still in evidence (!) in this entry in the series.

Where I wasn't quite so enthused, though, was in the number of Lorenza flashbacks Guido indulges in. This woman was extremely formative for his life and his outlook on gender relations! I get it, the need to process that old baggage is deep. I felt, though, that it got in the way of my seeing Lorenza the mother of the accused, as well as Iacopo the accused himself. It was, I suppose the best way to say it is, both overdone and underpresented.

It wasn't a fatal blow to my pleasure in the read since I gave the book four and a quarter stars. I think it was effective at one of its jobs, to wit: Demonstrating Avv. Guido Guerrieri's increasing longing to retire, to find a life outside his living. He's worn a groove in his spirit doing this important, and satisfying, job. This case...its links to a past he doesn't want to dredge up but won't fail to look in the eyes...its unsurprising results...its ending that we saw coming because of course...it's all just another turn of the wheel.

Stopping and alighting are, I suspect, the next things Avv. Guido Guerrieri will do. If so, I'll miss him. But I completely understand.

Wordle 507 4/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, SLEEP, SPELL Interesting. I think I'd like a #3 for #4 these days.

>231 richardderus: Death on the Pier Sounds like buckets of old fashioned fun!

>234 richardderus: Yeah, you're right, I loved it. I'm going to resist the Italian crime fiction, but you got me with The Plotters

>255 swynn: *tsk* You should give Guido, or actually for you Pietro's probably a better choice, a shot before skipping away. The Plotters is truly something special, so I hope you'll get a kick out of it when its turn at the top of the pile comes.

Happy Election Day, Steve!

>254 magicians_nephew: It really is all that, and genuinely deserves your eyeblinks...trumpet loudly when you get there!

The elections will take precedence over my usual GBBO watching tonight. I'll catch up and make comments on Friday.

The elections loom large on the world stage, Richard. at least from the perspective of those close by.

I got to your post >150 richardderus: about your blog and thought I should come back when I had time to have a look. We all know how finding time is! I had a peak and my only comment was that while I liked that you posted the covers of the books in some cases the fact that there was no space between the cover and the type made it harder to focus on the words.

>258 Familyhistorian: They do, and should, given the footprint the country has in the world. Good news would be welcome, same-ol' same-ol' would be acceptable....

It's a good thing to know, Meg, and thank you for telling me. I'm not adept enough to get the border to fit where it should on the left-sided images. I end up with the covers on top of the text!

>259 richardderus: Blogger is not very user friendly when manipulating images! I rarely put the type beside the picture because of that. I put the picture on top. But my blog is based on genealogy/history articles rather than reviews which really work better with the side by side view.

I hear you about the election. We'll see what tonight brings.

>253 richardderus: Exactly the same path today, Richard, using my 2 starter words as you used your 2.

I was this wound up in '20 and sort of despairingly hopeful for the same result.

>261 LizzieD: We just can't get around it...great minds *do* think alike.

This isn't any fun at all, is it. I do so hate waiting.

>260 Familyhistorian: Blogger stinks, Meg. The Goog-holes who bought it really abandoned it very early on and are mostly keeping its doors open so they won't be physically assaulted for betraying millions of people. As soon as they can, they will simply let it rot.

>234 richardderus: Glad that one hit the mark, RD. Hope to get it finished by the year end myownself.

Wordle in 2 today (which is still your tomorrow).

>263 PaulCranswick: Hi PC, two! That's fabulous. I've had my 2day, unless I change my second word.

Ooo, yes, The Plotters is a worthwhile delight. Keep plugging.
***
I'm not going to post reviews tomorrow. The election is taking my attention for now.

I have read 5 of the books by Gianrico Carofiglio that feature Guido Guerrieri and liked all of them. I did not know that there was a 6th book in the series. I agree with you about the pacing of these books. They are very different from American or even Scandi or Nordic Noir. I do think that Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti series is much the same kind of pace as this series, but because Leon is American they are still very much American in pacing and storytelling style. Carofiglio is very different. I will have to put this new one on my wishlist, so thanks for letting me know there is a new one. I look forward to reading it.

Smooches!! : )

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Wednesday to you.

>257 richardderus: I used to enjoy watching election results. That got stopped dead in its tracks when baby Bush stole the election from Al Gore. Went to bed happy in the result, Florida in the bag, woke up to chaos. I now like to hide my head in the sand.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Wordle 508 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, RAINY *aaahhh*

>267 karenmarie: "Enjoy" is seldom a word I use about any part of the political process. I was pleased that NY returned our Dem governor to office. I was *ecstatic* that the scumbucket Oz and what's-his-face the denier lost in PA.

More concerned that Georgians failed to install Warnock for a second, and full, term yet. The MAGA moron they ran against him should be slinking back to babymama #11876 for a little comfort sex.

Flahdah...I really despair. Likewise Texas with its vile, hateful MAGAts.

Still, the Punditry are all quietly shocked that Biden pulled off an historic victory by not losing everything in a red wave.

>266 Berly: Berly-boo! How lovely! *smooch*

>265 benitastrnad: I never warmed to Brunetti for some reason. Maybe it's just that I associate Venice with clogged sinuses and itchy eyes? (Mold.) But I hope you'll give The Cold Summer a whirl, too, Benita. Fenoglio's a good companion, too.

>268 richardderus: Nice!

Happy Wednesday!

>271 richardderus: Happy Wednesday, Anita!

I finally revisited >150 richardderus:. I really like the theme option RD. Helpful if I remember who hit me with a book bullet, and the subject, but not necessarily the book title. Or if I'm looking for a particular topic and what to see if someone whose judgement I trust has reviewed anything of interest.

I note on my catalogue I purchased 8 books (book bullet scars) by you. One I have already read and came up to expectations. 2 near my reading chair to be wiggled in this year.

>272 Caroline_McElwee: I'm grateful for the input, Caro, thank you.

Eight! I'm not sure if that's a good record or not, but since you keep track I'll trust that it is. Happy Thursday (almost)!

>274 richardderus: - Definitely speaking to me here!

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

I am all caught up with my reviews. Now Frank can return some books to the library, when he does his last shopping round before his vacation. The refrigerator is well filled, so I can survive 4 days taking care of myself ;-)

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

>274 richardderus: Laugh out loud. I actually read a paper book yesterday and will finish it today for my RL book club meeting, Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. I will probably even write a real review for it. Sometimes I amaze myself. *smile*

And, *smooch* from your own Horrible

210 Blackwater Falls (Detective Inaya Rahman #1) by Ausma Zehanat Khan

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From critically acclaimed author Ausma Zehanat Khan, Blackwater Falls is the first in a timely and powerful crime series, introducing Detective Inaya Rahman.

Girls from immigrant communities have been disappearing for months in the Colorado town of Blackwater Falls, but the local sheriff is slow to act and the fates of the missing girls largely ignored. At last, the calls for justice become too loud to ignore when the body of a star student and refugee—the Syrian teenager Razan Elkader—is positioned deliberately in a mosque.

Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif of the Denver Police are recruited to solve Razan’s murder, and quickly uncover a link to other missing and murdered girls. But as Inaya gets closer to the truth, Seif finds ways to obstruct the investigation. Inaya may be drawn to him, but she is wary of his motives: he may be covering up the crimes of their boss, whose connections in Blackwater run deep.

Inaya turns to her female colleagues, attorney Areesha Adams and Detective Catalina Hernandez, for help in finding the truth. The three have bonded through their experiences as members of vulnerable groups and now they must work together to expose the conspiracy behind the murders before another girl disappears.

Delving deep into racial tensions, and police corruption and violence, Blackwater Falls examines a series of crimes within the context of contemporary American politics with compassion and searing insight.

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

My Review: Look at that rating above. Now, listen to me: I am heartily sick of reading about men who abuse, rape, and murder girls. It's imagery I don't want in my head...real life provides more than enough examples of this disgusting, evil, inexcusable, reprehensible thinking and behavior.

Now are you more impressed that this story earned four stars from me?

Author Zehanat Khan is a talented wordsmith, and a very adept plotmonger. Her hate crime in this story is so extremely nauseating to me that I seriously thought about just not going forward with the read. A young Muslim immigrant girl's body is found crucified on the doors of a local mosque.

That was it for me. I closed the Kindle and just barely didn't delete the DRC. But, as people I know posted reviews that were equally appalled but full of praise (though sometimes they intended it to be condemnation), I thought I should pick up the read. I'm not pleased I did, but I'm glad I've read it.

I am in sympathy with Author Zehanat Khan's politics so I didn't feel it necessary to whinge about them. Her deeply felt disdain for the evangelical christian congregation in this story is short of the religion-blaming game that so many "christians" indulge in (despite their own "savior"'s injunctions not to judge others). I was pleased by that. I'd've been equally pleased had she indulged in christian bashing, though. The fact that she has Inaya ruminating on the *people* who committed this heinous act is a step up from the run-of-the-mill thriller.

The girl-posse that works together was, I suppose, fan service. It didn't make me feel any warmer towards that gynergy-celebrating stuff. It also led me to wonder if, in her authorial haste not to bash men as a whole, she hadn't rushed the possible romantic stuff she's hinting at between Inaya and Lieutenant Seif. It feels too soon to me. I want to get to know her as a person before thinking there might soon be a part-of-a-couple vibe.

More especially I want to see Inaya grow into her own powers as an investigator. This is a rookie's case. Let her get past this, move into a more confident footing, before saddling her with a man. That isn't what's going to happen, it seems, but it was an issue I felt needed to be addressed in my four-star review...as you're beginning to see, I liked the read but wasn't mad for it. I rated it higher than my first instinct said to rate it because it's very important to make these kinds of crimes public. I don't, as said above, like reading about violence against women. I am rather fond of a fair few women and don't wish to think of this kind of horror being perpetrated on them. But it's not like it doesn't happen, and disproportionately to immigrants and women of color; swallowing down my visceral disgust for the kind of sick fuck who could conceive of this crime as an act to be brought to fruition is necessary.

We need, as a society, to have the horrible, painful conversations that are the only way to get past the us-v-them divides that animate these haters. Books, novels most especially, are the premier way to give us permission to discuss hate and its dreaful consequences. I hope a few of y'all will see that opportunity and seize it.

Wordle 509 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, UNITE Another near-gimme day.

>277 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! *smooch*

So you're liking the Backman? I'm glad. A real review is either love or hate and it doesn't sound like you're hatin' on it....

>276 FAMeulstee: That's the perfect result...books reviewed, out of the house, and the fridge stocked. You are truly set for the impending holiday!

I'll be by shortly to read your newest.

>275 jessibud2: Heh. I am so not surprised.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. It was nice getting out with my birding buddies yesterday and since Sue is still under the weather, I have Jackson duties today. Grueling, I know. It will be in the 70s today, if you can believe it but it drops to the 30s for the weekend. That is November for you.

>274 richardderus: LOVE IT!

>281 msf59: I think this weather's more what we used to get in October! I'm a little worried...this phase of climate change is the part where we get to move two states south without even budging, and that's not to my taste at all.

Glad the birding went well, and *there there, pat pat* for having to take Sue's Jackson time away from her (which is how she sees it I'll bet cash money!).

Hi, Richard! I’ve been lurking and thought I would pop in just to let you know you’ve hit me with at least two, maybe 3, BBs, though I’m not sure about Blackwater Falls. Not sure I have the emotional bandwidth just now.

>284 richardderus: Whee! I'm a Book-AR15 these days. I'm sure you'll want to read Blackwater Falls one day, Mary, but maybe not just now. See if it gets sale-Kindled in a few months.

*smooch*

Just dropping off some almost-the-weekend-smooches.

>282 richardderus: I'm ahead of you on dreading the 2-state move down with climate change. SE NC is too hot and humid already. Do not give me Florida. Just reading in my current Slow Horse book that the extreme edge of climate change deniers think the whole thing is government control-the-weather-as-a-weapon gone wrong.

I came to say congrats on your 3, a shade less easy than my gimme and to add that I'm loving EJ and Harrie in the small bits I've gotten to so far. Thank you!

>286 LizzieD: Yay! I'm so glad you're liking EJ and Harrie! The whole Slow Horses series is really calling to me.

I'm really pleased with my 3day. It makes up for living in Pennsylvania now. *sigh*

>285 MickyFine: Hiya Micky! *smooch*

211 Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here comes an exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever.

Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them. Satanists, kidnappers—the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The art that brought Frankie and Zeke together now threatens to tear them apart.

Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge—famous author, mom to a wonderful daughter, wife to a loving husband—gets a call that threatens to upend everything: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she’s so carefully built?

A bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.

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

My Review: Nothing to See Here was a solid 3.5-star read for me. It was entertaining and I got a few moments of real emotional involvement. I didn't think I'd go looking for more of Author Wilson's work but the Universe had other ideas...Ecco offered me the DRC and, being game as well as greedy, I hopped on it like a hen on a junebug.

Frankie Budge is a teenaged girl with a serious boredom problem. She's a Coalfield, Tennessee, girl who's smart enough to be a novelist in training and bored enough to do anything to stave off the screaming meemees. She's got triplet brothers whose lives will clearly end in tears, prison sentences, and severe emotional damage. Her father's left his family for another woman, and her mother...cruises...she lets Frankie be her own weird self because, well, triplet boys on the way to prison require more than a single working mother actually has to give. Yay for Frankie! Then she meets Zeke, a new kid with no friends.

Zeke's dad was a horndog, too. (Is this something Author Wilson knows about from personal experience, one must ask oneself.) Zeke apparently decompensated all over the guy in the middle of his office. Well, that's what his mom says...he can't remember any of it. Oh, and this is important: He's so freaked about the whole nightmare that he's decided to rename himself "Zeke" short for his middle name, Ezekiel. He and his mom are staying in Coalfield, where she was from. And that's how the match met the gas....

Y'all remember the 1980s Satanic Panic era? All that horror, all those lives ruined...well, in her gawky attempt to connect with this boy she likes, Frankie made the error to end all errors...she showed him a Xerox machine her brothers had stolen from the high school's shed. With toner and paper and everything...and she lets Zeke fix it, using the loveliest phrase for a paper jam I've ever heard: "like the machine had done origami"...so thus begins one of the major Satanic panics moved all the way up in time to 1996.

Their use for the photocopier is to make an art project (after Frankie uses it as an excuse to cop her first-ever kiss from a boy who's never kissed a girl either) of a poster—a drawing Zeke does after she writes “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” on a piece of paper. Then the Xerox comes into play...she comments in her narrative about them being kids from Nowheresville and never having heard of Andy Warhol so they were inventing this new thing together...and, after making a bunch of them, Frankie puts them up all over Coalfield.

Hijinks quite horribly ensue.

The inspiration of some older teens to play off this mysterious and compelling artwork, using it for their own ends, and the horrors that any powerful thing can call forth when it's anonymous and unclaimed, break the entire town. Frankie and Zeke are kids. They're way too scared to face up to the consequences (some truly terrifying) of their innocent actions. And that is where I realized I was a lot more involved with this story than I ever was with the first book of his I read. I circled back and read "On Writing Now Is Not The Time to Panic", Author Wilson's introductory story of how this book has been moving inside him for a long time. He spoke directly from his heart, revealed his genuine grief that finally summoned this book into the world after the decades of growing, and I was utterly changed. A story I'd thought was pretty good became a moving, honest act of love for a past and a life he was no longer living. And that made my pleasure multiply many-fold.

What it means to my old-man self to see someone as young as Author Wilson contend with the doomed promise of nostalgia, to confront the power of a past one can never reach but must always reach for...well, that spoke to me. That made me feel I was heard and understood by a complete stranger who couldn't pick me out in a line-up of Boomers. I am validated by this evidence of my sad, wistful knowledge of the ghost-hand of the past clutching with steel talons in someone young enough to be my child.

Then what the hell happened to that fifth star, it's fair to ask. Welllll...I'm really not sure it's fair to say, he said, glancing at the ever-present truncheons of the Spoiler Stasi. I'm not a big fan of the way the pressure to dredge up her past with Zeke, now going by his first name again, entered Frankie's life, and the things it led her to do were understandable but frankly disturbing to me. I felt she was violating boundaries for selfish reasons. It's not like she needed to do something she did the way she did it...the knowledge could've been gained less invasively...but here we are. I've only docked a quarter-star and I'm pretty sure the sales won't suffer because one no-name blogger was squicked out at some stuff that most of y'all (who never had your boundaries utterly disregarded by a woman) won't notice.

I'm still glad I read the book, you can see. I'm especially delighted by a piece of mother-daughter healing that spoke loudly to me. And you know, that is more than enough of a gift to take the slight sting of imperfection off my eyes.

I'm very much looking forward to reading the new Wilson.

*smooch*

Excellent reviews, as always, Richard. I might read the new Wilson, but I'll steer clear from Blackwater Falls. Just reading a straightforward recounting of the crime is enough; the book would be too much.

'Morning, RDear.

As always, I love your reviews. Neither appeals right now, but then, not much appeals right now besides romances/romance-thrillers.

However, I did finish up Anxious People yesterday in anticipation of book club @ 11 a.m., but then remembered that we switched book club back to Sundays, this time 2-4 p.m. Sigh.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

I'll just stagger away with yet another BB, this one with K. Wilson's name on it. Onto the wish list it goes!

I wish you just the Friday you want. I wish us rain!

*smooch*

>292 LizzieD: Such a lovely wish, when granted to another, less evil-souled person..."just the Friday {I} want" involves mass deaths from exploding brains and eternal torment for orange persons to be enacted publicly and on all Fox-affiliated channels in perpetuity.

But hey, it's not likely to come true, so we're safe.

>291 karenmarie: Well, having it in the bag a few days early won't hurt a thing, now will it? It's a good thing it left a good impression on you or the few days between finishing and discussing would be filled with anxiety instead of anticipation.

>290 bell7: You should VERY MUCH AVOID that one, Mary, from giddy-up to whoa there's stuff in there that you won't be able to cleanse from your brain. Not a read for you.

At all. Ever.

*smooch*

>289 katiekrug: You will *batten* on the new Wilson, Katie, like a tick on a fat dog. So yay! *smooch*

The new thread is up, y'all! https://www.librarything.com/topic/345752