Arlie's Reading Continues

I'm Arlie, 65, newly retired software engineer. This will be my third year of the 75 books challenge.

I read about half-and-half fiction and non-fiction; the former mostly SF/Fantasy, and the latter mostly science, technology, and history, with a bit of biography and economics thrown in for extra flavor.

I mostly read in English, but am capable of reading French and German after a fashion, and very occasionaly pick up a book or a band dessinée to help me retain my less-than-stellar linguistic abilities.

I'm Canadian, but live in California, USA, where I moved in pursuit of career opportunity in 1997. My household consists of two retired adults and one aging dog. We also feed an ever changing menagerie of stray and feral cats.

The character of the books I read has changed somewhat since retirement. I no longer come home from work mentally exhausted, fit only to read a lightweight novel or play a mindless computer game to unwind. So I'm reading rather more challenging non-fiction, and rather less mindless escapist fiction. I also seem to be spending less time reading than I did in the first months of retirement, and the year of illness preceding that - I have time and energy for other activities.

Those activities include playing bridge, cooking more than I ever had time for, playing computer games, reducing the amount of stuff in our home while reorganizing what remains, and helping my body recover from at least 5 decades of spending most of my time at a desk. (Yes, I count that starting in my teens.)

My rules

In past years, I've counted only books I read from cover-to-cover in the relevant year for the first time. No rereads, and no books started Dec 31 of the previous year, or finished Jan 1 of the following year.

This year my only rule is that the whole book must have been read, part of the reading must have happened in 2023, and I can't count the same read for multiple years - it's either 2023 or 2024, not both, unless I read it twice.

I'm making these changes because:
- I'm likely to read less this year, but would still like to reach 75. Counting rereads might make the difference.
- I found a job lot of books in my to-be-read shelves with bookmarks in them. If I finish them without a complete restart they wouldn't count under my prior rules, and I'm afraid that might discourage me from picking them up again.
- It's more consistent with everyone else's practice.

Rules Addendum (3/18/2023)

When a book has a large excerpt from some other book at the end, as a teaser for something else by the same author or publisher, I don't have to read or reread the teaser to count as having read or reread the book, even if the page count includes the teaser.

My Rating System

5. Excellent. Read this now!
4.5. Very Good. Well worth rereading.
4. Very good, but not quite 4.5. Likely reread.
3. Decent read, but not special in any way.
2.5 Why did I bother finishing this?
2. Did not finish.
1. Ran screaming, and you should too.

Links

My 2021 thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/328797
My 2022 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337717
My 2022 thread, part 2: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341510

Book List

1. Hopes and prospects by Noam Chomsky
2. The eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
3. 1637 : the Transylvanian decision by Eric Flint and Robert E. Waters
4. The perfectionists : how precision engineers created the modern world by Simon Winchester
5. The serpent by David Drake
6. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff
7. Ranks of Bronze by David Drake (reread)
8. The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber (reread)
9. Foreign Legions edited by David Drake (reread)
11. Frontier wolf by Rosemary Sutcliff
12. Into the West by Mercedes Lackey
13. White Trash : The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
14. The case of the spellbound child by Mercedes Lackey
15. The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber (reread)
16. The Economics of Inequality by Thomas Piketty
17. March Upcountry by David Weber and John Ringo (reread)
18. The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff
19. Sea power : the history and geopolitics of the world's oceans by James Stavridis
20. March to the Sea by David Weber and John Ringo (reread)
21. The great divide : unequal societies and what we can do about them by Joseph E. Stiglitz
22. March to the Stars by David Weber and John Ringo (reread)
23. Saving capitalism : for the many, not the few by Robert B. Reich
24. We Few by David Weber and John Ringo (reread)
25. The 99% invisible city : a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
26. 28809376::Shenanigans edited by Mercedes Lackey
27. Kindred : Neanderthal life, love, death and art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
28. Why we fight : the roots of war and the paths to peace by Christopher Blattman
29. Decluttering at the speed of life : winning your never-ending battle with stuff by Dana K. White
30. 24739544::Into the Light by David Weber and Chris Kennedy
31. 28763911::What price victory? edited by David Weber
32. 27670670::Boundaries : all-new tales of Valdemar edited by Mercedes Lackey
33. A people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn
34. 1637 : the coast of chaos by Eric Flint and many others
35. Survival of the sickest : a medical maverick discovers why we need disease by Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince
36. Isolate by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
37. The son also rises : surnames and the history of social mobility by Gregory Clark
38. Councilor by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Pearl Ruled Books

1. Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life by Karen Rauch Carter
2. How to be a star at work : nine breakthrough strategies you need to succeed by Robert Earl Kelley
3. The gordian protocol by David Weber and Jacob Holo

Spare

Happy to be first, Arlie. Wishing you a comfortable reading year in 2023!

Welcome back for another year, Arlie!

Hiya Arlie! First full year of retirement, yay!

>9 PaulCranswick: >10 drneutron: >11 richardderus: Thank you all. It's going to be fun.

>2 ArlieS: Happy new thread! I totally agree with your new rules. Wishing you happy reading in 2023. : )

>13 Berly: Thank you, and wishing you the same.

Hi Arlie, I've starred your thread.

>15 kgodey: Hi and welcome. Is your thread up yet? I can't find it, but since I'm pre-caffeine, that might not mean anything.

>16 ArlieS: Yes, here it is: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346783. I haven't been advertising it yet, I only just posted on the intro thread.

Starred you for 2023

>18 SandDune: Welcome aboard for another fun year!

I seem to have somehow already managed to star your 2023 thread, but without leaving a comment. I bet I was half asleep.

Hope you have a year full of great books!

>20 thornton37814: And you likewise.

1. Hopes and prospects by Noam Chomsky

This is a collection of essays, mostly based on speeches and presentations, highly critical of the United States' behaviour in the rest of the world, with emphasis on South America and the Middle East.

Boiling down the contents to a few themes, which began to repeat on me:
- United States foreign policy is hypocritical. When a non-ally does something that the US or its allies routinely do, it's taken as a valid casus belli; when the US does it, it's a good thing.
- United States foreign policy - and much of the rest of its government actions - are entirely based on what the monied elites want, with recent emphasis on the financial industry in particular
- The US talks about "democracy", but only accepts elections that produce the results they want; otherwise it's time for sanctions and/or coups
- The US routinely violates international law (which, by implication, should be sacrosanct).
- Lots of relevant examples are available as they happen, e.g. on the AP newswire, which are not reported by the US press

The rest was specific examples. Much of the material about South America was relatively new to me. I'd like to know more, but suspect I might have to improve my Spanish to get any detailed information.

The material about the Middle East was more familiar.

The book has footnotes, which is especially important in a book that's basically one long string of "people I obviously detest did bad thing X", "their allies, who I also detest, did bad thing Y", "they lied about bad thing Z", ....

Unfortunately, I can stand only so much "Bad! Bad! Bad! These people are Bad!" Worse, I have an intuitive heuristic that says "if it reads like a campaign advertisement or other polemic, it's almost certainly false and/or misleading." I was constantly fighting this heuristic and reminding myself that style doesn't always indicate the quality of the substance - particularly in a case where much of the material started out as speeches to people with similar beliefs. (Much of what I've seen from televised excerpts from US nominating conventions has been far far worse.)

I rate this material as suggestive and worthy of research, which would unfortunately be quite difficult for me to perform, but not to be trusted without both fact checking, and reading his political opponents' take on the same events.

My personal belief is that the American behaviour is both deplorable, and well in the normal range of state behaviour, particularly the behaviour of powerful states. This author is particularly down on the US, rather than e.g. China (present), the USSR (recent past), Great Britain (less recent past) etc. because they are his "us", and he wants them to match the values they preach, which he probably once naively believed. Most of the specifics he provides are probably true, but will have been selected to support the positions he takes. Etc.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, foreign affairs, series: n/a, 2010
- Author: male, American, born in 1928, academic (linguistics) and political activist , author previously read
- English, public library, 327 pages, 4 stars
- read Nov 25, 2022-Jan 1, 2023; book not previously read

Note that because I didn't manage to complete this book in the year I started it, I would not have counted it as one of my 75 reads according to my 2021 and 2022 rules.

>22 ArlieS: Man oh man... you are very much to be admired for *not* dnf-ing that (impolite word) but I'll say, biased, tedious exasperating set of essays.
And for sure, count dnfs when you've read enough to feel you can evaluate them.

I starred your thread, btw. Thanks for hanging out in my neck of the woods to say howdy.

Happy new year Arlie!

>22 ArlieS: Wow Chomsky is a pretty heavy start to the year, Arlie. I read one of his polemics once and I won't try another.

Excellent comments on the book and they mirror my own impressions of Chomsky’s work. Thanks for the review, I enjoy your straightforward and clear approach to reflecting on writing.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, Arlie!

HAppy reading in 2023. I don't think I have read anything by Chomsky......

Happy New Year, Arlie. I hope 2023 is good to you.

Dropping off a star for you, Arlie.

>23 SandyAMcPherson: I sure wouldn't want a steady diet of books like that one. But it can be good to get a broad range of input. Have you got a 2023 thread up? If so, I failed to find it.

>24 quondame: Happy new year to you too. And I've dropped a star on your thread.

>25 PaulCranswick: It was supposed to be my 99th book for 2022, but I was still reading as the New Year rolled in.

>26 Finn8: Have you got a thread up for 2023? I've so far failed to find it, and anyone who agrees with me is likely to be a great source of book bullets ;-)

>27 ronincats: Happy new year backatcha

>28 figsfromthistle: His work on linguistics was ground breaking - but to be honest, Steven Pinker's book on the subject is probably easier for a lay reader, and incorporates some later work. His political work OTOH is non-academic activism/polemic.

>29 Berly: Happy New Year!

>30 BLBera: Same likewise.

>31 MickyFine: And I've just found and starred your 2023 thread

>22 ArlieS: Even when I agree with Chomsky I think he is just another antiquated windbag, and a little goes a long way.

Friends of mine used to go to MIT and they would sneak me into Chomsky's lectures. Now I fear I would be more interested in someone helping to sneak OUT of there.

>32 ArlieS: Our group admin is Jim Henson (drneutron), and he creates the thread book here, where you can access by username the link to anyone in the 75-challenge group with a Talk thread.

I'll go look on my thread to see if you've visited. I haven't spent much time on LT today... and the talk explodes in the first couple weeks.

>36 SandyAMcPherson: Oh! I had no idea there was such a handy index.

I did find your thread, and even comment. But this way will be so much easier in future.

>36 SandyAMcPherson:, >37 ArlieS: Along with the Threadbook, there's also the group wiki, here. It's got links to all the non-member, group-related threads like group reads and challenges.

It's been an exciting week. Big rain storms with lots of wind. Four power outages so far, ranging from 5 minutes to around 10 hours. One of my computers didn't survive the power instability, so I've been shopping for a replacement rather than reading - my Mac Mini can do a lot, but not everything the old linux box could handle, so I need a new linux box.

There's another rain storm predicted for this afternoon; it's supposed to be milder than the earlier one(s), but the ground is saturated, so flooding is a near certainty - fortunately not right where I live, but everywhere that had problems the last time, and maybe a bit more. Cleanup from the earlier wind and rain is not yet complete - there are doubtless plenty of trees that would have been fine with *only* today's storm barely hanging on after the earlier one(s), just about ready to drop yet another branch on a power line, or fall over onto one with only a tiny bit of bad weather. And then there's the potential for landslides and associated road closures - again, not likely to affect me directly - I'm on flat but elevated land. But repair crews will be working overtime, and they probably haven't fully recovered from the earlier storm.

The good news is that I can read during daylight without need for power, even when it's a dark day because of clouds and rain. Posting and keeping up on other people's posts is not so easy ;-) I may have to declare "bankruptcy" and not even try to catch up on what other people have posted.

Times like that where I wish there was a “mark read” option on threads to do a reset.

I hope the situation isn’t too bad for you!

>39 ArlieS: This is a land of tropical storms, the like of which I had never seen in the UK and we have had it tough with flooding and deaths due to landslides recently.

I hope that your storms are not quite so dramatic, Arlie, and that you are safe and dry and warm.

I hope the weather stabilizes, Arlie! We have a UPS for our home server so that we have time to shut it down properly. Power outages are rare, but we depend on it too much to take chances (we host our own email, etc.)

>40 drneutron: I would find a "mark read" option very useful. I sometimes simulate it by opening up all the threads with notifications in new tabs and closing them immediately without reading anything.

>40 drneutron: It's been less bad than I expected since I posted that comment, though we're due to start another round today.

>41 PaulCranswick: I don't think we've quite reached Malaysian standards of rainy season weather, fortunately. Though who knows what climate change will eventually bring us ;(

>42 kgodey: I used to host my email on a home server, but moved it into the cloud when I was going through a period of internet instability. One of my better decisions; DigitalOcean does a good job of keeping things stable, even with my also-ran system administration.

And I really need to replace the UPS I used to have, which died, presumably of old age, some time before all this. It's currently functioning only as a surge suppressor - and perhaps not all that well in that function either.

>43 ArlieS: Glad to hear you approve of the job DigitalOcean is doing for you - I own the stock!

>40 drneutron:, Jim, how is"mark read" different to the "Mark as read to here" (available at the bottom of every post)?

>43 ArlieS: here's hoping your severe weather doesn't deliver a big wallop. Especially high winds and flooding.

>45 SandyAMcPherson: What I'd like is the "mark as read to here" without having to open the thread first. There are a bunch of threads I follow, but don't have to look at every time I'm on LT. It would be nice to be able on the Talk page to select specific threads as a group and mark them all at once.

Happy reading in 2023, Arlie!

>44 ffortsa: If things had worked out differently, I might have wound up working for them.

>45 SandyAMcPherson: There's been flooding, but not near where I am, fortunately. Statewide, it's been bad enough that there have been a few deaths, and not all of them freak accidents involving falling trees.

>47 FAMeulstee: Thank you, and same to you.

>43 ArlieS: We've been talking about moving our email to a VPS too (or perhaps duplicating our setup somehow). I think we'll do it eventually, one of the benefits is that we can travel and not worry about "but what if the server goes down and we lose access to email".

Dropping by to wish you a splendid weekend, Arlie.

>50 PaulCranswick: Thank you Paul, and same backatcha.

My new linux box has arrived. When I get some more caffeine into me, I'll think about setting it up, and then about determining whether the disks from the old one are readable. If they are, I can restore from them, and not lose anything; otherwise I'm restoring from a backup that wasn't quite up to date, and reconstructing 5 days of changes.

The biggest difficulty will be deciding how to set things up so I can easily change window managers or even linux distributions. The box comes with Pop!_OS pre-installed, and I'm not sure I want to stick with Ubuntu or its derivatives.

Once all that's done, I'll start posting about books I've been reading.

It took me two days, and a trip to the local computer parts store, but I'm posting this from the new linux system, after successfully restoring all the data, not just the 5 day old backup.

We're also finally finished with this spate of rainy weather, for good or ill. Apparently the reservoirs aren't all full even now, for reasons I don't entirely understand, but the ones closer to me are so full they are letting water pass by them because of having no more room to store it.

Meanwhile the dastardly local library refused to renew two of my books, one of which I was more than 3/4 of the way through. They are now overdue; fortunately we have a grace period.

My plan for today: stop tinkering with the new computer long enough to finish the book, report here on everything I've finished since my computer failure, and then take the lot of them back to the library, including the unrenewable one I haven't even started.

After that I'll probably be back to tinkering. It's usable, and far less aggravating than it was even 3 hours ago, but some things still aren't right.

>53 ArlieS: I am very much an imbecile when it comes to managing new technology, Arlie. I have my assistant at work pulling her hair out because I always want hard copy documents to scribble all over rather than comment on a soft copy format.
I have no idea what a linux system is but if it result in plenty of your company here than I am all for it!

2. The eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

This is a historical novel for children set in Roman Britain. I read it for the British Author Challenge. I'm glad I did, and plan to read more of the series soon.

I may have read this book before but if so, it's been more than 40 years, and I had no memory of it.

The notable thing from my POV was that it didn't feel like it was written for a less-than-adult reading level. It's got the usual children's fiction tropes of its era - the viewpoint character(s) are young, they have adventures, and the ending is positive. But I kept thinking that the language, and even the assumed historical knowledge, might be beyond the average US high school student today, and maybe even beyond the average Briton of equivalent age. It felt like I was reading a coming-of-age novel written for adults, and even my reading speed was consistent with adult fiction.

The other notable thing is the handling of disabilities, both physical and social. A modern author of children's books might include a lame character in a bout of self-conscious diversity, or write a lame hero specifically so children with physical disabilities could identify with him. They wouldn't tend to have one who was just there, dealing with their problems and working around them as much as possible. And they'd never have even thought about the social disabilities inherent to someone being an ex-slave, let alone working that character's emotional reactions to them into the plot. The very short scene where the lame character tells the freedman, in effect, "shit happens; don't let it define your life" is absolutely not what I expected from a children's book first published in 1954.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, first of series, 1954
- Author: female, British, born in 1920, novelist , author previously read (decades ago)
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 210 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 10-15, 2023; book may have been previously read

>55 ArlieS: I'm so glad you enjoyed The Eagle of the Ninth. Sutcliff wrote several books featuring characters with disabilities, and I've found that she did a better job than a lot of the current crop of authors do.

>55 ArlieS: One of the things that I enjoyed about The Eagle of the Ninth was that the characters weren't as obviously anachronistic as a similar books might be today. So many books today have characters with the attitudes and outlook of the twenty-first century plonked down in whatever time period they are supposed to be in.

>56 amanda4242: If I recall correctly, she was disabled herself, so perhaps this is another example of "write what you know".

>57 SandDune: I very much agree, with the caveat that my image of e.g. the Roman Empire was formed by things written in e.g. the 1950s, as compared to the 2010s - it's quite possible I wouldn't notice the anachronisms I grew up on, while very much noticing those that became popular when I was already middle aged. (One obvious example in this case - no male-male sexuality in sight, even though I believe it was normal and acceptable in that time and place. Of course there's also precious little male-female sexuality in sight either - and that focussed on the decision to marry - which is also typical of the era the book was written, particularly in anything intended for children.)

>58 ArlieS: I assumed the two young men were into each other - even though the surface text contradicts that, it's still pretty strong.

>55 ArlieS: Thanks for that thoughtful and fair appraisal of a book a number have enjoyed or re-enjoyed this month (thank you Amanda!).
I was also struck by the enlightened attitude to disability and servitude.

>59 quondame: That would make sense, and it also makes sense that an author of that time would represent such a relationship only as an extremely close friendship, one where either would risk or even give their life for the other. (Certain things simply couldn't be said, even in a book for adults, never mind children.)

>54 PaulCranswick: Thank you. It's kind of the third alternative: Windows, Mac, or Linux - with linux chosen pretty much entirely by nerds, geeks, and software engineers.

>62 ArlieS: Mac OS is a somewhat cousin of Linux, as it is based on a version Unix and Linux was a functional copy of Unix. I have sometimes ventured onto the command line level to futz with old files.

3. 1637 : the Transylvanian decision by Eric Flint and Robert E. Waters

This is yet another novel in a sprawling series about events resulting from the miraculous transfer of a late 20th century Appalachian mining town named Grantville into the not-yet-remotely-united Germany of the 30 years war. The series has many contributors, though with some editorial control exerted by Eric Flint, the author of the first book of the series.

The quality of the series has been, in my opinion, somewhat unequal. In general, the best ones have been the books in the main, political line of the series, authored or coauthored by Eric Flint. Sadly, Eric Flint died on July 17, 2022 - this book will have been somewhere in the publication pipeline at the time.

This book, though listing Flint as the first author, didn't work too well for me. There were too many characters being followed, and too much jumping around. An attempt to seemed to be being made to write an exciting war story, a la David Drake, complete with scary battles and tactical details; the result was merely confusing. Perhaps the now deceased main author didn't manage to finish his part, or exercise his usual level of editorial control, or perhaps it's just that the series was already moving in this direction.

At any rate, I recommend this to completionists who want to read the whole sprawling series, and those who want to see more of their favorite characters. But if you haven't encountered this series before, do yourself a favour and start with 1632, then perhaps follow Eric Flint's suggested reading order.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 2022
- Author 1: male, American, born 1947, novelist, first time read this year
- Author 2: male, American, born 1968, novelist, first time read this year
- English, public library, 517 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 3-19, 2023; first time reading this book

>55 ArlieS: I love Sutcliff, and that's one of my favorites. Small quibble - in your stats at the bottom, you've got her listed as male.

I've never quite made the jump to Linux - partly because my job (self-employed) is fixing PCs, and when my clients have either Windows or Mac, my life is easier if I'm using at least one of those (Windows). Anyone who's good enough at computers to be using Linux wouldn't need my services, anyway. I keep looking, though. And use live CDs for some of the tricks to fix other computers.

>65 jjmcgaffey: Thanks for the correction; cut-n-paste must have got me yet again.

"Anyone who's good enough at computers to be using Linux wouldn't need my services, anyway. "

Actually, I'd absolutely love to have been able to pay a linux person to deal with my recent involuntary upgrade. It would have been wonderful to give someone the old box, complete with probably readable media, and a copy of the latest (not quite up to date) backup, and receive in return a fully set up new box, with my choice of linux distributions installed, my data in its own partition, and all the software I was using on the old one, except in more recent versions.

Plus what I'm sure would have been a decent sized bill, both for the new hardware and for their time and expertise.

But I suppose I'm a rare fish - I can do it this kind of thing, but I don't much enjoy it.

And I do it so rarely that I always have to research everything, every time.

Heh. Yeah. I love setting up a new (Windows) box, except while I'm actually doing it...I have done almost that (take old machine and new one, return new machine fully set up) for Windows machines. But most of the Linux users I know (mostly online) would take forever to do setup because they wanted to have the latest greatest (and therefore spent ages researching) and enjoyed the whole thing. Or at least claimed to enjoy it.

>62 ArlieS: So at least I was able to demonstrate my ignorance of computers and their systems, Arlie. xx

Arlie--Glad you computer woes are remedied and nicely done doing it yourself!! Kudos. Really like the thought you put into your book reviews and loved hearing how Sutcliff did such great job with disability conversations. That's always nice and even better when ahead of the times. Hoping the weather is nice, the power stays on, and you get some quality reading time. Happy Weekend!

>69 Berly: Thank you. I enjoy writing these little reviews, and the challenge of avoiding spoilers has me looking at slightly less obvious aspects of my fiction reads.

4. The perfectionists : how precision engineers created the modern world by Simon Winchester

This book consists of a series of chapters, discussing various aspects of the history of technology, in order of increasing precision. You won't see it in the table of contents, but each chapter has a subtitle like "Tolerance: 0.1", which makes it very easy to see the increasing precision achieved (and required) at each stage.

I loved it, even though it was written by a journalist, and did indeed pay a lot of attention to the personalities involved, not just the technology. (That's unusual for me - I tend to want to read more about the tech, and often want more precision and accuracy than the average journalist can manage.) I was surprised that this journalist's output worked well for me, and doubly so given that the book is recent. Perhaps the reason for his ability - and his choice to use it - is that his original education was in STEM, and his first post-college job was as a geologist with a mining company.

If you like reading about the history of technology, and enjoy unusual approaches to things you already know something about, but perhaps not in great depth, you should read this book. And if you aren't sure whether you would like reading about technological history, this would be a reasonably good book to read to get a taste of the subject.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, technology, series: n/a, 2018
- Author: male, British (British-American), born in 1944, journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 395 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 2-21, 2023; book not previously read

>68 PaulCranswick: I'm sure your ignorance of computers is exceeded by my ignorance of civil engineering.

>1 ArlieS: Hello, Arlie! I'm repaying your visit to my thread, as I got a late start in the group. Apologies for the belated reply to your first post.

It seems we have a lot in common. I retired just a few months ago, and I also am trying to recover from 40+ years of spending most of my time at a desk. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to stay as active as I had hoped, but I am slowly feeling better physically. My right hip, which has bothered me for several years is finally starting to recover after years of sitting at a desk and being stuck in a car commuting to and from work.

Our household is also two retired adults. We don't have a cat because my husband is allergic. We also don't have a dog right now, since finding time to walk the dog while we were working was a problem.

I used to read lots of SF/Fantasy when I was young, a habit I picked up from my father, but after I started working full time I didn't keep up with it, and am really out of touch with the current authors. I'll have to investigate what's out there now.

I hope the rains have stopped for you and that you'll get a nice break from the storms. (Although I also hope that it doesn't dry out so much that you don't get rain again when you need it later this year.) Best of luck with all your reading this year!

>73 atozgrl: Welcome, and absolutely no worries about how long it took to get here.

I miss having cats in the house, but we've had three dogs in a row that regard cats as something between dog-toy and maybe-its-edible.

5. The serpent by David Drake

This quasi-science fiction, quasi-fantasy revisit to the Arthurian cycle really wasn't worth the time I spent reading it. This is a pity, because the first two volumes in the Time of Heroes series were worthwhile; I rated them both 4 (very good; likely reread).

I rated this one 2.5, which means something like "I'm not sure why I bothered finishing it"; 2 would mean it was a DNF; 1 would mean it was especially egregious rubbish.

The best I can say about this book is that it was a bit like the Curate's egg - good in parts. A few sections would have worked well as part of a much better book, more like the first two. If, of course, that better book had a meaningful plot, and rather less gratuitous violence. Violence comes with the territory of being a knight errant, but the people killed in this book might as well have been chequers, for all the emotional reaction anyone has to their deaths. The main character (of all 3 books) seems to have become a sociopath in this one, though one that still makes excuses for their behaviour.

Strong dis-recommend.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2021
- Author: male, American born in 1945, novelist , author previously read
- English, public library, 181 pages, 2.5 stars
- read Jan 12-23, 2023; book not previously read

I appear to be getting picky about books. I'm strongly considering DNFing one book for seeming to have nothing new to say. (It has decent writing otherwise, but it's politically opinionated.) Another is at high risk of did-not-start; it will be due and unrenewable 14 days from now, and every time I've looked at my stack to choose what to read next, it's failed to attract me - in spite of my habitual bias towards the books that have the least time remaining.

With regard to the potential DNF - why do Nobel prize winning economists tend to turn themselves into political pundits, even going so far as to publish collections of their op-eds, rather than writing non-specialist explanations of the work that got them their Nobel? Nobel-winning scientists give interviews about their work, and don't generally take up punditry. At least some presumably contribute to textbooks, or write non-specialist explanations of their work. What's wrong with the economists?

>76 ArlieS: Maybe the economists need to convince themselves that they deserved the prize. The scientists work can be more easily verified, or disproved.

>77 quondame: There are times when I figure that 99% of macro-economics is snake oil, and a not inconsiderable fraction of micro-economics is true only in idealized circumstances - rather like simplified physical laws which are only true in the absence of friction.

>76 ArlieS: Made me smile. Probably because politicians end up getting blamed for the economy and they are charged with running something they simply don't understand!

Did not start: Death and Hard Cider by Barbara Hambly. This is a historical mystery (i.e. a mystery in a historical setting). I picked it up on a whim when I was at the library almost three months ago, and every time since then that I had to decide what to start next I picked something else. It's probably not a bad book, but from my in-library browsing, it seems likely to be a "heavy", with details about the black lived experience of the time. I just haven't felt like heavy fiction since I borrowed it, and it's reached maximum renewals.

6. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff

Like my #2 for the year, this is a historical novel for children set in Roman Britain, some generations after the other book, and featuring descendant(s) of its main character. We don't have a disabled character this time, but we do have a main character who was a sickly child and wasn't fit enough for the army - he became an army surgeon instead.

As with the previous book, it's as much about a pair of characters as about the single main character. Both are once again young men, and there's the same element of coming of age.

The two stories have other thematic similarities, but don't read as being the same but for the window dressing - I'm mostly noticing the similarities only while writing this review. They both have at least one battle, a bout of underground work, and a desperate escape or two. But these elements aren't put together at all similarly.

I may have enjoyed this one just a hair less than The eagle of the ninth but I'm giving them the same rating.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, series (not first), 1957
- Author: female, British, born in 1920, novelist , author of my #2 for this year
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 196 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 16-30, 2023; book may have been previously read

>81 ArlieS: Are you going on to read The Lantern Bearers as well? I have just finished it and thought that it was the best one of the trilogy.

>80 ArlieS: Yeah, Hambly loves to put her characters into very nasty places before she lets a glimmer of light through (and that series has an awful lot of painfully true nastiness to choose from). I have loved many of her books, but I do need to be in the right mood to read them.

>82 SandDune: The one I have on hand is Frontier Wolf. But I'm enjoying these so much that I just put interlibrary loan requests for the next two in chronological order, starting with The Lantern Bearers.

>83 jjmcgaffey: In the right mood, I appreciate realism, and characters dealing with serious problems. But that mood doesn't happen very often.

If January sets the pattern for the year ahead, I'm officially on track for a 72 book year, rather a come down from last year's 98 books. I guess "getting a life" has some downsides. ;-/

I'm also so far behind on everyone else's threads that I'm no sure I'll ever catch up.

7. Ranks of Bronze by David Drake

I've been having the kind of day where one pulls an already-read novel one likes from the shelves, and starts rereading it. That went so well that I reread this novel from cover to cover in a single day.

This novel involves a group of Roman legionaries purchased by star-traveling advanced aliens to fight for them, in situations where their own laws forbade the use of technology advanced too far beyond that of their opponents.

I like it much more than the same author's book that was my #5 this year.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, first of series, 1986
- Author: male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #5 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 314 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 2, 2023; reread

Another day of feeling unwell and not being able to sit at my desk comfortably for long - another old friend reread from my shelves.

8. The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber

This is the third (and last) book in the same series as my #7. (Book 2, also on my shelves, is a collection of short stories in the same universe.)

In this case, the human soldiers being used by advanced aliens are Medieval English picked up on their way to an expedition in France.

This series, and this book in particular, has a lovely mix of smart person dropped into really strange circumstances (reverse Connecticut Yankee, as it were) and combat stories. The viewpoint characters/heroes are the kind of leader I would want to be, if I found myself in charge of any large group, particularly in high stakes situations. Maybe that's why these books are such satisfying rereads when I feel like something that cats dragged in, and can't really concentrate on anything too challenging.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2002
- Author: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of several books read last year
- English, from my own shelves, 346 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 3, 2023; reread

>87 ArlieS: Looks like a pretty manic but interesting concept for a series Arlie.

My body is recovering somewhat, and/or I've found effective medication, so my next comfort reread took more than a single day. I look forward to being able to sit comfortably at my desk again, for longer than a handful of minutes.

9. Foreign Legions edited by David Drake

Short stories in the same universe as my #7 and #8, by a variety of authors, including shorter versions of the stories told in the other two books. Rereading this so soon after the other two meant those two stories didn't grab my attention too tightly, but there were others, a couple of which I really like. In particular, I like the story featuring a Roman centurion nicknamed Ranunculus (Froggie).

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, stories, series (not first), 2001
- Author: male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #5 and #7 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 378 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 4-5, 2023; reread

10. On Basilisk Station by David Weber

Another comfort reread here, but I'm also once again reading new-to-me books.

This is the first of a long series about a female Horatio Hornblower in space, which has also spawned many related series. I'm fond of pretty much all the fiction set in this world, and enjoyed the reread.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, first of a series, 1993
- Author: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 342 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 5-6, 2023; reread

11. Frontier wolf by Rosemary Sutcliff

This is another historical novel for children set in Roman Britain, by the same author as my #2 and #6 for this year. The viewpoint character is related to characters in the other two books, though of another generation; this is basically what makes these books a series.

I read it too late for me to count is as meeting the British authors challenge for January, but that's OK - the 2 I've already read counted. I enjoyed all 3, and have 2 more waiting at the library for me.

As always, it's hard to review a novel without spoilers. But while keeping Roman Britain, and combat, plenty of non-combat activities, and (male) coming of age themes, this one left what I'd come to expect as the author's standard pattern. No one's disabled; slavery is not an issue; friendship between young men is handled very differently. There are also a lot more deaths, including lots of characters the reader will have come to like - unusual in children's fiction, though perhaps this reflects how late the novel was written. (This one was published after I graduated from college - whereas the first I read of this series was published before I was born; perhaps standard practices for heroic coming-of-age novels had changed.)

I enjoyed it, overall, and am glad the author didn't keep telling the same story again and again, with only the character names and heir surroundings changed.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, series (not first), 1980
- Author: female, British, born in 1920, novelist , author of my #2 and #6 for this year
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 196 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 6-8, 2023; book probably not previously read

>90 ArlieS: The Honor Harrington books are the only David Weber books I've read. I read several and enjoyed them. The sheer volume of offerings is a bit overwhelming. I hope to do a bit of comparing notes with you about sci fi this year, as I'm diving back in those waters.

>92 ChrisG1: Another one I really like is The Apocalypse Troll, which is stand-alone rather than part of a series. But OTOH, I find it difficult to think of a David Weber book I don't at least like, if not love.

12. Into the West by Mercedes Lackey

This fantasy novel is the immediate sequel to my #9 for last year. Both are part of a humongous series. I tend to read them on sight, and this is no exception - I put a hold on this book while the library had it on order, and was probably the first patron to get my eager hands on it.

That said, this wasn't the best of the series. It's a fill-in book, set in what was ancient history in the first books of the series, and showing how certain things came to be. For some reason, it has two viewpoint characters - better than the modern habit of having about 50, but the selection doesn't entirely make sense in terms of the plot. It makes sense to make the leader of the expedition your viewpoint character - but why also take the viewpoint of his very youthful sister-in-law.? Add to this hinted-at character development for both of them - and few others - that doesn't quite come off - and it feels like a piece of a larger novel. And yet the book is a door stop, at 486 pages.

In some ways, the fun part of the book is its exploration of magic-based technology, and how it might be used on a longish trek, with people and livestock on the move, hoping to find a place to settle. Yet at the same time, I've a bad feeling that the numbers don't add up - how many people? how much livestock? etc. etc. Did the author work out details of her travelers in advance, or did she drop in occasional numbers that felt right, without ever checking they all went together reasonably? I rather suspect the latter,

Read it if you want a large chunk of light reading, enjoy people following up on uses for their magic system, love fantasy novels in general, or love this author. Don't read it first if you are looking for this author's very best work.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2022
- Author: female, American, born 1950, novelist, author previously read
- English, public library, 486 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 7-10, 2023; book not previously read

13. White Trash : The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

This is a book about class in the US, and in particular about poor whites, as seen by their self-appointed betters, starting from the earliest settlements. I found nothing really surprising, but I'm not American - I know the US has a class system, even while pretending everyone's middle class, and too often insisting that in the US the only divisions of this kind are based on race.

Not having been socialized in the US, or attended their K12 schools, I never adopted their myth of equality of opportunity or of respect. I'm also more than familiar with the popular habit of blaming the victim - to folks at the top, anyone who fails to climb the greasy pole to their level or better, clearly failed entirely due to their own poor choices and/or inadequate talents - and no amount of accurate statistics will convince most successful-from-birth people otherwise.

Nonetheless, I'd never seen so much detail gathered in a single place, or covering such a range of time periods. And seeing it all together helped me spot trends, notably the long history of even more unequal opportunity in Southern US states as compared to Northern ones. (Maybe the Northeastern US even reaches Canadian levels of less-unequal opportunity, some of the time.)

It's a good book. But of course I can see ways it could be better.

I'd have liked more statistics along with the many quotes from statements by the more powerful/prosperous about their (white) social inferiors. What proportion of the better off made statements like this? What proportion said the opposite? How likely was a child of poverty to be prosperous by middle age, and did it vary by time and place? How likely was a child of prosperity to be poor by middle age? What about the outright rich?

I'd particularly like to know how common the kinds of statements quoted actually were. With the help of the internet I can find *someone* who claims just about any damn thing you'd like. One eugenicist who thinks the poor should be killed is very quotable, but doesn't mean the guy wasn't generally regarded as an embarrassing wingnut or worse. (I can find you a modern candidate for Congress who proudly claimed to lust after his infant daughter.)

I suspect they were quite common, and well within the Overton window for the times and places they were made, with the "kill the poor" suggestion far less popular than "sterilize the poor". ("Sterilize the poor" was actually implemented in the US, though not because they were poor per se but because they were declared to be mentally defective, as evidenced by such things as having been born out of wedlock.) But I don't know, and the style of this book means it won't tell me.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2016
- Author: female, American, age unknown (received BA in 1980), academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 460 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 26-Feb 14, 2023; book not previously read

>95 ArlieS: Excellent review, Arlie.

There needs to be far more concentration on poverty eradication and opportunities given to the poor irrespective of race, gender, sexuality and creed rather than the divisive nature of world politics these days.

This from someone who grew up in a 'disadvantaged' mining community in West Yorkshire and was enabled, largely as a result of the Post War Labour government managing to change the political agenda for the permanent better.

>96 PaulCranswick: I'm another person born poor who made it well out of my birth class thanks to lots and lots of opportunities specific to that place and time, and the associated politics. (It also helped a lot that my mother figured that academic achievement was the best way out of poverty, and encouraged me to follow that path.)

I very much want everyone to have the opportunities I had. And because it's impossible to have everyone at the top of any hierarchy, I favour keeping the financial distance between the wealthiest and the poorest as short as is reasonably practical. (Not down to the level of no reward at all for talent and/or effort, or even for lucking into an advantaged birth. But not so high that Musk et al inhabit a different world from normal people, or even from especially unfortunate people.)

14. The case of the spellbound child by Mercedes Lackey

This was the 15th installment in a series of fantasy novels by a very prolific author. I had somehow missed it when it came out 4 years ago, and only just noticed it.

The series reliably delivers light mysteries always involving some kind of magic, in a historical world with fantasy elements hidden from normal people. Some are better than others, and this one hit the spot for me.

I think the series is improving again, after somewhat jumping the shark by working Sherlock Holmes and his team into recent novels. He's still there, along with a rather more prominent Dr. Watson and his wife, but the author's no longer relying on their presence as making the stories more attractive in itself. Now they are just characters, with traits you'd expect from the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, except that Dr. Watson (and not Sherlock) has magical talent and training. This works much better for me.

It occurs to me that this whole series is part of a recent American fad for stories set in a past Britain, featuring a kind of SCA version of the historical setting ("the past not as it was, but as it should have been"). Unlike more recent offerings of this trope, we don't find really blatant anachronisms, such as total acceptance of queer people (except by villains) , and have large fantasy elements (magic) to explain away any minor misrepresentations.

And with talking birds, not to mention a full blown magic system, I'm not unconsciously expecting accurate portrayals of social reality, including daily life, so anachronisms don't especially bug me.

Read it if you like light fantasy with magic. Don't read it if you are badly triggered by ill treatment of children - the villain here is a child kidnapper, among their other crimes.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2019
- Author: female, American, born 1950, novelist, author of my #12 for this year
- English, public library, 313 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 11-15, 2023; book not previously read

>80 ArlieS: "Did not start." That made me laugh out loud. I have several books that keep trying to draw me in and I look and them and then think Nope.

>98 ArlieS: Watson with magical powers and more air time than Sherlock? Interesting and fun twist!! Especially find this intriguing since I am slowly working my way through the audio of Sherlock's oeuvre.

>95 ArlieS: This sounds like an important book. Great comments. I agree that the wealth gap should be narrowed.

The Sutcliff books sound wonderful. I am waiting for the first one from the library.

>99 Berly: I envy you enjoying Sherlock Holmes for the first time. I read everything I could find by Arthur Conan Doyle some time in my teens, including his spiritualist stories as well as Sherlock Holmes. Hmm, maybe it's time to reread some.

>100 BLBera: Hurrah for libraries, even if they can be slow. If I didn't have them, I'd buy so many books I might not be able to get into my house around the stacks.

>98 ArlieS: That one tanked for me. Elemental Masters has been a spotty series in general.

Awhile since I drifted by... so a few comments 'cause your reading and so forth invites me to delurk :)

>76 ArlieS: Good point. I liked this discussion. Especially, "that 99% of macro-economics is snake oil" (#78).

>95 ArlieS: Really great overview. I think I need to add that one to my WL (White Trash).

I'm having trouble with "pandemic-effect" in my reading choices. It seems that my tolerance for books recounting heavy societal issues tweaks my tendency to overreact to social injustices. I've been reading very slowly with several renewals and too often DNF results. Still White Trash is now on my PL-WL.

Even fiction with a lot of suspense gets set aside mid-chapter, to wait another reading attempt a day or two later. I guess that tendency will fade away but 3 years and counting, I'm not noticing much emotional resiliency.

>103 SandyAMcPherson: My tolerance for heavy books varies a lot, but my retirement has brought it up a bit, counteracting the pandemic effect for me. OTOH, this mostly applies to non-fiction - most of the time, when I pick up a novel I want escapism, pure and simple - even though the books I remember longest tend to have more than mere escapism.

I've been having rather a high stress week, starting on Feb 14th when the furnace decided to take a vacation. Since then, I've been living in This Old House, except without the ongoing improvement - just getting one thing after another repaired. I'm a bit afraid to declare the series of events finished - I did that once already, and a plumbing problem (failed faucet assembly) appeared later the same evening. But right this instant plumbing, heating, and electricity are all working 100%.

I, on the other hand, am not at 100%. I'm stiff because I moved the fridge single handedly, so as to plug it into an extension cord (failed breaker, oh my - it tripped and then refused to reset). I've gotten up early to call tradespeople and/or wait for one to arrive just about every day since the fun began. Afternoon naps have helped, but not as much as getting up at my usual time would have. And today, with no tradespeople to deal with, I slept until noon, which I needed, but it's going to mean several weekend tasks get postponed for lack of time to deal with them. And that's on top of a backlog.

Unsurprisingly, I've stopped making significant progress with library books, and switched to comfort rereads. And absolutely no decluttering has happened, in spite of spotting a lot of prime-to-discard objects in the basement while investigating the furnace.

On the good side - the local climate is such that a furnace failure leads to discomfort, not risk of humans or even pipes freezing. One circuit going out is much better than losing electricity to the whole house. And a miracle handyman was able to deal with the failed faucet assembly on a Saturday, saving me from having to turn off water to the whole house, or waste prodigious quantities. (No, of course there's no cutoff valve for individual taps, except for outdoor lines; did I mention the house is old.)

>105 ArlieS: Arlie, I'm so sorry to hear that you've had such a rough go of it over the last week. I am glad to hear that things seem to be working again, and that you got some good rest today. Try not to worry too much about the backlog of weekend tasks; they'll get done eventually.

I can relate somewhat. We had a series of things break down over about 10 days or so in the fall. First the washing machine broke down between the wash and rinse cycle (fortunately, the neighbors were kind enough to let us finish the load in their machine), then the garage door quit working (trapping both cars in the garage), then the ice machine in the refrigerator broke. However, none of those were as serious as what you were dealing with, so I feel for you.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all your plumbing, heating, and electricity keep working with no more issues!

>106 atozgrl: Thank you.

It seems to me that your issues were of similar severity; cars trapped in the garage could be bad. And I *hate* dead washing machines.

Hopefully we're both finished with this kind of run of bad luck, and will have fewer problems in future, and only one at a time.

I certainly hope so too! For some reason, breakdowns seem to come in groups, I don't know why.

The garage door could have been a problem, but Mr. A. and I are both retired now, so it fortunately wasn't urgent. Luckily, we didn't have any appointments that day. Also, the repairman was able to get out here the same day, though it wasn't until mid-afternoon. He told my husband that there had been a lot of the same thing lately, with the garage door springs breaking. I think the area had a lot of houses built around the same time, and the garage doors are now breaking down.

Furnace, electricity, and plumbing failing still sound worse to me. But hopefully we're both past the problems now!

>108 atozgrl: If the electricity and plumbing had been total failures, I'd definitely agree. But one circuit and one tap, while aggravating, aren't the same as no power and no water. (Fortunately there were only ten minutes or so when I feared I'd have to shut off my water entirely.)

15. The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber

I'm continuing to reread books from my shelves, when too frazzled to expect to enjoy something new. This science fiction novel, set in the relatively near future (as of 1999), provided a nice relaxing (for me) hit of military/undercover combat against the last survivor of a higher tech invasion force, assisted by the only survivor of the equally high tech opponents who had mostly wiped out the invaders. (The "Troll" of the title is the lone invader, who is in fact a cyborg.)

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, non-series, 1999
- Author: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 312 pages, 3.5 stars (originally rated 3)
- read Feb 19-20, 2023; reread

>109 ArlieS: I am glad to know the problems didn't affect your whole house, but it's definitely aggravating, especially when it's one after the other.

I should say, as far as the problems with our garage door, you're supposed to be able to raise it manually with a pull cord if it won't go up normally, but Mr. A. couldn't get that to work, so we were stuck for part of a day. But we did get it repaired quickly, so we were fortunate in that.

16. The Economics of Inequality by Thomas Piketty

This slim book predates the author's Capital in the Twenty-First Century and is intended to provide the background needed for interpreting changes in economic inequality over time. I read it at least partly in a spirit of completionism. There were things I didn't know or hadn't thought of in it, but it wasn't the enlightening experience of the later book. Overall it's decent, but probably interesting only to those who really care about economics, or want to improve their ability to discuss inequality with economists.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2015 (first french edition 1997)
- Author: male, French, born in 1971, academic (economics) , author of my #48, 62, and 70 for 2021
- English, public library, 142 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 16-23, 2023

>112 ArlieS: I appreciate Piketty's thorough discussions of the economics of inequality but can get overwhelmed by his ocean of information that I've never studied in depth. His collected columns in Why Save the Bankers? was more my desired speed, but suffers from the repetitveness inevitable in such collections.

Anyway, Hi Arlie, I'm still getting about slowly but surely.

>113 richardderus: Good to see you up and about, virtually speaking.

I believe I read Why Save the Bankers? in 2021, and appreciated it. (So no book bullet. Nyah nyah ;-))

>114 ArlieS: *annoyed finger snap*

17. March Upcountry by David Weber and John Ringo

I'm continuing to reread books from my own shelves, in part because I'm a bit under the weather - I had a molar with a cracked root removed on Thursday, and while the pain meds are working fine (and may not be needed at all today), my body is demanding that I get a lot of rest. So what better to do than to prop myself up in bed, or in my comfy chair in the living room, with a book requiring limited mental effort?

This book is the start of a science fiction series featuring high tech humans stranded on a primitive non-human planet, needing to cross half the planet to reach the one space port, then conquer it, simply to get themselves home. It features all the small unit combat anyone could possibly want. (I guess I'm weird to find such reading comforting, when I'd absolutely hate it in real life. But fantasizing myself as a mighty warrior has been a thing with me since I was a child, and I still enjoy identifying with such heroes, especially in genres where their eventual triumph is assured.)

The first author is almost always reliable, except for his tendency to up the stakes and the body count in each succeeding book of any series. The second author gets into some rather iffy areas when writing on his own, but does very well as a coauthor. Together, they balance each other rather nicely.

One notable feature of this particular series is that the locals, though at a more-or-less medieval tech level (ranging from foraging tribes to cities with the beginnings of gunpowder weapons), get treated individually as equals to humans - both by the story and its human characters. They may have four arms, be twice the height of humans, require damp conditions for comfort or even survival, and be referred to by a derogatory name ("scummies"). But some of them join the human party, and get treated as individuals with their own specific abilities. The old shaman becomes a mentor for the human prince. We see events from some of their individual viewpoints as well as from human individual viewpoints.

Other than that, its a nice light snack, suitable for distracting me from my sore gums, and the things I'd like to be accomplishing but don't quite feel healthy enough to handle. I expect my book #19 or 20 (not 18) for 2023 will be the next one in this series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, first of a series, 2001
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8 and #15 for this year
- Author 2: male, American, born in 1963, novelist, editor of my #3 for 2022, and author of other books I've read
- English, from my own shelves, 586 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 24 (?)-26, 2023; reread

>116 ArlieS: I read one John Ringo book & yes, it was...not the kind of thing I want to read. "Iffy" puts it nicely.

>117 ChrisG1: Yeah. What I could say about Ringo ... Oddly though, he's got two separate (ahem) non-mainstream fixations, and rarely has them both on display in the same story. I'm sure there are readers that appreciate one of them but not the other, as well as readers who can't abide either, and presumably some who are into both.

18. The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff

It may be late February already, but I'm still reading books for the January edition of the British authors challenge. This one is a juvenile historical fiction starting at the tag end of the Roman period in Britain, with the second half of it linked to the Arthurian cycle, though at the end of the book Artos is still just a charismatic officer serving his natural father Ambrosius.

This book has a blind character, and its hero (viewpoint character) has been traumatized by his experiences, having immense difficulty getting close to people ever after.

There are also conflicting loyalties; the hero's sister marries one of the Saxons whose tribe had carried her off, and raises a son. The son grows up and joins an attack on the Romano-British, which fails, leaving him wounded in their territory, to be found by his uncle and a Christian holy man.

I find that the author does a better job of handling physical disabilities than emotional ones. But she certainly gets points for trying, particularly in a book for children.

This is the first of Sutcliff's books I've read which tries to address the predicament of women in a militaristic and patriarchal society. The hero's wife had no choice in her marriage, and only starts to become reconciled to it, slowly, after bearing a child. The hero's sister both wants to leave the Saxons and to stay with her man, and chooses to stay. These situations are depicted rather than addressed in any detail, and only as seen by the emotionally somewhat stunted male hero. But I think it's notable that they are shown at all, in a book for children first published in 1959.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, series (not first), 1959
- Author: female, British, born in 1920, novelist , author of my #2, #6 and #11 for this year
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 219 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 20-26, 2023; book probably not previously read

19. Sea power : the history and geopolitics of the world's oceans by James Stavridis

This book covers roughly it says in the subtitle, but with almost all its emphasis on the relatively recent past, and everything from the point of view of an American who's in tune with the American political establishment. (By the latter, I mean that the the author presumes he shares with the reader the primary goal of benefiting the United States of America. Also, he cannot say anything bad about either official actions of the United States or any actions of its military, though he very rarely shows some implicit dislike for minor things 40 years ago, or perhaps more major things even farther in the past.)

He's also fond of bringing in the human element - in particular, anecdotes from his past. He typically talks about his own first experience of a particular ocean, sea, or other watery region, generally in ways that show him as having been very junior indeed. (This includes relating anecdotes of his own early career mistakes, as well as in one case describing his own role as primarily fetching coffee.) The self-deprecation reads oddly, when you consider that except for a few anecdotes from when he was a naval cadet, he's always an officer - junior or not - so outranking at least 80% of those in the US Navy. I'm not sure that he considers himself the same type of person as a enlisted sailor.

Given these two factors, I didn't need to know that he'd been considered as a candidate for US vice president, to know he was part of the US governing elite. OTOH, that's not a down check for the book; it's just an unconscious bias that needs to be remembered.

I rated the book 3 rather than higher because it had broad but shallow information and limited analysis. The obligatory human element was part of that - it's the modern way of writing, but I prefer an older style. Mostly though, the book felt a bit like a fire hose lecture full of facts the reader/listener would be expected to memorize for the exam, with human anecdotes to keep them awake - but without enough of the structure that would make the facts stick in the reader's mind. And sure enough, very little of it stuck with me. That cost the book 1 point, with another half point for stressing personal experiences unrelated to the theme.

That said, I'm not aware of a better book focused on ocean power in modern times. So it's a 3, and might have inched up to 3.5 if I'd been in a slightly better mood while rating it.

There was a lot of new-to-me material about various oceans, and how they look from the POV of a senior (or even a junior) US naval officer. If I expected e.g. to want to write speculative fiction featuring ocean power, I'd keep it as a reference. But I kept wanting it to be a better book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, other (geopolitics), series: n/a, 2015
- Author: male, American, born in 1955, military (naval officer) , author new to me
- English, public library, 363 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 16-Mar 3, 2023

20. March to the Sea by David Weber and John Ringo

This novel is the immediate sequel to my #17 for the year. It continues the story of high tech humans stranded on a primitive planet, trying to cross half the planet to get to its one space port, in order to conquer it so that they can get themselves - and in particular their prince - back home.

We get to experience more combat, some of it on a larger scale. The locals have somewhat better tech than in the previous book - they are more Renaissance and less Medieval; in particular, they have gunpowder. And the human team begins to recruit local talent in a really big way, to the point that their force becomes mostly non-human.

We also get personal growth, of sorts, at least of one central character. The prince falls in love with one of the Marine NCOs (female), who already has the hots for him, and a certain amount of romance-novel comedy ensues. The prince's valet is killed - he's been an important character throughout, and was he closest thing to a father figure the prince had ever had. The prince becomes very depressed - but still very lethal. He might eventually make it to fully functional adult ;-)

As with the first volume, it's a nice light snack suitable for anyone who likes this kind of fiction, which I do. I expect I'll re-read at least one of the remaining two volumes before I finish the current round of dental work. (I have another extraction tomorrow.)

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2001
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8, #15 and #17 for this year
- Author 2: male, American, born in 1963, novelist, co-author of my #17 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 664 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 27 (?)-Mar 5, 2023; reread

21. The great divide : unequal societies and what we can do about them by Joseph E. Stiglitz

This is a collection of previously published essays, organized by theme, on the overall topic of inequality, by an economist who considers US inequality far too high. Each section is preceded by new material by the same author.

The book came very close to being Pearl-ruled as restating political positions, without new information, in an overall style of preaching to the choir. Fortunately, it got better - I gave the book a reprieve when I found a new-to-me criticism of Thomas Piketty. But the best material, from my POV, is found in the new material; the republished essays are too often an already-familiar critique and/or recommendation associated with political events I lived through a decade or two ago, and read about in real time.

It remains very weak on showing it works. For example, the statement that "trickle down economics doesn't work" is repeated in many essays. As it happens, I agree with this. But no evidence is presented, not even references to other work. And while I agree with the sound bite, I suspect it's not true in all times and all places; indeed, the book contains recommendations that look kind of like trickle down economics to me, just not the form rather consistently implemented by American politicians who use this term.

E.g. I suspect that if we want money made available by government to be invested in projects likely to improve productivity and employment, we need to either have the government invest it (research grants, infrastructure, training) or make it available to small businesses and potential small businesses. Not to the very rich, but also not to the very poor - the latter will spend it on consumption, and we have to hope for trickle up from their grocery stores etc. to eventual investment. That's not a reason for government not to ALSO engage in redistribution and relief, but the goals and motives should not be confused.

I could of course be wrong in my suspicions above. But this book would be far more to my taste if it addressed ideas like this, rather than managing to rail against "trickle down economics" and in favor of "trickle up economics" (from context, relief and redistribution), while separately talking about the need to provide funds to small and medium businesses in order to increase employment. (I grew up poor; even small businessmen were well above our economic level, and we knew it. They were "middle class", when that term meant something other than "what all Americans claim to be".)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (American), series: n/a, 2015
- Author: male, American, born 1943, economist, author of my #4 and #10 for 2022
- English, public library, 428 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Jan 23-Mar 8, 2023, not previously read

22. March to the Stars by David Weber and John Ringo

This novel is the immediate sequel to my number #20 for the year, and I imagine I'll be starting a reread of the last one in this series shortly.

I don't have much to say about this book that I didn't already say about the earlier two books in the series. It continues to provide me with heroic people who are really good at combat, and get to demonstrate it, even while also dealing with other problems, and having a pretty good time along the way, when they get the chance. Two of the non-humans from the first book are successful in forming romantic relationships with people (of their own species) met in later books; one is already expecting children, after a bit of romantic comedy.

David Weber has raised the stakes for the characters as the series proceeds, rather than his more common habit of raising the scale of the carnage in each successive book. They now need to save the Empire they belong to, not just get themselves back to civilization alive. That will, of course, allow him another volume. Perhaps his coauthor dissuaded him from simply growing the body count as a means of keeping the reader's sense of urgency.

Like its predecessors, this novel is a nice light snack, eminently suitable for distracting me from sore gums and guts made a bit cranky by antibiotics, and cheering me up as it does so.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2003
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8, #15, #17 and #20 for this year
- Author 2: male, American, born in 1963, novelist, co-author of my #17 and #20 for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 626 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 5 (?)-11, 2023; reread

Murphy's law: the day after I return my stack of finished books to the library, they notify me that one of my holds has come in. I'll be reading Shenanigans: All-new tales of Valdemar (https://www.librarything.com/work/28809376 - no touchstone) edited by Mercedes Lackey some time soon.

(Edited to add: the work page doesn't include the subtitle, so there's no match on the touchstone. If I try for a touchstone for "Shenanigans" without the sub-title, it gives me the wrong one (rather than no match at all) but I can select the correct one in the usual way.)

You know you can use the work number to create a touchstone to the right book? Shenanigans goes to the right one. Bracket, work number, colon colon, title (actually any text, but logically the title), close bracket.

Oh, Arlie! I'm sorry for your health challenges, but your light reading hits a couple of my long-time favorites. You're reading Rosemary Sutcliff! YAY! I'm sorry to say that my high school English students 15 years ago couldn't have handled her, and I seriously doubt that our schools have improved. Her books were still in the school library when I retired though, so I hope that some brave soul may have found her. AND You're reading David Weber! YAY again! I love my Honor and the Honorverse and also the Weber/Ringo books. Fun and games all around.

On the other hand, I've never been able to stir up any love for M. Lackey. Hope you enjoy her when you get to her.

>125 jjmcgaffey: Aha! Thank you.

>126 LizzieD: Yikes! I somehow managed to miss your 2023 thread. I've corrected that now, but not yet caught up. Anyone who likes the same books I do should be treasured, not accidentally abandoned.

I recall reading Rosemary Sutcliff as a child, probably high school or junior high. I liked Geoffrey Trease and especially Ronald Welch better, but classed them all together in my mind, and ate up anything either the school or the public library had.

It saddens me to think of any of these as too difficult for similarly aged readers.

I ran into Ronald Welch...possibly as much as five years ago. I learned about Geoffrey Trease this year (possibly from a comment of yours!). I've loved Sutcliff since I was a kid. It's hard to find Welch and Trease books, though - I'm on the hunt! (yes, they're on Abebooks and the like...but pricey!).

23. Saving capitalism : for the many, not the few by Robert B. Reich

The thesis of this book is that the choice of more vs less inequality, poverty etc. is not really between more vs less government. Presenting it this way is a red herring, distracting from the ways in which the minutiae of political choices in the US tend to advantage the already rich at the expense of the currently poor.

He discusses five policy areas other than more-vs-less government that in his view could be handled very differently - and have been so handled in the US past - with the result of reducing or reversing the cycle of ever increasing inequality. (I note that this includes inequality of opportunity as well as inequality of results.)

From page 8, those areas are:

- PROPERTY: what can be owned
- MONOPOLY: what degree of market power is permissible
- CONTRACT: what can be bought and sold, and on what terms
- BANKRUPTCY: what happens when purchasers can't pay up
- ENFORCEMENT: how to make sure no one cheats on any of these rules

In each case, the rules of the game have major effects. Those rules are determined partly by social norms, but mostly by a combination of laws and executive decisions.

That's basically the whole book in a nutshell, fleshed out with examples from both the past and the present day, and focused on ways in which the policies the US has today support increasing inequality.

This appears to me to both very basic, and utterly beyond the ken of the average American voter, or even the average college educated voter. The rules we have now are constantly taken for granted. There's only one way to do property - anything else is "socialism", or "theft". etc. etc., but property is the big one.

Thus this book very much needed to be written. The author obviously falls on the left side of US politics - he doesn't think that increasing inequality is good, or increased political control by those with money, for themselves. But he constantly stresses that the behaviours he doesn't like are legal, and generally the result of individuals responding to incentives - not some dire plot by ultra-rich right wing conspirators to set up a plutocratic tyranny. He avoids most of the usual left wing emotion-invoking hand wringing about the evil of the current situation, not to mention of individual perpetrators.

I'd like to believe this will get it read, and help to change the fundamental assumptions of US politics. But it was published in 2015, and I'd never heard of it before, or of its author (even though he turns out to have been the 22nd US secretary of labor). At a guess, the only people reading it are those who were already convinced when they started, or possibly simply wanting new strategy for US Democrats.

Still, read it if you subscribe to the socialism-vs-capitalism dichotomy, or need to argue with someone who does. Or if you just like decent explanations of things that don't get said often enough, particularly not in a coherent organized way.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (mostly American) and economics, series: n/a, 2015
- Author: male, American, born 1946, academic (public policy), author not previously read
- English, public library, 279 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 7-17, 2023, book not previously read

>129 jjmcgaffey: I've gathered an almost complete collection of Ronald Welch's books over the years, one library discard after another. They are almost all back in print now - from Slightly Foxed Books - but they are nice little hard covers in a limited edition. So not cheap. (They have some of Rosemary Sutcliffe's books too.)

Of course books have gotten expensive in general, and I'm not sure how much of that is just that the same amount of money buys a lot less than it used to. I suspect a combination of monopolistic pricing and the move to e-books. (I'll buy e-books when they come with an enforceable promise that I'll be able to read them for as long as a paper book, without needing to either buy a new e-reader or learn a new user interface to access "my" book. They should also be tamper-proof, or at least tamper-evident - the vendor should be unable to update my e-book, the way they do my (sic) software.)

24. We Few by David Weber and John Ringo

This is the immediate sequel to my number 22 for the year, and the end of the series. I'm in much better shape than I was when I started rereading this series, so this and the previous one took longer to reread than the first two. And while I've enjoyed the reread, I probably won't start rereading another series in the immediate future.

This novel has many of the same characters, but they start the book by returning to high tech civilization. Their mission: eject the usurpers and rescue the Empress, mother of the marooned prince Roger. All the humans have prices on their heads, having been blamed for a foiled coup, which was actually both real and successful. And the prince's older siblings, and all their offspring, have been murdered, making Roger the heir to the throne.

That said, it's still a mix of undercover plotting and heroic combat. But of course that's what readers came for, including me. It continued satisfactory up to the very end - which, as usual, involved mission success tempered with deaths of developed characters.

I recommend it, if you like that sort of thing.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2005
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8, #15, #17, #20 and #22 for this year
- Author 2: male, American, born in 1963, novelist, co-author of my #17, #20 and #22for this year
- English, from my own shelves, 559 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 12 (?)-17, 2023; reread

Note: this book included 19 numbered pages containing an excerpt from Hell's Gate and 11 unnumbered pages containing advertising material pertaining to other books, mostly from one or other of these authors. I generally read such material the first time around, when I often find it useful, particularly the excerpts. However the amount I found here, and my meh reaction to Hell's Gate when I first read it combined to trigger an update to my "rules" (post 2 of this thread). I explicitly disclaim the need to read any of this kind of material to count a book as being read.

>132 ArlieS: I even consider that material included from another book needs to be read to finish the main title. I happened to enjoy Hell's Gate but that's another series co-authored by Linda Evans that will remain incomplete. It came out about the same time as Spirit Gate, not that I confused the series or anything, but I sort of did.

>132 ArlieS: >133 quondame: I absolutely don't consider excerpts from another book to be necessary to count a book as "read," but neither do I count those pages. If I did, and I read the featured second book, I couldn't count those pages when I reported on the second book itself. The same thing is true for books with copious notes and bibliographies. If I don't read them, I don't count them.
I love that our rules are so individual and so strict!

I'm pretty sure that I never read We Few, and now I think I need to..... (But I've already pulled In Enemy Hands for a reread, and I surely can't read more than one Weber at a time.)

>134 LizzieD: You have a point about not including the pages unread in my count. At one time, I would count actual pages, including those at the beginning numbered in Roman numerals, and those at the end completely unnumbered, provided they had text. I also read everything in sight, including testimonials about the book, ads for other books, etc etc. (not the index though.) At some point though, possibly about when I began listing number of pages in my thread, I switched to just counting the numbered pages. So books with 40 page introductions have been undercounted for a while. That leaves me feeling that I'm not "cheating" when I count the numbered pages from an excerpt, while omitting to reread them.

>133 quondame: She's dead? Oh dear!

Edit: Wikipedia thinks she's still alive.

>135 ArlieS: True confession: if intros have Roman numerals, I count them myself - and count them.

>137 LizzieD: Like you, I appreciate that group members have lots of different rules - and think about it enough to have evolved specific rules for unusual cases.

First Pearl Rule of the year: Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life by Karen Rauch Carter

This is a book about Feng Shui, which I appear to have picked up from a second hand book store. It's been sitting on one of my TBR shelves with a bookmark at the start of chapter 7 (of 12) for some unknown number of years. I noticed it while doing some very minor de-cluttering of my book shelves. Out it goes!

Note: nothing especially wrong with the book, except that I'm just not very interested in feng shui, particularly in this seemingly Americanized form. If I were stuck in a plane with no other books, I'd have finished it.

Second Pearl Rule of the Year: How to be a star at work : nine breakthrough strategies you need to succeed by Robert Earl Kelley

This one's a self-help book for "success" at work (all jobs and professions being the same? or perhaps all "success" being the same?) Same apparent source (second hand bookstore, followed by years on a TBR shelf with a bookmark a bit more than halfway through it).

I don't recall for sure whether this had the usual hallmarks of this kind of self-help book (e.g. those suggested in my parenthesis in the second paragraph), but I'm absolutely not motivated to revisit it to find out - I'm retired, and have absolutely no farther use even for good advice about work success, which in my experience is far less common than useless platitudes and other dreck.

>136 ArlieS: I don't know if she's dead, but a lot of her series are - much to my annoyance, I was enjoying the time travel one and...the other one published about that time. At least, there hasn't been a new book in those series in...decades. Mostly now she writes with other people...generally in open-ended series, so again not completed. She's a good writer but I'm very wary of any work she's involved in; I expect to have it dropped with threads dangling.

There are authors who had their series dropped by publishers and revived them, either with a new publisher or (in the current era) by self-publishing; I applaud them and delight in their new books. Linda Evans hasn't, and the longer she doesn't the less interested in her work I am.

>136 ArlieS: As I see Jennifer has explained, Linda Evans is known for bailing out on series.

25. The 99% invisible city : a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

This book consists of a selection of interesting trivia about cities and towns - in particular, the built environment. All you ever wanted to know about local designs for manhole covers; symbols drawn on pavement to show locations of underground wires, pipes, etc.; or the origin of curb cuts. Well, not quite everything; each section is quite short, maybe a page or two, though grouped into larger chapters with a somewhat common theme.

I would have liked the book better if it went into more depth on a bit less of this. But the book is essentially an attempt to recreate the experience of a podcast in written form, and that means everything is limited to being bite-sized. The references are also to bite-sized material - they tend to be to news articles, not e.g. to professional magazines for civil engineers.

It gets a rating of 3 for scratching my itch to know more, and leaving it very much dissatisfied; even following up on their sources will mostly just get me more really short articles. That said, what they did cover was mostly quite interesting. I just want a chapter on each section, and/or a book on each chapter.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, misc (built environment), series: n/a, 2020
- Author 1: male, American, born 1974, radio producer, author not previously read
- Author 2: male, American, age unknown (BA 1998-2002), design journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 384 pages, 3 stars
- read Mar 5-20, 2023, book not previously read

26. Shenanigans edited by Mercedes Lackey

This is a collection of stories in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe, featuring pranks - mostly intentional, but some the unconscious result of uncontrolled Gifts. Amazingly for a short story collection, they are all good stories. Many probably work best for people familiar with that universe, and fond of it; like Regency Romances, part of the draw is imagining oneself in the situation, particularly with rare status/abilities.

A few stories had recurring characters and situations from earlier anthologies, but fewer than in the last two Valdemar anthologies I read. This was probably a plus, particularly for anyone how hasn't read all these anthologies, or is reading them out of order. As always in this series, everyone whose eyes we see through is basically good, as are most of those they encounter; even government and law enforcement are benevolent. This will probably be a flaw for some potential readers, but it's great if what you want is something relaxing and positive.

I ate it up the whole book in three days, and wish there was more left for me to read - but if it had been longer, it probably would have included some less effective stories.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), stories, 2022
- Editor: female, American, born 1950, novelist, author of my #12 and #14 for this year
- English, public library, 323 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 21-23, 2023; book not previously read

Glad to hear it's got fewer continued stories than recently - I do enjoy seeing old friends (the law enforcement family comes to mind) but serial novels require more memory than I'm able/willing to dedicate to these stories. So I spend a good while completely confused about how these people got into this situation, on far too many of the Valdemar anthology stories. Shenanigans is on my Read Soon list, though, there's always stories that make the anthology worth it.

27. Kindred : Neanderthal life, love, death and art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes

This is a book about Neanderthals by a "science communicator" with a doctorate which examined evidence for late Neanderthals in Britain. It tries to tell readers all that's known about Neanderthals, based on the latest available research.

Unfortunately, the author chose to include neither footnotes nor bibliography, and in most cases she names sites rather than the scientists who researched them; this is not helpful for either checking on her conclusions or finding more depth on specific topics.

Other than that, she does a pretty good job of painting a plausible picture, with specific evidence mentioned for just about every detail.

But: she clearly wants to portray Neanderthals as people of equivalent capability (etc.) to home sapiens, as well as having contributed to the home sapiens gene pool. I smell at least an anti-racist agenda here, and agendas tend to cloud people's perceptions, as well as encouraging them not to mention any inconvenient counter-arguments. And in fact she often has only one or perhaps two examples for a given point, and seems to mention non-consensus in the field less often than I'd expect it to be present. So I suspect some of what she's telling the reader is not in fact well supported by the evidence, and may well be de-confirmed by additional work.

The book would have gotten a rare 5 star rating from me, for telling me things I didn't know, that even bleeding edge scientists didn't know 2 decades ago, and doing it in a readable and well-organized way -- if it hadn't been for my uncertainty about its accuracy, and the lack of the usual convenience of including references. That cost it half a star.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2020
- Author: female, British, age unknown (BA 2003; Ph.D. 2010), science communicator, author not previously read
- English, public library, 400 pages, 4.5 stars
- read Mar 15-28, 2023, book not previously read

(Edit: I have no problem with people opposing racism, or with paleoanthropologists who are heartily sick of idiots trying to map white people to homo sapiens, and other race(s) to Neanderthals or similar nonsense. But even the best intentions can still create blind spots and inaccuracies; I'd have preferred that the author's entire agenda had been "describe what we know about Neanderthals, as accurately as possible in terms lay people can understand.")

28. Why we fight : the roots of war and the paths to peace by Christopher Blattman

This book defines "war" as "any prolonged violent struggle between groups", and then discusses why most groups aren't at war much of the time, what causes them to slip over the edge into war, and what might help avoid this happening and/or restore peace when it has.

Note first of all that the definition includes such things as gang wars, and does not include e.g. border skirmishes. Brief flare-ups, quashed by leaders/cooler heads don't count. Non-violent conflicts don't count. Long-running violent conflicts do count, even if neither party to the conflict is a state. To the extent that this is not another writer's definition, both causes and potential solutions may be different.

The author's basic thesis is that most of the time when there's a conflict, there's a peaceful bargain that can leave both sides feeling they are better off than taking the risk of fighting for even more. This is because wars are destructive.

Suppose we have evenly matched sides, both wanting to control some resource. Pre-war, the resource can generate a certain amount of what they both want. (Let's say it's tourist dollars.) During the war, the resource generates much less, and even post-war, destroyed infrastructure (hotels were burnt down, in my example) makes the total that can be produced less than it was pre-war. Would you rather have a 50% chance of getting the whole damaged resource (worth 80% of what it had been) - or would you accept a deal that gives you 45% now, even though it isn't entirely fair?

Most of the time, both sides haggle until they arrive at a split that leaves them both better off then the expected value of fighting. And if the balance of power between them changes - now one of them has a whole 55% chance of winning the war - they haggle again, and change the deal so that it's still acceptable.

This seems plausible to me, particularly for prolonged conflicts. Hotheads may shoot at each other at the border, but their generals - and their political leaders - insist that they stand down. (India and Pakistan don't really want whatever % chance of getting what's left of the whole territory, after they've both used nukes. They are better off not fighting, and especially not having an all-out fight, and their leaders know it.)

Sometimes, though, bargaining doesn't produce a result acceptable to both sides. The author provides a taxonomy of issues that prevent such a resolution, applies it to examples, and suggests that attempts to solve wars (before or during) need to address one or more of these factors if they have any chance of being effective.

For the record, the 5 factors are:
- unchecked interests. If the people who decide on war don't pay its costs, they don't bargain based on a shrunken post-conflict pie
- intangible incentives: If the people deciding on war expect it to provide glory, an enhanced reputation, the favor of God, or similar things, then these might seem bigger than the losses due to war damage
- uncertainty: the opponents might be bluffing, bargaining as if they have a 75% chance to win, when in fact the real number is 25%. Bluffs need to be called some of the time, simply to find out if they are as tough as they claim
- commitment problems: is it credible that side A will keep its commitments to side B in the future, particularly if they are becoming more powerful? B may prefer a pre-emptive strike today, to a paper promise not to destroy/conquer/oppress them in a future where B is no longer strong enough to prevent it.
- misperceptions: if both sides think they have a 75% chance to win, neither will accept bargains based on the 25% of the pie that are all their opponents are willing to offer. (If it were really 75:25, the bargaining range for the weaker side would be between 25% of pre-war and predicted post-war value.)

This thesis seems persuasive to me, but I haven't studied the subject. In particular, I haven't read authors advancing their own competing theories.

So what I get from this book is a model that's probably better than "those bozos fight because they are pugnacious assholes", or similar tautologies, and can be applied to current events as I hear them reported, hopefully increasing my understanding. Since I had no such model starting out, I'm happy that I read this book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, social science, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, Canadian (usually referred to as Canadian-American, but raised in Ontario) , age unknown (resident fellow 2007-2008 and faculty member thereafter), academic (economist and political scientist), author not previously read
- English, public library, 388 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 18-29, 2023, book not previously read

>146 ArlieS: What a shame. The Neanderthal book sounds like it should have been a good one.

>146 ArlieS: idiots trying to map white people to homo sapiens, and other race(s) to Neanderthals I always thought it was the other way around, that white Europeans had more Neanderthal genes?

>149 SandDune: Facts have never stopped that kind of idiot.

But here's a quote from the book, which hasn't yet gone back to the library. p. 324-325

Current data finds between 1.8 and 2.6 per cent Neanderthal DNA in everyone except those of sub-Saharan heritage;* but it's not equally distributed. Western Europeans tend to have the least - 2 per cent or under - while Indigenous Americans, Asians and Oceanians, including Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, have up to a fifth more.

* They also have some Neanderthal DNA, but it seems to have arrived from later interactions with Eurasian H. sapiens migrants.

>148 drneutron: I think it was still good, just not as good as it could have been.

>150 ArlieS: Guess what... as far as I know (based on genomics work I did in my research career), the claim of "Neanderthal DNA" is twaddle.

Not wanting to start a "flame war", I will provide some detail to substantiate this assertion (begging your indulgence, Arlie).

To assess DNA sequences of extinct sources of tissue (plant or animal), the researcher(s) must have access to assay archaeological skeletons and obtain verifiable material that can be tested. This is a matter of a forensic technique.

A fascinating (to some of us, anyway) journal article was published a few years ago (in PNAS, 2015) about successfully determining the ethnicity of a Bronze-age skeleton excavated during an archaeological dig in Ireland. At the time, this was the oldest DNA genomics study of human-related tissue, from a verified source.
You can access the article free of charge, here:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1518445113

For me, this study demonstrated how powerful these DNA techniques can be in determining human populations and their migration patterns. The data in this seminal article revealed that the skeleton was carrying DNA sequences characteristically found in peoples who came originally from the Eur-Asian steppes in Neolithic times. Such a distant migration was unknown though geographically-closer migrations from the European areas (Spain, Portugal, France) were known.

Anyway, just saying that the claim of "Neanderthal DNA" is not verifiable at this time.

I do recognize that the PNAS journal article is replete in genomics jargon and undoubtedly toomuch technical discussion. However, if you are persistent and skim that science-y stuff, there's much to understand about the significance of the discoveries.

Edited to fix the url link. Visit my thread to rag on me, if the link doesn't work for you.

>152 SandyAMcPherson: Thanks for the heads up.

The book is claiming successful extraction of DNA from some Neanderthal bones, some Denisovan bones, and IIRC one early hybrid. It mentions major issues with avoiding contamination, but that these have been overcome in some cases.

I doubt I have the resources to check these claims - any publications (since 2015?) are probably buried in journals available only in university libraries, and findable mostly via publications I'd also expect only to find in university libraries. (When I was at university, those were all big heavy tomes found in the reference section - or else they were microfilmed. Now they tend to be online, which means randos with access to a university library often aren't allowed to access them unless they are actually affiliated with the university.)

But IIRC, this isn't the only source that makes such claims. And very much not wanting to start an argument, but your source doesn't say first of that age, but "the first, to our knowledge, genome-wide data from four ancient Irish individuals" (emphasis mine).

On the other hand, all my knowledge in this area comes from MOOCs and books addressed to lay people. If you've worked in the field, you'll have forgotten more than I ever learned.... So you are far more likely to have good understanding than I am.

>153 ArlieS: Good insights, and thanks for pointing out "data from four ancient Irish individuals"...
It's nice to be a bit nerdy, and chatter on this topic.

I should be entirely candid and admit, I retired about then and certainly have not kept up with the literature. I do believe that there were some backstories on the questionable claims regarding Neanderthal DNA. But we'll all get headaches if I try to discuss anything appropriately researched. Wrong forum!

BTW, is MOOCs Online courses and what did you take? Assuming you feel like discussing that...

>154 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy,

MOOCs are indeed online courses. I don't remember what all I took - the heyday of MOOCs was probably a decade or more ago, before they got ultra-focussed on making money. And I started a lot more than I finished.

But one was about humanoid evolution; most of what I remember from it was about various australopithecus species. It probably went all the way to homo sapiens, but the material most interesting to me was in the earlier part.

29. Decluttering at the speed of life : winning your never-ending battle with stuff by Dana K. White

This book, and its author, was mentioned in our very own organizing/decluttering support group thread (https://www.librarything.com/topic/347628) or in discussions about it. I joined that group because I have more stuff than I can comfortably enjoy - the result of 26 years in the same home, and a job that tended to leave me too exhausted to keep on top of things. At the point when I retired (15 months ago now), my living room looked like the set for a hoarding documentary, and other rooms weren't all that much better. (And as for the garage, basement, etc. ... just don't think about them.)

I've been making slow but steady progress since my time became my own; I'm not a hoarder, or even a confirmed slob - just someone whose st0ff got away from them. But I'm open to ideas for better ways to attack the problem, not to mention support in doing so. So I borrowed this book from the library - cunningly avoiding the potential problem of having to fit it into bookshelves that don't have room for it ;-)

I'm not quite the author's target audience, but I found parts of the book extremely useful.

The best part for me was this principle: Don't think "should I keep this". Instead, think of your space in terms of containers, and fill containers with the things you most want to keep. The house can contain only so much furniture. A dresser or closet can only contain so much clothes. A bookshelf can contain only so many books. The house can only contain so many dressers, bookshelves, etc., and fitting in another bookshelf will cost you something else. Discard the rest.

That principle - think about the containers, and their remaining space, not about the desirability of the objects - was somewhat of an aha moment for me when reading that book. It makes decisions so much easier.

Of course in a perfect world with infinite space, and a magic system for locating any particular object, I'd keep things that I'm going to wind up discarding. But I don't live in that world, and the excess items make it hard for me to find or use objects that I want more.

Other parts didn't resonate, and made clear I was not the target audience. I'm not motivated by "this looks horrible" or "I can't let visitors see this". I *am* motivated by having things I'm unable to easily use, either because I can't find them, or because I have to move multiple large objects to get near them. E.g. I've been slowly cataloguing my books for years (since long before I retired), and my collections are used to tell me where to look for each individual book. (E.g. it might be in "Living Room Paperback Fiction".)

I want to get rid of enough unimportant st0ff that I can enjoy the rest. So starting with the most visible area is bad advice for me; I'm starting with areas which are currently making me crazy, or where I think I can most easily free up containers to make room for things that are currently clutter. And I'm absolutely not moving things that don't have a home (yet) to get them out of their current annoying location; that just results in me becoming unable to find them.

Other ideas are very good, but not something I needed to be told. I know I have limited energy, and need to be able to use my house. It's not OK to deal with my excess clothes problem by emptying out all drawers and closets, sorting them into lots of stacks, then figuring out which stacks to keep and where to put them. I'll get interrupted or exhausted in the middle, with my bedroom in a giant mess, and even if I manage to discard a few things, the result will be worse than when I started. So I basically sort in place, except for clothes immediately categorized as "donate" or "trash".

Also, bags and boxes of stuff to be donated need to actually be taken out of the house (doh), and the job isn't over till the bags are gone. (We learned that one the hard way 5 or 10 years ago - somewhere in my house there are boxes of discards that got moved repeatedly 'to get them out of the way' and mislaid; I found the discard books some time last year, but I'm reasonably sure there's at least one box of e-waste somewhere still.)

Overall, a good read, and provides a system complete with "where do I start" for those who need it. But for me, it's mostly gave me one big insight ("think containers") and a few odd bits and pieces.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, practical self help, series: n/a, 2018
- Author: female, American , age unknown (has kids at home), blogger, author not previously read
- English, public library, 221 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 12-Apr 6, 2023, book not previously read

30. Into the Light by David Weber and Chris Kennedy

This science fiction novel is a rather belated sequel of a book I read in 2014. Both novels are what my sister calls "dick fic" - lots of violence with overpowered protagonists ;( Like many such novels, this one also caters to American political illogic; the supposedly democratic, consensual government is referred to as an Empire, and has its own version of Manifest Destiny on its side. Of course the ultimate opponents are designed to be irredeemably evil, to avoid any difficulties with readers uncomfortable about glorying in violence.

For some reason perhaps of interest to a psychologist, I enjoy such novels. I'm just very careful not to mistake them for a description of any reality other than some people's preferred beliefs.

This one is quite readable, but only if you imagine it as fantasy, with a heavy dose of wish fulfillment. I'm unable to believe that the human species will be incredibly fast at developing science and technology, compared to other sapient species - still less that they can double or triple the effectiveness of alien technology in a lot less than a human lifetime. OTOH, the (good) aliens eventually met have intriguing biology (3 genders) with at least some thought to sociological effects of that biology. (I can't imagine why evolution would produce such a species design, but few science fiction authors have any kind of understanding of biology.) That's a plus, after the boring baddies of the first volume. Also, the pacing was decent, and while the book moved between viewpoint characters too often for my taste, it didn't either have so many as to leave me routinely confused, or continually kill them off after the reader had gotten to like them.

It also includes an attempt at designing a good political and economic system for a post-scarcity tech level, from the viewpoints of members of its in-group. It may not be a good design, but I enjoy reading attempts of this kind, particularly in fictional form. (Non-fiction making such attempts tends to be either dry-as-dust or annoyingly-preachy, when it isn't both.)

Read it if you share my enjoyment of violence, don't mind implausibility, and like novels where you know that the heroes will always win, though with some (mostly red-shirt) casualties.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2021
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8, #15, #17, #20, #22 and #24 for this year
- Author 2: male, American(?), age unknown, novelist (mostly self-published?), author not previously read
- English, public library, 511 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 30-Apr 6, 2023; book not previously read

31. What price victory? edited by David Weber

This is a collection of 5 science fiction stories in David Weber's Honor Harrington Universe. All the stories are good and, with only 5 in the book, long enough to get one's teeth into.

Some of the stories may benefit from the reader already knowing some of the characters, or at least their situation, but they'd probably work fine without that. 4.5 stars for a Honorverse fan like me; perhaps only 4 for someone new to these books.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, stories, series (not first), ?2021
- Editor (and author 6): David Weber: male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of my #8, #15, #17, #20, #22, #24 and #30 for this year
- Author 1: Timothy Zahn: male, American, born 1951, novelist, co-author of my #53 for 2022
- Author 2: Thomas Pope: male, American, age unknown, novelist, co-author of my #53 for 2022
- Author 3: Jane Lindskold: female, American, born 1962, author previously read
- Author 4: Jan Kotouč: male, Czech, born 1987, author not previously read
- Author 5: Joelle Presby: female, American, age unknown, author previously read
- English, public library, 313 pages, 4.5 stars
- read Apr 4-8, 2023; book not previously read

Just stopping by to wish you a lovely weekend, my friend. xx

>159 PaulCranswick: Thank you, and the same to you.

>156 ArlieS: I also found that book very helpful, and the idea of 'containers' is vital. I began getting rid of old books when I realized the space freed up could be used for something else, something I wanted to explore. That gave me a lot of energy and guidance. In other cases, things that were stowed on the top shelves of our closets and never used have been targetted to either external storage or complete eviction. Every time I give something away or throw something out, I feel lighter. But I've got a long way to go.

>161 ffortsa: It's a long process, even with few other responsibilities.

I've mentally allotted myself ten years to undo what took at least 26 years to create - more really, since when I moved here it was by professional movers paid by my new employer, and they packed everything.

By the time I turn 75 I hope to have nothing on tops of bookshelves an old lady might have trouble reaching safely, and next to nothing in the basement (stairs very likely to be a problem for an elderly person). And most importantly, only things that future self actually uses. (I currently have things like hobby materials I haven't touched in years, waiting to see whether I pick up the hobby again now that I have time for it.)

Containers have morphed into oubliettes in my space, I fear. I'm on a renewed purging kick because my clothes size has changed and I need to get the no-fit-no-more stuff out so I can put the fit-me-now stuff into drawers and on hangers.

>162 ArlieS: By the time I turn 75 I hope to have nothing on tops of bookshelves an old lady might have trouble reaching safely My goal as well, especially as I'm getting shorter. But that's only next year!

>164 ffortsa: Getting shorter is so unfair!

>165 ArlieS: I should be doing yoga and Alexander Technique. I've already lost about 1.5 inches. Some of it might be recoverable if I work on it. But that's a big if!

32. Boundaries : all-new tales of Valdemar edited by Mercedes Lackey

This is another set of stories in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe, like my #26 for this year, but published earlier.

Good light escapist reading, at least for me, and no unusually bad ones, but nothing really great either. Recommended if you like that kind of escapism, as I do.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), stories, 2021
- Editor: female, American, born 1950, novelist, author of my #12 and #14 and editor of my #26 for this year
- English, public library, 360 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 7-12, 2023; book not previously read

Hi Arlie! Good luck on the long-term cleanse project. The garage is next on my list. One whole side is filled with kid stuff that has to go somewhere else (or go away!). I've been reading a lot of Sci-Fi lately too. Dennis E. Taylor. : )

>168 Berly: Thank you, and good luck on your project as well.

33. A people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn

This is an attempt to present American history as if ordinary people mattered, not just either great men or members of the hegemonic group(s). It is also a political statement, glorifying those who rebelled and castigating those who ruled (as doing so at the expense of those beneath them).

The first part is heavier on the history, and works well as an antidote to anything likely to be taught to American children, teenagers or, quite possibly, undergraduates. It's well worth reading, particularly if your knowledge of US history is shallow and/or comes only from American sources.

The later part, where it overlaps with my own life and political awareness, seems much heavier on the politics, though of course I have no idea what, if anything, is commonly taught to American young people about that period of history. I found it to be a litany of "THEY DID BAD!", aka political speech intended to rouse one's supporters to justified anger - and also tending towards Great Man history (All about Nixon, Bush, Clinton...).

I'm giving it a rating of 4 overall. The last chapters, though, were very tedious, and only rate a 3.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 1980, latest authorial revision 2003
- Author: male, American , born 1922, academic (historian) and political activist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 729 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 21-Apr 14, 2023, book not previously read

34. 1637 : the coast of chaos by Eric Flint and many others

This is a set of stories in the alternate history spawned by a modern Appalachian town being transported to Germany in the 30 years war. The tone is very optimistic: the settlement of North America will be done right this time, without slavery, and without the long litany of abuse and betrayal of native peoples. The existing colonies are just about as selfish and inclined to abuse outsiders (natives, blacks, non-members of their particular sect) as they were in the real world, but the incentives are different - they all need to unite against a common enemy. Meanwhile, the uptimers (people from a future that will never happen) are stirring the pot in favor of no one power achieving hegemony, true alliances with natives, and the absence of slavery.

I find the optimism to be very pleasant, if somewhat implausible. The stories are engaging, and many involve real historical people (about whom we know very little) given extra detail in the way of historical fiction, which is something I enjoy.

It's also somewhat bittersweet reading, in that the series founder died last year. Many other people have already written stories in that universe - e.g. only 2 of the 8 stories in this book have Eric Flint even as a co-author - so the series might continue. But it won't be the same without Flint's editorial touch; and frankly almost all my favorite stories and novels in the series had him as author or co-author.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2021
- Author/Editor 1: Eric Flint: male, American, born 1947, novelist, co-author of my #3 for this year
- English, public library, 333 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 12-17, 2023; first time reading this book

One oddity: the physical book lists 3 authors on the cover. They are the 3 co-authors of the title story. The co-editor is only listed on the title page, and the other story authors are only listed in the table of contents. IMO, "standard" form would have been to list the co-editors (Eric Flint and Bjorn Hasseler on the cover, which is how the book is listed in LibraryThing. This gimmick - presumably intended to improve sales - does not make me feel happy with its publisher; sadly that's a major name that might just be the last publisher with a major science fiction label. At any rate, books published by Baen Books should be checked for mis-information of this kind.

35. Survival of the sickest : a medical maverick discovers why we need disease by Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince

This is a book about genetics, epigenetics, and traits harmful in our modern environment that are widespread in some areas because of benefits they confer in now-less-common situations. I normally love books like this, at least when they take a new-to-me approach, or include material new to me. This book included new-to-me material, but was otherwise somewhat disappointing.

I was willing to forgive the sub-title ("medical maverick", "discovers" etc.), which made the authors sound like crackpots peddling snake oil medicine - once I learned that the primary author had a relevant doctorate, and was working on earning an MD at the time the book was written.

Unfortunately, the book is full of minor omissions, statements of inaccurate common knowledge as factual, and similar. It also favorably cites Elaine Morgan, who is well known for writing just so stories about human evolution - her evidence being basically that "this makes sense". (Morgan lacks relevant professional training and is generally regarded by those in the field as the wrong kind of auto-didact.)

Back in 2019, I read another book with the same primary author, published 7 years later than this one. He was working as a medical geneticist, having presumably finished his MD by then. It did not strike me the same way - while I didn't review it, I rated it above 3 and my one line summary was merely "genetics and epigenetics from the POV of a medical geneticist ".

FWIW, this book is described on the cover as written by "Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince". This usually means the second author, who is generally a professional writer, did the actual writing. Dr. Moalem was presumably under-confident in their ability to write the book, and let Prince write what he (mis)understood from what Moalem told him. That may account for the problems I complain of above.

The book has notes at the end, associated only with page numbers - there are no end note numbers. There is no separate bibliography. The one or two bits of inaccurate common knowledge I looked for did not have notes for them.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2007
- Author 1: Sharon Moalem(*): male, American , born 1977, scientist (biology), author previously read
- Author 2: Jonathan Prince: male, American, age unknown (now deceased), speechwriter, adviser in Clinton white house, author not previously read
- English, public library, 267 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 11-18, 2023, book not previously read

*Note on gender: Moalem is plainly described as male in the book, looks male in his picture, and describes himself as affected by a genetic problem that manifests primarily in males, since the relevant gene is on the X chromosome. The gender is not a typo, in spite of the female-seeming name.

>172 ArlieS: Hm. I think I'll skip this one.

A miracle has occurred: I caught up on all the threads I had starred.

I'm also working hard to finish two books that arrived from the library with holds already on the second (they are a series), and one that's due in on May 4th which looks like having quite an interesting review.

I hope all is going well for my readers, with much enjoyable reading.

>174 ArlieS: I am horrifyingly disgustingly jealous of your being caught up.

>175 richardderus: It doesn't happen very often.

36. Isolate by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

This fantasy novel takes place early in the industrial age in a society where empathic powers are common, as are both special vulnerabilities and immunities to those powers. The viewpoint character is an "isolate", immune to empathic abilities. His teammate is an empath; together they act as security for a politician, one of the counselors who form what amounts to a parliament.

The political system is interesting, and the characters see it as basically good, if somewhat corrupted recently by one of three parties having held power for far too long. Their goal is to fix things - within the system, not by revolution.

As the story begins, all hell is beginning to break loose. The commercial class wants to hold on to power, not to mention the perquisites of corrupt politics. The rising lower classes want more than they are getting. Revolutionaries are appearing who want to replace the entire system. And there's an uptick in assassinations, both attempted and successful.

We follow the day to day life of the politician's security guard as he becomes committed to his boss' political ideals, and takes on responsibilities beyond merely acting as a guard.

There are aspects of a young person coming to mature responsibility (not simply coming of age; this is a somewhat later transition). There's a look at an alternate world, and how it might work in practice. There's a chunk of adventure, as several assassination attempts are foiled, or in some cases merely contained.

I enjoyed this novel a lot. (No surprise here; this author is read-on-sight for me.)

That said, the hero is a wee bit overpowered. He is both very smart and very athletic, as well as managing to remain very very alert pretty much constantly. I have questions about the economics etc. And some of the make-it-feel-like-a-different-place details feel like earth-with-names-changed. Many of this author's books do a better job on all these fronts, except that his hero(in)es do tend to be exceptionally talented and competent (aka "over powered").

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, first of a series, 2021
- Author: male, American, born 1943, novelist, author previously read
- English, public library, 596 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 18-21, 2023; book not previously read

>175 richardderus: What RD said. I seem to be getting further and further behind this year!

>177 ArlieS: For me Isolate seemed to distill the dullest and most rote aspects of Modesitt's books. While I skipped many of the Recluse books, I've read his other fantasies and SF books as they've come out for decades. I think my favorites are The Soprano Sorceress and the early Imager books.

>178 PaulCranswick: You've had a lot going on this year.

All caught up on your threads...LOL. I hope you enjoyed that fleeting moment! One I will not experience in the near future...but I am caught up here, so there's that. : )

>179 quondame: I'm sorry to hear that. I don't think it's his best either, for whatever that's worth, but I liked it anyway.

>174 ArlieS: >175 richardderus: I am *also* horrifyingly disgustingly jealous of Arlie being caught up.

Add to that ~ I probably didn't even star as many threads as I originally did, because I can *never* keep up with the ones that rocket off instantaneously with thousands of posts. And it feels so intimidating when I see that I am 2 threads behind or something, like on the busy threads.
I do drop by those but I comfort myself with simply delurking occasionally to enjoy a visit.

Arlie's thread is starred though, and I _still_ got way behind.

>181 Berly: >183 SandyAMcPherson: It doesn't happen often, which is what makes it memorable ;-)

37. The son also rises : surnames and the history of social mobility by Gregory Clark

This was an "interesting" book, but in a sense that requires the scare quotes I used.

My first problem was that the author was massively unclear about what the book was intended to do. Books normally have some kind of purpose/theme: to show some interesting results and speculate about their meaning; convey a chunk of history; convince people to join the author's cause; convey as much as will fit about the evolution of marsupials; show off the author's erudition; etc. etc. Competently written books generally make this theme clear up front. This one basically just started in on describing research in detail - with limited overview. And about halfway through the book it switched from that to other things.

I spent the first hundred pages or so smelling some kind of rat, and trying to make allowances for my suspicion that this book was in fact an attempt to convince people of political principles I don't share. Research can be competently done, and reliable as far as it goes, even if the person performing or describing the research supports things I abhor - and even if they maintain that the research supports their cause. Not explaining where they were going up front seemed like a bad sign, but that plus a few errors doesn't mean that the work is any worse than average; everyone makes mistakes, often in favour of what they already believe; I follow one particular political opponent's blog primarily because he's expert at finding and pointing out issues of that kind from authors on "my" side of certain political questions, and try not to expect my opponents to do better than my friends.

As the book progressed, the logical fallacies and potential research errors piled up. Undefined terms were used in multiple senses, yet were treated like a variable in an algebraic formula. In particular, the word "status" was overloaded to the point of incoherence.

I was also beginning to figure out the purpose of the book: to sell the idea that (social) status is inherited in much the same way as physical height, and that it takes centuries for the descendants of high status people to become merely average status. The rate of "regression to the mean" is, we are told, the same regardless of the degree of equality of opportunity in the society, except to the extent that high and low status groups avoid breeding with outsiders - in that case, it's even slower. It's also in all cases *much* slower than it appears from results comparing e.g. income or education levels between parents and offspring. Or that's what we are told the large first section of the book has proven.

The book was full of formulae, and tables - all of it looking very precise, except when you looked at the assumptions used to produce them. Given the size of those assumptions, if the author had included error bars - including for faulty initial data - my mathematical intuition says they'd be so huge that one could conclude almost anything from the data. (To the author's credit, he mentioned many of his specific assumptions; I feel reasonably sure he thought he was doing good research, and it's even possible that it is good - by the standards of economics, rather than of more rigorous social sciences.)

I can't prove that his conclusion is erroneous, given the data he presents. (I doubt anyone could prove anything from this muddle.) But somewhere in the middle he took to assuming the conclusion, and deriving results from the assumption. He also never defines the thing he's measuring, and uses a job lot of different proxies for it, which don't always produce the same results even in the data he presents. I keep imagining myself as a professor faced with this as a student assignment, or a peer reviewer giving feedback on an article for publication - my suggestions for improvement might be longer than the underlying document. NOT impressed.

My first suggestion would be to rewrite it to be a real report of research, and make that research a whole lot less ambitious. Unless you can cite strong correlations among all types of social status, you can't equate income, wealth, university graduation, attendance at a top tier university, and descent from nobility. It gets even sillier when you consider "being a lawyer" or "being a doctor" as indicators of significant social status, equivalent at all times and places. (These days, the truly ambitious shun both of those professions in favor of positions in finance, as evidenced e.g. by recent Harvard graduates.)

So why did I finish the book, and why did I rate it 3 rather than 0.5? I think it's useful to be aware of these ideas, and also to be aware of the various techniques being used to make the claims seem plausible, or even to have been proven.

Also, it's more or less obvious that genotype has a big effect on many types of success among humans. Some people are fond of insisting that it's *all* environment, or (worse) suppressing any consideration of genetic effects. (Or for that matter, any other effects that start early enough they might as well be innate.) And this author, probably because he's British rather than American, at least mostly manages to avoid equating "genotype" with "race". (The British class system doesn't claim that normal Britons are of a different race than their "betters", except sometimes with regard to the Irish, or more recently various immigrant groups.)

Sometimes you need people who overstate a reasonable position on both sides of a question.

On the other hand, there's also an unstated conclusion: there's no need for any measures in favour of equality of opportunity, or even reducing the degree of inequality of outcome. The people with innate status, or at least their descendants, will rise to the top anyway. It's fine if poor people get little or no schooling, or only as much as is needed for whatever jobs the elite have for them. Those with elite genes will still rise, wherever they start. Those without will fall, no matter how level the playing field. So we might as well not bother with fairness, equality etc. (And of course the author *is* an economist - efficiency tends to be far more salient to economists than e.g. justice.)

You don't have to draw this unstated conclusion from the explicit part of this book. But there are enough subtleties of style, authors cited approvingly, and similar, to place the author firmly in the American right wing. (Some of my left wing friends would call these "dog whistles".) I don't know what measures this author personally favors, but some of his fellow travelers favor fairly vile ones.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2014,
- Author: male, British (born in Scotland; lives and works in California) , born 1957, academic (economic historian), author not previously read
- English, public library, 366 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 7-23, 2023, book not previously read

Third Pearl Rule of the Year: The Gordian Protocol by David Weber and Jacob Holo

This science fiction novel has too many viewpoint characters. Writing it this way makes sense given the plot - it's an alternate-worlds novel in which we see from the POV of analogues of the same person in multiple different timelines. (I lost count of how many.) Unfortunately, the viewpoints aren't limited to the many analogues of the historian at the center of the plot.

I might have soldiered on, but it also had the problem of having terrible things happening to viewpoint characters. I'm unappreciative of authors that first make me sympathetic towards a character, and then have him or her die horribly, and it's worse when you get to watch their situation get worse and worse for page after page.

Net result, while there's probably an interesting story lurking here, I've used up the maximum renewals from the library, have ten days left before I must return it, and have no impulse to pick it up and read more of it. I also have no impulse to read its sequel.

And this is even though the primary author is a favorite of mine. (The second author, on the other hand, is one I don't recall reading, and will probably avoid.)

>186 ArlieS: Welp... that's ten days saved. Moving on to other reads, then?

>185 ArlieS: I am not as patient with the dog whistlers as you are Arlie. You were fair and balanced and eminently reasonable. I myownself would've just called him names.

>187 richardderus: Yep. In fact I've already moved on, with another novel and another non-fiction already in flight - and more holds to collect at the library tomorrow.

>188 richardderus: It must be my Canadian upbringing, compelling politeness. ;-)

>185 ArlieS: Man oh man... more perseverance than I would have devoted to Gregory Clark's twaddle.
I was drawn into reading your whole review with increasing amazement that you persevered, Arlie. Good review and with precise analyses, too.
I wondered at the Lamarkian evolutionary thought. Is not Clark's reasoning flawed that way alone? You pulled your punches, hey?

>188 richardderus: ^^^ what Richard said.

>190 SandyAMcPherson: His concept isn't really Lamarckian. He postulates some kind of innate factor that results in social status, rather than the other way round. If you have more of factor X than others starting at the same point as you, you'll tend to do better than them at climbing the greasy status poll. If you have less than your starting peers, you'll tend to fall. But luck also matters. Most of the time you'll have much the same amount as your starting peers, and stay at roughly the same status.

He writes as if the same factor X works in all environments, whether the key to status is passing exams in pre-westernized China, leading war bands against your neighbours, or the kind of financial innovation that produced the 2008 financial crash. I find that somewhat implausible, but can construct just so stories where this would make sense - perhaps factor X is ambition, or intelligence, or both combined.

Other than that - I persevered because the book was recommended by my bridge partner. Because my reaction was negative, I wanted to be clearer than "it really rubbed me the wrong way".

Also, I rather enjoy collecting issues with a book and then writing a detailed bad review. Or even a mixed review, if it's a case that merits one. (Good reviews are actually harder for me to write in any detail; I always feel like the book itself is much clearer than anything I could say about it.)

>192 ArlieS: Excellent clarification ~ thanks for taking the time.

38. Councilor by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

This fantasy novel is the sequel to my #36 for the year; there's a 3rd installment coming out in August that I look forward to reading once the library acquires it.

If you liked the first one, as I did, you'll probably like this, but not if you disliked the first one. The hero of the previous book is now a councilor himself, married to his previous security partner. The story mixes day-to-day minutiae of a new councilor learning his job in a crisis, with threats and actuality of violence. There are attempts on his life, which he expects to continue indefinitely, short of the instigator being removed, and perhaps even longer. (The instigator is probably in the employ of a corrupt corporation ....) Several of those the hero worked with in the first book wind up dead by the end of this one, including his previous boss.

One problem - revelations about main characters that make them even more overpowered. Our hero was even more outstanding during his education than previously revealed. Our heroine (and she is that, though never a viewpoint character) is connected to past royalty, and seems to be on the point of re-establishing a relationship with her mostly estranged relatives who hold the noble title. (Is her brother going to die in the next book, leaving her - or perhaps her husband - with the family title?)

I enjoyed the book anyway, but I'd prefer a bit less of the trope of a hero originally presented as poor-and-ordinarily-capable-but-striving turning out to have excellent connections and three-in-a century talents.

I'd also love to see someone take the premise of the original book and run with it - politics from the point of view of a politician's bodyguard -or other politician-adjacent security professional - without producing a thriller. Their viewpoint character should have a career path staying in security rather than moving into politics themself. Bonus if this all takes place in an alternate world, so we can have a bit of emotional distance from the corruption etc. inevitably observed. It's perhaps best of all if they are essentially non-partisan; the important thing to them is to try to keep the politician(s) etc. safe, not what those politicians favor. Think of it as a police procedural for political security ...

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2022
- Author: male, American, born 1943, novelist, author of my #36 for the year
- English, public library, 514 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 22-27, 2023; book not previously read

>194 ArlieS: Heh, Isolate was far from my favorite Modesitt, and one reason was that the politics, while rudimentary, were close enough to ours so that the emotional distance was insufficient. I think you're suggestions are excellent, but not what this author does.

Stopping by to wish you a wonderful long weekend, Arlie. Modesitt is an author I should give a chance to by the looks of it.

>196 PaulCranswick: We spent a happy Saturday playing bridge face to face. We're out of practice - we've been playing online since the first covid lockdown - so didn't do very well - but we had fun.

I hope your weekend is going equally well.

>197 ArlieS: My parents taught me bridge, but I don't know anyone else who plays - my wife has no interest. So, I play online only - bridgebase.

>198 ChrisG1: We've mostly played on Bridgebase since the first covid lockdown. So yesterday we were getting back to an old love.

My parents were a bit like your family. My mother loved bridge and my dad had no interest. Fortunately both of mom's parents played, so teaching the first grandchild happened fairly promptly. (That was me.) Also, they'd somehow worked out or found a 3 player variant, where all 3 competed to become declarer, and then got to work with whatever hand had been dealt to the dummy.

Oh, I am jealous! I haven't played bridge in forever, let alone in-person.

>198 ChrisG1: >200 Berly: I feel like this is where I should shill for the ACBL (American contract bridge league). www.acbl.org. If you are lucky, they have a club near you. And if you aren't in North America, I'm sure there are equivalents elsewhere.

>199 ArlieS: My live competetive card playing is cribbage - my son and I belong to a "grass roots" club affilliated with the ACC (American Cribbage Congress) that plays every Monday night and even participate in occasional large scale weekend tournaments.

>202 ChrisG1: I never learned to play cribbage. You may be the first person I know who plays it.

>202 ChrisG1: & >203 ArlieS: I have played cribbage before, Chris / Arlie although I am hardly proficient at it. I remember back to the dark days of Ted Heath being Prime Minister and daily power cuts. Without TV, my dear late mum used to tell us (me and my twin) stories, sometimes together with my Gran, and she taught us so many card games in those days.

Bridge clubs have fallen by the wayside here in NYC, alas. We used to attend one only a few blocks from home, but that is long gone. Aside from the senior centers, there are only one or two that I know of. I used to play, and Jim used to play, but not together, and we would have to do some really organized work to develop a partnership strategy and understanding. We keep planning to, and then don't.

>205 ffortsa: I think the bridge club we started in is struggling somewhat, but still hanging in there. We switched to one about as far from my then job in the opposite direction, because it was counter-commute, which mattered with evening games. It's also a bit larger - more frequent games, yay! But basically bridge clubs are still going strong in the SF Bay area, and California in general. And they do a lot of outreach to the younger generation; a pair of youngsters (pre- or very early teens) proved to be formidable opponents on Saturday.

The year is 1/3 over, and the list of books is getting unwieldy. Time for a new thread.