Arlie's Reading Continues in 2023 - Thread 2

I'm Arlie, 65, newly retired software engineer. This is 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. If fiction, well worth rereading; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
4. Very good, but not quite 4.5. If fiction, likely reread; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
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
My 2023 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346763

Books Completed Jan-Apr 2023

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.

Books Completed May-Aug 2023

39. Terminal Peace by Jim C. Hines
40. The knowledge machine : how irrationality created modern science by Michael Strevens
41. How Rome fell : death of a superpower by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy
42. The heart of valor by Tanya Huff
43. Valor's trial by Tanya Huff
44. End of the megafauna : the fate of the world's hugest, fiercest, and strangest animals by Ross D. E. MacPhee
45. Trade Secret by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (reread)
46. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
47. The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff
48. Fair Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
49. A new clan by David Weber and Jane Lindskold
50. Climate chaos : lessons on survival from our ancestors by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani
51. An ancient peace by Tanya Huff
52. The genetic lottery : why DNA matters for social equality by Kathryn Paige Harden
53. Wizard's first rule by Terry Goodkind
54. A peace divided by Tanya Huff
55. Woman, Captain, Rebel: The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain by Margaret Willson
56. The privilege of peace by Tanya Huff
57. The private world of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge
58. Dragon's eye edited by Christopher Stasheff (part previously read)
59. Killers of a certain age by Deanna Raybourn
60. For profit : a history of corporations by William Magnuson
61. Mind Changer : A Sector General Novel by James White
62. The last days of the dinosaurs : an asteroid, extinction, and the beginning of our world by Riley Black
63. The Order War by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (reread)
64. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (mostly reread)
65. The personal librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
66. Hospital Station by James White
67. Bones of the past by Holly Lisle
68. Stardoc by S. L. Viehl
69. Super volcanoes : what they reveal about earth and the worlds beyond by Robin George Andrews
70. The Aliens Among Us by James White
71. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum by William F. Ruddiman
72. Roman Keycard Blackwood: The Final Word by Edwin B. Kantar
73. Woke racism : how a new religion has betrayed Black America by John H. McWhorter
74. The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood by Tristram Hunt
75. Chicks in Chainmail edited by Esther Friesner (reread)
76. Did You Say Chicks? edited by Esther Friesner (reread)
77. Homo sapiens rediscovered : the scientific revolution rewriting our origins by Paul Pettitt
78. The silvered by Tanya Huff
79. Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure by Vaclav Smil
80. Brother Cadfael's Penance by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter))
81. Essential retirement planning for solo agers : a retirement and aging roadmap for single and childless adults by Sara Zeff Geber
82. Fledgling : a new Liaden universe novel by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (reread)
83. Rights talk : the impoverishment of political discourse by Mary Ann Glendon
84. 8287245::Red by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner
85. 151902::Rainbow's end by Ellis Peters
86. The Fires of Paratime by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (reread)
87. Where do camels belong? : the story and science of invasive species by Ken Thompson
88. Plagues upon the earth : disease and the course of human history by Kyle Harper
89. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our Worldview by Richard Tarnas
90. Bird brain : an exploration of avian intelligence by Nathan Emery
91. Exit, voice, and loyalty : responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states by Albert O. Hirschman (previously partially read)
92. The Grand Tour, or, The purloined coronation regalia : being a revelation of matters of high confidentiality and greatest importance, including extracts from the intimate diary of a noblewoman and the sworn testimony of a lady of quality by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
93. Edible economics : a hungry economist explains the world by Ha-Joon Chang
94. The Bishop at the Lake: A Bishop Blackie Ryan Novel by Andrew M. Greeley

Books Pearl Ruled in 2023

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
4: Beaverland : how one weird rodent made America by Leila Philip
5. An indigenous peoples' history of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Come on in; the tea is hot and the books are great.

New-thread orisons, Arlie!

Happy new one, Arlie!

>11 richardderus: >12 drneutron:

Thank you both.

Oooh, I hadn't read your rules before. Quite strict! And lots of intense-sounding books so far this year. I've read a couple, but the rest are either new to me or not quite in my wheelhouse. I'm impressed that you read Piketty.

Tonight we are going to a presentation by Michael Desmond, who wrote Poverty by America. I haven't read the book yet, but it did sound compelling.

And I'm really glad to hear that bridge is flourishing in California. We lost some very well established clubs over the last 20 years, I think because of the economics of renting space. And somehow, my head isn't as good for bridge as it used to be (not that I was that good!). Remembering what was played is always a struggle. But it would be interesting to get back to duplicate, even if I end up at the bottom of the list.

Happy new thread, Arlie!

Happy new thread Arlie!

Happy new thread, Arlie!

HAppy new one!

Happy new thread, Arlie. xx

>15 atozgrl: >16 quondame: >17 ChrisG1: >18 figsfromthistle: >19 PaulCranswick: Thank you all.

Happy new thread, Arlie!

>21 FAMeulstee: Thank you.

39. Terminal Peace by Jim C. Hines

This science fiction novel is the third in a series called Janitors of the Apocalypse. As you can imagine from the series title, there is plenty of humor. This installment also has moral conundrums and a main character who's trying to finish one last mission before she becomes a mindless violent savage. (Her body has begun to resist the treatment that had been keeping an alien plague in partial remission.)

I enjoyed it, and you might too. But if you decide to read it, I suggest starting from the beginning of the series, with Terminal Alliance.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2022
- Author: male, American, born 1974, novelist, author of my #48 for 2022
- English, public library, 362 pages, 4 stars
- read May 2-7, 2023; book not previously read

I am unhappy to report that I've run out of borrowed fiction. There's plenty on my shelves - at least 1400 works that I've catalogued, almost all of which I've already read, and a much smaller number neither read not catalogued. But everything unread I have out from the library right now is non-fiction. And unread fiction on the TBR shelf tends to be less immediately attractive - if it looked really delicious I'd have read it by now.

For now, I guess I'll go back to the two unfinished non-fiction library books I have in flight: How Rome Fell (history) and The Knowledge Machine (philosophy of science).

But I'm going to need a fiction fix soon ....

>24 ArlieS: I know the feeling. I'm determined to read from my shelves or get rid of the books I'm resisting. It's tough. I realized I had the second in a detective series languishing because I hadn't read the first, so I borrowed that title from the library. I'm not above rereading favorites either, of course. Good luck finding some stimulating fiction. BTW, I listened to The Knowledge Machine - found it interesting.

>24 ArlieS: I gave up the idea of reading only books I own because nothing sparks a Kindle spree faster than telling me I can't do something. Perverse as it undoubtedly is, I know not to trigger the spree so I can actually get a few more of the books I own read before adding dozens more.

Here's hoping that you are enjoying your have-to reads more than you thought you would.

>25 ffortsa: I foresee some DNFs getting dropped off at the nearest library sale or little free library, which will be good (I guess) as I need more space for books I like. But I'll probably start with a recent haul from a second hand book store - not the older ones that are much more likely to wind up Pearl ruled.

>26 richardderus: I'm fairly strict about not paying full price for anything I'm not sure will be a long term keeper, but second hand bookstores are fair game, within reason. (Not quite Paul's level of reason though - his home must be huge, to contain all the books he buys.)

I kind of wish I liked ebooks more - they take up less space. But I am making progress on reducing my excess st0ff - just very slowly. Even some books have gone, either no longer relevant ("how to succeed in the job market", "how to train a puppy", etc.) or DNF'd.

I hope I never have to move to a smaller place, let alone some kind of assisted living. I'd never be able to fit my stuff into anywhere smaller. (1200 sq feet or so here; 2 adults and an elderly dog.)

>27 ArlieS: There's a Little Free Library on the boardwalk near me, so I can offload read books that I don't want to keep... most of them these days... and that plus clothes are the only things I buy, really.

40. The knowledge machine : how irrationality created modern science by Michael Strevens

This was an interesting book. It does not fit nicely into my usual genres - or into my expectations of how a book should be organized. The organization worked; the book was interesting; but in a a sense its credibility was contradicted by its topic.

The scientific method seems to be strange and difficult for most people to understand. I'm not entirely sure why; it seems pretty natural to me. Perhaps I'm merely properly indoctrinated, in spite of never having been a working scientist. But on the other hand, perhaps I'm merely on the autistic spectrum, and have an unfair advantage in keeping certain common human thought distortions out of my thought process.

At any rate, the thesis of this book is that the scientific method is both unnatural and irrational - except that it works far better for its purpose (developing accurate knowledge of the world) than other, more natural means of understanding. Strevens suggests that developing such a method - and using it long enough for its practical advantages to become obvious - was always extremely unlikely, but had somewhat of a better chance in Europe in the aftermath of the religious wars - people had gotten into the habit of compartmentalizing domains of knowledge, separating religion from politics, because the alternative seemed to be yet another round of religious wars. Thus separating observed data from everything else, while doing science, or at least while reporting on scientific work, seemed less unnatural at that time than it ever had before.

The book starts by discussing the views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn about how science works, first contrasting them with each other, and then demonstrating that neither adequately describes the actual behaviour of some/all/most scientists. He then gives his own version of how science really works - or at least of the basic rule that must be followed for science to work at all.

In particular, he postulates something he calls the iron rule of explanation: scientists may only attempt to resolve their differences of opinion by conducting empirical tests. No fighting, no shouting, no revealed scripture, no appeals to past masters. Just empirical results. They may - and generally will - differ about what those results mean - but that can only be addressed by gathering and reporting more results. They may use any means they like to come up with theories, or ideas of what data to gather - but when they report the data, they are expected to sterilize it - not tell us that they think their results are in accord with Scripture, or that their experiment was inspired by a dream. At least, not tell us this in the scientific literature - they can say whatever they want in a memoir, or at the pub over a beer.

Paradoxically, leaving out extra sources of information results in better results. (At least, it's paradoxical if you truly believe dreams, divine revelation, etc. etc. provide useful information on the topic at hand.) Strevens uses a stronger word here - "irrational" rather than "paradoxical"; in my opinion, that word choice weakens his argument somewhat.

Unfortunately, Strevens is arguing for his position using the methods of the humanities. And not even the more data-minded of those methods. (We see examples, not statistics.) To me, this seems to be rather weak evidence.

Of course his approach is somewhat inevitable - he's a philosopher, after all. But I suspect he also doesn't get it - in the sense that he can't imagine being motivated to do science himself. Non-scientifically, I suspect that because he doesn't truly get it, his model of the motivations of scientists is likely to be somewhat inaccurate. (I imagine him as me, trying to understand the values and motivations of fashion designers, beyond the obvious one of making money.)

In any case, that doesn't really matter. His iron rule is a worthy addition to the existing theories of how science really works. But I don't think his methodology - or that of Kuhn for that matter (I haven't read Popper) is going to convince anyone of anything they didn't already want to believe. All 3 descriptions of how science really works are probably best regarded as "just so" stories - science speak for explanations not subject to empirical investigation.

That said, all three of them may be useful for potential scientists in understanding what they are, ideally, supposed to be doing. Or more correctly, how they are supposed to go about seeking knowledge, and some of the ways in which that search can go astray.

I'm not sure what (if anything) is useful for those prone to bastardize the word science, or one of its sub-fields, with pseudo-intellectual mashups like "creation science" or "indigenous physics". Mostly I just ignore them.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, philosophy of science, series: n/a, 2020
- Author: male, born in New Zealand (lives and works in New York) , age unknown (started PhD in 1991), academic (philosophy of science), author not previously read
- English, public library, 350 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 30-May 13, 2023, book not previously read

>29 ArlieS: Really nice, thorough review. I don't recall off-hand what I wrote about it, although I thought the book was worth listening to, maybe more than once.

eta: Oops. No review! Not even dates. But Audible says I finished it. Now I will have to listen to it again, and keep your comments in mind. I know I looked up both Kuhn and Popper as I was reading, and will have to again (mind has been like a sieve lately). Not to worry. I need to get a lot of walking done!

eta: Now I see I mentioned this on your thread before, and on mine. Duh.

Hope you have had a great weekend, Arlie.

>29 ArlieS: I think this is a technique of argument more in my life than in yours, Arlie. Philosophy and philosophers are likely to get past my defenses because I'm more like them than not, so I tend not to see their methods with too critical an eye.

And a 3.5* from you is pretty darn solid a recommendation. Off to library it up.

>30 ffortsa: I just had a brief exchange on Richardderus' thread about the need to review books if one's going to remember them, at least when one's as old as he and I are.

Mind you, I started forgetting some books much earlier than that, but I prefer to blame my advancing age. ;-)

>31 PaulCranswick: And you likewise, though from what I read on your thread, your family's probably still reeling from the unexpected death of Hani's close friend. So have a Canadian-style wish, for as good a weekend as possible under the circumstances.

>32 richardderus: It was about time for me to get you with a book bullet, given how many you've got me with ;-) I hope you enjoy it.

41. How Rome fell : death of a superpower by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy

This book tries to cover the Roman Empire from the end of the Republic until the fall of its western half in the sixth century. It's organized chronologically, with the theme being "why did Rome fall?"

While we know far less than any historian would want to know about much of this period, that's still close to 500 years. A chronology of relevant times and dates takes 16 pages. A book covering such a long time span is at risk of turning into a succession of brief descriptions of each emperor's reign, along with major political events. That can be hard to follow and harder still to remember, even with an organizing theme.

The author tried hard to avoid this, but I still came out of it with only very blurry memories, except of parts of the history I already knew something substantial about. I was overjoyed to find the detailed chronology starting on page 425; reading that helped me sort out some of the blur. He's also not the most engaging writer, at least when writing history. (He also writes novels.) Those two flaws got him a grudging 3.5 star rating, which was almost cut down to 3 stars.

On the other hand, he did everything else right. He's got references. He's got a glossary. He's got an introduction that explains what he intends to write, and a conclusion that puts it all together. He's very very good at explaining what information we don't have, and what guesstimates have been made to try to fill those gaps. (It would be nice to have a clear idea of the real size of the Roman army at various periods...)

His conclusion is that the western Roman Empire fell, and the East became no more than a major power (not a superpower), because Romans spent far too much time fighting each other, and their organizational arrangements were too often optimized to reduce the risk of yet another successful usurpation, at a cost of making them ponderously inefficient. The barbarians weren't significantly stronger in the 6th century than they had been in the 3rd. But the Roman army was far less efficient, and the only really large forces were directly controlled by the emperor(s), who couldn't be in more than one place at a time. Corruption was rampant, leading to paper soldiers, real soldiers going unpaid or unprovisioned, and similar issues. Deals made by the emperors with groups of barbarians might be sabotaged by organizational inability to live up to their terms. etc. etc..

I don't know how plausible this is, as the main/only significant reason for the fall of Rome. (Writing books explaining the fall has been a popular activity since Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and they've provided a lot of explanations.) I'd have to read a lot of literature written by scholars for scholars to get a better idea, and the answer might well be "we don't know". It seems plausible to me, but I've learned to never trust any scholarly work without also reading its critiques, particularly in the humanities. And because this is a book addressed to the general reader, with an author who's no longer in academia, there may not be any reactions at all. (Academics often ignore popularizers.)

At any rate, it's a decent book, if you don't mind the two flaws I led with.

Finally, some wry humor. On page 416, the author says "Before this book is released ... someone will have been elected and installed in the White House as president. We do not yet know who this will be, but we can at least be sure that the defeated candidate will not try to rally part of the United States Armed Forces and plunge the country into civil war." That was indeed true for the election of 2008. It was also technically true of the election of 2020, but only because the defeated candidate tried to rally a somewhat different group of his supporters.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2009
- Author: male, British , born 1969, historian and novelist (no university affiliation; looks like he dropped out of academia after 10 years), author not previously read
- English, public library, 531 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 24-May 14, 2023, book not previously read

Note: Interested readers should be aware that this book was released under two different titles; British readers got the same book titled The Fall of the West: the death of the Roman superpower. I use the American title here because that's what was on the cover of the book I read. Also, LibraryThing has the US title listed as primary - a touchstone using the British title produces a link labelled with the American one.

42. The heart of valor by Tanya Huff

This is the third in a series of marines-in-space novels. I read the first two last year.

The whole series features a smart and lucky NCO heroine, who deals effectively with whatever situation is thrown at her, however implausible, all the while minimizing casualties as best she can.

The first volume was very much played for laughs, with the combat plot relatively less important, but the balance has been shifting; this one's more like brilliant-heroine-does-the-almost-impossible against a humorous background. The Di'Taykan Marines are still sex-mad; the Krai Marines are still able and willing to eat and digest just about anything. The recruits display various varieties of cluelessness, naivete, and hero worship, while the NCOs and officers bet privately on which ones will last. And one NCO screws up by the numbers, by trying to ignore/delay his metamorphosis into the non-warrior, breeding life stage of his species - instead of reporting his need for a medical retirement, he goes on one more mission and winds up incapacitated by his biology.

But basically, this book is about a supposedly simple, essentially safe mission going very wrong indeed, and how the marines involved solve the various problems, after our heroine takes over from the incapacitated sergeant who had been in charge of it.

I eat this kind of thing like candy, so it gets 4 stars from me. Another person using my rating system might have given it a 3 - it's good, but perhaps more OK than great unless you really love this kind of story.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2008
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #26, 28, 34, 39, and 58 for 2022
- English, TBR shelf (purchased used May 2022), 418 pages, 4 stars
- read May 12-15, 2023; book not previously read

>35 ArlieS: Oh, it's now been a long time since I read the last of that series - the first I don't even have recorded on LT so it must have been before 2007. These are more like canapé than candy for me, but yes, easy bites.

>36 quondame: I only own the first four, and have just started reading the fourth one. If it's as enjoyable as the others, I'll look out for the rest of the series, though I really don't want to buy more books until I make some serious reductions in Mount TBR.

Sadly, it's unlikely any of the local libraries will have these books. They rarely have anything by this author, perhaps because she's Canadian.

Pearl rule #4: Beaverland : how one weird rodent made America by Leila Philip

This is probably a good book, but not to my taste. I rated it at 2.5, which normally implies that I finished it, in acknowledgement that if you like nature books that focus on the narrator's experience, the people they interview, and similar, you may well like this.

Ditto if you enjoy reading lots of factoids connected only by the author's subjective experience. And in fact, some of the factoids are fascinating.

But there are no footnotes, and a throwaway claim about the genetics of the Eastern Coyote was the last straw for me - the author claims that something I had believed to be true about that has recently been disproven, without even a hint of which researcher, which publication, or when.

I'm abandoning this book after page 64 (of 317).

I will, however, mine its sources section for books more to my taste - focused on nature (e.g. beavers, or coyotes), or history, or trapping, and hopefully complete with footnotes. Even a biography of John Jacob Astor (fur entrepreneur who gets discussed in one of the chapters) would be more interesting to me.

Edited to add: This book was recommended by LibraryThing. Probably by the new recommendation system (my notes are not entirely clear on that).

>37 ArlieS: I got them all from SM library in hardback. I do miss my weekly scan of their new F&SF shelf as quite a number of the authors I "discovered" between 2001-2018 first caught my attention there. Since 2017/2018 it's mostly from LT that I chose new authors to try. And it's more reliable in that it's seldom just a cover art+woman author thing.

>39 quondame: I was wrong - my local library seems to have all 8 of them. I guess what really happened was that I'd read the first volume from the library, and liked it enough to buy the first four second hand.

I now have the next 4 from the library, along with two others where later books in the series were recommended by LibraryThing. (I wish it would recommend the first unread-by-me book of a series, as well as - or instead of - the very latest - unless it's a rare case where the earlier books of the series are generally regarded as not worth bothering with.)

I still pull books from new SF&F, at the one library that still has such a shelf - the other one has merged all their fiction together. But I'm probably not at either library as often as once a month, on average.

Happy reading!

43. Valor's trial by Tanya Huff

This is the fourth volume of the marines-in-space series that also provided my #42 for the year. Character development is happening, or at least character change. And it's now clear that there's now an overall story arc, from volume one on, rather than just a series of incidents related only by the lead character and the world she lives in.

As always, there's plenty of action, and little time for introspection. Our heroine continues to kick ass with such effectiveness that this time some people in the story question her ability to have done what she claims. We get positive portrayals of (some) officers this time, including one of the enemy. But it's mostly an NCOs-and-privates adventure.

The ending sets up a somewhat different environment for the next book, with plenty of problems and unanswered questions to be addressed. I raced out and borrowed books 5-8 from my local library; so much for reading fiction from my TBR shelf for a little while.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2008
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42 for this year
- English, TBR shelf (purchased used May 2022), 410 pages, 4 stars
- read May 15-18, 2023; book not previously read

>40 ArlieS: I do so much of what I used to do at the library online now - first COVID prevented going into the library and I got used to finding reads elsewhere and now just rush in, grab the physical book off the holds shelf and check myself out. There is almost always so much I could be reading that spending time on my feet looking for books has just not engaged me.

It's always fascinating to read the Roman Empire and try to make comparisons to the here and the now.

I struggled through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when i was in college - really began my lifelong love of history.

"It's all about then - - - and it's all about now"

Sometimes true.

>43 magicians_nephew: I still haven't finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's out of copyright, so a free copy was available for my kindle, and I read a fair chunk of it while stuck in airplanes, airports, etc. But not all, and I haven't done much air travel since 9/11 - the PTB made casual air travel far too unpleasant after that.

Is there something about getting older that makes one less and less tolerant of bad books, or is it just me?

The case against reality: why evolution hid the truth from our eyes looked like it could be very interesting, but I found myself getting increasingly angry as I read. I'm now at the start of chapter 3, and have figured out what kind of dog whistles were unconsciously affecting me.

They aren't the generic racist kind that gave rise to the term "dog whistle", though there are some preoccupations more common to certain parts of the US right wing. No, these are the dog whistles of bad science - just so stories and presuming one's conclusions. Also interesting use of language. The following words are synonymns: "beauty", "attractiveness", and "lust-provoking".

44. End of the megafauna : the fate of the world's hugest, fiercest, and strangest animals by Ross D. E. MacPhee

This is a coffee table book about what we know about the causes of extinctions in the past few thousand years, particularly of large terrestrial mammals. It's lavishly illustrated with pictures of what the various animals may have looked like, given what evidence we have, often in mixed groups of extinct and extant animals that fossils suggest would have been lived in the same place and time.

The science appears solid, and the author has impressive scientific credentials. The book is written for lay people, with footnotes not indicated in the text (page number and a bolded excerpt are used in the notes to identify the context, as has become all too common recently). There's a decent looking section containing references cited. And there's none of the too-common preoccupation with personalities. (Originators of the major theories are described, but as scientists - we read about their publications, not their wardrobes.)

Overall, it's a very decent book. I wanted it to be longer, deeper and more specific, but that's the only reason I rated it 3.5 rather than 4. Someone who appreciates pictures more than I generally do would probably rate it 4.5. (I think they are good pictures, but I'm just not a visual person.)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2019
- Author: male, Canadian, age unknown (B.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1977; now emeritus), academic (paleomammologist), author not previously read
- English, public library, 236 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 15-22, 2023, book not previously read

>46 ArlieS: Ah, sounds interesting. I see my library has several copies of it, and I might stop by to have a look.

>46 ArlieS: Wardrobe choices of science monadnocks are necessary to fully comprehend the scientific nature of their achievements! After all, Darwin going commando in the Galapagos Islands probably contributed hugely to his overall sense of scientific freedom, no?

/facetiousness

>48 richardderus: I don't get it either, but apparently normal people need lots of social trivia and gossip to disguise the nasty medicine tase of anything remotely technical.

I seem to be turning into a LibraryThing "gnome" - that's wikipedia editor speak for someone that makes a lot of minor fixes to other people's work.

Yesterday, I found two of my books inappropriately (IMO) combined into the same work, and consulted the combiners group; they fixed the problem.

Today I added 3 more of my books, using "Add manually" since they lacked ISBNs. All 3 were immediately combined as the same work. In particular, I added vol 1, vol 2, and vol 3 of Vilhelm Grönbech's The Culture of the Teutons as individual books, and found they were treated as all being the same as a work that was described as containing vol 1 and 2 together, but not 3.

This time I fixed it myself, including combining other orphan single-volumes of The Culture of the Teutons with my own equivalent book.

Finally with great daring and some consultation, I created a contains/contained by relationship between the first 2 of my works with the work that contains 2 volumes, in the hopes of avoiding farther automatic mis-combinations.

This is after already mastering both combining works and uploading cover images.

I guess my next trick will be learning how to create and/or fix series relationships; a fair number of my books lack appropriate series relationships in LibraryThing.

45. Trade Secret by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

This was an accidental reread of a novel I'd previously enjoyed in 2017. I'd somehow failed to record it in LibraryThing; the recommendation system noticed I've read almost everything else in this series; I saw that the recommendation system thought there were new books in the series I hadn't read; and I borrowed it from the library along with putting a hold on one that is probably actually new to me, since it appears to have been published in 2022.

After two or three chapters, I realized that I was recognizing things - they weren't merely similar to things I'd read before. But I was enjoying the book, so continued reading.

This is a complex series - multiple lead characters in multiple times and places, with only their universe in common. This is the second in a sub-series about the same lead character - a young Terran who aspires to become an interstellar trader. He has good breaks and bad breaks, making progress as he goes, while we (and he) learn more about complexities involving his family and the trade ship he was born on. In particular, the social and political universe he lives in has Terrans and Liadens, each with their own worlds, and not too much commonality or trust between them. But Jethri is adopted by a Liaden clan, giving him loyalties on both sides of the divide, not to mention two more or less conflicting sets of customs.

In this book, Jethri is sent on an independent mission involving more than trade. This is his first such mission, and takes him back to Terran space, in company with a Liaden pilot. They deal with politics, personal animosity, and surprising connections of his deceased father, with Jethri growing in confidence as he goes.

A fun read, as pretty much all of this series has been for me, and it was fun to watch the plot unwind once again, even knowing how it would all end. (Fortunately, it's not a mystery story, though there's much that the characters don't know at the start.)

If you are reading this series for the first time, there are better places to start. We first see Jethri in Balance of Trade; better to start there than here. Or try starting with Agent of Change, the first novel in publication order. Conflict of Honors is also a good starting place.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2013
- Author: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #38 for 2021
- Author: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #38 for 2021
- English, public library, 356 pages, 4 stars
- read May 21-27, 2023; reread

>51 ArlieS: I've read Trade Secret more than once myself, but intentionally. Like most of the Liaden™️ books it's on my re-reads shelf. Fair Trade (2022) is indeed it's sequel. Conflict of Honors remains my favorite. I'm hopeful that Priscilla will get some more print time, though it will probably be Padi.

46. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald David Hoffman

This was a weird book, in somewhat the same way that my #37 for the year (The son also rises : surnames and the history of social mobility) was also weird. Start with an introduction that doesn't really say where the book is going. Add a giant heap of data, some of it potentially fascinating in itself. Sprinkle lightly with US right-wing tells. Eventually conclude something that runs against common belief, and perhaps common sense. A non-alert reader - or one made more comfortable and trusting by right-wing tells - is likely to conclude the conclusion must in fact be valid, as the heaps of data wouldn't have been emphasized unless they supported the conclusion.

My capsule summary of the book's arguments:
1) Human perception is not veridical. (The author likes this word. The way he uses it, it's presumably a cross between "accurate" and "true", with extra connotations.)
2) Evolution tells us that whatever perceptions we have got that way because of usefulness at creating copies of our genes, not accuracy per se.
3) Therefore our perceptions have no more connection with reality than icons on a computer screen are connected with the details of the apps inside.
4) Therefore the universe is really built from consciousness, not matter.
5) And since consciousness can combine in layers, they do so combine, giving rise to the existence of god; at least this god is unlikely to have all the more paradoxical attributes commonly attributed to the Christian God.

We get chapter after chapter of examples establishing #1. These discuss every optical illusion he could think of, weird reactions to super-stimuli in animals as well as people, and lists of things we can't perceive directly but other creatures can.

On the way from #1 to #3 we have something he calls the Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem, which he usually refers to as the FBT theorem, and treats like a fundamental truth. The initial form is unobjectionable, if a tad odd; in some cases, it makes sense for an organism that thrives in a middle state (e.g. of salinity) to perceive this in terms of worse-for-me and better-for-me rather than "too little", "more but still too little" etc. I don't recall now whether he produced any examples of organisms that do this, but it makes sense in computer modelling. But from this we get "it's all rubbish" rather than "there's plenty we can't perceive, some we simplify extremely, and some where we apply heuristics that get it wrong". He does discuss the transition, trying to motivate it, and did such a bad job of convincing me that I can't remember his argument.

Steps #4 and #5 come all at once, in pretty much the last chapter, and the bit about god is more like a throw-away comment than like his usual lengthy attempts to motivate his beliefs.

I gave this a 3.5 rather than a 3 because it at least appears to be an original offering, though I'd be inclined to place its author somewhere in philosophy, not cognitive science. (He is, however, a professor of cognitive science, not philosophy.)

Moreover, it has real footnotes. I did find a couple of oddities there, such as footnotes to articles with titles that suggested they didn't support the sentence they were on, but did support other parts of the paragraph. (They were not on the last sentence of the paragraph, so should have supported the specific sentence.) But I was unable to read the works cited - far too much peer-reviewed science is pay-walled - and as we've seen with this book itself, sometimes titles don't indicate everything in the work cited.

On the negative side:
- chapter 2 basically conflates "beauty", "attractiveness", and "amount of lust this object provokes in the critter judging it as more or less beautiful"
- chapter 9 mostly consists of an extended paean to advertisers creatively using wired-in human tendencies to get the general public to mis-perceive the value of the merchandise - and divert attention to it, complete with suggestions for additional ways to accomplish this highly desirable feat.
- there were plenty of examples of perceptual illusions printed in the book, complete with text telling the reader what they would see. Some of these illusions fell flat with me. That functioned as an instant visceral argument against the veridicality of the entire book. Though like as not they failed (a) because I'm familiar with the illusions (b) I'm on the autistic spectrum (c) the printer did a bad job of rendering the illusions properly.
- The author affects a style where he pronounces The Truth. He rarely or never phrases anything in a way that suggests "this is our current best understanding, based on research". When he mentions alternatives that disagree with him, it's always a prelude to arguing against them, in terms that he might well refer to as "demonstrating that they are false". The only time I recall him expressing uncertainty was (a) the actual nature of the space-time we don't perceive accurately (b) the attributes of the god he conjured up in the final chapter. (There may well have been more, though.) And he walked back (a) later, explaining that because the true reality is consciousness, anything he'd previously said about space-time was merely a kind of place holder.)

Also, FWIW, the whole thing smelled of net.argument. This is a book written to convince, and probably informed by debate - either on-line discussion or formal debating. Admitting uncertainty just isn't done in that context. Apparently most people believe better if the source pretends omniscience, at least on the topic at hand. Or at least people writing to convince others tend to believe that method works.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2019
- Author: male, American, born 1955, academic (cognitive science), author not previously read
- English, public library, 250 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 20-29, 2023, book not previously read

I'm currently reading Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors by Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani. This book isn't ringing alarm bells in every chapter, the way The Case Against Reality and The son also rises did.

But after reviewing those two, and attempting to express what it was they had in common, I'm noticing similarities here too. The "tells" in this book are US left-wing, in particular repeatedly describing foraging tribes of the distant past as making decisions by consensus, after hearing everyone's point of view, even the children's. Realistically, we don't know how decisions were made. Consensus decision making - or some semblance thereof - may be more common among modern foraging tribes, as compared to other modern human societies, but I don't recall any credible claims (based on anthropological research, not "just so stories") that this is the only way such groups make important decisions.

The authors also frequently pronounce The Truth (TM), without any indication of plausible alternatives, though they do seem to do it a bit less often than Donald Hoffman. And while I haven't spotted any howlers, I did read something I strongly suspected of being based on now outdated research, to the point where I automatically checked the copyright date, to see how dated the rest of the book could be expected to be - and since it was 2021, didn't feel happy to encounter what I suspected of being a stale pronouncement. (But - only one so far, and my memory is not what it once was. The odds-on hypothesis has to be that I'm misremembering, and the authors got this detail right.)

I'm only at the end of page 52 (of 321), but it will be interesting to see how my experience of this book develops. By this time reading both of the other books I was wondering whether I was going to Pearl rule them, or whether I was just reacting to my own biases. ("They suggest things I Don't Like! This must be a bad book." (sic).)

>52 quondame: I've now got my grimy paws on Fair Trade, but may not be starting it immediately, as I already have 3 books in flight, and also got A New Clan at the same time.

47. The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff

This is the fifth in a series that's no longer precisely marines-in-space. Our heroine Torin has left the marines and is adjusting to life as a civilian, as well as to living with a romantic partner.

The war is over, but that doesn't mean the end of conflict, or even violence. To no reader's surprise, Torin and Craig run into some of it, in the form of pirates. Craig is kidnapped; Torin is left for dead.

It's not a good idea to leave such a resourceful enemy still alive. And therein lies the main plot of this book.

We get our usual ration of heroic violence, and inspired thinking, but not much in the way of new humor, and there's no big revealing twist at the end of this one, so I'm taking off half a star compared to earlier volumes of the series. It's still well worth reading if you like this kind of novel.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2010
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42 and #43 for this year
- English, public library, 329 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 20-June 1, 2023; book not previously read

>2 ArlieS: Nice job articulating your new reading rules. Approved!! (Not that I really matter, LOL.) And you can you write some reviews for my books? You're doing such a thorough job! Keep it up.

>57 Berly: Thanks for visiting. It's always fun reading what others think of the way I do things.

48. Fair Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

This science fiction novel is a sequel to my #45 for this year. My local library has quite a few of this series, but didn't even seem to be in the process of acquiring this one, so I used inter-library loan to borrow it from a less local library that was more on the ball.

Unfortunately, it feels very much like half a novel. The story arc doesn't really have a proper climax and resolution. The main character gets partway on dealing with his various responsibilities, and we're left in the middle, with only a vaguely climactic scene that doesn't actually tie up anything. Other characters were developed a bit, and then left hanging, off on some secret-to-us mission.

I'm left wanting to read a sequel - preferably back to back - and unsure whether that sequel exists yet. There seems to be one more book in the series, but the publisher's blurb mentions nothing that suggests that Salvage Right is connected to Fair Trade by more than being set in the same universe. (Maybe this is the story of the side mission?)

Taken as the first 374 pages of a 700 page novel, this story is pretty good. We see more of Jethri's development as a trader, now intersecting with unpleasant politics. Another interesting character gets air time, in a mostly separate story-line; possibly she'd also appeared in earlier novels, since there are lots of back references to earlier events. There are the usual fun details of life in various parts of this universe.

But there's too much in here, taking up space that could otherwise have been devoted to a complete plot arc. I'm very frustrated that I won't be able to get any kind of resolution for heavens knows how long - indeed, given the age of the authors, they might well retire before finishing the story.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2022
- Author: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #45 for this year
- Author: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #45 for this year
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 374 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 31-June 3 2023; book not previously read

>59 ArlieS: Trade Lanes the 4th Jethri book is/was scheduled to be turned into the publisher in September 2023. I'm on Patreon for Lee&Miller and I've been getting lots of Salvage Right updates, but not so much on Trade Lanes - maybe Steve is the lead on that and he's not as verbose online.

Hi Arlie!

First time visitor.

>1 ArlieS: Where in CA are you living? I’m from SoCal.

>2 ArlieS: I follow your Rules Addendum, too.

>27 ArlieS: I hope I never have to move to a smaller place, let alone some kind of assisted living. I'd never be able to fit my stuff into anywhere smaller. (1200 sq feet or so here; 2 adults and an elderly dog.) I’ve started double-stacking shelves again, and have already thought that I might have to put books into air-conditioned storage if/when we downsize. *shudder*

>33 ArlieS: I have taken @msf59’s idea of a Lightning Round, so that I either review a book or add it to whatever-month’s Lightning Round. It’s saved me from untold amounts of stress AND work. And that’s before I got on the romance kick I’ve been on since April of last year. Having mentioned my how-to-avoid-reviews approach, I find your reviews are marvelous, the two I’ve read so far. My guess is that they all represent a thorough, thoughtful, and intellectual approach like what I've read.

>45 ArlieS: My motto is "Abandon books with glee if it's not working for me". However, “Too many books, too little time” may apply more and more as we age. I’ll be 70 this year, so I feel like I can start speaking from experience.

>50 ArlieS: Good for you for keeping LT books/works accurate. I asked the Combiners Group to fix a problem I had quite a while back and although they did it, whoever did it made loud noises that I should learn how to do it myself. I’ve stopped trying to get them to do things for me and have no inclination to start doing it myself.

>60 quondame: That's very good to hear. I'll be looking forward to reading both of them.

>61 karenmarie: I'm on the edge of Silicon Valley - Sunnyvale to be precise. Excellent for the career I've now retired from.

I really enjoy writing my reviews, particularly the mixed ones - where a book has both good and bad, and I'm trying to balance them. I'm glad you and others appreciate them.

I looked up your thread just now, and found myself eagerly reading your Lightning Rounds, even though I'm not much into romances currently. I like your writing style.

I also dropped a star on the thread.

I'm gradually learning to abandon books, following examples here on LibraryThing. It's still somewhat difficult - as if there's someone in my head saying "you have to finish everything you start". If the book is frightful, I may finish it simply to feel OK about writing a the bad review it deserves - a habit that seems really perverse when expressed in words. But I'm getting there, slowly. And I'm also getting better about discarding books I'll never read again, or possibly may never finish.

It's taken me quite a while to develop confidence fixing things on LT. But it's good to be able to set things right when I can. And I have so many books that predate ISBNs - which makes the LT records for them much more likely to be messed up in some way.

49. A new clan by David Weber and Jane Lindskold

This is a relatively new offering in a science fiction series for "young adults", i.e. teenagers. The whole series is a prequel to the first author's Honor Harrington series, set in the same universe but quite a few years earlier. The main protagonist has progressed from 11 in the first book to almost 16 as this fourth one starts, and has freedom and responsibilities to match.

I love almost everything the lead author produces, and this series is no exception. This was another solid offering, with youngsters taking the lead in solving an important mystery, with limited adult involvement. (They have grown up some since the earlier books - now they keep relevant adults informed, including in this case some in law enforcement.) The mystery is eventually duly solved, with the malefactors facing criminal charges and potential prison time.

Meanwhile, we see more of the world, its technologies and customs. We learn about some interesting sports enabled by counter-grav technology. The characters have developed some between books, and continue to do so. One is hell bent on becoming a doctor, and regularly volunteers at the local medical center. Teenage relationship uncertainty is present, though it never takes center stage in this book. There's a lovely juxtaposition of familiar concerns, very different technology, and a relatively undeveloped backwoods planet.

Strong recommend, with or without having read the earlier volumes of this series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2022
- Author 1: male, American, born in 1952, novelist, author, coauthor or editor of my #8,15,17,20,22,24,30,and 31 for this year
- Author 2: female, American, born in 1962, novelist, author previously read, including a short story in my #31 for this year
- English, public library, 423 pages, 4 stars
- read Jun 3-6, 2023; book not previously read

50. Climate chaos : lessons on survival from our ancestors by Brian Murray Fagan and Nadia Durrani

This book gives a good basic survey of climate drivers and climate proxies, and then dives into pre-history and history of human interaction with climate.

Unfortunately, I didn't get far before finding statements of "fact" where my immediate reaction was "there's no way they could possibly *know* that". In particular there's no way short of a time machine that they could determine how small foraging bands in a preliterate world commonly made their decisions.

I've read several books by the first author, and appreciated all of them, and only once noted anything like "unclear how much is entirely substantiated". But this time he seems to have jumped the shark, possibly with the aid of his co-author.

It's not a bad book. It gives an interesting survey of human experience of changing climate. (Think of it as history and pre-history focused on climate.) This history is interesting, and includes much I didn't know, though perhaps nothing I'd never even heard of. But it fails to do what it claims it will - provide useful lessons on how past human societies have coped with climate changes, let alone apply those lessons to modern concerns. So it's not a good book either.

Instead, it provides a one-size-fits-all way of dealing with climate changes, and pretty much claims this was always used, at least when the adaptation was successful. In particular, local adaptations, designed by the subsistence farmers themselves (not non-local rulers), plus migrating elsewhere to places where they've carefully maintained kin ties so that they will be welcomed, or at least accepted. There is, IIRC, one exception where the rulers organized the ruled to build major irrigation works, but everything else mentioned is bottom-up and local, including in cases where I don't see how they had any evidence other than the authors' own certainties about human nature.

I'd love to read a better book, applying recent developments in paleo-climate research to history and pre-history, but clearly explaining how much is extrapolated, contested or simply still unknown. But this isn't it.

As is my habit, I mined several citations from the notes, and added them to my enormous TBR list. I picked for recency among other things, as this book claims major recent changes in our understanding - in particular, it claims some of Fagan's earlier works are now outdated; most are around 20 years old. I also picked for publishers likely to have somewhat more academic standards than others, though of course that's never a guarantee.

Interestingly, one of those is another "fall of the Roman Empire" book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper. This one is described as blaming everything on climate change. It should be an interesting contrast to my #41 for this year How Rome fell : death of a superpower by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, which blamed everything on internal conflict. I rather expect it to gloss over details that don't support its thesis - but the whole point of reading it would be that the Goldsworthy book is likely to have glossed over different details.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2021
- Author 1 (Fagan): male, British, born 1936, retired academic (anthropology), author of my #68 for 2021
- Author 2 (Durrani): female, British (?), age unknown, archaeologist and writer (no apparent academic position), author not previously read
- English, public library, 321 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 29-June 11, 2023, book not previously read

What fascinating reading, and comments. If you find a climate book you would approve of, please post it here.

>66 ffortsa: Thank you. I have a lot of fun writing these comments, and I find that thinking about my future comments also helps me get more from the book while reading it - I notice more details.

I'll certainly let everyone know if I find something good, but I'm not too hopeful - political motivation tends to reduce quality. I find books about paleo-climate tend to be better than those purporting to be about current climate trends; more of the authors are thinking in terms of (pre)history, fewer in terms of convincing people to take action.

51. An ancient peace by Tanya Huff

This is sixth in the series that started as a very humorous take on marines-in-space and also the start of a sub-series set in the same world. The ex-marines are once again saving the world, or at least preventing selfish people from doing bad things - perhaps very bad things indeed.

The action in this novel proved fairly straightforward, but the implications of the situation leave everyone -characters and readers - with plenty of questions about what's really going on. Perhaps we'll find out in the next book, only to have still more questions arise from whatever answers we get, combined with ongoing events.

I'm kind of hoping various less-than-honest bureaucrats wind up in a world of hurt, in future novels. For now though, they are somewhat embarrassed, and may have lost some political points, but are otherwise OK.

As for the book itself - it hit the spot, and I read it very fast, not really wanting to put it down.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first)*, 2015
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42, #43 and #47 for this year
- English, public library, 328 pages, 4 stars
- read June 13-15, 2023; book not previously read

*also starts a new sub-series of the series of which it is #6.

>68 ArlieS: Marines-in-space, Arlie?
Well, where else would they be?!

>69 PaulCranswick: On boats? ;-)

You would think that marines would constitute the landing parties in most conflicts - either from boats or from space ships.

Heinlein has his "space marines" too though their role was left pretty much undefined. The "Cap Troopers" of Heinlein's Starship Troopers are pretty clearly Regular Army, though they too, are carried to battle by "Navy" ships.

>71 magicians_nephew: I suspect that a big part of the marines-in-space things is specifically about the USMC and its mythology. The marines often replace anything else resembling an army - i.e. they are the only land forces, as well as providing security on space ships, and acting as landing parties. Sometimes there's an army that takes over from the marines if a planet is to be occupied after being successfully invaded.

This might well make logical sense, in a world where the space service can destroy a planet - or its inhabitants - without the need to actually land. (They just need to drop enough rocks from space, once the local space navy has been defeated.) Land forces might be a lot less useful.

But it still seems odd. Obviously, some hypothetical future space faring civilization can divide its forces into whatever classifications it wants, using whatever names they prefer. But OTOH, they probably aren't doing this in English - certainly not in 21st century English. So "marines" vs "army" is a translation choice, at least in a sense.

52. The genetic lottery : why DNA matters for social equality by Kathryn Paige Harden

This is an unusual book. It dares to touch the political and academic third rail of considering genetic impacts on factors leading to humans doing better or worse in life, including financially. Moreover, it does this from a left wing perspective.

The author is very careful to restrict her discussion entirely to white people, thereby dodging a major modern American taboo. She's also careful to discuss - and disapprove of - the eugenics movement - presumably to avoid being considered part of it. And she shows no sign of even being aware of the terms currently being used by right wing Americans discussing genetic differences between humans - thus avoiding ever using terms that seem to currently function as "dog whistles" for those interested in their own racial genetic "superiority". (I imagine she knows the terms, and was wise not to ever mention them.)

The autistic in me is sorry she had to work so hard to avoid people jumping down her throat about daring to think of taboo topics. The realist in me hopes she did it well enough not to wind up cancelled. I'm also very happy that someone's finally dared to point out the elephant in the room - people differ in ways that aren't all environmental. And some of those differences affect their chances of 'success' in a competitive system. AND this doesn't mean that innate differences are the only ones that matter.

The main part of this book is an extended explanation of what we know about these differences, and how we know it. It's a very good explanation, and could be used as an excellent intro to the subject for non-specialists and non-mathematicians. I don't feel competent to summarize it; you'd do better to read the book. But it convinced me, and I'm normally a very critical reader. (OTOH, it is something I "want to believe". I've never been convinced by the "it's all environment" posture of the left wing of US politics.)

Some of the best research involves comparisons within nuclear families. Each child gets half their parents' genes; some siblings get more of factors granting relevant abilities, and some get less. You can't get anything useful for complex poly-genetic factors by comparing a single set of siblings, but if you look at a huge number of siblings, you'll see trends. This is important - looking at siblings reduces environmental differences, and even farther reduces systematic influences, like racism (except, of course, systematic sexism.)

One conclusion is that innate talents - as measured by polygenic scores - have roughly the same amount of influence on educational outcomes as parental socioeconomic status (income). I don't recall a direct comparison of parental effects and genetic effects on socioeconomic outcomes (income, wealth), but those polygenic scores also influence socioeconomic status.

The rest is a somewhat shallow attempt to discuss how a good society should handle the obvious now that it's scientifically demonstrated - some have more talent than others, even within families. That discussion owes a lot to Rawls, who I have not yet read; it's probably time for me to do so. It felt somewhat like an afterthought, in spite of the book's subtitle.

The main flaw of this book is a mostly implicit belief that getting everyone through college would solve everything. No it wouldn't; the modal college graduate these days is doing worse than the modal college graduate of my generation, as well as being burdened with horrific debt. If their parents went to college, they are probably doing worse than their parents; quite possibly they are doing worse than non-college parents. You do even worse without college, on average, but a bachelor's degree too often qualifies you to be a part time barrista, loaded with debt you'll never manage to pay off.

Also, I think the world should have room for well paying non-college jobs. I'd personally rather have a good plumber than an also-ran college graduate. (There are times I wish I'd become a plumber or electrician myself, but that's a different story. But with my academic talents, college was presumed by everyone around me.)

Finally, as long as we have a winner-takes-all system, the top 10%, 1%, and .01% will be way above everyone else. We need to drastically reduce the range of wealth and income. We can't all be Gates, Bezos et al., and any difference in talent of the winners compared to the losers doesn't justify the wealth premium. The author doesn't touch this; just implies we can all be Bezos if we just get more education. And that's arrant nonsense.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: female, American, age unknown (Ph.D. 2009), academic (clinical psychology), author not previously read
- English, public library, 300 pages, 4 stars
- read June 7-17, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by Library Thing; I'm not sure which system.

>73 ArlieS: I think the world should have room for well paying non-college jobs. I'd personally rather have a good plumber than an also-ran college graduate.

Amen to that! Not everyone is cut out for college, but that doesn't mean they are any less than those who've finished college. And we desperately need good plumbers, electricians, and other trades, who certainly can earn very good money. I wish the system could change to encourage people to pursue that kind of education when appropriate, and also that society would show them the respect they deserve.

53. Wizard's first rule by Terry Goodkind

This fantasy novel is basically High Fantasy, complete with a hero's quest involving a rather likeable young man. The first half of the book had me remembering how much I loved a well-done high fantasy, and regretting how few of them I'd seen recently. The second half added extra elements which were neither classic high fantasy nor especially welcome to me. One of them requires a trigger warning.

Even though I enjoyed the book - yes, even the second half - I'm of two minds about reading the sequel. I don't like solutions that come out of left field, not part of the magic system as far as the readers know, until discovered intuitively by the viewpoint character. And I don't like extended experiences of viewpoint character helplessness, especially when they take the form of non-consensual BDSM. . If you want to emphasize the evilness of the adversaries, find some other way!

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, first of a series, 1994
- Author: male, American, born 1948, novelist, author not previously read AFAIK
- English, public library, 573 pages, 4 stars
- read June 8-17, 2023; book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by both of LibraryThing's recommendation systems.

54. A peace divided by Tanya Huff

I'm continuing my happy wallow in Tanya Huff's Confederation series. It continues to deliver relatively uncomplicated combat-oriented fun. The characters continue to change and grow, but slowly, and mostly off stage. We continue to learn more about potential problems, including the shadowy aliens who first appeared in volume 4. My only complaint is that there's only one more book left in the series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2017
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42, #43, #47 and #51 for this year
- English, public library, 374 pages, 4 stars
- read June 16-20, 2023; book not previously read

>76 ArlieS: Have you read Tanya Huff's The Silvered?

>77 quondame: I don't think so. I take it you'd recommend it?

55. Woman, Captain, Rebel: The Extraordinary True Story of a Daring Icelandic Sea Captain by Margaret Willson

This book jumped off the shelves at the public library. It was probably in a display featuring recommended books. It is a biography of a female Icelandic fishing captain, who lived from approximately 1783-1863.

It fits squarely in the modern genre of reclaiming the history of non-elites. Fortunately Icelanders love remembering their ancestors, so there's information available about ordinary people of the 18th and 19th century, beyond bare data like birth, death and marriage dates. The author has taken advantage of this wealth of information to give English-speaking readers an example of a woman dealing with the hand life dealt her, and doing it in a way that gained her respect, both in her own time and today.

I enjoyed the book a lot, and learned a bunch of things about a society (time and place) I didn't know much about. It's also good to see a woman making her own place as something other than wife and helpmeet, in a society that gave husbands control of a wife's property etc etc.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biography, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: female, British, age unknown (Ph.D. 1990), academic (anthropology), writer and more, author not previously read
- English, public library, 392 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 24-June 21, 2023, book not previously read

>78 ArlieS: Oh yes. The Silvered starts off in a very cliched direction, but then goes into much less explored territories, and is also just a great adventure story.

>80 quondame: and is, unfortunately, a standalone (so far, anyway). I'd love to read more about that world.

>81 jjmcgaffey: But makes a good candidate when someone asks for a standalone.

>78 ArlieS: >80 quondame: >81 jjmcgaffey: It turned out to be available at my local library, so I'll grab it next time I'm there - maybe today. You score one book bullet ;-)

My collection of unread library books was getting very low. I had only 3 unfinished, for a total of 837 pages remaining. I tried to tell myself I had plenty to read from my own shelves, much of it never before read, but found it difficult to hear myself, what with the acute withdrawal symptoms.

I've corrected this problem. I walked to the library (counting as exercise; yay me!) and returned with my backpack containing 6 books, which is about all I can manage in my current state of decrepitude ;-) I've saved myself from a terrible fate.

In other news, I seem to be on a bit of a minor biography jag. Only one book that wasn't on the TBR list fell into my bag this time: The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood by Tristam Hunt. OTOH, I didn't do well at finding attractive fiction; all I brought home was The Silvered by Tanya Huff (thanks for the recommend, Susan (quondame)).

>84 ArlieS: You're welcome. Enjoy!

56. The privilege of peace by Tanya Huff

This is - so far at least - the eighth and last book of the series I've been devouring this year, and the immediate sequel of my #54. Many loose ends are tied up, so this could plausibly be the actual last book. Fortunately the author has other books and other series.

This book delivered another fix of just what I wanted - righteous combat and surprise solutions. Our ex-Marine heroine and her mostly ex-Marine team now very much think like Justice department workers, rather than members of a military. And this is a justice department in a world where the only possible sentence is rehabilitation - i.e. psychotherapy to repair whatever problem caused the convicted to commit their crime(s). (Apparently that works reliably in this universe.)

The team is now happily focused on making arrests, and doing so with minimal violence - minimal being relative, since their specific role is to arrest those deemed armed and dangerous. However, the culminating arrest in the book is entirely non-violent, with this team sent only because they wanted to arrest this particular perpetrator. And many of their solutions to problems involve rather more lateral thinking than violence. (They always did a lot of lateral thinking, which is why they remained successful - and for that matter alive.) But the violence level has gone down a lot over the course of the series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2018
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42, #43, #47, #51 and #54 for this year
- English, public library, 342 pages, 4 stars
- read June 22-25, 2023; book not previously read

57. The private world of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge

This is a biography of Georgette Heyer, author of many novels, best known for her Regency romances. I have four on those romances on my shelves, and may well have read others. My sister loves them, and may well have a complete collection. But I read the biography because of a book bullet from SandyAMcPherson.

I enjoyed the biography. It was fun learning about the author's life, and doubly so because she was born the same year as both of my maternal grandparents, and in the same country. (They emigrated to Canada; Heyer stayed in the UK.) So I got to experience a bit of quasi-nostalgia.

I gave it a 3.5 because it was good but not great. The author is an adequate writer; her subject was a better one. It contained nothing I found especially enlightening, perhaps because the period was so familiar to me. So I decided it was not quite a 4, but more than a 3. Read it if you like biographies, or if you're a completionist with regard to Georgette Heyer.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biography, series: n/a, 1984
- Author: female, British (born in the US, raised in the UK), born 1917, writer, author not previously read
- English, public library, 216 pages, 3.5 stars
- read June 19-27, 2023, book not previously read

58. Dragon's eye edited by Christopher Stasheff

This is a collection of stories about dragons, often from a dragon's point of view. Some are good; some are kind of meh. Most of them take place on an earth that's unchanged except for the presence of dragons, rather than in either a generic fantasy world or a more specifically crafted universe. In many cases, the dragon plays a critical role in some historical event, which real world history attributes to human agency.

I found this book on a TBR shelf, with a bookmark perhaps two stories in. The bookmark was a receipt from Waldenbooks dated Mar 15, 1998. Presumably it was for this book. So it had sat on my shelves mostly unread for more than 25 years.

The book was worth finishing, and kept my attention in a pleasant way for long enough to do so. But otherwise, it's a prime example of why I now avoid buying books I haven't already read, and will be going straight out to the nearest little free library.

Read it if you really like stories about dragons, are completionist about its editor, or are short of alternative reading matter.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, non-series, 1994
- Editor: male, American, born 1944, novelist, author previously read
- English, TBR shelf, 279 pages, 3 stars
- read June 25-28, 2023; book not previously read

I am continuing my project to go through all my books, sorting them into reasonable collections, cataloguing those that still need it, and updating the records for those only partially catalogued.

My goal is 4 books a day, *or* one newly read book, complete with mini-review in this thread. I've been exceeding that goal in the last couple of weeks, which makes up for the first part of June.

I'm currently working through books on polytheistic religions; yes, I have so many books about religion that I have multiple collections for them. But I frequently back up and add books I've just found that belong to some collection I've supposedly already finished; today I catalogued a stray sociology book, and moved yet another bridge book to the "pending" pile on my desk.

Unfortunately, I really don't have enough space to sort all these books in an accessible way. I have stacks and double shelving. I have collections that outgrow their original shelf space.

But there is hope. I'm gradually becoming more willing to get rid of books I'm reasonably certain I'll never read again.

I'm amazed by what I'm finding. Who knew I owned a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific revolutions? Also quite a number of philosophy books.

And then there are the duplicates, and the books on topics I hope to never even think of again. (I'm very happy to have no more use for books on how to succeed in business.)

But I'm eventually going to have to be very firm with myself, and get rid of some that aren't quite so obvious. My "rejected and now unowned" collection needs to grow, and not just by the slow accretion of DNFs borrowed from the local library.

59. Killers of a certain age by Deanna Raybourn

This was a fun novel about 4 women who'd made their living as assassins, motivated at least in part by idealism - killing wrongdoers the law couldn't or wouldn't touch. They were part of a clandestine organization referred to as "the Museum". While on a cruise to celebrate their retirement, someone from their organization attempts to kill them.

The (relatively) old ladies may be slowing down physically, but they have a lot of experience. The attempt fails, the would-be killer is killed by one of his targets, and the rest of the book deals with the women and their allies working on finding out why, and protecting themselves from additional attempts.

I borrowed this book from the library as the result of a book bullet from someone in this group, or possibly several people; I uncharacteristically failed to record who they were. Whoever they were has earned my thanks.

The other reason I borrowed it was that I'd noticed a lack of novels about older people, except for the annoying trope of "dying granny regrets their past" and similar angst. So I'm on the lookout for stories that feature older people actually doing things, not wallowing in generally negative emotions.

I read this book from cover to cover in a single day. (Yes, my statistics show 2 sequential dates, but that's because I went to bed well after midnight.) I don't recall having done that with any other decent sized book in the past decade or maybe two. Of course that wasn't entirely because the book was captivating - it was a beastly hot day so I didn't feel up to anything non-sedentary, and a sore wrist had me reducing my normal computer use. But it's still quite telling.

The book jumped between events in the 70s and early 80s, and events in the novel's present (2022?). I normally dislike this writing technique, but it worked well, particularly when I realized we were being shown interesting clues in some of those early career scenes, not just learning about the protagonists' personality and skills.

There were a bunch of fun little touches, the best of which I can't describe because they'd be spoilers.

It may also have helped that I'm just a hair older than the protagonists. I remember the culture of the early scenes. And FWIW, the author got that culture basically right - I was unsurprised to find that she would have been old enough to notice and remember things at that time. (Other authors have mis-portrayed times and places that were in living memory when I was younger, to the point that I notice when recently written books get things right.)

Statistics:
- fiction, thriller, non-series, 2022
- Author: female, American, born 1968, novelist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 353 pages, 4 stars
- read July 1-2, 2023; book not previously read

I’ve seen this one at the library and been interested - onto the reserve list it goes!

>91 drneutron: Enjoy!

The TBR shelves have been disgorging interesting things. These include two separate novels I've recently borrowed and read from the library, along with other books from the same two series. There were also several more books that should belong to collections I've supposedly already finished, and two rule books for a role playing game I can't quite imagine why I'd wanted. (Maybe my nephew was really keen on that specific game at the time I bought the books?)

I also found a fair number of unread magazines, some more than a decade old, with a few random papers mixed in among the magazines. No, I don't need some broker's take on investment prospects more than a decade ago, not even for a mild laugh about how badly they got it wrong. The paper recycling bin didn't wind up full, but there will be a respectable amount to put out for collection this evening.

I've partway completed my project of emptying out my main TBR shelving unit so as to rededicate it to history books, which are currently scattered in far too many places. This is creating rather a large mess, with stacks on top of bookshelves, and in some cases in the front of shelves in other bookcases. That will make it difficult to find TBR books that ought to be part of the next collection I work on, but I think it will be worth it. And maybe the mess will farther motivate me to discard books I'll never reread. (Or in some cases, never read at all.)

60. For profit : a history of corporations by William Magnuson

This is a history of corporations (broadly construed), showing both benefits and problems, from the Roman Republic onward. The part about the Roman Republic was especially interesting - I'd had no idea they'd had a corporation analog.

The book is organized as a series of stories - not quite case studies - moving forward in time. The corporate form, and specific corporation(s), are created or enhanced to deal with specific needs - generally for something seen as the common good, not just profits for those involved. That works, more or less, but there are unanticipated side effects, often related to what a kind Christian might call "human fraility" and a grumpy atheist might call "greed, stupidity, and possible sociopathy". Fixes are attempted - in the Roman case basically getting rid of the societates publicanorum entirely - and the cycle repeats.

The author is basically positive - the problems do get fixed, eventually, and the benefits outweigh the costs. But his final example(s) deal with problems that have not yet been fixed, and he continues with suggestions for how they might be addressed - hopefully by corporate executives behaving better, but with government action (new laws etc.) as the alternative. I personally don't imagine the executives making substantial reform, as compared with window-dressing - it's going to take laws, and those laws will need teeth. So I found that final section somewhat disappointing.

Overall though, I really liked this book. Of course I'm a sucker for anything that teaches me something I didn't already know, particularly with regard to things like social history. But even the parts where I already had some knowledge were well written enjoyable reads, and brought in details I didn't already know. If the topic interests you, you should probably read this book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, American, age unknown (B.A. 2004; J.D. 2009), academic (law), author not previously read
- English, public library, 357 pages, 4 stars
- read June 26-July 4, 2023, book not previously read

>90 ArlieS: This sounds interesting! Looks like I need to add it to my TBR list.

I'm going to have to start recording who I get my BB's from on this site. I haven't done that up to now, but I'm getting too many of them. You say you normally do that, and IIRC Karen does also. Let me start doing so today!

>95 atozgrl: Enjoy!

61. Mind Changer : A Sector General Novel by James White

I am amused to report a mild coincidence: my #61 for 2021 and my #61 for 2023 had the same author and were part of the same series. I own many other books in this series, but these were the only 2 I've read since 2021, when I joined the 75 books challenge.

This book is #13 in a series of science fiction novels about the practice of medicine in an inter-stellar future with many sapient species. Imagine a hospital that has the ability to treat anyone, whether they are an "ultra-frigid methane life-from", one of the "more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types", or an "exotic being living by the direct conversion of hard radiation". The staff are equally varied. This is a very elite institution, so it generally gets the most difficult cases - most people are treated in single-species institutions, staffed by the same species they treat.

I love this series, and was overjoyed to find two of them lurking on my TBR shelves. One was a copy of the book I'd borrowed from a library in 2021, but the other was this one, which I had not previously read.

Mind Changer focuses on the hospital's chief psychologist, Dr. O'Mara, and the types of issues treated by his team. Its remit includes watching for and dealing with xenophobia among the staff - some people simply aren't suited to work in this environment, but there's also a lot of social engineering done to encourage trainees to adapt. (Of course it helps that this hospital is very high status; no one wants to be demoted back to single species work.)

This novel includes some of the back story of the hospital, as we read a lot about O'Mara's early career when the hospital was still under construction, and many of its methods and traditions were still being developed. Threads dating back long before O'Mara became chief psychologist are eventually resolved - in the course of interviewing and training potential replacements in preparation for his retirement.

I loved it, as I love all these novels, and am now motivated to see whether I can find and purchase any more of those I am still missing.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 1998
- Author: male, Northern Irish, born 1928, novelist, author of my #61 for 2021
- English, TBR shelf, 301 pages, 4 stars
- read July 4-5, 2023; book not previously read

>97 ArlieS: This sounds like such a fascinating series! Thanks for the BB(s)! 😁

>97 ArlieS: I've always enjoyed reading the Sector General books, though I haven't made an effort to read all of them.

>94 ArlieS: That one caught my eye, Arlie, and I will look out for it.

Have a great weekend.

>98 PlatinumWarlock: Enjoy!

>99 quondame: Always great to learn of another shared interest. Thanks for visiting.

>100 PaulCranswick: Enjoy!

I've had a great weekend so far - mostly playing bridge since Friday at 3 PM - and I hope you've been having a good weekend too.

62. The last days of the dinosaurs : an asteroid, extinction, and the beginning of our world by Riley Black (previously known as Brian Switek)

This book attempts to imagine the dinosaur extinction and its aftermath based on the best scientific information available to its author.

I'm normally very wary about authors who turn science into "stories", presumably so that merely normal people will be willing to learn a wee little bit about it. But this one worked; it was more like listening to a lecturer who loves their field - and was bubbling with extra, relevant information, that kept popping out in spite of being beyond the level of the intro course they're supposed to be teaching. The extras were not the unwanted-by-me information about the process of interviewing, fashion sense of interviewees, and similar, too common among science writers. Instead, they were asides about a particular species' evolution or similar.

They also included both footnotes and a chapter explaining what they included in the vignettes, and what authorial license was involved.

It's a good book, and the author didn't ping my usual "do they really understand what they are talking about?!" alarms while reading, unlike many science writers.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: transwoman, American, age unknown, science writer, author not previously read
- English, public library, 287 pages, 4 stars
- read June 30-July 7, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended by LibraryThing, probably the new recommendation system.

Catching up with your reading, Arlie...some particularly intriguing non-fiction. The Last Days is one of my currently-reading pile, as I'm taking it chapter by chapter with books between.

Enjoy the week-ahead's reads.

>103 richardderus: May you likewise enjoy your week's reads

63. The Order War by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

A few years ago, I discovered an enjoyable author at the public library. I read everything of his I could find, and regretted those few that weren't available. Meanwhile, I went on cataloguing books I already owned, and had previously read. Eventually the two streams came together - this author was a rediscovery, and I already owned at least one of the books I'd been unable to borrow. L. E. Modesitt, Jr. was the author, and The Order War was that book.

I moved all of the author's books I owned, and hadn't recently read, into my "read soon" pile, and there they languished. I was reading so many library books that my "read soon" pile was being ignored.

Recently I ran low on borrowed fiction, and attacked the "read soon" pile a little more aggressively. It took a day or two to get properly stuck into this one - and then I did the "compulsive reading" thing.

Modesitt favors complex universes and wide ranging series. The characters are generally well meaning, and do things for the general good, or at least the good of their people. And the institutions they build work excellently - often for enough generations for the original actor to become more mythical than historical. But then there's another book, where the work of the earlier characters has become the problem that the current characters need to solve.

There are also generally complex magic systems, rarely fully understood by any of the characters. Character discover new ways of using the magic, or new risks. Their solutions may become institutionalized - or may be forgotten after their time. (No one has a complete set of magical talents, and most have none at all, so there may be no one in the next 5 generations who can use a particular character's discoveries.)

The characters are essentially always significantly more talented and capable than average, and some of them have abilities seen only once or twice in a thousand years - but none of them ever know that at the start of a book, unless perhaps it's an immediate sequel.

This book fits all these patterns. The hero is an ordinary (magic) engineer, somewhat jealous of his weather mage older brother, who's almost always more attractive to women. There's a war on, that may eventually threaten their nation, and both volunteer - or are volunteered - to assist the latest potential conquests. They cause more havoc to the enemy than anyone has managed in quite some time, but not enough to prevent the impending conquest. But one of them is made aware of a far more dangerous threat, that more or less caused the whole series of wars, and sets out to address it.

I suspect the story made far more sense to me the second time round, as I was far more familiar with the magic system and the pattern of institutional change within the fictional universe. I'd read stories set in most of the locations involved, at times both earlier and later. I'd even read stories of some of the historical/mythical figures casually mentioned in this novel.

But any of these stories can be read as adventure stories, without the broader knowledge. Some, but not all, also qualify as "coming of age" stories - this one doesn't quite make it, as the hero starts the book fully adult with an established career, though as yet no spouse.

I recommend pretty much anything in the Saga of Recluce, but the Order War probably isn't the best place to start. (I suggest reading them in publication order.)

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 1996
- Author: male, American, born 1943, novelist, author of my #36 and #38 for the year
- English, own shelves, 597 pages, 4 stars
- read July 6-10, 2023; reread

>105 ArlieS: I've enjoyed many of the L.E. Modesitt, Jr. books I've read, but not all, as in my experience he can wear out the novelty of his world and yet keeps on with his quotidian narratives like an Energizer bunny. I found his most recent series to start like a well past the hump volume of earlier series of his.

My favorites are the early Imager Portfolio books, or maybe Spellsong Cycle and I've enjoyed a number of Recluse books. My dad introduced him to me in the 90s with the The Ecolitan Operation.

>106 quondame: When I think about it, you are definitely right about Modesitt. Many of his books are strictly read-once. I don't think I've read the Ecolitan Operation, which probably means my library doesn't have it.

I'm currently reading Super Volcanoes: What they Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond by Robin George Andrews. I probably won't Pearl Rule it, so I should save my comments for my eventual review, but I just have to rant about it. It's a prime example of just about everything I don't like about science writers. Expect some of these sentences to recur in my eventual review.

This is a book about people. It's full of stories about scientists, feelings expressed by scientists, and similar. But that's not all. Volcanoes make decisions (p. 104), and submersible vehicles envy later models with better capabilities (p. 107) and potentially die (p. 109). Yes, I realize the personification of volcanoes and submersibles is intended as metaphor. But the choice of style gives a good feel for how the author thinks, or how he expects readers to think.

The title is misleading: the term "super volcano" has a meaning; only one of the first 4 chapters (of 8) discusses actual super volcanoes. (Probably none of the other 4 do either, but with cutesy chapter titles, I can't be sure until I've read them.)

The book does have endnotes, and most of them appear to be to scientific journals rather than newspapers and popularizations. It includes information new to me that's actually about volcanoes, rather than people. And those two things will probably keep me from Pearl Ruling it, even though I'm feeling very tempted.

64. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

This science fiction novel has spent a long time on my shelves in a kind of limbo. I've certainly read large chunks of it, but I'm not sure whether I'd ever read it from cover to cover before. I've read many other novels by this author, and own a fair number of them. But this one is problematic for me.

I really hate reading about characters I like doing idiotic things. The first part of this book has the hero/viewpoint character deciding, in spite of advice, to falsify a report - even though he should have realized getting caught was inevitable. He gets caught, and gets fired from the military job that's pretty much been his whole life, not to mention his sole ambition.

This takes up a bit more than the first quarter of the book. It also nicely sets up the subsequent story. But that first section wasn't something I enjoyed reading. I found the book sitting on a shelf with a bookmark just after page 60. The subsequent story was mostly familiar to me - I'd obviously skipped ahead at some time in the past. But actually reading the *whole* book was somewhat of a chore. (I restarted from scratch.)

The rest of the book is worth a rating of 4. It's a well-written mystery with plenty of interesting twists, with lots of additional features - i.e. not just the mystery - and tie-backs to prior stories in the series. Someone who doesn't have my twitch - and does like the Vorkosigan series - would probably love it. But I took off half a point for the starting section, and might well drop it in the nearest little free library if I didn't already have so many other members of the series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 1996
- Author: female, American, born 1949, novelist, many novels in my collection
- English, own shelves, 462 pages, 3.5 stars
- read July 6-12, 2023; probable reread

At least one of the LibraryThing recommendation systems said I should read this; quite possibly both. Even the classic system doesn't seem to be subtle enough to notice personal twitches like the one affecting my enjoyment of this book. (OTOH, it was right that this book was likely to be in my collection ;-))

>109 ArlieS: A recent FB post asked for favorite SF novels - I and another reader chose Memory. I do understand the pain of Miles' idiot choice, but Miles did in the prior books also make impulsive and dangerous choices, though few in the face of such pure contraindications.

>110 quondame: I think my favorite novel in that universe would be Falling Free, but it has competition.

>111 ArlieS: I think her books about Miles were the first SF for me in which the character and his development really did drive the story - however important all the SF elements were, for this person at this stage of his life, the outcomes were products of his actions - and the choices of others as well.

65. The personal librarian by Marie Benedict (Heather Benedict Terrell) and Victoria Christopher Murray

This book is a novelization of the life of a woman famous in her time, as J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, one of the most successful and well known career women in the early twentieth century. She was black by US standards, but light enough to pass as white, which she did throughout her career.

It tries to stay within what was possible, given what little records remain - Bella da Costa Greene destroyed her personal papers before her death. And it includes a 6 page historical note at the end explaining what liberties were taken. But it should not be taken as a biography - there's far too much about e.g. what she felt at various times, which is essentially unknowable. For the record, wikipedia says there is an actual biography, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone.

I enjoyed reading this book, and appreciated the portrayal of emotional and other issues for someone passing as white, though of course we don't know whether Bella personally had these particular concerns, or was more aware of others. The second author is black, with a grandmother who sometimes passed, so the concerns depicted - many of them emotional - are doubtless ones that _some_ people had, and it's doubtless good for white readers to be aware of them. But my "is this true" button was activated regardless.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, non-series, 2021
- Author 1 (Marie Benedict): female, American, born 1968, novelist (historical fiction) and lawyer, author not previously read
- Author 2 (Victoria Christopher Murray): female, black, American, age unknown, novelist and editor, author not previously read
- English, public library, 341 pages, 3 stars
- read July 3-13, 2023, book not previously read

IIRC, this book was mentioned to me by a friend who wasn't on LibraryThing, who'd accidentally attended some kind of bookstore event by one of the two authors, not about this book. The friend was impressed with the author, and what she said about this (then forthcoming?) book in particular, so I added it to my TBR list.

>113 ArlieS: I picked this one up earlier this year, as it looked quite interesting. I'm not sure when I'll get around to reading it, but it's sitting in the TBR pile in my bedroom. Since it is a novel, I don't think it'll bother me too much that we don't know for sure how much is true.

>114 atozgrl: For some reason this book made me very interested in Belle the real person, and less so in Belle the character. I don't know why; it's not my usual reaction. Maybe it's because the book didn't fit my usual fiction genres?

At any rate, being fictional is hardly a valid criticism for something labelled as a novel ;(

66. Hospital Station by James White

After reading my #61 for the year, I checked Powells Books for more books in the Sector General series. I found this one, along with a collection of stories by the same author, one of which is about Sector General.

This was a pleasant read, but wouldn't have motivated me to search second hand bookstores for more. It calls itself a novel, but it's more like a collection of consecutive short stories in the same environment. The same set of characters are present, but the viewpoint character is different in different chapters.

It is, however, the very first book of the Sector General series, written 37 years before the last of the series. The author was presumably working out how to write this series as he went along, and presumably also improving in his craft.

As with all Sector General books, the focus is on medicine, and most of the dramatic tension comes from some kind of medical problem the characters are trying to solve. Interactions between characters of extremely diverse species can be interesting and sometimes funny.

Some of the stories had interesting twists; none of them were boring. The range of medical and semi-medical issues in the series is huge, so you never know what the solution will be, and sometimes even the nature of the real problem comes as a surprise. Yet all are plausible, within the premises of this universe.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, first of a series, 1962
- Author: male, Northern Irish, born 1928, novelist, author of my #61 for this year
- English, purchased used, 191 pages, 3 stars
- read July 12-14, 2023; book not previously read

>116 ArlieS: A fix-up is seldom satisfactory when billed as a novel. Why not just call it a collection and be done with it, I always, always mentally demand of the publisher.

>109 ArlieS: It wasn't my favorite in the series, either (that would be Ethan of Athos), but it was a nice puzzle. Author Bujold is an overall favorite of mine. Her delvings into the human ability to be simultaneously idiotically stupid and supremely clever have always appealed to me.

>117 richardderus: Ethan of Athos is another of my favorites.

The combination of hot weather and a sore wrist is doing wonders for my reading. I don't want to do anything physical during the daytime because of the heat. Some of my ordinary activities either hurt too much, are suspected of making the wrist worse, or both. So I have had my nose rather firmly stuck in a series of books.

Fortunately, today is supposed to be less hot than yesterday, so I might manage to do my laundry. And I've upended my sleep schedule somewhat so that I can take a walk around 8 AM before the weather outside gets beastly. I'm now drinking my coffee after returning from today's walk.

But oh dear, I'm ready for winter already and we aren't even 2/3 of the way through July.

67. Bones of the past by Holly Lisle

This fantasy novel was a sequel to my #37 for 2022. Some of the characters reappear, and it's the same world, but mostly a rather different area. Moreover, some things have changed in the area of the prior novel, as a result of its events.

Faia's daughter, accidentally conceived in the first book, is now old enough to talk, and already showing a strong magical talent. Medwind has married the scholar who proposed to her. At the start of the book the two families are living together in a somewhat distant city, on the edge of a scary barbarian jungle that no one dares to visit, though traders from that area sometimes come to the city.

There are multiple viewpoint characters in this book who all end up in the same place for the denouement, but the main focus is on Medwind. (Faia was the central character of the previous book.) We learn a bit more about Medwind's birth culture, but don't get to visit them. (They were the interesting barbarians in my prior review.) Instead, the focus is on the culture of the jungle, which features divine trees demanding human sacrifices. There is also a First Folk culture, now extinct, which the mages are very interested in researching.

I liked this installment just a hair less than the previous one, but I already have the third volume in my "to read" stack.

This series continues to pass the Bechdel test with flying colours. There are more female than male characters, and while they tend to have love interests, who are themselves characters, I don't think any of the viewpoint characters were male. Gender is pretty much not an issue in this book, unlike the conflict between male and female magicians in the prior volume.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 1993
- Author: female, American, born 1960, novelist, author of my #37 for 2022
- English, purchased (used), 318 pages, 3.5 stars
- read July 6-16, 2023 ; book not previously read

68. Stardoc by S. L. Viehl (Sheila Kelly)

This science fiction novel was another hit, even if the science is somewhat chancy. I read it from cover to cover in a single day (blame bad weather), and promptly started looking for sequels.

It's the story of a human doctor who emigrates to a mixed-species colony planet for personal reasons. It begins with routine tasks as one of four doctors staffing what appears to be the only medical facility present. Meanwhile the doctor is settling in and developing relationships with neighbours and colleagues. She even falls in love with a non-human and becomes engaged to him. (See what I mean about chancy science... interbreeding is not uncommon.)

That's the first part, and in many ways I'd prefer it stayed on that path. Unfortunately, there's an epidemic, and politics, and a very nasty underside to the culture becomes ever more visible. She solves the epidemic, but the nasty underside threatens her personally. She flees, with some of her friends. But the tone of the book changes - it becomes a story of space combat and escapes, though she's still practicing medicine.

That worked well enough as a single novel, but when I looked at the series, intending to acquire sequels, I found it turns into an ongoing saga of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire. At least one major crisis per book, either directly caused by her implacable pursuer, or a result of fleeing somewhere that turns out to be terrible in its own way.

I'll probably borrow the immediate sequel from my local library, which has it, but expect to wind up rating it as a 3. (I hope I'm wrong about that.) And reading about the series left me insufficiently motivated to make a special trip to the library - I'll pick it up if it's available when I'm there for some other reason.

This book, however, is well worth reading, if you like reading about super talented extremely dedicated doctors doing their job, amid a highly varied cast of intelligent species.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, first of a series, 2000
- Author: female, American, born 1961, novelist, previously read one short story by this author
- English, purchased (used), 394 pages, 4 stars
- read July 17, 2023 ; book not previously read

>121 ArlieS: It does sound sad that it went deep political/implacable enemy route. I dislike entirely negative political plots and double that dislike for implacable enemy set-ups.

69. Super volcanoes : what they reveal about earth and the worlds beyond by Robin George Andrews

This is a book about people at least as much as a book about volcanoes. It's full of stories about scientists, feelings expressed by scientists, and similar. But that's not all. Even volcanoes and equipment are personified: volcanoes make decisions (p. 104), and submersible vehicles envy later models with better capabilities (p. 107) and potentially die (p. 109).

Either the author finds people inherently more interesting than e.g. volcanoes, or he expects his readers to be more interested in the scientists than the science. I find this to be a fairly common problem with science writers, and is the main reason that seeing "science writer" or "science journalist" in the author bio tends to make me reconsider my decision to read the book.

My other problem with science writers is concern about their accuracy. The good ones are about as accurate as the average scientist. Others show signs of not in fact understanding what they are writing about.

In this case, my main issue with accuracy is the misleading title. The term "super volcano" has a meaning, and the author knows it - but only one of the first 8 chapters deal with that type of volcano. (And yes, someone *could* write a whole book just on super volcanoes, but that's not what this book is.)

The rest of the book is OK. It has endnotes, and most of them appear to be to scientific journals rather than newspapers and popularizations. The author has a relevant doctorate, so probably understands what he's writing about. The book includes a lot information new to me that's actually about volcanoes, rather than people. It's just not great. If you want a better book dealing with much the same subject, try Fire and ice : the volcanoes of the solar system by Natalie Starkey - my #87 for 2022. IIRC, it has less about volcanoes on earth than this one, but other than that it's a much better book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, British, age unknown, science journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 257 pages, 3 stars
- read July 9-18, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by LibraryThing, probably the "new" recommendation system rather than the classic one. I wish that system had a bit more nuance, either in its recommendations themselves, or in explaining the reasons for them. (There's no way it's smart enough to offer me books by real scientists, while omitting books on the same topics by meh-ish science writers and science journalists.)

70. The Aliens Among Us by James White

This is a collection of science fiction stories by James White, the author of the Surgeon General series.

The common theme is that they usually start out looking like they'll be a positive depiction of inter-stellar war, but turn out to have some kind of twist at the end. In at least one case the reader thinks they are reading about the start of a war because of genre preconceptions - the actual text doesn't say why such a huge fleet is gathering, or what kind of casualties are expected - until the very end of the story. (It was a rescue fleet gathered in anticipation of a major natural disaster.)

They are quite enjoyable, but because they rely on surprise for their effect, probably not rereading material. I have a handful of complaints - two of the stories are too similar to each other; a third fails to make the character's changing feelings plausible to me. But basically good enough that I bounced between rating it 3.5 and 3, eventually arriving at 3 because I probably won't reread the book.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, non-series, stories, 1969
- Author: male, Northern Irish, born 1928, novelist, author of my #61 and #66 for this year
- English, purchased used, 217 pages, 3 stars
- read July 15-19, 2023; book not previously read

71. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum by William F. Ruddiman

This was an excellent book about climate change, in particular about the hypothesis that humans began to have a significant influence on global climate when some of them began farming, by the scientist who originated this hypothesis. It also has some more general information about climate change, that appears to be a lot more balanced than is usual for this topic. In his later chapters the author also makes the amazing choice to contextualize climate change among other environmental challenges. But very little of the book is political, and he segregates these concerns in their own short chapter(s), rather than embedding them throughout.

The hypothesis of significant global warming (or rather, lack of the normal cyclical cooling) due to farming is still contested (at least at the time this edition was published). The author tries to fairly report other scientists' criticisms of his theory, but this can also be seen as simply attempting to refute them. I think he's fairly evenhanded, but I am not a professional climate scientist.

The physical book I read had problems. It was missing 8 numbered pages, as well as the usual title page. The library had also helpfully covered up the ISBN on the back cover with some kind of sticker. So I'm not sure precisely what edition I read; from internal evidence, I think the work originally came out in 2005, and this is a 2010 edition produced by Princeton University Press, with an added afterword discussing additional relevant research in the intervening years.

This is the most even-handed book on any aspect of anthropogenic climate change that I have ever read. I'm tempted to track down his textbook Earth's Climate: Past and Future.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2010?
- Author: male, American, born in 1943, academic (paleoclimatologist), author not previously read
- English, public library, 236 pages, 4.5 stars
- read July 13-20, 2023, book not previously read

72. Roman Keycard Blackwood: The Final Word by Edwin B. Kantar (aka Eddie Kantar)

This is a book for expert bridge players. That would not be me; I'm some kind of intermediate. I bought this book in 2017, and didn't even try to read it until this year. It's still 90% beyond me, but I did learn a little bit about pitfalls of a bridge convention I use, and things experts might do to work around them, making the convention far more useful.

I'll assume readers know at least a little about bridge, and are familiar with the concept of conventions in that context. If not, I suggest skipping the next 3 or 4 paragraphs.

The Blackwood convention was devised in 1933 by Easley Blackwood, to help players avoid bidding impossible slams. In particular, if the partnership is missing 2 of the 4 aces, they have essentially no hope of making a slam against competent opponents, and should avoid bidding it.

The convention was a huge help to competitive bridge players. It was widely adopted, and some of the more inventive experts promptly started tinkering with it. The most popular variation currently is Roman Key Card Blackwood (RKB), which comes in two main variants, with plenty of additional variants in use by experts.

Edwin Kantar's book is basically the catalog of options for making RKB better in a huge variety of circumstances where the more usual variants don't work too well. It presents an incredibly complex system, complete with options that depend on whatever other convention a partnership plays.

I play bridge for about 5 hours a week. I use RKB 1 or 2 times in the average week. It's not worth the effort to me to play multiple variants in different circumstances, which likely would occur for me less than once a month each. But I was wondering whether I and my partner should switch which single variant we played. This resulted in me deciding to finally read this book, even though the system it presents seemed to me to be excessively complex for anyone at our level and difficulty of play.

It was indeed too complex for us. It took me just short of 6 weeks to read 244 pages, and by the end it was much more like skimming than reading. (Imagine a junior high school student reading a textbook of advanced calculus.)

The conclusion, well before I'd finished the book, was that whichever variant we used we'd still have issues ;-) We decided not to confuse ourselves by switching, and to focus instead on improvements to our play that will be more useful. I think Kantar is right that the best option is to use both of the main variants depending on the circumstances - but we're also right that that would be far too much complexity for our level of play.

My bridge partner did not read or acquire the book - which he would have done if I'd capsule reviewed it as "looks like we should try this". I've encouraged him into buying plenty of bridge books, but only ones likely to be immediately useful.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping the book on my shelves; perhaps a reread in a decade or so will be useful, once we've improved our play in more immediately useful ways.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, bridge game, series: n/a, 2008
- Author: male, American, born in 1932, professional bridge author, teacher, etc., author previously read
- English, own shelves, 244 pages, 3.5 stars
- read June 9-July 20, 2023, book not previously read

>126 ArlieS: Looks interesting! I went through a bridge book reading period, but pretty much only play online (Bridgebase), as my wife doesn't play & neither does anyone in our social circle that I'm aware of.

>127 ChrisG1: Bridgebase was my savior during the covid lockdown. I spent two years playing all my bridge online.

73. Woke racism : how a new religion has betrayed Black America by John Hamilton McWhorter V

This is a book attacking what the US right wing calls "wokism" and offering alternatives the (black American) author believes to be a lot more effective in improving things for the bulk of black Americans. I have some difficulty reviewing it fairly, because in the first part of the book, the author was preaching to the choir, and I was too busy enjoying his statements to fully engage my critical thinking abilities. He did such a nice job of skewering statements I already believed to be idiotic and self-contradictory! And I'd already considered that wokism (sic) functioned a lot like a (Christian) religion, both in providing an Original Sin for Sinners (all white people) to constantly repent and attempt to atone for, even though their inherited sin can never even be ameliorated. Also, of course, it's non-falsifiable, and any disagreement with its tenets should be punished by right thinking people.

I don't have personal experience with "living while black" in the US. I do have personal experience of living while part of one or more non-hegemonic groups that have been targets for various oppressions in my lifetime. I also have personal experience of living while poor. These experiences make me reasonably certain that black people are no more likely to be carbon copies of a common mold than poor people, women, immigrants, foreigners, disabled people, queers, or the elderly.

More importantly, I've had personal experience of performative wokism in my workplace. (I define this as talking the talk, strongly incenting others to talk the same talk, and never ever doing a damn thing that actually helps the people who this talk is suppose to benefit.) In my case, "strongly incenting" caused some people (me!) to fear that their continued employment would be threatened unless they conformed, not to mention any chance they might have for promotion. I don't know whether the threat at my workplace was real; I conformed in public, and then retired for this and other reasons.

FWIW, I believe that some large proportion of those producing this nonsense in my workplace were sincere. Most people judge relatively new plans by their stated goals, not their results to date. You have to be older and well informed to recognize plans as being unlikely to accomplish their stated goals, let alone as showing signs of having been created for other purposes entirely. The leaders, on the other hand, were probably cynical manipulators, though even they may have been able to self-delude into thinking they were doing some good. At my workplace, the only "good" they were doing was convincing the gullible that we were on the right side, thereby avoiding boycotts and similar potential reductions in profitability.

Also, I need to slightly walk back "never ever doing a damn thing that actually helps the people who this talk is suppose to benefit". It is possible - even likely - that there are people who actually experience emotional distress when they encounter the word "master" or other reminders of slavery. Some of these may identify as black, and be so well off otherwise that they perceive this as their most important race-related problem. And others almost certainly make their living teaching white people about their inherent racism, and similar. Both of these are benefits of a sort.

OK, that was a long digression, but I felt it important to give my biases, and some idea of where they are coming from.

One more thing - the author doesn't refer to "wokism", which he (and I) see as right-wing-loaded terminology. He refers to "The Elect", stressing the quasi-religious aspects. The solecism here is mine; I'm too lazy to come up with a neutral term. I apologize to my readers for my laziness.

This book starts with a bunch of claims about career harms to people who either challenge any aspect of "wokism", or make small errors in their performance of anti-racism. This is a common right wing trope. More importantly, on the one hand, I'm never comfortable with anecdata in place of statistics. And on the other hand, the victims were mostly all part of the same occupational class and category - middle class knowledge workers with a significant public element to their work. Unsurprisingly, the author is himself part of this category, so this looms more urgent for him than for me. That public element has always been risky - you need to avoid expressing opinions unacceptable to the latest fads. So while I agree that this is a problem, and relatively new, I really can't summon up any outrage, and regard this section as a reason to check the author for right wing political affiliation or funding.

It then goes through a long discussion of the various beliefs that aren't supposed to be challenged, generally tabulated in ways that show their inherent contradictions. I lapped this up enthusiastically. Somewhat belatedly, I note that while contradicting any of these will get some people calling you "racist", and others then echoing that labeling, it's quite likely individual proponents of this philosophy have preferences - they don't personally hold both contradictory beliefs equally strongly. They'll agree with their less preferred belief if asked, just as typical Christians will agree with anything Christians are supposed to believe - but then ignore it in practice, not initiating action in its support.

This discussion is part of establishing to the author's satisfaction (and mine), that this set of beliefs is functioning like a religion, with its adherents having faith in the presence of counter-evidence, proselytizing, persecuting heretics, etc. etc. After this he refers to believers as The Elect, and addresses his readers as reasonable people who know better than to join this Church.

The question then becomes - with this useless, noisy, and belligerent group claiming to own the mission of improving the lives of blacks in America, what can reasonable people actually do. The author has a few suggestions, which seem reasonable to me - but we are both middle class knowledge workers. He's closer in time and ancestry to severe persecution than I am, but I'm closer to poverty. I suspect that these suggestions may be contaminated by middle class blind spots - but I absolutely do not know this. In any case, leaving aside ways of coping with The Elect, the author favors 3 policies: (1) end the war on drugs; (2) teach reading by means of phonics, not whole-word methods; (3) get past the idea that everyone must go to college.

For (1), the idea is to reduce incarceration, and reduce opportunity for criminal employment, forcing poor (black) youth into legitimate employment. For (2) the idea is that whole-word methods work especially badly for those not growing up surrounded by books and readers, read to as children, etc. For (3) the idea is that strong vocational education will provide decent, skilled jobs, less debt, etc..I am sympathetic to all of these. But I'm middle class myself. I have no idea whether my blind spots are showing.

Finally, and controversially, the author believes that active discrimination is either non-existent, or decreased to the point where it's nowhere near the biggest problem a poor black person faces. The average black person starts life below the average white person because of *past* discrimination, and can cope with what little discrimination he still faces. Likewise, the cop problem is relatively limited - bad cops are a menace, but not usually specifically a menace to black people qua black people, rather than qua poor people, qua inebriated people, or qua people working in criminal careers.

He never mentions the reports by middle class blacks of feeling like they are targeted for e.g. traffic stops because of their skin colour. From that I conclude the author does not personally notice this problem. OTOH, looking at his photograph, he's light enough to be Mediterranean , and keeps his hair short enough that it might not obviously scream "black" even in person. (And he does specifically mention - to disbelieve - claims by e.g. black physicists of cop trouble. I've read some of those claims, and they involve high rates of being stopped by cops while driving, which they perceive as ye olde "driving while black".)

Bottom line - I liked this book, perhaps because it tended to confirm my existing beliefs. I can find problems with it, and have gone out of my way to list them, not because I believe the author to be especially biased, but because I don't trust my own biases. Biased or not, I'm happy to see any voice that disagrees with the current party-line prescription for helping minorities, particularly blacks, primarily by symbolic gestures and (especially) a kind of consciousness raising among whites. But I'd be a tad happier if it overlapped a bit less with right wing talking points; I consider the US right wing even more prone to false and misleading statements than the left wing - which is itself more than bad enough for me to question everything they claim.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: male, American (black), born in 1965, academic (linguistics) and political commentator, author not previously read
- English, public library, 201 pages, 4 stars
- read July 18-21, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by LibraryThing's new recommendation system (with "new books" selected)

>129 ArlieS: I've not read the book, but I've read a fair amount of McWhorter's columns & listened to podcasts featuring him. He's a clear thinking moderate. I wish there were more like him in our political discourse. Divisive partisanship on the wings is corroding the fabric of our society.

>129 ArlieS: What a thoughtful and thorough review, Arlie - thank you. I also appreciate your explaining your own biases... I wish more people were as aware of theirs as you are of yours, and included them in discussions about relevant subjects. I suspect it would make for more civil discourse.

>130 ChrisG1: That's good to hear. I agree that the US - and for that matter the world - needs more moderates. I hadn't encountered McWhorter before; discovering him is a happy result of LibraryThing's new recommendation system.

>131 PlatinumWarlock: Thank you Lavinia. These are the reviews I most enjoy writing.

I'll be officially reaching 75 once I record the two books I finished yesterday, and I'm rather amused about the one that will be 75th, following my usual rule of numbering books in the precise order that I finished them.

I hereby assure all my readers that I didn't do this on purpose. I was feeling kind of crappy last Friday and decided to reread something funny as a pick-me-up. I did and it did ;-)

I am in fact resisting the urge to reorder the two books due to some embarrassment about such a milestone.

74. The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood by Tristram Hunt

This is a decent biography of Josiah Wedgwood, complete with the contradictions in his life. For those who don't recognize the name - think tableware (dish sets) and other pottery. I'm not going to try to tell his story here - you can read the book for that - but he's an interesting mix of entrepreneur and experimenter, with politics sometimes radical for his time - but also sometimes just a matter of favoring his own business interests. Josiah Wedgwood was also the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

I have no record of why I borrowed this book, so it probably jumped out of its shelf at the library, landing in my bag. Most likely it was one the librarians had included in an attention-gathering display; those are particularly prone to such athletics.

In checking my records, I found this was at least the second book I'd read by this author, who sounds like an interesting chap himself, but I'd forgotten his name between books.

If you like biographies of 18th century Britons who left a cultural legacy, read this book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biography, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: male, British, born in 1974, historian, one book by this author read in 2017
- English, public library, 312 pages, 3.5 stars
- read July 9-23, 2023, book not previously read

>134 ArlieS: I absolutely adore Josiah Wedgwood and his legacy. Enlightned enough to know he needed to be rich to accomplish his goals; morally centered enough to know his human fallibility boded ill for perfection.

Plus the tablewares are right nice to look at. Wish the company bearing his name still bore his ethical stamp.

75. Chicks in Chainmail edited by Esther Friesner

This is a collection of Amazon Humor - fantasy stories featuring swordswomen in various fantasy worlds. It was exactly what I needed last week, when my aging body was interfering with my life, and I badly needed cheering up. Even random aches and pains are less of a problem when you are laughing hysterically.

These stories happily subvert stereotypes about women, rather than either shying away from them or being set in gender egalitarian utopias. The story about a king that decides to tax women's chest armor - but not men's - is hilarious, and far better for referring to the tax as being on "bronze bras". (Hint: it didn't end well for his tax revenue.) Then there's the woman who feels left out of the bonding experience when her fellow Guards go together to visit the local brothel, fearing her absence will imperil unit cohesion, and how she solves this problem. Or the princess who decides to solve the problem of finding a prince to marry by marrying a swineherd, then paying bards to spread the world that he was really a prince under some kind of enchantment.

Don't read this book if political correctness matters to you, or if you have a problem with e.g. women who prefer to solve problems using violence or its threat. Do read it if you feel like rolling in the aisles. And then read other books from the same series, some of which are even better, to my taste at least.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, first of a series, stories, 1995
- Editor: female, American, born 1951, writer,
- English, own shelves, 341 pages, 3 stars
- read July 21-23, 2023; reread

>135 richardderus: Yeah, the last chapter was about what had happened to the company after his time, and it was pretty sad.

>136 ArlieS: Congrats on hitting 75! I remember thoroughly enjoying that one when it came out back in the 90s. I wonder if I can find another copy...

>136 ArlieS: Congratulations on 75 books!

>136 ArlieS: Congratulations on reaching 75, Arlie!

>138 drneutron: >139 quondame: >140 atozgrl: Thank you all.

Congrats on 75!!

Hi Arlie!

>63 ArlieS: Thank you re my writing style and dropping a star on my thread. Quite a few people here on LT and in my book club in real life feel obligated to finish a book once they start it. I tried doing that in 2008, but started twitching about March and abandoned the don’t-abandon-books rule.

>87 ArlieS: Georgette Heyer is one of my favorite authors and I have all her romances and have read all of them except for Pistols for Two, which I’ve started twice and never finished for some reason. Quite a few of us here on LT are Heyer fans. She wrote mysteries, too, but they never appealed to me.

>129 ArlieS: I read Woke Racism and wrote glowingly about it in February of 2022. I first heard of John McWhorter through his lecture series The Story of Human Language, which I listen to every other year or so.

>136 ArlieS: Chicks in Chainmail – love the title and congrats on 75 books.

>136 ArlieS: Congratulations on reaching 75, Arlie!

>142 curioussquared: >143 karenmarie: >144 FAMeulstee: >145 PlatinumWarlock: Thank you all

>143 karenmarie: I clearly should have been reading your thread in 2022.

76. Did You Say Chicks? edited by Esther Friesner

This is the second volume of the Amazon Humor series that also provided my #75 for this year. Much of what I said in that review applies here too, except for the specific of the stories.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), stories, 1998
- Editor: female, American, born 1951, writer, editor of my #75 for this year
- English, own shelves, 309 pages, 3 stars
- read July 24-28, 2023; reread

I have been diagnosed with De Quervain's Tensynovitis. It's basically a problem with a pair of tendons running along the outside of the wrist into the thumb. My hand hurts, and doesn't like all kinds of normal-for-me activities.

The trouble started in late June or early July, and is the reason I read so very much in the past month; too many other normally pleasant activities either hurt, or were being avoided because I suspected them of making the hand worse.

The Wikipedia article, which I linked, doesn't agree very well with either other online articles from reputable medical sources, or what my doctor told me. It also appears to me to contradict itself. (Both of these observations apply to the version I retrieved 5 minutes ago.) But it should at least give an idea of what I'm talking about.

I now have a spiffy spica splint to immobilize and support the thumb and wrist, OTC anti-inflammatory ointment, and a referral for physical therapy.

I've also ordered a device for holding my cards when playing bridge face to face, as sorting cards has been particularly unpleasant, and left my hand more painful the following day.

I've been instructed in what I should and should not be doing with the hand, and am retraining myself to support things from below with my palms, and to carry less at a time. (Moving large stacks of books seems to have helped cause this problem.)

The hand feels much better with the splint on but mouse use is difficult. And it's a good thing I never learned to thumb-type on cell phones; the splint would make that impossible.

Hopefully with less discomfort I'll be reading a higher proportion of more interesting books, rather than comfort rereads. And hopefully I'll be able to play computer games again without either pain at the time or increased problems afterwards. (I'm going to try alternate pointer devices; using a mouse with my right hand is doable with the splint but a bit clumsy.)

p.s. technically the trouble started in the mid 1990s; I had a similar, milder attack back then while living in Colorado. But the current attack is "special".

>148 ArlieS: I'm so sorry to hear about your thumb issues. I've done thumb splints at a mild level and they do help but also interfere. I hope your pain levels subside.

>148 ArlieS: This totally stinks. I'm deeply familiar with this process of defining a new normal that accounts for new threholds of pain, so my sympathy as a fellow sufferer.

>149 quondame: >150 richardderus: Thank you both. I'm feeling surprisingly cheerful about the whole thing - I have a plan, *and* the doctor didn't suggest any frightening potential causes. I'm also hurting myself less, though I'm sure I look plenty silly using both hands to lift my somewhat oversize tea mug. (Amazingly, I've reached the point where I do that automatically when it's full, even while more than half asleep.)

It also helps a lot that I don't live alone. My housemate has been opening stubborn jars, and elderly-resistant medication packaging. She's also doing more than her share of things like unloading groceries. She's just a hair older than me, but fortunately our various age-related issues mostly don't match, so far at least.

And best of all - the treatment is working.

>151 ArlieS: I'm all for treatment that works. It has been pretty rare in my experience to find treatment that I can accept that also works.

>148 ArlieS: Arlie, I'm sorry to hear about your problems and your diagnosis. My husband was diagnosed with the same problem a number of years ago. He worked in a lab and apparently put a lot of strain on his wrist with what he did. He eventually had surgery to release the tendon (they cut into the sheath) and he recovered. He couldn't use his hand for a couple of weeks, and then went to PT for awhile. But he was able to quit wearing a splint and he hasn't had any problems with it recently. I hope you can recover without needing the surgery.

I'm very glad to know that you have a housemate to help, and that she is so willing to be helpful! And also that the treatment is working and you are feeling better. I hope you continue to improve!

You may love your particular mug. But if this becomes a continuing problem, look for a porcelain mug - they come in all sizes, not just cute little teacups, and they are _amazingly_ light for their size. My mother and sister both use them to help with hand strain. But we've found them at random times and random places, so I can't suggest anything directly, just keep an eye out.

>150 richardderus: On a good day, I'm all chirpy as in #151.

On a bad day, I wish to inform the universe that I'm heartily sick of random low grade aches and pains, seriously unpleased with anything more painful, and positively furious about any reduction in my abilities, or even my energy level.

Growing old is not for the faint of heart.

Your sympathy is very much appreciated.

>153 atozgrl: Yikes! That sounds scary.

So far, no one's suggested this as a possibility for me; steroid injections into the sheath would be the next level up for me.

I hope that means my hand isn't likely to get as bad as your husband's did. (Caught earlier, perhaps?)

>154 jjmcgaffey: I do love these mugs, but if I have a limited amount of thumb-and-wrist capacity, I'd rather use it for other things. Thank you for the idea; I'll keep an eye out for porcelain mugs.

>156 ArlieS: I certainly hope it was caught earlier for you, and that you won't need to have any surgery. It's not as bad as it sounds, and he doesn't have any problems with his wrist now, so the surgery and PT worked. But I do hope you won't need that and your current treatment will resolve the issue for you!

Sorry to read about your De Quervain's Tensynovitis. That does not sound like any fun. I hope the splints work and you don't need any surgery. I'm very glad you have a room mate to help out .

77. Homo sapiens rediscovered : the scientific revolution rewriting our origins by Paul Pettitt

This is a decent book about human development in the Pleistocene, Neanderthal as well as homo sapiens, with a bit about even earlier hominids. I enjoyed the earlier parts more (up through the earliest homo sapiens in Europe), even though the author specializes in the _Middle_ Paleolithic.

It has the usual virtues of science books written by actual scientists - the author has a deep understanding of much of what he's writing about and isn't obsessed with talking about people rather than the subject at hand. (He does, however, like writing about scientific topics in terms of his own personal experience.)

It's got good material on tools and other artefacts, including very early art. And it explains dating techniques well enough that they don't wind up seeming like magic.

That said, it felt like kind of an also ran to me - yet another book on a subject that's already been done well, without enough time passing since the latest similar good book for lots of new research to need reporting, and without a special focus of its very own. It's OK, but any new-to-me information it seemed to contain might well have been something I'd already read about and forgotten.

That's no down-check if you haven't read other recent books in the same general area - but I have. So that got it a rating of 3.5 instead of 4.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, British, age unknown (BA 1991, MA 1992, PhD 1999), academic (archaeology of the paleolithic), author not previously read
- English, public library, 304 pages, 3.5 stars
- read July 22-31, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by LibraryThing's new recommendation system.

>159 vancouverdeb: Thank you. It's looking good so far, but I'm still keeping my virtual fingers crossed. Some days are better than others, and mornings tend to be the worst.

I was way behind on your thread, but it was very interesting catching up.
Posts that certainly resonated with my ever-evolving way of thinking ~
>61 karenmarie: "Abandon books with glee if it's not working for me"
& >63 ArlieS: "... I'm also getting better about discarding books I'll never read again, or possibly may never finish..."

These philosophies really made a difference to my reading-enjoyment. I totally embraced the concept this year and I'm also not bothering to focus on whether I read a particular number of books.

>73 ArlieS: I haven't read this book (unlikely to do so, because I prefer peer-reviewed journal articles over text books even if written by a qualified, experienced researcher).

However, for those interested in the subject of asynchronous learning and innate genetic abilities, there exists a repository of data on a massive database accessible through the Gifted Development Centre in Colorado (https://gifteddevelopment.org/isad).
I have listened to several presentations and podcasts by Dr. Linda Silverman (https://gifteddevelopment.org/linda-silverman). I encourage folks interested in the topic to seek the understanding that lies behind the different abilities evident in children from birth. It is reassuring to see this unbiased research with regard to race, culture, all genders, and without regard to nationalities.

>87 ArlieS: IIRC, that was a BB from moi, yes?

>90 ArlieS: Oof... I think a BB from you!

>113 ArlieS: Ummm, I think you marginally liked this better than I did. I awarded two stars and in summing up on my review, wrote So how did Marie Benedict and Victoria Murray come to produce such a tedious, boring biography of this fascinating person? .

And finally down to your last post, and can only say (i) I've never heard of "De Quervain's Tensynovitis" and (ii) it sounds very painful and an uncertain out come. I hope there's a specialist consult in your future.

>162 SandyAMcPherson: I like the way you have lots of things to say when you do catch up.

" because I prefer peer-reviewed journal articles over text books even if written by a qualified, experienced researcher"

I wish I could get my hands on more of those.

"However, for those interested in the subject of asynchronous learning and innate genetic abilities ..."

Bookmarked, and somewhat explored. Thank you.

"IIRC, that was a BB from moi, yes?"

Yes, The private world of Georgette Heyer was a BB from you. And turnabout is fair play, with Killers of a certain age.

"... De Quervain's Tensynovitis ..."

So far it's been primary care doctor only; soon to also have a physical therapist involved.

I wish I was sure what was making it worse, and what is merely neutral, except for being unpleasant. This morning I drove a few miles wearing the splint, and my wrist felt worse afterwards than when I drive without it. But it's fairly happy now in late afternoon.

78. The silvered by Tanya Huff

This is a lovely fantasy book by an author I've been reading a lot this year. I found it a little slow to get into, perhaps because of having read some spoilers that had me anticipating unpleasant scenes, and perhaps just because I found the start less compelling than the rest.

It starts out looking like it's going to be yet another tale of a privileged scion of an over-controlling parent managing to grow up and get a life, possibly via the "good marriage" the parent wishes her to achieve, or possibly via a war rolling over idiotic parents who can't tell artillery from thunder, and are busy attending the opera (with the somewhat more clued-in marriageable daughter) in part to show her off to potential suitors rather than fleeing somewhere farther from the front. The impression that this book is going to be cliched and boring is only enhanced when we learn that the daughter in question had been told not to return to her mage training, as she's been making negligible progress in spite of her outstanding aptitude test results ... and still hasn't told her parents.

Fortunately, the book fails to deliver on its cliched promises. It does stay within the pattern of young person proving themselves, and the heroine is seriously over-powered, as well as a bit too sensible for her age and class background. But other than that, it's great. Seriously. I'd love to say more about what actually happens, but I don't want to spoil the plot for other potential readers. So I'll leave out several paragraphs of gushing spoilers,and you'll just have to take my word for it that I loved this book.

I read the last 2/3 of it in about 2 days, and was sorry when I reached the end.

The book is blessed with a magic and social system that is somewhat original (hard to find in fantasy), complete with ramifications unknown to many of the natives, even some relevant specialists. It's even got built in tradeoffs, with the people of different regions making different choices among those tradeoffs, and getting the bad along with the good.

There's no room for an immediate sequel, without the kind of plot devices that tend to make me crazy - yet I wanted to read more about this world. It would be interesting to read a story set in the same universe, 200 years earlier or later, or on some other continent.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, not in a series, 2012
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, author of my #42, #43, #47, #51, #54 and #56 for this year
- English, public library, 454 pages, 4 stars
- read July 21-31, 2023; book not previously read

I read this book as the result of a book bullet from quondame, but it was also relatively recently recommended by LT's classic recommendation system.

>164 ArlieS: I love The Silvered. As I'm rather fond of the trope with which it seems to start, I was into it from the beginning though I was delighted when it went its own way.
I think Mirian is level headed as defense against valuing herself according to what her mother feels, which has made her judge her mother's choices.

>165 quondame: She makes a good heroine, regardless of her family background. (And in fact, that family background has almost no effect on the story.)

Thank you again for the book bullet.

79. Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure by Vaclav Smil

This was a good book about technology. In particular, it's about technology that hasn't worked out as well as once predicted. Three types of failure are discussed: inventions that were welcome only at first; inventions that had far less impact than predicted; and inventions that never seem to quite arrive. Each category is discussed by giving the history of 3 examples of that type, rather than attempting a more complete inventory or a statistical analysis.

I was a bit uncertain about borrowing this book, because my one previous experience with the author was kind of meh - I rated that book a mere 3, describing it in my notes as a dry as dust recitation of dates and numbers. This book did not have that problem, probably because of the focus on a small number of examples.

The examples were: leaded gasoline, DDT, chlorofluorocarbons, airships, nuclear fission, supersonic flight, travel in a near vacuum (hyperloop), nitrogen-fixing cereal crops, and controlled nuclear fission. These are listed by type of failure, and in chronological order within that type, which is also the order they are presented in the book.

I learned a lot, particularly about the history of the three that were only initially welcomed. All wound up banned, or extremely heavily restricted. (Note, by the way, that of those three, only one was foisted on the public in spite of risks that were already known; the others were innocent mistakes.)

The section about the "hyperloop" hype rates special mention for teaching me things I didn't know, and farther decreasing my estimate of the engineering competence and/or honesty of now-beleaguered Elon Musk. I had no idea that the "Boring Company" was more than just a somewhat generic provider of tunneling services. One of its projects is yet another incarnation of a so far always failing attempt to do super-high-speed human transport by putting people in capsules that travel in mostly-evacuated underground tunnels. Smil thinks that this is still unfeasible in any cost effective way. I imagine that he's correct, and hope this will become evident via cost overruns and similar rather than via major accidents.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, technology, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: male, Czech-Canadian, born in 1943, academic (environmental science, public policy), author of my #81 for 2021
- English, public library, 219 pages, 4 stars
- read July 25 - Aug. 1, 2023, book not previously read

This book was recommended by LibraryThing's new recommendation system

>167 ArlieS: I still long for luxury travel via zeppelin. *sigh* CFCs and leaded gas stem from the same chemist, name now misfiled in my memory drat that stupid filing elf, so he might be the single largest-body-count mass murderer in all of human history.

Musk can eff all the way off to Saturn's rings. Tomorrow.

>168 richardderus: Thomas Midgley? Smil believes that while the hazards of leaded gasoline were predictable and warned against at the time, the hazards of CFCs were not. If so, Midgley is only culpable for one of the two, and his management chain surely shares this culpability. But perhaps I'm just overly sympathetic to engineers of all kinds, while very much unsympathetic to business executives.

Why is it that otherwise decent authors feel a need to make statements of things outside of their specialties that either cannot possibly be known for certain, or contradict statements of actual specialists? Such statements never have footnotes, and so appear to be intended to be representative of "common knowledge".

To this reader at least, such statements reduce the credibility even of footnoted statements in the author's actual field of expertise.

In the case of my #50 (Climate chaos: lessons on survival from our ancestors) the problem seemed to be caused by the second author, Nadia Durrani, since the primary author (Brian Fagan) didn't do this in the one other book of his I've read.

But what accounts for the repeated rubbish statements in chapter 1 of An Indigenous People's History of the United States? An excellent Introduction convinced me that the author (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) is a serious scholar, capable of thoughtfulness and nuance even in history with an obvious political intent. But I found several unfootnoted non-credible statements in the first 5 pages of chapter 1. I hope the problem is that the author feels a need to write about pre-history, even though she's a historian by training and profession, but because it's not her specialty she doesn't see a need to verify anything she thinks she knows about it.

No, Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz, we don't have any way of determining the gender of the people who invented agriculture (p. 15). It's unlikely that corn (maize) was separately domesticated in multiple locations in the Americas at the same time (p. 15). I'm also quite unclear that Mayans invented the court ball games common in central America (p. 19); in fact I've gotten the impression from other reading that they got them from earlier cultures. And those are just the statements I flagged as I read those pages, as jumping off the page at me.

I'll keep reading until I see whether the author does the same thing once she reaches time periods with actual historical sources. If she does, I'll probably invoke the Pearl rule, even though this is certainly a topic well worth reading about.

>170 ArlieS: That's the sort of annoyance that has me flinging books (mostly figuratively these days) across the room in a fury.

>171 quondame: Alas, the "religion" my parents taught me doesn't allow me to physically abuse books. I'm probably somewhat heretical even getting rid of books I purchased but don't like.

But some books really don't deserve my ingrained respect for them!

>172 ArlieS: I approve of the parental teachings, even in the case of books you actively hate.

>170 ArlieS: Dang it! I have that book pulled and was going to read it for the June Nonfiction challenge, but ran out of time. I was hoping I might be able to squeeze it in this month. Now I wonder whether it's worth picking up or not.

>172 ArlieS: That made me chuckle, Arlie, that fact that your parents " religion doesn't allow you to physically abuse books " . I don't have any such inclinations, but I recall a close friend of mine's mom, who was Mennonite, burning the elder daughter's book in a burning bin in the backlane ! :-) Books she disapproved of , like Go Ask Alice and I'm not sure what all. And my friends mom, ironically, mistakenly joined Hitler for Youth when she was a young person in Germany. She was actually a lovely woman and told many stories about WW2 and the mistake she made by being led to join Hitler for youth, and her husband , also Mennonite, was conscientious objector during WW2. He did go the battlefields from Canada, but as a medic without a gun. It just gives me a good chuckle to remember it all, As a kid in grade school, I didn't understand the significance of burning books, though I did think it was pretty weird. I was allowed to read any book I liked, though I recall my dad chiding me for reading D.H. Lawrence when I was in grade 12 or so, and telling me it was porn disguised a literature. :-)

>174 atozgrl: *sigh* I just read another 12 pages. I'm now at the end of chapter 3.

She's still making footnote-free statements that aren't common knowledge to me, but it's harder to find ones that are obviously ridiculous.

The "sacred covenant" basis of the United States, Israel, and (apartheid) South Africa - but nowhere else - is probably metaphorical. It's not being clearly defined, so I can't suggest other nations with similar attitudes to their constitutions.

The "state religion", with sacred documents including the (US) Constitution, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the Pledge of Allegiance, Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and the (US) Second Amendment (p. 50) is presumably also metaphorical.

The back story of the Ulster-Scots (p. 52-54) seems insufficiently footnoted and possibly mythological in places. It's also got many elements I believe to be accurate. I don't have time, energy, and expertise for a rousing game of hunt-the-errors.

As far as I can tell, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz personally subscribes to a mythology not entirely familiar to me, which mostly follows left-wing political contours. The achievements of women are important, whether or not we have evidence for them. Good cultures make decisions by consensus. By implication, they don't keep slaves; I wonder if she'll mention the slaves held by the "civilized tribes" displaced under Andrew Jackson, or the slave-holding tribes on the US west coast. It's important to mention the class position of various groups within settler society, and its internal oppressions.

It's important to her to make all native Americans look good, and to show how advanced the Americas were before European contact. That's fine, but other books do a better job, and furthermore include footnotes; I spotted errors in her statements in part because of reading some of those better books.

Is there room to teach some history among these biases? Will I recognize it as accurate and neither mythological nor metaphorical in this context?

I'm about 3 microns from Pearl Ruling this book. If I knew of a better alternative, I'd already have done so.

>176 ArlieS: Well, that certainly does not sound promising! Do let us know if you finish it or drop it. I will try to look around for some reviews and see what I can find before I decide whether to read it or not.

>172 ArlieS: That's quite a background for your friend. Her mother was probably far safer joining than not, however ugly the group. And I have a huge respect for conscientious objectors, particularly the ones that take dangerous non-combat roles. Too bad about the attitude to books though.

>177 atozgrl: It's always possible that it's pushing my buttons, and you'd like it better than I do.

I'm abandoning Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. The reason I'm putting in my private comments is "This is a book about why Native Americans and their friends should be angry at the US, not a history of the (mostly bad) interactions of Native Americans with the US."

I'm generously giving it 3 stars, as it appears to be doing an adequate job of being a book about the goodness of Native Americans and the badness of the US, and I'm aware that lots of people enjoy reading books of this type.

Maybe it improves later on; maybe it does not. I don't feel like taking the time to find out.

>178 ArlieS: >179 ArlieS: I may go ahead and pick it up in a few months, but I'll keep your comments in mind and not just blindly trust what the author is saying. I can at least decide whether it's a book we need to remove from our shelves. Some of what I've been reading since retiring is the stuff sitting on our shelves with the idea of clearing out what we don't want to keep. This might go in the pile that's going out the door.

>170 ArlieS: etc Sounds like one to avoid or my blood will probably boil. Agenda based history re-writing is becoming quite the thing these days. If an author is sufficiently convinced in his/her views at least have the intellectual honesty to show sources in support of opinions.

I did study native American history a little at university, especially relating to the dispossession of land-holding and the enforced conversion of them into being farmers via the Dawes Act. To say that they were wronged by the colonizers is the understatement to end all understatements but largely it was ignorance posing as enlightenment and 'acquisition' posing as progress that was the order of the day rather than a concerted evil spiritedness.

>181 PaulCranswick: She does have footnotes and sources; they just weren't in evidence for "common knowledge".

The following is from knowledge I already had, NOT this book:

I think in some cases, the harm to Native Americans was caused by a lot more than mere ignorance.

The Trail of Tears was a pretty clear case of government-authorized theft. And these people were already farmers, doing a pretty good job of living much like white settlers. Unfortunately, actual white people wanted their land and other property, and Andrew Jackson was their man. (Though frankly, I'm not sure he could have stopped the white settlers even if he'd tried to bring in federal troops against them.) All this *before* we get to the death march, which might well have been the result of incompetence and embezzlement/graft rather than any specifically murderous intent.

After that, you get a lot more in the way of embezzlement/graft by Indian Agents and government contractors, at the expense of the Natives. Lots of treaties were violated by the people charged with fulfilling them, rather than because the federal executive decided to break them. IMO that still leave the US government culpable, morally at least, for chronic failure to provide supervision sufficient to deter the graft.

That's before we get to bad things intentionally done by various levels of government. I think you are right that some of that was caused more by cluelessness than malice. I don't have anywhere near enough knowledge to know how much; you have probably studied this more than I have.

>182 ArlieS: I certainly agree with the theft thesis, Arlie. That is why I put "acquisition" in inverted commas. The ignorance and prejudice particularized itself in the ridiculous notion of the Native Americans being savages and somehow less than human. This justified the theft and assuaged consciences in the name of Manifest Destiny and then subsequently of "civilizing the tribes".

>183 PaulCranswick:, >182 ArlieS: Othering is the oldest trick in the theft-by-force playbook. It might be the most effective, but if not the superlative, at the least in the top of the order.

Sounds like a book you're well rid of, Arlie.

Interestingly enough, almost all the reviews I found praise the book quite highly, so I think I will give it a try in a few months and check it out for myself. The only negative review I saw was at Kirkus Reviews. I will keep a critical eye out while reading, however. Your criticisms look to be very valid.

>185 atozgrl: I'll be looking forward to reading your review.

Well, looks like you saved me from that one…

80. Brother Cadfael's Penance by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter))

This is the last of the Brother Cadfael Mysteries. This is a series featuring an aging monk living in England in the 12th century. Brother Cadfael solves mysteries; a new one in each book of the series.

I've read and enjoyed most of the series, and have some on my shelves, but haven't reread any recently. I acquired this one second hand a few years ago, and presumed it was one I'd read many years earlier when living with my mother and sisters, who between them had what I thought was a complete collection.

I decided to reread it because of its relatively recent acquisition, and because I didn't remember it at all. Usually previously read books come back to me as I reread them, but this one stayed completely unfamiliar. After checking its publication date, I don't believe it had been published in time to have been in the household collection while I was still living there.

I enjoyed it a lot, possibly helped a bit by this being one of those rare books where the main character is roughly as old as I am, but still doing interesting things.

I don't want to give spoilers, but it struck me that the author became an even better writer as she aged - this book has something the earlier volumes lacked, in terms of the personalities and concerns of the characters. Other than that, parts of the resolution surprised me, and I loved the attitudes expressed and acted on by several of the characters. It's definitely a keeper, and I may feel a need to reread some of the other volumes soon.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical mystery, series (not first), 1994
- Author: female, British, born 1913, writer, author frequently read
- English, own shelves, 273 pages, 4 stars
- read Aug 1-7, 2023; book probably previously unread

Have you read the prequel, A Rare Benedictine? It was published relatively late - don't know what dates you're actually dealing with. It's how Cadfael became a monk - and ties things very directly to history, because it was at the time of the White Ship. Fun, and a small mystery, and quite short.

>189 jjmcgaffey: Yes, and I enjoyed it.

It's not one I own, but that's why people created libraries.

81. Essential retirement planning for solo agers : a retirement and aging roadmap for single and childless adults by Sara Zeff Geber

This is a book about aging without adult children, i.e. when there's no younger relative who would feel responsible for assisting you in infirmity, and hopefully also approach the task with some level of competence and energy. I borrowed it because my network told me about plans for a local (to me) solo aging learning and support group the author might be planning to start, and I wanted a better idea of whether it would be worth my time and money.

The beginning was full of what I consider the usual platitudes - which I sum up sarcastically as "happiness in retirement requires being extroverted, socially skilled, and either religious or dedicated to some cause". She also added "flexibility and adaptability", which I was inclined to relabel as "happy to have a new, ever more impenetrable user interface every 6 months, for tools you can't get by without using".

I made two rather cranky blog posts about it, but kept reading, mostly because of the potential support group - that could be useful for connecting me with other local people in the same situation, even if the organizer was an also-ran. (Not, however, if she was a total idiot.) This was especially true because participants were being recruited on at least one mailing list for ex-employees (including retirees) of a major tech company; the group was thus likely to have a higher than average proportion of nerds, geeks, techies, and people on the autistic spectrum - i.e. people much like myself.

The second half of the book was *much* better, and I collected a lot of bookmarks, vocabulary, and mental notes. It dealt much more with preparing for the late stages of retirement, when disabilities may make it impossible to take care of yourself. I've been dealing with that at least in part by hiding my head in the sand, and contemplating acquiring (and concealing) means of suicide I could use even with limited physical abilities or independence. I've also been reminding myself that one friend who shared those concerns died suddenly of a "cardiac event", still in her 60s, before reaching the stage of needing assistance with activities of daily living; I might have similar good fortune, though preferably at a somewhat older age.

I'm still terrified at the thought of finding myself being cared for by people who can't or won't do what I'd prefer. I don't trust bureaucracies to do well by people lacking advocates. Also, if I can't express my wishes, people are likely to make me miserable by treating me as they (correctly) believe a normal, average person would prefer. (That happens even when I can express my wishes, but is currently limited by my ability to exit relationships where this is a regular problem.)

But this book helped me open the box and look at the details, providing names for options for care once living completely independently becomes impossible, and ways to research and even set up such a transition in advance. I discovered there were retirement setups specifically intended for queer people. I found names for some of the ideas that attract me, and organizations that specialize in connecting people interested in such living arrangements. I found terminology describing types of assistance a person might need, and the types of worker or facility that provides them. It's all useful, though my emotional reaction ("I hope I die rather than become dependent on uncaring, for profit bureaucrats") rather interferes with absorbing information.

Coincidentally, a friend-of-a-friend has recently moved into a "Continuing Care Retirement Community" (CCRC) and the friend (more like a net.acquaintance), who I'd thought was happily retired in place in a condo, seems to be considering or at least researching doing the same. I on the other hand, couldn't have distinguished a CCRC from a nursing home ;-( (Except that when I hear "community" in a name, I think that the for-profit group running it is slightly more mealy-mouthed than average ;-(.) Those were one of the options discussed in this book, and are furthermore reminiscent of the place an aunt and uncle of mine retired to and eventually died in.

At any rate, it was a useful book, once I got past the early retirement platitudes. I almost gave it 4 stars, and then remembered the early part and downgraded slightly.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, popular social science/self help, series: n/a, 2018
- Author: female, American, age unknown, counselor, author not previously read
- English, public library, 321 pages, 3.5 stars
- read July 8 - Aug. 8, 2023, book not previously read

82. Fledgling : a new Liaden universe novel by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

This is a science fiction novel by a pair of authors who reliably produce books I like, but some of them suit me better than others. Fortunately my library fairly reliably stocks them, so I'm generally able to try before I buy. This was one of the ones I loved, so when I spotted it in a bookstore about a month ago, I bought it, and put it right into my read/reread soon stack, rather than just putting it on the appropriate shelf in my fiction section.

Unsurprisingly, I still loved it on reread. These authors produce two types of story, all in the same universe. Some are serious, somewhat heroic, and prone to endings that leave plenty more problems for the characters to wrestle with in another story. Others are light, optimistic, and end with the characters seemingly ready to live happily ever after. I fairly consistently prefer the latter category, at least from these two authors. This was one of those rosy stories.

I know from reading later books that at least three of the characters will reappear in more serious stories, which I also enjoyed - but maybe not quite as much.

The rosy stories by these authors tend to be either romances of coming-of-age stories, and tend to follow their own tropes, rather than the more common variants. This was one of the coming of age stories.

A 13-year-old who's used to thinking of herself as "physically challenged" grows into her body (becoming positively athletic) and travels with her mother and some of her colleagues to a planet with a very different culture. A third type of culture is evident on the spaceship which brought them there. Meanwhile her parents are dealing, separately, with a serious plot. (There are 3 viewpoint characters - the daughter, the mother, and the father.) The daughter finds mentors en route, and learns of a potential career that suits her, but would not have been considered back home. Essentially all her problems are resolved by her official coming of age (at 14, as is normal for her homeworld), and as the book ends we see her buckling down to study the prerequisites to take up the scholarship she's been offered.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2009
- Author 1: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #45 and #48 for this year
- Author 2: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #45 and #48 for this year
- English, purchased used, 522 pages, 4 stars
- read Aug 8-10, 2023; book previously read (Oct 2017)

Just checking in on you, Arlie! Have a fantastic Friday!

>193 alcottacre: You too.

>191 ArlieS: A wonderful and worthy use of time, though ghastly in that chatty, oversharing social-worker way that makes my scalp prickle with mistrust to start with.

83. Rights talk : the impoverishment of political discourse by Mary Ann Glendon

This book sat on my TBR shelf for close to 19 years, transforming from "a bit late, but still topical" to "a breath from the past". Some of the issues discussed have gotten worse; others have changed in unanticipated ways.

This is a good book about some of the ways in which popular concepts in the US, often derived from legal terminology, but greatly simplified, lead to bad political philosophy and thus to nuance free, absolutist politics. The specific concepts, and the author's way of thinking about them, was new to me.

She doesn't like the idea of absolute rights, neither balanced against competing rights nor associated with equally important responsibilities. She notes that the legal system routinely does that sort of balancing, also balancing with various sorts of "legitimate government interests" - but political rhetoric, and the thought patterns of voters, generally does not. (I can easily cite examples of this more extreme than anything she mentions. Perhaps it's gotten worse in the 32 years since the book was published, or perhaps the author simply avoids mentioning anything that could possibly be attributed to stupidity, poor education, or trolling.)

She regularly cites the ways other countries handle the same things, as an ongoing proof that there are other ways of handling these issues, that avoid some of the problems of the typical American methods.

The author is a good Catholic (TM), notable for being opposed to abortion. She doesn't like Roe vs Wade, but in this book she uses it as an example of lack of compromise and absence of nuance, arguing that framing this issue as about a "right to privacy" prevented the organic development of compromise through the political process.

She regrets the US habit of not looking at the ways other countries handle similar legal and political issues, seeing this as resulting in limiting available ideas and nuance. In fact, she's all about nuance - perhaps unsurprising in a retired diplomat and legal professor, but an incredible breath of fresh air given recent behaviour of those that would presumably be seen as her current political allies. (She is, by the way, officially Independent in politics, according to wikipedia. For all I know, she's disgusted with the US right wing, in spite of being anti-abortion herself.)

Reading this book after the recent flip-flop in abortion rights in the US definitely made it better - those have gone from one extreme to another, bypassing anything resembling common sense. (I'm pretty sure very few anti-abortion voters even in the US actually want people dying of ectopic pregnancies, or for that matter rape victims being forced to bear their rapist's child.) She's arguing against the way that framing privacy as a right lead to an absolute position, lacking compromise in part because it bypassed the political process. (Does compromise still happen in US politics, though? It did at the time of writing, but recently not so much, particularly in national politics.)

Overall it was a good read, and better for having aged.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (theory), series: n/a, 1991
- Author: female, American, born 1938, academic (law), lawyer, and diplomat, author not previously read
- English, TBR shelves (acquired used in 2004), 218 pages, 4 stars
- read Aug. 1-10, 2023, book not previously read

Dropping in to say hello and catch up. Congrats on whizzing by the 75 books read mark!

>197 figsfromthistle: Thank you

>195 richardderus: Salutations and virtual hugs.

84. Red by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner

This graphic novel did not work for me. I finished it partly because I kept hoping it would improve, but mostly because it was only 124 pages long.

I borrowed this book because I was looking for books where older viewpoint characters do more than just ruminate on their pasts, generally regretfully. A friend who likes films more than I do suggested that such works were alive and well on screen, if not on paper, and particularly suggested a film named RED directed by Robert Schwentke. In investigating that film I discovered it was a not-very-close adaptation of a graphic novel that was available from my library, and borrowed it.

The graphic novel did indeed have action, but it also had the same old massive regrets about the hero's past, and the typical unhappy/fatal ending.

It also relied far too much on images for my taste. My archetypal graphic novel is Asterix the Gaul, which has plenty of text, and can be followed by text alone. (Asterix can also be followed in a language the reader knows badly, with the assistance of the pictures, and perhaps some memories of reading it in a language one does understand well.) Or if you want an English language example, I'll offer you the American comic books of my childhood, which also carried a lot of the content in their text.

It turned out that I rely on the presence of text for my appreciation, even of graphic novels. I'm also none too fond of plots which mostly consist of an over-powered hero committing lots and lots of successful violence. The ending also may well have been the most suitable for the story as it developed, but emphatically failed to suit me.

Another person's mileage may well vary. This probably is not an especially bad example of its genre; I just don't much like the genre. And the extra I'd come looking for - an elderly protagonist - just didn't counterbalance the genre and style.

Statistics:
- fiction, thriller (graphic novel), non-series, 2009
- Author 1: male, British, born 1968, comic book writer, author not previously read
- Author 2: male, American, born 1969, comic book artist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 124 pages, 2.5 stars
- read Aug 9-13, 2023; not previously read

85. Rainbow's end by Ellis Peters

This was a fun little mystery, set in a Britain that was probably contemporary when the book was published in 1978. The main protagonist is a police detective, and some violence occurred on stage, so it's technically not a "cozy mystery", but it certainly felt cozy. It's set in a village where people support each other - certainly to the point of lying to police - and everyone knows it, including the local constable, who's part of the village himself. The detective lives relatively nearby, and is connected to the local social scene. (We see him at a party at the home of the victim-to-be, months before he's called in to investigate the murder.) A schoolboy plays a major part in solving the crime, and everyone except murderer and victim presumably live happily ever after.

I'd happily read more of this series, but probably not reread any of it.

Statistics:
- fiction, mystery, series (not first), 1978
- Author: female, British, born 1913, writer, author of my #80 for this year
- English, own shelves, 191 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Aug 12-14, 2023; book probably previously unread

I love the Felse books - I do reread them (though not Rainbow's End, it's not one of the better ones). A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs is great, The Grass Widow's Tale is lovely, and I enjoy the spinoff where the Felse son (Dom?) is the protagonist - particularly Mourning Raga and Death to the Landlords. There's several, including Rainbow's End, that I've read once and have no great interest in reading again - Flight of a Witch is another. Oh, another good one is Death and the Joyful Woman. I got hooked on Ellis Peters by reading Cadfael, but I love the Felse books just about as much.

>201 jjmcgaffey: My sometimes annoying local libraries have distinguished themselves by having none of the Felse books. (They do have some of the Cadfael ones.) I haven't yet checked what's available here by inter-library loan.

>191 ArlieS: Oh, there's a topic that still makes me hyperventilate. I've got a younger husband and a daughter, but still, nothing is certain and they neither have a caretaker bone in their body, though both are good people.

>192 ArlieS: I remember catching Fledgling in the last months of it's crowdfunding and sending money to support Saltation. I prefer the HEA type story and want more Priscilla. It was my 90ish dad that turned me on to Lee&Miller with the two Misha Merlin omnibus volumes, Plan B, and I Dare. I got him all the chapbooks.

>202 ArlieS: Awww. Keep looking, they're fun.

86. The Fires of Paratime by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

This quasi-science fiction novel about a race of time travelers did not work for me. I really love this author, but not this example of his work. I pulled it off my shelf as part of a binge of rereading of the author, not remembering anything about this particular book. It then took me almost a month to finish 238 pages, and I arguably only finished rereading the book to be absolutely certain about dumping it into the nearest little free library.

The viewpoint character is overpowered but clueless. There are plots all over the place, to which he remains oblivious until threatened. Or is he oblivious? He's done some planning that doesn't get explained until he needs to use it. But given that it's a first person narrator, perhaps the preparations should have been mentioned as they happened.

The culture he comes from is selfish, paranoid, and parasitical on every other culture/species they can reach. The narrator goes along with personally contributing to genocide - in one case, essentially single-handedly - until he suddenly acts to treat his own culture and species rather similarly to its victims. (We're never sure whether he exterminated his own people, or just destroyed their culture and technology, setting the survivors on a new path.)

In fact, we're never certain of anything, except that almost everyone except walk on characters are involved in some kind of plotting. (For all we know, the parents of the two children individually needing rescuing are also plotters, and even the children themselves.)

Finally, to put the icing on the cake, all the major characters are given names based on European deities, mostly from the Germanic/Scandinavian mythos. Our viewpoint character is named Loki. another is called Odinthor. Their behaviour mostly has little or nothing to do with the associated myths; Heimdall is a big bad plotter with a gang of thugs. Everyone throws thunderbolts, usually with the aid of supposedly technological gauntlets, except Loki, who doesn't need the tech. (There may have been one or two others like him at some time in the past.)

The author is fond of settings with lots of intrigue, overpowered main characters, and sometimes a blurring of technology with magic. But he handles this package much better in almost all his later works. This one should have stayed in some editor's slush pile.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, non-series, 1982
- Author: male, American, born 1943, novelist, author of my #36, #38 and #63 for the year
- English, personal collection, 239 pages, 2.5 stars
- read July 18-Aug 16, 2023; reread

p.s. It gets 2.5 stars because I actually finished it - apparently twice now. If it had been borrowed from a library, I'd have Pearl Ruled it and rated it at 2.

>203 quondame: Chapbooks?

>204 jjmcgaffey: There's a lot available locally by interlibrary loan, so I might still get lucky.

>206 ArlieS: Twice a year Lee&Miller would sell pamphlets, usually with two short stories. Quality varied. The introduction of Ren Zel in Changeling was my favorite. I think all the stories are collected in the Liaden Companion books.

Almost all - plus some that weren't in the chapbooks. Baen's Liaden Universe Constellation is up to Volume 5 now (there are three collection series, that's the most complete and continues to be published, the other two are way behind and as far as I know will not be continued).

87. Where do camels belong? : the story and science of invasive species by Ken Thompson

This is a book about invasive species, written by a now retired botanist who was previously a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. The basic message is that most non-native species do as much good as harm, and the knee jerk "it's invasive! eradicate it!" is quite unreasonable. Most attempts at eradication of non-natives are expensive failures. Plants and animals routinely and quite naturally extend their ranges, or move them entirely, in response to environmental changes; if we successfully interfere with this we'll just have more extinctions. In fact, given habitat fragmentation, maybe we'd be better advised to give some potential climate refugees a helping hand at establishing themselves in areas that are becoming suitable for them, even as their old habitat becomes unsuitable.

The book is written by an academic, so it has footnotes and references to specific research. But it's written for the general public, and clearly intended to convince as well as inform. To me that means good counterarguments may go unmentioned, and likewise decent research that isn't supportive of the author's views.

This isn't taken to crazy extremes. There are examples given of invasive species that do cause big ecological problems. But there are more examples that the author presents as "usual suspects" and then completely exonerates.

If the rightness or wrongness of the author's thesis mattered to me, I'd have to do a lot more reading, possibly picking up most of an ecology degree in the process. So what I'm taking away here is
1) the level of problems associated with non-native species is contested
2) if someone quotes immense costs from some non-native species, check whether any of its benefits were counted; also check whether the costs of possibly futile attempts at eradication are being accounted as damage done by that species
3) Maybe it's better not to call non-native species "invasive" unless they are actually causing trouble
4) Badly designed eradication attempts have been known to do more harm to desired species than the species-to-be-eradicated ever managed.
5) Laws about conservation are frequently somewhat disconnected from reality.
6) If someone insists that all non-natives are always bad, they are probably a True Believer (TM), no more worth heeding than a door-to-door religious proselytizer.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science (ecology), series: n/a, 2014
- Author: male, British, age unknown (PhD in mid '70s), academic (botany), author not previously read
- English, public library, 262 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Aug. 10-17, 2023, book not previously read

My TBR list is growing like a possibly invasive weed. I'm in the process of finishing up an excellent book with 91 pages of references. I've mined the notes for things I might want to read, and now I'm working on the references themselves. I've reached authors names beginning with "So", and have already added 41 items to my TBR list, even while skipping those which seem unlikely to be available to me without an expensive purchase. (Oh how I wish I had a good university library - and its librarians - at my service...) And that doesn't count the interesting-looking references I found which I'd already read.

I'll post a review of the book that gave me all these TBR entries soon, once I've finished this labour of love ;-). Meanwhile, you may if you wish congratulate me on my self control; I've been averaging less than one addition per page of references. And I haven't purchased any of them ;-)

>210 ArlieS: My TBR list is growing like a possibly invasive weed...

Excellent analogy. I'm now trying to decide if I should nickname my TBR list "kudzu" or "Himalayan blackberry".

Also, excellent self-control! I would have failed miserably at that effort...

>211 PlatinumWarlock: I vote for "Himalayan blackberry"; the fruit is probably tasty.

>212 ArlieS: indeed it is tasty... but the plant is so very, very invasive. And SOOOO stubborn.

88. Plagues upon the earth : disease and the course of human history by Kyle Harper

This book is the result of a classics professor getting interested in the effect of disease in the periods and places he studied. He decided that he needed to understand the big picture. So he wrote a book about human illnesses, from paleolithic to modern times, in every inhabited part of the planet. He turned out to have the capacity to understand scientific as well as historical research, so the book moves smoothly from pathogen genetics to human societal impacts and back.

The very first part of the book sets the stage, and discusses things like types of pathogen. The next section is organized in terms of pathogen categories, but also evolutionary time. Helminths (worms) would have been the main problem affecting proto-humans and paleolithic foragers. They don't require crowding, or even settled living, to be transmitted to new hosts. Paleolithic humans would also have been affected by generalist pathogens (not human-specific) transmitted by blood sucking bugs. But their population was too small to have much in the way of human-specific disease-causing organisms. (They did have human-specific lice, but those don't cause disease on their own.)

Once humans started settling in one place, rather than constantly moving, there were niches open for additional pathogens. Increasing population added more niches. (E.g. measles needs a population of at least 250K to become endemic, rather than burning itself out in a single epidemic.) Genetic evidence of pathogen evolution, including sequencing pathogens found in older corpses, tends to confirm the timing, as well as giving insight into the sequence of events for human pathogens which have cousins afflicting livestock, commensuals (animals that live among humans, like rats), and wildlife. There was a lot of interesting detail here, complementing and supporting the bigger picture.

As the story moves closer to the present, there is much discussion of specific diseases and epidemics, as well as attempts to understand and combat them. There's also much discussion of pathogens being imported into new areas, becoming endemic there. There's also discussion of new challenges, as populations continued to increase, and had new interactions with wildlife.

All this and more. I really can't do justice to everything in this book, without writing a small book of my own.

The book had footnotes, and 91 pages of references, ranging from scholarly articles about fine points of individual diseases, to general histories. I mined the references for additions to Mount TBR, and got away with "only" 58 - not counting books already read. (And I skipped the scholarly articles, not having access to those very expensive publications.)

If you have any interest in the topic, you should read this book. If you read and enjoyed Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill, read this book. If Plagues and Peoples is on your virtual TBR, but you haven't found it yet, read this book instead or as well - it's got the results of research done since 1976.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: male, American, born 1979, academic (classics), author not previously read
- English, public library, 686 pages, 5 stars
- read Aug. 2-19, 2023, book not previously read

89. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our Worldview by Richard Tarnas

I acquired this book in 2006 because good things had been said about it while I was studying theology at GTU. It spent a bunch of time on a shelf usually devoted to TBRs, and I pulled it into "read soon" early this year.

As you can see from the title, the book purports to be an intellectual history of the west. This turns out to mean basically western philosophy. The book was dry as dust. I wondered why anyone had said anything good about it, and mentally planned to de-accession it once finished.

Meanwhile I noticed that it consistently used "man" for "human". I presumed that meant it was fairly old - 1975 or earlier, maybe 1980 in a pinch - but when I checked, the book turned out to be copyright 1991. This caused me to hypothesize the author was middle aged or older when writing the book, or a hidebound reactionary.

As it turned out, he was something I find even worse. He was using this language to make a point, which he explains later on. And he shifts to normal language both in his notes and when he reached something resembling his present day. This male author regards "feminine" and "masculine" as well defined principles, presumably not culturally contingent. He sees the entirety of western cultural development as being masculine-centric, until "now", with the brilliant discoveries and innovations of psychologists like Stanislav Grof. Grof is, to put it politely, rather "fringe" in his theories, which have AFAICT become even less popular now than they were in 1991. Few people would discuss him in terms of "discoveries".

But that's only the start of my issues with Tarnas. AFAICT, he manages to give a fairly objective account of just about everything before 1900, maybe even a bit later. (He starts teaching about "truth" and "discovery" rather than "beliefs" and "theories" some time in the twentieth century, but the shift is gradual. Most of these "discoveries" come from psychiatry, and involve people like Freud, Jung, etc.)

Among Tarnas' exotic beliefs: people who speak languages with grammatical gender, inevitably suffer from the same confusion of "man" with "human" common among English authors writing before the 1970s. If the word for "human being" is masculine gendered, such as the Greek anthropos, people who use it will inevitably and only somewhat consciously confuse it with the word for adult human male (andros in Greek). Their cultures will therefore be patriarchal, etc. etc. etc. (See p. 441.)

But my "throw this book across the room" moment was when, after telling me that centuries of androcentric bias were essential to the evolution of western ideas (p. 441), it was all going to be better now. All this masculinity had produced a masculine crisis, being resolved by "a tremendous emergence of the feminine in our culture" (p. 442) including the emergence of feminism. Also such feminine things as a sense of unity with the planet. "And this dramatic development is not just a compensation, not just a return of the repressed, ... (it has) ... been all along the underlying goal of Western intellectual and spiritual evolution." As I read it, women will now be useful for more than just making babies; they'll be valued for providing the "feminine principle" that more enlightened western men now recognize that they need. Wow! Such freedom! Women get new ways to serve the needs of men. (Yes, in spite of the obligatory claim that both principles are in all people, he's back to using "man" for "human", so I don't think he really means that women count as more than vessels of femininity.)

Don't read this book. If you skip the epilogue, which presents the author's theories, and use caution once it reaches the 20th century, it's probably adequate as an intellectual history. But such books are not especially rare; there are surely many competitors which are much more readable.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, philosophy, series: n/a, 1991
- Author: male, American, born 1950, academic (philosophy) but at California Institute of Integral Studies, author probably not previously read
- English, TBR shelves, 544 pages, 2.5 stars
- read Mar. 24-Aug 19, 2023, book possibly previously read

>214 ArlieS: BB - I found Plagues and Peoples fascinating, I'll be very interested in this one!

>214 ArlieS: *sigh* TBRd.

>214 ArlieS: & >215 ArlieS: Such interesting and thoughtful reviews, Arlie. Thanks for sharing with us.

>216 jjmcgaffey: >217 richardderus: I hope you both enjoy it a lot.

>218 PlatinumWarlock: I really enjoy writing them.

I have a new source of additions to my TBR list: The Inquisitive Biologist. This is a review blog specializing in "(mostly) academic books". The reviewer, Leon Vlieger, is a Dutch biologist who says that after getting a PhD he decided that "scaling the academic pyramid was not all that I had hoped for" and now works for the world’s largest specialist environmental bookstore.

I found him when looking for reviews of some book I was already interested in, and found that his reviews of books I had also read seemed excellent to me - well written and accurate. (He's that rare fish, a person who's notably better than me at something I do at least adequately myself, who inspires me to emulate him rather than to merely confess myself to be a hopeless amateur. If I were younger than him, rather than the reverse, I might say I wanted to be him when I grew up ;-))

I fear that based in the UK as he is, and specializing in academic books, he's going to leave me wanting to read all kinds of expensive books I can't possibly get from any library available to me here in the US, not even by inter-library loan. But sometimes I get lucky - the local also-ran university lets local residents access their physical books (not e-books, alas), and I've found and read some interesting material that way. Also, I do have *some* budget for book purchases, though it feels like a very guilty pleasure, given my over-full house.

90. Bird brain : an exploration of avian intelligence by Nathan Emery

This book describes evidence for intelligence in birds, and explains the brain structures likely to be involved. It's formatted as a coffee table book - each pair of facing pages is a mini-section, complete with captioned illustrations, many of which contain a lot of the information being conveyed.

It was recommended to me enthusiastically by a local acquaintance who is very fond of ravens, some of which can be found near his country house. It took me rather a while to find the book, which I eventually acquired by inter-library loan.

I enjoyed it, learned things I hadn't heard of before, updating my limited knowledge in the general area. The author is careful not to go beyond what is scientifically supported, which sometimes results in writing that bends over backwards to avoid saying "this behaviour is intelligent" - but that's a pleasant change after e.g. reading news media on the subject of artificial intelligence. He clearly wants to see birds as smart overall, and it sometimes feels like he's dragged out every remotely positive result - suggesting "cherry picking" data in support of a pre-conceived belief. (More likely there simply isn't very much relevant research. But I lack the knowledge to be certain.)

I found the coffee table format a bit trying, but that's just personal preference. Overall, it's a good book, but doesn't make it all the way to "great".

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science, series: n/a, 2016
- Author: male, British, age unknown (academic publications seem to start in 1994), academic (cognitive biology), author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 192 pages, 4 stars
- read Aug 14-22, 2023, book not previously read

91. Exit, voice, and loyalty : responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states by Albert O. Hirschman

This is a classic book of political economy, though I persist in seeing the topic as properly belonging in sociology, even though the book is written by an economist and includes the demand graphs beloved of economist authors. It predates my college years, so I don't really know to what extent it was innovative in its time - but my guess is that it was innovative then, and would still be useful to many folks who think they understand economics, but think of it entirely in terms of financial transactions.

I'd heard it either frequently recommended and/or frequently cited during my middle aged flirtation with career change, which involved some time in graduate school, so I added it to my collection in 2004. It then acquired a bookmark fairly near the end, and migrated into a TBR shelf, where it sat gathering dust until I noticed it earlier this year while inventorying and reorganizing my collection. I moved it to my "read soon" shelf, and re-started it in mid-August.

This book says things that I've never heard from other economists, but which seem moderately obvious to me. It mostly fails to support them with data, which I imagine was about par for the course when it was published in 1970. (It's still fairly common in economics, where "my model predicts X" is too often claimed as equivalent to "X happens at a more than statistically significant level in the real world", or even "X usually/always happens".) There are some studies cited; what I miss are statistical treatments - how characteristic are the studies cited, etc. etc. Plus how would one directly research the book's thesis, and who has done this, with what results.

The starting question is "what happens when quality declines?" and "to what extent will these reactions tend to result in the quality lapse being corrected, and to what extent will the provider involved simply bumble towards failure, replaced by a previously equal or inferior competitor.

The point is that this should not be unthinkingly treated as equivalent to the situation and reactions when price increases. Some people will pay more for what they consider adequate quality (price inelasticity) but abandon the product as soon as they consider its quality insufficient (quality elasticity). Some will trade up, if possible, when quality declines - paying perhaps substantially more for a competing product with quality better than they feel they need, rather than accept the diminished quality.

There's also the problem that one person's reduced quality may be another person's improvement. You see this even with actual products (a new, larger screened cell phone might be unpleasant for people with small hands to use, but loved by those with large or even medium sized hands). But it really comes into its own with organizations. When a political party changes its positions on just about anything, some members are happy, and others are angry. This does not happen with price; everyone agrees about whether the price has gotten better (gone down) or worse.

Standard economics tends to present these situations in terms of what Hirschmann calls "exit". User vote with their feet, and abandon the grocery store that sold them e.g. already spoiled cream, in favor of a competitor that hopefully still manages to take proper care of perishable food. The competent grocery store gains market share; the sloppy one goes out of business.

Except it's not that simple. People may well start by complaining to company management. Many will at least take the time to demand a refund. This gives management a chance to take corrective action, before they lose enough customers to put them out of business.

Management doesn't have to take that opportunity. They can ignore the irate customers, either out of lazy incompetence, or because they have reason to believe the problems won't put them out of business. (An example in the book involved a decreasingly effective government supported railroad, losing market share to hordes of private enterprise truckers. The railway managers expected their losses would be made good by their owner, without anyone getting fired, so did nothing to improve.)

Monopoly and near-monopoly also changes the calculus. I'm unclear which cell phone operating system is currently worse: iOS or Android. What I do know is that both of them become less to my taste with every so-called upgrade, and there's no significant alternative available. Neither Google nor Apple is likely to be put out of business by this; those who agree with me are already "upgrading" as rarely as possible, and buying new phones only when our prior one becomes unusable. Newly upset customers may switch from one vendor to the other, but they are going in both directions at once.

I could go on, but this review is already longer than I'd planned. The book's worth reading, if only to have available to cite when faced with someone presenting crappy popular economics as Gospel. Parts of it have clearly been forgotten by the majority of writers on economics, never mind random net.pundits. But on the other hand, most of the value is in naming and systematizing things many readers probably already know. And the obligatory economics window dressing (graphs etc.) while less plentiful than in typical economics works, still seems like a waste of time.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics/sociology, series: n/a, 1970
- Author: male, German, born 1915, academic (political economy), author not previously read except for part of this book
- English, own shelves (purchased 2004), 162 pages, 3 stars
- read Aug 18-24, 2023, book previously partially read

I'm somewhat amazed to report that I won an early reviewer book. The amazement is primarily because this is the first (and only) such book I've ever requested, and it was already over-subscribed at the time I added myself to the list.

It's a physical book, so I'll have to wait a bit for it to arrive.

Coming soon: The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal by Brian H. Williams.

>210 ArlieS: I can certainly relate to that, Arlie having one of the more unwieldy physical TBRs in the group.

Enjoying reading your reviews of books on political ideas from nearly two decades ago as it confirms my own feeling of how much things have changed in that time.

92. The Grand Tour, or, The purloined coronation regalia : being a revelation of matters of high confidentiality and greatest importance, including extracts from the intimate diary of a noblewoman and the sworn testimony of a lady of quality by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

I found this lovely novel lurking on a TBR shelf. Imagine a Regency Romance - except it's not actually a romance; the characters are already quite happily married. But it's got the other traits of a Regency. Now imagine that magic exists, in a world that's otherwise pretty much the same as the historical world. Add conspirators and mysteries, some of them magical. Garnish with newly married happiness. Serve in the form of diary entries and depositions.

I really liked the previous book in the series, Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country, and this one is even better.

I'm recommending it to everyone I know who likes both regency romances and fantasy novels.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2004
- Author 1: Patricia Wrede: female, American, born 1953, novelist, author previously read
- Author 2: Caroline Stevermer: female, American, born 1955, novelist, author previously read
- English, TBR shelf, 469 pages, 4.5 stars
- read Aug 21-28, 2023; not previously read

>225 ArlieS: These, especially the first, have been a favorite of mine for, well, decades. I'm even sort of mentioned in S&C. Something to do with silver painted toenails (I never!), I used to hold a dance we called Miss Haseltine's Drum several times a year and it misspelled itself into the text.

93. Edible economics : a hungry economist explains the world by Ha-Joon Chang

This economics book was not what I wanted, even though the author can be an engaging writer. The author is trying to convey alternative economic ideas, beyond the bog standard neo-liberal, globalist, free trade orthodoxy. Unfortunately he's trying to convey them to lay readers, whom he expects to find economics tedious. So the book is half about economics and half about food.

The anecdotes, recipes, etc. are enjoyable. The author is cosmopolitan - South Korean, educated in the UK, and visiting many more locations. Stories of his initial reactions to some foods are brilliant, as are his comments about what's used where, and for that matter examples of the unpretentiously fusion cuisine his family prepares and eats.

Each chapter starts with discussion of some particular foodstuff. Then he riffs a bit on economics somewhat related to the food, possibly via the history of its production. Unfortunately the economics is barely OK, from my POV as someone who already has some relevant knowledge. It's not deep enough, and the food-based organization doesn't hold it together in my mind.

It's not a bad book, and it might well be perfect for some other reader. But not for me. Rated 3.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: male, South Korean, born 1963, academic (economics), author not previously read
- English, public library, 191 pages, 3 stars
- read Aug 23-30, 2023, book not previously read

I didn't note why I had this book on my TBR list, but given that it was published in 2023, I suspect LibraryThing's new recommendation system.

I do remember that I'd hoped for a book that discussed economics in terms of the production, trading, and sale of foodstuffs.

94. The Bishop at the Lake: A Bishop Blackie Ryan Novel by Andrew M. Greeley

This is a nice cheerful mystery, full of Chicago Irish atmosphere. This is typical for the author, and what I expected when I picked it up, needing something to distract me from the latest antics of my aging body.

In this case, the amateur sleuth (Bishop Blackie Ryan) is sent to look into politicking within the Church, and stumbles on something more serious. But what? And whom?

There's an extremely dysfunctional clan at the center of the mess, with lots of money to fight over - and to hire lawyers, security guards, servants etc..

All works out fairly well in the end, and a few members of the clan even make progress in breaking free of some of their dysfunctions. I especially enjoyed the previously seemingly stupid, submissive wife of one of the would-be heirs to the business somewhat forcefully renegotiating the terms of her relationship with her self-centered husband.

Statistics:
- fiction, mystery, series (not first), 2007
- Author: male, American, born 1928, priest, sociologist and novelist, author previously read
- English, TBR shelf, 302 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Aug 29-30, 2023; not previously read