richardderus's eighth 2023 thread

Peter Doyle and Walt Whitman, circa 1869. Photograph held by the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Trent Collection.

Walt's long-term partner, Irish immigrant Peter Doyle. The Irish Times did a profile of the couple on the 200th anniversary of Whitman's birth in 2019. The writer, of course, had to make the article both-sides-friendly:

Whitman's homosexuality is generally assumed, rather than proven, although a later visitor from Ireland, Oscar Wilde, was in no doubt after meeting him. Whitman's letters to Doyle confuse the issue, perhaps deliberately, suggesting flirtations with women and even once describing himself as a "ladies' man".

One can, I suppose forgive the writer and/or editor for not knowing that "ladies' man" was queer coding for "your wife and her reputation are safe with that guy" when applied to queer men.

Anyway, it's marriage month for lots of couples, to whom I say a hearty "happy anniversary" and yay hurray for shrinking government's overreach into our private lives by recognizing that there's no compelling state interest in perpetuating unequal access to the rights and privileges of marriage of same-sex couples.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
John Maynard Keynes (5 Jun 1883-1946)

Reviews through 017 linked here.

Reviews 018 through 025 (out of order) linked here.
Reviews through 025 linked here.
Reviews 026 through 033 linked here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS
PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS
034 Fatal Shadows in post #69.

035 A Very Gay Book in post #76.

036 Sticker (Object Lessons) in post #90.

037 Open Throat in post #94.

038 Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs in post #210.
***except you...
039 Oil for the Lamps of China in post # 277.

right

Previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:
PEARL RULE #8 The Last Gay Man on Earth in post #65.

Previous Burgoine reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S BURGOINE REVIEWS:
#9 Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy in post #207.

#10 The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music in post #231.

It is, as of this post, your turn to speak.

Happy new one, RD!

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

Happy new thread, RD!
Learning new stuff again round here. >:-)

>7 katiekrug: Thank you, Katie! Your crown is edible this timea;

HAppy new one!!

>8 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita!

>9 Helenliz: Oh boy, oh joy, Helen! I hope you plan to share.

>11 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

Happy new thread Richard!

>15 ArlieS: Thank you most kindly, Arlie.

Hi Richard, dear friend, Happy New Thread.

Happy new thread, Richard. *smooch*

>17 johnsimpson: Greetings, John! i'm happy to see you here.

>18 MickyFine: Merry Monday, Micky! Return of smooch delivery guaranteed.

Happy New Thread, Richard. We are back from our weekend travels. Fortunately, I am staying near home until the end of the month. Happy to do my own routine. Hope you doing well, my friend.

Happy New Thread, Richard! Jeez, I don’t often get the pleasure of saying that to you.

Your planned review a day for pride month is off to a rousing start. I (almost) always enjoy a review that says I don’t know why everyone loves this book, I just found it so-so - except when I’m one of those who love the book. Then you’re calling my delightful grandchild so-so.

I didn’t “love” the Doerr books, and enjoyed the discussions about them. I thought All the Light We Cannot See was great storytelling, but with a less than convincing premise. I was impressed as all get out with Cloud Cuckoo Land because I expected him to do a conventional novel, knowing it would get big sales after ATLWCS. Instead he took big unconventional chances and, by and large, pulled it off. His storytelling chops pulled me through that challenging structure. He’s got me looking forward to seeing what he does next.

Happy new one, Richard!

>21 msf59: Thanks most awfully, Birddude! Enjoy the break from your peregrinations.

>22 jnwelch: Hey there, Joe... your opinion on Doerr is much the more prevalent one. He appeals to most folks, just not me. He is in no way in need of my praise nor does his work need me to promote it. He's got you to make a good case for others to pick him up. It's always a good sign when someone follows up a big success with something unlike their earlier success, as he did. I take nothing away from the man's courage! I just don't like what he does.

>23 jessibud2: Thank you Shelley!

Happy new thread, RD.

>1 richardderus: I read Whitman as a teen and found most of it glorious and incomprehensible. I read it again much later and found it more comprehensible but less glorious.

Goodness, turn your back for a few hours and your thread(s) go wild!! Happy new one, Richard.

Happy New Thread!

Happy new one Ricardo!! Smooches, but only symbolic ones because Hubby and I both have Covid...again. Sigh. I am symptom free, but he is miserable. Sigh. Be well and have fun! Happy reading.

>25 richardderus:
I will keep the Doerr discussion alive for one more round - if you please. I just didn't understand the story of the play Cloud Cuckoo Land. I wasn't sure what the objective was. If, as you say, it was just the thrill of the discovery of an ancient lost piece of literature, then I understand why that was in the novel. I kept looking for some kind of meaning in the play. Perhaps I was trying to "read" something into it that wasn't there? I loved the story of the library in Idaho, and since this is Gay Pride month, I will jump in and say that this was the perfect way to write about our lives as they are today. The sexual orientation of the character was important, but his life and his relationships were universal and therefore so relatable to any reader.

The best parts of the book, for me, were, as I said, the Idaho Library and the parts set in Constantinople. I said it at the time and will say it again, an author who can make me care about the fate of a pair of oxen while telling a larger historical story, has some writing chops.

In short, there were some characters I cared about in Cloud Cuckoo Land while I didn't get that same vibe in All the Light We Cannot See.

Happy New Thread, RD! I confess, I liked All the Light We Cannot See. Such an interesting comment on my thread from you regarding the lack of books written about WW1 vs so few about WW11. I don't know why that is, but I am going to look into a few titles written during WW1.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy new thread!

From your last thread, I won’t be reading Pedro & Daniel, and the Weiner book sounds totally yuck.

>1 richardderus: Hmmm. I did not know about queer coding of “ladies’ man”. I learn so many things from your threads! I’ve got Whitman in my Harvard Classics, Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books but not otherwise.

>25 richardderus: I read and sort of liked All The Light We Cannot See. I gave it 4*, but don’t remember it that fondly and don’t actually know why I rated it as “Excellent”. I’m a tad depressed because for our upcoming Real Life Book Club selection meeting that she can’t attend, one of the women has told us to put her down for Cloud Cuckoo Land.

I’m going to choose between Lessons in Chemistry and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, possibly one other as yet undefined. Meeting’s Sunday.

*smooch*

>27 PaulCranswick: Thanks, PC...Whitman is a touch *portentous* even for poetry, innit. I approve of him because, pace the homophobic erasure-mongers, it's quite clear that he was gay as a May morning, and precisely in the modern sense of the word.

>28 RebaRelishesReading: Hiya Reba! Welcome back to the party! *smooch*

>29 SilverWolf28: Thank you, Silver, happy to have you visit.

Happy new one, Richard!

>30 Berly: COVID?! Again?! Damn disease won't let go...I had my third round in rehab. The only symptom I ever had, apart from anosmia on the first go-round, was sleeping a lot. That could also have been boredom, though, being quarantined isn't very interesting.

Someone I know here said my strokes were caused by COVID, which I found in poking around, isn't ridiculous after all. (Not that I'll ever tell her that.) The link is more or less tenuous still, but it's possible that further research will throw up a causal link. This is still a very very new disease, and the vaccines are unprecedentedly different in their development; only time can tell us what the real long-term problems will be.

>31 benitastrnad: I don't honestly think the play was meant to be more than a thematic summing-up of Humanity's breathtaking ability to ignore reality in favor of building a fantasy world. I don't think there was much to choose from among the characters myownself. Doerr's writing, on the sentence level, is deft and his touch with the apeçus is undeniable..."“Fear of the thing,” Maher murmurs, more to himself than to Omeir, “will be more powerful than the thing itself.”"

It's just, as I said of All the Light We Cannot See, so uncomplicatedly sentimental. His work's just not for me.

>32 vancouverdeb: Hi Deb! Thanks for stopping by...it's always been clear to me that I'm a minority voice re: Doerr. I hope you can unearth a lot more stuff written about WWI than I could. At the very least, there's all the war lit from the 1920s, but there wasn't a big boom in the late 1960s as the 50th anniversary approached as there was with WWII. I don't entirely get why, though, since Vietnam was a very active unpopular war, and a lot could've been made of the use of chemical weapons in WWI being outlawed then reused in Vietnam.

*shrug* Missed opportunity, I'd say.

>33 karenmarie: Horrible me lurve! *smooch* I'm happy to see you. Whitman's poetry is pretty much what one would expect except for the focus of his desire. Very "lyrical" stuff...speaking of, has his stuff ever been set to music? I wonder why not, if it hasn't.

THe Weiner book was totally yuck, for me, because toxic female relationships are experientially real to me and I have less than zero interest in larding them into my reading, too. Pedro & Daniel wouldn't, I agree, be likely to gain a lot of traction in the race for your affections. Too sad and too culturally specific.

I'm so sorry about the enforced Doerr-reading.

I'd push you towards Salmon Fishing in the Yemen as an excellent book-club selection. I liked its movie, too.

>37 drneutron: Thank you most kindly, Jim!

Happy new thread!

Karen O

Happy new thread Richard!

Good morning, Richard. I've been away too long. You already know what I think about Whitman, and I didn't read him in my teens when I might have gotten him.

You and Deborah (maybe) were speaking of the dearth of good WWI novels --- The Daughters of Mars is one of my top books of the century so far. I also speak for the favorite non-fiction I've read since the turn: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. I'm sure you've read them both, but maybe some of your visitors might take a chance on one or the other.

I'm appalled that the strokes might have been COVID related. Nobody knows yet what that virus does and will do. Back to say it might somehow be a sort of weird comfort that they were not always waiting for you? Please don't get it again - you or Kim! (We got our 2nd bivalent boosters almost two weeks ago. I'm an advocate for going ahead if you qualify.)

*smooch*

>38 richardderus: Sorry you understand all too well about Covid. I have heard that about the stroke relationship, but haven't read about it in great detail. Doesn't matter the source -- I am sorry you went through that at all. Nice to see you back and posting so much!! Smooches.

>43 klobrien2: Thank you, Karen O.! Happy Tuesday!

>44 humouress: Good heavens, Nina, I'm shocked to see you anywhere but in the midst of your kitchen renovation! However can you spare the time, still less locate the energy, to pay visits!

>45 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! Happy-Tuesday *smooch* back atcha! thanks for the reminder about The Daughters of Mars. I intended to read it, and I don't see that I ever did. Onto the library list it goes (again). I'm surprised that there are so few in numbers WWI-themed novels, but there are deffo some excellent ones, like Regeneration.

I got vaccinated for COVID the minute the vaccines were available...boostered every time those came out, too...and still got it three times. The strokes were inevitable in some measure, because I inherited an arterial malformation on the right side of my brain from Mama, and my father had strokes, too. It might've waited longer, and been worse, but of course we'll never know if it was always going to happen now or if COVID hastened it along.

>46 Berly: It was, to a degree, inevitable, Kimmers—see above. Anyway, I was incredibly lucky because I have recovered more than I was ever expected to, and faster than anyone can believe.

>1 richardderus: I enjoyed Mark Doty's What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in my Life when I read it a few years back RD.

>51 Caroline_McElwee: Interesting choice, Caro...as a poetry-avoidant reader, Doty hasn't featured in my reading. I very much enjoyed Jean Huets's With Walt Whitman, Himself the year of his Bicentennial.

Happy New thread, which after an incredibly short time isn’t really all that new.

I read Cloud Cuckoo Land last year and, though I ultimately enjoyed it, I found myself resisting picking it back up after putting it down. I’m in no rush to read anything else by him.

I didn’t realize you’d had Covid 3 times. That really sucks. I hope that’s the end of it for you! I also had heard that stroke might be connected to Long Covid. My only known Long Covid issues are extreme fatigue and loss of balance. So far, anyway. Fatigue is something I’ve battled since my heart surgery in early 2020; LC only made it worse.

Hope your week is going well and you’re not being affected by the smoke from the fires.

Happy newish thread, Richard. My you were busy while I was away and not checking the threads! You caught my interest with the picture of the flyleaf from the family bible - looking at old handwriting is part of what I do. My interpretation of the info is as follows:

Anne Pettigall
on her Marriage
May 1st 1856

With the sincere Wishes and Prayers of Mr. + Ms. Estcourt
for her Spiritual and Temporal Welfare.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
St. Matthew. IVc 4v
R.A. Hibberd
In loving memory of her above Aunt
November 9th 1897

>53 Storeetllr: Hiya Mary! I'm not sure I've got long COVID. ATM it's a differential diagnosis and the State ain't hearin' it for us disabled folks. I guess it's possible the strokes were COVID-related, but with the family history I don't expect ever to be able to prove or disprove that.

Our current air quality is 155: Very unhealthy. I didn't feel bad walking to CVS, or notice any unusual effects. It's just a number so far, and I hope it stays that way.

>54 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg! That's HELEN's family bible, not mine. interesting to know the Estcourts weren't big fans of Anne's hubs, no? I do wonder why....

Glad to see you here!

>54 Familyhistorian: Thanks! My transcription wasn't far out.
Surname is Pattingale. I appreciate that spelling was a bit fluid at the time - we've got various spellings in the censuses of the time. Pattingale is what it has come down as.
Estcourt was the one I wasn't sure of. Not sure where they fit into the family tree. That's going to have to wait for retirement.

>57 Helenliz: ooops

wrong bible-haver
fixed it

Wow! Your thread's been spinning like a top. I look away overnight, and come back to 26 unread messages.

>59 ArlieS: The pace is a spanking one, indeed, Arlie. Starting a new thread seems to have awakened the kraken(s)!

>49 richardderus:
For what its worth - I liked both Daughters of Mars and the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. Both were excellent. Daughters of Mars was a shocker for me. It will stay with me for a long time. I will say that if a person reads Regeneration they should read the other two novels as well. All three of the novels tell individual stories but together they paint a much broader picture that focuses the great trauma of WWI and creates a lance of understanding straight to the heart of what that historical event meant to Europe.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Wednesday to you.

>38 richardderus: Yikes to Covid possibly causing your strokes.

>41 richardderus: I think I’ll read the first chapter of each of my possible RL book club selections and see if that helps me to decide. Come to think of it, considering our group, SFitY might just be a more interesting choice anyway.

*smooch*

>61 benitastrnad: I haven't read Daughters of Mars yet, but I did love Pat Barker's trilogy, though less and less as the books went on. I concur that reading one book is not enough to get the full impact of the whole story.

>62 karenmarie: Yikes indeed, Horrible. It's something I don't think I'll ever know for certain, so I just dismiss it from my mind. After all, we know for sure that my right-side artery is malformed, so the causality of anything is muddied.

SFitY will bing a lot to the discussion table. I really recommend watching its movie, too. It will be a very lively meeting!

*smooch*

PEARL RULE #8

The Last Gay Man on Earth by Ype Driessen
Rating: 1* of five


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

My Review: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS ON YOUR KINDLE DEVICE, OR FIRE TABLET. IT IS FORMATTED SO AS TO APPEAR UNCHANGEABLY SIDEWAYS ON EVERY DEVICE.

I suppose there's some piracy concern or something that makes this desirsble. I do not care. If I have to work this hard, only to be unable to read yhe file provided for my review, my review is going to bea; Do not bother.

>49 richardderus: I remember now that you had mentioned your family medical history, Richard. I would apologize for making you repeat it, but several other people needed that reminder too.

I read only Regeneration, and that was when I was teaching and distracted. I need to reread it and keep going. I certainly liked it well enough to know that it deserves a reread. I like Pat Barker.

Heard on MSNBC this morning that NYC had the worst air quality in the world yesterday afternoon and could expect the same today. I hope you're staying in! I see a slight haze down here in SE NC. Karen in central NC can expect code red air quality. Good grief!

*smooch* for Wednesday!

>65 richardderus: I had the same sideways-reading thing happen on Dean Koontz's The Other Emily. Gave up.

Hope your air is breathable!! At least inside.

>66 LizzieD: It's no problem, Peggy; I certainly don't expect all the details of my family to remain fresh in anyone's mind. There's just so much a brain can handle!

I hope you'll give Pat Barker more of your attention in a re-read, me lurve, the story's well worth your time.

>66 LizzieD:, >67 Berly: I am firmly parked indoors and I still have a nasty headache. Poor Canada....

034 Fatal Shadows by Josh Lanyon
PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS #6
Rating: 4* of five, with minor reservations

The Publisher Says: One sunny morning Los Angeles bookseller and aspiring mystery author Adrien English opens his front door to murder. His old high school buddy (and employee) has been found stabbed to death in a back alley following a loud and very public argument with Adrien the previous evening.

Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions; they are none too impressed with his answers, and when a few hours later someone breaks into Adrien's shop and ransacks it, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.

Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he is next on the killer's list.

I GOT THIS BOOK ON A 20TH ANNIVERSARY PROMOTION!

My Review: This groundbreaking series started in 2000 at the late, very lamented Gay Men's Press, when there was a great deal less M/M fiction around.

In a lot of ways, that fact explains the unquestioning acceptance of the M/M audience of Jake's waffling about Adrien, for whom he clearly has a lot of feelings...even if he doesn't want to come right out and say so for quite a long time. This approach/avoidance dynamic doesn't play the same way it did in 2000. We'd probably call it "queerbaiting" today, and it really makes me personally feel squirmy, but I totally grandfather this book in under the "the past is a foreign country" rubric. I don't think being lenient with an artifact of a bygone era is always a mistake; more especially so when it's something as influntial as this book and series were in that barely-rememberable time.

I confess that, had the prose been less fun to read, I might be harsher. Author Lanyon is justly celebrated for her skill with dialogue. Funny when that's what the story needs:

“Just shut up and listen.”

“Well, since you ask so nicely...”

There was silence. I listened. He didn’t say anything.

“Are we communicating through the Psychic Hotline or what?”
–and–
“Drink your coffee—people in Africa are sleeping.”

...quietly intense in other moods:

I dug out the powder blue cashmere cardigan my mother Lisa gave me the Christmas before last, pulled on my oldest, softest Levi’s. Comfort clothes; the next best thing to a hug from a warm, living body. Lately there had been a shortage of hugs in my life. Lately there had been a shortage of warm, living bodies.
–and–
“Everything a gay man does makes a political statement. Everything matters: where you bank, where you shop, where you eat. When you hold your lover’s hand in public.”

Some verities are eternal, or so it seems....

What the reader gets by turning on this time machine is a hit of funny, a soupçon of sexy, a helping of gay awakening, wrapped in a pretty darn interesting mystery. I would have LOVED to see this as a TV series in the Aughties or the Teens; now, I just don't think it'd play that well. Not that I wouldn't sample it! But my hopes wouldn't be high.

The price of experiencing things after their time. Still, a very worthwhile read indeed.

May I add my commendations to The Regeneration Trilogy. I just finished The Eye in the Door a few days ago, and I think it's as good as Regeneration. I will read The Ghost Road before the year is out.

I'll admit to having not heard of Daughters of Mars, but thanks for the recommendation, Benita. It's going onto The Want List™.

>70 weird_O: You won't regret reading any Kenneally, Your Weirdness.

Happy new thread, Richard! We're getting the smoke from the wildfires here, too, and it's left me with a sore throat off and on, but mostly I'm staying indoors and out of it.

I did have a patron call me about the wildfires and said his smoke alarm was going off, but I told him to call the fire dept (true story).

Regeneration is good choice for some WW1 fiction. I've not read it. I have read All Quite on the Western Front, which was excellent. Maisie Dobbs is a fairly gentle series that I have read that begin during WW1 and has involvement in that war.

Fingers crossed, so far so good in my corner of Canada. We have suffered with wild fire smoke in past summers, but I hope this year we might be lucky. But so far little rain and warmer temps , of course, so we'll see.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Both the Regeneration trilogy and All is Quiet on the Western Front were very good reads about WWI.
I was also impressed by Private Peaceful, a YA by Michael Mopurgo, and Good-Bye to All That. And for a French perspective I would recommend the excellent Summer, 1914 by Roger Martin de Gard.

I haven gotten to Siegfried Sassoon's memories, I bought the two books after reading the Regeneration trilogy.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. We are enjoying a beautiful stretch of mild weather, although we could use some rain. I love having all the windows open during the day. Heading over to the Arboretum- a pair of northern mockingbirds have been spotted there. They are rare here and it would be the first time I have seen one in IL.

I hope you are having a good week.

035 A Very Gay Book by Jenson Titus and Nic Scheppard

Rating: 4.5* of five
PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS #7

The Publisher Says: From the creators of @verygaypaint, the immensely popular comedy design brand, A VERY GAY BOOK paints a cheeky and satirical portrait of the world where everything—from sports to science to soup—is gay.

Trees are gay. It’s why their branches brush up against each other so softly. Right-handed people are gay because that’s the first hand you use when you do the Macarena. Left-handed people are also gay. Magnets. Palindromes. All gay. A satirical textbook—including sections on history and heroes, customs and traditions—celebrating a very gay world, A Very Gay Book is an invitation to revel in the (both real and absurdly fictional) iconic successes of the LGBTQ+ community.

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

My Review: I don't know if everyone will "get" this very, very gay duo's sense of humor. Here's their pinned tweet from their Twitter account:

Very Gay Paint Retweeted
Nic Scheppard @Nicschepp

Gay porn is so obsessed with guys being broke. I can’t see a financially-stable stud get wrecked?? The system is so broken.
10:16 PM · Aug 4, 2022

I myownself about had an aneurysm from laughing at that. Follow the links! These guys are hilarious!

Like all humor, it's not universal...the French still think Jerry Lewis is a scream, and the Brits and Aussies love them some men in drag, among other utterly inexplicable tastes...and it's unwise to read the hole thing straight through. Humor is like Aperol spritzes or Negronis...one or two, delicious...more than that gets yucky.

I doubt this would be anywhere near as hilarious to someone straight, but I sure as heck don't understand that much about why humor even works.

A lot of the humor in here is barbed, so be aware that you're not necessarily going to be comfortable with the things they're taking aim at:

It's really up to the individual to decide how much is too much at one sitting, but I really hope some of y'all will try this truly howl-worthy collection of rude, thought-provoking, not-always-truthful snippets of prose this Pride Month.

I know I laughed!

>76 richardderus: I’ve added A Very Gay Book to my TBR. Looks great!

Hope you’re doing fine and dandy!

Karen O

>48 richardderus: Thanks Richard. LT is always a good place to take a break. I'm trying to keep up with the threads I have managed to catch up with, even if I don't post anything.

I didn't see the initial comment on the dearth of WW1 writing to know whether it was about the fighting or the era. I suspect there would be more books by European, Canadian and Anzac authors than American authors; Agatha Christie springs to mind. One series I borrowed from the school library was the Flambards trilogy.

ETA: I also meant to say, echoing everyone else's sentiments on how well you've recovered from your strokes, covid-caused or otherwise.

‘Morning, RDear! I’m sorry about the smoke and headache.

>64 richardderus: Still gonna read the first chapter of each book… maybe today… but I’m reading such a fun romance, The Best Men by Lauren Blakely.

>69 richardderus: A BB, just ordered, drat you.

>76 richardderus: Sounds fun – I’d borrow it from the Library but not buy it, but my Library does not have it. I love the chart, especially the twins bit.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>72 bell7: Morning, Mary! Happy to be breathing if not happy to be breathing this smoky crud. Headache city!
*smooch*

>73 vancouverdeb: I hope your corner of Canada stays unsmoky, Deb, it's a really miserable experience. But Mother Nature has to spank our paddies somehow...we pay no attention, as a species, to anything not a crisis. That really needs to stop.

THursday orisons!

>74 FAMeulstee: Good additions, Anita! I'm glad there's any WWI stuff out there.

Happy Thursday! *smooch*

>75 msf59: Most of the week I've been trapped indoors by air qualities over 150...got to 292 at one point...and 100 is where they advise older people to avoid outdoor exercise. More time to read, but not very good for my expanding paunch. I'll accept the restriction for now because the headaches I'm having tell me to, but it's grumble-making.

>77 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O., and I suspect you'll find the humor in A Very Gay Book amusing. It's got a silly edge to it that I can see you enjoying.

Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

>78 humouress: I'd never heard of the Flambards trilogy, so that's very interesting indeed.

LT as a restful change of pace...very unusual take...I just remember how incredibly stresssful it was to have access to the kitchen limited for any length of time at all. I'm impressed you're not ax-murdering contractors and chaining your boys to the stairs to keep them from raiding the supplies.

>79 karenmarie: Horrible me lurve, how lovely.

You'll enjoy Lanyon or I very much miss my guess. It's only $6...and you'll get a big ol' chuckle out of it! Worth giving up that latte for.

Yeah, $30 for the hardcover's probably a bit much...maybe the $15 ebook for Jenna as a Pride Month surprise?

The Best Men sounds like a good time. I hope it rocks your world! *smooch*

>72 bell7: A friend of mine in the Washington DC area also reports indoor smoke alarms going off without any source other than the wildfire smoke. Ugh.

I'm happy to report that so far I haven't had that particular experience in California fire season.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Friday to you.

Not enough coffee yet, up way too early. 😲

*smooch*

>76 richardderus: Added to my list. Sounds like a funny and fun book!

HAppy Friday!

036 Sticker (Object Lessons) by Henry Hoke

Rating: 4* of five
PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS #8

The Publisher Says: Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Stickers adorn our first memories, dot our notebooks and our walls, are stuck annoyingly on fruit, and accompany us into adulthood to announce our beliefs from car bumpers. They hold surprising power in their ability to define and provoke, and hold a strange steadfast presence in our age of fading physical media. Henry Hoke employs a constellation of stickers to explore queer boyhood, parental disability, and ancestral violence.

A memoir in 20 stickers, Sticker is set against the backdrop of the encroaching neo-fascist presence in Hoke's hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, which results in the fatal terrorist attack of August 12th and its national aftermath.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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

My Review: Twenty little meditative essays inspired by a ubiquitous part of 1980s and 1990s childhoods: Stickers. (GAWD how I hated the damned things. "Easy release" my lily-white one! I was still finding them on the undersides of chairs and backs of paintings in 2010.)

Author Hoke shines in these quick hits of memory, bringing the reader back into his world as it was and thinking about his various challenges...disabled mother in a wheelchair, absent father, being queer in Charlottesville, Virginia...and the roots his white self has in the South, with all the freight that implies.

He reckons with comparatively large parts of his ancestral racism; he states that, with all its contradictions, he intends this read to make his identity "...a little more tangible." Without being acquainted with the gentleman, I feel that I have a picture of him as a person that would never be obtainable through any more rigorous, structured look at what makes a person into the unique self they are. No, it's not autobiography, or even memoir, it's that rare thing : The reflective essay, the thoughtful, loosely organized look into the back corners of the closets and the darker recesses of the attic for the bright, shiny things once delighted in and now gathering patina and dust in unused parts of one's mind

I enjoyed myself as I wandered around with Author Hoke as he showed me his once-prized gewgaws and knick-knacks. Join us for a good old wander.

>87 ArlieS: I will not be going out-of-doors until my local AQI goes below 100.

>88 karenmarie: Early-Friday *smooch*

>89 figsfromthistle: I hope you like the read, Anita! I got good chortles and some guffaws, too.

037 Open Throat by Henry Hoke

Rating: 4* of five
PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS #9

The Publisher Says: In elegiac prose woven with humor, imagination, sensuality, and tragedy, Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world told by a lovable mountain lion.

A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting the welfare of a nearby homeless encampment, observing obnoxious hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience. “I have so much language in my brain,” our lion says, “and nowhere to put it.”

When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief, while scrambling to avoid earthquakes, floods, and the noise of their own conflicted psyche. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?

In elegiac prose woven with humor, imagination, sensuality, and tragedy, Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world told by a lovable mountain lion. Both feral and vulnerable, profound and playful, Open Throat is a star-making novel that brings mythmaking to real life.

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

My Review: From the off, I wasn't sure about this...how did Author Hoke think of a puma being queer?! What kind of twee nonsense is a whole novel told from the point of view, nay, in the voice of, an animal going to be?!

Oh me of little faith.

What dazzles and delights me about this read is the meditations on being and becoming a sentient individual in the shadow of trauma and persecution, being and becoming an existential threat to creatures you're not able quite to emulate but whose world you inhabit. It's never about you, the fear and the anger; it's about what They bring with them into the tiny corner of space They condescend to allow you to roam in so long as you don't transgress Their amorphous, undefined boundaries.

Oh wait...that's pretty much a perfect summation of being queer in the cishet world.

Right there came my happiest moment in this read. I felt so exactly in tune with this puma. I felt so completely free to be in his head, and to enjoy his meditations on what the hell it is humans think they're doing. It's not quite what our lion thinks it is, of course, but he's a savvy old survivor with very keen senses...so he's often Right even when he's factually incorrect.

Of course, I'm tiresomely wedded to certain perceptual filters, and kept jumping a little in my seat when the cat would describe, eg, cars as being metal objects...what's a cat know about metal, my ill-tempered filing elf who lives in my brain rent-free and refuses to come up with words and/or data when I want them but freely kibitzes on minor points of fantasy in excellent reads, wanted to know. The cat who knows about metal should also know what a lighter is, and call it by name. Irritating damned elf needs to get a grip on what its actual job desciption requires.

So no five full stars. If fantasy is to work, it needs to make internal sense and be consistent in its fantastical dimensions...see Chouette for a similarly batshit crazy idea that works on this specific level better than Open Throat does.

But don't think for a second I am warning you off this short, concentrated, pithy read. I am not. I am waving my arms at you to get you to join me over here in the scrubby, hot, dry edgeland with this wonderful old cat as his world, never safe, takes on another configuration of threat.

He and I? We're hangin' as we await some kind of ending. Whatever we once thought we were doing, it's no longer what They want us to. And there's a pont in life where the reality of the exercise reveals itself in blinding bright light and inarguable simplicity. It's very much a before-and-after moment in one's life.

“I’m old because I’m not dead.”

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, RD! ((Hug)) and **smooches**

>95 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! I'll settle for a less-smoky weekend since the AQI has been so crummy. It does irritate my blepharitis. Today's not too awful so I might do my LFL run for the first time since it got bad.

Thanks for visiting! *smooch*

>91 richardderus: Good plan.

The Hoke books sound interesting. Putting them on my wishlist.

Have a wonderful, clean-air weekend! *smooch*

>97 ArlieS: This afternoon was my first outing to the LFL...two out, none in! The air was wind from the North Atlantic, so it felt like heaven.

>98 Storeetllr: Oh great! I hope you'll get a lot out of them when it's their turn to be at the top of the pile.

I hope you have the same, Mary. *smooch*

Glad to hear you got some ocean breezes, RDear. I hope air quality continues to improve this weekend.

Hiya, RDear. Happy Saturday to you.

>94 richardderus: “I’m old because I’m not dead.” Well, that’s refreshing. And oh, so true.

>99 richardderus: Glad you were able to get out to the LFL.

Today’s a normal Saturday around here – trash/recyclables collecting for Bill to take to the dump, take out brought home, and reading and puttering.

*smooch*

Happy Saturday, Richard. Of course, I had a good time with Jack yesterday. He keeps this old guy hopping. We have a family get-together this afternoon, but Jack has other plans. ☹️

Have a great weekend, my friend.

>101 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! The air's right breathable just now, and the weather's perfect, so off I go for a walk.

*smooch*

>102 karenmarie: The walk is so important to my altitude. There's nothing like the ocean to plant a big ol' perspectiv check on me...it doesn't care how I feel, it just is.

Happy to see you here. *smooch*

>103 msf59: Well, a young man of Jack's social stature can't be expected to devote all his time to mere grandparents, after all. He gas places to go, people to be....

Enjoy the summer before it gets too hot.

Hooo. The Google doodle for today is "Celebrating Scones." Don't know why. But, yes, thank you, I'll have one. Can't stop at one, though, can you? So have some.

"ill-tempered filing elf who lives in my brain rent-free and refuses to come up with words and/or data when I want them but freely kibitzes on minor points ... in excellent reads" Your elf has relatives, and one of them lives in my brain.

>94 richardderus: I swore off novels written from an animal's POV after reading Paul Auster's Timbuktu. But never say never...you have convinced me that this one may be worth suspending the rule.

Those sound like a couple of good reads -- but I'm trying very hard to resist because MtTBR has really gotten out of control lately.

(p.s. In CA we call mountain lions "cougars" not "pumas" -- those ones live in FL, poor dears)

>107 weird_O: SCONES *drool* Yes please!

Happy Saturday *smooch*

Glad you're able to get out today and hope the air quality stays good. We finally saw the sun on Friday after a week of haze, which was a real mood-lifter. I didn't have headaches, but I was getting a sore throat.

>108 laytonwoman3rd: I think it is worth suspending the sensible rule, Linda3rd.

>111 bell7: Your throat...my eyes...we get our aches and pains in many too many places.

*smooch*

Glad your AQI is good today, RD. We had some mild haze a for a couple of days, but we had rain today and yesterday, so that has helped. It was not bad at all though. I like the sounds of A Very Gay Book. I shall have to keep an eye out for it.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you.

>105 richardderus: Sigh. I remember when I lived in Redondo Beach, CA two blocks from the pier. It was perfect, 1974-1977, rent was $180/month for a small 1920s one-bedroom cottage. I could barely afford that… the salt air, eccentric neighbors, and easy access to the beach are wonderful memories.

*smooch*

Good Sunday morning, Richard! I hope you can get out today and not be smoke-smitten or too hot! I haven't seen the ocean in at least nine years - the longest stretch in my life without it.
*smooch*

Morning, all...be back later with responses. Please go read the New York Times's annotated indictment document setting out the Goverment's case against 45 here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/09/us/trump-indictment-document-anno...
It is worth burning one of your free uses of their site to review.

Morning, RD!

In case no one has any free articles for the NYT left, here's a "gift" link :)

>114 vancouverdeb: Good Sunday to you, Deb...it's right early out there so you're quite on-the-hop today. I'm barely squeezing my brain into sentience after my statutory pot of coffee and finishing my read-through of >117 richardderus: have conspired to make my brain active.

I hope A Very Gay Book will appeal when its turn on your TBR comes. It's a browsing book, so I advise against trying a read-through of it. Enjoy the week-ahead's reads!

>115 karenmarie: Lovely memories indeed...$180 in 1974 would equal about $1100 now, and you couldn't rent the closet in your old bedroom for that in Redondo Beach today. Inflation is the unseen tax we all pay to the capitalist system.

Have a lovely contemplative day, Horrible! *smooch*

>116 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! *smooch* It's going to be about 70° here today, so it'll feel like 80 in the sun and 65 with an onshore breeze. Makes dressing complicated. I'm up to the challenge. I love this early-summer moment of glory!

>118 katiekrug: Thank you, Katie! I really hope that this will inspire lots of folks to go see exactly what the legal case is about beyond political hype.

Have a lovely week-ahead's reads!

Wishing you a lovely Sunday, dear fellow.

>119 richardderus: "... barely squeezing my brain into sentience after my statutory pot of coffee ..."

I love your phrasing.

>122 richardderus: - Yes, there seems to be a lot of "What about-ism" and false equating going on... This is my shocked face... *eye roll*

>52 richardderus: Doty has written several volumes of non-fiction, including memoir RD. i've been reading his poetry from the start.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Monday to you.

>117 richardderus: I just downloaded the PDF, it’s 49 pages long and I’ll try to read it later today. I'm giving up my WaPo subscription mid-August, but cannot give up the NYTimes...

Today is my last Board meeting as President of the Friends. Board member 1 year, Treasurer 3 years, President 3 years. Time to become Immediate Past President and hope Heather doesn’t serve as President too long…

*smooch*

>127 karenmarie: Karen, just FYI the PDF is the original indictment document. If you use the website link you get NYT annotations that walk you through the document explaining things as you go. I haven't read it yet myself but it looks like a good way to digest it.

Thanks for the links, RD & Katie!

>127 karenmarie: what ^^^ >128 lauralkeet: said. The annotations give good context for what otherwise seem idiosyncratic inclusions into a legal document.

I agree about the subscription priority...AG Sulzberger might not be my beau ideal of a newspaper scion but he beats Bezos all hollow.

YAY for your reduction of time commitments! Your knee and its prone-hang time need that focus.

New-Sunday *smooch*

>128 lauralkeet: Lovely to see you here, Laura...I'm glad the annotated version will be part of your reading day. The annotations are very, very helpful to non-lawyers because the document is surprisingly full of strange stuff.

>117 richardderus: Ugh. I tried to read the annotated indictment but couldn’t figure out how to get to the NYT. I’ll try again after my second cup of coffee.

The good news: That indictment

The bad news: That judge.

But she has had porridge poured over her head once already for bending over backwards on Trump's behalf and she will know she is being watching on this case.

I suspect Trump's fallback position is that he can appeal anything to the Supreme Court who will rule his way because "They Owe Him". He may be in for a surprise.

I think I am just too much of a pessimist to get excited about this whole thing. That snake will never see a day behind bars, no matter how many people say the law applies to *everyone *. All this publicity is going to achieve is to incite his goons. And boost his popularity among them.
Nothing would make me happier than to be proven wrong but I'm not holding my breath. :-(

>133 jessibud2: Shelley, I'm fearful that you're right but hopeful that this time has to prove his undoing. I've watched so much MSNBC for the past week that I think I'll understand the annotated indictment when I can be here long enough to read it. Meanwhile, my hat's off to Jack Smith and his team with wishes that he may carry on!!!!!!!

Good morning, Richard! I look forward to your reading week. *smooch*

>131 Storeetllr: Caffeinate fully, Mary, then come back and use Katie's gift link in >118 katiekrug: for an effortless experience.

It's well-worth you time, promise.

>132 magicians_nephew: She'll rule in 45's favor on every possible occasion, which will do what 45's people want it to do...slow stuff down. Unless she recuses herself (exceedingly unlikely), any ruling she makes will be contested later...keyword, LATER...because judicial neutrality is an idiotic myth. The longer the process takes, the more money the MAGAts will pour into Deutsche Bank's coffers via 45's interest payments on his pile o' debt. The only losers here are decent taxpaying citizens who need protedtion from the scum that's risen, as ever, to the top of the media pile. It was ever thus.

>133 jessibud2: The law does apply to everyone, just not the same law to each person. Beneficial permissive laws apply to the wealthiest. Punitive minatory laws to the poorest. But they're all The Law.

>134 LizzieD: His undoing, Peggy, won't come unless his MAGAts slam their wallets shut. He needs this grift to keep out of the one legal trap he won't be allowed to escape: Debt. Until then he's a free agent because he can't repay Deutsche Bank unless he stays free to fleece the idiots.

Enjoy the week's reads, smoochling.

>118 katiekrug: >135 richardderus: THANK YOU, RD and Katie!!!

>139 Storeetllr: Excellent, Mary! Katie is most generous indeed.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

>129 richardderus: I read the yellow bits of the annotated document to understand what the Times was telling us. Still might go back and read the entire thing.

Today is book sorting then a chat with my sister.

*smooch*

>141 karenmarie: It's a very good idea to do it in that order, in my experience. I learned to tease out the ways the drafter was building the case by doing exactly that. Where they quote 45's own words, they show that he knowingly lied and obfuscated specifically to commit the crimes they've charged him with, f/ex. It shoots down the "I didn't realize" andd "I didn't know" defenses. They'll wheel 'em out anyway, of course.

I'm off to the fang-grinder today. I hate even typing that.

*smooch*

>142 richardderus: I hate reading it on your behalf. May everything go as smoothly and painlessly as possible and without an overload of noise and smell!

*smooch*

Sorry about your appointment today. As someone once so eloquently said to me before my root canal work last year, put on your big girl panties (in your case, big boy pants), and keep telling yourself that in 3 (fill in the number) I will be home, reading and this will be just a faint memory. Just 3 hours. 3 hours (or whatever number). I am going to assume that whatever they are doing, you will get frozen and feel no pain, just hear the sounds you'd rather not. It could be worse, really. This could be 1923, not 2023, at the dentist's... just saying...

Be strong! smooch

Good luck at the fang grinder. I go visit mine on the 26th but am not expecting any grinding to be involved.

Well, that was a slice of hell. Over an hour in the chair and there's still a small piece of the removed tooth in the bone. My maxilla's very robust so, unless the little fragment bothers me, it stays. Otherwise it's off to the oral surgeon.

The ambulette driver's first day, so I directed him to the office then back to the fscility. Same guy. TERRIBLE driver!

This is a gorgeous day and I hurt like anything, had a horrific time being yanked on and ground over, then had to talk around my gauze pack to tell the guy where to go because his data entry skills were poor and he entered the wrong town.

Yuck.

>146 richardderus: I'm sorry this is how your day is going. :( Wishing you as restful a recovery as possible.

>146 richardderus: Ooof, sounds like a miserable day. I hope tomorrow is better!

Terribly sorry about the tooth extraction. Been there, but my experience was tolerable, since I was knocked out. You doubtless will recover quickly; you've rebounded from worse.

Loved the rain we had yesterday. Today's been sunny, not to hot.

*Smooch* for living to tell the tale. ;-)
You could write a book...

>146 richardderus: Bummer!! Hope the mouth heals up without further trouble and that the company hires a driver who is capable.

Gentle(((Richard)))

>146 richardderus: - UGH. I've been putting off the rest of my implant "journey" because I just can't face it.... ((hugs))

That all sounds particularly unpleasant. Hopefully you're felling a bit more chipper today.
I come out of my 6 monthly checkup with a huge sigh of relief every time they don't find anything that needs doing.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. I hope you are feeling better this morning. The dental procedure, along with the transportation sounds awful. Glad you survived it.

We finally got some well-needed rain yesterday. I am sure it wasn't nearly enough, though.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Wednesday to you.

>146 richardderus: Ugh. I hate even reading about a bit of tooth still in the bone. *shudder* I hope you are feeling more the thing this morning, fully recovered from the Horrific Dentist Office Experience and the Not Good Experience with the Ambulette Driver (Being His First Day).

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Glad to hear the dental procedure is behind you, and hope today is a happier one. *smooch*

Hi everyone...it still hurts and is bleeding a bit so please forgive my absence today.

Sympathy! Get through it and come back tomorrow feeling better, please.
*smooch*

Ugh. Sounds awful. So sorry you’re suffering. Hope it heals up before day’s end. *hugs*

>157 richardderus: Absence forgiven -- hope your mouth gets well soon. Meanwhile, have a restful day please.

>157 richardderus: urgh. Look after yourself.

Hope you're feeling better, or will be, soonest!

Karen O.

Adding to wishes for a quick recovery. Take care of yourself, Richard

Well, I"m very glad that your day with the Fang Grinder is behind you, Richard. I'm not fan of the fang - grinder, as I have mentioned. I have to back to get two cavities filled in the fall. She books up very quickly. One is in a tooth that has a large filling already and so it may turn into a root canal. If so, I can only hope it goes like the first root canal I had 3 years ago. It's hard to believe as I am very anxious about the dentist, but apparently I feel asleep during for 20 minutes during my second appointment out of 3 for the root canal. I was kind of embarrassed when the dentist told me, but she said, if you can fall asleep during a root canal, that's a good root canal. True. They are long appointments - 2 - 2. 5 hours and I guess - knock on wood, it was not painful and the grinding must have ceased. Argh.

I hope your Thursday turns out a bit better, Richard dear.

The small piece that is stuck might come out by it self, at least that is what happened to me.
gentle (((hugs))) and *smooches*

>157 richardderus: - Oh no. I hope today is better, MUCH better!

I hope you're doing better today, RD.

*smooch*

Happy Thursday! At least I think it's Thursday....on vacation I don't have to pay attention ;)

Hope you are recovering from the dentist...my sympathies. those trips are never really pleasant

*smooch*

Thanks, all, for coming in to wish me well after that un-fun visit to the fang-yanker. The wound is still sensitive and that means not rinsing my mouth as usual plus avoiding that pat of the gum as I brush (easier typed than done), but at least it doesn't hurt so much today. I don't expect happy visits, ever, but I'm not ecstatic over this one...and there are things to do with my teeth that are going to be more challenging now. I had no follow-up visit schefuled and that seems weird to me. Nor was she in any way interested in making a plan for continuing care. There aren't a lot of dentists who work with poor people so it's just take what you're given, unfortunately.

I still hate going to the fanger...possibly a bit more.

I'm glad to see you here and improved, Richard. It's still cringe-worthy at long distance, and I'm sorry that your dentist isn't interested in making a plan to avert crises. Stupid.
My only extractions were in the 60s, and I used tea bags for the bleeding. If "they" still tell you to do that, it's no wonder you hate tea.

Hoping you heal quickly, I leave you with a *smooch* for the day.

>169 richardderus: Yowch!

I had my own adventure with the fang grinder yesterday. My teeth have been keeping her busy a lot lately - it turns out one of the fun after effects of cancer treatment can be lots and lots of dental problems. I though that would be a one-of - just tooth problems created during treatment - but no, it left me with a mouth much more prone to develop cavities.

In my latest adventure, I developed a cavity in a tooth that already had a crown, which required removing the old crown, removing the decay, filling that area, and then making a new crown to fit the new shape. Expensive. Also still a bit sore this morning, but nowhere near as bad as extractions tend to be, and as you are describing above.

For comic relief, imagine me yesterday with my lower right lip non-responsive to commands, attempting to get some soft food (soup) into myself without winding up wearing it. I had to be very careful, because that side of my mouth wasn't closing properly.

Happy Friday, Richard. I hope you are feeling better. It is Jackson Day today, so I will be having a good time romping around with the boy.

'Morning, RDear.

Weird and sad that no follow up visits are scheduled with the dentist. 🎵Money makes the world go 'round, the world go 'round, the world go 'round 🎵

I'm probably going out to the surgeon's office's DME center this afternoon to get fitted for a JAS SPS Knee - a piece of torture equipment to help me get to full extension after my knee replacement. Those last 3-5 degrees are pesky, and prone hangs just aren't quite cutting it.

I'll be able to do a lot of audio book listening. I'm doing Career of Evil, the roughest/most macabre of the series. BIID - yuck. Just... yuck.

*smooch*

Again, sorry for the lack of personal responses...I'm worried now about the swelling not really going down and the sensitivity remaining...I'm mortally sick of surviving on tepid soups and Ensures. I tried a banana and it wasn't a huge success. I just hope I don't get an infection. I'm still lying here just feeling the throb-throb-throb of healing (I HOPE) going on. My concentration level is low.

Thanks one and all for the kind wishes and weclome attention while this awfulness passes.

That sounds awful, Richard. I know you know how to take care of yourself, and I know you'll do it.
Gentle *smooch*

>174 richardderus: So sorry you’re still suffering through this, Richard. Are you able to have cold things? Wondering if fruit or yogurt smoothies would be both comfortable and satisfying. Sending healing thoughts…

So sorry Richard. I, too, hope your mouth gets itself healed asap.

>174 richardderus: *hugs*

Sorry to read about your tooth woes, Richard. Best of luck getting back to normal quickly.

'Morning, RD, and gentle hugs and kisses.

Of three kinds of listening, which would you prefer?

1. Helpful listening: Have you called the dentist's office to tell them about the serious pain you're still having? Are you using cold or hot compresses as appropriate? Serious painkillers? Are the folks at LBAS doing everything they can to help you?

2. Empathetic listening: I'm terribly sorry that you're still in so much pain, my dear. I wish I could take it away for you. I hope today brings much, if not complete, relief. (((hugs)))

3. Humorous listening: I'm truly sorry to hear that the terrible dental experience's injury has the added insult of being a gift that keeps on giving. F***ing dentists.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

edited to fix various and sundry early morning stupid errors.

>180 karenmarie: Morning smoochling! Thanks for the listening...the dentist's office said to go get a doctor's referral for another appointment; no one can responsibly prescribe more pain relief for me since I'm already wearing a Fentanyl patch. The real necessity here is to find a better dentist...I have a line on one. Awaiting developments.....

Thanks for the chuckles, dearest Horrible. The steps of frustration in dealing with the System aren't new, or news. One's body is not the System's priority at this stratum of society, but more or less a burden and that's never far from the awareness. I'm lucky that I am not in Texas or elsewhere in the Scum Belt where even the modest social services I receive are nearly inconceivable.

You are exactly right, Richard. I also note that it's the weekend which leaves you pretty much on your own. I'm sorry.
If we could fix it, we would.

*smooch*

Sorry to hear about the tooth extraction Richard. Last year I sat with superboy through a quadruple extraction. Oddly, he has two adult teeth missing so the baby teeth weren't pushed out though they were getting a bit wobbly so the orthodontist advised taking them out plus two wisdom teeth (because he apparently has a small jaw) and then using aligners to close up the gaps. At least the baby teeth didn't have deep roots.

So sorry you're still suffering. Hope you manage to change to a better dentist and that the pain stops soon.

‘Morning, RichardDear, and, I hope, a happier Sunday with less pain and etc.

>181 richardderus: The American Health Care System is a total shambles and embarrassment unless you're very lucky or very rich. Damned Gang of Psychos, AMA, and health care becoming so focused on profit in recent decades.

*smooch*

Ugh to needing a referral first, and hope you're able to get some followup soon. Sucks that even having *good* insurance (and I do, they cover everything I've needed), I need to do the legwork to make sure I have annual referrals for *annual* appointments that I'm not going to stop needing, let alone immediate care situations that come up.

Sunday *smooches* and may the awfulness pass soon.

Happy Sunday, Richard. Bree is at the boat with her family, so we will hang out with Matt and his girlfriend this afternoon. I hope you are doing well.

Happy father's day, dear fellow.

Happy Father’s Day, RD. Hope you’re feeling better today.

Awful how we get treated by the “health care” system in the US. As long as one doesn’t have any real issues, it’s fine. The minute you need extra care, it frequently turns into a nightmare. And why oral health is relegated solely to dentists is beyond me.

Hope you’re able to find a better dentist!

*smooch*, dear one

>175 LizzieD: How do, Peggy, I'm always a little depressed that get to be competent in caring for myself, advocating for myself and so on...until I see object lessons around me in NOT doing so. And realizing that I *do* have support. It still feels daunting, to my competent self, so how must it feel to others?

>176 PlatinumWarlock: Hello Lavinia! Thank you for visiting and commisserating with me. Fruits and yogurt are okay, if they're soft enough, but honestly not things I want to make the backbones of my diet...luckily I have Ensure galore to make nutrition less of a worry.

A pleasure to see you here, and I hope you'll visit regularly.

>177 RebaRelishesReading: I hope so, too, Reba, but it's taking its sweet time....*smooch*

>178 ArlieS: Thanks, Arlie!

>179 Familyhistorian: Your keyboard to the tooth goddess's inbox, Meg!

>182 LizzieD: I was actually encouraged to go to urgent care by a staffer here...I asked how I'd be paying for that and she shrugged.

::side-eye::

>183 humouress: It's not the first one for me, and none of them have ever been truly straightforward, Nina. Oh well, no one has a love for dentist visits, I suppose. Thank you for stopping by!

>184 RebaRelishesReading: I think a better dentist will be possible for future needs, though there are some complications in accessing his care. Nothing insoluble, but time-consuming.

If the pain is not handled by my Fentanyl patches, one would think the PTB would realize we have a real problem. So far, no. Dig we must....

*smooch*

>185 karenmarie: Peter Turchin wrote the clearest expilication of the current problems I've read yet. End Times: Elites, Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration develops his themes from twenty years of research and writing. Heartening it isn't, but careful and informative it is.

"Health" "care" isn't available in the US. Disease management is. There is no "care" anywhere in the system.

>186 bell7: Hey there, Mary. In a world with immense depths of data and incredibly efficient ways of managing it, there is no reason any of us should have to be more than minimally connected to the data stream to get all of our medical care needs met. Your phone should ding with a reminder to go to your next appointment in a week, say...and the bosses should get notified by the same system that this is where you'll be.

Oh wait...that won't generate profits...and it will cost money to create...silly me.

I remind myself of Seneca when I'm like this. "Scorn pain, either it will pass or you will."

>187 msf59: I hope Father's Day was a good one, Birddude.

>188 PaulCranswick: Thanks, PC, right back atcha.

>189 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary...I'm happy that the gum pain is bearable and that I don't appear to have an infection. why dentists are able to decline to participate in whole-body care is beyond me...all dentistry needs to be on a single-payer no-opt-outs basis. Like all other health care.

>190 karenmarie: *smooch*

<203 all dentistry needs to be on a single-payer no-opt-outs basis. Like all other health care. Here is one place that the simple answer is the only one, however hard the mechanics of setting it up and keeping it going!

>191 richardderus: I think that all the time about every system. If I'm having a problem, how do people less privileged in every way get any help at all?

I'm glad that you've made it through the weekend and that the pain is not overwhelming and that you're not infected. I pray for you (like it or not) to get better dental care whatever that takes in time and effort.

Hope you can read something good today!

>205 LizzieD: I thank you for the good wishes, Peggy, however they come, they're always welcome!

We're not alone, thee and me, in our wondering. What can we do about it? I don't know the answer to that one.

I *hope* I'm not infected! I'm swishing hydrogen peroxide solutions every day and that ought to kill most things. I'd love the tenderness and swelling to disappear.

New review below. *smooch*

BURGOINE #9 Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy by Larry Loftis

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The true story of the woman who became WWII's most highly decorated spy

The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father’s footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill.

As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. They are sent to Paris’s Fresnes prison, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, beaten, and tortured. But in the face of despair, they never give up hope, their love for each other, or the whereabouts of their colleagues.

In Code Name: Lise, Larry Loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love—of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations. He seamlessly weaves together the touching romance between Odette and Peter and the thrilling cat and mouse game between them and Sergeant Bleicher.

A LITTLE FREE LIBRARY FIND. IT'S GONE BACK THERE NOW.

My Review: I like spy stories because it never ceases to fascinate me why people who obviously think they're good, solid, honest people tell themselves it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal. "The end justifies the means" said Ovid 2,000+ years ago. A very consequentialist viewpoint that I worry about promoting, since it presupposes the agent knows what "good" really is and thus empowers lowlife scum to act in the bad ways they want to act to achieve something they think is "good."

Well, anyway.

This woman's life is one that, absent documentation, I'd say was a myth. If someone wrote it exactly like this as fiction, I'd snort mightily and tell 'em to rein it in and make the story believable. The author's prose is adequate to the task at hand. The reason to read the book is the story not the storytelling. For spy-story lovers it's proof that truth is still weirder than fiction. For history readers, the same. For all its fascinating turns and proofs that women lie, cheat, and steal with the same verve as men do, it fails the Bechdel Test dismally, as Odette is motivated and manipulated by LUUUV for men. Don't think she's some fempower icon, y'all. Literally everything she does is for some man or another, living or dead.

My rating is based on how much fun I had reading it not necessarily on its objective merits.

You've probably already done this, but I found the salt dissolved in warm water swish really helped my soreness after extractions...

Hang in there!

Hi Richard. So sorry to hear that the healing is so slow but hopefully, a bit better each day. I agree with Katie re the warm salt water. That was my mother's go-to fix for whatever ailed us above the neck: sore throat, painful teeth, congestion. I hated gargling/swishing but you can't argue with feeling better...

038 Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs by Andrew Rannells

PRIDE MONTH REVIEWS #10

Impostor Syndromeplayed for laffs. And it got them from me! What I don't always understand is how the idea of this common mental illness is so undertreated in the world of psychology, except of course among women in whom it was first identified forty-five years ago. That makes sense because it's a subtle way of (in)validating women's power.

Actor Rannells is a gay man of a certain age writing about himself and his multivalent struggles to achieve success, find love, gain self-esteem and confidence, and then Own It. If Impostor Syndrome does nothing else, it weaponzes the "virtue" of modesty to create eternal insecurity and "unworthiness" in those not inoculated against those insidious underminers of personal satisfaction and empowerment by virtue of gendered, class- and race-specific messaging. Just look around at those whose self-esteem is most on public display to get the import of this effective means of social control.

Those reflections being delivered, the story itself is a laugh-out-loud collection of short essays, the precise proper length to be read while in down-time from tasks of ordinary living...waiting in waiting rooms, between required or assigned busy-work bursts...and they deliver not simply respite from these but quietly effective food for thought. Rannells has lived an active public-facing life. His reflections on how that's worked for him, what it's cost him, where it's led him, are both completely personal and universally applicable in their outlines. (Funny how often those things go hand-in-hand, isn't it?)

What I enjoyed most about the read was how much honesty Actor Rannells brings to his gayness. He denies, hides, celebrates, and ultimately integrates his sexual and romantic focus on his own gender in a social milieu, the theatre, where it's not exactly uncommon. The process isn't direct, and is never over...gay men never stop coming out...but it's a lot less time-consuming as he ascends the career ladder with candor and humor. Aging has its good points. He's in charge of his own life and future in ways he never thought he could be as a young gay man. But the eternal struggle to believe himself actually possessed of that power, and the deservedness of that success, that is the ongoing "gift" of Impostor Syndrome, is the quiet but inescapable burden of his humorously delivered anecdotes.

I'm older than Rannells, older even than his decade-plus older partner, and I still recognize and relate to all the struggles he underagoes. I found comfort, fellowship, and fun in this read. I hope you'll take it with you to the next doctor's office or bureaucratic waiting room you go into.

>208 katiekrug: Hiya Katie! I'm afraid saline + hydrogen peroxide isn't a great combo. I'm way more worried about infection setting in than about trifles like "comfort". He grimaced....

>209 jessibud2: It's a problem of fits between hydrogen peroxide and saline solution, sadly. The chemistry is contraindicated for the inside of a mouth....

*smooch*

Sorry to hear things are not fangtastic at the moment RD. Dental pain can be some of the worst and rarely responds to standard pain relief. I hope it sets you down soon.

>213 Caroline_McElwee: "fangtastic" *ooof*

Thanks for the kind sentiment, Caro, no matter the punishment inflicted in their delivery.

Sorry about the dental pain issues, Richard. Dental pain is indeed some of the worst pain. I had a dry socket after a wisdom tooth extraction, long time ago when I was 32 or so. Boy that was bad! Fortunately the oral surgeon was even available at 10 pm at night to clean out the socket and put in some ???? oil of cloves and antibiotic and gauze. I was at the oral surgeons every other day for a week until that sorted itself out.

Little comfort, but Canada does not offer dental coverage. You get it via your employer - at least most people do, depending on their employer. Apparently dental coverage to some degree is in the works by the Canadian Government for 2025, and I think some coverage is already available this year for children.

It's so hard when you don't have your own dentist. Best wishes for you to soon be pain free. Whole body care indeed.

'Morning, RD. Happy Tuesday to you.

>210 richardderus: Onto the wish list it goes. I guess even straight women can get a lot out of this one, right? *smile*

And, *smooch*

Hey, RD. Sorry the dental pain continues. What a bummer, my friend. I hope you get some relief. Off to my Rehab duties. Juno and the books in the PM.

>215 vancouverdeb: You lot never escaped the gravvity well of US stupidity entirely? That's very much a tragedy. Your entire body should be the coverage basis for all systems. The pain of dry sockets, I'm told, is indescribable...my gums being tender and the bone throbbing are small-time stuff compared to that! It's unpleasant but it's getting better. Dry sockets don't get better without medical intervention so I am waaay ahead of that horror.

Stay well, Deb, and thank you for visiting me.

>216 karenmarie: Howdy, Horrible. *smooch*

Mini-rant incoming: Impostor syndrome is one of the most infuriating things I've encountered in my long, lucky life. Yes, it's real; no, it's not what They say it is. It's a maladaptive response to misogyny and other forms of cultural othering. It's the Straight White Man-God They install in you saying, "you'll never, ever be enough because I say so" operating as They intend it to: as a form of social control. If you always doubt yourself and your fitness and worthiness, They keep you in your proper place: Under/below/powerless. So a medicalizing diagnosis gets invented (not coincidentally in the 1970s when women, gays, and Black folk begin to gain some power over their persons and futures) for what really is a problem of social structure, designed to keep you Out, and convince you that (if you just work hard enough) you can overcome this flaw in yourself and your thinking. When you fail, They murmur, "bad luck you pitiful woman/faggot/brown-skinned person," and recline comfortably atop Their mountain of prestige.

/rant

>217 msf59: It's most frustrating because I really can't concentrate to read effectively, Mark. I get through a paragraph and realize all I'm thinking is "owowowowow"....

*smooch* Richard. *smooch* *smooch* *smooch*

I think you hit me with 2 BBs, but I'll be back later to take time enough to figure it out.

I think it's time for you to begin to feel some improvement. I wish it may be so as the day wears on.

>221 LizzieD: I'm ever so pleased that the throbbing is better today, Peggy, and have hopes that the soft foods the kitchen is serving forth today will help my gums heal, too. I hope you enjoy the books I BB'd you with.

*smooch*

>218 richardderus: Glad things are improving, Richard. Hope that continues and even speeds up.

>223 RebaRelishesReading: Your keyboard to the goddesses' inbox, Reba! I'm eager not to steel myself against hitting that gum patch with watermelon slices (to name the biggest surprise painful chew)!

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday, and I hope that this dental pain is diminishing every day.

Your rant is valid and important. I have gotten the woman portion of it, of course.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>225 karenmarie: *smooch* I'm still shufflin' along, Horrible my dear lady. The tenderness is now about all that's left, and it's perfectly manageable with some care and caution.

>226 richardderus: Glad you've reached the "manageable" stage, Richard - it sounds like it's been a wretched journey.

>227 PlatinumWarlock: Thank you, Lavinia, it was indeed miserable from giddy-up to whoa, and cements my unhappiness at undergoing dentistry in first place of the Misery Sweepstakes.

Hiya, Ricardo. Good reviews, as usual. The Stickers: Object Lessons one stood out for me, as it sounds like a kind of writing I enjoy. Our granddiddles are enamored of stickers; stickers seem to fulfill some kind of creative impulse for them that eludes me. It’s certainly guaranteed exciement when we give them to them.

Code Name Lise attracts me, too. I do enjoy spy stories, particularly when a woman has to overcome the usual male domination nonsense to pull it off.

Hope your week’s journey is a good one.

>228 richardderus: ...from giddy-up to whoa...

Well, THAT made me laugh!!!

BURGOINE #10

The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve López

Rating: 3* if five

The Publisher Says: Now a major motion picture-"An intimate portrait of mental illness, of atrocious social neglect, and the struggle to resurrect a fallen prodigy." (Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down)

This is the true story of journalist Steve Lopez's discovery of Nathaniel Ayers, a former classical bass student at Julliard, playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' Skid Row. Deeply affected by the beauty of Ayers's music, Lopez took it upon himself to change the prodigy's life-only to find that their relationship has had a profound change on his own life.

FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE TO THE LITTLE FREE LIBRARY.

My Review: Having my heartstrings plucked plangently has never been my personal beau ideal for reading. Tolerable writing. The 2009 movie is actually more fun than the book because it's got Jamie Foxx in a rare dramatic turn. Robert Downey Jr. was okay as Steve Lopez. Nothing about the whole experience, film adaptation or tree book, was better than average. In the 1980s it would've been a Movie of the Week on CBS.

Have you read My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunket? It was published in 1983 and quickly disappeared. Now being republished. The NYT had a story about it, and it sounded entertaining. I figured you'd know something about it.

Glad the tooth pain is down to manageable.

>229 jnwelch: I have never been able to parse the appeal of stickers. I know every argument against 'em, the furniture finishes they used to mar and the paint jobs they ruin, but what's the fun? ...kids these days...

Happy to see you here, Joe. Spend a splendid Mittelwoch.

>230 PlatinumWarlock: I'm glad! I've said it for years, and you're the first person to comment on it.

>232 weird_O: Good lawsy me. I'd not only never heard of it, but never heard of him (Plunket, that ia, obvs I've heard of Harding). Plunket doesn't seem to have caught the public's eye then or now.Walker Evans: Florida doesn't sound one bit more promising than the novel does to me. Interesting someone's republishing it in 2023, not 2015.

Spend your Wednesday splendidly.

>233 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen, me too!!

Just dropping by to see how you’re doing and to wish you a happy summer solstice.

>238 Storeetllr: Solstice greetings, Mary! I'm miffed that today is cloudy and windy, but pleased as can be that it's not hot.

Enjoy its many pleasures! *smooch*

Happy Summer Day 1. I'll go with "not hot" every time. We should get more much-needed rain today and tomorrow.
*smooch* and wish for happier eating and reading!

>240 LizzieD: I suspect you'd expire from envy if I mentioned that today's high will be 68°, my dear lady. So in deference to your summertime sufferings...
...
...oops.

Seen in the newsletter...The word “puzzleist” — a puzzle constructor — appeared for the first time in The Times recently, in a book review.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Not much to say, it is still warm here.
Glad to read the gap in your your mouth is improving.

Good morning, Richard! Glad to hear your mouth continues to heal and give you less trouble - even gladder to see the evidence, with you posting.

Steve Lopez's newest book was a DNF for me - he debates whether or not he should retire. Ostensibly he interviews people about their decisions to retire (or not), but a few chapters in it was still more navel-gazing than wisdom and I decided that while I'm still a good 15 years out from retirement I'm less interested in one man's dithering than I am the collective experiences of several.

Anyway, hope today is a lovely one with lots of good reading ahead.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Glad to hear the mouth is doing better. Whew! We are in for a warm stretch in Chicagoland, nearing 90F thru the weekend, with little chance of rain, which we desperately need. I have Jackson Day tomorrow and I plan on seeing Joe at his abode, on Sunday. All good here.

‘Morning, RDear!

I’m glad you’re finally getting some relief from the pain and discomfort you’ve been going through.

>232 weird_O: Darn it, Bill. I’m being self-indulgent this month because I turn 70 next week, and this is ANOTHER BB I’ve taken. It’s arriving tomorrow.

>234 richardderus: I became aware of stickers in 8th grade, so 1966. They were a wonderful novelty to me. I still have an old Pepperdine catalog from 1972-1973 that has a sticker of a car on it… I don’t remember why. Jenna, of course, came up during the Era of the Sticker and they’re still all over the place on things and as unused sheets.

*smooch*

>243 FAMeulstee: Hello, Anita! Thursday orisons to you. Tenderness continues to recede, thank goodness

I have seen the heat wave temperatures the Dutch are enduring. It might seem to me unremarkable to have it be 30C outside but I grew up where 40C was typical, and y'all decidedly did not. Sure hope it gets back to normal soon!

>244 bell7: Morning, Mary! Thanks for the kind wishes. My various parts are, thank goodness, cooperating with the Command and Control system. We'll see how long that decides to last.

Lopez isn't a good enough writer for me to want to explore his work further. It certainly sounds like enough of a snooze for me to skip this current one, anyway...navel-gazing requires me to enjoy the view of the navel being gazed at to endure with equanimity.

*smooch*

Good morning and good day, Richard! I look forward to hearing that your mouth is giving less and less trouble and that you're reading something good.

>241 richardderus: Your reticence is much appreciated but not necessary for yesterday or today. High yesterday was 76, and it's raining right now, so it's cool. Next week is another story when summer really hits.

>245 msf59: 90°! I hope not to see that heading all the way over here. Y'all can keep that one, k?

Thursday orisons, Birddude.

>246 karenmarie: I don't know if my mother was just very good at distracting me, or what, but I became aware of stickers when my kid did. I hated 'em then, I hate 'em now.

...I'm allowing your *idiosyncratic* timing of eighth grade to pass unchallenged, you know, as a birthday gift. Also the decade count.

You're welcome.

>249 LizzieD: Wow, that's cool for y'all's late June. It's a good thing, indeed. Today I'm reading something strange: Spring in Siberia.

So far it's a good read but not quite something I'd love to re-read, at least so far.

Plunket and Warren Harding. Mr. Derus is uninterested, Karenmarie is getting her copy tomorrow. I wait; still interested but not taking action on it before my birthday in July.

Glad to hear your healing system is at work on the hole in your jaw.

>234 richardderus: At least one of my sisters loved stickers, and for all I know still does. I, on the other hand, am with you in not getting it.

>240 LizzieD: Count me as another fan of "not hot". If the temperature today stays decent, I'll walk to the library after breakfast. If it's too hot, I'll stay home and read from my shelves ;-)

'Mornng, RD! Happy Friday to you.

I'm coffeeing right and getting ready to make a wish list to take to the local indie to spend up to $135 in gift cards today. Other than that, same old same old.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>253 weird_O: I'll await y'all's separate verdicts on Pluket before committing an eyeblink to him/it.

I am frugal with my attention post-strokes.

>254 ArlieS: Really! Hm. I don't know what about stickers appeals...but whatever it is, it's transparent to me. And thee, obvs.

I hope the unheat continues chez vous.

>255 karenmarie: Horrible! Have a happy FriYAY spending your gift cards! I'm sure there'll be a haul post, so I'll coddiwomple thitherward here directly to see whatcha got.

*smooch*

Stickers were big at my elementary school. We had albums and would negotiate trades and rearrange what we had on the album pages. I remember it being good fun but thinking about it now, I have no idea why...

>259 katiekrug: Had the goddamned things been confined to albums and traded like stamps, I'd never've even noticed them, just bought 'em by the carload. But my dining-room table needed refinishing TWICE because the stupid things got "accidentally" stuck to it, and the wallboard had to be peeled down and ultimately wallpapered over because of their unremovability without causing damage.

Their marketing partners should burn in hell for eternity.

>256 richardderus: >257 richardderus: I thought I had already commented on my sticker oblivion. I wasn't even particularly impressed by gold stars, the only stickers in my childhood. I don't see a post, and I know your discussion would be quite incomplete without my bit, so now we are 3.

>259 katiekrug: Don't you think kids generally need to collect something? The only thing I traded was marbles, and I don't know why either. I certainly didn't play the game in the dirt; I was much too prissy!

I wish your Friday may be irritation free, Richard, or mostly so. I'm told that we thrive with a bit of adversity, but only a bit, please. *smooch*

>259 katiekrug:, >260 richardderus:. Sounds like stickers will remain forever mystifying to those of a dignified age. As long as we can keep them off the furniture, they make for a sure-fire happy-maker for our nietos.

Did you like Yellow Birds? I’m reading and liking his new one, A Line in the Sand. It’s very much a mystery/thriller, which of course is just fine by me.

>261 LizzieD: I remember gold stars as nasty little divisive sources of things bullies could try to humiliate me with. Hey, my uninterest in stickers has roots after all! Thanks, Peggy, I'd never've dredged that up on my own. A solved mystery is a good'un.

Speaking of mysteries...my blog (now in its tenth year of regular posting) usually gets about 200 views a day. (Over 2,000 reviews, that's not hugely impressive, but it's better than nothin'!) There are occasional spikes, like the time I reviewed Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot the same week Jimmy Fallon picked it for his book club's read, or Steven Saylor featured my review of his beloèd How Are The Mighty Fallen on his megablog. There are the steady reviews that kids snag for their papers (eg, 5 Georges Simenon "romans durs" (tough books) from NYRB Classics which caused me to buy a subscriprion to PlagScan...wow, I've been cribbed a lot!). Then, this month, for no reason I can figure out, my usual 200 a day blew right the hell up to 757 views a day on the back of THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU, an adventure story about books and the people who love them...but WHY?! Why now, six years after I wrote it? No film, no TV rights, no huge breaking news...but almost 800 people a day are clicking on my review.

...?!?...

>262 jnwelch: I loved it, Joe! I have the DRC of A Line in the Sand: A Novel on my Booksgiving reviews list.

I'd be much less ticked off by stickers nowadays, since stuff matters very little to me at this point. Still not a fan, no matter what. Spend a splendid weekend!

>263 richardderus: And you just had one more visitor to that "ancient" review. Went to go check, and lo-and-behold, I already had it on the WL. Put it there in 2018, tagged it as "suggested by RD" so that review must have worked for me originally and today.

Its available on audio, I think its going to be my next read. Thanks for the nudge.

>265 mahsdad: Excellent news, Jeff...you'll get a lot from the read. I still want to see it on TV. Fine action story in here.

Dropping in to say hello. I am glad the the mouth is beginning to heal. What an awful ordeal, Richard.

Stickers in school were a huge deal. Each person had a line that was posted for all the class to see. Gold silver and bronze stickers were awarded for various things-good behaviour, grades, neatness. It was not very fun ( although I ended up with my line full). In my opinion it instilled the wrong kind of motivation.

Anyhow, happy weekending!

Happy Saturday, Richard. I had a good time with Jack yesterday. Not big surprise, right? Hot one here today, so I will get Juno out for a walk early. Enjoy your weekend.

'Morning, RDear. Happiest of Saturdays to you.

Ah, gold stars, the precursor to stickers.

*smooch*

Just a Saturday morning wave RD. I hope it has plenty of reading time.

>267 figsfromthistle: Happy weekending, Anita! I'm pretty sure competitive energy needed to be channeled to keep control of all the little heathens, but like you, I think it bred a negative result of invidious comparisons and invented superiority.

The ouchies are finally receding into bad memories, thank goodness.

>268 msf59: Gramps! Howzit? Melted in the heat yet? We're sticky today, with rain and then evaporation fueling a bit of excessive humidity. I'm pretty sure we'll pay for the lack of heat in July...

>269 karenmarie: Nasty things, gold stars.

Happy weekend-ahead's reads, my dear Horrible! *smooch*

>270 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caro...I'm stuck inside because of the sky's dribbling water all over. Reading is the order of the day until it stops because my desire to get soaked isn't detectable with a scanning electron microscope.

Sorry to hear you're having a rainy day although perhaps that will help the humidity. Glad your mouth is finally healing through. Perhaps some better food soon?

Hi Richard - just dropping by to say hello. Hope you're having a good day apart from the weather - maybe you could send some of that water over here as we could do with it at the moment.

039 Oil for the Lamps of China by Alice Tisdale Hobart

Rating 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Oil for the Lamps of China (1934) was a best-selling novel when it was first published, just a few years after Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (1931). The hero of the story is a keen, young American businessman who wants to bring “light” and progress to China in the form of oil and oil lamps, but who is caught between Chinese revolutionary nationalism in the 1920s and the heartless American corporation that has built his career.

The title became a catch phrase for expansive American dreams of the vast China market even though the novel itself, written at the beginning of the Great Depression, was skeptical of large business and any supposed American ability to improve China. The author presents a clear portrait of Western idealism versus Eastern pragmatism in the doubly exotic setting of Mainland China before the advent of large-scale industrialization. The portrayal is unflattering to both sides.

While some might now regard the more sympathetic treatment of the young American as out of date, others would counter that the picture is both historically and contextually accurate. "Now, nearly seventy years since it was originally published, . . . Oil for the Lamps of China again seems timely. Once again ambitious young Americans like Stephen Chase are working for big corporations in China. . . . Once again sensitive young spouses like Hester are coping with the rigors of living simultaneously in American corporate culture and Chinese culture. . . . As these parallels suggest, if Oil for the Lamps of China was timely in the 1930s, then it also seems timely today.” — from the 2002 reprint edition's introduction by Sherman Cochran

My Review: I got this ancient paperback as a freebie from a sidewalk cart in front of a used bookstore ages ago. No one would buy it because it's neither famous nor infamous. As a freebie, it was interesting to read as an example of how VERY MUCH the world has changed. Her Chinese people speak in an oddly archaic English, as thought Cotton Mather had time-traveled to teach them. Condescending much?

What worked, though, was the way her main character was bullish on how to exploit China's economic potential to make him rich and ends up broke and betrayed by even more unscrupulous American men. The Chinese people are characterized without the heavy moralizing pall I expected to need to brush off. But here's the thing: This outsider's view of an immense, ancient culture was written in the early 1930s, yet feels as old as a Victorian novel because the take is reflective of an unquestioning acceptance of "Western superiority," though not explicitly. It's implicit in the framing of the conflicts her oil executive has with Authority, Chinese or American, being valorizing of him and his role. No wonder its 1935 film was...so...boring to watch, as this was very easy to get onto the screen.

Two interesting notes: The author was married to a Standard Oil company man whose job was in China; the edition I had (it disintegrated as I read it so it's been chucked out) was printed in 1945, when China was an important theater in the ongoing war, so was meant to cash in on public attention.

>275 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! Rain's not lethal so I'm just whinging. Life goes on....

>276 SandDune: Hiya Rhian! I'm very glad to see you here. I don't think I can blow hard enough to get the rain all over the North Atlantic. I would if I could, I promise.

Ah, Richard. I'm hoping for some rain. We just got back from our mid-day walk, and I'm almost wiped out. I used to be able to tolerate 90° and dew point in the 70s better. This does not bode well for our walking for the rest of the summer unless I can persuade my DH to go out before breakfast.

So I'm whinging too. Happy weekend reading!

*smooch*

>280 LizzieD: How do, Peggy! Glad to see you this sunstruck Sunday. What a change...nary a cloud today after the rain gave way to fog last night and danked me down all night, waking up to this was a delight.

Artem Mozgovoy wrote a very affecting story in Spring in Siberia. You might want to give it a try soon.

*smooch*

The 2023 Miles Franklin Award nominees include Flames author Robbie Arnott's third novel, Limberlost. Winners will be announced on 25 July 2023. I hope he'll win it.

Remember how hard I tried to get y'all into Flames in 2019? I still think we need to pay attention to this writer's work in greater numbers than we have up to now. (Although I was impressed by The Rain Heron, his second novel, it wasn't *quite* up there with Flames...though what could be, to be fair?)

>282 richardderus: RD, I own 20 of the Miles Franklin winners but have only read 4 of 'em. A bit of a hole in my reading, I think.

'Morning, RDear! Happy Monday to you.

>277 richardderus: I'm surprised you gave this book 3* and have successfully dodged a BB.

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Morning, Richard. I had a very nice Meet Up with Joe yesterday. Details over on my thread. We have a good time together, along with having a couple of beers.

>283 PaulCranswick: Considering Australia's proximity to you, it's a considerable hole, PC...considering Australia's strategic placement vis-à-vis China thus it's only increasing global weight, it's down-deep foolish! Get on that project, man!

>284 karenmarie: New-Sunday *smooch*, Horrible me lurve. I gave it three because of what Mrs. Hobart didn't realize she was doing: Explaining the totalitarian revolution that still grips China. Mao's centrally-planned economy was doomed by its brittleness, but his political acumen was spot-on...the factions in China were ripping it up and, if the USA has any say in the matter, will do so again thus making the Chinese passive cogs in the consumer world order without any collective bargaining power.

Nothing really changes. Now it's our stars and stripes flag on the gunboats, not the Union Jackoff. (There's a very dirty play on words in there for those in-the-know.)

>285 msf59: I saw the photo on FB, Mark, so I'll come get details here directly.

Good early afternoon, Richard. I've looked for both Thea Astley and Robbie Arnott used on Amazon, and they're a bit pricey for me at the moment. They go on my wish list though. I read Patrick White but not lately and have some Peter Carey and Elizabeth Jolley. I think that's the extent of my Miles Franklin holdings (except for some Miles Franklin).

Cheers for the rest of your day!

>286 richardderus: Australian books are for some reason notoriously difficult to find in Malaysia, RD. Although having said that I do have 149 books on the shelves unread by Australian authors.

>289 LizzieD: I'm guessing the nominations have a lot to do with the prices being high, Peggy. Greed is eternal.

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>290 PaulCranswick: !!!

That is genuinely odd to me, PC, since LOTSA Aussies go there. But you have a gracious plenty to whittle off the TBR.

Tuesday *smooch* , Richard, and glad that your pain has receded.

Just flagging my latest finish as potentially up your street: A Short History of Coffee. Informative enough, I listened to it in the car. The foundation myth of the frisky goats is entertaining. It even had a section on making decaf, and I am most pleased that the process no longer uses benzene (amongst other things).

>293 vancouverdeb: Thank you most kindly, Deb! Have a pain-rictus-less *smooch* back!

>294 Helenliz: Oh, that does sound like something I'd enjoy, thank you very much Helen. I'm always interested in the ways my fave-rave bevvie has changed the world. Tuesday orisons!

A very good morning to you, Richard. I'm about to get on with it.

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>297 LizzieD: I'm having a nice morning, Peggy, and it just got brighter! *smooch*