richardderus's sixteenth 2024 thread

I'd figure out a way to cheat in short order...like instantly...

Good idea, though, via the irrepressible Tom Gauld in The Guardian

Reviews 001 through 008 are linked here.
Reviews 009 on thru 017 are linked here.
Reviews 018 to 026 are linked there.
Reviews 027 to 033 are linked there.
Reviews 034 through 040 are linked here.
Reviews 041 to 045 are linked here.
Reviews 046 unto 050 are linked here.
Reviews 051 to 059 are linked there.
Reviews 060 up to 064 are linked here.
Reviews 65 up to 78 are linked there.
Reviews 79 through 87 are linked there.
Reviews 088 to 109 are linked there.
Reviews 110 to 112 are linked here.
Reviews 113 up to 117 are linked there.
Reviews 118 through 123 are linked back there.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS

124 Counsel Culture in post #63.
125 Nefando in post #92.
126 Death of the Red Rider (A Leningrad Confidential #2) in post #98.
127 Sacrificial Animals in post #130.
128 Lonely Castle in The Mirror in post #138.
129 The Book of Eve in post #151.
130 Eve out of Her Ruins by in post #169.
131 My Part of Her in post #177.
132 Fowl Eulogies in post #195.
133 The Monsters in our Shadows in post #218.
134 City of Secrets (Detective Margaret Nolan) in post #226.
135 The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty in post #243.
136 Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past in post #251.

All my threads in the 75ers linked somewhere here
My Last Thread of 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2021 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2022 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2023 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

All previous Burgoine reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S BURGOINE REVIEWS:

BURGOINE #038 It Would Be Night in Caracas in post #104.
BURGOINE #039 A Winter's Promise: The Mirror Visitor Book 1 in post #106.
BURGOINE #040 The Last Twist of the Knife in post #109.
BURGOINE #041 LIQUID RULES: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives in post #259.
BURGOINE #042 Edison vs. Tesla: The Battle over Their Last Invention in post #261.
BURGOINE #043 Black Sheep: A Space Opera Adventure (Flight of the Javelin #1) in post #282.
BURGOINE #044 Raft of Stars in post #285.
BURGOINE #045 Vulgarian Rhapsody in post #286.

All previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:
PEARL RULE #018 (25%) The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel (BRZRKR) in post #055.
PEARL RULE #019 (21%) The Aging of Aquarius: Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder in post #263.
PEARL RULE #020 (31%) Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones in post #268.
PEARL RULE #021 (28%) So You Had to Build a Time Machine in post #278.
PEARL RULE #022 (33%) The Secret of Lillian Velvet (Kingdoms and Empires #5) by Jaclyn Moriarty in post #287.

Seriously...not a great venue for normies here.
My 2023 goals are here, for reference.
2024 GOALS
If I reviewed 222 books in 2023, why not go for at least 250 in 2024?

So I will.

All but 36 of 2023's reviews were from NetGalley and Edelweiss+, the DRC aggregators I use to get my biblioholism fixes. That's 16% of the total actually read and reviewed. In 2024, I think that percentage is just fine to maintain, so I'll settle on 41 reads not from those two sources as my soft goal...I don't much care if I hit it exactly, but I do need to leave room to read and review books I've been gifted over the years!

2023's #Booksgiving review blast resulted in my blog views for the month being 177% of November's total. So that worked. I only used Twitter for all of November, then for #Booksgiving, added Bluesky and Tumblr. That worked, too. The sadness of my #PrideMonth limp, flaccid performanceless unblast made me realize that, if I'm going to get a big project done, I need to break it down into steps. This is new for me, and a result of the actual limitations that the strokes have imposed on me. Like no longer being able to read handwriting or decode graphics like Wordle, this acquired dyslexia is a limitation I need to acknowledge. Not to say I won't keep pushing against it...but it's real, and planning needs to be based in reality.
***
End of Q1 thoughts on goals
I've had to drop Tumblr from my review-posting because the owner/president/head jerkoff posted transphobic maunderings, then the trans employees said "y'all CTFD he didn't mean it" which well totally relate to needing the gig, but no. THEN announced Tumblr would sell to AI scrapers everything users have posted there...so that, plus their porn ban, means they get axed from me creating anything there, posting or boosting things there. And they don't care, or notice, but I get to keep my own moral high ground.

I don't see, or feel, any reason to adjust any of my annual goals. I've posted 51 blog posts in 2024, or on track for 200 annual posts; but that does not account for the heavy months of June and #Booksgiving to come, and there are already eleven reviews banked for those two.

End of Q2 thoughts on goals
#PrideMonth ended the quarter better than I'd feared, an average of 287 page views a day on the blog. Twitter did me proud all quarter long representing 68% of referred traffic. My annual goal of 250 blogged reviews is still well within reach. The current 117 is down to June's big push of 27 posts, 26 of them single-title reviews. I've learned that the way to get more eyeballs on a review is to post one at a time even if they're short, and save the gang reviews for the end of the month. Adding up unique views on separate posts on the same day of the week versus ganged reviews showed me 151% more views were made than for the individuals. Message received.

There were a lot of surprises this quarter. I just loved Jonathan Corcoran's memoir, No Son of Mine: A Memoir, which was a relief since I really loved The Rope Swing: Stories and would've hated to say lukewarm things about this one. A disappointing surprise was The Ministry of Time, which sold me on one idea and delivered another that I didn't like nearly so well. A happy surprise was Saint Elspeth, new to me author, found via my BookTuber bud Bryce. Its minor flaws in copyediting did not ruin it for me compare to its reasonably hopeful take on postapocalypse US society.

A book of poems that I decline to name and a free Atwood story were, as expected, unloved. I'm more than ever aware that I have fewer and fewer eyeblinks ahead, so I need to get better at putting down thoughts on Pearl-Ruled books to give myself a sense of completion. I get niggly little guiltfish in my brain if I just drop a book with no resolution by review. I'm reinforced in my certainty that posting reviews is a lot easier if I make a few notes after I finish a read, then come back to make that a review when its day comes to be posted. Since I average five or six books on the go at one time, waiting until I finish a book then writing its review THAT MINUTE is daunting, so often doesn't get done. My blog's "scheduled" page is scary, full of bits and snips and stuff I really, really hope I don't die before I can clean up or delete. Otherwise there'll be months of nasty mean ugly-spirited whinges popping up at seemingly random moments into 2025.

On to Q3 in good spirits, eagerly awaiting #WITMonth in August! (Women In Translation Month, an annual event dreamed up by a woman (!) who was fed up with translators not getting any luuuv.)

See >5 richardderus: for 2023 achievements & 2024 goals.
My January 2024 summary is here.
My February 2024 summary is here.
My March 2024 summary is here.
My April 2024 summary is here.
My mid-May 2024 #PrideMonth launch notice is here.
My May 2024 summary is here.
My June 2024 summary is here.
My July 2024 summary is here.
My #August is #WITMonth launch post is here.
My August is #WITMonth in Review post is here.

Your turn!

Happy new 🧵!

>7 richardderus: Mary dear! Happy to present you with you namesake's imperial crown from Habsburg times:

>9 richardderus: Wow! I bet that sucker is heavy! It’s a beauty though.

Happy new thread, Richard. I need a machine like in the topper, not that it would work for long though!

OK, That's enough! You're starting thread 16, and I'm still on thread #2. You need to send your posse over to my thread, or better yet lead them there. https://www.librarything.com/topic/36042

More seriously, congrats on the new thread.

Happy new one, Richard. I gave up the ship on your last one but I'm back!

Love the topper though I doubt anything would truly help reduce my Mt. TBR....

>10 Storeetllr: One big joy of cybercrowns is they possess no avoirdupois. Enjoy without fear of cricks. *smooch*

Happy Sunday, Richard. Happy New Thread. I hope you had a nice, pain-free weekend.

Happy new one, Richard! Can’t believe I made it in before message 20. 😀

>11 Familyhistorian: Unless it's the gom jabbar, I don't think it'll work on too terribly many of us, Meg.

>12 ArlieS: It does seem, shall we say, odd that a lonely neglected ol' recluse rotting under the spiderwebs like a bearded Miss Havisham has a thread sixteen. Oh, I'll come over to say hidy-ho-there directly.

>13 jessibud2: Hi Shelley! It must be the relief of finally having the paperwork on the estate done with. (Mostly.)

>15 msf59: Sunday orisons, Birddude! I'm so pleased to have some energy, I have spared little thought for other ailments. All good then!

>16 drneutron: Yes indeed, you're an early-adopter-first-in-Scout, Jim. In a mere hundred years, your grands will be boasting about this! (Sixteen threads is pretty good going, though.)

>19 richardderus: - Mostly, being the operative word

I was perplexed by the ", la" t shirt on your last thread as it didn't seem to offer me any clues about pronunciation! Then I pretended I had a US accent and it all became clear. I find that hilarious; if I had to write what sounds correct in my NZ accent it would be "karma-la" or even "car-muh-luh" (we don't do 'r's' here).
Language is a never-ending source of amusement to me.

>22 jessibud2: "Mostly" beats not at all, but good gravy they're making you work for every gain.

>23 LovingLit: I got much the same feeling because I didn't mispronounce it. Not being the first time I'd heard it helps...New York's got a sizable South Asian community.

I appreciate the research on the Comma-La shirt. I am pleased that Kansas is first in introducing you to the T-shirt. I had no idea about what it meant when I saw it. I just appreciated the support she was getting in that huge red space in North Central Kansas. I have to confess that I didn't even get it when I saw it on your previous post. It wasn't until somebody said something about a comma that the lightbulb went off. I might be a Democrat but I am very slow to catch on to somethings at times.

>26 benitastrnad: I'm quite stunned at the energy/mood change this change has summoned into being. There was no sign of it anywhere and then ***WHAM*** the fog lifted and the fresh breezes of contempt blew away the MAGAt miasma of misery.

Congratulations on thread 16, RD.

>1 richardderus: That would put me in some difficulty methinks.

>28 PaulCranswick: "Some difficulty"
😅
"Some" 😂🧠

>1 richardderus: Hmm, my unread books stack is a whole lot bigger than that one. I think I am in trouble!

Happy new thread, RD!

Happy new thread.
I saw that and immediately started working out my circumvention mechanism!

Happy new one, Rdear. I hope you feel much better and the nasty cold is gone. *smooch*

I've had a sinus infection/cold this past week myself. There was one day I spent most of the day in bed. Otherwise, I've tried to be up as much as possible but taking frequent resting breaks (which involved cross stitch or reading, usually on the couch surrounded by cats).

Good morning, RD! Happy Monday and happy new thread.

>1 richardderus: Thank goodness for faulty mechanisms. I’ve been restricted for decades and didn’t even know it. Ignorance is bliss!

*smooch*

>30 alcottacre: I'd estimate that device's unsprung weight, applied to your TBR would be measured in solar masses. I don't see this applying to you, somehow...

>31 Helenliz: Hi Helen! This fact does not surprise me somehow....

>32 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara! There's no outward sign of the cold left. Not that this could not change on a minute's notice, but I'll take this and run with it.

>33 thornton37814: *ew*ew*ew*

Make sure you're staying rested so it won't come back or get worse, Lori. Better more kitty time than more mouth-breathing time. Stay well!

>34 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible! Ignorance is, as you say, bliss. I hope, with increasing frequency, to be gifted with stupidity...to no current avail, being instead encumbered with knowing too much for peace and not enough to launch effective action. I understand Tantalus's punishment well.

*smooch*

>37 richardderus: May I proffer the advice that you "take this" and walk with it??!?? Also refer to >38 richardderus:.

I just read your comment about Sunday lunch on Karen's thread. What a horror! You summoned up lovely Lev in my favorite The Road Home, who does some volunteer cooking at a retirement home when he is just picking up culinary arts doing vegetable prep in a trendy restaurant. I do wish that you had a Lev!

For all our sakes, and yours too, I don't wish stupidity on you. *smooch*

Happy new one, Richards (even if I am saying that as post #41!!!!)

>40 LizzieD: Good point, Peggy me lurve...need to walk before running.

But stupid people have it so easy! They don't think, they just react. So much easier. I want some easy. c'monc'mon pleeeze

*smooch*

>41 RebaRelishesReading: How do, Reba! It's new to you at 41 or 241 so I'll accept the good wishes.

>Hiya, Mr. D.

Sad news about Kathleen Larkin passing. We knew her from our bookstore days.

Did you read The Book of Elsewhere? I suspect you read some early reviewer copy. I’ve been so disappointed. Plodding, snore. Please let me know if you reviewed it, and I’ll look for your review.

Happy new thread, Richard!

>44 jnwelch: Greetings, Joe! I was saddened to learn of Kathleen Larkin's passing. Divided We Fall: The Case for an American Multi-Party System gives me so much hope.

I have my DRC at the ready but will focus on #WITMonth before diving in. I am avoiding reviews until I start it so I can really grasp the littlest bits of effect. How did it go wrong?! I'm very surprised it lead-ballooned.

Stay cool!

>45 figsfromthistle: How do, Anita!

>35 richardderus: Yay! I am glad to hear that it does not apply to me :)

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

>48 alcottacre: *smooch*

Hola, Richard. Glad to hear your energy levels are up. School went well yesterday. I have a new batch of kids and they are quieter and better behaved than last season's group. I am enjoying Sky Full of Elephants. Interesting premise. Keep this one in mind.

>50 msf59: Good news about the kids, Mark! It makes every day a bit easier when others aren't noisy, no?

I'm eager for your thoughts on Sky Full of Elephants, which had me at the title. I hope it keeps living up to its promise. Cheers!

Tuesday *smooch*
We have a high of 68 today and I am enjoying the crisper air.

We're not as crisp as Mary, but our morning walk was wonderful with the temp in the 70s with a breeze. I hope you may enjoy some of this cooler break!

*smooch* for the day!

(I was fully intending to read a book for WITAugust, but the first one I found on my Kindle was too long and didn't grab me immediately. Alas, I was reading other things and stopped looking. I feel so slow!)

Hallo, RDear! Happy Tuesday to you.

I'm PTed, my house is cleaned, my view out the Sunroom windows is gorgeous. I'm reading up a storm.

>39 richardderus: Helplessness in the face of willful ignorance is our lot, I'm sorry to say. I would never have envisioned where the world is right now in 2024, with me being 71. It's hard work to not give in to complete despondency. I will vote, I will hope, but everybody of goodwill and sensibility needs to do those two things, too.

*smooch*

PEARL RULE #018(%) (25%)

The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel (BRZRKR) by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: The legendary Keanu Reeves and inimitable writer China Miéville team up on this genre-bending epic of ancient powers, modern war, and an outcast who cannot die.

A mind-blowing epic from Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books

She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.

There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”

And he wants to be able to die.

In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

In a collaboration that combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, these two inimitable artists have created something utterly unique, sure to delight existing fans and to create scores of new ones.

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

My Review: Bitter dregs of disappointment.

I need to stay much more in the head of "no comic books" and I'll be happier, and make better reading choices for myself. This kind of pseudoprofound character, like The Ancient Mariner, or the Highlander, whose wisdom is aperçus strung together on worn-out fibers of fraying plot-ropes unbundled to make them stretch farther, just does not work for me.

>52 bell7: It's only 72° here, so I'm with ya on the enjoying.

Visit well, enjoy the book beano, and get home safe, dear one.

>53 LizzieD: It would require a new atmospheric physics for y'all to be as nice a day as someone to my north, Peggy, but it does sound like a good day indeed.

#WITMonth's an opportunity, me lurve, not another duty. Concern thyself not. *smooch*

>54 karenmarie: I concur, sweetiedarling. It's all many can do not to collapse under the extant weight so it's always best to limit the load on a person-by-person basis. Tuesday *smooch*

>55 richardderus: Bitter dregs of disappointment. *sad face*
I still wonder what Ethan Hawke's book was like. Why do I I feel apprehensive of actors turned writers? There's nothing to say they are not capable...

Happy new thread, Richard! Already up to 60 posts I see.

>1 richardderus: I'm afraid I'm already over my limit there. I need a bigger mechanism.

>59 LovingLit: He's essentially disavowed the book...refuses to claim credit. I can't figure out what happened to China Miéville. This doesn't resemble the work of his I've read. So sad.

Happy to see you!

>60 atozgrl: ...odd, isn't it, Irene...I sit here, wrapped in boredom and neglect, yet the posts keep coming in.

I don't think any known mechanism can stop us from piling up the reads.

124 Counsel Culture by Kim Hye-jin (tr. Jamie Chang)

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From prize-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin comes the contemplative, superbly-crafted story of a woman scapegoated by sudden tragedy, and the unexpected paths she must wander in search of redemption.

Haesoo is a successful therapist and regular guest on a popular TV program. But when she makes a scripted negative comment about a public figure who later commits suicide, she finds herself ostracized by friends, fired from her job, and her marriage begins to unravel. These details come to the reader gradually, in meditative prose, through bits and pieces of letters that Haesoo writes and finally abandons as she walks alone through her city.

One day she has an unexpected encounter with Sei, a 10-year-old girl attempting to feed an orange cat. Stray cats seem to be everywhere; they have the concern of one other neighborhood woman and the ire of everyone else. Like Haesoo and Sei, the cats endure various insults and recover slowly. Haesoo, who would not otherwise care about animals or form relationships with children, now finds herself pulled back by degrees into the larger world.

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

My Review: A respectful look at "cancel culture" and its multivarious issues. I was not fond of any of the characters, or rooting for them but also lacked animosity towards them. It was a peculiar reading experience as a result: I wanted to know what happened next but felt no frisson, no personal involvement in the story.

I don't remember a comparable sensation while reading fiction, though given the number of books I've read it statistically must have happened before.

More than anything else, Haesoo evoked from me the nostrum, "Physician, heal thyself." The entire time she is in the frame I expect there to occur another breach of empathy from or towards her. This makes the reading experience almost adversarial, but always compelling. She seems to be presented as a thoroughly ordinary person cast adrift in deeper waters than she can realistically navigate. That she swam out beyond her capability to move safely is, in the end, a completely ordinary, in fact universal, issue for humanity in general. Back in the 1970s we called it "The Peter Principle". It's been a truth of human organizational behavior since forever, no matter what trendy name one gives it: Haesoo has failed upwards to her limit of incompetence. She now reaches that interesting lagoon out of the deeper waters where storms from the outside can still reach her, but she is no longer at risk of being dragged to the bottom from which she cannot rise alive.

All of this is, however, much like real life, to be found in pauses, spaces, unfinished sentences. You aren't with Haesoo in the storm. We join her in the lagoon, a place she realizes keeps her safe but feels like a disappointment in its comparative shallowness. The waters are fresh-ish now, much having been dragged out of the space to be redeposited elsewhere. The nature of smaller spaces is, however, that they get full of junk far faster than bigger ones.

Haesoo's letters form a large part of the story. They're the way the author shows us her isolation, her growing sense of the limitations her post-cancellation will be lived within. Letters...things we create in deep isolation that are meant to be sent out to others...are both medium and message in a story like this one that focuses on the quiet parts of Trouble. Haesoo never sends her letters. Her outreach doesn't ever get completed. She focuses on a street cat and an abandoned child, determined to rescue someone as she can not rescue herself, her career, her marriage...some positive thing must come from this diminishment of her self!

It's a self very much built on her identity as a therapist. That's a job of nuances, edge cases, silences unfilled. It did not seem to me to be a job Haesoo should've done. There's a ghostly past event that explains it, I won't offer details because that calls too much attention to what's better experienced as a slow burn. The fact is that Haesoo won't be rehabilitated before your eyes, so if you're after a triumphal overcoming of obstacles story this isn't your best choice.

Read this story if your appetite is for tapas, not smorgasbord. Don't think sushi, those rarefied tastes that come directly from the sea. You're at the end of the food chain not the center. There's a little sip of sherry every so often, dry and cleansing then sweet and masking by turns. It's a case of satisfaction with the presentation, not satiation from the quantity either way.

You'll end up replete not stuffed. I found it very enjoyable. I expect y'all will too.

>55 richardderus: Joe did not care for that one either. Between the two of you, I have no desire at all to pick it up. The chances of my getting to it were slim to begin with as I am not a big fan of China Mieville.

>63 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation and review!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD!

>64 alcottacre: Hiya Stasia! Enjoy >63 richardderus: when you find it. No need for you to feel deprived about >55 richardderus:, trust me. Far too comic-book for my taste, simplistic and lacking profundity...so yeah, I really didn't like it.
***
If you've never watched 40 Fingers before, this is an excellent place to dip your ears into beautiful acoustic-guitar sounds, familiar-yet-new music heard again for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syKZdZJeqGU

>54 karenmarie: "Helplessness in the face of willful ignorance is our lot ..."

*sigh*

I wish my reading didn't suggest that it's always been this way.

>55 richardderus: I have LOVED China Mieville, even the ones that other people don't particularly like. Your review absolves me from acquiring and reading *Elsewhere*. I hope that CM gets back on track with his next one.

*smooch* for the Day of the Hump!

>66 ArlieS: I wish it wasn't always a surprise.

>67 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy. It's been a climb to get here but it just might be a nice trip down the other side. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway, for us all.

Hi RD, and happy Wednesday to you.

>55 richardderus: I’m sorry that this is so bitterly disappointing. I've read The City & The City and had a hard time understanding it. I still have Kraken and Un Lun Dun on my shelves, unread.

>62 richardderus: Neglect. *snort*

>63 richardderus: Excellent review, but I only read your first two paragraphs because, drat. Kindle’d, added to my catalog, confirmed that it downloaded, added to my huge list of books acquired this year.

I was not fond of any of the characters, or rooting for them but also lacked animosity towards them. It was a peculiar reading experience as a result: I wanted to know what happened next but felt no frisson, no personal involvement in the story. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever felt this way about a book. I’ll keep mulling it over. Interesting place to be with a book.

*smooch*

>70 karenmarie: ...practically ignored...cast aside, unnecessary, unneeded, unwanted *woe*

I think you'll really vibe with >63 richardderus:, Horrible. The oddness, the off-kilter viewpoint, the c-a-t will delight in their making of a frame for a story that otherwise probably wouldn't break through the noise of the world to get your attention.

>55 richardderus:. Right? Ditto. What a snooze. I hope at least that they had fun writing it. Like ones of those games with friends that should’ve been put away in a drawer.

I’m having a much better time with North Woods, urged on me by brother Mark.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Joe also didn't like The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel. It sounds like a major DUD. Never was on my radar.

I was selecting my next read and decided to go with a Colin McCann. I own two and picked Zoli, which I then saw that you gave a very glowing review. That sealed it. I also have Dancer, which also looks worthy.

>72 jnwelch: I think, had they had fun writing it, we'd see some sign of it...what a joyless trudge that was. I gave up at 25%. Enjoy the new read, Joe!

>73 msf59: Don't put it there unless you're paying off a karmic debt, Mark. We've suffered on your behalf.

Oh, Zoli! Such a good read. McCann in general is a writer of tremendous talent.

Your threads are flying by and I cannot keep up. Dropping off a which before it zooms off elsewhere.

Lovely crown for Mary, RD! Happy New Thread!

>76 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Glad to see you here.

Things move fast in spite of any effort to rein them in. A universal constant it seems.

>77 vancouverdeb: Deborah! How good to see you. Isn't that crown a good'un? Luckily the rich jerks of the royal past liked them some glittery bling.

Hiya, RDear! Happy Thursday to you.

>71 richardderus: I think you'll really vibe with >63 richardderus: richardderus:, Horrible. The oddness, the off-kilter viewpoint, the c-a-t will delight in their making of a frame for a story that otherwise probably wouldn't break through the noise of the world to get your attention. You have a wonderful way with words.

It’s purty outside, I’ve got bird visitors, brekkie to get, and will have a 90-minute massage at 1 p.m. Joy.

*smooch*

*dusting off cobwebs* I felt sorry for you, since there's so little movement on your thread and thought I'd wish you 'happy new thread' just to cheer you up.

>23 LovingLit: Reading 'Kamala', I would put the stress on the last syllable with the first two short - which, with an English accent would work with 'comma la'. But I'll go with however she says it.

>80 karenmarie: What a terrific way to spend your day. Good on ya, sweetiedarling.

Thanks for the kind comment!

>81 humouress: OMG

A VISITOR!! A VISITOR!! So exciting to see SOMEone at last.

Her way seems to me to be the preferred way for women of South Asian descent in the US. I'm indifferent, tell me how you want me to pronounce your name and I'll get as close as I'm capable of.

Dishes need washed, but before I amble to the kitchen sink, I want to salute you. Just a GP salute, but heart-felt I assure you.

The Bezos minion dropped two packages on my porch, containing two books by Percival Everett: I Am Not Sidney Poitier and A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond As Told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid. The latter book promises (to me) to be a hoot. But oddly (to me), the book page shows only a single review (4 stars) posted in 2011. Hmmm.

>84 weird_O: Your Bezoid visitation is very productive indeed. I wonder if the lack of reviews has a lot to do with that book's very off-putting title. I wouldn't buy it absent someone I respect warbling their fool lungs out to me personally and directly over a long period of time...if then.

Enjoy the slide into the weekend, Weird One.

Happy Friday, Richard. We had a good time with Jack & Co last night. He is adorable as ever. I dipped into Zoli yesterday and I think I made the right choice.

>1 richardderus: The invention comes far too late RD. Do love Gauld. Only occasionally misses the mark leaving me with a quizzical dog expression.

>84 weird_O:, >85 richardderus: I don't recall coming across the Thurmond title when doing my research on Everett for the AAC. It's a sleeper, for sure. I'm intrigued.

>86 msf59: Happy Friday! I'm very glad Zoli caught you quickly...if your experience mirrors mine, you'll keep feeling engaged as it goes along.

Enjoy the weekend-ahead's reads.

>87 Caroline_McElwee: Some of his stuff for New Scientist leaves me feeling that way, too, Caro. If I'd had that invention in 1970, I'd have as many books today...nothin' gonna stop tsundoku from gettin' its fix.

>88 laytonwoman3rd: Hmmm! Interesting that it just never crossed your radar, Linda3rd. We're both in for an interesting time when Bill reports on it.

125 Nefando by Mónica Ojeda (tr. Sarah Booker)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A techno-horror portrait of the fears and desires of six young artists whose lives are upended by a controversial video game, from National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda.

Six young artists share an apartment in Kiki Ortega, a researcher writing a pornographic novel; Iván Herrera, a writer whose prose reveals a deeply conflicted relationship with his body; three siblings, Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia, who quietly search for ways to transcend their abuse as children; and El Cuco Martínez, a video-game designer whose creations push beneath the substrate of the digital world. All of them are connected in different ways to Nefando, a controversial cult video game whose purpose remains a mystery.

In the parallel reality of the game, players found relief from the pain of past trauma and present shame, but also a frighteningly elastic sense of self and ethics. Is Nefando a game for horror enthusiasts, a challenge to players' morals, or a poetic exercise? What happens in a virtual world that admits every taboo?

Unsparing, addictive, and perverse, Nefando takes us to the darkest corners of the web, revealing the inevitable entanglement of digital and physical worlds, and of technology and horror.

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

My Review: If you have a trigger, do not read this book.

I can't recommend this read to you. I can tell you it challenged my every shibboleth, saying out loud things I'm reluctant to confront, because that means acknowledging them. Unlike Jawbone, this book doesn't burst onto the scene pointing Horror's attention onto girls and women as perpetrators and planners of Evil for the first time...well, not literally THE FIRST time but definitely early on...but treads that path with zeal and a ghoulish delight.

I'm always impressed when a writer can genuinely shock me. I was routinely shocked by the game Nefando, genuinely repulsed and affronted by things within it. As the sales copy above says, this is an unsparing story, deeply deeply perverse, and discomfitingly addictive. I didn't much want to keep reading. I had to. I was not going to be able to keep these images from ruining my sleep until I gave the story closure. The last time I felt this way about a psychological horror story was the Japanese version of Ring, which...well,, no, not going into it except to say this story has similarly deeply embedded awful triggers for me.

If I felt any kind of way about the translation, it was deeply impressed. Translator Booker made this nightmarish trip down...all the way down...into the pit an utterly unmissable trip. That takes mad skills. She has those, and clearly also has a deep affinity for psychological horror, the kind that blends pervasive unease with jump scares. If there is ever a horror translators' award, it should be called "The Sarah Booker Slap."

Author Ojeda...I hope this paper exorcism of your personal demons did you all the good in the world. It's set my therapy sessions back at least five years.

*shudder*

Hiya, RD! Happy Friday.

Quiet day planned here in central NC. It’s gorgeous out, will only get to 81°, with low humidity. Of course low humidity out here in the summer is 64%, but I’ll take it.

*smooch*

>92 richardderus: YIKES!!!! and NO THANK YOU!!!!

I believe you took one for the group again, Richard. I wish you were not having to do that so often. Better luck in your reading over the weekend's reading. *smooch*

(I know that I posted here yesterday, but it's nowhere to be found. My computer is acting up, so the fault is probably here.)

>93 karenmarie: Sounds wunderbar, Horrible. 81° is almos "unseasonable chill" for your state, so enjoy every bit if it.

Ignore >92 richardderus:. Totally. Do not so much as read the description. Trust me.

>94 LizzieD: Oh my heck, Peggy, avoid >92 richardderus: entirely! You would HATE it.

Posts do weird things...I edited >92 richardderus: and pasted the edits into my blog...and the UNedited version went up! I've fixed it, of course, but the thing that puzzles me is that my screenshot from last night shows the edited version posted. I y'all's gawd fuckin' with me for fun?

Tomorrow's review is of a book I liked a lot better as a read: Death of the Red Rider, A Leningrad Confidential #2 from Pushkin Press, by Yulia Yakovleva and translated by the very, very talented Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. Violent and filled with wickedness but not dankly perverted.

Happy New Thread! 16 Threads!! Your threads go so fast that I lose track!

126 Death of the Red Rider (A Leningrad Confidential #2) by Yulia Yakovleva (tr. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: As the Red Terror gathers pace, a horseman and horse mysteriously collapse in the middle of a race in Leningrad. Weary Detective Zaitsev, still raw from his last brush with the Party, is dispatched to the Soviet state cavalry school in Novocherkassk, southern Russia, to investigate. As he witnesses the horror of the Holodomor, and the impact of Soviet collectivisation, he struggles to penetrate the murky, secretive world of the cavalry school.

Why has this particular murder attracted so much attention from Soviet officials? Zaitsev needs to answer this question and solve the case before the increasingly paranoid authorities turn their attention towards him...

Don’t miss the second installment in the atmospheric and relentlessly dark detective series set in Stalinist Russia, where corruption, informers, and purges take paranoia to the next level.

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

My Review: Less gray-skied than Punishment of a Hunter, just as paranoid, just as nail-bitingly intense. The action moving south of Leningrad to "Cossack country," a nomenclatural sidestep from the modern name of a place Little Vladdy Pu-Pu doesn't much like having mentioned at present, changes the externals and, if anything, ramps up the internal conflicts between self and State present in every single breath taken in Stalinist times.

Zaitsev has a new...comrade? minder? internal spy?...in Zoya, a woman with a chip on her shoulder about being judged unfairly (because woman), a woman with a difficult attitude of disrespect for the people among whom she and Zaitsev must do their investigative job, and a general poor substitute for last book's Nefyodov. When you're among people who are extra-suspicious of you because you're Russian when they were already unhappy to see someone sent by the central authorities to poke around in places they'd just as soon leave unpoked, thanks, to solve a crime that took place a world away, to someone whose life was a-rattle with the skeletons in his closet...this will not end well for plenty of folks.

It's heavenly!

No one can be trusted! About/with/for ANYthing! Every time Zaitsev finds something out he has to unwrap more shades of meanings than Tut had embalmers' bandages! Impressively, Author Yakovleva manages to make the thriller-y bits cohere well. There's a secondary theme in who was murdered, where, and why, though it's not particularly energetically explored. It very much comes with the murdered man's identity, and I found it and its deeper ramifications interesting, but if I don't holler about it the importance won't be obvious to most. And I won't. This series has, as one of its main pleasures, the pressure cooker of Zaitsev sweating out the clues, in the teeth of multiple prongs of opposition, while uncovering realities of his life lived in Soviet Russia that break him on a human level.

So my attention was riveted again...last book I gave an extra quarter-star to, elevating it almost to fivehood. Not this one, despite my praising it; so why?

As pleasure reading, deeply interesting history of the Red Terror is...challenging. The information Zaitsev discovers as his investigation goes on would've gotten him shot in 1937 Russia. He could not have survived learning what he did...too much evidence to the contrary exists in the identities of the many murdered. So my disbelief muscle was sore from overuse. Also, why didn't he just shove Zoya under a tram or into a combine harvester and have done with it? She was more than a poor partner for an investigator, she was a provocatively bad investigator herself.

So there's the missing fractional star. Noe of that made me less eager to get to the next chapter, and I could not wait to pick up the read every day.

So a big #WITMonth win for Pushkin Vertigo, and me; y'all, too, if you go get one now.

>97 SilverWolf28: Hi Silver! Happy to have you visit!

'Morning, RDear! Happy Saturday to you.

>98 richardderus: Not my jam, but well writtten, as always.

*smooch*

Happy Saturday, Richard. I am picking up the camper today. The countdown has begun. The heat and humidity also moves back in today. Ugh! I will miss those cool nights, with the windows open.

>100 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible! I think you're wise to pass on >98 richardderus:. That level of pressurecooking, only to discover there's something truly morally rotten underneath even the resolution, would never be likely to satisfy ma'at-o-mane you.

Thanks for the kind words! *smooch*

>101 msf59: Saturday orisons, Birddude! Sorry the ugsome weather's returned at this inopportune moment. Still, you're going to a place that's bound to be cooler than Chicagoland, right?

Fall is on the way. This is the last gasp, so grin and bear it briefly, and most of all get the real pleasures of the trip!

BURGOINE #038

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo (tr. Elizabeth Bryer)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Told with gripping intensity, It Would be Night in Caracas chronicles one woman’s desperate battle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of modern Venezuela and the lengths she must go to secure her future.

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother–the only family Adelaida has ever known.

Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night—to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But as fate would have it, Adelaida is given a gruesome choice that could secure her escape.

Filled with riveting twists and turns, and told in a powerful, urgent voice, It Would Be Night in Caracas is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA AMAZON FIRST READS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Too much going on, ends up dissipating all my genuine and interested involvement in this story of a woman living an ordinary life in extraordinary times in a collapsing democracy. No sooner does the mother get buried than five other things happen in ten minutes. Exaggerating for effect, of course.

It's not that I DISliked the read. It's that I couldn't keep up with it.

HarperVia asks you for $2.99 to read a Kindle edition. I would not feel irked had I spent that on this read.

Good morning, Richard. As always, I appreciate your reviews. I'm far more likely to try *Red Rider* than *Caracas* although I often lean toward learning more about South America in general through fiction.

*smooch* for your Saturday!

BURGOINE #039
A Winter's Promise: The Mirror Visitor Book 1 by Christelle Dabos (tr. Hildegarde Serle)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Long ago, following a cataclysm called “The Rupture,” the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands. Known now as Arks, each has developed in distinct ways; each seems to possess its own unique relationship to time, such that nowadays vastly different worlds exist, together but apart. And over all of the Arks the spirit of an omnipotent ancestor abides.

Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors. Her peaceful existence on the Ark of Anima is disrupted when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, from the powerful Dragon clan. Ophelia must leave her family and follow her fiancée to the floating capital on the distant Ark of the Pole. Why has she been chosen? Why must she hide her true identity? Though she doesn’t know it yet, she has become a pawn in a deadly plot.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA AMAZON FIRST READS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Adolescent exceptionalism gets validated hard in this fun first-in-series fantasy. There are four in total, or so far at least.

I am deeply uninterested in how Unique and Special and Girl this character is. I enjoyed the animate-world parts, and found the worldbuilding deft. It was allowed to be part of the story not presented as A Revelation. As she moves through the steps of discovering *what* is happening, she also learns the whys of it.

Not at all a bad read...especially for someone who doesn't have decades and decades of possessing a "Y" chromosome. In fact, best for people who would say men are possessed by their "Y" chromosome.

>105 LizzieD: Morning, Peggy me lurve. I think >98 richardderus: would really keep you rapt, though I think some scenes would...um...cause some derangements from your ideal functioning.

You might enjoy >106 richardderus: more. Sampling it would be wise. *smoochiesmoochsmooch*

>98 richardderus:
Interesting. Zaitsev in the Czech language means Rabbit. I wonder if it means the same in Russian?

BURGOINE #040
The Last Twist of the Knife by João Almino (tr. Elizabeth Lowe)

Rating: 2.75* of five

The Publisher Says: After a quarrel, an ageing lawyer leaves his wife and travels from Brasília to the dry, lawless backlands of Brazil’s northeastern plateau, where he grew up. He has vague plans to start a new life, to buy a ranch and farm cotton, but unresolved childhood obsessions, fantasies, traumas resurface, threatening to overwhelm his very sense of identity. Consumed with thoughts of revenge against the man who murdered his father when he was only two, he discovers that he may in fact have been the lovechild of his rich godfather―the man who ordered the hit―and may therefore be the half-brother of the girl for whom he harbored an adolescent sexual fixation.

In this masterful novel rich in local color, João Almino creates a complex, damaged narrator inexorably dragged down into the vortex of his own treacherous memories.

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

My Review: Bored middle-aged man obsesses over The Girl That Got Away. After divorcing the wife who has the temerity not to save him from himself, he moves home to The Provinces *eyeroll* from the city, can't find the One, discovers he's descended from a long line of serial sexual predators/abusers, and...well, that's it, really.

Even if this was about him pining for a boy from his past, I'd find this a bog-standard iteration of a story I'm not very fond of anyway.

Dalkey Archive asks for $9.95 to let you read a Kindle edition. It has the virtue of being short.

>108 benitastrnad: It wouldn't surprise me in the least, Benita. It suits his agility and jumpiness, and seems like something Author Yakovleva would use.

I love Tom Gauld so much.

Mornin' Sir!! Glad to see you're still ripping through the books. Hope all is well.

Happy Saturday, Richard! I’m getting away unscathed by book bullets today, although it was close with The Death of the Red Rider.

Karen O

>112 RebaRelishesReading: Hey Reba! I'm glad to say the reads are, on balance, better than average this #WITMonth.Some blah, most decent, only one really rank and another unpleasant to me (though possibly not to others). Yay!

>113 klobrien2: Saturday orisons, Karen O. Pretty much the best result, then...enjoy the reviews and stay fat-walleted.

*smooch*

>116 richardderus: indeed

>117 RebaRelishesReading: Wish more people saw this for the disfiguring character flaw it is, Reba.

>116 richardderus: Brilliant.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday.

>102 richardderus: I had to actually do a bit of thinking there, to get your reference. I usually am a believer in “truth, justice, harmony, and balance”, and especially appreciate the reference to Old Kingdom Egypt. Sometimes, though, especially with the MM romances I’ve been reading since June of 2022, I find myself loving the morally gray areas of assassins and hitmen.

>104 richardderus: Damning with faint praise. I’ll pass.

>106 richardderus: I just saw a reference to Sommarøy, a Norwegian island, that wants to ‘abolish’ time, yesterday, so although this doesn’t particularly interest me, the concept of a unique relationship to time does. And I’m mostly past caring about vociferous X and Y chromosome POVs.

>110 richardderus: I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of your eviscerating reviews. Thank goodness I'm not a published author.

>111 richardderus: Heh. Reminds me of the 2699 books either abandoned but kept for better times or tagged tbr on my shelves. I’m sure they are hopeful, too.

>116 richardderus: Poifect!

*smooch*

>120 karenmarie: Howdy Horrible. I'm glad you liked that take on 34/45's so-called "character". That sleaze might have accidentally done us all a service by drawing the white-nationalist pustule to a head. Not at all sure we're safe from them yet. I fear not.

Gray areas make better stories. Better people, too. We should all remember that, if you need threats to make you behave like a decent human being, you aren't. The issue is, as always, agreeing on what a "decent human being" actually is.

Here at last, Richard! "decent human being" ---- I'm thinking of a friend who always ends an argument, especially with a salesperson or bureaucrat, by saying "I know that you want to do the right thing." She really believes that; I'm not that generous. On the other hand, it often works in her favor.

>116 richardderus: Very nice!

>111 richardderus: I decided that the books would feel better on my shelves (or in my piles) than in a used book store or the dump. It could amount to the same thing if you're a book.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

>122 LizzieD: Peggy! Like you, I doubt the desire of most people to do the righy thing. I suspect most don't care, but want only to do the easiest thing that will also get you out of their face.

Heh, I think our homes are better than dumps to a book.

*smooch*

Drive by Monday *smooch* Hope the beginning if the week finds you with an excellent read!

>65 richardderus: Thanks for the link to the 40 Fingers video, RD. I will listen to it in its entirety as I have time, but I did listen to the beginning number and liked it.

Skipping ahead as I am 60 posts behind again. . .

>116 richardderus: Isn't that the truth?

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a marvelous Monday!

Morning, Richard. I hope you had a good pain-free weekend. The countdown has begun on our Big Trip. Now we have to deal with some record-breaking heat before we go. Could push triple digits. NO PB for me.

>116 richardderus: Nailed it!

>124 figsfromthistle: Monday orisons, Anita! *smooch*

>125 alcottacre: It's the truth indeed, Stasia! Enjoy New Mexico, smoochling.

>126 msf59: Hiya Birddude, hope you're enjoying your anticipation of the Big Trip. *gaaak* on triple digits! I'm pretty sure that's unConstitutional.

127 Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.

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

My Review: The pleasure I felt reading this book about a bisexual man embroiled in a failing family that's falling to pieces under a culturally unexpected malevolence...! If your mood says, "make it fast," move on to the next cookie-cutter thriller. If your mood says, "give me the literary equivalent of edging," you opened the right book.

The pacing of the read itself is fast. The way the short chapters propel your reading is not, however, equaled by the pace of the story unfolding. The relocation into different periods of time that unfold the wide fan of motives and motivations is much more deliberate. I was surprised by this at first, but in time found my footing in this technique of moving the pages at a different rate from the story itself. In the end, the mechanism I used for dealing with this mismatch was the same one I'd used eons ago when I watched All My Children...the stories moved slower than the episodes.

That said...the story is very familiar. Using this technique helped a Gothic romance-cum-horror tale feel more exciting than that description does. Emilia, the exoticized Other, gets the modern reader's sympathy at first. She's rejected and devalues based on her Otherness. We respond to this behavior nowadays with complete sympathy for the Othered, as goodness only knows it was long past time for us to do as a default.

...but what if that could be used to wreak havoc...?

The author, an ethnic Chinese adoptee into Midwestern culture, decided she would use this very, very clever repurposing of the wide paranoid streak in US culture to create a Gothic story of supernatural entities causing havoc for, apparently, the hell of it. The nine-tailed fox of East Asian folklore seems, more often than not, to just do stuff to see what'll happen next. That seems to me, when attributed to conscious entities, like a wicked, immoral, rotten-souled thing to do, as it is guaranteed to hurt someone who does not know what they're getting into when they fall for the fox-spirit's lures. One can argue that, really basically, Nick fucking his brother's wife for any reason at all is just cause for everything that follows.

I agree.

But everyone else? They didn't ask for this.

So runs my usual horror-themed read response. Like Walschots's Hench, I've always seen super"heroes" as agents of chaos and misery; I watched Poltergeist and asked my then-date, "what the hell are these people gonna do when their insurance won't replace the house?" (He broke up with me a few weeks later.) It doesn't help that I do not believe in The Supernatural, or spirits, or gods. (The vastness of just measurable spacetime isn't awe-inspiring enough for you?) That's one steep hill of disbelief to climb for one little story.

Where I got invested in Author Pedersen's iteration of it was back to that soap-opera technique of unfolding the fan behind the shadowplay of the story. I was constantly thinking "what's that going to mean?" and "what's his zipper doing down?" not focusing on the action in the moment.

For some of y'all, that's the nail in the coffin right there. Good. This will not be a good read for someone whose story in-the-moment expectations are to move from cause to effect and ever onwards, kicked in the hindquarters by heavy boots of Action. A more satisfied reader will come from the ranks of the curious ones who climb hills to look around from the top, then walk down to look at the top.

Satisfying reading, though not in the easy, ordinary way.

NB the blogged review has links to explanations

>130 richardderus: Interesting, and thanks for the review, Richard! Interested ----? I'm not sure. If it comes my way, I'll remember it.

Your "cold" turned out to be COVID???? How did I miss that???? (I picked the info up from your comment on Roni's thread.) Forbear!

Otherwise, *smooch* for the day and the new week!

>131 LizzieD: IF it swims past you, reach a hand out...but honest, Peggy, I don't think it'll thrill you. Mildly entertain is likely, but not assured. It suffers from first-novel focus issues.

COVID's my diagnosis, because there was a massive outbreak here. I certainly felt awful enough, and it was over fast the way the current strand of the stuff is, but no one official said it was COVID.

*smooch*

Hiya, RDear! Happy Monday to you.

>130 richardderus: And onto the wish list it goes.

>132 richardderus: Gads. Another bout of Covid for you. I’m sorry, glad you’re recovered.

*smooch*

>133 karenmarie: Monday orisons, Horrible...I was just over at your new digs to say hello. I think >130 richardderus: would be a great KU read for you. The Chinese-folklore parts might hit your curious bump and make it a more involving read. *smooch*

I wish Sacrificial Animals was KU, but it's a hefty $14.99 plus tax. However, it is available as an Audible credit. I have 3 available, so I'm toying with the idea. *smooch*

They were not farmers, but my dad's maternal side settled in Nebraska in the 1860s and were postmasters, pharmacists, railroad and grainery employees, and etc.

>135 karenmarie: Oh, well, yes indeed then. For a credit or two, absolutely.

Hello Ricardo!! Sacrificial Animals sounds intriguing. And as usual, I enjoyed your review, no matter the book. ; ) Hope you feel better soon. We had 3 people come down with Covid at our week away, so I can only cross my fingers and hope I don't get it. Tested negative so far...

128 Lonely Castle in The Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (tr. Philip Gabriel)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a tranquil neighborhood of Tokyo seven students are avoiding going to school—hiding in their darkened bedrooms, unable to face their family and friends—until the moment they find the mirrors in their bedrooms are shining.

At a single touch, they are pulled from their lonely lives into to a wondrous castle straight out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. This whimsical place, oddly lacking in food and running water but full of electrical sockets, is home to a petulant girl in a mask, named Wolf Queen and becomes their playground and refuge during school hours. Hidden within the walls they’re told is a key that will grant one wish, and a set of clues with which to find it. But there's a catch: the key must be found by the end of the school year and they must leave the premises by five o'clock each day or else suffer a fatal end.

As time passes, a devastating truth emerges: only those brave enough to share their stories will be saved. And so they begin to unlock each other's stories: how a boy is showered with more gadgets than love; how another suffers a painful and unexplained rejection and how a girl lives in fear of her predatory stepfather. As they struggle to abide by the rules of the game, a moving story unfolds, of seven characters trapped in a cycle of misunderstanding and loneliness, who are ultimately set free by the power of friendship, empathy, and sacrifice.

Exploring vivid human stories with a twisty and puzzle-like plot, this heart-warming novel is full of joy and hope for anyone touched by sadness and vulnerability. At the heart of this tender, playful tale is a powerful message about the importance of reaching out which shows how with one kind act you can change your life for the better, and more importantly, you can change the lives of others.

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

My Review: A story about coming out, though not the kind that phrase currently evokes. These socially maladroit and thus ostracized middle-schoolers are magically transported away from the bullying horrors of that age...the characterization of reincarnation as an endless round of middle-school lifetimes makes me so very glad I'm not A Believer...but, of course, there's a price to pay for this act of rescue. The seven of them must open up, honestly share their experiences, and only then will they be truly safe.

Well. That sounds like something I'd be sharpening my flensing knife with a ghoulish grin on my face, doesn't it? More adolescent exceptionalism! And with an added splodge of fantasy goo! "Oh he's gonna go to town on this one!"

Not this time.

Any story in which adolescent readers are encouraged, without bludgeoning, to share, and to respect the gift of sharing from another, gets my vote. Then to put it in a fantasy world that protects the wounded ones? Bonus points! To go on with the worldbuilding in a way that connects their safe escape spot back to the world they're rescued from, yet without the toxicity they need rescuing from flooding in after them? Rare and delicate flower, let me inhale you! The most usual problems are here, the bullying and the losses of safety and love. Each person's also shown to be made aware from the response to the issue that led the sufferer to this magical safe space of how much different the same stimulus can feel to different people.

Literally the point of this entire book is to learn the art of perspective in dealings with others.

I would like to experience no surprise, no extra frisson of happiness at this. The world would be a better place if I didn't. But I did, and I encourage all y'all with grands, niblings, kids of twelve or more, to grab this story up thence to present it ever-so-casually to them. It's a message, one of kindness and the presumption of goodwill on the part of all who are not genuinely rotten-souled, that I'd strongly urge getting into their heads.

Their dads and uncles, older brothers, and so on, as well.

>138 richardderus: Hmm. Maybe I should get that one and 'accidentally' leave it lying around.

>139 humouress: As parenting-through-literature strategies go, that one's an evergreen for a reason.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Tuesday to you.

>138 richardderus: Drat. Another BB. As I write this I’ve only read what the publisher has to say and haven’t even read your review yet. However, I anticipate that it will be up to your usual standards and congratulate you on it. And, now having read your review, I just actually spent money on it.

I realize that relatively speaking, I was seriously repressed and closed off regarding my feelings until my early 30s, and wish I’d had a book like this.

*smooch*

Sauce for the goose....

>141 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible...I'm deeply glad books like this are more readily available to the world today, and also wish there was a bibliotime machine to shuttle them back to 1965 me. If that opportunity arose, I'd grab it with all forty fingers (I'm preternaturally befingered when it comes to books).

*smooch*

>142 richardderus: ha, ha, ho, ho, -- laughing quietly to myself. Love that.

>144 RebaRelishesReading: Made me smirk, too, Reba.

Oh, boy, you are cracking through the books, Richard! Wednesday *smooch*

Oh sure, skip me up in >137 Berly:. ; ) Smooch.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Yesterday was brutal. Sure glad I was not humping the US mail in that heat. A bit better today but will still play PB indoors. Just a few pages left in Zoli. It didn't land with me as well, as it did you but I loved the main character and found much of that gypsy culture fascinating.

>147 Berly: Oh dearr! I'm sorry, dear Berly-boo! You were in the wrong place, it seems, and I didn't see you. I think you'll enjoy Sacrificial Animals when it gets to the top of the pile. *smoochiesmoochsmooch*

>148 msf59: Zoli didn't delight? Well, there's still a lot to like, even if delight isn't in the cards. I have no idea if I'd like it as much if I read it now, which is really unlikely...too many shiny new books.

Enjoy the indoor PB!

129 The Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa (tr. Samantha Schnee)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: What if everything they’ve told us about the Garden was the other way around? Faced with what appears to be an apocryphal manuscript containing ten books and 91 passages, Eve decides to tell her version: she was neither created from Adam's rib, nor is it exact that she was expelled by the apple and the serpent, nor is story they tell of Abel and Cain true, neither that of the Flood, nor that of the Tower of Babel...

With brilliant prose, Carmen Boullosa gives a twist to the book of Genesis to dismantle the male figure and rebuild the world, the origin of gastronomy, the domestication of animals, the cultivation of land and pleasure, through the feminine gaze. Based on this exploration, sometimes fun and other times painful, The Book of Eve takes a tour through the stories they’ve told us and which have helped to foster (and cement) the absurd idea that woman is the companion, complement, and even accessory to man, which opens the door to criminal violence against women. Boullosa refutes and breaks them in this feminist novel, foundational and brazen.

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

My Review: Feminist retelling of Adam and Eve from Genesis.

As one might expect I was no fan of the patriarchal version, it being part of a religious tradition that I detest. I can't say that flipping the script to make it clear that Eve was hard done by in the Abrahamic original, and offering an Eve-centered corrective, was particularly agreeable, either; the entire religious framework is just so utterly nonsensical that making a shift in viewpoint doesn't make it less ridiculous.

I've seen significant consumer-review criticism of Author Boullosa (of Heavens on Earth fame) for sounding angry and anti-man in this retelling of the ur-text of misogyny. Well, honestly! How silly of the woman to feel some kinda way about a story that's been used for literal millennia to bludgeon women into submission to men in god's name? Outrageous!

The storytelling volume is indeed turned to eleven of ten, and the weird stop on the organ is out all the way. Eve reclaims the Ark myth as her own (which makes a lot of sense TBH) and has a really, um, off-center story of how we all came to have those indispensible things, the anus. Have to read it to find out. But the fact is, neither Adam nor Eve as created being would have one...or a navel...as they never gestated so never grew 'em. What the hell did I just read was my most frequent thought as I kept reading this uncorked, vociferous Eve's take on the stories I value so little.

So, on the one hand, yes indeed this woman's take on a man's story of why women should submit to him is plenty angry, on the other hand it always makes a story more interesting and more relevant to look at it upside down. Author Boullosa is a dab hand at making her characters sound like they are in the room with you. I found this storytelling voice compelling, angry, and Eve herself resolutely unwilling to be a good girl and quiet down. Thank goodness, though in spite of her absence of sham modesty Eve never addressed my most burning Biblical question:

Can anyone explain to me why the myth got started the Eve was created from Adam's rib, when we've all got the same number of these bones? Clearly it makes more sense...insofar as any of this guff does...to have her created from his baculum, since humans ain't got those no more.

>151 richardderus: Mark Twain's Eve's Diary in the Letters from the Earth collection is a pretty good clap back to the Genesis story

>152 magicians_nephew: He played it for laughs but told home truths, if you the reader were willin to listen.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

>151 richardderus: If this was nonfiction, I’d immediately buy it, but at least it goes on my wish list. Excellent review, as always.

*smooch*

>142 richardderus: Heh heh heh heh heh ---- Does my heart good.

Glad you're feeling some better, Richard. *smooch* for your day!

>155 LizzieD: Don't it just, Peggy, don't it just!

*smooch*

>130 richardderus: I do not think that one is for me. I stay away from horror as it gives me nightmares (which I am sure is the intention) and I have enough problems sleeping (barring when CFS hits.)

>132 richardderus: Sorry to hear about the COVID and hope it leaves you alone soon!

>138 richardderus: That one is already in the BlackHole, thanks to a recommendation from Mary (bell7). Woot! - just found that it is available through Hoopla - so I appreciate the reminder that I still need to read it.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD.

>142 richardderus: *ROFLMAO*

>151 richardderus: This is sitting on the edge of becoming a BB, in spite of me mostly sharing your opinion of the religion in question. (There are sects and believers that manage to be reasonable, even good. But while there are good things in among the rest of the sources, I give more credit to these individuals than to the resources of their faith.)

"Can anyone explain to me why the myth got started the Eve was created from Adam's rib, when we've all got the same number of these bones? Clearly it makes more sense...insofar as any of this guff does...to have her created from his baculum, since humans ain't got those no more."

Hmm, I wonder if someone was subtly signaling that the whole thing was nonsense, by including verifiable statements that could easily be shown untrue. Well, unless we assume that Adam originally had one more rib than any other human, before or since.)

Not too likely - too dangerous to mock The Truth according to violent True Believers, no matter how subtly.

Wednesday *smooch*
I'm home now so will slowly attempt to catch up on threads a bit.

The last couple of books you've read that may have tempted me are ones I've already read. Glad you enjoyed Lonely Castle in the Mirror. I liked A Winter's Promise a touch more than you did, though I have yet to pick up book 2.

QED

>157 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! I'm glad I could propel you to Hoopla for >138 richardderus:. Enjoy it!

Happy Wednesdaying, wherever it may take you. *smooch*

>158 ArlieS: True Believers are dreadfully touchy, no? Your disbelief is an existential threat to them...suggesting that "belief" in fact, isn't belief but conditioning.

I stick with my assertion: it *must* be the baculum. Which, of course, explains why so many women have no trouble channeling their inner dickheadedness.

>159 bell7: Hiya Mary! Picking up book 2 is the ultimate test, isn't it...no sequel means your subconscious is voting with its feet.

Welcome home, dear lady.

>160 richardderus: Nicely put. Happy Wed-nes-day!

Too bad about the covid, Richard! I hope you are feeling much better. My sister is just recovering from covid and as she and her husband are off to Germany September 1st , they are very pleased about that. My nephew arrived home to my 82 year old mom's with covid after a 3 week stay at camp, so my sister in law and brother arranged an emergency extraction of Ben the next day. They live in Edmonton, about 10 - 12 hours drive away. My mom seems to be fine now, as does my sister and niece who also live with my mom.

Happy Thursday! *smooch*

>164 Berly: Thank you, smoochling. It was okay. I didn't expect it to be more than that so I'm contented.

>165 vancouverdeb: That damned disease! Mortally sick (!) of it. I'm off for the new jab next week to see if I can stay ahead of the mutations. I'm really glad we have these technologies for mitigating the harm of disease.

‘Morning, RDear.

I’m sorry Covid still has you in its nasty embrace. I hope you’re better soon.

>160 richardderus: Seeing tolerance as a social contract removes the religious aspect of it, of course, because moral standards vary by religion. As a liberal theist not associated with any religion, I applaud this.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

130 Eve out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi (tr. Jeffrey Zuckerman)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "Devi writes about terrible and bitter events with a soft, delicate voice."—Le Figaro

With brutal honesty and poetic urgency, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country's endless cycle of fear and violence: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve's best friend, the only one who loves Eve without self-interest, who has plans to leave but will not go alone; Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, inspired by Rimbaud, in love with Eve; Clélio, belligerent rebel, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.

Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society. Awarded the prestigious Prix des cinq continents upon publication as the best book written in French outside of France, Eve Out of her Ruins is a harrowing account of the violent reality of life in her native country by the figurehead of Mauritian literature.

The book featurues an original introduction by Nobel Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clézio, who declares Devi "a truly great writer."

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

My Review: Paradise is always a fantasy, a construct imposed on a much more complicated reality. It is also used, with distressing regularity and near-universal success, as a trap for the seekers and for the sacrificial victims the entrappers designate.

The sea by the luxury hotel gleams with hazy fire. Where we live, it looks like oil and smells like an armpit. People walk past, sit at a café, take in the air, drink beers, enjoy the weather, and think about nothing. Eve once told me that we were on another planet. I think she’s right. Our sun and theirs aren’t the same.

No tourist could fail to wince at the reality of Paradise; so they're carefully steered away from contact with it.

Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.

The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.

Fantasy is good business, and good for business. Look at Disney's "entertainment" empire, its parks, hotels, cruise ships, retirement homes for fucksake. What it costs, what it does to the homes of real people, isn't priced into the fantasist's experience. It's an economic externality. Tourists, often with the very best of intentions, go to places to have experiences, learn things, be broadened and hopefully improved. Travel does alter people who can afford to do it.

The capitalist system demands that, wherever there is money to be made, as much as possible of it should be funnelled into the pockets of the very richest. So that broadening travel? It benefits you, the comparatively rich tourist and it enriches the service providers; leaving the people whose home you're staying in, whose lives you're altering, with less than a fair share. Most destructively, people like Eve are encouraged to commodify their being on this Earth:

The school principal told me: Vous vous devez de réussir. Then she said it again in English: You owe it to yourself to succeed. And finally in Mauritian Creole: Pa gaspiy u lavi.

Careful now...read that again. This is the colonizer's hand showing through the glove. Like that deeply and disturbingly unchristian "prosperity doctrine," it exchanges the idea of development, improvement, education for "success" that ever-elusive endlessly mutable chimera of the economic system. And look how beautifully succinct that message is, delivered in the colonizers' tongue, the dominant language of capitalism, then the hearer's local language. The hierarchy is laid bare. Fewer than thirty words to create the spine of a story.

Eve is, in the eyes of those around her who purport to love her, a wild creature of iron whims and large passions. She is a small woman. That means her intensity is almost fetishized in acknowledging it; it also has the side effect of making her sexually desirable. As she's a person very capable of dissociation, like many intelligent women, she uses sex to acquire things she needs and things she wants.

This willingness to divorce herself from the use of her body is, ironically, the greatest guide to the woman she loves and who returns that love, Savita.

Eve's silence is the rumble deep within the volcano. It hurts me to see her so fragile when she thinks she's so strong.

Savita sees Eve's magma, her soul heating the rock of her life to boiling point. She longs for the abillity to soothe her, to release the pressure that pushes Eve away from everyone else. In a grim, horrible way, she does that.

The shortness of this read shouldn't be mistaken for truncation or cursoriness. Savita's arc, not long, so hugely, consequentially alters Eve's and Troumaron's as an entire "native" (that ugly colonizers' term for the owners of the land) community, that an entire fifty thousand more words could be spent on it without adding a scintilla of intensity, meaning, or passion. Eve is transformed, attains an apotheosis, that alters her male admirer Saadiq (a poetry-obsessed yobbo whose yearning for her organizes his life and leaves hers untouched) perhaps most. The end of the story isn't a cheery, uplifting one. The end of the story is, instead, the realization of the inevitability of sacrifices in pursuit of the idea of Paradise.

I'll comment that the narrative voice here is not, nor was it meant to be, an accurate presentation of young people's actual spoken language. When you're telling a story this consequential, using more poetic, lyrical cadences is a useful way of communicating to the reader they're to look for more than the surface of the tale. I also note that Nobel-winner J.M.G. Le Clézio wrote an introduction that is one long spoiler for the story. I advise you to read it last.

I enjoyed this read very much. I hope you'll take heed of the content warning for sexual abuse...it's not graphically shown but it is absolutely pervasive of every aspect of the story told here.
ETA numbering

A rabbi explained to me once that Eve was created out of the "flank" or "side" of Adam (Rib is thought to be a mis translation now)

Not from his head to rule over him or from his feet to be subservient to him but from his side to be his companion. That's not too bad.

The writings make much of the fact that Eve was (a) created after the animals and (b) created not from the earth but from Adam's own flesh.

Adam gets to name the animals and be dominant over them but he does not get to name or be dominant over Eve (woman). (Though that changes after The Fall).

These few verses were discussed a lot. Talmudic writing is fascinating as long as you don't take it too seriously.

>170 magicians_nephew: Its fascination wanes when people take it seriously. At least for me it does. Any wisdom one can extract from it is mitigated to the point of active destructiveness by presenting it as "holy" or "authoritative."

The edifice is rotten, from top to bottom, inside to outside.

Sorry to hear The Rona got you again, RD. Hope you're feeling more human again soon!

>172 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie, it's good to be on the upswing...again, I note with some trepidation. Well, at least I'm not one of the unfortunates who have been sent to the hospital by the disease. A few days of misery is the worst to date, and twice I'd never have known I had it absent testing. *whew*

I've started watching the new competitive show, Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, on Netflix. Gotta fill the time until GBBO starts. It's decent, but not superb. Fun enough for second place.

Good night, Ricard. My advice for the rest of the week: GET WELL! My advice for the rest of the year: STAY WELL!

*smooch*

>170 magicians_nephew: I like that translation -- companionship. : )

>173 richardderus: Glad you are on the mend. Three of the family came down with Covid on our recent trip. So far I have escaped it. Fingers crossed and knock on wood!

131 My Part of Her by Javad Djavahery (tr. Emma Ramadan)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In exiled Iranian author Javad Djavahery’s captivating English debut, a youthful betrayal during a summer on the Caspian sea has far-reaching consequences for a group of friends as their lives are irrevocably altered by the Revolution.

For our unnamed confessor, the summer months spent on the Caspian Sea during the 1970s are a magically transformative experience. There, he is not the “poor relative from the North,” but a welcome guest at his wealthy cousin Nilou’s home and the gatekeeper of her affections. He revels in the power of orchestrating the attentions of her many admirers, granting and denying access to her would-be lovers. But in a moment of jealousy and youthful bravado, he betrays and humiliates an unlikely suitor, setting into motion a series of events that will have drastic repercussions for all of them as the country is forever transformed by the Iranian Revolution a few short years later.

Over the next twenty years, the lingering effects of that betrayal set the friends on radically different paths in the wake of political, religious, and cultural upheaval. Their surprising final reunion reveals the consequences of revenge and self-preservation as they each must decide whether and how to forget the past. Urgent and gorgeously written, My Part of Her captures the innocence of youth, the folly of love, and the capriciousness of fate as these friends find themselves on opposing sides of the seismic rifts of history.

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

My Review: Layers of response to this book. Most of them uncomfortable with the narrator, his assumption of power over the life of his female cousin, over the lives of the men who pursue her, and the general awfulness of a culture where that's just the way it is.

You'll see. It'll happen to you, if it hasn't already, and you will know as I do that the life you spent wanting to forget was in fact nothing but a life spent remembering.

This storytelling voice is the one used throughout the book. You're told what the story will do next, where it will lead you the reader. That isn't going to be everyone's favorite technique, but it's integral to the book. It is, per Translator Ramadan, a cultural staple and thus a vital part of the story being told. As she's translated other works from French in ways that delighted me, I'm willing to trust her.

How far will a male go to possess a female? How high is up, the answer ends up being; the young woman in this iteration of that seemingly eternally fresh story represents the startlingly awful answer of "into depths of manipulation and depravity that will revolt and surprise you."

The details aren't unique, or even any more distasteful than the fact that he uses his position of trust to rifle his cousin's underwear drawer; to cause a discovery to be made that screws up her chances at escaping an ugly, exploitive sysytem; and to ruin her suitor's life entirely in his home place while simultaneously looking virtuous to a powerful man.

So we're listening to the confession of a truly despicable boy...why?

Because all this takes place on the cusp of Iran's 1979 Islamist rebellion against the Shah and his paymasters. Everything changes...for the worse...very soon after the events of the story. Even here, my goodness if he doesn't try to finagle a way to weasel in with the new, hardline regime. The risks of playing a double game with True Believers come home to him. His much-desired cousin is suddenly more vulnerable than he is. She's a woman with an education and counterrevolutionary ideas.

She disappears.

An exiled Iranian author makes his Anglophone debut in this disturbing tale of moral turpitude and the cost of power to those who only want its benefits. The story the narrator tells us, finally revealing his ugly, wizened by lust soul to the gaze of others, doesn't so much edify its readers as provide a horrible example of the wages of the truest, most unforgivable sin:

Greed.

I read it with a strong desire to douse my brain in bleach to get the pervy little bastard's cringing Uriah Heeply gloating over his power cleaned off its surfaces. To no avail, obvs. I'm decidedly not edified at the end of the read. I'm damned glad I've never met this little lickspittle. I'm even more glad I can judge him from the untested heights of US cultural privilege. I've confronted that gift again and remain knee-shakingly grateful I was never tested in this way. Would I have done better?

Happy Friday, Richard. Good review of My Part of Her. We head out soon. This trip sure came up fast. Obviously I won't be around much in the next 2 weeks, but I plan on updating my own thread from time to time. Take care of yourself.

>175 LizzieD: Howdy do, Peggy! I'll do my best to follow your excellent advice. *smooch*

>176 Berly: Egads! You'll enter a record book if you stay COVID-free. I shall knock on as much wood as I see for that to happen.

'Morning, RDear! Happy Friday.

My brain is empty of clever or smart things to say, and I haven't read your two most recent reviews.

*smooch*

>181 karenmarie: *smooch*

I'll come see what's up.
***

>182 richardderus: Ain't that the truth? You might have to stand in line though, a long line.

NO thank you to *My Part*. I doubt that I would have seen it anywhere but here or have been tempted, but thank you for taking one for the team.

*smooch*

>160 richardderus: I like it. I hope the remains of the viral invader are swiftly vanquished, RD. I think you've done more than your "fair" share of hosting...

>182 richardderus: Absolutely!!! Love it!!

>183 LizzieD: Heh...are you sure about that, Peggy? You sound like you're on the fence about that decision....

I'm #1 in that line!

>184 laytonwoman3rd: Hiya Linda3rd! Thanks for the health-wishes, which I'm delighted to report appear to be granted. I feel pretty solidly good (now).

>185 RebaRelishesReading: Ain't this the dam-straight truth, Reba.

>187 richardderus: yay!

>189 ArlieS: And...my halo glows brighter from the virtue points accruing to me...I've just come back from getting flu, RSV, and COVID jabs.

>182 richardderus: That is right on the nose!

I'm sorry to hear that you had COVID, but very glad to hear that you are doing much better. >190 richardderus: May all those shots keep the bad bugs away.

>191 atozgrl: I so agree since my nose is still throbbing.

I hope to avoid acute illness. I'm not expecting sterile immunity, especially with the giant population reservoir here that won't get vaccinated, but just not being wretchedly sick would be nice.

>192 richardderus: Sterile immunity seems an impossible goal, unless you lock yourself somewhere away from all people. And that's not really possible, or good for anyone's mental health. I think the best any of us can do is get the COVID shot every year and hope that we'll have a mild case if and when we get it. Thank goodness for the science that made these new vaccines possible!

>193 atozgrl: Indeed, Irene, the goal of the shots is to reduce severity. I've been lucky in the many years I have had the flu shot, never developing a case since that first one. This one for COVID is a different kind of shot, and a different disease. I'll settle for extending my streak of never being hospitalized for it.

132 Fowl Eulogies by Lucie Rico (tr. Daria Chernysheva)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Fowl Eulogies is an absurd fairy tale for the ethical carnivore, fiction of perfect madness, of brutal and unprecedented humor. From the meadow to the supermarket, this dazzling first novel of mischief and feathers, brings to life the singular poetry of the industrial chicken.

Upon her mother's death, Paule Rojas, a vegetarian city-dweller, returns to the chicken farm where she grew up. Pressured to fulfil her mother's last request, Paule rediscovers pleasure and meaning in running the old family business. Yet, eager to bring something of herself to a family tradition, Paule embarks on increasingly intricate ways of helping the chickens to self-actualize before their deaths. She records the chickens' life stories, adding them to the labels that decorate the vacuum-packed meat sent off to market—an individual biography for every chicken.

But not all runs smooth in her childhood village; Paule finds she has few friends and many enemies. She is forced to spread her wings, relocate her livestock, and oversee the construction of an urban farm of never-before-seen practices and proportions.

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

My Review: A fable of modern factory farming that manages to be cautionary, amusing, and thought-provoking.

A woman whose mode of survival as a being is a rejection of her mother's means of support deals with the grief of losing a mother she...felt conflicted about, let's say...reassesses everything as she goes through the process. What I've always known about les animaux, their individualty and complexity within their scope, is apparently a revelation to Paule. That bumfuzzles me a bit, as it seems someone who has had life-long contact with them ought to have picked up on that before. After all, she did go vegetarian, yet *now* as she's learning to like killing chickens, she discovers their individuality...? Well, just go with it, I advised myself.

The pleasure of the read, to me at least, is in the fantastical element of mass public response to Paule's oddball response to being a chicken-killer for a living: Those obituaries for the bird you're roasting as dinner catching fire (!) with the bird-munching public seems wildly improbable to me. It makes me grin. It gave me a moment of wistful acknowledgment that my existence is predicated on the deaths of innumerable other living things I'll never know a thing about. In this vein of response, the story reminded me of that other very, very French novel of wildly improbable events, A Novel Bookstore.

It seems a truly French thing is to use fantastical and unlikely human responses to things in order to question those underpinnings of our world we don't spend a lot of time considering. It doesn't take Author Rico a huge page-count to get to the meat (!) of her fable. There's a sting in the tail of the tale, I suspect put there to cause discomfort. How many people can, if they really *know*, genuinely get that the food they eat is mass death? This applies equally to vegetarians, of course, but they seem not to worry overmuch about plant sentience. As forms of denial of evidence go, that one's pretty sensible since the world does not support the exitence of billions of Jains.

As a story meant to provoke thought, I'm on a different point on the curve of Author Rico's trajectory. I was far more focused, for my edification and education, on the many iterations of the vile, evil Violet Gamart of The Bookshop that populate the story. The innumerable, deeply solipsistic NIMBYs, the no-change stasis lovers, the PTB threatened in their sacred wallets by new ideas, all abound. I was varyingly infuriated, repulsed, and appalled at Paule's detractors. It was thus saddening to see Paule gradually submerge into The Capitalist System. I expected it. I was still saddened.

I suspect her evoking of my sadness is meant to remind me that collusion can be coerced from any of us; that principles are costly; that human nature is destructive always in all ways. Bleak as it is, this is a truth self-evident to any remotely honest observer of life.

As a way to "eat my spinach," this read is a properly well-made inducement. As a translation, it is smoothly made. As a narrative, your French gear needs to be engaged or its absurdity will clonk you hard. If you can shift that gear, this is a delight of a read.

NB the blogged review contains links to definitions

‘Morinng, RDear!

My brain is more online this morning, so back to your two reviews.

>169 richardderus: I love your examples and am especially alarmed at the 3-language colonizer’s hand quote. I first realized that just maybe colonizers ruined things instead of ‘improving’ things when I read Hawaii for the first time.

Your review makes me want to read it, I should read it, yet will, at this time, only add it to my wish list. Excellent, thoughtful, and articulate review, as always. I realized a long time ago that Introductions are frequently spoilers. I rarely read them at all, frankly.

>177 richardderus: Nope, but your writing is always a joy to read.

>182 richardderus: Hmm. There are one or two people…

>187 richardderus: Yay to solidly good.

>190 richardderus: I’ll get the Covid ‘jab’ this coming week. My doctor wants me to wait ‘til October for the Flu shot, and I’ll wait ‘til my appointment with him in December to discuss RSV.

>193 atozgrl: I agree, Irene – and since I did get Covid in February after 4 years of avoiding it AND it was relatively mild, am glad I can get a Covid booster next week.

>195 richardderus: What hoot. Paule embarks on increasingly intricate ways of helping the chickens to self-actualize before their deaths. She records the chickens' life stories, adding them to the labels that decorate the vacuum-packed meat sent off to market—an individual biography for every chicken. Self-actualizing chickens and biographies on the packages. It’s always been bad enough that I see 18-wheelers of live chickens in individual crates being driven off to the ‘processing’ plants here in central NC, but to know about a particular chicken’s life would be just too much for me. And, since I’m a carnivore through and through, I really wouldn’t want to have to consider becoming vegetarian for ethical reasons. I do like spinach, but will pass on this one.

*smooch*

August is #WITMonth in Review

I wrote twenty-four reviews, Burgoines, and Pearl-Rules in August. I'd planned to make twenty-one full blog posts of #WITMonth reads, and failed, making thirteen full-blown reviews. My excuse is what Katie calls "The Rona" bashed me for several days...though that might be a self-misdiagnosis. The pharmacist who shot me up with my vaccines yesterday said the profile I described sounded more like the onset and course of RSV.

Anyway, I'm all jabbed up and really don't want any re/visits from anything, thenkewveddymahch.

My favorite read of the month was, hands down, Hum by Helen Phillips. Excellent, thought-provoking story of how humans will always screw up inhuman systems because what programmers call "edge cases" actually make up the bulk of human life. I was gripped, beginning to end.

The most enjoyed #WITMonth read was the estimable Of Saints and Miracles, translated ably from its Spanish edition by Claire Wadie. I absolutely rang like a newly-founded bell with its story of betrayal for gain. Not the cheeriest story, permaybehaps, but one I think we can all feel in our water.

September will be themeless as I ramp up for #Deathtober and #Booksgiving. It's all the more urgent to me that I not die before those themes are polished and properly posted because my notes say some pretty scathing things and need toning down for public consumption.

>190 richardderus: You're ahead of me - but I can't usually find flu jabs available this early. And I got the RSV jab last(?) year - it's a one-and-done. I do want to get the latest covid jab real soon, now that it's becoming available.

>198 ArlieS: hmmm

I wonder if my access comes from the nature of my living arrangements...? I hope you'll get the jabs before something makes it urgent.

Oh my, Richard. I know I really can't read Fowl Eulogies. I'm already guilty enough about my diet as it is. (I didn't write a short story I thought of once about a meat-eater turned vegetarian turned vegan, who was left without recourse when he heard radishes scream when he pulled them out of his garden. It's so long ago that I may only think it was my idea.) I do have A Novel Bookstore in my pile to browse in for September's reading.

COVID shots.......... They're telling old people like us to go ahead and get the booster right now. Younger, healthy people should wait until October or so to have their immunity last through the winter wave. So what are old people like us supposed to do in the winter wave???? We haven't had it, thank God. I'm no longer petrified of the initial infection although perhaps I should be. The possibility of long COVID is daunting. More than that (and I'm sorry to say so), scientists know so little about the virus that I fear what changes may occur a few years from now as it lurks here and there in our systems. The analogy is to chicken pox showing up as shingles. We still mask when we go anywhere inside with other people.

Anyway, >197 richardderus: is impressive as usual, and I leave a *smooch* for your Saturday.

Good to hear you are on the mend, Richard. Keep it that way!

>182 richardderus:, >183 LizzieD: - I think I would almost PAY to be first in line! ;-)

>200 LizzieD: Go get jabbed! We're more likely to have bad outcomes than younger folk, so early protection means the bulk of the people who get it early won't pass it to us...and herd immunity should kick in during Oct/Nov.

Really, Peggy, you sound so ambivalent and unclear about your decision...but you know you best. Heh.

I hope you enjoy Cossé's novel when you get to it, and I'm glad you liked >197 richardderus:. Saturday *smooch*

>201 jessibud2: Heh...not like 34/45'd be around to collect but his grifter offspring would be. I'd deffo walk to the golf course where he'll end up in order to disrespect his memory, though.

Worth saying again.

>204 richardderus: A LOT more truth than poetry there!!!!

>205 LizzieD: Awomen, me lurve, a-women.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy September First to you.

>197 richardderus: Interesting the pharmacist thought it was RSV and not The Rona. Glad you’re all jabbed up. Yay for Themeless September.

>204 richardderus: He’s right, of course.

*smooch*

>207 karenmarie: Labor Day orisons, Horrible! Uncle George speaketh, as so often, sooth.

I thought her insight was interesting, too. Based on onset time and duration, she felt it wasn't likely to be COVID. No way to be sure now, and after the RSV vaccine I'm super unlikely ever to have the disease again.

*smooch*

>199 richardderus: Quite possibly, particularly if they have a vaccine day at the unit.

Several of my previous employers used to do that; they'd announce in advance that there'd be people in to give flu jabs on (date), and have people sign up for slots in their schedule. They'd be set up in a conference room somewhere, and we'd come in, get jabbed, and go back to working.

It reduced absenteeism, probably reduced insurance claims, and was a lot less trouble for the employees. Win-win decision.

Sometimes the available dates were kind of late though. One year we had visitors from the UK who brought the flu with them. I missed my scheduled vaccination because I was off sick - with the flu.

>204 richardderus: Too true.

>209 ArlieS: There are no perfect solutions, are there.

That Takei post gets it said loud and clear.

Happy first of September! Hard to believe it’s almost autumn with it’s cooler days, longer nights, colorful foliage, pumpkin spice drinks. 😆

>211 Storeetllr: Oh my heck, it sounds so paradisical. Can not WAIT!

*smooch*

I'm still feeling confident Glorious Exploits will be my 2024 6-stars-of-five read, and this is partially why:
Ferdia Lennon: "I was tired of ancient Greek or Roman characters sounding as if they’ve stepped out of a Merchant Ivory production"

There has been a lot of COVID and other things going around lately. I hope you are feeling better.

>214 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori, luckily even the post-vaccination arm soreness has passed. Yay!

>213 richardderus:
OK. you got me with a BB and you didn't even have to write a review.

I have had Syracuse on my mind for some time - ever since I read Last of the Wine by Mary Renault. Just yesterday there was a Rick Steves special on the local PBS station and one of the featured sites was the rock quarry at Syracuse. Steves explained all about the slave labor and gave the background history of why the quarries were there. He told how they quarried the stone and what it was for, then he said that today the old quarry site is a beautiful park and garden because in the 1600's an earthquake caused the roof of the quarry caverns to cave in leaving what was dungeons many levels deep open to the air. The area was replanted and turned into parks and garden spaces. Now you mention a book about this same ancient historical incident so this book is just calling out my name and screaming for me to get it and read it NOW!

>216 benitastrnad: Of course I wrote a review, it's here:
https://www.librarything.com/work/30328591/reviews/260602167

You won't go wrong, Benita!

133 The Monsters in our Shadows by Edward J. Cembal

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s been a century since “the great consumption.” Humanity has been devoured to the edge of extinction by the ever-ravenous Shivers – terrifying, shapeless creatures that latch onto their hosts, tormenting them over time before consuming them all at once. The last of civilization lives in the crumbling city of Atlas, where they subsist on processed insects and await their inevitable fate.

Anthem is the city Exilist, tasked with trapping the Shivers and banishing them to the malevolent Deadlands outside the city walls. But Anthem is ailing and destined to soon fall victim to his own Shiver, a fate he’s reluctantly accepted. As Anthem begins to withdraw from his world, a threat he’s unprepared for comes hurtling home. If he is to save anyone, he will have to travel into the Deadlands in search of a remedy to tame these creatures. But no Atlas dweller has ever made it back alive, and Anthem must confront his own darkness before humankind is forever lost to the monsters in our shadows.

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

My Review: I like horror stories about things I can believe exist, and the Shiver is one of those things. A thing unseen and unseeable to direct examination but real, and perceptible only obliquely? A thing that costs you huge energy to overcome the fear of, and ultimately it's most likely the thing that carries you off anyway?

Sounds like Life to me. Only this time it's seen from the widdershins view. No demons or supernatural gubbins or things from legend that don't exist. A real, demonstrably harmful...something...that we just don't understand. Like diseases we can't cure, conditions we can't treat, mental illnesses we refuse to look at.

Anthem, our PoV character, lives in Atlas, a walled city that's been erected to "protect" people yet it can't keep them safe from their Shiver. His job is to identify the threatened person's Shiver and get it corralled so he can take them both to the Deadlands outside Atlas's walls. He succeeds, he fails, but all he can do is treat the symptoms of the Shiver by ridding Atlas of the affected and their affliction. The drug that has prevented mass deaths is no longer effective, and Atlas needs a real solution...but where's it going to come from?

Atlas is under the control of a "savior" called The Architect whose walls have failed to keep out the Shiver, and whose claims to be the only one who can understand the Shiver and keep Atlas's people safe from it are wearing thin. The drug's no longer available and the price of cruelly exiling the sufferers to die outside Atlas is...well...distasteful. Anthem himself is now aware he needs to be exiled as his own Shiver is about to finish its ugly work.

The point of the story won't need belaboring, I trust, and the parallels won't need explication. The most effective part of the read is the sensory world Author Cembal evokes. The tense, paranoid, claustrophobic Atlas he creates is very effective. The way he adds sensory cues smalls and sights and sounds that get right to the emotional heart of the scene they're in...*chef's kiss*

I won't give the ending away. I will say that, by the end of the read, I felt I was rewarded by the story.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Monday and Labor Day to you.

>199 richardderus: and >209 ArlieS: The company I worked for 1995-2016, during their best years in that range, offered flu shots, mammograms, free pain meds and BioFreeze, and a nurse on duty. It saved them money, insurance claims, and time, As Arlie points out of course, but was a huge benefit to us. Bill was even able to come down and get flu shots because he was my spouse, and they also gave everybody a free pair of steel-toe shoes every once in a while because the shop floor required them.

>218 richardderus: Well. I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and was going to give it a HUGE pass, what with Shivers and processed insects, but as I read further down the review, I thought I’d go check it out on Amazon, just in case I felt moved to buy it. Happy day – it’s on Kindle Unlimited – and I’ve borrowed it. So you got me with a BB, albeit a free BB.

*smooch*

Happy Monday. Glad to hear you're bouncing back from the bug.

>220 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen! Happy new week to you, too.

Got me with *Shivers & Shadows* too, Richard. I'll have to wait a little, but it's now definitely on my radar.

We are awash in relatives at the moment. *smooch* for your day!

>222 LizzieD: Don't submerge, me lurve, float above and smile down from a serene height. *smooch*

Hmmm, two BBs at once. Off to see if I can find them at the library.

>224 Storeetllr: I'm pretty sure you'll find Glorious Exploits but very, very doubtful about the other. Maybe they'd order it...?
***
My friend the publicist reminded me I'd promised to review one of her books today, so I pushed it up from Wednesday. *sigh*

134 City of Secrets (Detective Margaret Nolan) by P.J. Tracy

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan returns in P. J. Tracy’s City of Secrets, the next book in the series praised by the New York Times Book Review: “Tracy seems to have found her literary sweet spot.”

Los Angeles Police Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner have worked a lot of different cases, ones where things aren’t always as they appear. And it’s Nolan’s job to find the truth in the darkness around her. When they’re called to the scene of what looks like a fatal car-jacking, Nolan soon realizes her victim was a founder of a company about to sell for millions, and within a day of his death, his partner’s wife is abducted. As Nolan learns more about the victim and his life, she gets pulled into a disturbing world of sex, violence, and big business; and an even darker world, where whispers of an "Angel of Death" are beginning to surface.

One of today's finest crime writers, P. J. Tracy has created a series that is a rich and authentic portrait of LA, filled with the tragedy and optimism of her multi-layered characters and a story guaranteed to keep readers enthralled.

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

My Review: Starting a series with book four is never ideal. I felt no investment in the Maggie/Remy subplot, but really didn't expect to once I twigged that the series was multiple books along.

That said, the dynamic between Maggie Nolan and Al Crawford, her policework partner, was an effortless joining of process. In large part that's because the pseudonymous Tracy partners really involve us in the way the investigation goes. This book, and I presume the entire series (as series authors seldom change tones radically this early in one), exemplifies the charms of the police procedural...that sense of being in on the action, a fly on the wall.

That's a wonderful way to build a series IMO because it gives the plotting a major through line without the need, at times, to contrive things just to keep up the pace. Of course the police work is a reductive fantasy version of the real thing, granted – stipulated – understood but it's the mystery reader's vision of it from countless other iterations, so it works. It also means one knows, if the series mystery world is not a new and fresh experience, that ornamental plot devices stand out. There are "dark sexual secrets' in the murder victim's life. Cheap, brummagem time-waster from the get-go, and, with Margaret's dull "romance" as the other lusterless sex distraction, means I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes.

The existence of a well-stocked larder of interesting side-characters, however, both redeemed and further irked me. I'm quite sure they've been here before, but I haven't. I'm on the fence about picking the series up but if I do, the first trip will be back to #1 before anything. I really want the answer to one burning question: Why does Ike like licorice?

Note for animal lovers: despite some suspense on the matter, no abuse or harm occurs and past wrongs are righted.

>198 ArlieS: >199 richardderus: The local (non-chain) pharmacy that we use has had flu shots available for a while, I'm not sure how long. They were pushing us to get one when we stopped in about 10 days ago. I want to wait a bit on that. On the other hand, if they had the COVID shot, I'd go ahead and get it now. We've heard repeated reports over the last month about COVID cases going up, and then last night I heard a story about the latest strain being more contagious, etc.

My workplace also scheduled flu shots every year, which was very convenient.

>197 richardderus: May I prevail upon you, Richard, to explain what a Burgoine is? I'm sure all your followers here know and it's old hat to them, but since I'm relatively new, I don't, and I've been wondering for a while now.

>227 atozgrl: I think it's a foolish opportunity to reject vaccinating your staff against flu and other diseases. The absentee rates demonstrably go down.

Happy to explain: A few years ago, Author 'Nathan Burgoine, a Canadian gay YA writer, came up with this infographic:

...and it rang my deeply resistant to book-reports self. I adopted it to begin to whittle down my mountain of DRCs I didn't care enough about to expound on but felt I'd like to say at least something about. I get A LOT of DRCs, and while I won't leave reviews on Amazon anymore, or on the horribly janky Buns and Nubile site, I *do* need to get them blogged, posted here for libraries to access, and on Goodreads...still the giant in consumer book discovery. The model he provided has been hugely helpful in getting me to sit down and do the work instead of simply looking the book over and then side-eying it ever after.

You *did* ask....

>228 richardderus: Thank you very much, that clarifies it! And very helpful suggestions indeed. I might need to apply them to some of the comments I write about the books I read.

>229 atozgrl: I strongly urge everyone who's in a reviewing drought to do *exactly* like Burgoine says, because having a model to follow makes it so much easier to formulate one's thoughts. Like poets with their *shudder* forms like sonnets and sestinas and epithalamiums.

'Morning, RD! Happy Tuesday.

>219 karenmarie: You missed me up there, and I wouldn't mention it except that I took a Kindle Unlimited BB on The Monsters in Our Shadows.

>226 richardderus: You got me again, only this time I am paying $1.98 plus $3.99 for shipping for the first in the series because ... LA.

*smooch*

>231 karenmarie: Oh dear, Horrible, sorry about that.

I hope you enjoy Mosters/Shadows! I guess little harm done if you don't, since it's KU. I was a little bemused, since it felt to me like I was watching a film...turns out he's a screenwriter, so I suspect it's a screenplay manqué.

Great idea to start at #1 and for $5 you're not going to load the pressure of a $30+ investment on a read, so it's got less of a hill to climb. I'll enjoy hearing your thoughts on the series. I'm quite sure it was a mistake to start so late.
Tuesday *smooch*

Do like your three sentence book review model, Richard,

>233 magicians_nephew: I'm glad to bring it to your attention, Jim, but that's all the credit I claim. It's very efficient and encourages concision.

>228 richardderus: "or on the horribly janky Buns and Nubile site,"

Laughing really hard, once I parsed this, and if I were 10 years younger I might be rolling on the floor as well.

>230 richardderus: (thoughtful) I don't consciously follow the Bourgoine model, but many of my reviews wind up looking somewhat like that.

>231 karenmarie: Richard is a dangerous man.

Good afternoon, Richard. I had a disconcerting thought about myself this morning that I meant to post on my thread but didn't, so I'll put it here where it might feel a bit at home. I realized that I'd vote for Bobby Kennedy in order to keep Trump out of the Presidency if it came to that.

*smooch*

>228 richardderus: Thanks, that is indeed helpful, Richard. I don't want to post spoilers and struggle to say enough to give real information without doing that.

>235 ArlieS: Moi? Dangerous? Faugh, Arlie! I suspect some sort of convergent evolution of the reviewing process occurs.

Glad my joke made you laugh!

>236 LizzieD: Howdy do, Peggy me lurve. I don't blame you. A steaming goat pellet would get my vote before I'd acquiesce to 45 back in government housing.

>237 RebaRelishesReading: It's so good to have a model in your mind before starting, because it means you can spot those things.

>239 richardderus: This!

OTOH, there's some government housing he'd suit just fine. It has locked doors (cells) and enforced stays.

>241 ArlieS: That would be a distant second to the critter fleeing to Moscow the day after the election.

But then the plane would crash....

135 The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty by Valerie Bauerlein

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.

Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect—and fear—for a hundred miles in any direction.

When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. His forefathers had covered up a midnight suicide at a remote railroad crossing, a bootlegging ring run from a courthouse, and the attempted murder of a pregnant lover. Alex, too, almost walked away from his unspeakable crimes with his reputation intact, but his downfall was secured by a twist of fate, some stray mistakes, and a fateful decision by an old friend who’d finally seen enough.

Why would a man who had everything kill his wife and grown son? To unwind the roots of Alex’s ruin, award-winning journalist Valerie Bauerlein reported not just from the courthouse every day but also along the backroads and through the tidal marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. When the jurors made their pilgrimage to the crime scene, trying to envision Maggie and Paul’s last moments, she walked right behind them, sensing the ghosts that haunt the Murdaughs’ now-shattered legacy.

Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.

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

My Review: Sick-making.

True-crime books are not strangers to my TBR himalaya, or my blog. They regularly infuriate me, offend my sense of ma'at, and reorient my moral compass in the direction of "humans are irredeemable scum".

This story marks the second time I have felt physically sick while reading about a true crime. (American Honor Killings was the first.) Author Bauerlein covered the story for the Wall Street Journal because, one assumes, there were so very many financial crimes uncovered in this murder trial. The malpractice, malfeasance, and felony money-laundering are what made the case interesting enough for that bastion of The Establishment to consent to spend resources on the take-down of what is presented as a rogue actor, a bad apple, an outlier. What better way to protect The Establishment than to show it policing itself?

The book details a century's worth of similar, often worse, crimes committed by the same family. Unprosecuted, usually uninvestigated crimes committed as good as out in the open.

But this one's a rogue.

No, he is not, and if #MeToo taught the world anything it's that The Establishment circles the wagons fast to contain the damage. Zoë Kravitz has made this superficial damage control the center of her directorial debut film Blink Twice. Author Bauerlein does not seem to make this connection, though, as she says, Alex Murdaugh had inherited his forebears' power and prowess and then squandered it, the work of a hundred years washed away in blood. Even after digging into the history of these crackers in expensive shoes, her allegiance is firmly to The Establishment, and thus confines condemnation to this scumbag while quietly and indirectly exonerating the evil demon of generational wealth that enabled at the least, caused is more like it, the inevitable rise of the very scumbag she ringingly condemns.

I understood the need to organize the book out of chronological order; there's evidence that otherwise wouldn't fit into the story. It did mean that all the almost-five hundred pages feel weighty, freighted with meanings you can not slip past or you will indeed miss something. It also made the read a week longer for me than it would have been otherwise. Processing the implications of the murderer's inherited sense of entitlement and immunity from consequences was, and is, effortful for me.

Terrible story of a vile scion of ill-gotten wealth squandered, and for a wonder, the criminal punished at long last. A cautionary tale for others in similar circumstances.

The chickens will come home to roost.

>243 richardderus: Boy, do those chickens ever roost! Since we're so close to the SC line, our nearest TV station, the one Mama had on in all her waking hours, followed this story and trial very closely. The only time I ever appreciated Dr. Phil was the day he devoted to Alex Murdaugh. I will never, ever forget seeing that bastard, who had a head tremor anyway, nodding his head "yes" the whole time it took him to say, "I did not murder Maggie. I did not murder Paul." For at least once justice was done in SC.

>239 richardderus: I will only add that in a 3-way race, I'd vote for the steaming goat pellet.

Ah. Good afternoon, Richard! Do you intend to bring out my inner Fury?

*smooch*

Good afternoon, RDear. Happy Wednesday.

>243 richardderus: crackers in expensive shoes Perfect. I just bought it with an Audible credit after listing to the sample. As a rule I don’t like female narrators but was intrigued that the author is one of the two narrators.

*smooch*

>244 LizzieD: They came home to roost for that rotter, alrighty alright.

I'm not sure how we will feel this November, but my gut is telling me we'll be pleased. be right gut be right

*smooch*

>245 karenmarie: Oh, I *am* glad of this, Horrible! You will likely resonate on the same fracture planes as me; I hope you like the read.

*smooch*

>243 richardderus: Safely skipping that one. I won't say "never" with true crime, but I tend to stick with old, historical ones when I do dip my toes in.

Happy Wednesday *smooch*

Happy Thursday, RD! *smooch*

>226 richardderus: You got me with the P.J. Tracy but I decided to start with the first one Deep Into the Dark. At least if you pick up the rest of the series its only 4 book along so far and you've already done one!

136 Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past by Tore C. Olsson

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A pathbreaking new way to examine US history, through the lens of a bestselling video game

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as recreations of history?

In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plot and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. As such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.

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

My Review: I don't play these kinds of games, even ones based on history, so I approach the books about games and gaming like I would explications of religious texts. This is fascinating, I think, why do people get invested in this stuff? I have never found an answer to that but I have definitely learned to appreciate the skill and craft of storytelling involved in creating these interactive spaces.

No exception here. The author is a (tenured! Go Doc!) college professor trained to teach US history specifically, so has a deep knowledge of the universe the game discussed here inhabits; being a child of the time when games like this were in their infancy, and by his own admission an addicted game player until he went to college, he's brilliantly...almost uniquely...suited to see the game universe, more importantly this game and its universe, from both its important axes.

After a long absence from the gaming world spent building and solidifying a career, the author got the giant clonk on the noggin that was the COVID pandemic. His life was upended and the time budget entailed in being an academic completely altered. What better way to use his time than rediscovering gaming, especially since a hot game of the time was Red Dead Redemption? History plus gaming equaled irresistible. The history content of the game was solid...and sometimes not.

If there is better bait for a hook meant for academics, I do not know of it.

As one might expect from a history professor, the "not" side gets the bulk of the attention. It's not presented in a "GOTCHA!!" way. The facts are presented, the footnote corroborates his source, and on we move. For a reader accustomed to accusatory fact-correcting, that might lessen the interest. For me it was a balm. If a fact isn't supported by historiography, but is supported by the needs of gameplay, this is noted. Doesn't make him call it correct, just...noted.

As an opportunity to spread knowledge of US history, this book would not be my first suggestion. It is not a fast-paced trip down History's highway; it is not a slow meander through the woods, examining the flora and spotting the fauna. It is a solid, readable work of game analysis as this intersects with actual history, contextualized by very interesting meditations on what the choice of historical background, and the alterations to historiography, say about both gaming and overall culture.

I was never bored, or even disengaged from, the story. For context recall that I am well into my seventh decade on Earth, and had no concept of home computing as a thing until the early Eighties. I liked card games and board games as a kid. Dungeons and Dragons felt like math class to me. And my interest was held. I hope that tells you what kind of work this is: Quality thinking expressed clearly and organized well.

It didn't make me excited, gave me no frisson, so I can't add a fifth star. It is a solid, thought provoking read about two subjects of great interest to me, and very probably of even greater to those who skew towards interest in gaming than I do.

Sweet Thursday, Rdear. 💖😘

>249 vancouverdeb: Greetings, Deborah! I'm glad to see you! Spend a good, solid Thursday that's fun...I'm planning that myownself.

>250 Familyhistorian: It's something I'm contemplating, Meg. It's that ol' completist in me...got one done, liked it okay, it's only three more...

...if I was 45 not 65, I'd deffo do it. As it is, probably (but not certainly) not.

>252 Ameise1: Barbara! How delightful! I offer you the same wish heartily returned. *smooch*

137 Hollywood Hustle by Jon Lindstrom

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From 4-time Emmy-nominated actor Jon Lindstrom of General Hospital, Bosch, and True Detective fame, comes a gripping debut thriller.

Set in the dark underbelly of the LA film industry, Hollywood Hustle is the perfect read for fans of Alex Finlay and Jeffrey Deaver.

Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside—traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win’s troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his “movie money” for her safe return. But what they don’t know is…his movie money is long gone.

Unable to go to the police for fear the kidnappers will make good on their promise to kill his daughter, Winston turns to two close friends—a legendary Hollywood stuntman and a disgraced former LAPD detective.

There’s no easy way out for Winston or his daughter—the gang is violent and willing to do anything to get the money they’re after, and Winston begins to realize that to get his daughter back, he’ll have to beat the kidnappers at their own game.

This propulsive and tense thriller will transport readers to the seedier side of LA, depicted in bold prose by a Hollywood insider.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE LIBRARYTHING EARLY REVIEWERS PROGRAM. THANK YOU.

My Review: Thrillers starring grandfathers are uncommon. Grandfathers aren't. The fact we have a man who failed on multiple axes in his life rising to the challenge that, in part, stems from those failures feels to me both just and condign.

I do love a redemption arc. This one's a doozy.

The key to a solid, entertaining thriller, then, is turned: I'm invested in the set-up and the characters. I care about the stakes...a child's life is precious to a father, doubly so to a grandfather, and these are real relatable emotional states for Winston to occupy.

The next hurdle for a thriller to make a good impact, as opposed to a stinky splat, on me is the storytelling. The voice of the PoV character, or the use of an omniscient narrator; the pacing, the setting's depth, the blend of familiar and novel elements in this; and crucially the organization...how long are the paragraphs? the chapters?...all must reinforce each other for the trick of suspension of disbelief to work. Someone writing sentences as long as mine isn't writing a thriller, they're writing a mystery. Happily, Author Lindstrom is the veteran of many scripts read and enacted, so he grasps with a sureness born of experience the need for dialogue to serve a purpose or be left on the cutting-room floor.

I am unsurprised therefore to give him full marks on the craft of writing dialogue. I take away a star, paradoxically, for not listening to the effect of all the swearing. There are a few people reading this who are howling with laughter at my statement. I'm "foul-mouthed" as many a pursey-lipped prude has told me over the years.

Reinforcing the horror trope "the call is coming from inside the house."

If *I* noticed this facet of the dialogue, many others did too, and either checked out or gave up and Pearl-Ruled the book.

A thing I felt was...underdeveloped? glossed over? not explored to the extent needed to justify its centrality?...was the pervasive illicit-drug use. Winston passed the curse of addiction to his child. That is the igniting incident of the entire plot. I expect that to be more of a topic of either reflection or regret rather than a background taken for granted. If a character's failings are the reason they are in enough hot water to justify a thriller, it feels careless for the author not to offer more than passing acknowledgment of that reality.

While I know Author Lindsrom has portrayed a LOT of flawed characters in his acting career, that shows in this case. Scripts do not ever have room for exploration comparable to that in a novel, so I'm observing the need for a good storyteller to shift gears, not develop a missing skill.

I really hope this is not the last novel I'll read from Author Lindstrom. I liked Winston, and wouldn't pass up a second book featuring him. I think the thriller world can use some older men doing their best to offer amends for past wrongs, errors, and omissions.

>251 richardderus: I doubt I will read it, but I like that a book like this exists.

>257 Helenliz: I would've said exactly that before I read it. If it comes your way, don't dismiss it! It could surprise you in a pleasant way.

BURGOINE #041

LIQUID RULES: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives by Mark Miodownik

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: This fascinating new book by the bestselling scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik is an expert tour of the world of the droplets, heartbeats, and ocean waves that we come across every day. Structured around a plane journey that sees encounters with substances from water and glue to coffee and wine, Liquid Rules shows how these liquids can bring death and destruction as well as wonder and fascination.

From László Bíró's revolutionary pen and Abraham Gesner's kerosene to cutting-edge research on self-repairing roads and liquid computers, Miodownik uses his winning formula of scientific storytelling to bring the everyday to life. He reveals why liquids can flow up a tree but down a hill, why oil is sticky, how waves can travel so far, and how to make the perfect cup of tea. Here are the secret lives of substances.

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

My Review: As popular science, this is on the "populist" end of the scale. The framing device wore very thin for me, but I can definitely see the appeal for those less interested in the science part than in the popular part. Information those readers are otherwise extremely unlikely to encounter, they can be convinced to absorb in this winsome, relatably amusing tone.

My rating is meant to convey a warning to my fellow amateurs of science: Not meant for us! Our kids/grands/niblings who need an inducement to get some contact with the idea of science that very definitely does NOT feel in any way like Education are its audience.

Mariner Books offers it in Kindle Unlimited free.

I'm getting a head start on my September Burgoines and Pearl-Rules. My goodness, there are a LOT of books I want to say something about. I don't quite believe the sheer number of them with some notes on 'em and no desire to write a real review of them. (note to self: "BLECH" is not a note) So buckle up, the post count's a-risin'.

BURGOINE #042

Edison vs. Tesla: The Battle over Their Last Invention by William J. Birnes

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Thomas Edison closely following the alternative physics work of Albert Einstein and Max Planck, convincing him that there was an entire reality unseen by the human eye. This led to the last and least-known of all Edison’s inventions, the spirit phone. His former associate, now bitter rival, Nikola Tesla, was also developing at the same time a similar mysterious device. Edison vs. Tesla examines their quest to talk to the dead.

Edison’s little-known near-death experience formed his theory that animate life forms don’t die, but rather change the nature of their composition. It is this foundational belief that drove him to proceed with the spirit phone.

Tesla monitored Edison’s paranormal work, with both men racing to create a device that picked up the frequencies of discarnate spirits, what today is called EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). Both men were way ahead of their time, delving into artificial intelligence and robotics.

Although mystery and lore surround the details of the last decade of Edison’s life, many skeptics have denied the existence of the mysterious spirit phone. The authors have researched both Edison’s and Tesla’s journals, as well as contemporary articles and interviews with the inventors to confirm that tests were actually done with this device. They also have the full cooperation of the Charles Edison fund, affording them access to rare photos and graphics to support their text. Edison vs. Tesla sheds light on this weird invention and demonstrates the rivalry that drove both men to new discoveries.

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

My Review: Many thoughts about this read. I took time to think them through before opening my "mouth."

Pseudoscience is a curse on the communication of solid, evidence-based old-fashioned science on multiple axes. It dazzles and fascinates almost all of us some of the time. When disproved, it reduces trust in and willingness to listen to the real stuff among the credulous. OTOH, it prevents real scientists from investigating "out there" stuff that could possibly result in real advances of human knowledge.

I read this book waiting for something about Edison and Tesla's rivalry to enter the chat, specifically about Edison's factual and swept under the rug "spirit phone" experiment. Barely got Tesla at all, though his appearances always fit the premise. I felt, however, that the stretch from the spirit telephone to discussing AI's existential threats was waaay over the top, and in any case, is outdated in its parameters...things are a lot worse than they thought.

I *did* learn interesting trivia about The Force and Spiritualism as they interrelate.

Skyhorse Publishing offers hardcover copies for $9.99 and Kindle editions for $16.99, Use The Force to divine which one they want you to buy.

>259 richardderus: Thank you. I'd noticed this one before, possibly as a recommendation from LT's new system. I'd passed on it for the moment, suspecting it might be, as you describe, a science book for people who aren't into science. Now I know I made the right call.

PEARL RULE #019 (21%)

The Aging of Aquarius: Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder by Helen Wilkes

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: Live your passion and purpose and change the world as an empowered elder.

Your career has wound down, the kids have moved, and your schedule is clear...for the next 30 years. In your youth, you cared about people and planet earth, and you had grand visions of changing the world. At some point, those passions and that sense of purpose got buried under diapers and the 9-5.

Still, that old you remains alive. Now, with the rest of your life ahead, you can be the change and make this next stage of your life the most powerful yet. But where to start?

Helen Wilkes, a retired professor and activist, takes readers on an inspiring journey to find renewed purpose in retirement. Along the way she helps readers navigate the transition to a post-work identity by fanning the embers of lost passions and developing new interests. Whether you are drawn to gardening clubs, to social justice issues, political campaigning, ethical investing, or creativity through the arts. The Aging of Aquarius offers inspiration, practical steps, and extra resources to help reignite your passion, your sense of purpose, and to effect real change in the world as an empowered elder.

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

My Review: Not the audience for this...I'm disabled, live on a pittance, not facing a crisis of sudden rudderlessness. I took exception to the cluelessly chirpy and determinedly upbeat tone. Remember Cher slapping Nic Cage in Moonstruck?

This felt the same way: well-meant, but tone-deaf and unhelpful.

New Society Publishers offer the Kindle edition for $13.49, the paperback about the same...but donate that money to Harris's political campaign and get a real return on your investment.

>262 ArlieS: I'm really glad to save you the eyeblinks, Arlie. I suspect the framing device I found annoying would cause you actual negative health consequences.

‘Morning, RD. Happy Thursday to you.

>256 richardderus: Well, darn it. Crime stories about El-Lay are one of my two kryptonites, so another Audible credit was just cashed in. Usually when an author reads his own work (I’m looking at you, Stephen King) it’s awful, but Jon sounds more than reasonable. Listenable? You get the idea.

I was able to avoid the siren call of your other 3 reviews.

*smooch*

‘Morning, RD. Happy Thursday to you.

>256 richardderus: Well, darn it. Crime stories about El-Lay are one of my two kryptonites, so another Audible credit was just cashed in. Usually when an author reads his own work (I’m looking at you, Stephen King) it’s awful, but Jon sounds more than reasonable. Listenable? You get the idea.

I was able to avoid the siren call of your other 3 reviews.

*smooch*

>263 richardderus: I wonder whether this would be any use to me. I'm somewhat closer to the target demographic, but not rudderless. I figure that *if* I run out of self-generated projects (cue maniacal laughter) I'll look for somewhere to volunteer. But so far I have plenty to do, much of it purely self-indulgent.

What I don't have is knowledge of available volunteer options, and how I'd go about finding them. OTOH, most of what I'd consider most valuable isn't even on the list for most people - I want better digital technology, and a good alternative to Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And I have the skills to contribute to creating it, just not to do the whole thing myself.

PEARL RULE #020 (31%)

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones by Ed West

Rating: 1* of five because it's so infuriating what they did to this book!

The Publisher Says: Have you read everything George R.R. Martin has every written? Do you know what in Game of Thrones is based in real history?

A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father’s death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him. He is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons to safety. Against them is the queen, passionate, proud, and strong-willed and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men. She too is battling for the inheritance of her young son, not yet fully grown but already a sadist who takes delight in watching executions.

Sound familiar? It may read like the plot of Game of Thrones . Yet that was also the story of the bloodiest battle in British history, fought at the culmination of the War of the Roses. George RR Martin’s bestselling novels are rife with allusions, inspirations, and flat-out copies of real-life people, events, and places of medieval and Tudor England and Europe. The Red Wedding? Based on actual events in Scottish history. The poisoning of Joffrey Baratheon? Eerily similar to the death of William the Conqueror’s grandson. The Dothraki? Also known as Huns, Magyars, Turks, and Mongols.

Join Ed West, as he explores all of Martin’s influences, from religion to war to powerful women. Discover the real history behind the phenomenon and see for yourself that truth is stranger than fiction.

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

My Review: History is not boring, y'all! Teaching it as a means to pass a standardized test is an outrage, a disservice to our youth, and disrespectful to our ancestors! There is nothing boring in this book. Accurate within my (and Wikipedia's) scope of factual knowledge, to boot.

I have to tell a personal story here. Aeons ago I was a literary agent, and thus would get books from publishers who hoped I'd bring them something fresh and wonderful if I knew what kind of publishing they were doing. I read a book a friend passed on to me that was a reprint from a UK house; no one knew it was uncorrected proofs, and failed at every step in the process of making the book...and there are many!...to go through it page-by-page looking for errors.

The bound book was unreadable for all the errors.
That is what happened here. I could not force myself to finish what was shaping up to be a fun read.

>265 karenmarie: Horrible! *smooch*
I'm ever so pleased you were struck by >256 richardderus: because I was, if I'm honest, aiming right at you. Jon's decades of acting must really pay off as a narrator of his own words.

Really, we just need to lock Stephen King in the attic with a Selectric for the rest of his life. No one can do everything, Steve.

The others, let slip past you. I did the legwork, you reap the reward. After all, what's the YOUNGER generation for? Need me to fluff you pillows?

>266 karenmarie: Or find your glasses, permaybehaps?

>267 ArlieS: This is SO outside Holocaust-survivor Helen's wheelhouse I admit to laughing out loud. Her cozy, cookie-baking-bubbe persona would cause you to unswallow.

Do you know FORTRAN? NASA needs folks with that generation of knowledge to help the newbs figure junk out.

Wow -- that was a stretch of patience/obligation on your part to read all of those!! My sympathy.

>270 richardderus: Glasses are on the face, backup pair in the 2nd drawer down in the dresser in the Sunroom. Cheaters are all over the house, just in case. *smile*

>267 ArlieS:, >271 richardderus: Arlie, my volunteer efforts are with the Friends of the Library in my adopted town. Maybe your county libraries need volunteer tech help? RDear - I know FORTRAN, programmed in it for several decades. Business apps, not scientific, but it's a lovely language.

*smooch*

>272 RebaRelishesReading: Thank you most kindly, Reba. Most I read before COVID and made notes on, so it's mostly just reliving bad memories. I have many many many more to go to get the backlog down. I might shove some into later months so I don't have a fifteen column-inch end-of-month post.

Wishing you the best of what's left of today, Richard. ("Blech" is a note of sorts.)

*smooch*

>273 karenmarie: ...and yet the double-post...*shrug*

I say contact NASA anyway, Horrible. If they don't need you today, they'll know you and your expertise exist.

>275 LizzieD: It is indeed a note, just a singularly unhelpful one. What was "BLECH"? Who was "BLECH"? Why was any of it "BLECH"? Come on 2017-Richard cough up the deets gorram Reaverbrain!

Anyway, *smooch* for you, dear Peggy.

PEARL RULE #021 (28%)

So You Had to Build a Time Machine by Jason Offutt

Rating: 2.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Skid doesn’t believe in ghosts or time travel or any of that nonsense. A circus runaway-turned-bouncer, she believes in hard work, self-defense, and good strong coffee. Then one day an annoying theoretical physicist named Dave pops into the seat next to her at her least favorite Kansas City bar and disappears into thin air when she punches him (he totally deserved it).

Now, street names are changing, Skid’s favorite muffins are swapping frosting flavors, Dave keeps reappearing in odd places like the old Sanderson murder house—and that’s only the start of her problems.

Something has gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Absolutely *$&ed up.

Someone has the nastiest versions of every conceivable reality at their fingertips, and they're not afraid to smash them together. With the help of a smooth-talking haunted house owner and a linebacker-sized Dungeons and Dragons-loving baker, Skid and Dave set out to save the world from whatever scientific experiment has sent them all dimension-hopping against their will.

It probably means the world is screwed.

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



My Review: Humor is hard to review. What works for you, what makes you clutch your sides and shriek loud enough to scare the dog, might leave me in a curled-lip-and-stink-eye mood. And of course vice-versa.

My one and only note in the Googledoc I use to keep such things dates from May 2020. It reads, in its entirety, "BLECH". What was "BLECH"? Who was "BLECH"? Why was any of it "BLECH"? Come on past me, cough up the deets you gorram Reaverbrain!

Crickets.(I can, to be fair, see why I wanted it in 2020 as COVID choked the land. Hence the weird rating.)

CamCat Books only wants $4.99 for a kindle edition. *shrug*

>243 richardderus: I'm very pleased that Valerie Bauerlein both liked and retweeted a link to my review!

>271 richardderus: Lordie FORTRAN VI was my first computer language.

Good for math very strange at input-output.

Considering how many million of COBOL code are still running in the bowels or our banks and financial institutions-- The Coders of my generation had better NEVER die.

>278 richardderus: Coupe of years ago there was a little indie movie called "Safety Not Guaranteed" about a goofy guy who maybe invented a time machine. And advertises in the local paper for a companion to join him in his adventures.

And apparently somebody has turned it into a Broadway Musical.

Your story reminded me of it.

One of my physics professors had a great line about this.

"If I ever invented a time machine first thing I would do is go back in time and PREVENT myself from ever inventing it!".

BURGOINE #043

Black Sheep: A Space Opera Adventure (Flight of the Javelin #1) by Rachel Aukes

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Fifteen years into a twenty-year voyage, war veteran Captain Throttle Reyne is looking forward to taking a break from dealing with malfunctions, glitches, and the hassles of monitoring a thousand colonists in cryo-sleep.

But when her colony ship breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Throttle and her crew must leave the colonists behind to search for help. They find a ship that's not only missing a crew… it's clearly not from their star system.

It's the discovery of a lifetime. All they need to do is tow the mysterious vessel back to their colony ship for further study and Throttle won't ever have to work again. One problem. While they're away, the colony ship is stolen—with the colonists still on board.

Throttle gives chase to a lawless star system on the outer rim. To get their colonists back, they must take on the pirates and ganglords who will do anything—and sell anyone—to make a buck.

They play dirty. But Throttle and her crew play dirtier.

Strap on your restraints and experience the start of this new space opera thrill ride. It's perfect for fans of Jay Allan, Jennifer Foehner Wells, and Star Wars.

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

My Review: Disabled woman very much in charge of a colony ship. A lot is made of her disability not holding her back...she's a gifted pilot, a stellar markswoman, a natural leader who inspires her crew to tremendous efforts and loyalty...but also shows her relishing zero-gee time as it lets her be free from her mobility devices. That's lovely, small piece of character development and world-building...we went to space, but can't fix everything...that I really liked.

The pace is good, the story is solid (though her error that costs the crew their passengers/cargo is a bit out of character), the prose is serviceable-plus but not dazzling or superior. I couldn't get the final mile to loving it. I do like it...I think Tales of the Ketty Jay or Firefly is a better comp than Star Wars...but I'll read the next one.

She wants $4.99 for a Kindle, or it's free to read on Kindle Unlimited.

>280 magicians_nephew: I suspect there are very high-level meetings among intergovernmental orgs and ministries going on to address this issue without crashing the entire planet's economy and infrastructure.

I quake like the blancmange I so closely resemble at that thought.

>281 magicians_nephew: *gaaak* A MUSICAL *urp*

I'm with the prof!

BURGOINE #044

Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When two hardscrabble young boys think they’ve committed a crime, they flee into the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Will the adults trying to find and protect them reach them before it’s too late?

It’s the summer of 1994 in Claypot, Wisconsin, and the lives of ten-year-old Fischer “Fish” Branson and Dale “Bread” Breadwin are shaped by the two fathers they don’t talk about.

One night, tired of seeing his best friend bruised and terrorized by his no-good dad, Fish takes action. A gunshot rings out and the two boys flee the scene, believing themselves murderers. They head for the woods, where they find their way onto a raft, but the natural terrors of Ironsforge gorge threaten to overwhelm them.

Four adults track them into the forest, each one on a journey of his or her own. Fish’s mother Miranda, a wise woman full of fierce faith; his granddad, Teddy, who knows the woods like the back of his hand; Tiffany, a purple-haired gas station attendant and poet looking for connection; and Sheriff Cal, who’s having doubts about a life in law enforcement.

The adults track the boys toward the novel’s heart-pounding climax on the edge of the gorge and a conclusion that beautifully makes manifest the grace these characters find in the wilderness and one another. This timeless story of loss, hope, and adventure runs like the river itself amid the vividly rendered landscape of the Upper Midwest.

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

My Review: There's a religious-nut mother involved, so of course I had to read the book. To my disappointment, she is not vilified.

It's like that Leif Enger guy (So Brave, Young, and Handsome) or Per Petterson (Out Stealing Horses) was writing with Kent Haruf (Our Souls at Night); these comps ought to tell you what I thought of the book.

Ecco Press offers a trade paperback for $13.59, and if any of the named writers are your jam, go now!

BURGOINE #045

Vulgarian Rhapsody by Alvin Orloff

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A whirlwind tour of San Francisco’s fabled queer bohemia in the waning days of the 20th century, as the city’s budget bon vivants work to save their eccentric lifestyles in the face of tech gentrification by LAMBDA award finalist Alvin Orloff.

Harris, San Francisco’s most annoying gay barfly, doesn’t mean to be bitchy, passive aggressive, or insulting. But he’s so bedazzled by his own critical brilliance he feels morally obliged to share his scathing opinions with the world at any and every opportunity. This irritates no one more than his roommate, Maxine, an avant-garde transsexual cabaret singer. When she overhears him badmouthing her on the phone she flies into a rage and expels him from their apartment.

This crisis couldn’t come at a worse time. The year is 1999 and the “dot com” boom has rendered cheap housing nonexistent, and Harris, who works as a part-time telemarketer, is—as usual—low on funds. Will he be able to convince one of his eccentric, semi-dysfunctional friends with a rent-controlled apartment to let him move in?

Vulgarian Rhapsody immerses readers in a fading bohemia of queer dive bars, drag clubs, and countercultural cafes. The book’s narrator (a longtime frenemy of Harris who’s every bit as snarky and annoying as he is) tells the story with sadistic relish and an ironist’s eye for the absurd. Anyone feeling sickly from too many uplifting stories of personal empowerment, precious coming-of-age tales, or sugarcoated romances will find the perfect antidote in this hilariously acidic comedy of manners. A must-read for fans of Brontez Purnell, Philippe Besson, and Ryan O’Connell.

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

My Review: Have you ever wondered what would happen if Armistead Maupin had written Tales of the City in the 1990s, focused it on the (non-existent) lovechild of Truman Capote and Sylvia Miles, and done it when he was coming off a meth binge? Just me, then?

This is what would've happened...this bitter acerbic slacker story about a San Francisco as gone, as forever and irretrievably gone, as my New York is. So this is swingin' for my sweet spot, nostalgia plus perspective multiplied by anger at the heedless waste of it all.

I had to stop at three-and-a-half stars because, as I was reading bits aloud to Rob on a Zoom, he kept saying, "that's really obscure" and "why do you think that's funny, exactly?" So it's aimed at me, but the blast radius is quite small.



Three Rooms Press asks a piddling $9.99 for a Kindle edition. Go, fellow oldsters! Buy!

PEARL RULE #022 @ 33%

The Secret of Lillian Velvet (Kingdoms and Empires #5) by Jaclyn Moriarty

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Lillian Velvet lives a very lonely life with her cold and remote Grandmother. That is, until her tenth birthday, when she is given a pickle jar of gold coins, along with a note with clear instructions: don't go out, don't open the door for anyone, and don't spend all your coins in one day.

What happens next seems impossible. The coins whisk Lillian away to a different time and place. There she meets a small boy in a circus about to be crushed to death; a lively family, each member in a distinctive form of mortal danger; a boy with a skateboard; and a girl who can Whisper. And a web of dangerous magic closing tight around it all.

Why is Lillian here? How is she supposed to help these new friends? And—most importantly—what happens if she fails?

An exciting tale in the magical Kingdoms and Empires world, where seemingly disparate elements are spun until all is revealed as one delicious, tantalising whole.

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

My Review: What on Earth is this?! How HORRIBLE the treatment of this child was. How awful for people to *pretend*to*die* and leave a child to be "raised" by a stranger whose identity is also a lie.

I gave up because I was really pissed, but really felt silly for reacting this way to book five in a series aimed at middle school kids. I know kids all think they're changelings/adopted/not really related to these muggles in their house. Permaybehaps the series reader, inside the target audience, will purr like a lynx at this story.

Levine Querido offers Kindle editions for $8.99...but start your kid/grand/nibbling with #1.

*smooch*

Good for you for gritting your teeth and getting those reviews done! I admire the effort and feel justified in skipping the books.

On the other hand, HURRAY for V. Baurelein's taking the time to comment on your review. She should have, and I'm glad that she did.

*smooch*

Congrats on getting all those reviews done!!

You've had several Pearl Rules, Richard. Too bad! I meanwhile am reading What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley. And that is thanks to you alerting me to the fact that a new book in the Flavia series was going to be published quite a few months ago here on your thread. I was first in line with the holds at the library. Thanks!

I'm liking the contrast between >286 richardderus:, which seems to have been written for you and >287 richardderus: where you may not be the target audience (mild understatement). There is a book for everyone out there and each reading experience is as unique as the person reading it.
Hoping you get more hits in your wheelhouse. >:-)

>280 magicians_nephew: Oh, everyone is talking about FORTRAN and COBOL... again! :)

My first language was BASIC, followed by Z80A machine code. Yes, I had a ZX-81! This was closely followed by 6502 machine code and then FORTH, but along the way I tried learning both FORTRAN and COBOL. I know about as much about these as I know about proto-Cornish. But I agree that FORTRAN I/O was weird!

New thread under construction here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/363162

>288 ronincats: *smooch*

>293 sirfurboy: Indeed, Stephen, it's a subject much more intertwined with our lives than most appear to realize.

>292 Helenliz: I'm pretty well-stocked in the story larder, Helen, statistically it'd be a miracle if I didn't dislike a few. I'm actually pretty lenient in my reviews nowadays because I'm really making an extra effort to consider how this thing I hate might appear to others. I'm still rating them by *my* lights but mentioning who might like a story is good practice.

>291 vancouverdeb: I'm WAAAY behind the statistics curve on Pearl-Rules, Deborah, because I'm applying my standard described just above to my reads.

*smooch*

>290 Berly: Thank you, Berly-boo! *smooch*

>289 LizzieD: That'a solid result, then, Peggy me lurve! My effort is amply rewarded thusly. *smooch*

>288 ronincats: *smoochiesmoochsmooch*