richardderus's eighteenth 2024 thread

Ephemerides by Regiomontanus (former astrologer to King Matthias I of Hungary and Archbishop Janós Vitéz), published in 1474. MS held by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

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.
Reviews 124 to 136 are back there.
Reviews 137 to 154 are back here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS
155 Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl #1) in post #20.
156 Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl #2) in post #21.
157 Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open in post #47.
158 We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe in post #48.
159 How to Listen in post #58.
160 Civil Unity: The Radical Path to Transform Our Discourse, Our Lives, and Our World in post #61.
161 The Devil's Flute Murders in post #99.
162 The Little Sparrow Murders in post #102.
163 The Noh Mask Murder in post #128.
164 Seriously HAPPY: 10 life-changing philosophy lessons from Stoicism to Zen to supercharge your mindset in post #144.
165 Betrayal at Blackthorn Park (Parisian Orphan #2) in post #155.
166 Killers of a Certain Age in post #166.
167 Season of the Swamp in post #194.
168 The Book of Witching in post #226.
169 Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity in post #249.
170 The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy in post #254.
171 The Witches of El Paso in post #262.

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:
DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #060 Ladykiller in post #184.
#061 The Hitchcock Hotel in post #185.
#062 House of Glass in post #288.
#063 The Kamogawa Food Detectives in post #292.
BURGOINE #064 A Legend in the Baking (Fake It Till You Bake It #2) in post #292.

All previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:
#026 Future Man: How to Evolve and Thrive in the Age of Trump, Mansplaining, and #MeToo in post #63.
#026 Body Phobia: The Western Roots of Our Fear of Difference (33%) in post #284.

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.)

End of Q3 thoughts on goals
My Q3 reads started out ~meh~ in July but ramped up to excellence during #WITMonth...Of Saints and Miracles was terrfic, several others were notably good...but my favorite read was Helen Phillips's excellent near-future story of AI-enshittened late-stage surveillance capitalism, Hum. What a chilling story. Very probably predictive. Very, very provocative. One all y'all should read because it's propulsive and thought-provoking in equal measure.

The quarter was very productive in review-writing terms. Counting all three of my categories, Burgoines, Pearl-Rules, and regular reviews, I wrote NINETY-TWO REVIEWS. That makes 254 written of a 2024 goal set of 250! Very, very pleased with myself. My #Booksgiving reviews already written would take me to 125% of my 2024 goal. That doesn't count the #Deathtober ones written, the numerous reads already read and notes made (no count on those because counting them now makes me feel superstitious, like I'll die in the middle of posting them or something), or the books I'm still reading! Amazing what one can accomplish with no other commitments like work or IRL socializing.

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.
My September in review post is here.

usual stuff...except this one, which is your permission to post now.

Happy new one!

Happy new thread, Richard. I am first! A rare occasion!

Darn, Anita beat me by a minute!

Salutations on your latest thread, RD.

Happy New Thread, Richard! Now I need to go back and finish the last one. *smooch*

Happy new thread RD.
>11 LizzieD: I finished the last one before I came here *smug face*.

Happy New Thread, Richard, and Thursday *smooch* .

>8 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita! I couldn't find the Habsburg crown in my collection, so here's a Bavarian one for your thread-queenliness:

>9 jessibud2: Oh dear, Shelley, that was a real pipped at the post minute. *smooch*

>10 PaulCranswick: Thank you most kindly, PC!

>11 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy, not much happened after your last visit except some Pearl-Rule reviews. *smooch*

>12 Helenliz: Hi Helen! I'm glad you're starting here from a solid base.

>13 vancouverdeb: Greetings, Deborah, thank you for the kind wishes. *smooch*

155 Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl #1) by Matt Dinniman

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.

Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.

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

My Review: Samuel Beckett's absurdist humor meets The Truman Show by way of Cat Valente's Space Opera, but streamed on Twitch.

If any of that didn't make sense, this might not be the read for you. Wait for the TV show. They'll dumb that down.

Humor is the most difficult thing to review, since you are guaranteed not to think what makes me laugh is funny. Likewise, I'm sure. Princess Donut the cat was a sarcastic, clueless hoot. And I hate cats!

This is a video game, so you know. It didn't originate as one, but it really hit the same cultural nerve.

Boy howdy, did Dinniman hit an artery! A TV deal with Seth MacFarlane's company is the latest...before that the book's self-published editions sold well, his Kickstarter for deluxe hardcovers went past goal. There's something here that spoke to those under forty in stentorian tones.

I think you already know if you'll like this one, and I'm here to assure you you're right.

156 Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl #2) by Matt Dinniman

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: "The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin."

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Carl still has no pants.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.

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

My Review: Reading something I liked, but didn't love, then its sequel, in less than a week was a bad decision. Princess Donut really worked my nerve this time, and not because she's a cat.

I'm not a gaymer. I've never kept my focus long enough to care about these games on screen, but the way they deliver the human addiction to story is pure and uncut. Is this a good exemplar of the text version of it? Since I read them both, and never even finished Ready Player One, I'm goin' with yes. The grace notes in this story are the basic reason I kept my eyes on the Kindle. Small things, deliberately planted, all through both books...this made me want to keep reading past the annoyance of the absurdities Carl and Princess Donut get up to, into, and yak on about.

I said it above: "I think you already know if you'll like this one, and I'm here to assure you you're right."

>14 richardderus: thank you,Richard. A lovely crown it is!

*smooch*

>22 figsfromthistle: It's one of the nicer German ones, I agree. So much more graceful than most. I'm glad you agree!

You've made my day, Richard, so thanks. A new thread at just the right time for me. I can't just jump to the last post, passing one or two hundred that I haven't at least scanned. So a fresh new thread is dandy. You're into so many things, some I relish and others I bypass. So the upshot is: I dunno.

Reading a non-Doyle Sherlock Holmes, this one by Nicholas Meyer. The Return of the Pharaoh.

Slowly transferring non-fiction to my new bookcase, beginning with Bio, Autobio, and Memoirs. So many of these tomes are fat and gobble up shelf-space. Geez.

*smooch*

Happy new thread! I need to find an ebook to read. I'm hopefully at the place in my recovery I can concentrate.

Happy new thread, Richard. No successful BBs so far. Nyah nyah. ;-)

Just stopping by to drop a ⭐️ and wish you a happy new 🧵!

>24 weird_O: Greetings, Weird One, and you're welcome. A new thread's a great time to draw that line.

Your many new shelves make me dizzy with jealousy. I hope none of them sag and there are no collapses that damage your house, he smiled evilly.

>25 ronincats: *smooch*

>26 thornton37814: I hope so too, Lori. Are you on Edelweiss+? Your library position entitles you to get DRCs. I'm not reviewing it but I really loved Food & Other Things I Love : More than 100 Italian American Recipes from My Family to Yours by Caroline Manzo, out via Chronicle Books.
This frittata made me drool barely sub-lethally:

Her stories are just the right length of the format, as well.

>27 ArlieS: I should hope to kiss a pig, no BBs on you yet! Nothing but fluff reviewed and mediocre fluff at that. Never you fear, my pretty, your time in the crosshairs is comin' fast....

>28 Storeetllr: Mary! Thank you most kindly. *smooch*

>31 richardderus: I've gotten several through Edelweiss in the past. I haven't requested many lately.

>34 thornton37814: Oh, excellent, because this one is in the no-approval-needed "To Download" section!
https://www.edelweiss.plus/?sku=1797225251&g=4400

Happy new one, Richards -- pant, pant trying to keep up

>36 RebaRelishesReading: Thank you, Reba! *smooch*

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Happy New Thread! I got a Lifer today. Hooray!

Happy new thread, RD!

>38 msf59: All the YAY! I'll come look at what it was.

Thanks!

>39 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie, hard to believe what a big posting year it's been.

Happy new thread, Richard! Already over 40 posts, I see. It's hard to keep up.

Happy new thread Richard!

>24 weird_O: So greedy!

>42 atozgrl: Shocking, innit...here I sit, alone and ignored, and somehow posts pile up while I'm off in my corner sobbing.

*smooch*

>43 humouress: Greetings, Nina! Thanks for your kind wishes.

Non-fiction is indeed a greedy genre. It demands a lot of space to tell you its stories. The number of pixels, of course, matters not at all, but gallons of ink need lebensraum.

Happy New Thread!

157 Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open by Angela Hume

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The story of the radical feminist networks who worked outside the law to defend abortion.

Starting in the 1970s, small groups of feminist activists met regularly to study anatomy, practice pelvic exams on each other, and learn how to safely perform a procedure known as menstrual extraction, which can empty the contents of the uterus in case of pregnancy using equipment that can be easily bought and assembled at home. This “self-help” movement grew into a robust national and international collaboration of activists and health workers determined to ensure access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, at all costs―to the point of learning how to do the necessary steps themselves.

Even after abortion was legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, activists continued meeting, studying, and teaching these skills, reshaping their strategies alongside decades of changing legal, medical, and cultural landscapes such as the legislative war against abortion rights, the AIDS epidemic, and the rise of anti-abortion domestic terrorism in the 1980s and 90s. The movement’s drive to keep abortion accessible led to the first clinic defense mobilizations against anti-abortion extremists trying to force providers to close their doors. From the self-help movement sprang a constellation of licensed feminist healthcare clinics, community programs to promote reproductive health, even the nation’s first known-donor sperm bank, all while fighting the oppression of racism, poverty, and gender violence.

Deep Care follows generations of activists and clinicians who orbited the Women's Choice clinic in Oakland from the early 1970s until 2010, as they worked underground and above ground, in small cells and broad coalitions and across political movements with grit, conviction, and allegiances of great trust to do what they believed needed to be done―despite the law, when required. Grounded in interviews of activists sharing details of their work for the first time, Angela Hume retells three decades of this critical, if under-recognized story of the radical edge of the abortion movement. These lessons are more pertinent than ever following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the devastation to abortion access nationwide.

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

My Review: By limiting her scope to activists in the Bay Area of California, Author Hume enables herself to dive deeply into the whys, hows, and wherefores of the activists who believed then, and will inspire others now to believe, in the truest expression of "self-help." There is a huge weight of wrongheadedness and immorality bearing down on women's rights. There always has been, of course; patriarchy isn't a new idea, and making up a matriarchal past from evidence so fragmentary as to be useless for tendentious argument is not particularly helpful to resisting the current, powerful, well-funded assault.

Author Hume does not shy away from graphic evocation of the procedures she enumerates the activists providing. It's astonishing to me how very difficult pregnancy is...to start, to finish, to understand in its myriad complexities. It was not always pleasant to encounter this information.

The broader framework of resistance and activism on multiple social fronts in that fifty-years-gone time and place is not skimped. The long-gone groups, their interlocking aims, their interpenetration of membership, wildly proliferate and birth acronym after abbreviation thus are correspondingly difficult to keep track of. As is so often the case among resisters of any facet of the status quo, the vicious internecine fights are hard to read about. I have this wild, unruly desire to scream at the idiots fighting over nonsense to grow up and get a grip! Fight the right-wingers in charge, not each other! It's just handing the rotters victory in their efforts to control and exploit everone for fun and profit to fight among yourselves!

I took long breaks from this read to avoid having more strokes from fury at the dimwits who refuse to accept impure, compromise positions because they are RIGHT and that should be OBVIOUS so everyone should do as they say! Which is, oddly enough, exactly what the right-wingers say.

Funny, that.

The thrust of this book is, as I see it, what worked before can work again. Get your gloves out, the literal healthcare ones and the metaphorical battle ones. The world's going to go into reverse unless we all do a LOT OF RESISTING, at ballot boxes, at clinic-defense events, at community meetings.

It worked before, it can again, but not without personal, individual commitments to show up in the flesh. Slacktivism is helpful to direct the conversation but more is needed to oppose the wave of nightmare invasive evil laws.

158 We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe by Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Although the Dallas Fire Department had saved the clinic, we were shaken and heartsick that our son had just spent Christmas Day at a crime scene. I had performed my first abortion in the year Kyle was born, and though he had long supported our work, he now felt worried for us in ways he’d never expressed. As we stood near the ruins, breathing fresh air in gulps, he said, “Do you have to keep doing this work?”

We were both silent for long moments before I simply said, “No. We choose to.”

In this deeply personal account, Dr. Curtis Boyd and Dr. Glenna Halvorson-Boyd reflect on their lives in abortion care, from the childhood experiences that shaped their paths to the Supreme Court decision that forced the closure of their Dallas clinic. Their stories begin in the 1960s, as Curtis opens a clandestine abortion practice while breaking with the beliefs of his Baptist family and Glenna pursues psychology while coming to understand the world of restrictive gender roles. When the two of them meet shortly after abortion is legalized, they bond over a common commitment to women, forming a professional and personal partnership that will weather the coming decades. We Choose To is the story of that partnership, and the staff and patients that have shaped the history of modern abortion.

In these pages, Curtis and Glenna share their holistic, morally rooted approach to their work. Led by a desire to empower patients, they advance abortion and mental health care further than ever even as they find themselves at the center of a controversial new issue in American life. Sweeping, introspective, and deeply honest, We Choose To is a rare portrait of abortion providers and the world in which they work, where abortion is not a talking point in a culture war but a private, even spiritual, act.

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

My Review: If you're wondering what kind of person is drawn to resist social injustice, read this joint memoir by two powerfully rooted in faith people. They set themselves out to provide care for women who were not being served in their time of need by any system allegedly meant to do so.

I'm strongly anti-religion because people like the authors are far too seldom to be found in the ranks of churchgoers. These people are exemplars of walking the walk while self-awarely not talking the most frquently heard talk from the faith they once shared.

I emerged from this read far more ready to smile about the world's future. These deeply admirable people have raised kids and lived lives of service and, by example, inspired others. What more can one ask?

Thank you both for sharing your motivations and reasons for being genuinely good.

Checking in on thread #18, good sir! Eighteen?? Yikes!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes for a wonderful weekend, RD!

>32 richardderus: ;-)

>47 richardderus: How right you were. Added to the TBR list.

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, Richard. I've wondered and wondered and wondered how doctors can let their patients die even knowing they themselves risk spending the rest of their own lives in jail. I won't read Hume or the Boyds, but I get again that this complicated issue ought to be straightforward. Taking an oath and meaning it may cost a person more than that person ever imagined. I'll stop.
*smooch* for your Friday and into the weekend!

>47 richardderus: and >48 richardderus: Bulls-eyes this time. I don’t want to read these—I’m crying just reading your reviews—but I think I have to. It shouldn’t be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. Damn the religious extremists.

Have a wonderful weekend!

>49 alcottacre: Shocking, ain't it? I'm a little gobsmacked at the speed things're moving.

Happy-weekend *smooch* back

>50 ArlieS: Heh.

::nail-buff::

>51 LizzieD: It's the "meaning it" bit that gets so deeply troublesome, Peggy. I think meaning it is always tough no matter the commitment, but this subject...well...there's no piece of it that is not extremely consequential.

*smooch*

>52 Storeetllr: Damn them indeed. I am increasingly entrenched in my conviction that all religion, religions, and religious organizations = evil. These stories...well, you won't dash about trilling your joy at having read them. They are important, though.

Happy new thread, Richard! *smooch*

159 How to Listen by Thich Nhat Hanh (illus. Jason DeAntonis)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a time of great division and discord, our capacity to listen deeply and with compassion is paramount to solving pressing issues—across the realms of global politics, interpersonal relationships, and our own hearts and minds.

In How to Listen, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh demonstrates how deep listening is a fundamental building block of good communication. But perhaps more fundamentally, listening is central to our practice, a basic ingredient to strengthen our capacity for mindfulness, concentration, insight, and compassion. Learning how to listen with equanimity to life itself, we generate insight into the true nature of our deep connection to all things. And from this place of understanding—when we know that we aren’t separate—our capacity to listen deepens even further.

With clear and gentle guidance from Thich Nhat Hanh, we learn how truly listening—to ourselves, to each other, to Mother Earth, and to the many “bells of mindfulness” that are available to us in each moment—is the foundation of our practice, an expression of love, and a solution to our deepest and most urgent large-scale conflicts.

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

My Review: "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," said Tolstoy, and that truth has never faded or lost relevance.

When confronted by disagreement, wisdom says to listen first, then react. As a goal, that is very admirable, but largely unattainable, I hear everyone saying. I said it, too. Truth is it's hard, it's challenging, and you will fail in practicing it.

Zen practices are the butt of many jokes in the Western overculture, unsurprisingly. Google "zen koan" and imagine being presented with it sans context or preparation for the simple existence of a context where this is not intended to be humorous. Mindfulness is not natural to homo sapiens occidentalis. We're fed a constant media diet of covetousness, triumphalism, and valorized ignorance. These are the antithesis of mindfulness, its very opposite both in worldview and in the practices promoted therein.

The author was a vocal peace and mindfulness advocate most of his near-century of life. This book, charmingly illustrated by Jason DeAntonis, offers up practical steps towards a practice of mindful listening. In reading the ideas I was forcefully struck by the way they could be read: I've been at the mindfulness game for quite a while now, and began my own journey from a more or less Buddhist perspective. (My sexual preference has always been "more," so Buddhism, with its emphasis on renunciation, and I were destined to part.) These pages are full of advice for practices that can be read and applied by the novice through to the student of Buddhism. No one is left out of the benefits because there is no presumption of an expert audience.

So I hope, like the departed author, that you'll start a journey to becoming a real listener by reading and heeding his words. From the 1975 publication of The Miracle of Mindfulness through to this posthumous publication (he died in 2022), he's been making steady inroads into US and Western culture with his interlocking message of listening as a practice, and mindful existence in the modern world, in place of mere passivity and disengagement.

There is no better way to transform one's experience of the world than to be fully present in it. Starting here is not a bad idea at all.

>57 bell7: Thank you, Mary my dear lady, and a return *smooch*

>31 richardderus: that looks like a user friendly layout. easy to read while cooking. I always dislike it when a recipe does not have a picture of how it's supposed to look like. Looks like a perfect cook book.

Happy weekend reading *smooch*

160 Civil Unity: The Radical Path to Transform Our Discourse, Our Lives, and Our World by Shola Richards

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In order to transform our world, we must unite behind a new kind of civility.

In a world that is more divided than ever, it will take a radical act to transform our discourse, our lives, and our world. International civility consultant and keynote speaker Shola Richards believes that unifying our world around the power of civility is that radical act, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Do we want a safer world to live in? Do we want less toxicity in our politics? Do we want a world free of hate and discrimination? Do we want to work in organizations that allow us to do our best work? Do we want our children to learn in schools that are kind and supportive? Do we want to live in a world that prioritizes our mental health and overall wellness? If your answers are “yes,” then we must steel ourselves for the reality that uniting around civility is the only path that will get us there.

This deeply personal—and deeply practical—book will not shy away from addressing the challenging questions, such as:

How can civil discourse be maintained during disagreements about topics that are profoundly polarizing, like abortion, gun control, or politics?

How can I be expected to be civil toward someone who has deeply wounded me—the drunk driver who killed my child, the relative who sexually assaulted me, the spouse who left me for my best friend, or the narcissistic parent who abused me?

How can I be civil when confronted with the hatefulness of intolerances such as racism, misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia, or Islamophobia?

How can I have a civil conversation with someone who isn’t tethered to reality and believes in baseless dark web conspiracy theories?

It sounds like civility means that we just need to be agreeable, not rock the boat, avoid having opinions or keeping them to ourselves, and refuse to take a firm stand against the policies and people who are trying to harm me and my loved ones. What in the world is positive about any of that foolishness?

These questions—and more—deserve to be answered. To be clear, Civil Unity is not another book about turning the other cheek when faced with harmful or hateful behavior. This book is about providing the practical tactics to disagree more effectively, bridge ideological divisions, actively prioritize our mental health, and fiercely create a more civil world that will sustain over time.

If you are ready to transform our discourse, our lives, and our world, let’s get to work.

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

My Review: A book that approaches the central problem of relatively anonymous online discourse: disinhibition from conversational norms of civility, as an opportunity to offer the healing balm of being heard to self and others.

His measured storytelling tones combine with well-chosen illuminating anecdotes of succesful de-escalations. It is by this surprisingly simple shift in tone, complete with some stock phrases to use as the practice becomes habit, that Author Shola gives his evidence for both the need for and the efficacy of active application of civility in all our interactions.

The upcoming elections and the past decade of increasingly strident public, and private, disagreement, has pointed up the need for us all to take stock of our roles in perpetuating this noisy, angry buzz. An expert's view of what works is the gift this book brings. The author's Amazon bio offers a condensed version of his acquisition of expertise:

Shola Richards is an international keynote speaker, author, and suicide survivor, who has deep expertise about—and firsthand experience with—the dangers of toxic incivility.

Lovingly nicknamed, “Brother Teresa”, Shola has shared his transformative message of civility on three different continents, on major media platforms such as CBS This Morning, with top organizations (such Microsoft, Google, and WebMD), on the TEDx stage, and even on Capitol Hill where he was invited to testify in front of the House of Representatives for two hours about how to bring more civility to Congress (clearly, they need a refresher course).

Shola’s ideas are known to be extremely practical, deeply researched, highly inspirational, and readily applicable to people from all walks of life.
So in this book, like his previous book Go Together: How the Concept of Ubuntu Will Change How You Live, Work and Lead, he offers a clear vision for how the effort of communicating civilly and respectfully around our inevitable disagreements, will assist in resolving them.

As one would expect from someone whose CV includes being a suicide survivor, Author Shola does not stint on the positive reinforcement. Being that deep into the darkest places brings a need to stress the light in one's communication with great regularity.

None of this is in any way to suggest that "both sides"ism or tolerance for, even acceptance of toxic intolerant bullying is required to "keep the peace." That isn't peace, it's capitulation, and it's what fans the flames that a different and civil approach to disagreeing with those who spread the ills we're suffering under can offer. Angry confrontation changes nothing, but since when is it your job to change the way others think? Accepting that you can and should have clear boundaries that require those you disagree with to remain civil, while remaining civil yourself, changes the world too.

A very well-presented book with some useful and immediately deployable ideas. My idea of a terrific way to spend money for anyone in a situation where conflicts are, or are becoming, personally troubling. Reading and applying Author Shola's lessons bid fair to change your quotidian world.

>60 figsfromthistle: It makes cooking easier to me if there are explanations of what's wanted...eg, "beat until just incorporated" or suchlike...but photos are there to reassure and guide. I'd encourage this one on you, Anita.

Enjoy the weekend reading you get a chance to do!

PEARL RULE #026

Future Man: How to Evolve and Thrive in the Age of Trump, Mansplaining, and #MeToo by Tim Samuels

Rating: 2* of five...generously granted

The Publisher Says: A sharply intelligent, explosively honest, and laugh-out-loud funny look at the state of masculinity and how to be a man, for fans of Jon Ronson and Matt Haig.

If ever there was an urgent need for a frank understanding of what's going on with men, it is now. Male rage and frustration have driven resurgent populism, mass shootings, and epidemics of addiction and violence.

Powerful men who have abused their positions for decades have been and are being #MeToo–outed and dismissed. The patriarchy, that solid bedrock of male power for thousands of years, seems to be crumbling.

In Future Man, with his characteristic intelligence and humor, Tim Samuels assesses the state of contemporary manhood, its conflicts, confusions, and challenges. Trapped in bodies barely changed since cavemen days, men are contending with the stresses of corporate culture, lifelong commitment, rampant depression, and crazy expectations to be successful at work and at home. But how can you hunt and gather in an open-plan office? Why do men make up to 95 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs yet 93 percent of the prison population? Why do men commit suicide at more than three times the rate of women?

Drawing on his own experience and reporting, Samuels addresses such topics as dating, aging, fatherhood, porn, violence, mental health, and the trouble with monogamy as well as issues related to toxic masculinity, the man box, gender roles, and role models. The American edition has been updated and includes a new preface.

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

My Review: Offensively heteronormative. Glib to the point of irrelevance. Might help some very toxic straight white men under forty see themselves but offers bland nostrums as "solutions" eg embracing fatherhood's current "Golden Age".

Curiously underdevelops mansplaining...isn't that what this book *is*? Not recommended for anyone not utterly clueless about how to be a decent human being, and even then with the caveat that they should read more and better self-help books. I abandoned the read at about 10% but stochastically bounced around through the whole book.

SEPTEMBER IN REVIEW

What a productive month. I wrote fifty-six reviews! Googledocs have made such a difference in my practice, they might one day even stop meriting a curled lip and rolled eye when I mention their free-to-use and easy to store on my Chromebook selves. I don't need to track read-in-{month} data because it isn't important to me...this is what I do, no job, no outside social obligations, just read, write, repeat.

Tomorrow, the 29th, will bring the usual last-Sunday gang review. The 21st and 22nd, unusually, brought themed gang reviews for mysteries I got from the two biggest DRC aggregators, Edelweiss+ and NetGalley. With October being #Deathtober, my chance to make inroads into my unread and/or unreviewed mysteries, horror and true crime books, I felt the need to talk about some I cared little about *before* the month started, or the 27th...last October Sunday...would be five hundred reviews long.

My favorite September reads were, unsurprisingly, A Muzzle for Witches and Sky Full of Elephants. The last book by a late author whose essays I've enjoyed for years, and the first book by an author I hope will join my list of people whose work I look forward to for years to come.

Monday the 30th brings my first #Deathtober review: THE LITTLE SPARROW MURDERS, latest translated from Japanese mystery via Pushkin Vertigo, translated by Bryan Karetnyk. It also squeaks into National Translation Month, which I pretty much ignored this September after spending August warbling my fool head off about Women In Translation.

How absurdly lucky I am. I get to read as much as I want, I get to read books before they're published, I get to talk about them multiple places to lots of different people who care about them as much as I do. All enabled by technology. Even social media brings me good interactions with the bookish people I most enjoy chatting with.

Enjoy your October reading, y'all! (I forgot to add that I'm going to put up political reviews on Tuesdays, possibly Thursdays, because there's a presidential election coming in November. Permaybehaps you've heard...?)

>58 richardderus: I have dipped into Thich Nhat Hanh's work RD, and plan to settle to reading the works of his I have more fully. I guess waiting for the perfect moment is not ideal as there is no such thing!

>65 Caroline_McElwee: No, there's not, and "waiting" for it is more honestly phrased as "naaah, never mind." I'm more and more willing to say, "I'm skippin' this one."

Speaking, (Hi, Richard!) and off to my normal duty round! You'd think that we normal, semi-intelligent adults would know from what works with us (somebody who listens, somebody who is civil) would work for us. Apparently, it takes several lifetimes except for extraordinarily self-aware, sensitive individuals. Glad that 2 of your 3 were worth your time. *smooch*

>64 richardderus: Lovely sentiment that last paragraph!! Hope your enjoy your October reading too and I look forward to reading your comments (and trying not to end up heading for the bookstore TOO often as a result).

>56 richardderus: I completely agree. I look forward to reading them.

>58 richardderus: I love Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace Is Every Step, so I imagine I will love this one too. Can’t find the audiobook though, which is kind of ironic considering the title, though I guess the illustrations might be worth getting the printed book.

>67 LizzieD: I'm delighted the two that worked are as good as they are, Peggy, given my general oppositional attitude toward self-help books. These slipped past my curmudgeonly filters. I am so irritated with myself for not excoriating them!

Well, honest assessments of things one loathes *should* be painful in order to be meaningful. *grumble*

>68 RebaRelishesReading: Thank you, dear lady. I forgot to add that I'm going to put up political reviews on Tuesdays, possibly Thursdays, because there's a presidential election coming in November. Permaybehaps you've heard...?

>69 Storeetllr: I hope you derive the benefit I did from them, then.

>70 Storeetllr: No audiobook?! That really is odd. I think the illos are...sweet...but worth it on their own, no. You do better work, considered artistically.

So it took until after NOON today for me to have access to the GBBO season-starter, but I got it watched! I am officially In Love with Dylan after his showstopper Canopic jar. Andy's accent is so thick I barely understand him, unless I put on headphones and pay strict attention. His overnight bag showstopper was so beautifully thought out, if a lot too small, that I half-expected him to get Star Baker until P&P agreed his cake was dry. Christiaan was very clever with his showstopper but unless he learns to tickle the judges' palates he's a goner. Remember S5Norman and S10Elena? Lavender losses, both.

Nelly, Hazel, and Gill are forgettable. Jeff is, or will be, gone.

Georgie, Illiyin, Sumaya, and Mike are all very fun to watch...Pato and Fanny, the bird cakes, were amusing; Illiyin's vase of flowers was clever if poorly finished; and Mike's book illusion cakes were *a*maz*ing*! But John's bluejeans were so beautifully textured and colored, if a touch sloppy on the folding details (but a home baker doing it in four hours?!) that I really thought they made a fair choice.

So even if it was twelve hours late for me, for no reason I know of, I am really hoping this is going to be a very entertaining season.

>61 richardderus: Hmmm. Sounds like something I ought to read. Unfortunately, my list of to-reads keeps getting exponentially longer, so I don't know when I would fit it in.

>75 richardderus: I wish the show was still on PBS, where I could see it. I enjoyed watching it when it was on.

>75 richardderus: - I've been eagerly awaiting your thoughts! We watched it last night, and so far, I love the cast (mostly). I understand why no one was sent home, but I was hoping Hazel would get the old heave-ho.

I think Illiyin (that's the midwife, right?) is my favorite so far.

I have informed The Wayne that he needs to make me a chocolate orange loaf cake, STAT.

>76 atozgrl: I'm pretty sure >61 richardderus: will end up drawing you in irresistibly.

I'm pleased about the move to Netflix b/c I won't watch linear TV or pay for their app...they're taxpayer funded, I've already paid, thanks. This is, of course, proof there's nothing on Earth that pleases everyone.

>78 richardderus: PBS comes automatically on my cable, and since I also support my local PBS (because the government doesn't provide enough support), I've also got access to their app. And since I'm paying for cable, I can't subscribe to expensive streaming services on top of it. To this point, I still don't want to trade cable for streaming that may or may not be constantly loading on unreliable wifi. Plus it looks like subscribing to all the streaming services is just about as expensive as the cable.

So, as you say, "nothing on Earth pleases everyone."

>77 katiekrug: What a good season we bid fair to have! That loaf cake made me drool, too, though I myownself want Illyin's cinnamon-roll loaf! *drool*

Your spoiler will come true by week three or I'll eat a piece of Christiaan's...well, anything it seems, given P&P's reactions. That was a *diabolical* technical, wasn't it? The idea of having them taste an example cake then reproduce it without a recipe, well *chef's kiss* Kudos to their diabolical home economists and producers for thinkin' it up!

>79 atozgrl: It's impossible! I like the adlessness of streaming, and the absence of a schedule is the "two" of the one-two punch. If a service says "turn off your adblocker or we won't show you stuff" I delete their app. No, I will not watch ads, that's faaar too expensive a price.

If you speak Spanish, I am not remotely sorry for what the sign says because I agree with it.

Happy new one, however late I am, Richard!

>83 drneutron: Merry Xmas, Jim!

>81 richardderus: I understand your position, but I am willing to put up with the ads for a lower cost. The rare one streaming service I do have to pay for, I've got the cheaper version with the ads. And I occasionally watch one of the free ones with the ads, if they've got something I want to see.

On the other hand, the election season produces lots of political ads that I really do not want to see or hear, and I would love some way to turn them off. I find I cannot tolerate the Mango Monster's voice any more, so I sure hope he doesn't win. For that among many, many, many other reasons.

I don't think I'd watch any tv now without the streaming services we have. There is nothing really worth watching on cable TV, though I do still subscribe to it. I occasionally watch news, so we still have cable tv. I like Britbox, Netflix and Amazon Prime.

>85 atozgrl: Cheeto Benito was nauseating to me in the 1980s. He is amoral, greedy, cowardly, and contemptible. And if he wins, I'll leave this up even though it would make me a target...because it is true.

>86 vancouverdeb: I totally agree with you. Cable companies have made a deal with Mauschwitz aka D*sney to carry their cable channels IF their subscriber base gets access to their streaming offerings. The writing's on the wall. Back to bundles for you, peasant!

Happy Sunday, Richard. Feeling for those poor folk in western NC. My brother lives in that area but he wasn't hit as hard as many others. Still out of power. Someone mentioned this is North Carolina's Katrina. That is awful.

>82 richardderus: Amen, Senor!

>89 msf59: It's bad indeed, Mark, but will only get worse when rebuilding time comes...unless the state pulls its head out of its collective ass and votes blue.

Hiya RDear. Belated happy new thread, current happy Sunday.

Back, with a bit of skippety-skipping.

From your last thread, latkes. Sigh. Envy.

… book shrapnel…

>1 richardderus: For the tiniest second I thought this was a page from the Voynich Manuscript. It’s wonderful even if it is in Latin… My mother always complained about having to take Latin.

Latin is a dead language,
Lying in the dust.
First it killed the Romans,
Now it's killing us.

I also just watched a Suzy Eddie Izzard bit about Latin. And of course soccer intrudes even in a bio - she/he supports Crystal Palace FC, Premier League club.

>82 richardderus: I do speak enough Spanish to get this… Fantastic sign.

>89 msf59: and >90 richardderus: I didn’t realize until I moved here that many storms go through the mountains of Western NC with devastating flooding. I’m glad my kidlet moved home in 2022. I’ve got a friend who lives in Waynesville, just texted her.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>72 richardderus: I think I've noticed that lol. I'm busy just holding my breath, crossing my fingers and toes and sending prayers into the ether ... dear heavens I am so frightened...

>91 karenmarie: I hope the Waynesville friend is okay. WNC is indeed a weather magnet. Those mountains spirits are serious!

That pinche cabrón is going straight to the christian hell for...well, take your pick. No one seems to want to talk about his murder of Ivana. Latkes, blessèdly, are a normal dish here in Jewishland, so I get them on average once every three weeks.

*smooch*

>92 RebaRelishesReading: Goodness! You're more attentive than most, Reba. Let's hope good things happen, unlike in Austria.

Sunday orisons, dear lady.

I got as close to the Orange Asshat as I need to. He was in Tuscaloosa this weekend. Good thing I am moving to Kansas. Since Kansas is so red it hemorrhages stinkheads like Kobach and Brownnose (AKA Brownback), I am sure that Cheeto Bandito won't be coming to the state. This will spare me seeing him. However, like somebody upthread I am getting so that I can't stand even hearing is inarticulate speech. I wish there was some way to program a TV so when his voice came on or (Tuberville or Britt) that it would black out the sound. I hope that people see the light and don't vote for him.

>95 benitastrnad: Brownslop and Co. are not advertisements for Kansas...but what is? 34/45's nauseating sideways-moving mouthparts remind me of a crab's...and that's all I can bear to discuss about that...thing.

I wonder if polling that everyone seems to trust is actually failing to capture data that could point to a loss, or if the polls are just so terribly flawed as to be useless given that they're all commissioned by people who want one outcome over another.

'Morning, RD, happy Monday to you.

My Waynesville friend and her wife have power but don't have internet, cell phones, TV, or landline. My friend is a knitter/crocheter/craftswoman, her wife reads a lot.

Got a busy one planned until about 1ish, then R&R for me.

*smooch*

>97 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible! I'm pleased as punch that you're out and about, busy busy busy. I'm impressed your Waynesville pals could let you know they're okay, given the state of things there. Their hobbies sound perfect for people who are caught at home by circumstances beyond their control.

New-week orisons, sweetiedarling.

161 The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Kosuke Kindaichi #5; tr. Jim Rion)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An ingenious and highly atmospheric classic whodunit from Japan’s master of crime.

Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning.

The old viscount Tsubaki, a brooding, troubled composer, has been found dead.

When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed patriarch, death visits the house once more, and the brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate.

But before he can get to the truth Kindaichi must uncover the Tsubakis’ most disturbing secrets, while the gruesome murders continue…

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

My Review: A peek at the very immediate aftermath of WWII in bombed-out Tokyo, and the dreadful inconvenience all this war nonsense with its barbaric social leveling brings to The Better Classes.

Deeply dislikable "noble" people doing disreputable things for ignoble motives, aaahhh there's the sweet spot for a story! The supernatural window-dressing was sort of fun. Seances are entertaining silliness in fiction, cynical and sordid manipulations in person. The one in this book is, oddly, both; the fact is the "supernatural" gubbins of the music playing eerily would not work at all in today's world, but was very amusingly handled so flew under my eyeroll threshhold.

Again, and as always in this vintage of Japanese crime novels (based on my limited sample size, anyway), be prepared for the sleuth to know things you do not. You're here to be Dr. Watson, or Inspector Japp, not Hercule or Sherlock. Accept this and enter in the spirit of "what did bombed-out Tokyo look like?" and this read will both entertain and educate you. Kosuke Kindaichi's rumpled Columbo-like presentation of self is a lot more...unusual, noticeable, in Japanese society both then and now. The author's choice to make him rumpled is making a statement about surfaces in a country where they're even more important than they are here in the West.

I land on four stars, per usual in this series, for the fun of being in this very, very dissimilar-to-mine world.

It's Monday, it's the last day of the 3rd quarter, and for the Feds, 2025 starts tomorrow. For me, that's enough reason to stop worrying about details and get busy on #Deathtober's crime, horror, and suchlike reviewing. Two Japanese translations from the eminently capable house Pushkn Vertigo, fifth and sixth in their long-running Kosuke Kindaichi series...there are eighteen or so to go, I think, and their translation order in no way resembles the original publication order; nor does it seem to follow an internal chronology, at least not to me...kept me glued to my Kindle.

My Q3 reads started out ~meh~ in July but ramped up to excellence during #WITMonth...Of Saints and Miracles was terrfic, several others were notably good...but my favorite read was Helen Phillips's excellent near-future story of AI-enshittened late-stage surveillance capitalism, Hum. What a chilling story. Very probably predictive. Very, very provocative. One all y'all should read because it's propulsive and thought-provoking in equal measure.

>99 richardderus: I ought to get back to those. I listened to the first few then got distracted.
Happy Mondays.

162 The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi #6; tr. Bryan Karetnyk)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An old friend of Kosuke Kindaichi's invites the scruffy detective to visit the remote mountain village of Onikobe in order to look into a twenty-year-old murder case. But no sooner has Kindaichi arrived than a new series of murders strikes the village - several bodies are discovered staged in bizarre poses, and it soon becomes clear that the victims are being killed using methods that match the lyrics of an old local children's song...

The legendary sleuth investigates, but soon realises must unravel the dark and tangled history of the village, as well as that of its rival families, to get to the truth.

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

My Review: An interesting cross between Kawabata's masterwork Snow Country and a sideways take on Dame Agatha's lesser work Hickory Dickory Dock mixed with her absolute chef d'œuvre The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, only in 1950s Japan.

One factor that must be attended to by Anglophone readers of this series is that in Japan they are historical fiction. Japanese readers will be as "at sea" as any Anglophone reader would be; the story is sixty-five years old, and was about a bygone way of life even then. So there's a layer of anachronism baked into the modern reading experience irrespective of language it's read in. That doesn't mean it's not a good read. It is indeed a fun story to follow. Don't expect fair play in modern mystery terms, and all will be well. Read it for atmosphere, read it for the trip to the past...you'll enjoy it more that way.

Dysfunctional family dynamics are crime-fiction evergreens. The rage and hatred needed to work a person up to killing someone build in that pressure cooker. This story has a corker of a horrible family in it. The murder Kindaichi investigates took place twenty years before the present...remembering that present is 1959...and the victim is one of those folks who just need killin' in the old US Southern idiom. Mysteries exist because we, as a society, need to see ma'at maintained in our fiction because it seems so unmaintained in the world. The zeitgeist of 1950s Japan would reasonably suggest itself as a similarly traumatized one. I suspect the Kosuke Kindaichi series serves much the same function as the Poirot series did post-Great War...a superior intellect comes along and apportions blame for the guilt of tearing the already fragile fabric of a society in flux.

Letting the reader in on all the clues, all the information the superior intellect possesses, isn't the playbook for the crime stories of this period. I'm sure some sociology thesis treats this topic, but I don't have access to such material. I suspect it goes along with the social norms of trusting experts, even...especially...if they know more than The Authorities...which seems almost quaint in this day and time.

It's a series I get a lot from reading. I enjoy the historical aspects on several levels, within the story told and the storytelling itself. It feels, in these translations at any rate, like work that could have come from the same era as the original Japanese work.

That's a compliment. Four stars for solid enjoyment of a fun-to-read story.

NB the blogged version has links to other reviews, and useful definitions

>99 richardderus: Be interested to read The Devil's Flute Murders just to soak up the air of the place and time.

Post WWII Tokyo was a place of terrible devastation and curiously great hopefulness too.

Added to the wish list.

>101 Helenliz: They're consistent, Helen, both in tone and tenor, so permaybehaps you needed some time off...? They'll most likely be fresher now that you're coming back to them.
***
See >6 richardderus: for my Q3 triumphalizing!

>103 magicians_nephew: Enjoy the read, Jim! They're well-translated so I hope you'll get the atmosphere with the clarity I did.

I have been listening to Anthony Horowitz's latest in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series and Horowitz opined at the end of the book about "locked room mysteries." In this short couple of paragraphs he said that the Japanese were the masters of that form and that readers who like that kind of mystery should start with the work of Akimitsu Takagi and Seishi Yokomizo.

>106 benitastrnad: How do, Benita...Takagi's The Noh Mask Murder is coming on Wednesday, and you've seen the Yokomizo reviews. Pushkin Vertigo is going heavy on the Japanese translations! I'm glad for it.

Just checking in on you today, RD.

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

>82 richardderus: I do not speak Spanish as well as I read it. I completely agree with that sign.

>99 richardderus: >102 richardderus: One of these days I will get to that series!

>94 richardderus: or the Netherlands...I'm just scared *&$%LESS -- and happy Monday to you, Sir.

>108 alcottacre: Hi there, Stasia! Glad to see you here today. I'm pleased it's Monday and I have not died. At least, I don't think I have. If this is The Afterlife, I want to see a manager.

>109 RebaRelishesReading: That was even more upsetting, true. Austria's understandable, it's Hitler's homeland.

>111 richardderus: Yes, Austria has always tended rightward but back-in-my-day the Netherlands was always center to left

>112 RebaRelishesReading: It breaks my heart the Great Lurch Backward we've lived through. I hate feeling as though my grands will be so much worse off than I was.

>90 richardderus: Meanwhile, that hateful person had the utter gall to say today that our Democratic governor was withholding aid to "Republican" counties. Can *he* explain how *he* would get aid to counties that have no roads or infrastructure left because they are MOUNTAINS, and the deluge washed everything away? And it's only been a few days? I would not have thought it was possible for me to dislike Trump any more, but I am FURIOUS, and there's no end to how much I hate the man for making such an accusation. NOBODY but Trump cares about political party at a time like this. And not everyone who lives there is Republican, for heaven's sake. They're PEOPLE!

>114 atozgrl: Can he explain why there's gravity? Why anything, really, except why he should be president again? (Because he wants to, is his only reason.)

People need help, they should get it. Nature, however, made this more challenging. I only hope they will ultimately get the help they need from the best-funded source: the Feds.

Happy October, Richard. May the month bring you good cheer and good health. Jackson will visiting this afternoon. Hooray!

>116 msf59: Hooray for Jackson time, and happy October!

Hi RDear! Happy Tuesday to you.

I dodged the BBs.

*smooch*

>118 karenmarie: I can well imagine you did! Nothing I've read lately would appeal to you, I'm afraid. "Would I gift this to Horrible?" is one of my review criteria, and the answer lately has been "no" more often than not.

Tuesday *smooch*

>114 atozgrl: As a Great Man (TM), he gets to define Truth. Or maybe he's God; I'm not sure which.

And plenty of people will go along with a "leader" of that kind, for lots of sad evolutionary reasons.

>115 richardderus: Nonsense! Only Good People (TM) deserve help. And only the Great Man (TM)'s supporters can possibly be good, by definition.

>114 atozgrl: The Orange Menace thinks only about himself -- always!!

My thoughts are with poor North Carolina (and other states affected by this storm).

>120 ArlieS: If not gawd herself, then an avatar...and the worthiness issue is the one I badly want these...people, must be polite...to have rubbed in their faces by a very Old-Testament gawd. If only there was one.

Ick. I need brain-bleach.

>121 RebaRelishesReading: Indeed, Reba, completely agree on all counts.

>120 ArlieS: >122 richardderus: Apparently he thinks he's God, based on some of the ads that were produced earlier this year.

>121 RebaRelishesReading: Thank you Reba, that is much appreciated.

>110 richardderus: If this is The Afterlife, I am there with you. Uh oh.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD. Have a terrific Tuesday!

>124 atozgrl: Even if *he* doesn't the cultists clearly do.

*sigh* and *smooch*

>125 alcottacre: Uh-oh is pretty restrained, dearie, more like WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON HERE LEMME OUT NOW

...but I'm more volatile than you are. *smooch*

163 The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A bewildering locked-room murder occurs as an amateur crime writer investigates strange events in the Chizurui mansion in this prizewinning classic Japanese mystery.

This ingenously constructed masterpiece, written by one of Japan’s most celebrated crime writers and translated into English for the first time, is perfect for locked-room mystery fans who can’t resist a breathtaking conclusion.

In the Chizurui family mansion, a haunting presence casts a shadow over its residents. By night, an eerie figure, clad in a sinister Hannya mask is seen roaming around the house. An amateur murder mystery writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate — but his investigation takes a harrowing turn as tragedy strikes the Chizurui family.

Within the confines of a locked study, the head of the family is found dead, with only an ominous Hannya mask lying on the floor by his side and the lingering scent of jasmine in the air as clues to his mysterious murder.

As Takagi delves deeper into the perplexing case, he discovers a tangled web of secrets and grudges. Can he discover the link between the family and the curse of the Hannya mask? Who was the person who called the undertaker and asked for three coffins on the night of the murder? And do those three coffins mean the curse of the Hannya mask is about to strike again?

The Noh Mask Murder’s legendary ending offers locked-room mystery fans the perfect coda to an ingenously constructed mystery.

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

My Review: A fun framing device of the author as a clumsy amateur sleuth, and a puzzle that really absorbed me. Set in a time and place...midcentury Japan...that's just foreign enough to make the attitudes and beliefs necessary for the plot to work credible.

I suppose that's a roundabout way to say "this story is of its time." I think that's okay...you should know that the conventions of that day aren't always polite to twenty-first century ears.

The locked-room aspects of the plot are the bits that get the praise. I'm always glad to read these because I don't expect to solve them. I didn't this time either. The resolution felt of a piece with the story, not pulled out of the parts bin and welded onto the frame built whether it fits or not. That made it satisfying to me, despite the reveal eliciting from me, "...really...?" when I first read it. Remember what I said about of its time. There's no way it would work in 2020s Japan.

So read it as an historical novel, a gothic-inflected piece of a past very much passed, and you're very likely to enjoy this trip into eighty-years-gone Japan.

Award-winning in its time, The Noh Mask Murder launched the career of an author synonymous with Japanese crime writing. It's clear from the translation that translator Jesse Kirkwood had a book to work with that was very well-crafted, and a job translating it that was enjoyable. There's that unexplainable sense of freshness that hangs over work that someone liked doing.

Four well-earned stars.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday to you.

>128 richardderus: I love locked-room mysteries but am going to pass, because realistically I won't get to it anytime soon. Good review.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>129 karenmarie: Thank you, sweetiedarling. I liked the readme but I won't urge it on you unless it becomes a KU title. Acquiring it now, in the midst of the smut-volution, would be a waste of resources.

I'm so glad I have my notes, and have made the note-leaving a habit. That thumb drive I bought was a great idea, too!

Successfully dodging the book bullets to bring you a Wednesday *smooch*

>131 bell7: Oh, I'm tireless in my reloading of the literary AK47. Your turn will come, my pretty...it will come.

*smooch*

*pulls aside curtain, peeks out* Just so you know...I'm lurking about.

>133 laytonwoman3rd: Lurky-loo alert! Hi Linda3rd, welcome to the #Deathtober Zone of Free Fire. *smooch*

>127 richardderus: I am pretty sure that you are not more volatile than I am, RD. I just hide it better. Ask my husband what I am like "when my stinger is out," lol.

>128 richardderus: That one sounds good! Adding it to the BlackHole.

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

>135 alcottacre: See, >131 bell7:? My free-fire zone is utterly unrestricted, even zapping resistant targets like Stasia (famous the world over for resistance to new-book envy)!

/trumpian boasting

*smooch*

>136 richardderus: trumpian boasting? Really? I am pretty sure I would not even want that comparison to him. Lol

I have no resistance and well you know it, sir :)

A quick good afternoon, Richard, and I am off. I am off - not handling time or my use of it, so maybe this is an afterlife. I can't say that I care for it.

I watched the debate last night; DH didn't.
Our conclusions ---
Mine: All Vance had to do was sound not-crazy (I'm not addressing content here). He managed that.
DH: Waltz would have looked better if he had worn his glasses. (Comment on the perspicuity of the great unwashed, who probably didn't pay any attention to the debate anyway)
Therefore, it didn't matter at all.

*smooch* for the day!

>137 alcottacre: Nonsense! You are world renowned for your paucity of book-envy, or else my boast becomes hollow and based on a lie.

That simply cannot be allowed, now can it?

>138 LizzieD: Vance's whinge about the rules saying there wasn't supposed to be fact-checking has set the meme-making crowd aflame, Peggy. The roasting he's getting is epic...I do love to see it.

#Deathtober is here!

M.C. Goodwin (American, b. 1980, Biloxi, MS) - Planting Teeth, 2023

>140 richardderus: That about nails it, RD.

Happy Wednesday! I hope you are having a good one.

>142 msf59: Hi Mark, Wednesday treated me well enough that I don't dread tomorrow...that's something, right? I think "good enough" is exactly where I'm happy to be.

164 Seriously HAPPY: 10 life-changing philosophy lessons from Stoicism to Zen to supercharge your mindset by Ben Aldridge (illus. Michelle Brackenborough)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Seriously Happy is a practical self-help guide for teens, exploring 10 life lessons based on ancient philosophy—from Stoicism to Zen—to help tackle self-doubt, build resilience, and banish anxiety.

Seriously Happy is a highly practical self-help guide exploring 10 life-changing lessons based on teachings of the ancient philosophers.

YA readers are encouraged to discover how Stoicism can improve your mental resilience; the calming, meditative influence of Zen; the decision-making prowess of Aristotle or the confidence-boosting ideas of the Cynic philosophers.

As a young man, author Ben Aldridge struggled with debilitating anxiety and self-doubt, until he discovered Stoicism and other philosophies which helped him restore balance, peace and contentment in his life. In this book, Ben shares over 20 practical challenges rooted in ancient philosophy that will power up your focus and confidence, improve your critical thinking, build mental resilience, and embrace happiness. The text is accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by Michelle Brackenborough.

The challenges are based on ancient philosophical ideas—such as ‘shame attacking’, facing your fears, and appreciating the small things in life—as well as the ancient arts of Tai-Chi, Qi-Gong and meditation. Seriously Happy shows how to harness the power of ancient philosophies to deal with the real-world stress and anxieties of today.

Learn to master a growth mindset and face your fears with fun tasks and challenges such as 'the banana walk', inspired by Cynic philosophers.
Get curious, question everything, and power up your critical thinking like Socrates.
Learn how to make good life choices inspired by Aristotle’s Golden Mean.
Train your mind and embrace discomfort with cold-water therapy or digital fasting like Buddhist teachers.
Increase your mental resilience by keeping a setback diary like the Stoics.
Power up your focus & concentration with a walking meditation inspired by Zen philosophy.
Protect your wellbeing by practising Tai Chi and being in nature like the Taoists.

Be calm, be confident, and be (seriously) happy!

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

My Review: Philosophy made simple. You and I, dear reader, are old enough to have perspective...hard won, and fleeting though it might be...to help us through the dark night of the soul. Our kids and grands need us to model that life-saving skill.

There are a lot of slightly desperate thoughts along the lines of, "...and just how am I meant to do that exactly?" running through a lot of y'all's heads. I'd love to have a glib answer all ready for you. I don't, and thus I'm telling you about this book.

I myownself, after more than sixty years on Earth, am convinced by Epicurean philosophy (see my review of The Swerve) that logic and evidence outweigh feelings and dogma as a way to understand the world. Author Aldridge suffered through anxiety and self-doubt and the depression that inevitably flowed from those conditions of being. He used the cultural legacy of many philosophers in multiple traditions to acquire the perspective to see the evidence that the world *is* comprehensible, that there *are* answers to the question "how do I do that?", and shares them very accessibly here.

In this election year, so fraught with rage and peril, I think offering the newly-minted teen/high-school student/recent graduate a leg up on making the noise make sense is a great thing to do.

No one needs to know you read it yourself first.

The illustrations did nothing for me personally, but I suppose anything one wishes to sell to kids must have 'em.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Thursday.

>129 karenmarie: Heh. Smut-volution. Yup. Still working it hard, so to speak…

>144 richardderus: Probably not only for teenagers… Re the illustrations that did nothing for you personally… but the tentacles!

*smooch*

>1 richardderus: Happy new thread!

>144 richardderus: Nice one! I know a granny I may suggest it to for her grandson.

*smooch*

>145 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! I don't think >144 richardderus: is for kids only because, goddesses know, we can all use some help with emotional self-help and stability assistance. Tentacle porn aside, I find her art ~meh~ at best. I think it'll serve its purpose. It isn't likely to make anyone say "wow" in admiration or horror.

Thursday orisons, sweetiedarling.

>146 ocgreg34: Thanks, Greg! Happy to see you here.

>147 LizzieD: Oh excellent, Peggy! I think most smart kids are likely to get something important and helpful out of it.

*smooch*

Hi Richard, dear friend, Happy New Thread.

>151 johnsimpson: Greetings, John, and thank you most kindly!

>144 richardderus: Hmm. If I could get my boys to read it ...

>153 humouress: Leave it lying around their TV lair? With a plate of snacks next to it? Food usually works as a bribe....

165 Betrayal at Blackthorn Park (Parisian Orphan #2) by Julia Kelly

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With mystery, intrigue, and the hints of romance international bestselling author Julia Kelly is known for, Evelyne Redfern returns in Betrayal at Blackthorn Park.

Freshly graduated from a rigorous training program in all things spy craft, former typist Evelyne Redfern is eager for her first assignment as a field agent helping Britain win the war. However, when she learns her first task is performing a simple security test at Blackthorn Park, a requisitioned manor house in the sleepy Sussex countryside, she can’t help her initial disappointment. Making matters worse, her handler is to be David Poole, a fellow agent who manages to be both strait-laced and dashing in annoyingly equal measure. However, Evelyne soon realizes that Blackthorn Park is more than meets the eye, and an upcoming visit from Winston Churchill means that security at the secret weapons research and development facility is of the utmost importance.

When Evelyne discovers Blackthorn Park’s chief engineer dead in his office, her simple assignment becomes more complicated. Evelyne must use all of her—and David’s—detection skills to root out who is responsible and uncover layers of deception that could change the course of the war.

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

My Review: After the four-star detail-filled atmospheric romantic thriller that was A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL, my expectations and hopes were high for this second read featuring Evelyne and David.

I got the period details I wanted, I got the relationship development I expected (minimal), and the mystery element was interesting. But the second time is so often just a bit...samey...isn't it? We've been here, now we want something to happen. Author Kelly chose to meet that desire fairly late in the proceedings, setting us up for a sequel.

The fact that this is a romantic suspense novel far more than a puzzle-solvong one is just fine by me. Evelyne and David are well-matched, though not perfectly mated. That would get a bit dull. Instead they're given enough friction by their shared career as confidential agents of The Powerful at a tremendously consequential crossroads in history to keep their focus clear and mutual; there's an enemy to fight, a reason to keep fighting, and a lot of work to put into that fight.

Witty banter is a risky narrative strategy in a book without an explicit romance. David and Evelyne are clearly headed that way, but at times their palaver gives the future of the game away. This results in oddly reducing the tension that so many series stories rely on. Just ask Moonlighting's producers how letting that drop works out...yet, despite this (I suppose inevitable) middle space in a series being unsettled, the way Author Kelly words things is enough fun, the period evocation is so skillfully interwoven, and the history treated with such respect that I can't help but bump this fun book two of more to come up a quarter star. I'm especially calling out Evelyne's character-appropriate, but period-shocking, willingness to chafe against what she sees as unfair boundaries set for her because little is expected of her in terms of ability. This is something I suspect many intelligent people from disrespected groups and backgrounds relate to. Events transpire that give Evelyne reason to reassess her responses...sometimes training wheels save the savant from a bad fall.

All in all, a series I'm enjoying more as it unfolds. An increasingly rare experience that I genuinely appreciate.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Friday.

That's pretty much it - a reading, light puttering, and PT session day for me - I'll venture out on my own after having done a small driving test run Wednesday afternoon.

*smooch*

>155 richardderus: Sounds like a find to me, Richard. I'll be looking for *Traitor* first with thanks.

*smooch* for the day!

>156 karenmarie: Morning, sweetiedarling! It's beautiful here, I'm really enjoying my two next review-books (one of which is getting a series follow-up in March!), I've fallen in love with a juvenile non-fiction series from Germany, it's #GBBO Day, Heartstopper's out and I'm determinedly not binging it all in one day...well, what better fall Friday is there? *smooch*

>157 LizzieD: All the YAY! Peggy me lurve! I think Julia Kelly's books will appeal to you. The suspense isn't going to kill you, spoiler alert the Allies won, but the couple-who-aren't-yet will appeal. *smooch*

G'morning Richard. No book bullets today ;-)

GBBO thoughts for biscuit (Englandtalk for cookies) week:
Good news first: Hazel got chucked out! What a bumbling disaster for the second week in a row! (Although she did middlin' in the technical, minted cream cookies aka Thin Mints.) That Punch & Judy showstopper...!! *I* could do as well in my ovenless, appliance-free room.

I do not know what ailed poor ol' Bronx lad Jeff, but he's had to exit the show. Both my departure predictions came true! I should gamble on the show's outcome!

Nelly is a numpty, but she's got a great shtik going with Noel. Chasing him around with chocolatey paws during the technical was hilarious! The Thin Mints, not so much...thick, clumsy, ugly-lookin' things. Her poochie-face Viennese whilrls were cute, too, though P&P were ~meh~ about the flavors. The showstopper...well...I'd stopped paying her any attention, don't know or care what it was.

Mike, who looks like his mum needs to fess up to her place as Stephen Fry's one stab at straightness, he looks so much like him, did Viennese whirls of such unctuous-sounding delectability...malted brown butter filled with raspberry yumyum...that I think I whined out loud "I wAAant one", then went on to present gorgeous Thin Mints and make a showstopper of such utter adorkableness (and apparently perfect flavors and baking), deserved Star Baker over Sumayah (who really squeaked it IMO)...those viennese-whirl swans filled with goat's-cheese and honey buttercream were so lovely and that GLORIOUS showstopper was on wheels!...and John with his utterly charming Welsh-themed showstopper, the other two really stand-out bakers this week. Neither of them like mint chocolate, so both *should* lose soon. Moral turpitude like that shouldn't be on telly. Next they'll be eating corn on the cob publicly!

The dullards in the middle are still dull: Georgie, Gill? who they? Added to the "go home soon" list is Christiaan with his tin ear for flavors (tin tongue? anyway, blueberry-lavender jam from his Viennese whirls sounds urpsome despite P&P saying it worked) and serious style-over-substance issue. I know Illiyin was there, couldn't tell you one thing she made.

Beautiful Dylan, if he does more to *execute*his*ideas*, could make it to the finals. The viennese s'mores flavor worked, the disaster technical was down to lack of knowledge which I hope he rectifies, his bloody amazing toasted-soy four biscuits making that beautifully painted Japanese mythology scene would've won him star baker IF he hadn't effed up and cracked the front display! Andy, bless his cotton socks, is completely incomprehensible...closed captioning is your friend...but his flavors and ideas are also dogged by execution faults. Had he not clumsed it up, that flying-pig-up-the-A12 story alone woulda won him star baker.

On to bread week!

>160 ArlieS: Goood afternoon, Arlie, and a beauty it is! I'm utterly unsurprised I haven't hit you yet. Won't this weekend, either. Oh well.

I think I failed to answer your question about GBBO over on my thread and your message at >161 richardderus: reminded me, so I'll respond here. I haven't watched it yet, and I was thinking I wouldn't get a chance until TW gets back from Boston a week from today, but I think I'll just watch it without him, and then keep my lips zipped when I do end up watching with him. So I'm skipping your spoiler comments for now but shall return...

>163 katiekrug: Oh, good! I'll be interested to see your take on the showstoppers in particular.

Happy Deathtober, Richard! I'm looking for some scary books. Saturday *smooch*

166 Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.

They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire—it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.

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

My Review: Aren't revenge-fantasy stories fun? In general, the genre gives me a vicarious delight in the ability of the PoV character(s) to exact personal revenge on them as wronged 'em. I find the more general type of revenge story, the wars/quests/crusades sort, not as compelling as this direct and deeply personal kind.

What works here, for this old male reader, is the "just-assume-the-backstory" nature of the women's friendships. There are hops back and forth in the story's timeline that fill in details, but honestly they were integrated in a way that worked to increase my investment in the shared backstory. It felt a bit like having a memory flash when you're talking to someone you've known for ages.

That might also be a bit of a problem for book one of a series, with the next one (Kills Well with Others) to come on 11 March 2025. I think the way people expect stuff to go in this book is more violent, more "wet job" details in it. Instead, we get the motivation for the revenge story, and the way these women plan and execute (!) events based on their cultural invisibility. I myownself liked that better than the pleasures to be had from a solidly crafted Repairman Jack tale. It's more relatable, more like something I could see myself doing if I was competent in these arts.

Billie, our primary PoV character (though we hear from everyone), has a dry, biting wit that agrees with me, and the situations that are supposed to be funny were indeed funny to me. Humor's hard, y'all, so Author Raybourn gets and deserves nosegays of praise for that achievement. It's also welcome to have women as professional killers, if I'm honest. They're so good at the job they've never been caught. This is probably a weird thing to say, but the existence of women reinforcing ma'at on the dark side seems to me like a welcome development. Saintly do-gooders? Been there done that. Cops repairing the broken social compact? Yawn. Targeting and killing them what just needs killin'? NOW you got me.

A four-star funhouse mirror held to the myth of women as passive, victim-of-crime ciphers. These are vibrant personalities with agency, doing what they know from long experience how to do, only against the ingrates they thought were on their side. I think it's well worth your time and treasure.

>165 vancouverdeb: Howdy do! I'll do my best to get a few scaries up, though most of the reviews will be mysteries. I'm just more interested in those than spookifyin' silliness. People scare me more than myths do.

Happy weekend-ahead's reads, dear lady!

Happy Saturday, Richard. I am going to the lakefront with my birding buddies today. Books in the PM. All good here, my friend. Enjoy your day.



^Black-throated Blue Warbler. One of my favorites. (NMP)

>168 msf59: A beauty indeed. Enjoy the peepin' time.

>166 richardderus: I started reading your review and thought "hey, I've read that story" -- investigated and found that I read it last year and still have it on the shelves. I remember enjoying it but only rated it 3 I'm afraid -- maybe reflected my mood at the time. Fun to see your comments.

Good afternoon, RDear. Happy Saturday to you.

Arsenal won, so there.

*smooch*

>166 richardderus: Oh! I really enjoyed this one too. I gave it a good rating when I read it last year. So happy to know the sequels out soon-ish!

Have a delightful weekend, my friend! 😘

>170 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! I'm actually pretty confident you'd enjoy the read, but honestly not adore the read. So a three seems to me a very reasonable rating. I was really in the mood, so a four came about.

Happy weekend ahead's reads!

>171 karenmarie: Oh boo

Well, all those goddesses must be in cahoots with you on gender-solidarity grounds.

>172 Storeetllr: Won't be long at all, Mary. March is basically next month. *sigh*

You do the same, my dear pal.

>166 richardderus: You can't get me with this one; I've already read it. Liked it a lot, and I'm glad you did too.

>176 ArlieS: It was fun! I'm glad we agree that there was a good deal to be enjoyed, Arlie.

>139 richardderus: You are right, Richard. How silly of me!

>155 richardderus: I am slated to read A Traitor in Whitehall this month, so I will wait and see what I think of that one before I seek out the new one.

>166 richardderus: Dodging that BB as I have already read it.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a wonderful weekend, RD!

>178 alcottacre: *harrumph* of course you see it now I've pointed it out. Sensible.

I hope you enjoy Evelyne and David as much as I have, Stasia! *smooch*

>166 richardderus: would have been a BB, but I already read and loved it!

>180 drneutron: Oh good! Now we can all read the new one this coming March!

>166 richardderus: Well, I seem to be the only one who hasn't read it. BB'd

>171 karenmarie: And Liverpool are sitting pretty at the top of the table.

>182 humouress: I don't know that its popularity was international, Nina. I am guessing, though, that a youngster such as yourself will not be quite as enthralled as us old'n'wrinklies were at the idea of it. It is a bit of fun so I hope it does end up exerting its appeal.

Heavens! Does Liverpool field a soccer team? How...unexpected. :-P

DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #060

Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: When an heiress goes missing, her best friend races to unravel the secrets behind her disappearance using clues left behind in an explosive manuscript…

Gia and Abby have been best friends since they were girls, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. In the aftermath, bookish Abby threw herself into her studies while heiress Gia chronicled the events of that fateful summer in a salacious memoir.

Twelve years later, Gia is back in Greece for the summer with her shiny new husband and a motley crew of glamorous guests, preparing to sell the family estate in the wake of her father’s death. When Abby receives an invitation from Gia to celebrate her birthday in September beneath the Northern Lights, she’s thrilled to be granted the time off from her high-pressure job. But the day of her flight, she receives a mysterious, threatening email in her inbox, and when she and Gia’s brother Benny arrive at the Swedish resort, Gia isn’t there. After days of cryptic messages and unanswered calls, Abby and Benny are worried enough to fly to Greece to check on her.

Only, when they arrive, they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts a manuscript she wrote detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. The pages reveal the dark truth about Gia’s provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of the guests they entertained with fizzy champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun. As tensions rise, Gia feels less and less safe in her own home. But the pages end abruptly, leaving Abby and Benny with more questions than answers.

Where is Gia now? And, more importantly, will they find her before it’s too late?

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

My Review: Well, what can one say? The publisher sets up a Sabrina retelling with added Gone Girl tropes. I'm no more than lukewarm to either story. I'm lukewarm about this one.

I think the author's gift is for pacing. Once launched, it's easier to keep going than quit...no matter that it's a well-trodden path.

Come for the concept, stay for the execution. If the author can make my cynical, seen-it-all self read the whole book, she can do even more for you.

DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #061

The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.

To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.

But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.

After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.

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

My Review: Amusing idea for a horror story, one I was really looking forward to; I love Hitchcock's films even as I grow ever more disillusioned with his living persona. I was very entertained by the film references, especially to his lesser-known masterwork Rope.

So I was ready for some fun. I got less of that than expected...why were these people friends? how did Alfred get the money to set up this elaborate haunted house?...as I pondered the practical problems inherent in the set-up. Like any horror-tinged read, I can't stop myself from asking these questions unless I'm utterly ensorceled.

I wasn't.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Sunday to you.

>182 humouress: Hi Nina. They’re only up by one point and 2 in goal differential… And I so don’t like Salah’s short hair. *smile*

>184 richardderus: and >185 richardderus: Successful dodging…

*smooch*

>186 karenmarie: You'd have to be determined to take a book-bullet on either of those! So very not your thing, it's hard to see you consenting to read either one even if you got it as a gift.

Sunday orisons, sweetiedarling.

>164 richardderus: - I hated the showstopper challenge. I generally don't like when they have to build things like that. It's all style over substance, IMO. I was very glad Hazel went - she was rubbish at the challenges AND annoying. I think Mike the Gay Farmer might be my favorite. I was trying to figure out who he reminded me of and then read your Stephen Fry comment. Yes!!! I have a soft spot for Andy, despite his incomprehensibility...

>188 katiekrug: Really? I know there was blowback on the showstopper complexity a few years back. I like it because they don't judge them unrealistically despite setting the challenge bar high. Andy is a gem. He's got the chatty-guy position that Priya in S10 among others have occupied. He's got to up the execution game! Young Mike the Fry is adorkable. I hope he makes it to the final. So much about the show is down to investing in the characters. This season has more characters I want to invest in than last season did.

I'm really positive about Alison and looking forward to her further development in the host role.

>155 richardderus: Thanks for putting Betrayal at Blackthorn Park on my radar, Richard. I enjoyed the first book in this series and didn't realize there was a second out.

>166 richardderus: Your GBBO posts make me jealous. Netflix in Canada doesn't carry them because there is a Canadian version of a baking show. Not my cuppa.

>190 Familyhistorian: ...but...but...Roku here has the GAmericanBS, from Love Productions and judged by Prue and Paul! If Netflix couldn't stop that, why wouldn't they have GBBO in y'all's market? And, crucially, couldn't you as a Canuckistani, go sign up for channel4.com to get it hot'n'fresh?

Enjoy the second Evelyne and David book!

>183 richardderus: Yes, Liverpool does field a football team ;0)

I popped over to the city and visited the Liverpool FC store to get my souvenirs just yesterday.

>186 karenmarie: Yes, but the point is they're up at the top. Alexander-Arnold's haircut threw me because he always reminded me (oddly enough) of my niece until he cut it. As long as Salah doesn't lose his joy of playing.

>166 richardderus: Another direct hit! I see that I have 2 of Raybourn's historical mysteries, but I am not sure that I've read even the first. Oh well. The wish list grows and grows.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday! *smooch*

167 Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera (tr. Lisa Dillman)

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city of New Orleans.

Accompanied by a small group of fellow exiles who plot their return and hoped-for victory over the Mexican dictatorship, Juárez immerses himself in the city, which absorbs him like a sponge. He and his compatriots work odd jobs, suffer through the heat of a southern summer, fall victim to the cons and confusions of a strange young nation, succumb to the hallucinations of yellow fever, and fall in love with the music and food all around them. But unavoidable, too, is the grotesque traffic in human beings they witness as they try to shape their future.

Though the historical archive is silent about the eighteen months Juárez spent in New Orleans, Yuri Herrera imagines how Juárez’s time there prepared him for what was to come. With the extraordinary linguistic play and love of popular forms that have characterized all of Herrera’s fiction, Season of the Swamp is a magnificent work of speculative history, a love letter to the city of New Orleans and its polyglot culture, and a cautionary statement that informs our understanding of the world we live in.

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

My Review: A vividly imagined and intensely told expansion on the historical record of President Juárez's exile from Mexico. Arriving in New Orleans, with its slave markets, must've been a shock coming from Mexico thirtyish years after the trade was outlawed and slavery abolished there. Like everything else Juárez thought or felt in those years, though, Author Herrera has had to reconstruct it from the known, more importantly the documented, facts of his later life.

So it is that the events related in this novel can't be verified; there aren't any records in his, or anyone else who was there's, own words what the people around Juárez said, or thought, or felt. This reconstructed tale that relies on the history of New Orleans in 1853 as extensively documented has the feel of verisimilitude. We can't know if Author Herrera got it all, as regards Juárez at least, factually correct, but I can tell you he got it right.

Juárez, as an Indigenous Mexican in the US at that fraught passage in our history, would've seen and been the subject of the nastiest kind of "racial" prejudice. Mexico was no kind of enlightened paradise at this moment, but there was no threat of being kidnapped, then sold into slavery, as the was in the antebellum South. I don't know if one major plot point relating to slavery is factual, but it wouldn't surprise me. In fact I kind of hope it was, even if it wasn't Juárez's own story. (You'll know as soon as you run across it which one I mean.)

If this story has an overriding virtue, it is that it is short enough to be an all-day-and-done read. I think it's going to be hard to put down once you begin it, so that's a very good thing. Among the events rendered all the more effectively for being curtailed in length is Juárez's immigrant journey of acquiring the local language, English, on top of his native Zapotec and the Mexican national tongue Spanish. Three very different grammars, poor bastard, and (as we who speak English first do not realize) extremely complicated to navigate the world in.

Author Herrera's writing style is both evocative and without frills and furbelows, eg: "What are we willing to ignore, or let atrophy, for the right to indolence. What a monstrous thing, comfort." It's not flowery and it's not plain. Translator Dillman is clearly working to a high level and from a highly polished source. This is the kind of work I hope we will get from author, translator, and publisher, as a team or separately, for a long time to come.

Almost five stars for compact, beautiful, concise storytelling. Some minor rubbing of noses cost it a half-star.

>193 LizzieD: Morning, Peggy me lurve. It's a wet Monday and likely to stay gross, but I am not required by law or compelled by necessity to go out in it.

So I won't.

Enjoy the Raybourns as you get to them. She has an easy-to-read style and a way with her characterization that I admire. They're a lot of fun! Rest-of-the-day *smooch*

>192 humouress: Imagine having a football team in Liverpool! I guess the NFL is doing its bit for imperial Murrika by spreading the awful violence of our gladiatorial games. How do you even see their hair? They wear those terrible helmets....

Hiya, RDear. Happy Monday.

>192 humouress: Yup. They're at the top. It's going to go back and forth among them and Man City, with Aston Villa putting in a good challenge, I think. I love watching Salah. Lots of folks are getting short haircuts, and the tapering on the sides and down the back is much more prevalent, too. I love Cucurella's locks. Haaland's man bun just irritates me.

>194 richardderus: More dodging.

And, you're Very Dangerous, what with your U of Princeton Press mentions on Mark's thread. PUP30 is tolerable, but FALL70 is devastating. Just spent hours and $$ there.

*smooch*

>197 karenmarie: Moi? Dangerous? I, madame, merely comment amusingly on the passing scene as any good biblioflâneur would do.

Oh! Nina meant Liverpool fields a soccer team, not a football team. Makes more sense now.

Monday *smooch*

>194 richardderus: Hmmm....I may have to keep my eyes open for that one.

>194 richardderus: Season of the Swamp looks very interesting. Onto my TBR it goes!

Karen O

p.s. Have a great day!

>179 richardderus: I hope you enjoy Evelyne and David as much as I have I hope so too, RD!

>194 richardderus: Oh, that one looks really good. Adding it to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Richard!

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

>199 laytonwoman3rd: Definitely leave it your radar, Linda3rd. It's a very compact read for that historical mood without a long time commitment.

>200 klobrien2: How do, Karen O.! Will the MPLS library have one? Graywolf is based there...worth a whirl, I'd say.

Happy Monday RD. >194 richardderus: is going on my WL too. Sounds really interesting.

>201 alcottacre: Morning, Stasia! I think you'll like the read. And a merry-Monday *smooch* back!

>204 mahsdad: It really is, Jeff, so I hope you'll really get to it soon!

>206 richardderus: I just looked, the library has it. Put it on hold for audio.

>207 mahsdad: Excellent! I hope it gives you the good day it gave me.

>203 richardderus: Yep—Hennepin County (Mpls) has Season of the Swamp, on order. I’ve added my name to the list.

Karen O

>209 klobrien2: Oh, great! I hope it works for you as well as it did for me.

‘Morning, RichardDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

>198 richardderus: Yes you are, and you love it. I can’t in all honesty be called a biblioflâneur because the term specifically relates to being male, but I have gone down the rabbit hole of the verb flânerie and can honestly call myself a biblioflâneuse. I think. Never having studied French, of course. Please tell me I'm not wrong, because I plan on amending my 8th thread's first message to include biblioflâneuse.

Well, of course most of the world calls two teams of 11 each kicking the ball around the field or headbutting same, trying to get into the net at the opponent’s end, football. We, perverse country that we are, now in so many more unfortunate ways than ever, call it soccer.

Chocolate last night around 8 p.m. caused 4 a.m. wakies. Drat. I may try to go back to slumberland...

*smooch*

Happy Tuesday, Richard. Waking up to chilly temps. 44F at the moment. I will be bundled up, while I go out and pick up those "kids". Pickleball afterwards will warm me up. Books & Juno in the PM. I hope you get some sunshine today.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a terrific Tuesday, RD!

>211 karenmarie: Gramatically, "biblioflâneuse" is correct...don't say it to a French person, though, or they'll pass out. French culture does not love neologisms.

If I'm honest, the US game is not in any way logically called "football" as it involves feet the same way tennis does. "Handegg" would be more accurate for gridiron football. I get irritable about the idiotic superfluous "u"s and the faux-latinate handwringing about preposition-ending habit of American speakers but the English are correct about the US national game's inapt name.

I'm sorry your momentary indulgence had such an ugly consequence. Sleep early and well, and nap often. *smooch*

>212 msf59: It's very cold here, too! It's very refreshing! I hope pickleball is fun, and I know you'll enjoy the kid run and the PM's activities.

>213 alcottacre: Welcome, smoochling! Happy Tuesday.

I'm expecting the day to be long. I slept poorly, uncommonly for me. I'll nap as needed.

Those utter rotters at Princeton just published Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success by Christine Larson...howinahell am I supposed to resist that?!

>217 richardderus: ;-)

*smooch*, Richard. Bon courage!

>219 LizzieD: *smooch* back, Peggy me lurve...I'm heartened because, while Old Stuff's out getting drunk, I get some lovely quiet time.

Hope you use that "lovely quiet time" to catch a nap...or is the pleasure of "lovely quiet time" too much to sacrifice to sleep?

Just sending big waves over the pond. *smooch*

>221 RebaRelishesReading: I went out to get a gift card. Old Stuff, drunk as a lord, fell on the street corner a block away. 911 called, location reported, off I came back home mission not accomplished. I expect he'll come back sometime after 911 gets done with his drunk ass.

>222 Ameise1: Barbara! How lovely! I'm glad to see you, and send my hugs Swissward.

‘Morning, RD!

Yes, another early morning, although I’m headed back to bed in a bit.

>217 richardderus: How dare they. I just checked it out on Amazon, and love ‘Romancelandia’. And, Drawing on the largest-known survey of any literary genre as well as interviews and archival research, Larson shows how romance writers became the only authors in America to make money from the rise of ebooks—increasing their median income by 73 percent while other authors’ plunged by 40 percent. from Amazon’s description. Makes me happy, and I’ve seriously contributed to that, although indirectly in more recent months because of Kindle Unlimited.

>220 richardderus: Yikes. I forget – is he a mean drunk or just a stumble around, fall and hurt himself drunk? Not, heaven forbid, both…

>223 richardderus: I commented on >220 richardderus: too soon, but thought I'd leave it in.

*smooch*

168 The Book of Witching by C.J. Cooke

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A mother must fight for her daughter’s life in this fierce and haunting tale of witchcraft and revenge from the author of A Haunting in the Arctic/.

Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.

Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?

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

My Review: The dual-timeline haters are duly warned: this novel uses that technique in an absolutely inescapable way. It's not a gimmick to improve pacing...it's integral to the story, and deployed in a way you invest in right away, or really dislike instantly. It does not change for the entire book so be advised of that if you do not like it on contact.

The initial horror set-up, a mother hearing that her daughter who was off on an adventure holiday is now in the hospital, scared me enough. "It can't get worse than this," thought innocent little me. Your kid's in a burn unit far away. You have to get there, worried out of your mind. Your beloved only child is, when you can finally speak to her, someone else...or so she says. "It can not get worse than this," I shuddered.

Had I but known....

I don't go in for supernatural stories, witches and devils and suchlike silliness. If something supernatural like that existed, I'd've seen it for myself in these past *cough*ty-*mumble* years. Ain't happened. Weird shit, yes; devils and gods and miracles, nope. None of that kind of horror is here, either. It's all the slimy rottenness of Humanity. It's all the horrible stench of misogyny. It's all greed and control at their ugliest and most personal.

Just in somehow linked points in past and present.

That's as far as suspension of disbelief will take me, so I'm glad that's as far as we went. There's nothing but a truly unnervingly described...talisman? power focus?...wisely left ambiguous. If one wants a supernatural explanation for these weirdly entwined events so distant from each other in time, there's a way to see that; there's also nothing that requires it to have that explanation, and the horror in the story told is of human origin.

That made it just right for me to read this #Deathtober, and is why I gave it four stars. I found Clem's anguish and confusion horrifying because they're totally relatable. Her child, a new mother herself, is wounded terribly in body and quite possibly irretrievably in psyche. That could not possibly be worse, except evil Author Cooke made it scarier by introducing elements that are outside normal parameters.

Parents of teens strongly cautioned.

>225 karenmarie: It was an early one here, too...Old Stuff got carted back in at 4.35. I would leave it at that but he immediately flicked on his TV then went out for a smoke. I deserve a prize for not killing him.

Greek fire suits me.

Happy Wednesday drive by *smooch*

>228 richardderus: Thanks, Anita!

>228 richardderus: I'm right there with you.

>228 richardderus: Awesome! I will be asking for my Ballista inst. He always says he never know what to get me. >:-)

>231 Ameise1: Ha! It just *feels* right, no?

>232 Helenliz: ruh roh

I smell trouble a-brewin' in the east....

>228 richardderus: Woo HOO! A trebuchet!!!! Let 'em mess with me, boys....

*smooch* for your day, Richard I hope that you can somehow contrive to have a quiet one.

>228 richardderus: I don't even know what many of those are -- including "mine" (Onager--must google that).

>226 richardderus: I hate books that feature a child being harmed and a mother being terrified, so of course I’m going to look for it to get for my own Deathtober/Spooktober reading.

The library in my living room is almost gone. A friend came over and we packed books yesterday. I have 6 bookcases in the living room and 5 of them are now empty. It's might be football season in Alabama, but at my house it is moving time. The day time temps are in the middle 80's and forecasted to stay that way for the next week. Nighttime temps are in the 60's. For this part of the humidity belt it is great weather.

>235 LizzieD: I think you got a great birthday siege engine indeed, Peggy. Old Stuff's been very quiet because he's asleep, and has been since he ate breakfast. I couldn't be more delighted, though what this means for his sleep tonight...ain't my problem.

*smooch*

>236 RebaRelishesReading: OMG

You're in for quite an education, Reba! *shiver*

>237 Storeetllr: Heh. Masochist! But I'd say Nanuet's library ought to have the book.

>238 benitastrnad: The work progresses well, then, and happily under the best conditions you could expect for the place. Good vibes for this continuing to be the case.

You've sold me on The Book of Witching. Richard. Thanks! I have really enjoyed her other books, The Ghost Woods and the The Lighthouse Witches. I've put a hold on The Book of Witching at my library just now , but if I get impatient, I'll maybe purchase the paperback copy of The Book Of Witching. The perfect Deathtober book. Sorry about old stuff. What a hassle.

>228 richardderus: Artillery cannon seems likely to be most effective. It may not be assigned to my month, but I'll take it anyway.

>243 vancouverdeb: I'm really glad to know it, Deborah. I hope you like the read!

Old Stuff's a PITA but at least he's a familiar one. *sigh*

>244 ArlieS: I don't think it's above the odds to decide for yourself what the proper representation of your personal reality is.

>191 richardderus: No Channel 4 available here, Richard. Just in England and Northern Ireland.

>228 richardderus: Lucky! I want that one, but Kerry stole it from me. I am a mangonel.

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

169 Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity by James D. Gwartney, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, Joseph P. Calhoun, Jane Shaw Stroup

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The fully revised and updated fourth edition of the classic Common Sense Economics.

As the global economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and debates over the future of work challenge our long-held preconceptions about what careers and the market can be, learning the basics of economics has never been more essential. Principles such as gains from trade, the role of profit and loss, and the secondary effects of government spending, taxes, and borrowing risk continue to be critically important to the way America's economy functions, and critically important to understand for those hoping to further their professional lives—even their personal lives.

Common Sense Economics discusses these key points and theories and more, using them to show how any reader can make wiser personal choices and form more informed positions on policy. Now in its fourth edition, this classic from James D. Gwartney, Jane S. Stroup, Dwight R. Lee, and Tawni H. Ferrarini has been fully updated to include commentary on the effects of the pandemic on the global economy and the workplace; it offers insight into political processes and the many ways in which economics informs policy, illuminating our world and what might be done to make it better.

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

My Review: Not entertaining, not as dry as a textbook either. Densely packed tendentious freemarketeering with a curious blind spot to how its own examples undermine its Hayek-lite assumptions about how the economy (as though that was one readily definable, easy-to-encompass in words, entity) works and should work. I think any book that trumpets a viewpoint, eg "low taxes good" here, should be honest enough to mark this out as editorializing. More especially since their own chosen examples of, eg, businesses seeking tariffs on imported goods to protect their market share presented without the expected free-trader's opprobrium, sorta gives the lie to the book's claims to being "commonsense" since this violates their own oft-reinforced (I fought myself hard to strive for neutrality I do not feel by changing the word from the judgmental but truthful "repeated") statements supporting "low taxes good."

The revisions undertaken post-COVID really ought honestly to have been labeled "post-China falling from favor." As a policy guide, not recommended, then. But for an economics explainer of how neoliberal economics wants you to think it works...modern research undermines the existence of the core neoliberal concept of "rational actors"...it's solid and as easy as it can get. All my stars for that useful quality.

Stay skeptical, then, and remember any time someone wants you to think a system is infallible, or "self-correcting," or "maximizing efficiency," they're not just factually incorrect but wrong. Plus almost guaranteed to be manipulating you for their own (however broad a definition of "their" you care to apply) benefit.

>247 Familyhistorian: Good heavens, Meg, I didn't mean on TV, I meant the streaming service. Surely that isn't georestricted!

>248 alcottacre: Mangonels are still cool, Stasia! *smooch*

‘Morning, RD! Happy Thursday to you.

>226 richardderus: If something supernatural like that existed, I'd've seen it for myself in these past *cough*ty-*mumble* years. Ain't happened. Weird shit, yes; devils and gods and miracles, nope. You’re lucky.

>227 richardderus: Too bad there’s not a second remote for OS’s TV so that you can mute it when he leaves the volume up when he’s out of the room or falls asleep. Yes, don’t kill him. We don’t want you in the hands of law enforcement.

>228 richardderus: Catapult. I’m disappointed in that I don’t have a new siege engine to research.

>246 richardderus: Ah, then, I choose the trebuchet.

*smooch*

>252 karenmarie: Not lucky, skeptical, sweetiedarling.

I could do that remote trick...and then I'd be in the wrong. I'm better off being in the right and then complaining to the management when he gets too obnoxious.

Hugging your trebuchetly self with my Greek-firely cyberarms.

170 The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy by Melissa Deckman

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Progressive activism today is increasingly spearheaded by the nation’s youngest voters. Gen Z—those born between 1997 and 2012—has come of age in a decade of upheavals. They have witnessed the election of Donald Trump, the murder of George Floyd, and the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and they have lived under the constant threats of mass shootings and climate change. In response, left-leaning Zoomers, particularly women and LGBTQ people, have banded together to take action.

This book tells the story of Gen Z’s growing political participation—and why it is poised to drive U.S. politics leftward. Bringing together original data and compelling narrative—including nearly one hundred interviews with Gen Z activists and several national surveys—political scientist Melissa Deckman explores the world of youth-led progressive organizing, highlighting the crucial importance of gender and sexuality. She reveals why women and LGBTQ Zoomers are participating in politics at higher levels than their straight male peers, creating a historic “reverse gender gap.” Deckman takes readers inside Gen Z’s fight for a more inclusive and just future, sharing stories of their efforts to defend reproductive rights, prevent gun violence, stem climate change, and win political office.

A deep dive into the politics of Gen Z, this book sheds new light on how young voters view politics and why their commitment to progressive values may transform the country in the years ahead.

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

My Review: The US presidential election is a few weeks away. Many of my Boomer peers are, I fear, going to be very angry, and the young men they've knowingly toxified will take to the streets.

It will be futile.

The long-term trend, "the arc of the moral universe," is not on their side. This book shows that the overall age cohort, absent the targeted and radicalized men we insultingly call "incels" and other dismissive and emasculating nicknames, isn't getting the authoritarian message. They aren't doing what we did, sitting down at our desks and shutting our mouths, because the stupid greedy oldsters at the top stopped "sharing" the wealth. (That our labor created, but never mind that for now.)

You take away people's stake in the system, you throw away the stick you can beat them back into line with. The Jesus freaks and their co-religionists have realized this and gone full theocracy in response. And the grim truth is staring at them from every young person's eyes: "NO." The word they hate the most. Good for the youth, I say. Stonewall in 1969 was my signal that I could say no. George Floyd's murder, #BLM #MeToo Roevember are theirs.

But the money is still going to do its bloody, vicious, destructive best to stay on top. The Russians, with their collaborators the City men in London, are swimming in money. These are deeply illiberal people with A LOT TO LOSE. Read some Bill Browder and Jessikka Aro, study up on Alexei Navalny and his fate, look into the reason the felonious (thirty-four convictions!) Cheeto-dusted grifter got installed in government housing in 2016. Hoping that'll happen at a different Pennsylvania address again soon...preferably White Deer, Pennsylvania, this time...like me? Pay sustained attention to this existentially threatening election.

That said, there's a lot of work to be done to mend fences with this embittered cohort of people. As Psychology Today reports in their article on the topic that refers to the author and her findings, "Gen Z Americans are interested in addressing specific issues rather than defending a party position. Whether or not they identify as liberal or conservative, they agree on the need for effective government solutions to major social challenges. The disagreements over more or less government intervention that underlie the polarized American political landscape of today are less visible amongst them."

If that is not a blaring klaxon for oldsters to Pay Bloody Attention I can't imagine what else could be. The existence of the GOP and the Democratic Party are not divinely ordained. This sclerotic duopoly is not the only possibility of goverment organization for the young who have witnessed the venality and callousness of both sides to the burgeoning crises around the world. I have to take a half-star off for the author's choice to leave this tendentious conclusion out of the book.

I do not want to understate the stakes of 45's hand-picked Supreme Court's ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215. This last-ditch effort to reduce women's right to full citizenship, ie bodily autonomy, as a means of social control, is probably going to galvanize young women to vote in large numbers. Thank all those useless gods for that. Every other facet of this horrible travesty of justice is sick-making.

The diversity of the activism of this age cohort is ethnic more than gender-based. The efforts to undermine the intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are meant to reduce the access to voting of the most radicalized women in this generational cohort.

The young could save us from the vast right-wing conspiracy referenced by Hillary Clinton in 1995, the one determined to reinstall the convicted felon in charge of the most powerful machinery of coercion on the planet, achieving their aim. I'm hopeful they can. The obstacles put on the way of their ability to do so, the deliberate and carefully calculated efforts to hive off the angriest, thus most likely to take action, young men from the predominant attitudes of their peers, could work...but only if we ignore their reality.

Don't sleepwalk into 1933 Germany's fate The threat to democracy, flawed and fucked-up as it is, is real.

I am not sure about the politics of Gen Z but I sure got a lesson from the Atlas Van Lines moving representative last week. She told me that most younger people, starting with the Millennials' don't purchase furniture to last a lifetime. The move often and they move light. Most of their possessions are moved in boxes, as in Ikea furniture, not furniture like I have. That right there should be telling people about the future of this country.

When I worked with college students at the library it was easy to see that they are politically out-of-synch with their parents and they don't get their grandparents at all. If they would vote they would turn this country around 180 degrees on things like guns, personal rights, etc. And they simply didn't understand the culture wars at all. Why on earth would you ban a book? Or go after gays or blacks? For them the reversal of Roe v. Wade was a shocker. Maybe it will shock them into voting? I think they are the hope of this country.

>249 richardderus: Got me. It's worth reading what the neoliberals are currently saying.

>254 richardderus: One of my friends is a politically active Zoomer, currently working for the Democratic party.

I guess I should read this too.

>255 benitastrnad: They are indeed the hope of the country. We're still believing the polls and the pollsters; they're off looking at the wreckage we've left and getting seriously pissed that they get to clean it up.

May this FINALLY be the election the red-meat right wing has feared since 1965.

>256 ArlieS: Wise decisions both, Arlie. You'll gain a lot, if very differently, from each narrative.

If I could time-travel once, and kill one person, I think it'd be Rupert Murdoch's father. If I failed at that, Hayek's father.

>228 richardderus: You got me a trebuchet for my birthday? How sweet.

Your favourite supervillainess

>189 richardderus: I am actually AHEAD of you on GBBO for once and have just watched Bread week. Unfortunately that will be it for me until, presumably, next year since the next episode here in GB will air after I leave. I won't spoil it for you but I will say this: the attractiveness of GBBO in my eyes (apart from the actual baking) is that all the contestants root for each other and it doesn't have the nasty side of humanity that means I don't even watch reality shows (having seen the trailers). I like it when they show the triumphs and the handshakes and even the happy tears. So why focus on it if a contestant shows a moment of weakness? That's just mean.

>250 richardderus: Duh, of course I didn't try TV. The streaming service is restricted geographically. It has been since streaming was a thing and I tried to get access to the British version of "Who Do You Think You Are" on a regular basis.

171 The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda.

If you call to the witches, they will come.

1943, El Paso, teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.

In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.

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

My Review: So satisfying. Slow and intricate, deep and wise. I'm sure some will find the woven timelines...no definitive breaks or obtrusive tricks mark the shifts in the timeline...to be deal-breakingly imprecise, but to me that made this like an oral performace of a mythic tale. I will say that, as this is also a review of the book meant to instruct others in its merits, I've nicked a half-star off because this pigeonholes the Perfect Reader a bit overly finely.

I don't always love it when men take it upon themselves to write about motherhood. Author Jaramillo manages to do this feat without making the commonest mistakes men fall into: flattening the narrative scope into a litany of caretaking chores or glossing over these same chores. The effect is the same either end of the spectrum. It makes the work of motherhood into insignificant triviality. I hasten to add that many women writers have done the same, Gone Girl being a notable example. In this book, caretaking, mothering, is literally everywhere and yet this didn't obtrude into my consciousness until I was reviewing my notes before writing this review.

That's well-done prosody...I'm in the sounds of the story not in the structure of it. As these are the sounds of la frontera, where I grew up, I fell right in and did not notice it. Very well done indeed, Author Jaramillo.

I don't think any one thing worked more in favor of the book than Nena's manner of explaining the past to her modern, harried granddaughter, not as a place of beautiful memories but of deeds undine and consequences unmet. Business to be finished dominates every life, none moreso than that of the oldest among us. I resonated like a struck bell to this thread of the tapestry woven for me.

As a way to add some occult flavor and Hispanic culture to your #Deathtober reading, this works very well. As a lovely story of the intense bonds of a loving family woman, forced by bitter circumstance to choose actions permanent and irremediable, making amends as best she can, it's gloriously satisfying.

Read soonest.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Friday.

>253 richardderus: Thank you for the Greek-firely cyberarms hug. My trebuchetly self thanks you.

>254 richardderus: Great review, of course. I learn more from your reviews than from quite a few books.

>255 benitastrnad: My daughter’s in the interesting position of having been raised with lots of quality family furniture/antiques/stuff and loving them but is living with a woman who does not value material possessions at all and questions everything brought into their apartment. My daughter votes Blue, her girlfriend is on a student visa from Korea.

>262 richardderus: In theory I’d love this one, of course, but you won’t be surprised that given the current trend of my reading I’ll pass.

*smooch*

>261 Familyhistorian: OIC

The logic of this escapes me. I'm so uninterested in most TV that I never thought about following the rules.

>263 karenmarie: You're really in a specific trend, and >262 richardderus: isn't on that trend. JenWan have a lot of negotiating of boundaries and goals as time goes by. There's a tense trouble spot in the issue of possessions. You're going to be listening to a lot of that issue over time.

Happy Friday to you too, sweetiedarling!

GBBO BREAD WEEK THOUGHTS
Well, now we have the Paul Pat™ to add to the Hollywood Handshake®! A bread week of startling innovation...that technical was innovative indeed with its demonstration, then duplication of the demonstrated technique. I have to think they only filmed one of several passes, or else it's really asking a lot more than is fair of ye olde bakers.

The results were, predictably, intensely indicative of the way the bakers are shaking out. Homeward went sparkly-smile himself, the bleached John after coming ninth of ten in that race. His signature was awful, putting blobs of wet stuff inside a sealed bun without a vent or slit results in a big ol' airpocket! Like, have you even watched this show?! Then the showstopper...what a 'mare he had this week, nothing worked, nothing was well thought out, and even he said it wasn't a week he was looking forward to. But shouldn't that be the week you practice and plan out the most closely? *tsk*

Spang in the middle of the results were the dullards: Illiyin 4th, Gill 5th, Georgie 6th. Georgie did get the Paul Pat™ for her flavorlicious pesto buns in the signature, but then her cornucopia of her "favorite things" was *almost* excellent but for the proving times. Which, goodness knows, depend on temperatures and humidity levels one can't know precisely enough to be perfect at the task. Illiyin and Gill both did well enough, got praise for flavors, but didn't stand out. All are still in. So's Sumayah, but really unmemorably despite a second-place technical.

Mike, great sig of lamb bao, 7th in tech, failed a little less badly on his showstopper proving than the women, and is still in. Christiaan (8th in tech) still has ups and downs on his flavors, notably his showstopper bread with Stilton they couldn't taste! Stilton! Also, strawberry and cardamom?! ewww P&P liked it but it sounds awful to me. Andy did...okay...in everything, but after a near disaster in the technical, pulled it out for third place. Nelly's tech win and good signature, her quality performance in the showstopper, would've landed her in star bakerhood any other week.

Dylan wants to be a chef. Dylan came tenth of ten in the technical. Dylan SMASHED IT in the sig and the showstopper with gorgeous presentation, excellent techniques ("you're quite a little bread baker, aren't you Dylan?" says Paul afyer eating his pussy. CAT, you pervs!), and a really really interesting way with flavors. His whipped bone marrow for the showstopper! His gorgeous gochujang buns, colorful and aromatic! Star baker was really the only fair result.

On to caramel week!

>258 richardderus: The nasty cynic in me wonders whether they were in fact sired by their mothers' husbands. It would be sad if killing their official fathers didn't do anything useful. Maybe just kill both Murdoch and Hayek in infancy.

Seen in the University of California's announcements today: How to Love a Rat: Detecting Bombs in Postwar Cambodia by Darcie DeAngelo.

ummm...oookaaay

>267 ArlieS: I'm confident Rupert fell mere millimeters from the tree:

Dad, just after Gallipoli

Son, destroying the world's economy at Davos in 2007
They look a lot alike and they think a lot alike. Hayek, well, got me on the relationship. But all he's known for is cataloging plants in Hungary's imperial possessions; *yawn*

>251 richardderus: Yeah, they are. I just wanted to be something else - the story of my life, lol.

Skipping a bunch due to time constraints. . .

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a wonderful weekend!

>270 alcottacre: *smooch* back, Stasia!

>266 richardderus: I must get the latest episode of GBBO watched; then, I’ll be back to read your report. You always clarify things so well for me (interesting that I used a culinary term there!)

Have a great weekend!

Karen O

>272 klobrien2: I hope the episode makes you smile as much as it did me. The standard was really high!

>260 humouress: ahuhaahaahhahemmm?

>273 richardderus: Great week on the show! They are all so talented. I was getting so hungry watching Paul and Prue tasting all those lovely breads! I noticed that Dylan is laughing aloud and seeming more relaxed all around. And I loved the “Paul pat”!

Karen O

>274 humouress: You are perfectly correct in your assessment of the appeal...the mean edge is not there even when someone utterly fails. No one, from P&P on down, gloats or even says a slightly snide word. AND, when crunch time comes, they'll all pitch in to help someone floundering.

THIS week I saw so many ideas I have not seen even once. It was a great week.

(How'd I miss you this morning? I'm sorry!)

>275 klobrien2: We got a good group left now. I'm going to be gutted next week no matter who goes! Pretty young Dylan *is* more relaxed, and more consistent because of it. He's got the stuff to go all the way if he can execute more consistently every time.

Georgie was pretty pleased with it, too!

*smooch*

Happy weekend, Rdear. 😘💖

>278 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara! *smooch*

Happy Saturday, Richard. Good review of The Witches of El Paso. I will add it to the hefty TBR. I got to hang with Jack a little bit the last 2 days. He is such a bright spot. I am volunteering today for the forest preserve, helping at their Fall Festival. I do not do these events very often, so I thought it was time. I hope you have a fine weekend.

>280 msf59: Thanks, Mark! I'm pretty sure it'll be like all the others...too much television, sweart ears from constant headphone use...but I'm really enjoying Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews...queer YA horror.

Glad I could tempt you to add Witches to your list! I was very happy about that read. Enjoy your lovely day planned...soon enough Jack will be back!

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Saturday to you.

>265 richardderus: It will be interesting to see how their dynamic plays out. If anything, I see Jenna conceding to Hwan, and although the idea of all this lovely stuff not going to the next generation (which, frankly, I don't see happening either), I can’t control it and will ultimately not be around to deal with it. *shrug*

>268 richardderus: Well. $94 hardcover, $28 for Kindle, $30 for paperback. I’d like it for my shelves, simply for the title, but as it is, I’ll just add it to my wish list.

*smooch*

>282 karenmarie: Yep...it's all out of hands once we're dead. Which honestly is such a relief some days that I get weak in the knees.

Academic titles are the illuminated manuscripts of our age: only a few libraries can afford them and want them; some very rich people might occasionally get one or two; and the poor creator gets nothing remunerative except a warm glow of finishing a hard job as well as they could.

Saturday *smoochings*

PEARL RULE #026

Body Phobia: The Western Roots of Our Fear of Difference (33%) by Dex E. Anderson

Rating: 5*? can't fault the book for my rage

The Publisher Says: Your body is who you are.

We will only build a just society by rejecting fear of our bodies. American culture hates the fact that we have bodies—from evangelical culture, which insists "you are a soul and have a body," to wellness culture that turns your control over your body into a moral test, to transphobic activism that insists any step taken to change one's body is an immoral act, to the treatment of disabled bodies in a profoundly ableist culture.

Fear has led cisgender, white, and able-bodied Americans to deprioritize the physical experience and prioritize the mind alone, contributing to our alienation from one another, the marginalization of certain kinds of bodies, and harm to us all. Body Phobia is an examination of the American fear of the body, how it permeates all parts of culture, who gets to be perceived as more than their body, and who does not.

By becoming self-aware of how our bodies interact with the world and what it means to have a body, we can begin to overcome the harm done in divorcing the American body and the American mind for centuries. Through cutting analysis and candid storytelling, Dianna E. Anderson exposes our fear-based politics and shows us a way to approach bodies that is neither positive nor negative but neutral. Our bodies are. And that's enough.

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

My Review: I can not keep reading.

This short book is deeply tendentious and absolutely infuriating. I am confronted with thoughtless homophobia/heterosexism, invisible to the perps; with explicit transphobia everywher I look in our culture; with idiots bloviating about disability in ways that boggle*my*mind* and are impervious to anything like education.

How much more awful for Author Dex Anderson to confont these things, and then courageously set out to analyze and explain them clearly and persuasively...to people who won't listen. I suppose that includes me, since I'm absolutely unable to endure the stress of feeling so infuriated at the way things are one more page without having another stroke.

Broadleaf Books says, "$24.99 please," for the hardcover, which seems inexpensive to me. You should, though, get the information in here.

After eleven years of blogging, I've passed the 800,000-views mark.

Quite pleased.

Happy Saturday, Richard. I've been breezing through, and as you might predict, I can't face either of your latest two nonfiction offerings. I will, however, wish for the Jaramillo for sometime!

Meanwhile, I have my copies of both the Julia Kelly and the Deanna Raybourn, and I thank you. You know what a writing snot I am. Kelly is right on the line for me. For example, I'm on page 13 and have read about Evelyne's "dark brown curls" twice now when I'd rather not have had them mentioned at all. One more time in the next few pages, and I bail. I like the premise though, so we'll see.
Raybourne seems to do better.....

>238 benitastrnad: ? (I hope that Reba has found that Onager means Mule. I wouldn't be sorry to have had that one just for the name!)

Peaceful rest-of-the-day to you! *smooch*

>286 LizzieD: I believe that onager as an animal refers to a particular type of wild ass, not a mule.

DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #062 House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce—and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

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

My Review: What Maisie Knew, with added (and unnecessary) murder, from a lawyer's PoV. It's not much of an improvement TBH. A lot easier to read than James's prose; less intensely compelling, too.

Tendentiously moralizing tale of a child's nightmarish loss of innocence. Judge less, understand more.

>286 LizzieD: In very fancy pseudogreek, it does. Those Linneans did a lot of phonying up, didn't they?

That sort of Homeric phrase doesn't drive me as mad as it does so many...it's a leitmotif, so shortly becomes invisible to me. I hope it'll eventually do the same for you, smoochling!

>287 ArlieS: After 1775, it does. Before that, it was a mule to the Greeks.

>286 LizzieD: I looked it up and found that it's a catapult with a bowl-like part to hold what is being thrown. Some would say that "mule" is appropriate for me because I have been accused of being stubborn from time to time :).

>287 ArlieS: "wild ass" -- never been called that as far as I know

DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #063
The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories—dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.

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

My Review: I ignored the warning signs...the c-a-t on the cover, the call-out to Before the Coffee Gets Cold which is a dreadful, condescending farrago...and paid the price: I just do not like "international bestsellers" because if they appeal to that many people they'll make me queasy with insulin poisoning.

I hated it. But I read it. I wanted the lingering possibility of evoking my 1964 birthday cake, a caramel doberge cake my mother bought to make up for forgetting to make one herself.

Fail. I was annoyed and irked by turns...but y'all'll eat it up (!), I bet, hence the two stars.

If I'd spent Putnam's $25 for a hardcover I'd be frothing bloodily at the mouth and nose.

>291 RebaRelishesReading: A very specific kind at that:

DEATHTOBER BURGOINE #064
A Legend in the Baking (Fake It Till You Bake It #2) by Jamie Wesley

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After accidentally going viral on social media, a cupcake-baking football player gets assistance from a social media maven—and his best friend's little sister—to help promote his new bakery.

August Hodges was supposed to be the silent partner in Sugar Blitz Cupcakes. Emphasis on silent. That is until his impromptu feminist rant about how women bakers are the backbone of the industry and baking cupcakes isn’t a threat to masculinity goes viral, making him the hottest bachelor in town. With a new location in the works, August and his partners decide to capitalize on this perfect opportunity to help cement their place in the community. But the hiring of his best friend’s younger sister, the woman who has haunted some of his best dreams for years, was as much of a shock as his new-found fame.



Social media manager Sloane Dell fell hard for her brother’s best friend the moment she met him more than a decade ago, but that teenage infatuation cost her dearly. Still, she accepts her brother’s request to revamp the bakery’s social media presence to take advantage of August’s newfound popularity, knowing it’s the big break her fledgling career needs. She’ll just ignore the fact that August is still August, i.e. sexier and sweeter than any man has a right to be. And that he drives her crazy with his resistance to all her ideas.

They vow to leave the past in the past. But when an explosive make-out session makes it clear their attraction burns hotter than ever, Sloane and August are forced to reconsider what it means to take a risk and chase your dreams.

As they’re both about to find out, all’s fair in love and cupcakes.

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

My Review: It worked before...do it again. People love formulas because they're very soothing. Jamie Wesley's on a winner here because it hits the beats, makes the current landscape...the social-media and baking-as-entertainment landscape that is...her own, and does it in readable prose that gets out of the story's way.

Yay!

Coming November 19th from St. Martin's Griffin.

>294 richardderus: I bought that one for the library, so I'm glad to see you found it generally worked well for what it does.

Oh, and I added Season of the Swamp to the TBR list. Thanks, I think :P

>295 bell7: I'm pleased...the book's not gonna change the reading conversation about Black men and masculinity, but it sure won't hurt anything. You'll probably enjoy the Herrera. It's got a lot of really trenchant things to say. You're definitely welcome! *smooch*

>276 richardderus: No, no, it's okay. Don't mind me *sob*

Well, I'm back at home now so I'll have to wait until the powers that be decide to show the current
Bake Off series here to catch up on the rest of the programme.

>297 humouress: I'm intensely glad I'll be ahead of you, Poor Pitiful Pearl, for another week!

Seriously, though, what can be the thinking behind the very long delays? Surely it can't be GBBO's producers, they'd do better with a buildup of interest all at the same time in as much of the world as they can reach...so, well, it just gets weirder and weirder as I try to puzzle it out. Cultural contamination? Excessive partisanship? Ecological concerns about resource use inspired by all those eggs? Nothing makes sense to me, it just feels arbitrary. In whatever month you *do* finally get to see the next episodes the thoughts will still be there, if you can remember where I put them!

ETA the idiot AI's bad decisions

>161 richardderus: I rewatched the Biscuit Week episode while I made my eldest's 21st birthday cake so I didn't focus on it. Episodes 3 & 4 showed as well but - apart from frequent mentions of caramel - I couldn't tell you much about 4. I switched it off before the results so I'll watch it properly some time. But this month is going to be more hectic than usual! Got my parents here till tomorrow so my mum is helping out too.

Personally, I love Andy and Nelly - they're such characters. I'm sorry Jeff had to leave; we didn't see enough of him to get an impression. I have a soft spot for Dylan, Sumayah and Georgie. As for Hazel, honestly I doubt I'd do that well under time pressure especially.

>266 richardderus: I rewatched Bread week, too but focused even less. The winner of the technical looked pretty good.

>299 humouress: I agree on both your spoiler points. December is always a busy month, isn't it? I hope you survive sanity intact.