mahsdad's (Jeff) 2025 Thread - Q1

Welcome to 2025 Q1 and my little corner of the world



Hi, I'm Jeff. I live in San Pedro California. Moved out from Pittsburgh in 1989. I'm an avid reader. My wife might say I'm bordering on the obsessive. But then, I think that could apply to a lot of us in this group. I also enjoy photography, movies, hiking and playing games and hanging out with my family. Book-wise, I have a pretty eclectic taste in what I read and I hope to give you not so much reviews but my impressions about what I read.

What you will find here is mostly my rambling thoughts, a whole mess of lists I'm keeping track of, my Wishlist and TBR pile temptations and a smattering of my photography. I don't really make a plan for what I'm going to read thru out the year. Its mostly what strikes my fancy from the TBR piles.

Past 75 Threads :
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2017 2018 2019 2020
2021 2022 2023 2024

Come in and sit a spell.

2025 Statistics - Q1

🎧 - Audio
ER - Early Review
GN - Graphic Novel
K - Kindle


March
20. Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman 🎧 :
19. Radium Girls by Kate Moore 🎧 :
18. America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien 🎧 :
17. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson :
16. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 🎧 :

Favorite : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand


February
15. Replay by Ken Grimwood 🎧 :
14. Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery :
13. Dead du Jour by Kathy Reichs 🎧 :
12. Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black :
11. Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson :
10. A Model World by Michael Chabon :

Favorite : Written in Bone


January
9. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 🎧 :
8. Mort Cinder by Hector German Oesterheld (GN) :
7. A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers :
6. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis :
5. Wastelands edit by John Joseph Adams 🎧 :
4. Babel by R.F. Kuang 🎧 :
3. Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace :
2. The Eternaut by Hector Oesterheld (GN) :
1. Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera 🎧 :

Favorite : A Psalm for the Wild Built

Audiobook Narrator

Thom Riveria - Season of the Swamp

Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown - Babel

Too Many - Wastelands, Weird Black Girls

Marin Ireland, Michael Urie - Remarkably Bright Creatures

Sue Black - Written in Bone

Bonnie Hurren - Dead du Jour

William Dufris - Replay

Rosalyn Landor - Never Let Me Go

Oliver Wyman - America Fantastica

Angela Brazil - Radium Girls

Pulitzer's Read

Ongoing bucket list to read all the Pulitzer winning novels.

Bold : On the Shelf

2024 - Night Watch
2023 - Demon Copperhead
2023 - Trust
2022 - The Netanyahus
2021 - The Night Watchman
2020 - The Nickel Boys - READ
2019 - The Overstory - READ
2018 - Less - READ
2017 - Underground Railroad - READ
2016 - The Sympathizer
2015 - All the Light We Cannot See - READ
2014 - The Goldfinch - READ
2013 - The Orphan Master's Son - READ
2012 - NO AWARD
- Swamplandia - READ - Nominee
2011 - A Visit from the Goon Squad - READ
2010 - Tinkers - READ
2009 - Olive Kitterridge - READ
2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - READ
2007 - The Road - READ
2006 - March - READ
2005 - Gilead - READ
2004 - The Known World
2003 - Middlesex - READ
2002 - Empire Falls
2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - READ
2000 - The Interpreter of Maladies - READ
1999 - The Hours - READ
1998 - American Pastoral
1997 - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer READ
1996 - Independence Day - READ
1995 - The Stone Diaries
1994 - The Shipping News
1993 - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - READ
1992 - A Thousand Acres - READ
- My Father Bleeds History (Maus) - READ (Special Awards & Citations - Letters)
1991 - Rabbit at Rest
1990 - The Mambo Kings
1989 - Breathing Lessons
1988 - Beloved DNF
1987 - A Summons to Memphis
1986 - Lonesome Dove - READ
1985 - Foreign Affairs
1984 - Ironweed - READ
1983 - The Color Purple - READ
1982 - Rabbit is Rich
1981 - A Confederacy of Dunces - READ
1980 - The Executioner's Song - READ
1979 - The Stories of John Cheever - READ
1978 - Elbow Room
1977 - NO AWARD
1976 - Humboldt's Gift
1975 - The Killer Angels - READ
1974 - NO AWARD
1973 - The Optimist's Daughter
1972 - Angle of Repose - READ
1971 - NO AWARD
1970 - The collected Stories of Jean Stafford
1969 - House Made of Dawn : DNF
1968 - The Confessions of Nat Turner - READ
1967 - The Fixer
1966 - The Collected Stories of katherine Anne Porter
1965 - The Keepers of the House
1964 - NO AWARD
1963 - The Reivers
1962 - The Edge of Sadness
1961 - To Kill a Mockingbird - READ
1960 - Advise and Consent
1959 - The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
1958 - A Death in the Family
1957 - NO AWARD
1956 - Andersonville
1955 - A Fable
1954 - NO AWARD
1953 - The Old Man and the Sea
1952 - The Caine Mutiny - READ
1951 - The Town
1950 - The Way West
1949 - Guard of Honor - READ
1948 - Tales of the South Pacific
1947 - All the King's Men
1946 - NO AWARD
1945 - A Bell
1944 - Journey in the Dark
1943 - Dragon's Teeth
1942 - In This Our Life
1941 - NO AWARD
1940 - The Grapes of Wrath - READ
1939 - The Yearling
1938 - The Late George Apley
1937 - Gone with the Wind
1936 - Honey in the Horn
1935 - Now in November
1934 - Lamb in His Bosom
1933 - The Store
1932 - The Good Earth
1931 - Years of Grace
1930 - Laughing Boy
1929 - Scarlet Sister Mary
1928 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey - READ
1927 - Early Autumn
1926 - Arrowsmith
1925 - So Big
1924 - The Able McLaughlins
1923 - One of Ours
1922 - Alice Adams
1921 - The Age of Innocence
1920 - NO AWARD
1919 - The Magnificent Ambersons
1918 - His Family

Hugo's Read

Ongoing bucket list to read all the Hugo winning novels.

Bold : On the Shelf

2024 - Some Desperate Glory
2023 - Nettle & Bone
2022 - A Desolation Called Peace
2022 - A Psalm for the Wild Built (novella) - READ
2021 - Network Effect - READ
2020 - A Memory Called Empire
2020 - This Is How You Lose The Time War - Novella - READ
2019 - The Calculating Stars - READ
2018 - The Stone Sky
2018 - All Systems Red - Novella - READ
2017 - The Obelisk Gate
2016 - The Fifth Season
2016 - Binti - READ - Novella
2015 - The Three-Body Problem
2014 - Ancillary Justice - READ (DNF)
2013 - Redshirts - READ
2012 - Among Others - READ
2011 - Blackout/All Clear
2010 - The Windup Girl - READ
2010 - The City & the City
2009 - The Graveyard Book - READ
2008 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union - READ
2007 - Rainbows End
2006 - Spin - READ
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2004 - Paladin of Souls
2003 - Hominids
2003 - Coraline (novella) - READ
2002 - American Gods - READ
2001 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - READ
2000 - A Deepness in the Sky
1999 - To Say Nothing of the Dog - READ
1998 - Forever Peace - READ
1997 - Blue Mars
1996 - The Diamond Age - READ
1995 - Mirror Dance
1994 - Green Mars
1993 - A Fire Upon the Deep
1993 - Doomsday Book READ
1992 - Barrayar
1991 - The Vor Game
1990 - Hyperion
1989 - Cyteen
1988 - The Uplift War - READ
1988 - Watchmen - READ - category : Other forms
1987 - Speaker for the Dead - READ
1986 - Ender's Game - READ
1985 - Neuromancer - READ
1985 - The Crystal Spheres - READ - David Brin - Short Story
1984 - Startide Rising - READ
1983 - Foundation's Edge
1982 - Downbelow Station
1981 - The Snow Queen
1980 - The Fountains of Paradise
1979 - Dreamsnake
1978 - Gateway
1977 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
1976 - The Forever War - READ
1975 - The Dispossessed
1974 - Rendezvous with Rama - READ
1973 - The Gods Themselves - READ
1972 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go
1971 - Ringworld - READ
1970 - Left Hand of Darkness - READ
1969 - Stand on Zanzibar - READ
1968 - Lord of Light
1967 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - READ
1966 - Dune - READ
1966 - This Immortal
1965 - The Wanderer
1964 - Way Station - READ
1963 - The Man in the High Castle - READ
1962 - Stranger in a Strange Land - READ
1961 - A Canticle for Leibowitz - READ
1960 - Starship Troopers - READ
1959 - A Case of Conscience
1958 - The Big Time
1956 - Double Star - READ
1955 - The Forever Machine
1953 - The Demolished Man - READ

Retro Hugos - this are given for years when no award was given (more than 50 years ago). Of those...

1939 - The Sword in the Stone
1951 - Farmer in the Sky - READ
1954 - Fahrenheit 451 - READ

Nebulas Read

Bold - On the Shelf

2023 - Babel, Or, The Necessity of Violence, An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution READ
2022 - A Master of Djinn - READ
2021 - Network Effect - READ
2020 - A Song for a New Day
2019 - The Calculating Stars - READ
2019 - This Is How You Lose The Time War - Novella - READ
2018 - The Stone Sky
2017 - All the Birds in the Sky - READ
2016 - Uprooted
2016 - Binti - Novella - READ
2015 - Annihilation - READ
2014 - Ancillary Justice - READ DNF
2013 - 2312
2012 - Among Others
2012 - Paper Menagerie - Short Story - READ
2011 - Blackout/All Clear
2010 - The Windup Girl - READ
2009 - Powers
2008 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union - READ
2007 - Seeker
2006 - Camouflage - READ
2005 - Paladin of Souls
2004 - The Speed of Dark
2003 - American Gods - READ
2002 - The Quantum Rose
2001 - Darwin's Radio
2000 - Parable of the Talents
1999 - Forever Peace - READ
1998 - The Moon and the Sun
1997 - Slow River
1996 - The Terminal Experiment
1995 - Moving Mars
1994 - Red Mars
1993 - Doomsday Book READ
1992 - Stations of the Tide
1991 - Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
1990 - The Healer's War
1989 - Falling Free
1988 - The Falling Woman
1987 - Speaker for the Dead - READ
1986 - Ender's Game - READ
1985 - Neuromancer - READ
1984 - Startide Rising - READ
1983 - No Enemy But Time
1982 - The Claw of the Conciliator
1981 - Timescape
1980 - The Fountains of Paradise
1979 - Dreamsnake
1978 - Gateway
1977 - Man Plus
1976 - The Forever War - READ
1975 - The Dispossessed
1974 - Rendezvous with Rama - READ
1973 - The Gods Themselves
1972 - A Time of Changes
1971 - Ringworld - READ
1970 - The Left Hand of Darkness - READ
1969 - Rite of Passage
1968 - The Einstein Intersection
1967 - Babel-17
1967 - Flowers for Algernon - READ
1966 - Dune - READ

National Book Award Winners

2015 - Fortune Smiles
2014 - Redeployment
2001 - The Corrections
1988 - Paris Trout
1985 - White Noise
1983 - The Color Purple - hardback award
1981 - The Stories of John Cheever - paperback award
1980 - The World According to Garp - paperback award
1953 - Invisible Man

Man Booker Books
2024 Orbital READ
2023 Prophet Song
2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
2021 The Promise
2020 Shuggie Bain READ
2019 The Testaments
2019 Girl, Woman, Other
2018 Milkman READ
2017 Lincoln in the Bardo READ
2016 The Sellout READ
2015 A Brief History of Seven Killings READ
2014 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2013 The Luminaries
2012 Bring Up the Bodies
2011 The Sense of an Ending
2010 The Finkler Question
2009 Wolf Hall DNF
2008 The White Tiger
2007 The Gathering
2006 The Inheritance of Loss
2005 The Sea
2004 The Line of Beauty READ
2003 Vernon God Little
2002 Life of Pi READ
2001 True History of the Kelly Gang
2000 The Blind Assassin
1999 Disgrace
1998 Amsterdam
1997 The God of Small Things
1996 Last Orders
1995 The Ghost Road
1994 How Late It Was, How Late
1993 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1992 The English Patient
1992 Sacred Hunger
1991 The Famished Road
1990 Possession
1989 The Remains of the Day READ
1988 Oscar and Lucinda
1987 Moon Tiger
1986 The Old Devils
1985 The Bone People
1984 Hotel du Lac
1983 Life & Times of Michael K
1982 Schindler's Ark
1981 Midnight's Children READ
1980 Rites of Passage
1979 Offshore
1978 The Sea, the Sea
1977 Staying On
1976 Saville
1975 Heat and Dust
1974 The Conservationist
1974 Holiday
1973 The Siege of Krishnapur
1972 G.
1971 In a Free State
1970 The Elected Member
1969 Something to Answer For

International Booker Prize

2023 Time Shelter - Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria) : trans. Angela Rodel Read
2022 Tomb of Sand - Geetanjali Shree (India) : trans. Daisy Rockwell
2021 At Night All Blood Is Black - David Diop (France) : trans. Anna Moschovakis
2020 The Discomfort of Evening - Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Netherlands) : trans. Michele Hutchison
2019 Celestial Bodies - Jokha al-Harthi (Oman) : trans. Marilyn Booth
2018 Flights - Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) : trans. Jennifer Croft
2017 A Horse Walks Into a Bar - David Grossman (Israel) : trans. Jessica Cohen
2016 The Vegetarian - Han Kang (South Korea) : trans. Deborah Smith Read

100 SFF/Fantasy Reads as compiled by NPR

https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fant...

1. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien READ
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams READ
3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card READ
4. The Dune Chronicles By Frank Herbert READ
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series by George R.R. Martin
6. 1984 A Novel by George Orwell READ
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury READ
8. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov READ but only the 1st one
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley READ
10. American Gods By Neil Gaiman READ
11. The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman READ
12. The Wheel Of Time Series by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm by George Orwell READ
14. Neuromancer By William Gibson READ
15. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons READ
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov READ
17. Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein READ
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles BY by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five By Kurt Vonnegut READ
20. Frankenstein By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley READ
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick READ
22. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood READ
23. The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King READ
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey BY by Arthur C. Clarke READ
25. The Stand By Stephen King READ
26. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson READ
27. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury READ
28. Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman READ
30. A Clockwork Orange BY by Anthony Burgess READ
31. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein READ
32. Watership Down by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein READ
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz By Walter M. Miller Jr. READ
36. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea By Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes READ
39. The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells READ
40. The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad By David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. Mistborn Trilogy Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld by LARRY NIVEN READ
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin READ
46. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King BY by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere by NEIL GAIMAN READ
49. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact by Carl Sagan READ
51. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust by Neil Gaiman READ
53. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson READ
54. World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks READ
55. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman READ
57. Small Gods A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle READ
62. The Sword Of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road by by Cormac McCarthy READ
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson READ
66. The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series by Robert E. Howard and Mark Schultz
69. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger READ
71. The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
72. Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne READ
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series by R. A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War by John Scalzi READ
75. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson READ
76. Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke READ
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire READ
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde READ
83. The Culture Series by Iain Banks
84. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man By Ray Bradbury short works collection
92. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov READ
95. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle READ
97. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
99. The Xanth Series by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis

100 Horror Reads as compiled by NPR

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/632779706/click-if-you-dare-100-favorite-horror-s...

1. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley READ
2. Dracula by Bram Stoker
3. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
5. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
6. The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
7. The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
8. The Monkeys Paw by W. W. Jacobs
9. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
10. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman READ
11. Oh, Whistle, And Ill Come To You, My Lad by M. R. James and Darryl Jones
12.The Werewolf Of Paris By Guy Endore
13. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson READ
14. Let The Right One In By John Ajvide Lindqvist
15. The Vampire Chronicles (First Triology) by Anne Rice READ
16. Minion (Vampire Huntress Legend Series) by L. A. Banks
17. The Hunger by Alma Katsu
18. Those Across The River by Christopher Buehlman
19. Bird Box by Josh Malerman READ
20. Feed (Newsflesh Series) by Mira Grant
21. World War Z by Max Brooks READ
22. The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey READ
23. The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft
24. The Ballad Of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle READ
25. The Fisherman by John Langan
26. Laundry Files (Series) by Charles Stross
27. The Cipher By Kathe Koja
28. John Dies At The End by David Wong READ
29. At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
30. All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts by Sonya Taaffe
31. Uzumaki by Junji Ito
32. Communion: A True Story by Whitley Strieber OR Majestic by Whitley Strieber
33. The Repairer Of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers
34. The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
35. The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
36. Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
37. The Shining by Stephen King READ
38. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
39. The Elementals by Michael McDowell
40. The Woman In Black by Susan Hill
41. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
42. The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
43. Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
44. Infidel by Aaron Campbell, Jose Villarrubia, Pornsak Pichetshote and Jeff Powell
45. The Ruins by Scott Smith
46. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
47. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates
48. The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan
49. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
50. The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr.
51. Left Foot, Right by Nalo Hopkinson
52. Come Closer by Sara Gran
53. Furnace by Livia Llewellyn
54. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
55. Through The Woods by Emily Carroll
56. Sandman by Neil Gaiman READ
57. Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
58. White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
59. Goblin Market by Christina Georgina Rossetti
60. Experimental Film by Gemma Files
61. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson READ
62. The Collector by John Fowles
63. The Terror by Dan Simmons
64. Intensity by Dean R. Koontz
65. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
66. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
67. Night They Missed the Horror Show by Joe R. Lansdale
68. Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
69. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill READ
70. Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler
71. Lord Of The Flies by William Golding READ
72. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood READ
73. Beloved by Toni Morrison
74. Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler
75. The Devil In America by Kai Ashante Wilson
76. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
77. Books Of Blood by Clive Barker READ
78. The October Country: Stories by Ray Bradbury
79. The Weird: A Compendium Of Strange And Dark Stories by Ann Vandermeer and Jeff VanDermeer
80. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
81. Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, 1961-1991 by Ramsey Campbell
82. Things We Lost In The Fire by Mariana Enriquez
83. Shadowland by Peter Straub READ
84. A Head Full Of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
85. Rosemarys Baby by Ira Levin
86. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
87. The Body by Stephen King READ
88. Its A Good Life by Jerome Bixby
89. The Other by Thomas Tryon
90. The Troop by Nick Cutter
91. Elizabeth by Ken Greenhall
92. Please, Momma by Chesya Burke
93. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell
94. Goosebumps (Series) by R. L. Stine children
95. Rotters by Daniel Kraus children
96. Jumbies Rise Of The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
97. The House With A Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs
98. Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh
99. Coraline by Neil Gaiman READ
100. Down A Dark Hall by Lois Duncan

Weird Books List

From Book Riot - The 100 strange and weird "must read" books. https://bookriot.com/i-got-your-weird-right-here-100-wonderful-strange-and-unusu...

A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons
After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones
Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss
An Exaggerated Murder by Josh Cook
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer READ
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem
Bear vs. Shark by Chris Bachelder
Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe (Author), Alexander O. Smith (Translator)
Cat Country by Lao She
Damnificados by JJ Amaworo Wilson
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham
Dendera by Yuya Sato (Author), Edwin Hawkes (Translator), Nathan A Collins (Translator)
Disquiet by Julia Leigh
Duplex by Kathryn Davis
Escape from Baghdad! by Saad Hossain
Fram by Steve Himmer
geek loveGeek Love by Katherine Dunn
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland READ
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
Half Life by Shelley Jackson
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (Author), Michael Glenny (Translator)
I Crawl Through It by A.S. King
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe
Just Like Beauty by Lisa Lerner
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis
Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet
Motherfucking Sharks by Brian Allen Carr
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood READ
Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters
Prodigies by Angélica Gorodischer
Pym by Mat Johnson
Radio Iris by Anne-Marie Kinney
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
Sister Mine by Nalo HopkinsonSister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson
Slade House by David Mitchell READ
Slapstick or Lonesome No More! by Kurt Vonnegut
Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue (Author), Natasha Wimmer (Translator)
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor
The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
The Bees by Laline Paul
The Blue Girl by Laurie Foos
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders READ
The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman
The Daughters by Adrienne Celt
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier
The Incarnations by Susan Barker
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosely
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Author), Lola M. Rogers (Translator)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall READ
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Author), Christina MacSweeney (Translator)
The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
The Unfinished World and Other Stories by Amber Sparks
The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits
The Vaults by Toby Ball
The Vegetarian by Han Kang READ
The Vorrh by B. Catling
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Weirdness by Jeremy Bushnell
The Wilds by Julia Elliott
Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce
Version Control by Dexter Palmer
Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
Waiting for Gertrude by Bill Richardson
What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Jeff's Weird Additions
Help! A Bear is Eating Me by Mykle Hansen
WhaleFall by Daniel Kraus
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

Esquire's 75 Best Sci-Fi books of all time.

Choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. Though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. We also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre—to borrow a great sci-fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.”

75 - The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey
74 - The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal READ
73 - Redshirts, by John Scalzi READ
72 - Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino
71 - The Ten Percent Thief, by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
70 - Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
69 - Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson READ
68 - Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
67 - Contact, by Carl Sagan READ
66 - Under the Skin, by Michel Faber
65 - Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak READ
64 - Sea of Rust, by C. Robert Cargill
63 - What Mad Universe, by Fredric Brown
62 - The Book of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor
61 - Semiosis, by Sue Burke
60 - Excession, by Iain M. Banks
59 - The Claw of the Conciliator, by Gene Wolfe
58 - Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
57 - This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone READ
56 - The Resisters, by Gish Jen
55 - Rosewater, by Tade Thompson READ
54 - Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
53 - Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem READ
52 - A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess READ
51 - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein READ
50 - A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle READ
49 - The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
48 - The Body Scout, by Lincoln Michel
47 - An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon
46 - The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler
45 - Neuromancer, by William Gibson READ
44 - The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester READ
43 - The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
42 - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams READ
41 - A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. READ
40 - Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir READ
39 - Zone One, by Colson Whitehead TBR
38 - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers READ
37 - Engine Summer, by John Crowley
36 - The Children of Men, by P.D. James READ
35 - Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
34 - The City & The City, by China Miéville
33 - A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
32 - Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie DNF
31 - The Stand, by Stephen King READ
30 - In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes
29 - Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany
28 - The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman READ
27 - 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami READ
26 - Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
25 - Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
24 - Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer READ
23 - Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood READ
22 - Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
21 - Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
20 - Shikasta, by Doris Lessing
19 - The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
18 - Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky READ
17 - Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke READ
16 - The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov READ
15 - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu READ
14 - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley READ
13 - The Employees, by Olga Ravn
12 - 1984, by George Orwell READ
11 - The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu TBR
10 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick READ
9 - Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel READ
8 - Exhalation, by Ted Chiang READ
7 - Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
6 - The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin READ
5 - Kindred, by Octavia Butler READ
4 - The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
3 - The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury READ
2 - Dune, by Frank Herbert READ
1 - Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley READ

2024 Reading Results

Books Read : 103
# of Authors : 77
Authors of Color : 5 (6%)
Lady Authors : 23 (30%)
Narrators : 46 (Most books - : John Lee - 3 )
Rereads - 20 (19%)

Pages Read - 14,264 Hours Read - 22 days, 5 hours and 19 minutes

1st Book - Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
75th Book - Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
Last Book - Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

Books Purchased/Gifted/Found - 106







Map of 2024 author birthplaces

Scatter Plot

My favorite graphs for some strange reason. Not quite sure they're useful for anything, I just like them artistically. Here's all the books I've read plotted out in order of when they were published

2024 Reads



And for something even more obscure, Everything I've read since I started tracking

2024 Books of the Month

January : IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
February : Kindred by Octavia Butler
March : Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside by Nick Offerman

April : Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
May : A Wild Swan and Other Tales by Michael Cunningham
June : My Real Children by Jo Walton

July : The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
August : A Manual for Cleaning Women
September : The Angel of Rome

October : Starter Villain
November : Father and Son
December : Homegoing






#botm

Wow, Jeff, that is a striking topper.

I look forward to another year keeping in touch across the ether.

>15 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul, Thanks for stopping by.

That image is related to my image in my FF post in my 2024 thread. One of the light exhibits were lasers that were in the trees and slowly cycling thru different colors. They enhanced things with smoke machines, it was very surreal walking thru. Since it was dark, my phone was taking long exposures which generally works out quite nicely when you don't move, but leads to very interesting results when you move the phone while its taking the shot. :)

Just to record my own progress against your lists (and remembering that Sci-Fi and Horror are not my go to genres). I have read:

Hugo Winners : 5
Nebula Winners : 5
Pulitzer Fiction Winners : 23
National Book Award Fiction Winners : 15
Booker Prize Winners : 37
International Bookers : 5
SFF Reads : 21
Horror Reads : 10
Weird Books : 3
Esquire Sci-Fi : 10

Let's see what I manage by the end of the year.

Cool, thanks for sharing. Its always fun to see where we sit against these arbitrary goals. Its not like we need any real suggestions on new books (especially you LOL), there's always unread tomes on the shelves. But sometimes a list will point us in an interesting direction.

>18 mahsdad: That is absolutely correct, Jeff, and I do want to read more out of my comfort zone and broaden those reading horizons. I have a lot of the books on the respective lists so I will try to make a dent.

Hi Jeff. I haven't followed you before, and this year i wound up overwhelmed and not keeping up on threads, but your intro looked interesting, so here I am. Maybe I'll do better this year.

Count me as another who reads a lot of SF & fan, though with very little idea of what award winners I've read.

I'll start my thread when it gets a little closer to New Years day.

Happy new thread Jeff!

Welcome back, Jeff! Unfortunately, LT’s wiki system is down, but I’ve got you on my list to add to the Threadbook once it’s back up.

>19 PaulCranswick: Glad I can do my own little part to enable your habits. LOL

>20 ArlieS: Hi ArlieS, thanks for stopping by. I'll look for your thread next week.

>21 quondame: Thanks Susan

>22 drneutron: No worries. Even if it took a week or so to catchup with the new Threads, that's okay by me.

New Book - audio

Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera (read by Thom Rivera



A major new novel set in nineteenth-century New Orleans by the author of Signs Preceding the End of the World

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.

The badges dragged the man from the ship, hurled him down the gangplank, and he fell in front of them and then attempted to stand, but the badges conquered him with clubs and he didn't defend himself from their blows, because his hands were clasping a treasured object to his chest. One of the badges torturing him said Drop it. They didn't speak the language, but that's what the badge was saying.

#newbook

New Book - rereading on Kindle

Earth by David Brin



Set in the year 2038, the book is a cautionary tale of the harm humans can cause their planet via disregard for the environment and reckless scientific experiments. The book has a large cast of characters and Brin uses them to address a number of environmental issues including endangered species, global warming, refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, and the social effects of overpopulation. The plot of the book involves an artificially created black hole which has been lost in the Earth's interior and the attempts to recover it before it destroys the planet. The events and revelations which follow reshape humanity and its future in the universe.

The scope of the story expands vastly as the plot gradually reveals itself, bringing into question the future course — and even the survival — of humanity.

First came a supernova, dazzling the universe in brief, spendthrift glory before ebbing into twisty, multispectral clouds of new-forged atoms. Swirling eddies spiraled until one of them ignited - a newborn star

#newbook

Book Haul

Sure technically its still 2024, but I'm making the move here and documenting my first haul of 2025. Our annual tradition is to go book shopping and this year we went today to the Last Bookstore in downtown LA and then had a late lunch at the Grand Central Market (a big warehouse of too many food booths to choose from. Had a really tasty bbq ham and cheese sandwich.

So not counting Christmas, we start at 5.

5. A Model World by Michael Chabon : He's an automatic buy. This is an old story collection I didn't have
6. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
7. Alien Virus Love Disaster - Stories by Abbey Mei Otis. This just caught my eye. Short Stories that sound interesting
8. Sock by Penn Jillette - a buddy cop thriller where the narrator is a sock monkey. Sounds weird, which means its right up my alley
9. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes. The blurb on the back got me.... "Its a hilariously revisionist account of Noah's ark, narrated by a passenger who doesn't appear in Genesis. Its a sneak peak at heaven, and of woodworms tried for blasphemy in 16th century France". Yes please.
10. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil. Shortlisted for the Booker. I seldom read Indian fiction, this got my attention.

#bh

>24 mahsdad: That one is on my TBR, albeit in print.

>24 mahsdad: Me too - I think I've got it on my Libby/Overdrive list.

>27 laytonwoman3rd: >28 drneutron: I think Richard reviewed it back in October and I immediately added it to the list and Libby (audio). its a little shorty (only 4 hours on audio). Only about 30 minutes in, its pretty good so far.

New Book

Big Fish by Daniel Wallace


The classic novel that inspired the beloved Tim Burton film and the Broadway musical.

In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He knew more jokes than any man alive. At least that’s what he told his son, William. But now Edward Bloom is dying, and William wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father—this indefatigable teller of tall tales—before it’s too late. So, using the few facts he knows, William re-creates Edward’s life in a series of legends and myths, through which he begins to understand his father’s great feats, and his great failings. The result is hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous.

On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree.
After a couple of minutes my father took off his shoes and his socks and placed his feet in the clear-running water, and he looked at them there. The he closed his eyes and smiled.
I hadn't seen him smile like that in a while. Suddenly he took a deep breath and said, "This reminds me."

#newbook

>12 mahsdad: Well its the 31st and I'm not going to finish anymore books today, so I updated my charts and posted them here. Enjoy my weird tracking obsessions.

Also, I went back thru my tracking log (back to 2007) and updated everything with the author's birthplace. So here's the map of everything I've read since then. Looks like the the UK is the winner for most of the authors I've read.

Let's resolve to do this more.

Abso-freakin-lutely

Happy New Thread, Jeff. Happy New Year. Looking forward to sharing another book-filled year with you. We should read Rabbit at Rest or The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love at some point next year. I have read every Pulitzer winner back to '92. I have also read '88 and '88. Would you ever consider rereading Beloved. I think it is one of the Great American novels.

Happy 2025, Jeff.

Happy New Year Jeff!

>26 mahsdad: Narcopolis got my attention in the local library when I discovered it shelved on a Young Adult display. I'm not one for controlling what children read, but I was very surprised to see it there (I'd read it a few months earlier) given its subject matter. I did mention to one of the librarians that I wasn't QUITE sure that it was suitable for YA. The librarian said it was because YA was 18-24 age group. I said that generally people thought it was 12-18ish and he said I was wrong, so I left it at that. So, there may have been some local parents that were very surprised to discover what their beloved 12 years were reading if they selected things from that display!

Happy New Year. Looking forward to the new photos.

Happy New Year, Jeff!

>34 msf59: Hey Mark, Rabbit or Mambo Kings would be a fine idea. I'd also be interested in revisiting Beloved. I DNF'd it several years ago, but it just might have been the wrong time for me personally. Might be time to try again.

>35 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul!

>36 SandDune: Hi Rhian. That's very interesting about the age segment for YA, I too thought it was a little younger. I would think 18 (maybe 20) would be the top-end. However, I've read a bunch of YA over the years that certainly weren't aimed at me. :)

>37 Oberon: Hi Erik, Hopefully I can provide some good ones.

>38 quondame: Hi Susan, thanks!

Happy new year and happy new thread, Jeff!

Hope your new year is off to a good start! Happy reading!

>40 jessibud2: Hi Shelley, thanks!

>41 thornton37814: Hi Lori, thanks!

New Book - audio

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams (read by too many to name)



Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon — these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

The End of the Whole Mess - Stephen King : I want to tell you about the end of war, the degeneration of mankind, and the death of the Messiah - an epic story, deserving thousands of pages and a whole shelf of volumes, but you (if there are any "you" later on to read this) will have to settle for the freeze-dried version. The direct injection works very fast. I figure I've got somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours, depending on my blood-type.

#newbook

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread, Jeff, I look forward to many good books with you.

>44 SirThomas: Thank you kind sir...Thomas. :)

Fantastic Foto Friday
First one of a new year. Hope everyone has survived the holidays. We are headed out to Palm Springs later this morning to go celebrate the MIL's 91st birthday

Today's image is just a part of a whole wall of paint brushes that is an art installation. I don't know if these were all collected from local artists, or if they were purpose created, I just find it fascinating. Enjoy.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Big Fish by Daniel Wallace : 71%
Listening - Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams : 7%
Graphic Novel - The Eternaut by Hector Oesterheld : 86%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 6%

1. Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera 🎧 : Listened to this on audio. This was a really good little story about future Mexican President Benito Juarez during his brief exile to New Orleans in 1853. Herrera imagines what Juarez and his friend's life would be in the big city. They experience crime, disease and the slave trade. Herrera posits how Juarez's experiences will shape his future political career once he goes back to Mexico. Recommend

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>46 mahsdad: Visually interesting and though provoking. I hope lots of careless crafters got a few cents each for their mistreated tools.

>1 mahsdad: Happy New Year, and happy reading in 2025!

Happy New Year, Jeff!

>47 quondame: Ha! Who knows? 🤷‍♂️

>48 ocgreg34: Thanks Greg, glad you're here

>49 jnwelch: You too Joe. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Starred again!! Happy reading, Jeff!

>51 Berly: Hi Kim, thanks for joining in for the fun!

New Book

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis



Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

“A tour de force.”—The New York Times Book Review

For Kivrin, preparing to travel back in time to study one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.

Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up. "Am I too late?" he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary. "Shut the door," she said. "I can't hear you over the sound of those ghastly carols."

#newbook

>53 mahsdad: Ooh, I read that last month. I liked it much.

Just think, Jeff. Tomorrow will be the last day of the first week of the new year.

And just in a nick of this time, I've shown up on your doorstep. Those lists. Seductive. But I didn't get sucked in and read every line. I did, however, read too many of them. And you, you devil, have added a few lists that weren't in your collection last year.

I'm scurrying from thread to thread just now. But I shall return. Have a good week.

I swear I posted this at least an hour ago. Ah the fleeting nature of an internet post

>54 swynn: Good to hear. I read To Say Nothing of the Dog many years ago, even tho that's technically a sequel to Doomsday. I've been wanting to read Doomsday ever since.

>55 weird_O: Watch out for my black hole of book lists. Don't get too near the event horizon. :) I think the Esquire list is the only recent one. It probably wasn't listed with the others until I reorganized. And I actually got rid of one. I moved the Chunkster list over to the BFB Challenge Group. In case you missed it, my thread is here : https://www.librarything.com/topic/367222#n8721264

>53 mahsdad: Doomsday Book was my introduction to Connie Willis. Bowled me over. I love her lighter works but she can sure do the heavy lifting.

New Book - audio

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kang (read by Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown)



raduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton's narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive.
The air was rank, the floors slippery. A jug of water sat full, untouched by the bed. At fist the boy had been too scared of retching to drink; now he was too weak to lift the jug.
He was still conscious...

Added by me, I'm putting Wastelands on pause. Its a collection of short stories and there's no wait list, to start this very popular book, that I've only had to put back on hold a couple times. its time to read it, sometimes the hold lists don't align all the way. :)

#newbook

As you posted yesterday, I'm assuming you are not running for your life away from all the wildfires in the news in your area. Hope you and yours are safe.

>59 ffortsa: Hi Judy, thanks for thinking of me. We are fine. I live in San Pedro which is at the LA Harbor, near Long Beach. No issues for us. it did smell a little bit like smoke this morning when I went outside.

Now that you mention it Susan(@quondame) is one that might be affected. Going to check on her.

>60 mahsdad: I'm fine. Some people I know have had to flee from the eastern fires, and I suspect that a few of my daughter's K-12 classmates' families who live in the western hills (Santa Monica Mountains) and adjacent coastal areas will suffer losses. But it's unlikely I'll find out.

Just checking in, Jeff. I thought I saw something on FB about you being "safe". Whew! Another devastating event. WTH? Glad to hear you and the family are fine. 🙏

>61 quondame: Ugh, too close. I'm every one in Southern California will know someone who's lost everything.

>62 msf59: Hi Mark, thanks for checking in. Yeah, I figured since a lot of my friends would be asking, I'd use FB's "check in" page for the fires. It doesn't really give you the option of giving degrees of safety. Luckily I'm the I'm no where near the devastation type of safe. Rather than, I've just lost my house and I'm in a church parking lot hunkering down kind of safe. I can't imagine.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Boy what a week this has been. I'm amazed we made it. First off, if you haven't read my previous posts, I do live in Los Angeles, but many miles away from the Palisades and Altadena, so apart from some unhealthy air quality we're all good. Such a tragedy. If you're of a mind and want to donate, pick your favorite disaster relief charities. The Palisades Public Library was destroyed, along with pretty much the entire town. I saw a Instagram/TikTok about ALA's disaster relief fund. I'm thinking about donating there, plus a few others.

On a completely different and lighter note, I came to a weird realization that my two current books are both Chunksters (Doomsday Book, and Babel) and are both set around Oxford University. Totally not planned. I never plan my reading. I only started Babel because it came off my Libby hold list.

Today's image is some kind of berry that I saw on this grate. I just liked the red-on-red



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis : 19%
Listening - Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams : 63% On hold until I finish Babel
Listening - Babel by RF Kuang : 18%
Graphic Novel - Mort Cinder by Hector Germain Oesterheld : 7% After finishing The Eternaut, I stumbled across a video biography of Oesterheld ( https://youtu.be/gidIRzuOjDc?si=ioeTn7KjoznfuhYE ), it was a fascinating watch. It lead me to look for his other well known work, this one.
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 11%

3. Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace : This was a really fun little read. Edward Bloom was a bigger than life man and this book is the story of his life told by his son has he sits with his aged dying father listening to his tall tales all over again. Tim Burton made a movie of this in 2003 with Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney. Saw this many years ago, have to go try to find it again.

At home, the magic of his absence yielded to the ordinariness of his presence.

I went to my father's room and sat in the chair beside his bed. I sat there and waited - for what I don't know - and stared at those marvelous machines. This wasn't life, of course. This was life support. This was waht the medical world had fashioned to take the place of Purgatory.

2. The Eternaut by Hector Oesterheld (GN) : I forget how I stumbled on this one. It was a trippy story of a post-apocalyptic world dealing with an overwhelming alien invasion. It was published in an Argentinian pulp magazine in the 50's. I'm sure that the underpinnings of the story is the political climate in Argentina at the time, but I'm not well versed enough to pick up on it. Its a pretty good story on its own.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>64 mahsdad: What a wonderful play of tones and textures! Favorite color!

Dropping in to say hi. Glad you are safe from the fires. Looking like some good new reading.

Hi Jeff. I checked you out on Google Maps and surmised you and yours weren't in any immediate danger from the fires. Oh but Lordy. Stay safe.

I read that Connie Willis multi-volume yarn about time travel during the Battle of Britain. I'm remembering the individual volumes as being chunksters. The last volume (All Clear) was the only one that achieved true chunksterdom at 691 pages. And Willis did go on and on; the last two books would have benefited from cutting (editing). What astonished me was learning that Willis did no on-site research. (So unlike her time-traveling characters, she didn't do dry runs on-site.)

How did I forget to respond to everyone. Bad Jeff

>65 quondame: Thanks Susan

>66 elorin: >67 weird_O: Thanks Robyn, Bill for your thoughts about the fires. Nice that you all are thinking of me. We are indeed far away from them. Tho depending on the way the wind is blowing we can smell them.

>67 weird_O: TBH, I didn't know about Blackout and All Clear, I read To Say Nothing of the Dog many years ago, before I started tracking. I think I might have to reread it when I'm done with Doomsday Book and find the last 2 as well.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Yippee, we made it to the end of another week. Not much to add other than to share a quote I heard from Tig Notaro, the comedian. She was sharing something her step-father said to her, at her mother's funeral. He was apologizing to her for not accepting and understanding her (she's LGBT+) for years.

Its not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who their child is

Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis : 52%
Listening - Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams : 63% On hold until I finish Babel
Listening - Babel by RF Kuang : 71%
Graphic Novel - Mort Cinder by Hector Germain Oesterheld : 31%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 15%

No books finished this week

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>69 mahsdad: Great comment by Notaro's stepfather. More parents should feel this way.

>69 mahsdad: - Gorgeous photo and powerful quote, there. Thanks, Jeff.

>69 mahsdad: What a beautiful blossom! I'm interested in your Oesterheld discovery...I hope they stay as good as they start.

>64 mahsdad: That's a madroño/madrone...a native Arbutus fruit.

Dropping in for the Friday photos and book talk. Cozy lil bee!

>70 ffortsa: Absolutely, it certainly put things into better perspective for me.

>71 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley

>72 richardderus: They are very good. A little dated in tone and a very interesting drawing style. His story is very interesting. You should check out the video from two Friday's ago about his story (I just edit the post to make the link active. The HTML gremlins didn't like the extra parenthesis, it wouldn't convert until I put in spaces).

And as always you're spot on about the fruit pick.

>73 elorin: Hi Robyn, thanks for stopping by.

>69 mahsdad: It's one of the real difficulties of being a parent and of being a child - parents don't all get or absorb the important parts of "the manual" - cause there isn't one, they are infinite and wrong - and so many children think they are the center and cause of problems when they are at most bystanders.

The image is involving - I was trying to figure out why there was a needle in the flower (embroidery? no!) before I saw the bee.

>75 quondame: Oh you're preaching to the choir, we only had the one, which probably means we F'd 'em up, no do overs. But I love her. ;)

You know what's really funny about that image. Probably a testament to my old man eyes, I didn't notice that needle at all until just today when I was posting it. If I had any skills, I'd photoshop it out. I wish I'd noticed it, I would have moved it There's a bunch of pine trees right around where the flower bed is. LOL

Book Haul

Went out to lunch and then took a little walk in downtown SP. Of course that meant we ended up at Sunken City Books, my favorite local bookshop. I always feel that I got to do my part every so often, even if I don't need anymore books, so that they won't go out of business. Just got a couple.

11. Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
12. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
13. Animal Dreams by Barabara Kingsolver (this was Laura's)

#bh

Nice! I really enjoyed Piranesi.

>77 mahsdad: Excellent book haul! Read the first two but have not read the one by Kingsolver.

Happy weekend!

So in case you didn't know (and I only knew cause I saw it on some Booktok posts on the TT), Onyx Storm came out yesterday. Its seems to be pretty anticipated. Its the 2nd sequel to Fourth Wing. Which I have on the shelf and I'll get to eventually, but I suspect I'm not really the target audience, so I'm not in a great hurry.

Anyway, on this TT post, this woman was talking about the Libby waiting list for the book at her library and was wondering what others were seeing. I was curious.

For Audio, the LAPL, has 503 copies in use with 2,113 people waiting
eBook is 653 copies out with 5,181 people waiting.

Wow.

Oh, wow. Here are the stats at my local PL (Tulsa City-County):

Physical book: 56 copies on order, 323 holds
eBook (Libby): 1 copy (!), 213 holds
Audio (Libby): 1 copy, 293 holds

I bounced off the first, so won't wait in line for the third. But I'm delighted there are people excited about this.

I was curious, so I looked up Onyx Storm borrowing stats for my local suburban Roseville MN library, and the nearby Hennepin County (Mpls) libraries.

Roseville (Ramsey County) Public: physical book (170 holds on 14 copies), Libby ebook (302 on 282), audio book (there’s no wait? Libby let me borrow it immediately, but I sent it right back…hmm…)

Big city Hennepin Public: physical book (835 holds on 32 copies), ebook (4321 on 282), audiobook (available immediately).

I didn’t get away untouched: I’ve got a hold on the ebook copy of the first book in the series, Fourth Wing.

Karen O

SAPL has 53 holds on 1 copy of the large print edition and 281 holds on 1 copy regular print.

>81 swynn: >82 klobrien2: >83 elorin: Interesting. Until this book, I never really thought about the local demand and sourcing of various "popular" books. I guess that's because I don't generally read "popular" books. At least not when they are popular.

A little YT doom-scrolling had me stumble upon an interview with Percival Everett from last year on CBS Sunday Morning. Its pretty good.

https://youtu.be/q0s4FRf1QSI?si=_JmsQ0IgUCK7TmNR

>84 mahsdad: Ah, me too. I let the 'popular' books age a bit, to see what the opinions here are. Even then, I tend to avoid those books, and best sellers in general.

Absolutely.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. Seems like this has been a whole year in a week. Nothing to see here, just most of Southern California still on fire. Fingers crossed we'll be getting some rain soon.

Here's Calfire's website ( https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents ) of the current incidents. 3 days ago we were down to 2 (Palisades and Eaton which have been burning for 3 weeks). Now we're up to 9. Santa Anas don't mess around. It was so dry at my house (and I'm on the coast) that my outdoor weather module gave up the ghost and said the humidity was 1%, which can't possibly be true, can it? It was 22% in the house. Forecast is saying we'll get some rain soon. I hope so.

At any rate, here's a building taken from my always skewed angle



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis : 86%
Listening - Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams : 93
Graphic Novel - Mort Cinder by Hector Germain Oesterheld : 52%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 17%

4. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang 🎧 : Listened on Audio. In the mid-1800's a Chinese orphan is brought to England to attend Oxford at a mysterious college of language translations. There we find that the world is run on silver and the magical quality that it and certain words have. As he is training to "work silver", he uncovers a plot that drives him and some of his friends to what is given away by the overly long (in my opinion) subtitle of the book, a revolt. I'm not sure what the hype is all about. As is usually the case, when I don't get a book, I'm not the target audience. If I believe the bookish social media posts about it, its the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was a a decent read and an interesting take on a kinda steam-punky/magical realism story, but it just didn't knock my socks off.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

ETA - fixed Calfire link

>88 mahsdad: I love your Fantastic Friday Foto! Lovely shapes, and the beautiful blue above and echoed below.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Karen O

>89 klobrien2: Thank Karen!

>88 mahsdad: Why I really appreciate you FFF images, and this one more than most: Architecture/the built environment is designed, created for a purpose and with a need that it needs to fulfill. I don't always see what the problem it's solving is, unless you show me the funny angle or random broken bit. Those angled windows wou;don't even register on me if you hadn't showed them to me framed that way.

Thank you.

>88 mahsdad: I love the study in blues!

>91 richardderus: Hi RD, thank you very much. I love architecture, especially when the designer takes a step away from general purpose. Whether its Gehry @ the Disney Hall, or all the Art Deco stuff we have in downtown LA, or just generally any interesting twist.

With this one, I have no clue what purpose the angled windows hold, but when I looked up, I was just struck and had to stop to take a picture.

>92 quondame: Thanks Susan!

New Book - audio

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (read by Marin Ireland, Michael Urie)



For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible

Darkness suits me. Each evening, I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank. Not perfect, but close enough.

#newbook

New Book

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers



In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future.

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you'll get seven different answers.

#newbook

Just wanted to share. If finally rained in Southern California (in opposition to what Albert Hammond always says 😎)

>96 mahsdad: Beautiful rainbow! I hope the rain helps with the fires.

>97 elorin: Thanks! The catch-22 of the rain is that it might put out the fires, but then they have to deal with mudslides. Can't win for trying.

I am not a writer, nor do I have any ambition whatsoever to become one, but this scifi writing class that Brandon Sanderson is doing, is fascinating.

Here's episode one

https://youtu.be/MEUh_y1IFZY?si=clsPj-BC4b0lVmzP

Here's another bookish video for you today.

The Booksellers - the story of rare book sellers in NY. Its on YT for free

https://youtu.be/oM17mX_C0Cw?si=ACXn6xpGbXewpNDZ

Quote from a bookseller... "I don't regret anything I've owned and sold. My only regret are the books I never bought"

Seems like this group's motto. ;)

>100 mahsdad: - The link for The Booksellers isn't available for me but I saw it a couple of years ago and it was a delight.

>102 jessibud2: That's too bad, but glad you were able to see it. I had seen it advertised somewhere, probably Amazon Prime, but it was a pay or rent and I never pulled the trigger. Glad I was able to watch it. It was, as you say, a delight.

>101 mahsdad: Awomen!

>104 richardderus: Noice. I think I'm going to start using that.

New Book

A Model World and Other Stories by Michael Chabon



Few literary debuts have been as auspicious as Michael Chabon's. He won the Mademoiselle fiction award. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was widely praised and spent seven weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Here is his first collection of stories, remarkable for their diversity, yet sharing a depth of intellect and sparkle of language that has become Chabon's hallmark.

(from S Angel) On the morning of his cousin's wedding Ira performed his toilet, as he always did, with patience, hope and a ruthless punctilio.
He put on his Italian wool trousers, his silk shirt, his pink socks, to which he imputed a certain sexual felicity and a slight worn but still servicable Willi Smith sport jacket.

#newbook

Have you ever had selection paralysis? I am really a vibe reader, I rarely make plans/schedules of what I'm going to read and when I finish a book I just grab whatever strikes my fancy off the piles. Its usually easy. For some reason last night, after I finished A Psalm for the Wild Built, I must have picked up a half dozen books, each one I said, yep this is the one. Half second later, nope, its this one, etc.

I finally decided on the Chabon. A book I didn't know existed until I saw it on the shelf at the Last Bookstore a couple weeks ago. I'm gathering that this is his second work, a collection of short stories.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. I'm not the first to say this, but its finally the end of what seems to be the longest January in the history of humankind. LOL.

Did anyone watch the Fireaid concert last night? We only got thru about half of it. It was 6 hours long. Looks like you can still rewatch it on YT or Prime. What we saw was pretty good. Speaking of fires, it looks like Palisades and Eaton are still on Calfire's active list, but they are 98 and 99% contained respectively. And there's no other active fires, so that's a good thing

Not much else to report, here's a flower...



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - A Model World by Michael Chabon : 19%
Listening - Remarkably Bright Creature by Shelby Van Pelt : 86%
Graphic Novel - Mort Cinder by Hector Germain Oesterheld : 94%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 20%

7. A Psalm for the wild Built by Becky Chambers : Oh my goodness what a delightful little book. In a future world, robots have been created, they've become sentient and decided that they don’t want to be subservient anymore and go off to find their own life. The people had to find their own way and over the centuries, the memory of the robots became myth. A tea monk goes out into the wilderness and is met by a robot who is coming back to the people to find out what people need. The monk Dex and the robot Mosscap, then journey together to find what it means to be human. It’s a short read but a most excellent one.

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between not the other way round.

6. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis : Two in a row of most excellent reads. This one is one that I’ve been wanting to read for years, and I’m glad I finally got to it. In the future, time travel is possible, but only to the past. So at Oxford, a young historian is getting read to be sent back to 14th century England for a short time right before the outbreak of the Plague, but then a virus breaks out in modern day England and the team there loses track of their historian. It’s a thriller, and a historical “what if” with a modern woman going back to the early 1300’s. An excellent read.

Sir Bloet didn't have any children. Which of course was why he as marrying one, with, apparently, everyone's approval. The carrying on of the line was the all-important concern in 1320. The younger the woman, the better her chance of producing enough heirs that one at least would survive to adulthood, even if its mother didn't.

5. Wastelands edit by John Joseph Adams 🎧 : Listened to this on audio with too many narrators to name. It’s a collection of stories about the apocalypse. Many different apocalypses. Many well known authors contribute. Steven King, Jonathan Lethem, Elisabeth Bear, Octavia Butler, to name a few. As with most collections, I didn’t connect with every story, but it was a worthy listen. My favorite was Cory Doctorow’s When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, about what it takes to keep the internet going after a virus wipes out most of the population.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>108 mahsdad: Beautiful color, Jeff. Calendula gold.

Happy unburnt weekend!

Had to edit my post to add a couple quotes that I liked. Especially the Psalm one.

New Book - audio

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black



In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor.

In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.

It is not only in our brains that the memories of our lives are laid down. The adult human skeleton is made up of over two hundred bones and each has its own story to share. Some will tell it willingly to anyone who cares to ask; other guard it jealously until a deft, persistent scientific investigator cajoles them into revealing their truths

#newbook

Happy Saturday, Jeff. I like the rainbow pic. I did not know Chabon had a story collection out. Keep me posted. Speaking of story collections- keep your eye out for The History of Sound. An absolute fantastic collection.

>112 msf59: Hi Mark, Neither did I (Chabon), its early stuff, so they're pretty good, but you can tell he was just "finding himself" a bit. But so far so good. I will definitely look out for History of Sound. Always like me some new collections.

January Recap

Books Read - 9

First Book: Season of the Swamp
Last Book: Remarkably Bright Creatures

Overall sources
DTE - 33%
Audio - 44%
Digital - 22%

Unique Authors - 8
Lady Authors - 4
Authors of Color - 0

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 2

Pages Read for 2025 - 1,605
Hours Listened for 2025 - 2 days, 5 hrs and 56 min

Not much statistical graph data yet, but my Day I finished a book graph is somewhat interesting so I'll share it here

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February :
March :

April :
May :
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :



#botm

BOTM was a close call, Doomsday Book was really good too, but I think the feel-good aspect of Psalm put it on top. To say nothing of Remarkably Bright Creatures, that was a close third. Really good book, too.

>111 mahsdad: I hadn't been aware of Sue Black, but Richard (rderus) recently mentioned both books on his thread, and I think I want to check them out. Good to see you liked it too.

>115 mahsdad: Yay for A Psalm for the Wild-Built! I've bounced off Chambers's stuff more than once so I don't know what it is about Monk and Robot, but they really hit a sweet spot for me.

>96 mahsdad: It's always nice to see a rainbow!

>101 mahsdad: A wise man!

>99 mahsdad: Great link. thanks for sharing

>114 mahsdad: Lovely stats. Nice and colourful

Happy week ahead

Seen on the Net...

Musk's minions should be called The Incelegencia

My current state in the world...

I said to Laura, as white, somewhat affluent middle aged people, we will probably survive the next 4 years. But as liberally-minded white, somewhat affluent middle aged people, our livers AREN'T. (We're probably drinking too much.... #firstworldcopingmechanisms) ;)

... and to alleviate any fears, we are NOT drinking to excess on a regular basis, or an irregular basis, we're too old for that nonsense, just that we're drinking more than we should... too many empty calories. LOL

>120 mahsdad: We're all coping as best we can. The National Archives is the latest target of the Vandals. I'm not sure how anyone's sanity will survive these Aynholes in their determined assault on facts, decency, and science.

>120 mahsdad: Yeah, that's us too...

>121 richardderus: 😩

>122 drneutron: Glad to know we're not alone. LOL.

>96 mahsdad: Beautyful - like all your pictures.
Have a wonderful weekend, Jeff!

>120 mahsdad: Ditto.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. I'm happy to report that winter finally arrived. At least for a little bit. Its been delightfully chilly (currently 59, yeah, I know, but that's cold for me) and its been raining some. Unfortunately that means mudslides for the burn areas, but we need it.

Not much else to report, so here's another flower. Took this the other night, lit by a flashlight.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Broken by Jenny Lawson : 72%. I had put this down quite a while ago. Started reading it in 2023, finally said, Okay, I'll finish it. Not that it was bad, just got sidetracked.
Listening - Written in Bone: Hidden Stories of What We Leave Behind : 65%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 24%

10. A Model World by Michael Chabon : An early collection of Chabon's stories. As usual, some better than others. The second half are all stories around a young boy Nathan Shapiro and his life with his broken family. I am by no means a writing expert or anything but an average reviewer, but in my mind, I think some of this is a little overwritten. I can see him stretching and trying for metaphors and similes that might be a little bit too much. Definite hints of things to come. Worthwhile read.

"Drink this," said Donna, handing Ira a shot glass filled to the brim with liquid the very hue of hangover and remorse.

"See you, honey," she sang. "Mom!" said Nathan. He stood up - afraid, absurdly, that she might be leaving for good, because she seemed so happy. After a few seconds he heard her whistling, and he went to the door and pressed his face against the wire screen. His mother had a Disney whistle, melodious and full, like a Scotsman's as he walks across a meadow in a brilliant kilt.

9. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 🎧 : Listened on audio. On the service, this is just a simple story about the life of an elderly woman working at a small Pacific Northwest Aquirium and a troubled young man that she meets on his quest to find the father he never met. What elevates this to a really excellent read that I highly recommend, is her relationship with an elderly Pacific Octopus at the aquarium. They seem like best friends and in some of the chapters we get to hear his inner monolog has he tries to help her with her troubles and with his realization that he is at the end of his life. In my mind, it goes to prove that octopuses are an alien intelligence. Not sure what I was expecting, but this existed that.

8. Mort Cinder by Hector German Oesterheld (GN) : This is an Argentine comic book series from the 1960s. Written by Oesterheld and drawn by Alberto Breccia. Its the story of Mort Cinder, an erstwhile Walter Mitty type who seems to be immortal. He keeps coming back after he is killed. Walter, a proprietor of an antiques shop becomes his friend and has to help him avoid an evil doctor who wants to study his brain. Cinder takes/or seemly takes Walter thru or to his past lives, during WWI, the building of the Tower of Babel and Thermopylae. Its a horror comic and Breccia has a very stark drawing style. I think I liked it more than Oesterheld's first book I read; Eternaut

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>126 mahsdad: It took me a minute to figure out whether this was an iris or not, but the framing was really thought-provoking no matter the species.

I'm not sure how I became aware of Chabon, or exactly when, but that collection rings not bell one. I'd swear I'd at least seen all his books before but clearly not. These Argentine comics are (no surprise) also not in the slightest familiar but a lot more interesting fo rit.

Happy weekend, horizon-widener!

>127 richardderus: Its a Bird of Paradise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strelitzia. This one in particular was one that was in our yard 30 years ago when we moved in. We thought we killed it, didn't see it for 20+ then couple years ago, it resurrected itself. LOL

Chabon - Same with me, I could have sworn I read everything until I saw this one.

I forget how the Oesterheld stuff came across my vision, but they are very interesting reads.

Happy weekend to you too!

Finished up a couple books today

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
Broken (In the Best Possible Way)

So here's some new ones.

New Book - audio

Death Du Jour by Kath Reichs (read by Bonnie Hurren)



When a recent skeleton among ancient bones raises questions—and danger—forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is the only one who can solve the case in this “triumphant second appearance” (Publishers Weekly) from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs.

Tempe Brennan is stuck teaching an archaeology field school for students at UNCC in Charleston, South Carolina.

When she stumbles upon a recent skeleton among the ancient bones, she starts asking questions. She’s the expert they might have called in, but lucky for the police she’s already there. The skeleton leads her to a free street clinic where patients have begun to go missing, and some have wound up dead. What is going on and who is to blame? The charismatic televangelist who oversees the clinic? The shady doctor who practices there? Or is it the clinic staff?

Ryan is in Montreal, though he may come down for a visit. If he does, Tempe will have to juggle him and Detective Galiano, an old flame, who is in town investigating the disappearance of a wealthy young woman. This is a phenomenally high stakes business where one dead body can save a couple of lives, maybe more. Along with the corpses, Tempe investigates the sick moral logic of the mastermind behind the operation.

Kathy Reichs has returned Tempe to America and put her in the middle of a sinister trafficking ring that’s local and global. The suspense is intense, and the world is riveting. Kathy Reichs’s books are expert and smart with a taut energy, and this is her best plot and writing yet.

If the bodies were there, I couldn't find them. Outside, the wind howled. Inside the old church, just the scrape of my trowel and the hum of a portable generator and heater echoed eerily in the huge space. High above, branches scratched against boarded windows, gnarled fingers on plywood blackboards.

From me... In reading Written in Bones, I was immediately visualizing Bones and Temperance Brennen. So I had to read another Bones book. This is book 2 in Reichs' series.

#newbook

New Book

Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery



From the author of the critically acclaimed literary SF novels Spaceman Blues and Liberation comes an incandescent and thrilling post-apocalyptic tale in the vein of 1984 or The Road.

In the not-distant-enough future, a man takes a boat trip up the Susquehanna River with his most trusted friend, intent on reuniting with his son. But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.

Lost Everything is a stunning novel about family and faith, what we are afraid may come to be, and how to wring hope from hopelessness.

Lost Everything is the winner of the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award.

He was on the river with Reverend Bauxite when the dream descended upon him, of the mountains and hills melting into the sky. The wrinkles of the land smoothed and rose, the air thickened and fell to meet it, until everything was gray, dull yet luminous, as if there was a sun behind it, though he knew there was no sun there.

#newbook

Paraphrasing Jimmy Carr, from a video I saw of him on TikTok talking about "The Greatest Time Ever". Very profound, to me...

You get used to how great your life is. No one had a hot shower until 50 years ago...when I stand in a hot shower, I just try to reflect on the fact that no one that you admire from a hundred years ago had this simple pleasure...there's been 100 billion people who have ever lived and we live in the top top percentage in terms of our lives. The amount of food we have that we don't have to think about, the fact that our kids don't die in their first year. And yet life has never been objectively better and subjectively worse...because the nature of humanity is that our desires are memetic...

so how happy are you...well...its your quality of life, minus envy.

I'm not sure I completely understand this, but it just struck me, especially that last bit...

So apparently, Google has already changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. SMH....Why when there's so much going on in the world, was this shit necessary.

Anyway, I know preachin' to the choir.

Did you know that you can rate places on google maps, I saw somewhere that said that it wouldn't be a "bad" thing if you want and rated the Gulf of America 1-star. I went and looked and there are a bunch of reviews and this one from about 6 years ago is hilarious. I guess just changing the name of a place isn't going to change opinions... ROTFL

Nasty. If you want to go somewhere to get a skin infection, see medical waste, not feel comfortable peeing in a warm body of water, and wade through water that constantly looks like poop water, then this place is for you. It is a constant disappointment, like a 30 year old son who won't leave home.

Note

>133 mahsdad: 😂
If you call it up from Germany, it says Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)...
it's a strange world.

>134 SirThomas: I heard that was the case. SMH

>126 mahsdad: Nice! Book #9 Was my favourite read from last month as well.

>130 mahsdad: I have not started this series yet but sometime this year I will pick up the first book. Reichs seems to be a hit for most readers.

Happy rest of the week!

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. And Happy Valentine's Day for those who celebrate. ;) Laura and I, being married just shy of 30 years, are above all that nonsense. Why only say you love someone on a proscribed day? Say it every day. That being said, I think a very nice bottle of gin is in our future tonight. LOL.

Today, I give you a nice little picture (IMO) of one of my children.



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery : 34%
Listening - Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs : 53%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 27%

12. Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black : Listed to this on audio, read by Black. This is a memoir of sorts where Black, a forensics anthropologist, tells the story of the human skeleton and what it can tell us about crime and identifying victims and criminals. It is not for the faint of heart at times. There are evil people in the world and they do horrific things to people and even more horrifically children. However, beyond that, from a historical and scientific curiosity perspective, this book hits on all cylinders. She immediately brought the TV show Bones to my mind and I could definitely see the contrast of what actual forensic anthropology is versus the science fiction show that Bones was. That being said, however, I immediately went back in started reading one of Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan books for my next audio.

11. Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson : I started reading this memoir/series of essays from Lawson over a year ago, but I put it down for a while and its just been sitting on my nightstand. Decided that it was time to finish it. Not to say it isn't a good read. This collection of her trials and tribulations of her struggles with mental illness and the quirkyness of her life is hilarious. I definitely recommend this book, but as a series of distinct essays, it was very easy to put aside. So if you want something funny that you can dip into every so often, as a palette cleanser, or read right thru, its worth the time.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>137 mahsdad: What a cutie that kitty is! Great picture. And some great reads there. Ouch! You hit me with at least one book bullet (I’ve read Jenny Lawson and really like her stuff).

Happy weekend!

Karen O

>137 mahsdad: A well lit feline!

>137 mahsdad: - So sweet!

For all you Kindle users. Ammy is making changes at the end of the month that will limit what you can do with the books you've "purchased".

They are going to be taking away the ability to Download/Transfer via USB. That means you'll lose the ability to physically keep your books outside of the Kindle or Ammy itself. Then if they decide that they need to take the book away, they can just grab it and its gone.

If you have a Kindle eInk reader from before 2024 you can still do this.

Basically, you have to go to your Content listing on Ammy, and go to each individual book and do Download/Transfer via USB. That will get you the AZW file that still has DRM.

Now if you want to go one step further, you need Calibre and a deDRM plug in, to be able to convert your books from their format to something else, like EPUB, so you can put it on other devices like Kobo.

Here's a Reddit post about how to do this

https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1ck4w8e/2024_guide_on_removing_drm_fro...

In this post there is also a video explaining the steps. It was pretty straight forward, and I was able to get it working. I only have 50 ebooks that I've purchased over the years so it won't be too bad. But I think its worth the effort. For me, its something I want to do, to get out of the Ammy infrastructure as much as I can.

https://youtu.be/31M9WcO2INs?si=CB3eYeG5NpgZz2t6

See, under the cover of taking over the world, the techies are picking the pockets of its best customers. I'm glad I've avoided Kindle.

>141 mahsdad: Good for you, Jeff. I don't read e-books, as a general thing, so this is not an issue for me. But I'm trying very hard not to buy from Amazon--not just books--nearly as often as I once did.

>140 jessibud2: Thank you very much for that, Jeff.
This behavior makes me even happier that I didn't choose the kindle back then.

>111 mahsdad: These two books sound really interesting. Thanks for the review.

>141 mahsdad: Oh lord. I have hundreds of Kindle books. i didn't even know you could download them to another format. Somehow, i don't think I'm going to be able to capture all of them before the end of the month. But thanks for the heads-up. I'm wondering if I download all my texts to my desktop computer, without using the USB option, if they are safe from Amazon predation. I have an automated data backup that I can unplug if needed. Anyone have any ideas?

>138 klobrien2: >139 quondame: >140 jessibud2: Thanks!

>142 weird_O: >143 laytonwoman3rd: >144 SirThomas: Yeah, hindsight is 20-20. I delayed for years actually getting a Kindle. Sometimes the convience outweighs the evil empire. :)

>145 ffortsa: Judy, couple things. This only affects any books you've actually purchased from Amazon itself. If you've done the email option to get your own books onto your kindle, that's not what I'm talking about. Those are still yours, and I imagine you still have a physical copy of them.

For the Amazon books you bought, I guess I was a little confusing. You don't need to do any USB stuff to get copies of the books you've purchased. The USB feature was something they were doing for older Kindles. Ones without wifi, or if you just wanted to keep your kindle on Airplane mode. It gave you the ability to download the books to your PC from the Amazon website, so you could later load them on the Kindle via USB. The ability to download FROM the website is what is going away soon.

Unfortunately, there is no way to download all the books you have in bulk. You have to go to your Content library and on each book, choose to download and transfer via USB



When you select this option, you'll be asked to select a Kindle you have registered with them. Then it will download the file to your PC. Once you have the file. What you do with it is entirely up to you.

Like I say, to do this, you have to go to each book individually.

The only issue/fear if you don't do any of this is that if Amazon ever decides to revoke the license for the book (cause you didn't really by the book, just a license), they can take it away from your account.

>146 mahsdad: Thanks for the clarification. I think I may start downloading the Amazon books to my PC just for comfort. No books I've 'acquired' through Amazon have ever disappeared (oh, maybe one, long ago), but I don't like that I can't share a book with someone who doesn't have a Kindle. So this is one answer to that. Yay!

Thanks for all the kindle info. I also had no idea, that you could add books to your Kindle, via USB. As long as most of my unread books are safe on my kindle, I don't think I will have much problem. I only have a couple of dozen at most.

Glad to hear you grabbed a copy of Uncertain Walls and are thinking of joining us on the shared read.

Oh yeah- I am starting Father & Son tomorrow.

>141 mahsdad: How many thousands of ebooks I have in Kindle makes this simply undoable for me, which is what they count on, of course. Further ENSHITTIFICATION of the world to make the tech scum richer. At least I won't be blindsided when the day comes and that is worth a lot to me. Thank you for this.

>148 msf59: I don't think a lot of people realized that you could do that. And to be honest, its not going to be a problem with 99% of things. Its very rare that Ammy pulls books, but in this current political climate, if you have controversial books, there is that possibility.

Uncertain Walls, yeah, I couldn't resist. Hope you like Father and Son.

>149 richardderus: Yeah, you're preachin' to the choir here. I'm thinking of transitioning to something more open, like Kobo or Boox (something I just heard about as I was researching this). They use the EPUB format which I gather is the "standard" for digital preservation these days.

Last year, I did a humble bundle and got the entire DiscWorld collection from Kobo. I had to learn how to use Calibre to get them converted over to MOBI so I could get them onto my Kindle, so I was kinda aware of the process already.

New Book - audio

Replay by Ken Grimwood (read by William Dufris)



Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again -- in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle -- each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?"

Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died. "We need " she'd said, and he never heard her say just what it was they needed, because something heavy seemed to slam against his chest, crushing the breath out of him

#newbook

>151 mahsdad: - I loved that book. Read it years ago but it was fun. I love good time travel stories. Have you read Time and Again. It's one of the few books I've reread more than once. And listened to on audio (but you miss the visuals in the audio version).

>152 jessibud2: Hi Shelley, its pretty good so far. I have not read Time and Again. I'll have to look for it.

>153 mahsdad: - The Finney is probably on of my all-time favourite books. It has everything: adventure, romance, mystery, humour, and just plain fun. Not to mention the visuals, in the hard copy. I am waiting for a Spielberg or Ron Howard to do a film version but at the same time, am just as happy that no one has attempted so far. I'd hate for it to be ruined.

Funny coincidence, Jeff. I happen to have The WANT™ List open in another tab when I got to your post on Replay. It's natural for me to add the book to the list. Thanks! (I guess.)

>155 weird_O: Ha, too funny. I can't remember how it got on my Want list. I just checked and its been there since 2010, which is before I joined this group.

>146 mahsdad: I've learned a little more about Kindle books since my last post. Today I reviewed Calibre - it looks like an amazing app! I also discovered that all the Kindle books I 'downloaded' to my Kindle for PC seem to be encrypted web pointers. Sigh. So at some point I might attempt to convert them through Calibre and Digital Editions (seems I need that too to strip the DRM) but I won't make that effort until after this month. I have a few fewer books on Kindle than I thought - 830 it says - and while I might download the pointers, I won't have the time, energy or concern to convert them immediately. If big companies like Amazon were less piggish, I wouldn't bother at all.

>157 ffortsa: Judy, PM me when you want to tackle the DRM side of things. As long as you have the actual files downloaded from Ammy, that's all you need to worry about for now.

That reddit link and video I shared does go thru it on dealing with the DRM, but I have it working and was able to convert all my Kindle files ito EPUBs. its not too bad.

>157 ffortsa: If you've purchased any books from Rakutan/Kobo, you do have to go thru a similar process with Adobe Digital Editions, but its too bad either. Just multiple steps, once its setup.

>159 mahsdad: Nope. I"ve been strictly an Amazon girl except for library books.

I'm hoping I have the files. It's a little weird, in that they seem to be all in one big encrypted file so far. I'll be away for the weekend but may try to finish the downloads when I get back, and then we will see what Amazon actually delivered.

Book Haul - eBook Edition

After the discussions of Kindle downloads, I was looking on Kobo and saw a couple classics really cheap (under a $1) so I grabbed them, as well as the gentle arm twisting (that wasn't really arm twisting) from Mark to get the new Murakami, from Amazon

14. 1984 by George Orwell
15. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
16. City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

#bh

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. I've been flying solo this week. Laura had to go out to Palm Springs to help her Mom. She's been having some medical issues and @ 91, she's starting to have memory issues. So we're coming to the unwelcome realization that she can't live by herself anymore and we are working on moving her closer and into a senior living facility... boy is that a sticker shock. Sucks to get old. Do not recommend. LOL.

At any rate, here's a plaque we saw on someone's driveway



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery : 75%
Listening - Replay by Ken Grimwood : 36%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 32%

13. Dead du Jour by Kathy Reichs 🎧 : Listened on audio. This is book 2, of her Temperance Brennan series, and its what you'd expect from a police procedure set with the main character being a forensics anthropologist. It opens with Brennan looking for the bones of a potential saint in Montreal and then consults on a murder investigation that turns out to be part of another murder in the states. Then its somehow tied to a "cult" that she has to deal with. She gets beat up a couple times, threatened and finds some interesting revelations about the saint. About what you'd expect. I will say that there's some forensics descriptions that aren't for the faint of heart. Buyer beware.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>162 mahsdad: It happened in 1899 instead. Time's a funny ol' fella.

>163 richardderus: That's exactly what Laura and I said. ;)

Christmas Gifts

Because I don't have enough book lists to track. I just finished up a book that I got for Christmas and I thought I should track them here as a new list. :)

2015
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories - Kevin Wilson READ
The Magician's Book: A skeptic's Adventures in Narnia - Laura Miller
Burning Paradise - Robert Charles Wilson READ
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories - Hilary Mantel READ
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides READ
St. Lucy's Home for Gilrs Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell READ

2016
The Sellout - Paul Beatty READ
The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi READ
Among Others - Jo Walton READ
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
An Abundance of Katherines - John Green READ
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri READ
Empire Falls - Richard Russo READ

2017
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds READ
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell DNF
Consider Phlebas - Ian M. Banks
Tenth of December - George Saunders READ
Some Luck - Jane Smiley
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess READ
Stone Spring - Stephen Baxter
The Path Between the Seas - David McCullough
The Hours - Michael Cunningham READ
Beloved - Toni Morrison DNF
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

2018
Adventures of Oliver Twist/A Christmas Carol/A Tale of Two Cities/Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan READ
Circe - Madeline Miller READ

2019
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood READ
Under the Black Flag - David Cordingly
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson READ
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons READ
Advise and Consent - Allen Drury

2020
Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline READ
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers READ

2021
Intercourse/Severance: Stories Rober Olen Butler READ
Salt: A Word History - Mark Kurlansky READ
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi READ
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon READ

2022
Faulkner: Novels 1942-1954 - William Faulkner
West - Carys Davies READ
Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers READ
Shlock Is My Name - Howard Jacobson
Justice - Larry Watson
Lost Everything - Brian Francis Slattery READ

2023
Growing Up Yinzer - Dick Roberts READ
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vindge
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley READ
Prophet Song - Paul Lynch
Holly - Stephen King

2024
A Psalm of the Wild Built - Becky Chambers READ
American Dirt - Jeanine Coummins
Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

New Book

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson



Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a born storyteller, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition.

When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali?

Major Pettigrew was still upset about the phone call from his brother's wife and so he answered the doorbell without thinking. On the damp bricks of the path stood Mrs. Ali from the village ship. She gave only the faintest of starts, the merest arch of an eyebrow.

#newbook

Very little ebook haul.

Was watching a tiktok clip about the best dystopian books to read, had the usual suspects, all that I had read, Handmaid's Tale, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, etc

But there was one that I had never heard of, and apparently inspired/influenced/lead to Brave New World, 1984, Player Piano and Dispossessed. It was written in 1927 and was actually available on Project Gutenberg, so I grabbed a copy

17. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

#bh

New Book - audio

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (read by Rosalyn Landor)



NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years.

#newbook

Fantastic Foto Friday
Last day of February, how did that happen already? Glad its Friday, all is relatively well, I suppose. Not much else to report

Here's a plant...



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson : 29%
Listening - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro : 37%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 35%

15. Replay by Ken Grimwood 🎧 : Listened on Audio. This was an excellent time travel/past lives story. Jeff dies in 1988 at the age of 43 and wakes up in his younger self in 1963 and he gets to relive his life, but this time he remembers everything he learned in his first life. He's freaked out a bit, but quickly recovers and pulls a Back to the Future II and wins a boatload betting on the Kentucky Derby and the World Series, then he goes on to make a killing in the stock market. At first I thought, yeah a little bit cliched. But then when he gets to 1988 again, he inexplicably dies again and wakes back up in his teenaged self remembering everything he did the last two lives. Okay, now its getting interesting, how could/will he live his life differently this time. What's the point, why is this happening. I won't spoil anything more, cause it really ramps up from there and takes a very novel twist (IMO) that elevates the premise. Excellent read.

14. Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery : This was an interesting read. Dystopian world, climate collapse, government collapse, war spreads across what used to be the US. Written 13 years ago, and its seem all too possible today. Its not science-fiction, its science-plausible. Set in Central PA, it centers around Sunny Jim and Reverend Bauxite, as the travel along the Susquehanna River trying to get to Jim's sister and his son. We jump around in backstory to get a picture of the war, and how Jim lost his wife, and switching between life on the boat, the militia fighting and Jim's sister's life upstate. It wasn't an easy read, both in plot and structure, but a worthwhile one.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>169 mahsdad: I'm so glad you liked Replay! It's a story I think about long after (re)reading it. I'm pretty convinced I'd still manage to screw stuff up. Oh well....

I like the succulent's portrait! Lovely how you caught the light and the color *just*so* to make it feel so real and present.

>170 richardderus: Thanks for the photo love. That was one of those spur of the moment captures where the light was just right. I was out for my lunch walk. I saw it but didn't see it. Strolled right by it, and then as my input buffer caught up with my brain, I went back and took that. :)

Woman's Prize for Fiction

Got this list from Paul, another one to add to my collection.

https://womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-fiction/

1996. A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
1997. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
1998. Larry's Party by Carol Chields
1999. A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne
2000. When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
2001. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
2002. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
2003. Property by Valerie Martin
2004. Small Island by Andrea Levy
2005. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
2006. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
2007. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
2008. The Road Home by Rose Tremain
2009. Home by Marilynne Robinson
2010. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver On the shelf
2011. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
2012. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller READ
2013. May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
2014. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar M
2015. How to be Both by Ali Smith READ
2016. The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
2017. The Power by Naomi Alderman READ
2018. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
2019. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2020. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell On the shelf
2021. Piranesi by Susannah Clarke On the shelf
2022. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
2023. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver On the shelf
2024. Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganesthanathan

I added Replay to The WANT! List™ on 2/19/25. Blamed you. After your report on it, I'm going to have to highlight it. And then RD chimes in. I'm supporting the boycott today, so I'll shop for it Saturday.

>172 mahsdad: Nice list. Read 6 of them, with another 3 or 4 on the shelf. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Jeff.

>173 weird_O: Ha, glad I can continue to contribute to your delinquency. LOL.

>169 mahsdad: Yep, that's a plant. A grand photo, too!

>175 quondame: Ha! Yep, I'm very descriptive. LOL.

Thanks for the photo love.

February Recap

Books Read - 6 (15)

First Book: A Model World
Last Book: Replay

Overall sources
DTE - 40%
Audio - 47%
Digital - 13%

Unique Authors - 14
Lady Authors - 7
Authors of Color - 0

Total BFB/Chunksters for 2025 - 2

Pages Read for 2025 - 2,398
Hours Listened for 2025 - 3 days, 17 hrs and 54 min
Average Books per Week - 1.67

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March :

April :
May :
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :



#botm

>165 mahsdad: I think this ia very cool that you did this. I highly recommend many of the unread ones like The Prophet Song, American Dirt & Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Holly was a good read too.

I hope to get to Brotherless Night this year after failing to do so last year.

>179 msf59: Thanks Mark. I think if nothing else, it will remind me of these important gifts that I should read. I have so many stacks around the house and I'm such a "vibe" reader that sometimes things get lost.

Brotherless Night - there's many on this award list, including this one that I want to read.

>180 mahsdad: I can certainly recommend Brotherless Night to both of you, Jeff.

Great read and one of my favourites of 2024.

>181 PaulCranswick: Thanks for the recommendation, I'll be sure to look out for it.

Don't you hate it when an audio book hold comes up on Libby for a book you're looking forward to read, when you notice its the Abridged version. Shoot. Now I'll have to wait another 8 weeks before the actual book becomes available.

Who in their right might would read abridged novels.

New Book - audio

America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien (read by Oliver Wyman)



“O’Brien’s first novel in two decades was well worth the wait. . . . In the age of ‘mythomania,’ O’Brien takes aim at the lies that power this country, and how and why they sustain us. America Fantastica peers straight into the dark heart of the American psyche, and it's unafraid of the comedy and tragedy staring back.” — Esquire, Best Books of the Fall

An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review)

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.

“How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.”

“You’re robbing me?”

He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.

The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me.”

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

The contagion was as old as Africa, older than Babylon, wafting from century to century upon sunlight and moonbeams and the vibrations of wagging tongues.

#newbook

>184 mahsdad: And another BB, thank you, Jeff.
Happy thursday!

>185 SirThomas: Hi Thomas, its pretty good so far, kinda of a quirky modern crime caper story.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Its Friday again, glad to get off the corporate treadmill for a couple days.

Here's another plant. :)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Reading - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson : 62%
Listening - America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien : 35%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 41%

16. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 🎧 : Read on Audio. Kind of a quiet English drama about life at a boarding school and the issues between kids, and growing up, and following them in their later years as they are doing what is expected of them. And what's expected is the sci-fiy/dystopian twist that undercuts the story. I had started to read this many years ago, before I even was a member here, but I never finished it, but when it came across in Libby, I thought I would give it a try. It was a pretty good story, by an author I should read more of.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

Just heard about a new acronym for us book obsessives that I think I might have to start using.

We obviously know about DNF. I try not to DNF a book but sometimes there is no choice.

The new option is NRN - Not Right Now. Its not that you didn't like the book, its just that you started it, came to a place that you're just not quite ready to finish it. So you can put it down and label it as NRN. You might eventually come back to it, unlike a DNF, that is done forever. :)

For me Never Let Me Go was a NRN book. When I first started reading it, I'm pretty sure I Pearl-Ruled it, before I even knew who Pearl was. But I guess I just wasn't in the right headspace for it. I was now.

Anyway, that's it for now.

>187 mahsdad: It's a good plant. Very green and hypnotically organized.

>188 mahsdad: I did finish Never Let Me Go at first read, but I'm not sure I don't regret that somewhat. It seems written not to satisfy.

>188 mahsdad: - I love that new acronym. In fact, I have a whole basket of NRNs. I blame it on my attention span or lack thereof, at times. I always start with good intentions but if I get side-tracked but don't want to DNF something, into the basket it goes. I probably should make reading through that basket a January goal for the year!

>187 mahsdad: - Love that succulent!

>187 mahsdad: Hairy-navel plant! Looks eerie, as ever, so I still don't miss it.

>188 mahsdad: "NRN" is a genius addition! Will use it often.

Weekend joys, Jeff!

I could have sworn I replied to all of you. Guess I didn't. Bad Jeff

>189 quondame: Yeah I love the golden ratio'ness of it :) Never Let Me Go - its one of those that I've heard lots of people rave about, and it was good, but I'm not sure it was really for me.

>190 jessibud2: Yeah, I have at least a couple NRN books that have been sitting on my nightstand for quite a while.

>191 richardderus: Hairy-navel... Ha, love it. NRN - glad I could pass along someone's idea and add it to our lexicon.

What's life without tracking another book list. For me, apparently nothing. LOL.

I think I had known about this, but ran across it again. David Bowie was quite the book nerd in his life. An avid reader, before he passed he compiled a list of the 100 most influential (to him) books. There is a site called https://www.bowiebookclub.com/, where a couple people are reading thru his list and podcasting about them.

Thought I'd share. I haven't read too many of these, but actually more than I thought I would have.

Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess READ
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz READ
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus READ
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodieby Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole READ
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell READ
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo READ
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon READ
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses (aka Peking Story) by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote READ
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamonth
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

I've seen that list, Jeff, and I'm sure I downloaded/copied it. Not sure where it is stowed, though. My mind's eye is asserting that I've read quite a few of these books, but I'm pretty sure it really is but a modest number. Always being lied to, even by my own mind. :-)

>194 weird_O: My mind's always lying to me. Book-wise, I love when I see someone talking about a book and I think, that's one to add to the list... go to the list and its already there. This place is my external book brain. ;)

>193 mahsdad: There's a fair overlap of Bowie's books that you've read and that I've read. I don't seem to have stowed this anywhere in my Books folder, so thanks for the post!

>196 quondame: You are most welcome, I think I had seen this list somewhere years ago, right after Bowie passed. Glad to find it again.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Drat, I'm annoyed. I could have sworn that I had posted this hours ago, but I can't find it. :(

Alrighty then, quick and dirty. Here's some flowers....



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Listening - America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien : 91%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 52%

17. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson : A delightful little dramedy. The Major is an aging widower in a quaint little British village. He's dealing with the death of his brother, the social politics at the "club", cultural differences with what the local society things of his budding friendship/romance with the Pakistani widow who runs the local grocery. Just a nice little story, well told. Had some action I wasn't expecting and an interesting take on family obligations. Recommend.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>198 mahsdad: I'm always deeply gruntled by those shades...nice to see 'em.

Bowie's bookishness was very smart-midcentury-dude, not that this is surprising. I'm sure most of them I haven't read I'd most likely enjoy, but feel no special need to find out.

Have a great weekend-ahead's reads, Jeff!

>199 richardderus: I love gruntled, its like whelmed. Never over or under, just whelmed. LOL.

That reminds me of a fun video from Graham Norton's chat show, where British comedian Michael McIntyre talks about his routine with funny groups of words. and Rosamund Pike brings up Whelmed

https://youtu.be/iPuqNBeL7_0?si=9ZOgd4iYvO-Bd-WC

>200 mahsdad: That was hilarious! Chris Martin is very different from what I thought he'd be like.

>198 mahsdad: That's a lovely burst of color.

I did look for your thread earlier and was surprised that the Friday Foto hadn't posted yet. All is remedied.

>201 richardderus: Yeah, I know Martin was quite funny.

>202 quondame: Thanks Susan!

New Book - audio

Weird Black Girls: Stories by Elwin Colman



From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman, an irresistibly unnerving collection of stories that explore the anxieties of living while Black—a high-wire act of literary-fantastical hybrid fiction.

A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.

In each of the seven stories in this collection, characters pursue their obsessions on paths to glory and destruction while around them their worlds twist and warp, oscillating between reality and impossibility. On display throughout is Cotman’s ability to reveal truths about the human experience—about friendship, love, betrayal, bitterness—through whimsy, horror, and fantasy. Elegiac in tone, imaginative and humorous in their execution, the character-driven stories in Weird Black Girls challenge, incite, and entertain.

These days ghosts visit me in the way a lock of hair will kink, or the way someone stirs their tea, or the competitive crack when someone slams a domino down on the table. Mine is now the eye that would miss a girl stealing my diamonds.

I picked this up randomly looking thru recommended book lists on Libby after finishing America Fantastica. I was driving a lot and finished the first story. Its pretty good. But then....

#newbook

New Book - audio

Radium Girls by Kate Moore



A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller!

For fans of Hidden Figures, comes the incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers' rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives...
In the dark years of the First World War, radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill. And, until they begin to come forward.
As the women start to speak out on the corruption, the factories that once offered golden opportunities ignore all claims of the gruesome side effects. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come. A timely story of corporate greed and the brave figures that stood up to fight for their lives, these women and their voices will shine for years to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

The scientist had forgotten all about the radium. It was tucked discreetly within the folds of his waistcoat pocket, enclosed in a slim glass tube in such a small quantity that he could not feel its weight. He had a lecture to delivery in London, England, and the vial of radium stayed within that shadowy pocket for the entirety of his journey across the sea.

...I have wanted to read this for a while, and had it on hold, put it back on hold when I couldn't borrow it because I was reading something else, and of course it came off hold as soon as I started reading the previous entry. But since Weird Black Girls is stories and no one is waiting for it, I'm going to switch to this.

#newbook

>198 mahsdad: Beautiful flowers!!!

>205 mahsdad: And The Radium Girls was a good one.

Wishing you a great week ahead!! : )

Hi Jeff. I'm on hold at the library for a copy of Radium
Girls. I may have to purchase it, as I have wanted to read it for awhile.

As always, your photos are wonderful.

Never Let Me Go is an incredible book, by a superb author! I've read almost all Kazuo Ishiguro's works.

>206 Berly: Hi Kim, thanks for stopping by! and for the photo love

>207 Whisper1: Hi Linda, thanks for the photo compliments as well. Radium, it was on hold for me too, but only a couple weeks, not too bad

Glad Ishiguro is one of you favorites. I've only read Never Let Me Go and Buried Giant. I liked them both, not sure I loved them. But that's the beauty of our reading world. Plenty of other books and authors to latch on to. :)

Fantastic Foto Friday
Happy Friday. I'm headed out to Palm Springs this afternoon, to help Laura with her Mother. We're working on moving her closer to us, at 91 its getting to the point where she can't live alone and she's too far away for Laura to help. Boy this is a difficult process.... don't get old.

But on the bright-side, I get to drive out there in my shiny brand new (to me) Toyota Prius. Yeah, after about 10 years of not being in the car loan club, I jumped back in with both feet. So far so good, but then I haven't started making payments. :)



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Listening - Radium Girls by Kate Moore : 40%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 67%

18. America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien 🎧 : Listened on audio. From the author of The Things They Carried is his first fiction in about 20 years and its just okay. Its the story of a bad man, down on his luck, who robs a bank and kidnaps the teller. But the bank is run by another bad man and his wife who are stealing from the bank, who are working with some other bad people. Bad things happen to bad people. And everybody lies. Its told in the time of the first Trump regime where everyone lies and believes whatever they are told. Sort of an extreme version of real life. Like I said, it was an okay story, it kept me engaged, it just was as good as I was expecting. If you like O'Brien, it is worth the read, but not a buy, in my opinion, borrow it.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

>209 mahsdad: Congrats on the new-to-you wheels!

>209 mahsdad: The problem is the alternatives...

Congratulations on your new-to-you Prius. We've enjoyed our Priii. A C & a V, though, not coupes.

Congratulations on the purchase of a new car. Regarding Laura's mom, will she be living with you?

Congratulations on the new car.
And thank you for anothe BB, I really enjoyed America Fantastica.

Thanks RD, Susan, Linda, Thomas on the car. I love it. I don't know what I did without adaptive cruise control. I got 50+mpg back from Palm Springs.

Getting old...
>211 quondame: yeah, there virtually are no alternative.

>212 Whisper1: No she's not going to be here. At least that's not the plan now. Its just so difficult to work what what level of care is needed and when, and what to with her house full of stuff

>213 SirThomas: Glad you liked America. I've received so many BBs around this place, I'm glad when I can share some. :)

Book Haul

Just got my preorder of John Green's new non-fiction book

18. Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

#bh

>172 mahsdad: I'm reading these, as well. Lots of great books in the list: Home Fire is a retelling of Antigone; Hamnet is one of my favorites. Currently, I'm about 1/3 through We Need to Talk About Kevin. It's taken me a bit to get into the story and the writing style, but it's good so far.

>216 ocgreg34: Hi Greg. Ah, what would we do without good booklists to inspire us. :)

Thanks for stopping by.

Fantastic Foto Friday
Made it to another Friday. From last week, made it out to Palm Springs. Took almost 4 hours, Yikes, that's long. Much less on the way back, but the good news is that the car performed wonderfully. (once I figured out the new bells and whistles). Got just over 50 mpg. Very nice.

For your viewing pleasure, some "native" Palos Verdes birds, enjoying the sunset. (And by native, I mean not native at all, but firmly established round here :) )



Book Update
>2 mahsdad: Q1 Books
>3 mahsdad: Audiobooks

Listening - Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman : 80%
eBook - Earth by David Brin : 82%

19. Radium Girls by Kate Moore 🎧 : Listened on audio. Subtitled, The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Its the horrific and tragic story of what happened to the women who painted watch face dials with Radium so they would glow in the dark. This was in the early 20th Century when the perceived benefits of radium use were rampant and little understood. The medical complications these women went thru, due to the radium and the method by which they painted the dials was asolutely insane. They would dip their brush in the radium paint solution, lip it (twist the brush in their lips to make sure it had a fine point) and then paint. Everyone thought it was great stuff (even going so far as to paint it on like makup), until it wasn't. And then the corporations didn't want to admit there was a problem, or take care of their vastly sick employees. Its not book for the faint of heart, and I'm thinking it would have been worse on an actual book....no pictures. But it is a very powerful one. Recommend.

Jeff's 2025 B.A.S.S tracking document

#ff

Maybe I'm the last to know, but how did I not know that Penguin did a new (a couple years ago) recording of all of the Discworld books.

I stumbled across this making of video on YT. https://youtu.be/Zw4kYXx8s4k?si=gwagFnP97yNjMIbP

Not to bury the lede, but they've got some great voices.

Bill Nighy reads all the footnotes across all the books
Peter Serafinowicz is Death in all the books
Indira Varma reads the Tiffany Aching, and Witches series
Andy Serkis reads Small Gods
plus others that I'm not familiar with.

Sure I have them all on eBook that I got from a Humble Bundle purchase, but audio seems perfect.

I just put Small Gods on hold.

>218 mahsdad: Peacocks are such drama birds and you caught them trying it at one of the few times of day that out dramas them.

>219 mahsdad: I have a very hard time with audio books but I am severely tempted by that Small Tods recording!

>220 quondame: Thanks Susan

>221 elorin: Hi Robyn, yeah audio might be an acquired taste. Not every book works for me, but I do read a lot of audio. Whenever I am driving, or doing chores, or walking, I'm reading audiobooks

---------------------

Well its the end of the quarter on Tuesday. I'll probably create my new thread tomorrow. But since I doubt I'll finish another book before then, here's my BOTM update...

2025 Books of the Month

January : A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
February : Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
March : Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

April :
May :
June :

July :
August :
September :

October :
November :
December :



#botm

New Book - audio

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates



Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,”but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.

In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

Comrades, In the summer of 2022, I returned to Howard University to teach writing. Given my rather middling career as a university student, I couldn't help but feel somewhat sheepish about the honor. But it was an honor, because it was there that I met you.

#newbook

I'm going to start creating my Q2 thread. With all the lists I'm tracking, I'm up to about 17 opening posts.

Talk about padding my numbers. LOL