Arlie Keeps on Reading in 2025

I'm Arlie, a 67 year old retired software engineer, living in Silicon Valley, California. broadly construed. This will be my fifth year of the 75 books challenge. I was born in Canada, but moved to the US in 1992, and to California in 1997.

My household consists of two retired adults and one aging dog. We also feed an ever changing menagerie of stray and feral cats.

Now that I have as much time as I want to read, and less tendency to come home stressed and exhausted, I find that my reading tastes are changing. Perhaps there's also some influence from other 75-ers ;-) I don't know where this will end up, but I'm enjoying the journey.

My fiction reading is mostly SF/Fantasy, with a bit of historical fiction and the occasional mystery. My focus is on escapism, and I avoid anything labelled literature unless it's very old indeed.

My non-fiction reading tends to be all about learning new things. I've spent the past few years with about half my non-fiction reading focussed on particular subject areas I wanted to learn more about, reading about them until I'm mostly satisfied, or at least run out of new information. (In some cases, I intend to keep reading about the topic as new books come out, or come back in a few years to learn how the field has been changed by ongoing research.) The rest has been a mix of perennially favorite topics, favorite authors, and random books that happened to catch my attention.

Recent focus topics: biology (so much has changed since I was in college), economics, politics, Ottoman history. Perennial favorites: science, history, technology.

The rest of my life includes playing bridge, cooking more than I ever had time for, playing computer games, reducing the amount of stuff in our home while reorganizing what remains, and helping my body recover from too many decades of spending most of my time at a desk. I'm also currently assisting my housemate, M, who is recovering from an emergency hip replacement after a fall two days before (US) Thanksgiving 2024.

I mostly read in English, but have been known to read simple material in French or even German. That's almost always light fiction, given my less than stellar linguistic skills.

My Rating System

5. Excellent. Read this now!
4.5. Very Good. If fiction, well worth rereading; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
4. Very good, but not quite 4.5. If fiction, likely reread; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
3. Decent read, but not special in any way.
2.5 Why did I bother finishing this?
2. Did not finish.
1. Ran screaming, and you should too.

Links

My 2021 thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/328797
My 2022 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337717
My 2023 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346763
My 2024 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356637

2024 Statistics 1

Total books: 136

Fiction: 64
Non-fiction: 72

First Time: 121
Reread (best guess in some cases): 23

Total pages read: 50,170
Average Pages/Book: 341.3

Books read in English: 134
Books read in French: 2

Library Books: 112 (16 inter-library loan)
Owned books: 24 (0 recent purchases)

2024 Statistics 2

Fiction Genres:

portal fantasy: 2
present-day fantasy: 1
fantasy romance: 1
urban fantasy: 1
other fantasy: 28

total fantasy: 31

alternate history: 8
graphic novel: 2
historical fiction: 3
military fiction: 1
post-apocalyptic: 2
science fiction: 16

Non-fiction genres:

agriculture: 1
astronomy: 1
biology: 11
climate change: 2
environmental science: 1
human evolution: 4
medicine: 3

total science: 23

biography: 2
history: 33

total history: 35

bridge game: 1
political science: 1
politics: 9
practical self help: 1
social science: 2

2024 Author Statistics

In all cases, any author who wrote more than one of the books I read this year is counted once per book.

Author Gender

Male: 109
Female: 51

Author Nationality (at birth):

Australia: 1
Austria: 1
Austria-Hungary: 1
Canada: 4
China: 1
France: 3
Georgia: 1
Israel: 1
Netherlands: 2
Ukraine: 1
United Kingdom: 27
United States: 109
USSR: 6

Note that in a couple of places, nations/empires that have been broken up appears in this list as well as one or more of their individual pieces.

Author Birth Decade

1920-1929: 7
1930-1939: 19
1940-1949: 28
1950-1959: 24
1960-1969: 19
1970-1979: 18
1980-1989: 2
1990-1999: 1
unknown: 27

Author Profession

academic historian: 14
academic scientist: 10
other academic: 14

total academics: 39

amateur historian: 2
non-academic historian: 6
popular historian: 4
non-academic scientist: 2
scientist: 1

total in often academic fields without academic career: 15

blogger: 1
comic book artist: 2
comic book writer: 1
journalist: 5
novelist: 70
podcaster: 1
science writer: 1
writer: 14

total of various kinds of professional writer: 95

activist: 1
judge: 1
medical doctor: 2
nutritionist: 1
politician: 4

unknown: 2

These categories are a mess, and several should be combined. I hope to be more disciplined about my categories next year.

Books Completed Jan 2025

1. After 1177 B. C. : the survival of civilizations by Eric H. Cline
2. 278302016::Basic economics : a common sense guide to the economy, 5th edition by Thomas Sowell
3. Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, Fourth Edition by James D. Gwartney, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, Joseph P. Callhoun and Jane Shaw Stroup
4. The Witch Goddess by Robert Adams (reread)
5. The genius of China : 3,000 years of science, discovery, & invention by Robert K. G. Temple
6. The economic government of the world : 1933-2023 by Martin J. Daunton
7. Unlikely heroes : Franklin Roosevelt, his four lieutenants, and the world they made by Derek Leebaert
8. Puerto Rico : a national history by Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo

Books Completed Feb 2025

9. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer
10. The toll-gate by Georgette Heyer
11. Native nations : a millennium of indigenous change and persistence by Kathleen DuVal
12. The mapping of love and death by Jacqueline Winspear
13. A lesson in secrets by Jacqueline Winspear
14. These old shades by Georgette Heyer
15. The politics of our time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism by John B. Judis
16. Frederica by Georgette Heyer
17. Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans by Bill Schutt
18. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer (reread)
19. American Zion: a new history of Mormonism by Benjamin E. Park
20. The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer (reread)
21. A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

Books Completed Mar 2025

22. Miss Amelia's List by Mercedes Lackey
23. Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear
24. Economics : the user's guide by Ha-Joon Chang
25. Venetia by Georgette Heyer
26. The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
27. Good economics for hard times by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
28. Leaving everything most loved by Jacqueline Winspear
29. Raiders, rulers, and traders : the horse and the rise of empires by David Chaffetz
30. Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way by Roma Agrawal
31. A dangerous place by Jacqueline Winspear

Books Completed Apr 2025

32. Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear
33. Power and progress : our thousand-year struggle over technology and prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
34. The great wave : the era of radical disruption and the rise of the outsider by Michiko Kakutani
35. Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
36. In this grave hour by Jacqueline Winspear
37. To die but once by Jacqueline Winspear
38. The new financial order : risk in the 21st century by Robert J. Shiller
39. The American agent by Jacqueline Winspear

Books Pearl Ruled in 2025

1. The acid watcher diet : a 28-day reflux prevention and healing program by Jonathan E. Aviv
2. The Earth transformed : an untold history by Peter Frankopan

Spare

Welcome aboard!

Happy 2025, Arlie.

Hoping for this in 2025 for us all.

Welcome back, Arlie!

Hope you enjoy your 2025 reads!

Best wishes for a satisfyingly bookish 2025!

Thank you all.

Happy new thread, and

Happy New Year, Arlie!

Happy New Year, Arlie!

P.S. I just posted the new Decluttering/Organizing Support Group here, in case you want to participate again.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/356425

Happy New Year, Arlie, and happy new thread!

Happy New Year, Arlie. Thanks for dropping by my thread.

Hi and Thank You all.

1. After 1177 B. C. : the survival of civilizations by Eric H. Cline

This is a book about ancient history: in particular, what happened to the interconnected bronze age civilizations that all collapsed, to one extent or another, around 1177 B.C. What happened in each area, as they moved into the iron age? Did the old civilization and culture stumble a bit, then continue? Did some previously backwater people rise to prominence in place of the prior civilization?

How much of the detail do we know in each case, and does this allow us to construct theories about societal fragility and strength in the face of changed conditions and adverse events?

This period used to be called a Dark Age, and some cultures simplified enough to lose the ability to write - or at least stop leaving records that archaeologists have found. In at least one case (Greece), when writing returned it was an entirely different system. Many stopped building monumental architecture and similar relics obvious to archaeologists. There seems to have been less interaction between separate locations - less diplomacy, and less trade. But trade at least continued, though sometimes with new groups doing the trading. And while many previously urban areas lost significant population, life went on. So it's now more common to refer to the period as the Iron Age, or early Iron Age, not as any kind of Dark Age.

The book covers a lot of ground, some of it involving groups not especially familiar to me. This is interesting, but not always as easy to remember as I'd prefer. It's very much worth reading for a big picture view.

It then gets into speculating about what makes cultures and kingdoms more or less fragile in these situations. I found that discussion to borrow too much from the latest trendy popular writers, and to try to build more theory than the data seemed to be able to support. Given that climate change was a factor in problems and changes experienced in many of these areas, it seems like an attempt to draw lessons from the past relevant to the present. But I'm not convinced that any lessons have been accurately identified - too much handwaving, and jargon, with too little substance, if you ask me. Still, it's interesting in its own way.

Overall, the first part rated a 4 or a little bit higher, and the ending was more like 3.5.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Eric H. Cline): male, American, born 1960, academic (classics and anthropology), author previously read
- English, public library, 314 pages, 4 stars
- read Dec 27, 2024-Jan 6, 2025, book not previously read

I've filled in the information about books and authors from 2024 in posts 4, 5, and 6 of this thread.

Now I need to think about a better organization for 2025.

I think first of all I'll count authors once only even if I read a dozen books by them in one year, but keep a separate count of number of books by each author, and report range and average for those counts.

I'll also tabulate the initial publication dates of my books in a manner similar to author birth years. I have this information; I simply haven't built it into my spread sheet.

Finally, I'll try to bring some order to the writer professions, and perhaps the sub-sub-genres.

2. Basic economics : a common sense guide to the economy, 5th edition by Thomas Sowell

This chunkster of a book presents itself as an introduction to economics for the general public, with the goal of getting ordinary folks more up to date with the ideas of professional economists, and thus less prone to "common sense" that isn't accurate.

The book can certainly be seen as fulfilling that promise, with the caveat that the economics taught is that of the Chicago School, with a strong attachment to red tribe politics, in particular in the form of markets uber alles and its related tendency to presume that free enterprise can do no wrong, while government can do no right.

I found it a strange mix. Some parts were trivial and obvious. Others appeared to involve cherry picking examples to give impressions that weren't in fact true. Some appeared to be US politics glossed with an economic rationale. Being for the general public, there were no footnotes. Examples were given, but a handful of examples need not come from the more common case.

This style works when teaching the basics of anything to callow youth, especially if they don't already believe they know something about the topic. It doesn't work well with a retiree who's been reading up on economics for a year or two, not to mention inundated in US politics.

Another way to look at this book is to see it as an apologia or even a catechism, explaining the details of the one true religion to proselytes, potential converts, and confused bystanders. It's not as erudite as e.g. the writings of Origen in the 3rd century, but it gets the job done.

Looking at the approach as essentially religious makes a lot of sense to me. Economics, as commonly taught, consists of a number of axioms, along with conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is not generally regarded as especially relevant to provide evidence for the accuracy and applicability of those axioms. Unfortunately a lot of recent critiques of economic conclusions are based on attacks against the accuracy or relevance of those axioms, so it's unfortunate that books like this one rarely address that question.

Although I am not a Christian, I understand Christian theology well enough to make good arguments based on accepted Christian premises. I can do the same thing with economic premises, and come to the same conclusions as Sowell does in this book. But I'm 99% sure the Christian premises don't (all) describe the real world, and at least 50% certain that the same thing applies to economic axioms.

And herein lies the problem with this book. It'll give a naive reader, or convinced right wing American, plenty of ammunition to defend the conclusions of Chicago School Economics, and regard themselves as better informed and more reasonable than anyone who disagrees with them. It'll give the naive reader a sense that this sort of economics represents Truth. But it doesn't give sufficient evidence to back any of its claims, not even the ones I figure are agreed on by all economists.

It's also not shy about drawing political conclusions, while staying away from the worst political cesspools. (I.e. it doesn't favor or oppose specific politicians, or care about scandals and "character".)

I originally planned for this review to include a critique of a few of this book's less supported positions, ones I personally disagree with. But it's too long already and getting longer.

Let's just say that my personal observations of e.g. large, bureaucratic corporations suggest that most of the flaws Sowell attributes to government and non-profits are alive and well and living in a for-profit corporation near you. Market discipline may eventually eliminate these inefficient behemoths, or at least reduce their scale - but it takes decades, and rarely has negative effects on the careers of those most at fault.

Meanwhile, while it may be possible that the overall standard of living is improved by corporate failures in the long run, a lot of harm is done in the short run, which may extend for the rest of some laid off workers lives. (Except of course for the executives; they'll do fine.)

I'm also not convinced by the constant harping on how income changes with age, with its implication that all or most of the poor are merely young, and will be prosperous members of the middle class in their 40s and 50s. (Yes, there's something in it, but it's not the only source of low incomes.)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2015 (5th edition) - first published 2001
- Author (Thomas Sowell): male, American (black), born in 1930, academic, economist, social philosopher and political commentator, author previously read
- English, public library, 689 pages, 4 stars
- read Dec 9, 2024-Jan 6, 2025, book not previously read

Hello Arlie. Belated Happy New Year and happy first thread of 2025.

>5 ArlieS: I didn’t know what portal fantasy was, checked it out, and have read the 3 mentioned in the Wikipedia article.

Love your 2024 stats.

>27 ArlieS: I don’t have that one, but I do have his 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, as yet unread. I really like the statistics you post at the end of each review.

Hi Arlie. Happy New Year!

Your first two reviews here are really interesting. I've read Cline's 1177 book. Does the following book cover the same ground, or is it really a 'what happened next'? And thanks for taking the hit for us on the economics book. I think I'll steer clear of apologists for the Chicago School.

>30 karenmarie: Hiya Karen.

I only learned the term "portal fantasy" recently myself, from someone else on LibraryThing.

>31 ffortsa: After 1177 B. C. basically starts where 1177 B.C. left off, except that the approach is different enough that it's not a continuous narrative.

>29 ArlieS: This is indeed The Chicago School Catechism. I think their orthodoxy is, to put it mildly, past its best-before date.

Happy week-ahead's reads.

>29 ArlieS: I am impressed that you managed to complete a book by Thomas Sowell, Arlie. I have/had one of his books on my shelves and his writing could not hold my attention at all. I would doubt very much that I would concur with that many of his views on economics.

>34 PaulCranswick: I've read a few of his books.

Some decades ago, he seemed more of an iconclast. Now, after reading up on economics, he seems a bit more like a broken record, not to mention a mouthpiece for libertarian Republicanism - who gets extra credit for expressing these opinions while black.

But I still have somewhat of a fondness for him, given my earlier experiences.

I'm still looking for an economics book that addresses differences among economic schools. I've found references to some, but not yet tracked them down; they have a tendency to come from Europeans, and not to have been originally written in English. Also, not to be in US libraries.

American authors seem to think there are two choices: communism a la Soviet Union, and a market economy that's simultaneously just like the US *and* tending towards radical libertarian.

Meanwhile, I get by on my own rather fuzzy sense of what's generic economics, what's American consensus economics, what's Chicago School, and what's radical libertarian pseudo-economics.

3. Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, Fourth Edition by James D. Gwartney, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, Joseph P. Calhoun and Jane Shaw Stroup (also known as Jane S. Shaw)

This book is actually intended as an economics text, and many of the authors are involved in economics education. It is, however, firmly in the same tradition as my #2 for this year, Basic economics : a common sense guide to the economy by Thomas Sowell.

This book is shorter, and goes into less depth. It also has a section on money management for young adults, with emphasis on methods that worked in my generation at least for those with above average incomes (invest in your own skills, save money, invest in equity mutual funds, ...).

It teaches roughly the same mix of right wing/Chicago school economic truths with bog standard generally agreed economics, but spends much less time attacking contrary opinions.

It has a short list of suggested additional reading, which includes the Sowell book.

Overall, I'm beginning to think that "common sense" in the title of an economics book may mean "US right wing orthodoxy taught here".

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2024 (4th edition) - first published 2005
- Author (James D. Gwartney): male, American, born in 1940, academic (economics), author not previously read
- Author (Dwight R. Lee): male, American, age unknown , academic (economics), author not previously read
- Author (Tawni Hunt Ferrarini): female, American, age unknown, academic (economic education), author not previously read
- Author (Joseph P. Calhoun): male, American, age unknown, academic (economics), author not previously read
- Author (Jane Shaw Stroup): female, American, age unknown; environmentalist, editor and journalist; author not previously read
- English, public library, 261 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Jan 7-12, 2025, book not previously read

>7 ArlieS: Coincidence? I just added Cline's 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed to the BlackHole the other day. I guess I will need to add the follow up book as well!

Have a fantastic Friday, Arlie!

>37 alcottacre: You too Stasia

>36 ArlieS: I'm beginning to think that "common sense" in the title of an economics book may mean "US right wing orthodoxy taught here".
Nailed it. I read Piketty's books, Varoufakis's books, and Thom Hartmann's books but just can't gag down the libertarian nonsense anymore even to debunk it.

>39 richardderus: I'm now subscribed to Paul Krugman's substack, which can be interesting, if rather politically predictable. https://paulkrugman.substack.com

>39 richardderus: I do like to read books on economics and especially the history of economics and have enjoyed the books of E.F. Schumacher and J.K. Galbraith especially on this. Steiglitz, Krugman, Varouvakis, Hutton and others are writers I often look for and I hope to read Piketty this year too.

I do think that economists should stick to their trade and not tread too heavily on politics but there is clearly some overlap.

>41 PaulCranswick: More authors for me to read ;-)

I hope you find Piketty as eye-opening as I did.

4. The Witch Goddess by Robert Adams

I haven't been finding much fiction at the library that attracts me, so I'm back to my project of rereading all the fiction I own, pretty much in alphabetical order by author. That project lapsed after July of last year, probably because I was reading a prolific author who isn't quite bad enough to discard, but isn't great either.

I'm back to rereading that author. The Witch Goddess is his ninth volume in his Horseclans series, and shares most of the flaws of the eighth volume. If it weren't part of a series which has better books both before and after, I'd probably de-acquisition it.

This one is at least somewhat less repetitious than the immediately previous volume, and develops a new character I kind of like - not the one referred to in the book's title.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), series (not first), 1982
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author previously read
- English, own shelves, 201 pages, 3- stars
- read Jan 9-18, 2025, book previously read

>43 ArlieS: Do you recommend the Adams series overall though, Arlie, despite your reservations on books 8 and 9? I am trying to read more fantasy and sci Fi books, so a good fantasy series would be of interest.

Thanks!

>44 alcottacre: The author does a fairly good job of offending modern sensibilities. I suspect lots of people younger than me would hate it for that reason - but the books were written in the 1980s, on the one hand, and I grew up with Tarzan, on the other.

He likes to create over-the-top evil adversaries, and picks on notable social groups, extrapolating and exaggerating their worst tendencies. Thus we have a decadent post-apocalyptic Greek-derived culture, with many elite members who are into raping male children (often slaves, or kidnapped peasants). There's another group descended from some kind of radical green organic farmers, whose less disgusting traits include refusing to bathe lest this contribute to water pollution.

Even the good guys keep slaves, and commit heterosexual rape. Very much heroic fantasy, but don't think too much about the plight of the underclasses.

If that would bother you, better avoid them. On the other hand, if that's just part of the normal background of such cultures for you, well, it pretty much fades into the background.

All the good guys have strong honour cultures, for good or ill. I don't think I'd like to live with or near them, but I can respect them. And fortunately their honour is about their own behaviour, not that of their female relatives.

This works for me in a fantasy setting. But I may be weird.

Edited to add: overall, I count them as OK, not as something to recommend, even though there was a point when I collected the whole set.

5. The genius of China : 3,000 years of science, discovery, & invention by Robert K. G. Temple

This book describes numerous technological and scientific discoveries that were made in China long before they were known in Europe. The goal seems to be to redress the balance of both European and Asian understanding. The target audience is lay people, not historians of science, technology, or China.

It's easy to see this as a popularization of much of the information in Joseph Needham's epic series Science and Civilization in China, written by a scholar primarily for other scholars, though accessible to lay people like myself. Indeed, Needham always wanted to write a version of his work for a lay audience, but was convinced in old age that he wasn't going to have time, and instead approved of the writing of The genius of China. He (Needham) also wrote a forward for The genius of China.

I've read several volumes of the work of Needham and his collaborators, and appreciated them, while finding some of them hard slogging.

The only hard slogging in The genius of China was caused by a decision to print various pages of this edition on dark coloured backgrounds, making it difficult for me to distinguish the text. I'd have rated the book 3.5 without that flaw - I took off half a star for eye-strain, and suggest finding a more readable edition.

Read this book is you have a foggy idea that stirrups and gunpowder came from China, and maybe a handful of other things, and would like to have a better idea of the actual history. Or if you have been living under a rock, and think the Chinese were somehow always behind the brilliantly inventive Europeans - actually they've spent more centuries ahead of Europe than behind it. Read it if you are interested in the history of technology.

Don't read it if you already have a fair idea of this history (e.g. have read some Needham, or other derivatives), and don't like eye strain. Be aware that it's not a balanced account, trying to weigh what was developed where and when, but rather a corrective to naive European beliefs.

Be aware that author has published some fringe theories. E.g. The Sirius Mystery, which according to Wikipedia "presents the hypothesis that the Dogon people of Mali, in West Africa, preserve a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from the Sirius star system".

Given that, I'd have trusted the current book rather less, if I hadn't already encountered similar information from Joseph Needham.

Temple does, however, seem to be a legitimate academic.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history of technology, series: n/a, 1986 (this edition 2007)
- Author (Robert K. G. Temple): male, American, born in 1945, academic, author previously read
- English, public library, 288 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 14-23, 2025, book not previously read

I already have a fair idea of the history, but the Needham books caught my eye. I have access to the Johns Hopkins University library, so will see whether I can find them there.

And really? The Sirius people? *sigh*

6. The economic government of the world : 1933-2023 by Martin J. Daunton

This chunkster covers 90 years of international negotiation and action on economics, finance, trade, and similar. The organizational names were familiar to me, and some of the complaints about them, but little more; I knew only what news media had covered, and only the part of that I'd actually read and remembered. As always, there was a lot more detail that never made it to the person in the street.

The book was quite enlightening, going well beyond the optimistic, positive press releases, to the nitty gritty of actual negotiations and the individual national politics underlying those negotiations. I wish my memory were better, as it would take repeated readings to cause me to remember as much of this as I would like to. But at least I know there's interesting stuff to remember, which can be looked up as needed.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes deep dives on a single subject, has an interest in international relations, economics, or world trade institutions, and doesn't mind heavy going from time to time. I hope to also locate some of the author's other works, though I fear that being more focussed on Great Britain, they'll be harder to find in the US. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to get them from some university by inter-library loan.

The author is a retired Cambridge professor. No concern about Sirius influences here ;-)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history (international economic relations), series: n/a, 2023
- Author (Martin J. Daunton): male, British, born in 1949, academic (economic history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 986 pages, 4 stars
- read Nov 19, 2024-Jan 25, 2025, book not previously read

I found this book on the new non-fiction shelves at one of my local libraries, and grabbed it.

Aargh! The work page has been modified. I tried to add a book I'd finished, and wound up in a rabbit hole at https://www.librarything.com/topic/368002

Note that there are changes to the format for entering dates in "edit book" as reached from the "add book" page. The correct date format is no longer yyyy-mm-dd

I don't know whether or not the date format is even the same for all users. The American date format worked for me, on Safari, with my localization settings consistent with US English. Or you can enter the date by clicking on calendar pages, with the same PITA interface offered by the calendar program on my cell phone.

--

I'm too stressed to cope with learning a new UI for LibraryThing today. I have a half-added book, and a 10% written post about it.

I might get back to them some time this week.

--

Here's the half-added post, so I can conveniently cut-and-paste into a new comment, later. Don't believe anything with ?? preceding it - this is a template not fully corrected

7. Unlikely heroes : Franklin Roosevelt, his four lieutenants, and the world they made by Derek Leebaert

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history (US), series: n/a, ??2023
- Author (Derek Leebaert): male, ??British, born in 1949, academic (economic history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 488 pages, 4 stars
- read Dec 24, 2024-Jan 28, 2025, book not previously read

>49 ArlieS: I don't like the changes. My issue was setting the cover image, which isn't as important as dates, but I was able to click the calendar pop-up for those so I didn't notice the format change.

7. Unlikely heroes : Franklin Roosevelt, his four lieutenants, and the world they made by Derek Leebaert

This book is about Harold Ickes, Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace, who worked with/for Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) from at least the start of his presidency until his death. It gives a moderately detailed history of FDR's presidency in the course of describing their activities, priorities, and interaction with FDR.

I had no particular expertise on FDR's presidency when I started the book. I'd read a novel or two set in the period, but from the viewpoint of characters far lower in political status. And I'd learned basic ideas/soundbites like New Deal, Tennessee Valley Authority, Fireside Chats, Depression - the stuff that would be in the one or two paragraphs devoted to FDR in a K12 survey class. But that was about it.

Before reading this book, I would have figured FDR for a good president, and a good person. After reading it, I figure him for a thoroughly political animal, with unappealing habits equivalent to tearing virtual wings off human flies. (He liked to instigate senseless quarrels among people he relied on, picked on subordinates "in fun", and regularly made them promises he didn't keep.)

The book's worth reading, if you are interested in the history. But I'm sorry to have had yet another US President knocked violently off his pedestal in my mind. Quite a lot of good was done in his time, that's still relevant today. But I can't imagine he cared about anything but its political effect.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history (US), series: n/a, 2023
- Author (Derek Leebaert): male, American, age unknown, technology executive (who writes books on history and politics), author not previously read
- English, public library, 488 pages, 4 stars
- read Dec 24, 2024-Jan 28, 2025, book not previously read

8. Puerto Rico : a national history by Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo

This book claims to be a history of Puerto Rico, through a lens that sees Puerto Rico as a nation.

It's not. It's a history of resistance to colonialism in Puerto Rico, with occasional digressions. Some of those concern Puerto-Rican affairs; others concern anti-colonialism in South America and other parts of the Caribbean.

It also pays attention to almost all current anti-discrimination concerns - not just race and language, but also gender and sexuality. However, unlike most modern left wing/Democrat treatises, it also pays attention to poverty, which it doesn't reduce to a consequence of racism, and to rural-urban differences and conflicts.

It's quite readable, in that the writing style is clear, though unexciting, and it rarely presumes knowledge the general reader won't have. There are endnotes and a "selected thematic bibliography"; quite possibly one of the books in the bibliography would work better for me as a general history.

Nonetheless, I was disappointed. I wanted to learn more about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, and not just their experiences of oppression and resistance. The place has problems by the score, including some I didn't know about before reading this book; I certainly wouldn't want these airbrushed out. But I wanted a much broader picture.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history (US), series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo): male, American (Puerto Rican), age unknown, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 290 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 28-30, 2025, book not previously read

9. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

The world is out of joint, oh cursed spite, and I'm finding it somewhat difficult to cope. My sister suggested that reading (or rereading) Georgette Heyer might help provide a healthy dose of pure escapism, and then suggested works she thought would particularly suit me. She was right. The Corinthian is one of those books.

Georgette Heyer pretty much invented the Regency Romance, so she doesn't follow its modern conventions religiously. She's also a better writer than many of those writing for e.g. Harlequin. Overall, if I'm going to read Regencies, Heyer is a great choice.

In this book, we have two people whose relatives are pressing them to marry - not each other, but people they individually find odious. One of the two decides to climb out of her window in the middle of the night, dressed as a man, and flee to a childhood friend. The other comes within inches of committing to propose, then drinks rather more than is his normal habit, and decides to take a long walk. He comes upon the young lady climbing out her window.

Many humorous adventures ensue. This being a romance, they eventually decide to wed each other, and to hell with family pressure. This being a Regency, the young lady's family is overjoyed by her prospective bridegroom's status, rather than mad as hops at having their wishes thwarted. And the gentleman's family really didn't care who he marries - they just wanted him to get busy begetting an heir.

The trip to this somewhat predictable end is a lot of fun, while at the same time being light enough I could pick it up when distractedly angry at e.g. the latest political lunacy - and get fully engrossed in it, forgetting my ill humor. Often I'd then put it down and read something more weighty, that I simply couldn't handle without the bridge.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1940
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author previously read
- English, public library, 393 pages (large print), 3.5 stars
- read Jan 31-Feb 1, 2025, book may have been previously read

This book was suggested by my youngest sister.

I was only able to get my hands on this book in a large print edition, which is going to mess up my average pages per book statistics. But that made it comfortable to read even in poor light, which was an added bonus.

10. The toll-gate by Georgette Heyer

This is another regency romance, by the originator of the genre.

In this case, we have love at first sight - not too far into the story - but there are problems to be solved before the course of true love can run smooth. These are not communication problems between the two lovers, or even the almost equally classic familial opposition. Instead the author skips what have become the usual tropes, and presents us with a crime to solve, an orphan to place, a dying old man to comfort and protect, and a friend and ally desiring to turn from a life of crime so as to marry his own true love.

Once these responsibilities have been handled, our lovers are free to live happily ever after. But meanwhile we have humor, danger, puzzles, and the usual fun wallow in (supposedly?) period customs, manners, and language.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1954
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9 for this year
- English, public library, 313 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 1-3, 2025, book may have been previously read

This book was suggested by my youngest sister.

Hi Arlie. I’m visiting threads a bit.
Those two Georgette Heyer’s books sound like a great choice!

I admire your patience in reading those economy books. I think I would have thrown the first one in a corner, market economy, bah. But I lack any schooling in economics, so what do I know?

On the other hand, your other subject, the Iron Age, sounded intriguing.

>53 ArlieS: & >54 ArlieS: Amazingly, I still haven't read anything by Georgette Heyer! Maybe this year?

>54 ArlieS: Your sister is both kind and wise. Ma'at is served as much in Heyer as in any mystery. It's a balm in the world we're living in to see the Right Thing happen!

>55 EllaTim: Hi Ella. I've dropped by your thread and starred it.

I've wanted to understand economics for decades, but so much of it seems a lot more like religion than science. So reading up on economics has been one of my many retirement projects. I'm *still* convinced that a large part of it is rubbish, believed because people want it to be true. But at least I now have a better idea of what they are talking about.

History has been a fascination of mine as long as I can remember.

>56 PaulCranswick: You're in for a treat when you get to them, if you like that kind of fiction.

>57 richardderus: I think my sister D may be the sanest one in my birth family, particularly when it comes with dealing with one's personal imperfections and inabilities. Our mom wanted to believe we were all superior beings, leaving us with bad intellectual and emotional habits, which become more and more dysfunctional as we experience the reduced abilities that come with age.

D's helped me a lot to admit to myself that "I can't" is OK, if annoying, and get on with finding workarounds. Also, and perhaps even more usefully, to admit myself that there's only so much I can do, before needing recovery time, and that amount is notably less than it was in my teens.

She's had to cope with more "I can't"s in her life than me, and at a younger age, having had trouble with migraines and excessive sun exposure from childhood on, with decent drugs only becoming available to her in the last decade or so - and she's generally still wiped out when on migraine drugs, just with less pain and general misery.

11. Native nations : a millennium of indigenous change and persistence by Kathleen DuVal

This is a book about indigenous history in North America, mostly in the area currently claimed by the United States, and mostly after the arrival of Europeans. Each chapter tells the story of a particular group of natives, in a particular area, presumably chosen to be representative. No attempt is made to cover everything and everyone.

Unlike too many such books, it's neither the story of a tragedy, nor an angry screed. Instead, it stresses indigenous agency, and what things looked like, to the people described, in that particular place and time. It also makes clear that the story is ongoing, with indigenous people still making the best decisions and adaptations they can find, individually and in groups.

The author doesn't just ignore land theft, murderous violence, and the American government habit of routinely breaking treaties. Her attitude is more like "shit happened; here's how people responded". Sometimes it's plainly "here's how the survivors responded". But she centers her story in what the indigenous people did, not primarily what was done to them. Moreover, she regards what they did as in the main successful, in that cultures and nations survived, though modified.

Some attention is put into countering myths about the indigenous experience, which I won't even try to list here.

Overall, it was a good informative read, even though I kept distracting myself expecting the shoe to fall, and the rest of the book to turn out to be tragedy and indignation.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Kathleen DuVal): female, American, age unknown, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 718 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Dec 25, 2024-Feb 4, 2025, book not previously read

>53 ArlieS:: Interesting - I've picked up a Heyer novel this week for the exact same reasons. I wasn't sure at first if the suspense of one of her mysteries would be OK, but it's turning out to be just fine. It's a nice distraction between my non-fiction books. I'm glad Heyer is helping you as well.

>60 alsvidur: Hurrah for escapism!

Pearl Rule 1. The acid watcher diet : a 28-day reflux prevention and healing program by Jonathan E. Aviv

I have been troubled by heartburn/acid reflex/GERD for the past 6 months or so, and while I've learned to cope with it somewhat, I'd like to get rid of it entirely. The doctor's advice did not entirely work, so I'm looking for ideas.

My local library has purchased a software package with various social media features. I mostly ignore them, but noticed this book when it popped up on one of them - perhaps as a recent review. So I borrowed the book.

In my experienced but cynical judgment, it's more than 50% snake oil, and doesn't contain enough clues to distinguish any actual gems of wisdom from the matrix in which they are embedded. The author appears to have valid medical credentials, but he should have stuck to inventing ways of screening for esophageal cancer in office and similar, where he seems to have done good work.

This is unfortunate. The sample patient description in the introduction was a fairly good match for my symptoms, including some my doctor didn't connect with my report of acid reflux. This suggested that I might match the pattern this author calls laryngopharyngeal reflux, aka LPR, aka throatburn reflux, with just a bit of more classic GERD on the side. Maybe a book about this syndrome would be more useful to me than more generic advice ...

Well, maybe it would, but not this book. My suspicions began in chapter 1, with a general condemnation of "processed food", without explanation or definition. Of course the badness of "processed food" is an axiom of the "wellness" community, and tends in practice to mean "convenient foods not produced by our sponsors". Presumably he expected his target audience to already agree with this axiom, and may even have trotted it out to show he was one of them. Then there were some blatant examples of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy - as we all know, any negative statistical change in American health was caused by exactly one change that happened vaguely before the health change - whichever one the author doesn't like, or believes they can make money opposing.

Footnotes were, of course, conspicuous by their absence. There was short Further Reading section and a longer "Sources" section; the latter was at least organized by chapter, but without footnotes or endnotes, checking the author's assertions would be exceedingly difficult. I'm not up for reading a bunch of unsourced claims, laden with logical fallacies and truths I don't subscribe to.

Sorry to hear about your sister's migraines, and your GERD or LPR or whatever. I hope you find someone who can address your constellation of problems successfully. As for your sister, I know a lot of people who suffer from migraine; it must feel like being imprisoned in your own skull. I hope the treatments get better and better for both of you.

Pearl Rule 2. The Earth transformed : an untold history by Peter Frankopan

This book failed its readability die roll, at least for me. I had no such complaint with the first book I read by this author, perhaps because he's a historian, and that was a history book.

This book is about ecological history, and starts some time before multi-cellular life. So perhaps the author is a bit out of his depth, with no more knowledge than one would expect from an intelligent undergraduate writing a paper for a course in ecological history. Certainly I got the impression that I understood at least as much about that history as the author did, though not precisely the same things.

But that wasn't my big complaint. It's not the first time I've suffered through a context-setting chapter or two by an author who frankly hasn't studied whatever context they consider relevant, and simply recites whatever "everyone knows", including the part that's been superseded by later research.

The problem was that in reading it, I felt like a tide of words was flowing over me, nice and rhythmic, perhaps, but serving primarily to put me to sleep.

It may get better when the author reaches truly historical periods. Indeed, I may be bailing out just as the book gets worth reading. (He's just got through the stage of the earliest cities.)

But OTOH, part of the goal of the book is to address modern climate change and responses thereto. That's too often a matter of either wall-to-wall indignation or wall-to-wall platitudes.

At any rate, after 98 pages I've read more than enough to decide that I'm finding reading the book to be more of a chore than a pleasure, and moreover have so far learnt absolutely nothing.

Maybe it's a good book, farther on, or for a different reader. But I'm out of here.

p.s. This book was recommended me by LT's new system, and possibly also by its classic system.

>63 ffortsa: Growing old is not for the faint of heart, though in my sister's case she unfortunately didn't need to grow old to get migraines.

>64 ArlieS: Oh dear that bodes ill! The book is a bit of a chunkster too and is weighing down my own shelves. I will go into it with some trepidation now, Arlie, if at all.

>66 PaulCranswick: Maybe you'll like it.

12. The mapping of love and death by Jacqueline Winspear

Another day, another novel, read in part to escape the world we live in today.

This is the 7th in Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, following the life of a female private investigator in post World War I Britain.

As always, there's a complicated plot with lots of details. It held my attention, and distracted me from whatever stressors were afoot in real life.

Beyond that, there's not much I can say without spoilers, except that I enjoyed it.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2010
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author previously read
- English, public library, 471 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 3-5, 2025; book not previously read

This is another book I could only get in large print format, so the page count is inflated.

>45 ArlieS: Thanks for the input, Arlie. I think I will give the series a pass for now.

>59 ArlieS: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review, Arlie.

>69 alcottacre: I am currently reading the Maisie Dobbs series but I have not yet made it to book 7. I am reading book 6 this month.

Your two most recent stinkers are eminently avoidable. I'm glad to know about #2...I've been heft-shy and now I'm happily saying farewell to the temptation.

Enjoy better reads the rest of the week.

My goodness, you've been wading through the chunksters! But your reviews are good to see what's there. And Georgette Heyer is the ultimate palate cleanser!!

>69 alcottacre: Glad to steer you to a book you'll like.

>70 richardderus: Thank you. I have been, so far. Even one that's devoted to politics, but on track for a 4 star or maybe higher rating, and a search for all the author's other works. (Yes, that's actually possible, though kind of rare.)

>71 ronincats: Somehow I do have a liking for really big books. Or even larger works, produced in multiple volumes to make them manageable.

But some of my recent huge page counts aren't entirely fair, since I've been finding books I wanted to read available only in large print.

Hurrah for Heyer. I just wish my local library had all of her works.

13. A lesson in secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

Another day, another escapist novel. This is the 8th in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries. Time has been progressing along with the series; we're now in 1932. Adolf Hitler is making waves, and has supporters in the UK - primarily, but not entirely German ex-pats. Pacifism is also very much a thing.

Maisie is sent by government spooks to teach at a pacifist college in Cambridge, while looking out for anything contrary to the country's interests. Meanwhile, a friend from her servant days loses her husband in an accident that smells, to Maisie and others, more like a murder.

Life is progressing for everyone. Maisie is involved in a serious relationship. Her assistant's wife - who lost her only daughter to diphtheria in an earlier book, and almost lost her mind in consequence - gives birth to another daughter. Maisie's long-widowed father is courting, for the first time since his wife's death decades earlier.

The college assignment proves complicated. The head of the college is murdered soon after Maisie begins work there, and while she's supposed to leave that investigation to the police, she pretty much ignores those instructions.

All in all, an enjoyable read, perfect for taking one's mind off current events, unless of course the mere mention of Nazis sets you off.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2011
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12 for this year
- English, public library, 323 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 6-9?, 2025; book not previously read

>64 ArlieS: I borrowed the book from the library, thinking it was just my cup of tea. As it was such a big one, they even gave me double reading time. But when I had it at home I found I couldn’t get through. This flood of words, as you call it. And somehow still not tight enough. Of course he had an enormous time scale to cover, but then it’s even more important how a book is written. No, returned unread.

Maisy Dobbs sounds just like just the thing!

>74 EllaTim: At least I don't feel vaguely guilty when I fail to read a library book, unlike when I purchase a fail book.

14. These old shades by Georgette Heyer

Another day, another Regency.

This wasn't one of Georgette Heyer's better efforts, or perhaps it just wasn't especially to my taste. The heroine is implausibly devoted to her eventual groom from their first meeting.

The novel takes as fact the idea that nobles and others are inherently different, with nobles being far better; thus, if a noble and a common child are switched at birth, they'll nonetheless grow up true to their heritage. The common child, raised noble, is a "clod", only interested in farming - as well as not resembling his putative parents. The noble child, on the other hand, fits right in when her status is raised.

I finished it, but that's about it.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), series (first), 1926
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9 and #10 for this year
- English, public library, 561 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 10-14, 2025, book may have been previously read

I read this book in a large print edition which inflated its page count.

>76 ArlieS: This is the only Heyer historical I actively dislike. The later ones featuring the characters as parents are a bit better, though An Infamous Army just uses them as hooks really.

>77 quondame: When my sister heard I'd picked that one off the library shelves, she pretty much warned me against it.

15. The politics of our time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism by John B. Judis

This is an excellent book about three currently important large scale political currents, placing them in international and historical context. It started out as three separate books, which were edited and combined into one book with three sections.

This is that rare book that causes me to seek out everything else the author has written. In this case, I also looked at the publisher and series. Both contributed to my over-mighty TBR list.

The section on populism was especially informative, providing a lot of context that news media just don't get to, and situating current, local phenomena in a context of similar movements in other places and/or times.

The section on nationalism was thought-provoking. If it's true that most people will put their own fellow citizens ahead of outsiders, and expect our government to take care of us, while other governments take care of their own, then the current leftwing tendency to internationalism is yet another way in which leftwing parties are handing victory to their opponents. Left wing populism, complete with a side of nationalism, has at times worked well at attracting supporters. Maybe a bit more of that, and a bit less internationalism, would be good for parties that don't appreciate increased inequality, enforced social roles, and all the other fine trappings active on the right.

Of course, there is a range within nationalism, from routine wars of aggression at one extreme down to cheering one's country's athletes at the other. But you don't have to be an imperialist bastard seeking lebensraum at your neighbours' expense to be a nationalist, and that field perhaps shouldn't be left to imperialist rat bastards.

The section on socialism was weakest of the three, probably because the author sees himself as socialist and socialism as desirable. It descends to "how could we make (some of) this happen?" too often from explaining what's going on, who favors it, and why. Given the rather broad range living under the socialist umbrellas, as used in this book, I can't be in favor of everything labelled socialism, let alone various other labels for those who dare not use the socialist name. Judis unfortunately has a touchstone that identifies good socialism to him - it's whatever he's in favor of - and that touchstone is less visible to his readers.

It's nonetheless an excellent book.

A big thank you to richardderus, whose favorable review of this book, and some of its component books got this one not just on my TBR, but on the select list of books I'm willing to go to the trouble of obtaining even though they aren't in either of the local libraries I visit.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2021
- Author (John B. Judis): male, American, age unknown, author and journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 430 pages, 4.5 stars
- read Feb 4-16, 2025, book not previously read

16. Frederica by Georgette Heyer

Another day, another Regency.

When a sensible somewhat older girl asks her cousin to help him bring out her beautiful younger sister, he finally finds love, happiness, and an end to chronic bored selfishness - with the elder, not the silly beauty. The beauty also finds a mate, as does the cousin's male secretary.

I enjoyed this one a lot, from its humorous portrayal of odious relatives to the cousin's married sister who eventually maneuvers him into finally proposing.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1965
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10 and #14 for this year
- English, public library, 561 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 15-18, 2025, book may have been previously read

I read this book in a large print edition which inflated its page count.

17. Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans by Bill Schutt

This is a book about teeth - both in vertebrate evolution and in human history. Given my tastes, I was more interested in the biology than the history. OTOH, I probably knew less about the history, so I may have learned more there.

I rate the book as basically OK, but not much more. The selection of topics in the human history section felt more like interesting vignettes than through coverage of, e.g. the history of dentistry. The vertebrate section was better, but in retrospect I wonder if it also omitted major relevant areas without me noticing. And I prefer books that give me an overall picture to books of cute facts suitable for cocktail parties. That's not to say that this was just a book of disjointed facts. But OTOH, why would I want to know about a dentist known to George Washington, who may or may not have made dentures for him, rather than a broader picture of historical dentistry?

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Bill Schutt): male, American (?), age unknown, academic (zoology), author not previously read
- English, public library, 308 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 27-Feb 18, 2025, book not previously read

This year's "creeping crud" is unpleasant and long lasting. My housemate and I have been sick for several days, and still aren't over it. I don't know if it's flu, a cold, or some other member of the flu-like illness bestiary. No fever. Starts with a sore throat, progresses with exhaustion, lack of appetite, and brain fog. For a couple of days I found myself unable to manage even reading novels in bed. At about the point where you lose your voice, you're beginning to have energy and appetite again. Yesterday was mostly spent in bed, but awake and reading. Today I'm spending more time at my desk than in bed, and actually took a walk, but I don't have much of a voice.

I'm going to see whether I have enough of my brain defogged to start in on reporting my accumulated reading. (Other things are more urgent, but I don't want to deal with e.g. bookkeeping yet.)

For the record: I haven't been this sick since chemotherapy.

18. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

I'm continuing to read Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances.

In this case we have what's become a tired old trope, but may still have been at least somewhat fresh and young in 1953 when this book was written. A rich but miserly old man announces that he's leaving his entire fortune to his otherwise penniless ward, provided she marries one of his great nephews; otherwise it will go to charity rather than to any of them. The potential grooms range from well off to essentially penniless, including a wastel who'd always been expected to be the main heir, who's been living on his expectations.

Cataloguing the candidates, there's the feeble minded earl with run-down estates, the none-too-swift but well heeled more minor noble, the prim clergyman, and the wastrel living on his expectations. The miser summons them all to his home to learn the news - the wastrel doesn't show, and the minor noble is late. It's generally been presumed that the (now) heiress is besotted with the wastrel, but the first two make awkward proposals, which are refused. We learn that the feeble-minded earl is dominated by his mother, and proposes because she insisted, not in fact wanting any such marriage. (We'll later learn that he's in love with a sensible young woman from a family that's "in trade" so not considered suitable.)

The minor noble isn't interested, and would hate to be seen as proposing just to gain a fortune he doesn't need. But he meets the heiress at the local inn - him having dinner before facing the miser's inadequate provisions; she attempting to run away. Too much punch is drunk, and they hatch up a scheme where he will propose, she will accept, and spirit her away to London; the engagement won't be announced, and will eventually be broken. The reasons for this seem somewhat hazy. But they go through with it.

Many interesting things happen in the next month, with the heiress friendly to all, including those she "ought" to snub. Her generosity gets her into various fixes, from which her supposed fiancee sometimes rescues her. Soon he's helping with her schemes to help people she cares about - including the earl and his fiancee.

By the time the dust clears, the earl is married to his intended - by the somewhat odious clergyman. The heiress' con-man cousin has run back to France with Olivia, a poorer girl that seemed to have a choice between marrying an odious (to her) old man and a non-marital relationship with the wastrel - with their flight encouraged and abetted by the heiress' supposed fiancee.

Meanwhile the heiress' governess, companion etc. has been left behind to look after the old miser. Things have progressed in an unexpected direction - the miser now intends to marry her. So much for the heiress' expectations, particularly if there's a child.

Fortunately, the supposed fiancee has decided he really does want to marry the no-longer heiress, and she has discovered that she prefers someone reliable and kind, if none too sharp, to the flashy but selfish wastrel.

All four couples presumably live happily ever after. The clergyman continues his prudish life. And no one much cares what happens to the wastrel.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1953
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10, #14 and #16 for this year
- English, own shelves, 406 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 18-22, 2025, book previously read

>79 ArlieS: I'm so pleased you liked Judis as well as you did, Arlie! He's thought-provoking even when one isn't in complete sympathy with his points.

Thanks for the shoutout!

>82 ArlieS: Pretty sure it's COVID, Arlie. I had it too. *ugh*

>85 richardderus: I've been under the impression that covid always comes with a fever, which neither of us had. (We checked for fever, because the exhaustion and brain fog sure sounded like covid. But neither of us tried a covid test, because of the lack of fever.)

Am I wrong about the fever, perhaps believing something that seemed true at first, but was shown not to be true later in the pandemic?

>86 ArlieS: The fever was never universally a COVID feature...I've never had a fever during an infection. The first time I had it I slept 18hr/day and lost my sense of smell, never a fever. The next three my only symptom was a positive test. This time it was coughing and schnerkling. BTW if you haven't already ordering 4 more tests each will save them from the Felonious Yam's ordered destruction of the surplus tests.

19. American Zion: a new history of Mormonism by Benjamin E. Park

This book is exactly what it claims to be: a history of Mormonism. The author is a professional historian, who had reasonably good access to Mormon archives. He also appears to be a Mormon himself.

While I don't think the author intended to make his Church look bad, or at least no more than accuracy required, the catalog of falsehoods and information suppression made a very bad impression on me, more than the average history of a religious organization.

Basically, the LDS has been ruled from the beginning by Prophets who have infinitely more regard for expediency than truth. Not content with secularly unprovable religious claims, or scripture-derived easily falsifiable historical claims inherent to Religions of the Book, they seem to have gone all in on routinely rewriting their own history to suit then-current aims. And again, this seems rather more than the usual mythologizing of heroic founders, and the tendency to wishfully insist that people of the past were good by modern standards.

Other authors and even personal acquaintances have given me a better impression of Mormonism, though of course I have no personal use for any religion that enforces gender essentialism. I rather like the idea of Progressive Revelation, theologically speaking, though not when that ability is confined to a single, politically successful gerontocrat. Good things are said about their social safety net for church members, though I'm sure it comes with lots of requirements for performative gratitude and self-improvement. But the requirement to "believe" the obviously false would do me in, even if I wasn't also required to perform femininity and heterosexuality.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Benjamin E. Park): male, American, age unknown, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 519 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 5-22, 2025, book not previously read

>88 ArlieS: Many years ago, I read a biography of Joseph Smith called No Man Knows My History. It was the first non-hagiographic biography of Smith. Yours sounds like a good one to also pick up on the post-Smith church. I had a friend in High School who was a member of the "Reorganized" Church, the largest of the splinter groups, founded by Joseph Smith's widow who wanted her son to be the next prophet instead of Brigham Young. According to them, Joseph Smith never practiced or approved of polygamy. Fascinating stuff.

20. The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer

Another day, another Regency.

I rather like this one, perhaps for its implausibility, or its characters.

Due to one of those insane, and possibly legally unenforceable wills beloved of romance writers, a certain gentleman cannot change the heir to his estate unless/until he marries. (Once married, he can leave the estate however he wishes.) The Romance novel solution is, of course, a marriage of convenience.

But here we have the first twist: the person advertising for a bride is the heir to the estate, not its current owner. There's all kinds of bad interpersonal history, such that he absolutely hates the idea of inheriting. He's coerced the current owner to marry as directed, by offering to pay off all his debts. But wait, there's more. The would-be bride fails to turn up, and a would-be governess is accidentally picked up instead. Moreover, that same evening the current owner is fatally injured in a drunken brawl.

High handed persuasion ensues, excused by lack of time to find another single woman. The governess is married that evening to the badly injured man; a will is hastily written and witnessed, leaving the whole estate to her - in a spirit of anything-but-the-existing-heir; and the badly injured husband dies later that night.

The widow is duly installed in her husband's run down estate, mostly to work on preparing it for sale. Meanwhile, it turns out that there's something fishy going on at the estate. In particular, secret state papers have gone missing, and may be in the house. Much excitement ensues.

This being a Romance, all's well that ends well. Being a Regency, it even ends without public scandal. The state papers are retrieved, and surreptitiously restored. The culprit is retired from his government position. And the widow winds up happily married, with quite enough money not to need to work as a governess.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1946
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10, #14, #16 and #18 for this year
- English, own shelves, 344 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 23-25, 2025, book previously read

>90 ArlieS: One of the more squickworthy Heyer plots, but it has a sneaky claim on my affections. She might be hugely abusively coerced into this mad plot, but she undeniably ends up better off. Something in that soothes my squicked-over bits.

>89 ChrisG1: The problems the Mormons, and Falun Gong, and ISIS face is exactly what makes books like that one possible: Record-keeping is better nowadays. Of course the tech scum are doing their goddamnedest to undo that with AI, but for now it's a boon to truthtelling.

21. A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

This is another Georgette Heyer regency, written late enough in the author's life that I was already alive.

This one's interesting in part for the ways in which it violates modern regency tropes. We have a marriage of convenience here which goes very well indeed - but without both parties discovering in the course of the story that they are in fact madly, passionately in love with each other. Instead, the man discovers that he's incredibly comfortable with the wife he married for her money, and would not have been at all comfortable with the lady he'd wanted to marry, if only he'd been able to afford to do so. In fact, the more he sees of his ex-fiancee, the less he wants to.

His wife, on the other hand, isn't particularly surprised. Her goal always was for her husband to be comfortable with her. Maybe she had a tendre for him, and maybe she did not, before her father proposed the match; we're never told, though we know she knew him.

Basically, the novel is a paean to the little things of life, at the expense of magnificent passions. It works well, and I also appreciate its upending of the genre tropes.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1961
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10, #14, #16, #18 and #20 for this year
- English, own shelves, 454 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 25-27, 2025, book previously read

22. Miss Amelia's List by Mercedes Lackey

This is the 18th volume in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters fantasy series. All books involve roughly the same magic system, and a historical setting that includes this magic (mostly hidden from non-magicians) without changing history in any way. Thus the plots involve private matters, nothing touching on changes to history.

Many of these novels are also SCA-history - the past not as it was, but as it should have been. Characters are "better", by modern standards, than their average historical counterpart - sometimes so much better as to strain credulity. They also share the romance trope of everything coming out right in the end; in fact, they often have a lot in common with the kind of historical romance not focussed on sexuality.

In this case, we have a pair of cousins from just post revolutionary US, in England partly for business reasons, and partly looking for husbands. (Yes, they are both women.) They are also virulent abolitionists, with their home plantation about half populated by escaped slaves and their descendants, treated absolutely as equals. One of the two cousins, who successfully claims Italian ancestry, is in fact the great granddaughter of an African slave.

There's a lot of Regency-Romance-like exploration of the English social scene, though not at the level of the nobility. (They do have some entree to the noble scene, but only among elemental magicians.)

Overall, the scenes are great, and there is a plot, but the plot elements seem badly balanced. The abduction-and-escape near the end feels like it was thrown in to put some action in the story. And what a coincidence that someone had just recently given the abductee the perfect magical tool for neutralizing her opponent.

There are also characterization issues, even affecting the title. Miss Amelia's lists start out as her way of coping with anxiety and stress, but disappear later in the book, along with the personality trait that required them.

I feel as if the author is losing her ability to build coherent plots - or simply not bothering, because lots of people buy her books on name alone.

Still, it worked as a nice light snack, except when the SCA-like improvements to history interfered with suspension of disbelief.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fantasy, series (not first), 2024
- Author (Mercedes Lackey): female, American, born 1950, novelist, author frequently read
- English, public library, 325 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 4-5 2025, book not previously read

23. Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear

This is volume 9 in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries. Like the others, it was an enjoyable read. The author is continuing to manage a nice variability in the cases investigated in each volume, so they rarely seem predictable and thus boring. On the other hand, the events in the investigator's personal life are beginning to be a bit repetitious. I'm tired of Maisie's uncertainty about her love life, even though it may well be realistic, given the time scale.

This volume winds up with an interesting twist, that would be such a major spoiler that I don't want to discuss it. However, it brings in an ethical question new to this series, that more people should perhaps think about. The question is more implied than asked, and the answers found by the characters seem somewhat trite, but I'm pleased that it was there.

Overall, the book's a nice light snack, on the good end of my ratings for books I'd describe that way.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2012
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12 and #13 for this year
- English, public library, 335 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 19-Mar 6, 2025; book not previously read

24. Economics : the user's guide by Ha-Joon Chang

I really appreciated this book on economics. Instead of conforming to a single school of economics, often teaching The Truth according to that school without even identifying the school in question, this book gives a taxonomy of economic schools, with information about founders, proponents, strengths and weaknesses.

I felt like someone had given me the key to the (economist) universe; now I have knowledge - and names - to back my intuitively built tentative groupings of economists and their often unfalsifiable Truths. I'm also newly aware of more approaches than the average American would ever mention - since they often write as if they think there are only two: Marxism (bad), and Neoclassicism (good).

The rest of the book was a decent introduction to economic concepts, aimed at lay people with somewhat less knowledge than I already had.

If you want to read economics 101, without being indoctrinated into The (Political) Truth (TM), as with two so-called "common sense" intros I read earlier this year, I suggest starting here.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2014
- Author (Ha-Joon Chang): male, South Korean, born 1963, academic (economics), author previously read
- English, public library, 365 pages, 4.5 stars
- read Feb 18-Mar 10, 2025; book not previously read

>82 ArlieS: This growing old thing bites. I'm *still* not 100% recovered from the crud I caught late in February. Today it's excess tiredness, a headache, and the never-ending cough-to-clear-phlegm.

Fortunately there's nothing more I absolutely must do today, so a nap seems to be in order.

Hi Arlie!

Long time no visit - sorry about your GERD, February-March crud.

I am, of course, a very serious Heyer fan, and appreciate your reviews. These Old Shades is in my top 5, but that's a quibble.

I also appreciate the reviews of the nonfiction books you have read.

Naps are always good.

>95 ArlieS: Ha Joon Chang is a writer on economics I would recommend to many also, Arlie. He breaks down difficult concepts very concisely.

I agree with Karen on the benefits of naps.

Have a great weekend.

Hi Arlie -- sorry to hear you are battling illness crud as well. It's so taxing and stubborn. Hang in there. I love the Maisie Dobbs series. No idea what number I'm on but I should get back to it. Wishing you a great week ahead! : )

Health check-in, Arlie, hoping you're feeling better and doing more satisfying reading.

>100 richardderus: Thanks Richard. I want my normal energy back, but at least I'm not feeling especially sick, provided I sleep more than normal.

>91 richardderus: I wish I wasn't afraid that record-keeping is in the process of getting much worse; anything stored on line on someone else's server can be modified at will. Or simply deleted.

>89 ChrisG1: I had a Mormon coworker, several jobs ago, and we got on well even though he knew I was nothing even resembling any kind of Christian, let alone a Mormon. But I also knew at least two ex-Mormons, both of them gay, who had nothing good to say about the church in which they'd been raised. Both were neo-pagans.

>97 karenmarie: It's good to "see" you here.

The GERD has fortunately calmed down a lot, now being tameable by less than a single Tums per day. Maybe avoiding acidic food has been good for that, or maybe whatever bug I've been having has anti-GERD effects. Either way, I'm happy not to have had to deal with both at the same time.

>98 PaulCranswick: I was glad to find him, after a string of disappointing economics witers.

I'm now reading Good economics for Hard Times, by Abhijit V. Bannerjee and Esther Duflo. Have you read either of them?

>99 Berly: I just keep on reminding myself that this, too, shall pass. Today has been a pretty good day, so I'm getting caught up on LibraryThing, though perhaps I should be doing the laundry instead.

I continue to read Maisie Dobbs books, and will be sorry to finish all that have been published and need to wait for new ones. Fortunately I still have several to go.

25. Venetia by Georgette Heyer

This is another regency romance, read in large print format because that's what my library has.

I was very nearly scared off by the foreword, written by a far more recent romance writer, who basically described it as being as close to soft porn as you could get, in an era when the only sexual activity described would be a kiss. According to this author, the (sexual) heat steamed off every page. I wound up wondering whether she'd read the same book I had.

My ten cent summary, at risk of spoiling: a very responsible young woman meets a well-behaved rake, who becomes a friend; marriage eventually ensues in spite of the best efforts of her relatives.

The operative word here is "friend". There is some forward behaviour from the rake at their very first meeting, but then the woman's brother is injured in a riding accident, and winds recuperating at the rake's home - it being closer to where the accident takes place. This puts the "rake" safely in the category of "friend" to both the young woman and her brother - both in their minds and in his. The bad behaviour never recurs, replaced with a little bit of extravagant verbal flirtation, and immense helpfulness, including at one point physically interfering with unwanted behaviour from another would-be suitor.

It's notable how much agency this woman has. Part comes from the head of the family (another brother) being too selfish to bother coming home to take up any responsibilities, leaving them primarily to her. But she continues to make her own decisions - and act on them - even after she's relieved of those responsibilities. Her behaviour remains within the bounds of convention, but not entirely - she's a believable rebel, who decides she'd prefer the right man, complete with his reflected bad reputation, rather than any suitor approved of by her uncle - and then makes it happen, in spite of the rules being rigged against her.

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1958
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10, #14, #16, #18, #20 and #21 for this year
- English, public library, 454 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 7-11, 2025, book probably not previously read

I read this book in a large print edition which inflated its page count.

26. The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

This is yet another of Heyer's Regency romances. In this case, we have an unconventional interfering busybody being sent to stay with her aunt's family while her father is in Brazil. Sophy likes to fix things she sees as wrong, and her methods are unconventional. But she's equipped with money, horsemanship, social skills, an unusual upbringing, and the occaisional assistance of her widowed father's Spanish fiancée.

She arrives with a monkey (for the household children), a dog, and an excellent horse. Mischief ensues, featuring the monkey. She decides that the marriage plans of both the eldest son and the eldest daughter just won't do, and sets out to torpedo them. Eventually she finds out that the next son is in financial trouble, and sets out to rescue him. She is on friendly terms with 90% of the officers in the British army, including plenty of neer-do-wells. Her hostess is sometimes appalled.

When the dust clears, there are three marriages pending, though one couple doesn't quite know it yet. One of them is her own - with the eldest son of her aunt, with whom she'd repeatedly quarreled. Her father's marriage is off - not her intent - to his great relief, as he's decided he's not the marrying kind after all. She's still a scary whirlwind of unpredictable actions, making everyone she knows nervous, even though the results have all been good.

And since it's a romance, they presumably all live happily ever after, even the useless would-be poet, who's no longer engaged to anyone. (We can hope he'll grow out of his ambitions.)

Statistics:
- fiction, romance (regency), non-series, 1950
- Author (Georgette Heyer): female, British, born 1902, novelist, author of my #9, #10, #14, #16, #18, #20, #21 and #25 for this year
- English, public library, 372 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 15-18, 2025, book probably not previously read

27. Good economics for hard times by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

This is an interesting book about economics, as applied to various human problems. The chapters are interesting, and frequently cite research, much of it about real world human behaviour - as compared to the imagined selfishly rational behaviour of the homo economicus presumed by theoretical economists.

But the book doesn't cohere - the chapters seem mostly independent, each with its own topic. I found myself looking back to the table of contents after reading it, to see what all it had been about; unfortunately, cutesy chapter titles didn't always jog my memory.

The best arguments, with the solidest evidence, are found in the early chapters. The most important point is that the labour market is sticky. People mostly don't pick up and move when they lose their jobs, even when there are jobs available elsewhere. They mostly don't retrain in new specialties either. The exception would mostly be the youngest cohorts, still beginning their careers. This is not to say that no one moves, or even no older person. But overall, there's little recovery among those who lose their jobs when their industry moves far away - their children might take whatever new types of jobs are available, wherever they are available, but rarely the laid-off parents.

This is, of course, not what we're told by Chicago School economists, who know what homo economicus would do, and therefore assert that's what real people actually do. (They aren't prone to check their predictions against real life events, AFAICT. Even other groups of neo-classical economists seem unlikely to see a need to check predictions from their axioms.)

I'm one of the rare ones, who's worked in 5 cities, 2 countries, and rather more individual jobs. I did move - but in pursuit of opportunity rather than recovering from adversity. At the time, I was young, unmarried, and childless. I didn't have ailing parents I needed to help, or healthy parents I relied on for babysitting. And I didn't have a house that couldn't be sold for what I'd paid for it because of a local economy that had crashed, putting me and others out of work. (While the book doesn't say so, another group likely to pick up and move are academics - until they get tenure, they can be extremely nomadic. This may be why many economists are so sure that everyone will pick up and move that they don't feel a need to check their predictions.)

Related to this is a discussion of emigration: bottom line, most people don't want to emigrate. They mostly need to be pushed out of a home they find unlivable, to get them to move at all. Some do move, seeking opportunity - presumably including both authors, who moved to academic jobs in the US. I'm also in that group. But it's a much smaller group than people think when worrying about an immigrant invasion. It's hard for most people to get a job in a place where they don't know anyone, don't speak the language, etc. etc., no matter how many more jobs are available there than back where they do know people. There's less opportunity to get assistance when a job is unavailable, or other things go wrong - no friends, relatives, or long term neighbours. They anticipate this, and mostly judge themselves better off staying where they are.

The book continues with a tour of other topical issues with economic aspects, such as increasing income inequality, the increasing use of artificial intelligence technology, etc.. This is the part that really didn't stick with me. The chapters made sense, but didn't connect well to each other. I'm not going to try to discuss them.

This disjointedness tempted me to drop the rating below 4 - but 3.5 would have put it to close to my ratings of books teaching The Truth (TM) according to the Chicago School of Economics, without bothering with such refinements as evidence. If the quality of the first chapters had kept up, though, I might have rated the book at 4.5.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2019
- Author 1 (Abhijit V. Banerjee): male, India (naturalized USA), born 1961, academic (economics), author not previously read
- Author 2 (Esther Duflo): female, France (naturalized USA), born 1972, academic (economics), author not previously read
- English, public library, 403 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 11-21, 2025; book not previously read

28. Leaving everything most loved by Jacqueline Winspear

This is book 10 in the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries, featuring a female sleuth from a lower class background, operating (so far) in London England between the two world wars.

I've got some cranky thoughts about the series, which is beginning to annoy me, and gets worse in book 11, but I still like the individual books.

In this book, Maisie is asked to investigate the murder of a woman from India, after the police have pretty much dropped the ball. There's a lot of content related to India, along with a desire on the part of Maisie to get away from it all, visiting India for a long enough period to entirely shut down her business. And Maisie's romantic life is at the point of deciding whether to marry or break up.

For me, the good parts of this book were the case itself, its twists, and the way it worked out. Those were as satisfying as this series usually is, maybe even a hair more.

On the other hand, I'm tired of the romantic twists in this series. Given the cultural setting, she really can't marry and continue to work, not at her professional level. (Poor women have always worked, married or not.) Or at least the author believes so, or believes the readers would insist on that. So she's now on her third romance since the series started.

I'm also tired of the girl from a poor background climbing the social scale. I can just barely see a smart girl before world war I, "in service", becoming a project for her employers, gaining a lot of tutoring and mentoring, and eventually able to attend university. But Cambridge? OK, that's in the background for the first book; I'll accept it. But then on the one hand, her main mentor dies leaving essentially all his considerable wealth to her. And on the other hand, the son of the family she worked for, complete with noble title, is courting her extremely seriously.

I'm now waiting for another shoe to drop, where her deceased mother proves to somehow have noble blood herself, or similar - you see, I've read that series before, where the proudly yeoman family's scion turns out to be closely connected by blood with the ruling elite of a nearby nation. (The last time I read this trope, the series was Honor Harrington.) Personally, I'd much rather see reasonable success from a lower class background - not either over-the-top success or turning out to really be upper class by blood after all. By the time we get to book 11, which I have just started, she's really over the top, and yet I fear there's more to come.

Still, this book itself is worth reading. And I enjoyed the verbal portraits of individuals midway between Indian and British, often as a result of a mixed marriage.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2013
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12, #13 and #23 for this year
- English, public library, 455 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 11-22, 2025; book not previously read

I read this book in a large print edition which inflated its page count.

>106 ArlieS: Not all it could've been, on either the up- or the down-side. *sigh*

>107 ArlieS: "Maisie" alone scuppers her chances of being taken seriously by the U...simply not happenin' that any woman called "Maisie" will be anything but a maid or cook. "Davina" or "India" would never be taken for chars....

>108 richardderus: I don't know for sure what connotations names had in early twentieth century Britain, but I find myself inclined to agree with you. At a guess, the name was chosen when the author still thought there'd only be one or two books, since Maisie's lower class origins were very much to the point in the first book.

>108 richardderus: & >109 ArlieS: My grandmother was called Ethel which was in some ways a high society name but she spent some time in domestic service and told the most uproarious stories about her time.

>110 PaulCranswick: Neat coincidence here: my mother's mother was also named Ethel.

There's a bit of domestic service in her background too, caring for other people's children: nanny or governess, I'm not sure which.

>108 richardderus: In the volume I'm currently reading, "Maisie" turns out to be a nickname, not her given name. I forget now what that was; perhaps Margaret. I predict she'll be using that name more as the series proceeds, when she isn't simply going by "Lady Compton".

>111 ArlieS: What a wonderful coincidence, Arlie!

29. Raiders, rulers, and traders : the horse and the rise of empires by David Chaffetz

This is a book about horses, primarily as military and prestige technology, particularly of empires and future or potential empires. It covers the usual suspects - horse nomads, prone to invading or raiding settled neighbours - but doesn't limit itself to them. It also has a lot to say about the settled lands themselves, in particular their use and acquisition of horses, for military and prestige purposes.

In general, it's easier to raise horses in herding country, harder in croplands - the climate is wrong, there's not enough grass, and the horses wind up expensively stable fed. They also get less exercise and less natural toughening - the same genetic lines wind up smaller and with less endurance than their steppe-raised parents. So while the settled empires put a lot of effort into raising their own horses, they were also very eager to buy horses raised by pastoralists, often pastoralists far away.

This led to trading opportunities. Many pastoralists became horse-breeders, trading surplus horses for the products of settled lands, often sending caravans quite a distance to make those sales. The author makes a case that the Great Silk Road should really be called the Great Horse road, with silk trade being merely incidental, except to the extent that Chinese purchasers often offered silk as payment, to the point of silk acting more like a currency than not.

The other alternative for pastoralists seeking a use for their excess horses was raiding - and that's what they did when they thought this would be more profitable, or trading opportunities were blocked. The book covers this pattern also, but while most books about steppe pastoralists tend to focus on raiding and conquest, this one pays a lot of attention to trade and horse breeding.

It also talks a lot about different "breeds" - better conceptualized as the kind of horses raised in some particular location - their advantages, disadvantages, and distribution.

Finally, we read a lot about places like Afghanistan - a horse breeding gateway to India - that rarely seem to be covered in books written in English.

So you may ask why I only rate this book at 3. Well, the problem is that things didn't stick with me, and it took me a whole month to plow steadily through the book, which was less than 500 pages.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (David Chaffetz): male, United States, age unknown (early career in "early 1980s"; retired in 2018 (and then started writing?)), non-academic historian, author not previously read
- English, public library, 424 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 23-Mar 23, 2025; book not previously read

30. Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way by Roma Agrawal

This book discusses seven foundational technologies and their variants: nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string, pump. Most are extremely old. All are still used today, often as component parts of extremely modern technologies.

The discussion is a mix of history and technology, with lots of people and anecdotes. Much of the discussion involves quite short sections on individual variants or modern uses. It thus tends broad and shallow, rather than narrow and deep.

Unfortunately that mix didn't work too well for me, in terms of remembering the content, or even making steady progress with the book. It thus took me 24 days to read from start to finish, as other books jumped my reading queue. And I didn't remember anywhere near as much as I would have liked to have.

I'm nonetheless rating the book at 4, because there's lots of good information in here, and I could have got more out of it if I'd taken notes and studied them, rather than simply reading through everything once. It just isn't my preferred style.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, technology, series: n/a, 2023
- Author (Roma Agrawal): female, India (and Great Britain), born in 1983, structural engineer, author previously read (in 2018)
- English, public library, 258 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 2-25, 2025; book not previously read

31. A dangerous place by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 11th volume of the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries, so far set between World Wars I and II. It changes the emphasis of the series in ways I did not like, and I'm unsure whether I'll be continuing it. That said, I'm aware that others may well prefer the new series template, and I can sympathize with an author who's tired of writing the same book over and over again, with only details and setting changed.

My problem, in a nutshell, is that this book is predominantly about Maisie's psychological and emotional state, and only secondarily a mystery novel. Worse, while there is a mystery, Maisie is basically led around by the nose to a conclusion she's never sure of; the important thing is that getting back to work, first on this mystery and later as a nurse, helps her recover from major trauma.

The previous book ended with Maisie having lots of options, each likely to make significant changes to the series. She had closed down her detective office, and her staff had found themselves new positions. She was on her way to India, and she had received a proposal of marriage from a man she loved, who expected to be based in Canada, which she's agreed to answer by telegram some months in the future. The author "solved" her problem with Maisie not being socially permitted to work if she married, but being well on the road to marriage emotionally, by having her married, impregnated, widowed, and then delivered of a dead child, all between this book and the last. She is, moreover, on her way back to the United Kingdom, having spent time in Canada (with her husband), and India.

To make the reversion to the original setting more extreme, the book ends with her reestablishing her detective business, and rehiring the same staff, both of whom have reasons their new employment isn't working. So the detective plots will be more of the same, but presumably with lots more emphasis on the detective's internal life.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2015
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12, #13, #23 and #28 for this year
- English, public library, 309 pages, 3 stars
- read Mar 26?-29, 2025; book not previously read

p.s. I *have* already read the next volume, so I'm clearly not stopping with this volume. But I'm also not sure whether it will be my last, even though I ahve at least one more checked out from the library.

>116 ArlieS: Ye gawds, Arlie. Winspear's clearly a major consumer of raw handwavium. That sounds flat awful to me.

I hope y'all're keeping well as spring lurches onward.

>116 ArlieS: I am skipping your review as I am currently reading the series. However, based on your 3 star rating it sounds like one of the weaker books in the series which I enjoy over all. I am up to book 8, A Lesson in Secrets.

Have a wonderful weekend, Arlie!

>118 alcottacre: Good choice. I put my most revealing comments behind a spoiler tag, but didn't hide everything. It's *hard* to review fiction without spoilers; I'm not good at it.

I hope the series continues to work well for you.

>117 richardderus: I see our tastes are similar.

As for my health, I'm doing so well that I'm ready to start another round of dealing with what's become a chronic problem with my shoulder, though without too much optimism. (At least now we have a good idea of why the first round of physical therapy didn't work.)

32. Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 12th volume in the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries, so far set between World Wars I and II. This is the third volume where Maisie gets involved in secret government activities, and the first one where she assumes another's identity for that purpose. The book works as a story, with only a few spots where it pushes against the limits of my suspension of disbelief.

The personal issues are still prominent, but less than in the prior volume, and aren't having such a large impact on Maisie's choices and actions as they did in that volume. For me, this is a relief. I probably will start volume 13, which I borrowed from the library at the same time as volume 12.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2016
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12, #13, #23, #28 and #32 for this year
- English, public library, 287 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 29- Apr 1, 2025; book not previously read

33. Power and progress : our thousand-year struggle over technology and prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

This economics book could perhaps be summarized as "the productivity bandwagon often fails to work; here are some details". There's a popular concept, that when productivity improves, the gains are widely shared - in fact everyone benefits. The usual aphorism is that "a rising tide lifts all boats."

The authors disagree. They start with historical examples where this did and did not work, sometimes even worsening the lot of the average and/or least wealthy people. Then they explore the question of the conditions needed for this aphorism to be accurate - i.e. for the gains of productivity to be shared, rather than grabbed, or more than grabbed, either by those already powerful, or those controlling the new methods, technology, or investment.

This is, of course, inescapably political. The authors clearly favor less inequality, not more. They also clearly think that modern conditions are not conducive to gains being generously or even grudgingly shared, at least in most nations, and specifically the United States.

On the good side, though, they aren't writing a typical political book. There's no ranting about how terrible things are to fire up the base. There's a relative lack of mindless group think, where the author(s) endorse everything their party favors, and nothing the party opposes, while justifying none of it. They basically have one issue, inequality, and an approach to it that involves a long view of history.

And as it happens, I share both their issue and their approach. Their historical approach resulted in my being exposed to facts I hadn't previously known, which I also appreciate. So it's no surprise that I liked this book.

That said, far too much of it failed to stick in my head. Maybe it's my aging brain, but I suspect at least part of the blame can be assigned to failures of organization. Hence my rating of 4 rather than 4.5.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2023
- Author (Daron Acemoglu): male, Turkey (and United States), born in 1967, academic (economics), author previously read (in 2019)
- Author (Simon Johnson): male, Great Britain (and United States), born in 1963, academic (economics), author not previously read
- English, public library, 546 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 24-Apr 7, 2025; book not previously read

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

My library reading follows a predictable pattern.

I find myself short of reading matter, consult my TBR list, and create lists of books I'd like to read now, which can be acquired from some local library. I place some holds, and perhaps some inter-library loan requests. Then - perhaps when its first hold comes in - I visit one of the libraries, and pull other books from the list off their shelves. Often I visit the other one not long after, and pull more books from its shelves. Pretty soon I have rather more books than I can carry at one time. Meanwhile farther holds become available, and I often pick up additional books when collecting those holds.

Pretty soon I have a great heap of books. If no one puts a hold on a book, I can renew it 3 times, for a total of 12 weeks. So I have time to get through quite a large stack.

I start three or four books: any book that already has someone else's hold on it, plus whichever books seem most attractive at the moment. A few are disappointing, but most are indeed among the better books in that set. So I have a period where reading is especially enjoyable, and most of my ratings are high.

But that leaves only books that didn't grab me quite as much.Some will prove to be gems, but more of them will be disappointing. There will be more bad reviews and maybe some DNFs, and a lot of books rated at a mere 3. Reading feels less attractive, and I wonder what kind of grouch I've become.

At that point I may bring in a few later members of series that I'm enjoying, often ones where earlier books were in the initial batch. But I'll also read less. And as I get closer to the final due date for the earliest borrowed books in this batch, my reading choices will be more governed by when the books are finally due, less by what I actively want to read.

I'm currently in the "finish up these books" stage. I've got one book finished and still to review that's somewhere between 2.5 and 3. I'm working my way through a novel that's something of a curate's egg, except that the good parts really are good, not merely edible. Another is headed for a 3 due to too much human interest at the expense of the natural science I came for.

There's got to be a better way. Maybe I should even out my borrowing, so I never have 8-12 weeks of reading on hand at one time. Maybe I should plan on DNFing at least 2 out of every batch, even if they are basically readable. Maybe I need a new topic, so as to widen my available selection.

Meanwhile, here I am.

>122 ArlieS: What an interesting analysis of reading habits and procedures. Parts of it are familiar if not so common. Where I'd differ most these days is in binge reading when I've found a new, compelling author, or go into re-read mode, and adding up to 30% of books for challenges or online book clubs.

>122 ArlieS: Your solutions are wise. Abandoning books is hard for me. I got around that by taking it as a promoted act of self-preservation, hence my calling it "the Pearl Rule." Nancy Pearl gave me a structure and thus permission and cover for abandoning books.

Merely being readable is quickly losing power over me; I'm old, I've already had three strokes, who knows how long I've got to read? Not wasting time on mediocrity is a smart bet.

>122 ArlieS:: Ah, I am not alone! Thank you! The first few I read from my library stack end up being highly rated, and it keeps going down from there, and I feel terrible for rating so many books so 'eh'. I even want to DNF some. I may need to go back to my approach from a couple years ago, where every book had to be from a different genre than the one before; at least the ratings were better then. I don't have an answer to the struggle either, but I look forward to seeing if you come up with a solution.

>123 quondame: I love it when I find such an author, though when there's a series involved, I'd give 50-50 odds that it will develop in ways that don't please me as much as the first volume. (Relatively recent examples of that: Temeraire, and Maisie Dobbs)

Sadly, I'm getting set in my ways, and less prone to find new series or authors I love than I used to be.

>124 richardderus: Abandoning books goes against my upbringing, not to mention 50 years of habit. But I persevere at learning this new skill; some books really aren't worth the attention.

You've been one of my role models.

>125 alsvidur: I suppose it makes sense that some books are going to be disappointing. And the worst of my reviews are sometimes books I started shortly after I got them home, and then put them down for a couple of weeks - repeatedly, until they were running out of renewals.

The idea of alternating genres is interesting, but I tend to read several books at once, rarely of the same genre. So there's actually overlap, with the fiction mostly being read in less total time, and the non-fiction chunksters spread over longer, only exceeded by the ones I kept putting down for a couple of weeks.

34. The great wave : the era of radical disruption and the rise of the outsider by Michiko Kakutani

This book utterly failed to work for me. It took me 3 months and an impending deadline to get through 238 pages. It might well work better for someone else, so I've rated it at 3 rather than 2.5, but that was very much a coin flip.

The author is a literary critic and a journalist. The former almost guarantees I won't like the book; the latter merely raises the odds of a similar bad result. If I'd been smarter, when I saw it on the new books shelf at the library, I'd have read the about-the-author blurb on the inside back cover, and put it back on the shelf. But the topic was potentially interesting, if not handled with journalistic shallowness, so I gave it a try.

I knew I was in trouble in an early chapter, when the author clearly subscribed to every single US left wing political belief, without exception, and without any sense of differences in relative importance. That's when I noticed she'd spent a career at the New York Times. Apparently she'd imbibed their orthodoxy, whether as a true believer, or as the viewpoint from which one was expected to write. And whether she believed it or not, I can't see her as understanding her positions in any depth - they were merely The Truth (TM), not requiring thought.

She does use her mind when it comes to literary criticism, at least as far as I can tell. While I'm so disinterested in that field as to be unaware of its orthodoxies, she writes as if she has definite opinions and understanding. But oh dear, she tries to demonstrate the state of current (mass?) opinion by discussion of the works of a number of authors I've never heard of, who presumably are equally unknown to the 98%* of the population who don't care about capital A art or capital l Literature. (Those who perform interest in such matters as a class related shibboleth will have heard of them, but will neither understand nor actually care about them, though they may well dutifully learn and repeat this author's talking points about them.)

Add to this that I didn't feel as if the chapters formed a coherent argument - perhaps because I read it so intermittently, but perhaps because the book was more like a series of essays than an integrated book - a common failing of people who've spent their careers writing short pieces.

I'm really not sure why I finished it. And that ought to make it a 2.5 by my posted rules. But since it's probably not a bad book, for someone who likes literary criticism, and reads Literature as well as non-fiction and escapist fiction, I've given it a 3.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, a pundit bloviates, series: n/a, 2024
- Author (Michiko Kakutani): female, United States, born in 1955, literary critic and journalist (as literary critic), author not previously read
- English, public library, 238 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 22-Apr 7, 2025; book not previously read

* number pulled out of my rear end, based perhaps on people I personally know, who to be fair tend far more interested in engineering than art, except the ones who aspire to write, most of whom are into science fiction and fantasy, not Literature (TM).

This book was found on the new books shelf at a local library.

35. Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

I can't decide whether or not I like this science fiction mystery. It kept me coming back for more; it also kept me frustrated.

On the good side, it was imaginative, with lots of new-to-me features.

Also on the good side, the aliens are at least somewhat alien, not humans in costume.

On the bad side, it had a cast of far too many characters, and would drop into the past whenever yet another one became important.

It also had an awful lot of nasty people, mostly involved in some or other type of destructive covert ops, without being a spy thriller. It's effectively some kind of noir - everything's a downer. Families are all dysfunctional, with plenty of intra-familial murder. The problem is never who to suspect, but which of the plausible suspects actually did the deed any of them wanted to do.

Individual scenes are compelling, and they certainly add up to a plot, with the key mysteries eventually solved. But the glue between them jumped around rather too much for my taste.

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction/mystery, first of a series, 2022
- Author (Mur Lafferty): female; American, born 1973, "podcaster and writer", author not previously read
- English, public library, 453 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 2-14, 2025; book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by Library Thing's classic recommendation system.

>126 ArlieS: I am both touched and honored, Arlie.

>127 ArlieS: *ew*

>128 ArlieS: Six Wakes was irritating enough that this author went onto my "no no Nanette" list.

>126 ArlieS: While Temeraire didn't end as strongly as it began, and absolutely slogged before the last volumes, Novik did so much better in her later books, so I count finding her as very much a win.

>129 richardderus: Thanks for the warning

>130 quondame: I enjoyed her Scholomance series.

I'm having my second day in a row of being what I now call "energetic", but considered "normal" as little as one decade ago.

I've spent the time usefully by replacing Gmail with Protonmail. The former inserts Google in your business; the latter's main selling point is enhanced privacy. But as it turns out, it also works on every operating system available, including linux, with much the same user interface throughout. (I use linux, MacOS, and Android, so finding tools that work on all of them is often a problem.) And that UI seems to have been designed for nerds, with keyboard shortcuts, email filter rules, and similar, while also having multiple layers suitable for less technical users.

There are a few warts, as always, but this is, essentially, the best email system I've ever used, defining "best" a some combination of "suits my tastes", "doesn't waste my time", and "has just about every feature I want".

I was able to import everything I had in gmail, and I'm gradually setting up filter rules, folders, etc. as emails come in. This will continue on slow, possibly for months. My next project will be to learn to use their calendar program (data already imported and app installed), followed by their password manager.

Meanwhile, I'm emitting happy geek squees.

36. In this grave hour by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 13th volume in the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries, which has now reached the beginning of World War II. It worked reasonably well for me. Maisie continues to have a personal life, which develops over time - and volumes - but in this volume the developments don't have me rolling my eyes. I can't say more without spoilers, but it was definitely an OK read.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2017
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of my #12, #13, #23, #28, #32 and #33 for this year
- English, public library, 335 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 15-18, 2025; book not previously read

I've had a terrible accident(*): I broke my glasses. In particular, my every day full range bifocals, the ones I wear to drive, and to read, but not while using the computer.

Fortunately I was able to find an older pair that's still usable, if not the perfect prescription. And I've made an appointment with the eye doc, who'd already sent me this year's time-for-a-checkup reminder.

But what a terrible thing to happen to a reader, who's also the only driver in their household. And thank heavens it happened late last night, not immediately before I needed to drive somewhere.

---

(*) No human flesh was damaged - I didn't fall or anything - in fact the problem may well have been metal fatigue, since the frames had been reused.

>132 ArlieS: I chucked Opera onto my Chromebook for use on sites that get balky when Chromed. Also I'm just sick of the "use another browser" dodge in customer complaint emails.

Protonmail having filters means it works like my Yahoo account. That's one of Gmail's biggest failings, the lack of filters.

Squee away happily.

>135 richardderus: I didn't know yahoomail had filters. If I had, I might have moved there most of a decade ago, when it became impractical to run my own email server.

37. To die but once by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 14th volume in the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries. I liked it, but just about everything I have to say will need a spoiler tag. Moreover, the part that struck me the most was peripheral to the mystery plot, and somewhat peripheral to the ongoing development of the protagonist's life. The plot itself was interesting, and the developing life has got itself far from issues of romance - both positives with me. But they aren't the most interesting aspect of this book, to me at least.

I grew up with stories of World War II. Many were written for children, and those often had sub-adult protagonists. Maybe this is why there was high adventure, and terrible risks - but generally no one important to the reader died, and no one was maimed. And this was doubly true when the topic was the evacuation at Dunkirk - if anyone died, it was an anonymous Tommy the brave and sometimes sub-adult boaters failed to rescue.

Well, in this book the 16 year old son of Maisie's best friend and his own similar aged friend "borrow" a parental boat they'd been forbidden to use, and join the Dunkirk evacuation, without bothering to first inform anyone of what they were doing. One of them comes back dead; the other barely manages to get back, with a load of soldiers and his friend's body, with an arm so badly injured that it has to be amputated.

This is the first book I remember where teenage heroics at Dunkirk has fatal consequences, not to mention life altering injuries. I was very impressed.

I was impressed. I was also impressed what seemed to me to be unusually accurate details from the main plot - which turned out to be drawn, with some artistic license, from the life of the author's father. (Like me, she had parents who were adult or near adult in World War II.)

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2018
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of 7 other books I've read in 2025
- English, public library, 325 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 18-23, 2025; book not previously read

38. The new financial order : risk in the 21st century by Robert J. Shiller

This book was interesting, but kept pinging my "is this snake oil" meter. The basic premise is that modern technology allows insuring against risks not previously insurable, and this would be a good thing to do. In particular, the large amount of data amassed on just about everything allows insuring against risks like "XYZ country's GDP won't grow as fast as predicted" and "the financial rewards of career X won't be as good as predicted when John Doe started training for that career".

The book was published in 2003, so the author saw no problem with using complex financial derivatives for this purpose, and calling them by that name, rather than some euphemistic neologism. That's a nit, not at all one of my problems with this book, but amusing.

The real problems are with the ideas being advocated. To my non-professional eyes, there are two classes of significant issue. (1) Some of these risks appear to me to be correlated, so that if there are claims, there are more than enough claims to render the insurance unprofitable. (A topical example of this in the context of more ordinary insurance would be risk of fire damage to houses in California.) Can insurers really diversify enough to handle e.g. the constellation of risks that are exacerbated by climate change? (2) Measures to avoid "moral hazard" seem likely to result in insurance that is essentially useless, having every excuse not to pay the claimant.

Note that the case of "country X's GDP not increasing" doesn't fall into these traps. The author conceptualizes this as a deal between two countries, as dissimilar as possible. The country that does better (compared to expectations) pays the one that does worse. If everyone's economy tanks, there isn't some private insurer on the hook to pay off all these policies. Here the risks are entirely political, involving the payer country repudiating the contract unilaterally. That risk might be lessened by their relative prosperity when the payment comes due, a well as other factors that usually result in nation keeping their contracts, at least with foreigners.

I found the ideas interesting, and it sure would be nice to insure against picking the wrong career, or the wrong city to live in (and buy property). But I don't trust insurance companies not to either fail to diversify sufficiently to be able to pay, or to simply come up with infinite excuses to collect premiums while under-paying claims. (Anyone who has health insurance in the US has experienced the latter pattern.)

Also, most people would rather consume now, and let the future take care of itself. Life insurance was a hard sell for many years, somehow made more salable by pairing it with an enforced savings plan, guaranteed to produce a worse outcome than separate term insurance and savings plans. (And the author tells this story with approval, and without mentioning what a bad deal "whole life insurance" is for the purchaser. That made me wonder what other bad deals were advocated elsewhere in the book.)

It's interesting, but primarily for someone who's a completionist about economic or insurance ideas. Reading it was not a waste of my time, but the likely audience is very niche.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2003
- Author (Robert J. Shiller): male, United States, born in 1946, economist (academic), author previously read
- English, public library, 368 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 5-27, 2025; book not previously read

I'm now in the good stage of my library cycle.

I have one book left unfinished that properly belongs to the previous cycle - a hold that arrived rather late in that cycle, due back in 16 days.

I brought 12 books home a couple of days ago, and there are holds ready for me at both of the libraries I frequent.

On Thursday I'll collect another dozen or so from the more distant library, returning those from the last cycle which I still have. And holds and ILLs will trickle in at the closer library for some time.

I'll probably end up with 30 or so books checked out, and happily read them in order of momentary attractiveness, though with at least one fiction and one non-fiction in progress at all times.

>138 ArlieS: The idea of an insurance agency going bankrupt from a plethora of claims sometimes worries me, as I have long-term care insurance and if I need it, my age cohort will likely need it too.

>140 ffortsa: It could happen all too easily, though with luck they saw this coming - the demographic bulge has been obvious for decades - and adjusted premiums accordingly.

>141 ArlieS: They have indeed adjusted premiums, to an eye-crossing extent. It persuaded me to cut down the extravagant coverage I initially bought, to a somewhat more optimistic level. But one of my friends is in desperate need of at least assisted living, and has no insurance, and would be unable to pay for quality care. So I keep paying, with my fingers crossed that I will never need it and live to 100 anyway.

>142 ffortsa: You are more provident than I am.

I have no long term care insurance, and I'm hoping that the value of my house will be sufficient to pay for any long term care I eventually need. That's fine until/unless there's a big drop in local house prices, or an escalation of care costs beyond any home price appreciation, or I need care for an eye-wateringly long period.

My big fear to be honest, is that any care available would be so awful as to make me suicidally depressed. A friend was in a "skilled nursing facility" recently, for two weeks, recovering from a hip replacement, and not a happy camper. It was easier to manage care by doing things for inmates who were capable of doing those things for themselves. Significant push back was required. And when they moved her to the long term care section of the facility, for reasons obscure, she was flat out miserable. (Fortunately, I was able to take her home after only one day there.)

If I had to spend the rest of my life in a place like that, treated as more incompetent than I really was, and with precious little beyond television to occupy me, I'd soon be scheming to hide enough medications to accumulate an overdose. (Inmates weren't allowed to handle their own medications, however capable they were. So subterfuge would be required.)

>143 ArlieS: I live in dread of needing skilled nursing for more than trauma recovery. I would honestly prefer to die quickly and painlessly than experience that. The final-exit kit should always remain assembled!

39. The American agent by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 15th volume in the Maisie Dobbs series of historical mysteries. As readers can see, I went past the point where I was wondering if the series was going in the wrong direction for me, and am continuing to enjoy them, though not giving them stellar ratings.

Unfortunately I've almost reached the last published book of the series - #18 - and the author is older than me, so might stop writing at any time. But I have 3 more still to enjoy, and have borrowed all 3 from the library.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction/mystery, series (not first), 2019
- Author (Jacqueline Winspear): female; British, born 1955, novelist, author of 8 other books I've read in 2025
- English, public library, 365 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 25-29, 2025; book not previously read

Yikes! Tomorrow is May Day, and it's been my custom to start a new thread on that day - yet I'm only at 145 messages in this one. You should all leave me meaningless messages to raise that number to something rather more new thread worthy. ;-)

>146 ArlieS: So

Like

This,

You

Mean?

Yeah ;-)

Happy almost May Day!

>153 elorin: And to you likewise.