richardderus's third 2025 thread

An untitled Mark Rothko from 1964 that engenders hopeful feelings in me.

Welcome to Year of the Wood Snake.

Reviews 1, 2, 3 are here.
Reviews 4 through 17 are here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS
018 Río Muerto in post #67.
019 How to be enough : self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists in post #97.
020 Immemorial (Undelivered Lectures) in post #110.
021 The bee sting in post #127.
022 Living in your light in post #175.
023 Loca in post #183.
024 Beartooth in post #228.

All my threads in the 75ers linked somewhere here
My Last Thread of 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2021 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2022 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2023 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2024 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

All previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:
#004

Seriously...not a great venue for normies here.
My 2024 goals are here, for reference.

2025 GOALS
I wrote an unprecedented 413 reviews in 2024, though certainly not all those books were read in 2024! I'm not counting books read, but reviews written. Decades of pilf from the review aggregators never got a real review written, just some notes on my computer. This year I went back to all my old computers and vacuumed notes onto a data stick. It's my purpose now to write at least a Burgoine review from those notes, post it here and on the DRC aggregator's site, and that will be my annual count.

For those who think I should follow the "books read in 2025" model, that's very interesting, and thank you for sharing your judgment with me. I will, however, be using the site the way I want to not how you think I should.

Numerical goals aren't really the point for me. I've shown I can meet or exceed them often enough now to think they're just unnecessary, and a little show-offy, for me. I will focus my efforts on getting my unwritten-review count down, and on focusing my efforts on reviewing #ReadingIsResistance titles.
☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂
1Q25
2Q25
3Q25
4Q25

See >4 richardderus: for 2024 achievements & 2025 goals.
Monthly (and special hashtag events) wrap-up posts are linked below.
JANUARY 2025 here.

GBBO and other special foodie projects will be linked here.
Season 15's comments linked here.

All previous Burgoine reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD:
BURGOINE #006 Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan in post #136.
#007 Blood on the Brain in post #137.

Best advice I've found on coping with this passage of terribleness.

Okay. Safe to post.

Happy Saturday, Richard. Happy New Thread. Hopeful topper. We need that right now. At least we can all take comfort in the books. How would we survive and stay sane without them?

Salutations on your new thread, dear fellow.

>10 msf59: Welcome, Mark! My answer is: We wouldn't.

Have a Roman ceremonial helmet.

>11 PaulCranswick: Thanks, PC. I'm pretty sure it's only February 2025 but it feels like 2040.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes for a super Saturday, RD. Happy new thread!

>14 alcottacre: *smooch*
***

Tom Gauld is a treasure.

‘Morning, RichardDear. Happy Saturday to you.

From your last thread: Congrats on 24 reviews. Good summary of craptastic January and rotting on ice February to come. I avoid news most of the time. You’re not selfish. You’re saving your sanity, blood pressure, and stress levels. Not everybody needs to always pay attention to the news and the imploding world. Let others carry that burden.

>1 richardderus: Restful colors. I understand how it engenders hope.

>6 richardderus: Every time I see this, I try to see bananas and grapes, but only see happy dolphins and bubbles.

>12 richardderus: Wonderful helmet.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: I said to a friend once that i found Mark Rothko cuddly and he stopped and stared.

But this kind of warm green blob is exactly what i was talking about.

>8 richardderus: Good advice. If you throw your hands in the air adn weep at everything, eventually your outraged and appalled -o-meter will just break down from the strain.

Pick your battles. Keep your powder dry. Keep with your tribe. Keep moving forward.

I forget who it was who said "Winning parties fragment" Losing parties come together".

Let it be so now.

Morning, BigDaddy! Happy new thread!

>8 richardderus: Excellent advise - I had not seen that, so thanks for sharing.

>12 richardderus: That looks heavy.

Stopped in here first to say hello, and now I ma off to catch up with your previous thread. Hoping Saturday is kind to you, dear one. *smooch*

Happy new one, RD, and I'm glad to see the banana dolphins are back :)

Happy new thread, RDear. I love the green in that Rothko painting.

Dropping off weekend smooches and wishing you lots of good reads this February.

Happy new thread Richard. Gong xi fa cai!

Happy new thread, Richard.

>8 richardderus: is a most important bit of political advice for coping. Reminds me of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny

>15 richardderus: - Is that Jack Nicolson??! LOL! Sure looks like him

>16 karenmarie: I'm not willing to resign from humanity just yet, Horrible. I have trans friends and a trans grandchild. The world as it is reflects my generation's rottenness, despite efforts to alter its course; the reaping is, sadly, left to the younger ones. I'm obligated by my morality to stand publicly and as loudly as I can with them.
***

Pretty image to enjoy. Reminder to take the time to enjoy pretty when it's there to be enjoyed!

A new thread for the new month!

I agree: that Rothko does engender hopeful feelings. Let’s hope for the best even as we prepare for the worst.

Cheers.

>17 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

Happy new thread, Richard

>18 magicians_nephew: People I tell about my affection for Rothko (assuming they know who he is) are often verschmeckeled. He doesn't make purty pickshers so he doesn't make sense to a lot of people who don't see the appeal of abstraction.

It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

>19 magicians_nephew: Losing papers over the fault lines between factions; winning busts 'em open. "They" were on the back foot from 1932-1980. We've been on the back foot since 1980. Time to reverse again.

>20 Crazymamie: I found it really helpful, Mamie. I'm glad you did as well.

Those ceremonial helmets are display items, like the Parliament-opening crown...they sit there and look impressive as their owners bask in the glow of that kind of power.

It's Saturday...the neverending-TV day. Now with added phone chats to the Merry Widow, because she has no TV in her room, so he can't spend too long in there without going nuts.

>21 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! They truly spark joy in that silly woman's throw-shit-away cult's phrase.

>22 MickyFine: It's a shade I am particularly soothed and gruntled by, Micky. *smooch*

>23 humouress: Thank you, Nina!

>24 jessibud2: It is the man himself...a big belly-laugh from me after my brain read the text in Nicholson's voice.

On Tyranny belongs on all readers' nightstands at this moment.

>26 Storeetllr: That was the plan...expunge January's miasma of rottenness early. *sigh* So far not helping a lot....

*smooch*

>28 ArlieS: Thanks, Arlie!

Happy new thread, Richard! I hope I can keep up with this one. I got so far behind your last one that it was a lost cause.

>8 richardderus: This is great. Something we'll have to try to remember. They're definitely trying to overwhelm us with the awfulness right now, but that can't last.

>25 richardderus: What a spectacularly beautiful staircase! Pausing to enjoy beauty where we find it is especially important right now. It's an antidote to the awfulness.

>1 richardderus: My memory when I dove into Rothko after you posted your first one is that I didn't find much green. I love green, and those are two wonderful ones. Regardless of the line by my 1970s dashiki-wearing friend T.J. Reddy about the South (--- and everything that grew, grew white) and which I've obviously never forgotten, most things that grow, grow green at least at first. Let's encourage good, healthy growth!

>8 richardderus: That's sensible. I buy it for trying to make change to a few things; I'm not sure that I can follow the advice as new atrocities arise.

*smooch* for your day! I keep pulling nonfiction and not reading it. May I do better in February too.

Happy new(ish) one Richard!! I'm glad the bananas and grapes are still here :)

>38 atozgrl: Welcome, Irene! It's free-form around here. No need to read 'em all.

It's such a beautiful object, isn't it? I'm impressed that someone paid for all that work. Awfulness is le mot juste for the world these scum want us to have.

>39 LizzieD: My impression of Rothko is that the color green, like blue, is just not a favorite of his...too bad. Keep focused on fewer things, but don't dilute your attention, is always a good mantra, but hard to maintain. I'm too involved in too much outrage so I need to make it a focus to focus by letting go of some stuff.

Hard work for me.

>40 RebaRelishesReading: They're too happy, silly, and pleasant to change yet, Reba. I started it today, so there's no other descriptor than "new" really.

>25 richardderus: That is gorgeous RD.

Happy February reading.

>44 Caroline_McElwee: Ain't it? Thanks, Caro.

Hi Richard, dear friend, Happy New Thread and hope everything is well with you.

Happy New Thread!

>46 johnsimpson: Howdy, John, thank you...I'm not too bad, you?

>47 SilverWolf28: Thanks, Silver!

Happy new thread and Saturday *smooch*

I don't often "get" abstract art, but your image topper is quite soothing. I do love those shades of green.

Happy New Thread, RD!

>25 richardderus: Nice staircase and room. *smooch*

>25 richardderus: It looks deliciously chocolatey.

>52 humouress: Mocha genoise with caramel crème au beurre.

>53 richardderus: Not hitting my sweet tooth. More like this:

Good morning and happy new thread, Richard!

It’s 5:35am in my part of the Earth, I‘ve been up for almost two hours, turned into an extreme lark (is it?) in the last couple of years. I wouldn’t mind having some of >53 richardderus: with my second breakfast coffee now, yummy

I’m so with you on >8 richardderus:, those are basically the steps I learned recently. The community thing is a bit difficult here, but I’m determined to take some steps this year. Now off to look at some more Rothko, that topper is wonderful. That green, and then it looks like an exclamation mark.

Have a good Sunday!

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you.

>25 richardderus: Let’s see… I personally know the trans child of a dear friend and am worried sick for friend her/and son him. I also have a daughter/wife who now have to seriously worry about her immigration status. I perform focused worry.

So pretty. I can even see myself going up and down simply to enjoy holding onto the bannisters.

>53 richardderus: Yes, please, with a cup of coffee.

*smooch*

>54 humouress: Chocolate. Ick. Pretty color, and that photo caught *precisely* the texture in the >25 richardderus: image!

Still. Ick.

>55 Deern: Morning (for me) Nathalie! IRL community-building is always a challenge when one is a reader, as being online presupposes a certain functional literacy that ups the odds of discovering like-minded souls.

>53 richardderus: is absolutely superb for first-thing eating. I don't eat until earliest 11am. Before that it's coffee, and mmmaaaybe a banana if some medicine can't wait. Enjoy the journey into Rothko! Tumblr and Bluesky both have "Daily Rothko" accounts that feed my addiction if you're looking for a fast-overview source of lots of images.

Welcome, and may February be kind to us all.

>56 karenmarie: Agreed about the coffee-n-cake! I'll have mine about 1pm. That staircase is exactly that: an incitement to use it so you can enjoy the way it's been thought through. So lovely, so luxuriously beautifying the space it's in.

Happy Sunday, RD! Hope you're having a good weekend

>60 ChelleBearss: Sunday orisons, Chelle! It's...fine. Of course everything's...fine. Just...fine.

Happy Sunday, Richard!

>62 drneutron: Thank you, Jim, same back at'cha!

Happy new thread, Richard. I had to go back and look at >15 richardderus: again after Shelly's post and there is definitely a Nicholson vibe! >25 richardderus: Beautiful image but I don't know what it says about me that the first thing I thought of was the need to keep it dusted.

>64 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg! Yes indeed, Nicholson is the model, the whole thing is his scene from The Shining where Shelley Duvall finds his sacred manuscript is nothing but "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over.

If one has that staircase, the tweeny one purchased in Xinjiang is going over it every few hours.

Cheers!

>64 Familyhistorian: Please put a nice wax shine on it while you’re at it so we can continue to admire it. Thanks.

018 Río Muerto by Ricardo Silva Romero (tr. Victor Meadowcroft)

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: On the outskirts of Belén del Chamí, a town that has yet to appear on any map of Colombia, the mute Salomón Palacios is murdered a few steps away from his home. His widow, the courageous and foul-mouthed Hipólita Arenas, completely loses her sanity and confronts the paramilitaries and local politicians, challenging them to also kill her and her two fatherless sons. Yet as Hipólita faces her husband’s murderers on her desperate journey, she finds an unexpected calling to stay alive.

This poetic and hypnotizing novel, told from the perspective of Salomón’s ghost, denounces the brutal killings of innocent citizens and at the same time celebrates the invisible: imagination, memories, hope, and the connection to afterlife.

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

My Review: South America's cultural impact is never more delightfully represented, to me at least, than when I read magical-realist works whether in translation or not. A novel narrated by a ghost definitely counts as "magical" in my book (!), so I was prepared for something to get me, to find the chinks in my emotional armor.

Not prepared enough.

That there's a civil war, a narcoterror regime, and immense unrest in Colombia was known to me. How pervasive it was didn't seem to me to be a reason to be surprised until I read the author's explanation that these events are fictionalized, not merely fiction...that "based on a true story" line we see so often hit home hard, because this is a friend's life skinned in fiction but boned by facts.

It's really down to this:

I am telling what I was told to me: that Salomón Palacios was gunned down only a few paces from his home and died and became a nameless thing in the gloom—the closing in—before returning from the dead. That he took an eternity in coming back, for the soul recovers memory in its own time, at its own rhythm, but that he must be out there now, and always will be, because death is the true present and because some murder victims do not depart.

Time passes subjectively, per Einstein; I'm not entirely ready to say velocity's the one governing factor until someone can really explain time fully. Maybe Death really does equal time; after reading this book, I have to be open to the possibility. For one of the few times in my reading life I find myself agreeing with a Pentecostal character: the apocalypse really has begun.

What makes Salomón such a great narrator is his ongoing physiological voicelessness. In life, in death, he makes no auditory impact. His existence as a ghost is in a powerfully evocative way a continuation of his voiceless, ineffectual life. Small gestures of kindness, his eking of a living by doing odd jobs, his very death carry the same burden of being a little guy living a little life that couldn't possibly threaten anyone who gets killed in spite of his death changing nothing.

Well, it unhinges his wife. She goes on a campaign to force his killers to kill her, and their sons, too. The sons have other ideas. Her plan to confront the boss who ordered Salomón's death to force him to martyr her, and her boys, in order to...what, exactly? no one in their town doubts who caused the thugs who did it to pull the triggers...or is she simply and selfishly out to commit suicide to avoid feeling grief for her genuinely loved with all his flaws husband? Insisting the sons she birthed join her in this spectacular suicide-by-provocation motivates Salomón in ghostly form to attempt to communicate love felt, love given to be received, to the maddened Hipólita to cause her to reinvest in life, to use her rage to pick up her boys and get the hell out of there. It would give his death, and his life, meaning.

How can a man voiceless in embodied life, in other words, find a voice now he's bodiless?

Author Silva Romero wrote a story I did not want to inhabit, but I did inhabit as fully as I have most stories I've read, because few kinds of story command my involvement more than grief, love, and power dynamics in emulsion. He chose a story I couldn't not get myself into. He chose a storytelling voice I could not avoid investing my empathy, sympathy, and tearducts into. Salomón loved deeply and mutely showed his love in practical simple deeds; he loved so much he was motivated to reach around the barrier of death. Author Silva Romero, ably served by his translator Victor Meadowcroft, did a fine job evoking a violent time's hideous human cost, as well as human beings' overpowering need to force the world to make those costs make sense.

It's impossible to do that, I say confidently, as I read the story of how it is done. All five stars.

Happy Monday, Richard. I hope you had a comfortable weekend. Great review of Río Muerto. Ooh, it is a shorty too. On the obese TBR it goes.

>68 msf59: It will reward you with a really deep dive for such a short book. Monday's a warm one, so far, at almost 40°! Cheers.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Monday.

>67 richardderus: 5*. Intriguing. I should buy it, I know, when it’s released tomorrow, but I’ll simply add it to my wish list. Your review is masterful.

*smooch*

>70 karenmarie: No rush to procure one, there's a strong chance they'll put it on Kindlesale soonish. It has the strong virtue of being quite compact, so it could be a time-cranny filler, though it's really deeply into the war-ness of the civil war.

We just don't hear about the Colombian countrywide collapse. It's a flaw in the attention economy, there's just so much attention to spread around for so many many many worthy topics to spread it on.

*sigh* Stay warm, smoochling.

>25 richardderus: >53 richardderus: >54 humouress: All of them get me where I live. *sigh*

>67 richardderus: A direct and deadly hit. I'll have to be a better reader, but it is at least on my wish list if I can't afford it right now. Thank you, Richard. (I haven't yet finished The Mad Patagonian, but I see that this one is as short as *MP* is long.)

*smooch*

Afternoon, BigDaddy! You got me with >67 richardderus:, and I loved reading through your most excellent review.

*Second Sunday smooch*

>72 LizzieD: Go get 'em, Peggy!

That is a megaread indeed! My ongoing megaread is eight years old now: Martutene, an 816pp Basque translation that I've lost interest in twice, waited too long to resume the read, restarted again...I get maybe sixty pages read before just getting overwhelmed by the pace (glacial) and the cultural refs (uhhhmmm say wha'?)...one day I'll admit defeat. That day is not today. I am unclear why.

*smooch*

>73 Crazymamie: I'm glad I could wing you with a book-bullet, Mamie. It really was one of THOSE reads. The review feels honest, if awkward, reading it now. I didn't really say much about the plot, and I usually worry when I notice that I've skimped. Still, I got your interest...maybe it's just me being anxious...?

You're just being anxious. I care less about the plot and more about your thoughts on the book. This is always what gets me, and it's what makes a review personal.

>76 Crazymamie: Oh good. I'm not interested in book reports, either, but still worry that people want them. I'll leave it alone then. *smooch*

>53 richardderus: Oh my! that is mouthwatering.

Happy Monday *smooch*

>78 figsfromthistle: Oh my heck, Anita! It is just plain scrumdiddlyumptious. Not hard to make, just fiddly...genoise is a finicky to create batter and easy to overbake but honestly uncomplicated, uses ordinary ingredients, isn't in any way unfamiliar techniques-wise. The results are supercalafragilisticexpialadocious. Monday *smooch*

I was really pleased that Morgan Talty liked my review of Fire Exit, and stunned when he found my blog and followed it. I'm really surprised every time an author does that, and I still get a frisson when Nancy Pearl shows up in my Twitter/BlueSky feed with a comment. I know. It's silly, but it really does feel good!

Well, Richard, Canadians are mighty angry at Trump and his tariffs . That crazy madman! But I think we can remain friends , at least on LT and Facebook, and in person, should you head this way.

>81 vancouverdeb: I'm honestly more worried Muskolini will find a way to interrupt digital traffic, TBH. I don'r see us as people suddenly becoming all MAGAtty!~
***
The Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley...HE OF THE GUNCLE...publishes on 14 October! NetGalleyards can, of course, request it now and fret until Putnam decides whether to be generous or not.

>81 vancouverdeb: Deborah, there are plenty of us here who agree with the Canadians!

>66 humouress: Oh no, Nina. What I meant was more along the line of needing to employ someone to do the dusting.

>65 richardderus: The tweeny would do just as well, Richard.

Canadians are reluctant to travel to the US so the tariff talk is not just affecting Canadians but all those US northern border towns that rely on cross border shopping. Kind of reminds me of a similar affect as "they're eating cats and dogs".

>83 atozgrl: Around here, I'd guess almost all of us.

>84 Familyhistorian: I'm sure they'll do it fine...I sure as hell ain't elbow-greasin' the damned thing.

Canadians are wise. The only way to get US attention is to cause pain. Then We-The-People start howling, the media spreads the howls, and someone up the food chain might maybe perhaps deign to notice the issue.

Inefficient and cruel, but when is capitalism not.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

>71 richardderus: I can wait. It’s not like I don’t have literally thousands of books here at the house that I haven’t read and over 600 on my Kindle. Warm won’t be a problem – it will be 75F today, although it’s 40F now. *smooch*

>79 richardderus: Drat you, now I’ve got an ear worm.

I’m still mostly not consuming news, although I snuck over to the Soccer section of Yahoo News this morning, only unintentionally seeing a few horrible headlines.

*smooch*

>87 karenmarie: I never knew there was a soccer section of Yahoo News. It's a powerful earworm, too. It can pop up at the damnedest times...the music supervisor in my brain has his iPod on shuffle most of the time, but some days he really likes Disney.

It's awful. Merry drunkday! *smooch*

Heavens, Richard! A big Basque novel!!!! I am so intrigued and not going to put out a penny for it until I'm forced to by my acquisitive little mind.

As Karen says, it will be very warm today, cooler tomorrow by 20-some degrees, then warming again........N.C. weather for sure.

Why should it be silly to be delighted to receive your due? Enjoy! I enjoy it for you!!!

I really think (having just read HCR's latest letter that says what I've been saying) that I have to write at least to Thom Tillis and say, "You may agree with the agenda, but you're smart enough to see that your office is on its way to being redundant. At least be smart enough to preserve the legality. Remember the Roman Senate of the Empire!" Or maybe not. It may be that THE PEOPLE will react more quickly and more strongly to the dictation of the Muskolini.

I wish you may have an easy day and some peaceful time. *smooch*

>80 richardderus: Your connection with authors and Nancy Pearl (!) is so cool! I’m not surprised at all, you ace reviewer, you!

Have a terrific Tuesday!

Karen O

>89 LizzieD: Drunkulus has yet to return from his binge. This means it's quiet, so my mood is lifted....though I don't feel great about the scumbaggery going on in our government. Martuntene is worthy and worthwhile but...well...too much (for me at least).

Thank you for that perspective check, Peggy...I'm not good at seeing that good things coming my way aren't mistakes or flukes or warning shots from y'all's god's bazooka. See tomorrow's review.

*smooch*

>90 klobrien2: *blush* Thank you for your enthusiastic support! Tuesday orisons, Karen O.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Last work day with the kids. I like my little work schedule and the kids do make me smile. I only have 5 and that is only if everyone shows up, when is not common these days.

I hope your week is off to a good start. I am getting ready to start Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, which I am sure will get the old blood boiling.

>93 msf59: I'd say it's a great way to keep yourself out of trouble and gainfully occupied, as well as feeding your sense of joy in the world. The Hochschild book sounds very interesting. I'll put it on my list, too.

Morning *smooch*. My first thought, seeing the staircase, was that it was an AI image. Conditioned by seeing some really neat c-t appliances and furniture images that definitely were. At least that means no dust issues!

>95 ronincats: Morning, Roni! I'm pretty confident an architecture magazine isn't going to publish AI manipulated images. I could be wrong, but I'd think they'd be a bit nervous about reputational damage to do it.

No dust issues in photos, and I have never had nor do I expect ever to have the money for such an art-installation of a staircase, so their dust = their problem. Said with an envious smirk laden with schadenfreude.

019 How to be enough : self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with this clear and compassionate guide.

Do you set demanding standards for yourself? If so, a lot likely goes well in your life: You might earn compliments, admiration, or accomplishments. Your high standards and hard work pay off.

But privately, you may feel like you’re falling behind, faking it, or different from everybody else. Your eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector highlights every mistake. You try hard to avoid criticism, but criticize yourself. Trying to get it right is your guiding light, but it has lit the way to a place of dissatisfaction, loneliness, or disconnection. In short, you may look like you’re hitting it out of the park, but you feel like you’re striking out.

This is perfectionism. And for everyone who struggles with it, it’s a misnomer: perfectionism isn’t about striving to be perfect. It’s about never feeling good enough.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen—clinical psychologist, anxiety specialist, and author of How to Be Yourself—is on the same journey as you. In How to Be Enough, Hendriksen charts a flexible, forgiving, and freeing path, all without giving up the excellence your high standards and hard work have gotten you. She delivers seven shifts—including from self-criticism to kindness, control to authenticity, procrastination to productivity, comparison to contentment—to find self-acceptance, rewrite the Inner Rulebook, and most of all, cultivate the authentic human connections we’re all craving.

With compassion and humor, Hendriksen lays out a clear, effective, and empowering guide. To enjoy rather than improve, be real rather than impressive, and be good to yourself when you’re wired to be hard on yourself.

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

My Review: I was the youngest child of my parents. My older siblings were more like aunts than siblings...we were two presidencies apart, almost three...and as adolescents lumbered with a toddler they didn't want in their ambit, weren't any more careful of word or deed than one would expect from members of a toxic system at a terrible passage in human life. In other words, not kind, not loving, not supportive. Add that to parents who didn't model those things and...well.

This book understood me.

So much of the world is based on conditionality: if you want this thing/state/privilege, you must give that thing/service. Conditionality and capitalism are deeply intertwined, I venture to suggest inseparably so. One's self-worth in a capitalist system becomes imbued with that transactional conditionality: I'm not working hard enough to deserve this or that bauble. Far worse is the knock-on of that, I'm too "poor" to afford this thing/service so I must be lazy/undeserving/unworthy.

It enters one's bones and imbues all one's relationships: I'm not getting this thing/behavior/feeling I need so I must not deserve it...if I work harder/behave better/give more of this or that resource I have, maybe then I will deserve or even get it.

The internalization of perfectionism is thus complete and the transactional relationship template is frozen into immobility. As are many of us who got this message. We're frozen into immobility because then the desired whatevers *not* being ours makes sense. We don't deserve whatever. Therefore the world makes sense because we don't have it.

A book like this one that makes the pathology plain does a huge service to the sufferer from the condition. It's wonderful to be told plainly and baldly that: "Pretty much every high achieving person experiences a gravitational pull to feel left out. Meaning we reflexively look for signs and signals that tell you you’re being excluded or not wanted." It's a balm to know the roots of this awful paralysis are there in multitudes of us, then be told how that: "What perfectionism neglects to tell us is that getting it right doesn’t make us part of a community." Ultimately, we've bought the bullshit and not the bull himself; we paid for the bull, and now here's a way to get him.

The author is, I suspect, an excellent therapist in practice. In writing she is clear, concise, and manages to be evocative in her phrasemaking. No small feat! I don't think this book is for those who struggle to see their own pathologies, there are more effective tools to break walls of denial. I think most readers are some way into the process of denial-busting, but again the best audience for the read are those who already see their perfectionism, have an idea it's a problem, and would like some help building coping strategies for its dismantling.

This book is a wonderfully useful tool for that purpose. I can't offer a full fifth star because there is just that soupçon too little interlinking of strategic implementation: How, after this insight hits home, the reader should look for that and the other one to arise.

As cavils go, it's really pretty minor. As self-help books go, this one belongs on far more bookshelves/Kindles than it doesn't.

>97 richardderus: Agreed, your source is impeccable!

Morning, BigDaddy! *Wednesday smooch*

>80 richardderus: So full of fabulous!

'Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday.

>97 richardderus: Excellent review of a book quite a few of us should read, myself included.

*smooch*

>97 richardderus: Many thanks for the review, Richard! You did so well that I don't feel the need to read the book. I could comment for a long time, but I'll simply say that learning to say a genuine "thank you" and leave it at that is a great step forward. Otherwise, to quote a student, "I am contempt with myself as I am."

*smooch**smooch**smooch* for the day!

ETA: I note this morning that when I leave your thread, I always pause for a bit to enter the green!

>97 richardderus: Whadda you know?! My library has How to Be Enough and I’ve requested it. Thanks for the review.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Karen O

>98 ronincats: :-)

>99 Crazymamie: It was full of fabulous to me, so
i'm pleased we agree! *smooch*

>100 karenmarie: Most anyone could benefit from reading it, assuming they're open to learning the material. So many would see its knowledge as a weapon to control others. Depressing truth: no tool is not also a weapon.

*smooch*

>101 LizzieD: I'm so glad that particular Rothko's made it into your life-list of pleasures.

"Thank you" and "I'm sorry" are the two phrases that get the most immense bouquets of padding. I'm clear about why; but honestly, just saying it is so very much more satisfying to hear, correspondingly harder to say. Your student put their finger precisely and firmly on the sore spot most of us deeply dread being poked in.

*smooch*

>102 klobrien2: Excellent news, Karen O.! I hope it will crystallize some stuff for you the way it did me. I'm not one to turn down more self-knowledge.

Wonderful-Wednesday wishes Heartily returned.

>89 LizzieD: Funny, I've been having the same thought about writing to Tillis. I would like to remind him that it's REPUBLICANS who have been complaining for decades that the president has too much power. And where are they now? Apparently they are not really Republicans. And say more along the same lines as you about what purpose does it serve to have a House and Senate now if they're going to let Trump get away with everything.

90+ posts behind already, which is what 2 days out of town with no Internet gets me.

I hope all is well with you, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

020 Immemorial (Undelivered Lectures) by Lauren Markham

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A speculative essay on language in the face of climate catastrophe: how we memorialize what has been lost and what soon will be, pushing public imagination into generative realms.

“I am in need of a word,” writes Lauren Markham in an email to the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, an organization that coins neologisms. She describes her desire to memorialize something that is in the process of being lost—a landscape, a species, birdsong. How do we mourn the abstracted casualties of what’s to come?

In a dazzling synthesis of reporting, memoir, and essay, Markham reflects on the design and function of memorials, from the traditional to the speculative—the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, a converted prison in Ljubljana, a “ghost forest” of dead cedar trees in a Manhattan park—in an attempt to reckon with the grief of climate catastrophe. Can memorials look toward the future as they do to the past? How can we create “a psychic space for feeling” while spurring action and agitating for change?

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

My Review: The issue many of us have been braying about for a generation now has burst upon us unmissably. The climate has changed. The results are blatantly obvious and the profiteers, mainly insurance companies and oil companies at the moment, are raking in the money out of your pockets.

The other costs, the ones not as tangible as lost spending power, are still to be named, and still to be felt. Until we can name something, like "spending power," it's nebulous to us as linear-time-trapped people. What name can we give to sights we will never see again? To descendants who can never be born, or can't be kept alive? To lives unlivable, to thoughts unthinkable, because there was/is no one trained, taught, allowed to think them?

Author Markham does the heavy lifting of identifying this dawning reality for us. She asks us to make room in our heads and hearts for an unbearable, unthinkably terrible, loss we're not making room for. It takes a person to speak a truth for it to be recognized. This truth, still nameless, is spoken, and it's now in our collective court to put a stop to our losses before they mount up in reality.

There is something like a haunting, a poltergeist infestation, in the idea of absences as losses. The absence of children unborn, of life...not unlived, nor even unlivable, simply "un"...impossible to experience this void of Reality unless one's alerted to it. Author Markham's essay, tight and compact of duration, carries resonances forward into time for her readers, makes patterns of thought that, now they exist, are indelible. An example of how the "un" is real....

Time's weird at the simplest level...what is it? explain it and how you know what it is, I'll wait...but when bent like this, when folded into a curve that feels untraversable, it begins to feel physical to me. I can respond to time in a new way, not a fun way but a new one, thanks to Author Markham. Immaterial is an ironic title for something that, through its power of observation alone, caused me to concpetualize time as a physical, separate entity from my world. Its positing of conditional loss, of non-existence as a loss, is a powerful insight I'd never have come up with on my own.

I won't get all the way to a fifth star because I felt at times a punch being pulled, an implication she knew was too much being avoided. The rigorous honesty of the piece was incomplete, partial; but I'd be extremely hard pressed to do half so well as Author Markham's done. Don't allow my weird frisson to dissuade you from wrapping your head around her arguments.

>108 atozgrl: They didn't mean PRESIDENTS had too much power, they meant Black men and Socialists shouldn't have that much power.

Of course 34 The Felonious Yam is going to get away with the maximum they can cover for in spite of any consequences to people not them. It's the evil bargain they've made for safety. Solons they are NOT.

>110 richardderus: - BB. This sounds like something I would like reading. Your aim is on target!

>109 alcottacre: New threads do have a way of filling up fast, Stasia, but they have the charm of being there whenever you care to, or have the tech to, check in. *smooch*

>112 jessibud2: Oh yes indeed, Shelley, this is a read I suspect you'll batten on! It's very well-written, it's got a really interesting argument, and I think she's onto something here that could help turn the tide of public forgetting we're caught in.

>114 richardderus: - Is it published yet?

>115 jessibud2: Day before yesterday.

Thanks. I will mention it to the library and see what they can do ;-)

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday.

>110 richardderus: Your intellect blows me away. Not enough coffee to do this justice, enough coffee to realize I should read it.

*smooch*

>117 jessibud2: It's fairly soon for it to have wended its way through ;ibrary procurement, but maybe they can put into some patron-request system. I'll cross the crossables.

>118 karenmarie: Did I intellect? I felt so expanded in my awareness that I was concerned that I blithered.

Caffeinate well. *smooch*

Nights Lately Leah Gardner, n.d.

Because my thread doesn't get nearly the traffic of yours, and the interesting articles thread practically none, I'm alerting you and your readers about this article that I've posted in both those places:

Who are the top readers for 2024? And where did they get their books?
And — bonus data — which books were they least likely to finish?

>122 ronincats: Their paywall and support for 34 the Felonious Yam mean I don't click on 'em. Care to summarize, or permaybehaps copy and repost the text?

I understand. I haven't gotten around to canceling my subscription yet but am considering it. This is a gift article, which means there should be no paywall for this link. Unfortunately, it is a truly huge data dump and impossible to summarize and way too long to copy and repost.

>121 richardderus: Lovely picture, Richard. Thursday *smooch*

Good night, good night, Good Richard! I was reading and thinking about your review of Immemorial this morning when walk time suddenly came upon me. I can't do it again. Sleep well. *smooch*

021 The bee sting by Paul Murray

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?

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

My Review: This book is A Lot. Long, deep, densely packed.

I enjoy reading anything that plays in the quantum fields of many worlds. The idea of one.little.change. making all the difference in one's life is very empowering, as well as nonsense, and honestly hazardous. All of those are reasons we love to mess with it safely in our fiction. Here Paul Murray goes full-tilt boogie down this waterslide, wets us to the bone in the spume of his landing, and completely destroys our hairdos.

Is it good anyway? Well...honestly...yes, but in a curious way no. Want to laugh hollowly at the folly of the merely mortal? Come hither, disciple dearest. Want to process your grief at the titanic (or Titanic) sinking of the life you planned? This is your altar call. Or is the appeal of a stonking novel immersive and redemptive reading? Hie thee hence, pilgrim. Nothing for you here...there is no redemption here, no one's gettin' what they think they deserve before the Apocalypse that's looming calypses. Need rigorous copyediting with Oxford commas, periods, line breaks, and other such embankments to channel the flow of the words? Ite, missa est. No communion cookies for you, though madeleines will be served in the Sodality of Marcel's post-tea.

Digressive is my word for this seemingly Irish specialty of novels (Milkman's another favorite) that don't give a feck for your English rules. Me, I'm down with it, I like things that don't slavishly straiten their gates to some Authority's pre- and proscriptions just cuz. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of the culture wars! Whatever you do, don't be boring!

That said...well, honestly I found the central thesis of the family tedious and predictable: Dad's crushed, Mom's hogtied and struggling, Junior's got his antennae out so far they can find meaning in electric currents imperceptible to an ammeter, Sis is in thrall to the Mother of All Crushes on the most dreary poseur in all of literature...really, does this need retelling? The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, To the Lighthouse, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and every Colleen Hoover book ever written fill these separate niches extremely ably...have for most of a century. (It felt like a century passed when I read 102pp of It Ends With Us. *shudder* I {mildly mis-}quote that nasty little creep Truman Capote: "That's not writing, that's typing.")

So my bag was mixed. I loved parts, liked most of it, and was impatiently awaiting liftoff that never quite generated enough thrust to get me over the literary Kármán line. Hence my stingy-feeling 3.5 stars. It might be stingy but it's waaay better than most stuff I read and toss aside. I'm really impressed with Author Murray's swinging for the fences in all his writing and storytelling. I mean, mad respect for going toe-to-toe with the twentieth century's greats (and megabestselling hack Hoover)! But coming for the monarch isn't safe lest you fail to slay them.

No slaying here, though some serious wounds were delivered.

>125 vancouverdeb: I thought so, too, Deborah, so I'm delighted you agree. Friday *resmooch*

>126 LizzieD: Good morning, and I do mean good, dear Peggy! It's a beautiful little book, one that offers a lot, but we all know our reading selves best. The review's got to be good for something so let it be that.

Good review of The Bee Sting. I liked it more than you but more editing would have helped. I think that was also the case with Skippy Dies.

>121 richardderus: Love this image!

Happy Friday, Richard.

>130 msf59: Most happy weekend, Mark. I'm really glad that >121 richardderus: is speaking to others like it did to me.

Everyone liked The Bee Sting a lot...even me...I just couldn't get past the sense of "been here, seen that" I got everywhere in the read. I think it's actually part of the reason others liked it so much. There's a lot of comfort in reading something comfy and familiar, especially when it's fresh.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Friday.

>120 richardderus: Yes, you intellected. *smile*

>121 richardderus: Heh. Pills, coffee, books. My life.

>127 richardderus: Great review, as per usual, but not currently my cuppa, alas. Don’t want folly as much as HEAs.

Ah! Derivative is the word I am looking for. I'm seeing lots of it lately, excluding MM romance, of course. 😁

And, Kármán line. Yours, the literary version. Clever and apropos. There is aways something new for me to learn on your thread, of course.

*smooch*

Morning, BigDaddy! I feel like I should just say ditto to Karen's post because she covered everything so well. I had to google Kármán line, and I love that I always come away from your thread with something to take with me. *Friday smooch*

>132 karenmarie: We're not young enough to see derivation as a mistake, or a theft. It's like the way genes get passed down within a species. Enough iterations and something new and unique expresses itself, becoming all at once (after many many repetitions) a New Thing!

I'm out of sympathy with the way "appropriation" and derivation are characterized and excoriated by ignorant and/or malevolent and/or gatekeeping malefactors for purposes of exerting and maintaining power.

I was a bit pleased with my repurposed Kármán line as a literary metaphor. Contained within the two words are such a capacious cache of augmentive metaphors. I'm pleased as punch you like getting new information when you're here.

>133 Crazymamie: It's my usual habit to make things I expect people to be encountering for a very early time in their experience into a link. I'm eager for the way I talk about things to be part of a larger conversation that I'd like everyone to join. So click, click, click, dear lady! xo

BURGOINE #006
Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan by Siamak Herawi (tr. Sara Khalili)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: An intimate look at the lives, loves, horrors, and dreams of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule
A heartbreaking tragedy in the vein of The Kite Runner from a major English-speaking Afghan figure famous for his books and long career in politics

Siamak Herawi brings Afghan women center stage and takes us deep into the heart of his motherland to witness the reality of their lives under the Taliban’s most extreme interpretation of Islam. Based on true stories, the result is a sobering and harrowing tale that relates the current ethos of a country under occupation by one power or another for more than half a century.

Told in a direct, conversational prose, this chorus of voices offers us a vivid picture of the endless cycle of the suffering of girls and women in the grip of the Taliban authorities, of the imbalance of power and opportunity.

The central figures illuminate the power of love, friendship, and generosity in the face of poverty and oppression. Their experiences and dilemmas have a visceral power and we become deeply attached to Kowsar, Geesu, and Simin. These are testaments of resilience, hope, courage, and visceral fear, of doors of opportunity opening just a crack that offer a way out.

In Sara Khalili’s vibrant and nuanced translation from the Persian, Tali Girls tears down the curtain and exposes the treacherous realities of what women are up against in modern-day, war-torn Afghanistan.

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

My Review: Do you believe it can't happen here? Even after the decade of horrible we've endured since 20 January 2025? Read this clear-eyed, scathingly honest book about what happened in Taliban country. The author's used a polyphonic approach to telling stories based on real experiences. It lends an immediacy to the read; it dilutes the emotional investment in the characters. On balance a choice I understand, but don't feel is for the story's best expression. Hence, at the halfway mark, I settled into a rating of 3.25 stars instead of 4.5, which is where I was headed from the off.

Archipelago charges $16.99 for an ebook. Used paperbacks are cheaper; I think the read is worthwhile and deeply engaging.

BURGOINE #007 Blood on the Brain by Esinam Bediako

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An impulsive, madcap, and newly concussed young woman comes of age as she navigates her Ghanaian American identity, her relationships, and the muddled landscape of history, memory, imagination, and delusion.

Twenty-four-year-old Akosua is easily knocked off her feet. When she falls and hits her head, she’s too preoccupied with her latest dramas to fully absorb the shock. In the span of three months, she has broken up with her boyfriend Wisdom, discovered that her deadbeat dad has moved back to the States from Ghana, and dropped so many classes that she believes she’s the only history grad student in the history of grad students to be registered for just one partial-credit class. Instead of facing her problems, Akosua seeks distraction in Daniel, a “good Ghanaian man.”

But as her head injury worsens, she questions whether she can continue to run away from her father any more than she can keep ignoring her brain and its traumas. Vibrant, funny, and bittersweet, Blood on the Brain is a novel about the complications of family, romance, and culture—and how coming of age can feel like a blow to the head.

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

My Review: Books about women obsessing over men who clearly do not want to engage with them, will not provide emotional connection for them, and have no interest in or intention of making any changes to step in that direction are unpleasant to me. When the woman in question is quite clearly using every means at her disposal to use that reality as a seriously maladaptive coping mechanism for the wounds inflicted by paternal rejection and neglect from childhood, my blood pressure begins to spike to dangerous levels for a reader who's already had three strokes.

Add in a literal closed-head injury as the catalyst for some nascent stabs at introspection, and we're back at the level of aggravation I felt while viewing 1945's Spellbound, or "severe with spells of acute." I've given it three stars for the very well-used and -placed Ghanaian cultural tidbits, and the flashes of humor I quite enjoyed.

>1 richardderus: That is a lovely painting. It's a perfect example of the power of negative space and composition in an art work.

>127 richardderus: Excellent review and aligned with my experience of that read, too.

>121 richardderus: That painting kind of packs a punch, doesn't it?

>138 EBT1002: Morning, Ellen! I'm very glad you liked >127 richardderus: as you're like me in not *adoring* the read.

>1 richardderus: is, for me as well, a carefully composed set of spaces and flattened volumes that add up to something more...intense...intentional...inner-directing...than a flick of the eyes would reveal. >121 richardderus: is so on-the-nose that I wonder how it's so pretty.

Happy weekend!

‘Morning, RD! Happy Saturday.

>134 richardderus: I hope you don’t think I am derisive about deriviation/appropriation. I simply don’t like the flurries in certain subgenres (including artwork) that I consider derivative except for MM romance. I won’t comment on specific subgenres so I won’t get excoriated.

Your Burgoines are always quite wonderful.

*smooch*

>121 richardderus: Oh that's cool, and I like the way the light on the wall makes a nice little heart drawing your eye to the stack of books. (I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I actually hated "art appreciation" the way we did it in school.) My nightstand looks very much like that, including the medicine bottle lol.

Happy Saturday *smooches* and good weekend reading to you!

>140 karenmarie: It's not derisive to notice and comment on the ancestry of something/one. It's part of life. Everything comes from somewhere. Being derivative is sometimes used as a dismissal, a usage I usually prefer to deflate by doing my equivalent of the woman-trick of stepping on the joke by taking it seriously and engaging with its words literally. Embarrasses the unprepared...they think they're being witty and here comes a big reality check.

You're too kind, sweetiedarling. I'm never confident of the landing in so few words, but it seems I'm getting my point across. *smooch*

>141 bell7: It's a beautiful image, and the cool, soothing colors work so well to deliver its sting in the tail. Your school *taught* art appreciation, Mary, mine wasn't gonna waste no dollars on suchlike faggotry. (Quoting a school-board member from 1970s Austin on art classes there.)

I'm well past the bottle stage of medicine administration. I have blister packs by the handful. There is, to be fair, a lot of necessity in my medication regimen, but it does look...excessive...taken as a whole.

Saturday *smooch*

Dropping off weekend smooches, as usual.

>121 richardderus: Is beautiful but I can't articulate why I like it as well as you and Mary.

>144 MickyFine: Hiya Micky! Happy that you're enjoying >121 richardderus: as well. Being able to utter "vertical orientation inspires" and "unequal thirds afford monumentality" is acquired gloss and, often as not, superficial to the response "yeah, that's good, that works" we're all sharing.

*smooch*

>121 richardderus: You can add my appreciation of this one. You all have pointed out all its merits already, no need for me to add more. Just very nicely done!

>146 atozgrl: Yay! That's another pro vote.
***
There is a sane voice on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7uO5lG-Gv4

>147 richardderus: Many thanks, Richard. That is sane. I too very much wish it were not going to take so long.

*smooch*

>147 richardderus: I love that.

>15 richardderus: Love that cartoon :)

>121 richardderus: that is about right! All the things we need.

>149 EBT1002:, >148 LizzieD: So reasonable, well-reasoned, and non-reactively presented. I was quite soothed. Happy y'all were too.

>150 LovingLit: I agree, Megan, >15 richardderus: is really good. But look at this!

Happy Sunday, Richard. I have been enjoying a relaxing weekend with Juno, while Sue is out of town visiting a friend. I will go over to Bree's later to watch the first half of the game. More Jack time but he is more distracted at his home place.

>152 richardderus: Love it!

>153 msf59: A lovely way to wile away a bachelor weekend, Mark, sounds just full enough to be fun.

That cartoon made me grin, too. "Accidental" my lily-white one.

‘Morning, RD! Happy Sunday to you.

>142 richardderus: You’re right – everything comes from somewhere. Everybody does, too, so although I really like doing personal genealogical work, I don’t use it to put down other folks who can’t trace their lines. We’re all of ancient lines simply because we’re here now. Our ancestors all survived wars, pestilence, Black Death, the 1918 influenza, and etc.

If I had a dime every time Bill said “KP, that’s a joke.”, I could buy more books than I already do. I am quite literal and usually assume something’s true rather than a joke.

>143 richardderus: I have the bottom drawer of a 3-drawer file cabinet filled with what I fill my pill dispensers with, extra bottles from 90-day refills, supplements, and pain meds. Morning pill dispenser and evening pill dispenser.

Oh, >121 richardderus:. I like that the books are nominally size-stacked but aren’t really. I also like the bookmark in one.

>152 richardderus: Unfortunately, not so much a joke as a prediction, although I don’t think they can actually accomplish a totalitarian dictatorship. They’re sure trying, though.

*smooch*

>155 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible, from my tiny little cave currently being irradiated with the stupid of The Brady Bunch on MeTV. I expect I'll be fumigated with the poison of racist physical exploitation for nine jillion hours soon enough. All brought to you by the scum of the Earth.

I detest television.

"They" have accomplished a totalitarian dictatorship, they're calling it AI. Surveillance capitalism has trained people to accept the utter lack of privacy as normal, and all of that data is used to track you and influence you to think and behave in certain ways. It isn't granular to the personal level just yet but I promise you some Aynhole somewhere is beavering away on a means to do that very thing. Probably under contract from some religious authority or another.

Sunday well...I've got a box of CVS brand white-chocolate/macadamia cookies I'll be self-medicating with as the onslaught of noise and stupidity gathers force.

>67 richardderus: skinned in fiction but boned by facts Wow, Richard! Beautiful turn of phrase. Great review. I’m off to check to see if I can borrow it from the library.

>121 richardderus: Truth in Art!

Thanks for the review on How to Be Enough, Richard. It made it onto my obese hold list at the library.

A genealogy blog I subscribe to just passed on the news that the Archivist of the United States was abruptly dismissed by the Trump administration although she was not in office during the documents investigation.

>157 Storeetllr: Oh, thanks Mary! I like that little simile, too.
***


It just might be that the overreach is coming home to roost at long, long last.

>158 Familyhistorian: That's good news, Meg, hoping you find it a quality read.

It's only tangentially about the investigation. It's about getting permanent control of the information economy.

>147 richardderus: Man, I love that link and his arguments for the future.

I’ve thought since the billionaires moved in that all of those egos in such proximity is going to make for a lot of explosions.

Thanks for bringing the link to our attention! I posted it to my Facebook (yes, I still visit there (family, friends, and cute animal videos)).

Happy Sunday, Richard!

Karen O

>161 klobrien2: The Metastatic Site that Traitorous Fuck Zuck owns oughta luuuv that...or this:

Another brick in my wall of resistance.

Enjoy All the Sunday you can, dear lady.

I gave The Bee Sting 5 stars when I read it last year, Richard, so I guess I enjoyed it more than you. In fact I think I read it quite quickly. But YMMV.

>160 richardderus: Yeah, being in control of the records means being in control of the narrative.

Dropping in to wish you a wonderful Monday!

Hey, Mr. Wordmeister. Thought this would give you a chuckle:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2025/02/10

:-)

>163 vancouverdeb: I think my view's very much a minority one, Deborah. I'm looking at the read without the big burst of energy that was behind it a couple years ago. Less pointing and shouting being done....

>164 Familyhistorian: ...and the source materials of History when new narratives get shaped. Scary.

>165 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, that same wish heartily returned.

>166 jessibud2: Snorky and brambish indeed, Shelley! Wonderful how well those panels survive.

>166 jessibud2: >170 richardderus: And "Brunky"!!!! I know exactly what that means and hope to use the word often. I miss good comics and forget that I could look at some online.

Good Monday, Good Richard! I've wondered how long it will take for those 2 monstrous, sociopathic egos to implode whatever the relationship is. I think that 45/7 has neither the focus nor the desire to be more than a figurehead, but he certainly doesn't want to appear to be only a figurehead. He also expects his every whim to be implemented - or to be knocked down quickly enough for him to move on to something else so that everybody will forget that he said it. The Muskolini is expecting to be the power stepping out from behind the throne. May they implode soon and inside some bunker where the fallout is contained!

*smooch* for the day!

>162 richardderus: Thank you, Richard. I'll try...

>171 LizzieD: It's been the only place I see comics for decades now. The newspaper stopped being viable for me in the Aughties. 34 the Felonious Yam and Muskolini are overreaching far faster than I thought they would, expecting they'd behave like ordinary coup-runners. It's clearly the smoke-and-mirrors stage where they're seeing what will stick.

We're in a brunky place.

>172 RebaRelishesReading: It's the best we can do, any of us, is try.

022 Living in your light by Abdellah Taïa

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A story in in praise of a woman, a fighter, a survivor from the award-winning French-Moroccan novelist known for humanizing North Africa’s otherwise marginalized characters—prostitutes and thieves, trans and gay people in a world where being LGBTQ+ can be a dangerous act.



Shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022.

Three moments in the life of Malika, a Moroccan countrywoman is her voice we hear in Abdellah Taïa’s stunning new novel, translated by Emma Ramadan, who won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Taïa’s last novel, A Country for Dying.

Malika’s first husband was sent by the French to fight in Indochina, the novel takes place from 1954 to 1999—from French colonization to the death of King Hassan II. In the 1960s, in Rabat, she does everything possible to prevent her daughter Khadija from becoming a maid in a rich French woman’s villa. The day before the death of Hassan II, a young homosexual thief, Jaâfar, enters her home and wants to kill her. Malika recounts with rage her strategies to escape the injustices of history. To survive and to have a little space of her own.

Malika is Taïa’s M'Barka Allali Taïa (1930-2010). This book is dedicated to her.

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

My Review: I read Taïa's novels to feel the world as I experience it from a the experience of a true stranger...étranger, foreigner, other, Other, the French don't parse things down near as fine-tipped as Anglophones do...who, like me, believes queer desire runs the world.

Save it, apologists for the inversion of nature that is hetero identity, it's just unnatural or we wouldn't have so many bloody-minded religious and civil laws shoring it up. One doesn't prohibit what people don't like.

As I was saying before that irritated tangent: Taïa’s stories center queer desire, feature queer people, are about things we understand a little differently than hetero people do. It's like a warm blanket in a freezing, windy steppe that isn't for you, doesn't give a shit about your happiness or satisfaction unless it somehow comes up and gives "them" a frisson of what you're expected to endure your entire life in which case shut up and stop bothering "them". This is Taïa’s reality, and thus where his fiction lives. It's a whole lot worse in god-ridden spaces than it currently is in the US.

So how does this relate to a story about Malika, an aging mother of eight whose life is ending, but whose track record is not close to what she ever wanted it to be? Her tragic inflection points are all around collisions with Authority, a thing every QUILTBAGger is deeply, existentially familiar with. She fails to keep her first husband home from the war that kills him, despite it being fought for the same people who have colonized their country. She fails to convince her money-motivated daughter to eschew the colonialist inducement of cash for submission and become a mail in a wealthy French family's service. Lastly, her gay son chooses his identity over her idea of duty to their country after he is raped by men in their neighborhood who claim to hate homosexuals...yet exert their sexual rights as straight men by fucking him...Rape is a crime of power, an abuse of autonomy and self-ownership, not sex itself, of course. That's pretty well established as fact. But someone needs to explain to me, slowly and in simple words, how the sex act they're engaging in makes any sense in this framework, given male penetration requires a physiological state of excitement to a sexual object.

I don't get it. But I'm back on a tangent.

Malika wants her powerful will to be obeyed because she is Right. The problem is she's correct a lot of the time, but that's not enough for her...she must be Right, and that is uniformly fatal to successful imposition of one's will. In a long life of mixed emotional results, that central truth does not come clear for her. It's the human condition to live life backwards, learning more and more as the need for applicable knowledge diminishes. It's the reason to have elders in the family system, expandable to encompass every level of social organization...a thing Malika would've reveled in, but did herself out of by insisting she be seen as Right. The world needs us oldsters to give up our addiction to the powerful substance of Rightness, and accept they're doing it differently now so offer advice without judgment.

As if.

So we read stories. It helps us all make sense of each other, helps us see the humanity in people deeply and fundamentally not-U, in Mitford's 1955 formulation. I'd offer all five stars with a big smile if the story was longer, developing the parts I was most curious about...Malika's time under colonialism would be so fascinating to learn about!...but this récit isn't designed to do that, and as it is written, is a beautiful evocation of a complex woman's life as a second-class partially empowered participant in a wildly passionately tumultuous world.

Her contributions to that world's growth earn my four and three-quarter star rating for their telling here.

Treat 'em the way they treat you, politics-style.

I want this to be reality. Nor what's really going on.

Wow! I'd live there!

>177 richardderus: I want that to be a reality too, preferably in my house!

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

>177 richardderus: *sigh* That's better than >27 richardderus:, isn't it? Or is it? Maybe I need a house with both of them.

*smooch* for a good night!

>177 richardderus: Wow, another gorgeous wooden staircase! I definitely want that transplanted to my house.

These staircases remind me of the "miraculous staircase" at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe that The Wayne took one look at and explained how it was engineered :D

023 Loca by Alejandro Heredia

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From Lambda Literary Award–winning author Alejandro Heredia comes a spellbinding debut about intersectionality, enduring friendship, and found family set at the turn of the millennium in 1999, following two Afro-Caribbean friends as they journey beyond the confined expectations of their home country in the Dominican Republic and begin new lives in New York City.

It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.

With both friends feeling the same pressures in New York that forced them from their homes, a chance outing at a gay bar introduces Sal to Vance, an African American gay man whose romantic relationship with Sal challenges him to confront the trauma of his past. Through Vance, Charo befriends Ella, an African American trans woman, and Ella’s refusal to be who or what society dictates she should be inspires Charo to reckon with the role she’s grown comfortable in. Sal and Charo soon find themselves part of a queer intersectional community who disrupt the status quo of gender politics and conformity, allowing both to create the family and identities they’ve always longed for.

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

My Review: "No matter where you go, there you are" meets "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." Socrates and Buckaroo Banzai in one sentence has to be a new record of weirdness even for me. When I read a book with Spanish and English side by side, I'm inspired to make connections. In my daily life I'm surrounded by Spanish-speaking folk, I grew up a denizen of La Frontera, I was taught Spanish in school...read my first foreign-language novel in junior high Spanish class...I am, in short, at home.

That is how this novel felt to me, like a homecoming. I'm upset that many of y'all will avoid the read like it gots the cooties *because* there's another language in it. Some because there's transgender representation. Some because it doesn't center, or to the best of my recollection contain, any wypipo. (Look it up.) Adding to the reasons I liked the read, and others won't, is New York City. That great cultural lightning rod with its century-old antisemitic epithet, its much-maligned by flyover country denizens Harlemness, that haven and home for Others. How that's a bad thing, honestly, is beyond my scope of imagination. I see it like Sal and Charo do, a place not to be defined by others but a place to do one's own defining. How can that be bad?

Sal, who provides the bulk of the narrative, is coming of age in a place as little unlike his home as he can bear. The Latine diaspora in New York City has enough cultural similarity and still enough cover to hide from the ugliness of his past. He's been traumatized, as a queer boy I don't imagine I need to spell it out for you how, and feels safer in New York. After all, it's harder to hate people when you don't know them, right? Disappearing into a crowd is safety?

Hmmm. Us oldsters are pretty sure that's fallacious already on first hearing but young people need to learn the hard way. Which explains in part why there are fewer old people than young ones.

1990s New York is the one I remember best. Things were changing and that's utterly ensorcelling to young people seeking personal change. The problem comes when the young person ignores the fact that change isn't a function of location, as Peter Weller memorably says in the clip linked above. Socrates (allegedly; at this distance in time, who really knows who formulated the thought?) elucidates the other issue Sal confronts in his desperate bid to change by escaping what he was told he was. It isn't until he meets a role model for his queerness who, like him, is a Black man but is also from the US, that he begins to *build* an identity not run from a label slapped on him...regardless of who's doing the slapping.

Charo might have the harder task. She does NOT want to be a punching bag for some man, in sexual slavery to him and a breeding machine for babies. Guess what. Moving to New York City on the cusp of a new century, a new millennium, doesn't change her less-obvious struggle any more than it does Sal's. Luckily for her, this is a soulbrother she's found, this is a connection they won't break. Sal is a role model for moving forward into being, into crafting, a new self. I expect these kids did just fine for themselves, and that is a great feeling to end a read on.

So why not more stars? Because, even though I get that the chaotic timeline with flashbacks and PoV changes is very much the way we live our lives in reality—complete with intrusive ruminations—fiction needs more order than life to work as a story. This book was, from the get-go, going to be more than one story with more than one main character. What happened was what so often does: One of the characters has more to say to the author than the other. It comes down to page-time. Sal's is the dominant PoV but we're more acquainted with him than really close friends, as a single PoV novel allows us to feel.

The truth is that's not a flaw when it's by design as it is here...we're apparently meant to feel we're conversationally getting to know a person's history and life events...but that carries an inherent issue of diminished investment in that PoV. When we don't focus hard on something, due to different kinds of interruptions in narrative flow, we don't necessarily get the same level of reward for our attention.

It's a braided-stories novel, a set of vignettes with beginnings and middles, whose ends we mostly know from their being flashbacks. It's a valid storytelling technique simply not one I love with the kind of passion I had to invest in this very involving set-up taking place in a world I knew, and remember fondly. So three and three-quarters of a star subjectively awarded.

Objectively I laud this debut novel by an author with a resonant voice, and encourage you to encourage him and his publisher by reading his book.

>178 jessibud2: IK,R?!

>179 alcottacre: I'd have to move in with you if that was your house, Stasia, so be careful what you wish for....

>180 LizzieD: OOO

>27 richardderus: for up, >177 richardderus: for down. What a house we're conjuring! *smooch* for Wednesday.

>181 atozgrl: Once a site's algorithm learns one likes something, it's served up on the regular, Irene. Luckily I'm okay with cool architectural details being pushed at me. I'd say anyone who doesn't want >177 richardderus: in their home is not likely to enjoy being a 75er, TBH.

>182 katiekrug: Yeah, they're never impossible to someone who comprehends the practicalities of physics. Always cool to look at, though!

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Wednesday to you.

>176 richardderus: Impressive rating and review.

>177 richardderus: So gorgeous. And, with herringbone hardwood flooring.

>183 richardderus: Interesting musings about so many PoVs and investment in one character more than another. Wonderful review, as always.

*smooch*

Morning, BigDaddy! We made it to Wednesday.

>177 richardderus: Well, that's gorgeous.

>189 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible! I'm glad you enjoyed the reviews. I'm as delighted as you are by the herringbone floor...would LOVE to have had that at least once before landing up in here.

The stairs, the books, the floors...all just as cozy-feeling as possible to me and my phellow bibliohols. *smooch*

>190 Crazymamie: Morning, Angel Flower. We did...but what more will we have to endure to get to Thursday? *sigh* Savonarola's grandson possesses me, apparently.

>192 richardderus: *smooch and a bear hug*

Wednesday *smooch*

>194 bell7: Thanks, Mary!
***

The algorithm's latest offering.

>185 richardderus: We could put you in our (nonexistent) basement, RD. . .

>195 richardderus: I kind of like that. Not 100% sure about it though.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, Richard. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday!

>195 richardderus: WOW! I WANT that algorithm to pay attention to me. I'm not sure how to reconcile that space with the two staircases, but I'd be willing to try. I might mention that I love dark wood.

*smooch* (I just went hunting Girolamo's grandson. I now see what you mean. Oh dear.)

>196 alcottacre: Basement >>>Attic in y'all's neck of the prairie. >195 richardderus: is nicer for its form than its face, at least to me. *smooch*

>197 LizzieD: Scary people the Savonarolas of the world.

If you join Tumblr, it will pay attention to you. Wouldn't that make an amazing entry to the room >77 richardderus: is in? Walk up, see the face, go through the archway, end up in that glorious sunstruck room facing the staircase...on the way up to:

That, dear Peggy, is Our Kinda House.

*smooch*

The algorithm gets my humor.

>195 richardderus: - I like this door. The other side of it, from what we see of it, looks a tad boring but who knows? On the other hand, I could DEFINITELY live here: >199 richardderus: (but I'd need a ladder to reach those upper shelves. ;-)

>201 jessibud2: *I* would need a ladder to reach those shelves, Shelley! And rppms that start boring needn't remain that way...

>199 richardderus: I want this. Forget the ladder, and let's go for a butler instead that way we can also be served drinks.

Love the photos in your thread, Richard. >177 richardderus: is beautiful (but I'm happy not to have to deal with stairs in this house), >195 richardderus: is a doorway that would make me smile every time I saw it and >199 richardderus: might make it worth the trek to climb stairs to reach it...but, "yes please, Mamie", let's have a butler :)

Thanks for the pleasant diversion, Richard.

>203 Crazymamie: Clever, these Georgia lassies! Perkins can bring me my Aviation gin 'tini and you some of that sweet tea y'all love so much, since I *know* such a refined lady would never sully her lips with magnolia droppings.

>204 RebaRelishesReading: Mais oui, Reba ma chere amie, de rien. I love that doorway for its color and its glorious sinuous curves. Perkins! Miss Reba will need some sweet tea as well, and refill the 'tinis for me.

No sweet tea for me as I am fond of the enamel on my teeth. I take a glass of dry white wine, please.

>207 Crazymamie: Mamie! Alkabooze?! You?! Whatever will the churchladies think?! *gasp*

>166 jessibud2: Perspective; there are other viewpoints than human on this Earth.

>177 richardderus: Aaahhhh ..... bliss!

>209 humouress: Agreed, Nina, it really is bliss. Glad to see you.

>199 richardderus: And my kind of house too!

>195 richardderus: That's also impressive in its own way.

>173 richardderus:
Felonious Yam!!!! I laughed so hard, I got the hiccups. I am going to bed happy. Thanks.

I think >177 richardderus: is the best of all the latest images, Richard, but the zebra ironing is an eye catcher!

>211 atozgrl: It's a beauty, one I'd feel perfectly happy moving into. *sigh* If I had the opportunity, of course.

>212 benitastrnad: 34 the Felonious Yam seems like the best descriptor. Pleased you liked it.

>213 Familyhistorian: Got to stay zorch, Meg...a little ironing helps rge creases stay sharp.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I love that reading room up there. Perfectly cozy. It is Jackson Day. I am deciding what to do with him since I will have him all day, or at least until Sue gets home. Looking forward to when the weather turns where we can do stuff outdoors. Very cold today.

I am ill, fever, cough, aches and dizziness. U.G.H.

I'll be in my thread mostly, trying to polish up Beartooth by Callan Wink. I liked it fine. I'm not sure if I'm grouchy and unsettled, or really seeing some flaws. I'm off to read some other peoples' reviews to see if they saw what I see. When I can't trust my own opinions I'm actually ill.

>217 msf59: Enjoy your Jackson time, Mark! Our dusting of snow is gone. It's a bit dank today, which isn't making me feel any better.

>177 richardderus: Oh man what a dream! I would be taking a pillow with me to the stairs and sitting on them all day, reading!

>195 richardderus: that looks calming.

Happy Thursday!

Hiya, RD! Happy Thursday to you.

>199 richardderus: Sweet. Books, comfy cushions, hardwood floors…

>200 richardderus: Oh my goodness. Fantastic.

>218 richardderus: I hope you polish your review to a brilliant shine.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>218 richardderus: - So sorry you're feeling poorly. Rest up!

>218 richardderus: Oh, I’m so sorry you’re unwell…get lots of rest. Hope you’re better tout de suite.

Karen O

>220 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! I agree, >195 richardderus: is calming, satisfying the need for order and beauty. Thursday orisons.

>221 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible...it's not specially happy but I will not die just yet so I call it a win. >200 richardderus: is a glory, I agree. >199 richardderus: is more or less the way I dream of living.

>218 richardderus: is what it is, and is honest about merits and uncomfortable spots...best I can hope for, really. Thursday orisons! *smooch*

>222 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie, my body's giving me little choice but to rest...I slumbered through 2/3 of a documentary I really wanted to watch on the Kushite Pharoahs. YouTube will still have it from PBS's channel, but wow...lights out about 10min in!

>223 klobrien2: Morning, Karen O.! I'm not fighting my body's insistence on snoozin' when he wants some rest so I hope I'll get better fast. Stay well!

024 Beartooth by Callan Wink

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival.

In an aging timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration and the medical bills from their father’s fatal illness and the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is... different, more instinctual, deeply attuned to the natural world. Desperate for money, they are approached by a shadowy out-of-towner with a proposition and agree to attempt a heist of natural resources from Yellowstone, a federal crime.

Beartooth is a fast-paced tale set in the grandeur of the American West.

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

My Review: All y'all seem to be lovin' you some Western-set crime shows, like Costner's Yellowstone that lasted six years in a media landscape full of disposable shows. There are other series reads in this setting (eg C.J. Box's Joe Pickett books, Craig Johnson's five-year TV run for Longmire TV show and ongoing novel series) but all of those are borderline copaganda in their focus on police procedural plots, and valorization of the settler-colonial worldview endemic in the men of this family. The brothers in this story, coming as they do into control of valuable natural resources after their father's expensive death that threatens their grandfather's stolen homestead.

It was pretty hard for me to work up much sympathy for Thad, the brother whose show of privilege leads them into the nightmare of property loss, which they agree to solve, and to restore their stolen "birthright" homestead, by doing things so far beyond the pale of acceptability that I had a lot of trouble pushing through the details to get to the ending.

Animal abuse is rife.

I'm impressed by Wink's ability to evoke the Montana setting with near-hallucinatory clarity. I could feel the unique quality of Yellowstone's air, see the special way light limns the edges of distant objects; I was a lot less excited when the poaching scenes were also evoked as clearly. Hazen, the more nature-oriented brother, still finds it in himself to commit acts I find reprehensible for short-term gain. It's almost always the case that criminals are simply bad at planning and lack foresight; that fits these brothers to a T. They're led into criminality to solve a problem they created with no shred of common sense to their behavior.

What happens is a drawn-out reckoning for the past and against the future. Their long-fled mother, Sacajawea, shows up to add her dose of unpleasantness. I expected to be more led along by the strands of family dissolution and reckoning. Their criminality, the means and motivation for it, led me to finish this short (under 300pp) tale of men acting like kids who need a spanking, in over a week.

I seldom take more than three days to finish 256pp, more often two.

Wink can write. His plotting is logical, his pace is chosen carefully to immerse the reader not whiz past anything. I wish I'd loved it by the end as much as I started out loving it.

Animal lovers are cautioned...the awful things done to them aren't valorized, but still happen with no sense on my part they were being condemned, either.

Afternoon, darling. Sorry you are feeling the yuck.

>208 richardderus: They can think whatever they like as long as they keep it to themselves. I am quite immune to The Disapproving Look.

>228 richardderus: Nope. But I loved reading your review.

>218 richardderus: *hugs* and hopes that you feel better soon.

Hope you're feeling better!

Sorry to hear you are under the weather, Richard. Get better soon!

>229 Crazymamie: ...but...but Mamie! You have A Responsibility to Set A Good Example to All of Georgia's Ladies of Standing! However could you decline to be a Leading Lady of Rectitude!

heeheehee

I definitely think >228 richardderus: is NOT for you. The yuck, well, it's burning through the whole facility. It's horrifying to see how many are down with it. I know I'm vaxxed up, yet here I am. *sigh*

>230 ArlieS: I hope I do, too, thank you.

>231 RebaRelishesReading: I'd love to be better. I'm not getting worse, though, and that's not like a lot of others here. Coughing is an annoying activity. I hate it.

>232 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg, from your keyboard to Pestilence's inbox.

>233 richardderus: Rectitude is overrated. Ima kill em with kindness.

Please take good care of you and try not to mingle.

>237 Crazymamie: My mask and I are huddled up, avoiding interaction.
***


Yum!

Good job, my darling. Hoping tomorrow is better.

>218 richardderus: I'm sorry to hear you are down with the crud, RD. Sending wishes that you will soon feel much better. >238 richardderus: Plenty of hot drinks should help. Rest and sleep as much as you need!

>199 richardderus: To die for - except that would sort of defeat the purpose....

>228 richardderus: No thank you. Thank you for taking another one for the group though.

I'm sorry that you're ill. Baby yourself and demand what you need! *smooch*

Sorry you are feeling cruddy, Richard. I hope you are feeling better soon.

>228 richardderus: Not for me, thanks.

Feel better soon Richard.

{{Richard}}. Feel better soon!!

>239 Crazymamie: A bit better indeed, though I sound like a two-pack-a-day bullfrog.

>240 atozgrl: Gurgling down coffee, then lemon-ginger tea, because I really need the relaxation of my trachea. Didn't crack an eyelid until 7.30! Late for me. *hack*

>241 LizzieD: I think that's The Afterlife, Peggy. If there's a gawd, that's what she'll give us as a reward.

>228 richardderus: would make you really angry. Avoid!

*smooch*

>242 vancouverdeb: Thank you most kindly, Deborah! I'm a solid bit better than I was yesterday, no more fever, little achiness...but I have a sore throat.

Better tomorrow than today!

>243 humouress: A paisleypus! What a great image, Nina, thank you! I love that kind of creative use of octopus anatomy.

>228 richardderus: isn't one I'll push into your hands, honestly, because it's so...self-absorbed. Not for what I know of your reading tastes.

>244 jessibud2: Morning, Shelley, and thank you. I'm pretty much on the mend, so it's been a short but nasty one.

‘Morning, RDear! I hope you’re feeling better today.

>228 richardderus: I always have mixed feelings about anything to do with Yellowstone. It’s a fine line I walk when I talk with friend Karen who lives near Bozeman, because she’s 5th generation white Montanan. If this was on Kindle Unlimited I might get it, but even at $2.99 (original digital price $28. $28? Really?) I’m going to pass. Your warnings are good for our sensitive fellow LTers (and on your blog, of course).

>246 richardderus: I’m glad you were able to sleep in. Coffee yum. Lemon-ginger tea not so much, but helping your trachea, yes.

>250 richardderus: Yay for the mend!

*smooch*

>251 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, I'm pretty sure >228 richardderus: wouldn't bother you, or much entertain you. It's about spoiled boys being entrapped, and I can't see the idea of it not making you roll your eyes.

I hate tea. Lemon ginger is tolerable because I can't then taste the tea. Otherwise I'd never drink the stuff.

>250 richardderus: Better than long, drawn-out and nasty. :-)

>253 jessibud2: Awomen, Shelley!

So sorry you’re feeling cruddy, Richard, but glad to hear you’re on the mend. Lemon ginger tea is what I reach for too, especially in the evenings, if I’m not feeling my best.

>255 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary! I need hot liquids so I choose this instead of more coffee. I'd like to sleep again before March....

Happy Friday RD, I hope you're feeling better. Just a word of warning, one of my fur-clad children is feature in today's post. If you're so inclined to visit :p

I'm glad you're better today, Richard, and look forward to even better tomorrow. *Every day in every way,* etc. ---- how Victorian of me!

This will likely make you sicker (I really don't mean it to) because it sounds awful, but it does sooth a sore throat without tea: drink hot Tang. I think I've also mentioned my DH's cabbage, garlic, vinegar cure for opening a stuffy head.

You may get well in self defense. *smooch*

>199 richardderus: Oh, what a lovely picture. Yes, I want to love there!

Glad to hear recovery is proceeding! Take care and help it along :)

>257 mahsdad: Oh. Well.

Yeah, my recovery is still fragile enough that I don't want to assault its foundations with the sight of one of...them...so next week.

>258 LizzieD: Émile Capouya! Goodness, hadn't heard or thought of that in ages!

The last time I saw Tang was when B. Dylan made Tang cookies. One supposes it could be procured from some internet source or another. Cabbage, garlic, and vinegar plus egg noodles was a favorite solo dinner of mine. I soldier on, steadily coughing less, still a bit froggy of voice. *smooch*

>259 sirfurboy: Absolutely agree, Stephen. Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

>260 RebaRelishesReading: I'm downright thrilled, Reba, and have been dozing, drinking tea, and dozing some more all day. Seems to be working!

>261 richardderus: But she's sooooo cute. LOL. Just jaggin ya.

So you don't have to go over there, I'll just say thank you for the recommendation about Sue Black. I finished Written in Bone on audio (she does the narration), it was really good. Made me go right out and start listening to Kathy Reich's second Temperance Brennan book; Dead du Jour. Sure its not the same, but Black kept reminding me of Bones.

>265 mahsdad: C-a-t-s are, by definition, never cute. Their evil souls and toxic spit preclude it.

I'm glad Dame Sue made her mark! She's got a real gift for making death interesting. Enjoy the Reichs books!

>249 richardderus: Happy Valentine's Day Richard ;0)

re >228 richardderus: It was the mention of animal abuse that turned me off.

>246 richardderus: Lemon-ginger throat sweets, for when the hot liquids threaten to swamp you?

Sorry to hear that you have been under the weather. I hope you are doing better today and get a nice rebound. We have been getting snow but at least it only drops an inch or 2 at a time, enough to shovel but better than getting dumped on. Even Oregon got 6-8 inches. WTH?

Hope you are feeling better soon Richard.

>267 humouress: Oh my gawd. I completely forgot about that. Thanks.

The idea of animal abuse will never occur to someone not utterly self-absorbed/

Not usually agreeable, those things, I want my sugar enrobed in fats or would just as soon have fruit. The tea's working fine, and things're not unusually swampy...yet.

>268 msf59: Atmospheric rivers, and thank goodness they're snowing it down! Those floods in Cali were apocalyptic. Our snows are gone for now. It is, as you say, February. We can expect more before the end of March...I hope!

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Saturday to you. I hope you keep feeling better and better.

>262 richardderus: Heh. I love the Dylan's Tang Cookies short. Tang is available on Amazon…

*smooch*

>269 SandDune: Better and better though not yet well, Rhian. The whole place is sick with this whatever, and quite some several have been hospitalized...one guy three times. Luckily I'm just uncomfortable.

I'm sorry to hear you're under the weather, RDear. Sending get well smooches and lots of hot beverages.

>262 richardderus: I can always count on you to catch any allusion I make, Richard. It's affirming for me!

Hope today is a bit more comfortable. *smooch*

>264 richardderus: Hooray!! Good reason to keep it up, eh?

I hope you are feeling better by now, Richard.

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

>274 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! Three squillionth teamug goin' down.

>275 LizzieD: I'm glad it's affirming, dear one. It is not more comfortable, and I chucked $4 into the can because I just cannot even.

>276 RebaRelishesReading: I am very definitely keeping it up since I really can't do much else.

>277 alcottacre: Nope...wonderful weekends are not on my horizon, but sleep and recovery ones are.

*smooch*

Looks like you are going in a positive direction, Richard. Hope the crud leaves soon.

Glad you are beginning to feel better, Richard!

I'm sorry about your coupon, Richard. I join everybody in wishing you a good night, which will encourage a better day tomorrow. *smooch*

May you get plenty of rest this weekend and feel much better soon. *smooch*

>282 Familyhistorian: Me too, Meg. I could do with it going today....

>283 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

>284 LizzieD: It's the sort of thing that irks me, Peggy, but honestly is pretty unimportant in the grand scheme.

>285 bell7: It was a long night. I expect a long day to come. May it not be so....

'Morning, RDear. I hope you're feeling better this morning.

We've got March weather in February - thunderstorm warning, wind gusts, rain, power flickers.

Not much planned except for reading and etc.

*smooch*

I likewise hope for a better day for you. We escaped with less weather than we feared. It just looks nastier than it is now.

May the nibbling ducks stay far from you for the rest of the day! *smooch*

And when you're really down and out the only way is UP!

I hope your day wasn't as long as you feared and that your Monday is way better!

>290 karenmarie: Sunday was horrible. I was utterly wretched, clogged, dripping, headachey, miserable. I never got much sleep, hacking and schnerkling, using an entire box of kleenex, and the misery of sore ribs from coughing...then, at 1am, I fell asleep until 6.30. It was blissful. I got both nostrils back, haven't hacked at all since waking, and actually feel hungry! May this not be another false dawn.

Awfully cold here, with gale-force winds. I'm slurping coffee and waiting for lunch.

*smooch*

>291 LizzieD: Hi Peggy, it's not as bad today as Sunday. See >294 richardderus: for deets. Our winds are really awful...I'm freezyfrosty cold and have the heater cranked.

*shiver* Have the best Monday, smoochling.

>292 magicians_nephew: From your keyboard to Hygeia's inbox, Jim. I hope present trends continue.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy feeling-better Monday to you.

>294 richardderus: I’m so glad yesterday’s misery has turned into today’s dramatic improvement. May it continue. Coffee! Waiting for lunch! Warm inside, and you don’t have to go out into it. Things to be grateful for.

*smooch*

>297 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, it's been a road but it really does feel a lot more like wellness than before. I hope it'll keep going in this direction. "Warm" is relative, of course, since my room's one without steam heat and with windows on a wind-tunnel between the North Atlantic and the bay. But I'll switch to tea, put on my socks and cardie, and revel in not feeling hot OR miserable! *smooch*

We've got the same wild winds today, and everything's icy after yesterday's mess, too. I had to walk the dogs in the woods today because the street is a sheer block of ice, and I can't open the garage door to drive out because it's iced closed. Guess I'm stuck reading all day?

I hope you are truly on the way to well and have a good night's sleep tonight.

>299 bell7: Thanks, Mary, again keyboard → Hygeia's inbox...I'm getting all the winter I missed in November.
***

New thread's open!
https://www.librarything.com/topic/368544

>300 richardderus: - Bingo. Tragically, bingo. Humanity seems not to be evolving or improving...

>294 richardderus: Poor, Poor baby. I am so sorry that you were feeling so miserable. Hooray for blissful sleep - hoping the feeling better continues, dear heart. *smooch*

>302 jessibud2: Repugnant, innit.

>303 Crazymamie: I'm flagging a bit and needin' a nap....

>300 richardderus: Indeed. Or they are law-uber-alles nutters without a shred of empathy.

>301 richardderus: You posting machine!

>306 ArlieS: They're flouting laws, so can't really be accorded that fig leaf...there are lots of reasons this coup is illegal, and its supporters are criminal actors.