Jill's 2025 Reading, Rummaging, and Sorting Continues - Part Three

Happy New Thread!

Okay, so here's what I managed thus far in 2025

War and Peace
The Murder in the Squires Pew
Fear Stalks the Village
The Greene Murder Case
The City in Glass
The Orb of Cairado
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair
The Tomb of Dragons
Three Act Tragedy
The King is Dead. Long Live the King

Rereads (Christie):
The Moving Finger
At Bertram's Hotel
The Mirror Crack'd
Death on the Nile

Rereads (Addison)
The Witness for the Dead
The Grief of Stones

Book Group Selections
Dreamsnake
The Bookshop
Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary
The Wall (actually a reread for me)
Death My Darling Daughters
The Wizard's Butler

>1 pgmcc: You're a tricksy one, getting in the first post of my fresh thread. ;>)

@pgmcc @clamairy As admins, can you / would you kindly fix the title of this thread to indicate Part Three. I seem to have inadvertently begun to repeat myself.

>3 jillmwo:
Your wish is my command.

Job done!

That is an amazing amount of reading completed so far this year, especially with War and Peace on the list.

You're a tricksy one, getting in the first post of my fresh thread. ;>)

It's all a matter of timing. :-)

Happy new thread! I also am in awe of your reading.

Happy new thread!

>4 pgmcc: Thank you. If no one else has told you today what a splendid person you are, please allow me to be the first! And I keep telling you that your problem is that you insist on leaving the house. Conversely, I should leave the house periodically but have managed a surprisingly convincing imitation of a cloistered nun.

>5 haydninvienna: Some of those titles listed, you will note, are really light. They offset the long slog of War and Peace. I saw your note on the previous thread about Michael Innes and his admiration of Christie's technique. I haven't really compared the two authors, but it might be interesting to see what he may have picked up from her.

>6 terriks: It's the beginning of a new quarter. And Spring had sprung! That's my excuse.

>7 jillmwo:
… I should leave the house periodically but have managed a surprisingly convincing imitation of a cloistered nun

It is just your habit.

>1 pgmcc: >jillmo I happened upon your thread early this year, some comment you made elsewhere got me curious. so glad jumped in; I have found interesting discussions humor, and so many BBs that it should be illegal. Thanks for letting me participate here. tons of fun! oh and happy new thread

>8 pgmcc: HAhaha oh, my ribs

Happy New Thread, and thank you for the morning chuckles!

>1 pgmcc: So it appears that time hopping is one of Peter's many skills? Posting on a thread BEFORE THE AUTHOR of the thread is very impressive and a little alarming!

>12 Sakerfalcon:
It’s a Timey-Wimey Thing.

Happy New Thread!

I am also impressed with your time hopping skills, @pgmcc :)

>12 Sakerfalcon: I seem to recall Peter telling us that he was going to post a time-travel joke but that none of us understood the joke, so he didn't bother...

Well, apparently, he did something because this thread currently does not show up in the system as being a thread I started. (I have to wonder if the thread shows up in the system as one HE started. The system may think the @jillmwo handle is only a bot under his control.) Somewhat disconcerting, but for all we know he was playing with the levers of the time machine while simultaneously being held at gunpoint by a nefarious espionage agent wearing a steel-brimmed derby. We all get distracted under such circumstances....)

For the record, I am not a 'bot.

Nicola Griffith Named as Damon Knight Grand Master https://reactormag.com/sfwa-names-nicola-griffith-the-41st-damon-knight-memorial...

>16 jillmwo: It's possible we are all just figments of his imagination.

>16 jillmwo:

I have to wonder if the thread shows up in the system as one HE started. The system may think the @jillmwo handle is only a bot under his control

Oops!

<19 *giggling*

>17 jillmwo: Great to see her getting well-deserved recognition. I really enjoyed Ammonite and Slow river as well as Hild.

>17 jillmwo: This is wonderful news. I definitely preferred Spear to Hild, but they are both amazing books.

>2 jillmwo: Happy almost new thread! If I were to post any later, you'd have started a new one, or is that Peter?

Seriously, I put >1 pgmcc: first, without thinking.

>21 Sakerfalcon: Agreed. Griffith is very good and really deserves this recognition. I first heard of her when Hild was published. One of my favorite SF authors that no one has heard of, (Mark W. Tiedemann), blogged about Griffith's new book while mentioning that he attended Clarion with her. He heavily praised the book so I picked it up, (only my 2nd kindle purchase at the time), and liked it so well that I have read all of her novels* and quite a few of her shorter works as well.

>22 clamairy: I gave Spear 5 stars - and I'm not much of a fan of Arthurian fiction. The Aud Torvingen books are pretty good too, albeit not sci-fi or fantasy. More like Griffith wrote herself into the role of a badass queer female Reacher-type character.

* Except one: Hild was the first Griffith I read and I plan to re-read it before diving into Menewood, which is waiting on my shelf.

Something to read. (in the interests of full disclosure, I wrote it.) It's sadly clunky in terms of the prose, but things kept changing. https://www.niso.org/niso-io/2025/03/concern-over-fate-imls-drives-scrutiny-stak... Check the sidebar for links to coverage from a variety of external groups.

Why those residing in the US should care: The Institute of Museum and Library Services delivers funding to a variety of public and state libraries. The grants delivered enhance the services that citizens need from those entities. It is depressing that funding for this agency has been cut. It is not a political entity. It works with state libraries in all *fifty* states. It bolsters the work of rural libraries with minimal funding. I'm not surprised it was on the chopping block, but it is a loss.

>25 jillmwo: I was going to reach out and ask you about this as there was a segment on the PBS NewHour last night about the cuts. I rarely watch the news anymore, and this story had me flabbergasted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy_kArHgY0A

>3 jillmwo: I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to put you back as the author of that 1st post.

>27 clamairy:
I have looked and it has defeated me.

>27 clamairy: and >28 pgmcc: Well, the way things are currently constructed, I don't think it's a real problem. Because my 2025-Part Two thread connects over to this one without a problem. The issue will be whether when this Part Three thread hits the 150 mark and I start the next thread, if that Part Four of 2025 will show back up as being MINE. It's a learning experience for everyone! But it should not be something that keeps anyone awake at night. (BTW @clam, following up on that Twitter conversation yesterday? I don't want to give a false impression that I'm without concern. On-going changes are disturbing at best and hiding out here in the Pub and reading bunches of Agatha Christie is how I REALLY cope.)

>29 jillmwo:
The continuation will carry on for you. It appears the user posting the first post is said to have started the thread. The next time you set up a new thread I will temper my enthusiasm to wish you a happy new thread and await your posting your first post. There was no one more surprised than I when it turned out my post was number 1. That’s my cover story to hide my time-travelling technology.

>30 pgmcc:. Like I said, this is a learning experience for all of us. Giddy enthusiasm, however warm and welcoming, is something to be shared with care lest things go all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... The question remains whether you were able to successfully subdue the nefarious counterspy as you were futzing with the levers on the time machine. Enquiring minds want to know.

>26 clamairy:. For what it's worth, I thank you for posting the link to the Newshour interview as I hadn't seen it. I went back to my story page and added that link to the sidebar. There's so much people don't fully grasp about how some things are managed in the modern environment. And so much of what libraries do, most particularly with regard to electronic infrastructure, is hidden from view.

>31 jillmwo: When I was on the library board, and then, very briefly, part of the staff at my small town library in CT it was a real eye-opener to see how many hats everyone working there had to wear to make the place function the way it did. Just about everyone became an expert on Wi-Fi, wireless printing, and connecting patrons' tablets, laptops, phones and e-readers to the internet and OverDrive. Oh, and they were constantly having to clear the history on the public computers thanks to a couple of degenerates.

>29 jillmwo: This is one of the reasons why I have been listening to so many audiobooks. If I'm not listening to something my brain runs wild, and not in any productive or pleasant directions.

Well, even worse now, there are conflicting reports as to whether 100% of IMLS staff have been placed on administrative leave or if only 80% have been placed on administrative leave. (Sorry, I feel as if I may be treading into the political here. I'll shut up now. Maybe go back to pontificating about literary criticism of work by Agatha Christie. I went and ordered three new books today to see if I could otherwise be distracted.)

>33 jillmwo: Oh no...

>31 jillmwo:
The question remains whether you were able to successfully subdue the nefarious counterspy as you were futzing with the levers on the time machine. Enquiring minds want to know.

If I say I have been successful how would you know I had or if I was still under the cosh of the nefarious counterspy and sending you a response that she was dictating, or if this response was being typed by her after having neutralized me? It is hard to know what is really happening in a spy/counterspy encounter. It is like an espionage themed Turing Test.

>26 clamairy:
That is not a nice story. I have experienced the wonderful libraries in Cincinnati and how wonderful they are. It would be diabolical shame if they were to suffer from this action.

>36 pgmcc: Actually, I saw some local television coverage that talked about the way this would impact the museums in the Greater Cincinnati area. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIJeQbNkdl0 That is dated I think as being from two weeks ago.

>37 jillmwo:
The Cincinnati Museum Centre is an amazing place. It is a wonderful place to visit.

I fear for the future of The Freedom Centre.

>31 jillmwo: Well, I certainly thank you for writing this, adding the link(s) and keeping us informed. I learned a few things about the IMLS and how it functions.

It's all a bit unnerving. Thank goodness for Agatha Christie.

If you need something new to rant over... did you see this yet? https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-ne...

What makes it worse is that Meta could easily have paid the licenses to train their AI - the company has the money - yet chose to pirate instead. Ugh.

>40 Narilka:. I believe that Meta claimed that negotiating those licenses would have taken too long and they as well as other tech companies needed to jumpstart the work on AI before China got too far ahead in the realm of AI. What the Authors Guild actually suggested some months back was that tech companies train their LLMs on public domain content. (I tried to track down their original post and my response from 2024, but the thing isn't surfacing.) Of course, that wouldn't have served the purpose unless we want the Chatbots to all use the vocab and sentence structure of the 19th century in responding to queries. Although the bots might be far more courteous that way. And it would be much easier to spot the students who relied on the bots to write their essays.

Seriously Narilka, I agree with you that it was absolutely a violation of creator rights, but techies tend to adopt the approach that it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. (Not all of them, of course, but there's a percentage.)

>41 jillmwo:

unless we want the Chatbots to all use the vocab and sentence structure of the 19th century

Pray tell, what difficulty might that present to the enquirer after knowledge and wisdom, forsooth?

>42 pgmcc: All I know is that I get dinged alot by various systems for using complex sentences. The systems think it reduces the readability of the piece. What it really means is that those in the fast lane might actually need to slow down to process the meaning of a sentence and OMG, we can't have that. (There. I got my rude sarcasm out of the way for the day. What else is on the To-Do list?)

>40 Narilka:. One more thing to get your juices flowing today! Research paper discussing whether or not OpenAI trained their system on copyrighted material. https://asimovaddendum.substack.com/p/did-openai-train-on-copyrighted-book Spoiler Alert: Yes, they most likely did.

However, lawyers are playing both sides against the middle: https://torrentfreak.com/training-ai-using-pirated-content-can-be-fair-use-law-p...

Another bit of historical interest -- the fashionable presence (and sometimes the practical necessity) of a bridge coat. https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-intricate-secret-world-of-bridge...

>25 jillmwo: Thank you for that post and keeping us informed.

>41 jillmwo: Of course, that wouldn't have served the purpose unless we want the Chatbots to all use the vocab and sentence structure of the 19th century in responding to queries. Although the bots might be far more courteous that way. And it would be much easier to spot the students who relied on the bots to write their essays.

I love all of this lol

Thanks for the additional reading links. I wish their class action lawsuit well though I'm sure it will take years to go through. I feel bad for content creators right now.

>43 jillmwo: Well, having read a recent piece of yours, I think you're kind of a badass - complex sentences and all.

>43 jillmwo: For us as drafters, Microsoft Word’s spell checker was an absolute necessity, but anyone who valued their sanity used to switch the grammar checker off. Even now that would be the first thing to do after installing a new copy of Word.

>43 jillmwo:
I do not think it rude at all. I am sure you could do better.

>50 pgmcc: *snort* Meanwhile, I have acquired Floating Hotel. I'm bouncing between that and A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny in that last period before sleep.

Meanwhile my sinuses are acting up due to the roller coaster temperatures we are experiencing. The precise descriptive terminology would be irritating. Disruptive to the thought process; disruptive to the nasal membranes; disruptive to the sleep cycle.

>51 jillmwo:
My sympathy about the sinuses. I cannot say I understand your problem intimately but I can say my wife suffered with her sinuses so I understand the irritation and disruption. My wife likes to be generous and so she shares her suffering.

I hope your problem clears up quickly and lets you have a more relaxing time reading.

I am waiting for the actual press release / list announcement. But if you want to find out the finalists for the 2025 Hugo Awards, you can watch the YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48yqLg6Jx9s&t=1202s (The video is 22 minutes in length.) Nominees include Ray Naylor for his novella, T. Kingfisher for a novella as well as a novel, and Moniquill Blackgoose for To Shape A Dragon's Breath in the category for YA novel.

>53 jillmwo:
Thank you for that.

>25 jillmwo: this makes me so furious. these Neandathl are killing everything we hold dear. there will be nothing left to be rebuilt. Such a loss

>55 cindydavid4: I know. I feel the same way, but I am holding on to the idea that the introduction of new technologies will not necessarily eliminate archives and libraries, but will instead shift our thinking about how best to use them. (Somewhat foolish, I admit, but it's how I keep trudging along.)

But per my msg in #53 above, here's the "print" announcement of the 2025 Hugo award nominees: https://locusmag.com/2025/04/157974/ Browse at your own risk. Management is not responsible for any financial liabilities incurred.

One more item of possible interest, pertaining to libraries. The American Library Association (ALA) put out their annual report, The State of America's Libraries: A Snapshot of 2024.
https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/state-of-americas-libraries-repo...

>57 jillmwo:
I have downloaded this report to read at a later stage. You are linking us to some very interesting material. Thank you for the Hugo shortlist presentation. The male voice is Nicholas Whyte. He is a psephologist, and a very good one at that.

>56 jillmwo: Thank you for the Hugo award nominees! Quite a few of these are on my list already.
Alien Clay was good, my book club read it.

I've only read A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher and The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I personally would vote for the Bennett. I've only seen two of the movies, Dune II and Flow. I would put my money on Flow, only because I loved it so very much.

>58 pgmcc: He is a psephologist, and a very good one at that.

explain please, never heard that term

>61 cindydavid4:
He is an expert in predicting and interpreting election results. In countries where there are many political parties this is a very interesting profession. Nicholas is frequently appearing on television election coverage to analyse results as they come in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psephology

>58 pgmcc: >61 cindydavid4: I had to go look him up (as well as the definition of his profession) as well. But, Peter, is there truth as well to the rumor that he is involved in calculating the Hugo awards? Or was he just the YouTube voice of the announcement?

>63 jillmwo:
He is a key player in managing the Hugo Awards, especially since the faux pas a couple of years ago. He was called back to put order on it. I understand he had stood back from it before the damage was done. He is an extremely ethical person and an avid Dr. Who fan. I would call him a savant. He not only works full-time as an international affairs strategist, he also carries on various activities as a psephologist, reads and reviews over thirty mostly science fiction books a month, blogs about matters Whovian, speaks many languages fluently (most if not all European languages, Middle Eastern languages, and many more) and works on the Hugo team for Worldcon. A lovely person to meet; a genius who deals with people on a very equal basis; not airs and graces or snootiness.

He is from my home town and it is through attending science fiction conventions that I got to know him.

I remember his taking part on a panel at P-Con in March 2006. For work reasons he had his phone switched on. During the panel his phone rang and he had to take the call. It was the BBC telling him that Slobodan Milošević had just died and asking Nicholas for his reaction and comments on the situation. He's that kind of guy.

So, yes, he is involved in the Hugo elections. Thanks to him the process will remain straight and honest.

>64 pgmcc: Thank you! Geez Louise, though. How does he manage to read and review 30+ books per month? Your characterization of him as a savant must be accurate.

>65 jillmwo:
He is quite amazing. I recall his taking part in a two team Science Fiction quiz at Octocon, the Irish national SF convention. The other team was made up of a team from Cork that was very well versed in SF. The team Nicholas was on included my daughter and two members of the Octocon committee who are steeped in SF. Nicholas's team won hands down. They didn't miss a question. The interesting thing was that Nicholas was the only person who answered the questions. :-)

I understand he reads on his commutes to and from work.

When we both attended a convention in Belfast he asked me if I wanted to accompany him to the local bookshop, which was The University Bookshop, a favourite haunt of mine years previously when I worked in the University. I leapt at the opportunity. We spent about an hour in the shop. I bought two books. He bought over thirty.

He is truly amazing, and as I said, a lovely person.

>62 pgmcc: thanks for that. was he right about this last elction? sounds like a fascinating person

>67 cindydavid4: Any time I have seen him covering elections he has presented his predictions and reasoning before the results come in. He has always been very accurate with his analysed.

If you are discussing US elections, I do not know if he did any predictions for it.

yes I was thinking about US but was shocked how quickly the results came in. Have always wondered about that....

>66 pgmcc: When my commute up in New York was 90 minutes one way, I too could get through a lot of reading. And he bought 30 to your simple two. The gentleman sounds fascinating and I can see why you'd strike up a friendship.

I read The Wood At Midwinter over my breakfast this morning. I'm not quite sure why I found it such a breath-taking read, a hallmark of good fantasy, but it was indeed good fantasy. The author's commentary about how it came into being kind of restored my equanimity and allowed me to return back to real life. But quite a striking experience. A young woman goes into the woods and, once having understood what she wants, receives the fulfillment of her deepest wish.

From Hesperus Press: https://hesperus.press/blogs/news/going-green Too brief to really cover the subject, but they're trying to raise awareness which I suppose is good. Hesperus Press primarily specializes in reprints of classic short form content.

From Publishers Weekly re tariff situation and book pricing:

While no new tariffs on books are imminent, the existing 7.5% tariffs on books printed in China implemented by the first Trump administration, which were kept in place under President Biden, remain in force. Bibles and other religion books also remain exempted from the new tariffs. While paper from Canada is exempt from the tariffs for the moment, it is unclear whether paper, pulp, and ink imported from other countries will be subject to higher duties. If so, that could raise prices for American printers.

A nice little bit of sunshine.

>73 jillmwo: "A nice little bit of sunshine."

We'll take the stalemate, if that's what it is, as long as we can get it!

A Great Reckoning

Sometimes one probably should read a series in the established order. I haven’t made a practice of this; too many times, the bookstore or the library hasn’t got all titles available on the shelf. Upon occasion, an ebook is available at a vastly reduced price so that’s the title you grab because it fits in the budget. It’s an impulse buy that means that the reader isn’t always moving smoothly along with the author’s intended development.

At any rate, I read A Great Reckoning, #12 in the Three Pines series by Louise Penny, out of order. I had some vague very general sense of what the larger narrative arc across multiple volumes was ( massive police corruption at the Surete and a dangerous experience of betrayal for Chief Inspector Gamache). However, the plot specific to this particular volume was not something I had anticipated. For the time being, Gamache has assumed the role of Commandant of the Academy that feeds new recruits into the Surete. It is one of Armand Gamache’s strengths to be able to recognize talent in the ranks and he is suitably adept in this setting. He sets an assignment to some of the Academy cadets with regard to a map showing some symbols. A few are readily worked out, but some are not. While the unit is busy with that task, Gamache must wrestle with the murder of one of the faculty. Penny nicely weaves her theme, impressively bringing the stories together. There are one or two disconcerting points, but nothing overly alarming or off-putting.

I doubt I’ll ever get to move through the full series in the proper order, but Penny did do a marvelous thing when she crafted the eccentrically populated Canadian village of Three Pines.

***unsuccessful segue***

Halfway through Floating Hotel so by the time that @pgmcc has resurfaced in his French chateau with wine and baguette, I should have some thoughts to share. (It’s one of the titles included in his packed TBR pile. Both @Sakerfalcon and @libraryperilous had given it a thumbs-up.)

>74 terriks: I have a very real sense that publishers were sweating over how the supply chain and release dates might be affected.

By the way, folks, please secure the penguins. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5xx036p4vo Granted that everyone walked away from the incident, but we do need to remain aware.

>75 jillmwo:
On page 128 with progress held back by packing, medical appointments for wife and our being “important people” for our grandchildren at their school open day today. Beautiful sunny day with temperature reaching 21C. Unusual for April here, especial with the good weather lasting almost a fortnight.

>77 jillmwo: "Please secure the penguins." Seems like a good mantra each morning.

I would have missed this if it weren't for Hglen referring to it on his thread. Must have been in a hurry when looking at threads.

>77 jillmwo: Ouch. It could have been a lot worse.

You think Floating Hotel is going to start out as an adventure story because you watch a 12-year-old boy finagle his way onboard a spaceship, the Grand Abeona. It’s a hotel for those jaunting about from one planetary playground of the wealthy to the next. The boy is a stowaway who is then taken in by the crew. Then you meet the concierge, who is receiving love sonnets periodically at her desk, sent through the pneumatic tubes. So then you sigh happily and settle in for what you see may also be a good love story. That’s fine, but then there’s the subversive pamphleteer known as the Lamplighter whose brief essays note that things may be a bit rotten in Denmark (or Andromeda, as the case may be).

Floating Hotel is a carefully crafted and entertaining perspective on where we as a society appear to be at the present moment, speculative fiction about real-life existence from the view of working class service providers. Not a lot of glamour here. The work is hard – being on one’s feet all day, competently delivering charm, comfort, and ease to strangers. Some of the guests are lovely people; others are nasty privileged sorts who ought to be shoved out the nearest air lock. But well-trained staff (even those untrained) don’t do that on the Grand Abeona. The hotel sails smoothly and serenely through the galaxy.

The thing is that author Grace Curtis manages to engage you in the fun of espionage, dead bodies and cryptic messages while all of this is going on. There's humor to be found. One quote;
”I must apologize for stealing your order this morning.,,,I hope you didn’t get into any trouble.” To which the most honest response from the waitress must be, “Well, I got st–stabbed with a fork.”

The book starts slow in terms of action in order to allow the reader to get a handle on who is who, but roughly midway, the character story lines begin to intersect in very interesting ways. Who is trustworthy? Who is not? This is important because, roughly midway in, the housekeeper has found blood in the bathtub. Something which will cause concern among the guests. Are the Emperor's agents aboard ship? That too is disconcerting to some of the guests.

To answer the usual question of to whom would I recommend this? To the person who needs an encouraging and entertaining book, but not one with an overly simplistic plot. To someone who is looking for a bit of fun and a bit of humor, but who recognizes that an author still has to build in narrative tension. To the reader who need not be hit over the head with a message, but who can find and take in the meaning between the lines.

This isn’t literature for the ages, but it’s a really good read. I didn’t see any of it coming. Thanks to @Sakerfalcon for bringing it to the fore.

>81 jillmwo: Sounds good, but I keep thinking about The Fifth Element.

>82 Karlstar: And, as I read the book, I kept thinking of Garbo in the 1932 film, Grand Hotel. That wasn't quite right either.

>81 jillmwo: A wonderful write-up! I agree, it is a good read :)

>81 jillmwo: What an excellent review! You express the nature of the book so much better than I could!

>81 jillmwo:
Only on page 162 but can agree totally with your assessment. Curtis is good at the curve balls and twists. Subtle hints along the way.

>81 jillmwo: Okay, you (and >84 Alexandra_book_life: & >85 Sakerfalcon:) have convinced me to put this on my TBR.

>81 jillmwo: sounds like my kinda book

>87 clamairy: I just added it to my list too and have placed a hold with overdrive. Quite the ricochet!

>81 jillmwo:
I have just finished the chapter about Lucia. Such a beautiful story. A totally unexpected turn of events.

More to read and think about with regard to the continually evolving situation for the print industry.
https://notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/will-tariffs-impact-book-printing

At bedtime this past night or two, I was reading O.Douglas’ book, Taken By The Hand. The heroine is, by nature, a rather shy woman in her early ‘20’s, having always lived in the shadow of a busy and competent mother. However, when left orphaned, she is shuttled off to the house of a married step-brother and his family. After two months of visiting / living with them, she overhears an unfortunate conversation wherein her impatient hostess comments on Beatrice’s lack of social ease among their friends. She’s sadly provincial and doesn’t fit into the daily social round at all. So no, she doesn’t want her to come along with the family to the French Riviera or wherever. Beatrice feels humiliated, but seems not to know what to do next. She’s not without financial resources, but she’s feeling a bit adrift without knowing how to manage life and successfully “fit in”.

Happily, a very casual friend pops up who takes her to a small village setting for a Christmas visit and we see that our heroine is not without charm as a house guest. Her visit stretches out for some six weeks or more. Then, in the wake of a family death. Beatrice moves into a different environment, accompanying another woman on a sea voyage to India. She sees some of the world and she is perceived by those on-board as being very attractive and as a social success.

Beatrice doesn’t have much faith in herself and the six-to-eight months or so covered by the novel, she is shown new ways of developing a sense of her own competency. O.Douglas essentially shows the reader that what the poor girl ought to have had was the kind of communal social learning acquired through life at a Proper English Boarding School. The tone here is exactly what one would find in one of Chaz Brenchley’s Craterian stories. Taken by the Hand is essentially a school story without the institutional setting.

The message is that, failing the chance at being molded by school groups, one should try living communally in some small village amongst a group of practical people of breeding and good taste, the kind who read Cowper’s poetry and then discuss his influence on Jane Austen.

Since Beatrice is actually a young woman of independent means – an heiress in some moderate way – the feeling is that she ought not to take a paying job away from those who actually need such work. Rather, she should be useful in some other kind of feminine role. One that bolsters loving families and stabilizes the larger society. At just the right moment, she ends up as the loving and competent wife of a sensible school teacher. Her money goes towards his accession in becoming Headmaster.

I was charmed to some extent by this one, although my 21st century cynicism did kick in rather rudely. .Does anyone really send or accept a marriage proposal by wire? (Reality checks do spoil a sweet romantic tale.)

>91 jillmwo: Good article, thanks for that.

@Karlstar -- I am about halfway through Barbara Tuchman's The Zimmermann Telegram. Thus far, what occurs to me is again how badly American students are taught history and frankly, how astounding the activity of espionage between countries can be. Some of the events covered here are jaw-dropping.

>94 jillmwo: Sounds very entertaining! (Especially the bit about smuggling secret documents inside corsets, which you mentioned in another thread.)

>95 clamairy: Tuchman writes in a very lively tone and leaves no doubt as to her opinion of how some of the political maneuverings ought to be viewed. As naive as I as a reader may sound, one simply gawps at how things were managed. The bit about the diplomat's daughter wearing a corset stuffed with secret papers really only took a paragraph or two. But imagine traveling by train for five days across Europe, unable to ever remove one's corset for security reasons, even when going to bed at night. There's a hint of humor in it but there's also a sense of insanity. Neither she nor her father ever removed their clothing during the trip for fear of some one filching the goods. (Dealing in espionage requires odd forms of sacrifice.) Tuchman conveys that well.

But it is appalling to look closely at the historical back-and-forth between the powers seeking to drive the United States in one direction (isolationist neutrality) during World War I or in the other direction (joining the Allies against Kaiser Wilhelm's belligerency). The potential for driving the US into war with Mexico as a diversionary tactic, promising Mexico that it could get back territory (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and conceivably California). The Germans had three or four different espionage operations in place at various locations in New York City as well. No wonder the British had their antennae up at the first sign of trouble.

My non-fiction book group is going to be discussing Code Girls over the next three months and I thought that reading up on the British activity with regard to cryptography in World War One might provide some background. (It has, but not in the way I'd anticipated!)

>94 jillmwo: >96 jillmwo: I agree, I thought that book was really enlightening. The book I'm reading now, World War I, devotes about a page to the whole bit with Mexico and the telegram, so at least it got mentioned.

Well it's only available as an audiobook from the library, and there is a wait list! So I added it to my teetering virtual TBR stacks.

>98 clamairy: and >97 Karlstar: I was interested in how the events in The Zimmerman Telegram might have fit in with the biography of King George V that I am currently reading. Apparently the King did not find Wilson to be a particularly congenial personality. George V: Never a Dull Moment doesn't spend much time in exploring the reasons. The crux of the problem was that Wilson saw himself in the role of trying to mediate a European peace and the Brits wanted him to realize that there simply was not a peace deal to be had. One can understand the depth of frustration on both sides.

>99 jillmwo: Sounds like a great overlap of perspectives.

I swear that I keep reading and re-reading books on my shelves simply because I don't think I get the full measure of someone else's thinking on the first go-round. Given this set of circumstances, it seems unlikely that I will ever run out of reading material. Because you read one book and think you've got it, then you read two more books and realize you need to go back to the first book to see how the second and third titles influence your understanding of what the original author had in mind (or may have left out of the equation).

Completed a slow read of Dumb Witness with the result that I have an entirely different perspective on the book. There are still problems with it, but it's a decent read in many ways. Emily Arundel is wonderfully presented in the first chapter:

In that reticence could be found the keynote of Emily Arundell’s character. She was, in every respect, a typical product of her generation. She had both its virtues and its vices. She was autocratic and often overbearing, but she was also intensely warmhearted. Her tongue was sharp but her actions were kind. She was outwardly sentimental but inwardly shrewd. She had a succession of companions whom she bullied unmercifully, but treated with great generosity. She had a great sense of family obligation.

>102 jillmwo: This would be true of many of my books as well, so I'm set for some time.

>103 jillmwo: That one sounds interesting.

>104 Karlstar: I had read Dumb Witness some while back and had not found it particularly memorable. But this time around I was able to appreciate Christie's view of the world at that particular point in time. She's got a point she's making about the difference between the generational perspectives. (Neither the older set nor the younger set of characters is entirely free of social bias, with regard to who counts as being "one of us" and therefore deserving of protection.)

By the way, I watched the most recent BBC remake of Toward Zero today and I am rather flummoxed. They made an awful lot of changes to the original story line -- adding in new characters, shifting motives, etc. However, I will share this article with you -- a series of brief interviews with each of the cast members. They have the broadest range of ideas as to what the point of the story might be. https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/mediapacks/bbc-towards-zero-agatha-christie They also have some interesting ideas as to why Christie has lasted as long as she has.

Book Titles TBR in the Offing:

The Annotated Great Gatsby from the Library of America. (Because I hated this when I was still in school. Now I need to see if that was justified as an opinion.)
Code Girls for the non-fiction book group.
The Death I Gave Him, the selection of the Folgers Shakespeare Library Book Group
The Black Angels: The Untold Stories of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis - recommendation from my SIL.
Essays in Idleness and Hojoki - Only after much effort could the LT system find this particular title. Calming philosophical mutterings from Buddhist monks.
Paladin's Faith - I was reminded by someone on one of these threads of this series and it's just right for bedtime reading (when not finding satisfaction in output generated by Buddhist monks).

And on a different personal note, the owners (Prospect Medical Holdings) of the two closest hospitals have been allowed to file for bankruptcy, leaving our immediate area without. The nearest hospital is approximately 20-25 minutes away. We're trying to figure out what the hell happens with the local physician whose practice we've been with for something like 20 years. She doesn't even know what happens now. (We've asked because it affects our regular prescriptions.)

>108 jillmwo: Oh, what a distressing situation. The bankruptcy definitely requires closure, then? It's not always the case depending on their liability. Sometimes consultants take over at the top, under the jurisdiction of the Board of Directors, and the hospital can stay open.

Hope this gets worked out for your doctor, too. I was a medical practice manager for many moons and it could be quite fraught at times.

>108 jillmwo: I saw your Facebook post, but I didn't realize it was impacting you personally. That's terrible.

>108 jillmwo: This is both absurd and terrible. Any further comment I could make would inevitably be political and it isn't my country anyway, so let's just say that I DO NOT APPROVE of the circumstances, policies, whatever that allow this sort of thing to happen.

>108 jillmwo: I am very sorry to hear that! This is a terrible situation.

>108 jillmwo:
Sorry to hear about your medical predicament.

>109 terriks: >110 clamairy: >111 haydninvienna: >112 Alexandra_book_life: >113 pgmcc: Many thanks. Just keeping fingers crossed.

But today's wrinkle was to wake up to the fact that our internet had gone out although it is back now. It was out for just under 12 full hours. This was a surprisingly challenging experience. I have forgotten how to operate in a world without a robust connection. I don't know how people navigate real life with just a mobile phone. And it was apparently a fairly wide-spread outage affecting both businesses as well as residential connections.

This happened on the same day that we had the nice man coming in to do the annual check of our furnace; he told us that we REALLY need our chimney cleaned. But what was encouraging was that about 15 minutes after he had pulled out of the drive way, he came back saying he couldn't remember if he'd properly tightened something and wanted to be sure he'd done things right. I was really grateful.

Intended as humor, but probably not for everyone: You know, when you wake up on a Monday morning to the news that the Pope has died, that should probably be taken as a signal that the rest of the week is just going to be going down in flames as well.

Today's rabbit hole had to do with learning about the colloquial phrase "bunfight". I opened up my morning email and there was a news publication talking about the upcomng papal conclave as a bunfight. As an American, for me, this unfamiliar term conjured up images of a food fight in a high school cafeteria. Still, I wasn't quite sure I was right in assuming that was the intended meaning. (Throwing buns at one another doesn't strike me as suggesting a messy or even particularly painful outcome. More like an SNL skit.)

So I googled it to see what might pop up. Here's what did: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/351211/what-is-the-origin-of-bunfigh...

So did the reporter in the newsletter mean the terminology to suggest what the Urban Dictionary claimed, that is "A sustained, overblown argument about a petty matter, usually personal in nature to the participants but not to everyone else."? That really only the College of Cardinals would be getting worked up over a papal election and the rest of the world was not particularly concerned one way or another? It sounds like a subtext that a somewhat jaded or blase writer might choose to convey.

But I have no real idea and frankly, the Google results were less than illuminating. So I throw this out to the group (while hoping particularly for help from people like @Sakerfalcon, @tardis, and @NorthernStar.). What is meant by the term, bunfight?

Or should I go stick this in the "unfamiliar words" thread?

>115 jillmwo: Scrolling down on that link reveals meanings that are more similar to a "tea party." Either way I resent the notion that the rest of the world is not interested in this particular conclave. I would love to be a fly on the wall for this one, and I know I am not alone in that.

>115 jillmwo: I too will be interested to know if anyone knows that terms, I've not heard it before.

it conjures up this in my mind though:

>115 jillmwo: I also saw this tidbit at the end:

It derives from disputes between antagonists who are both hot and cross.

That sounds like a reasonable description of the effects from sweating under the typical Cardinal garb while having differences of opinion on a potential candidate. ;)

But I agree it comes off a bit trite. A "petty matter" doesn't seem to fit here.

>117 Darth-Heather: Bwahaha...
Uhoh. Now I am hearing "Everybody was Bun Fu Fighting" in my head.

>117 Darth-Heather: Bunnies!! Kick fighting bunnies!

>115 jillmwo: I have certainly heard the term "bunfight," although rarely. Probably mainly in the works of P.G. Wodehouse - it sounds like what Bertie Wooster would call a tea party or other food-related event populated by argumentative aunts. To me, it has a lighter connotation than I would apply to a papal conclave. However, maybe the writer of the news article was being flippant?

Well, here's the actual context from The Tortoise email:

...attention will turn to electing the next leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

So what? This is democracy in its most refined form. By some accounts, the very word “vote” is derived from the vow each cardinal takes ahead of making their pick in front of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment.

It may also be a bunfight. Pope Francis’s 12 years as pontiff were dogged by a struggle between modernists and traditionalists. Critics railed against his decrees

--restricting the use of Latin Mass;
--allowing blessings for gay couples; and
-- permitting divorced Catholics who have remarried to receive communion.

In 2019, a group of conservative clerics signed a letter accusing Francis of creating “one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church”.

>115 jillmwo:
The term is used fairly frequently here. My understanding of its origin was school dining areas where people started throwing buns or bread rolls at each other. It is used to convey a factional argument were people are shouting points at opponents without worrying about logic or decorum. I always pictured it as applicable to the sort of political debates you see in various parliaments, such as Westminster in England and The Dáil in Ireland. A bit of a chaotic factional encounter.

>123 pgmcc: I'm beginning to prefer >117 Darth-Heather: image. I mean, there's nothing wrong with flinging bread about while shouting over the top of other voices, but the bunnies have adorable long ears. And fluffy cotton tails.

>118 terriks: Hahaha!

>124 jillmwo: I don't check in for 12 hours and I miss a bunfight!

>124 jillmwo: That's why you should be checking in every hour. (Living as I do the life of a cloistered nun, I have the time to get up to all kinds of mischief.) I've already managed to get into two bunfights with my husband this morning!

>127 jillmwo: Any cream buns involved? That would be the nuclear option.

>122 jillmwo: To me that sounds like the author is being a bit flippant, trying to lighten the mood or something with a bit of irreverence.

One of those things where it is possibly OK for someone affiliated with that group to do, but not for anyone outside the group to do? My mother-in-law, a very devout Catholic, made many jokes about the Pope, etc., but I, as a Protestant never would have. :) Same with family; I can make jokes about my family, but you had better not. I don't know if the writer was a Catholic or not.

ETA: >119 clamairy: I will never get that out of my head now.

Poetry this morning:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

That is intended to be uplifting, but being in a blue funk this morning, I'm not sure I am able to buy into it entirely.

>130 jillmwo: I am good with the getting 'up' part, it's the 'doing' that's become problematic.

Edited to add: I am sorry about the blue funk. I'm wearing a matching gray one.

>131 clamairy:. The blue funk wears off slowly. The Longfellow poetry (a fragment from The Psalm of Life) is meant to encourage but it also makes one want to give him the stink-eye. "Get away from me, you male nitwit with a houseful of servants and prominent social position." :>)

Oh, and I did laugh as well at the bun-fu fighting...

>119 clamairy: >132 jillmwo: Now I have that song in my head again, thank you both! :)

I hope you are feeling less funky soon.

Had a productive morning. (Some glitches here and there but nothing serious.) Trying to figure out what I'm up for. I just can't deal with The Great Gatsby. Yes, some of the prose is lovely but the theoretical people-aspiring-to-love-and-money literary theme is making my eyes roll. None of Fitzgerald's people are trustworthy or even vaguely likeable.

Found elsewhere on LT ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xYn3CKir4bTMzY5eb/why-have-sentence-lengths-decr... ) The article explains why the lengths of our sentences in print have diminished.

The first paragraph is here:

Sentence lengths have declined. The average sentence length was 49 for Chaucer (died 1400), 50 for Spenser (died 1599), 42 for Austen (died 1817), 20 for Dickens (died 1870), 21 for Emerson (died 1882), 14 for D.H. Lawrence (died 1930), and 18 for Steinbeck (died 1968). J.K Rowling averaged 12 words per sentence (wps) writing the Harry Potter books 25 years ago.

But read the whole thing. Sorry, folks, but I talk in complex sentences.

You know, sometimes it's not the price of the book that makes one balk, but rather the price of the shipping. Dear heaven, is it flying over the pond on British Air in First Class? The most I ever got to do was business class on BA.

>136 jillmwo: They might be serving it a seven course meal, with seven different kinds of wine to complement them.

Edited to add: There are 18 words in my sentence.

>135 jillmwo: I thought I talked in complex sentences too. But I've just had Microsoft Word calculate the stats for a longish document of mine (not a legislative document) and it gives me an average sentence length of 12.3 words. That was a surprise. An even bigger surprise was a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 4.9. Obviously I need to up my game.

>136 jillmwo: I managed First in BA once: London to Johannesburg in 2019. Very nice. The first class price was so cheap that it must have been a mistake, but they honoured it.

ETA I've just got Word to do the stats for the first 8 paragraphs of my recent post about Sinai. This time I got an average sentence length of 25.9 words and a Flesch-Kincaid index of 11.1. I wonder if the difference hs something to do with the long document having a lot of dialogue?

>136 jillmwo: I'm coming to the US next month, I can bring it to you for less than whatever you are being charged!

>139 Sakerfalcon:. I'm sure you could. The cheapest shipping rate for a single standard size hardcover was $26 and change. That one doesn't give you a tracking number. The rate that allows a recipient to TRACK the package crossing the ocean was $33 and change. (That last one would have been just about triple the cost of the particular book.)

>138 haydninvienna:. I was working for a European company the one time I got to fly business class. They'd asked me to stay longer than anticipated and they knew I had a family with young children. The woman who made my arrangements was just a tad outraged that she couldn't get me a normal coach seat but under the circumstances, the business class ticket was deemed justifiable.

>137 clamairy: You've got 18 words in the sentence but only one with more than two syllables. You may need to up your game. ;>)

>135 jillmwo: Wow, ouch, reason #1 for the decline is just mean, isn't it? The whole article does seem to be leaning in that way. Without going through stats, I sometimes observe that my older writing, particularly stuff written pre-internet, was written in longer sentences.

>135 jillmwo:
Great article. It reminded me of a report I had to read which had been written by an economic consultancy. The report was produced for the European Union Commission and was about postal regulatory affairs across all the countries in the EU. As such it had to be presented in all of the official languages of the EU countries. Naturally I read the English language version.

I have read some turgid documents in which it is impossible to get through the first couple of pages without falling asleep. The sentences in this report were so long, the words so esoteric and multisyllabic, and the authors (of course it was a committee, i.e. “team effort if one is being kind) all trying to make sure there were no possible causes of misinterpretation in any language, I could never get to the end of the first sentence without dozing off.

>142 pgmcc: This sounds exactly like the kind of writing Jill seems to want me to strive for. LOL

>143 clamairy:
LOL

>140 jillmwo: Hmm, I see two words with more than two syllables. ;o)

>145 clamairy: It all depends on how you pronounce them. (Either that or blame my ability to count things.)

Okay, I just finished a book that I would never have picked up had I known what it was about. OTOH, sometimes we as readers build ourselves comfy little cocoons and because such insulated hiding places aren’t always useful, it helps to be brought back into awareness.

The book is The Death I Gave Him. It's certainly marketed as a retelling of Hamlet and that’s legitimate (if insufficient) as a descriptor. I read this so that I would be able to participate intelligently during the Folgers Shakespeare Library virtual book group this evening. The thing is that this novel restores all the horror to the events of Hamlet that Shakespeare put onstage. It's a story about deception, trauma, murder, and quite honestly, self-harm. And handed to an unsuspecting reader at the wrong time, it could wreck the vulnerable individual. But given what young people have had to deal with (and I'm talking about everyone currently under the age of 40), this may be more reflective of what they've seen on television and experienced in their own schools than anything else their parents have allowed to happen over the past forty years.

The setting is a research facility, a science lab, and it is (to some extent) a locked-room murder mystery. The author Em X. Liu has reduced the number of characters from the total number that Shakespeare wanted on stage, but the whole thing works. The pacing is just what’s required. The writing is vivid, crisp, and sharp. The subject matter is immediately relevant (AI and all that).

This is a book that deserved way more attention than it got at its initial publication in 2023. The novel is shocking and it's visceral. (Properly produced, so is a performance of Hamlet.) It's powerful writing. The Death I Gave Him is not in any way cheerful, but it does properly convey what Shakespeare might originally have intended. Far less formalized language, but the Bard's meaning is certainly reflected.

A five-star read, but be very aware of the pain potential. Oh, and it comes with plenty of footnotes, because that’s what scientific investigations in research incline toward.

>147 jillmwo: This book sounds familiar, I might have heard of it. I'm very intrigued, but a certain frame of mind is probably in order.

>147 jillmwo: That's a big NOPE for me, but I appreciate your summation and thoughts of it. I love Hamlet, but think I will stick with the original at this point in my life. :)

>148 Alexandra_book_life: and >149 MrsLee: It's marketed as belonging under the science fiction genre, but aside from the artificial intelligence aspect, there's less SF than one might expect.

But her other work is something called If Found, Return to Hell and is marketed as being fantasy as it involves wizards. In fact, one of the descriptions of the main character is that he is an intern at the One Wizard company and he has to deal with clients who've been turned into platypuses. (Any ideas as to why one would object to being transformed into a platypus? I've always thought they were adorable critters.)

>147 jillmwo: You made that book sound very interesting.

>147 jillmwo: This sounds fascinating. It's been years since I read Hamlet, but I think I might enjoy a retelling. The title seems familiar, so it may have gotten enough buzz to enter my radar.

Thanks for this review and the warnings. I hope you enjoy the book group tonight.

>147 jillmwo: Oooh. I am also intrigued. Now might not be the best time, but I will put it on my Libby wish list for some future time when I am in a happier state of mind.

>153 clamairy: >152 terriks: >151 Karlstar: Did I mention that there was one major sex scene in the book? Someone felt it was really quite something to read.

>154 jillmwo: No, you didn't mention that. Was it gratuitous sex - or, did it not matter either way?

>155 terriks: It was not necessarily gratuitous. It was there (IMO) to convey a sense of how the Hamlet character felt abandoned and unloved by his parents. Which is in fact part of Shakespeare's story. (There was more to it than that but I don't want to give anything away.)

>156 jillmwo: Thanks! This seems to add another dimension to this book.

Where's Peter? I am told that in Rome there is a statue of an elephant carrying an obelisk on his back. Has anyone happened upon this wonder? see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_and_Obelisk

I'm thrilled to finally be able to do something for #elephantawareness

Quote from Will Storr's book The Science of Storytelling:

... it seems to me the only true plot fundamentals are that a story event on the surface triggers subconscious character change beneath...It uses its story event to repeatedly change and gradually break the protagonist’s model of who they are and how the world works before rebuilding it. This requires pressure. These models are tough. They run to the core of the character’s identity. If they’re going to crack, the protagonist needs to hurl themselves at the drama.

This is sound and worth considering, whether reading a book from 80 years ago like Dumb Witness or the more current and complex The Death I Gave Him. (Please forgive any pompous tone. It sneaks in.)

>159 jillmwo:
I am glad you are finding the book interesting. It certainly had me in its spell.

>158 jillmwo:
I am delighted to see you demonstrating an impressive degree of Elephant Awareness. Thank you for the post and the link.

>115 jillmwo: Going back to a previous conversation, I just saw this in a restaurant review “On a side street behind the pub, One Club Row has its own separate, neon-signed door, a hole in a graffitied wall, that opens to a wooden staircase – think 1990s squat party – that leads up to a long room where, by 8pm, the party will already be in full swing. Elegantly, of course – this is not a bun fight – with rather sexily dim lighting, and a long bar where you can eat a plate of pickled jalapeño gougeres while sipping one of their four house martinis (club, classic, French or olive oil).”

>158 jillmwo: I have seen this! It’s outside the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, down the side of the Pantheon. Unfortunately I haven’t been to Rome in so long that any photos I have are print. It is a very nice elephant though.

I have (off and on) been slowly reading through two biographies in recent weeks. The first is George V: Never a Dull Moment by Jane Ridley and the second is Matriarch by Anne Edwards, a biography of King George’s Queen Consort. I was trying to get a mental framework of Inter-War Britain in a more general kind of way – the influences of Victorian and Edwardian thinking on a monarchy and country during a time of disruption and upheaval. Both books are quite readable by the non-expert, although Edwards’ biography of Queen Mary frankly leans a tad towards the more informal, “gossipy” end of the spectrum.

The point is that neither of these two people were provided with a robust style of education or training for what they ended up having to deal with. The marriage was something of a dynastic arrangement but one which ended working out well. Based on what I read, as a couple, they were valued for that on-going kind of stable dullness that keeps system cogs running in a society. During their life times (and after), they were accused by commentators of being dull, boring people. They weren’t sparkling celebrities, but whatever they viewed as being their duty to the nation, they took steps to do. Flawed human beings, quite possibly, but overall responsible ones.

Other reading has included Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling. Another good quote encountered there:

A character’s conviction in their rightness and superiority is precisely what gives them their terrible power. Great drama often forms itself around a clash of competing hero-maker narratives, one belonging to the protagonist, the other to their foe. Their respective moral perceptions of reality feel utterly genuine to their owners and yet are catastrophically opposed. These are neural worlds that become locked in a fight to the death.

My “Christie” project – currently a shapeless amalgam of history, book quotes, thoughts, and analysis sitting in a Google doc – has led me to reflect on what constitutes useful content. One of Amazon’s recent offerings recommended to me was a 2009 title focused on Christie’s short stories. (For the record, not her preferred form.) When I plunked down the 3 dollars or whatever on the basis of interest, I was slightly disappointed at how lacking in depth the book proved to be. There didn’t appear to be a real objective specified by the author – other than she loved Christie’s short stories. She offered quite brief summaries of short stories, early versions and then subsequently “upgraded” versions with their publication dates. My personal reaction was honestly that I could do better than that, but apparently the book won an Agatha award and was nominated for other non-fiction awards as well.

*Jill mutters something rude in an uncharitable undertone.*

In the background, I putter around, riffling through various titles, recommended and selected in the context of book group discussions.

>162 Sakerfalcon: So it would seem that a bunfight when fought between cardinals (however well-garbed) would not be elegant? Got it. And I am glad that the elephant in Rome did not disappoint.

>160 pgmcc: Storr is stimulating but he sets the bar very high.

>164 jillmwo:
You are one person I believe has no problems with a high bar. I also believe you are correct in >163 jillmwo: when you say you could do better. You set high bars yourself; that’s why your posts are always “must-reads”.

>163 jillmwo: So, when are you going to write your book about Agatha Christie? And what will its focus be? How about the significance of marrows in The Murder of Roger Ackeroyd?

>166 clamairy: :D I was wondering the same thing (not about the marrows). I would love to read her book on Agatha Christie, whereas I won't read any of these others written about her. Same goes for Jane Austen.

>167 MrsLee: The inclusion of vegetable marrows was meant to be a joke, but the rest of my post was dead serious.

>168 clamairy: I got that. :)

This news story has to do with the Seattle Worldcon to be held in August of 2025. Note that the use of ChatGPT was primarily used for the vetting of program participants. From Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/worldcon-2025-chatgpt-controversy-hugos-2000598351.

>170 jillmwo:
I saw Nicholas's press release. He has always been a man of integrity and principle.

>165 pgmcc: >166 clamairy: >167 MrsLee:. You are all too kind. At the moment, the amalgum would at best only result in some kind of long-ish essay. But I admit I am THINKING. Although not about marrows. I really know nothing of marrows. Neither did Poirot apparently, given his success rate.

>171 pgmcc:. I saw his name and wondered whether you knew.

>163 jillmwo: Shouldn't dullness, or lack of drama, be valued more these days? Wouldn't it be great if more of our leaders were competent and steady, rather than flighty and dramatic?

I agree with what the others have said, you set the bar very high, so works that don't meet that standard are lacking.

>174 Karlstar: I actually believe that stable dullness is desirable in many situations. These two individuals were not flashy types and there's a place for that. Jane Ridley, in writing about George, noted that the period of his reign had a fair amount of conflict and general social upheaval going on and George's regulated approach to just about everything was deeply appreciated by a somewhat tense national mood. He certainly made some bad calls upon occasion, but for the most part, he kept things on an even keel. Queen Mary seemed to be someone on whom he relied in maintaining that aura of respectability and calm. But they didn't gamble, drink to excess or have flagrant affairs. They were both just normal human beings and products of their upbringing, not plaster saints. When one tires of the extremes, such personalities are welcome; they keep drama to a minimum.

Apropo of absolutely nothing, but peculiar and just because this was the year I read Tolstoy.

Just now on social media, I encountered a post where a computer science guy had inserted the phrase "She spoke instead to Crab Man, the superhero" as a buried item in War and Peace to see if Google's Gemini 2.5 would be able to pick up the anomalous text. His cautionary note read that it was important to tell the AI to read everything, because "sometimes it is lazy...AI is weird." Honestly, on the one hand the story is humorous, but on another it is absurd. One has to tell the machine to read all the words...

No, I am not making this up. Original post here: https://x.com/emollick/status/1919966879398891579

You have to tell the machine to read the whole book. I guess this would be because the original programmer got through school by relying on Cliff Notes?

>176 jillmwo: I'm not sure what to make of this. Yes, it seems like a best practice to tell AI to read the whole book, because AI only will spit back what it reads. So if it reads "She spoke to Crab man, the superhero," is it smart enough to pick this off as an anomaly?

Is this the point from the computer science guy? He writes that Gemini 2.5 "consistently found this among 860K tokens," but I don't know what a token represents. If it doesn't consistently pick it off, then is it possible Gemini may accept that this language is actually part of the book, and quote it to anyone inquiring about "Crab man, the superhero?" So...860K... what?

Sorry, I'm just blanking out on this.

>177 terriks: I would have said words, but according to the google AI, War and Peace 'only' has 587,287 words. Maybe the token count was inaccurate or inflated?

>177 terriks: and >178 Karlstar: You both raise some interesting questions. I don't know. The way I read it, his point is that Google Gemini 2.5 is sufficiently reliable to recognize the phrase as being an anomaly. But I'm not confident of what is meant by the word "token" in this context. I was simply taken aback by the idea that you have to tell the machine to read all the words. In AI, isn't the point to have the machine read all the words in the first place, if only to be able to pick up patterns?

>179 jillmwo: In AI, isn't the point to have the machine read all the words in the first place, if only to be able to pick up patterns?

One would think so, yes. Beyond that...I remain mildly confused.

>179 jillmwo: I would think that would be a reasonable assumption, but it is possible that the default is to read enough to gain a particular level of confidence, including the end, so if you want it to 'read' it all, you have to ask.

>179 jillmwo: "But I'm not confident of what is meant by the word "token" in this context."

From the Google AI For Developers Page:

Gemini and other generative AI models process input and output at a granularity called a token.

About tokens

Tokens can be single characters like z or whole words like cat. Long words are broken up into several tokens. The set of all tokens used by the model is called the vocabulary, and the process of splitting text into tokens is called tokenization.

For Gemini models, a token is equivalent to about 4 characters. 100 tokens is equal to about 60-80 English words.

Which helps explain the word count in >178 Karlstar:
 

>182 ScoLgo:. Thank you!!! This explanation helps a bit. Although now I have to go find my son, the CS professor and ask him to explain the practical virtues of this approach.

I did learn something interesting yesterday by way of history about Inter-War Britain. I hadn't been aware of it, but there was something called the War Books Boom in Britain in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was how those most affected by their wartime experiences were processing the conflict. It happened across all genres, both in fiction and in non-fiction. That such publications came out was not a surprise to me, but that such a period was being identified and studied was of interest. Christie herself in her works of fiction largely stayed away from discussions of the war. She clearly thought it was wiser to put some space between readers and the realities.

>182 ScoLgo: Very enlightening, thank you!

>184 jillmwo: Were any examples listed?

>185 Karlstar: The most immediately recognizable title was All Quiet on the Western Front. But the article is openly available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19475020.2022.2129718

It mentioned articles written by Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain (names I knew) but there were a few other author names with which I was unfamiliar such as Richard Aldington for Death of a Hero and R.C. Sheriff for Journey's End.

The article turned up as a result in a search for important books published in the early 1930s, because I was reading Alison Light's book, Forever England. It covers works by four female authors - Ivy Compton-Burnett, Agatha Christie, Jan Struther and Daphne DuMaurier.

>182 ScoLgo: Thank you for this! I've learned something today. :D

>186 jillmwo: Thank you. I see they mentioned All Quiet on the Western Front multiple times, along with quite a few other books. That's quite an article, though a little repetitive.

There was no good reason for the administration to fire the Librarian of Congress. And it was done under cover of a day when they knew the news cycle would be focused elsewhere.

his reason is that he hates reading, books, libraries, and cares not one iota about the people who do

>190 cindydavid4:. I posted that in my first flurry of anger because it caught me off guard. But we really aren't supposed to be posting political statements here. There are other reasons why the firing was done and it is true that her appointment was due to expire in another year.

@clamairy, if I've broken the bounds of Pub behavior, let me know and I'll delete the post. (Honestly, I swear that I watered it down from the initial..)

>191 jillmwo: Oh, they're more like guidelines. I trust you to use your own discretion on this issue. (I exploded a wee bit when I read that news yesterday.)

>191 jillmwo: wait what thread am I on? regardless I know better and Ill delete mine if necessary

>189 jillmwo: Your post was just news, not political discussion.

>193 cindydavid4: You are posting to a thread in the Green Dragon group, where we don't indulge in political discussion. No need to delete but I think it best to not continue the discussion.

>192 clamairy: You're not the only one.

'Nuff said.

>194 Karlstar: yeah I did know that, but didnt realize I was in that group. How can you tell what group a poster is in? thanks Never mind the group is listed just before the posters name; duh.....

Changing the subject, just because it's Mother's Day.

***Upcoming Releases***

V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death by Kathryn Harkup is due out in June of this year. This is a follow-up to her 2016 book A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, which offers a foundational introduction to the various poisons used in Christie novels. I look forward to this one myself.

Newsflash: The next segment in Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills cycle of books is entitled A Mouthful of Dust and is due out in October of this year. Macmillan is beginning their promotional efforts for the book. (See https://us.macmillan.com/series/thesinginghillscycle )

I’ve also come to the conclusion that it’s important to fit the book to the mood in order to maximize one’s enjoyment in reading.

Hmmmmm! Poison again.