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

Okay, so here’s how ordinary research works for the normal worker in the field. One day, all you get is a single tidbit of interest or a minor flash of insight. The next day you manage to identify and make coherent a small set of dates. Then for a day or two, you find yourself just kind of scanning the landscape. Is there any kind of visible boulder in the text that can be used as a landmark of sorts? Other days it’s just cutting away at weeds and debris and wondering if any of this activity is worthwhile. I understand why the technology guys roll their eyes because this certainly can appear to be incredibly inefficient.

For the record, a text of 15,000 words is surprisingly manageable. I’m not there yet, but it is looking quite feasible.

It is rude of novelists to mock their fuzzy-minded researcher-type characters. The scribbled notes and muttering done may look awkward and funny, but it’s still represents work. Let’s revive the granting of awe and prestige to the pointy-headed nerds capable of stringing 500 words together without resorting to ChatGPT.

Okay, so here’s how ordinary research works for the normal worker in the field. One day, all you get is a single tidbit of interest or a minor flash of insight. The next day you manage to identify and make coherent a small set of dates. Then for a day or two, you find yourself just kind of scanning the landscape. Is there any kind of visible boulder in the text that can be used as a landmark of sorts? Other days it’s just cutting away at weeds and debris and wondering if any of this activity is worthwhile. I understand why the technology guys roll their eyes because this certainly can appear to be incredibly inefficient.

For the record, a text of 15,000 words is surprisingly manageable. I’m not there yet, but it is looking quite feasible.

It is rude of novelists to mock their fuzzy-minded researcher-type characters. The scribbled notes and muttering done may look awkward and funny, but it’s still represents work. Let’s revive the granting of awe and prestige to the pointy-headed nerds capable of stringing 500 words together without resorting to ChatGPT.

I'm a bit appalled, but I just counted the number of books sitting on my living room couch and it extends into multiples of 5. I mean, well-over the multiples of five.

>1 jillmwo:
Well said. In fact, you can say that again.

>4 pgmcc: Excellent. I see what you did there. I blame the LT gremlin.

>1 jillmwo: Happy New Thread!

>3 jillmwo: That's a lot of books for one couch! (I've been stacking mine under the coffee table.)

>4 pgmcc: You can say that again!

>1 jillmwo: Happy new thread, and I agree!

>3 jillmwo: Are any of the books about potatoes?

Happy new thread!

>1 jillmwo: Happy new thread!

So now there's a gremlin afoot. I'm looking at you, @pgmcc, as you were the first to call attention to it - and being away from the pub on holiday means you can't defend yourself with your usual vigor.

>7 Karlstar: I see what you did there.

Quick FYI. Crimefest Awards shortlist 2025
https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2025/05/crimefest-awards-shortlists-2025....

>7 Karlstar: Are you suggesting there's too much starch in my reading selections?

>8 Narilka: Thank you!

>9 terriks: I believe the duplicative entries are due to my itchy finger on the post button. I blame Gremlins because any good Pub would have several acting as servers.

>10 jillmwo: No ma'am, but maybe the books have eyes...

Happy new thread!

>9 terriks:
That’s right; hit a man when he’s lying down on a sun lounger and couldn’t be bothered to get up.

:-)

>1 jillmwo:
I forgot to say, “Happy new thread, and congratulations on beating me to your first post.”

>14 pgmcc:. I timed setting up the new thread with initial post ready to go for a time period when I felt I could count on you being either distracted by wine and cheese or else, fast asleep.

>13 pgmcc: Ha! Yeah, I saw this opportunity and I took it. ;)

>10 jillmwo: You're very gracious. And I had him in a vulnerable position! But sure, we'll blame your twitchy fingers.

Happy new thread!

>15 jillmwo:
People in my profession never sleep.

>16 terriks:
So, it was a conspiracy. I knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

>19 pgmcc: Whistles a happy tune....oh, look! Squirrel!

Here's an interesting read from a consulting group on building discoverability for academic titles in an age of artificial intelligence.
https://www.maverick-os.com/news-events/news/book-strategy-in-2025-what-gets-dis...

At the same time, traditional markers of book performance, such as sales, reviews, or library holdings are becoming less relevant. In a subscription-based model, where books are bundled and access is centralized through large-scale platforms, performance is determined by discoverability, usage, and integration into learning and research workflows. In this context, it becomes imperative for publishers to rethink how they evaluate success and where they invest strategic effort. Series-level benchmarking, keyword performance tracking, and metadata optimization, once technical considerations are now core components of a book’s competitive positioning.

I am conflicted. On the one hand, you build the information environment that you think best serves the community. Traditional means of assessment don't really work in this context. But it's irritating to think someone back stage is turning to the editorial guy and bellowing "Oh, just pour it all into the bucket, Joe. It'll be fine".

I sound like a damn Luddite. AI is not the actual problem. The way it's being sold might be.

Happy new thread :)

Folks, read this thread: https://bsky.app/profile/delilahsdawson.bsky.social/post/3lp544cfkvk27

That author describes what is like to try to market a mid-list book in today's market. I'm not against libraries by any stretch of the imagination and I know that budgets don't stretch quite the way we'd like. That said, I do buy 'way more books than may be necessary. I will do my best to support individual creative endeavors. But authors can't do it without our support. Publishers (for any number of legitimate reasons) have cut back so much on advertising dollars and if you're not a best-selling brand (like James Patterson), you just aren't granted any of the limelight.

Support your local author. Support the independent press. Not all of us can buy books (and I've got to cut back dramatically myself for a while), but if you can buy a book, please do. It's a cold harsh world out there.

>23 jillmwo: Sorry, that requires a bluesky account and I do not have one. Nor X, Y, or any other alphabet of social media. Edit: not complaining, just explaining that I tried reading it and it would not show it to me without an account.

I heartily agree with the support your local author sentiment. Trish is having a real tough time getting the word out about her books.

The woman who was posting @Karlstar was Delilah S. Dawson. Two of her statements caught my attention.

It's especially difficult to release a book when a dynamo like Silver Elite is dominating the space. An IP book by an anonymous bestseller that got millions in PR budget rules over all while we salivate over the sprayed edges? Oof. I feel like a mule watching a billion dollar horse win the derby. 3/

The midlist, much like the middle class, feels like it's disappearing. There are million-dollar books that get all the perks while everyone else is thrown at the wall like spaghetti to see what sticks. Most just fall to the floor. It's money or luck, babbies, and no one is coming to save you. 4/

Her stuff isn't really to my reading taste but, based on what I see on Amazon, she is trying to write for a living. And my heart goes out to Trish and her efforts.

One might want to produce a book and get it professionally published, but it's been made so difficult to enter the marketplace.

>25 jillmwo: Thank you for the quotes. If I'm not mistaken, she is the person designated by Terry Brooks to continue writing in his Shannara series, so she may have more publicity coming soon, though I don't think Terry's last book got much attention at all.

>25 jillmwo: I can't get to Bluesky either, so thank you for expanding. It wrings my heart - whether she writes in my preferred genres or not is beside the point, I agree.

And I can't help but draw comparisons to the music industry; I have several musician friends who actually tour and play out, and they've ranted for years about being shut out. They do at least have YouTube now as an avenue to put up tracks, but it's still an incredible hill to climb if you're small and, you know, broke without representation.

The arts should not have erected such barriers.

>27 terriks: I don't think anyone meant to erect barriers, but the practices adopted over time have developed into becoming new obstacles.

I came across a quote in a short story this past day or so that encapsulates what I think I've been feeling about changing circumstances. In the middle of The Mysterious Mr. Quin, there is a short story entitled "The Soul of the Croupier". It's not a mystery at all. Things are a little difficult to understand for the young Americans who are visiting Monte Carlo and while Mr. Satterthwaite sympathizes with them, he is processing some feelings of his own.

He felt discouragement sweep over him. Values were changing – and he – was too old to change.

Meanwhile, never let anyone tell you there's no value in rereading Christie. It's not always about whodunnit, as this particular story shows. I'm sure I've read this collection at least two times before but the arrangement of the stories never hit me until this time round. It's been educational as well as enjoyable.

>28 jillmwo: I feel the truth of that quote. I keep reminding myself that each generation must shape their world and that change isn't necessarily bad. Just different.

Sometimes a decade can completely reformulate your ideas of what you read. The Mysterious Mr. Quin struck me one way back in 2015 (see my review below) but I read it back then in the mindset of casual entertainment. This past week or so, I've begun to see an entire narrative arc in the way the stories in the collection have been arranged. Really quite interesting and the characters touch me in ways that they initially didn't.

>30 jillmwo: I haven't read that one yet. Almost sounds like Quin is an altar ego of a split personality. Do other characters interact with him?

>31 MrsLee: Yes, in the opening story, Mr. Quin becomes part of a snow-bound house party. He talks to the various parties and, if I recall correctly, he drinks port with the gentleman. In a later story, he meets Mr. Satterthwaite at a restaurant and they have a meal together. So he certainly appears to be human in the way he engages.

But Mr. Quin is also capable of vanishing in a remarkable way. He can disappear in such a way as to make you think he must have gone off the edge of one of England's coastal cliffs. He's perhaps magical, but only in the sense of the Italian version of the Harlequin character. I think elsewhere Christie may describe him as fey. He's there to serve as a catalyst in these stories.

>32 jillmwo: Like Jeeves:

Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

("Leave It to Jeeves").

>30 jillmwo: Fascinating! I have several Agatha Christie novels, but not this collection. Your assessment makes me want to look closer.

>28 jillmwo:. I agree the obstacles weren't deliberately set, per se, but they do exist to the detriment of many.

Began reading The Tainted Cup last night before bed. Has a whiff of Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin about it or at least I thought so last night. I may be entirely wrong as I'm really only a chapter or two into it.

>35 jillmwo: I read that one a few months ago, and enjoyed it quite a bit, though I found the pace a bit frenetic.

Let’s go down a rabbit hole. From the file of things you don't really need to know

In the Agatha Christie novel, Three Act Tragedy, there is a seemingly throw away comment about a man in a barrel. We're interviewing a potential suspect in a murder.

…did they think I’d had an affair with him? Archdeacons are sometimes very naughty, aren’t they? So why not vicars? There’s the man in the barrel, isn’t there?

Well, as it turns out, there was, in fact, a naughty vicar IRL, one who took to living in a barrel as a means of funding his legal appeal against a decision by the Church of England. The C of E had been embarrassed and wanted to get rid of him (as he’d been accused of inappropriate behavior). As part of his last ditch effort, the vicar went to Blackpool and took up residence in a barrel – one with a window so that paying customers could see him as he sat and smoked a cigar. (There was a chimney so the smoking was okay...)

I happened across this tidbit in somebody's (lightweight) history book, Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations, theoretically about British crime and Christie’s body of work. The ties to true crime as presented proved rather tenuous. But the bit about the man in the barrel was new to me. I had to dig up four newspaper articles and visit Wikipedia to satisfy my curiosity. The story may well be familiar to those of you from over the Pond, but I’d never heard of Harold Davidson before. It appears his descendants are trying to get the criminal record expunged. (Admittedly, the whole thing looked like it was a set-up.)

Edited to add that the man died after being mauled by an elderly lion (again, as something of a side show act).

And also to add that there's a SONG: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=90852

>37 jillmwo: That's all well and good, but what about when someone "has you over a barrel?"

>37 jillmwo: What about the people who go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Some never return.

>37 jillmwo: ... the file of things you don't really need to know: But isn't that what the Pub is for?

>40 haydninvienna: Exactly.

>37 jillmwo: Who doesn't love a good rabbit hole?

I love tugging on threads like this.

I leave you with the above metaphors: a twofer!

>37 jillmwo:
Fascinating.

>38 MrsLee: >39 Karlstar: >40 haydninvienna: >41 terriks: >42 pgmcc: The part I was most curious about was the size of the barrel. Was it one of those massive whiskey barrel sized things that could hold a comfy armchair, and a lamp to read by? How tall was the Rev. Harold Davidson? Did he stand 6 feet tall in his stocking feet or was he only 5 foot 5"? Apparently he drew quite a crowd and whomever it was who was in charge there in Blackpool took action to have this particular seaside show closed down.

These are the things that an idle mind tends to fret and obsess over.

Tidbits encountered this week:

Vorticist - I encountered this word in a Quin/Satterthwaite story this week and had to google what it meant. Wikipedia tells us that Vorticism was an artistic movement emerging during the course of the First World War. It was seen as building on cubism, with an emphasis on angular forms and lines. The Wikipedia entry is really rather interesting to read.

The Reverend Harold Davidson thing above

Great phrase and image from The Tainted Cup: Comprehension wriggled into my skull. Which exactly expresses the length of time it takes before the light fully dawns. (To mix metaphors as >41 terriks: did above.)

Three separate quotes from Wil Storr’s book, The Science of Storytelling

Brains, concluded the researchers, seem to become spontaneously curious when presented with an ‘information set’ they realise is incomplete. ‘There is a natural inclination to resolve information gaps,’ wrote Loewenstein, ‘even for questions of no importance.’

There is, concluded Loewenstein, a ‘positive relationship between curiosity and knowledge’.

The more context we learn about a mystery, the more anxious we become to solve it.

four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans: (1) the ‘posing of a question or presentation of a puzzle’; (2) ‘exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution’; (3) ‘the violation of expectations that triggers a search for an explanation’; (4) knowledge of ‘possession of information by someone else’.

Storr’s is one of those books one revisits, just as @pgmcc has said elsewhere.

And one bit of humorous writing from a short story by Agatha Christie:

Satterthwaite had come to Corsica because of the Duchess. It was out of his beat. On the Riviera he was sure of his comforts, and to be comfortable meant a lot to Mr. Satterthwaite. But though he liked his comfort, he also liked a Duchess. In his way, a harmless, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way, Mr. Satterthwaite was a snob. He liked the best people. And the Duchess of Leith was a very authentic Duchess. There were no Chicago pork butchers in her ancestry. She was the daughter of a Duke as well as the wife of one.

Snarky, but with affection.

I spent a lot of time this week reading short stories.

>44 jillmwo:
I am glad you like Storr’s book.

The Agatha Christie quote is very interesting.

>44 jillmwo: The quote about the brain is interesting, especially in light of a funny video I watched this morning which posed the question, "What if Google was still just a man answering questions?" It had people posing the types of questions we ask Google, most of which are very silly and random at best. :) Still, inquiring minds want to know! my curiosity level increases with the ease of finding the information.

>44 jillmwo: Unfortunately curiosity caused by "(4) knowledge of ‘possession of information by someone else’." seems to be a problem with the internet when 'information' is confused with rumor, speculation or untruth.

Sorry, that's getting a little political these days.

I finished reading The Tainted Cup last night before I fell asleep.

The use of Agatha Christie's face and words to fuel work with AI; https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/05/28/dispensed-with-a-matronly-air-tru... (Yes, this one is me.)

>48 jillmwo: I enjoyed this one, too. Wasn't the sequel supposed to come out last month? If so I have heard nothing about it. (I just put it on hold through OverDrive. I'm 29th in line, but there are 10 copies.)

>50 clamairy: The sequel A Drop of Corruption has been published (April 2025). AMZ is offering a Kindle edition, an audio book, and the hardcover. I haven't gotten to it, but I do look forward to slurping it down.

>49 jillmwo:
Excellent article. As you say, this particular project is open and authentic, but as you say, what of future projects with this technology. If this application serves the purpose of acclimatising people to such use of AI, does that not open the door for less scrupulous productions that benefit from the positive aura of the Christie writing course. As my mother used to say, “The man who has the reputation of being an early riser can sleep to lunchtime.”

>52 pgmcc: There will always be black hats in the realm of tech innovation. AI worries me with regard to a massive white-collar employment bloodbath occurring. But the technology is out of Aladdin's lamp and we need to see how it can be managed, what it can do with some intelligence, and what we need to guard against.

The Christie project doesn't concern me because I think they did move carefully. But that doesn't mean I'm not concerned for those entry-level actors who wont' get jobs in the entertainment community because some bean-counter prefers to have AI create the crowd for a market scene. I'm sure that was in the back of the heads of those working in this project.

I definitely have concerns about the black hats who might think, "Oh, Jill has a profile photo. Let's see if we can manipulate her face and her voice to persuade people that Jill is talking to them about X subject with authority." But I don't think anyone at this point can roll back what some folks have already been exploring or playing with. That's why I think you need to get some folks in there who use tools legitimately because that's how you infuse good practices into the industry. They need to have time to learn.

That said, there was one point that didn't make it into that blog post. I watched those videos and I think it was just this side of unkind to show Christie in her matronly years as having some fat-ish calves sitting under the desk.

>49 jillmwo: Nice article. I wonder, was it necessary to have the actor appear to be Agatha Christie at all? On one hand, I'm thinking of the so many movies where someone plays someone else and they make an attempt to have them look something like the real person, but not exactly. Like Oppenheimer, for example. To your point in >53 jillmwo:, I don't see the need for unkind realism.

On the other hand, last year we watched a show where voice actors read letters from soldiers in WW2. It was jarring to see people reproducing the accents and mannerisms, who were clearly not from that time. Kind of hard to explain, but it just didn't seem right. Would it have worked better if they, via makeup or CGI, made them look like the letter writers? Maybe.

>53 jillmwo:
I saw a post the other day which stated, and I paraphrase, "What $300 billion problem is AI trying to solve? Oh yea! The problem of having to pay people."

I see the way AI is being used as part of the cost accountants’ eternal drive to eradicate labour costs and get to the point where they can do everything with nobody. When you think about it this is the refined approach in the continuing march for greater efficiency, i.e. drive cost out by driving the labour cost out. Once we have driven out all the workers the wealthy can have servants at slavery wages. It is creating the conditions where a broad based revolution could happen. The big difference this time is that the tech companies can identify any threats of a revolution and their political buddies will see to it that the threats are removed.

>55 pgmcc: Yep, that's the plan.

Preaching to the choir, of course, but I share with you three paragraphs from a piece in today's WaPo:

While acknowledging that neuroscientists are still struggling to understand these mechanisms, Sahakian said, “Reading, regardless of how good you are at it, is beneficial for the brain…. You can actually reduce the risk of dementia through reading.”

And we’re not just talking about challenging works of nonfiction. “Fiction reading with social content activates the brain’s default mode network, and it’s associated with better social cognition,” Sahakian said. “The analysis demonstrated that the participants who read fiction most often also showed the strongest social cognitive performance.”

“The key,” she noted, “is to get people to read something that they like because if they do that, they’ll keep reading, and it has massive benefits, both for increasing their reading ability, but more importantly for the brain structures.”

Reading, like milk, does a body good.

>57 jillmwo: Indeed. At least, I sure hope so!

>58 Karlstar: The woman quoted is Barbara Sahakian and she's a neuroscientist with the University of Cambridge. Sadly, I can't now get back to the article from which I lifted those three paragraphs. I'm sure there was more to share.

>57 jillmwo:
That is reassuring. Of course, a lot of people do not read and sometimes they get into positions of power. Heaven forbid that should ever happen.

>57 jillmwo: Reading is one of the best things ever :)

From the Wall Street Journal on the subject of romantasy as a genre:

Sales in the genre have electrified the publishing industry, reaching nearly 20 million in 2023 when U.S. book sales overall dipped. While there is no hard data on readership, the audience for romance novels generally is over 80% female, according to the Romance Writers of America, a trade group. These stories are clearly answering a profound need among their largely female readership. What is it?

A quote regarding The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings:

In the rare moments where we see the orcs unguarded, they too express longing for an end to war, despising the dark lord Sauron who commands them and his hideous Nazgûl shock troops. It is Sam’s unexpected pity for a human who is nominally his enemy that has rightly become one of the most often-quoted passages from the book: “He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.” Part of what has sustained interest in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the last eighty-seven years are precisely these sorts of rough edges and unfinished thoughts.

Read the whole thing: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/tolkien-against-the-grain/

One can also think about how scholars think about those of us who read for the plot: https://www.publicbooks.org/scholars-have-lost-the-plot/ Note: Despite any misgivings that arise, this isn't a high-brow article at all. You'll enjoy it.

>63 jillmwo: I don't even like to think of LoTR in terms of politics and who should or shouldn't enjoy it. Your second link may be the salvation, just read for the plot.

I thought this was interesting. "Scholars’ close readings of a selective but growing canon of literary works constitute a body of evidence, proving that these works—rescued from a sea of second-rate, mediocre, and actively bad writing—will endure."

>63 jillmwo: It seems to me that the whole debate boils down to that you find in a book what you went looking for. I recall that Chesterton's Father Brown says somewhere, of one of his religious-nutter murderers, that he spent his days reading the Bible and could find there justification for anything he wanted — rape murder, cheating, whatever. As usual, Georg Lichtenberg got there first: "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out." (Unlike many quotations attributed to people on the internet, this one is genuine: I have the book.)

>63 jillmwo: That bit is always one of my favorites. Peter Jackson tried to capture a little bit of Sam's reaction in the film version, too.

>65 Karlstar: >66 haydninvienna: >67 clamairy: I tend to be very middle-brow in my tastes. There are some authors (part of the so-called canon) who bore me to tears. Virginia Woolf is one example. I value a good plot and question those who think narratives of introspective angst are of particular value. I'm also one who wants to think first about what the author was intending to convey which flies in the face of much of what students are taught in the current environment. They're taught that what matters is what the reader sees. Which is how we get to the problem identified there by @haydninvienna. In my view, there needs to be a balance between the two.

Having said all that, I realized just now that I'm also the one who doesn't necessarily want to talk to authors about their fictional worlds, lest they muck up my thinking by saying something about a character that completely messes up my understanding of that character. Leave me to enjoy the fictional world that I see.

Whiplash change of subject: There is a line that Christie used in The Body in the Library, specifically "the yoke of perpetual remembrance". In context, it refers to an overbearing parent who is reluctant to accept changes in status of their children, other relations, etc. It's really a continual theme with her. But it may apply as well to much of today's thinking -- not so much about traditional families necessarily, but about social groupings.

The Black Spectacles is a nice easy read. I finished it in the course of a weekend. You have a family under stress as one of its most vulnerable members has been associated in the public mind with the poisoning of chocolates from a local sweet shop. Of course, we all know she couldn’t possibly have done it, if only because the Inspector responsible for the investigation has fallen in love with her. Then a subsequent poisoning occurs – a family member very closely tied to the young woman dies in front of three witnesses. It’s a problem. Is it possible to harmonize the various statements from those eye-witnesses in such a way as to identify the wicked, guilty party? The creator of Dr. Gideon Fell (a man who wears astounding dressing gowns and never gets up before eleven in the morning), John Dickson Carr weaves a logic problem that theoretically the astute reader can work out, given all the details provided. (I didn’t. The candidate I had my eye on proved to be trustworthy after all.)

However, appearing late in the text was a discussion by Gideon Fell of why poisoners are always ultimately brought to justice. The risks associated with the use of poison are significant.

“He must make sure the victim does not live long enough to denounce him, a bad risk; he must show he had neither the opportunity to administer the poison nor reason for administering it, a very deadly risk; and he must obtain the poison without detection, perhaps the worst risk of all.”

Dr. Fell also provides us with an overview of some of the more infamous poisoners. Thomas Wainewright, William Palmer, the Rev. Clarence V.T. Richeson, Dr, Edward Pritchard, Arthur Warren Waite, and so forth. Chapter 18 is really most informative.

And of course, there’s the film. (Can’t say more. Spoilers.)

I can't say that Carr is one of my favorite writers, but he does manage to construct some interesting narratives. At one point late in the day, I was about 60 pages from the end of the book and wasn't sure if I would have time to finish it before dinner was due on the table. I decided to push through because at that point I truly could not figure out who the murderer was and I wanted to know as soon as possible and not have to wait until bed time.

>65 Karlstar: That quote you captured: "Scholars’ close readings of a selective but growing canon of literary works constitute a body of evidence, proving that these works—rescued from a sea of second-rate, mediocre, and actively bad writing—will endure." It's always interesting which ones do endure. Agatha Christie is a case in point. She had no illusions herself about how she earned her living. She was writing books with the intention of entertaining people; that's what she was paid to do and she lived up to her obligation. She certainly would never have expected that there would be academic treatises written about her books a century after they'd been published.

@haydninvienna and @pgmcc were talking about this very thing within the past 24 hours over on his thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/369906#n8872016

>68 jillmwo: As you can tell from my lack of books in the legacy libraries, I have not read a lot of books that I 'should' have read. I don't mind from time to time catching up on them, just to see what I've missed, but I don't have high expectations. On the other hand, all of us have limited time, so I prefer to read books I'll enjoy - in whatever way that is (see the conversation you referenced in >71 jillmwo:).

One of the things I greatly appreciate here is that folks will help advise on what should and shouldn't be read, considering time constraints, and will offer intelligent reasons pro or con. You all are much appreciated.

A very brief something (a mere 8 paragraphs) but worth reading: https://togelius.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-library-came-alive.html

>73 jillmwo: wow,love that

>73 jillmwo: Interesting and rather scary. It reminded me of this:

Taliessin’s look darkened; his hand shook
while he touched the dragons; he said ‘We had a good thought.
Sir, if you made verse you would doubt symbols.
I am afraid of the little loosed dragons.
When the means are autonomous, they are deadly; when words
escape from verse they hurry to rape souls;
when sensation slips from intellect, expect the tyrant;
the brood of carriers levels the good they carry.
We have taught our images to be free; are we glad?
are we glad to have brought convenient heresy to Logres?’

Source: 'Bors to Elayne': Upon the King's Coins' in Taliessin Through Logres by Charles Williams. Hidden because I'm probably the only Pub denizen who's ever read it.

Explanations: the 'dragons' are coins, which bear an image of a dragon. 'Logres' is a place.

>75 haydninvienna: It's been a very long time since I spent any time with Charles Williams. Perhaps in the coming months, I'll try him again. But something I'm reading (On Close Reading) talks about the use of this particular technique in the context of poetry. Reading Williams would demand that kind of approach.

I particularly like the phrase above "when Sensation slips from Intellect" because so much of what passes for advocacy these days suffers from the separation of the two.

>73 jillmwo: That's wonderful. I hope you shared it everywhere.

>76 jillmwo: I first encountered Taliessen Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars (what a great title!) about 50 years ago and was bowled over by them then. Since then I've probably gone through two or three cycles of 'great poet"/"bluffer" and back again. As of now, I can't help but be reminded of Eliot's Four Quartets and other late, explicitly religious poetry.

If you do tackle Williams's poetry (there seems to be quite a bit, but the only part of it that I know is the Arthurian poems), I take it you know about C S Lewis's essays on it, available in Arthurian Torso, which is available on Faded Page Canada. At the risk of a derail, or teaching you to suck eggs:

A note in my own hand (but it is either transcribed or abridged from a letter of Williams’s) runs as follows. ‘Broceliande, West of Logres, off Cornwall; both a forest and a sea—a sea-wood. It joins the sea of the Antipodes. Beyond it (at least beyond a certain part of it) is Carbonek; then the open sea; then Sarras. A place of making, home of Nimue. From it the huge shapes emerge, the whole matter of the form of Byzantium—and all this is felt in the beloved.’

Carbonek is the castle of the holy things, the dwelling place of Pelles the guardian of the Grail. Sarras is the ‘land of the Trinity’. If both these are beyond Broceliande or at least beyond a certain part of it—then through Broceliande runs the road from earth to heaven. On the other hand Broceliande, if you follow it far enough and in a certain direction, will bring you right round the world to the ‘antipodean ocean’; and indeed, even from the shore of Britain, Taliessin can discern through the trees of Broceliande its ‘thrusting inlets’. Now the Antipodean Ocean, in Williams’s myth, is the realm of P’o-Lu. There the Headless Emperor walks forever backwards and ‘heaven-sweeping tentacles stretch, dragging octopus bodies over the level’. Consciousness in P’o-Lu consists only of ‘rudiments or relics’, ‘the turmoil of the mind of sensation’. It is on the very fringe of Hell. For either journey, then, to Sarras or to P’o-Lu, Broceliande may be the route; tenent media omnia silvae.

Those who accomplish either journey will not be likely to return; but those who have gone only a little way into the wood have been known to come out again. They are changed when they do, and that in one or other of two ways. Some are ‘dumb and living, like a blest child in a mild and holy sympathy of joy’. But the majority came back as cranks—panacea-mongers ‘loquacious with a graph or a gospel, gustily audacious’.

Inside the wood it is very quiet

there no strife
is except growth from the roots, nor reaction but repose;
vigours of joy drive up; rich-ringed moments
thick in their trunks thrive, young-leaved their voices.
For there is no time in Broceliande

moons and suns that rose in rites and runes
are come away from sequence, from rules of magic;
here all is cause and all effect . . .
Time’s president and precedent, grace ungrieved,
floating through gold-leaved lime or banked behind beech
to opaque green, through each membraned and tissued experience
smites in simultaneity to times variously veined.

In a writer whose philosophy was Pantheistic or whose poetry was merely romantic this formidable wood from whose quiet and timeless fecundity ‘the huge shapes emerge’ would undoubtedly figure as the Absolute itself. And indeed Broceliande is what most romantics are enamoured of; into it good mystics and bad mystics go: it is what you find when you step out of our ordinary mode of consciousness. You find it equally in whatever direction you step out. All journeys away from the solid earth are equally, at the outset, journeys into the abyss. Saint, sorcerer, lunatic, and romantic lover all alike are drawn to Broceliande, but Carbonek is beyond a certain part of it only. It is by no means the Absolute. It is rather what the Greeks called the Apeiron—the unlimited, the formless origin of forms. Dante and D. H. Lawrence, Boehme and Hitler, Lady Julian and the Surrealists, had all been there. It is the home of immense dangers and immense possibilities.

>78 haydninvienna:. You are neither derailing me nor are you teaching me to suck eggs. That excerpt is wonderful. I first encountered the concept of Logres when I was first learning about the Inklings as a group. My first exposure to them was as individuals (first Tolkien, then Lewis) and then I read about the others in that group, like Williams. The idea of Logres is an initial step into Enchantment -- Logres as the more purified, authentic nature of England itself. It makes one catch one's breath at the beauty.

I really am tempted to find a copy of Taliessin Through Logres.

Over on @Sakerfalcon 's thread, we were chatting about The Spellshop and as it happened today, I came across this bit I'd highlighted as something, I liked from that book:

One of the librarians in the south tower had been a fixture in the Great Library for so long that it was said he’d been born in the stacks and had pledged his skeleton would become a bookshelf ladder after his death.

It's the concept that is appealing.

>80 jillmwo: " It's the concept that is appealing."

You mean as opposed to the execution

(sorry, I'll see myself out...)

>81 ScoLgo: *snicker*

>79 jillmwo: Taliessin Through Logres is available on Faded Page Canada, as I said. The Lewis essay, 'The Establishment of Arthur', that I quoted is there as well, in Arthurian Torso. (Note I've fixed the quotations in my post above: the two verse quotations are from 'The Departure of Merlin', in Taliessin Through Logres. The short embedded quotations sound like Williams, but I haven't been able to trace them.) The second volume of poems, The Region of the Summer Stars, is not. I've owned all three since 1972, according to my handwritten dates on the flyleaves.

Incidentally, I've just had a small example of Williams's curious (to me anyway) learning. The poem 'The Death of Palomides' includes the lines:

Netzach is the name of the Victory in the Blessing:
For the Lord created all things by means of his Blessing.

Having (of course) read these lines more than 50 years ago, and never having wondered about 'Netzach', I finally looked it up. Of course you're probably way ahead of me here, but "Netzach generally translates to 'eternity', and in the context of Kabbalah refers to 'victory' (literal meaning),  'perpetuity', or 'endurance'." What was a devout Anglican like Williams doing with the Kabbalah? But he seems to have known quite a bit about certain kinds of occult studies.

>81 ScoLgo: >82 MrsLee: Open mic night again!

>83 haydninvienna: Williams is a bit hard to fathom as a person and at times as a poet.I was unfamiliar with Netzach myself. In those two lines you quoted; however, the exotic vocabulary term did jump out at me as something I would have to look up to understand the reference. Williams was closer to being a moderriist in his narrative writing (I think) but it would be interesting to compare some of his poetic works with what T.S. Eliot was doing. Eliot wasn't (to my knowledge) at all interested in the Arthurian legends, but is it possible that he might have been more interested in Williams' theology? You're far more knowledgeable about both of these men than I am.

>84 jillmwo: You've gone and done it now, telling me I'm knowledgeable about Charles Williams. I thought I had Grevel Lindop's biography Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, but I don't. Now I've had to go and order it. As far as I know this is the only biography of Williams, against probably a dozen of Lewis (I have 3 plus his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and I know there are several I don't have). There's quite a bit about Williams in The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, by Philip and Carol Zaleski, and The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends, by Humphrey Carpenter, both of which I do have.

The Amazon description of Lindop's book gives some idea of how truly unusual Williams was:

This is the first full biography of Charles Williams (1886-1945), an extraordinary and controversial figure who was a central member of the Inklings -- the group of Oxford writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Charles Williams -- novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru -- was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the group. He was a pioneering fantasy writer, who still has a cult following. C.S. Lewis thought his poems on King Arthur and the Holy Grail were among the best poetry of the twentieth century for 'the soaring and gorgeous novelty of their technique, and their profound wisdom'. But Williams was full of contradictions. An influential theologian, Williams was also deeply involved in the occult, experimenting extensively with magic, practising erotically-tinged rituals, and acquiring a following of devoted disciples. Membership of the Inklings, whom he joined at the outbreak of the Second World War, was only the final phase in a remarkable career. From a poor background in working-class London, Charles Williams rose to become an influential publisher, a successful dramatist, and an innovative literary critic. His friends and admirers included T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the young Philip Larkin. A charismatic personality, he held left-wing political views, and believed that the Christian churches had dangerously undervalued sexuality. To redress the balance, he developed a 'Romantic Theology', aiming at an approach to God through sexual love. He became the most admired lecturer in wartime Oxford, influencing a generation of young writers before dying suddenly at the height of his powers. This biography draws on a wealth of documents, letters and private papers, many never before opened to researchers, and on more than twenty interviews with people who knew Williams. It vividly recreates the bizarre and dramatic life of this strange, uneasy genius, of whom Eliot wrote, 'For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world.'

I've been trying to run down a comment by Lewis comparing the poetic techniques of Williams and Eliot, something to the effect that Eliot's esoteric references were impressionistic (or something like that), whereas every esoteric reference in Williams had a precise and specific meaning, and Williams could have told you what it was. Google gives mostly stuff about how Williams was friends with both Eliot and Lewis and tried to bring them together. But I think Lewis probably had in mind mostly the earlier Eliot, not the Eliot who wrote

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

(I think that one poem, 'Little Gidding', establishes Eliot's right to be called a great poet, regardless of anything else he ever wrote.) I was going to try to compare the later Eliot of Four Quartets and Williams's Arthurian poetry but it won't work. Both are religious, even mystical, but I think the resemblance ends there. (Somewhere in the background I can just hear our late friend @-pilgrim- chiding me for being superficial.)

>84 jillmwo: & 85 A few years ago there was a discussion in one of my threads about Charles Williams because I was watching some murder mystery or other (my mind wants to think it was one of the Morse series or a spin-off because of his literary inclinations, but my mind is a fickle beast) which featured a cult built around the beliefs of Charles Williams. Interesting fellow, but I wouldn't want to be in that cult.

>86 MrsLee: I think you are thinking of one of the Inspector Lewis episodes, because I was spellbound watching that particular segment. It was so unusual to see something about Williams on television. Discussion of ideas regarding redemption and sacrifice all fed into the narrative of the crime. (I may want to watch that one all over again..).

>85 haydninvienna: Okay, you've done it. I will find a way to lay my hands on some of Williams' poetry. I have Little Gidding in a book of T.S. Eliot's poetry somewhere in a box and I want to revisit that one as well. (I know @MrsLee loved that one when she read it)

Question: How can a vendor in Hay-on-Wye possibly charge me $37.20 to ship a book to me here in the US? I mean, that is what they're charging me for standard shipping rather than for priority. (Standard meaning it may not arrive for nearly three weeks, depending upon who's busy this week.) I think this is Royal Mail, but it still seems excessive. Is it a zone thing? Hay-on-Wye not being in the same zone as London or something of that ilk? Or is it an exchange rate kind of thing? Or is the bookseller making up for any existing shortfalls by billing me more as an out-of-country buyer?

Seriously, what cost elements are going into that price tag? Theoretically, it's not a tariff thing. Is it a VAT thing? I truly don't understand and when I try to find something coherent to work it out for myself, the only explanations I find are for big bulk items worth hundreds of dollars. What am I missing?

>88 jillmwo:
Having worked in the postal sector I can give you a definitive answer to this issue. There is a United Nations body called The Universal Postal Union (UPU). This body sets the prices countries can charge other countries to deliver any post sent to them. This charge is called Terminal Dues. The sending country pays the cost of transporting** the post to the destination country and pays the terminal dues to the delivering postal organisation.

In some cases countries have bi-lateral agreements with other countries. These agreements set the terminal dues between the two countries involved independently of the UPU treaty rates. These agreed rates are higher than the UPU rates. This is generally due to the real cost of delivery being higher than the UPU rates as it takes years for the UPU rates to change and they cannot keep up with cost increases.

Other countries set what are called "Self Declared" rates. In the case of post going to the US, the US President* withdrew the country from the UPU treaty and had the USPS set self-declared rates that are much higher than the UPU rates. This resulted in a massive increase in the cost of sending letters and parcels to the US for delivery by the USPS.

From the price you mentioned I would suggest the item is a book that weights around 2kg (~4.4 lbs). That being the case the price mentioned would be correct under the current US terminal dues and transport costs.

*The current president in his first term.

**Freight costs took a climb during COVID (the much reduced number of flights crossing the Atlantic led to a scarcity of transport and hence higher cost) and the increase in fuel prices when Russia invaded Ukraine was a further factor.

>89 pgmcc: Not sure that's the whole story. Peter. According to Royal Mail's website, the minimum price for a book-size parcel to the USA is £11.75 online or £16.95 at a branch (respectively US$15.90 and US$22.95). Either the bookshop is using one of the more expensive services (including Parcelforce) or they're padding the P&P to cover other stuff like packing. The corresponding prices for Australia, which is at least twice as far, are £8.90 and £14.55. Interesting. And yes, I realise that for air freight distance is not the whole story.

>90 haydninvienna:
If one sends a 2kg item from Ireland to the US it costs €34 for standard postage. That is mostly terminal dues. The weight will include packaging. Half a Kg would be €16. Is it a big book?

>91 pgmcc: This is getting confusing. I just looked at An Post's website and it quoted me €48 for a 2 kg parcel to the US, standard rate. But it still looks like the UK shipper was charging too much, unless the Royal Mail website I quoted above was wildly wrong for some reason. But relevantly, I've just been looking on Biblio.com at prices for a copy of Mortal Love, by Elizabeth Hand. I searched for the hardback, so all the results are for identical copies (confirmed by checking the ISBNs). The price of shipping from the US to Australia ranges from A$29.66 to A$76.18.

ETA The same title in hardback from BetterWorldBooks of Fife in Scotland would cost me £18.69 for shipping, which is vaguely reasonable allowing for some costs for packing, etc.

>92 haydninvienna:
While I was still working there was a big increase in the rates going to Australia. The transport costs had become prohibitive.

>92 haydninvienna: and >93 pgmcc:. I'll give you two examples. One was a relatively small book in terms of trim size (smaller than the current trade paperback but bigger than a mass market paperback). Fewer than 300 pages. Nowhere near the weight of 5 lbs. The vendor would have charged me something between 25 and 27 dollars for the book itself and then the shipping added the $37.20. It seems very likely to me that the vendor may be padding, but only to some limited extent. I've used the vendor on multiple occasions and found them quite reliable, but the shipping charges were nowhere near this level prior to March of 2025. They'd been going up, but not by exorbitant leaps and bounds.

A second title was a bit larger but the book -- sight unseen -- did not seem to me to be oversized, based on the picture of the paperback provided by the seller. Page count was just under 400 pages but no estimated trim size was offered. I could get this at a relatively reasonable price from someone in Amsterdam; the shipment (from the Netherlands) was $23.95.

Now, I could order this second book from a specialist/rare bookseller here in the States. But here in the states, the seller wants triple digits for it, a sum which is unjustifiable even for me. (The shipping in the US would be under $5 as long as I am willing to wait for delivery as long as 3 weeks. If I want priority shipping, the shipping goes up by another ten dollars and they'd get it to me within 2 weeks.) I know I've gotten spoiled by two-day delivery over the past twenty or thirty years, but three weeks to get something from California to Pennsylvania suggests transport by elephants moving slowly over the Rockies and then the Great Plains of the Midwest and then struggling across the length of the rectangular Commonwealth to reach my tiny little cottage of books.

(I'm too lazy to google it this morning, but wasn't Hannibal successful in his attempt to cross the Alps? He was the one who used the elephants, right?) I need more caffeine.

My most sincere thanks to both of you -- @pgmc and @haydninvienna -- for such coherent responses. But I'm afraid the European-based rare booksellers will be seeing less of me than they might wish. Good thing that for the most part the reading material is more of a "want" than a true necessity.

>94 jillmwo:
Unfortunately only one elephant survived the crossing of the Alps, but that one surviving elephant proves the point that there is always an elephant.

Glad to be of service regarding mysterious world of trans-Atlantic postal charges.

>95 pgmcc:. What I object to is the lack of transparency. I know distribution channels have dramatically shifted over the course of the past fifty years. Just because I want to know how to minimize costs doesn't mean I'm not willing to pay something. *murfle*

On another topic, I am wondering how people feel about this: https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/360717579/national-library-recycle-500000-unus.... (No commenting unless and until you have read the full article.)

>96 jillmwo: I'll be honest, I'm not sure what else they can do with them. At least they are recycling them and not sending them to a landfill.

>96 jillmwo: "The cost was commercially sensitive, the library said." I'm not sure what that means. Expensive? They paid commercial prices but not too much? The library really didn't want to part with its books and now is sensitive about the subject and will need therapy?

>98 Karlstar: I *think* what is meant is that they aren't allowed contractually to publicly say the final amount spent. This may have been due to concerns on the side of the service provider (proprietary information) or it may have been due to concerns on the side of the library itself (budgetary oversight).

>99 jillmwo: Seems to make sense.

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”

I know the quote is from Anne Fadiman, but some of those behaviors are bad for the book.

>101 jillmwo: I hear you! I don't like food or food stains in my books. And I will only write in textbooks.

How were you productive within the past 24 hours, Jill?

Last night and for part of this morning, I updated my LT library with notes of start and completion date for titles read during the second quarter of 2025.

Are you laboring under the impression that this was a necessary item on your to-do list?

Well, yes.

Why?

Because one day in the future, some poor grad student will be mining LT data to try to determine just how much time people spent reading in that awful year of 2025. I will be helping that future grad student get her Ph.D. and successfully thrive. It's a symbiotic relationship across time and space.

>102 clamairy:. It's the muffin crumbs I find disturbing.

>103 jillmwo: A conversation I have with myself almost every day about the ways I spend my time. At some point, the answer of, "because I wanted to" has to be enough.

>104 jillmwo: Due to the high fat content there will be grease stains in addition to the crumbs. :o(

>105 MrsLee:
I think "because I wanted to" is the highest level of justification. Rock on, Lee!

>105 MrsLee: and >107 pgmcc: So really you're both just hedonists, is that it? Decadent Pleasure-seekers? Over-indulgent sybarites? I am horrified by the idea of such debauchery...

I ask you. What of DUTY? Do you want to end up like this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardanapalus

>108 jillmwo:
Yes!

What a way to go!

>108 jillmwo: From what I read in that article, the king's life and demise are sheer invention and rumor designed by his enemies to use fear and guilt to keep their subjects towing the line and working instead of enjoying life.

Free yourself! Get out from the puritan strictures of hard work! Be a rebel and fiddle in your LT library while the world around you is harnessed in delusions of grandeur! We support you!

>110 MrsLee:
I stand with you, as long as it doesn’t take too much effort or involve having to get up early or…

I had gone out and gotten myself a used copy of Death of an Airman. This is a novel initially published in the early to mid 1930s and I wanted it because I had a few weeks back been thinking about commercial aviation as it had shown up in two novels by Agatha Christie. The first one was Peril at End House which features a pilot attempting to circumnavigate the globe in a record period of time. The second one was Death in the Clouds, which features a death mid-air in a tightly constrained space. Before much can happen in the book, the investigator must interview the 8-10 passengers present at the time. So I sought out Death of an Airman because it was a way of seeing (through a different perspective from Christie’s) the beginning of aviation as a travel option for a mainstream population. (I also bought it because it features a Bishop of the Church of England and I thought that seeing that particular character learn how to fly a plane might be fun.)

At any rate, Death of an Airman is a good read. It’s part of the British Library Crime Classic series and if you’ve a passing interest in aviation, it is rather fun. The author writes convincingly about the flying daredevils who do loop-the-loops and who know how to pull a plane out of a downward spiral. One gets a great sense of the energy of those engaged in the activity.

There’s also a certain amount of humor in the writing:

Mr. Walsyngham was also effulgent beneath a grey top-hat, and wore on his face an expression of bright interest. This disguised his extreme indignation at the fact that, although he had been staying at the Lord-Lieutenant’s house for a week, he had been completely unsuccessful in getting him to subscribe to any of the shares of his new flotation, Planet Airways. Beside him, dressed in a battleship-grey toilette which unfortunately increased her resemblance to a tank, Lady Crumbles was engaged in conversation with Lady Laura Vanguard.

There’s an on-going element of drug trafficking in this novel. This type of crime features as well in the two Christie novels named above. Taken together, one suddenly realizes that perhaps the drug problem of the 1930's was more of a social issue than previously recognized. The idle rich (indeed, some of the middle-class as well) are bored and need to deaden or distract their awareness and dissatisfaction with life . It’s an ugly aspect of the period,)

At any rate, it’s a fun read and one does pick up a great deal about the thinking going on at the time about airplane travel, the impact that aviation had on the international distribution of freight,and the perceived advantages for personal and commercial use. It wasn’t just about allowing the upper-crust greater access to the French Riviera.

Have started to read Katherine Addison's Angel of Crows at bedtime. I am absolutely agog at how cleverly the first few chapters are using early portions of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet to set up her alternate universe. It's thrilling. (Not a word I generally use about my bedtime books.)

>112 jillmwo: >113 jillmwo: Those both sound good. I received The Tomb of Dragons for Father's day, so I'll be reading that soon.

>113 jillmwo: I agree, you don't generally want something that's going to keep you awake to read at night. I am glad to hear you are enjoying this though. I will be adding it to my wish list. I have to get to the three other books of hers I bought when they were on sale first, though!

The Short List for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction (2025): https://lithub.com/heres-the-shortlist-for-the-2025-ursula-k-le-guin-prize-for-f...

I have already read The City in Glass and now I'm considering whether I want to read The West Passage.

>116 jillmwo: Hmm, The City in Glass sounds interesting. Reading your earlier review, how much of that is 'demons aren't bad, angels are'?

>117 Karlstar: Essentially, the story has to do with building relationships over time between those entities who might otherwise not come together in peace. The story takes place over an extended period; we watch a city fall and rise again. It has more to do with learning to see the "Other" as connected to oneself. Angels and demons are just a kind of descriptor.

>118 jillmwo: Ok, thanks. There was a similar theme in The Book that Wouldn't Burn, which I liked.

Today's curious marketing blurb: "Canongate has acquired The Comfort of Distant Stars by debut novelist IO Echeruo, a coming-of-age story that promises existential longing and humour alongside physics and Igbo cosmology."

Does that sound appealing? I like a lot of what Canongate publishes (like their wonderful myth book series), but I'm wrestling with this one. It almost sounds as if the author heaped a bunch of "stuff" in to the kitchen sink. OTOH, it might be quite interesting....

>120 jillmwo: It does not!

By the way, if you're looking for noteworthy scence fiction up for awards, you might want to look at this particular list. I am tempted both by The Ministry of Time and Annie Bot but at the same time, I don't think they'd be "uplifting".
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/best-science-fiction-books-of-2025-andrew-m-but...

>120 jillmwo: That marketing blurb make me wary. It sounds too much like a real estate agent talking up a rundown property by saying it's "quaint" with a charming view.

>123 MrsLee: If you have two minutes to spare, the definitive take on that kind of real estate advertising is
that of Fred Dagg.

Explanation for non-Oz/NZ-ers: "Fred Dagg" was a character created by the late and very much lamented John Clarke, a much-loved comedian and satirist, who was born in NZ and emigrated to Australia. "Fred Dagg" provided explanations of puzzling features of modern life. The text (seemingly slightly revised) is here.

Quote (entirely unverified) attributed to Virginia Woolf: "Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack." I'm not sure I agree with the statement, although I think any personal library should have a mixture of matching volumes in sets alongside titles picked up on a whim without regard to their long term value.

>125 jillmwo: I love this quote, whoever said it. I think a home library with nothing but perfect sets does lack a little character. Or call it whimsy.

I have several really nice sets of books: art books, some Shakespeare, etc, but packed all around them and the "wild, homeless" books. But that's in the big downstairs library. Upstairs my old bookcase is full of my ratty old paperbacks, likely all mass produced, with a few hardcovers that fit better in the bottom shelf. There's no long-term value there other than sentimental!

>124 haydninvienna: I hadn't seen his version, I read it in my faux Aussie accent (because I've been watching a murder mystery series at in the Outback of Australia). Spot on.

>125 jillmwo: I took that quote to mean the difference between browsing in a used book sale and a library. The used sale is "vast flocks of variegated" topics, arranged willy-nilly. I'm thinking more of a book sale table, or a Friends of the Library sale. There is a different mood in a library. I like that quote.

>126 terriks: Same here. I love matching books, but the vast majority of mine are not matching, some new, some used, some very used, etc.

>127 MrsLee: I think that's a good interpretation.

Locus Awards Announcement: https://locusmag.com/2025/06/2025-locus-awards-winners/ (And it doesn't appear that I have read any of 'em because sadly, The Tainted Cup didn't win in its category...)

>126 terriks: and >128 Karlstar: I have several really nice sets of books: art books, some Shakespeare, etc, but packed all around them and the "wild, homeless" books.. That is my story as well. I have some very nice Folio sets out for public view but there are others that are not out on shelves. There is one bookcase tripled packed with mass market paperbacks. There is another that is a mix of old used books and recently published titles. There are the ones in piles crawling up the base boards. And as previously confessed, the couch in the living room (which needs to be replaced for a variety of reasons) has a surprising number of books piled on it as well, but I'm trying to reduce that number. (No hoots of derision need be heard.)

>127 MrsLee:. I agree (after reading it three times over) that yours is the likely intended meaning of the quote. Because yes, my home is overrun with old and new editions of titles. My husband is still raising an eyebrow over certain stacks (although he tends to be grateful when I identify and order a book that I am sure he'll enjoy). I ordered Drawn Testimony by Jane Rosenberg for him and he's been very intrigued by it. He reads bits out loud to me. (She does drawings during courtroom proceedings when they are closed to cameras. Her work shows up fairly regularly on the evening news.)

And just because I'm a bit of a sucker for stories regard stained glass windows: https://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/latest-news/york-minster-and-the-five-sister...

>129 jillmwo: So many books, so little time.

Just to remind myself, it is sometimes wise to recall that some people read purely for purposes of either entertaining themselves or to soothe their mind before sleep. It can be particularly useful to remember this during Book Group discussions. Others do not necessarily enjoy books that largely run on metaphor.

>122 jillmwo: I've read both of the books that caught your eye, and your impression is correct. They were both very good, and Ministry of Time has a lot of humour in it, but both books tackle some weighty and hard-hitting topics. I haven't read any of the others, although Private rites is waiting on my kindle.

>129 jillmwo: I'm sad that The tainted cup didn't win, though if A sorceress comes to call is up to Kingfisher's usual standard then it's a worthy winner. I've never heard of the SF winner, but I enjoyed Bury your gays which took the horror prize.

>131 jillmwo: I didn't know about this! Then again, I haven't been to York Minster since I was a child. I'm glad they are continuing research to identify more women who should be commemorated.

I actually had a *thought* today (despite the way that the humidity and temperature are mounting). Where's @MrsLee? A book of the Lord Peter stories hit my mail box today and it made me suddenly recognize some differences between Sayers and Christie in the context of short stories. There's the thing about Lord Peter as quintessentially British by birth whereas Poirot is a "transplant" and forever the outsider. (Miss Marple of course is English, but she's rather more humble in rank than Lord Peter. She was only related to a Cathedral Canon whereas I have a vague sense that there was a Bishop in one of the Wimsey stories.) There's the difference with regard to the titles on short stories. Christie always went for the short and sweet story titles whereas with Sayers you get titles like "The Pescatorial Farce of the Stolen Stomach". These two women both earned their living by writing fiction, but their output is decidedly different in tone. Sayers' didn't much care for the Harley Quin stories; she thought they were sentimental, but Quin was one of Christie's private favorites.

>135 jillmwo:
One thing I was surprised about Gaudy Night was how arrogant and snobby Hariett Vane came across, and how classist and elitist she came across. The whole story appeared to be a justification of the aristocracy and and a condescending criticism of the lower classes. Even the solution of the crimes was a swipe at the lower classes and a reinforcement of how the upper classes were such good people. Sayers also made out that the upper classes were righteous and honourable. Obviously she had never heard of the atrocities committed on the peoples of the various countries subjugated within the empire by those self same honourable and righteous aristocrats./spoiler

>136 pgmcc: I can see how you might interpret the tone in that way, but perhaps due to the consciousness-raising period during which I initially read it, I have a decided soft spot for Gaudy Night. The women in the story had struggled to be allowed to benefit from a top-drawer university education (as Sayers had herself done) and what you may be registering as an attitude of elitism in my view was more a hell-bent intent to excel because they'd earned the right to be prepared as scholars to do real work -- something they'd been excluded from previously. Harriet was taken aback by those of her undergraduate companions who had allowed themselves to be distracted by marriage and family from doing scholarship for which they'd be trained. This was something precious and hard won and some part of her feels strongly that her friends were not just missing out for themselves but also doing a disservice to others by not continuing in doing their real work!) It's not a class-by-virtue-of-birth thing. If they're an elite, it's because there are so few who've been permitted the opportunity. Harriet (and by proxy, Sayers) views it as a woman's issue. Which is why it is something of a betrayal that the perpetrator of the poisonous letters is a woman..

Please note that it's been awhile since I last revisited Gaudy Night if I've muddled some of the details. But it spoke to me so strongly on first reading as I was coming from an all-female educational environment. And now I feel a deep impulse to pull out all of my Folio copies of Sayers. You've started something.

Edited to add one more "thought". Christie was a narrative technician in the way that she approached writing. Sayers had a better handle on actual characterization. Sayers also had the benefit of a far better education than was allowed to Christie. (Original time stamp was 2:08 pm on June 23.)

>122 jillmwo: The Ministry of Time sounded interesting and familiar, until I realized it seemed familiar because that's the setting and sub-plot of the Loki miniseries on Disney. Edited: what the heck was I doing with that comment reference? Fixed.

>130 jillmwo: Back on the nice books topic, is this too much: https://www.eastonpress.com/all-categories/sci-fi-and-fantasy/a-wrinkle-in-time-...

>138 Karlstar: If you think I'm going to tell you to not buy a good book like A Wrinkle in Time, you're way off. The price covers a hefty leather binding, gilded pages, a nice thick bookmark ribbon and a hubbed spine. And the wonderful text that Madeleine L'Engle provided. Some portion of that price undoubtedly goes back to her literary estate, as well. If you are tempted, go ahead and give in.

Now to be fair, I will note to you that Easton Press books are (IMHO) very heavy. It's the bulk of the pages on archival, acid-free paper, combined with the leather binding. If you really prefer a book in your hands to be manipulable like a mass market paperback, do not give in to this temptation.

>137 jillmwo:
Do not get me wrong. I enjoyed the book. It was not Harriet's attitude to married women or other women who did not follow the scholarly path, but the attitude to the staff, the security people, and the non-academic people in the story. There was a lot of classist criticism of "lower classes" that was nothing to do with the scholarly life and discipline, but were pure snobbishness and typical of the upper classes who find it tiresome to tolerate ordinary people. My skin crawled reading some of those parts.

>138 Karlstar: OMG!! I adore A Wrinkle In Time and this copy is absolutely gorgeous!

Buck up, man - not only do you get gilded pages but a ribbon bookmark!

I'm smitten. ❤️

>135 jillmwo: Here I am! Not sure why I was wanted?

I can see the point of both snobbery and female scholars trying to hold their places and not go backwards. I thought it quite ironic in a way, and I've found it to be true in life as well, that the educated women who have fought hard for their rights despise or at least dismiss those women who did not choose that path. Education is a "class" of its own. Not trying to disparage anyone, it's just hard to remove our blinders as humans and I thought Gaudy Night illustrated that very well. The perpetrator was not even thought of by the women because she was part of the furniture. It took Lord Peter, who was not part of the college, and who possibly had more to do with the "common" classes than the others, to realize the passionate perpetrator was not one of the scholars

>142 MrsLee: It was the volume of Lord Peter stories that made me think of you, hence the ping on your name. No other rationale. I just seemed to recall that you had read them at some point and enjoyed them. That was all.

Some thoughts. BTW I haven't read Gaudy Night, but I have read all the other Wimsey novels, and I think all the short stories as well.

• Lord Peter was the younger son of a Duke, therefore was "old money" and old nobility; attitudes might differ between the"old nobility" and the new money
• He had been a junior officer on the Western Front at a time when officers were middle or upper class and the footsloggers were lower class — therefore he did know something about the lower classes (in the "biography" by Uncle Paul Delagardie that's appended to the novels, it is said of Peter that "he was a good officer and the men liked him")
• Harriet was IIRC a vicar's daughter — vicars at the time were normally middle class; I don't remember a Bishop (who would definitely be upper class) in either of the families, but Wimsey's class certainly mixed with bishops
• as far as I can remember, Harriet had never worked for a living — she had become a novelist after graduating, and a crime novelist rather than a "literary" one
• seconding >142 MrsLee: about the attitudes of some educated women

All in all, I think Sayers might well have drawn the attitudes of the time fairly accurately. The attitudes of Harriet are not necessarily those of Sayers herself, of course.

>139 jillmwo: >141 terriks: I'm very tempted. I already have a paperback copy of A Wrinkle in Time. It is the oldest fantasy/scifi book I can remember getting from the library, in the 'Children's Room', so it has some sentimental attachment. I may have to give in on that one.

>145 Karlstar: It's okay to have two copies of the same book -- one is in the format you read initially and which thus carries a (hidden) sentimental value and the other one displays the value of the content to the world through it's binding etc announcing the status of the work to you and to others. (I'm really good at rationalizing an expensive acquisition...)

>144 haydninvienna: and >143 jillmwo:. It isn't right for the educated women to look down on the less-educated women who served them as staff in the college, but I do sympathize with the intensity they felt about the associated value with honest scholarship as being just as much the "proper work" of women as marriage and housekeeping. That's one of the points Sayers made throughout the stories with Harriet Vane -- that the work one was GOOD at is the activity that should be viewed as one's PROPER work.

My husband tells me breakfast is here. Sadly, for now at least, the Sayers books are inaccessible to me on the shelf.

>129 jillmwo: I read and enjoyed both of the T Kingfisher books that won, and I believe you would like them as well.

This one is interesting: https://www.thebookseller.com/news/robert-harris-wins-10k-pleasure-of-reading-pr... Robert Harris, author of Conclave has been awarded the Pleasure of Reading Prize for 2025. It's the quotes included that make the piece worth your while.

>148 jillmwo: The Bookseller is telling me that I've reached my limit for free articles. Funny, I don't recall going to this website before, but it won't let me see the piece.

>149 terriks: Same. I'm not signing up for access, even if we get two articles a month for free.

>149 terriks: and >150 clamairy:. I believe that I downloaded a PDF of the piece and I will root around and will hopefully provide a better synopsis of the substance. (The Bookseller is a great periodical but it is annoying when they put up those types of speed bumps to access.)

However, this piece has no paywall. https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/2025/06/25/ten-things-i-look-out-for-w.... It will appeal to those of us who endeavor to write reviews of some nature.

>151 jillmwo: Very interesting, but I thought it lacked the 'grip factor'. I think in our past discussions of what makes a great book, we may have covered many of these aspects in various ways, though our discussions weren't so focused on mysteries.

>149 terriks: and >150 clamairy: I found the PDF!!

Robert Harris has won Give a Book’s The Pleasure of Reading Prize for 2025, worth £10,000. The prize money is shared between the winning author and a charitable Give a Book project of the winner’s choice, often a prison, school or another project where reading for pleasure can "teach, inspire, and change lives".

Harris was chosen by a panel of expert judges, including this year’s guest judge Harriet Constable, author of The Instrumentalist.

The prize was devised by the charity Give a Book during lockdown and was inspired by The Pleasure of Reading anthology, edited by Give a Book’s patron, Antonia Fraser, and published by Bloomsbury. Every year, the prize recognises an author, writing in English,whose writing brings pleasure to others.

>152 Karlstar: Ha! Excellent insight.

BTW, I did a binge recently of newly published titles. (Got tired of paying shipping costs...) So at some point in the next day or two I will share a list of what I currently have available to me. For the time being however, I did want to tell all of you that Kathryn Harkup's latest book, V is for Venom is delightfully informative. I haven't finished reading it, of course; it's the kind of thing one reads at point of need, on a chapter basis. But this volume includes (as just a sample) the background on Mickey Finns as a means of incapacitating some luckless soul. An excellent work of general non-fiction informing the reader about the history of a particular substance, its chemical make-up, medical usage, available antidotes, all as seen in the works of Agatha Christie.

The Angel of Crows continues to be my bedtime reading, but as indicative of my immersion, I have cheated now and again and read a chapter or two mid-day. Katherine Addison is wonderful and there are sufficient references to the Holmes canon to delight one. I snorted when I hit the case involving the Copper Beeches. If you aren't averse to the occasional vampire gathering in London (and I do recognize that some people avoid those), it's quite a fun read.

>153 jillmwo: Thank you!

>151 jillmwo:
A very interesting conversational discussion of their thoughts on important things to consider when writing reviews. Thank you for the link.

>154 clamairy: and >155 pgmcc: I am surprised at you both. A chance to express concerns over my continued reading on poisons and murder and not a single bit of snark from either of you. Have you finally been lulled into that state of mind where you think "Oh, she's never going to do anything untoward with that knowledge"? So I can assume you'll tell any investigators something along the lines of "that sweet little grey haired librarian talks a big game but...".

(Jill cackles with glee, rubbing her hands together, as she studies the page again with an eye the contents of the alembic sitting atop the Bunsen Burner)

>156 jillmwo: Oppressive heat is not conducive to snarkiness, IMHO.

>156 jillmwo:
Jill, at this stage I consider you a lost cause in terms of redemption. That being the case I simply note your further venomous and poisonous indoctrination exercises and add the to the book of evidence to be produced at the appropriate time to the relevant authorities.,lestvyou have any nefarious ideas regarding my wellbeing I have take numerous precautions including keep multiple copies in various placed with instructions for their release to authorities snd press in the event of anything unsavoury happening to me.

>153 jillmwo: Thank you for this!

Oh, I see how it is around here. Jill seems to be very forthright in her doings with her Bunsen Burner. Peter is running about gathering "evidence," while Claire is feigning heat exhaustion. I'm a bit surprised no one in the Pub is complaining about the smells from little puffs of smoke in the corner.

But sure, let's all change the subject and talk about cheese. I had a luscious Havarti earlier today with some delightfully crisp crackers. Anyone?

>160 terriks: 😆😆😆 There are so many goings-on at the Pub, it quite makes your head spin.

About cheese, though: I've tried Havarti for the first time a few weeks ago, prompted by a discussion here. Unfortunately, I don't remember whose Cheese Bullet it was. It was delicious!

>160 terriks: Bwahaha!

>161 Alexandra_book_life: I believe it was @MrsLee who tried it for the first time. Then several others of us said that it was one of our favorites.

>161 Alexandra_book_life: Yes, indeed. I just try to keep up.

Havarti is wonderful!

>162 clamairy:. :D

News emerging from ALA this week, for those of you who use Libby: https://company.overdrive.com/2025/06/24/clarivate/.

>162 clamairy: Yes, and now I've tried it again, I still like it, but my daughter-in-law brought a cheddar with red wine coating (ok, it has a proper name but I don't know how to spell it) she bought at Costco and it is too die for. Crunchy, salty bits in the cheddar, and a hint of wine flavor on the outside to finish. We couldn't stop putting it in our mouths.

Now this is the way the Pub should be -- folks stuffing their mouths with cheese, offering the casual jeer at long-term denizens in the Pub and someone asking about whether or not there should be concerns about small puffs of smoke that appear to be from something sitting in the shadows. (Actually, >160 terriks:, it's possible that the smoke is a by-product of the brewing process associated with bartender's Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.)

>164 jillmwo: Woah... A lot of that is in corporate speak. I do hope it all comes together smoothly.

>165 MrsLee: Was it this one? I've seen wine encrusted cheese there before, but it was not a cheddar.

>167 clamairy: Yes, that's the one. If it's not cheddar, the flavor is doing a good job of pretending to be the best cheddar ever. Reminds me of Coastal Cheddar, with the added goodness of the outside of the cheese.

I looked it up and see that Bella Vittano is the type of cheese. I thought it was the company that made it. Any way, it is my current favorite.

>166 jillmwo: Ha! I should have guessed.

Okay, I finished The Angel of Crows last night, staying up past my bedtime to do so. Honestly, the writing itself is so well managed. She weaves in so much that is recognizable from major stories of Sherlock Holmes, but then she introduces her own characters and versions of criminal events. I fell in love with the mechanical cerberus!

Set this one on the shelf right beside the Everyman's Library volume of A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Dance between the two to see how she managed to dovetail her alternate universe with Doyle's Victorian London.

If I have a minor quibble, it's that it may be a disservice to link too many of the Holmes stories so closely together. I think readers may want space in between each experience and the overarching narrative by Addison is essentially a full-length novel. (It is possible to read too many short stories in a row and it tends to cloud the experience.)

But I do recommend this one, if one is willing to accept vampires, hell-hounds and more. Addison is good at her job.

Edited to add that I saw references as well to short stories, "The Speckled Band" and "The Copper Beeches"

>170 jillmwo: I am more and more interested in this book :)

>171 Alexandra_book_life: I loved it and I'm not a Holmes aficionado!

>170 jillmwo: Adding another book to the TBR pile.

All the kvetching on various threads (naming no names) about needing Kevlar Vests as one sips a nice wine and nibbles on exotic cheeses. Some of us are hard at work because we know that (without AI) those books just aren’t going to read themselves. Before I launch a third quarter thread, I wanted to put a list here. (One of the book groups just decided they’d read The Fifth Elephant by Pratchett. The other is working slowly through the book about women in Washington DC breaking codes. A third has selected something exotic, but I’m not sure I’m up for it.)

Meanwhile I have:

The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919 - 1940
Understanding Agatha Christie
The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern
The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend
Taliessin Through Logres
The Book At War
Ten Teacups
On Close Reading
The Bookbinder of Jericho as (bedtime reading)

Oh that's a very chewy list. I have that Charles Williams sitting around somewhere. I don't think I could find it if my life depended on it though. I think I was supposed to have read it in college, but I'm pretty sure I didn't.

>175 clamairy: By "that Charles Williams" you meant Taliessin Through Logres? You were "supposed to have read it in college"? First, I'm astonished that any university (US or anywhere else) has it on a reading list; second, if you're pretty sure you didn't read it, you probably didn't. Williams is unique (I've never found anyone else like him anyway) and I think unforgettable.

>176 haydninvienna: It was for an Arthurian Romance class I took as an undergrad. I signed up for the class the year before because the professor that was supposed to be teaching it was one of my favorites in the English department. But he got sick and they talked two guys from the French department into filling in instead. They changed the reading list and the syllabus and I was not a happy camper. I'm going to post this, and then add the book titles I remember from my PC. It's a lot easier to cut and paste there.

Taliessin through Logres, The Region of the Summer Stars & Arthurian Torso all in one volume by Charles Williams
War in Heaven by Charles Williams
Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory

I still have them all. I read enough to pass the class, but since they nattered on and on about France and not England I think my mind wandered.

Just saw something on Facebook that showed a purple dragon with the line "Today I shall drink coffee and BE A DRAGON". Oh, that a cup of coffee would handle it all...

Actually >175 clamairy: It's not as chewy a list as one might think. For example, The Age of Illusion is really quite readable. Blythe has a nice prose style. As for the Arthurian Romance class, I think I'm envious. Even if you did have to suffer through two French professors. (Were they French or did they just specialize in the language?) Taliessin Through Logres is lovely. (Althought my copy doesn't include the Arthurian Torso. >176 haydninvienna: What does the Torso actually entail?

>178 jillmwo: I believe I would get a lot more out of that class if I took it now. Actually the same could be said for many of my courses. I believe one of the professors was from Quebec, but the other was from the US. They both had their noses in the air, though.

>179 clamairy: I was assured once by a Dutch colleague that the French are not really snobbish by nature, more simply insecure about how to engage with others who are not French.

>180 jillmwo: I never thought the French were snobbish. The Francophiles on the other hand...

>181 clamairy: *snort*

>178 jillmwo: Arthurian Torso contains "the posthumous fragment of The Figure of Arthur" by Williams, and a commentary on Williams's Arthurian poems by Lewis, plus a brief introduction by Lewis about how the book came to be. The "fragment" is the completed part of a book on the Arthurian legends that Williams was writing, but never finished. Williams's Arthurian poems aren't part of the Arthurian legend, exactly: best I can say is that Williams used the myth as a setting and probably a source of inspiration, but the content of the poems is all his own.

>142 MrsLee:
On Gaudy Night

It is exactly your point about the perpetrator being part of the furniture and not part of the elite group that considered all its members to be obviously not capable of doing evil that struck me as a key defence of the elite group and a story structure that reinforced the classist prejudices portrayed in the story. I felt Sayers could not bring herself to have the guilty party anyone in the group she belonged to. I feel this was a cop-out and an easy option that avoided upsetting the “right sort” of person.

While the story is primarily about educated woman I see the defence of classist attitudes as a defence of the upper class members whether female or not. I really enjoyed the book and the philosophical discourses but I was very conscious of the elitist prejudices and felt Sayers demonstrated that she supported the class structure and everything that went with it.

I have in hand The Figure of Arthur by Charles Williams. It's very interesting and only 84 pages in length. I can handle this. However, I still lack the commentary by C.S. Lewis.