Magicians Nephew -- To Seek a Newer World

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

Hello.

My name is Jim and I've been on the Thing for a decade now. Amazing

I'm a retired computer programmer, a lover of history, a one time actor and stage manager, and (once again)(sort of) a piano player.

I live in New York City and love it - the worry, the noise, the dirt, the heat not withstanding -- and looks to be here for a while yet.

(and if you recognize that as a quote from a Sondheim Lyric - then we are sure to be good friends)

I read more non fiction than some of the LT gang, but i read a lot of novels too. Two active book clubs keep me on my toes.

And here we go! Weeeeee!

Welcome back!

Happy reading in 2026!

Nice to see you back, Jim.

Happy new thread!!!

Happy new year and new thread, Jim.

Sending you pre-New Year's greetings, Jim.

>7 katiekrug: Thanks, neighbor.

Happy New Year of reading. I vow to visit thread more often in 2026. It was wonderful to meet up with you and Judy in June!

A newer world for 2026 sounds like a good aim, Jim!

Happy New Thread! 🧵

>11 SilverWolf28: Thanks to you Silver and to all who stopped by.

>1 magicians_nephew: I DID recognize that Sondheim lyric, but then we're already friends, unsurprisingly... :-)

2026 orisons, Jim. Good reads to distract you from the world....

My doctor diagnosed me with Autocorrect Syndrome.

I didn’t even know I was I’ll. (chuckle)

Thanks to Kim Kommando for the joke.
Her daily email blast always has good updates and good tech info. Plus she's a cool lady.

If you like you can sign up for her newsletter. It's free.

Kim Kommando

>1 magicians_nephew: Hi - Love the Tennyson quote -
the first lines are on our refrigerator outlining a large photograph of a young child walking her black cat through the snow.

>16 m.belljackson: Love it!

Glad you're signed aboard for this new year.

>15 magicians_nephew: I've been posting a daily "dad joke" on Facebook for 15 years, so this is right up my alley. And yes, I will definitely steal this one!!!

Happy New Year!

>19 SilverWolf28: Thanks Silver. I used to see you sometimes on my friends threads when you announced a new readathon. It's been fun this year to follow you and get to know your reading habits a bit too.

New Year greetings from Kuala Lumpur. My project is at least physically completed and an addition to the city scape.

Look forward to keeping up with you in 2026, Jim

>15 magicians_nephew: LOL! : )

>20 magicians_nephew: Feel free to suggest any books you think I'd like.

Here's my new thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/377236

Fast away the old year passes
Cheer the new ye lads and lasses

My first book of the New Year is a chunkster, but it has a big story to tell.

The Devil Reached Towards the Sky is the book and it's an "Oral History" of the American Atomic Bomb Project and the use of the bomb against Japan.

Looking back you might think it was a straight triumphant march from E=MC2 to Hiroshima. It wasn't that al all.

So we see Fermi and his men covered with graphite dust creating the first "pile" under the bleachers at Stagg Field in Chicago. Was it going to work? Go "Critical"? Well, spoiler alert, it did.

And then the US Government built two different million dollar plants - at Oak Ridge and Hanford, Washington - to invent on the fly means to generate fuel for a bomb that the boys out in New Mexico MAYBE had some idea of how to build. (If they had some fuel). Incredible!

(And the people living in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos needed schools and cafes and movie theaters and grocery stores too. And bathtubs. And today!)

Graff's The Only Plane in the Sky made you feel like you were right there in the smoke and the darkness of the stairwell at Tower Two on 9/11. This book is like that. Details here that were new to me and eye opening. It's an amazing story.

America was united like never before in the War Effort, and people believed in American Know-how and engineering as a way to win the war. It was a different time.

Not just for historians. Recommended.

"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success".
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer

Happy new year, Jim! Will you guys be coming to the west this year?

>25 RebaRelishesReading: Judy's cousin Bonnie is always asking the same. We'd like to. Time will tell. And a joyous New Year to you too!

>21 PaulCranswick: Looking at that tall building could give a person a Edifice Complex, Paul.

Glad you're along for the ride this year.

Happy New Year!
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

>28 foggidawn: Thanks for finishing the poem for me. It's a favorite.

"That which we are, we are"

Works for me.

Thanks for stopping by!

>24 magicians_nephew: I believe Hulu, had a wonderful documentary on the building of the bomb and how it impact on the world thereafter. I highly recommend this very engrossing, well-written multiple segment.

I add The Devil Reached Toward the Sky to the 2026 list.

All good wishes to you and Judy.

I've been reading more about the early stages of the bomb development (the Tube Alloys project in the UK and the Montreal Lab in the early 40s) for a personal project of mine. Sounds as if I should add this book to the list!

>31 Chatterbox: The Ur text for me will always be Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb but this book fills in a lot of the corners and tells a lot of the human stories.

George Lawrence's work on neutron capture in Montreal does not always get the credit it deserves. It paralleled a lot of Fermi's early work in Chicago.

It's fascinating to read of people sitting around with the fear of Hitler strong in their minds and saying "OK. What do we do next?" and not having an obvious answer. But they found one. And that makes a great story.

And hello Linda! Glad to have you along for this years journey.

Judy and i caught a lovely concert of Sinatra Songs from the beautiful cabaret space "54 Below"

This song was new to me. From a short film made by the US Government. Sometimes called "The House I Live In". Maybe it's new to you too.

What is America to me?
A name, a map, the flag I see,
a certain word, "Democracy."
What is America to me?

The house I live in, A plot of earth, a street,
The grocer and the butcher and the people that I meet,
The children in the playground, the faces that I see;
All races, all religions, that's America to me.

The place I work in, the worker at my side
The little town or city where my people lived and died
The "howdy" and the hand-shake the air of feeling free
the right to speak my mind out, that's America to me.

The things I see about me the big things and the small
The little corner news-stand and the house that stands so tall;
The wedding and the churchyard, the laughter and the tears,
The dream that's been a grow-in' for a hundred fifty years

The town I live in - the street, the house, the room,
The pavement of the city, or a garden all in bloom,
The church, the school, the club house,
The million lights I see, But especially the people,
That's America to me.

>33 magicians_nephew: I like to listen to "Siriusly Sinatra" on satellite radio & have heard this song there many times - Sinatra loved it.

I like that Sinatra song... and envy you the trip to 54 Below. It's on my bucket list!

>34 ChrisG1: A couple of our friends have SiriusXM and rave about it - the Sinatra channel and the Broadway channel particularly. Maybe this year we'll bite the bullet and bring one home.

>35 Chatterbox: Next time you're in the big city we'll have to go! They turned themselves into a non -profit corporation last year, which seems amazing, but they seem to be thriving under the new set-up.

They do streaming concerts every now and then but there's nothing like the atmosphere of being there in person. And the food - miracle of miracles for a cabaret space - is actually pretty good .

Hi Jim! Happy New Year to you.

I'm currently reading:



I highly recommend this book that lists the key scientists involved, and the way in which Hitler's policies against Jews forced the scientists to flee Germany. The issue now became keeping the key discoveries out of his hands. It is a fascinating book thus far.

I think you would find it interesting.

>38 Whisper1: It's a pretty amazing book, Linda.

Many European Jewish refugee scientists really were frightened that Hitler would get The Bomb First. Once Germany fell, the idea of building a bomb to drop on the Japanese was curiously less urgent for some. But the project momentum was impossible to stop

Lots of writers concentrate on the Big Show at Los Alamos and neglect the even bigger shows at Hanford Washington and Oak Ridge Tennessee.

They needed to hire people to sit and monitor the big gas diffusion systems that were painfully sifting out grams of fissionable Uranium. They hired women from the area some with high school diplomas, some with less education than that. They taught them to to sit and watch gauges and dials and constantly tweak the temperature and pressure to keep the cascade at maximum efficiency.

Their men were overseas fighting. They knew how important this was. With patience and determination and concentration, they did a very difficult tedious job and did it damned well. Those are the kind of stories I like to read.

The Girls of Atomic City has a few things to say about it too. It's a story that should be told.

Thanks for dropping by

Book Clubs are great for reading new books and experiencing new things that might otherwise not come to your attention.

As witness A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki's spellbinding novel about time and loss and life and memory. Where to begin?

We first come upon a sort of diary written by Noa (pronounced like "Now")
It chronicles her time as a teen age High School Student in Japan, an outsider and a loner with a father who thinks he's a failure and a mother who has no time for her . She is cruelly teased and tormented by her classmates, and thinks about ending it all.

But she has a great grandmother who is a Buddhist Nun, head shaved and all. and she gains great comfort from her teaching and her presence. (and so do we!) Noa decides write a biography of her remarkable grandmother before (Maybe) throwing herself under a train,

And then Bang! that book was tossed (somehow) into the ocean and found by Ruth, a writer unhappily exiled to the Canadian Northwest, with her husband and few friends and contacts. Even the WiFi is unreliable. Ruth is a novelist suffering from writers block and can't her new book started.

So it's two stories in parallel about writing and witnessing and being there as a "Time Being" -- a being who moves forward (and backward) in Time. We care about these two women a lot, and tend to forget that we are also reading a novel written by a woman named Ruth (!) who encapsulated the whole shebang.

We learn a lot about Noa and about Ruth's relationship to her and her "Tale", Stories are important. People who tell stories are magic.

The writing is just wonderful and the women in the book are lovingly drawn. I'm often impatient with parallel stories like this but this one is just fine.

The Book Club loved it. I did too. Maybe you will also.

“But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens.”
― Marcel Proust

Jim, your comments about The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, encouraged me to find this book at my local library. I brought it home, and have a difficult time putting it down. It is so very well written. This author knows how to take complicated scientific words and make them understandable. I very much like how he stresses the take over of the Nazi's throughout Europe and the fact that many of the scientists developing the concept of a bomb came to the United States. Thank God we inherited all this information, and in the end it was not in the hands of Germany!

Thanks for recommending this one!

>41 Whisper1: Only too pleased , Linda. It's an amazing book.

I'm now enjoying his "Watergate" book Watergate: A New History and of course his book on 9/11 was pretty amazing too.

Some folks on LT have read and liked his oral history for D-Day also.

>42 magicians_nephew: Watergate happened in my high school years & I've always been suspicious of the voluminous parade of books that came out in it's wake, expecting them to be self-serving or partisan (pro or con). Perhaps enough years have passed - this looks like a worthy effort - I look forward to seeing your assessment of it.

>27 magicians_nephew: Edifice Complex? What a great phrase, Jim!

>33 magicians_nephew: Really like that and reminds me of this:

What Johnny Cash Sang

Johnny sang from sea to shining sea -
and the ships sailed into Ellis Island
and a melting pot melted
and Armenians, Paddies, Italianos,
and Jews and Poles and Russians
came and placed their stamp on unwashed
city streets;
making a beehive of workers with no Queen.

Johnny sang from sea to shining sea
and the ships sailed into San Francisco
with the Coolies and the Asiatics
and their trade and their actors
sweated on the railways,
not always cross-legged on the casting couches.

Johnny sang from sea to shining sea
and the wagons rolled across the plains
and the prairies -
Germanic and Nordic plowing a furrow
and energizing a rice bowl and a wheat field
from unpromising circumstances.
And the Hamish and the Quakers and
the Mormons and the Shakers
were not shook from their belief
as they trod unorthodox pathways.

Johnny sang from sea to shining sea
and the slave ships entered
chains and locks cutting through skin
into bone
and the cotton fields were plucked
on the backs of unpaid labor
and America awoke slowly through
the paining cannons of Gettysburg
and the white hoods a lynching
and the bus seat of Rosa Parks
to a nation to be proud of
and where woman and man
and black and white and yellow and red
could call each other brother and sister.

>44 PaulCranswick: Thanks for posting this great poem Paul!

>45 Whisper1: Welcome Linda

>44 PaulCranswick: Thanks for posting that Paul. I always liked Johnny Cash -- unlike some of the drugstore cowboys and loud mouthed flat pickers who hang around country music, Johnny walked the walk and knew the territory. .

The result seems to have been a great love of country and a great acceptance of people who have walked the dark side of the road. His last few albums were full of darkness and danger but full of awe and love too.

After a week or so reading for a Book Club and taking a deep dive into the minutia of the Atom Bomb Project, I needed a sort of palette washer -- and some comfort food.

The later Nero Wolfe books are mostly domestic comedy, Archie and Wolfe gently sparring like the old married couple they were, and the who-dunnit almost secondary,. (And too often solves by luck - or coincidence)

But the early cases are different. as witness Might As Well Be Dead Here there is an old family schism to try to come to grips with, and corporate skullduggery in a darker, deeper place.

It begins, quite remarkably with Wolfe's client already CONVICTED of the murder and goes on from there.

Wolfe loses one of his own in this one, and has to set things right, in the family and in the world of men. Like Shakespeare, it ends with a weddng. It's about something.

They say the mark of a good mystery is when you can re-read it and know the ending and still enjoy it. Rex Stout's books clear this bar with ease. I enjoyed it. If you don't know Nero and Archie, this one could be a good place to make their acquaintance.

“Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overpowering.
-- Nero Wolfe

>43 ChrisG1: Chris I grew up, as i guess you did, in the era not only of "Watergate" but in the terrible days of the Kennedy assassinations.

Clearly History did not unspool quite as smoothly as it seemed to when talked about in "Social Studies" classes.

(and if you learned History and Civics under the umbrella topic of "Social Studies" you probably are of my generation.)

A lot of people see parallels to today in The Watergate era. A president coming to office after losing a bitterly contested election, paranoid (with some good reason) and out to use the levers of power for validation, as well as for retribution.

The Left (Blacks, women, and uppity kids) seemed the enemy of all that was American (and tarred with the brush of Communist sympathizers and worse.) So the paranioa was not just in the White House, for true. .

Nixon spoke openly about using the Cabinet Departments and the IRS to harasses his enemies. and cheered on the cops and the "Hard Hats" who beat up demonstrators. Sound familiar?

Of course Nixon came to office almost uniquely for a modern president in NOT having a majority in either House or Senate. (and a left leaning Supreme Court) Like Trump, he took power unto himself and bypassed Congress again and again.

I guess the lesson that Trump took to heart was '"It's not the crime that gets you, its the cover-up"

My go-to book about Watergate has always been Fred Emery's Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, with Elizabeth Drew'sWatergate Journal for a side dish.

But Garret M Graff is such an interesting writer and historian that I am willing to give his Watergate book a look. I will report back.

>47 magicians_nephew: Yeah Jim, I liked him too and had all his studio released CDs and quite a few of his live recordings including the great Folsom and San Quentin gigs.

Guy had some spunk to sing an anti war song in front of the President mired in Vietnam showed integrity and defiance.

Happy New Year Jim. I'm popping by threads to say hi, but IL took my phone, which has nice big font. So I'm on the computer, and my eyesight is starting to wane. (It's pretty terrible and keeps going downhill.) I've reached my limit and can't read your thread, lol. So hopefully I'm not missing any important news! I'll stop by later. (At least I can type accurately, so I don't have to read what I typed...lol)

>51 The_Hibernator: Hi Rachel. Thanks for stopping by. As someone whose eyesight has never been particularly good, I can relate.

Coke Bottle thick glasses since the age of eight. Many many many eye surgeries for cataracts and clouded corneas and other problems. Happily they invented the Kindle where I can adjust the font size to my liking or I don't know if I would be reading much into my later years.

My thread is happy to have you posing on it. And so am I.

Happened to notice that the George Clooney Stage Show "Good Night, and Good Luck" is now streaming on Netflix.

Still feel the original movie is better than the stage play. Movies allows intimacy and closeup, and underplaying which this material needs. Clooney playing to the back balcony of the Winter Garden Theatre doesn't allow for much subtlety But it's sgitl very much worth seeing.

The coda of the movie and the play is the same.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

Just a quickie, and a DNF always with a little sigh of regret.

The House of Morgan is a BIG Book about the family who dominated banking for a century and it's written by Ron Chernow whose books on Hamilton and Franklin were real page turners.

But I dunno - he's writing here about generations of men (not one man) ALL of whom are named Morgan, and all of whom seem to have the initials J. P. , and all seem to be ruthless robber barons. (and serious horndogs) It's easy to get confused.

Taking over companies by buying and holding (and threatening to sell) their bonds (not their shares) was a tactic that came back in fashion in the '70's. Creating Nationwide "Trusts" to back-door control industries like railroads and Steel and (later) Oil was a cattle prod shock to the very regional-oriented American businessman.

I'm up to 25 per cent on my Kindle and we're just looking over the horizon to the 20th century -- and Teddy Roosevelt who came into office as the "Trust-Buster" -- and I'm putting it down, maybe for now, maybe forever.

Your mileage may vary.

A man always has two reasons for doing a thing: a good reason and the real reason,"
-- J. P. Morgan

Gem of the day from Kim Kommando's terrific daily email blast

How should I answer this?

“Kim! Nothing is built in America these days. I just bought a TV, and it said, ‘Built In Antenna.’ I don’t even know where that is!” — Bobby in LA.

(There’s only so much I can do, really.)

Off to Boston for a weekend of Irish music and culture and seeing some good and old friends.

Have to finish Vineland which is becoming a chore.

Pulled an old favorite off the shelf for a train book and palette clenser

Alice I Have Been a lovely fictionalized version of the life of the woman who inspired Alice In Wonderland and how mortal tired she got being introduced that way all her life and into her eighties.

Where are you now? : )

Hi Jim, did you make it back from Boston?

Well yes I did after all. And then and some eye problems that made it hard to look at a computer screen for long periods. But Im here and I'm back and thanks for keeping the thread warm in my absence.

"Club Passim" is a little brightly lit hole-in-the-wall club almost the last it seems of the many many folk and "Trad" Music clubs up and down the Northeast.

But once a year they put on the dog and have a real old fashined Irish Music Fair and its not to be missed. Old time Irish family bands show up and new younger groups that keep the tradition going while adding some lovely and exciting new grace notes for today.

We saw a group of young women fiddlers and harpists and singers all who met at a Fiddle camp in their teens and stayed together to become a powerhouse. Reels and jigs and that brought the house down.

(The name of the Group is "Scottish Fish" because when they were kids their favorite candy was "Swedish Fish" but you couldn't have a Celtic Fiddle forward band called that ,could you?)



(There was a lovely big band of singers and fiddlers where the current lead singer - a woman in her sixties - joined the band in her teens. They keep this up, the band is IMMORTAL!)

After two or three days of reels and jigs you may be reeling too - but it's grand to see the tradition carried on and the music played with passion and joy and commitment.

Do we really need another book about Watergate? Many would say "no"

Fred Emery's Big Book Watergate is the one to go to for the time line - he has everything in the right order, when they said it when they did it -- and when they admitted it -- which is not always the same thing.

But yeah - there more to say and more to learn about this dark and stormy story.

First of all Watergate - a New History was written after the rather sad little book The Secret Man came out, outing at last the man who they called "Deep Throat" . Surprise he wasn't some low level clerk he was a senior official of the FBI who leaked as much to boost his own career (and stab his boss in the back) as to save the Republic.

Its useful to know that the shadowy and heroic Watergate Whistleblower was just than another mid-level bureaucrat throwing elbows for power and advancement. (And if you think that Woodward and Bernstein were the only ones he leaked to, well, then you do need to read the book

(People who paid attention (including Nixon!) had Deep Throat figured out pretty early on when Deep Throat, the source disappeared from the Woodstein narrative about the same time that Mark Felt was booted out of the FBI)

Al Haig was a major source for the Washington Post Boys when they came to write The Final Days and they gave him a lot of passes and a lot of credit. It's useful to see another perspective on Haig being (a) in over his head and (b) worrying mostly about about Watergate might mess up his career The great investigative reporters got played - over and over and over.

Why does this matter? We have a President in the White House now who embodies a lot of the paranoia and excesses of the Nixon Era. Have to ask: If Nixon had had a majority in Congress and/or a friendly Supreme Court, would we ever have hear of "Watergate"? Asking for a friend.

Anyway a useful book by a terrific historical writer - but maybe just for the groupies. Your mileage may Vary

“The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election...
-- Gerald R. Ford

>61 magicians_nephew: LOL!

Some books are labors of love from the author, and some are just well - labors, for the reader. This one comes somewhere in the middle.



Broadway Revival is a Sci-Fi Time Travel book written by a Broadway Fangirl. OK. I'm there.

In the not to distance future someone invents Time Travel. Our Hero, sneaking into a Time Travel mission chooses to go back to New York City in the year 1934.

Why? Why, to cure the young George Gershwin of the cancer that killed him at a early age, and to see what kind of musical theatre magic the Gershwins could create given a few more years.

The author knows her Broadway History very well, and it's fun to spend time in the 1930 and on, where theater history was being made by the Gershwins and by Cole Porter and Victor Youmans and others.

But the book goes on waaaaaay to long, and the Broadway trivia grows wearisome (even for fanboy me) , and at the end the book just sort of peters out.

If being backstage at the legendary first performance of "The Cradle Will Rock" gives you a charge, then this book may be for you. Lot of lovely cameos by Ethyl Merman and others (Did you know that the Merm was a trained stenographer, and took shorthand notes for the director during rehearsals of "Panama Hattie", her first big show?. I didn't) A young Richard Burton sails in to play"Huck Finn" in a new musical of the book written by Kurt Weill! (Mind - - - blown!)

The author gave me a copy of this book when it came out last year, and I just got around to finishing it. Sorry Laura. I'll see you at the theatre.

It ain't necessarily so!
-- Ira Gershwin

Good, honest review. Interesting concept for the book but I can imagine it's way more than you really needed to read.

Just to wrap up a few loose ends. When I was in college in the late Jurassic Period we had already discovered fire, and the wheel, and some undergrads had discovered Thomas Pynchon
People walked carrying the thick paperback of Gravity's Rainbow like it was Holy Writ, and some (I'm told) actually read it.

I liked it well enough for its language and the "made you look!" story, but didn't feel a need to read anything else the guy had done.

Which is a long way of saying that this year my Book Circle took a look at Vineland and my response is - is this guy kidding?

It's a world of faded grey pony-tails and talk of revolutions that never came to pass. Zoid lives off a government check and nurses a deep paranoia, always looking over his shoulder (though no one seems to be chasing him)(or are they?)

There is talk fascism and alienation, and parents and children, and the bonds of nationhood, and i don't want even to give the book that much credit.

The tone veers from rural comedy to deep turgid melodrama and you don't know after a while, who to bless or who to blame. Spoiler alert - I didn't finish it.

I'm told this book was sort of the frame for the recent movie "One Battle After Another" and if you squint you can sort of see it.

For me I say it's spinach and i say the hell with it.

Today's New York Times ran an appreciation of the "Boxcar Children" books and their author Gertrude Chandler Warner.

The Boxcar Children

I was a kid when these books were popular but somehow they never got on my radar. Seems a bit like The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit which i loved..

Anybody read them? Remember them?

I always thought of them as Nancy Drew for younger kids. Although as much adventures as mysteries.

>67 MDGentleReader: Thanks for dropping by, MD

The first book sounds pretty grim - four orphan kids living in a dirty abandoned boxcar living on berries and scraps and not much else. Staring in at the window of a bakery. Dark and a little scary.

Think the author was wise to introduce a wealthy "Daddy Warbucks" style long lost grandfather to rescue the kids and set them on their later mystery solving adventures.

Another one to just report and then move on.

The Sellout is billed as a biting satire on family and American race relations California local politics and the Supreme Court and I don't know what else.

Alas, the book is very long, and then repeats itself, and the humor seemed (a) forced and (b) obvious - like a stand up comic pushed out on stage with out enough good material.

Doesn't help that i "read" this as an audiobook, and the reader/narrator made the story seem bland and solemn, in a way i suspect the author did not intend.

It's about a black man in Los Angeles who wants to reshape race relationship and good luck to that. The ending is just like - wait? it's over? That's all?

It won a Booker and a bunch of other awards. Just didn't strike sparks with me. Gave up around page 100.

If he was indeed an “autodidact,” (self taught) there’s no doubt he had the world’s shittiest teacher.”
-- Paul Beatty

Thanks for taking the bullet on that one Jim. Now I can pass without worrying about it :)

>66 magicians_nephew: My younger brother got into the Boxcar Children more than I did, but I definitely remember reading at least the first dozen or so as a kid. Running away from abusive adults and living in a boxcar on berries and stuff sounds grim, but the tone of the book is hopeful and adventurous -- the four kids are together, they adopt a stray dog, and as you say, the rich and loving grandfather finds them at the end. After that book, it's all kids' mysteries, pretty low stakes and never too much danger for the intended audience. The originals that were actually written by Warner are better quality than the later 150+ books and spinoffs. I'm always a little amused that horse-drawn farm wagons are mentioned in the first book, and eventually they are using computers and such -- but they're always the same ages!

>71 foggidawn: Yes i did notice that the children stay the same ages - enjoying the first book now - feels like the Famous Five books at times. Or even the Bobbsey Twins

Thanks for stopping by, foggi!!

from Facebook:

I just got a job at a factory making plastic Draculas.

There are only two of us on the production line, so I have to make
every second count.

>73 magicians_nephew: lol

With the roar of the booster stage of Artemis II loud in my ears i settled back for a fond re-read of a book i enjoyed a few years back

Back to the Moon is a real "hard science" sci fi novel by two men who were working closely with NASA on what became the Artemis Project.

There is altogether too much about the techie trivia and perhaps a little too much about the machinations of Congress that funds or un-funds space science. The authors do not conceal their biases.

But what they have written this time is just a crackling yarn that Tom Swift and his chums would have been right at home with, with hairsbreadth escapes following heart stopping dangers, love and betrayal and all the trimmings.

They pause for a word about space tourism, and a look over the shoulder at Chinese scientists who are, as we speak, dreaming of sending Chinese humans to the moon and beyond.

(Curious that Americans only shows an interest in space when we see other nations maybe getting there ahead of us. Whats with that?)

My heart leaps up to see grainy films of space suited humans treading on alien worlds, even as my head knows that we can (usually) do the job easier and safer with robots and telepresence. Oh Well.

It was a long book but a quick read. The characters are pure cardboard but the science is fascinating. My 14 year old space crazy self loved it.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”
-- Larry Niven

In the midst of prepping for our book Group Meeting tonight I took a look aside at a new book that I am really getting a fan boy high from.

Stan Lee wanted to create a comic book about a group of Super Heroes. The Template was
(1) The brainy leader (Reed Richards, "Mr. Fantastic")
(2) the hot headed teenager (Johnny Storm "The Human Torch" )
(3) the grumpy comic relief strong man (Ben Grimm, "The Thing")
(4) and the obligatory Girl (Sue Storm). What was her super power? She was the hero's girlfriend. She was an ex fashion model (Really, Jack?) And she could turn invisible. Could there be a better metaphor for women in comics than that?

So now there is a terrific book about the early days of Marvel and the Women of Marvel and what's it called? Super VISIBLE.

We start with Flo Steinberg who was Stan Lee's right hand gal and just about ran the place when Stan was on deadline for a story.

And then other women sort of snuck in in ones and twos. Danni Thomas, (who was writer Roy Thomas' wife) and later Marie Severin, (who was Artist Big John Severin's sister) and the trickle soon became a movement. Women who had made their bones on "Underground" Comics in LA wanted in.

The best thing about this book is that it was based on a podcast and we see the actual words of the actual women talking about their careers and the time at Marvel, and later.

The pinnacle was when they refashioned Patsy Walker, originally the star of her own book about being a boy crazy fashion model (a "Girl's Book") into the fiery fighting The Cat who joined the Avengers and later became a mentor for She Hulk, just as the women creators mentored the younger ones as new gals joined the team.

If you were raised on Marvel Comics (as I was) this book is a glorious blast from the past. And even if you're not it's a chance to make the acquaintance of some smart talented strong women who changed the face of the industry one four color page at a time.

Only caveat is that there aren't more examples of stories and artwork created by the women. (there is some) Copyright ownership issues, I guess. It's a shame.

Lovely Book. Those were the days.

"I can't turn invisible fast enough, Torch! How can we stop this thing?"
-- Sue Storm the Invisible Girl

Just stopping by to say a few words about The Wind Knows my Name a recent novel by Isabella Allende that sad to say, left me rather cold.

In modern day California, we meet a sturdy women who was swum across the river on her father's back and who has made a life for herself cleaning and doing other menial jobs. We meet a young girl, nearly blind, passed from foster home to group home and in and out of danger, whose mother has been brutally murdered by faceless soldiers caught up in El Salvador's endless Civil Wars.

The author draws parallels to the Kindertransports where children were spirited away from Nazi Germany and carried to foster homes in England, safe but never seeing their parents again. Hard choices were made. Families were shattered. Kids survived.

Allende wants to shine a light on the horror stories of immigrant children falling into the pulping mill of American Immigration Law and Policy. OK

But the book lectures us when it should be moving us. The characters seem one note, curiously unengaging, and the action of the book, over and over, is told, not shown. Deadly.

Allende has written movingly and poetically in her earlier books (cf. The House of the Spirits) but the spirits seem to have deserted her here. And the subtlety. And the grace. A book to respect but not to embrace.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.
-- Isabelle Allende

>77 magicians_nephew: Interesting, thoughtful review, Jim.

There was a Carnegie built library in Elmhurst Queens when I was growing up It was my second home. And that was when it was just books!

The New York Times is starting a "Learn a Poem a Day" Feature and today's poem was one that was new to me and which i totally loved.

"The More Loving One" W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime
Though this might take me a little time.

(Rod McKuen said in one of his books "There's no sin in not being loved . . . only in not loving". Perhaps he had these verses in mind)

>80 magicians_nephew: I'd heard the couplet
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
before, but I don't think I'd ever read the whole poem.

>80 magicians_nephew: Got a nice, needed chuckle from that Jim. Thanks.

>81 foggidawn: Saw Michael Chabon at an author event where he quoted the first two lines and got a big laugh.

As I said it's a poem new to me and I was happy to add it to my memory book.

Thanks for stopping by, you two

>80 magicians_nephew: Thanks for sharing that one, Jim. I need to read more Auden.

was scrolling through the library on my Audible (Audiobook) accounts and one jumped out at me

And I had to reread (relisten) to Rick Atkinson's wonderful The Guns at Last Light

This is the last volume of his World War II trilogy and i carries us through D Day and the invasion and the taking of Fortress Europa and the March to the Rhine (and on to Berlin)

It's a big book with lots of telling details, but honestly not a word wasted. He wants to tell you of brave and and foolish men, of complex plots and sometimes mad improvisation.

His topic is people (and civilizations) under pressure and how they respond -- some nobly, some horribly. Patton and Montgomery, of course, but also the luckless General Hodges and other figures now faded in memory.

It's not just a war book. It's not just a history book. Every time i read it i learn something.

You may too.
"Almost everything about American society is affected by World War II..."
— Rick Atkinson

I have never heard of that one, Jim. I'm not a big fan of war-related reading but your description certainly makes it sound interesting.

Steven Johnson is one of my favorite authors. He writes engagingly and intelligently about the history of science and really draws you in. He Wrote The Ghost Map about the man who solved the cholera epidemic in London and The Invention of Air about the man who figured out there was more in the air we breathed than just, you know , air.

So when The Infernal Machine crossed my path i was up for a good read and to learn something new. OK.

He starts out with Good Old Alfred Nobel and the invention of dynamite. Prior to Alfred's day, blowing things up was difficult and dangerous and a matter left to experts. Dynamite made Blowing Things Up easy safe and something anyone could do. An Improvement, perhaps? That's the first part of the book.

Using dynamite as a jumping off point he takes us through anarchist movements of the 19th century, where blowing up the Czar (or the Duke) seemed like a good use of dynamite for a lot of people. He then crosses the pond to America and we meet Emma Goldman and others of her cadre who preached communism and were ruthlessly hounded by the police and the Pinkerton's whether they actually blew something up or not. Tasty stuff but I wanted more. That's Part Two.

And Part Three is another 90 degree lurch and he talks about police methods of the early 20th century in big city America mostly based on stool pigeons and the third degree. Identifying criminals - (or anarchists) and really arresting The Right Guy -- was a big problem.

The French had figured out "Fingermarks" as a way of identifying criminals paired with the new science of photography, and over time figuring out who was who got easier and more "scientific" . An oddball American detective picked up on it, fought for it, and made it a standard. Wrong accusations got fewer. Policeman got smarter, maybe Good.

Johnson can't write a bad sentence, but honestly parts of this book are LOTS better than other parts and the third part just seems tacked on. Maybe there wasn't enough material for three books. I can say there seems like too much material for one book, and let's leave it at that.

Glad I read it, Hard to recommend it. Moving on.

I Know how to Blow Things Up
-- "Younger Brother in E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime"

From the Internet Posted without comment

Thank you!! That gave me a much-needed laugh!! What on earth did the poor ducky do? Why does he/she want to get in there so badly?

>89 RebaRelishesReading: As George C Scott used to say "There are eight million stories in The Naked City. This is just one of them"

I've been having some pain in my back lately so not on here much. But I shall return!

In the meanwhile, this from my news feed. Just tickled my fancy

>91 magicians_nephew: Gosh...I wonder why not !?! lol

Sorry you're having back issues -- hope they resolve soon and look forward to seeing you again.

If you're my age or thereabouts, you might remember Gerald Ford coming to the Presidency after Watergate and declaring "Our Long National Nightmare Is Over"

Sitting here in the year of our Lord 2026, with Trump in the White House, I can only say "That man didn't know nothing about national nightmares"



Tom Tomorrow's new book Our Long National Nightmare is a high energy tour d'horizon of the second Trump administration and his slapdash style of governing and his retribution agenda.

These remind me of the cartoons of Herblock during the Nixon years, with their anger and their frustration and real fury in every panel.

Can we laugh Trump out of office? Probably not. But these cartoons will serve as record and memory that not everyone thought Trump was in fact the greatest president that ever lived. And that those who followed him will have to live in the wreckage he created.

If you're a Trump voter, this probably isn't the book for you.

Recommended.

>93 magicians_nephew: Ah yes, I remember Mr. Ford saying that but I'm not ready to laugh about the current mess we're in quite yet -- weep? yes --- scream? yes -- vomit? yes but laugh?...that's asking a lot.

Thanks for the heads up on Super Visible. I too grew up in the Marvel universe. Hope your back issues are easing up.

>95 Familyhistorian: Thanks for stopping by. Yes for a lot of people Women at Marvel began and ended at Flo Steinberg Stan's office manager/ But there were a lot more than that.

Wish someone would do a similar book at women who worked in the DC Superman universe in that same period. Won't part with my Ramona Fredon original art

Just to clear up the pile of books on the corner of my desk

Before You Leap ticks a lot of boxes for me. It's a time travel book, is a YA-ish with likeable teen age protagonists, and comes well recommended.

Sorry to say it's slow moving and flat. Two hot female transfer students arrive at Sean’s high school, and they talk in formal stilted English, they know way to much about history current and (when they slip) future, they know way too little about teen age slang and
mores circa this timeline. ("We are from France")

But it takes the kid half the book to figure out there's either space aliens or time travelers, and the dialog explaining the rules behind the time travel gimmick takes forever, and i just put it down. First of a trilogy if you can believe it, but c'mon guys! Give me some plot here.

Spent too much time trying to work out of Les Lynam was in some way an acronym or something but I came out empty. As did the book.

You may find the book slows down time for you when you're reading it. Or maybe it just feels that way.

"Will you never be done tormenting me with time?"
-- Samuel Becket

LOL (gently)

>99 RebaRelishesReading: Shhhhh! You'll disturb them.

My book group took a look at The Road Cormac McCarthy's prize winning novel and to be honest it's still living rent free in my head.

This is a Real Post apocalyptic story with no ifs ands or buts. The sky is greasy with sun-obscuring clouds, and the landscape is shattered and despoiled. Not enough sunlight to farm, we learn, and no food animals to hunt and live on.

So we meet a father and son going down "The Road" and a big day is finding some unspoiled can goods or maybe potable water. They go hungry a lot too. They're heading to "The Coast" - every road has to lead somewhere, right? - and they are laying low to avoid other people who have solved the food problem by turning cannibal.

The relationship between the man and the boy is lovingly detailed - the man is trying to teach the boy hunting and gathering and maybe other survival skills too.

But why? Why go on? Why survive? We learn that the wife and mother has taken her own life and encouraged them to do the same.

In the Cold War days of the 60's atomic war with Russia was a constant threat, and there were many many novels who tried to imagine what life "after" would be like. (My favorite might be A Canticle for Leibowitz but they were legion) But the worst of them was never as dark and hopeless as McCarthy.

"Where there's life, there's hope"? Not sure I would always agree.

(The boy is not taught culture or history or any of the things that make a people a society. That vexed me.)

A Book i had read before but now got smacked in the puss with it like never before.

And for the last word Mr. Samuel Beckett

"I can't go on. I'll go on"

Unforgettable

It's alive and well in my head too and I read it shortly after it was published in 2006!!

Just a quickie

In Five Years was recommended to be as a good Book Club Book, so i got it on the Kindle and started in.

It's a story about a group of Young and Rich New Yorkers, and their lives and loves.

Early in the book Our Heroine has a strange flash-forward dream of herself five years in the future, not with the man she is nominally engaged to but with some stranger in a stranger place.

And then some of it seems to be coming to pass - or does it?

If that makes the book sound interesting, well it did for me to. But it's a dim and dull tour of the Very Best Restaurants and the Very Best Shopping in New York in the Reagan era, with a pack of shallow soulless nitwits as your guides, and who gives a monkeys (****), when all's done.

(If you're playing at home thats Four Asterisks, not Three.)

The ending surprised me a little bit but nothing else did. They've already sold the movie rights. Gives Chic-lit a bad name.

No, No. Just No.

"Ah, well! It means much the same thing," said the Duchess, `and the moral of that is--"
-- Lewis Caroll

Not sure I would have been tempted but someone in my book club might have been so thanks for the warning.

Popping in to say Hi and thanks for keeping my thread warm. Love your cartoons and thanks for saving me from In Five Years. : )

>104 Berly: Nice to see you stopping by these woods, Kim. Hope all is well with you.

The strangest thing about In Five Years is that it has buckets of rave reviews up here on The Thing, to my vast astonishment. Really.

Here's the Sunday Funnies for the day. I don't do blond jokes, but if i did . . . .

LOL!

It is a truism I suppose that the book nearest your hand is going to be the book you read last.

So it was with Persephone Station a book I got from a friendly LT'er for Christmas and only just picked up last week.

It's a big brawling space opera with a lot of fun characters and a lot of lovely set piece battles and smart little scenes.

It has the swagger of some of the best manga and the fast moving pace of a John Ford Western.

Sidebar: There are a LOT of characters and a LOT of world building going on - a lot of back story to explore and a lot of furniture to unpack. Who are this guy/girl? I wondered a few times.

Lot of the characters are queer and/or non-binary and they take their time introducing you to them too. But interesting and real fleshed out people. They don't all have to be Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.

Wish I could show this to E. E. ("Doc") Smith - wonder what he would make of it. I liked it and will be looking around for a sequel.

His rival, it seems, had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy
Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy
-- Paul McCartney

>96 magicians_nephew: So I asked AI about the women of DC comics (ie writers, artists, editors) and it came up with a few generic ones about women in the comic industry. It also reminded me that I have Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013 patiently waiting on my shelves. It also came up with The Secret History of Wonder Woman which includes a look at a couple of the women behind the comic. So, not Superman but DC related.

>108 Familyhistorian: The Secret History of Wonder Woman is pretty good but Jill Lapore is more interested in WW as cultural icon than as four color heroine. The story of the rather strange man who created the character and his menage a trois is worth a look - he was living with Both Wonder Woman and her mousey alter ego. When Charles Moulton died WW became Superman in a bustier, and a good deal less interesting, alas, until feminists reclaimed her in the 60's.

I'll have to have a book at Pretty in Ink - great title. that.

Thanks for stopping by.

Our Book Group took a look at Edna Ferber and her Pulitzer prize winning So Big and there were a lot of rewards there.

It's the story of a woman Selina growing up a gamblers daughter in the late 19th century. Good times and bum times. Selina prizes beauty and finds beauty in the most unexpected places. That's her gift.

(in one tight time she has the choice of buying a book or buying a needed new pair of shoes. You can guess which she picked)

Then her father dies and she strikes out on her own, first as a rural schoolteacher on the Minnesota prairie, and then so quickly a farm wife on a not very prosperous farm. They have a son The father dies unexpectedly.

(The son and the mother have a game as many mother do where Mom says "How Bigi s Baby?" and Baby puts his arms out as far as he can and says "Soooooo Big")

Amazingly she makes a go of it and the farm prospers. Her son is sent off to college. He tries a few things and winds up a Bond Salesman and finds a career and success at it.

But "Beauty" is a closed book to him. "How Big is Baby?" Maybe not so big.

Ferber writes of America busting its britches and changing from a sleepy rural ecomony to Chicago Hard Chargers. She can show us exhausted farm women and glittering society ladies. She makes you see the Big Picture and the local scene both at once. It's quite amazing. She doesn't judge. She tells her story.

Who is living the American Dream? Who is Happy?

A lot of people in my book group "knew" of Ferber but amazing had never read her. I was appalled. Giant and Showboat and Cimarron - plays and short stories and all of it. She's the real deal.

If you haven't read Ferber this one is not a bad one to start with.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
-- Shakespeare

I read Ferber many, many years ago. I still have Show Boat, So Big and Cimarron (in one volume) on the shelf. Might be worth a re-read some day (I remember liking them a lot).

>110 magicians_nephew: You got me. I have that one on the shelves and I will bump it up for a read in July, God willing.

>107 magicians_nephew: Sounds good, Jim!

Hi Jim. I haven't connected with you or Judy in awhile. Can you believe that it is one year since I saw you in NYC? Happy summer. It is so very hot here! I think today was one of the hottest thus far this summer..

All good wishes to you and Judy.

Hi Jim, I hope the books and the weather are treating you well.