Joe's Fourth Book Cafe of 2026

Book dresses by Sylvie Facon, as referenced in The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

Books Read in 2026

January 2026

1. This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki*
2. Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
3. The Day the Moon and Earth Had an Argument* by David Duff, The Crystal Heart* by Aaron Shephard, and The Knives* by Brubaker/Phillips.
4. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.
5. Drawing on Walls* by Matthew Burgess.
6. Isola by Allegra Goodman. Good but not great story of parentless Marguerite growing up spoiled by her rich circumstances, but still good-hearted, in a medieval castle-type setting, until her guardian uncle sells her lands and takes heron a journey to the New World - Canada. She ends up left on an empty stony island where she overcomes her coddled upbringing and survives under animal and weather duress. She finally makes herway back to France and is reunited with her dear friend Claire, and all turns out well.
7. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. An epistolary novel. The life of in-her-70s Sybil Van Antwerp, as revealed in letters to and from her, and some unsent ones. She mentors a brilliant but socially teenage boy, who lives with her when things are their worst. She spars with her daughter Fiona, both of them longing for a better relationship but can’t figure out how to get it. She reveals all - almost all - to her best friend Rosalie, who has exchanged letters with her since they were little girls. Sybil lost her young son under heart-rending circumstances that broke her family apart and caused her husband to leave her. Now, at her advanced age, she finds herself caught between two men who both want her. And she unexpectedly learns she has a closely similar sister in Scotland she knew nothing about.. Well done and worthy of the popularity it has attained mainly through word of mouth.

8.Twelve Months by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden is back, in another corker of a story. Queen Mab of the winter court has appointed Harry her Winter Knight, and told him he will be marrying Lara Raith, currently head of the White Court of Vampires. Harry is still mourning the loss of Karrin Murphy, a cop who battled alongside him and who reciprocated his love.. Harry., as usual, is not inclined to be easily compliant to authority, but Lara is intoxicatingly beautiful and brilliant in her own right, and Queen Mab has sufficient power to make it stick. Meanwhile, Harry is dedicated to freeing his half-brother Thomas (a vampire) from the clutches of a Hunger demon, and to free Thomas’s kidnapped pregnant wife, too. Lots of good ingredients for a juicy tale, and as usual Butcher manages to blend them into a tasty and satisfying dish.

February 2026

9. Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb. Another solid Eve-Roarke procedural, centered around stolen jewelry and a seemingly unnecessary death. Roarke had connections to the jewelry, and a woman from his past surfaces.

10. Villette by Charlotte Bronte. See review below.

11. A Bride’s Story 15 by Kaoru Mori. In this one we’re mostly in England instead of the Silk Road, as Smith brings Talas home with the intention of marrying her. His parents disapprove, of course, and think she must be from India (she’s from Turkistan, IIRC). They settle in his family’s enormous “cottage”, with sheep for Talas to happily tend. Mori’s drawing skills continue to impress and even improve.

12. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Review below.

13. Anti-Hero by Gregg Hurwitz. Descent into the sordid porn and abuse of women business. During an epileptic seizure in public, Anca is kidnapped by four teenage men who proceed to brutalize and rape her, then sell the film to a porn site. Evan, with the help of his techno-wizard adopted daughter Joey, and former nemesis Candy, rescues Anca, tracks down the young men and brings them to justice via new nemesis FBI agent Naomi Templeton, who’s wiiling to work with him on this. He also straightens out a falling añart billionaire genius, who in turn helps him destroy the porn site that is fomenting the abuse.

March 2026

14. Antarctica by Claire Keegan. Short stories by the author of Foster and Small Things Like These. She was able to convey a lotbin those short novels, and the same happens here. The title story is a masterwork as a woman dissatisfied with her marriage goes on a risky adventure. The author has a knack for ending a story sooner than you’d expect, with perfection, so that you’re satisfied yet your mind carries on the story into what happens beyond. Looking forward to her next novel.

15. Murder in Mistake by Anne Cleeland. Kathleen Doyle once again uses his truth-sorting powers and dream visits from a ghost to help her husband Lord Acton solve a complicated set of murders where veiled motives cause misdirection. There’s a new baby girl who needs breast-feeding, but Doyle handles a busy maternity leave with her usual aplomb. Love this series; always a pleasure to reunite with Doyle and Acton.

16. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.* A competently done graphic version. This story is always appealing, but I kept thinking of the much more magical illustrations of Inga Moore.

17. Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman.*

18. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. The first in a silly fun post-apocalyptic series.

19. The Crossroads by CJ Box. A Joe Pickett mystery in which Joe is in a hospital bed coma for most of it, after an ambush that gave him a bullet wound to the head. His three daughters investigate, which is fun.

20. The Hard Line by Mark Greaney. Another exciting Gray Man adventure. This time Court Gentry, the GM, is working with a team to thwart a Chine attempt to take over U.S. intelligence services with the help of high-up traitors. They send multiple GM-level assassins to kill key intelligence operatives. Among them are two with personal scores to settle with the Gray Man. One targets the GM’s father, which results in the GM and his father teaming up to fight a half dozen trained killers. Another fun thriller in this reliably action-filled series.

21. Please Wait to Cross by our cousin Elissa Bass. I enjoyed her Happy Hour, but this one a little less. Part of that is the inclusion of a somewhat grisly murder scene in an otherwise lightish romance novel. I can definitely see why she did it -it sets up a future valuable section about the main character’s good works, but yhe tonal asymmetry didn’t work for me.

22. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. The first half of this novel about an unhappy academician trying to get tenure at and Oxford/Cambridge-type university had me wondering why the book is revered. (I got it off that BBC Top 100 list). The introduction talks about how much Amis detested the academic environment and hidebound tradition, and it shows. In the second half Jim becomes more sympathetic, and his passive agressivevbattles with forces thst be (the main villain is named Welch, but I didn’t hold that against the book), and efforts to mollify a histrionic romantic interest while also pursuing a level-headed beauty made the reading much more interesting. As impossible as it seemed early on, thigs work out okay for Lucky Jim.

23. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Not my cuppa. An intolerably Christian father who oppresses his wife and daughters, and tries to force his Christian beliefs on African natives (the Congo) without for am minute considering their existing beliefs or, for that matter, their daily lives.

24. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. The self-published phenomenon by a first-time author. A huge bestseller. Theo is a handsome, charming 86 year old man who comes to a small Georgia town, Golden, and keeps information about himself under wraps. He loves a local artist’s portraits of the townspeople and proceeds to buy them bit by bit. He arranges to give their portrait to each subject in exchange for time discussing their lives. In this way he becomes a valued member of the community. I enjoyed the community members and Theo, and Levi deftly mixes it up so it doesn’t get repetitive. Turns out that Theo had quite a life pre-Golden, and has unexpected connections to the town. A well done feel good novel.

25. Becoming Yourself by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki was an influential Zen master and author of one of my favorite Buddhist books. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. This one is a loose collection of transcribed talks Suzuki gave at the San Francisco Zen Center, which my Chicago Zen Center is affiliated with. I love his lighthearted skepticism about all the behavioral rules (e.g. the 16 precepts). His view: they’re important, but don’t overweight them. If you sit (meditate) well and get yourself into the compassionate Buddhist mindset, you’ll be fulfilling them without even thinking about it. The book also has a chapter by his wife about her life with Suzuki, and Suzuki’s explanation of how he learned Zen, and how and why he came to America to teach us Buddhism. Start with Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. If you love it, you’ll want to read this one.

26. The Waves by Virginia Woolf. My goddaughter’s favorite of hers, and one of the BBC Top 100. Very poetic writing; consists of a half dozen or so freeflowing interior monologues interspersed witb lovely descriptions of the sea and shore. Stuctured from sunrise to sunset, it tracks the connected characters as they age from young to old. Explores the growth of identity and aspirations for unity over loneliness. Impressive, but my favorites remain Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One’s Own.

27. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn. This fantasy novel on its face seemed like such a departure for this author of excellent historical novels like The Alice Network, The Rose Code and The Briar Club. But her Afterword makes it clear that she’s been an avid fantasy reader her whole life. She makes good use of that knowledge, as this novel features the ability to enter and live in the books of the Astral Library. This is a godsend for 26 year old Alix, who after being raised in multiple foster homes is eking out a meager existence cobbling together part time jobs, including one at the Boston Public Library. The Librarian in the AL is ancient and dragon- tough, and somewhat reluctantly takes on Alix as an assistant. This lead to adventures in multiple books, as the AL seems to be under a mysterious attack. Wearing the right clothing in books such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice is always an issue, particularly since the library’s funding (of course) has been cut, like every library’s. Luckily Alix’s best friend Beau is a rising fashion design star who can kit her out. Dire dilemmas relating to the attacks keep the book hopping, and it ended up being a very enjoyable diversion in our stressful time. A book lover’s, and fantasy lover’s delight. Given her enjoyment of the genre, I suspect that this is not the last we’ll see of Alix and the AL.

April 2026

28. Oh Brother by Georgina Chadderton. A graphic memoir from Austria about a young girl growing up with a brother very much on the autism spectrum. Rob is mostly non- verbal, so clever that they have combination locks on every door, and sometimes violent. Her parents are great with him, but he affects every aspect of their lives. Taking him to get his haircut or to the dentist is a major operation which he resists. Gina has trouble making friends but makes a good one in Callie, who puts up with Rob even after he bites her. Gina has her own anxieties and difficulties at school, but loves Rob and knows he always has to come first. . From an afterword we know that Rob becomes increasingly difficult, and after he turns 18 is moved to a house that provides proper. Gina learns at 32 that she’s on the spectrum, too. . What I particularly liked about this book is I haven’t often gotten this perspective from a sibling on a spectrum-resider. The graphics were so-so.

29. There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. A VERY high concept sci-fi book about battling a creature who preys on memories.

30. The Violence: My Family’s Colombian War by Adrian’s Es Ramirez.
31. More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa. Liked its “Days” predecessor a lot. The first half was a snooze.💤 Peaceful, but not much happening. The second half took a turn for the much better, with suppressed characters opening up to each other. I ended up glad I read it, and I’ll read more by this author.

32. Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh. Subtitled “Wisdom for Cooling the Fames”, I found it very helpful in trying to defuse and calm down my anger. Mindful breathing, embracing the anger and taking care of it like a loved one, rather than suppressing it or”venting it”. He says the last may give temporary relief, but in the end it just feeds the anger. Lots of good stuff about getting relationships back on track, the roles of parents, and more. Glad I read this one.

33. Transition by Ben Lerner. A disappointment that probably is my fault. Book critics have been robustly supportive of this one, and it basically sailed over my head. Supposedly an examination of memory and digital recording in novel form, it unfortunately did little for me. The most interesting part was when the main character’s daughter had an eating disorder that got straightened out.

May 2026

34. The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst. This cozy fantasy was delightful from beginning to end. It took me back to the first fantasies I read as a lad, and the pleasure I took in them. Clarisa’s boyfriend breaks her heart, and she needs to get away for the summer to heal. Her Aunt Zee needs help at her Vermont Inn, which turns out to have some wonderful secrets and surprising guests. A treat to read.

35. Woods & Words: The story of Poet Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman.

36. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Re-read. Spiritual and Buddhist, but also warmly personal and touching. This was an impressive re-read: not an easy subject to make so appealing.

37. Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood. Like our daughter, I’ve enjoyed this author’s STEM romances. This non-STEM one was just okay.

38. Platform Decay by Martha Wells. It has the humor we’ve all enjoyed, led by SecUnit’s skepticism concerning all things human, sometimes surfacing as distaste (e.g., our constant need for bathrooms) and sometimes an inability to understand (why the attempts to interpret his expression). I was a little disappointed by the somewhat unilinear plot: Murderbot has to rescue humans trapped on a space station from pursuing corporate villains out to capture or kill them. He connives his way through the ginormous space station, hoping to reconnect with an escape shuttle. His rescuees include weak and incomprehensible (to him) children whom he must reluctantly accommodate. It’s fun, but for me doesn’t reach the heights of some of its predecessors.

39. Wild for Austen by Devoney Looser. It’s subtitled “A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane”. The author is a well-known Austen scholar with other Austen books under her belt. This one seeks to dispel the notion that Austen was a cloistered, prim village girl with little exposure to the outside world. Looser’s arguments are effective. Through her brothers and other relatives and acquaintances she got around much more than commonly thought, and her inner fire was often on display. An authorial tic that annoyed me was Looser’s repeated use of the word “wild” to advance her premise. Among the otherwise skillful writing and meticulous research, it felt surprisingly amateurish. Still, I was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge and the depth of that research. It was great learning more about a favorite author and her works. I’m re-inspired to dig into her sometimes naughty, sometimes hilariously mean-spirited Juvenalia.

40. The Golden Hour by Niki smith.*. A well-done 235 page graphic story about Manuel, 10-11 years old, who was traumatized by a school shooter, but thought to pull the fire alarm and ended up saving his art teacher. A school project leads to friendship with white farm boy Sebastian and black classmate Caysha, both of whom help Manuel (who is Latin) when he gets triggered by noises or events.

It’s well done - also featuring realistic parents who are open-minded- and I hope it gets found by YAs and middle grade readers. The warm friendships are a highlight.

41. Out Law by Jim Butcher. A fun outing with Chicago wizard Harry Dresden. Harry is teaching a young apprentice wizard named Fitz, who knows how to create fire and some other things, but is ignorant of a whole lot more. Meanwhile chief gangster Marcone has called in a chip to have Harry help an annoying low echelon gangster, Tripp, go straight. It turns out Tripp is owed $10 mill by a rival gang leader after winning a bet, and the rival would rather kill him than pay it. The rival has a fantastically strong black blob called The Lurker doing what he asks; it gets inside animals and people and takes them over. The rival’s right hand man has the Lurker inside him. Harry, helped by the Valkyrie Bear, has to keep Tripp safe, get the $10 million for Tripp’s legit new charity, and defeat the rival and the Lurker. He figures out a clever way to do that with the help of Demonreach, and at the same time teach both Fitz and Tripp some valuable lessons.. I was very happy to have another Harry Dresden story to read.

42. Night Watch by Kevin Young. One of the best poetry collections I’ve read in a while. I always find it hard to describe poetry collections. I’ll think some more and maybe post an excerpt or two. Meanwhile I’m going to look for his previous collection, Stones.

43. Names and Faces by Leise Hook. A well-illustrated graphic memoir about a biracial Asian/white girl. She’s caught betwixt and between and has trouble figuring out her own identity. She grows up to look white. Her happiest time seemed to be when she was in an international school filled with mixed race children. There nobody thought there was something odd about her appearance.

She explores her Chinese heritage and experiments with her hair, going through a blonde phase. The lack of Asian role models, including in American girl dolls, troubles her mind. It’s all interesting enough, and caused me to think a lot more about what life is like for biracial people. But there is no real resolution. I suspect that there will be a second book covering more of her journey. She appears to marry a white man, so there may be more ruminations not only about her own identity, but that of any children.

* Denotes a graphic work

Art by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

Here is what is to me a weird top 100 from The Guardian

The Guardian's Top 100 Books Written in English as of 2015:

After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum for the Guardian has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list



Mon 17 Aug 2015 05.11 EDT
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1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.

2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-famous novel is a complex literary confection, and it’s irresistible.

3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English

4. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)

Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.

6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)

Laurence Sterne’s vivid novel caused delight and consternation when it first appeared and has lost little of its original bite.

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

Jane Austen’s Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility.

8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley’s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece of horror and the macabre.

9. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)

The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired by Thomas Love Peacock’s friendship with Shelley, lies in the delight the author takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.

10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel – a classic adventure story with supernatural elements – has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.

11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

The future prime minister displayed flashes of brilliance that equalled the greatest Victorian novelists.
A whirlwind success … Jane Eyre
A whirlwind success … Jane Eyre.

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue with the reader.

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Emily Brontë’s windswept masterpiece is notable not just for its wild beauty but for its daring reinvention of the novel form itself.

14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura performance by a writer at the top of his game.

15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker masterpieces.

16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe.

17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Wise, funny and gripping, Melville’s epic work continues to cast a long shadow over American literature.

18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in the English canon.

19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed by many as the greatest English detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the realistic.

20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female market has iconic status in America and never been out of print.

21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian fictions.

22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as Trollope’s masterpiece.

23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)

Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature.

24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and fascinating study of the Scottish character, Kidnapped has lost none of its power.

25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)

Jerome K Jerome’s accidental classic about messing about on the Thames remains a comic gem.

26. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

Sherlock Holmes’s second outing sees Conan Doyle’s brilliant sleuth – and his bluff sidekick Watson – come into their own.
Helmut Berger and Richard Todd in the 1970 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Helmut Berger and Richard Todd in the 1970 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

Wilde’s brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption was greeted with howls of protest on publication.

28. New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

George Gissing’s portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as relevant today as it was in the late 19th century.

29. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

Hardy exposed his deepest feelings in this bleak, angry novel and, stung by the hostile response, he never wrote another.

30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

Stephen Crane’s account of a young man’s passage to manhood through soldiery is a blueprint for the great American war novel.

31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story was very much of its time but still resonates more than a century later.

32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)

Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about a life-changing journey in search of Mr Kurtz has the simplicity of great myth.

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)

Theodore Dreiser was no stylist, but there’s a terrific momentum to his unflinching novel about a country girl’s American dream.

34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

In Kipling’s classic boy’s own spy story, an orphan in British India must make a choice between east and west.

35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

Jack London’s vivid adventures of a pet dog that goes back to nature reveal an extraordinary style and consummate storytelling.

36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

American literature contains nothing else quite like Henry James’s amazing, labyrinthine and claustrophobic novel.

37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)

This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.

38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

The evergreen tale from the riverbank and a powerful contribution to the mythology of Edwardian England.

39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)

The choice is great, but Wells’s ironic portrait of a man very like himself is the novel that stands out.

40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911)

The passage of time has conferred a dark power upon Beerbohm’s ostensibly light and witty Edwardian satire.

41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down.

43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)

The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.

44. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham (1915)

Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.

45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture.

46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.

47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.

48. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)

EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of empire.

49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)

A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.

50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.
Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby
Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby’s film adaptation by Baz Luhrmann.

51. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Fitzgerald’s jazz age masterpiece has become a tantalising metaphor for the eternal mystery of art.

52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this original satire about England after the first world war.

53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Hemingway’s first and best novel makes an escape to 1920s Spain to explore courage, cowardice and manly authenticity.

54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Dashiell Hammett’s crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carré.

55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi rural life can be felt to this day.

56. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Aldous Huxley’s vision of a future human race controlled by global capitalism is every bit as prescient as Orwell’s more famous dystopia.

57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent generations.

58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)

The middle volume of John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy is revolutionary in its intent, techniques and lasting impact.

59. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

The US novelist’s debut revelled in a Paris underworld of seedy sex and changed the course of the novel – though not without a fight with the censors.

60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and memorable.

61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

Samuel Beckett’s first published novel is an absurdist masterpiece, a showcase for his uniquely comic voice.
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.

62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)

Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled debut brings to life the seedy LA underworld – and Philip Marlowe, the archetypal fictional detective.

63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)

Set on the eve of war, this neglected modernist masterpiece centres on a group of bright young revellers delayed by fog.

64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)

Labyrinthine and multilayered, Flann O’Brien’s humorous debut is both a reflection on, and an exemplar of, the Irish novel.

65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US society.

66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)

PG Wodehouse’s elegiac Jeeves novel, written during his disastrous years in wartime Germany, remains his masterpiece.

67. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the 1930s in the American south.

68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece about the last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico is set to the drumbeat of coming conflict.

69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

Elizabeth Bowen’s 1948 novel perfectly captures the atmosphere of London during the blitz while providing brilliant insights into the human heart.
Richard Burton and John Hurt in Nineteen Eighty-four
Richard Burton and John Hurt in Nineteen Eighty-four.

70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

George Orwell’s dystopian classic cost its author dear but is arguably the best-known novel in English of the 20th century.

71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Graham Greene’s moving tale of adultery and its aftermath ties together several vital strands in his work.

72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

JD Salinger’s study of teenage rebellion remains one of the most controversial and best-loved American novels of the 20th century.

73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

In the long-running hunt to identify the great American novel, Saul Bellow’s picaresque third book frequently hits the mark.

74. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)

Dismissed at first as “rubbish & dull”, Golding’s brilliantly observed dystopian desert island tale has since become a classic.

75. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Nabokov’s tragicomic tour de force crosses the boundaries of good taste with glee.

76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

The creative history of Kerouac’s beat-generation classic, fuelled by pea soup and benzedrine, has become as famous as the novel itself.

77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)

A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to shrug off the colonial past.

78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Her second novel finally arrived this summer, but Harper Lee’s first did enough alone to secure her lasting fame, and remains a truly popular classic.

79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)

Short and bittersweet, Muriel Spark’s tale of the downfall of a Scottish schoolmistress is a masterpiece of narrative fiction.

80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

This acerbic anti-war novel was slow to fire the public imagination, but is rightly regarded as a groundbreaking critique of military madness.

81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s, this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.
Malcolm Macdowell in A Clockwork Orange
Malcolm Macdowell in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange film.

82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Anthony Burgess’s dystopian classic still continues to startle and provoke, refusing to be outshone by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film adaptation.

83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)

Christopher Isherwood’s story of a gay Englishman struggling with bereavement in LA is a work of compressed brilliance.

84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, a true story of bloody murder in rural Kansas, opens a window on the dark underbelly of postwar America.

85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)

Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of Anglo-American feminism.

86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession with masturbation caused outrage on publication, but remains his most dazzling work.

87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)

Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.

88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one of America’s great literary protoganists, up there with Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby.

89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century.

90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)

VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece.

91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence.

92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)

Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis.
Nick Frost as John Self Martin Amis's Money.
Nick Frost as John Self Martin Amis’s Money.

93. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)

Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self.

94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration.

95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)

Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis.

96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)

Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American speech to perfection.

97. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)

This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the faultlines of Irish patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world.

98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

A writer of “frightening perception”, Don DeLillo guides the reader in an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture.

99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)

In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.

100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)

Peter Carey rounds off our list of literary milestones with a Booker prize-winning tour-de-force examining the life and times of Australia’s infamous antihero, Ned Kelly.

Our Book of Delights

Arielle Hebert

All our windows open, steady drizzle on the kudzu’s
broad backs, birds making their music like this isn’t North
Carolina, but a tropical rainforest, and we’re somewhere
deep in the palms and vines. But it’s our own ferns and fiddleheads,
evergreens and sugar maples, trillium blooming, or on the verge,
for no one in particular, for everyone in particular, as if to say,
Go on, enjoy it. Rain, flowers, time on earth. The apple I
hand-picked at the market. Braiding my friend’s hair, silver
in my fingers, how I tie a tiny bow gently at the end
just as the sun comes out. I want to believe this is true power, that
kindness is the only weapon worth wielding, and I wield it,
land blow after blow to my enemies, without mercy.
Mercy. Bring the wine. Set the table for surprise guests.
No matter the plates don’t match and we’ve run out of chairs,
only that there is bread and laughter, enough to go around.
Parades, in spite of—. Pride, in spite of—. Please, someone answer all these
questions I have about hummingbirds and the little futures we are
reaching for, the ones rising above the horizon right before our eyes,
such intoxicating visions, our truest selves, with nothing to hide. Go on.
Trust the child standing barefoot in the rain, her face turned
up to the sky. Trust that crescendo building in your chest is your
voice, singing what you need to hear, the stone-heavy echo
welled from darkest springs. Go ahead. Open the door. No one can
explain how to love the world. It doesn’t happen all at once. But
you can start here. Tonight, with yourself. Someone near you. Let it go
zigzagging town to town. Look, there. It’s already coming back around.

Niece Amy Landecker's very funny new movie "For Worse" (she wrote, directed and starred) is now streaming on Apple TV. That's her father John on the left interviewing her and her husband Bradley Whitford (who's in it).

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn.

This fantasy novel on its face seems like such a departure for this author of excellent historical novels like The Alice Network, The Rose Code and The Briar Club. But her Afterword makes it clear that she’s been an avid fantasy reader her whole life. She makes good use of that knowledge, as this novel features the ability to enter and live in the books of the Astral Library. This is a godsend for 26 year old Alix, who after being raised in multiple foster homes is eking out a meager existence with cobbled together part time jobs, including one at the Boston Public Library. The Librarian in the AL is ancient and dragon- tough, and somewhat reluctantly takes on Alix as an assistant. This lead to adventures in multiple books, as the AL seems to be under a mysterious attack. Wearing the right clothing in books such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice is always an issue, particularly since the library’s funding (of course) has been cut, like every library’s. Luckily Alix’s best friend Beau is a rising fashion star who can kit her out.

Dire dilemmas relating to the attacks keep the book hopping, and it ended up being a very enjoyable diversion in our stressful time. A book lover’s, and fantasy lover’s delight. Given the author's enjoyment of the genre, I suspect that this is not the last we’ll see of Alix and the AL.

WOW - Adriana and HER Cake!!!

Great toppers and also great pics of the reading at the bookstore!!

Just fyi, Joe. In your >2 jnwelch:, , book 7 for January, the author of The Correspondent is Virginia Evans, not Allegra Goodman as you had it.

>12 m.belljackson:. Right, Marianne? Her friend Carly (in the photo) got her that amazing cake. It tasted really good, too. Lemon pudding cake.

>13 jessibud2:. Thanks, Shelley. Aren’t those toppers fun? The main character in The Astral Library wears one of Sylvie Facon’s book dresses to an event.

Thanks for the catch on my book list. I’ll make the change to Virginia Evans. Allegra Goodman wrote a different one, Isola.

>4 jnwelch: I ***love*** that one! Happy new thread, Joe.

Happy New Thread, Joe!

>1 jnwelch: What came first, the book or the gown? As The Astral Library is new and I’ve bannered these myself years past, I do know! But I’ll look forward to TAL.

Happy Monday, Joe. Happy New Thread. I love the cute, bookish toppers. I also love the pics from Adriana's book event. How special that must have been. I am looking forward to reading it.

Are you back to peace and quiet there? I bet it feels glorious.

Happy new thread, Joe! Thanks for sharing the photos of Adriana's book event - looks like everyone is having a great time, and the cake is truly impressive.

Glad to see such love for The Astral Library, too. The patrons of the library where I work are notoriously picky about fantasy, but as they've loved Quinn's historical fiction, I'm hopeful I can get a few extra readers willing to branch out into the genre.

Happy new thread! The book dresses are pretty, but none of them look exactly comfortable. :-) Congrats to Adriana!

>1 jnwelch: I am reading The Astral Library currently. I will be curious to see where those dresses are referenced!

>7 jnwelch: >8 jnwelch: Love those pictures! I hope the book does well!

>11 jnwelch: Glad to see that you enjoyed it!

I wanted to thank you for recommending When the Cranes Fly South. I finally got it read this past weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Have a marvelous Monday, Joe!

Today’s Bargain: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey for $1.99 on e-readers.. An NPR and Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year. Not my thing, but I immediately notified our daughter, seasonsoflove, who is a connoisseur of the eerie.

>15 richardderus:. Right, Richard?! >4 jnwelch: is my favorite, too.😀

>16 quondame:. Thanks, Susan! The dresses came before The Astral Library. Kate Quinn talks about it a bit in the Afterword. I enjoyed that Afterword, which also talks about how she came to write a fantasy novel, and recommend it.

>17 msf59:. Happy Monday, compadre. Aren’t those toppers fun? The one with an open book is a supremely silly showstopper. Imagine walking into a party and seeing someone wearing that! Like Richard, my favorite is >4 jnwelch:. So cool.

For some reason I’ve been extremely busy since the gang left, some of it ho-hum like laundry and house clean up. What a whirlwind those nietos are. Rafa texted me from the road that he already missed me. What a sweet guy he is. Fina is …. So adorable, but watch out world, she’s coming! Jesse’s already talking about what a challenge she will be as a teenager. A lovely, bursting at the seams one, but a challenge. Debbi and I want her to keep her present voice, which lights up our hearts. Not gonna happen, of course.

I finished The Violence: My Family’s War. So good! You have a treat ahead of you. I’m really happy for her. Now she’s working on a novel, which, she says with delight, won’t require so much research. Go Adriana!

>18 bell7:. Thanks, Mary! I’m so glad Adriana’s Chicago stop went so well. We really love her, and she deserves every success. Hardest working person I’ve ever met. Three lives in one.

Although I enjoy fantasy more than most people, that’s how I came to The Astral Library: I loved Kate Quinn’s historical novels. Your patrons should be receptive to that pitch and enjoy AL. Although if someone’s a stalwart anti- fantasist (Antifa?) I can imagine the gripes.

>19 foggidawn:. Thanks, Misti! And thank you for the Adriana congrats. I’d love to see her book atop the NY Times bestseller list, of course, but it’s all going really well so far. The reviews! Imagine everyone disliking it, or meh about it. We’re very happy for her.

Although I don’t wear dresses (a t-shirt and pants are about as exotic as I get), I’m all for comfort. And I agree most of those in the toppers don’t look particularly comfortable. Except for >4 jnwelch: jnwelch:, which is part of the reason it’s my favorite.

We just had a conversation on our porch about how all dresses should have pockets in them. Apparently some wedding dresses now have them, as well as other dresses. One needle-savvy sister of mine cuts the seam of new dresses and adds a pocket. She must have chapstick on hand at all times, among other things.

>20 alcottacre:. Hi, Stasia. You’ll know in Astral Library when the dress appears, but you won’t hear about Sylvie Facon until the enjoyable Afterword. I wonder whether this will help Sylvie’s sales?

Thanks re the author appearance photos. I love them, too. So far so good for the book. Uniformly positive reviews. Now I have my fingers crossed 🤞 that word of mouth garners a lot of readers. I just finished it and loved it. And, as you can tell, I’m totally unbiased.

Yes, Kate Quinn won me over with The Astral Library. At first I was skeptical, as it was such a change from her prior books. Was this just an author self-indulgence? Or a genre she wouldn’t be good at? I’ve loved Walter Mosley’s books, but his sci-fi leaves me high and dry. But I ended up enjoying AL, and will read any sequel she might write.

Great to hear re When the Cranes Fly South ! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. What a book. It’s in my innards, ready to re-experience any time I think of it. Well- meaning children who cause problems: it makes me think of Kent Haruf’s Our Souls at Night. Thanks for letting me know.

So far, it’s a marvelous Monday: good night’s sleep, good workout and this. I’ve still got meditation, and Spanish on Duolingo, then I can read. Right now, it’s More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, which so far isn’t as good as the first one, but hope springs eternal.

I hope you have a marvelous Monday, too!

Cheers for Adriana and her encouraging success!

>22 jnwelch: I put The Astral Library on hold. Also The Violence. I suspect Adriana will find fiction can lead to deeper research rabbit holes than non. Care to take a side bet?

I am endlessly shocked at how weird women's clothes are. What idiot decided the buttons should be on the other side from men's buttons when they're optimized for right-handedness? Why are bras so flimsy and so damnably expensive? Who's the weirdo who decided women's underpants should basically be permanent wedgies?

Hi Joe, i can't believe that i am able to post Happy New Thread congratulations so early on your new thread, mate. I love the photos of Adriana at the bookstore and the kids, i cannot imagine how proud you both are of her with this book.

I hope that both you and Debbi are doing fine and that the family are all well, sending love and hugs to you all from both of us, dear friend.

>26 richardderus: Preach! Not to mention the little tiny pockets, if there are pockets at all.

Ah, it looks like I won't be attending Adriana's reading tonight after all. I have some sort of bug, complete with mysterious chills and a baritone voice, and I certainly don't want to spread it around, least of all to her. Jim is going, and we bought the book, so I figure we are covered.

>24 jnwelch: You reminded me that I still needed to buy Adriana's book - it is now on order :)

Too bad that More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is not living up to its predecessor, which I enjoyed too.

Happy new one, Joe! Some cool book dresses up there…

Happy new thread, Joe.

>1 jnwelch: Wowzer and especially the last one......I wouldn't mind turning those pages!

Nice to see Ariana in action and the heartiest of congratulations to her on the success and reviews of her book. I have my radar set for its appearance on these shores.

>28 foggidawn: What in satan's name is a *skirt* All about?! No pockets no warmth no cover for your legs the closures are on the BACK and are teeny li'l hook-and-eye things you need magnifying glasses to *see* still less manipulate. Misti...start the rebellion!!

"Fina is so adorable, but watch out world, she’s coming... Debbi and I want her to keep her present voice, which lights up our hearts."

Aw...how sweet. I will enjoy some of that sweetness a little later when I go hang out with Jack, before taking him to school.

If you're collecting photos of Adriana, here's one from her book tour stop in New York last night at the good old McNalley Jackson Bookstore downtown.

"Why did you write this book?" the lady asked. "Well, I was broke", Adriana replied, "So i applied for a grant and took a trip home and and out of it came this book".

Smart interviewer busy discussion had a chance to chat for a few minutes afterward and get my book signed! Good Times.

>25 quondame:. Thanks, Susan! A friend in NYC said her appearance there went well. I think she has Philadelphia and hometown Pittsburgh left.

Ha! You may be right about research for fiction, although it’d be hard to top the amount she dis for The Violence: My Family’s War, as you’ll see. I’m glad you’re going to give it a go. Can’t wait to hear what you and others think of it. The Astral Library should be right up your alley, or right inside your local library.

>35 magicians_nephew: Hey, great! Thanks, Jim. I just saw the photo. I’m glad you could make it; sorry Judy wasn’t feeling swell. Isn’t Adriana good on her feet? Did she mention how Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath inspired her structuring of the book? I hadn’t heard that “why she wrote it” answer before. Being broke often is inspiring, too.😀

Thanks for the excellent photo. I’m glad you had a good time and a few minutes to chat.

Please let me know what you think of the book when you get to it.

>33 richardderus: LOL! Skirts are nice in the summer, breezy and non-constricting. I agree about the closures, though, and the general lack of pockets. I think they should be an option for all genders, and if they were, we'd probably see more sensible construction.

Joe - for my quick Book Reviews, see Linda's thread #131 and #136.

To address a topic from your last thread (3) regarding print or digital copies. I recently read in a Publishers Weekly bulletin that in the U.S. the majority of readers still prefer hardcopy books. This afternoon I took the time to look it up and confirm that I was correct in what I glanced at in a newsletter. There results are from a Pew Research Survey and was published in Publishers Weekly. Here is what I found.

According to a survey of 8,046 U.S. adults conducted last year from October 6–16, 2025, 64% of respondents said they had read at least part of a print book in the last 12 months, down from 72% in 2011. During the same time span, the percentage of respondents who read an e-book rose to 31% from 17%, while audiobook usage jumped to 26% from 11%.

The number of e-book readers has seen only a small increase since 2014, when the percentage of adults reading e-books rose to 28%. Audiobook readership, however, has had stronger gains since 2014, when 14% of readers preferred an audiobook. Adults favoring print books was at 69% in 2014. Adults favoring print books was at 7

Print books (hardback and paperback) account for 76% of total book sales revenues. Print books outsold digital formats by a 4 to 1 margin in 2025. 45% of people bought a print book in 2025 compared to 23% who purchased a digital book.

The numbers of people reading print books continues to climb year-over-year, while digital book numbers hold steady.

The reasons why people said they liked to read hardcopy books:
1. They like the sensory experience of touch and smell of books and find that sensory experience irreplaceable.
2. Print allows for "digital detox" cutting down on screen time.
3. Readers said that they have better comprehension with hardcopies. Research backs that up. Hardcopy readers have better comprehension of what they read, and memory retention is better with hardcopy.
3. Collectability - many people enjoy displaying books on shelves and buying hardcopies as trophies.

Also of interest:
Readers in China prefer e-books, but more than half of Germans bought a print book in 2025.

>36 jnwelch: Heh! There aren't alley's in my immediate neighborhood! Something to do with being on a steep hill probably, so I'd have to wander about to the lowlands to find myself an alley.

It's grand Ariana is doing so well - those chairs look to incorporate their own stage so that the attractions have some lift, but they don't look all that comfortable.

>40 benitastrnad: Hm, I wonder if each physical book being an at least slightly different physical object has something to do with better retention. More distinctive sensory inputs to form associations.

I'm holding with my preference for ebooks. They don't collect dust or form piles between me and my screen.

>41 quondame: That makes sense to me. I can often recall where I was when I read a certain book.

I read in all three formats, and appreciate them for different reasons. Also, I use the library almost exclusively for audiobooks and ebooks, only buying an ebook if it's steeply discounted (like the bargains for $1.99 that Joe often posts about), whereas if I want to purchase a book, I'll buy the physical copy (though I use the library extensively for those, too).

>40 benitastrnad: I read in all formats these days, but mostly ebooks. While I love physical books, I've had to deaccession quite a few old volumes because the type and page contrast (or lack thereof0 made them hard to read these days. I like audio books for long non-fiction such as The Sixth Extinction which I am now listening to, partly because they are usually longer. Somehow fiction doesn't work as well for me, with some exceptions.

E-books and audiobooks don't provide visual affirmation, of course. No one can look at my e-book list and admire it while waiting for a pot of tea. I find myself looking at other people's bookshelves because I'm interested in what interests they might have, and that is becoming more difficult.

All that said, I know that reading a paper book gives lots of geographic clues that reinforce the understanding and memory of the text. How many times have we looked for a passage just KNOWING it was in the left hand upper corner of the left hand page, a quarter of the way through the volume?? That extra mental reference gets lost.

>41 quondame: I definitely read e-books and audiobooks from my library, lazy person that I am. Not only do I not have to carry the physical volume around, I don't even need to leave my chair!

>26 richardderus:. I agree 100% on all your points, RD. I’m not sure why the market hasn’t corrected some of these. Some enterprising woman must see what you see. I can add one that bugs Debbi and me: when I get a shirt dry cleaned, it doesn’t cost much. When Debbi gets a similar shirt drycleaned, it costs much more. Why? To us it seems like dry cleaners charge women more for evrrything.

>27 johnsimpson:. Hiya, John. Always a pleasure to see you on the premises. For some reason recently I’ve been thinking of our visit to York. Wish we could meet up with you, and maybe Karen, at that coffee shop. Was it Betty’s?

Thanks re the photos of Adriana and the grandkids. We had a really nice visit. It’s always something different, but this time Rafa and Fina were really into playing basketball on our backyard hoop. What has remained constant is that they both want the company of our many rubber ducks when they take a shower. The’re now 8 and 6, and I thought that last interest would fade. Not yet.

We’re all doing well. It was great to have the whole gang together, including daughter Becca and her stalwart furry friend Indy. We all (except Indy) will reunite in June for a Disney cruise to Alaska. Hope you and Karen and the rest of your fine family are doing well, too, my friend. Hugs and kisses from us.

>29 ffortsa:. I’m sorry you missed the Adriana appearance, Judy. I hope you’re feeling better. That was a wise choice. Your acquisition of an accompanying baritone voice sounds intriguing, but not worth the accompanying malaise.

I’m glad Jim made it, and had a chance to chat with her. Can’t wait to hear what both of you think of the book- and what you think of her grandmother. I can say that she’s as compelling in person.

>30 alcottacre:. Hiya, Stasia. More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop has taken a turn for the better. It’s not really a spoiler, so I’ll say that there was a section about her uncle’s hemorrhoid problem that I could’ve done without. Maybe it plays better to a Japanese audience?

It’s good to know someone else who read the first one. My son just asked me if I read every book that has “bookshop”, “bookstore” or “library” in the title. I sure read a lot of them. Whoo can resist?

>31 drneutron:. Thanks, Jim. Aren’t those book dresses cool?

Have you read There is No Antimemetics Division? I thought it was different, clever and good. Any recent sci-fi you’d recommend?

>32 PaulCranswick:. Hey, Paul. Thanks. Ha! I thought that last one in >1 jnwelch: was the silliest of all, but I’m glad it captured your reading heart.

Thanks re Adriana and her book. I’d love it if it made it to your shores. But just in case, maybe you and Hani should visit Chicago and pick up a copy here?

>28 foggidawn:. Right, Misti? RD’s preaching sure sounds right to me. I’m surprised that some entrepreneur hasn’t made a lot of money addressing the no pocket/tiny pockets problem. Every woman we’ve talked to about it agrees.

>33 richardderus:. I again get your point again, RD. But more men are wearing skirts these days, aren’t they. The easy breeziness must have appeal. And we’ll always have kilts. At least kilts seem simpler and more functional than what you describe.

I was hoping you’d get some comments on your sermon/tirade.😀

>46 jnwelch: It's on my reserve list at Overdrive, but I'm still waiting...

The Ministry of Time has been my latest sf. It's a time travel story mixed with thriller and a bit of romance. Quite fun!

>34 msf59:. Hiya, Mark. You met Fina, so you have some idea of what I’m talking about. If you remember my friend Phil, who played guitar and sang, he and Fina are best buds after that vow renewal party. What a sparklepuss she is.

Speaking of which, have fun with the jovial Jackson. Thank you for being such a regular post-er of Jackson photos. It’s a treat to see him grow and take on his personality.

>38 foggidawn:. Got it, Misti, thanks. I can see the appeal of skirts/kilts, although wearing one is too weird for the likes of me. I keep thinking someone should step up and make some money addressing these
dissatisfactions that I imagine are widely shared.

>39 m.belljackson:. Thanks, Marianne. You mean Whisper1/Linda, right? If I ever catch up here, I’ll go visit her.

>40 benitastrnad:. Hi, Benita. Thank you for all the interesting and thought-provoking information. I was going to say that there’s a tactile and other sensory experience with print books that e-books and audio books can’t imitate. But each has its own appeal. For e-books it’s convenience and portability. I often read hefty tomes on my Kindle rather than lug them around. Debbi also thinks she reads faster on Kindle, and she’s not the only one I’ve heard that from. With audiobooks it’s the pleasure of having someone read to you. Now that I can’t (post-stroke) drive, I rarely listen to audiobooks. But Debbi and I do read to each other.

>41 quondame:. Hi, Susan. We’re so used to alleys here that I forget they’re not as common elsewhere. They sure are useful for trashcans. We don’t have the NYC problem of having to put trash out front by the street.

I’m very happy for Adriana; so well-deserved. I just want the book to garner even more readers.

Better retention with print books: isn’t that intriguing? You may have the reason why. I don’t sense that it’s true for me; I’m not sure why. But I sure do love the sensoriness of a print book in a way you just can’t a digital book.

>42 foggidawn:. Hi, Misti. I use all three formats, too, although audio much less than the other two. I use the library a lot for graphic books, because they’re so expensive. There always are a few I buy for the home shelf, but I’m very selective.

I do love the experience of being in a bookstore and buying print books; I have the added motivation of wanting to support the stores and help continue their existence. A trend that really intrigues me is successful authors like Ann Patchett owning bookstores. I feel like they do it for love and handle the low ROÍ with more equanimity. I hope that we see more and more authors doing it.

I’m glad that the $1.99 e-bargain posts are useful. I enjoy being reminded of good books, and end up purchasing a lot of the bargains myself.😀

>49 jnwelch: Yes, Joe, Whisper Linda - I think it's a fun list.

My copy of THE SWALLOWS should arrive today!

The Hugo Sci-Fi Finalists for Novels and Novellas:

Best Novel

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)
1,153 ballots cast.

Best Novella

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)

Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)

The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK)

>51 m.belljackson: Thanks, Marianne.

Good for you for picking up Adriana’s poetry collection, The Swallows! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. She’s such a talented writer.

>43 ffortsa:. Hi, Judy. I hadn’t thought about the ability to make e-books easier to read, but that’s another positive for them. You nudged my thinking on audio books - I have enjoyed NF a lot in that form. Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime is the best I’ve listened to. i may do more NF that way going forward.

Yeah, like you, I love looking at people’s print book collections, and you can’t do that with e-books. It reminds me of riding the El reading the newest Jim Butcher Dresden Files book, and realizing the woman next to me was reading it, too, at the same time she realized I was. Nice moment. Never would’ve happened if we were reading Kindles.

You also make a good point about finding text from earlier in the book. With e-books you can’t flip the pages and, as you say, remembering the physical location of the text on the print page doesn’t work well with e-readers.

Our daughter reads a lot of library e-books. I haven’t tried yet. GNs are my main library pickups, and older books. It’s not worth the wait for me for new books at the library. GNs for me work differently; whenever the newer ones free up is fine by me, and there isn’t such a clamor from others to get hands on them.

>47 drneutron:. Thanks, Jim. I hope that, once it comes in, you enjoy There is No Antimemetics Division as much as I did.

I grokked The Ministry of Time muchly. Good pick!

On the other hand I have only read one of the Hugo nominees in >52 jnwelch:. How about you?

>45 jnwelch: I'm sorry I missed her too. For some reason, this bug is hanging on. I'm wondering if my encounters with Covid (negative this time - whew) have disrupted my normally robust immune system.

As for the baritone voice, I have dated at least one man who loved it. Said it made me sound like Lauren Bacall.

>46 jnwelch: It occurs to me to mention that Beverly Sills, the opera singer, always insisted that her costumes have pockets.

>55 jnwelch: The Jackson Bennett is really good - I read it last year. I've loved both of the books in that series. Mix of fantasy, sf, and mystery. Good stuff!

Haven't read the others, but would like to. I'm in the middle of a reread of F. Paul Wilson's Secret History of the World with a few 75ers, and that's my focus right now. And after that, we're talking about a reread of Stephen King's extended Dark Tower world - that'll be a long set of books!

>46 jnwelch: I have pockets, large ones, in the pants I’m wearing and in the dress I’m wearing over them. There are elements of style that must be jettisoned to live comfortably pocketed if your body has wide hips and or breasts. Well, I suspect that any close fit clothing for any shaped body, has to trade pockets for elegance of line, it’s just a gnarlier burden to manage in women’s apparel.
All my clothing comes from one company that places a premium on natural fabrics and comfort.

>49 jnwelch: Our trash bins do go out in front. On the west face of the hill - our house is just on the east ridge - some of the houses are about 30’ above the street with twisty stairs down to where the bins are placed in nooks. I think there are cul-de-sac alleys on that one street, to access garages behind the houses.

>54 jnwelch: I have found the search function on the reader apps very handy. I do spend time on Discord - and occasionally here on LT - discussing books in detail, and needing to look up something right now.

>52 jnwelch: Thanks for posting these, Joe.

I used to read a lot of "scienc fiction" in the golden age of Ellison and Zelazny - nowadays the Hugo Lists are names unfamiliar to me, and my mind stammers.

Remember reading The Raven Scholar and liking it a lot -- will have to look for some of these.

>53 jnwelch: The Swallows - What a Wild Range of Voices!

I'll add my favorites to my Review...
and now see what a good chapbook looks like.

>43 ffortsa:
The geographic clues that you address are the subject of an entire book by the French philosopher Gerard Genette. He even named that phenomena - paratext. He believed that when we read that the book is like a picture frame that we step into. The paratext is everything that forms that picture frame. The book itself - what is made of, what color is it, the size and style of the print. The texture of the book we are holding: is the cover rough, smooth, soft, hard, etc. How large are the margins. The color of the paper. All of these sensory things that are not the text (the words themselves) are paratext. Paratext is material that surrounds a published main text (e.g., the story, non-fiction description, poems, etc.) supplied by the authors, editors, printers, and publishers. These added elements form a frame for the main text, and can change the reception of a text or its interpretation by the public.

I suspect that it is really the paratext that readers like when they have a book in their hands. E-readers don't have as much paratext for us to latch onto in our reading, unless we mark it ourselves in some way.

The Italian author, medievalist, and semiotician, Umberto Eco (he wrote The Name of the Rose was a big believer in paratext. He thought that the human brain needed the frame provided by paper in order to work best. I think that most e-readers also provide a frame, but it isn't as sensorily pleasing to humans as is the multi-textured traditional book.

One thing that I find interesting about the e-book vs. hardcopy thing was what students told us at the university. They wanted their textbooks in digital format, but books they read for pleasure, or assigned books for classes, to be in traditional book format. When asked why, they often couldn't pinpoint the reason. I think it had to do with paratext and one, or all four, of the reasons listed in that Publisher's Weekly bulletin.

Wow, Joe. Things be hoppin' in your cafe. I spent at least an hour yesterday afternoon slowly scrolling through the posts. I had things I wanted to say, but when I got to the end, those things had evaporated. So keep up the good conversations.

I've added Ms. Ramirez's book to The WANT List™. By the bye, I read that a non-profit had struck a deal to keep the Post-Gazette going.

I'll be darned. Double post. Sorry.

          

>56 ffortsa:, >57 ffortsa:. Oh, my sympathy, Judy. I was thinking what a lousy time (spring is springing) to have a bug hanging on, but there’s no good time for that is there? I hope you start feeling better soon.

I loved Lauren Bacall’s voice, and the rest of her (!), but she was lucky enough to have it sans bug. Oh well, we’ll take the silver linings where we can find them.😀.

Good for Beverly Sills. Pockets for everyone! I can’t imagine not having them. They seem essential to my journey through life. It does remind me that there was a time I lived out of a backpack. How did I do that? So many things now essential to my well-being were absent.

I’m going to re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and I’m sure that will remind me of those limited possessions days even more strongly. Besides books, what else do we really need? Well, at this age, a comfortable bed, for one thing.😀

>58 drneutron:. I’m glad you mentioned the Jackson Bennett, Jim. That title wouldn’t have jumped out at me. Is it okay if I start with that one and not it’s predecessor? Or should I find the first one?

Your ambitious reading plans with 75ers sound fun. It’s an unusual treat on LT to be able to read books with others, like a book club. The now ancient Steinbeckathon is one of my fondest memories.

I don’t know Secret History of the World. I will investigate.

>59 quondame:. Good for you with your pockets-positive approach to life, Susan. As usual, I didn’t think of the effect on the design silhouette of pockets. It pays sometimes to be a mussed-up guy type. Comfort is my main clothing motivator these days, but even pre-retirement it was a prime motivator.

The alleys are among the reasons I love Chicago. It allows the streets to look neat and clean, and the alleys are their own Murakami-esque world. The sub-conscious of our conscious? But in flattish Chicago we can’t live on a hill with a twisty stair, and I sure like the sounds of that.

I lack your eptness with the Kindle search function. That would help a lot when wanting to go back to an earlier part of the book. I’ll investigate next time I’m not being lazy.

I can’t remember whether you were the one that asked, but More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop has gotten much better in recent pages.

>60 magicians_nephew:. Hi, Jim. My pleasure. Zelazny! There’s an author I don’t see come up a lot. I used to read everything of his I could get my hands on. Are you an Amber appreciator? I could get lost in those for days on end, although I suspect that they may be dated by now.

The Raven Scholar was the most grabby title for me, and now I have your positive reaction to the book, so I’ll follow up.

Because of Project Hail Mary (we loved the movie), I’ve reading/seeing a lot about Andy Weir and his writing process lately. I admire his painstaking approach to the science. He was talking with Neil deGrasse Tyson and it turns out that that Rocky and his planet was based on what would be required on a planet in a real life star system (40 Eridani A) that was thought to exist when he wrote the book. For some reason (needs investigation) we no longer think that planet exists. Ah, science fiction.

>61 m.belljackson:. How great, Marianne. I’m so glad you enjoyed her The Swallows. I wish you could see her perform at a slam. Her different voices really come alive. She and our son met at a slam in Olympia, WA.

I’ll look forward to seeing your review.

Whoops. It’s the wrong touchstone in >61 m.belljackson:. I’ve owed you a catch or two or three!

>62 benitastrnad:. . The geographic clues that you address are the subject of an entire book by the French philosopher Gerard Genette.. Man, there’s a sentence I never expected to see! Thank you, Benita. I love Librarything!

And I love that idea of the paratext. You express it well. I’m enamored of the cover to The Violence: My Family’s War. I thought the single blue brushstroke was a literal stroke of genius. As Adriana explained to me, if you look carefully, that stroke is part of the flag of Colombia, so there was an underlying rationale.

So many book covers are nondescript or imitative these days that it lifts my heart when I come across a well done one, and I’m very happy that this time it’s to the benefit of Adriana’s book. I hope it makes it to paperback, because with that cover and the positive support it’d do really well.

I’m a fan of Name of the Rose and I think Eco is right about paper and paratext. It’s hard to imagine an e-reader providing a similar experience, isn’t it. But we never know what’s next.

>63 benitastrnad:. How interesting about the students’ instinctive request for tradicional for pleasure and assigned reading, and digital for textbooks.You’re right, it fits perfectly with the PW and paratext discussions.

>69 jnwelch: Joe - are any of the Poetry Slams on Youtube?

>64 weird_O:. Hi, Bill. Yes, a downsized Pittsburgh Post- Gazette will continue under a nonprofit ownership. That’s good news- I hate to lose any newspaper these days - but Adriana sill has to (re) interview for a new position. That should be a no- brainer IMO, but I’m not the new owner.

I’m glad the cafe gave you an enjoyable, thought-provoking hour going through the posts. It’s a challenge to keep up, but I’m having the same experience. What a bunch of interesting thinkers we have here! Do stop and make those comments as you think of them. That’s a big part of the fun. I think post-ers like Stasia keep an open response, and add their thoughts to it as they occur.

>65 weird_O:. 👍. I’ve had a recent series of double posts, too, Bill. I wonder whether something is going on in LT innards?

>67 jnwelch: Start from the first - it introduces the characters. Think Holmes and Watson meeting.

>74 drneutron:. Man, that whets my appetite. Thanks, Jim. The Tainted Cup.

>62 benitastrnad: I agree with Eco about the paratext. Quotes and topics always had a landscape in the books I read. Now if I change the font as I get tired, the pagination changes and I have to do searches, which aren't horrible, but not as pleasing.

>63 benitastrnad: My father wrote a textbook for convention sales that was used in a lot of colleges. A young woman once told him that she knew just which one he wrote, because she had to put it in the middle of the books in her backpack to keep things balanced. Textbooks tend to be hardcover and heavy, with glossy paper and illustrations. They really weight things down. I just gave away some compendiums of English literature from my college days - quite heavy. Then, of course, I bought a few more that i couldn't find as ebooks!

Independent Bookstore Day is this Saturday. 80 stores here are participating in a bookstore crawl that day. I’ll be joining our daughter, seasonsoflove, for part of it.

>60 magicians_nephew: While I’d have picked a largely different set of novels for the Hugo ballot, most of those names have become almost as valued as Zelazney - I found Ellison not to my taste. These last years have been so much more a golden age for anyone who isn’t swm, and richly rewarding in story, world building and character. The authors I find hard to match are Le Guin and Wolfe who out wrote, if not out invented, all prior explorers beyond known realms and times.

>62 benitastrnad: Humans did OK before paper, so if we survive it will probably remain as inventive as we ever were.

Sweet Thursday, Joe. Another gorgeous day in Chicagoland, right? I know you are a Sox fan (and I am sorry) but my Cubbies have been enjoying a hot streak- winning 9 in a row.

I hope you are enjoying those current reads. I know I am...😎

>78 quondame:. Hi, Susan. Oh, I love LeGuin and Gene Wolfe. The problem with Wolfe for me is nothing else by him lived up to those miraculous Shadow of the Torturer books. LeGuin: I read and liked just about all of hers, including A Beginning Place (Debbi and I read it to each other) and the oddball, wonderful Lathe of Heaven.

I understand your not warming up to Ellison. He sounds like a prick in real life, too. But I will say I admired and got a lot out of his Dangerous Visions ostory collections, and his novella A Boy and His Dog knocked me on my keister.

>79 msf59:. Sweet Thursday, brother. What a gorgeous day! All the flowers and greenery are coming in around us - calloo callay!

Go Cubbies! I do enjoy them as a respite from the ditch-floundering Sox. That NYCer Phil is busy enjoying the Yankees. Arggh. Is it football season yet?

I’m enjoying the books - I’m near the end of More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, and it proved its worth in the second half. I’m re-reading Hesse’s Siddhartha, which was influential for this Buddhist when I was a lad. My current GN is a Lone Wolf and Cub-type Samurai one that’s very good; I’ll text you a photo, although I suspect it’s not your cuppa. I have no poetry book going; I need to fix that. Kevin Young supposedly has a good one out. Did you ever get further with John Berryman? I fear I made him seem more complicated than he is.

I’m glad to hear that your reading is going well; I’ll visit your part of town and find out more.

From The Washington Post, about a regretful Tucker Carlson and others:

Pity poor Tucker Carlson. Watching Donald Trump’s war in Iran—which Carlson has branded “the single biggest mistake” by a U.S. president in his lifetime—he is ruing his strong support for Trump in the 2024 election.

“It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson, long the most prominent media personality in the MAGA movement, said this week on his podcast. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Or, even better, don’t pity Carlson. He is one of several media figures who are having second thoughts about Trump—and in some cases, receiving praise for it. But these pundits deserve no amnesty. Their second thoughts are wise, but to have erred so badly, when so many other commentators and journalists saw the truth, disqualifies them from being taken seriously on politics again.

The problem is not just that Carlson ought to have known better. It’s that he did, as the journalist Jason Zengerle reports in his recent biography, Hated by All the Right People. Back in the early 2000s, Carlson harbored reservations about the war in Iraq, but he swallowed them to be what he felt was a good team player for the right, Zengerle notes. Later, he said, he’d gone “against my own instincts in supporting it. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never.” (The Iraq disaster may inform Carlson’s vehement opposition to the war in Iran.)

And yet Carlson did just that with Trump, repeatedly. He initially found Trump coarse, but came around to him during the 2016 presidential campaign. By 2020, however, he’d become disgusted with Trump, including over his handling of COVID; Zengerle writes that Carlson first believed that the president’s approach was too blasé, then too strict. He told people he voted for Kanye West for president in 2020. When Trump tried to steal the election despite losing it, Carlson skewered Trump’s allies on air and was even harsher in text messages to colleagues.

“I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote in texts revealed a few years later in a lawsuit against Fox. “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.” Yet after being fired from Fox, Carlson mended his relationship with Trump, counseling him to choose J. D. Vance as running mate and speaking at his rallies.

Discerning the “real” Tucker Carlson is, Zengerle suggests, a lost cause, and anyway, it doesn’t matter whether Carlson was honest when he was backing Trump or is being earnest now. Either way, he’s forfeited any reason to listen to him. And yet Carlson’s turn against Trump has won him commendation of the “strange new respect” variety from liberals such as Jon Favreau of Pod Save America. This is ill-advised, and not only because Carlson continues to mingle anti-Semitism and other bigotries with his Trump criticisms. If these liberals’ goal is to make allies who can draw Trump voters away, it’s also likely to be ineffective. As Carlson rejects Trump, his own popularity is cratering faster than the president’s.

Restoring American democracy after Trump will require reaching out to those who backed him. That’s good sense and good math: After all, he was democratically elected, and many of his supporters were fooled by him or didn’t believe he’d follow through on his more draconian promises. In the case of the unpopular Iran war, voters may have been tricked by Trump’s claims to be an antiwar figure; that impression was fostered not only by his rhetoric but also by credulous framing in the mainstream press. Every voter has a responsibility to do their best to understand the candidates in an election, and Trump’s foibles should have been plain long before November 2024, but most people are also busy and dependent on the media, whichever kind they choose, to inform them. Creating space for ordinary Trump voters to reject Trump doesn’t require welcoming or absolving the prominent figures who rallied the public to support him.

One group ripe for shunning is broadcasters such as Carlson and Alex Jones, who has also reacted strongly to the Iran war. “I love the old Trump,” he said during an interview with former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another MAGA apostate. “I’m just going to be honest. I hate this person. This is a disgusting husk of a former person.” (Strong words from a guy who falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake and the families of murdered children were “crisis actors.”)

A second is the so-called Trumpist intellectuals, who have tried to create an ideological framework around MAGA. The writer Sohrab Ahmari argued (with Matthew Schmitz) in 2022 that Trump was “the only candidate who recognizes” that the establishment’s warmongering was the root of American problems. Now, as the journalist Michelle Goldberg points out, Ahmari writes that Trump’s “mad-king governance is exhausting for Americans and the world” and bitterly adds, “Bring back Hillary.” The conservative commentator Christopher Caldwell declared the Iran war to be the end of Trumpism and wrote that Trump’s “virtues are not the ones you need to run a free country.” You get zero points for recognizing Trump’s style and character only now, a decade into his era.

A third is those you might call lifestyle podcasters, many of whom forswear any claim to be political commentators but happily take on the job anyway, interviewing political candidates or issuing endorsements for office. This includes Theo Von, who has called Trump’s strikes on Iran “diabolical,” and Joe Rogan. “Make America greater—I’m down. But Make America Great Again and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks? ’Cause a lot of them are dorks,” Rogan said last month, calling them “really weird, fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people.” If Rogan was unable to notice this before, this says little for his perception. (The White House seems to be eager to heal any rift and hosted Rogan at the White House this past Saturday.)

The proposition that people such as Carlson, Ahmari, and Rogan offer their audiences is that they are smarter or better informed than a lay observer, or have access to politicians that allows them to be useful conduits for information and ideas. They have also argued loudly that they’re more trustworthy and have clearer judgment than the mainstream media. If their most prominent political position was backing Trump in 2024, and they have all come to regret it, that says everything we need to know about their credibility going forward.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind’—or like, ‘Oh, this is bad. I’m out,’” Carlson said on the same podcast episode. He’s right, for once; perhaps he should try saying nothing at all for a good long time.

Related:

Tucker Carlson is the emblem of GOP cynicism.
Finally, someone said it to Joe Rogan’s face.

>80 jnwelch: I found all but the first of the Book of the New Sun series a bit too esoteric, while I loved Latro and utterly succumbed to the magic of The Knight. Not to mention his short stories. Not that Shadow of the Torturer isn't a wonder, and yes his other works are different, but wonderfully different!

Robert Jackson Bennett has written several sci/fi series and all of them have looked interesting to me. They are series and are meant to be read as such, so I would recommend that you read book 1 before you read book 2. The Founders Trilogy series had lots of readers in our library. I have not read this new series - Shadow of the Leviathan.

>83 benitastrnad: The first two of Shadow of the Leviathan have been remarkable. A Drop of Corruption doesn't surpass The Tainted Cup, but I would have nominated it for a Hugo and am glad to see it's on the ballot.

>49 jnwelch: Thought I would chime in on the print vs screen discussion. Like Debbie, I can read ebooks faster than paper books. The reason I can read faster is that I find I am skimming (not on purpose) rather than reading each word and absorbing the thought. I'm reading the ebook like I'm reading my desktop computer screen--looking for the most important elements (for me) and moving on. Also, when I was working, I spent nearly 99% of my job on the computer, and of course the faster I read (and skimmed for the important stuff) and did my tasks, the more I could get done in the workday. Thus over some 30 years at work, a habit was formed between me & screens.

So unlike you, I find that, because I'm unconsciously skimming the ebook screen, my retention is not the same as with a paper book. I'm sure the "paratext" part of a paper book also slows me down a little, but probably in a good way, so that I'm taking in more of what I'm reading.

All this to say that ebooks have a place--I have a brother who stopped reading because of his eyesight until he got a Kindle and was able to adjust the font. And I understand the great convenience of having large tomes electronically on a small device that you can carry around. But I think for me it's paper if I want to have the best comprehension of what I've read.

>83 benitastrnad:. Good to know about Robert Jackson Bennett, Benita, thanks. We’ll see how it goes with The Tainted Cup.

>82 quondame:. Each reader is different, Susan, as the maxim goes. The first was the best for me, too, but I enjoyed all four of The Shadow of the Torturer books. The magic of The Knight eluded me. I did enjoy his short stories in that Island of Dr. Death collection. I’ll have to track down Latro, which I missed in earlier times. A talented and varied author.

>84 quondame:. Thanks, Susan. Good to hear about The Tainted Cup and its successor.

>85 kac522:. What an interesting take on reading e-books faster, Kathy. When you explain it, it makes sense. My job wasn’t as computer-intensive as yours, sounds like, and I never developed those scan and grab skills. I’m normally an every word kind of reader anyway, so that I’m equally ponderous in both forms. Maybe the poetry training?

Paper gives you your best retention - intriguing.

Yeah, that ability to make the digital print large is a real blessing, and I bet a lot of eyesight-hampered readers take advantage. Thanks for adding that important one to the benefits. I bet it now gives librarians pause when considering laying out money for large print books.

>87 jnwelch: Speaking as a librarian, our large print books still circulate extremely well -- probably because a lot of the demographic typically interested in large print is not always comfortable with technology. It will be interesting to see if that changes in, say, the next 20 years, but in my job I still meet a lot of people who have no interest in figuring out how to read ebooks. (Edit: I'm also in a small city and see a lot of people from rural areas, which also makes a difference in terms of technology use.)

>87 jnwelch:. Thank you, Misti. That makes sense with the demographic and those less comfortable with technology. I suspect we will see a difference in 20 years, as more people become comfortable with e-books, and those used to technology age into a new demographic. I think the adjustable type size is a major benefit for the digital books. I actually use it to shrink the type so I can highlight text on a single page. (I love the highlight function, too. With print books I use post-it’s).

Today’s Bargains: 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories edited by Lorrie Moore, for $1.99 on e-readers. For short story aficionados this looks like a treasure at a bargain price, with 40 stories, and perfect for e-readers. 4 and a half stars on Amazon.

The Amazon AI customer summary:

“Customers find this book to be an awesome collection of short stories, appreciating its diversity across various decades and beautiful writing style. Moreover, they consider it a must-read that provides hours of enjoyment, with one customer noting it's particularly engaging when read in chronological order. Additionally, the book receives positive feedback for its value, with one customer mentioning it merits the Nobel Prize in Literature.“

>81 jnwelch: Better still, Carlson should assign 100% of his cash and other assets to the Southern Poverty Law Center, retire on only his Social Security benefits available to a disabled person his age, and never speak outside the walls of his jail cell ever again.

Friday orisons, Joe!

>91 richardderus:. Ha! Sounds good to me, RD. Who will trust the guy after all this?

Friday orisons, Richard!

Knopf Poetry today has a Great Review of my new favorite book THE BOUNDLESS DEEP!

"From the thunders of the upper deep
Far below the abysmal sea..."

>93 m.belljackson:. Cool, Marianne. Do you have a link by chance?

Has anyone had the physical sensation while reading of being physically transported to a place in the book? I thought of two this morning: the King’s Road in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and the Woods of the Dead in Kafka on the Shore.

>94 jnwelch: No idea how to link - if you do a Search for Knopf - THE BOUNDLESS DEEP, review will come up.

^^^^^

At night, I feel awfully close to being transported up to the home of the young Monk and his Fox in
SANDMAN - The Dream Hunters,
as well as now to work beside Martin in THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS by Simon Van Booy.

>44 jnwelch:, Hi Joe, mate, it would be great to meet up with you and Debbi again and making sure Karen is with me, sadly i think the cafe has closed down, i think it was a covid casualty.

Hope you, Debbi and the family are/have a great weekend, love and hugs from both of us dear friend.

Today’s Bargain: Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp for $1.99 on e-readers.. What a fun book! Cluny is an irrepressible maid who can’t stick to her allotted status. Her enthusiasm affects those around her. Go Cluny!

Fun to be reminded of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again. Maybe time for a re-read.

>98 jnwelch: I had come here. Of all the pancake joints on all the websites on the entire internet I had come here.

Play it, Margery. If he can stand it so can I. ::knuckle gnaws::

>100 richardderus: You sound famished!

>99 magicians_nephew:. Right, Jim? What a good one Jonathan Strange is. Did you read Piranesi? Likewise excellent and casting a spell, IMO.

>96 m.belljackson:. No problem, Marianne.

I’m glad that Sandman and your other are near transport-experiences. It takes fine writing, I believe, to make it seem that real.

>97 johnsimpson:. Hiya, John, buddy. Ah, too bad about the cafe. I think Debbi told me the same. We’ll find a suitable alternative venue! Fingers crossed for a near-in-time reunion. 🤞

BTW, Independent Bookstore Day was a blast. Lines down the block to get in the stores, stores filled with people browsing, buying and talking about books. One smart thing they did is hand out “passports” that got stamped. Get yours stamped at 10 of the 80 stores and you get a 10% discount at all 80 for the year. It was a joy. I found a new GN I’d just read a review of, Names and Faces, and The Lions’Run, the new one by the author of Pax, Sara Pennypacker. I also bought our schoolteacher daughter Becca’s, seasonsoflove’s books, which brought back fond memories of doing that when she was a wee lass. Plus breakfast at a favorite neighborhood restaurant. Good times.

Double post - again.

>105 jnwelch: I made it to 4 stores and 1 library's "store", and I bought a book at each (spreading the love). They were all busy. On Thursday I went to Jarvis Square books in Rogers Park, a great (but tiny) used bookstore. Last year it was packed in there so I decided to hit it early and exchange some books for credit, and picked up two more. And my husband found several poetry collections.

Hi Joe - not sure who else is Jewish (or interested) - the copy of ENDLESS EXODUS that I won through ER is totally amazing and not to be missed!

Joe, I spent a lot of time this morning going through your threads. You read some incredible books, enjoyed family time, made a trip to Costa Rica, and posted great images. I came away knowing that I must visit threads more often, yours of course, is at the top of the list.

I know how very much you love your family. I want to share that today my beloved grand daughter, Kayla, will be hospitalized for inducement of the baby boy she's carried for nine months. She began the process weighing a mere 101 pounds. The baby is now 9.5 pounds. She mentioned lately how much discomfort she is experiencing, and she really wants to see the face of the wonderful child she's carried. Christian, Carter's wonderful father is a wonderful caring, loving person. He is everything I hoped for her and our family.

We hope that Carter will show his presence to his parents today! I am very close to Kayla, and was present for her birth. I know she is anxious. She was delivered via forceps, and I think this is part of her anxiety.

Thanks for sharing your life, your books, and for reaching out to the members of our group throughout the history of this wonderful group.

Today’s Bargains: Vigil by George Saunders for $2.99 on e-readers and Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P. G. Wodehouse for $1.99.

The first surprised me - the new one by the author of Lincoln in the Bardo at a bargain price? Kinda weird, but good news if you’re a Saunders fan.

The second is one of my favorite Wodehouse books. If you’re in the mood for light and funny (who isn’t these days?), Uncle Fred and a prize pig deliver.

>107 m.belljackson:. Hi, Marianne. Jews in Gondar, Ethiopia? What prompted you to read Endless Exodus? You may be setting the standard for most varied reading palate! Kudos.

>106 kac522:. Good for you, Kathy. Spreading that book love lifts the heart, doesn’t it. I was thrilled to see the throngs, and difficulty getting from Point A to Point B in a bookstore never felt so sweet.

You caught my attention with your husband finding several poetry collections. Who are his favorites? Was there a collection he was surprised to find?

>108 Whisper1:. Hi, Linda! Oh, thank you for taking the time to go through those posts! We’ve been pretty chattified over here. I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I’ve slowed down from the old days, but I’m happy with what I’ve been reading.

I thought of you with a cool book we found for Rafa’s 8th birthday: Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood. What an uplifting story about youngsters playing instruments made from recycled materials.

Wow! That’s a big baby for your small, beloved grand daughter Kayla! I’m glad they’re inducing. I’m also glad father Christian is an admirable fellow, and that he and Kayla found each other. I know how heart-gratifying that is. Carter must be the name they picked for the impending baby. Good one.

Wow, you were there for Kayla’s birthday. How amazing this must feel. Kudos to you for forging such a long event-filled life. I understand the anxiety; I imagine we all do. I’m sending big positive vibes her way, and look forward to Carter’s arrival. What a life-changer.😀

You’re welcome re the LT shenanigans. As I said somewhere earlier, what a group of interesting thinkers we’ve gathered! What a blessing in these tumultuous times. I hope you have a wonderful week filled with good reading.

>107 m.belljackson: this is helpful to me. I did not know the history or story until I took a pro bono asylum claim for a member of this group who was seeking refugee status in the US. I will put this on the wishlist.

>110 jnwelch: Joe - Again = do not miss this book - though we are not personally acquainted,
I can almost guarantee that Adriana will be totally impressed by Endless Exodus.

You asked why requested...?
A few husbands ago, my last name was Levy,
three good Friends are Jewish (one Quaker and German with a Jewish husband),
and my daughter is doing research for a book she is writing.

Re: "varied reading" there are A LOT of books out there for those few of us LT not drawn to mystery or horror!

>110 jnwelch: I asked my husband and he says some of his favorite poets are Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Diane DiPrima, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, W B Yeats.

His pleasant surprise at Jarvis Square Books was finding a collection by Elizabeth Marino, who he knows from poetry readings around town. On their website, the bookstore has a list of genres that they are looking for and poetry tops the list. So if you've got some poetry collections that you want to give to a place that appreciates poetry, this is the place: https://www.jarvissquarebooks.com/bring-us-books

>113 m.belljackson:. Hi, Marianne. Endless Exodus sounds excellent. Unfortunately, I’ll probably miss it, as its topic right inow doesn’t tickle my ivories. I’ll keep it in mind though.

Varied reading: Sounds like quite a life that might warrant a memoir, Marianne. Walk the halls of that memory palace and write down what you see?

Enjoy the day. We’re having a nice one down south in Chitown.

>114 kac522:. Thanks for asking the hubby, Kathy. Did he grow up in the SF area? His first picks led me to the q. I join him on Heaney, Neruda and Yeats in particular. In the states I like our last poet laureate Ada Limon and Sharon Olds and Danez Smith, and I just bought Kevin Young’s new one, Night Watch.

I’ve read a lot of Ferlinghetti, but need to read more Corso and DiPrima. I don’t know Elizabeth Marino, so I’ll look for her, including in poetry readings around town. And Jarvis Square Books. Thanks for the tips. I tend to be a miser with poetry books, but you never know.😀

>112 Oberon:. Hiya, Erik. 👍

>115 jnwelch: okay on ENDLESS EXODUS but you might want to check my 5 Star review to see if someone else might like it!

>115 jnwelch: My husband is a life-long Chicagoan, Joe. He just likes the Beat poets, I think. Totally get that the poetry collections are precious; we have many, many collections here--at least most of them are quite slim.

>116 m.belljackson:. Thanks, Marianne.

>117 kac522:. Thanks, Kathy. I’m a beat fan myself; Ginsberg is my fave from that group. The poetry volumes’ frequent slimness appeals to me, too.

I’m enjoying a YA fantasy called Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst and Kevin Young’s new collection Night Watch: Poems.

For those reading, or intending to read Adriana’s The Violence, a trigger warning: she gracefully avoids being graphic with violence, except with one paragraph that vividly includes gruesome Colombian neckties. It’s quease-inducing, but I thought it was kept to a minimum and appropriate. She felt it had to be included.

Man, another double post. I probably should notify our hosts.

Hi Joe, I'm sure that you're aware that the Book Review section of The New York Times on Sundays includes an interview with a noted author. This week's subject is Xochitl Gonzalez, and this was her response to the question, "What books are on your night stand?":

""The Violence" by Adriana E. Ramirez. "Kill Dick" by Luke Goebel. "Baldwin: A Love Story" by Nicholas Boggs is just outstanding. I'm taking my time with it."

BTW I completely concur with Gonzalez about the biography of James Baldwin, which is so far my favorite book of 2026. I sent you a PM a couple of weeks ago to let you know that I wouldn't be attending Adriana's talk(s) in Philadelphia, but I'll definitely purchase her book the next time I visit a local independent bookshop.

If I had attended her talk I would have asked her if she had read The Shape of the Ruins by the Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez, which also concerned the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and the subsequent riot in Bogotá (El Bogotazo) and the decade long Colombian civil war (La Violencia). I loved that book, and I would be interested to know what Adriana thought of it.

>122 kidzdoc:. Thanks for letting me know about Xochitl Gonzalez and Adriana’s book on her nightstand, Darryl. I’ll be back to say more- gotta go.

>122 kidzdoc:. Thanks for letting me know about Xochitl Gonzalez and Adriana’s book on her nightstand, Darryl. I’m a Gonzalez fan anyway.

I’m an NYT Book Review (not the paper) subscriber, but I haven’t received this one yet. I’m told the NYT review of her book is reprinted in the Book Review, so I’ll be looking for that, too. You and Xochitl make that Baldwin book sound mighty good. What a special author and person he was.

Adriana knew about the Xochitl bedside book mention; it turns out they’re pals and hang out together. (Maybe I’ll get to meet X some day!). I passed on your question to her about the Vasquez book and will let you know what I hear back.

I’m sorry you missed her in Philadelphia. I’m a fan of her personal appearances.

Today’s Bargain: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt for $2.99 on e-readers.. Featuring marvelous Marcellus the giant octopus and his septuagenarian friend. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s your bargain chance.

>124 jnwelch: You're welcome, Joe. BTW, here's a link to the NYT review of Adriana's book:

How a Decade of Violence Transformed Colombia, and One Family

I selected the gift article option from my NYT subscription, so you and everyone else should be able to read it.

As I mentioned in my PM I wasn't comfortable driving into the West Kensington section of North Philadelphia at night to attend Adriana's talk, especially since I'm not familiar with the immediate area of the venue in which she appeared. The Kensington area is notorious for open air drug markets, homeless drug addicts, and high crime rates, including carjackings, especially in comparison to other areas in the city. I wish her agent or whoever booked her appearance had chosen a safer place for her to speak, as I would have been willing to see her in Center City, Fishtown, University City, NE Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, or half a dozen or more other neighborhoods. In addition to my own safety I am responsible for my mother's well being, as her primary caregiver, so if something were to happen to me she probably would have to be discharged from the very expensive memory care center where she is currently residing. Hopefully I'll have another opportunity to see Adriana speak in person, in Philadelphia, New Jersey, NYC, or elsewhere.

>126 kidzdoc:. Yikes! I get it re your concerns about the West Kensington section, Darryl. No worries. I’ll try to remember to ask Adriana about the venue choice. I’m sure you know Philadelphia better than she does.

Thanks a lot for the link to the NYT book review of The Violence: My Family’s Colombian War! A gift indeed. I hope word is spreading.

>127 jnwelch: Adriana might feel more comfortable in Linda - Whisper's pleasant and beautiful ( see library on her thread) EASTON, Pennsylvania

Today’s Bargain: We Do Not Part by Han Kang for $1.99 on e-readers.. Not my cuppa when I read it, but the cup overflows with goodness for lots of readers when it comes to her. Friendship, a big secret, and Korean history on an island. It won awards galore, and Best Books of the Year recognition from the New Yorker, the Guardian, and a large quiver of other publications.

>128 m.belljackson:. Thanks, Marianne. Scribner makes the venue selections, and Adriana is now taking a well-earned break from touring. I’m glad to hear Linda has a beautiful library nearby.

>127 jnwelch: I did read from several posts online that selrcted parts of West Kensington have become safer and more livable, but the general consensus from residents was to be in your home before dark. As you undoubtedly know from living in cities you can quickly go from a safe and well lit street to an adjacent one which is quite different, especially one which seems to be okay in the late afternoon but not at nighttime. I don't know that part of Philadelphia at all, which accounts for my reticence in going to an unfamiliar area, especially after dark.

>129 jnwelch: Thanks for mentioning We Do Not Part; I just purchased the ebook version of it, as I'm a fan of her works.

>132 kidzdoc:. Ah, good, Darryl. Glad that was helpful. You have lots of company in that Kang fandom. 😀

>131 kidzdoc:. Yes, I know exactly what you mean about more dangerous parts of a big city. We had to fetch Jesse and a friend out of one here in the middle of the night.

Today’s Bargain: The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert Parker for $1.99 on e-readers. The first book in the excellent series featuring wise-cracking detective Spenser. Some are better than others, but I loved them all. In this one he gets involved in a murder case while searching for a rare manuscript.

Dropping by, Joe, to let you know that I just finished reading Adriana's book, The Violence: My Family's Colombian War - and I thought it was terrific. Please pass on my regards to her and let her know how much I appreciated her work!

The Next Day’s Bargain, and It’s a Doozy: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera for $1.99 on e-readers.. Wow, what a book! Life, love, passion, why we’re here. One of the great novels. I hope they do the same with his Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

>135 alcottacre:. Hiya, Stasia. Great! Thanks for letting me know. Isn’t it terrific? I’m so happy for her. We met her grandmother in Colombia. How wonderful to learn her story. It reads like a novel, doesn’t it.

I’ll pass on the regards and encomium. Enjoy the day!

>136 jnwelch: I have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being! I am going to have to get that one!

>137 jnwelch: It does read like a novel - I pointed out in my 'review' that I found it very accessible. I hope you have a good one too!

1870 "Mother's Day for Peace"

"...Julia Ward Howe felt that mothers should gather

to prevent the cruelty of war and the waste of life..."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

((Sure wish Social Media could send that message Around the World.))

Wild for Austen by Devoney Looser. It’s subtitled “A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane”. The author is a well-known Austen scholar with other Austen books under her belt. This one seeks to dispel the notion that Austen was a cloistered, prim village girl with little exposure to the outside world. Looser’s arguments are effective. Through her brothers and other relatives and acquaintances she got around much more than commonly thought, and her inner fire was often on display.

An authorial tic that annoyed me was Looser’s repeated use of the word “wild” to advance her premise. Among the otherwise skillful writing and meticulous research, it felt surprisingly amateurish. Still, I was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge and the depth of that research.

It was great learning more about a favorite author and her works. I’m re-inspired to dig into her sometimes naughty, sometimes hilariously mean-spirited Juvenalia.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells. It has the humor we’ve all enjoyed, led by SecUnit’s skepticism concerning all things human, sometimes surfacing as distaste (e.g., our constant need for bathrooms) and sometimes an inability to understand (why the attempts to interpret his expression). I was a little disappointed by the somewhat unilinear plot: Murderbot has to rescue humans trapped on a space station from pursuing corporate villains out to capture or kill them. He connives his way through the ginormous space station, hoping to reconnect with an escape shuttle. His rescuees include weak and incomprehensible (to him) children whom he must reluctantly accommodate.

It’s fun, but for me doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of its predecessors.

The Golden Hour by Niki Smith.*. A well-done 235 page graphic story about Manuel, 10-11 years old, who was traumatized by a school shooter, but thought to pull the fire alarm and ended up saving his art teacher. A school project leads to friendship with white farm boy Sebastian and black classmate Caysha, both of whom help Manuel (who is Latin) when he gets triggered by noises or events.

It’s well done - also featuring realistic parents who are open-minded- and I hope it gets found by YAs and middle grade readers. The warm friendships are a highlight.

Darn it. Another double-post.

>138 alcottacre:. Oh good, Stasia. Can’t wait to hear what you think of An Unbearable Lightness of Being. It sent me off on a Kundera tear and he became a favorite author.

Oh, I’ll have to read your review. I think I mentioned previously that she credits Grapes of Wrath for influencing her structuring of the book. I love that.

And she loved getting your regards and appreciation of the book as we texted this morning.😀

>139 m.belljackson:. Hi, Marianne. Mother’s Day for peace makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it. If it’s still appropriate next year (I hope it isn’t) maybe someone will organize it next year and we wise elders can pitch in.

We’re taking Debbi out to her favorite breakfast place. Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you have a great one with that most excellent daughter of yours.😀

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene for $1.99 on e-readers.. The first in the Nancy Drew mystery series. I have fond memories of reading it to our daughter.

Carolyn Keene was a famous pseudonym for a variety of ghostwriters.

“The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) was primarily written by ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson. While published under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, Benson authored 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries, establishing the character's spirited personality. The plot was outlined by Edward Stratemeyer of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.”

>144 jnwelch: Hey Joe - Excellent Daughter gave me a copy of MARTY SUPREME for Mother's Day --

The Ping Pong is unbelievable!!!

Did you look up my daughter online? = Atala Mitchell, near Dad, Roscoe.

>146 m.belljackson: Hi, Marianne. I know you loved Mary Supreme. I saw T Chalomet got nominated for it. Sounds like quite a movie.

Yes, you had me visit Atala on YouTube for what I remember as a teaching session? My marbles aren’t lost yet, but at times they’re difficult to find. She seemed to be a sweetheart.

>141 jnwelch: Murderbot isn't a novelty now, so it can't possibly be as impactful as it once was. And shame on you for using human-based pronouns for poor little Murderbot! You know it prefers to be referred to as the clean, simple, unHuman "it."

>148 richardderus: Good point about Murderbot's un-novelty now, Richard. And it remains a fascinating hoot. I'll also try to wipe away expectations from and comparisons to prior books, and experience new ones pristine-like.

Man, I'm continually inept with pronouns. My intentions are irreproachable, my execution pathetic. I'll keep trying to convince my brain electricity that alertly using new pathways, rather than old worn ones, is important. Thank goodness that LGBTQIA'ers and Murderbots are graciously, if eyerollingly, forgiving.

>150 jnwelch: *tsk* Maybe a set of flashcards...a spreadsheet...you can consult the internet...?

>150 jnwelch:. I shy away from spreadsheets; they make me yawn. But flash cards are a thought, and I’ve heard the internet can be useful.

Who am I kidding with that last one? The internet and Google havee become essential for all those questions that come up, including ones, maybe especially ones, that we once knew the answers to but they since have become elusive wisps. Now I get aggravated when I’ve left my phone elsewhere and I need it for a question I have. We did have lives before these phones existed, didn’t we?

>151 richardderus:. I shy away from spreadsheets; they make me yawn. But flash cards are a thought, and I’ve heard the internet can be useful.

Who am I kidding with that last one? The internet and Google have become essential for all those questions that come up, including ones, maybe especially ones, that we once knew the answers to but they since have become elusive wisps. Now I get aggravated when I’ve left my phone elsewhere and I need it for a question I have. We did have lives before these phones existed, didn’t we?

>153 jnwelch: I don't recall. What the devil did we do without search engines on the internet?

>153 jnwelch:, >154 richardderus:- We had the World Book Encyclopedia at home. The refrain I heard throughout my childhood was "Go look it up".

:-)

LOL--I am trying to put my phone aside more, and do more reading and thinking, but it's so hard when those oddball questions come up.

BTW; did you see the message I sent? We are going to be in Chicago in June, and I'd love to get together if you have time.

>155 jessibud2:, >153 jnwelch: *WHINES* BUT THAT'S WOOOORRRRK

I am also going to be in Chicago in June. I will be in town for the American Library Association Conference. I will be there June 25 - 29th and will be in town with thousands of other librarians.

I just saw that The Violence is the selection this month for Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club. How very cool!

>154 richardderus: 😂. I’m sure, if you don’t recall, we can look up our prior Phone-less existence on the Internet.

>155 jessibud2:. Man, did I grow up with that, Shelley: Look it up! We had a huge Webster’s dictionary that my dad always sent me to for words I didn’t know. When I lamented not making our kids do that, Debbi said, “you were their dictionary.” Could be worse. I guess I was an early version of the internet.😀

>157 richardderus:. I totally grok it, fellow member of the Laziest Whiners Around.

>156 banjo123: Right, Rhonda? Apologies for being a goombah head, Rhonda. I’ve now responded to your DM. I forgot all about LT DMs for a while, and looking it up on the internet didn’t help.🤪

>155 jessibud2: I used to browse our encyclopedia set (ours was the New Book of Knowledge) like people today browse Wikipedia!

>161 foggidawn: - So did I! If it had words, I read it! lol

I have a big dictionary on a stand in my living room. It is open and I often find myself pursing the open page browsing the words.

Today’s Bargains: My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand and A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand, each for $1.99 on e-readers..

The first got a lot of positive reviews when it came out. IIRC, the hard copy was hefty, so it’s a good one to have in e-form.

The second is an homage to Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House that our daughter enjoyed and recommends.

>161 foggidawn:. Browsing the encyclopedia set made me smile, Misti. Good for you. I never tried that for some reason, but I can imagine that being a reading feast for a curious kid.

>158 benitastrnad:. Darn it, Benita. It would have been good to see you. Unfortunately, those are the exact dates we’re taking an Alaskan cruise with the kids and grandkids. Too bad. I hope brother Mark is around.

>159 katiekrug:. Thanks, Katie. Isn’t that cool? Adriana had alerted us and is very honored and excited about it.

>162 jessibud2:. Ha! Spoken like a true book nerd, Shelley. Looking back, I think our encyclopedia set seemed too solemn at a time when I was reading Oz books and Alice in Wonderland. I’d do it for school projects, but not for satisfying curiosity like you and Misti. Kudos.

>163 benitastrnad:. Good for you, Benita. That Webster’s of ours that I mentioned, that my dad would send me to, was ginormous with small print. I didn’t browse the open page like you did; I like the idea. When my dad passed on I got it and still have it.

I’m enjoying Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, a Korean novel about a young woman opening a bookstore and learning to run it properly, and A Cup of Zen by Kai Tsukimi, a collection of Zen short stories. I’m also reading a new poetry collection by Julia Alvarez, Visitations, (I liked a novel by her), and a graphic memoir, Names and Faces by Leise Hook, a biracial (Asian/white) woman writing about figuring out her true identity.

Beautiful day here, sunny and heading heading toward 80F. We’re reading and meditating on the front porch. Because of the roller coaster weather, our azaleas aren’t as spectacular as last year, but the lilacs are gorgeous.

Today’s Bargain: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu for $1.99 on e-readers.. This National Book Award winner is a potent satire of Hollywood’s traditional treatment of Asian actors. Kung Fu Guy is the realistic height of aspiration. But could more be attainable? A deep look into immigration, stereotypes and defying assumptions.

P.S. Most people here have read the unforgettable Jane Eyre, but it, too, is available for $1.99.

I just nabbed the Kindle version of The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by the British-Libyan author Hisham Matar, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. I've read and enjoyed three of his novels, especially My Friends and In the Country of Men, so I was pleased to purchase this ebook for $1.99.

ETA: Our late dear friend Caroline McElwee gave this book 4½ stars, so reading it would be a great tribute to her.

>141 jnwelch: It’s fun, but for me doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of its predecessors. I am in agreement with you there, but I am not at all sorry that I read it :)

>142 jnwelch: Adding that one to the BlackHole!

>144 jnwelch: she loved getting your regards and appreciation of the book as we texted this morning Yay! Maybe one of these days I will get to meet her in person.

>149 jnwelch: I cannot believe how big the grands are getting! Congratulations to Adriana on the success of the book!

>165 jnwelch: I thought The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between was terrific too, Darryl, giving it 4.5 stars. I read it because of Caroline as well.

I hope you have a marvelous Monday, Joe!

>170 alcottacre: Great! I'm glad that you also loved The Return, Stasia. Fortunately the electronic version is still on sale for $1.99.

>169 kidzdoc:. Good morning, Darryl. Thanks for mentioning The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between and this author, who is new to me. Caroline’s review was helpful. On your recommendation, and in her honor, I’ll give it a go in paperback form. I’m glad you found that e-bargain price.

>172 jnwelch: That sounds good, Joe. You may know that I'm particularly fond of well written memoirs and biographies, and this appears to be another one of them.

Joe - Before diving into IN THE COUNTRY OF OLD MEN, you might want to take time to scroll down to my review.
Tastes differ, yes.

>171 kidzdoc: Good! You might as well get a good book on sale, right?

*waving at Joe!*

I picked up a copy of Ann Leckie's book Translation State from the library on Friday. It will be one of the next books I read. Library books get read first and then my own books. I loved the first Imperial Radch books and this one has had positive reviews.

I was surprised that the library had the new book in the series Radiant Star on the new book shelf. I haven't read Provenance yet, so I hope I don't have to read them in order. I guess I will soon find out.

>175 alcottacre: Right, Stasia!

Happy Monday, Joe. The Sultan of Darkness here. As you can tell, we had a great trip. I highly recommend Portugal. I also wanted to mention that I just started the audio The Violence: My Family's Colombian War. I think it was a good choice- Adriana's narration is beautiful.

>176 benitastrnad: Only the Imperial Radch need to be read in order. The other 3 are connected but not strongly and independent (I'm not actually sure about Radiant Star) in plot and characters.

>173 kidzdoc:. Nice, Darryl. That’s a category I don’t often read, biographies and memoirs (although graphic memoirs are popular these days), but I imagine this’ll be among the much-appreciated exceptions, like Crying in H Mart.

>174 m.belljackson:. 👍. Thanks, Marianne.

>175 alcottacre:. 👋. Hi, Stasia! Smart.

>176 benitastrnad:. Ha! .Somehow, I missed Provenance, too, Benita. I share your hope regarding Radiant Star. Yes, her Imperial Radch books are my favorites, too.

>177 kidzdoc:👍

>178 msf59:. Welcome back, o Sultan of Darkness! Good to see you back on campus.

That looked like such a great trip! All the sweeter when you don’t have to return to work, right? Just bask in the memories.

As we texted, so good to hear that about Adriana’s narration. She has a wonderful performance voice. Debbi and I are going to read it again on audio together.

>179 quondame:. Thanks, Susan. I may have goofed on Radiant Star, having not read Provenance. We’ll find out soon enough.

Cheers, Joe! Glad to see how many good reviews from readers are piling up for Adri's book. I keep wanting more to find it, though. Maybe a banner ad over the intersection of Kingsbridge and University Aves here in the Bronx? Lotsa Colombians here, along with venezolanos...or a video ad on one of the bus/parking kiosks. Of course that'd mean a Spanish-language edition....

>180 jnwelch: Ha. I really need to read Crying in H Mart. I understand that it's at least partially set in Philadelphia, and I just happened to visit my local H Mart yesterday, which is less than 10 miles north of the border with Northeast Philadelphia.

>183 kidzdoc:. Crying in H Mart is excellent, Darryl. The author is a member of the indie rock (I guess) band Japanese Breakfast (IIRC), and the beauty of her writing surprised me. It even got me to go to YouTube to listen to their music, which was above my head.😀

>182 richardderus:. Right, Richard? Her book is so good, I want more people to read it. I even include that in my daily post-meditation rumination. I want to stop people on the street and explain why they should give it a try. I’d probably get a “Is this some kind of Jehovah’s Witness thing?” reaction.

Unfortunately, the marketing budget for this “debut author” is close to zilch. Maybe that’ll change with all the positive reactions. I think of The Correspondent which seemed to rise onto the bestseller list (and up it) based on word of mouth. Fingers crossed. 🤞

I like your Bronx idea. There should be a Spanish edition, shouldn’t there? And we’re hoping to get the book distributed in Malaysia for brother Paul.😀

>184 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. The Free Library of America system has 54 copies of Crying in H Mart, so I shouldn't have any problems borrowing a copy of it!

I'll probably visit one of my favorite independent bookshops in Philadelphia on Thursday; hopefully it will have at least one copy of Adriana's book.

>185 jnwelch: I think just sending him a copy's the way forward there. Containerloads of books about Colombia's anti-fscist civil war going to a country not exactly on the liberal end of the political spectrum...kinda not a good idea, eh what? Honestly I'm a little surprised it made the print market here, the way things're shaping up. Felonious yam and henchrats for prison! Put that in your mindfulness/manifestation hopper. Maybe with both of us whangin' away at it the Divine Inbox will prioritize the message. Two post-stroke old white guys oughta make an impression, no?

>186 kidzdoc:. Sounds good, Darryl. If the store doesn’t have a copy of her book, please let me know and I’ll pass it on. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it (and H Mart).

>187 richardderus:. 😂. What a team we are, Richard! I’m sure we’ll be able to apply for wheel chair basketball soon. Seriously, thank you for appreciating her book and championing it. She loved your review - although she refuses to apologize for her family burning records.😀. And she loves the comments here which I try to faithfully pass on.

You’re probably right about Malaysia. Someone here - Stasia? - offered to lend Paul their copy if he comes to the states. Wouldn’t that be a treat?

Today’s Bargain: Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo for $1.99 on e-readers.. I got a big kick out of this one. Great way to learn or revisit Buddhist concepts with funny repartee and a fast-moving story.

>167 jnwelch:, Hi Joe, mate. I really enjoyed this book and over the last 12 to 18 months i have got into Japanese and Korean novels and really enjoy them. Hope all is well with both you and Debbi and the family and send love and hugs to you all from both of us dear friend.

Hi Joe! Crying In H-Mart was so good, and she's from Oregon, so I felt the local connection when I read it. I also loved The Return; so hopefully you will get to it.

I have Adriana's book on hold through my library, and should get it soon.

Hopefully we will be able to connect next month when we are in Chicago!

Today’s Bargains: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin and This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson, each for $1.99 on e-readers. The first is a Baldwin I haven’t read, and the second is about librarians - their lives, their work and their adjustments to tech changes.

>192 jnwelch: FWIW I gave 4½ stars to If Beale Street Could Talk.

>183 kidzdoc: >184 jnwelch: I need to get Crying in H Mart read too. It has been in the BlackHole for far too long. Thanks for the reminder, guys!

>192 jnwelch: >193 kidzdoc: I am echoing Darryl in recommending If Beale Street Could Talk, Joe!

>193 kidzdoc:, >194 alcottacre:. Thank you, Darryl and Stasia! It really helps to get your perspective. I’m on it - if Beale street Could Talk is in my soonish future.

And you’re welcome re Crying in H Mart, Stasia. Can’t wait to hear what you think of it. My mind still boggles at what a good writer she is - I didn’t expect it from an indie rocker. My ignorance, no doubt.

>190 johnsimpson:. Thanks for letting me know, John. I’m nearing the end of Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop and have much enjoyed it. Like you, I have been getting into Japanese and Korean novels. This one was recommended as a book about a bookshop inThis Book Made Me Think of You, along with 4 others I’d already read and liked.

Have you read Before the Coffee Gets Cold? It’s another gentle but engrossing Japanese novel. Debbi and I both liked it, and there are more good ones that follow it.

>191 banjo123:. Hi, Rhonda. The Return: Fathers, Sons is on its way, so I should get to it soon.

Wasn’t Crying in H Mart excellent? Her being from Oregon makes sense somehow - one of the multi-talented people from there. I hope at some point she gives us another book.

Yes, fingers crossed on when you come here before our trip - maybe we can get together at our place if nothing else.🤞

Today’s Bargain: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor for $1.99 on e-readers. . Great book.

>195 jnwelch: If you are available on June 20th, we should be able meet someplace close to you....

>197 banjo123:. 👍. Sounds good, Rhonda. I’ll DM you.

I just bought the Kindle Harvard Classics on Kindle for 99 cents and man does it have a lot:

Vols. 1 & 2: The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Vol. 3:
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Vol. 4: Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott
Vol. 5 & 6: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Vol. 7 & 8: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Vol. 9: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Vol. 10:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Eleonora by Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
The Luck of Roaring Camp by Francis Bret Harte
The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Francis Bret Harte
The Idyl of Red Gulch by Francis Bret Harte
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale
Vol.11: The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Vol. 12: Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
Vol. 13:
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Devil's Pool by George Sand
The Story of a White Blackbird by Alfred de Musset
The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet
The Last Class by Alphonse Daudet
The Child Spy by Alphonse Daudet
The Game of Billiards by Alphonse Daudet
The Bad Zouave by Alphonse Daudet
Walter Schnaffs' Adventure by Guy de Maupassant
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant
The Cripple by Guy de Maupassant
Vol. 14: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by J. W. von Goethe
Vol.15:
The Sorrows of Young Werther by J. W. von Goethe
The Banner of the Upright Seven by Gottfried Keller
The Rider on the White Horse by Theodor Storm
Trials and Tribulations by Theodor Fontane
Vols. 16 & 17: Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Ivan the Fool
Vol. 18: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vol. 19: Ivan Turgenev
A House of Gentlefolk
Fathers and Children
Vol. 20:
Pepita Jimenez by Juan Valera
A Happy Boy by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Skipper Worse by Alexander L. Kielland

Some I haven’t read, some I haven’t heard of, like those in Vol. 20.

May 21, 2026 Poem-A-Day

Correct the Record, Can We?
Adam Falkner

What if I told you he wasn’t that bad?
That you couldn’t smell it on his breath
after all, & that he wasn’t one of the loud ones
the way he is in all my poems? Not at all
like the viral headlines made him seem? What if
I told you he smiled in PTA meetings & never spoke first?
That he sat on the sidelines at little league games
& laughed with other parents? That he loves to sink
his soft hands into soil & clip the crisped
edges of dog-tongue rhododendron leaves because
they make him feel small? What if I told you
he sits in church basements with other white-whiskered
men to talk about how proud they all are of their
gay sons? & the whirling manic I cartoon him to be
in line at the rehab hospital, or barking through
car windows with an open Sauv Blanc bottle
cinched between his khakis—what if I said
that was all mostly for me?

*****

Sometimes I wonder whether my poems about my parents are all mostly for me. They’re never from their POV. Typically they’re my gripes about how they fell short. Seems unfair and unappreciative, I’m realizing. I’ve seen laudatory, grateful parent poems. One of the most poignant.(and funny) is Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard.”

https://share.google/AXQqKvUfQxX0ACdoG

Today’s Bargain: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson for $1.99 on e-readers.. His best book, IMO. Very funny recounting of his hiking on the Appalachian trail.

>199 jnwelch: wow! would keep my book club busy for a decade.

The Nathanial Hawthorne is a gem.

>199 jnwelch: I picked this up in 2023 but haven't looked at it since. According to a quick count, I've read about 13 of those titles years ago. But I think there's a lot more in there, isn't there? According to Wikipedia, the first volume starts with Ben Franklin. Or did you get the fiction compendium?

>202 magicians_nephew:. Right, Jim? Man, that’s a lot of good reading packed in there. Luckily I have read a lot of them, so the task isn’t as daunting as it might be. I’ve been thinking about re-reading Tom Jones, as my memory of it is dimmer than I’d like, so this is perfect for that.

Good to know about the Nathaniel Hawthorne. I find the premise and environs of The Scarlet Letter tedious, and have avoided reading it for lo these many years. But I’m curious to read something by him.

Francis Bret Harte? Sounds like they’re set out west. That’ll be interesting.

>203 ffortsa:. Hiya, Judy. Nice to hear from NYC’s Dynamic Duo. Yes, Harvard Classics is stuffed with, ahem, classics, but there are a number of titles I haven’t read and would like to.

It does sound like I have a different collection than you do. A fiction compendium is a good label for it. It was offered as this crazy-good bargain, and when I saw what all it contained, there was no resisting. Thank you, Harvard. I probably should track down some of its history; it certainly smacks of “what every well-educated person should have read.”

>204 jnwelch: Oh yeah, it's really Bloom's Western Canon, as far as I can tell.

>205 ffortsa:😀. Right. I’ll have to add in some nourishing variety to this reading diet.

>206 jnwelch: Hopefully of the female variety, as there are only 2 works by women in that long list. Exactly what Rebecca Romney points out in Jane Austen's Bookshelf.

>207 kac522:. Yes, it’s dopey, Kathy. Any thoughts on what you’d substitute on the list? Given the content, I’m surprised Jane Austen made it.

Thank goodness we’ve progressed in our thinking since then. It’s too big a project, but it’s tempting to try to create a “Librarything Classics” collection. What would we keep on it from the Harvard Classics?

I’d be voting in favor of Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Old Goriot, and Crime and Punishment, and I’d substitute Middlemarch and War and Peace for Eliot and Tolstoy. Did I miss any? What favorite classics should be on the new list? NOT Poisonwood Bible, please.

>208 jnwelch: English Creek!

I'm sorry to admit that I haven't checked in with you in a long while, Joe. Good to see that you're chuffed about the reception of Adriana's book. I'm looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately according to AI the only Canadian lit festival she appeared at was in Ottawa. (Not sure why that rated.)

Hi Joe, I spent a lot of time culling through the books you read! What an incredible list. Also, I want to thank you for recommending Woods & Words: The Story of Poet Mary Oliver, The entire 40 pages were a gem in the story of her life, and the illustrations were beautiful! I found this one in my local library. I checked it out right away, and I wasn't disappointed.

>199 jnwelch: And yet, another gem in mentioning "I just bought the Kindle Harvard Classics on Kindle for 99 cents and man does it have a lot:"
Thanks, Joe, so much for taking time to list their recommendations! I'm sure it took a lot of effort to type this out.

I'll be back to read this thread more in-depth. It was too beautiful to go through it quickly.

Books Read in 2026

January 2026

1. This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki*
2. Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
3. The Day the Moon and Earth Had an Argument* by David Duff, The Crystal Heart* by Aaron Shephard, and The Knives* by Brubaker/Phillips.
4. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.
5. Drawing on Walls* by Matthew Burgess.
6. Isola by Allegra Goodman. Good but not great story of parentless Marguerite growing up spoiled by her rich circumstances, but still good-hearted, in a medieval castle-type setting, until her guardian uncle sells her lands and takes heron a journey to the New World - Canada. She ends up left on an empty stony island where she overcomes her coddled upbringing and survives under animal and weather duress. She finally makes herway back to France and is reunited with her dear friend Claire, and all turns out well.
7. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. An epistolary novel. The life of in-her-70s Sybil Van Antwerp, as revealed in letters to and from her, and some unsent ones. She mentors a brilliant but socially teenage boy, who lives with her when things are their worst. She spars with her daughter Fiona, both of them longing for a better relationship but can’t figure out how to get it. She reveals all - almost all - to her best friend Rosalie, who has exchanged letters with her since they were little girls. Sybil lost her young son under heart-rending circumstances that broke her family apart and caused her husband to leave her. Now, at her advanced age, she finds herself caught between two men who both want her. And she unexpectedly learns she has a closely similar sister in Scotland she knew nothing about.. Well done and worthy of the popularity it has attained mainly through word of mouth.

8.Twelve Months by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden is back, in another corker of a story. Queen Mab of the winter court has appointed Harry her Winter Knight, and told him he will be marrying Lara Raith, currently head of the White Court of Vampires. Harry is still mourning the loss of Karrin Murphy, a cop who battled alongside him and who reciprocated his love.. Harry., as usual, is not inclined to be easily compliant to authority, but Lara is intoxicatingly beautiful and brilliant in her own right, and Queen Mab has sufficient power to make it stick. Meanwhile, Harry is dedicated to freeing his half-brother Thomas (a vampire) from the clutches of a Hunger demon, and to free Thomas’s kidnapped pregnant wife, too. Lots of good ingredients for a juicy tale, and as usual Butcher manages to blend them into a tasty and satisfying dish.

February 2026

9. Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb. Another solid Eve-Roarke procedural, centered around stolen jewelry and a seemingly unnecessary death. Roarke had connections to the jewelry, and a woman from his past surfaces.

10. Villette by Charlotte Bronte. See review below.

11. A Bride’s Story 15 by Kaoru Mori. In this one we’re mostly in England instead of the Silk Road, as Smith brings Talas home with the intention of marrying her. His parents disapprove, of course, and think she must be from India (she’s from Turkistan, IIRC). They settle in his family’s enormous “cottage”, with sheep for Talas to happily tend. Mori’s drawing skills continue to impress and even improve.

12. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Review below.

13. Anti-Hero by Gregg Hurwitz. Descent into the sordid porn and abuse of women business. During an epileptic seizure in public, Anca is kidnapped by four teenage men who proceed to brutalize and rape her, then sell the film to a porn site. Evan, with the help of his techno-wizard adopted daughter Joey, and former nemesis Candy, rescues Anca, tracks down the young men and brings them to justice via new nemesis FBI agent Naomi Templeton, who’s wiiling to work with him on this. He also straightens out a falling añart billionaire genius, who in turn helps him destroy the porn site that is fomenting the abuse.

March 2026

14. Antarctica by Claire Keegan. Short stories by the author of Foster and Small Things Like These. She was able to convey a lotbin those short novels, and the same happens here. The title story is a masterwork as a woman dissatisfied with her marriage goes on a risky adventure. The author has a knack for ending a story sooner than you’d expect, with perfection, so that you’re satisfied yet your mind carries on the story into what happens beyond. Looking forward to her next novel.

15. Murder in Mistake by Anne Cleeland. Kathleen Doyle once again uses his truth-sorting powers and dream visits from a ghost to help her husband Lord Acton solve a complicated set of murders where veiled motives cause misdirection. There’s a new baby girl who needs breast-feeding, but Doyle handles a busy maternity leave with her usual aplomb. Love this series; always a pleasure to reunite with Doyle and Acton.

16. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.* A competently done graphic version. This story is always appealing, but I kept thinking of the much more magical illustrations of Inga Moore.

17. Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman.*

18. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. The first in a silly fun post-apocalyptic series.

19. The Crossroads by CJ Box. A Joe Pickett mystery in which Joe is in a hospital bed coma for most of it, after an ambush that gave him a bullet wound to the head. His three daughters investigate, which is fun.

20. The Hard Line by Mark Greaney. Another exciting Gray Man adventure. This time Court Gentry, the GM, is working with a team to thwart a Chine attempt to take over U.S. intelligence services with the help of high-up traitors. They send multiple GM-level assassins to kill key intelligence operatives. Among them are two with personal scores to settle with the Gray Man. One targets the GM’s father, which results in the GM and his father teaming up to fight a half dozen trained killers. Another fun thriller in this reliably action-filled series.

21. Please Wait to Cross by our cousin Elissa Bass. I enjoyed her Happy Hour, but this one a little less. Part of that is the inclusion of a somewhat grisly murder scene in an otherwise lightish romance novel. I can definitely see why she did it -it sets up a future valuable section about the main character’s good works, but yhe tonal asymmetry didn’t work for me.

22. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. The first half of this novel about an unhappy academician trying to get tenure at and Oxford/Cambridge-type university had me wondering why the book is revered. (I got it off that BBC Top 100 list). The introduction talks about how much Amis detested the academic environment and hidebound tradition, and it shows. In the second half Jim becomes more sympathetic, and his passive agressivevbattles with forces thst be (the main villain is named Welch, but I didn’t hold that against the book), and efforts to mollify a histrionic romantic interest while also pursuing a level-headed beauty made the reading much more interesting. As impossible as it seemed early on, thigs work out okay for Lucky Jim.

23. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Not my cuppa. An intolerably Christian father who oppresses his wife and daughters, and tries to force his Christian beliefs on African natives (the Congo) without for am minute considering their existing beliefs or, for that matter, their daily lives.

24. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. The self-published phenomenon by a first-time author. A huge bestseller. Theo is a handsome, charming 86 year old man who comes to a small Georgia town, Golden, and keeps information about himself under wraps. He loves a local artist’s portraits of the townspeople and proceeds to buy them bit by bit. He arranges to give their portrait to each subject in exchange for time discussing their lives. In this way he becomes a valued member of the community. I enjoyed the community members and Theo, and Levi deftly mixes it up so it doesn’t get repetitive. Turns out that Theo had quite a life pre-Golden, and has unexpected connections to the town. A well done feel good novel.

25. Becoming Yourself by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki was an influential Zen master and author of one of my favorite Buddhist books. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. This one is a loose collection of transcribed talks Suzuki gave at the San Francisco Zen Center, which my Chicago Zen Center is affiliated with. I love his lighthearted skepticism about all the behavioral rules (e.g. the 16 precepts). His view: they’re important, but don’t overweight them. If you sit (meditate) well and get yourself into the compassionate Buddhist mindset, you’ll be fulfilling them without even thinking about it. The book also has a chapter by his wife about her life with Suzuki, and Suzuki’s explanation of how he learned Zen, and how and why he came to America to teach us Buddhism. Start with Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. If you love it, you’ll want to read this one.

26. The Waves by Virginia Woolf. My goddaughter’s favorite of hers, and one of the BBC Top 100. Very poetic writing; consists of a half dozen or so freeflowing interior monologues interspersed witb lovely descriptions of the sea and shore. Stuctured from sunrise to sunset, it tracks the connected characters as they age from young to old. Explores the growth of identity and aspirations for unity over loneliness. Impressive, but my favorites remain Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One’s Own.

27. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn. This fantasy novel on its face seemed like such a departure for this author of excellent historical novels like The Alice Network, The Rose Code and The Briar Club. But her Afterword makes it clear that she’s been an avid fantasy reader her whole life. She makes good use of that knowledge, as this novel features the ability to enter and live in the books of the Astral Library. This is a godsend for 26 year old Alix, who after being raised in multiple foster homes is eking out a meager existence cobbling together part time jobs, including one at the Boston Public Library. The Librarian in the AL is ancient and dragon- tough, and somewhat reluctantly takes on Alix as an assistant. This lead to adventures in multiple books, as the AL seems to be under a mysterious attack. Wearing the right clothing in books such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice is always an issue, particularly since the library’s funding (of course) has been cut, like every library’s. Luckily Alix’s best friend Beau is a rising fashion design star who can kit her out. Dire dilemmas relating to the attacks keep the book hopping, and it ended up being a very enjoyable diversion in our stressful time. A book lover’s, and fantasy lover’s delight. Given her enjoyment of the genre, I suspect that this is not the last we’ll see of Alix and the AL.

April 2026

28. Oh Brother by Georgina Chadderton. A graphic memoir from Austria about a young girl growing up with a brother very much on the autism spectrum. Rob is mostly non- verbal, so clever that they have combination locks on every door, and sometimes violent. Her parents are great with him, but he affects every aspect of their lives. Taking him to get his haircut or to the dentist is a major operation which he resists. Gina has trouble making friends but makes a good one in Callie, who puts up with Rob even after he bites her. Gina has her own anxieties and difficulties at school, but loves Rob and knows he always has to come first. . From an afterword we know that Rob becomes increasingly difficult, and after he turns 18 is moved to a house that provides proper. Gina learns at 32 that she’s on the spectrum, too. . What I particularly liked about this book is I haven’t often gotten this perspective from a sibling on a spectrum-resider. The graphics were so-so.

29. There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. A VERY high concept sci-fi book about battling a creature who preys on memories.

30. The Violence: My Family’s Colombian War by Adrian’s Es Ramirez.
31. More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa. Liked its “Days” predecessor a lot. The first half was a snooze.💤 Peaceful, but not much happening. The second half took a turn for the much better, with suppressed characters opening up to each other. I ended up glad I read it, and I’ll read more by this author.

32. Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh. Subtitled “Wisdom for Cooling the Fames”, I found it very helpful in trying to defuse and calm down my anger. Mindful breathing, embracing the anger and taking care of it like a loved one, rather than suppressing it or”venting it”. He says the last may give temporary relief, but in the end it just feeds the anger. Lots of good stuff about getting relationships back on track, the roles of parents, and more. Glad I read this one.

33. Transition by Ben Lerner. A disappointment that probably is my fault. Book critics have been robustly supportive of this one, and it basically sailed over my head. Supposedly an examination of memory and digital recording in novel form, it unfortunately did little for me. The most interesting part was when the main character’s daughter had an eating disorder that got straightened out.

May 2026

34. The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst. This cozy fantasy was delightful from beginning to end. It took me back to the first fantasies I read as a lad, and the pleasure I took in them. Clarisa’s boyfriend breaks her heart, and she needs to get away for the summer to heal. Her Aunt Zee needs help at her Vermont Inn, which turns out to have some wonderful secrets and surprising guests. A treat to read.

35. Woods & Words: The story of Poet Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman.

36. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Re-read. Spiritual and Buddhist, but also warmly personal and touching. This was an impressive re-read: not an easy subject to make so appealing.

37. Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood. Like our daughter, I’ve enjoyed this author’s STEM romances. This non-STEM one was just okay.

38. Platform Decay by Martha Wells. It has the humor we’ve all enjoyed, led by SecUnit’s skepticism concerning all things human, sometimes surfacing as distaste (e.g., our constant need for bathrooms) and sometimes an inability to understand (why the attempts to interpret his expression). I was a little disappointed by the somewhat unilinear plot: Murderbot has to rescue humans trapped on a space station from pursuing corporate villains out to capture or kill them. He connives his way through the ginormous space station, hoping to reconnect with an escape shuttle. His rescuees include weak and incomprehensible (to him) children whom he must reluctantly accommodate. It’s fun, but for me doesn’t reach the heights of some of its predecessors.

39. Wild for Austen by Devoney Looser. It’s subtitled “A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane”. The author is a well-known Austen scholar with other Austen books under her belt. This one seeks to dispel the notion that Austen was a cloistered, prim village girl with little exposure to the outside world. Looser’s arguments are effective. Through her brothers and other relatives and acquaintances she got around much more than commonly thought, and her inner fire was often on display. An authorial tic that annoyed me was Looser’s repeated use of the word “wild” to advance her premise. Among the otherwise skillful writing and meticulous research, it felt surprisingly amateurish. Still, I was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge and the depth of that research. It was great learning more about a favorite author and her works. I’m re-inspired to dig into her sometimes naughty, sometimes hilariously mean-spirited Juvenalia.

40. The Golden Hour by Niki smith.*. A well-done 235 page graphic story about Manuel, 10-11 years old, who was traumatized by a school shooter, but thought to pull the fire alarm and ended up saving his art teacher. A school project leads to friendship with white farm boy Sebastian and black classmate Caysha, both of whom help Manuel (who is Latin) when he gets triggered by noises or events.

It’s well done - also featuring realistic parents who are open-minded- and I hope it gets found by YAs and middle grade readers. The warm friendships are a highlight.

41. Out Law by Jim Butcher. A fun outing with Chicago wizard Harry Dresden. Harry is teaching a young apprentice wizard named Fitz, who knows how to create fire and some other things, but is ignorant of a whole lot more. Meanwhile chief gangster Marcone has called in a chip to have Harry help an annoying low echelon gangster, Tripp, go straight. It turns out Tripp is owed $10 mill by a rival gang leader after winning a bet, and the rival would rather kill him than pay it. The rival has a fantastically strong black blob called The Lurker doing what he asks; it gets inside animals and people and takes them over. The rival’s right hand man has the Lurker inside him. Harry, helped by the Valkyrie Bear, has to keep Tripp safe, get the $10 million for Tripp’s legit new charity, and defeat the rival and the Lurker. He figures out a clever way to do that with the help of Demonreach, and at the same time teach both Fitz and Tripp some valuable lessons.. I was very happy to have another Harry Dresden story to read.

42. Night Watch by Kevin Young. One of the best poetry collections I’ve read in a while. I always find it hard to describe poetry collections. I’ll think some more and maybe post an excerpt or two. Meanwhile I’m going to look for his previous collection, Stones.

43. Names and Faces by Leise Hook. A well-illustrated graphic memoir about a biracial Asian/white girl. She’s caught betwixt and between and has trouble figuring out her own identity. She grows up to look white. Her happiest time seemed to be when she was in an international school filled with mixed race children. There nobody thought there was something odd about her appearance.

She explores her Chinese heritage and experiments with her hair, going through a blonde phase. The lack of Asian role models, including in American girl dolls, troubles her mind. It’s all interesting enough, and caused me to think a lot more about what life is like for biracial people. But there is no real resolution. I suspect that there will be a second book covering more of her journey. She appears to marry a white man, so there may be more ruminations not only about her own identity, but that of any children.

44. Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum.A comforting novel about Yeongtsu, a Korean woman who, after divorcing, decided to follow her heart’s desire and open a bookshop in a small town. I enjoyed as she gradually figured out how to make it a success, and found good people to help her. Lots of good book talk, too, and an interesting romance with an author.

45. Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, which it’s a sequel to. This one has a theme of how to handle grief after a loved one’s death or a miscarriage.

46. Creature by Michael Dumanis. Pretty good. What I liked: unexpected images and word combinations, which reminded me a bit of the more skilled poet Dean Young. What I didn’t like. The concluding lines in most poems didn’t pull the poem together or surprisingly jump off from the poem in a striking way. Some talent there, but unfortunately the collection isn’t compelling.

47. Sidetracks by Bei Dao. My review was lost somewhere in the technological back alleys of LT. Suffice to say that these biographical poems over a ten year period - combined thematically into one long poem - make the poet’s life seem quite interesting, and contain some striking images, but overall they/it didn’t grab me. There were a couple of Buddhist poems I liked and tabbed, but that wasn’t enough.

* Denotes a graphic work

Today’s Bargain: Seabiscuit by Lauren Hillenbrand for $1.99 on e-readers. The story of the legendary racehorse, as told by an exceptional storyteller.

>213 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I could take one more paper book off my overstuffed shelves by buying this.

>204 jnwelch: The Bret Harte short stories are as good as anything Mark Twain ever wrote. Shame he is not better know. Go read him and enjoy

>214 ffortsa:. Ha! I get it, Judy. Too often I go the other way, buying a paper copy to keep of one I liked a lot on Kindle. What madness these readers live.

Most of our books are in boxes right now, as we step by step our way to reassembling our basement.

>215 magicians_nephew:. Thanks, Jim. I’ll be more pumped for reading Bret Harte now.

>216 jnwelch: Oh I do recall your basement situation. Hope that resolves soon.

If I had more space, I might keep more paper books, but between my aging eyes and my real estate, it's better on Kindle.

>199 jnwelch: Musset, Daudet, George Sand! Oh how cool I just read a fascinating piece by Emily Herring: https://aeon.co/essays/young-people-now-and-the-mal-du-siecle-of-19th-century-fr...
...detailing how they made it clear we're not living in unprecedented times by any stretch. What we wring our heads about they did too, "le mal du siècle (literally ‘sickness of the century’)" as Herring explains...these writers were Gen Z in the 1850s!

>199 jnwelch: Richard notes George Sand on the list, who I missed, so there are 3 women, not 2. I agree with you to add the Brontes (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall); I'd have both The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch and maybe Adam Bede, too; certainly War and Peace and maybe The Death of Ivan Illych; Les Miserables as well as Notre-Dame from Hugo; something from Thomas Hardy.

>212 jnwelch: Joe, I am reading The Correspondent currently. It is so well written! I'm hooked. Also, I found the illustrations book Woods & Words at my library. You were right, of course, it is beautiful, and the rendering of Mary Oliver's life is so well done. Thanks for recommending this one!

. Today’s Bargain: Sharpe’s Storm by Bernard Cornwell for $1.99 on e-readers. . A very recent entry in one of my all-time favorite series (historical novels). Sharpe has to keep an important rear admiral safe in 1813, during the Peninsular War with France. Cornwell is known for his historical accuracy.

>217 ffortsa:. Thanks, Judy. It’s going to take some time to put the basement back together. There’s a crew for everything. Next is electrical, which got held up by a permitting problem for two weeks. Then insulation and drywall. Step by step. It’ll be a much nicer basement by the time we’re done. We’ll be putting in much-needed cabinets, and Debbi’s been longing to replace the kid messed up industrial carpet for some time now. When the time comes, we’ll get our bookshelves re-installed and unbox those books!

Yeah, NYC is a tough one for book space. I basically had none when I lived in an inexpensive studio there (different times plus rent control). But I worked in a bookstore, so my sanity remained intact. A friend and his wife raised my book-reading goddaughter in a small but nice apartment in lower Manhattan; she had a bedroom wall of books but it wasn’t enough.

>218 richardderus:. Hiya, Richard. I will look up Musset and Daudet, and I haven’t read Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (George Sand). What a many-featured reading life you’ve had! I’ll also give that article a go. Worries about an impending apocalypse aren’t new to us, eh? But I think we’ve got a lock on the most realistically possible one. We certainly seem to be reaching some sort of crescendo.

>219 kac522:. Hey, Kathy. The “Georges”are an interesting hide-the-gender. We’re probably lucky that we don’t have a George Austen.

Mmm, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall surprised me with how good it was. That goddaughter loves it, and that convinced me to try it. What a sibling trio! Nothing like it before or since. A proud time for DNA.

You’re inspiring me with Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede. I did love Middlemarch to pieces.

Tess of the D’ubervilles was most excellent, and would be my Hardy pick.

Thank you for following up on improving the Harvard Classics list. This elevates my day.😀

>222 jnwelch: In my life I've made it a point to read as widely as I can because my readerly family were all interested in different stuff. It was rare for two of us to read the same writer with the same excitement (Anya Seton and Taylor Caldwell were two) but ordinary for us All to read the authors we knew each other loved. Winter LOVED Anais Nin; my mother *hated* her, and I was coldly indifferent; Lynne *adored* Ann Bannon, I thought it was pretty average and Winter was so bored she quit on page 100...and she's a completist; etc etc. It's ingrained in me, and it's been the source of huge numbers of terrific discovery reads.

Kathy's notes deffo improve the 99¢ purchase!

Man, I’m having too many posting problems. I’m going to have to contact the LT techies.

It just lost, for no apparent reason, my review of the poetry book Sidetracks by Bei Dao. It could be worse, because in the end I’m not recommending the book. My last line was something like: “it’s like listening to the biographical songs of a musician a friend is over the moon about (‘you have to listen to this!’) and having them sail over my head while I’m peacefully dozing under an old stone bridge.”

I’m off to find some tech help.

>222 jnwelch: Glad to be of service!
My favorite Hardy has to be The Mayor of Casterbridge.
From my favorite George, I loved The Mill on the Floss until the ending. Adam Bede is thought-provoking. I haven't read Romola, which some call one of her finest, but I have to go with Middlemarch as one of my all-time favorite novels ever.

I read something today about the Harvard Classics, which apparently was originally called Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books and was a 50-volume set published in 1909-1910. There's a long wikipedia article here:

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

The original list doesn't seem to be yours, BUT, near the end of the wikipedia article, you'll see there was a supplement published in 1917 called "The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction" which seems to match the works on your list.

ETA: sorry about the tech problems. I'm finding that if I take too long composing a message, I end up with a double message somehow. I'm also guilty of clicking away to check something and then come back to find everything I did has vanished.

I hope you get your tech problems sorted out, Joe. I type all of my reviews into Word then copy and paste them on LT. Seems to work for me.

>226 Familyhistorian:. Thanks, Meg. I haven’t heard back yet on the tech problems. Fingers crossed that I can post this response to you.🤞

Huh. Interesting approach on reviews, thanks. I’m probably more off the cuff doing them than you. But I’m having problems with every kind of post right now. It won’t Post Message for me, but sometimes when I refresh the page, what I wrote shows up. Sometimes not.

>225 kac522:. Thanks again, Kathy. I probably need to give The Mayor of Casterbridge a go at some point.

Yeah, in poking around it seemed that the “shelf of Fiction is what matched my Kindle Harvard Classics. One of the welcome wonders of e-readers.

Like you, I also started getting double posts. I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ll bring it up with LT when someone contacts me. I didn’t think to associate it with the length of the post.

Ok, let’s see whether I can successfully post this one!

Joe, It certainly is frustrating to have tech issues. Jim is always so good in helping me.

I want to thank you for recommending Mary Oliver! Today, I read Dog Songs. I'm hooked on her beautiful writing style. She doesn't need to use a lot of long-winded words to express her lovely thoughts!

>220 Whisper1:, >228 Whisper1:. Hiya, Linda. I think in the tech frustration I missed responding to your first post. I’m so glad you enjoyed Woods & Words and have become a Mary Oliver fan! She has many beautiful poems that I think you will enjoy. One of my favorites of hers is “Summer Day”:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

*****

Those last two lines, oh my goodness. Worth a lifetime of writing to come up with those.😀. And yay for Dog Songs!

Isn’t The Correspondent a good one? Word of mouth, apparently, got readers’ attention. One of my favorites of the year so far, along with Theo of Golden.

I think Abigail helped me effectively last time I had a problem. What a good staff LT has assembled. I love that they let us know what books they’re reading.

I hope you have a Sweet Thursday! haven’t checked my emails yet; maybe I’ve heard back.

>223 richardderus:. Darn it, RD. I had a good long post to you that LT lost. Arggh! Maybe length is part of the problem? Frustrating.

>230 jnwelch: I've found five lines, then post, is about what I can count on getting the GUI to take. Longer than that and I compose in Google docs, copy, and paste, and that *never* fails.

>231 richardderus:. Good to know, RD. Abigail of LT is working on this, but I may end up using your Plan B. My Ghost Post to you, among other things, was about my surprise that your family members affected each other with their author affections ( your growing-up was even more complex than I imagined), and the way my sisters’ book leanings differ from mine - one spiritual, the other fantasy- and how we do overlap. My parents mainly loved mysteries, and that’s rubbed off on me, as they’re my most common comfort read.

Today’s Bargains: The Synesthesia Experience by Maureen Seaberg and The Second World War by Anthony Beevor, each for $1.99 on e-readers.. I’ve been interested in synesthesia since reading about it in The Mind of a Mnemonist, and WWII remains endlessly fascinating.

>232 jnwelch: It was a weird bunch, fer sher. My father liked Geoffrey Household books if he was going to get fictional, other than that it was newspapers, professional journals, business/self-help...and whatever my imperial whims demanded he read to me.

I look back some days and see exactly why I am who I am.

>232 jnwelch: Joe, I have a question I want to put to our fine LT staff, but can't find the right place to ask it. Sent an email, finally, but maybe someone else knows the issue. I see on my book list that some of my books have references to swap sites. I used to be able to click on that to find which sites were looking for the titles, but that doesn't seem to work anymore. Any ideas? Should I pass this one by DrNeutron?

I finished reading Translation State over the Memorial Day weekend and really enjoyed it. Leckie is such a good writer. The first part of it wasn't all that exciting but it was a good character study and laid the foundations for the last 100 pages. When I got to that part, I couldn't put the book down and spent most of Sunday afternoon reading instead of making potato salad. I will be backtracking to read Provenance asap.

I also have to say that I love the new techie covers on the reissued dust jackets. The colors are so brilliant, but they aren't so neon that they hurt to look at them. The only cover that doesn't work as well as the rest of them is the one on Ancillary Sword. It is yellow and the word sword is in white. That one word doesn't show up as well as the others. But, in general, whoever designed those deserves many kudos. We shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but in this case, it can be safely done, and the reader gets quality artwork and great stories.

Hi all: Apologies for any odd posts you might have seen in this thread. This is just me, testing.

Happy Saturday, Joe. I posted my mini-review of The Violence over on my thread (also on Good Reads). I hope I did it justice. Such a fine read.

I am heading to northern Michigan tomorrow with some birding friends. It is a beautiful and birdy location. We will be back on Wednesday. Have a great weekend.

>239 AbigailAdams26:. Thanks for giving it a go, Abigail. I’ll start a new thread very soon, and we’ll see whether that helps. And, as you and RD both suggested, I’ll start by drafting longer ones on Google Docs and then transferring them here in one go.

Today’s Bargain: Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink for $1.99 on e-readers. . A fascinating account of a people-saving crisis at an overloaded New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

There is indeed a new barebones cafe to hopefully help with technical difficulties. See you there!

>234 richardderus:. Your father was ahead of his time, RD. A diligent reader, but not of books. I come across that a lot these days - especially when someone new finds out I’m a book reader. The most common response is they read a lot, but it’s all online news and the like.

Someone actively interested in books is heaven, of course.

You seem sui generis to me. I wouldn’t have begun to predict your expansive reading and writing from the back in the day you’ve described. 😀

>235 ffortsa:. Hi, Judy. I’ve nothing useful on that; maybe Dr. Jim does. To reconnect with Abigail, I actually used Google. I got tired of looking for the info on LT. I’d never heard of the swapping - if you find out anything interesting, please let us know.

>236 benitastrnad:. You’re way ahead of me on Ann Leckie, Benita. I agree with you about how good an author she is. I still haven’t gotten to Radiant Star; Walter Mosley’s new one, Ghalen, showed up and jumped the queue.

>240 msf59:. Thanks, Mark! I’ll pop over to read your review of The Violence: My Family’s Colombian War. And also putting it on Goodreads is just what Adriana wanted - I did the same. Apparently her publicist is very happy to see reviews on Goodreads. I’m still hoping that word of mouth gets her book some of the success it deserves, like happened with The Correspondent. I’m so glad you liked it!

Oh man, a birding trip in beautiful Michigan. How great! Where in Michigan? I hope you get the same lovely weather we’re having here. Michigan usually does, a day later.