Sunday Morning Book Thread - 06-09-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

(ht: Moron who forgot his nic...)

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...(Now in espresso!)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

This was sent in by a Moron who has forgotten his current nic:

Good morning to you Perfessor!
Here's a link to an interesting article at Power Line Blog on organizing a library where you get to "start from scratch" as it were.
A WORKING WRITER IN A WORKING LIBRARY
I hope you find it interesting.

As libraries go, it's pretty nice. I'll take it over my current arrangement...though I don't have 3500 books yet...

"ONE BOOK TO RULE THEM ALL" -- ARROGANCE FROM IGNORANCE

...always bet the under...

Earlier this week, I received an email from someone hawking their new book. Now, this didn't come to my AoSHQ email account, or even to my personal work account. No, this came to a departmental email account I monitor. I have no idea how we got on this person's mailing list.

You can read the full email message HERE.

It's a very long message, so I won't rip it to shreds from top to bottom. At its core, the author claims to have found himself "unraveling a mystery that defies conventional boundaries" and that he has found a "scientific proof of love." And that's before you even start reading the message.

He begins by stating that meditation, love, and God are all connected to one another and that this connection is "the ultimate tale, the story of all stories." He also says he's the living embodiment of Frodo, Harry [Potter-PS], or any other crafted hero, which shows that he knows nothing about Tolkien even though he use Tolkienien metaphors. Frodo was NOT the hero in Lord of the Rings (he was a failed hero at best).

Here's a quote from his book demonstrating his complete lack of knowledge of all things Tolkien:

None of us really know Tolkien beyond his literary legacy. Who was he when he wasn't crafting epic tales? What were his daily routines, the nature of his conversations, or the simple pleasures and sorrows of his life? Did he have thoughts he didn't express in any of his books? Did he have feelings he kept to himself? Undoubtedly, he did; Tolkien was much more than just the author of his books. However, we only know the stories and when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, there's no role for Tolkien himself in this tale. So, by sending Frodo to the Undying Lands, he subtly reflects on his own mortality. Tolkien may have left our world, but he explores a kind of immortality through Frodo. Stories never truly fade away, and Frodo's journey will continue to live on somewhere forever..."

(NOTE: I have a library copy of Humphrey Carpenter's Tolkien: A Biography sitting on my office desk right now...It has pictures of a young J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith. She was a beautiful woman. I can see why she was the love of his life.)

He goes on a very lengthy pitch about how he's discovered some form of cosmic meditation that allows him to embrace nothingness on an epic scale and thus become a creator, as all creation stems from nothingness. Or something like that.

My absolute favorite part of this long, long email, is at the very end. I'll leave it for you here without comment.

"Atheists say we are gods unto ourselves."
"Religious people say God helps us."
"Couldn't both statements be equally true?"
Joseph Chad Sycamore - One Book to Rule Them All: A Journey to Reveal Life's Unsolved Mysteries through Meditation

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REMINDER ABOUT THE COMMENTS

Although I put some stuff up here about book-related topics that I think may be of interest to you, you are, of course, free to take the conversations in any direction you like. Last week featured extensive discussion about the merits of various Star Trek episodes, alongside conversations about military history. All of that is perfectly OK. I do like conversations to be mostly about books & stories (100 comment rule in effect...) so try to keep most of the political stuff out of the thread, unless it's about a political book, of course. Anyway, the conversations in the comments are far more entertaining than any blather I post at the top of the page....I just post that in case anyone needs a conversation starter...

If anyone wants to send me a guest post, feel free to do so. There are a lot of book genres of which I know next to nothing, so if you have some insights you'd like to share, then I'm happy to post them! Feel free to send me a few paragraphs (300-500 words at most). You can send it to me at perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com (you'll need to translate this into proper email address format).

Carry on and have fun!

BOOKS BY MORON ADJACENT AUTHOR

Frequent commenter and Moron Author Wolfus Aurelius sent me a note about a friend of his who has published some books. Sounds like she is also interested in us as well, as Wolfus pointed her to Ace's website...

One of these days I'll have links to my own work for you to consider for the Book Thread. In the meantime, here are links to the current offerings from a fellow local writer, Rosemary Althoff. They straddle the line between fantasy and SF, and have a distinct Christian bent as well. If you think they are worthy of including on a future Book Thread, Rosemary would be thrilled. I've sent her the general URL for Ace's site and suggested she read and join in. Thanks!
Rosemary's newsletter, FYI
Her first novel in her "A Soul's Warfare" series: The Hot Marble
The second: The Cave Chamber
The third: The Horde Edge

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Re-reading Daniel Flynn's superb A Conservative History of the American Left. Reminded that an American Communism predated Marx in the delusional "phalanx" community projects of the early 19th century. Fascinating how many leading cultural and political figures became swept up in the Utopian lunacy. At the same time the country's immune system seemed stronger than it is today. Will we ever learn?
Posted by: Ordinary American at June 02, 2024 09:38 AM (8YWAH)

Comment: Will we ever learn? Yes, probably, but many people will die before then, unfortunately. The Left is absolutely committed to destroying our past so that we can't remember, but as long as even a sliver of the knowledge of freedom exists, someone, somewhere will be able to claim it again and restore freedom to its rightful place.

+++++

I just started reading 100 Animals That Can F*cking End You by Mamadou Ndiaye.
Folks, if you have never seen this man's YouTube channel "Casual Geographic" you are missing out. And his humor comes through on the book as well.
Posted by: NR Pax at June 02, 2024 09:27 AM (2oSqa)

Comment: Wild animals are just that--WILD. Although that panda bear may be cute and fluffy and look tame, it possesses rather long claws (useful for climbing trees) and is stronger than you are. Orangutans look cute if they are just sitting around eating their lunch, but they can weigh as much as a man and are several times stronger. They can END YOU if you look at them funny. If you see animals out in the wild--particularly large ones like bears or moose--it's best to keep your distance. There are far too many horror stories of people who got close to nature and regretted it--or died. Even the small stuff can be very dangerous, like wasps, spiders, and centipedes (house centipedes are harmless, but they still look creepy). Tree frogs might be colorful, but they possess powerful toxins that native use to coat their darts and spears. Nature is brutal. Have a great day!

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This week I picked up Japan's Asian Allies, 1941-45 by Philip Jowett. Jowett is a prolific Osprey Books author, and I own many of his books on Chinese military history.
The book is quick read on the various "collaborator" groups that fought on the side of Imperial Japan, almost always out of mixed motives. As much as the current generation is incapable of nuance, the fact is that if you're a colonialized people, a different bunch of people who show up and offer you guns will get a fair hearing.
Of course, the Japanese didn't offer independence, just a different oppressor and most of the groups faded down the stretch. Jowett apparently has a much longer series of books on the topic, and I intend to grab the one on China.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 02, 2024 09:22 AM (llXky)

Comment: From my own understanding, it sounds like both the Chinese and Japanese were bastards during WWII, at least from the perspective of those they conquered. Both of them will point fingers at the other and say their opponents were worse. The Japanese of today seem different, but I suspect they still harbor long grudges against the Chinese and the Chinese no doubt do the same. Going back centuries, if not millennia. Now, of course, both the Chinese and Japanese are in demographic death spirals, so neither one may be a viable ethnic group in a few more centuries...and in no position to attempt to conquer the world.

+++++

I was visiting family over the holiday weekend, thus away from my usual books. When I needed a break from socializing, I grabbed my tablet and dug into my digital comic collection. I settled on reading Dragonlance Classics. Now, I haven't read the original Dragonlance novels since high school, but I can confidently report that the comic book adaptation leaves out a lot of material. They just give the story of individual characters: First Riva Silvercrown, then Kalthanan, then Tanis Half-Elven....It actually works pretty well, until our main character meets another 'major' character who's in the middle of their own quest, which the comic-reader knows nothing about. (cough-Raistlin-cough)
Still, the story has been mostly good. The art equally so. The penciler is experienced: great work on figures and facial expressions. But he clearly comes from a superhero background rather than fantasy, so the dragons and other creatures look a little clunkly. And the coloring is peak cell-shading. Everything is a single block of color, letting the linework deal with shadows and such, but they know how to make the characters distinct from the foreground or background. Good Read.
Posted by: Castle Guy at June 02, 2024 09:57 AM (Lhaco)

Comment: I thought this was interesting commentary on the quality of artwork in comics, as well as an acknowledgement that comics can tell stories equally as well as books. Though as Castle Guy points out, all stories can be flawed... In the original Dragonlance novels, there are no characters names Riva Silvercrown or Kalthanan, so they must be original creations for this comic book series. Tanis and Raistlin, of course, are part of the original party commissioned to return the gods to Krynn. When it comes to Raistlin, I think Larry Elmore perfectly captured his image. It just screams, "Yeah, this high priestess of Paladine [the god of Good] is in love with the most powerful evil sorcerer who ever lived. Whatcha gonna do about it, punk?"

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

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Omaha Beach + Normandy landing history books - Links below to PDF's of Official US Army histories of the Omaha Beach attack and the overall Normandy invasion up to the capture of Cherbourg on July 1st. Excellent color maps at the end of each document. More than most here may want to know, but here they are for your perusal.
Omaha Beachhead
Cross Channel Attack
Also, here's the link to the US Army Center for Military History book collections - a LOT of books!
U.S. Army Center of Military History
Posted by: Gref at June 06, 2024 09:06 AM (5fDan)

Comment: Thanks to Gref for posting this on the Morning Report thread this past Thursday!

+-----+-----+-----+-----+

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

After the events of the first two books, Odd Thomas decides he needs to retreat from the world for a bit and is able to find sanctuary in a monastery in the California mountains. At first, he finds the peace he desires, but then he begins to see ominous portents of a catastrophe heading towards the monastery. After one of the monks is killed in a brutal way and another disappears, Odd has to unravel the mysteries surrounding this unusual monastery and stop an evil that threatens to undo creation itself.

Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Odd leaves the monastery to become a wanderer. He's drawn to a small town on the California coast where he meets a young pregnant woman. Upon touching her hand, he sees visions of an immanent apocalypse. Now he only has hours before Armageddon will be unleashed on America. Chased by corrupt cops, Odd struggles to find a way to save not only this small town that has come to mean a lot to him, but also the young woman who needs his help most of all.

JOB: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein

Since my church's men's group decided to study Job this week in our small group meeting, I decided to read Robert A. Heinlein's JOB: A Comedy of Justice. It turns out this doesn't have a whole lot to do with the original story, but it's pretty entertaining anyway. A preacher is swept up into events beyond his understanding as he and his new love interest are transported through parallel worlds, often at the most inconvenient time when Alex/Alec is experiencing a happy moment. Constantly frustrated by these transitions, he struggles to make his way from French Polynesia where all of this began to rural Kansas, where he has roots and may find some answers at last.

It kind of reminds of the 1990s television show Sliders because of how sudden the transitions happen and how the characters of Alex and Margrethe have to readjust after every transition. I also thought it hilarious that the main character was once an undergraduate student at my alma mater, though it's an alternate world variant (he washed out--not good at thermodynamics). I had no idea Heinlein knew my college existed, but there it was in black and white. Pretty cool.

Dragonlance - Defenders of Magic 3 - The Seventh Sentinel by Mary Kirchoff

Lyim survived the collapse of Bastion, the mystical stronghold guarding the passage to the Lost Citadel. He also recovered the use of his arm after it was mangled due to a curse. Now he seeks to destroy the magic of Krynn that he believes has betrayed him. To do that, he will attempt to siphon off the magic from the three gods of magic. Not a very smart plan, as one of the three gods is the god of evil magic. He's not known to be the forgiving sort. Nor is his mother, the Queen of Darkness, the epitome of all Evil. Only one man in the history of Krynn challenged all of the gods and won. Lyim is not that man....

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 06-02-24 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

(Huggy Squirrel is animal 101...)

Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. 99 animals are stalking you...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 Tolle Lege

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 08:59 AM (fwDg9)

2 Nothing again. I'm getting lazy.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 08:59 AM (0eaVi)

3 BOOOKZZZZZZZ

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:00 AM (Ka3bZ)

4 Long comment incoming

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:01 AM (Ka3bZ)

5 Hello, my fellow Librosexuals!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:02 AM (FkUwd)

6 Booken morgen horden!

I went spelunking with KTE for books at a used bookstore and found a treasure.

On a small shelf of angel books was a softcover Fulton J. Sheen Sunday Missal pub 1961. White softcover, gold edged pages, excellent condition, no price. Latin on left pages, English on the right. Pre Vatican II.

When I took it up to check out, the bookseller disappeared behind his wall of books for a bit to price it, then popped back up and said, apologetically, "$39, do you still want it?"

Crestfallen I replied, "I guess not"

"I can give it to you for $30"

KTE, seeing my struggle of stinginess vs booklust, handed me a $20. I gave her $10 back and took the missal, feeling very happy.

It's more than I've ever spent on a used book, but I feel like my guardian angel led me to it.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:02 AM (Ka3bZ)

7 Dutifully called as always
Finished D-Day by Tate, Costello and Hughes
And awaiting sometime today from Amazon
The Guns of Last Light, the war in Western Europe 1944-45 by Rick Atkinson. It's the third book in a series, maybe if it's good will look into the other 2
Saw a link in a article on the anniversary so thought I might see what it's got

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 09:03 AM (fwDg9)

8 Good idea, Perfessor! I like the idea of letting us know about friend books as well as commenters. I'd wager that WA's friend will now become rich as Creases once the sales bump from morons begins.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 09:04 AM (0eaVi)

9
Willowing from last thread: Joey 's morning "breifing" refers to staff changing his diapers.

Posted by: Auspex at June 09, 2024 09:05 AM (j4U/Z)

10 Good morning fellow Book Threadists. I hope everyone had a great week of reading.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 09:06 AM (zudum)

11 I love the Odd Thomas books

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (Ka3bZ)

12 Good morning horde. Thanks for the great content as usual Perfessor.

100 animals that can end you might as well be a travel guide to Australia where everything can and wants to kill you.

Posted by: TRex at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (IQ6Gq)

13 Morning, 'rons and 'ronettes.

Time for a second cup of tea.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (Q0kLU)

14 Still reading the Oppenheimer book, American Prometheus

I'm up to the part where Oppenheimer makes some questionable frinds and brushes up against Communism Lite

or Diet Commie, if you will

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (/7KEl)

15 Vmom, that was a good score! The regrets would have drawn a tear from any book lover.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (FkUwd)

16 I did not read this week.

Posted by: rhennigantx at June 09, 2024 09:08 AM (ENQN6)

17 You can read the full email message HERE.

Wow, did you read all that? Looks like he wrote two books. Bor-ring.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 09:08 AM (OX9vb)

18 Is the squirrel looking for advice?

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 09, 2024 09:08 AM (p/isN)

19 I'm up to the part where Oppenheimer makes some questionable frinds and brushes up against Communism Lite

or Diet Commie, if you will
Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 09:07 AM (/7KEl)
---
That's the one with a third less work camps than your regular Communism.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:09 AM (llXky)

20 Bit of Heinlein synchronicity today: I am reading (for the first time, no less!) Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_. Awesome book.

I think you could call it Heinlein's love letter to Rudyard Kipling. Our young protagonist Thorby starts out a beggar and a slave on a primitive world, then gets adopted by an older beggar who is pretty obviously a spy, then ships out on a family-run trading starship and learns the ways of _that_ culture, then does a stint in the space navy, which leads to him finding his true identity as the scion of a powerful family on Earth. Kind of Kim meets Captains Courageous with a dash of David Copperfield.

As I said I somehow missed this one during my prime Heinlein-reading years in the previous century. Turns out I have a new favorite Heinlein novel at the age of 58!

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (78a2H)

21 Oh, hey, my comment got featured....Wow, I had no idea the Dragaonlance comics were THAT far off from the novels....Well, I guess that means the novels will still be a surprise if/when I go back to read them again!

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (Lhaco)

22 I promise not to bring up anything Trek unless germane to books. It'll be hard, though.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (FkUwd)

23 >>If you see animals out in the wild--particularly large ones like bears or moose--it's best to keep your distance. There are far too many horror stories of people who got close to nature and regretted it--or died.

Indeed! The National Parks Service's instagram account is constantly reminding people of this, with great humor.
https://tinyurl.com/4ppajy7n

Another book about this, specifically regarding mountain lions, is Dave Baron's "The Beast in the Garden."

Posted by: Lizzy at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (cCVOS)

24 Perf, maybe it's someone inside your work group. It reads like AI, or someone playing a joke on you. Is the book real?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (0eaVi)

25 I felt like laughing, so off the shelf came "Fresh Lies," a collection of columns in the late '80 and early '90s by James Lileks, later known for his complaints about fruit and vegetables in Jell-O. (Mom put shredded carrots in orange Jell-O; I liked it.)

Some of what I've read is now outdated, although I still laughed at Lileks' mention of a cabbie playing a tape of his favorite band, Smite the Infidel.

And I credit him with coining the phrase "flavor mining" -- digging only one flavor out of swirled ice cream.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (p/isN)

26 Although that panda bear may be cute and fluffy and look tame, it possesses rather long claws (useful for climbing trees) and is stronger than you are.

You know, of course, that there is a trashy movie called Pandasaurus.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:11 AM (Q0kLU)

27 Silly atheists will they be in for a surprise

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:11 AM (PXvVL)

28 and I still don't understand quantum theory

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 09:12 AM (/7KEl)

29 My other used bookstore finds:
Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions by T.W. Doane 1942 reprint of 1882 monograph - $1

Women in the Old Testament 1997 by Sr. Irene Nowell, O.S.B. - $4

Illustrated Guide to Bible Battles by Stephen Leston 2014 - $9

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:12 AM (Ka3bZ)

30 I love fringe science, especially the intersection of Nazis, aliens, and Antarctica. But some supposedly fringe science makes me think Wellll......maybe? I'm intrigued by the notion put forth by folks like Graham Hancock that civilization is far older than we imagined, but suffered a climactic catastrophe.

Robert M. Schoch posits in "Forgotten Civilization" that extreme solar outbursts and accompanying plasma discharge in our past ended the Ice Age by triggering massive floods, earthquakes, volcanic activity, and torrential rains that abruptly ended earlier cycles of civilization and set mankind back thousands of years.

The really interesting part was his idea that such an event would significantly decrease the ozone layer and subject living things to harmful levels of UV light. Could this explain all the underground dwellings and churches carved into rock? To stay protected from the harsh rays during daylight hours?

Here he is on Joe Rogan's show discussing water erosion on the base of the Sphinx, which he says indicates that by its age is far, far older than previously thought:

https://tinyurl.com/4c8wznkj

I love Rogan's podcasts; it's like a stoner symposium.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:12 AM (FkUwd)

31 Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:02 AM (Ka3bZ)

Vmom, if pre-V2 stuff appeals to you, I would suggest checking out the monthly missal / devotional Benedictus:

https://praybenedictus.com

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (Q0kLU)

32 Good idea, Perfessor! I like the idea of letting us know about friend books as well as commenters. I'd wager that WA's friend will now become rich as Creases once the sales bump from morons begins.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024

***
Heh, heh, heh. No, this is not *that* writer!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (omVj0)

33 Wow, did you read all that? Looks like he wrote two books. Bor-ring.
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 09:08 AM (OX9vb)
---
The curse of our age is an overabundance of information combined with a society that pushes self-esteem as the cure to all of life's hardships. The result is a vast segment of the population knows nothing but thinks it knows everything.

It pops up everywhere, but is particularly obnoxious in the realm of religion and philosophy, where you get dummies who make sweeping assertions about a topic without knowing anything practical about it. Thus: "I didn't read anything about Tolkien's amply-documented life, but here's what I think...'

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (llXky)

34 I finished "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham (subject of some discussion here recently). As opposed to The Day of the Triffids or The Kraken Wakes it's a lot less apocalyptic (the apocalypse having happened many decades before).
It concerns a rural community obsessed with purity, where physical deviations from the norm are not tolerated.
The narrator is a young man who deviates not in the physical sense in the mental--he and a group of similarly aged folk are telepathy who can communicate with each other over several miles.
They have to be constantly on their guard, but for most of the book things proceed leisurely. I'd call it pastoral science fiction.
The last third picks up quite a bit but overall I found it an interesting read.

Posted by: Beckoningchasm Phone at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (zbHus)

35 "Atheists say we are gods unto ourselves."
"Religious people say God helps us."

"Couldn't both statements be equally true?"

*thinks back to Symbolic Logic class*

No, they couldn't. Next question.

Posted by: Dr. T at June 09, 2024 09:14 AM (jGGMD)

36 The regrets would have drawn a tear from any book lover.
Posted by: All Hail Eris

Right?

KTE said later if I hadnt bought it she could imagine me scrolling thru ebay and abebooks muttering "$90! $200!"
Lol

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:15 AM (Ka3bZ)

37 WA's friend will now become rich as Creases once the sales bump from morons begins.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 09:04 AM (0eaVi)

*snort

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 09:15 AM (OX9vb)

38 I suppose we have all given up on Ace writing this review, or else I missed it. In 1901, Arthur Conan Doyle published the first installment of The Hound of the Baskervilles . Sir Charles Baskerville has died mysteriously in his garden, and rumors of a huge demonic dog being the culprit sends Sherlock Holmes on his latest quest. Henry Baskerville, nephew and only heir, has been living a simple life in Canada and is arriving to claim his inheritance. Holmes and Watson come to the hall to accompany Henry and investigate the mystery. As they arrive, they note police are manning roadblocks to search for an escaped murderer from nearby Dartmoor. In this somber atmosphere, Holmes and Watson begin collecting clues. Between the odd behavior of butler Barrymore and his wife, and neighbor Stapleton, the men are entwined in the dangerous game of determining how Charles died, and whether danger lurks for Henry. Is there really a curse on the Baskerville family? Most Holmes tales are short stories, but The Hound of the Baskervilles is a full length novel, and was written relatively late in the series. Despite the length, there is no filler here. The story flows well, and shows Doyle at his peak.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 09:15 AM (aoVP+)

39 https://praybenedictus.com
Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing

Oooh, thanks!

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:16 AM (Ka3bZ)

40 "The curse of our age is an overabundance of information combined with a society that pushes self-esteem as the cure to all of life's hardships. The result is a vast segment of the population knows nothing but thinks it knows everything."

Sophomores, all. Literally "wise fools"

Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:16 AM (Gse2f)

41 Watched the Oppenheimer movie everybody raved about so much. I think Christopher Nolan layered on a whole lot of cool movie director-y stuff and nifty editing and impressive effects in order to distract people from the fact that his hero was a traitor and a bastard and a liar, since we're not allowed to say bad things about American communists any more.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 09:16 AM (78a2H)

42 Okay, this past week I read "Berserk: The Deluxe Edition Volume 1," (because I got it at a steep discount at Walmart) and I need to vent about it. Probably for several comments.

There are two lead characters in the story: Guts and Puck. Guts is an angry, embittered loner, who wanders the land in search of demons to kill. He doesn't care much about other people, or their problems. In fact, he actively dislikes most people he meets. He isn't a hero, just a guy with a noble goal. The kind of protagonist you might expect for a grim-dark story.

Puck, on the other hand, is the unwanted sidekick that has invited himself along on Guts' journey. He's a tiny naked fairy-elf-thing that looks and acts like he's from a cartoon meant for pre-schoolers. He's annoying, inane, and ruins every scene he's in. Which sucks, since he's in practically all of them. I hate him, and find him more immersion-breaking than the most stilted and awkward 60's-era superhero-comic dialogue...

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:17 AM (Lhaco)

43 Job: A Comedy of Justice I read originally when it came out in paperback, in the Eighties. And I've reread it many times. Heinlein possessed that rare ability among writers, the skill of scooping you up and almost *forcing* you to keep reading. The other day I happened to dip into that particular book for a quote to use here, and found myself reading on beyond that point. And this is even though I know what's coming and how it will all work out.

RAH seemed to have this ability even from the start in his short stories for Astounding in the Thirties, too.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:17 AM (omVj0)

44 Two chapters into Frederic Wakeman's book Policing Shanghai 1927-1937. He sets the stage by briefly recounting Qing dynasty policing methods and late reforms. So, the beginning of the book is ~1870 forward.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 09:17 AM (5mIwL)

45 Commented on Miller's thread re: that working library -- in a number of the photos you can actually read the titles. I hate photo spreads on writers' work spaces and libraries that don't give you a clear view of WHAT THE BLEEP IS ON THE SHELVES. I'd like to see a Jill Krementz kinda photo book of writers' libraries that show me not just the room but the shelves -- nice clear photos that show the titles.

Yeah, I'm nosey -- if I'm visiting somebody, I look at the shelves.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 09:18 AM (q3u5l)

46 Is the squirrel looking for advice?
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 09, 2024 09:08 AM

The squirrel is laughing at them.

Posted by: RedMindBlueState at June 09, 2024 09:18 AM (Pa5Jp)

47 I read Dark Voyage by Alan Furst. This is the eighth book in the Night Soldiers series of WW II spy novels. After its captain, Eric DeHaan is recruited by the British Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy, the Dutch freighter Noordendam is repainted in the colors of a shipping company in neutral Spain, flies the Spanish flag, and is renamed the Santa Rosa. She participates in landing British commandos, but her last voyage is to deliver detection equipment to the Swedish coast in order to track German submarines. After delivering the equipment, things go awry and this becomes the last voyage of the Noordendam. A thrilling spy and escape story.

Posted by: Zoltan at June 09, 2024 09:18 AM (gyCYJ)

48 God is love.
Love is blind.
Stevie Wonder is blind.
Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:18 AM (Gse2f)

49 There are some good nuggets in the interview with Stephen Hayward about his library. Everyone has their own system, but how do you organize your books on the shelves? Your system may not work for others, but it has to work for you (presuming you have a system).

Posted by: TRex at June 09, 2024 09:19 AM (IQ6Gq)

50 I really want to mock that letter Perfesser got, but I shan't.
I absolutely shall not.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:20 AM (Ka3bZ)

51 To quote Tolkien's best friend: "Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" If that twit had read "On Fairy-Stories" even once, he'd know exactly what the Professor would say about the idea that humans can create ex nihilo.

/stops self before going into a full rant on the subject that would include The Cloud of Unknowing and Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum

/grouchy medievalist

Morning, all.

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at June 09, 2024 09:20 AM (LLJRz)

52 Most Holmes tales are short stories, but The Hound of the Baskervilles is a full length novel, and was written relatively late in the series. Despite the length, there is no filler here. The story flows well, and shows Doyle at his peak.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024

***
I submit it is the single most filmed Holmes story. There is great visual potential in it, and action as well.

Pretty sure ACD wrote it during the period after Holmes had officially died, but before he was "resurrected." HI spublic kept demanding Holmes stories, and Doyle complied.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:20 AM (omVj0)

53 @41. Oppenheimer the man was too complicated to put into simple categories, especially "traitor," which is why Nolan thought he'd make for an insteresting biopic.

Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:22 AM (Gse2f)

54 (More ranting about Berserk)

Reading the first Berserk story is like reading/watching an adventure of Conan the Barbarian, but with Bluey tagging along.....No, that might be unfair to Bluey. That cartoon has a reputation of actually taking its topics seriously....

Reading the first Berserk story is like reading/watching an adventure of Conan the Barbarian, but with Spongebob Squarepants or Ren and Stimpy tagging along. Every time the audience sees Conan do something cool, they also have to deal with a cartoon character in the background, making meme-faces, overreacting, or saying something stupid.

It makes the story impossible to take seriously.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:22 AM (Lhaco)

55 This book doesn't even mention kitty cats or Jack Russel Terriers.

Posted by: The squirrel at June 09, 2024 09:23 AM (xcIvR)

56 Ioh also just borrowed Blood Money by Peter Schweizer
I'm surprised he hasnt been thrown into FJB's gulag yet

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:23 AM (Ka3bZ)

57 Wonder where Doyle got the inspiration about a mad dog for a story with Sherlock Holmes.

Posted by: dantesed at June 09, 2024 09:24 AM (Oy/m2)

58 Watson is Mulder
Holmes is Scully

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:25 AM (Ka3bZ)

59 Good morning all.
Still tired from yesterday's festivities. Sometimes it is hard being 29 over and over.
Still waiting for new releases from so,e of my favorite authors so read another Spenser from Robert B Parker titled Playmates. Spenser gets hired by a mythical college in MA(naturally) to find out if someone on their star basketball team is shaving points. The team has one of the best players in the country and it is headed to the big tournament so a rumor of point shaving could be devastating.
I like this one quite a lot. Parker's characters Spenser, Hawk and Susan are ver well defined at this point and work well as a team. There are a couple of twists that made the story more interesting.
Seems Parker is getting better at it.😉

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 09:25 AM (t/2Uw)

60 As for my own reading, I'm deep into Nevil Shute's third novel, Ordeal, from 1939. Written and published before WWII began, it focuses on a young couple in Britain with three children who find themselves in the middle of a war with an unspecified European power (though he does mention Mussolini and Hitler in passing). The couple have to bug out from their suburban house in the south of England and take refuge on their small sailboat. Lack of food and water, and milk for the baby, drive them to sail to the Isle of Wight, and farther afield yet.

This, without being science fiction, is a kind of precursor to the English apocalypse SF novels done in the Fifties by John Christopher and John Wyndham. It focuses on the effect of these events on one family. Good so far!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:25 AM (omVj0)

61 "Atheists say we are gods unto ourselves."
"Religious people say God helps us."

"Couldn't both statements be equally true?"

No. We are not gods. To believe this is folly and leads to cruelty.

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 09:26 AM (Zzbjj)

62 Heh, heh, heh. No, this is not *that* writer!
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (omVj0)

Nah, didn't think so. Because you said she was a friend.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 09:27 AM (0eaVi)

63 In the days BK (before Kindle), my bookshelves ran pretty much alphabetical by author. Worked okay, but as my shelves were always pretty full adding a new writer or more than one or two new titles by writers already present got to be a pain. These days, with a lot of print replaced by ebooks, I just keep a writer's titles together without trying to do anything alphabetically. Some day I'll tinker with the collections groupings on the Kindle so that some of 'em aren't so unwieldy.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 09:27 AM (q3u5l)

64 Bought a couple of books on kindle, but right now am reading Germany 1923 by Volker Ullrich, who recently completed a new 2-volume bio of Hitler. It's the oft-told story of 1923 - the faltering Weimar Republic, the Ruhr occupation, the hyperinflation, the Beer Hall Putsch - but Ullrich is a good storyteller and also has access to much more documentation than earlier writers.

My only quibble is that the constant barrage of different parties pile up in the mind and it's nearly impossible to know which one is supporting the Republic and which tryig to finish it off.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:27 AM (Q0kLU)

65 Two chapters into Frederic Wakeman's book Policing Shanghai 1927-1937. He sets the stage by briefly recounting Qing dynasty policing methods and late reforms. So, the beginning of the book is ~1870 forward.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 09:17 AM (5mIwL)
---
There's a .pdf version of Sykes and Fairbairn's manual for the Shanghai police. Quite interesting and makes some good points about using safety catches, shot placement vs caliber, etc.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:27 AM (llXky)

66 50 I really want to mock that letter Perfesser got, but I shan't.
I absolutely shall not.
Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:20 AM (Ka3bZ)

Go for it. It's from a budding satanist

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 09:28 AM (Zzbjj)

67 Steinbeck wrote about being a youthful fan of "phalanx theory." See, "Steinbeck, a Life in Letters." He was also a degenerate murderer. See what he wrote about a "miserly" victim of his in, "America and Americans." He left his second wife to care for his two little boys as he traveled for months to the U.S.S.R. to write a commie travel guide, "A Russian Journal," in which he extolled the beauty of young communettes.

Posted by: Marooned at June 09, 2024 09:28 AM (kt8QE)

68 Everyone has their own system, but how do you organize your books on the shelves? Your system may not work for others, but it has to work for you (presuming you have a system).
Posted by: TRex

I organize quite generically. Modern fiction, classics, history roughly by region, and technology each have a more or less separate section. My reference books like Jane's and atlases are mostly large and occupy the bottom rows.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 09:30 AM (aoVP+)

69 Recall the hyperinflation was a shock but it eas the deflation and the calamitous collapse of the german economy after 1931 that discfedited bruening as hunger chancellor then stalin went after the social democrats

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:30 AM (PXvVL)

70 You know who you are.

Posted by: Bob from NSA at June 09, 2024 09:30 AM (a3Q+t)

71 (More comments about Berserk, but slightly less rant-y)

The final chapter of the first Berserk Deluxe Edition starts a new story-arc (not the best way to break up a serialized story) which thankfully has none of the mood-killing Puck. Instead, the story-arc is one big flashback, dealing with the early life of the main character, Guts. Alas, because this is a grimdark series, the mood of the chapter is relentless bleak. At least until the end, where it becomes downright disgusting. (That last panel: ick!) It's....not a fun read.

I doubt I'll be continuing with the series. Between the anime-tisms and the general mood of the story, I just don't see myself ever wanting to re-visit the setting. My shelf-space is too limited to waste on stories that are barely worth reading.

...Which is why I keep vacillating on the GI Joe comic collected editions up on kickstarter. The series has a great reputation, but I just don't have a natural interest in the franchise...

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:31 AM (Lhaco)

72 Would they have prevsiled doubtful against the communists as ot was in the spanish republic

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:31 AM (PXvVL)

73 Semi-willowed from last week's discussion of China and very germane given the lead-in letter, it is important when reading military history of various regions to know the full context.

For example, Chiang Kai-shek's decision to breach the dykes of the Yellow River and stall the Japanese advance seems self-defeating to Westerners, but there was ample precedent in Chinese history.

There are similar problems when discussion his generalship. The vast majority of people commenting on it have zero idea of the kind of logistical constraints the Nationalists were under. Let me give a simple example. The Hanyang Arsenal - China's premier facility - took 40 years to produce 1 million rifles. Springfield Arsenal cranked out 5 mllion M1 Garands in about five years. (con't)

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:32 AM (llXky)

74 I miss Sliders. A non book take, but hey, it was brought up… : o )

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:32 AM (8sMut)

75 One thing I think am realizing digging into D-Day invasion is I am not anymore in the it was a close run and could have failed. The Allies planned extremely well with ruses, strict planning, material delivery, bringing their own harbors with them, air superiority planning a year ahead , that they had a overwhelming chance to break into Normandy. Looking at the 5 beach landings only 1 was close for 6 hours or so. Maybe a year later it could be different but at that time it was inevitable.

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 09:32 AM (fwDg9)

76 Rosemary, the lady whose books I mentioned to the Perfessor, said she would try to stop in here this morning. But her husband is a pastor, and she normally goes to church on Sunday morning anyway, so she may not have much time.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:33 AM (omVj0)

77 Someone on a site that is looking to limit sexually explicit content, etc. in school libraries is challenging "The Handmaid's Tale" and "A Stolen Life". The form asks for suggested alternatives for these books.

Any suggested books, considering that this is for a school library?

Posted by: KT at June 09, 2024 09:33 AM (rrtZS)

78 I also read The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst. This is the ninth in the Night Soldiers series. Carlos Weisz is an Italian working in Paris for Reuters as a foreign correspondent covering Spain, Paris, Berlin, and the Balkans in 1939. He is also on a committee publishing Liberazione, an anti-fascist newspaper they smuggle into Italy. There is a mole in the committee working for OVRA, the Italian secret police, and soon a series of misfortunes occur to its members and to its meeting place. After doing their own detective work and discovering the mole, they are recruited by British intelligence to set up printing in Italy and a larger distribution network. Weisz has to go to Italy to make it happen and is lucky to escape with his life.

Posted by: Zoltan at June 09, 2024 09:33 AM (gyCYJ)

79 I started reading some of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and was struck by how he combined aspects of Aristotle's ethics with Catholic doctrine, using the appeal of ancient authority and philosophy and church tenets in a waya that reinforced the benefits of both. (This is a VERY simplified description.)

Then I realized I hadn't read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics or anything else by him for decades. A trip to the used bookstore and I now have most of Aristotle's works as well as Plato's on the shelf. Time to refresh the foundations. Part of my interest is seeing how the influences of Aristotle and Plato have echoed through the centuries for religion, literature, culture.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 09:34 AM (zudum)

80 Vmom, if pre-V2 stuff appeals to you, I would suggest checking out the monthly missal / devotional Benedictus:

https://praybenedictus.com
Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (Q0kLU)

Is that sent in hard copy? I despise reading stuff online, but if they send the missals in paper form, I would like that.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 09:34 AM (OX9vb)

81 No. We are not gods. To believe this is folly and leads to cruelty.
Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 09:26 AM (Zzbjj)

Say what?

Posted by: Communists at June 09, 2024 09:34 AM (8sMut)

82 Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:17 AM (omVj0)

Wolfus, I remember you and I trading opinions about Job: ACoJ in this very thread a few years ago. Neither of us has moved an inch.

Posted by: Oddbob at June 09, 2024 09:35 AM (/y8xj)

83 (con't) People equate China with Russia because they're both big and have lots of people, but China was far less developed and had a miniscule industrial capacity - even less after Japan seized the coastal cities. Total rifle production from 1939-45 was probably only 400,000 units. Hard to fight a war without weapons. Thus, Nationalist armies were actually quite small, which is how the Japanese could contain them. The chief struggle for Chiang Kai-shek was simply to keep a force in the field and prevent China from collapsing back into warlords - who made up a significant proportion of "collaborator" armies.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:35 AM (llXky)

84 Wonder where Doyle got the inspiration about a mad dog for a story with Sherlock Holmes.
Posted by: dantesed at June 09, 2024 09:24 AM (Oy/m2)

According to William Baring-Gould's notes in his magesterial The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, the story "arose from a remark by that fine fellow. . .Fletcher Robinson*, that there was a spectral dog near his home in Dartmoor. That remark was the inception of the book, but I should add that the plot and every word of the actual narrative was my own."

*a fellow author; Doyle apparently thought of asking Robinson to collaborate on Hound, but changed his mind when he decided to turn it into a Holmes story.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:35 AM (Q0kLU)

85 Pretty sure ACD wrote it during the period after Holmes had officially died, but before he was "resurrected." HI spublic kept demanding Holmes stories, and Doyle complied.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius

Yes, Doyle was offered an obscene amount of money to resurrect Holmes, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes was the result.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (aoVP+)

86 Well many of the top german officers were on leave hitler was not actively engaged as relayed in the longest day it seemed madness to the high command

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (PXvVL)

87 Historic action series like Master and Commander, Sharpe and especially Flashman should be manadatory reading for HS boys. Making them read Pride and Prejudice is a hate crime.

Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (Gse2f)

88 I finished "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham (subject of some discussion here recently). As opposed to The Day of the Triffids or The Kraken Wakes it's a lot less apocalyptic (the apocalypse having happened many decades before).
It concerns a rural community obsessed with purity, where physical deviations from the norm are not tolerated.
The narrator is a young man who deviates not in the physical sense in the mental--he and a group of similarly aged folk are telepathy who can communicate with each other over several miles.
They have to be constantly on their guard, but for most of the book things proceed leisurely. I'd call it pastoral science fiction.
The last third picks up quite a bit but overall I found it an interesting read.
Posted by: Beckoningchasm Phone at June 09, 2024 09:13 AM (zbHus)

Yes.

I'd call Wyndham's writing "Cosy Horror' or "Cosy SF".

There is very little panic or hysteria. Everything happens or is presented under the aegis of rationality in the main characters. ie. Just how do we solve this/these problem/s?

I like his novels quite a bit.

(con't)

Posted by: naturalfake at June 09, 2024 09:37 AM (eDfFs)

89 Last week I finished A.J. Cronin's The Green Years, about a young lad (the narrator) born of Scots and Irish parents. The parents die in an accident, and at age eight he is brought over to Scotland to be raised by his grandparents. The tale begins in about 1903, and sweeps on to about 1913, chronicling his boyhood adventures and crises, his relationship with his great-grandfather, who lives in the house with them all, his first love, and his fall to great depths of depression. Things turn up, though, and the ending, quite satisfying in itself, hints that there was to be a sequel. Was there?

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:37 AM (omVj0)

90
I think my bookie is no longer taking bets on the Tolkien Over./Under line.

(bookmaking related comment)

Posted by: Muldoon says anatomy is not gross. at June 09, 2024 09:37 AM (991eG)

91 64 Bought a couple of books on kindle, but right now am reading Germany 1923 by Volker Ullrich, who recently completed a new 2-volume bio of Hitler. It's the oft-told story of 1923 - the faltering Weimar Republic, the Ruhr occupation, the hyperinflation, the Beer Hall Putsch - but Ullrich is a good storyteller and also has access to much more documentation than earlier writers.

My only quibble is that the constant barrage of different parties pile up in the mind and it's nearly impossible to know which one is supporting the Republic and which tryig to finish it off.
Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:27 AM (Q0kLU)

I still consider Richard J. Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich one of the best histories of the era that I have read.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (8sMut)

92 I think it was Vmom mentioned Ilona Andrews last week and when I finished a book before I was ready to sleep, went to her website. She has lots of free short stories from a number of her different story lines. The perfect time of night for a short story. 😴

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (t/2Uw)

93
Wolfus, I remember you and I trading opinions about Job: ACoJ in this very thread a few years ago. Neither of us has moved an inch.
Posted by: Oddbob at June 09, 2024

***
Did we? Did you like it?

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (omVj0)

94 Is that sent in hard copy? I despise reading stuff online, but if they send the missals in paper form, I would like that.
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 09:34 AM (OX9vb)

Yes, once a month ($5 per copy) and a prayer card is included. It's designed for you to use if you attend a Tridentine Mass.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (Q0kLU)

95 The works of the late, great Avram Davidson (1923-1993) are becoming available again thanks to the work of an outfit called "Or All The Seas With Oysters Publishing" (named after one of AD's most famous short stories). This company is headed by Seth Davis, Avram Davidson's godson. They are publishing in both ebook and printed form. The ebooks are free with Kindle Unlimited or can be bought at reasonable prices.

As well as republishing books that saw print during Davidson's lifetime they are also publishing material that either went uncollected or was never published at all. A good example of the latter is "Dragons In the Trees" Davidson's account of a trip he took to the country then known as British Honduras (now Belize) in 1968-1969. This is both very readable in its own right and interesting as the source material for the fantasy stories he later wrote of the adventures of Jack Limekiller, a Canadian expatriate in "British Hidalgo" (collected under the title "Limekiller").

For those who are not familiar with AD's work I would recommend starting with "The Avram Davidson Treasury". This was a tribute collection published after his death.

Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 09, 2024 09:39 AM (jjfDF)

96 87 Historic action series like Master and Commander, Sharpe and especially Flashman should be manadatory reading for HS boys. Making them read Pride and Prejudice is a hate crime.
Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (Gse2f)

The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:39 AM (8sMut)

97 6 ... "On a small shelf of angel books was a softcover Fulton J. Sheen Sunday Missal pub 1961. White softcover, gold edged pages, excellent condition, no price. Latin on left pages, English on the right. Pre Vatican II."

vmom,
You got a deal. Just looked on Amazon. The best price I saw was well over 100 dollars.

I envy your find. I remember his TV broadcasts and have a number of his books. Wish he was still with us today. We, and the church, would benefit.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 09:40 AM (zudum)

98 I still consider Richard J. Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich one of the best histories of the era that I have read.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (8sMut)

I have that, and I agree.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:40 AM (Q0kLU)

99 Finished The Iliad (Richmond Lattimore translation). Great book. Loved the nature similes, the battle descriptions beyond those of one on one combat are excellent and the one on one descriptions are gruesome.

Posted by: who knew at June 09, 2024 09:41 AM (4I7VG)

100 I did some writing this week.
Quit my job so I wrote my obituary in case Mrs. R did the well deserved deed and planted my ass.
Book wise I'm still flipping back and forth between A Distant Mirror, The Black Prince and Disease and History.
I can't seem to get out of 1350. Facinating time period.
I have almost come to look at the Black Death as the birth of western civilization.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 09:41 AM (xcIvR)

101 Everyone has their own system, but how do you organize your books on the shelves? Your system may not work for others, but it has to work for you (presuming you have a system).

I used to work in a bookstore, so my library is arranged by subject (ancient history, mediaeval history, English history, the American Revolution, the Third Reich and so on).

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 09:41 AM (Q0kLU)

102 92 I think it was Vmom mentioned Ilona Andrews last week

--
Probably!

Patricia Briggs has a new Mercy Thompson book coming out next month I think

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:42 AM (Ka3bZ)

103 The same thing happened with Spain. Lots of people criticize Franco for not winning fast enough, when in fact the odds were heavily stacked against him. A big gripe is his decision to relieve the Alcazar rather than driving on Madrid. This is basically the Prussian view, where strategic points and timetables are the key to victory.

But Franco knew otherwise. A logistical genius, he also understood the critical importance of morale. He was also a charter member of the Spanish Foreign Legion, one of whose tenets is never, never, never abandon a brother, regardless of the cost. By turning aside to save the Alcazar garrison, Franco immediately created a heroic narrative for the Nationalists - one that assumed legendary proportions when the commander paraded his men and when asked what happened, answered: "Nothing significant to report."

It is unlikely Madrid could have been taken - militias were army, the Legion would be fighting in urban terrain, etc. But what Franco did was set the tone of the war. He would never abandon faithful troops, regardless of the strategic situation. That in turn caused Nationalists to fight to the death, giving them a decisive edge.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:42 AM (llXky)

104 Did we? Did you like it?

My opening comment was something like "I bought it off the college book store remainder rack for twenty-five or fifty cents. After reading it, I felt like I had overpaid."

Posted by: Oddbob at June 09, 2024 09:42 AM (/y8xj)

105 (con't)

Just finished "The Midwich Cuckoos" (the basis for the movie "Village of the Damned"),

which weirdly plugs right into the present time as a meditation on just how strange and out of place and dangerous can "newcomers" to your society be before society has a right to defend itself. How much tolerance must society show newcomers prove themselves to be dangerous??

Unlike the movie, "The Midwich Cuckoos" takes place over a period of years.

Interesting story presented with crisp writing in an interesting fashion.

Give it a whirl.

Posted by: naturalfake at June 09, 2024 09:42 AM (eDfFs)

106 I still consider Richard J. Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich one of the best histories of the era that I have read.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (8sMut)

William Shirer's book should be required reading as well.

Posted by: dantesed at June 09, 2024 09:43 AM (Oy/m2)

107 Reporter and blogger Kara Swisher's account of the rise of Silicon Valley and its tech titans, "Burn Book", has Spy Blurb-O-Mat level gushing on the back cover, but I found it tough going from the opening page, in which -- horrors! -- President Elect Trump has requested a meeting with tech movers at shakers at Trump Tower. The word "fascist" is thrown about with gleeful abandon, even as she chastises the industry for not harnessing free speech enough to prevent Trump from being elected(!).

Orange Shrek has devoured a lot of brains.

Anyway, her chatty insider gossip is interesting but the constant Me Me Me I Was Right All Along attitude is off-putting. I skimmed a lot.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:43 AM (FkUwd)

108 JTB, as you're a fellow Tolkienist, be sure to include Aquinas' commentary on Hebrews in your reading list. I read it for my prelims, and one particular section jumped out at me as a direct influence on Tolkien.

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at June 09, 2024 09:43 AM (LLJRz)

109 continued from #95: Other titles I would recommend are "The Phoenix and the Mirror" (Davidson's best novel), "The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy" and "The Boss in the Wall". Though I advise against reading that last title if you are home alone, especially if you are in an old house given to producing odd creaking and rattling noises at night.

Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 09, 2024 09:45 AM (jjfDF)

110 In actual prose reading, I'm back to working through some "Savage Realms" e-zines: a collection modern sword-and-sorcery short stories. I read them in the local park, in the fresh air and sunshine (or in the shade of a tree) and I basically just read one short story per session...

Well, I finally got the first 'racism is bad' story in the e-zine. It was stupid, out-of-character for the series, and as subtle as a ton of bricks. Plus, it was as simple and direct as a pre-school PSA. I have no idea what the author was thinking when he wrote it. There was no story, just the message (The Message, TM), and the message wasn't new, it wasn't clever, it wasn't anything the target audience of the story wouldn't have heard a hundred times...

It might have soured my mood, if I weren't in the park, and didn't go on a bike ride (the journey home) right after reading it.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:46 AM (Lhaco)

111 Briggs, Coulter, Nalini Singh, Iris Johansson, Karin Slaughter...
I love how I can put new books on reserve at my library so I can be in the front of the line when they become available and not have to spend $25 on the hardcover or wait a year for the paperback edition.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 09:46 AM (t/2Uw)

112 Chiang should have just not mao escape into his long march not ruthless enough

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:46 AM (PXvVL)

113 Mornin' Horde. As everyone knows, I just returned from a marvelous Inklings trip to Oxford and Cornwall. A couple of book thread-relevant highlights from Oxford for me were -

Group reading of CS Lewis' sermon "The Weight of Glory" in the church where he gave it, University Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Group reading of the Tolkien's Leaf by Niggle by his grave at Wolvercote Cemetery (For Horde runners, Sir Roger Bannister is also buried there)

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 09:47 AM (iZbyp)

114 Though I advise against reading that last title if you are home alone, especially if you are in an old house given to producing odd creaking and rattling noises at night.
----

It could just be a drifter living in your crawlspace.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:47 AM (FkUwd)

115 Thus we get lazy arguments based on Western prejudice: Franco won because Hitler dragged him across the finish line. Chiang Kai-shek was incompetent, corrupt but it was Truman's fault that he lost.

I think the tide is turning on Franco because more people are looking at the facts and clowns like Antony Beevor are so transparently biased as to wreck their credibility. With Chiang, it's different, but people focusing on China will learn more about him if they care to. Put simply, he could not have gotten where he was without a tremendous force of will and some seriously strategic planning.

If anyone "lost" China, it was Japan, by attacking him in 1937 as he was about to finish Mao off. The second hinge point was 1945, when we forced a cease-fire on Chiang as he was about to deliver a killing blow.

Chiang's biggest mistake was not understanding the Maoist tactic of yielding cities while controlling the countryside, but to be fair, he was the first guy to face it in our age.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:48 AM (llXky)

116 Batista invited the communists into a popular front type arrangement in the 30s they helped write the unworkable 1940 constitution the green nude eel of its day

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:49 AM (PXvVL)

117 Chiang should have just not mao escape into his long march not ruthless enough
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:46 AM (PXvVL)
---
If Japan had not invaded, the Long March" would be unknown because it would have been pointless. Mao's fugitives were exhausted and Chiang literally was held hostage to stop their annihilation.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:49 AM (llXky)

118 Historic action series like Master and Commander, Sharpe and especially Flashman should be manadatory reading for HS boys. Making them read Pride and Prejudice is a hate crime.
Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (Gse2f)

As I said a few months ago, regarding a middle grade book I found at a neighbor's house, there's quite a few stories fitting for boys and girls written in the forties and fifties that would be appropriate reading today. Unfortunately, you can't really find them, unless you haunt used bookstores, or antique stores, or have old books in an attic somewhere.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 09:50 AM (0eaVi)

119 One thing I think am realizing digging into D-Day invasion is I am not anymore in the it was a close run and could have failed.
**********
And thank goodness that Hitler decided to ignore Rommel's wisdom that the Allies would land on those beaches....

Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 09:51 AM (IQ6Gq)

120 continued from #95: Other titles I would recommend are "The Phoenix and the Mirror" (Davidson's best novel), "The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy" and "The Boss in the Wall". Though I advise against reading that last title if you are home alone, especially if you are in an old house given to producing odd creaking and rattling noises at night.
Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 09, 2024

***
I've read a few of his stories, not many. Mainly his ghostwriting for the Ellery Queen cousins. He did at least one of the novels that appeared under the EQ name (true Ellery stories, I mean) between 1962 and '67.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:51 AM (omVj0)

121 Job is the one Heinlien book I own but haven't finished ever.
Several attempts over the years to no avail.
I don't know why.
It just seems to work lower into the stack.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 09:51 AM (xcIvR)

122 Frankly I think your friend should leave Handmaid's Tale alone. That one has become one of the Holy Books of the left, so they'll scream "CENSORSHIP!!" if you even try to get it moved to the Teen section out of the Children's room.

My suggestion: a quiet word to the librarian that Margaret Atwood has made some statements which weren't very supportive of "transwomen" and so is possibly a "TERF." Since innuendo=accusation=guilt, I think this would be a more effective tactic.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 09:51 AM (78a2H)

123 Orange Shrek has devoured a lot of brains.

Anyway, her chatty insider gossip is interesting but the constant Me Me Me I Was Right All Along attitude is off-putting. I skimmed a lot.
Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 09:43 AM (FkUwd)
---
It fills the void where their faith in God should be. The only meaning they can find without that is mouthing propaganda and imagining they're fighting Orange Hitler.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:52 AM (llXky)

124 I have a different shelf in my library for each general category.

1. Hobbit-related books
2. LOTR trilogy related books
3. Tolkien map publications and map commentary works
4. LOTR fan fiction books
5. Tolkien correspondence
6. LOTR action figures
7. LOTR-inspired art work and graphi. novels
8. Hobbit/Star Trek crossover fictioon

Posted by: Muldoon says anatomy is not gross. at June 09, 2024 09:52 AM (991eG)

125 Mixing politics with books....
I like J.D. Vance a lot as a possible VP pick but have never read Hillbilly Elegy. Was even more impressed when I read his bio in looking up the book.
Has anyone here read it? Seen the movie?

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 09:52 AM (t/2Uw)

126 Chiang Kai-shek's questionable decision to breach the dykes of the Yellow River.

Killing 2,000,000 Chinese people living in the floodplain of the breached dyke. Every single freshwater well was fouled. Plus, thousands of dead farm animals floating in the wrack and ruin of the flood. Food stores ruined.

The only way Chinese ever drank water was by boiling it first - dry tinder to fuel those fires was gone. So, within a day people were in great peril.

All of it done to delay the Japanese advance for 6-8 weeks.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 09:53 AM (EMeSF)

127 I also had a non-Inklings book moment when I took a brief peek into the Ashmolean museum. I adore Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series. So whenever I'm near a museum with Egyptian exhibits, I try to take a look. I was pleased to see an Amarna exhibit at the Ashmolean - Amarna features prominently in the first and seventh Peabody novels.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 09:54 AM (iZbyp)

128 Tell her heinlein came up with it first 'if this goes on' straight up plagiarism

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:54 AM (PXvVL)

129 74 I miss Sliders. A non book take, but hey, it was brought up… : o )
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33

A fun show

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:54 AM (Ka3bZ)

130 I can't seem to get out of 1350. Facinating time period.
I have almost come to look at the Black Death as the birth of western civilization.
Posted by: Reforger

It was a fascinating and formative time, though writing was such an elite skill that there are not too many contemporaneous records of the time to provide a lot of detail. Michael Jones has a good account of the Black Prince.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 09:55 AM (aoVP+)

131 100 I can't seem to get out of 1350. Facinating time period.
I have almost come to look at the Black Death as the birth of western civilization.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 09:41 AM
***
Fascinating and truly terrible. Shows how bad it can get.

Posted by: TRex at June 09, 2024 09:55 AM (IQ6Gq)

132 125/
I've read Hillbilly Elegy, although it was a while ago. Thought provoking book, especially if you are not familiar with that part of the country. I found it painfully honest, but did wonder how difficult it was for him to write it.

Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (IQ6Gq)

133 The plague came of the black sea in the eastern corner with the genoese colonies

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (PXvVL)

134 Good for you, vmom! I hope it brings you much pleasure!
Over the years I have sometimes paid pretty high for used books that really, really called to me. Thinking particularly of my first civilian edition of the Smythe Report, or some of the ACS Monographs on the shelves ...

Posted by: sock_rat_eez at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (tQtDb)

135 Job is the one Heinlien book I own but haven't finished ever.
Several attempts over the years to no avail.
I don't know why.
It just seems to work lower into the stack.
Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024

***
I've never reread I Will Fear No Evil and The Number of the Beast --. Evil might appeal to me more now, or maybe less, than it did in 1974. Beast is just plain talky with little plot movement. (To be fair, that one was written when his mental powers were reduced thanks to a brain tumor. After his surgery for that, he roared back with Friday -- so he did recover.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (omVj0)

136 Been some time since I read Wyndham. If memory serves, Midwich Cuckoos had a nice closing line to the effect that if you would survive in the jungle you must live as the jungle does. Which strikes me as something that too many of Our Betters would prefer to not be true.

There's a collection of Wyndham's selected short fiction coming some time this summer or fall as well. Title escapes me right now and I'm too bloody lazy to look it up. Shame on me.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (q3u5l)

137 Had a great week of vacation and reading.
Forever Flying, autobio of Bob Hoover; WW2, test and airshow pilot. Loaded with stories and very entertaining.

Also, Munda Trail by Eric Hammel. Solomons campaign in 1943. A good read about the next step after Guadalcanal. Pvt Rodger Young makes a short appearance in this history. Turned in his Sergeant stripes because he'd become deaf. Earned MOH the hard way. Heinlein knew his name.

Posted by: InspiredHistoryMike at June 09, 2024 09:58 AM (3uc2w)

138 87 Historic action series like Master and Commander, Sharpe and especially Flashman should be manadatory reading for HS boys. Making them read Pride and Prejudice is a hate crime.
Posted by: Ignoramus at June 09, 2024 09:36 AM (Gse2f)

On that same theme: I have vivid memories of reading "Hatchet" as a kid. Right down to specific scenes. (Like the moment hatchet-kid figured out the secret to spear-fishing, when he realized that water refracted light weirdly, and that he needed to adjust his aim accordingly.) However, the book also had a bunch of garbage about hatchet-kid's parents, and the divorce that they were going through, and how hatchet-kid felt about that. I had no memory of any of that family-drama-nonsense, until I re-read the book upon giving it to my nephew.

So, yeah, there are some topics in books that will entertain a pre-teen boy, and other topics that they will only suffer through, and do their best to forget about afterwards.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 09:59 AM (Lhaco)

139 Frankly I think your friend should leave Handmaid's Tale alone. That one has become one of the Holy Books of the left, so they'll scream "CENSORSHIP!!" if you even try to get it moved to the Teen section out of the Children's room. . . .

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024

***
As Miguel C. mentioned, Heinlein was first by decades with the idea of a religious U.S. dictatorship, with his novelette "If This Goes On --" RAH's is much more readable. The best thing about Atwood's book was the afternotes, in which a group of academic discuss the origins and the fall of the dictatorship some years after its fall.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:59 AM (omVj0)

140 If Japan had not invaded, the Long March" would be unknown because it would have been pointless. Mao's fugitives were exhausted and Chiang literally was held hostage to stop their annihilation.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 09:49 AM (llXky)

It’s worth remembering (as you clearly know) just how many Communists died on the Long March.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:59 AM (8sMut)

141 I think Friday was the last of Heinlein's novels that I read. _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ just didn't attract my interest. I think later Heinlein was getting "too big to edit" and was letting his personal kinks and Elmer Gantry-era taboo-breaking take over.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:00 AM (78a2H)

142 I need to find Wyndham's Out of the Deeps/The Kraken Wakes. I last read it in high school, when I was not an SF fan aside from a certain famous TV show, and was not familiar with the genre or its tropes. Still, I loved the story and want to read it again.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:01 AM (omVj0)

143 Rereading The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child.

This book got me hooked on the authors years ago.

Posted by: mpfs, ubi porci mali at June 09, 2024 10:01 AM (54th9)

144 I can't seem to get out of 1350. Facinating time period./

I'm reading your words and thinking of all the German churches and cathedrals we've visited with the sculptures/carvings on the church walls and tombs from that time period - mainly skulls, skeletons and scythes

Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 10:01 AM (IQ6Gq)

145 the fall of RAH's theocracy is covered in the book "Revolt in 2100".

fwiw

Posted by: sock_rat_eez at June 09, 2024 10:01 AM (tQtDb)

146 Any suggested books, considering that this is for a school library?
Posted by: KT at June 09, 2024 09:33 AM (rrtZS)

Back in my Dem days I would suggest ppl read Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country instead of Handmaid's Tale. Tepper is an angry feminist but writes well.
Now I think I would look for s book set during Iran's sudden sharia imposition.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 10:02 AM (Ka3bZ)

147 106 I still consider Richard J. Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich one of the best histories of the era that I have read.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:38 AM (8sMut)

William Shirer's book should be required reading as well.
Posted by: dantesed at June 09, 2024 09:43 AM (Oy/m2)

Shirer is good but I treat that as more of a primary source, as Mr. Shirer had a ringside seat to much of the madness. It is also very surprising what is not in his book: no mention of Mengele, for instance.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 10:02 AM (8sMut)

148 Its mercifully shorter attwood also hedges on her basis in some instances she cites perry miller her lefty grad adviser in others she cited the taliban but they hadnt faken power then in the mid 80s

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:03 AM (PXvVL)

149 Right now I'm on the back porch reading a Frank Belknap Long novella, "...And Others Shall Be Born".

Something alien is afoot in Appalachia.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 10:03 AM (FkUwd)

150 Why havent they adapted friday if for the cover on the paperback as well as the pre cyberpunk milieu

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:04 AM (PXvVL)

151 I think Friday was the last of Heinlein's novels that I read. _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ just didn't attract my interest. I think later Heinlein was getting "too big to edit" and was letting his personal kinks and Elmer Gantry-era taboo-breaking take over.
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024

***
Possibly. But he has Maureen Long, Lazarus's mother, tell us about the decline of the U.S. in her timeline (which is not ours). And her comments about the even worse failures of Time Line Three (ours -- Code Neil Armstrong) are worth rereading. Depressing, when you realize he wrote those words in 1987 or so, and we are in even worse shape than that today.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:04 AM (omVj0)

152 125 have never read Hillbilly Elegy. Was even more impressed when I read his bio in looking up the book.
Has anyone here read it?

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 09:52 AM
***
Yes. Worth reading. The broader subjects of Appalachian history, coal country culture, etc. are worthy. Gives some context for why efforts from "outsiders" to "fix" any other culture are fraught. There are no easy answers.

Posted by: TRex at June 09, 2024 10:04 AM (IQ6Gq)

153 As Miguel C. mentioned, Heinlein was first by decades with the idea of a religious U.S. dictatorship, with his novelette "If This Goes On --" RAH's is much more readable. The best thing about Atwood's book was the afternotes, in which a group of academic discuss the origins and the fall of the dictatorship some years after its fall.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 09:59 AM (omVj0)

I liked (not loved) The Handmaid’s Tale. That ending bit is also Ms. Atwood’s taking the piss out of academia and its self-importance.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 10:06 AM (8sMut)

154 Rereading The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child.

This book got me hooked on the authors years ago.
Posted by: mpfs

That book got me hooked as well. And, I have gotten several others into the authors by that book.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 10:06 AM (aoVP+)

155 Oh KTE is making me read one of her fave fairytale retellings, Jessica Day George's Midnight Ball , and it is really quite good. Recommend for ages 12 and up

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 10:06 AM (Ka3bZ)

156 This is interesting.
Went to both the MD library system and MA system that I have access to and looked up J.D.Vance. Almost everything available is an explanation of his book. Like they had to make sure people understood the wokeness/anti wokeness point of view instead of actually reading the book. I am sure all the authors of the book "explanations" are completely unbiased.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 10:06 AM (t/2Uw)

157 Killing 2,000,000 Chinese people living in the floodplain of the breached dyke. Every single freshwater well was fouled. Plus, thousands of dead farm animals floating in the wrack and ruin of the flood. Food stores ruined.

The only way Chinese ever drank water was by boiling it first - dry tinder to fuel those fires was gone. So, within a day people were in great peril.

All of it done to delay the Japanese advance for 6-8 weeks.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 09:53 AM (EMeSF)
---
That's routine attrition in China. The Yellow River burst its banks during the Taiping Rebellion, a conflict which killed more people than the United States even had at the time.

History is replete with examples of a narrow delay meaning the difference between survival and collapse. You call it 6-8 weeks, but that represented the entirety of the 1940 campaign in Western Europe.

I mean, scorched earth is a thing - the Chinese just go big on it because that's their thing.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:06 AM (llXky)

158 8. Hobbit/Star Trek crossover fiction
----

Muldoon reads Frodo/Spock slash fic!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 10:07 AM (FkUwd)

159 Oh, good idea! Suggest the library load up on books about women in Iran, Afghanistan -- even the socialist paradise of China. Then maybe make some sniffy remarks about Atwood appropriating others' lived experiences.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:07 AM (78a2H)

160 Everyone has their own system, but how do you organize your books on the shelves? Your system may not work for others, but it has to work for you (presuming you have a system).
Posted by: TRex
---
It is not at all apparent from my home shelves that I am/was a trained cataloger.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 10:07 AM (iZbyp)

161 There's something about Chiang. He must've had vast reserves of charm, charisma and strength of will to survive the hell-that-was-the warlord/war years of China. The problem with all dictators is they become estranged from the general public.

AHL - I don't think CKS was some sort of clown. I do think he was a gambler at heart - and with all big gamblers - in the end they lose big time. The Chinese dissident author Liu Zhongjing writes at length about Chiang's gambler personality.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:08 AM (EMeSF)

162 Yes but the explanation of how gilead came about doesnt really make sense no wonder leftists love it.

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:08 AM (PXvVL)

163 Been some time since I read Wyndham. If memory serves, Midwich Cuckoos had a nice closing line to the effect that if you would survive in the jungle you must live as the jungle does. Which strikes me as something that too many of Our Betters would prefer to not be true....

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 09:56 AM (q3u5l)

You are correct, sir!

Posted by: naturalfake at June 09, 2024 10:08 AM (eDfFs)

164 108 ... " JTB, as you're a fellow Tolkienist, be sure to include Aquinas' commentary on Hebrews in your reading list. I read it for my prelims, and one particular section jumped out at me as a direct influence on Tolkien."

Elisabeth,
Thanks for the tip. Part of my recent interest in Aquinas is from references about how he valued imagination/faith along with sensate rationality as a way to learn more about creation. If this was an influence on Tolkien and others, I will be very interested.

Minor note: At the used book store I looked for any books by Aquinas. There wasn't even one. I asked the clerk in case I was looking at the wrong sections. She said they can't keep them on the shelves. They come and go out quickly.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 10:09 AM (zudum)

165 >>Someone on a site that is looking to limit sexually explicit content, etc. in school libraries is challenging "The Handmaid's Tale"

How about "Atlas Shrugged?"
I mean, Dagny Taggart is a strong, empowered woman taking on male-dominated systems, right? Checks almost all of their boxes. . .
Heh

Posted by: Lizzy at June 09, 2024 10:09 AM (cCVOS)

166 Been picking through a few books on D-Day recently. Somebody who didn't get a Medal of Honor and who probably deserved it for his actions at Ste Mere-Eglise was Lt Waverly Wray. Info in Phil Nordyke's Four Stars of Valor (easily available) as well as Deryk Wills' Put on Your Boots and Parachutes (pricey now and harder to come by). Or:
https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/waverly-w-wray/

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 10:10 AM (q3u5l)

167 I guess its supposed to be a turner diaries scenario yadda yadda

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:10 AM (PXvVL)

168 Ah yes dagny no depiction has done her justice

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:11 AM (PXvVL)

169 Some years ago the New Yorker noticed that science fiction was a thing, so they did a special science fiction issue -- notable, among other things, for the complete lack of any work by living male American SF writers. It included an essay by Margaret Atwood about how she'd totally been a sci-fi fan her whole life and isn't it cool!

This from the woman who spent about two decades denying that Handmaid's Tale was science fiction at all.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:11 AM (78a2H)

170 In the three atlas shrugged adaptations

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:12 AM (PXvVL)

171 It’s worth remembering (as you clearly know) just how many Communists died on the Long March.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 09:59 AM (8sMut)
---
Valley Forge is only significant insofar as we ended up winning. At the time, it sucked. The Long March became heroic only after Chiang was unable to finish the job.

Also, the winners wrote the history, and part of this is demonizing Chiang constantly. Hence the narrative that the Red Army did all the fighting and the Nationalists sat it out. Not remotely true. In the early fighting, the Nationalists won several outright victories, Taierchwang being one of the most clear-cut.

But their army had limited weapons and staying power. Junior officers were dropping like flies and their only artillery was basically mortars. In urban fighting, they used suicide bombers to kill Japanese tanks. The Nationalists fought hard but by the time we showed up, they were exhausted.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:12 AM (llXky)

172 Opening lines and closing lines of novels and short stories would make a fine topic some morning. As long as the closing line doesn't give away something crucial, of course. Ellery Queen's The French Powder Mystery ends with the murderer's name as the last two words of the book -- a feat which has rarely been equaled, I think. But you wouldn't want to quote that.

Great opening line: "We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge." (-- John D. MacDonald's Darker Than Amber)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (omVj0)

173 I have almost come to look at the Black Death as the birth of western civilization.
Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 09:41 AM (xcIvR)

And the fake flu as the death....

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (0eaVi)

174 There's a difference between natural disasters and man made catastrophe.

Arguing that they're the same leaves me cold.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (3SnuR)

175 I am reading Shogun by James Clavell. On the one hand, I'm curious if the routine use of torture and the more grisly aspects of the culture depicted in the book reflect Japan at that time. On the other hand, it might have even been worse and I'd rather not know if true. On the gripping hand, I'm not certain I care. NOT a feel good book.

Posted by: Nancy@7000ft at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (0tmoY)

176 Ah yes dagny no depiction has done her justice
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024

***
I named my Siberian kitten after her. Does that count?

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (omVj0)

177 In any bookshelf, I organize the books by fiction/nonfiction, mass market paperback/everything else, and then alphabetically by author.

But it is sometimes hard to find a book anyway because which bookshelf they go into depends on whether I want to reread them just before bed, reference them in the study, reference them in the media room, reference them upstairs in the office, or show them off in the main room.

Then there’s also the bookshelf next to the easy chair, the “bookshelf” in the end table next to the sofa, the two bookshelves of cookbooks, and the “bookshelf” of food reference books in the dining room buffet hutch.

Don’t even ask about my DVD organization scheme.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 09, 2024 10:15 AM (PMw0V)

178 There's something about Chiang. He must've had vast reserves of charm, charisma and strength of will to survive the hell-that-was-the warlord/war years of China. The problem with all dictators is they become estranged from the general public.

AHL - I don't think CKS was some sort of clown. I do think he was a gambler at heart - and with all big gamblers - in the end they lose big time. The Chinese dissident author Liu Zhongjing writes at length about Chiang's gambler personality.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:08 AM (EMeSF)
---
A very complex man, who had a remarkable career. Training in war by the Japanese, he also took refuge in Japan when he came out on the losing side in a KMT power struggle, only to return. The shifting alliances in China make your head spin.

That also complicates the history, because everyone has an angle. It's interesting that the PRC is rehabilitating the Nationalists insofar as the Resistance War against Japan is useful to them. I saw a terrible Chinese film with Christian Bale about the fighting in Shanghai and there was a Nationalist Rambo laying boobytraps everywhere.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:16 AM (llXky)

179 Book organization? All of TRex's automobile books take up several bookcases in one room, cookbooks in the kitchen, otherwise just group together others by subject.

Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 10:17 AM (IQ6Gq)

180 I too am reading "Shogun" for maybe the tenth time. Clavell tells a good story.

Posted by: mostly cajun at June 09, 2024 10:17 AM (04pA4)

181 I've read Cukoos, kraken and triffids and liked them all. Chrysalis was new to me

Someone wrote a sequel to Triffids, Night of the Triffids, wasn't half bad. Kept my interest.

Posted by: Beckoningchasm Phone at June 09, 2024 10:18 AM (Ap0jS)

182 Still no internet. But hey, I do have at least a dozen Holy Bibles, all start ‘In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth…’
Any book starts like that is one you read over and over.

Posted by: Eromero at June 09, 2024 10:18 AM (DXbAa)

183 I wish I had as many shelves as the picture at the top of this thread. It would solve so many problems...

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 10:19 AM (Lhaco)

184 Opening lines and closing lines of novels and short stories would make a fine topic some morning.

I believe we had that topic a couple of years ago. My favorite, of course, is "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."

The legendary Ed Wood once opened one of his pulp stories with the line, "I woke up early the day I died."

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 10:19 AM (Q0kLU)

185 >>This from the woman who spent about two decades denying that Handmaid's Tale was science fiction at all.

A friend saw Atwood speak at a local college, where they regularly host authors and it's open to the public. Said she was hands-down the worst. She kept her head down, mumbled and said nothing interesting.

Posted by: Lizzy at June 09, 2024 10:20 AM (cCVOS)

186 I read a fascinating book about the transition from silent movies to talkies over the period of 1926 to 1930. The Shattered Silents by Alexander Walker.

Of course, during the first part of the transition it was the silents that were the unadjectived movies and movies with sound that were adjectived—nor were they all talkies at first, since silence was so built into the production and viewing of movies that it didn’t initially occur to anyone that speaking would be a good idea. Originally it was a way of reproducing concerts and things like that.

Before talking, movie stages were loud places with lots of movement everywhere—and so were theaters. One of the first things theaters had to install after installing sound were ventilation systems, because now the doors had to be kept closed to keep outside noise down!

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 09, 2024 10:20 AM (PMw0V)

187 Finished The Iliad (Richmond Lattimore translation). Great book. Loved the nature similes, the battle descriptions beyond those of one on one combat are excellent and the one on one descriptions are gruesome.
Posted by: who knew

One of the great things about the Iliad, I think, is that while multiple instances of individual combat are included, each is provided with a back story making each a real person. Compare today's action movies in which multiple people are included for the sole purpose of being killed.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:20 AM (L/fGl)

188 I'm reading your words and thinking of all the German churches and cathedrals we've visited with the sculptures/carvings on the church walls and tombs from that time period - mainly skulls, skeletons and scythes
Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 10:01 AM (IQ6Gq)

I lived in Bamberg for a year and a half. I spent hours and hours going through the downtown area which is pretty much the same as it was in 1300. Bamberg was never targeted during WW2 so it's kind of unique in that it is intact as it was. I'd love to go back again and do it sober.
I forget where it is but somewhere in Europe is a castle entirely decorated in human bones.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 10:20 AM (xcIvR)

189 But it is sometimes hard to find a book anyway because which bookshelf they go into depends on whether I want to reread them just before bed, reference them in the study, reference them in the media room, reference them upstairs in the office, or show them off in the main room.

Then there’s also the bookshelf next to the easy chair, the “bookshelf” in the end table next to the sofa, the two bookshelves of cookbooks, and the “bookshelf” of food reference books in the dining room buffet hutch.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair

I'm in the same boat. I know the general region a given book will be in, but. I still need to go through a few shelves in that general area. I've got a library, but there are also bookshelves in most every other room as well.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 10:20 AM (aoVP+)

190 My bookshelves? Literary stuff on the top shelf of each bookcase. SF and fantasy on the 5th and 6th shelf of one bookcase, and some on the 4th of the other, shading over into the Matt Helm and Ian Fleming novels. Travel stuff on the next shelf next to the globe, and various reference things (languages, writing, etc.) on the bottom.

Mystery stuff, primarily Ellery Queen, is on shelf 2 of that bookcase, and also on shelves in the little bookcases in my bedroom, where I keep my Rex Stout, Robert Parker, and Lawrence Block.

Hey, at least I know where to find things.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:21 AM (omVj0)

191 Still no internet. But hey, I do have at least a dozen Holy Bibles, all start ‘In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth…’
Any book starts like that is one you read over and over.

Posted by: Eromero at June 09, 2024 10:18 AM (DXbAa)

I've never been able to finish a reading straight thru....one of these days.

Posted by: BignJames at June 09, 2024 10:22 AM (AwYPR)

192 159 Oh, good idea! Suggest the library load up on books about women in Iran, Afghanistan -- even the socialist paradise of China. Then maybe make some sniffy remarks about Atwood appropriating others' lived experiences.
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:07 AM (78a2H)

Or, a book on the experiences of women in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 10:23 AM (8sMut)

193 176 Ah yes dagny no depiction has done her justice
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024

The only actresses who could have been credible as Dagny had come and gone by 1957.

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 10:24 AM (Zzbjj)

194 Opening lines and closing lines of novels and short stories would make a fine topic some morning.

-
That is a plot point in Felix J. Palma's The Map of Time which, I thought, was an excellent book.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:24 AM (L/fGl)

195 “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”—Speak Memory, Vladimir Nabokov

“Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.”—The Empty House, Algernon Blackwood

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 09, 2024 10:24 AM (PMw0V)

196 188/
We've visited Bamberg several times, and it is a lovely city. Love the little towns/cities that survived intact. Of course my favorite is Dresden, which did not survive intact - but has been rebuilt faithfully. Can understand why they used to call it the Paris of the Elbe.

Posted by: Grateful at June 09, 2024 10:26 AM (IQ6Gq)

197 As for DVDs, I don't have that many. The Mission: Impossible and It Takes a Thief Season One sets, a scattering of movies like Wait Until Dark, the Perry Mason TV Movies compendium, the Jim Hutton Ellery Queen TV series, and a few other things all sit on a shelf under the TV and DVD player.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. DVD set, though, has pride of place atop the bookcase with the 1984 set of the Britannica.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:26 AM (omVj0)

198 I re-read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and am astounded by how much he knows now compared to when I first read him many years ago. /sarcasm

Actually, Meditations may contain the best practical philosophy ever written. It seems especially pertinent for today's America.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 10:26 AM (zudum)

199 And the fake flu as the death....
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (0eaVi)

I have thought the same thing.
Reading about last rights being read to bodies dumped into the Thames because there wasn't enough people left to dig mass graves while being told what we were going through with the plandemic is the worst ever...
A death rate similar to the black death would have killed probably 3 to 4 billion people.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 10:26 AM (xcIvR)

200 There's a difference between natural disasters and man made catastrophe.

Arguing that they're the same leaves me cold.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (3SnuR)
---
It's about how a culture values life, which shouldn't be hard to understand. We're dealing with a culture that regards massive population movements as a viable way to preserve the Empire.

When 16th Century Japanese pirates proved impossible to control, the Ming simply ordered coastal provinces evacuated and the fishing fleets burned. Problem solved.

When a province rebels against the Emperor, standard practice was to just kill everyone there and resettle it.

That context is crucial to understanding Chiang's decision-making process. His actions were firmly in the mainstream of Chinese military operations.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:27 AM (llXky)

201 Poems are made I know not how
But only God can change a cow

“Cows have a digestion system that emits methane. We need to change cows and work towards artificial meat.”

~ Bill Gates

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:27 AM (L/fGl)

202 Someone upstairs mentioned anime and their manga:

On rare occasion if I see an anime with but one season and I'm interested in the story, I'll read some of the manga to see how it all works out.

I did that last with "Chainsaw Man" to finish up the current story but probably won't go any further.

Anywho...I recently saw a one season comedy anime titled "Aho-Girl" (basically stupid or clueless girl) and laughed a lot at every episode.

If you enjoy tremendously stupid and silly comedy,. buddy have I got an anime for you! The main relationship between Aho-Girl and her putative boyfriend is somewhat the same as Krazy Kat and Ignatz the Mouse. However, there's lots of different characters who interact with AH.

The manga extends beyond the anime so I bought some of the manga, which are funny. The manga follows them closely, which is a good thing.

The most interesting thing for me is how the comedy works in both formats. Sometimes better in the written and drawn format, sometimes it works between when animated.

On a more elevated note, it's similar to reading and watching PG Wodehouse stories. Some times the most hilarious passages when read fall completely flat in the videos.

Posted by: naturalfake at June 09, 2024 10:28 AM (eDfFs)

203 “Cows have a digestion system that emits methane. We need to change cows and work towards artificial meat.”

~ Bill Gates
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:27 AM (L/fGl)

The man who believes he is a god. Nothing but trouble.

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 10:28 AM (Zzbjj)

204 In a book of interviews with Robert Silverberg, there's a section where Silverberg talks about sometimes misplacing a book in his huge personal library, to the point where it's easier to buy another copy than look for it. The interviews are in a book called Traveler of Worlds -- worth a look for any sf fan.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 10:28 AM (q3u5l)

205 I read a fascinating book about the transition from silent movies to talkies over the period of 1926 to 1930. The Shattered Silents by Alexander Walker.

I know that book, but I've never read it. I'll have to add it to my list.

A similar book is At The Speed Of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926 - 1930 by Scott Eyman.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 10:29 AM (Q0kLU)

206 Elisabeth and others. Besides the Aquinas essay on Hebrews as suggested, is his "Shorter Summa" worth getting? I have the entire Summa on Kindle but find it unwieldy and the printed version is both huge and expensive.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 10:29 AM (zudum)

207 How Dagny didn't get pregnant from all the fucking is a mystery.

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:29 AM (VuZH8)

208 I'm not sure how much influence school-assigned reading has on a kid. I was molded much more by books I chose or family members suggested.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 10:30 AM (FkUwd)

209 Well, anyway, I must go shower and dress. I'm helping a friend prep her new book for sale, and then I really, really must get back to my own writing.

I need some sort of kick in the ass, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

Anyway, hope you all have a lovely day.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 10:31 AM (Q0kLU)

210 Everyone has their own system, but how do you organize your books on the shelves? Your system may not work for others, but it has to work for you (presuming you have a system).
Posted by: TRex
---
It is not at all apparent from my home shelves that I am/was a trained cataloger.
Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 10:07 AM (iZbyp)

All the hardbound books are together, the paperbacks are together, but never the twain shall meet.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 10:31 AM (0eaVi)

211 As for DVDs, I don't have that many.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius

I treat DVDs like books. One never knows when they will be burned in pyres, so I have collected a lot of them, often used. I store them without cases in those large 100 disc folders. I can watch most BBC classic series or any good American series from 1965 to 1985, as well as classic movies no matter how unwoke they are.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 10:31 AM (aoVP+)

212 207 How Dagny didn't get pregnant from all the fucking is a mystery.
Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:29 AM (VuZH

Actually quite simple. Ayn Rand was very pro-abortion and would have agreed with it up to the point of birth.

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 10:32 AM (Zzbjj)

213 Some years ago the New Yorker noticed that science fiction was a thing, so they did a special science fiction issue -- notable, among other things, for the complete lack of any work by living male American SF writers. It included an essay by Margaret Atwood about how she'd totally been a sci-fi fan her whole life and isn't it cool!

This from the woman who spent about two decades denying that Handmaid's Tale was science fiction at all.
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:11 AM (78a2H)

Eh, it ws her gambit to stay in the Literature Section of the libraries and bookstores.

Apparently, it worked.

Posted by: naturalfake at June 09, 2024 10:32 AM (eDfFs)

214 I just finished reading a timely read: "The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton."

Yep, there's a possibility that Hamilton was born Jewish. He seems to have definitely attended as a child a Jewish school in Nevis in the Virgin Islands. The book pieces together other minute details alluding to Hamilton's mother likely being a Jewish convert.

But most of the book is not about Hamilton's being a Jew but rather his encounters, relationships and references to other Jews he came in contact with during his lifetime. So one should stress the book title words "The Jewish World" more than "of Alexander Hamilton" in order not to be mistaken that this book is mainly concerned with proving Hamilton's origins. That actually is secondary, though very much related to the history brought up throughout most of the book.

And interesting read. In any case, whether you're a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian, the founding fathers would be united in revolting against today's rogue regime pulling the strings in Washington DC.

And now on to my next read, from 1964: "The Life of Lenin," by Louis Fischer. This is a much longer read.

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 10:33 AM (i/5Rr)

215 Personally I think school assigned reading has a negative effect. It only associates those works with drudgery and tedium.

Obviously, reading works to analyze and discuss in class, especially in middle and high school, is a whole different thing. But summer reading lists are a curse and a blight on the land -- especially since the teachers always have to load them up with "socially relevant" bullshit.

I suppose, as a matter of conservative culture war tactics, school summer reading lists may be to our advantage: they make kids associate socially relevant bullshit with tedium and drudgery. So perhaps they're a good thing after all!

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 09, 2024 10:34 AM (78a2H)

216
The man who believes he is a god. Nothing but trouble.
Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 10:28 AM (Zzbjj)
---
The pagans believed that men with outsized wealth and egos were obviously favored of the gods and therefore worthy of worship in their own right.

This proves how little human nature has changed because now people assume that any nerd who gets fabulously wealthy is some sort of quasi-divine being who must be consulted on every possible issue.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:34 AM (llXky)

217 The CCP have taken to promoting Sun Yat-sen as part of their updated early 20th century history. It's literally impossible to find a neutral-viewpoint biography of the man.

He too must've had vast reserves of charm and charisma, but he was more dreamer than doer.

And I don't think the Japanese military academy that CKS attended was equal to West Point. Not even close; he graduated and was seconded to an artillery regiment.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:34 AM (Qh6MC)

218 Besides me thinking Shattered Silents would be a good resd wonder has TJM or Moviegique read this or interested?

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 10:36 AM (fwDg9)

219 Get "Thomas Aquinas in 50 pages" by Dr. Taylor Marshall.

First, Thomas lists "objections."
Second, Thomas rejects the "objections" by listing his "sed contra" or "on the contrary."
Third, Thomas gives his response.
Fourth, Thomas refutes each of the objections he listed at the beginning of the article.

So, if you want to learn just the facts, Just read the beginning the third (e.g. I answer that...)

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:36 AM (VuZH8)

220 Sad news from Hard Luck Hank author Steven Campbell.

Hi, everyone. I have recently been diagnosed with cancer. My writing has fallenoff sharply because I've been housed in hospitals for months undergoingprocedures. At this point, I am not certain if I will be able to continuewriting. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers and listeners and supporters. I consider myself truly lucky to have been able to be a professional writer, which is the culmination of a life-long dream. While I hope I can continue, if nothing else, I am thankful I got to bring a little silly joy to the lives of strangers. Thank you.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:36 AM (L/fGl)

221 Opening lines and closing lines of novels and short stories would make a fine topic some morning. As long as the closing line doesn't give away something crucial, of course. Ellery Queen's The French Powder Mystery ends with the murderer's name as the last two words of the book -- a feat which has rarely been equaled, I think. But you wouldn't want to quote that.

Great opening line: "We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge." (-- John D. MacDonald's Darker Than Amber)
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:13 AM (omVj0)

The last line is supposed to explain the whole book. So, you wouldn't want to give it away. At least, that's what a literature teacher told us in high school. Don't think that's quite true, but maybe sometimes.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 10:36 AM (0eaVi)

222 ...and the third part.

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:37 AM (VuZH8)

223 And I don't think the Japanese military academy that CKS attended was equal to West Point. Not even close; he graduated and was seconded to an artillery regiment.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:34 AM (Qh6MC)
---
No, but it shows that Japan and China were not always implacable enemies. For a long time, Japan was trying to build China up as a counterweight to the Europeans.

The West Point was the Whampoa Military Academy. Huge amount of future leaders among the graduates. A college professor of mine was there, still had connections on both sides of the strait.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:37 AM (llXky)

224 Silverberg talks about sometimes misplacing a book in his huge personal library, to the point where it's easier to buy another copy than look for it. The interviews are in a book called Traveler of Worlds -- worth a look for any sf fan.

Posted by: Just Some Guy

Or just forgetting you own a book. I ended up buying a tracking system to keep a handle on it, after buying a duplicate several times.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 10:37 AM (aoVP+)

225 I'm not sure how much influence school-assigned reading has on a kid. I was molded much more by books I chose or family members suggested.
Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024

***
Same here. Serendipity, by seeing an interesting title on the shelf at the library, had more to do with my choices than anything forced on me at school.

If I were teaching English, as in reading, and could actually get away with it, I'd choose *shorter* or lighter works by the so-called great authors ("Of Mice and Men" and Sweet Thursday by Steinbeck), and assign things with real story in them like Von Ryan's Express, at least one Ellery Queen mystery, and a Heinlein.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:38 AM (omVj0)

226 So, if you want to learn just the facts, Just read the beginning the third (e.g. I answer that...)

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:36 AM (VuZH

---
I found a hilarious one-pager explaining his method by refuting the "a hot dog is a sandwich" argument.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:38 AM (llXky)

227 The pagans believed that men with outsized wealth and egos were obviously favored of the gods and therefore worthy of worship in their own right.

This proves how little human nature has changed because now people assume that any nerd who gets fabulously wealthy is some sort of quasi-divine being who must be consulted on every possible issue.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:34 AM (llXky)

what skews the playing field is that such men, both now and in the past, are always able to hire armies of sycophants to sing their praises.

Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 10:38 AM (q3gwH)

228 I can't recall school-assigned reading having much effect one way or the other. It was just another classroom chore.

But years later, from that reading I knew the names of quite a few writers whose work might be worth revisiting as (at least chronologically) an adult.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 10:39 AM (q3u5l)

229 JTB, I took (and enjoyed) a graduate seminar on the Summa but haven't looked at the Shorter Summa. I think Peter Kreeft wrote A Summa of the Summa, which might be a useful guide. You might also find the web version on New Advent easier to navigate; it's the same edition I have in print, but I find it easier to look up specific topics there.

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at June 09, 2024 10:40 AM (LLJRz)

230 Bookshelf organization? What is this think you speak of? I have one old lawyers bookcase full of books that might be worth something some day (first editions, etc.), one bookcase for books about Wisconsin or by Wisconsin authors, and everything else is mostly organized (if you can call it that) by making a half-assed effort to keep all the books by a given author together.

Posted by: who knew at June 09, 2024 10:40 AM (4I7VG)

231 Sad news about Steven Campbell. I enjoyed the Hard Luck Hank stories.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 10:40 AM (FkUwd)

232 My kids ended up attending my high school and it was sad to see how far it had fallen academically.

When I was there we not only read Heart of Darkness but then watched "Apocalypse Now" in class and critiqued what it got right and wrong. My kids read dumbed down trendy garbage. Sad.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:40 AM (llXky)

233 I can watch most BBC classic series or any good American series from 1965 to 1985, as well as classic movies no matter how unwoke they are.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024

***
Which reminds me, I have the early (B & W) episodes of The Avengers w/ Mrs. Peel, plus a couple of the ones with Honor Blackman too!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:41 AM (omVj0)

234 I just learned something very interesting. Abdullah al-Jamal, the "journalist" holding the hostages recovered in this Gaza raid appears to be one of "ours."

The media are all playing him up as an al-Jazeera journalist - but he was only freelancing for them in Gaza. He was on staff with a US outfit called the Palestine Chronicle, and at a shady 501(c)3 called "People Media Project." Both of PMP's websites appear offline at this time (though Palestine Chronicle's is still up).

Meanwhile, Times of Israel is reporting that the CIA provided unspecified "intelligence" on the hostages' location prior to the raid.

I suspect the CIA was able to do this because they found out the kidnapper was of *their assets,* and decided it was better to make this situation go away.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 09, 2024 10:41 AM (0FoWg)

235 what skews the playing field is that such men, both now and in the past, are always able to hire armies of sycophants to sing their praises.
Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 10:38 AM (q3gwH)
---
Yep. Never a shortage of lickspittles and singing eunuchs.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:41 AM (llXky)

236 I was amazed how little English Literature was covered in 12th grade "English Literature" my daughter attended.

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:42 AM (VuZH8)

237 Heart of Darkness is on my read someday list

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 10:42 AM (fwDg9)

238 In eleventh grade, my English teacher assigned us The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm so glad, looking back, that she did not choose Catcher in the Rye or any of that ilk.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:43 AM (omVj0)

239 Continuing my search for books that might help my grandson with his reading, I read the first of Barry Sadler's Casca series. I was surprised to find that it was better written than I expected.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:43 AM (L/fGl)

240 what skews the playing field is that such men, both now and in the past, are always able to hire armies of sycophants to sing their praises.
Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 10:38 AM (q3gwH)

And they will accept that praise as legitimate despite the fact they paid for it. Men cannot be gods, as they become sinister every time.

Posted by: GOP sux at June 09, 2024 10:43 AM (Zzbjj)

241 When 16th Century Japanese pirates proved impossible to control, the Ming simply ordered coastal provinces evacuated and the fishing fleets burned. Problem solved.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:27 AM (llXky)

I don't remember if I first heard that anecdote from your book, or from one of the Osprey military history books...But that needs to become the setting of some great action story. Pirates sailing along and empty coast, setting up bases in abandoned (provincial) palaces, making their own little fiefdoms out of ghost towns and unoccupied fields... It could be so wild.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (Lhaco)

242 Conrad is clever in how marlow doesnt let any european power in the making of kurtz

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (PXvVL)

243 Heart of Darkness is on my read someday list
Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 10:42 AM (fwDg9)
---
It turned me into a lifelong Conrad fan. I didn't enjoy required reading but that was because I was ignorant. I think there are classics that you should know in order to sustain the culture.

Catcher in the Rye is not one of them.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (llXky)

244 Horde

It is with much grief I must inform all of you that my Father passed this morning. Thank you for all your prayers, please keep my Mother in your prayers.

Thank you so much.

Posted by: Anna Puma at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (2vHPe)

245 A similar book is At The Speed Of Sound…

Thanks! I expected the topic to be interesting, it still exceeded my expectations.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (PMw0V)

246 LOL. Folks actually care about Robert De Niro's political opinions.

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (VuZH8)

247 Harry Harrison had two things about opening lines of books. The first one came from him being an editor, and basically said that it was far too often where the author got his feet with a story and generally the first page could be thrown out since it was establishment of the world that should be in the work itself

The second was that he kept a file of really exciting first paragraphs for story ideas, written to be absolutely gripping, since in the traditional submission format, after all the title, information and other stuff, there was just room for one paragraph to get the editor's eye, and that format was carried over to the pulp. since the reader would often only read the first paragraph, it better be a good one to encourage turning to page two.

The first paragraph of

Posted by: Kindltot at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (D7oie)

248 The apocalypse version of kurtz is based largely on robert rheault

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:45 AM (PXvVL)

249 In eleventh grade, my English teacher assigned us The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm so glad, looking back, that she did not choose Catcher in the Rye or any of that ilk.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere

An amazingly good haunted house book.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:45 AM (L/fGl)

250 219 ... No one of any consequence, Thanks for the tip about the Aquinas book.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 10:45 AM (zudum)

251 It is with much grief I must inform all of you that my Father passed this morning. Thank you for all your prayers, please keep my Mother in your prayers.

Thank you so much.
Posted by: Anna Puma

I'm very sorry. Will keep your family in my prayers.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (aoVP+)

252 Hes the one that killed the suspected vietcong agents

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (PXvVL)

253 Sorry Anna.
Prayers.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (xcIvR)

254 I don't remember if I first heard that anecdote from your book, or from one of the Osprey military history books...But that needs to become the setting of some great action story. Pirates sailing along and empty coast, setting up bases in abandoned (provincial) palaces, making their own little fiefdoms out of ghost towns and unoccupied fields... It could be so wild.
Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (Lhaco)
---
Absolutely! I think that might be in Pirates of the Far East. Just a crazy cast of unemployed Samurai, Chinese bandits, European adventurers.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (llXky)

255 So sorry for your loss

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (PXvVL)

256 Watership Down is truly a great story, but its drawback for a class is that it's long. And the first third or so, until you hit the section on rabbit abnormal psychology, is a little slow for some readers. You can't skip it, it's essential to the lead rabbits' motivations and to set up their world and their oral culture and mythos. But the book does not really take off until that point.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (omVj0)

257 Meanwhile, Times of Israel is reporting that the CIA provided unspecified "intelligence" on the hostages' location prior to the raid.

I suspect the CIA was able to do this because they found out the kidnapper was of *their assets,* and decided it was better to make this situation go away.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 09, 2024 10:41 AM (0FoWg)

that's a very interesting observation. I've been wondering why the CIA was claiming to have provided intelligence, I couldn't imagine how they could have had any involvement here.

Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 10:47 AM (q3gwH)

258 Can't recall what novels I was assigned in 11th grade, but being assigned The Haunting of Hill House would have been a delight.

We were assigned "The Lottery" in high school, though, and trying to pick it apart took a lot of the fun out of it.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 10:47 AM (q3u5l)

259 Thank you so much.
Posted by: Anna Puma at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (2vHPe)
---
May he rest in peace.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:47 AM (llXky)

260 prayers for you and yours, Anna!

Posted by: sock_rat_eez at June 09, 2024 10:49 AM (tQtDb)

261 Hes the one that killed the suspected vietcong agents
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:46 AM (PXvVL)
---
I'd love to recut the movie by removing much of end by simply showing Kurtz, the way he lived and then his death.

Then flash to a headquarters clerk reading the report asserting that Kurtz was fine.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (llXky)

262 Condolences Anna.

Posted by: Northernlurker at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (JLq/1)

263 …my English teacher assigned us The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is a great example of an author who is often assigned and who also should be read. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is another great read.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (PMw0V)

264 A week or two ago, when we were talking Irish vernacular, someone mentioned reading "Kala" by Colin Walsh.

Sounded like a good one for audio, so I listened to it this week. Also got a copy from the library, so I listened some, read some.

It's written in present tense, which I typically despise, and don't understand why anyone uses it. However, I was enjoying listening to it, so I continued. Over time, it made sense to use the present tense, as the characters were in the present day but recounting their past. And then there was one character who used 2nd person present tense, even though he was referring to himself. I finally understood that he didn't feel like he was a part of his group--and kind of separated from himself, so that eventually made sense to me, too.

Was really annoying with that tense and person treatment, though the story was interesting.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (OX9vb)

265 my first thought on seeing the library pic up top was "so much room for Moar Boox!"

Posted by: sock_rat_eez at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (tQtDb)

266 I have just completed a fun little read called Persuit by Chris Crowther.
I fully recommend it. Set in the 1920's it follows a former WW1 fighter pilot who is now a struggling attorney in NY. Well researched for the flying and war writing, it is a great mystery with an ending I didn't see coming. Well done!

Posted by: Diogenes at June 09, 2024 10:50 AM (W/lyH)

267 Anna, I'm so sorry. Sending prayers, love, and hugs for you and yours.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 10:51 AM (iZbyp)

268 Thank you, Perfessor, for yet another awesome Book Thread.

I pushed my self to keep reading C.S. Lewis's Perelandra (thanks for the encouragement, Spindrift) and was rewarded. Yes, it does in fact, have an actual story. I'm glad I read it but it was not, for me, an easy read. I'll likely start That Hideous Strength tonight.

As far as organizing goes, in theory, I mostly arrange my books by topic: work-related, gardening, crafts, fiction, religious, and so on. They're also separated with already read on one side and to-be-read on the other. In practice, I have some books organized in 3 small book cases, some scattered around the house, and way too many in piles in my home office./library. At some point, I want to spruce up my office and buy 2-3 more book cases. I'm also scoping out book case space in the spare bedroom (shhh - don't tell my poor husband).

Posted by: KatieFloyd at June 09, 2024 10:51 AM (VTrrP)

269 Also on my TBR pile, Beyond This Place, The Citadel, and The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin; and Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. Oh, and An Irish Country Girl, one of the Irish Country Doctor series, by Patrick Taylor.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:51 AM (omVj0)

270 Whampoa was not equal to West Point. Cadets got 6mos military training. One of the first attacks on a walled warlord village turned into a nightmare; the cadets forgot to bring scaling ladders to mount the earthen walls. Oh, they took the village, but at great cost.

Soviet commissar Vasilii Chuikov chief Soviet military adviser to CKS witnessed the tragedy. Chulkov made a lot of changes. The next attack on another walled village went off quite well.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:51 AM (g/kU+)

271 Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at June 09, 2024 10:29 AM (Q0kLU)

MP4, if you're still around, did you ever get my e-mails about marketing?

Also, was in a B&N last week out of state, and asked if they had any of your books. They didn't, but you were in their system with the Whitechapel book. I mentioned your TB mysteries. The clerk looked like a kid who might be interested in them.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 10:52 AM (0eaVi)

272 11th grade was American Literature. The Scarlet Letter, etc. I was not a great reader then and did as little as possible.

12th grade was English Lit. Shakespeare (MacBeth), The Rape of the Lock, and other silly stuff.

Posted by: No one of any consequence at June 09, 2024 10:52 AM (VuZH8)

273 Better yet have flashbacks of kurtz in action although brando was in his jabba phase by his time

By comparison i watched force 10 from navarone with shaw he was still pretty spry then

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 10:52 AM (PXvVL)

274 Just finished The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian, in which is mixed cryptocurrency, murder, Las Vegas tribute acts, and the memory of Diana Spencer.

What a thriller! Do you know what a seed phrase is?

Posted by: Mr Gaga at June 09, 2024 10:53 AM (ZtgZZ)

275 239 Continuing my search for books that might help my grandson with his reading, I read the first of Barry Sadler's Casca series. I was surprised to find that it was better written than I expected.
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 10:43 AM (L/fGl)

I recently purchased a big stack of used Jim Kjelgaard novels off ebay. They are (probably) all 'a boy and his dog' or 'a dog survives in the wilderness' books. I remember enjoying them as a child. I'm planning on re-reading them before gifting them to my nieces. (One of whom is a voracious reader, another of whom really likes dogs.) I'm hoping they'll hold the interest of girls.

Anyways, I presume they would be an option for a grandson. They're on the older side (originally written in the 40's and 50's) and in the 150-page range.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 09, 2024 10:54 AM (Lhaco)

276 Prayers up, Anna Puma. Very sorry for your loss.

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at June 09, 2024 10:54 AM (LLJRz)

277 That long email sounds real but also like one of those viral marketing pitches that draw you into their length like a car dealer that makes you sit around and wait.

What he said could have been said in 80 fewer paragraphs. It was interesting though, and I think I see why he thinks it is profound. There were some profound observations in it for sure but also a lot of meaninglessness.

Posted by: ... at June 09, 2024 10:55 AM (lX8VI)

278 Prayers Anna Puma for you and all your family.

Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 10:55 AM (WXNFJ)

279 Anna, prayers for you and your family.

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at June 09, 2024 10:56 AM (PiwSw)

280 Hugs Anna, I will continue to pray for your family.

Posted by: ... at June 09, 2024 10:56 AM (lX8VI)

281 Can't recall what novels I was assigned in 11th grade, but being assigned The Haunting of Hill House would have been a delight.
*
We were assigned "The Lottery" in high school, though, and trying to pick it apart took a lot of the fun out of it.
Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024

***
Some of Jackson's short stories would be good classroom assignments. And her two novelized memoirs about raising her family, Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages, are fun and quite unlike her other stuff.

Her short story "The Summer People" is unsettling, though I've never quite understood why (maybe that's the point), and "The Flower Garden" has a stinger of an ending.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:56 AM (omVj0)

282 The best novel done second person singular is Bright Lights Big City. I gave up on Kala two thirds in.

Posted by: Mr Gaga at June 09, 2024 10:56 AM (ZtgZZ)

283 I can't remember what was required reading in high school. Probably Romeo and Juliet, and an Edgar Allen Poe or two, but beyond that--I simply don't remember.

Either we didn't have required reading, or it was that unmemorable.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 10:58 AM (OX9vb)

284 Think we had some Shakespeare in both 11th and 12th. One year the comedies and tragedies the other. Liked the tragedies, couldn't have cared less about the comedies which seemed awfully short on laughs to me.

Opening lines -- didn't Olivier's film of Hamlet open with a voice-over saying that this was the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind?

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 10:58 AM (q3u5l)

285 {{{Anna}}}

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 10:58 AM (FkUwd)

286 The best novel done second person singular is Bright Lights Big City. I gave up on Kala two thirds in.
Posted by: Mr Gaga at June 09, 2024

***
Yes! BLBC is not only told in second person, but in present tense -- usually two things I hate. But it's very well told, with superb humor in unexpected places; a satire on the office culture of The New Yorker; and a solid ending. A tour de force for sure.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:58 AM (omVj0)

287 In 11th grade I was forced to read Beowulf. Yeah, yeah, yeah first Old English epic poem and all that but to me it was garbage.

Perhaps I just missed all the points it was attempting to make all but I really hated it.

Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 10:59 AM (WXNFJ)

288 Sorry for your loss Anna

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 10:59 AM (fwDg9)

289 Anyways, I presume they would be an option for a grandson. They're on the older side (originally written in the 40's and 50's) and in the 150-page range.
Posted by: Castle Guy

Thanks.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:00 AM (L/fGl)

290 didn't Olivier's film of Hamlet open with a voice-over saying that this was the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind?
Posted by: Just Some Guy

Well, yes and no. . .

Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:00 AM (WXNFJ)

291 tangentially:

Starship Die Cast Rocket Model $69.99 on YouGuessedIt.

If you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.

https://tinyurl.com/58r4bavd

no one would ever look there for your stash

Posted by: Braenyard at June 09, 2024 11:00 AM (gMabG)

292 I finished the second volume of Roald Dahl's autobiograpny, Going Solo. It starts with his sailing out on a steamer to his new employment with Shell oil as a district representative in Tanzania, with his first experience with the breed of English who operated the overseas empire, who were to a man and woman "dotty", some high points of being a district representative, and the drama on England's entering WWII of helping rounding up the German settlers who were trying to escape to Portuguese Mozambique.
He then talks about volunteering for the RAF, learning to fly Tigermoth Trainers in Iraq (hence the title), and then his crash, period in hospital in Alexandria and then the transfer to the fruitless defense of Greece and Crete where he was given a Hurricane to fly in combat without any training. After Greece he was transferred to Syria to fight the Vichy French in Lebanon, meeting some Jewish Refugees, and invalidated out and returned to England due to his injuries.

This is a children's' book, but Dahl is a very good writer, and says much with few words, and is full of the delight of the world even with what was going on He reminds me of a similar English writer, Gerald Durrell

Posted by: Kindltot at June 09, 2024 11:01 AM (D7oie)

293 And an interesting piece of history - Vasilii Chuikov ended up reforming the shattered 8th(?) Soviet Red Army after the Winter War defeat on Raate road.

Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 11:01 AM (Q7M7L)

294 Of the 50 fictional books or so I was required to read in school, I read exactly zero of them.

I know I shouldn't be proud of such a statistic but I kind of am.

Posted by: ... at June 09, 2024 11:01 AM (lX8VI)

295 Which reminds me, I have the early (B & W) episodes of The Avengers w/ Mrs. Peel, plus a couple of the ones with Honor Blackman too!
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 10:41 AM (omVj0)

I had read somewhere, or watched a YT vid that most of the first season was lost. Steed was the number two man assisting someone else. He only became the lead when the other actor wanted out, or wasn't asked to return. I always thought that maybe he was the missing Mr. Peel....

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:02 AM (0eaVi)

296 The breadth and depth of horde knowledge continually amazes me.

Posted by: TRex at June 09, 2024 11:03 AM (IQ6Gq)

297 In my Biography section, I imagine the subjects and authors sitting down to a dinner; so I've got at one table Martin Luther, Christopher Hitchens, Benjamin Franklin, and Keith Richards. At the next table is Dave Grohl, King Ludwig, Alexander the Great, and Richard Feynman.

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at June 09, 2024 11:03 AM (PiwSw)

298 I finished reading Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. Published in 1921, it's a realistic, rather cynical description of army life during and after WWI. There's very little combat and the war ends halfway through the book. The story is mostly about the grind of discipline and despair suffered by one soldier, John Andrews, an aspiring composer. It's affecting, but I think the hero was partly to blame for his predicament because of his over-sensitivity and poor choices.
Dos Passos is a good writer, on par with his friend Hemingway. In this book he sympathizes with socialism but in later life he allegedly supported Barry Goldwater. Perhaps that's why he's not taught in schools much nowadays.

Posted by: Linnet at June 09, 2024 11:03 AM (oAl1N)

299 Present tense in fiction? Think I read somewhere that the idea was to make it seem more immediate (Holy prose style, Batman, it's like this is happening right effin' now!). But to me the use of present tense always seemed to keep the reader at a distance, seemed colder and much more aloof than a good story ought to be. For some kinds of story that may be fitting, but if it was the usual practice I don't think I'd read for pleasure as much as I do.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:04 AM (q3u5l)

300 It is with much grief I must inform all of you that my Father passed this morning. Thank you for all your prayers, please keep my Mother in your prayers.

Thank you so much.
Posted by: Anna Puma

Praying for you and your mother. I am so sorry for your loss.

Posted by: Moki at June 09, 2024 11:06 AM (wLjpr)

301 I can't remember what was required reading in high school. Probably Romeo and Juliet, and an Edgar Allen Poe or two, but beyond that--I simply don't remember.

Either we didn't have required reading, or it was that unmemorable.
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 10:58 AM (OX9vb)

I think we did Canterbury Tales for sr. english.

Posted by: BignJames at June 09, 2024 11:06 AM (AwYPR)

302
Remembering Anna's father in my Rosary intentions.

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:07 AM (MoZTd)

303 Anna Puma,

Condolences on your dad passing and our prayers for you and your family will continue.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 11:08 AM (zudum)

304 I had read somewhere, or watched a YT vid that most of the first season was lost. Steed was the number two man assisting someone else. He only became the lead when the other actor wanted out, or wasn't asked to return. I always thought that maybe he was the missing Mr. Peel....
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024

***
Right; Steed was the mysterious Foreign Office chap helping out a Dr. Keel (?), who was the lead. When he left, the producers revamped the show and made Steed a co-lead with Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman). When she left (to do Goldfinger), along came Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel. Only then did the show really take off. And come to America, too.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:08 AM (omVj0)

305 Present tense in fiction? Think I read somewhere that the idea was to make it seem more immediate (Holy prose style, Batman, it's like this is happening right effin' now!). But to me the use of present tense always seemed to keep the reader at a distance, seemed colder and much more aloof than a good story ought to be. For some kinds of story that may be fitting, but if it was the usual practice I don't think I'd read for pleasure as much as I do.
Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024

***
When I see it, I immediately think "MFA graduate and academic writers' workshop survivor," and suspect that it's going to be a case of "Look how *well* I'm writing!"

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:09 AM (omVj0)

306 Pander Bear.

White House to Host Juneteenth Concert to Celebrate Black Artists

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:10 AM (L/fGl)

307 Greetings, O Book Thread! Some among you are already aware of Raconteur Press, purveyor of fine, eclectic anthologies. Well! Yours Truly will be appearing in the next anthology, Alien Family Values coming out next Friday! They've got some other fun ones coming later, too. Space Cowboys appears to be a long-running theme.

Posted by: Sabrina Chase at June 09, 2024 11:10 AM (nH+RN)

308 As a substitute for The Handmaid's Tale in a children's library, I think Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time would be appropriate. Its young heroes battle against a totalitarian system and while it's not feminist in a modern doctrinaire way, the main protagonist is female.

Posted by: Linnet at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (oAl1N)

309 The last line is supposed to explain the whole book. So, you wouldn't want to give it away. At least, that's what a literature teacher told us in high school. Don't think that's quite true, but maybe sometimes.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024

***
You're right . . . and in most cases, a superb last line which sums up the book won't mean anything to someone who hasn't read the whole thing.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (omVj0)

310 306 Pander Bear.

White House to Host Juneteenth Concert to Celebrate Black Artists
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:10 AM (L/fGl)

During Pride month?????

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (PiwSw)

311 So sorry, Anna. Will be praying.

Posted by: KT at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (rrtZS)

312 Along with reading Shakespeare as a senior in HS, out epic English Lit instructor, Paul Bastille Renier required each of us to memorize one of Bill's soliloquies.

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

(RIP you magnificent bastid!)

Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (WXNFJ)

313 On YouTube, I watched a clip of James Dean in a television adaptation of Sherwood Anderson's short story "I'm a Fool". His co-star in the show was Natalie Wood! I actually remember from my childhood an adaptation made over twenty years later, with Ron Howard and Amy Irving.

Anyway, that got me remembering when I was in high school and had to read Anderson's short story collection Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson belonged to that generation of American writers just before Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. That earlier group of writers does tend to get overshadowed by those literary superstars. In fact, the only characters I really remembered from Winesburg were the gay schoolteacher and the town slut. But "I'm a Fool" was written a few years later and considered his masterpiece. It's a simple story. A few years before Prohibition a nineteen-year-old boy from some hick town in Ohio who gets a job grooming racehorses. On his day off, he puts on his best clothes and goes to the racetrack. There he meets a pretty and sweet middle-class girl. In order to impress her, he brags that his family owns one of the horses racing that day.

Posted by: Pete in Texas at June 09, 2024 11:12 AM (BHrzb)

314 I hear they’re going to film a remake of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Starring Mutt Demon.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at June 09, 2024 11:12 AM (v6JzV)

315 He had been intelligence corps (had been at eton with bond) so actually secret service steel was

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 11:12 AM (PXvVL)

316 “The View” Co-Host Sonny Hostin Says Black Male Trump Supporters Are As Real As "Unicorns"

-
That's not racist at all!

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:13 AM (L/fGl)

317 anna, I am sorry to hear that your father died.

Posted by: Kindltot at June 09, 2024 11:13 AM (D7oie)

318 That's not racist at all!
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:13 AM (L/fGl)

They don't care if it's racist. These things are deployed as peer pressure.

Posted by: ... at June 09, 2024 11:14 AM (lX8VI)

319 Tonypete at June 09, 2024 10:59 AM

My 11th grade English teacher read it to us, dramatically. Made a difference.

Posted by: KT at June 09, 2024 11:14 AM (rrtZS)

320 At the moment, I can think of only two authors I was initially forced to read in school, and hated, and later came to appreciate and love after I grew up just a little bit more - Austen and Shakespeare.

(The casting of Colin Firth as Mr Darcy may have had something to do with changing my mind re: Pride and Prejudice)

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 11:15 AM (iZbyp)

321 Fingers Crossed: Ex-Obama Ambassador Predicts Illegals Will Flee U.S. If Trump Gets Elected

-
Dude, you had me at Trump.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, The Outlaw Donald Trump 2024 at June 09, 2024 11:16 AM (L/fGl)

322 When I see it, I immediately think "MFA graduate and academic writers' workshop survivor," and suspect that it's going to be a case of "Look how *well* I'm writing!"
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:09 AM (omVj0)

Haha, yeah, that.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 11:16 AM (OX9vb)

323 Re: Ancient Cataclysm

I agree with that - take a look at the Colorado Plateau area on Goolag earth - along the Colorado river, Confluence with the Green, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. To my eye, it shows evidence of incredible flooding. To be clear I don't dis-believe the long erosion cycles - but "something" happened to create those landscapes and it happened overnight, in geological terms. It's one of the unique areas on Earth, and quite beautiful in its own way.

Posted by: Common Tater at June 09, 2024 11:17 AM (sWgBr)

324 Prayer up, Anna Puma. So sorry for your loss.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at June 09, 2024 11:19 AM (v6JzV)

325 He had been intelligence corps (had been at eton with bond) so actually secret service steel was
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024

***
Right, I'd forgotten the name -- MI-5 or -6 or one of those.

Bond wasn't at Eton long, though. In his obituary for Bond in You Only Live Twice, M says JB started there, but was asked to leave -- after an "embarrassing incident" with one of the maids at the school. . . .

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:21 AM (omVj0)

326 Whampoa was not equal to West Point. Cadets got 6mos military training. One of the first attacks on a walled warlord village turned into a nightmare; the cadets forgot to bring scaling ladders to mount the earthen walls. Oh, they took the village, but at great cost.

Soviet commissar Vasilii Chuikov chief Soviet military adviser to CKS witnessed the tragedy. Chulkov made a lot of changes. The next attack on another walled village went off quite well.
Posted by: 13times at June 09, 2024 10:51 AM (g/kU+)

I didn't mean it was exactly equal, merely that it was the equivalent in terms of a center of training where a lot of lasting relationships were formed.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 11:22 AM (llXky)

327 Yes what a scamp

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 09, 2024 11:24 AM (PXvVL)

328 Prayers for your father and for you, Anna Puma.

Posted by: Linnet at June 09, 2024 11:24 AM (oAl1N)

329
Of the 50 fictional books or so I was required to read in school, I read exactly zero of them.

____________

The sum of what I got from my English classes in school was zero.

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (MoZTd)

330 The sum of what I got from my English classes in school was zero.
Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (MoZTd)
-

Sounds more like math!!!

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (i/5Rr)

331 Can we keep the book thread a book thread?

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 11:26 AM (FkUwd)

332 229 ... "You might also find the web version on New Advent easier to navigate; it's the same edition I have in print, but I find it easier to look up specific topics there."

Elisabeth,

Thanks so much for the suggestions. I put the New Advent Summa site under bookmarks. And in my usual, unbridled, enthusiasm I'm ordering Aquinas' "Selected Writings (Penguin Classics), 12 Life Lessons of St. Thomas Aquinas by Kevin Vost, and a Shorter Summa. Should be here this week.

I anticipate going down a LOT of rabbit holes from this reading.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 11:26 AM (zudum)

333 244 Horde

It is with much grief I must inform all of you that my Father passed this morning. Thank you for all your prayers, please keep my Mother in your prayers.

Thank you so much.
Posted by: Anna Puma at June 09, 2024 10:44 AM (2vHPe)

I am coming up on the one year anniversary of losing my father.

Please accept my condolences.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 11:26 AM (8sMut)

334 The sum of what I got from my English classes in school was zero.
Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (MoZTd)
---
I got quite a bit, and it was sad for me to see my kids not getting anything close to the same experience.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 11:26 AM (llXky)

335 It's one of the unique areas on Earth, and quite beautiful in its own way.
Posted by: Common Tater at June 09, 2024 11:17 AM (sWgBr)

The only remaining body of water to never go dry from that is Pyramid Lake.
I think something happened with the plates raising ancient Lake Lahonton (now called The Great Basin) in elevation that when a crack opened it came down like a shit ton of bricks.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 11:28 AM (xcIvR)

336 Peace be with you and your mom, Anna.

Posted by: nurse ratched at June 09, 2024 11:28 AM (Jmzdj)

337 The sum of what I got from my English classes in school was zero.

Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (MoZTd)

got a D- soph yr....if I didn't pass final I was dead meat...summer school...whew.

Posted by: BignJames at June 09, 2024 11:28 AM (AwYPR)

338 Of the 50 fictional books or so I was required to read in school, I read exactly zero of them.

____________

The sum of what I got from my English classes in school was zero.
Posted by: Hadrian the Seventh at June 09, 2024 11:25 AM (MoZTd)

We need to have a thread on required reading from school, and which ones were good, bad, or ugly. I liked Call of the Wild from eighth grade, enjoyed Brave New World from senior year…

I HATED Great Expectations. Fuck Dickens.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 11:29 AM (8sMut)

339 Anyway, my point was that without context, it is very easy to jump to "hot takes" that obscure more than they illustrate.

I particularly hate the tendency to "judge" history by today's ephemeral moral standards. Even otherwise decent historians do this, and Tuchman's A Distant Mirror falls victim to this.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 11:29 AM (llXky)

340 . LOTR action figures

*******

One odd thing about the Limited Edition set is that the Gandalf figure bears a striking resemblance to Anthony Fauci. I think it's because it comes complete with the Kung Flu Grippe.

Posted by: Muldoon says anatomy is not gross. at June 09, 2024 11:30 AM (991eG)

341 Congratulations, Sabrina Chase!!!

Posted by: nurse ratched at June 09, 2024 11:30 AM (Jmzdj)

342 It's been a LONG time since I had occasion to look at the contents of a high school literature textbook, 20+ years, but even then the book was considerably dumbed down from what I remembered of the texts I had. Hate to think of what's in there now.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:31 AM (q3u5l)

343 I HATED Great Expectations. Fuck Dickens.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33

If you approached it from the point of view that Pip and Miss Havisham had it going on, it became a much easier read.

Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (WXNFJ)

344 Condolences, Anna P.

Posted by: Muldoon says anatomy is not gross. at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (991eG)

345 This week’s reading is Macbeth, while also following the discussion on the podcast, The Play’s the Thing. This summer, along with my mystery novels and other fun reading, I’m trying to read Shakespeare. Boy, Macbeth was a brutal place to start. It’s not that I haven’t read any Shakespeare, it’s just been a while. Now I’m wondering if the TV show Breaking Bad Was just a modern version of Macbeth.

With regard to the discussion of required reading, as an ex homeschool mom I did require reading. But I think the most important thing is to just let the student read, and not spend much Time analyzing the book to death. The time for that can come later. But my son found authors that he loves by reading what I made him read that he wouldn’t have read otherwise. My motto through high school was simply let’s see what the author has to tell us in the story. It was amazing what my son drew out of the story on his own because he wasn’t prodded and pushed toward it.

Posted by: SummaMamaT at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (LC7FR)

346 got a D- soph yr....if I didn't pass final I was dead meat...summer school...whew.
Posted by: BignJames at June 09, 2024

***
I never had to do summer school. First, my parents would have slaughtered me and offered me up at the A & P as veal. Second, I'd have been terminally embarrassed and psychologically damaged -- I *needed* that time off from late May to late August for mental recovery. And third, we didn't have A/C in the school buildings then. Imagine what a hellscape that would have been.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (omVj0)

347 We listened to the author read her "Nuclear War" novel, in which the Norks do a surprise first strike on the Pentagon, and things go blooey after.

Real blooey, as in extinction, the entire thing happening in less than one hour.

F^ckin downer, I gotta say.

After which, I re read The Orphan Master's Son, then Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, each a piece of artful imagination.

A wonderful piece of artful imagination, film-wise, is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, in which Heath Ledger is featured, and due to his untimely death during production, his character is done by Johnny Depp. How about THAT?

Posted by: Mr Gaga at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (ZtgZZ)

348 Anna - prayers and condolences on the passing of your father.

Posted by: KatieFloyd at June 09, 2024 11:33 AM (nHAVE)

349 If you approached it from the point of view that Pip and Miss Havisham had it going on, it became a much easier read.
Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM

Wouldn't the Miss preclude that?

Posted by: Duncanthrax at June 09, 2024 11:34 AM (yCMqD)

350 Didn't care for Great Expectations in high school. Liked it when I read it a couple of decades later. Found Bleak House a slog and did not finish -- may try it one more time this fall, perhaps, maybe...

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:34 AM (q3u5l)

351 I guess the dog food isn't going to cook itself. Again. I have The Day of the Jackal queued up on audio.

By the time I get that done, the weather should be perfect for porch-sitting.

*peruses bookshelf for perfect porch-reading

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 11:34 AM (OX9vb)

352 I HATED Great Expectations.

*********

Perhaps you had been led to believe there would be more to it than there actually was...IYKWIM

Posted by: Muldoon says anatomy is not gross. at June 09, 2024 11:35 AM (991eG)

353 I finally picked up "The Real Anthony Fauci". I'm sure I'm late to the party around here. Rather then being infuriating, I find it just reinforces many of the things that have already been discussed. I find myself having to put it down about every 30 minutes and pace around for a while.

Posted by: Indiana Lurker at June 09, 2024 11:36 AM (3ZVqj)

354 I read "The Count of Monte Christo" as a junior in hs. I remember being completely enthralled and horrified when I figured it out.

I also read "Anna Karenina " in hs. Perhaps it was my teachers, but I found it to be breathtaking.

Posted by: nurse ratched at June 09, 2024 11:38 AM (SfVf3)

355 /adjust sock

Posted by: Muldoon at June 09, 2024 11:38 AM (991eG)

356 It's been a LONG time since I had occasion to look at the contents of a high school literature textbook, 20+ years, but even then the book was considerably dumbed down from what I remembered of the texts I had. Hate to think of what's in there now.
Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024

***
I still have a copy of the "Reading Adventures" text that had just been discontinued when I was in tenth grade. My teacher was giving copies away. I saw "Leiningen Versus the Ants" in the table of contents, and grabbed it. The text was from the early Fifties and had that story, plus a comic pastiche of Poe by Steinbeck, the short story "The Quiet Man" that became the film with John Wayne, a Ring Lardner, a Saki story, a Hemingway, an early Kurt Vonnegut SF tale, a wide selection of good poetry, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and a lot more.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:38 AM (omVj0)

357 I guess the dog food isn't going to cook itself. Again. I have The Day of the Jackal queued up on audio.

By the time I get that done, the weather should be perfect for porch-sitting.

*peruses bookshelf for perfect porch-reading
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 09, 2024 11:34 AM (OX9vb)

Charles Calthrop

Posted by: BignJames at June 09, 2024 11:38 AM (AwYPR)

358 Macbeth was fun even in high school, and back in the day you could occasionally catch the Orson Welles film on the late movie. The notion of Breaking Bad as a version of Macbeth reminds me of one of the weirder adaptations I'd seen. I think Paul Douglas and Ruth Roman in Joe MacBeth, setting the story against a mobster background.

Just can't keep a really good story down...

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:39 AM (q3u5l)

359 Greetings, O Book Thread! Some among you are already aware of Raconteur Press, purveyor of fine, eclectic anthologies. Well! Yours Truly will be appearing in the next anthology, Alien Family Values coming out next Friday! They've got some other fun ones coming later, too. Space Cowboys appears to be a long-running theme.
Posted by: Sabrina Chase at June 09, 2024 11:10 AM (nH+RN)

Great! They don't seem to care for my stuff. Anyway, I posted on ALH that might be of interest to you, Sabrina.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:39 AM (0eaVi)

360 I found that I also enjoyed Shakespeare more after acting in a couple of high school productions of Tom Stoppard plays; had a bit part in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and was Lady Macbeth in Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 11:40 AM (iZbyp)

361 I agree with that - take a look at the Colorado Plateau area on Goolag earth - along the Colorado river, Confluence with the Green, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. To my eye, it shows evidence of incredible flooding. To be clear I don't dis-believe the long erosion cycles - but "something" happened to create those landscapes and it happened overnight, in geological terms. It's one of the unique areas on Earth, and quite beautiful in its own way.
Posted by: Common Tater at June 09, 2024 11:17 AM (sWgBr)

I have a book that goes into detail about the history of the area. One helpful thing they do, as they're going through the eons, is show the location on the globe, of where Colorado is, in relation to the poles. It shifts all over the place, and there were periods when they whole area was indeed under water. As in oceans. Not floods.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:42 AM (t5QaG)

362 Prayers to you and your family, Anna on the loss of your father.

Posted by: thatcrazyjerseyguy with twice the crazy at June 09, 2024 11:42 AM (iODuv)

363 "I HATED Great Expectations. Fuck Dickens."
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33
Me too! I no longer HATE DIckens but there is very little of it I can stand. A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities , ...and that's about it.

Posted by: who knew at June 09, 2024 11:44 AM (4I7VG)

364
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

(RIP you magnificent bastid!)
Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:11 AM (WXNFJ)

So that's where S Bar-David (Shimon Wincelberg) got the title for his Star Trek episode! "Dagger of the Mind." (obligatory ST reference, allowed by the Perfessor)

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:44 AM (0eaVi)

365 Whoo! Had trouble typing with a big black cat on my lap. Congratulations to you, Sabrina. The editor, or one of them, at Raconteur got in touch with me about one of my stories, asking for some mild revisions. I agreed with him that the changes would improve the story, made them, and sent the story back. Waiting to hear now.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:45 AM (omVj0)

366 Hmmm, previous post gives me an idea. Shakespeare lines as titles for other authors works.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:45 AM (0eaVi)

367 113 ... "Group reading of CS Lewis' sermon "The Weight of Glory" in the church where he gave it, University Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Group reading of the Tolkien's Leaf by Niggle by his grave at Wolvercote Cemetery."

SiD,
So glad you had such a great trip. Those group readings must have been a wonderful experience.

PS: Mrs JTB and I miss the Amelia Peabody series. We got each one as soon as it was published. The strong element of fun and humor added to the mysteries made them irresistible.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 11:46 AM (zudum)

368 Great Expectations gave me a slate of reasons to hate Dickens, so it wasn't wasted.

Evelyn Waugh shares that sentiment.

And with that, I'm out. Thanks again, Perfesser!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 09, 2024 11:46 AM (llXky)

369 I still have a copy of the "Reading Adventures" text that had just been discontinued when I was in tenth grade. My teacher was giving copies away. I saw "Leiningen Versus the Ants" in the table of contents, and grabbed it. The text was from the early Fifties and had that story, plus a comic pastiche of Poe by Steinbeck, the short story "The Quiet Man" that became the film with John Wayne, a Ring Lardner, a Saki story, a Hemingway, an early Kurt Vonnegut SF tale, a wide selection of good poetry, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and a lot more.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:38 AM (omVj0)

I have a book of "horror" short stories, most of which aren't really horror. Back when, my ex's 5 year old asked me to read a story from the book, and I said "you're too young for that." She held her ground, insisted, so I did.

I got all dramatic, reading the last few pages of a story, and I don't even remember what it was. Just some guy who was being visited by the dead. It was told from his point of view, as hard as I tried to make it sound scary, she just was not impressed.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (t5QaG)

370 The area we call the Colorado Plateau was indeed at the bottom of an ancient ocean

then it got pushed skyward into the open during the Laramide Orogeny, and it's been falling apart ever since

so yeah when you look at Monument Valley or Brice Canyon or even the Grand Canyon, remember it was all once at the bottom of the sea

unless I have it wrong

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (/7KEl)

371 I wasn't into Shakespere until my senior year when I was in a play called "Mcbeth did it". A play about a bunch of people trying to put on a Mcbeth play.
Racist, stereotypical, sexist and one if the best times of my life.
We sold out 9 shows. A first.

Posted by: Reforger at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (xcIvR)

372 366 Hmmm, previous post gives me an idea. Shakespeare lines as titles for other authors works.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:45 AM (0eaVi)

hmm. Maybe something like "Band of Brothers". Or "The Sound and the Fury."

Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 11:48 AM (q3gwH)

373 Bryce Canyon
sorry

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:48 AM (/7KEl)

374 I really don;t see a lot of similarities between Macbeth (prob. my favorite Shakespeare play) and Breaking Bad. Walter White was not a nobleman or today's equivalent, his ambition was to provide for his family in case of his death, and he was not urged on or given the idea to cook meth and sell it by his wife. She came on board later, yes, and his goals changed considerably, but I don't see a correspondence between the two stories.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:48 AM (omVj0)

375 Can we keep the book thread a book thread?
Posted by: All Hail Eris

Yes please.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 11:49 AM (t/2Uw)

376
unless I have it wrong
Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (/7KEl)

most anything with sedimentary formations was. (oceans and river deltas)
west texas is dominated by ancient coral reef structures.

Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 11:50 AM (q3gwH)

377 stuff I learned from books

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:51 AM (/7KEl)

378 After one of the monks is killed in a brutal way and another disappears, Odd has to unravel the mysteries surrounding this unusual monastery

So, basically Cadfael.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at June 09, 2024 11:51 AM (IG4Id)

379 unless I have it wrong
Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (/7KEl)

Basically correct, although the Rockies are baby mountains. Created in all the ways mountains are, they're an extremely young formation. I don't believe those were ever under water, at least not in the form they're in now.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:51 AM (t5QaG)

380 Almost time to wind things up, huh? Thanks for another superb Book Thread, Perfessor and the rest of you!

"Happy trails to you . . . keep riding on 'til then . . ."

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 11:52 AM (omVj0)

381 unless I have it wrong
Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:47 AM (/7KEl)

most anything with sedimentary formations was. (oceans and river deltas)
west texas is dominated by ancient coral reef structures.
Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 11:50 AM (q3gwH)

Yeah, most formations where you can see exposed layers, hundreds of millions or even billions of years of exposed rock, somewhere in there are sea shells and other life forms that only live under water.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:52 AM (t5QaG)

382 Can we keep the book thread a book thread?
Posted by: All Hail Eris

Yes please.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 11:49 AM (t/2Uw)
-

1,000,000,000 comment rule?

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 11:53 AM (i/5Rr)

383 Bulgaroctonus, enjoyed our discussion yesterday about your brother's book. You should send something to Perfessor Squirrel.
Also apologize for not seeing your name tag but in my defense, it was over my head. 😉

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 11:53 AM (t/2Uw)

384 1,000,000,000 comment rule?
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 11:53 AM (i/5Rr)

The book threads tend to evolve over time too.

Usually by the time I get here most of the bookies are gone.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:54 AM (t5QaG)

385 okay I get it
ixnay on the geology

Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:54 AM (/7KEl)

386 PS: Mrs JTB and I miss the Amelia Peabody series. We got each one as soon as it was published. The strong element of fun and humor added to the mysteries made them irresistible.
Posted by: JTB
---
I didn't discover them until the series was well underway, but I miss them too. I'm glad I didn't buy the last one, that Joan Hess finished. I did read it, but wish I hadn't. I'm sure Hess is a fine author, but I don't think she came close to capturing Peters' (Mertz) inimitable voice or stayed true to the characters. Just my opinion, of course.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 11:55 AM (iZbyp)

387 Don't recall the title, but the textbook we used had a Shakespeare play (Julius Caesar, I think), an abridgement of some novel (a Dickens? a Hawthorne? I dunno...) and poems that went right by me but also some pretty decent short stories. Jackson was there, Bradbury, "Leiningen vs the Ants," Jack Finney's "Of Missing Persons," some Poe, some Hawthorne, a Henry James I think. Others. We didn't get all of that assigned in the school year, but some of it was actually fun.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:55 AM (q3u5l)

388 340 ... "One odd thing about the Limited Edition set is that the Gandalf figure bears a striking resemblance to Anthony Fauci."

Fauci, with that infuriating superior smirk, always makes me think of the Chuck Jones Grinch. Which is an insult to the Grinch.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 11:55 AM (zudum)

389 Usually by the time I get here most of the bookies are gone.
Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:54 AM (t5QaG)
-

Have you tried the race track?

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (i/5Rr)

390 okay I get it
ixnay on the geology
Posted by: Don Black at June 09, 2024 11:54 AM (/7KEl)

I know about geology from two sources: Books and seeing things with my eyeballs.

Not off topic.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (t5QaG)

391 Thanks, Perf, for another great Book Thread, and thanks fellow threadists for your suggestions.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (FkUwd)

392 Have you tried the race track?
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (i/5Rr)

I try to avoid being labeled a racist.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (t5QaG)

393 Well, off to screw things up in my little corner of the real world.

Thanks for the thread, Perfessor.

Have a good one, gang.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 09, 2024 11:56 AM (q3u5l)

394 Can we keep the book thread a book thread?
Posted by: All Hail Eris

Yes please.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice)
---
Where do we stand on fish puns in the book thread? :-)

Still sad I couldn't be with y'all yesterday, Sharon.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 11:57 AM (iZbyp)

395 I really don;t see a lot of similarities between Macbeth (prob. my favorite Shakespeare play) and Breaking Bad.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius,

Well, you don't have to see it. It's just that the director explicitly said The Play was the starting point for the series. Accurate, nonsense - doesn't matter.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at June 09, 2024 11:57 AM (IG4Id)

396 But books can be a source or derivative for movies, comic books, audio files and others. Perfessor already said he's not a stickler about it.

Anyway, thanks for the thread, Perfessor. Gotta go.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 09, 2024 11:57 AM (0eaVi)

397 Weekend threads are meant to be different.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 11:58 AM (t/2Uw)

398 SiD
You were missed. Even more today.🤠

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 09, 2024 11:59 AM (t/2Uw)

399 Thank you Perfessor and literary Horde for a lovely Book Thread. I'm constantly amazed at the breadth and depth of the reading of a bunch of Morons, myself excluded. But I like to sit at your feet when I can and try to improve my understanding.

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 09, 2024 12:00 PM (iZbyp)

400 Several books from high school have stayed with me over the years and the most persistent in terms of day to day was Steinbeck's The Pearl.

Posted by: Diogenes at June 09, 2024 12:00 PM (W/lyH)

401 WE HAZ A NOOD

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 12:00 PM (fwDg9)

402 Job is about a Big Dick contest God started with the Devil, setting in motion death, loss, disease, agony, and torture for no legitimate reason other than God's apparently fragile ego, at the end of which God basically tells Job he's a worm that should shut the fuck up, when Job asks the very fair question "why?"

Posted by: Job depicts God as narcissistic, sadistic, cruel at June 09, 2024 12:01 PM (k3d8O)

403 5 I really don;t see a lot of similarities between Macbeth (prob. my favorite Shakespeare play) and Breaking Bad.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius,
*
Well, you don't have to see it. It's just that the director explicitly said The Play was the starting point for the series. Accurate, nonsense - doesn't matter.
Posted by: weft cut-loop at June 09, 2024

***
As a starting point, I see it. "A man wants to change his life, and decides to do something criminal -- and that has far-reaching and dangerous implications for himself and his family."

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 12:02 PM (omVj0)

404 Perfessor and all,

Thanks for another excellent book thread (even though it ended up costing a few bucks for the Aquinas books.) Not an unusual situation at Maison JTB.

Posted by: JTB at June 09, 2024 12:03 PM (zudum)

405 hmm. Maybe something like "Band of Brothers". Or "The Sound and the Fury."
Posted by: Tom Servo at June 09, 2024 11:48 AM (q3gwH)

Didn't Andrea Mitchell (or an intern who writes her tweets) embarrass herself by wrongly correcting Ted Cruz when he said "the sound and the fury" was a line from Shakespeare?

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at June 09, 2024 12:03 PM (PiwSw)

406 On the question of great opening lines, one of my favorites is from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit":

"It happened that while Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were dallying in a wine shop near the Sidonian Harbor of Tyre, where all wine shops are of doubtful repute, a long-limbed yellow-haired Galatian girl lolling in Fafhrd's lap turned suddenly into a wallopingly large sow. It was a singular occurrence, even in Tyre."

Now that is what I call an effective narrative hook.

Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 09, 2024 12:03 PM (jjfDF)

407 If you approached it from the point of view that Pip and Miss Havisham had it going on, it became a much easier read.
Posted by: Tonypete at June 09, 2024 11:32 AM (WXNFJ)

“Mr. Pimp” - friends and I in ninth grade

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 09, 2024 12:05 PM (8sMut)

408
Didn't Andrea Mitchell (or an intern who writes her tweets) embarrass herself by wrongly correcting Ted Cruz when he said "the sound and the fury" was a line from Shakespeare?
Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at June 09, 2024

***
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had been Mitchell herself.

Literally, "The Sound and the Fury" (with two "the"s) is the Faulkner title, while the line from Macbeth reads ". . . full of sound and fury . . ." But anyone with any education should know the former came from the latter.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 09, 2024 12:06 PM (omVj0)

409 Shangai....

The city of Shanghai China before WW2 was a vey interesting place-think of the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was an open treaty port under the treaty of Nanking, and so was the home to a quite diverse (sorry) group of traders, fortune hunters, refugees (White Russians for example), remittance men and other sorts. The municipal police had units organized by nationality for the larger populations groups in Shanghai, with different departments reflecting the challenges of policing that particular place and population. For example Eric Sykes, a Brit adventurer, ran the sniper squad, while William (Dangerous Dan) Fairbairn (ex-Royal Marine, both mentioned above by Mr. Lloyd) ran the Shanghai police riot squad. Wakefield's book on the Shanghai Police provides a good background and overview of the Shanghai police. In the past decade or two several memoirs by former Shanghai police have been published. E.W. Peters "Shanghai Policeman" is typical.

cont below...

Posted by: Pope John 20th at June 09, 2024 12:08 PM (cYrkj)

410 Muldoon, Thank you for your Tolkien contribution. Always thoughtful. I hope your new pup is getting adjusted to its new home.

Posted by: Mrs JTB at June 09, 2024 12:09 PM (zudum)

411 me this past week:

The End of Everything, (subtitle) How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, by Victor Davis Hanson

4 case studies: Thebes destroyed by Alexander in 335 BC; Carthage in the Third Punic War; Constantinople in 1453; and Tenochtitlan at the hands of Cortez.

The Professor relies on his own reading of Greek & Latin in the original texts-- Thucydides; Plutarch & so on. Not on English translations.

Bottom line: Hope-ium is not a good basis for making foreign policy.

Posted by: mnw at June 09, 2024 12:09 PM (NLIak)

412 409

Paul French has written some fascinating books, both fiction & nonfiction, about Shanghai in the '30s.

Ever run across them?

Posted by: mnw at June 09, 2024 12:16 PM (NLIak)

413 Shanghai cont...

During WW2 Fairbairn and Sykes returned to England and then America to train commandos and American OSS (Roger Hall in his book "You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger" mentions being trained by Dan Fairbairn), developed the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife, etc. Together or separately they wrote half a dozen or so short books on shooting ("Shooting to Live"), practical fighting technics ("Defendu," All-In Fighting," etc), and the like which were kept in print for years by the kind of publishers whose books are sold at gun shows. I'd expect, as Lloyd said, that pdf copies and the like can be found online.

IIRC, Shooting To Live also has some very interesting practical discussions about suppressing riots, and raids on gangster hideouts. There have also been at least a few mystery and adventure stories set in pre-war and early war Shanghai. All in all, pre-war and early war (Japanese knocking on door) Shanghai would be a very interesting background for adventure stories-I expect some pulp stories were set there, but I'm not aware of any specifics.

Posted by: Pope John 20th at June 09, 2024 12:21 PM (cYrkj)

414 Seventh grade ruined Dickens for me, too, with "Oliver Twist." I have loathed him ever since. OTOH, we read "Pygmalion" which I have loved ever since in all of its incarnations. Also loved "The Scarlet Letter" and "Travels with Charley" which were assigned reading in later years.

I've always been an avid reader but I agree with many others here that little of what I read was inspired by required readings in school.

Posted by: Art Rondelet of Malmsey at June 09, 2024 12:59 PM (FEVMW)

415 219 Get "Thomas Aquinas in 50 pages" by Dr. Taylor Marshall.

---

I have never read Aquinas and was thinking of starting with Confessions, which sounds memoirish

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 01:14 PM (Ka3bZ)

416 Anna, I am so sorry for your loss. My prayers for you and your family, specially your mom.

Eternal rest grant upon Anna's father, and may perpetual light shine upon him.
May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 01:17 PM (Ka3bZ)

417 Nice to see others mentioning Raconteur Press now! (Thank you Sabrina Chase, Wolfus Aurelius, and OrangeEnt.)

OrangeEnt: If you got a refusal back, write and ask what more you could do, or what suggestions they have to better your odds on a future submission. They enjoy publishing new authors so I'd expect they'd happily give you feedback to encourage you.

If you didn't hear back, that would indicate something is fouled up in the actual communication process (they're not getting your mail, you're not getting theirs.) They won't ignore you.

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at June 09, 2024 01:32 PM (O7YUW)

418 My sympathies to Anna Puma and her family.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 09, 2024 01:44 PM (p/isN)

419 Got paperback version of The Guns at Last Light, 640 pages

Posted by: Skip at June 09, 2024 02:38 PM (fwDg9)

420 Anna Puma:

My sincerest condolences on the passing of your father. May God comfort your mother, you, and the rest of your family. While the loss never goes away, in time you may find yourself telling funny stories from your shared past with him, and through your memories, introducing people to him that never had the chance to meet him.

Keep the best of him alive in your heart.

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at June 09, 2024 02:59 PM (O7YUW)

421 I must say that the pictures at the beginning of the Book Thread are giving me a severe case of library envy. All those beautiful book shelves! The excellent combination of artificial and natural light!! Whoever designed that space knew what they were doing.

Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 09, 2024 03:21 PM (jjfDF)

422 I'm currently reading George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood book, just because I've been watching HBO's House of the Dragon. It's interesting, in that it explains a lot of the backstory, but it reads like a history book for a history that never happened. It reminds me of the last book so far in the Game of Thrones series, Dances With The Dragons, which read like a really tedious travelogue.

Does anyone else think GRRM is bored now with his books and will probably never finish the Game of Thrones saga, now that HBO already gave us an ending?

Posted by: RebeccaH at June 09, 2024 03:46 PM (Nvors)

423 Another good book to suggest for the high school girls library: Three Swans of China by Jung Change. It had an interesting effect on our bookclub (a rather diverse group ideologically)

Posted by: sharon at June 09, 2024 05:41 PM (WKNzA)

424 Decades ago I got a book on the game of Go, written by an American Ex-Pat in Japan. It was written in 1932 or 33, In his preface, he commented on America's xenophobia would "force" Japan to attack America. It was part of his comments on how you could identify the General's Go school by how he operated in China.

It is never as simple as we were told.

nic: Aelishdad

Posted by: Dale Sigler at June 09, 2024 07:48 PM (lBBcD)

425 Ԍreat pοst.

Posted by: buxom at June 09, 2024 08:10 PM (bULj2)

426 Yandex

Posted by: Yandex at June 10, 2024 01:18 AM (LBU8v)

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