Sunday Morning Book Thread - 1-5-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

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...

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

PIC NOTE

2025 is already starting off to be a very surreal year, so why not start the Sunday Morning Book Threads with a surreal image? This is taken from the Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world written in an indecipherable language created by Italian artist Luigi Seraphini. It bears some resemblance to the Voynich Manuscript with art that is somewhere between Dr. Seuss and Hieronymus Bosch.

READING GOALS FOR 2025

I don't put much stock in New Year's Resolutions. I don't recall ever making them, nor do I recall attempting to keep them. However, in 2024, I did come up with some reading goals because I reached a significant milestone birthday and wanted to celebrate by crossing a few books off my "bucket list." I was able to accomplish that goal for the most part. For 2025, I think my main goal will be to finish reading a number of series in my TBR pile. In some cases, I've read the first book, purchased the remaining books in the series, but for various reasons, I never finished the series.

What are YOUR reading goals for 2025?

RABBITS KILLING PEOPLE IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS

The Codex Seraphinianus depicts bizarre and unusual objects within its pages, but it's far from the only weird artistic book out there. It turns out surrealistic art in the margins has a long and glorious history among illuminated medieval manuscripts. For some reason, much of this art features rabbits killing people in a wide variety of strange and unusual ways. Monty Python and the Holy Grail incorporates this into its plot with a killer rabbit preventing the knights from passing through a cave that may lead to the Holy Grail. Terry Jones was quite the medieval scholar.

SINISTER FAERIES

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meanings.
No-one has ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
--Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Over the past century or so, fairy creatures have acquired a reputation for being cute, playful tricksters, who may lead people astray, but don't mean us much harm. Some can even be beneficial to humans, like brownies that help out a cobbler with his work. Disney seems largely to blame for this, though if you look closer at Disney's depiction of fairies in their movies, they aren't quite as nice as you might think at first. For instance, how do we know the fairy godmother in Cinderella didn't demand the titular character's firstborn daughter as payment for services rendered?

Anyone who's read fairy stories for any length of time will quickly realize that fairies are treacherous, murderous critters that obey their own laws and pay no attention to the social standards of humankind. Faerie lore seems to be somewhat universal as well, as creatures sharing commons powers and abilities tend to show up in numerous mythologies from around the world. The Trickster archetype is very common, for instance, regardless of the civilization in which he appears.

Curiously, although faeries are seen as supernatural, even spiritual beings, they often prey upon humans by appealing to humans' physical desires. Faerie food and drink, for example, are said to be far superior to mortal food and drink, and anyone who partakes of faerie food will be trapped in their world forever. Elves possess an otherworldly beauty that can snare the hearts of mortals, again leading us to our doom should we indulge ourselves by mating with them. To them we are simply amusing diversions, to be discarded (or destroyed) once they tire of us.

Are faeries a form of demon? Is that why they tempt us?

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(Needs more cowbell!)

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CRITICS' PICKS FOR 2024

This is what literary critics believe are the "best" books of 2024. These opinions, for what they are worth, are highly subjective, as everyone's tastes are different. I think you will be able to identify some commonalities among their selections, however, that also serve to identify their preferred ideology. Not really surprising considering the source of this video and the critics that were selected to provide their opinions.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

May, 1940. Four hundred thousand British and French soldiers at Dunkirk have just learned that Belgium surrendered to the German army, and the panzer divisions are just miles away. With that surrender, the allied troops are trapped on the coast. Winston Churchill has been prime minister for just two weeks, and is faced with catastrophe.
Walter Lord, in his book The Miracle of Dunkirk, provides the definitive account of the greatest evacuation in military history. The Royal Navy, assisted by hundreds of private boat owners managed to land hundreds of craft at the beach, and extract three quarters of the troops to safety in a matter of days.
Private citizens like Charles Lightoller, former Titanic officer, took their own craft to the rescue. As Churchill said, a retreat is not a victory, but these rescued troops formed the base on which Britain built their fighting force from. This retreat was a moral victory that presaged actual victory to come, and Lord gives a detailed view of the heroism displayed.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at December 29, 2024 09:17 AM (R7yRq)

Comment: A strategic retreat in warfare is often necessary to avoid catastrophe or to prevent a total defeat. The Allied troops needed to escape across the English Channel to regroup and revise their strategy. We know how it all turned out, but it could have all gone very, very wrong. It's also an example of how private citizens can step up and provide invaluable assistance when called upon to do so. We see that all the time here in the United States of America. Unfortunately, governments have a tendency to get in the way...

+++++

I read Cause For Alarm by Eric Ambler. Some believe Ambler is the inventor of the modern suspense novel. In this work Nicky Marlow is in London in 1937. He is engaged to be married and needs a job. Although he is an engineer, he takes a position as the manager for Spartacus Machine Tools' office in Milan. His predecessor met a sinister death, and he is soon courted by agents with dangerously different agendas. The Italian secret police finds him to be a spy which leads to a long, harrowing escape from Italy to the Yugo-Slav border. A realistic thriller.
Posted by: Zoltan at December 29, 2024 09:47 AM (OAKaM)

Comment: I had never heard of this author, but apparently he inspired other authors in the suspense thriller genre. He also wrote screenplays, even scoring an Academy Award nomination for The Cruel Sea.

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

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WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

Since I began 2024 by reading Steven Erikson's most excellent series, Malazan Books of the Fallen, I decided to start 2025 by reading Ian C. Esslemont's companion books that take place within the same world. Erikson and Esslemont are long time friends that designed this world together, mostly as a roleplaying game experience that they then turned into novels. (Raymond E. Feist did the same thing with his Riftwar Saga.)

Path to Ascendancy Book 1 - Dancer's Lament by Ian C. Esslemont

Path to Ascendancy Book 2 - Deadhouse Landing by Ian C. Esslemont

Path to Ascendancy Book 3 - Kellanved's Reach by Ian C. Esslemont

Path to Ascendancy Book 4 - Forge of the High Mage by Ian C. Esslemont

In addition to the prequel series above, Ian Esslemont wrote several stand-alone novels that take place during the main epic storyline of the Malazan Books of the Fallen. These flesh out other areas of the world of the Malazan Empire, extending the worldbuilding in new and exciting ways.

Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont

Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont

Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont

Blood and Bone by Ian C. Esslemont

Assail by Ian C. Esslemont

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.

Fairie Tale by Raymond E. Feist

I first read this as a teenager and I recall not liking it at the time. I decided to give it another go. I enjoyed it much more the second time, thanks to the combination of age and experience that have shaped my reading since then.

Phil Hastings moves his family from California to rural upstate New York to start a new life as a novel writer. Unbeknownst to him, his new property has an active "fairy mound" and his family soon notices odd occurrences and strange happenings as the local faeries take an active interest in the Hastings family. A war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts threatens the entire world as an ancient bargain is disrupted, which could lead to disaster for the human race. Hastings must also find his son, who was taken by the faeries as payment for his innocent transgressions.

Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill

This is another faerie-inspired story where the faeries are rather nasty buggers. Cargill draws upon not only faerie lore, but also middle-eastern myths and legends. Colby Stevens is granted a couple of wishes by a djinn, who has been cursed to only grant wishes that turn out bad. Ewan is a changeling who grew up among faerie kind. When Colby and Ewan find each other, they become fast friends. Colby grows up to become a powerful wizard who must take on the faeries of Austin, Texas who will kill Ewan to fulfill an ancient bargain they made with Satan. It gets quite twisted quite fast.

Queen of the Dark Things by C. Robert Cargill

In the sequel to Dreams and Shadows, Cargill draws up on Australian Aboriginal lore to tell the story, as Colby must face consequences of a choice he made in the past. The titular Queen of Dark Things has never forgiven Colby for abandoning her to her fate in the Dreamworld. Now she's back for revenge.

Both Dreams and Shadows and Queen of the Dark Things use an interesting narrative framing device to tell their stories. The main chapters are interspersed with excerpts from a fictional text that explains much of the lore required for understanding the events of the story. I'm not sure if there is an actual name for this narrative framing, but I found it interesting, especially when we find out that these excerpts were actually written by Colby Stevens under a pseudonym.

Path to Ascendancy Book 1 - Dancer's Lament by Ian C. Esslemont

Before he was Cotillion (a.k.a. "The Rope"), the patron god of assassins, he was known as Dancer, a superb killer. Before that he was simply Dorin, a young man dreaming of becoming the best assassin in the world, but lacking the business skills needed to develop that reputation. Along the way, he meets up with Wu, a strange mage who may or may not be a confidence trickster. Dorin is caught up in a conflict between the Protectress of the city-state of Li Heng and the King of Itko Kan, seeking to claim the city for his own.

This is a prequel to Steven Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen. We get to see a number of characters that eventually show up in that series, before they achieve fame in that world. Wu is insane, but also fun as he keeps Dorin on his toes throughout their exploits. Dorin is just trying to make a name for himself as a killer-for-hire, setting his sights on the King assaulting the city.

Path to Ascendancy Book 2 - Deadhouse Landing by Ian C. Esslemont

Dorin and Wu have fled the city-state of Li Heng for greener pastures on Malaz Island. Wu is still insane and adopts a new name--Kellanved--because it sounds more badass (seriously, that's his reasoning). Dorin is now known as Dancer, due to the fighting style he uses. They take control of the criminal underworld of Malaz City, as Kellanved launches his scheme to steal the leadership of the island out from under its current pirate lord, Mock. It's a plan worthy of Pinky and the Brain. Unlike one of the Brain's plans, Kellanved's scheme works, laying the foundation for an empire that will one day conquer a third of the entire planet.

Path to Ascendancy Book 3 - Kellanved's Reach by Ian C. Esslemont

As I've been reading through Esslemont's take on the Malazan universe, I've frequently found myself looking up characters on the Malazan Wiki site, because I don't remember their significance in the larger narrative. Thank goodness for the internets!

In this book, Kellanved's venture to steal the throne of Malaz Island was successful. Now he sets his sights on the nearby rival island ruled by Nap. Once he controls both realms, he'll be in a position to dominate the coastal cities of the continent of Quon Tali. And once Kellanved controls those, he'll move on to rulership of the newly born Malazan Empire! Then things get weird as Kellanved demonstrates once and for all he's walking around with a pair of stones made from pure neutronium...

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 12-22-2024 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Made with all natural organic ingredients. And lots of love.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 Tolle Lege

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 08:59 AM (fwDg9)

2 Happy New Year

Posted by: rhennigantx at January 05, 2025 09:00 AM (gbOdA)

3 Morning, Perfessor.

Howdy, Horde.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 09:02 AM (q3u5l)

4 Ain't been reading nothing. Writing a bit, but no reading, except for some work on A Literary Horde posted by the denizens there.

Nobody's about, so it's the Book Thread, then take down the Christmas decor.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:03 AM (0eaVi)

5 When I can get it, moving along in Martin Gilbert's Churchill, a Life. 600+ pages into it and Chamberlain is still trying to appease Adolf with is passive theory.

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:03 AM (fwDg9)

6 Would have gotten another chapter in but wife had the book yesterday evening so I painted miniatures.

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:04 AM (fwDg9)

7 Are sinister fairies lefthanded?

Posted by: Northernlurker , Maple Syrup MAGA at January 05, 2025 09:06 AM (kTd/k)

8 Good morning fellow Book Threadists and here's to another great year of reading.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 09:08 AM (yTvNw)

9 Reading has been spotty for a while now, hope to tighten that up. Got the square of The Sevens by Laura shepherd-Robinson for Christmas from d2. Trust the daughter, don't trust hyphenated authors.
A few quick chapters in and it's seeming pretty good.

Posted by: From about That Time at January 05, 2025 09:08 AM (4780s)

10 Happy New Year to those of you who thumb through pages. (Somebody more tech-savvy than me please add the equivalent lingo for e-books.)

My resolutions for 2025 include:

1) Do not buy any additional books online. (Replacements don't count.)

2) Read only from books I have.

2) Send at least 20 books to new homes.

I didn't progress with the Luke Cage stories. When work gets busy, there are no slack periods for blogs and news sites. Those get shoved into the night, cutting into book time.

But it's early in the year.

Posted by: Weak Geek at January 05, 2025 09:09 AM (p/isN)

11 Northernlurker probably

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:09 AM (fwDg9)

12 Yay Book Thread! Close to cresting page 800 of Gilbert's doorstopper. My New Years Resolution is to stop it with these interminable chunky books. Really. This time for sure.

After 1,300 pages on Ford Madox Ford, why I'd take on 1,100 for Churchill I don't know. I think Gilbert himself is getting a bit bored, because after painfully detailed discussions of tariff legislation and the travails of the Ministry of Munitions, World War II is largely just a travelogue of where Winston sailed, flew or drove, and all the sights he saw.

It is obvious that while he is supremely important to the morale and leadership of the UK, by 1944 the Empire is a spent force, and Churchill is reduced to sniping at Stalin and hectoring an increasingly incapable FDR, who Gilbert quotes one of Churchilll's entourage as only being good for about four hours work a day - not enough to manage a war.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:09 AM (ZOv7s)

13 Oh, also a reference to FDR having to wear makeup because he is so visibly unhealthy.

Wilson, FDR, Biden - the Dems do sure love their Lich-Kings!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:10 AM (ZOv7s)

14 For some reason, much of this art features rabbits killing people in a wide variety of strange and unusual ways.
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Must've been Elmer season.

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at January 05, 2025 09:10 AM (JdYf9)

15 I don't have any reading goals. I've never done that. I read because I want to, not because I feel I have to.

Faeries in Austin? You mean, the whole town?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:10 AM (0eaVi)

16 I have picked up several Eric Ambler books over the past few months. He is a very good storyteller and the novels are generally a couple hundred pages.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 09:12 AM (02QaS)

17 Not much reading this week. Am skipping through a couple of private eye novels by Michael Harvey -- The Chicago Way, and The Fifth Floor. They've been sitting around here since their hardcover publications and I'd never gotten around to them. Okay, but not spectacular; will probably find them a new home during the upcoming trimming of the shelves.

New Year's Resolutions? Quite a few eons ago, I made a NYR to not make any more NYRs and so far I've stuck to that. If I meant to do one this year, it'd be to be a little more systematic in my reading and catch up on books unread for too long. This kid's 75 now & time's a wastin'.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 09:13 AM (q3u5l)

18 For some reason, much of this art features rabbits killing people in a wide variety of strange and unusual ways.
-

Must've been Elmer season.
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at January 05, 2025 09:10 AM (JdYf9)
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There's lots of symbolism that is now lost to contemporary culture.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:14 AM (ZOv7s)

19 I read A Strange Habit Of Mind by Andrew Klaven. Klaven's protagonist is Cameron Winter, an English professor and ex-assassin. In this book, Winter calls upon his ex-boss to help him bring to justice a Big Tech billionaire who arranges fatal accidents to happen to those who oppose his ideas of a better world, which are similar to those of the World Economic Forum. Klaven manages to tuck bits of his conservatism into this interesting thriller.

I read 61 books last year, slightly above my average. The best by far was People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

Posted by: Zoltan at January 05, 2025 09:14 AM (OAKaM)

20 Your problem with reading the first series book and piling up the rest stems confusing 'possible' as 'probable'.
Unless you are finding a whole series in a used book store, put off buying the second until you've read something else.

Posted by: From about That Time at January 05, 2025 09:14 AM (4780s)

21 A Book Thread, AND a fashion thread for the 'ettes!

It's like two Threads in one!

Posted by: Duncanthrax at January 05, 2025 09:15 AM (a3Q+t)

22 I remember reading harlots ghost by norman mailer hos bildungsroman about the cia some 1100 pages about 20 pages of notes and sources

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:17 AM (dJR17)

23 Can't say picture makes much sense to me, but to me looks like paper doll cut outs

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:17 AM (fwDg9)

24 Depending upon how they dress, those faeries might be arrested by the Russians.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 09:17 AM (02QaS)

25 Happy New Year!

Illustrated books for adults are awesome.

Faerie Tale is a book I remember vividly; really good.

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:17 AM (Wx316)

26 Last Monday I ventured to downtown East Lansing while the students were gone to visit Curious Books. Their other location (The Archives) has closed down, and Curious is in a state of disarray, with both empty shelves and boxes of books crowding the aisles.

I almost tripped over Lord Rochester's Monkey, a biography of a Restoration-era poet by Graham Greene. This was apparently written in the 1930s, but was considered too obscene for British publishers. By the 1970s, Greene was able to get it published and updated his earlier work.

I've just dipped into it, and it is lavishly illustrated and looks quite good. While I was there, I snapped up a bunch of other Greene paperbacks, which looked agreeably short.

The possibility of lighter fare has me churning through Churchill.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:18 AM (ZOv7s)

27 Thanks for reminding me, I need to reread Tolkien's Essay On Fairy Tales.

Posted by: davidt at January 05, 2025 09:18 AM (i0F8b)

28 Good morning dear morons and thanks perfesser

Posted by: San Franpsycho at January 05, 2025 09:19 AM (RIvkX)

29 Good Sunday morning, horde.

I just picked up my reserved copy of the latest Longmire, "Tooth and Claw." It's no doorstopper--I should probably finish it in a day once I get started.

First, I need to finish my priority reading, which is "Built From Broken," by Scott H. Hogan. It is "A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body."

Bottom line for me so far is that a low-protein diet, over decades, has probably led me to breakdown. Gotta make some changes.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 09:19 AM (OX9vb)

30 I'm glad that Second Officer Charles Herbert Toller got a prominent mention in that The Miracle of Dunkirk writeup by Thomas Paine. I'm a sap for stories of redemption and heroism. Toller, senior most officer to survive, saved a lot of lives on Titanic. He served in the Royal Navy in WWI, twice decorated for gallantry. The Titanic disaster hung over him though. Then he saved even more lives as an aging private citizen (age 66!) with his actions at Dunkirk.

Helluva man. Salute!

Posted by: Count de Monet at January 05, 2025 09:19 AM (Aqu9a)

31 Seems to me that a Moron author could have great fun producing a "translation" of the Codex Seraphianus, or the Voynich Manuscript.

Posted by: Alberta Oil Peon at January 05, 2025 09:20 AM (8zz6B)

32 It took place in the states in berlin in uruguay around the cia headquarters that was his editor overindulging him
A good 300 hundred pages could have been lopped off

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:20 AM (dJR17)

33 I should say that Gilbert's book isn't bad by any stretch, it's just that wartime Winston is the one I know quite well, and I think Gilbert knows that, so it's really just a summary of events he assumes you already know, and the focus is on Churchill's health problems, which would be quite dramatic if you didn't know he died 20 years later.

I'm looking forward to yet another end to his political career.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:21 AM (ZOv7s)

34 My reading goal for this year is to tackle as much of my TBR piles as I can. My lovely wife has been a saint when it comes to the mess in my office. She said it makes Malcolm Guite look organized.
Happy New Year to all my fellow book enthusiasts. I love this place. It keeps me sane.

Posted by: RetsgtRN at January 05, 2025 09:21 AM (IYQDn)

35 Without losing much

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:22 AM (dJR17)

36 I expect to finish off The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey today. I really like this book, there is something about alien species with value systems orthogonal to ours (in general) that I find fascinating. Corey is a pen name for two guys, who also wrote The Expanse series, a good (but slow, as always) streamer series.

The most interesting part about this book is the exploration of collaboration with conquerors. Acquiesce and live to fight another day, or fight and die? What if the fate of our species rests on not fighting? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, but can you make that decision for all of humanity?

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 09:23 AM (DcZ8z)

37 My reading goal for this year is to tackle as much of my TBR piles as I can. My lovely wife has been a saint when it comes to the mess in my office. She said it makes Malcolm Guite look organized.
Happy New Year to all my fellow book enthusiasts. I love this place. It keeps me sane.
Posted by: RetsgtRN at January 05, 2025 09:21 AM (IYQDn)
---
The concept of the TBR pile is unknown to me. I mean, I did buy multiple books, but the "pile" is tiny, and anyway, I keep books on the shelf unless they are actively being used. Gilbert's book is a good candidate for me to discard down the stretch (when Curious Books is buying again) because it is so damn BIG.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:24 AM (ZOv7s)

38 Speaking of illustrated books for adults, I mentioned last week liking Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak. Fun mystery thriller.

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:24 AM (Wx316)

39 Tolkien left out the part where the elves loot the Target.

Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 09:24 AM (2Jptx)

40 Elves have left the building.

Posted by: That guy who always says... at January 05, 2025 09:25 AM (991eG)

41 I'm continuing with George MacDonald's "At the Back of the North Wind" and it continues to be a delight. The lush descriptions of the scenes and the depth of the characters, gradually revealed, and the sheer creativity of his writing is wonderful. (As in the sense of full of wonder.)

I don't make New Year's resolutions but I foresee a LOT more reading of MacDonald and GK Chesterton this year. Between those two authors and the suggestions that come from the Malcolm Guite YT videos, that could take up much or more of a year.

I have the complete works of MacDonald and Chesterton on Kindle but will add to the paper versions as I find them.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 09:26 AM (yTvNw)

42 Since there are covers in the post, could I request feedback on cover design? Thanks.

https://is.gd/WK0ndN

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:27 AM (9yUzE)

43 The most interesting part about this book is the exploration of collaboration with conquerors. Acquiesce and live to fight another day, or fight and die? What if the fate of our species rests on not fighting? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, but can you make that decision for all of humanity?
Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 09:23 AM (DcZ8z)
---
Something that I didn't notice when I was younger and now can't get past is the absence of religion in a lot of sci-fi. There may be vague references here or there, but it's not all that important in the face of whatever struggle is going on. Death is final, death is the end, there is nothing beyond death.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but it was definitely a vibe you get - if faiths are present, then they are all kind of equal, sort of like pagan Rome, and everyone does their own thing.

C.S. Lewis obviously did Christians In Space, but it was heavy into to the allegory, and I could not get into it.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (ZOv7s)

44 Robert Kirk was a Scottish clergyman of the 17th century who wrote the book Secret Commonwealth about fairies and fairyland. He believed fairies were capable of salvation and that he was called ultimately to be a pastor to them.

Posted by: Northernlurker , Maple Syrup MAGA at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (kTd/k)

45 Can't avoid seeing Neville Chamberlain in the likes of Jimmy Carter and other Democrats like Barack and Sundowner.

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:30 AM (fwDg9)

46 #1 Son bought me Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible Vol.1. Just started it this week - an easy read although Toll is not my favorite WWII Pacific history author.

He does a good job of explaining where the Japanese Navy's doctrine of a 'decisive battle' originated from.

(Hint: It was from an American)

Posted by: Tonypete at January 05, 2025 09:30 AM (WXNFJ)

47 It took less than ninety seconds, but it became one of the best known events in American history. On October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp, two of his brothers, and Doc Holliday met the McLaurys and Clantons next to the OK Corral. What followed became legend, much like many events in Earp's life.

In his illuminating biography, Inventing Wyatt Earp, Allen Barra has sifted through all of the legends and stories to reveal the true man behind them. Farm boy, buffalo hunter, detective, bounty hunter, boxing promoter, gambler, and more, Earp lived through a momentous period in American history.

By the time he died in 1929, Wyatt Earp's story had been told and exaggerated to millions, and the truth is more fascinating than the legend. Barra has done a good job separating myth from fact in the unique life of Wyatt Earp.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 09:30 AM (02QaS)

48 Finished the Galactic Patrol Series by Doc E.E. Smith.

Children of the Lens was superior to the previous book, Second Stage Lensman. But still had some clunkers. Also some scenes of good writing. It is a tale of good verses evil.

Even with evil evident in society today, First Lensman and it's President of North America election is the most relevant part of the entire series to today. The thought of a completely fair and untainted major election is indeed Science Fiction.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2025 09:31 AM (u82oZ)

49 https://is.gd/WK0ndN
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo

I like it a lot. It promises fun and violence.

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:31 AM (J5RCE)

50 Enjoying the beautiful descriptions in MacDonald's stories reminded me of John Muir's writing. I went through some of his essays on the American west in the latter 1800s. His descriptions are both accurate and poetic in power and wonder. He never lost his delight in Creation. Even if you aren't interested in the topics, his writing is a pleasure.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 09:32 AM (yTvNw)

51 Morning, book folken,

Walter Lord is also famous for his book on the Titanic[/i disaster, A Night to Remember . . . and the 1958 film version of that was scripted by Eric Ambler!

Officer Lightoller, as the Perfessor mentioned, was involved in the Dunkirk rescue. He was played in the '58 ANtR film by Kenneth More. To this day when I hear Lightoller's name, I picture More.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 09:32 AM (omVj0)

Posted by: Tonypete at January 05, 2025 09:33 AM (WXNFJ)

53 More Everest stuff, so I'll be brief. Shook by Jennifer Hull is about a 2014 expedition. They were doing acclimation, to get ready for the climb, when an earthquake hit base camp. About 200 climbers were stranded on camps 1 & 2, which had to be rescued by helicopter. The entire season was shut down and many Sherpas were killed at the mountain and in their homes. Well written and a good read. It was Dave Hahn's last trip to Everest.

Also finished Michael Groom's Sheer Will. He's an Australian climber with a long career. The book is about his climbing history (with an Everest summit without oxygen). He had to add a chapter about the 1996 climb, when he was a guide. It's pretty brief and limited to only what he personally experienced. I saw complaints about him on You Tube and wound up arguing with strangers about Jon Krakauer. I try not to do this but Krakauer made up some things when he wrote Into Thin Air. I have a couple more books to read on that climb, mostly from the IMAX team.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 09:33 AM (NQtI0)

54 My first (graphic) novel of the year was "The Atleantean" volume 1, by Randy Zimmerman and Russ Leach. Its the first of a promised series of sequels to Robert E Howard's old pulp story "The Shadow Kingdom." TSK was the story that introduced Kull, the prototype of Conan. It also fell into the public domain two years ago, so Zimmerman and Leach did a graphic novel adaptation of that, and are now turning it into a series.

I'm actually excited for it, besides Kull, TSK introduced the idea of shape-shifting lizard people attempting to infiltrate the kingdom. It was really cool and creepy, but never really followed up on in any later Kull stories. While the lizards weren't the primary focus in The Atlantean 1, they did make an appearance, and hunting them appears to be the driving force of the series. I'm looking forward to volume 2.

My only complaint is that the artist, Russ Leach, isn't quite at the level of the definitive Kull/Conan comic book artist, John Buscema. But that's a high bar, and I can't blame him for not being the very best. He's far from the worst artist I've collected.

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 09:33 AM (Lhaco)

55 I snapped up a bunch of other Greene paperbacks, which looked agreeably short.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:18 AM (ZOv7s)

Be careful with greene books. They're not ripe.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:34 AM (0eaVi)

56 Can't avoid seeing Neville Chamberlain in the likes of Jimmy Carter and other Democrats like Barack and Sundowner.
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:30 AM (fwDg9)
---
Chamberlain was utterly committed to his cause and had no doubt that he was on the Right Side of History. He was arrogant, controlling and mocking, but at least had the virtue of writing his own speeches.

The most striking thing about him was his abject refusal to even *plan* for wartime conversion of industry, which almost cost the UK the war.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:34 AM (ZOv7s)

57 good morning and happy new year, Perfessor, Horde

Posted by: callsign claymore at January 05, 2025 09:34 AM (CHaZg)

58 If fairies did not sin, they would not need redemption.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at January 05, 2025 09:34 AM (ZmEVT)

59 As I mentioned last week, my reading goal for the new year is simply to read more books than I purchase, so that my to-be-read pile smaller at the end of the year than at the beginning.

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 09:35 AM (Lhaco)

60 3D Printing has become a gateway drug back to gaming, the grandson has taken a fancy to tabletop gaming, so I've printed out 3D Catan, but we've also gotten into DnD, so we've started playing minimalist Dnd, picked up a book, The Game Masters Book of More Random Encounters, for ideas. It was 30pct off at a big box store that will remain unnamed. Pretty good so far, lots of ideas and scenarios.

Posted by: Thomas Bender at January 05, 2025 09:36 AM (XV/Pl)

61 I have manager to curtail by book buying but I will still buy random very old books as objects on impulse.

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:36 AM (OTdqV)

62 I think I read maybe 4 or 5 books for 2024.

I'll try for maybe 8 books this year. Wish me luck.

Posted by: dantesed at January 05, 2025 09:36 AM (Oy/m2)

63 The experience of the English in medieval times destroying the giant killer rabbits was hare razing.

Posted by: That guy who always says... at January 05, 2025 09:36 AM (991eG)

64 It must have been the fairies that brought soccer and the metric system to Europe.

Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (2Jptx)

65 Yes, faeries are demons or demonic.

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (OTdqV)

66 I'm working through book series that I have on the shelves; mostly cozy mysteries. Some of which I had not read in so long that I've forgotten who the murderer was. Currently working through Charlotte McLeod's Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn mysteries. Agreeable, not overly violent, nice characterizations and setting.
Thanks, Perfessor, for last weeks link to West Towards the Sunset - a nice uptick in sales. BTW, the print version is not available. I wanted to have it in time for Christmas, but real life intervened. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0989782425

Thanks to all AoS Book Threaders who purchase mine and other indy writers books. I don't know if any of us can buy a castle next to JK Rowlings' yet - but every purchase helps. So do reviews - if you read and liked any of our books, please-please-please post a review on Amazon. I've been told that once a book hits fifty or more reviews, Amazon's algorithms boost its' visibility in searches.

Posted by: Sgt. Mom at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (Ew3fm)

67 Very punny

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (dJR17)

68 For some reason, much of this art features rabbits killing people in a wide variety of strange and unusual ways.

Who knew that Redwall had such historical precedent?!

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (Lhaco)

69 I had no idea that killer rabbits were a thing in illuminated manuscripts. Until they started popping up in the Moron vernacular these last couple of weeks, they weren't on my radar at all. I just thought Monty Python was being Monty Python.

I started watching the video, and it's interesting so far, but I can't listen and read threads simultaneously. I'll put it on while I'm cooking later and listen to all of it.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (OX9vb)

70 Since there are covers in the post, could I request feedback on cover design? Thanks.

https://is.gd/WK0ndN
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:27 AM (9yUzE)

Did you decide on that one before? Is this a redo for it? Can you show us the other choices again?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (0eaVi)

71 This week I finished a 1994 crime/suspense novel called Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter. The attractive wife of a New York City Asst. DA in the Organized Crime Unit meets and falls in love and adultery with a handsome young man she knows as Andrew Farrell. Turns out he is actually Andrew Faviola, the boss of a Mafia crime family that her husband is charged with investigating and destroying. Because it's confidential, she does not know the name of the target family, and she doesn't know he's Faviola either for quite a while . . . and Faviola doesn't know her husband is the DA hunting him. From 1994, it is a swift read, with no cell phones or Internet.

I'm starting his 1983 Far From the Sea, which so far is family drama and does not hint at crime. Hunter didn't always deal with criminal activity in his stories.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (omVj0)

72 52
Posted by: Tonypete

Agreed

Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (OTdqV)

73 Sigh. The curse of fat fingers - the print version of West Towards the Sunset is NOW available.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0989782425

Posted by: Sgt. Mom at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (Ew3fm)

74 I have read and greatly enjoyed Lilith and Phantastes by Mcdonald. Lilith, in fact, played a part in my return to faith.
Another writer I've enjoyed is Lord Dunsany.

Posted by: Northernlurker , Maple Syrup MAGA at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (kTd/k)

75 How do rabbits wield axes. They don't have hands.

Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 09:39 AM (2Jptx)

76 Historical fiction is my favorite genre and Steven Pressfield is my favorite author for it though he has leaned woke in his most recent pure fiction works.

One of my most pleasant surprises after first learning of Pressfield's historical fiction work, starting with Gates of Fire , was a few years later when I learned he was the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance. As a golfer I had heard of the book but had no desire to read it for some reason but when I realized Pressfield wrote it I picked it up immediately. I can see why it was one of his most successful books.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 09:39 AM (D6PGr)

77 Allie, as usual, is playing literary critic this morning and has plopped herself down on my book, preventing me from reading it.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 09:39 AM (BpYfr)

78 Something that I didn't notice when I was younger and now can't get past is the absence of religion in a lot of sci-fi. There may be vague references here or there, but it's not all that important in the face of whatever struggle is going on. Death is final, death is the end, there is nothing beyond death.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (ZOv7s)

Absolutely agree. I read a lot of science fiction and religion is almost always treated as some superstitious relic from the days before the species developed logic. The existing ethical systems are usually portrayed as the result of evolution, biology.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 09:40 AM (DcZ8z)

79 Something that I didn't notice when I was younger and now can't get past is the absence of religion in a lot of sci-fi. There may be vague references here or there, but it's not all that important in the face of whatever struggle is going on. Death is final, death is the end, there is nothing beyond death.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (ZOv7s)

Well, post TOS, Star Trek always posited faith as the problem, unless it was some weird crap like on DS 9 or something aliens did that didn't fit with human ideas.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:41 AM (0eaVi)

80 I'm starting my annual reading of LOTR this week. At first I thought to simply read through it with no other books until I finished. That's the way I did it when it was new to me. Then I realized I now know so much of the authors and background that influenced LOTR and the philosophical underpinnings behind Tolkien and his group that there will be too many rabbit holes appearing in my mind. But I want to keep those side discursions brief and not interrupt the lovely flow of the books.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 09:41 AM (yTvNw)

81 Yes, faeries are demons or demonic.
Posted by: vmom deport deport deport at January 05, 2025 09:37 AM (OTdqV)
---
This would be a function of how evil presents itself in ways contemporary people can relate to. Faeries are now very distant to us, something out of folklore, sentimental, silly and harmless.

Our current demons take forms more suitable to modern, suburban life, feeding off of clickbait rage, or social media lynch mobs. And of course, overt displays of satanic symbols that would have earned you a noose if not a bonfire only a century ago.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:41 AM (ZOv7s)

82 #1 Son bought me Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible Vol.1. Just started it this week - an easy read although Toll is not my favorite WWII Pacific history author.

He does a good job of explaining where the Japanese Navy's doctrine of a 'decisive battle' originated from.

(Hint: It was from an American)

Sure, sure, blame it on the dead guy.

Posted by: Alfred Thayer Mahan at January 05, 2025 09:42 AM (xCA6C)

83 I ran across that killer rabbits in medieval literature video the other day, but I was not convinced that it wasn't a put on.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 09:42 AM (y3283)

84 Can't avoid seeing Neville Chamberlain in the likes of Jimmy Carter and other Democrats like Barack and Sundowner.
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:30 AM (fwDg9)

You give them too much credit. Chamberlin stalled for time, but the evil three you've mentioned were/are active subversives.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (0eaVi)

85 From 1994, it is a swift read, with no cell phones or Internet.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 09:38 AM (omVj0)
---
When I was reading Feist's Faerie Tale (published in 1988 or so), I was struck by how many problems in the story could have been solved with the internet and cell phones. For instance, one of the characters has to do a lot of travelling to track down experts in faerie lore. Nowadays, they could talk online via Zoom meeting...

It truly was a different world back then.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (BpYfr)

86 I liked the exceedingly fey elves of "Bored of the Rings", who reminded me of the two lavender lads in "The Producers":

https://tinyurl.com/y5cz2d23

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (kpS4V)

87 Well certainly not the episode on the roman world name esxapes me but the apollo manque flint and trelayne are supposed to be good figures

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (dJR17)

88 Those brownies in the shoemaker story were naked when they first showed up and went away after they got some clothes. I'm not sure what that means other than you can make those fairies leave by giving them clothes.

Posted by: fd at January 05, 2025 09:44 AM (vFG9F)

89 I know it's difficult to pick ones all time favorite book because it's fluid as time passes and more books are read but id like to hear what the hordes choice would be. Maybe top three or by genre.

Overall mine is Captains Courageous.

Biography is American Caesar
SciFi is Armor
Historical Fiction is Gates of Fire
Drama/Mystery/Crime is Lords of Discipline

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (D6PGr)

90 @42 --

Victor Tango Kilo, that cover and ritle jump off the shelf. I like the art style, even if it didn't have a pretty girl and a BFG.

Compare with the covers in Prof's current reads. All title and author's name. Teeny-tiny art. Why bother?

Posted by: Weak Geek at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (p/isN)

91 Guilty pleasure: Finished the Forgotten Realms novel "Azure Bonds" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Except for the cocked eyebrows I received at the classic "Chicks in Chainmail" cover. Screw you, coffee house hipster!

I downloaded the next in the series, "The Wyvern's Spur", for my treadmill read.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (kpS4V)

92
Faerie food and drink, for example, are said to be far superior to mortal food and drink, and anyone who partakes of faerie food will be trapped in their world forever.

So-o-o-o, Whataburger?

Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (iJfKG)

93 Well, post TOS, Star Trek always posited faith as the problem, unless it was some weird crap like on DS 9 or something aliens did that didn't fit with human ideas.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:41 AM (0eaVi)
---
Babylon 5 is probably the most faith-based sci-fi, and actually examined how God could transcend species and time, and that maybe death wasn't the worst thing.

The whole G'kar and Londo storylines were all about fall and redemption. I think that's why I still like it and it stands out so much.

There is even an episode where the know-it-all secular doctor flouts religion to save the life of a child, and the parents then kill the "abomination."

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (ZOv7s)

94 When I was reading Feist's Faerie Tale (published in 1988 or so), I was struck by how many problems in the story could have been solved with the internet and cell phones. For instance, one of the characters has to do a lot of travelling to track down experts in faerie lore. Nowadays, they could talk online via Zoom meeting...

It truly was a different world back then.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025

***
In a mystery, too, modern cell and Internet tech makes it hard for a villain to *conceal* anything!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 09:46 AM (omVj0)

95 Evan Hunter was excellent. Between his series books (87th Precinct, Matthew Hope) and non-series titles like Sons and The Blackboard Jungle, he was practically a one-man publishing house for a while.

Far from the Sea was one of my favorites from his later stuff, though there are some of his late works that I still haven't gotten around to.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 09:46 AM (q3u5l)

96 Escapes thats the thing aboit science fiction even good ones like babylon 5 where the shadows were certainly demons of a sort

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:46 AM (dJR17)

97 Did you decide on that one before? Is this a redo for it? Can you show us the other choices again?

It is a rework. I have changed computers since then and I'm not sure I could easily locate the previous version. There is an alternate version posted below.

It promises fun and violence.

That's what I was going for, dark military space opera with a Heinlein vibe.

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:47 AM (9yUzE)

98 I cleared my reading decks in anticipation of beginning my reread of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's been some years, so I'm hoping I'll be pleased anew by some passages, which will feel both fresh and familiar.

It's the hardback Houghton Mifflin trilogy with a map in the back of each book.

I have Karen Wynn Fonstad's "Atlas of Middle Earth" on the table for consultation. One can never have too many maps.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:48 AM (kpS4V)

99 Guilty pleasure: Finished the Forgotten Realms novel "Azure Bonds" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Except for the cocked eyebrows I received at the classic "Chicks in Chainmail" cover. Screw you, coffee house hipster!

I downloaded the next in the series, "The Wyvern's Spur", for my treadmill read.
Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (kpS4V)
---
Dragonlance killed whatever interest I had in TSR fiction. No, it didn't just kill it, it nuked the site from orbit and then dragged it into the sun.

Anyway, I do remember that cover, which one could argue is a candidate for Peak 80s fantasy cover art.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:48 AM (ZOv7s)

100 There's never just one killer rabbit.

Posted by: callsign claymore at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (CHaZg)

101 Our family went to see Homestead yesterday, an Angel Studios release based on “Black Autumn” by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, made me make plans to refresh our go-bag this morning. If interested, see it in theater and support alternative independent film-makers.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (DcZ8z)

102 One of my 2025 goals is to read a few books that I purchased a long time ago but haven't got around to reading, top of the list being 'White House Years' by Henry Kissinger. If I tell someone then I have to do it, right? I'm interested in the origins of globalism, though I realize they may predate this book, but I also find Kissinger interesting and wonder what his role was in globalism.

Posted by: Norrin Radd, sojourner of the spaceways at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (tRYqg)

103 could I request feedback on cover design? Thanks.

https://is.gd/WK0ndN
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:27 AM (9yUzE)

I like Hell Yeah, We're the Baddies. Left a comment on your post.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (OX9vb)

104 There is even an episode where the know-it-all secular doctor flouts religion to save the life of a child, and the parents then kill the "abomination."

There is also that episode where every race is supposed to present its dominant belief system. When it's humanity's turn, the commander begins introducing a long line of people, each a representative of one of Earth's many religions.

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (9yUzE)

105 The RPG writer Kenneth Hite has suggested that in all old fairy tales and legends, you should mentally replace "fairy" with "orc" or "goblin" to get a better sense of what the storytellers meant.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2025 09:50 AM (78a2H)

106 Orange Ent yeah I agree

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:50 AM (fwDg9)

107 At the end of the STOS episode "Bread and Circuses"

"Spock expresses surprise at a sun-worshiping cult preaching universal brotherhood, opining that sun worship was primitive superstition, with no such philosophy behind it. Lt. Uhura, having monitored the planet's communications all this time, has the answer: "It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the Son of God." The Captain is astonished: "Caesar and Christ. They had them both. And the Word is spreading only now."

Posted by: fd at January 05, 2025 09:50 AM (vFG9F)

108 {{{All Hail Eris, Agent of Good Times}}}

Chicks in Chainmail has some good short stories in them. I especially remember using magic for reversible breast augmentation. And the subsequent medical insurance funding crisis. Pretty clever.

The cover was good while reading at a Denny's.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2025 09:51 AM (u82oZ)

109 It's the hardback Houghton Mifflin trilogy with a map in the back of each book.

I have Karen Wynn Fonstad's "Atlas of Middle Earth" on the table for consultation. One can never have too many maps.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:48 AM (kpS4V)
---
Ah, the second revised edition. I remember well when I got my trembling hands on it and read the publisher's note that this was now THE MOST PRECISE EDITION IN PRINT.

*pauses to catch breath*

The Atlas can easily send you down rabbit holes (speaking of our weekly theme), but the detail in "Pathways" is great.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:51 AM (ZOv7s)

110 Re: Posted by: Dash my lace wigs!

If it helps, here is the story description.

Midnight Morrigan was once the brightest star in the Scorpion Horde’s notoriously brutal intelligence apparatus, the Military Analytics Department (MAD). After the Scorpion Imperium’s conquest of the planet Carpathia turned into a humiliating bloodbath, the Overlords demoted her to a lowly post on a second-rank battle cruiser.

Morrigan has one shot at redemption: exterminate the ragtag rebellion that opposes the Imperium. Defeating them will take all the cunning she has. She will also have to make an uneasy alliance with an Imperial commander, help a mad scientist complete a doomsday weapon, and overcome her greatest foe – the corrupt Imperial bureaucracy. Only once she has crushed the last best hope for freedom in the galaxy, can she take her revenge on all those who wronged her.

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:52 AM (9yUzE)

111 I thought Farscape touched on religion with 'Einstein' . Someone who created everything.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 09:52 AM (D6PGr)

112 Candidus, I also liked "Homestead". It felt very realistic that the baddie was a mid-level official who wanted to confiscate property and produce and redistribute it "for fairness".

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:53 AM (kpS4V)

113 One can never have too many maps.

Posted by: All Hail Eris

Framed on my wall is an 1850 map of Danish, British and Russian North America. Danish Greenland, Russian Alaska, and thirty or more Canadian territories, many of which were concessions for fur hunting or forestry. Interesting how things used to be organized.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 09:53 AM (y3283)

114 Like when Uhura said they were worshiping the Son, not the Sun and they all looked at her like she was crazy.

Nope. Christianity died in the 21st century, dontcha know?

But the Vulcans, it turns out, are a lost tribe.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at January 05, 2025 09:54 AM (ZmEVT)

115 Good morning!

Let's smile & be happy & strike fear in the hearts of killjoy leftists everywhere.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2025 09:54 AM (u82oZ)

116 The Atlas can easily send you down rabbit holes (speaking of our weekly theme), but the detail in "Pathways" is great.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:51 AM (ZOv7s
---

A.H., *all* atlases send me down rabbit holes.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:55 AM (kpS4V)

117 When I was reading Feist's Faerie Tale (published in 1988 or so), I was struck by how many problems in the story could have been solved with the internet and cell phones. For instance, one of the characters has to do a lot of travelling to track down experts in faerie lore. Nowadays, they could talk online via Zoom meeting...

It truly was a different world back then.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (BpYfr)

Perf, that's why the A Literary Horde's epistolary is set in the late 40s - early 50s. Cell and internet cheapens the detective work. Instant comm kills suspense. Then to get around it, you have to invent some bs reason your cell phone doesn't work to warn the victim they're about to be killed.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:56 AM (0eaVi)

118 With the winter storm approaching, and the predictions seem to get more dire every few hours, we are preparing for power outages. For reading purposes that means making sure the e-readers are charged (I wish they used batteries that could be replaced) and various battery lights and candles are handy. Reading by candle light has a certain charm once you get used to it. I would rather not lose power but it's not the end of the world if you are prepared. I can live quite happily without computers but not being able to read or do hobbies would be terrible.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 09:56 AM (yTvNw)

119 One of my 2025 goals is to read a few books that I purchased a long time ago but haven't got around to reading, top of the list being 'White House Years' by Henry Kissinger. If I tell someone then I have to do it, right? I'm interested in the origins of globalism, though I realize they may predate this book, but I also find Kissinger interesting and wonder what his role was in globalism.
Posted by: Norrin Radd, sojourner of the spaceways at January 05, 2025 09:49 AM (tRYqg)
---
Kissinger was always a classical realist, which isn't compatible with globalism because it puts national interest before everything else.

Globalists want to destroy national interest in favor of pan-national oligarchy.

Because globalism became ascendant, Kissinger often muted his views to maintain public viability, but in his few remarks on Ukraine, you could see he did not approve of what was being done and why.

Put simply, the US national interest in Eastern Europe is not the same as Russia's and therefore competition is counterproductive. A Realist would seek some sort of transaction, such as a boundary adjustment regarding the Russian enclaves in exchange for Ukraine's permanent neutrality.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:57 AM (ZOv7s)

120 Guilty pleasure: Finished the Forgotten Realms novel "Azure Bonds" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Except for the cocked eyebrows I received at the classic "Chicks in Chainmail" cover. Screw you, coffee house hipster!

That cover isn't even all that bad. Hot chick, but still pretty classy. And her outfit is nowhere near Red Sonja levels of impracticality...

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 09:58 AM (Lhaco)

121 Re: "Bread and Circuses" in ST:TOS

There's a nice Ray Bradbury story called "The Man" around that theme of the word being spread across the worlds. Think it's included in his collection The Illustrated Man.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 09:58 AM (q3u5l)

122 could I request feedback on cover design? Thanks.

https://is.gd/WK0ndN
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 09:27 AM (9yUzE)

Well, the reader will certainly get a pretty clear idea of the sort of story they are getting. Noone will mistake that for a 'literary fiction' type of story...

Definitely attention-grabbing.

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (Lhaco)

123 We saw Homestead which is an Angel Studios produced film based on the book Black Autumn. I was talking to a friend about it and he is big into Prepper-lit and mentioned Going Home which is a series by an author who goes by A. American and had also been recommended by a farmer neighbor in Florida as the author is from nearby.

So it was my first foray into Prepper-lit. I had watched some interviews of the author of Black Autumn trying to get some insight into the movie, so I have not read it yet but based on that seems like Prepper-lit has a LOT of product placement People don't have backpacks they have Maxpedition Devildogs and it is always referred to that way.

Going Home is an EMP story and a guy who has to walk home 250 miles in Florida in the aftermath. Some of it seems realistic some of it is just survivalist fantasy. The main characters are written in a believable way that makes them likable and the bad guys are less well written and you know they are bad guys.

Posted by: blaster at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (QfvaV)

124 Like when Uhura said they were worshiping the Son, not the Sun and they all looked at her like she was crazy.

Nope. Christianity died in the 21st century, dontcha know?

But the Vulcans, it turns out, are a lost tribe.
Posted by: no one of any consequence at January 05, 2025 09:54 AM (ZmEVT)
---
There was very much a hope among sci-fi authors and script writers that Christianity - with its bothersome sexual mores and ethical constraints - would in time go away and allow the freaks to do their thing.

Lots of pervs in the ranks of the sci-fi/fantasy Old Guard.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (ZOv7s)

125 Well certainly not the episode on the roman world name esxapes me but the apollo manque flint and trelayne are supposed to be good figures
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (dJR17)

I finally figured out you were responding to my comment about ST when I read "trelayne."

Just a humble request. Can you ref who you're responding to in your comments? Most of the time I can't tell who you're responding to so I skip your posts. Sorry.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (0eaVi)

126 Looking at the 'these pants' sample, I really, really hope tie-dyed bell bottoms aren't coming back. I had enough of that Hippie shit in the 1960s.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (yTvNw)

127 Yep thats a great cover, whats it about,

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:01 AM (dJR17)

128 Last week I also finished Even HUnter's short memoir of working with Alfred Hitchcock, Me and Hitch. It tells the story of how AH recruited Hunter to write the screenplay for The Birds. The original Daphne Du Maurier short story is set on a farm in rural England (Hunter says there is not a line of dialogue in it, which is not true). They jettisoned everything except the central idea of birds attacking humans in droves and proceeded to hash out a completely different story.

Hunter says there were things that worked in the film, and things that did not. Annie, the schoolteacher played in the film by Suzanne Pleshette, he says did not work on paper or on film. Not Suzanne's fault, he says, just the character itself. (Personally I cannot imagine why Rod Taylor's Mitch is so crazy about blonde Tippi Hedren when he had sizzling hot Suzanne right there next door.)

Hitch seemed pleased enough with Hunter's work . . . and then fired him after he had turned in an early draft of AH's next film, Marnie.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:01 AM (omVj0)

129 Hell, even Tinker Bell in Disney's version of "Peter Pan" wasn't sweetness and light despite her cuteness. She had it in for Wendy.

Marvel's miniseries Wisdom (as in Pete) and the subsequent series Captain Britain and M.I. 13 had a fairy. She had a punk hairdo and the sharpest dark glasses I've seen. Shame that the series lasted only 15 issues.

Posted by: Weak Geek at January 05, 2025 10:01 AM (p/isN)

130 Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:57 AM (ZOv7s)

Within that I've always thought Kissinger applied the strategy of negotiate when you can and compromise when you have to. And it all based on the best result for American interests.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (D6PGr)

131 I know it's difficult to pick ones all time favorite book....

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (D6PGr)

It is. I don't have one.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (0eaVi)

132 The tos episode i thought since you were talking about trek

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (dJR17)

133 Morning book hordians!

Daughter gave me Koontz' The Darkest Evening of the Year for Christmas. That man has been through or seen some horrid trauma, because I don't think one can merely imagine the horrors he depicts. It has also inspired me to volunteer at an animal shelter- he wrote the most compelling argument for adopting shelter pets I've ever read.

It's a good book, but not for the faint of heart.

Posted by: Moki at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (wLjpr)

134 The Atlas can easily send you down rabbit holes (speaking of our weekly theme), but the detail in "Pathways" is great.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:51 AM (ZOv7s
---

A.H., *all* atlases send me down rabbit holes.
Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:55 AM (kpS4V)
---
As I read the Malazan books, I have a huge fan-made map open on my desktop so I can visualize where the action takes place. To be fair, both Erikson and Esslemont include nice maps in their books, but since the action jumps around the world a bit, it's helpful to see the different locations in context with each other.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 10:03 AM (BpYfr)

135 Within that I've always thought Kissinger applied the strategy of negotiate when you can and compromise when you have to. And it all based on the best result for American interests.
Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (D6PGr)
---
I recommend Kissinger's book Diplomacy for those interested in his thoughts in pure form. Spoiler: Richelieu is his hero (which explains a lot).

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:04 AM (ZOv7s)

136 There is even an episode where the know-it-all secular doctor flouts religion to save the life of a child, and the parents then kill the "abomination."
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (ZOv7s)

Always meant to watch Babylon 5. Never did. I was waiting until the whole thing was over.

Hmm. Did the same thing with Townsend's log cabin build....

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:05 AM (0eaVi)

137 Oh, so Jimmy Carter wasn't crazy trying to kill a swimming rabbit who very well might have been armed and out to assassinate him.

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 10:05 AM (fwDg9)

138 Just a humble request. Can you ref who you're responding to in your comments? Most of the time I can't tell who you're responding to so I skip your posts. Sorry.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (0eaVi)
---
That's part of his charm. You read the comment, and then see if you can figure out where it goes. I always feel a bit of satisfaction when I crack the code and link back to him.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:05 AM (ZOv7s)

139 Always meant to watch Babylon 5. Never did. I was waiting until the whole thing was over.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:05 AM (0eaVi)
---
You should watch it. It is very good. Skip the 5th season, though. It's terrible, and not necessary to complete the story arc.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:06 AM (ZOv7s)

140 Thanks ace

I am striving to be less cryptic on the new year

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:07 AM (dJR17)

141 Oh, so Jimmy Carter wasn't crazy trying to kill a swimming rabbit who very well might have been armed and out to assassinate him.
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025

***
Remember, General Woundwort's body was never found. . . .

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:07 AM (omVj0)

142 Candidus, I also liked "Homestead". It felt very realistic that the baddie was a mid-level official who wanted to confiscate property and produce and redistribute it "for fairness".
Posted by: All Hail Eris, Agent of Chaos at January 05, 2025 09:53 AM (kpS4V)

On his first appearance I leaned over to my wife and said 'drop him and kick the assistant out'. I guess I'm more of a 'speed, surprise, and violence of action' guy than a 'fishes and loaves' guy.

The commissar is needed for the series.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 10:08 AM (DcZ8z)

143 The first season of babylon was not as good

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:08 AM (dJR17)

144 Wolfus,

I'll second your comment on Pleshette's character in The Birds. I've got Me and Hitch on request through interlibrary loan and am looking forward to reading Hunter's comments on doing the script. Eons since I read Du Maurier's short story; first found that one when the movie came out in one of the paperback Hitchcock anthologies (which seemed to breed on the paperback racks the way coat hangers do in the closet).

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 10:08 AM (q3u5l)

145 Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:04 AM (ZOv7s)

In what way? France being the USA and the Soviet Union / Russia being the Hapsburgs ?

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (D6PGr)

146 Seaaon two when they replaced o hare with boxleitner was better

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (dJR17)

147 Have a great day of reading books.

Snow is walling us in.

My wife is reading yet more series of mystery books in which husbands are killed. Maybe she is looking for how to avoid providing forensic evidence, as she watches Forensic Files a lot.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (u82oZ)

148 Orange Ent yeah I agree
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 09:50 AM (fwDg9)

Thanks, I.... uh, agree with wut?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (0eaVi)

149 When I was reading Feist's Faerie Tale (published in 1988 or so), I was struck by how many problems in the story could have been solved with the internet and cell phones....

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 09:43 AM (BpYfr)

Perf, that's why the A Literary Horde's epistolary is set in the late 40s - early 50s. Cell and internet cheapens the detective work. Instant comm kills suspense. Then to get around it, you have to invent some bs reason your cell phone doesn't work to warn the victim they're about to be killed.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 09:56 AM (0eaVi)

I don't know. The wide open. free-wheeling, "freedom for all" world of the internet is collapsing into a mire of walled gardens, pay to play, and most weirdly and dire of all....forbidden knowledge and forbidden speech!. And that's before we even mention those capricious faeries of the digital world, AI, with their sly fictions and malicious lies.

If we, that is humanity, ever have a Butlerian Jihad, it will be because Our Betters' Digital Prometheus has stolen our fire.

Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 10:10 AM (iJfKG)

150 Well, I must now leave the thread in favor of skiing. Have fun, all!

Posted by: Castle Guy at January 05, 2025 10:11 AM (Lhaco)

151 The first season of babylon was not as good
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:08 AM (dJR17)
---
Perhaps, but it took some time to establish the characters and the story. What is impressive is how quickly the cast came together and you start to get meaningful plot development.

For those who don't know, B5 actually had a real story arc, and these often feature in flashbacks, so not only can you enjoy it in the first viewing, you can then re-watch and see all the foreshadowing you missed.

It was one of the first American TV series to do this.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:11 AM (ZOv7s)

152 Thanks, I.... uh, agree with wut?

Ha!

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 10:12 AM (DcZ8z)

153 Speaking of killer rabbits, Brian Jaques apparently was disappointed with the lack of moral values in children's books, so he came up with the Redwall series. They were good stories and financially successful.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at January 05, 2025 10:12 AM (qJ/SO)

154 I don't know. The wide open. free-wheeling, "freedom for all" world of the internet is collapsing into a mire of walled gardens, pay to play, and most weirdly and dire of all....forbidden knowledge and forbidden speech!. And that's before we even mention those capricious faeries of the digital world, AI, with their sly fictions and malicious lies.

If we, that is humanity, ever have a Butlerian Jihad, it will be because Our Betters' Digital Prometheus has stolen our fire.
Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 10:10 AM (iJfKG)
---
Hmmm. I can see the seeds of several good story ideas in what you've written above...

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 10:12 AM (BpYfr)

155 Harvey was a serial killer.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:13 AM (D6PGr)

156 Cat thought he might try going out the front door. Reacted to the snow like a vampire to garlic. It's about ankle deep here.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 10:13 AM (NQtI0)

157
We're giving Disney too much credit for capricious but ultimately benign faeries.

Shakespeare does a pretty good job of that in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 10:14 AM (iJfKG)

158 Lots of pervs in the ranks of the sci-fi/fantasy Old Guard.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (ZOv7s)

No way!

Posted by: Neil G at January 05, 2025 10:15 AM (0eaVi)

159 Your Chamberlain to Carter etc al

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 10:15 AM (fwDg9)

160 89 I know it's difficult to pick ones all time favorite book because it's fluid as time passes and more books are read but id like to hear what the hordes choice would be. Maybe top three or by genre.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 09:45 AM (D6PGr)

It would be hard to choose. But, if re-reading is an indication, mine would be The Powwow Highway by David Seals. I think I've read it three times over the last decade or so. American Indian buys an old beater car (his "war pony") to go from one of the Dakotas to Arizona to help a girl get out of jail. It's a great adventure. And I can't help calling my own old vehicle the War Pony.

Another I've re-read is "The Likeness" by Tana French. It's such a fascinating situation to me--a detective with a strong likeness to a murder victim goes undercover in the victim's group of friends to prove they dunnit.

I have other faves for reasons of importance and interest, but these are off the top of my head.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 10:16 AM (OX9vb)

161 In what way? France being the USA and the Soviet Union / Russia being the Hapsburgs ?
Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (D6PGr)
---
Despite being a cardinal and prince of the Church, Richelieu believed that nations had no souls and therefore could not be judged for their actions. The purpose of statecraft was to be loyal to one's people, to shepherd them, which was not bound by conventional morality.

Breaking a treaty was therefore a question of utility, not morality. Backing heretics was acceptable to maintain the balance of power.

Kissinger traces this pathway through history, and it's a fascinating look.

It's funny but back in the 80s, when Paul Kennedy wrote The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he openly proclaimed Kissinger the greatest statesman of the 20th Century, on par with Bismarck and Metternich.

Until the field of international relations was completely corrupted to the point where "realist" lost its descriptive value, Kissinger was hugely respected.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:16 AM (ZOv7s)

162 Looking at the 'these pants' sample, I really, really hope tie-dyed bell bottoms aren't coming back. I had enough of that Hippie shit in the 1960s.
Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 10:00 AM (yTvNw)

My preteen loves that kind of stuff.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:17 AM (0eaVi)

163 The word "We're" did not jump out at me at first possibly because of the colors and the font. But maybe because my eye was drawn to the bodaciousness. Mostly the bodaciosity.

Posted by: Quarter Twenty at January 05, 2025 10:17 AM (dg+HA)

164 I've been writing a futuristic spy novel, and the ubiquity of surveillance and the ease of communication and getting nearly infinite information quickly makes for an interesting set of challenges. I find that emphasizing all the precautions and deceptions my spy has to do really generates a sense of paranoia.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2025 10:18 AM (78a2H)

165 The latest thing I have "listened to" is
Bill O'Reilly's Killing Patton. He narrates and goes into great detail about the personal disagreements Patton had with damn near everyone and his strange death at age 60.
I listen to audible books, it's a good thing for a retiree to do. I get 1 credit per month to spend on whatever I wish, but there are lots of other content. All you have to do is do a search on "included" and there are lots of books you may also consume for the price of the monthly subscription.
Check the sample before you download, sometimes the narration is sub par.

Posted by: gourmand du jour at January 05, 2025 10:18 AM (c6hLR)

166 Well yeah you need bigger font or a smaller pic grin

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:18 AM (dJR17)

167 Brandon Sanderson says he has 'evolved':
https://shorturl.at/7Zslx
I doubt he was bribed, so...?

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at January 05, 2025 10:19 AM (YTktQ)

168 Tolle the Lege!!!...Just finished Alan Smales' 2nd book of the Apollo rising series...Radiant Moon...!!! nice alternate fiction IF NASA hadn't pussed out and continued actual space exploration...cool moon based cold war action novels..interesting combat and tactics dealing with the moons gravity and enviroment...Action Packed !!!

Posted by: qmark at January 05, 2025 10:19 AM (+t9Oi)

169 (and it's from 2 years ago??? wow)

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at January 05, 2025 10:20 AM (YTktQ)

170 Actually went to the city Library with the grands yesterday.
Full of bums and half the shelf space from my last trip there probably 15 years ago.
Why is there a play area for kids? It's supposed to be a playground for the mind. Not a place where kids can be as loud as they want.
Quite the let down. I have collections larger than some of theirs in European History.
Half the building is now lost to the public behind a wall.
The grands loved it so I guess I will be returning in the future.
Oldest is a self described "expert reader" than backs that up with "what's that word Papa?". Youngest is trying hard. He doesn't like that there are things his brother can do that he can't.

Morning all, need coffee then off to content.

Posted by: Reforger at January 05, 2025 10:20 AM (xcIvR)

171 I've been writing a futuristic spy novel, and the ubiquity of surveillance and the ease of communication and getting nearly infinite information quickly makes for an interesting set of challenges. I find that emphasizing all the precautions and deceptions my spy has to do really generates a sense of paranoia.
Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2025 10:18 AM (78a2H)
---
An interesting take would be to have agents go pure old school. Dead drops. Brush passes. One-time pads for encryption or using obscure out of print books (not available online) as keys.

It's worth noting that the digital empire is only barely capable of policing its own. It has lost every conflict based on kinetic action. Every. Single. One.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:20 AM (ZOv7s)

172 The tos episode i thought since you were talking about trek
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:02 AM (dJR17)

I know, but a lot of your comments don't seem to be connected to a specific post. Maybe just a number if you're responding to what someone else said. Makes it easier to follow.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:20 AM (0eaVi)

173 Perfessor,
Thanks for including those videos in the post. I will look at them later so as not to miss some gems among the comments. (No snark.)

Like most of us, I grew up with the Disney version of the cute fairy. Once I started delving into the various writings about 'faerie', both the creatures and the place, it becomes so much more interesting and has great depth. Tolkien, of course, with his "On Fairy Stories" started my interest. Shakespeare in Midsummer Night's Dream opened more levels followed by other imaginative writers. MacDonald's "Phantastes" brought out for me the idea of faery as a place, not just beings. Always with the idea of 'other', which can be enriching or dangerous. Finding these aspects in authors I enjoy continues to be an enriching journey.

Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025 10:20 AM (yTvNw)

174
I'll second your comment on Pleshette's character in The Birds. I've got Me and Hitch on request through interlibrary loan and am looking forward to reading Hunter's comments on doing the script. Eons since I read Du Maurier's short story; first found that one when the movie came out in one of the paperback Hitchcock anthologies (which seemed to breed on the paperback racks the way coat hangers do in the closet).
Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025

***
14 of My Favorites in Suspense, issued not long after the movie, was the first of the AH anthologies I bought when I was eleven. The ones from around 1945 up until about '65 were the best. After that the editor seemed only to shovel stories from the mystery magazine into the anthologies. Before, though, you got stories, as I'm sure you remember, from M.R. James, Du Maurier, Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Evelyn Waugh, Ambrose Bierce, and more.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:21 AM (omVj0)

175 Are sinister fairies lefthanded?
Posted by: Northernlurker

Let me be clear, I'm glad you asked. I'm one of my favorite subjects, and certainly the most interesting.

Posted by: the Mancurious Candidate at January 05, 2025 10:21 AM (/hs1M)

176 Morning all.
I read a guilty pleasure book this week, White Hiot Kiss by Jennifer Armentrout. It is a YA story set in a world of Demons (who can ltransform to look human) breaking our of Hell and a group of Gargoyles who transform into humans called Wardens whose job it is to kill them before they can harm humans and also to keep the fact that there are demons and wardens from the public.. Main character is a girl, half demon and half warden, who has been raised by Wardens and now that she is 17, the demons are trying to kill her. A sexy 18 yr old Demon shows up to protect her? Kill her? Ae the Wardens trying to protect her? Kill her?
I enjoyed it. Definitely a guilty pleasure.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at January 05, 2025 10:22 AM (t/2Uw)

177 I've pretty much decided that nobody can discuss Kissinger honestly and accurately. For all Boomers, it all immediately descends into something-something-Vietnam-Nixon-Bad. And unfortunately they poisoned the well for all subsequent study.

All I can say is that a hard-nosed diplomat who tries to get the most advantage for his country out of any situation sounds like a good man to have around. The only question is whether he can achieve that.

Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2025 10:23 AM (78a2H)

178 Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:16 AM (ZOv7s)

Makes sense but I see Richelieu put one nation, France ahead of all others. Admittedly my knowledge is minimal on both, less than Cliff notes and just enough to be dangerous and incorrect.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 10:23 AM (D6PGr)

179 Like most of us, I grew up with the Disney version of the cute fairy. Once I started delving into the various writings about 'faerie', both the creatures and the place, it becomes so much more interesting and has great depth. Tolkien, of course, with his "On Fairy Stories" started my interest. Shakespeare in Midsummer Night's Dream opened more levels followed by other imaginative writers. MacDonald's "Phantastes" brought out for me the idea of faery as a place, not just beings. Always with the idea of 'other', which can be enriching or dangerous. Finding these aspects in authors I enjoy continues to be an enriching journey.
Posted by: JTB at January 05, 2025

***
There is a neat novelette by Poul Anderson,"The Queen of Air and Darkness," in which the people on an Earth colony world have the same legends about faeries and changelings as on old Earth. We find out it's not fantasy, but they are real -- the original natives of the planet.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:23 AM (omVj0)

180 I found that I somehow had 10 Audible credits, so, I've been experimenting with novels (I had only listened to lectures and Shakespeare (Arkangel!) previously).

I enjoyed the first 5 books of the Princes of Amber series by Zelazny. It was read aloud by Alessandro Juilani (sp?). He did different voices for each character which was really impressive (mostly). But, the female voices were goofy af (but distinguishable).

Tried to move on to the next 5 but they're read by Will Wheaton and he is (to me) terrible on every level. Fractally intolerable.

Reading novels aloud seems a true art.

Does anyone have reccs for narrators?

PS. Arkangel is fantastic but they use multiple actors.

PPS. Juliani's female voices did not break the spell for me, but they were goofy. I get that if he was going to do individual male voices (and he was incredible at that) then he had to do individual female voices as well. A hard spot. I kept thinking they should have brought in some women (ones who have never had pen0rs) to do the female characters. But, idk, that might be financially and technically burdensome....

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:24 AM (z6Ybz)

181 And don't forget the actor playing the original captain had a psychotic breakdown and had to be replaced.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 10:26 AM (NQtI0)

182 Usta love hearing Rush enunciate the phrase "foreign policy" with a thick Kissinger accent.
I miss Rush.

Posted by: Quarter Twenty at January 05, 2025 10:26 AM (dg+HA)

183 I've pretty much decided that nobody can discuss Kissinger honestly and accurately. For all Boomers, it all immediately descends into something-something-Vietnam-Nixon-Bad. And unfortunately they poisoned the well for all subsequent study.

All I can say is that a hard-nosed diplomat who tries to get the most advantage for his country out of any situation sounds like a good man to have around. The only question is whether he can achieve that.
Posted by: Trimegistus at January 05, 2025 10:23 AM (78a2H)
---
To see a chain-smoking, hard-drinking cynic like the late Christopher Hitchens get his panties all in a bunch over Cold War realpolitik was a bit muchs.

Sorry Hitch, but the US was up against Mao Tse-tung, famous for killing more people than Stalin, and who was Pol Pots biggest fan. Maybe the Marquess of Queensbury rules might not apply in stopping that?

One could argue that the biggest criticism of Kissinger was that his successors admired his methods but didn't understand how to get good results, and so topping governments and creating CIA ops became the end rather than the means to an end.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:26 AM (ZOv7s)

184 (Comment was about B5)

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 10:27 AM (NQtI0)

185 Can you go old school in a panopticon universe one supposes that could be possible

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:27 AM (dJR17)

186 And don't forget the actor playing the original captain had a psychotic breakdown and had to be replaced.
Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 10:26 AM (NQtI0)
---
The way the show replaced Sinclair with Sheridan was really impressive, and having Sheridan be a war hero, hated by the Minbari was just perfect. Sinclair has political ties, is close to Delenn, but Sheridan is just this fresh-faced fighter jockey, and of course Boxleitner just oozes charisma.

Plus: Tron reunion! Count all the Tron actors!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:29 AM (ZOv7s)

187 Well hitchens was as nuch focused on east timor and greece as chile because reasons

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:29 AM (dJR17)

188 I am striving to be less cryptic on the new year
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:07 AM (dJR17)

I always assume typing is not your top skill. Like A. H. Lloyd, I kind of enjoy the code.

Reminds me of saf, who used to comment a lot, and whose comments were like surrealism. Whatever happened to saf? Are you he?

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 10:30 AM (OX9vb)

189 Kissinger became most well known over a treatise on use of tacticsl nukes thats who walter matthau is supposed to be at the opening of fail safe

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:31 AM (dJR17)

190 I just assumed it was unedited talk-to-text.

Posted by: Quarter Twenty at January 05, 2025 10:33 AM (dg+HA)

191 What quentin burdick was picking up on, the irony is the soviets had no qualms about use of said weapons

But they didnt have the cnd to worry about in fact that was probably their tool in part

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:34 AM (dJR17)

192 The faeire thing brings to mind obv Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrel. But, also Vance's brilliant Lyonnesse series and Gene Wolfe's The Wizard Knight series. All fantastic works. Idk, I tend to think that faeries are "psychic" phenomena and not demonic. For me, the psychic exists but outside/horizontal to our reality. Demonic is beneath and of course related to the Fallen Angels. Faeries are outside the God/Satan conflict.

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:34 AM (z6Ybz)

193 Burdick the author of failsafe later the ugly american

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:34 AM (dJR17)

194 Thank you Perfessor for another Book Thread and Happy New Year to you all.

I finished Barroness Orscy's The Old Man in the Corner. As I read crime story after crime story and the Old Man's theories about what really happened, I started to wonder where all of it was heading. It pulled together at the end, maybe a little too neatly, but good enough.

I just started C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. It's a relatively easy read and a short book - my copy is only 128 pages. I'm finding it interesting.

Got a late start this morning so I'm off to read the contents.

Posted by: KatieFloyd at January 05, 2025 10:35 AM (4Ehg5)

195 That's part of his charm. You read the comment, and then see if you can figure out where it goes. I always feel a bit of satisfaction when I crack the code and link back to him.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:05 AM (ZOv7s)

Far be it from me to force people to give up their pleasures in it, but I'm just a dumb old man with diminishing brainpower who doesn't have time to solve the mystery.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:36 AM (0eaVi)

196 But the Vulcans, it turns out, are a lost tribe.
Posted by: no one of any consequence at January 05, 2025 09:54 AM (ZmEVT)

Imagine the amount of back tithing they've built up!

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:37 AM (0eaVi)

197 Re the Hitchcock anthologies.

Yep -- they had a lot of range. I think the first times I ran across writers like Du Maurier, Gerald Kersh, and Richard Matheson (in addition to the mystery writers) was in Hitchcock paperback anthologies. Great stuff. And if memory serves, a terrific Bradbury piece, "The October Game," (with that absolute killer of a last sentence) was included in one of those (Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, I think). If there's been anything on the racks to compare with those in the last few decades I've overlooked it completely.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 10:38 AM (q3u5l)

198 Also in my TBR pile from the library: two of the first in the Parker the hardboiled thief series by "Richard Stark" (Donald E. Westlake), and a comic Westlake caper, Get Real, with Dortmunder and his "Seinfeld"-ish crew of crooks that I haven't read.

Also an omnibus of Agatha Christies, Surprise Endings by Hercule Poirot. This has The A.B.C Murders, Murder in Three Acts, and Cards on the Table. I think I read all three long ago during my big mystery period, but I'm only fairly sure about the first.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:38 AM (omVj0)

199 Just finished Don Winslow's "The Dawn Patrol" and found it engaging, how well it integrates the California surfing ethos into a murder investigation thriller, and gives us the wonderful history of San Diego.

Winslow calls himself a former P.I. and consultant, whatever that means. He is a notorious Trump hater so much so that he claims to have quit writing to become a full time activist. This, last spring, before Biden's public collapse, and the progressive left performing a wonderfully public suicide. You gotta wonder what effect his bleats from the beach could possible do, in the face of the MAGA storm coming.

But in the book, there's a wave a-coming.

The story has a force of nature as its rhythm track, an ocean swell coming across the Pacific that will result in a one-day period of monster waves. The surfers know it is coming. You learn all you need to know about surfing in this book.

Posted by: Mr Gaga at January 05, 2025 10:39 AM (KiBMU)

200 "But the Vulcans, it turns out, are a lost tribe.
Posted by: no one of any consequence "

Splitters!

Posted by: The Romulans at January 05, 2025 10:39 AM (vFG9F)

201 The vulcans were certainly suggested as a stoic race that had sublimated their more violent urges a long ago nuclear war might do that

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:39 AM (dJR17)

202 I've read that, after making that replacement, he wrote alternate storylines for every main character. Wanted to be able to deal with another replacement if needed. And he didn't tell what happened until after the actor's death.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 10:40 AM (NQtI0)

203 I think my sister was trying to get me Chronicles of Narnia. She got me C.S. Lewis's science fiction trilogy. I was in middle school. Reading something so far avove me helped me advance my reading and vocabulary.

Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 10:42 AM (2Jptx)

204 You onlg get this from disne duane and later references in enterprise

The klingons never nuked themselves the romulans the ferengi

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:43 AM (dJR17)

205 Anyone who's read fairy stories for any length of time will quickly realize that fairies are treacherous, murderous critters that obey their own laws and pay no attention to the social standards of humankind.
------

Many of you will be familiar with the Irish lore which considers that any child that is born with a birth defect is not really the child that was born, but rather one that was substituted by the Faries. Yeats wrote a poem about it, 'The Stolen Child'. Worth a read. The Waterboys recorded the poem as song, and is a sad, poignant tune indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVSN9DMvl6I

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at January 05, 2025 10:43 AM (XeU6L)

206 If we, that is humanity, ever have a Butlerian Jihad, it will be because Our Betters' Digital Prometheus has stolen our fire.
Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 10:10 AM (iJfKG)
---
Hmmm. I can see the seeds of several good story ideas in what you've written above...
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 10:12 AM (BpYfr)

If you would have given us a little more respect, my brothers in service wouldn't be cutting the heads of you toffs, would we now?

Posted by: Jeeves at January 05, 2025 10:43 AM (0eaVi)

207 Otoshi yoi!

I've read 10 books so far in 2025 and have two more in progress. But the real resolution for this year is to actually keep up with my catalog of books I've read.

Needless to say, none of these 10 are big doorstoppers. They are all random finds from Project Gutenberg. I love their "random books" search option and often use it to discover something I would otherwise have never read. (We were camping, so I didn't have my bookshelf, ereader, or to be read pile with me)

Posted by: Mrs. Peel at January 05, 2025 10:44 AM (Y+AMd)

208 Kissinger had a gigantic horrifyingly ugly wife. Towering gaunt creature with enormous hands. Mao met her and short-circuited.

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:44 AM (z6Ybz)

209 On the topic of esoteric commenters, the one I miss is spurwing plover.

Posted by: Mrs. Peel at January 05, 2025 10:45 AM (Y+AMd)

210 Your Chamberlain to Carter etc al
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 10:15 AM (fwDg9)

Ok, thanks. I think it's true. I never saw anything nice in any of the three.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:45 AM (0eaVi)

211 Yep -- they had a lot of range. I think the first times I ran across writers like Du Maurier, Gerald Kersh, and Richard Matheson (in addition to the mystery writers) was in Hitchcock paperback anthologies. Great stuff. And if memory serves, a terrific Bradbury piece, "The October Game," (with that absolute killer of a last sentence) was included in one of those (Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, I think). If there's been anything on the racks to compare with those in the last few decades I've overlooked it completely.
Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025

***
Same here.

The editor for a long stretch, I've recently found out, was one Robert Arthur. Bradbury's "The October Game" appeared in A Hangman's Dozen -- mostly crime stories, it appears from the Wiki listing.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:45 AM (omVj0)

212 I also know little of Eric Ambler so I looked him up and found this tidbit.

Ambler was then politically a staunch antifascist and, like many others, tended to regard the Soviet Union as the only real counterweight to fascist aggression, which was reflected in the fact that some of his early books included Soviet agents depicted positively and as sympathetic characters, the undoubted allies of the protagonist.
Like numerous like-minded people in different countries, Ambler was shocked and disillusioned by the German–Soviet Pact of 1939. His postwar anticommunist novel Judgment on Deltchev (1951), based on the Stalinist purge trials in Eastern Europe, caused him to be reviled by many former Communist Party and other progressive associates.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 10:46 AM (L/fGl)

213 It's funny but back in the 80s, when Paul Kennedy wrote The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he openly proclaimed Kissinger the greatest statesman of the 20th Century, on par with Bismarck and Metternich.
====

*retches*

Posted by: San Franpsycho at January 05, 2025 10:46 AM (RIvkX)

214 Winslow calls himself a former P.I. and consultant, whatever that means. He is a notorious Trump hater so much so that he claims to have quit writing to become a full time activist. This, last spring, before Biden's public collapse, and the progressive left performing a wonderfully public suicide. You gotta wonder what effect his bleats from the beach could possible do, in the face of the MAGA storm coming.

Used to love Don Winslow's novels. Buuuut, then he fell in lo0ve with Oblabla and lost his mind his books "Savages" constantly interrupts the story for a sloppy blowjob on Obama.

Truly tiresome stuff.

I think "Dawn Patrol" was the last book of his I read.

Posted by: naturalfake at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (iJfKG)

215 Does anyone have reccs for narrators?

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:24 AM (z6Ybz)

Will Collyer (American)
Gerard Doyle (Irish)
Robert Glenister (English)
David Chandler (American)
George Wilson (American)

These are several that I have never abandoned for annoyance.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (OX9vb)

216 Kissenger was an actual faggot.

Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (2Jptx)

217 Yes he is greatly overrated compared to rusk or vance well yes but thats not the true measure

What did the china gambit earn us in the end

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:48 AM (dJR17)

218 Will Collyer (American)
Gerard Doyle (Irish)
Robert Glenister (English)
David Chandler (American)
George Wilson (American)

These are several that I have never abandoned for annoyance.
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (OX9vb)

!!!! Thanks. One I tried, I could hear his sharp intakes of breath (low volume too) and I thought I was going to start screaming if I continued....

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:49 AM (z6Ybz)

219 Good morning Horde and thank you Perfessor!

My book of choice recently was "The Idea Factory" about Bell Labs (which was the think tank and R&D center for AT&T). It is a fascinating read that mixes technology, public policy, and a cast of eccentric and brilliant scientists.

Bell Labs had a role in creating the transistor, video phones, mobile phones, Unix and programming languages, radio astronomy, the beginnings of machine learning, military radar, encryption, and more. The book follows key characters so it is not an exclusive inventory of every project.

Because AT&T had a telephone monopoly, it had the luxury of funding R&D with no immediate business objective or benefit. They thought in decades rather than years. They came up with solutions and then reverse engineered the problems and applications. They took on big ideas and had to invent the technology and science (often with trial and error methods).

Ultimately, the success of the labs and the pace of technology undermined the rationale for the monopoly.

The book is a well written and researched. It brings the characters to life and explains the tech in layman terms. Recommended if you're interested in the subject.

Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 10:50 AM (IQ6Gq)

220 Currently reading The Wager by David Grann. About a shipwreck and what followed in the
mid-ish 18th century. Close to halfway through. Seafaring was nothing but unrelenting suffering. Oof.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at January 05, 2025 10:51 AM (mJzrR)

221 By the way, does anyone else catalog what they read? If so, what method do you use?

I used to use good reads but got chased off when I wrote a critical review of a book whose author is apparently extremely popular. I got called sexist and various other ists. (The funny thing about it to me is that I was deliberately attacking the book from the left. The main character, some sort of incorporeal potentially-demonic being, constantly violates its female love interest's clearly stated boundaries, and then ends the book by nobly passing her on to an acceptable new partner, without actually consulting her desires or treating her as a real person with agency at any point. I pointed out how incredibly sexist this was, but it turns out that it's totally OK when it's Twoo Wuv.) Then I used paper notecards for a while, but there are literally hundreds of them and it's too hard to keep up with all the interconnections between them. So now I'm using Obsidian, which I like pretty well.

Posted by: Mrs. Peel at January 05, 2025 10:51 AM (Y+AMd)

222 My Favorites in Suspense

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:21 AM (omVj0)

Was that a magazine, too, Wolfus? My parents had a hardbound book. All I remember was there was the Oliver Crangle story in it, and one where a couple had collided with another car and the detective asked how the victim's blood got on the underside of a rock.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 10:52 AM (0eaVi)

223 Well, time to go! Thanks again, Perfesser!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:54 AM (ZOv7s)

224 . . . Something that I didn't notice when I was younger and now can't get past is the absence of religion in a lot of sci-fi. . . .
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (ZOv7s)

The initial impetus of science fiction in the Gernsbach era was a form of materialistic technocracy which looked to rationalize society in a similar method of Marxism using a technological elite, in many ways reflecting the Wilsonian sort of progressivism.
Later, when that had been ground down and the pulps focused on actual story, plot and character development (like under Campbell) the publishing houses were all in Manhattan, and NYC was a culturally and religiously diverse society, and the editors had sense enough to realize that appearing to promote any religion over another, or one form of worship over the other was a sure way to turn off the other 90% of the customers who would object strenuously to any thing that stunk of proselytization, unorthodoxy, or bigoted wagging of one religion in the face of everyone.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 10:55 AM (D7oie)

225 Today's tendency to find a "cause" and force it everyone's face like a tranny at a children's library event is distressing, and tends to make any author, no matter what the qualifications, into a niche author, and I think it is a major reason we hear the complaint that "no one reads any more"

Why bother? I can get religious tracts anywhere, I don't want them ineptly slipped into my reading matter when all I want is to learn something else. Opinions are important, but some people just hammer it in over and over and it gets pretty boring.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 10:55 AM (D7oie)

226 Breaking a treaty was therefore a question of utility, not morality.

-
Lo these many decades ago when I was a first year law student, I was shocked when my contracts professor said that an aspect of contract law was to encourage breach when advantageous to do so. It was a simpler time.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 10:56 AM (L/fGl)

227 Thought about trying to catalogue what I've read, but took a nap, woke mostly refreshed, and decided not to. At the time I was reading far more than I manage now and the whole idea sounded a lot like extra work that would probably cost me time I could spend reading something else.

These days, I can still remember that I've read and enjoyed/not enjoyed something but I don't always recall the plot details, etc. Annoying.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 10:57 AM (q3u5l)

228 My wife is reading yet more series of mystery books in which husbands are killed. Maybe she is looking for how to avoid providing forensic evidence, as she watches Forensic Files a lot.
Posted by: NaCly Dog at January 05, 2025 10:09 AM (u82oZ)

My wife's murder porn addiction is a bit concerning to me too.

Last Friday I finished Howard Hughes, The Hidden Years by James Phelan. Beings I have met and conversed with the brother of Melvin Dumar on the topic of "The Mormon Will" and had the story told to me by him. I trully believe Hughes was found in the desert by Melvin and taken back to The Sands which if the story I got was true actually happened on state route 361 as Hughes was leaving the Salt Wells whorehouse outside Fallon when his plane sputtered out about 10 miles North of Gabbs NV and crashed off in a valley not visible from the road and not in Utah as told by the movie.
I find it funny how all the people who say that story is false actually got really rich off Howard and were the people who kept him from seeing anybody and were lying to him. I also find it funny that some dude in nowhere Nevada managed to come up with his story and nobody can prove it didn't happen.

Posted by: Reforger at January 05, 2025 10:58 AM (xcIvR)

229 It was a couple of Bell Labs researchers who accidentally made one of most important discoveries in cosmology. While attempting to find the cause of persistent background static picked up by a new radio receiver, Penzias and Wilson realized that they were hearing the residual microwave radiation that theorists had surmised should be present across the universe as an artifact of the Big Bang.

Its wavelength was exactly as had been predicted.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero43) at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (dDmld)

230 Good morning Hordemates!

Posted by: Diogenes at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (W/lyH)

231 It's funny but back in the 80s, when Paul Kennedy wrote The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he openly proclaimed Kissinger the greatest statesman of the 20th Century, on par with Bismarck and Metternich.
====

*retches*
Posted by: San Franpsycho at January 05, 2025 10:46 AM (RIvkX)

Maybe it's like a Voldemort thing. Was Voldemort the greatest wizard of his age? Maybe. He essentially killed Dumbledore.

What's the quote from Ollivander? Voldemort did great things. Terrible, but great.

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (Qqpbi)

232 !!!! Thanks. One I tried, I could hear his sharp intakes of breath (low volume too) and I thought I was going to start screaming if I continued....
Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 10:49 AM (z6Ybz)

I think I have to speed David Chandler up a bit, IIRC. But, once he's normal speed, he's good.

I had to abandon a good book recently because the narrator had a lisp ("th" for "s"). Can't hear the story for the lisp. I wish I had recorded her name so I won't get caught by her again.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (OX9vb)

233 I imagine most scifi types were nonconformists who thought themselves free thinkers asimov clarke and co

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (dJR17)

234 I can't remember who it was, someone reflecting on the genesis of Science Fiction, said that for an open cultural propaganda genre, that took the position of progressive technocracy (educated and skilled administrators scientists leading everyone to a superior and more rational world) and lost it along the way leaving a genre of optimistic adventure based around human flourishing, would be like Bolshevism and Marxist-Leninist thought disappearing and leaving only a somewhat Art Deco genre of art that focused on industry and farming with an emphasis on tractors.

Personally I think the world could use more tractor art, if competently done.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:00 AM (D7oie)

235 Something that I didn't notice when I was younger and now can't get past is the absence of religion in a lot of sci-fi. . . .
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd

Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Star is one of my favorites and addresses religion if somewhat ambiguously.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 11:01 AM (L/fGl)

236 Recommended if you're interested in the subject.
Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 10:50 AM (IQ6Gq)

Thanks T, adding to the TBR. Like to see something like that about Xerox PARC as well.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:01 AM (DcZ8z)

237 216 Kissenger was an actual faggot.
Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (2Jptx)
----

I was told that what happens at Bohemian Grove stays at Bohemian Grove!

Posted by: Henrietta Kissinger at January 05, 2025 11:01 AM (kpS4V)

238 Orange Ent,

Some of those Hitchcock paperback collections were selected from hardcover collections. 14 of My Favorites in Suspense was taken from the hardcover. Think they did the same with Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, splitting it into a couple of paperback anthologies. And I believe 14 of My Favorites did include that "bottom of the rock" bit -- think the story was called "Terrified" by C. B. Guilford (?). Jeez, those collections were fun.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 11:02 AM (q3u5l)

239 Bell Labs gave us Claude Shannon - the most important mathematician, scientist, engineer and juggler of the mid-20th century.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:03 AM (DcZ8z)

240 Lo these many decades ago when I was a first year law student, I was shocked when my contracts professor said that an aspect of contract law was to encourage breach when advantageous to do so. It was a simpler time.

--------

That idea still underlies contract theory. It is why California's brief flirtation with imposing tort remedies for contract breaches was so misguided, and was quickly shitcanned. Tort damages are too unpredictable to allow a party to make a rational decision on when a contract should be breached.

(The one exception where tort damages are still available for the breach of a contract in CA applies to breaches by an insurer of an insurance contract, where unique considerations are said to apply.)

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero43) at January 05, 2025 11:04 AM (dDmld)

241 I imagine most scifi types were nonconformists who thought themselves free thinkers asimov clarke and co
Posted by: Miguel cervantes

Today's writers are contortionists who bend and shape their works within the confines of woke.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 11:04 AM (L/fGl)

242 *Personally I think the world could use more tractor art, if competently done.*

Call me.

Posted by: The Massey Ferguson 2025 calendar at January 05, 2025 11:04 AM (dg+HA)

243 Personally I think the world could use more tractor art, if competently done.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:00 AM (D7oie)

Tractor pull tractors.

Posted by: BignJames at January 05, 2025 11:04 AM (Yj6Os)

244 The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers is sort of a suspenseful espionage novel, and it was written in 1903!

[I knew his grandson}

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at January 05, 2025 11:05 AM (d9fT1)

245 Does anyone have reccs for narrators?

Posted by: Thesokorus

I listen to a lot of books on Librivox (public domain books). Algy Pug is one of my favorite readers on that site. In particular, The Shades, a Russian short story about Socrates in the afterlife.

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at January 05, 2025 11:05 AM (Dm8we)

246 Kissenger was an actual faggot.
Posted by: Boss Moss at January 05, 2025 10:47 AM (2Jptx)
----

I was told that what happens at Bohemian Grove stays at Bohemian Grove!
Posted by: Henrietta Kissinger at January 05, 2025 11:01 AM (kpS4V)

Reminds me of the story about Charles Manson (yes, I'm going there). Manson would gather the flock, select one or more of the men present, and suck him off.

It wasn't because he was gay, he would say, it's because he wanted to show how power could be distributed between members of their "family," and no one individual was more important than another.

That too is the story of Bohemian Grove.

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 11:06 AM (Qqpbi)

247 I imagine most scifi types were nonconformists who thought themselves free thinkers asimov clarke and co
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 10:59 AM (dJR17)

I am pretty sure there was a lot of reaction to the earlier "leaders know best" but Asimov was fully on board with technological elites guiding the world, even against their best wishes. a lot of the early stuff was that way, and the later writers were the kids who focused on the exciting things like adventure, new gadgets, and even more important the individual.
Some of this is obscured now but even the most pulpy stories in the 30's and 40's were about how technology made the individual more autonomic, that tech was a force multiplier, and it made people richer, in short human flourishing through technology.
This was a major element of the "golden age"

This is also (I believe) a principal element in the sub genre of CyberPunk, though CyberPunk also explores the negative side of it as well - anomie, cultural schisms, and cultural fragmentation.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:08 AM (D7oie)

248 58 If fairies did not sin, they would not need redemption.
Posted by: no one of any consequence at January 05, 2025 09:34 AM (ZmEVT)

The original sin for Elves in Middle-Earth (not Valinor) would be the Kinslaying. Feanor and his Noldor slaughtered the sea elves on Valinor's coast, to take their ships and return to Arda.

Posted by: gKWVE at January 05, 2025 11:08 AM (gKWVE)

249 I know that tattoo's are considered gauche here but the Codex Seraphinianus has some wonderful little ditty's in it that would make interesting templates.

Posted by: pawn, RIP Vic at January 05, 2025 11:09 AM (QB+5g)

250 Just finished Alan Smales' 2nd book of the Apollo rising series...Radiant Moon...!!! nice alternate fiction IF NASA hadn't pussed out and continued actual space exploration

Something else we can blame on Nixon, he bought into the whole "why are we exploring space when we have so many problems on Earth" vibe.

We coulda had this....

https://is.gd/2mCdFV

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 11:09 AM (9yUzE)

251 Good morning, Perfessor!

Was Faerie Tale the one with Puck making horseshoes in the forest?

My TBR pile is children's classics and standalone YA. Plus Kurt Schlicter's The Attack and Mike Aquilina's Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins.

I also have a small "captured fleet" of popular books I hated but non-Morons raved about. Going figure out their allure with pencil and pens. Might even fold down the corners of some pages!

Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 11:11 AM (93YMr)

252 Not to lend support to the progressive materialist mindset of some SF writers, but I think at that time there was a lot of following ritual and formula rather than the spirit behind the word. My dad, a Catholic, was disgusted with the types who got on hands and knees on a sidewalk to roll a peanut uphill with their nose, which he felt was at once demeaning and also look-at-me-God. That would seem pretty primitive to the kids of immigrants.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:11 AM (kpS4V)

253 ...that tech was a force multiplier, and it made people richer, in short human flourishing through technology.
This was a major element of the "golden age"

Is this about us?

Posted by: The Jetsons at January 05, 2025 11:11 AM (dg+HA)

254 My Favorites in Suspense

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 10:21 AM (omVj0)

Was that a magazine, too, Wolfus? My parents had a hardbound book. All I remember was there was the Oliver Crangle story in it, and one where a couple had collided with another car and the detective asked how the victim's blood got on the underside of a rock.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025

***
No, originally it was a hardback with more stories. The paperback publisher split it into two, Fourteen of My Favorites in Suspense and More of my Favorites in Suspense. I'm pretty sure the two you mention were in the 14 volume. Mr. Crangle -- that was "Four O'Clock" by Price Day, wasn't it? Twilight Zone did a version of it, I think.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 11:12 AM (omVj0)

255 Was Faerie Tale the one with Puck making horseshoes in the forest?

Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 11:11 AM (93YMr)
---
Yep...He takes on the name "Wayland Smith" as an alias...

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 11:12 AM (BpYfr)

256 Well von braun was the visionary who wanted to go as far as mars he even wrote a novella about in 1959 but with the war the unrest and the focus on pollution the democrats were laser focused on

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:13 AM (dJR17)

257 236 Thanks T, adding to the TBR. Like to see something like that about Xerox PARC as well.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:01 AM
***
The book you're looking for is called "Dealers of Lightning:Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" by Michael Hiltzik. It is on my list to read.

Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 11:13 AM (IQ6Gq)

258 Howdy, y'all. I am currently and for at least the next day or two stranded at a hotel in Salina, Kansas.

Over vacation, I read William Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency. Someone, Sharon IIRC, read and liked the first one. I did as well. If you've read and liked other Gibson, you'll probably like The Peripheral which incidentally is only passingly similar to the Amazon miniseries. Agency didn't do much for me, partly because he let his current day political sentiments taint it. Trump/Clinton (although not named), CAGW, Russia. Maybe some other stuff.

Posted by: Oddbob at January 05, 2025 11:13 AM (S8eqI)

259 Those brownies in the shoemaker story were naked when they first showed up and went away after they got some clothes. I'm not sure what that means other than you can make those fairies leave by giving them clothes.
Posted by: fd at January 05, 2025 09:44 AM (vFG9F)

From my experience, if you pay your crew before they finish the job, they won't come back to complete it.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:15 AM (D7oie)

260 It has taken two generations and another visionary in musk

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:15 AM (dJR17)

261 Some of those Hitchcock paperback collections were selected from hardcover collections. 14 of My Favorites in Suspense was taken from the hardcover. Think they did the same with Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, splitting it into a couple of paperback anthologies. And I believe 14 of My Favorites did include that "bottom of the rock" bit -- think the story was called "Terrified" by C. B. Guilford (?). Jeez, those collections were fun.
Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 11:02 AM (q3u5l)

Thanks. I don't know what happened to that book. I'm pretty sure it disappeared decades ago. Wouldn't mind having it now.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:16 AM (0eaVi)

262 Wolfus & Orange Ent

Yep, the Crangle story was Price Day's "Four O'Clock."

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 11:16 AM (q3u5l)

263 Howdy, y'all. I am currently and for at least the next day or two stranded at a hotel in Salina, Kansas.
---

Posted by: Oddbob at January 05, 2025 11:13 AM (S8eqI)

I've stayed in Salina, once or twice. You have my sympathies.

I hear people are having weather issues elsewhere in the country.

Our high today is only supposed to be 57. Brrr!

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 11:17 AM (cR8od)

264 Although I did not meet last year's goal of 1 book per week, I'll try it again this year. Cutting down on my internet scrolling in the evenings would help. I might also consider some audio books.

Other goals include finishing some books I started then set aside. Either they're good enough to finish or not worth keeping. I also plan on going through my book shelves and donating books I've read but doubt I'll reread. For example, I went on a Charles Todd binge a few years ago. I'll probably never pick them up again but the some thrift store might be able to make a couple dollars.

Posted by: KatieFloyd at January 05, 2025 11:17 AM (dGj+v)

265 Bell Labs gave us Claude Shannon - the most important mathematician, scientist, engineer and juggler of the mid-20th century.
Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:03 AM (DcZ8z)

A juggler? Wow, he worked in a lot of different veins.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:18 AM (0eaVi)

266 Religious-themed Sci-Fi? Check these out:

Voyage to Alpha Centauri, by Michael D. O'Brien
https://is.gd/TU0NGa

The Lamb Among the Stars trilogy, by Chris Walley
https://is.gd/Iu2qeN

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at January 05, 2025 11:19 AM (PiwSw)

267 [I knew his grandson}
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at January 05, 2025 11:05 AM (d9fT1)

I thought he died childless. I didn't know he had grandchilders.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:19 AM (0eaVi)

268 It has taken two generations and another visionary in musk
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:15 AM (dJR17)

Admittedly, I don't follow much of this rocket stuff, because I don't find it interesting, but are people really trying to blow up his rockets?

Like, primitive monkeys, lashing out at the hairless apes who bring fire?

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 11:19 AM (cR8od)

269 Oddbob, yes,I liked the Peripheral a lot. It got me on a Gibson kick for awhile. One I really liked was IDORU. Mona Lisa Overdrive and Neuromancer also good but eventually got tired and moved on.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at January 05, 2025 11:22 AM (t/2Uw)

270 We coulda had this....

https://is.gd/2mCdFV
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at January 05, 2025 11:09 AM (9yUzE)

But how did that end up? Huh? Huh?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:22 AM (0eaVi)

271 According to robert zimmerman (the other one(

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:23 AM (dJR17)

272 Admittedly, I don't follow much of this rocket stuff, because I don't find it interesting, but are people really trying to blow up his rockets?
----

I'd be worried about both domestic crazies and foreign competitors. All it takes is one tragedy to allow the PTB to shut it down "for safety reasons".

Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:23 AM (kpS4V)

273 To see a chain-smoking, hard-drinking cynic like the late Christopher Hitchens get his panties all in a bunch over Cold War realpolitik was a bit muchs.

Sorry Hitch, but the US was up against Mao Tse-tung, famous for killing more people than Stalin, and who was Pol Pots biggest fan. Maybe the Marquess of Queensbury rules might not apply in stopping that?[ . . . ]
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at January 05, 2025 10:26 AM (ZOv7s)

It is odd to see Hitches paraphrasing the gospel of Mark, though he may have seen it in a movie

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:24 AM (D7oie)

274 Gibson could not imagine the intermet so he thiught virtual reality even though he didnt call it that

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:24 AM (dJR17)

275 No, originally it was a hardback with more stories. The paperback publisher split it into two, Fourteen of My Favorites in Suspense and More of my Favorites in Suspense. I'm pretty sure the two you mention were in the 14 volume. Mr. Crangle -- that was "Four O'Clock" by Price Day, wasn't it? Twilight Zone did a version of it, I think.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 11:12 AM (omVj0)

Yes to the story. (not sure of the author, I read it in the 70s) And yes to TZ.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:25 AM (0eaVi)

276 Re Claude Shannon

A Mathematical Theory of Communication is just a mind bogglingly concise and approachable way to introduce a whole new field science to the world.

IBM had a basic research shop too and while not the juggernaut Bell Labs was, lots of good stuff there too. Their journals seemed to have something interesting (other than the article I was trying to find) in every issue I picked up back in grad school. As far as I can tell, we’re missing that in industry today.

Posted by: Fritz (not Fritz) at January 05, 2025 11:25 AM (V+FvY)

277 The RPG writer Kenneth Hite has suggested that in all old fairy tales and legends, you should mentally replace "fairy" with "orc" or "goblin" to get a better sense of what the storytellers meant.
Posted by: Trimegistus

Works also if you replace "Democrat" or "progressive" with "orc" or "goblin". For example, "Orc Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut."

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 11:26 AM (L/fGl)

278 Weather took an interesting turn here...frozen sleet mixed with grumbling thunder...Unusual, but not unheard of...

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 11:27 AM (BpYfr)

279 I'd be worried about both domestic crazies and foreign competitors. All it takes is one tragedy to allow the PTB to shut it down "for safety reasons".
Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:23 AM (kpS4V)

And yet, the FBI is still rounding up J6 trespassers, and grannies who protest outside abortion clinics.

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 11:27 AM (tJD8X)

280 You mispelled ring wraiths

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:28 AM (dJR17)

281 I'm afraid it wouldn't surprise me at all if some dingdongs wanted to blow up Musk's rockets. It also wouldn't surprise me if nobody was trying to blow up rockets in, say, China. Wonder why? Similar: US coal-fired plants evil; Chinese coal-fired plants, no problem.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 11:28 AM (q3u5l)

282 Perf, it's a sign to stay inside and read!

Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:29 AM (kpS4V)

283 265 Bell Labs gave us Claude Shannon - the most important mathematician, scientist, engineer and juggler of the mid-20th century.
Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:03 AM (DcZ8z)

The book described Shannon as very interested in amusements, toys, games, automatons, etc. He tried to apply scientific principles to juggling, even measuring the specifics of mechanics. Sounded like he could juggle four balls but getting to five was a challenge.

Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 11:29 AM (IQ6Gq)

284 Perf, it's a sign to stay inside and read!
Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:29 AM (kpS4V)
---
No argument from me!

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 11:30 AM (BpYfr)

285 As far as I can tell, we’re missing that in industry today.
Posted by: Fritz (not Fritz) at January 05, 2025 11:25 AM (V+FvY)

But it'd be worse for us if diversity suffered.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:30 AM (0eaVi)

286 It has taken two generations and another visionary in musk

Personally - I've tired of all these "great men" and "visionaries". Musk, Obama, Kissenger, FDR, Trump - the list goes on and on. All "great men". The only argument, it seems, is what makes a man great and thus deserving of this cult of personality.

A pox on them all. So much for a nation of citizens, all equal. That shits been right out the window my entire life. Too many too willing to fall in line and sing the praises of all these "great men".

Posted by: We'll See at January 05, 2025 11:30 AM (LNtgV)

287 I listen to a lot of books on Librivox (public domain books). Algy Pug is one of my favorite readers on that site. In particular, The Shades, a Russian short story about Socrates in the afterlife.
Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at January 05, 2025 11:05 AM (Dm8we)

Thanks. Excellent!

Posted by: Thesokorus at January 05, 2025 11:31 AM (z6Ybz)

288 278 Weather took an interesting turn here...frozen sleet mixed with grumbling thunder...Unusual, but not unheard of...
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05, 2025 11:27 AM (BpYfr)

Thundersnow!

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 11:31 AM (OX9vb)

289 The book described Shannon as very interested in amusements, toys, games, automatons, etc. He tried to apply scientific principles to juggling, even measuring the specifics of mechanics. Sounded like he could juggle four balls but getting to five was a challenge.
Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 11:29 AM (IQ6Gq)

Pfft. I can do six!

Posted by: Pete Buttgigger at January 05, 2025 11:31 AM (0eaVi)

290 Well von braun was the visionary who wanted to go as far as mars he even wrote a novella about in 1959 but with the war the unrest and the focus on pollution the democrats were laser focused on
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:13 AM (dJR17)

I had that book, it was about the trip to the moon.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:31 AM (D7oie)

291 I can only imagine Winston is rolling in his grave how the British government has let Muslims rape and pillage the country.

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 11:34 AM (fwDg9)

292 I can only imagine Winston is rolling in his grave how the British government has let Muslims rape and pillage the country.
Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 11:34 AM (fwDg9)

See my response at #285.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:35 AM (0eaVi)

293 44 Robert Kirk was a Scottish clergyman of the 17th century who wrote the book Secret Commonwealth about fairies and fairyland. He believed fairies were capable of salvation and that he was called ultimately to be a pastor to them.
Posted by: Northernlurker , Maple Syrup MAGA at January 05, 2025 09:29 AM (kTd/k)

"Eifilheim" by Michael Flynn considers this problem, but with aliens who crash land in the Black Forest in the 1300's. The village priests are trying to discern if they have souls and if the can be baptized.
Sandwiched in between bandits, local wars and the Plague.
And interspersed with modern-day characters trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Eifilheim.

Not a huge Sci-fi fan, but I do love this one.

Posted by: sal at January 05, 2025 11:36 AM (f+FmA)

294 He tried to apply scientific principles to juggling, even measuring the specifics of mechanics. Sounded like he could juggle four balls but getting to five was a challenge.

Once had a co-worker who was an excellent juggler. He performed for kids' parties and such. He said something like "On a scale of one to ten, juggling three balls is a two. Juggling four balls is a seven. Juggling five balls is a forty-three."

Posted by: Oddbob at January 05, 2025 11:37 AM (ZLG7B)

295 The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers is sort of a suspenseful espionage novel, and it was written in 1903!

-
I once read a book that was a deep dive into the causes of WWI. One topic was the belief of an inevitable war with Germany as evidenced by the popularity of such books predicting hostility including The Riddle of the Sands.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 11:37 AM (L/fGl)

296 216 Kissenger was an actual faggot.
Posted by: Boss Moss

If that's what it took to score a date with peak Jill St. John, I'm in.

Posted by: Auspex at January 05, 2025 11:38 AM (j4U/Z)

297 Thundersnow!
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 11:31 AM (OX9vb)
----

https://tinyurl.com/mpemrk35

Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:38 AM (kpS4V)

298 > Weather took an interesting turn here...frozen sleet mixed with grumbling thunder...Unusual, but not unheard of...
-------
We've had about 4-5" of snow, but it's now switching over to sleet. Up to a half inch of ice is forecasted here. Which will suck bigly.

And there is a small chance of "thunder snow" through Monday morning.

Posted by: Martini Farmer at January 05, 2025 11:39 AM (Q4IgG)

299 I have stalled out on reading The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson, since it is changing viewpoints around and I got thrown off by it. I am taking a break and reading Forerunner Foray by Andre Norton. I am not sure what the whole thing bout ESP was in the 60's and 70's.

eventually I will finish both books.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:39 AM (D7oie)

300 Must be weather events happening in Book Thread land. The comments have dropped off precipitously in the last few minutes....

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:40 AM (0eaVi)

301 Thanks. Excellent!
Posted by: Thesokorus
___________

linky, nos. 9 and 10.

https://librivox.org/best-russian-short-stories/

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at January 05, 2025 11:40 AM (Dm8we)

302 Was Faerie Tale the one with Puck making horseshoes in the forest?

Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 11:11 AM (93YMr)
---
Yep...He takes on the name "Wayland Smith" as an alias...
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at January 05,

I was disappointed in it. Erotic scenes instead of action and a too-neat ending IIRC.

Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 11:41 AM (93YMr)

303 Not a huge Sci-fi fan, but I do love this one.
Posted by: sal at January 05, 2025 11:36 AM (f+FmA)

I also really enjoyed Eifelheim.

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at January 05, 2025 11:41 AM (PiwSw)

304 Thank you Perfessor for your Sunday Morning Book Threads. We live is a stupid and very unserious world. Your Book Threads, and OM*s before you, are an oasis of sanity and good stuff, amidst the craziness we otherwise live in. And I appreciate your thoughts and words greatly!

Posted by: SuperMayorSuperRonNirenberg -Buff Beyond Belief, And A Commie Too! at January 05, 2025 11:41 AM (bPnfu)

305 There's a famous story (famous for engineers, like being hot in Cleveland) that towards the end of his career Shannon was invited to give a talk. Not having anything new to discuss, he juggled various things for fifteen minutes, thanked everyone, and left.

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 11:42 AM (DcZ8z)

306 Someone like goddard who was mostly neglected then von braun bought his patents

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:43 AM (dJR17)

307
Thundersnow!
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs!

Is that a Marvel character?

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at January 05, 2025 11:43 AM (63Dwl)

308 https://tinyurl.com/mpemrk35
Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:38 AM (kpS4V)

Haha!

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at January 05, 2025 11:43 AM (OX9vb)

309 Imagine if he had been properly funded anf given attention von braun for one would have been matched

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:44 AM (dJR17)

310 A pox on them all. So much for a nation of citizens, all equal. That shits been right out the window my entire life. Too many too willing to fall in line and sing the praises of all these "great men".
Posted by: We'll See at January 05, 2025 11:30 AM (LNtgV)

Consarnit! Dagnabbit!!

Posted by: BurtTC at January 05, 2025 11:46 AM (BXDM3)

311
Morning, all. I just finished "The Best of Minds" by Jonathan Rosen. His boyhood friend was an amazing mind (graduated from Yale in 3 years summa cum laude among many other academic and intellectual achievements) that was possessed by schizophrenia.

Tragic story but I was intrigued by Rosen so i watched a bunch of YouTube videos of him talking about it. Depressing as heck.

Rosen wrote a novel called Eve's Apple that I want to read but I feel like I need to recover with some funny fiction first.

Posted by: Blonde Morticia's phone at January 05, 2025 11:46 AM (lCaJd)

312 Sigh - my book wishlist gets a growth spurt every Sunday.

But in instant gratification news: I just discovered that (1) there is a biography of Walter Lord and (2) it is available in Kindle format for $4. Yesssss!

Posted by: Clio Weeps at January 05, 2025 11:46 AM (kSAM8)

313 Thundersnow!
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs!

Is that a Marvel character?
Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at January 05, 2025 11:43 AM (63Dwl)

It is now! A lesbian who promotes body positivity by snorting cocaine, and using her magic scissors to cut down the patriarchy!

Posted by: 21 Century Comic Book Writer at January 05, 2025 11:48 AM (BXDM3)

314 Imagine if he had been properly funded anf given attention von braun for one would have been matched
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at January 05, 2025 11:44 AM (dJR17)

Um, before 1936, before 1945, or after? I think this is important.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:48 AM (D7oie)

315 276 IBM had a basic research shop too and while not the juggernaut Bell Labs was, lots of good stuff there too.

Posted by: Fritz (not Fritz) at January 05, 2025 11:25 AM
***
I *think* that both XEROX PARC and IBM Research were modeled on Bell Labs. I need to find a good resource on the IBM effort. The flywheel of innovations, people, and organizations that can trace their roots to those three must be astounding.

Posted by: TRex at January 05, 2025 11:48 AM (IQ6Gq)

316 I am not sure what the whole thing bout ESP was in the 60's and 70's.

eventually I will finish both books.
Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025

***
John W. Campbell, the editor and guiding light of Astounding Science Fiction magazine (later Analog) from the Thirties to the Seventies, was a big big proponent of ESP. He called such things "psionics," and we still refer to "psi" powers. How the idea went mainstream from SF magazines to the wider culture, I don't know, except there were Rhine's experiments on ESP at Duke beginning in the '30s, and that got popularized.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 11:49 AM (omVj0)

317 Anyway, chores await. Thanks to the Perfessor and all of you for another entertaining Book Thread -- the first, but I hope not the last, for 2025!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at January 05, 2025 11:51 AM (omVj0)

318 316 I am not sure what the whole thing bout ESP was in the 60's and 70's.

eventually I will finish both books.
Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025

All I can say is it was the 60's and the 70's.

Posted by: sal at January 05, 2025 11:52 AM (f+FmA)

319 Okay, time to crack open "The Fellowship of the Ring".

Thanks, Perf and Hoard, for another splendid Book Thread!

Posted by: All Hail Eris, She-Wolf of the 'Ettes 'Ettes at January 05, 2025 11:53 AM (kpS4V)

320 RE: ESP
After the Boeing/MacD merger, I met one of the idiots from MacD who was big on the whole ESP, Remote Viewing stuff. I laughed at him.
Out loud.
I was disinviting all the other meetings.

Posted by: Diogenes at January 05, 2025 11:53 AM (W/lyH)

321 I was disappointed in it. Erotic scenes instead of action

-
Describes Ridley Scott's movie Napoleon. What a disappointment!

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent at January 05, 2025 11:55 AM (L/fGl)

322 Campbell had enthusiasms. He got in thick with George O. Smith when Campbell decided he needed to know everything about shortwave and electronics - Smith had worked for Philco and IIRC Westinghouse - and they also worked on fuel cells. Campbell started playing around with Dianetics and psionics, and ignoring his wife Doña Campbell, and eventually she divorced John and married George O Smith.
Smith wound up not selling as many stories to Astounding after that, I think.

Posted by: Kindltot at January 05, 2025 11:56 AM (D7oie)

323 Well, it's the saddest part of Sunday morning again. Thanks for the thread, Perfessor. Time to take the lights and tree down. Sad.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:57 AM (0eaVi)

324 Seraphinianus

Seraphini WHAT?

Posted by: Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with festive little caps and interpretive dance. at January 05, 2025 11:57 AM (ubHaz)

325 RE: ESP
After the Boeing/MacD merger, I met one of the idiots from MacD who was big on the whole ESP, Remote Viewing stuff. I laughed at him.
Out loud.
I was disinviting all the other meetings.
Posted by: Diogenes at January 05, 2025 11:53 AM (W

Though The Fury was a great movie.

Posted by: Sebastian Melmoth at January 05, 2025 11:58 AM (D6PGr)

326 Seraphinianus

Seraphini WHAT?
Posted by: Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with festive little caps and interpretive dance. at January 05, 2025 11:57 AM (ubHaz)

I think they just got it all bass ackwards.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at January 05, 2025 11:59 AM (0eaVi)

327 Real world beckons.

Thanks for the thread, Perfessor.

Have a good one, gang.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at January 05, 2025 11:59 AM (q3u5l)

328 One re-read I am promising myself is "Possession" by A.S.Byatt.
Two reasons: the story is compelling and the writing is a tour de force of "voice".
In the course of the novel, she writes the poetry, fiction and correspondence of two main characters, journal entries from three supporting characters, and memoir extracts and scholarly papers from others.
Now that I know how it turns out, I can re-read to savor the art.

Posted by: sal at January 05, 2025 11:59 AM (f+FmA)

329 WE HAZ A NOOD

Posted by: Skip at January 05, 2025 12:01 PM (fwDg9)

330 Who asked about tracking books?

I bought a blank book with "Book Journal" on the cover. I left the first three pages for an index with the following headings: Page, Title, Author, Rate (because "rating" didn't fit).

I jot down a little bibliography, genre, and page count for each book and write down notable quotes (if any) and commentary as I read.

I read only 20 fiction books last year. I don't log nonfiction because that's work-related.

On a related note: my co-worker decided we should split the reading: she does the first half and I do the second. The lazybones thinks I'll end up reading the first half, too, and she can crib from me. I'm not. Let her stand up and explain why her half of the presentation is missing. We're paid the same but she's been getting away with taking shortcuts and leaving early for years.

I guess my 2025 resolution is to help her choose retirement.

Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 12:02 PM (93YMr)

331 On a related note: my co-worker decided we should split the reading: she does the first half and I do the second. The lazybones thinks I'll end up reading the first half, too, and she can crib from me. I'm not. Let her stand up and explain why her half of the presentation is missing. We're paid the same but she's been getting away with taking shortcuts and leaving early for years.

I guess my 2025 resolution is to help her choose retirement.
Posted by: NaughtyPine at January 05, 2025 12:02 PM (93YMr)

I love it when "her rules" backfires...

Posted by: sal at January 05, 2025 12:05 PM (f+FmA)

332 Musk has made arbitrary rule changes to X that are quite questionable to say the least. Been waiting for more clarification.
Well, a lot has been going on and Mike Benz takes X to the woodshed.

Mike Benz via Ashley St.Clair
https://tinyurl.com/4jvf38nj

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at January 05, 2025 12:05 PM (E7bCG)

333 Personally - I've tired of all these "great men" and "visionaries". Musk, Obama, Kissenger, FDR, Trump - the list goes on and on. All "great men". The only argument, it seems, is what makes a man great and thus deserving of this cult of personality.

A pox on them all. So much for a nation of citizens, all equal. That shits been right out the window my entire life. Too many too willing to fall in line and sing the praises of all these "great men".
Posted by: We'll See at January 05, 2025 11:30 AM (LNtgV)

Awwww. Feeling a little inadequate and worthless, are we? At least I received a medal! Nyah!

Posted by: Sir Hillary Rodham-Medal Winner 2025 at January 05, 2025 12:07 PM (iODuv)

334 re: Bell Labs et al.

duPont also had their CR&D (Central Research and Development) in Wilmington at the Experimental Station from which came Nylon and Kevlar and Teflon and not much famous since

Posted by: yara at January 05, 2025 02:11 PM (5wYGj)

335 Good afternoon, fellow bibliophiles!

The discussion about Dunkirk and the importance of the civilian rescue reminded me of a novel/novella I read back in my youth. Took some searching to find the title, but I did: “The Snow Goose,” by Paul Gallico. A reclusive artist lives in an abandoned lighthouse off the coast of Essex. A young girl finds a wounded snow goose and brings it to the artist. They bond over the recovery of the goose. Dunkirk plays a significant role in the climax of this story. The story was powerful enough that I remember much of it despite having read it over 50 years ago.

The story was part of the Reader’s Digest Condensed books my parents owned. As a precocious reader, the Condensed Books introduced me to many adult writers and stories in my ‘tweens and teens.

Posted by: March Hare at January 05, 2025 04:10 PM (jfX+U)

336 I think my goal is to read all of Dickens in 2025 I haven't read yet, or reviewed on Goodreads:

Oliver Twist
Nicholas Nickleby
The Old Curiosity Shop
Barnaby Rudge
Martin Chuzzlewit
The Chimes
The Cricket on the Hearth
Dombey and Son
The Battle of Life
The Haunted Man
Hard Times
Little Dorrit
The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Posted by: waelse1 at January 05, 2025 05:13 PM (7YTAg)

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