richardderus's twelfth 2021 thread

August is Women in Translation Month. To celebrate this annual acknowledgement of women's central and vital place in the literary landscape across cultures and languages, I post a #WITMonth feature on my blog, and a fresh review every Thursday and Sunday during the month. (Other days as well, as new releases come out.) But, of course, the importance, centrality!, of women's work in translating the fiction and non-fiction and children's books we all love so much is year-round...and began generations ago.

Marguerite Yourcenar and Grace Frick
The longtime loves, Marguerite Yourcenar and Grace Frick, met and established themselves as a couple in 1937. They remained together until Frick's death in 1979. Yourcenar was a public intellectual in France and a writer of rare and delicate talent for observing and recording the most delicate signals of inner life. She was the first woman elected to the Académie française. She was, besides being a poet and a novelist, a translator from English to French...most notably of fellow semi-Sapphist Virginia Woolf.

While Frick was alive, Yourcenar insisted that she be the English-language translator of all her work. Her beautiful renderings of The Memoirs of Hadrian and Coup de Grâce (which I reviewed last Sunday here) were, in my never-humble opinion, perfection. Frick captured lightning in a bottle and made it refract rainbows. Seldom has a writer been better served by her translator...and I suspect that forty-two years of cohabitation recommend them as a model to emulate of marital harmony.

I'm delighted to introduce, laddies and gentlewomen, my new spirit animal:
The Fucktopus.

**********************
In 2021, I stated a goal of posting 15 book reviews a month on my blog. This year's total of 180 (there are a lot of individual stories that don't have entries in the LT database so I didn't post them here; I need to do more to sync the data this year) reads shows it's doable, and I've done better than that in the past.

I've long Pearl Ruled books I'm not enjoying, but making notes on Goodreads & LibraryThing about why I'm abandoning the read has been less successful. I give up. I just don't care about this goal, so out it goes.




My Last Thread of 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

First five reviews? 1st 2021 thread..

Reviews 6 all the way through 25 can be viewed in the thread to which I have posted a link at left.

The 26th through 36th reviews occupy thread three.

37th through 44th reviews belong where they are.

Reviews 45 through 58 are listed here.

Reviews 59 through 65 present themselves in that spot.

Reviews 66 through 75 reside in this thread.

Reviews 76 through 98? Seek them before this.

Reviews 99 through 110 remain becalmèd thitherward.

Reviews 111 up to 123 actualize their potential in the linkèd thread.

Reviews 124 through 136 locatable in this locale.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

137 After the Dragons charmed, post 38.

138 "Muslim": A Novel informed, post 58.

139 Twenty-Five to Life desponded, post 91.

140 If You Exist delivered, post 113.

141 The 7th Woman held up, post 125.

142 Crossing the Line excited, post 126.

143 The City of Blood enraged, post 127.

144 The Book of Errors intrigued, post 130.

145 My Heart is a Chainsaw rocked, post 172.

146 Deer Season eviscerated, post 192.

147 The River in the Belly satisfied, post 213.

148

149

150

2020's five-star or damn-near five-star reviews totaled 46. Almost half were short stories and/or series reads. While a lot of authors saw their book launches rescheduled, publishers canceled their tours, and everyone was hugely distracted by the nightmare of COVID-19 (I had it, you do not want it), no one can fault the astoundingly wonderful literature we got this year. My own annual six-stars-of-five read was Zaina Arafat's extraordinary debut novel YOU EXIST TOO MUCH (review lives here), a thirtysomething Palestinian woman telling me my life, my family, my very experience of relationships of all sorts. I cannot stress enough to you, this is the book you need to read in 2021. A sixtysomething man is here, in your email/feed, saying: This is the power. This is the glory. The writing I look for, the read I long to find, and all of it delivered in a young woman's debut novel. This is as good an omen for the Great Conjunction's power being bent to the positive outcomes as any I've seen.

In 2020, I posted over 180 reviews here. In 2021, my goals are:

to post 190 reviews on my blog

to post at least 99 three-sentence Burgoines

to complete at least 190 total reviews

Most important to me is to report on DRCs I don't care enough about to review at my usual level. I don't want to keep just leaving them unacknowledged. There are publishers who want to see a solid, positive relationship between DRCs granted and reviews posted, and I do not blame them a bit.

Ask and ye shall receive! Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >7 richardderus: below.

I stole this from PC's thread. I like these prompts!
***
1. Name any book you read at any time that was published in the year you turned 18:
Faggots by Larry Kramer
2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long:
The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream by Michael Wood
3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover?
Wasps' Nest by Agatha Christie
4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?)
The Perfect Fascist by Victoria de Grazia; paper book of 512pp, can't hold it...hands too feeble now
5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you?
Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump
6. Name the book that read either this year or last year that takes place geographically closest to where you live? How close would you estimate it was?
The Trump book; set in Queens and the Hamptons, so just down the road a piece
7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read?
The last successful rebellion on US soil and caffeine
8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book?
The Only Good Indians, a horror novel that's really, really good
9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it?
Restored, a Regency-era romantic historical novel about men in their 40s seizing their second chance at luuuv
10. Name a book you read that led you to specifically to read another book (and what was the other book, and what was the connection)
Potiki, which Kerry Aluf gave me; led me to read The Uncle's Story by Witi Ihimaera
11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with.
P. Djeli Clark
12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year?
Hawaii and PNW
13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)?
The Fighting Bunch; WWII
14. What was the last book you acquired or borrowed based on an LTer’s review or casual recommendation? And who was the LTer, if you care to say.
There isn't enough space for all the book-bullets y'all careless, inconsiderate-of-my-poverty fiends pepper me with
15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way?
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason
16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall?
Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky by David Connerley Nahm
17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere?
Red Heir by Lisa Henry
18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover?
please don't ask me this
19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die?
Agatha Christie, 1976
20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read?
good goddesses, I don't remember...Goodnight Moon to my daughter?
21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read?
Poirot by Dame Ags
22. What was the shortest book of any kind you’ve read so far this year?
The World Well Lost, ~28pp
23. Name the last book that you struggled with (and what do you think was behind the struggle?)
Lon Chaney Speaks, because I really, really don't like comic books
24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT?
see #23
25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics)
see #23
I liked Sandy's Bonus Question for the meme above, so I adopted it:

26. What is the title and year of the oldest book you have reviewed on LT in 2020? (modification in itals)
The Sittaford Mystery by Dame Aggie, 1931.

I really hadn't considered doing this until recently...tracking my Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winners read, and Booker Prize winners read might actually prove useful to me in planning my reading.

1918 HIS FAMILY - Ernest Poole **
1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington *
1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton *
1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington **
1923 ONE OF OURS - Willa Cather **
1924 THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS - Margaret Wilson
1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber *
1926 ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined) *
1927 EARLY AUTUMN - Louis Bromfield
1928 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder *
1929 SCARLET SISTER MARY - Julia Peterkin
1930 LAUGHING BOY - Oliver Lafarge
1931 YEARS OF GRACE - Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck *
1933 THE STORE - Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1934 LAMB IN HIS BOSOM - Caroline Miller
1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 HONEY IN THE HORN - Harold L Davis
1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell *
1938 THE LATE GEORGE APLEY - John Phillips Marquand
1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings *
1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck *
1942 IN THIS OUR LIFE - Ellen Glasgow *
1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
1944 JOURNEY IN THE DARK - Martin Flavin
1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey *
1947 ALL THE KING'S MEN - Robert Penn Warren *
1948 TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC - James Michener
1949 GUARD OF HONOR - James Gould Cozzens
1950 THE WAY WEST - A.B. Guthrie
1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
1952 THE CAINE MUTINY - Herman Wouk
1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway *
1955 A FABLE - William Faulkner *
1956 ANDERSONVILLE - McKinlay Kantor *
1958 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee *
1959 THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS - Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury *
1961 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee *
1962 THE EDGE OF SADNESS - Edwin O'Connor
1963 THE REIVERS - William Faulkner *
1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau
1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter
1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
1968 THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER - William Styron *
1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday
1970 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JEAN STAFFORD - Jean Stafford
1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner *
1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty *
1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara *
1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow *
1978 ELBOW ROOM - James Alan McPherson
1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever *
1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer *
1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole *
1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike *
1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker *
1984 IRONWEED - William Kennedy *
1985 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Alison Lurie
1986 LONESOME DOVE - Larry McMurtry *
1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison *
1989 BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler
1990 THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE - Oscar Hijuelos *
1991 RABBIT AT REST - John Updike *
1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley *
1993 A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN - Robert Olen Butler *
1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx *
1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields
1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY - Richard Ford
1997 MARTIN DRESSLER - Steven Millhauser
1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth
1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham
2000 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES - Jumpha Lahiri
2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon
2002 EMPIRE FALLS - Richard Russo
2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides *
2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones
2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson
2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz *
2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout
2010 TINKERS - Paul Harding**
2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD - Jennifer Egan
2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson
2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt
2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr **
2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen **
2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead **
2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer
2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers
2020 THE NICKEL BOYS - Colson Whitehead

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

1969: P. H. Newby, Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1970: J. G. Farrell, Troubles ** (awarded in 2010 as the Lost Man Booker Prize) -
1971: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist ... and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey, Saville
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea *
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children *
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac *
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People **
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger *
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda *
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day *
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance *
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient * ... and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road *
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin *
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang *
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little **
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty *
2005: John Banville, The Sea
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering
2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question *
2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending **
2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
2013: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings *
2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout
2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
2018: Anna Burns, Milkman
2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think's important and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

And now, you may speak

Happy new one! Warm and humid here - gross.

>9 katiekrug: First again! We'll have to go up from tiara to crown:


It's *revolting* out there. Sick-makingly sticky. This summer shtik needs to be over now.

Happy new one!

>11 drneutron: Thank you, Jim!

By the way, I just posted a blurb about Defekt, the sequel to Finna. You have *got* to give these a try!

Happy new one, BigDaddy! Snagging a seat while I wait for the topper.

Happy new thread, Richard!

Happy New Thread!

>16 mahsdad: Thanks, Jeff!

>15 bell7: Hiya Mary! Welcome.

>14 Crazymamie: Topper's up, Mamie dearest.

>13 drneutron: I hate you. *trudges off to Ammy*

>17 richardderus: I thought Topper was the end of the previous thread. Did you miss it, Mamie?

Oh, hi, Richard!

>18 weird_O: Heh. The THREAD topper, not Topper, silly William.

Hi!

Happy new thread, RD.

I aim to read 6 books in translation each year, (that might not sound like a lot to you, but to me it's approaching 10% of my reading for the year). Peirene Press is excellent for out of the way books being translated into English for the first time. Their latest is Winter Flowers by Angélique Villeneuve, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Two ladies doing their thing.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Happy New Thread. I will be following you with a new one, very soon. I just picked up Afterparties: Stories from the library and will probably start it next. Joe's reading Hench too, so your warbling is still hitting the right notes.

>21 msf59: Hi Mark! I really hope you're as impressed by the So collection as I was...you know we agreed on Gordo, I remain hopeful.

>20 Helenliz: Hell there Helen! I don't care a whit how many books you read as long as you're reading books you enjoy not feel like you *should*...eat-your-kale books are the Devil's Own and we should all refuse to read them. Peirene is chary with their DRCs so I don't read a lot from them. Bitter Lemon and New Vessel are more open-handed, Archipelago and Pushkin Press practically chase me down, so I'm well-translationed.

Winter Flowers sounds so well-suited to my tastes, though...I'll ask them for one, thanks!

Happy new thread!

I'm a bit short of translated works of any sort so far this month. Well, there's still almost 2 weeks left....

>23 quondame: Thanks, Susan.

Exactly! Plenty o'time.

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

Most books I read are translated, I have to keep an eye my Dutch reads :-)
One day I will read Marguerite Yourcenar, three are waiting on the shelves.

>25 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita...yes, y'all's book market is the inverse of ours because books in Dutch are less common than ones in English. There's just so many of us, after all, at least a half-billion world-wide. A billion if you count the English-speakers whose first language is Chinese.

Happy new thread, Richard!

I was hoping to get to Magda Szabo this month Richard but I'm running out of days and the book piles are too enormous 🤷‍♀️

>28 brenzi: Hi Bonnie! Well, there are twelve days left, maybe you can pull it off...I hope so!

>27 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley!

Another new thread, already????? You are monstrously profligate, Richard, but I forgive you because I enjoy every post of it. Happy New Thread!!

>30 ronincats: ...and you are...?

*smooch*

*smooch*

Happy New thread, Richard!

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

ETA: I just saw on the library website that Swimming in the Dark is on its way to me :-)

Hi RDear, and happiest of new threads!

I’ve just actually downloaded Topper. I’m going to immerse myself in the 1920s for a bit.

>22 richardderus: eat-your-kale books.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

I'm in!

Eat-your-kale books, hehe. I keep on toying around with volunteering to teach literacy, and my first question would be, 'what do you want to read?' It doesn't matter to me what they want to learn with, as long as they get better at it by enjoying it more. When I was a young kid this very beautiful neighbor lady came over to visit my mother. I was born gay but I could appreciate the stylish clothes and modish hair. Despite her looks and her clothes, she seemed kind of skittish and I remember wondering why she didn't stand up straight, and why wouldn't she come into the house and sit down and talk but preferred to chat in the foyer? I found her to be very interesting. After she left, my mom told me that she didn't know how to read and I was shocked because everybody knew how to read. How could somebody so beautiful not have such a common, basic skill? Now, I know that she didn't have to know how to read. I mean, when you look like that you develop a different skill set.

Since then I've met adults who struggle with proficiency in literacy. It always kind of amazes me. Anyway, I'm rambling.

>36 SomeGuyInVirginia: Sometimes the struggles that others have with literacy makes me so very sad. What do illiterate people *do*? My dyslexic roommate discovered, ahem, large-print books and now spends most of his time reading. (Which also keeps him quiet...score!)

Glad you're here, smoochling.

>35 karenmarie: Thank you, me lurve. And enjoy Topper! Marion Kirby, in fact, reminds me of Larry's Mama's skittish pal!

>34 FAMeulstee: Oh goody good good, Anita! I hope the story hits you just right. What a lovely surprise it was.

>33 swynn: Thanks, Steve!

137 After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dragons were fire and terror to the Western world, but in the East they brought life-giving rain…

Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease—shaolong, or “burnt lung”—afflicts the city’s human inhabitants.

Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. Interest in Beijing’s dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons? Eli and Kai must confront old ghosts and hard truths if there is any hope for themselves or the dragons they love.

After the Dragons is a tender story, for readers interested in the effects of climate change on environments and people, but who don’t want a grim, hopeless read. Beautiful and challenging, focused on hope and care, this novel navigates the nuances of changing culture in a changing world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The entire world is burning up...including the people in it.

We are in an alt-Beijing in a future based on today. Climate change has gone into overdrive, and Beijing's famously poor air quality has never been worse...or warmer. There is a new lung disease, fatality rate as close to one hundred percent as to be indistinguishable, called "shaolong" or burning lung.

Oh...and dragons are real, and are very common in Beijing. Little dragons, not like the hulking fire drakes that medieval Europeans hunted to extinction. Small, delicate, beautiful...but not particularly valued. In fact they're used much as cocks are, for dragon fights. (While this isn't gone into in detail, it leads me to remind those sensitive to animal harm that this factor exists.)

Eli comes to Beijing from the USA. He is a mixed-race Black and Chinese diasporan child with a working grasp of Mandarin and a strong desire to make his mark in biomedicine. Kai is a dying victim of shaolong who meets handsome, healthy Eli when he comes into Kai's...well..."job" implies he gets paid which he does not...position at a dragon sales shop-cum-dragon fight ring. Their attraction is mutual but stuttering at its start: Eli can't help noticing Kai's illness and thus sets up the pity dynamic...unintentionally, of course, but inevitably...which makes Kai resist his reciprocal feelings for Eli.

Their dance of approach and stillness and retreat and stillness was beautifully handled, while never leading to a Conclusion. They are involved...in a coupling-type thing...and it's making them both happy...today. The way we're left at the end of the story, that is all we can expect to hear about these young men. I would like to say aloud that I would love to read more stories set in this world because its depth-of-field in this novella is amazing and has not come remotely close to exhausting the possibilities it contains. What does it mean to fall in love with someone who is dying? What kind of world can you, the healthy one, believe in once you've realized he will die before you? Not things I'd know about at all....

I did not expect to think the AIDS parallels were particularly well-done or even necessary. I was wrong. The story is very much enriched by the author's quiet acknowledgment that these men face a short future and a rough road to the end. Nothing is made of that, as in there are no set pieces built around it, but it pervades their oddly tender yet standoffish dynamic.

Anyone who can make the Bird's Nest from the 2008 Beijing Olympics into a ratty-tatty old hulk where wild dragons swarm is someone who needs to delve far more deeply into this world they have made. The details that bring it to life...the drought causing the poor to pay so much for water while there are still fountains in the wealthy part of town, for example...made my greedy little story bandit within coo and gurgle.

This is the second novella I've read from Stelliform Press (after The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, reviewed here), and they have both been excellent cli-fic books with stellar (!) production and design values. It is clear that this press has a very well-defined mission and is using the best kind of writing...tense, intense, high-stakes storytelling...to get your attention. You will enjoy the trip even while you're unhappy with the implied destination.

More, please. Soon, please.

>37 richardderus: what do illiterate people *do*?

I KNOW! But they do stuff, they fill up their time and they do it in a way that is completely alien to me. My coming to grips with this has led me to accept everything above the Mason-Dixon line for what it is and appreciate New England for perfecting the idea of 'quaint'. I went to a wedding in Western Massachusetts several years ago and decided to spend a few days at the casinos in eastern Connecticut. I visited Mystic, a place I had associated with enchantment ever since I was a child, and was really thrilled to tour the area. I remember driving by these houses in the surrounding countryside and being absolutely charmed by the almost perfect, picturesque quality they had. They were so effortlessly groomed. It's a really lovely area and the aesthetic is almost completely foreign to southern states.

I saw David Bowie perform at the Mohegan Sun casino while I was there. The wedding was kind of a dreary strain, I confess to having a crush on the groom, but I did have fun after the wedding.

>39 SomeGuyInVirginia: Keeping that glossy surface is far from effortless, speaking from experience, but it's at least got some intellectual component. Deciding what to plant is often a decision already made in this part of the world; but learning the susceptibilities and crotchets of the entities, learning the whens and hows and what-the-hell?s of them, that's a long learning curve.

Weddings more often than not bore me witless. And nowadays I am not physically capable of attending! Proof that there is no curse without a blessing.

In my entire life I've been to 5 weddings, including mine.

>41 karenmarie: ::jealous::

Morning Afternoon, BigDaddy! I have been to tons of weddings, and usually it is a chore. My very favorite one was my son's last October - it was small and intimate and a perfect reflection of who they are as a couple. Only 18 people total including the photographer. Short quick ceremony in a tiny chapel nestled into the hills of Northern Georgia with giant windows making the view a main character. Then breakfast for dinner with Louis Armstrong playing in the background, followed by outdoor giant Jenga, corn hole, and s'more making. Birdy and Daniel made the games together, and you could write a message on the Jenga pieces if you wanted. As the daylight gave way the twinkle lights came on, and it felt like a fairytale setting. The whole thing was full of fabulous.

Late to the party but dropping off happy new thread greetings. *double cheek smoochings*

>44 MickyFine: "Late" is an irrelevance when the point is to be here no matter when or how. *smooch*

>43 Crazymamie: It does indeed sound full of fabulous, Mamie, and exactly what I'd expect from one of your family: True to their own vision and designed to make a lasting happy impression.

*smooch*

>22 richardderus: Oh I don't know, a bit of kale every now and then makes you appreciate the sweetness of the really good just that little bit more.

It's a bit like the cake after having had salad for a week...

I've been to hundreds of weddings - most of them as a paid volunteer, I ring church bells for fun and ringing the happy couple out of the church is quite the English tradition.

>46 Helenliz: Well, isn't that just as quaint as anything could possibly be! Bell-ringing! With added *urp* kale!

where is that insulin oh gawd where is it

I'm sure it's just totes adorbs. Mmm hmm.

gaaak i can't find the

>47 richardderus: Example of English change ringing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pugRM2Nsnyo

As a hobby, I'd describe it as many things, sweet is not one of them!

>48 Helenliz: Why, that's not at all like noise pollution and irksome invasion of my sound-space! It's as far as possible from an infringement of public freedom-from-religion laws! Not in the slightest like those irritating "calls to prayer" that besmirch the welkin in Islamic countries. In spite of what the neighbors say.

We’ve been to a bunch of weddings too - Mrsdrneutron was our church pianist for 20 years, so would play for most of the couples getting hitched there. As a sound tech, I usually tagged along as a two-fer. Got many rubber chicken meals out of the deal! 😀.

Kidding…. Mostly.

Ack, weddings! Send regrets and some tat.

Happy new one, RD.

>49 richardderus: When I worked in Egypt I lived a stone's throw from the local mosque and never needed an alarm clock to get up for work. Like Pavlov's dog after a year of it, I have never really needed an alarm clock since.

Hani has taken to listening to a prayer tape in the bedroom and swears it helps her sleep - it keeps me awake so I switch it off when she nods off!

Happy new thread Richard!

Am feeling bored. Will have to come back soon with something supervillainessy.

>38 richardderus: Hmm, dragons vs doomed love, which will tip the scale? And why don't I, after your several repetitions, immediately translate cli-fic to climate fiction. But I haven't yet.

>41 karenmarie: Heh, I've been to 6 weddings where the groom was one of my 2 brothers. My sister's been married twice, but I only went to the first one, and may not have been invited to the second.

>47 richardderus: Come on Richard, you know the bell ringers have pools on how soon the kid will be born an how long the marriage will last.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy pre-tropical storm Friday to you. Looks like you might get some … ah… interesting Henri weather.

>46 Helenliz: Ringing church bells sounds fascinating, Helen. One of my all-time favorite mysteries includes quite a bit of fantastic information about campanology and change ringing. (The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers).

>55 quondame: I’m assuming many divorces, but perhaps there are tragedies in there, too…

I’m having a great time with Topper. It is, of course, quite different from the movie, but even there Roland Young got quite a few lines from the book and managed to dance, drink, and sing beautifully.

*smooch*

>56 karenmarie: So pleased you are liking Topper Karen.

It's truly a lot more than just patter comedians.

Someone gave Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan a ring of (i think) nine bells and they used to ring them out in peals at noontime. At first it was just jangle and noise to me but after a while and some education i could pick out the patterns and the swell and ebb of the peal. Still not sure i'd want it under my window every morning and evening.

138 "Muslim": A Novel by Zahia Rahmani

Rating: 3.5* of five

Winner of the 2020 Albertine Prize
Selected for Asymptote's February 2019 Book Club

The Publisher Says: "Muslim": A Novel is a genre-bending, poetic reflection on what it means to be Muslim from one of France's leading writers. In this novel, the second in a trilogy, Rahmani's narrator contemplates the loss of her native language and her imprisonment and exile for being Muslim, woven together in an exploration of the political and personal relationship of language within the fraught history of Islam. Drawing inspiration from the oral histories of her native Berber language, the Koran, and French children's tales, Rahmani combines fiction and lyric essay in to tell an important story, both powerful and visionary, of identity, persecution, and violence.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: One can call a cat a dog, but that won't make the creature bark or fetch a stick. This is not a novel. It is, in my pretty well-informed opinion, a récit. And, at under 150 pages, it isn't possessed of the scope a novel needs. Here's why that's important: Expectations get set when a person reads a title, and someone expecting a deep, immersive novel experience is going to leave this read disappointed.

Sad that this is the case. I would've chosen a different title, in fact; but the book's beauties are plentiful, call it what one may, and much here is to be savored.

Born in 1962, the author and the narrator of the book, whom we understand to be the author in heightened and fictionalized form, was the child of a Harki father:

He was only the man who had impregnated my mother. I never knew what to call him. I never had a father. The war had stolen mine.

and a Berber mother:

I was old enough to walk, and yet my mother was carrying me on her back in a shawl, with a scarf tied around my head. She told me later that she used to put baby potatoes in the shawl to help my headaches. "Did I get headaches a lot when I was a child?" "I didn't have any medicine," she told me. "I had headaches a lot?" "All the time," she told me.

Her father's imprisonment until a daring escape in 1967 meant her childhood was spent as a doubly disadvantaged person: Berber language and culture was no more accepted in Algeria after independence than before, and her father's legacy of French co-operation was the cause of trouble. Her entire life, then, was delineated in hyphens...she was never Rahman, herself, and later Elohim, her invented self. She was Othered in an Algeria bent of Arabizing to belong to a larger Islamic community of "Pan-Arabism" and then in France by not being white, not looking like other little girls did.

And here, at this juncture, fiction diverges from fact as Rahman-the-character not Rahmani-the-writer is exiled by the French language...and so leaves France, the not-homeland of the body. This story having been written and published in France in 2005, it's sort of inevitable that the US invasions of Muslim lands like Iraq in Operation Desert Storm take a sort-of vague center stage. French intellectual that she is, the author sets a good deal of the, um, events (no real "action" in a récit) in a prison camp much like the camp her Harki father occupied after Algeria's independence.

They had just one Name. One Name. And no one suspected the evil inside them, no one bore witness to this evil inside them, the thing that they were referring to when they said, "we don’t want them, we don’t want others, not him, not her, not them." And this always brought to mind the scenes of trains leaving for Poland.

"Of all the excuses that intellectuals have found for executioners—and during the past ten years they have not been idle in the matter—the most pitiable of all is that the victim's thought—for which he was murdered—was fallacious."

It is at this point that quotidian reality departs the scene for good; what replaces it is Reality-Plus, the enhanced experience of poetry and fable and fairy tale. The mere fact of her existence becomes threatening to Them, the Powers That Be. She is not one thing, not that she ever was ever allowed to be only one thing (herself); she is Other, and takes the identity Elohim, that ambiguous plural Ugaritic word for the monophysite Jewish god as well as for the Children of El as well as for the Canaanite pantheon...she never shies away from complexity, Author Rahmani. And so I've never made any attempt to make it clear if any of the foregoing is fiction or autobiography.

Because it doesn't matter.

If you choose to read this book, and I hope you will, the reason to do so isn't to go from Point A to Point Q. You're not doing the Stations of the Cross, Catholics; not on Hajj, Muslims. You're making the pilgrimage through the countryside tending towards Santiago de Compostela or Mecca or Canterbury. You're there, in other words, for the voyage in, towards the destination, and not the destination itself.

Coming to France was my father's fault. He'd been banished from Algeria. Banished like so many others had been, and like so many more would be. Banished, stripped of a name, a soldier of the colonial army, a traitor to his country. They were the banished, the silent participants of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq and elsewhere, the comrades of the losers of these wars, waiting to drag their shame home.

Because, in the end, there is no destination, no Home, no place for us on this Earth, that we do not demand accept us, speak into being intentionally and unyieldingly.

I wouldn’t be just an exile, an immigrant, an Arab, a Berber, a Muslim, or a foreigner, but something more. Despite all they might do to force me back into these categories, I wouldn’t return to those places. I would strive to find in these words whatever they had of the universal, of the beautiful, of the human, of the sublime. The rest—the dark flipside of the particulars—I would leave for those starving for identity politics. I would continue to love my mother tongue, and I would see how it linked me to Arab people, to Semitic peoples, to “Muslim”, and to “Jewish.” I wanted to learn everything that had been kept from me about these people and their languages.

In just under an hour and a half, you'll make the acquaintance of one who has done precisely that.

>57 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim! Yes, Topper-the-book isn't a simplistic series of vaudeville shtiks.

I wouldn't want the damn things in earshot!

>56 karenmarie: Yay! Glad it's working out for you, Horrible.

>55 quondame: ...and that makes it better because...?

>54 quondame: I'm guessing it's lack of exposure, TBH.

>53 humouress: Being bored is allowed. Not every visit needs to be a reminder of your supervillainy. I merely reflect on the...interesting...lack of COVID in your country. It's afraid of you, wouldn't *dare* crudesce.

>52 PaulCranswick: It *helps* her sleep...? Really. Shocks me. Permaybehaps it's the reciter of them, engendering ASMR?

>51 SomeGuyInVirginia: Yes on regrets, no on tat...use your Bridal Registries, y'all!

>50 drneutron: I'll bet that, should the celebrant keel over mid-sentencing, Danita could take over and finish it all up for them. Twenty years! Yowza.

>57 magicians_nephew: Trinity Wall Street has a ring of 12 bells. They may not have been ringing all 12. Odd numbers, apart from 5, are almost unheard of.

>56 karenmarie: The Nine Tailors is pretty good on ringing information. Has a few boo boos, but none that a non-specialist would spot and none that interfere with the story.

>55 quondame: oh no we don't! Well not unless we're feeling particularly catty because the bride was more than 5 minutes late. The later they are, the more catty we get.

>49 richardderus: I know, we get to make quite a lot of noise and we have a whale of a time. Invest in ear plugs. Or don't move near a building with an active ringing society. >;-)

>61 Helenliz: So far, in the whole of my life, the closest I've ever lived to a church of any sort was when I lived on Maiden Lane in Manhattan. Trinity Wall Street was right there, and a decommissioned one was on Nassau Street. They weren't audible to me in either case, which is all I ask...Silence is Golden.

>60 richardderus: Good point. I'll come by some other time to practice supervillainy (no, no, it's no trouble); not feeling quite as bored at the moment.

Re weddings; maybe it's because we're between generations or maybe it's because all my family is elsewhere in the world but there haven't been many in my life recently. I remember my cousin's wedding in DC with fondness; as well as the London contingent, which we were part of, there were cousins' cousins from Philly and distant cousins from Canada and of course a heap of DC folks and there were a lot of us in our late teens/ early twenties with no responsibilities to worry about, so it was a lot of fun. I do like the excuse to get togged up once in a while.

>63 humouress: Well, late teens/early twenties are prime time for weddings being held. Older, they tend to be of one's ex-spouse(s) or one's child/ren, and those are of necessity much more fraught. Sobriety is highly desirable under those constraints, and is one of the many drawbacks of wedding attendance after the age of forty. (Others being going there, being there, and knowing where the whole thing's headed therefore not seeing the point.)

I rather like weddings, as long as there is a free/open bar :)

>65 katiekrug: Being unencumbered by ex-spouse(s) and/or child/ren, it would make sense that you would do. Sobriety is greatly to be decried at suchlike goins-on.

Morning, BigDaddy! I concur that with your assessment of sobriety at gatherings.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Saturday to you.

>57 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim. Here’s a quote from The Nine Tailors: The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. ... Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.

I wouldn’t want to live too close to a church with bells, but it’s very sad to me when I hear recorded bells from a church that used to have change ringers.

>68 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, happy Saturday to you too. It's a truth universally accepted that what's almost unbearably wonderfully quaint on first experience is a serious drag on fiftieth.

*smooch*

>67 Crazymamie: Sobriety is hugely overestimated. Our ancestors were not sober for any appreciable period of time until the advent of capitalism. This should tell you something.

Happy Saturday, Richard. Baby watch continues. I took care of some house chores and now tending to the books. Loving Afterparties. Just finished "The Shop", probably my favorite so far.

>70 msf59: Hiya Grandpa! I'm so glad you're enjoying the stories in Afterparties. What makes me sad is that there won't be much more work from him.

Only a few more hours....

>71 richardderus: Oh, man! I forgot that he had died. What a tragedy. 28 years old? WTF?

>72 msf59: I gather that his family rather blames his ex for the overdose that killed him.

Not thrilled with the weather forecasts for your vicinity, RD. Is there an evacuation plan?

Hope Henri doesn't cause you any problems, Richard.

'Morning, RDear. Henri has veered west east (a caffeine-free mistake) but I'm still concerned about the rain and storm surge.

I hope you're safe and sound.

*smooch*

>76 karenmarie:, >75 ronincats:, >74 laytonwoman3rd: It's rainy, and the air feels like breathing in a steambath through a wet wool sweater, but...that's it. Rob's surfing yesterday wasn't as exciting as he was hoping and he can't come out here today for various reasons but wouldn't've wanted to...rip currents.

I was a bit concerned about coastal flooding but even that isn't notably bad. (Yet?)

We were Skypeing last night as I was futzing around with my Kindle files. (I really don't understand how it works but we can see what each other's desktops are doing. Some meeting feature.) Rob was, for some reason, utterly gobsmacked at the stuff I get from publishers...it's not like he hasn't got access to the stuff! He was ooohing and aaahing over something or another and asked "what's the "abovethetreeline.com" mean?"

Edelweiss+ was utterly unknown to him. All those times I typed it in a review, he thought it was some sort of in-joke he didn't understand. "NetGalley but older" made sense, luckily, and now all those unread galleys are going to get cleaned up. He'll read some, in fact quite a lot, of them!

Anyway, hoping all have a less sticky Sunday than this one bids fair to be for me.

Morning, BigDaddy! Sorry that Rob did not get his anticipated surfing. Bummer.

Keeping you in my thoughts - stay safe, you. Sorry about the sticky Sunday. *smooch*

>78 Crazymamie: Thank you, sweetiedarling, and I'll pass along your sympathies. I don't anticipate having a lot of trouble because it's headed well northeast of me...I wouldn't necessarily want to be on the North Fork, say, but that's 125mi away. Here on the South Shore, it's just muggy and gloomy.

Thank GOODNESS!

Thank goodness Long Island is so.....long, right?

>80 laytonwoman3rd: Awomen! Poor Connecticut and Rhode Island, though...and far western Mass.

Like others who know you, I have been watching the track of the fickle Hurricane, now Tropical Storm Henri, and thinking of you. I did notice that when I went to sleep last night that the latest track had the center missing Long Island, but it still seems like you are going to gets lots of rain. Do you think you can handle that much excitement from a once -in-30-years event? Sure you can. Good books on a rainy day! that is a gift from the gods.

>82 benitastrnad: The good news, Benita, is that even the rain's within ordinary storm parameters here. I don't expect the storm surge to affect us given how far away the damned thing is from here.

But the weather does keep me indoors, the books being cherce then becomes the blessing we always look for. A Tale of Two Omars is a really good book, though I think the author calling himself "Omar Sharif Jr." is a wee touch arrogant. (He's a grandson.) (But he's VERY pretty, like his grandpa.)

Considering how many books are on my Kindle and how many are also right here in my space, I have not one single excuse to whine about the poor quality of available reads....

Hi Richard, a belated happy new thread dear friend.

>84 johnsimpson: Thank you, John! I appreciate it. Have a lovely week-ahead's reads!

>77 richardderus: Hmm, never heard of in my backwater.

>86 quondame: ...never...? Wow...their PR is pretty poor. https://www.edelweiss.plus to sign up,should you care to.

>87 richardderus: More books? Hmm ... should I/ shouldn’t I?

Ricardo--Hello and happy newish thread (they go so fast!). Glad you are posting and safe and sound. Weddings...next one will be my daughter's next September! It's the next generations turn. : ) Smooch.

Hiya, RD! Looks like Henri is the gift that keeps on giving...

Have a lovely bookish day.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

139 Twenty-Five to Life by R.W.W. Greene

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Life goes on for the billions left behind after the humanity-saving colony mission to Proxima Centauri leaves Earth orbit ... but what's the point?

Julie Riley is two years too young to get out from under her mother's thumb, and what does it matter? She's over-educated, under-employed, and kept mostly numb by her pharma emplant. Her best friend, who she's mostly been interacting with via virtual reality for the past decade, is part of the colony mission to Proxima Centauri. Plus, the world is coming to an end. So, there's that.

When Julie's mother decides it's time to let go of the family home in a failing suburb and move to the city to be closer to work and her new beau, Julie decides to take matters into her own hands. She runs, illegally, hoping to find and hide with the Volksgeist, a loose-knit culture of tramps, hoboes, senior citizens, artists, and never-do-wells who have elected to ride out the end of the world in their campers and converted vans, constantly on the move over the back roads of America.

AUTHOR GREENE SENT ME A DRC OF THIS TITLE AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know that itchy little something that lives in the back of your brain? The one that says "...but...wait...what was...?" in a still, small voice but never quite speaks what it is you've forgotten? That's what happened to me with this book. I knew I wanted it...go look at my review for The Light Years...but forgot it was coming out this month. Completely. Until about a week ago.

Way too late to hit up the publisher, in other words. Fuck!

But given that Rob and I follow each other on Twitter, I used my privileged access (snort!) and DMed him to beg for a DRC in my preferred format. Next thing I knew it was in my inbox and I was off to the races. A week, though, isn't a lot of time to read something for a review. Contrary to the openly expressed opinion of a Famous SF Writer who, on Facebook, called my reviews "mediocre," I do expend a goodly amount of effort to engage with what it is I think the writer is trying to do, and if they've succeeded at it, in my opinion. Are there longueurs of style, are there errors of fact, and how exactly did I end up feeling about the story I was being told?

The news is good, readers. Author Greene does it again. He's made a post-apocalyptic future of Left-Behinders not only readable but fun.

Julie, twenty-three, is on her way into an underage person's rave-type party as we meet her. Mother signed off on her attendance..."just don't let anyone film you!"...and here she is, ready to have all the pharma-fun she can! The state wants people happy, so there are implants that go in as soon as possible; they give out SSRIs like they're nothing because, well, that's what the people Left Behind on Earth can expect: Nothing. The planet's given itself a terrible fever to get rid of the infection of Humanity, and it's working. Hence the Best and Brightest going to the Stars.

Julie, goddesses please bless her, wants...something. It's not going to happen if she stays where she is, so she makes the changes necessary (hello, drug withdrawal aka "brain zaps"!) and joins the Volksgeist. They're the few remaining souls who'd rather experience life instead of simply existing through it. Julie joins their caravan of fools (das NarrenVan?) and begins Life with Ranger, an older woman who takes her in and renames her "Runner." (It really fits.) And the novel goes On the Road!

The way things unfold is partly a commentary on the difficulty of detoxing from the astonishingly complex cocktail of brain-altering stuff we routinely ingest. This means Runner has periodic, what to call them, lapses? lacunae? in her sense of time and in the narrative of the story. Since that means some sorts of things don't get described (a party is simply not dealt with, only its aftermath, for example), it can feel a bit frustrating. I wanted to, like Runner herself, experience it all...but what happens in the telling is that I was given the sense of experiencing it as Runner did herself...a subtle, but bold, decision on Author Greene's part. I think it was successful in reinforcing my sense of Runner's reality, her actual experience, though I might've chosen a different course given the chance.

What do road novels do best? They give you a broad spectrum of experiences...and that's here, as well. The community of the Volksgeist is one amorphous, boundary-permeable entity. The places it rests are both changed by the experience of the group being there and the group is changed by additions and deletions of personal choices to remain or join. It makes the entire novel feel as though the goal is Canterbury, and the Wife of Bath will be here momentarily. While I'm medievalizing, since we've already got the Ship of Fools and the Pilgrim's Tale, let me point out that this is very much a morality play as well. Ranger and Runner, the Odd Couple in a way, are experiencing in unmediated form the consequences of my generation's criminal neglect of the warning signs of catastrophe to come. There's not a single thing that happens to the Volksgeist that isn't perfectly possible to believe is happening now, or to see how it will in the term left to me of my own life.

It doesn't look good. It doesn't make my generation look good. And it makes for one helluva good story.

On sale the 24th, tomorrow from when I'm writing this; preorder it now. You WILL want to have it ASAP.

>90 karenmarie: Ain't he just! Happy Monday, Horrible, may it be a lovely, dry, cool day.

Somewhere. *sigh*

>89 Berly: Hiya Berly-boo! Glad to see you here. Yep, that generation's got the baton, and good luck to them all. *delicate shiver*

>88 humouress: Remembering they're often not available to the Outlandish, permaybehaps not quite the TBR-fattener extraordinaire?

Monday morning smooches, RDear. Hope your rain hasn't been too intense. We are finally getting a solidly rainy day today and it's desperately needed.

Afternoon, BigDaddy! You were right, and Ima add that latest one to The List. I also added my thumb to your review. *smooch*

What does that Sci-Fi writer know? You write the BEST reviews! Off to thumb.

>95 Berly: Well, that's all I care about anyway. Pfui on nasty-pants people. *smooch*

>94 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie! Good, I'm glad that you're susceptible to Ship-of-Fools tales like I always thought. It really is a well-made road novel.

>93 MickyFine: Oh, the rain's gone...now we're in the evaporate-and-gasp stage. There's really been no appreciable damage done to Long Beach, to my pleasure. I've got all my crossables crossed that we don't have an outbreak of malaria or dengue fever or something from all the standing water.

>91 richardderus: Dare we ask who the Famous SciFi Writer was?

>97 magicians_nephew: You may ask. I won't answer, though. I'll say it's someone whose work I reviewed favorably in the past and have ignored since 2016.

Happy Tuesday, Richard dear!

I was glad Henri went elswhere, and your place only got a lot of rain. I hope there are some dry days ahead.

Morning, RD. I hope the new week is finding you well. I adored Afterparties but it ended up being so bittersweet, since this will be the last we hear from this incredibly talented writer. I can't believe he wrote most of these in his early to mid-20s. RIP, Anthony!

Good morning, RDear.

I'm slowly getting caffeinated and waking up. I hope you have a great day.

*smooch*

>101 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, taking it slow is a good strategy on days like this...those sneaky, snaky rotters...y'know, the ones that end in "y". Can't trust 'em, they'll bite your ass hard given the chance.

*smooch* for a smooth Tuesday ahead.

>100 msf59: It's bittersweet indeed, Mark. I'll bet there's more to come, but it won't be limitless, and it makes me sad to think of all the work Author So didn't have time to do. *sigh*

>99 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita, it was a lucky, lucky escape for us here at the beach. Not quite so lucky to the northeast, but overall it could've been so very much worse.

OH, dear, I don't think I've dropped a message here in a few days. I've been by but just lurking I guess.

Tuesday smooch!

>103 katiekrug: Hi Katie! *smooch*

I'm so pleased! Angry Robot, the publisher of >91 richardderus: Twenty-five to Life, decided they liked my review enough to feature it on Twitter!

>105 richardderus: Whoot!! That is very happy making!

>105 richardderus: - Congrats! And keep up the good work! It seems you are getting lots of notice these days (outside of LT) for your reviews! And deservedly so :-)

>107 jessibud2:, >106 Crazymamie: I am pretty chuffed. I liked the book, and I like Rob Greene as a person, so I wanted to get the word out...and they liked what I had to say.

Noice.

ETA I've been at it a long time, in several places, so I've got a lot of work out there for the publishers to see. It does help.

Oh my, I'm late to the party. Belated new thread wishes, Richard.

>105 richardderus: Congrats ! How exciting :) Your reviews are always spectacular.

Hiya, RD! Three hours of insomnia then waking up to an alarm sucks. Spectrum's here to convert our landline from Centurylink. They said they'd be here between 8 and 9 and got here at 7:50. We'll finally see the end of Centurylink today. 🤞

Morning, BigDaddy!

>105 richardderus: Just remember us little people when you're all big and famous as a Twitter influencer!

140 If You Exist by Lillian Moats

Rating: what? rate this how exactly?

The Publisher Says: If You Exist is a personal message written to one of our human progeny who might find it many generations in the future. The narrator, like others in her generation, faces her own mortality at the same time she faces the possibility of thousands more species, including her own, becoming extinct.

As a private heartfelt message to someone who may never exist, the writer likens her missive to “a note in a bottle set to sea in hopes of reaching you, if you exist in the future on some unfathomable shore.” The narrator shares her personal take on where humanity is now and where we might be heading depending on what choices we will make. She writes about climate change and such topics as human migration, racism, the pandemic, as well as her projected concerns about the possibilities of unbridled technical advancement and human redesign.

After offering her perspective on where hope could lie, the writer ends her note with “the stuff of fairy tales,” her positive fantasy in the final chapter called, “If We Could Meet.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

The impulse to hunt takes aim instead, to separate, conquer or eradicate whatever may be defined by some group as less than human. With the future of the planet now so much in doubt, I think it's a rare person who does not, at least unconsciously, align hopes for the survival of this world with either gathering or hunting.
–and–
What it means to be human is quite a different question from "What is human nature?" for which we finally realize there can be no answer except to include what any human culture has done or felt.

For me, the question of what it means to be human is more pressing than ever, though my own answers reside in recollected incidents, not in academic definitions.

Published to coincide with the author's seventy-fifth birthday on Monday, the twenty-third, this compact meditation on what the world is, what our role as humans in the world is, and why that urgently needs to change is the topic of the book. "Has the stranger been gathered in, or hunted down?" is quite probably the clearest statement of purpose any book could have, and it comes exactly on time as the catastrophic exit of US troops from Afghanistan unfolds.
Just as with refugees today, the pattern of slavery has always been that the darker skinned peoples were owned and abused by the lighter skinned. There were notable exceptions, such as ancient Africa where emperors of dark nations owned dark slaves from different tribes. Slavery was never just about color, but about power and wealth. ... Today, prejudice and brutality by many police in the U.S. have outlived legal slavery by more than a hundred and fifty years.

So you're reading this review and wondering what the point of my telling you about this small book written by someone who isn't a Big Name, hasn't written think pieces and hefty reports and the like, is? Because you have a vaccine-resisting climate-change denying (or at the least skeptical) aunt, or mother, or church elder. No one is talking to her. They're talking to Greta Thunberg (who comes in for some quiet praise here) and her mom. They're marshaling innumerable facts about chemistry and computing that say absolutely nothing to that friend, relative, elder.

I think she deserves the respect of someone sitting down and speaking to her, peer-to-peer, reminding her of *why* she made those decades of sacrifices and plans and worked so hard to bring about what she hoped would be a better world. And so did Lillian Moats...here, she's written the book she hoped to read and thus engage with a wider world of people who, like her, haven't been mindfully included in the world they made as it decides its future.

Yuletide is coming. Maybe a birthday before that. Try talking to the people you'd like to mobilize the way they need to hear you.

>112 drneutron: ...and you are...?

>111 Crazymamie: Hiya, Mamie!

>110 karenmarie: Worth getting up to be rid of CenturyLink, though, isn't it? Insomnia always stinks.

*smooch*

>109 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! Thanks, it's lovely to be acknowledged. It's a fair amount of work to do reviewing, so it's lovely to be told when it's succeeded.

My dear, enormous, throbbing brain friend. All of your reviews are master classes in understanding literature. Really, you should ghost right for academics and intellectuals.

>115 SomeGuyInVirginia: *snort* As though I could be that boring....

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

I always enjoy your reviews, and I am happy others like it as much and spread the word.

Hiya, RDear. Happy 5th day of the week to you.

>113 richardderus: Drat. Clicked and will be on its way to me soon.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Morning, BigDaddy!

>113 richardderus: Look where your touchstone goes - made me laugh out loud!

>119 Crazymamie: Oh, that is *priceless*! I wish I'd done it deliberately...I think I'll leave it, though.

Happy Thursday with a fillip from the Universe, sweetiedarling.

>118 karenmarie: *nyahnyah* can't dodge forever, Horrible.

I got her I got her *happy dance*

>117 FAMeulstee: Thank you very much for that kind sentiment, Anita. I very much appreciate it.

So I had to click on the touchstone Mamie mentioned, and I chortled. I feel that way about a lot of people, but not you (or Mamie)!

>121 katiekrug: Isn't that perfection?! I was so not responsible for it, but it is delightful to my eville sense of humor.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Yep, we are still on cloud nine. A happy place to be. I did some outdoor window cleaning, (I couldn't see the feeders) and now I am inside with the books for the rest of the day. Continues to be hot & muggy here.

>123 msf59: I can honestly say it's a summer worse than any other since the 1981 heat wave in Texas. Sticky, icky, hot & prickly.

Ick!

Enjoy the books, Birddude.

141 The 7th Woman by Frédérique Molay

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of France's prestigious Prix du Quai des Orfèvres prize for best crime fiction, named Best Crime Fiction Novel of the Year, and already an international bestseller with over 150,000 copies sold. There's no rest for Paris's top criminal investigation division, La Crim'. Who is preying on women in the French capital? How can he kill again and again without leaving any clues? A serial killer is taking pleasure in a macabre ritual that leaves the police on tenterhooks. Chief of Police Nico Sirsky—a super cop with a modern-day real life, including an ex-wife, a teenage son and a budding love story—races against the clock to solve the murders as they get closer and closer to his inner circle. Will he resist the pressure? The story grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the last page, leading you behind the scenes with the French police and into the coroner’s office. It has the suspense of Seven, with CSI-like details. You will never experience Paris the same way again!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What makes me feel like a putz is that I haven't read this book, whole and entire, since 2014. I need to revisit it, clearly. In the meantime, I'll offer some comments about the clear memories the story has left me with, then come back if I have more to say.

I'll tell you what I *do* remember, the way Author Molay renders the crime scenes. It's very very grim, and don't think for a second you're ready for it! I remember the way they were slaughtered vividly. The sensitive are forewarned.

Nico Sirsky, our PoV cop, is a surprisingly vivid character. I was, given the women's-body-parts nature of the killings, expecting him to be less than fully realized in the 250-ish pages we're granted. I was wrong. His ex-wife, Sylvie, has just dumped their teen son Dimitri onto his doorstep at precisely the moment Nico is falling in love with the (annoyingly perfect, if I'm honest) Caroline. The cases are all demanding his attention...the evident serial killings are urgently necessary to solve, to stop, to explain somehow...and the threats aren't just to random women.

Thanks, Sylvie, for the well-timed breakdown. Not surprisingly, this adds a lot of stress to Nico's madly stressed life. I'm pretty sure a lot of the bad stuff in the dénouement is exacerbated by Sirsky's stunningly high stress levels.

The crimes are very close to home indeed, and Nico's entire world is badly damaged by the perpetrator and reason for the killing spree.

I enjoyed very much the details of the French legal system. Author Molay has made a career of creating the procedural tales beloved of American audiences and has gifted us with a lot of our own violent tropes, "perfected" and returned. The differences are plentiful...what's an investigative magistrate when it's at home?...and there are many little moments where it's clear the translator slipped in a tidbit of Paris geography for her US audience. But there are also the deep dives into Nico's thoughts and methods. There are less successful dives into the killer's methods. (Ugh.) All the way around, the story felt to me like a French person's idea of an American procedural, explained for a French audience and then translated for an American one. The details and grace notes that would entertain a French reader do the same job on me, at least.

This is, in fact, the thing I liked best about the read. It worked on a procedural level. It worked on a novelistic level. And it gave the reader the chance to get fully involved in less book-bulk than the typical bloated four-hundred-page overstuffed story-sandwich you can't fit in your mental mouth. And still made me care about Nico, Dimitri, Caroline, and even that wretch Sylvie. One important note, besides the violence perpetrated on women by the plot's demands, is that French gender relations of a decade-plus ago were not anywhere near the levels of pre-#MeToo US gender relations. It's simply not that way, and if that isn't okay with you, don't bother to try.

It's $5 on your Kindle. Risk it! I bet most of y'all won't be a bit sorry.

***NOTE THAT ANYTHING BELOW THIS REVIEW COULD BE A SPOILER FOR THIS BOOK.***

142 Crossing the Line by Frédérique Molay

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It's Christmas in Paris. Chief of Police Nico Sirsky returns to work after recovering from a gunshot wound. He's in love and raring to go. His first day back has him overseeing a jewel heist sting and taking on an odd investigation. Dental students discovered a message in the tooth of a severed head. Is it a sick joke? Sirsky and his team of crack homicide detectives follow the clues from an apparent suicide to an apparent accident to an all-out murder as an intricate machination starts breaking down. Just how far can despair push a man? How clear is the line between good and evil? More suspense and mystery with the Paris Homicide team from the prizewinning author Frédérique Molay, the "French Michael Connelly". This is the second in the prize-winning Paris Homicide series.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: "I was murdered" isn't something a cop expects to hear from a dismembered dead person. That's exactly what starts the machinery of a French homicide investigation moving in this exciting book. Second of Molay's "Paris Homicide" thrillers, we're more or less starting with Nico Sirsky, chief investigator from the last book, as he starts his normal day. I realize a lot of readers don't like the catch-you-up parts of procedurals, but I appreciate them...it's been most of a decade since I read The 7th Woman; no way in hell could I have recalled who these names were attached to without a refresher. I get it...I really do...lots of names, lots of titles, none of then familiar. Take your time, really best to start with THE 7TH WOMAN, but no matter what I recommend that you read slowly until they all fit into place.

They will! Paris, her police, the men and women who serve the unexpectedly dead as their interlocutors, all have a slot in Molay's stories. Something that Bruno Guedj, he of the "I was murdered" message hidden in his obviously, clumsily worked-on tooth, clearly expected to work as it always had. Donating his body to science...out of nowhere, blindsiding his wife and sons...was clearly calculated to get his message NOTICED and it worked.

The best thing about reading these books is the same thing people who enjoy Stuart Woods's Stone Barrington books, or James Patterson's Women's Murder Club books, are getting: Minimum of fussy stuff and maximum of forward momentum. Just what you want in a thriller. A bit less like those books is the way so much of the action, like press conferences and suchlike, take place off-screen. It's clear that Auteur Molay hasn't got her eye firmly set on a movie deal. One fillip in this book that I didn't care much for was the single-page chapters from the perpetrator's point of view...I didn't feel they served The Greater Good, somehow.

A great deal of the story has to do with how much Love rules our lives...Guedj, the victim, making sure his dearly and deeply loved family is cared for, and still making sure they won't be taken into dark places wondering why he died; then Nico, recovering from his nasty wounds inflicted by the killer in The 7th Woman, finally able to deal with his delight and love Caroline...his son Dimitri...all his team...Molay never forgets that the reason we read is that the characters mean something to us. I'd say that the series is a throwback to the days when 200-page thrillers were the norm. That makes the author's stakes high: must get action and character development from the off. The w-bomb dropped at 64% was an unpleasant surprise, out of keeping with the overall brisk and business-like tone. But to repeat the offense at 69%...! And then the coup de grâce at 88%, where it took me right out of a very high-stakes scene, well I ask you. Can that explain a whole star missing from the rating? You bet it can, sugarplum.

The details of Russian-descended Sirsky taking an interest in his heritage, the way this reconnects him to his teen son and his parents...all in this short word count, well, it's admirable. A note here to chuckle, albeit a bit wanly, about the pop-culture easter eggs in so many names..."Marc Walberg," "Dr. Queneau," et alii. Most amusant, Mme l'Auteure. I'm also a fan of the glimpses into the operational realities of the French justice system, the roles different people play in it, and how, like the US, so much happens due to needing to respond to the media's reporting on what has occurred.

Ending the story how, and where, she did made the underlying theme of Love, love, and luuuv as they intersect and intertwine so poignantly complete. I think the ultimate reveal is a good, solid ending. Had it not been for those blasted w-bombs there'd be four-plus stars on this outing in the "Paris Homicide" series. Molay has made a career in writing; she decided that her storytelling chops would sustain her, and I see that they truly have.

A special note of thanks to Translator Anne Trager. The careful, not-obtrusive explanations of things that wouldn't need explaining in the home audience's edition truly does help. I'd recommend that, at some point, a map of the parts of Paris we're going to be cruising through would be very helpful.

You need an exciting series, played for high stakes, and set in a lush landscape? Here it is, ready for you....

***NOTE THAT ANYTHING BELOW THIS REVIEW COULD BE A SPOILER FOR THIS BOOK.***

143 The City of Blood by Frédérique Molay

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: When a major Parisian modern art event gets unexpected attention on live TV, Chief of Police Nico Sirsky and his team of elite crime fighters rush to La Villette park and museum complex. On the site of the French capital's former slaughterhouses, the blood is just starting to flow, and Sirsky finds himself chasing the butcher of Paris, while his own mother faces an uncertain future.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know what you're in for with the Molay procedurals: Action. You're going to get action from the start and Sirsky, in charge of his usual posse of law-enforcers, is about to enter a world that scares many more than it beguiles: Fine Art. Avant garde fine art. Of the twentieth century...art that makes anti-capitalist and anti-waste statements.

See why I wanted to review this now, at this juncture?

Much more stress for poor Nico comes from his mother, a woman...barely more than a girl!...of sixty-five. There is nothing easy about parents growing older, and Nico Sirsky the cop knows it well. He is on the receiving end of news he usually needs to break..."we have unfortunate news about your mother"...at the same time that he and his team solve a decades-old disappearance that brought life to a halt for another mother.

It seems that the supply of sexual violence in Paris was reasonably well-capped until the Cassian exhumation. Suddenly there's so much more happening, and in the cruisy Parc de La Villette, with unknown perp(s) making their awful desires manifest in reducing young gay men to bloodless meat.

What winds through this entire book, and through all three Molay stories that I have read, is a sense of the inviolability of two things: Love and Hate. Every crime is deeply seeded with both of these things, and every time Nico and his team work on a case, it is clear that each of them has been imbued with Nico's so-Slavic sense of the duality of the world as represented by this pairing. The future is not guaranteed, not to anyone, and those who seek a guarantee before committing themselves to Life are always, always left with regrets and unhappiness.

This according exactly with my own life's course, I've got no kick with it. And the ways in which Auteure Molay makes these bones dance is always a pleasure. One of the additional joys of this story is the simple, direct path that Nico unhesitatingly follows to solve a thirty-year-old crime, one that ended more than one life. And will now end others, as there is fallout from any act of Hate committed in this world. A large thread of Nico's life is his love of his family, and his resultant willingness to put himself in the shoes of anyone who needs his professional services. It is a pleasure to read about such a fine character...as one of the bereaved says to Nico, towards the end of the story, "Maigret can sleep well, you are a worthy successor to him."

We do spend some time in the peculiarly placed gay hookup world, a thing I wouldn't've expected La Molay to give so much space to. It's not played for comedy, it's not presented as Abnormal; it's a reality, it's where the crimes committed have led; therefore, thence goes (tall, blond, blue-eyed hunk) Nico. It fails to shock me that he ends up on a gay club's dance floor....

I was a bit more shocked that Nico sought out a Russian Orthodox priest to, I suppose confide in...? He's pretty resolutely a materialist. Still and all, it was worked into the story as well as such a thing could possibly be. The artists of the 1980s and the hothouse world of Fine Art is a significant character in the tales. It isn't *explored* per se, but its limits and its passions are very much part of the reason for the crimes that are experienced in this compact, intense read.

I encourage thriller readers to check out all three of these Paris Homicide series reads. Rev up the translation-reading you do painlessly, pleasurably, and with added thrills.

>127 richardderus: While I like art cropping up in fiction, this one isn't calling to me too loudly.

Other than that, just crusin' by...

Crack o’ dawn greetings, RDear.

Insomnia has reared its ugly head, but I’m getting caffeinated and going to read more Feral Creatures after I visit a few threads.

>120 richardderus: *nyahnyah* can't dodge forever, Horrible.

I got her I got her *happy dance* So are back to even since Jim and I got you with The Eighth Detective?

>125 richardderus:, >126 richardderus:, >127 richardderus: Dodged, dodged, and dodged. Whew. I’m now up to over 200 books acquired this year and really need to consider an intervention.

I hope you have a loverly Friday.

*smooch*

144 The Book of Errors by Annie Coggan and Mark Hage

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A collection of three illustrated essays looking at the preservation of three historic houses—and the layered, messy process of reconstructing our past and reimagining history. An architect and artist, Annie Coggan delves into the history of three iconic American structures—the Henry Knox Memorial in Maine; Fraunces Tavern in New York City; and the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia—and the stories of the people and ideas involved in their preservation to consider the ways in which history is reshaped by future generations.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A literary magazine of some significance gave birth to a publishing company of some significance. I've reviewed So Much for That Winter, one of their earlier book publications of a translation from the Danish via Graywolf Press, on this blog. I've also reviewed their initial own-imprint publishing venture, the late and underknown Bette Howland's delight of a short-fiction collection, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, on this blog. As both of those were positive reviews, I think you could safely say I am in tune with this press's aesthetic.



Here you see the artwork that forms the spine of this book's conceit. It is a series of beautiful paper models, and drawings, and painted drawings, of three different historic homes that are going to be conserved, restored, or rebuilt. The specific examples I've used are those provided by the publisher; all are from the Henry Knox Memorial, a house named "Montpelier," in Thomaston, Maine. The facts about the house are: It is a nineteen-room recreation, finished in 1929, of the original space built in 1794; that space was demolished in 1871 to make way for the Thomaston Railroad. The essay about this house is in the form of letters to and from the architect of the reconstruction, William E. Putnam, to one of the commissioning parties, Miss Watts of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Are these "real," by which I mean were they written by the parties whose names are on them, and selected by Author Coggan; or are they fabrications of Author Coggan's, made to elucidate a point about the eternal and delicate process of reaching a working understanding between client and architect?

I don't think it matters.

I don't see how anything but the effect, the gentle and eloquent interplay of images such as the above, with the words such as:

The evidence, even of eyewitnesses, as to the probable plans of the Knox House are so at variance that we have to consider it carefully and test each bit by things that we are sure of from a practical standpoint...

I wish you would read carefully Miss Miller's description and check it up with your remembrance. Also, if she is still living, I should think that a talk between you and her might clear up many of the points about which a difference of opinion seems to exist....

really makes a difference to the way one experiences this beautiful and thoroughly satisfying melding of idea, image, and purpose. We are brought into a quotidian conversation between patron and architect, between a man and a woman both of senior years, and thus in conjunction with the beautiful art, we are flies on the walls of these moments when History, long dead even then, was being negotiated for presentation to The Future. It is always a worthwhile endeavor to learn about what goes into the making of the world thee and me see.


Author Coggan's beautiful paper-and-paint constructions offer something I think too many books about preservation, architectural history, and art in general lack: A what-if, a road-not-taken approach to visual arts that I resonated with. It could simply be that I am so enchanted by the art itself that I am happy to see it used in this unusual manner. I grant that others might not feel this is anything other than a very niche project, showing a blow-by-blow of things that didn't happen, or might have happened, instead of cold non-fiction.

I see value in the exploration this approach allows of the why, the deeper why, of art and architecture pressed onto the service of History and the Monomyth of American History. The exceptionally contentious "restoration" of Fraunces Tavern, more precisely called a "conjectural reconstruction" (thanks, Wikipedia!), is illustrated in black-and-white drawings which, quite lovely though they are, suit the more angry and contentious responses to the Sons of the Revolution's major, and not uncontroversial, reimagining of the Tavern as of the 1790s (from the distance of 1904!):

"On passing the Washington statue...I thought I heard a loud sobbing... I said, 'Why weepest thou?' He said, 'Hast been to Fraunces's Tavern lately and witnessed the scoundrelly piece of vandalism that they have perpetrated upon that hallowed building, with whose walls I embraced my loved comrades?'"
—Letter to the New York Times (1906)

Daniel Libeskind, he of the master-planned Freedom Tower complex on the site of the old World Trade Center Twin Towers, would've recognized the entire imbroglio as being New York City doing what she does best: Eating her young. Nothing can ever be accomplished in the City without a decade of brangling, infighting, and public bitching.

The last of the three historic structures whose futures were assured by these early preservation attempts was famed upholsterer and flag-designer, Betsy Ross, whose residence in Philadelphia came in for a "re-configuration" to make it more suitable a setting for the probably apocryphal transfer of a flag designed by Mrs. Ross in her role as a famed upholsterer in Philadelphia society to General Washington. Since the probability is that Mrs. Ross didn't ever live in that tourist mecca, there's really no point getting exercised about it...and Author Coggan uses beautifully simple line drawings to evoke the scale of the house (it's dinky!) and the simplicity of its furnishings (spartan).

I think this lovely object belongs on the coffee tables of those whose appreciation for art is not limited to visual expressions of design, but also reaches for the "why" of art...what about this is necessary, what in this artistic expression am I going to think about and become acquainted with that I haven't, wouldn't, or couldn't otherwise?

This book is meant to close those gaps for you, elegantly, about parts of History that more often than not are so dead to us that we couldn't care less if they were there at all. I salute your vision, A Public Space Books, and your talent, Author Coggan!

>129 karenmarie: Oh eeeccchhh! I'm so sorry, my dear lady. I hope there's relief in your future.

Heh...I think you're back ahead, what with three dodges to my one hit. And >130 richardderus: is another miss, I'm quite sure. Not like anything you'd care to spend $18 on, I don't think. Caffeinate away!

*smooch*

>128 LovingLit: I can't recall ever thinking you'd be delighted by a police procedural, Megan. You're not a biggie on 'em are you?

>130 richardderus: is another miss although the idea of restoring houses and visiting restored houses has always appealed.

We took a tour of Biltmore one time that only talked about restoration research and activities, and the guide took us through rooms they were working on restoring. They also showed us some chairs that were in the process of being restored. In fact, I just recently rediscovered a tiny piece of brick that Bill surreptitiously stole from one of the rooms and that I'd put in an enveloped and labeled "Biltmore Brick from Renovation".

OK. Fine. Ya got me with The Book of Errors. It's on my WANT! List.

>133 weird_O: Heh. *buffs nails*

>132 karenmarie: Believe me, you'd really resent this book...it's not *about* anything and that's not gonna work chez vous.

Oh my. You're reading so much, and I don't have the present to read what you have to say about it all. (I did "helpful" your review of *25+* at Ammy.)

I will quote my late, much-loved father on weddings (from your discussion up in the #60s):
"I'd rather go to a wedding than a funeral. At least you don't have the long, hot ride to the cemetery."

>135 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! Thank you for upgethumbing my reviews, that's always nice to have a vote of confidence. *smooch*

Your papa was a wise old owl indeed. Weddings have parties...and it's easy to duck out of a party.

>130 richardderus: I'm imagining it as a popup book, but then I would. It's not of course.

>137 quondame: No, sadly, because that would've been *way* cool! Too bad.

Hiya, RD! Happy coolish and rainish day to you.

We'll be sweltering today with 95F and 100-105F heat index. Inside with husband, books, and kitties is the plan.

Hot days don't prevent hot morning caffeing, however - I'm on my first cup now.

*smooch*

>139 karenmarie: I'm so sorry, Horrible ...that is simply insupportable. Stay indoors is the only feasible response.

I'm luxuriating in the less-than-80° heatlessness!

Morning, Karen! Sorry about those temps - we have similar weather but not as bad as yours. Inside is also my plan.

>141 Crazymamie: You're getting storms, so it'll be better afterwards, won't it?

The storms are supposed to deliver us from the 90s. We'll see. Not holding my breath, but I will cross my fingers. Heh.

>143 Crazymamie: I shall cross the crossables to bribe the weather goddess on your behalf.

Passed the half-way page in Piranesi. Still strange, but engaging and entertaining. Good.

>145 weird_O: I'm so glad its charms are working their wiles upon you!

>145 weird_O: I don't think this will be a galloping surprise - it remains strange to the end.

Ran errands and worked in the garden this morning and now I'm just trying to cool off enough so that I can take a shower. Soooo gross outside.

I have the thermostat set to 73°, but it's so hot out that when I come in it feels positively arctic. Very pleasant. I should go out and come in more often.

Still unboxing the books that I originally started to collect back in the day and that have been in storage for 20 years. It's kind of shaming because my taste in reading materials took a dive and I went from Penguin Classics and Latin grammars to serial killer police procedurals. Regardless of the mantra 'just read', what you read does produce certain benefits.

And just entre nous, the guy who lives across the street from me is married with a child, and he's a clergyman. Presbyterian. I generally support the idea of people attending some sort of weekly service, but I'm thinking high Anglican or a Latin Mass. You know, something with a wine list and the floor show. There's a Lutheran Church maybe a thousand feet from where I live? And I appreciate the granite blocks and goth spires, but I still associate Lutheranism with Unitarianism, and I don't have any sandals and I don't really give that much of a shit about anything to qualify. There's another church maybe a quarter of a mile from where I live, and it flies the rainbow flag. I keep on forgetting to register the denomination when I drive by it but it's an established theology. It's right next door to the Villa Maria, an Edwardian mansion bought by two DC gays and fully restored. I've never been in but I've heard it's simply amazing. I mean, if I'm going to go to church I might as well make a few contacts along the way.

Anyway, my point about the pastor across the street from me, and I do have one, is that he may be off the list but he does have a spectacular ass. I thought you'd want to know.

Happy Saturday, Richard. The heat is keeping me indoors this weekend. More book time, I guess. I am really enjoying The Pull of the Stars.

>149 msf59: It's time for heat to make its way to the exits, isn't it? The Labor Day cool-down is a-comin'!

Yay for The Pull of the Stars! I hope it ends up being a joy.

>148 SomeGuyInVirginia: Only one mnemonic to offer, my dear, regarding the Callipygian Christian: Ring = Wrong.

Shopping for a church? Hm...I'd say whichever one is the most architecturally interesting is a good sort criterion. And a visit during the summer's nastier heat will let you know if their a/c is adequate.

All those years of accumulation! Of course the trends and patterns of accretion are most telling; after all, the physical object labeled "Larry" has undergone many, many software upgrades as well as periodic crashes.

Hoping that 73° will require heating not a/c very shortly. *smooch*

>147 Helenliz: :-)

>148 SomeGuyInVirginia: Lutheranism with Unitarianism, huh? I associate Unitarianism with Congregationalist, my dad's ancestors sect, but maybe that's just because some Unitarian churches were once Congregational.

>151 quondame: Jesusy stuff goes straight over my head.

>152 richardderus: Better than hitting you on the head.

The latest auth-hole communiqé is in! An author I've followed...I think because I got a solicitation to? I don't recall...posts reviews on Goodreads. Their algorithm privileges authors' reviews, so I see them quite a lot. I don't care about analyzing others' reviews, so I skim and like them.

So I got this:

subject: Change of setting
message: Dear Mr. Derus,

You seem to have somehow set a like button for pretty much everything I review. The "Like" appears simultaneously with the posting of the review, so you obviously could not have read and so cannot be responding to my comments. I wonder if there is a way to un-set this? I don't mind a sincere "Like," but these clearly are automatic. Thanks.

all the best,

Arrogant is one word..."I don't mind a sincere like" and stupid is another...someone who's got a minor book on how US radio networks fought over who could do the best Shakespeare productions published by a micropress in Amsterdam might want to be polite to a reviewer with over 2,000 published reviews and a daily blog...but breathtakingly vain is probably the best descriptor.

To be sure, the block button was deployed. But...good gawd, y'all.

Whaaaat???? 🤨 That’s just… weird.

So the complaint is you like his stuff too much?

>155 drneutron: Weird things happen when you don't include the reference post #. For a moment I thought your remark was associated with >148 SomeGuyInVirginia:.

Nah, the one right above it, >154 richardderus:

Hi Richard, starting reading from here on down!

>154 richardderus: Really? Someone has too much time on their hands.

>154 richardderus: And who says people don't study their own reviews?! Arrogant and petty would sum the writer up RD.

I do read the reviews on the LT work page on a book that I have just read - not to get ideas for my own review as I am opinionated enough to stand by my own view of a book - but because I am genuinely interested to see what my friends thought of it. So I skim the reviews also and only look for people I "know" in LT out of interest.

Have a great Sunday, RD. The Lady of the House is making pretzels today and I am (not) reluctantly placed in the position of Guinea Pig. Those Guinea Pigs are lucky oftentimes.

>154 richardderus: - I hate Goodreads.

‘Morning, RDear.

>154 richardderus: Boggles the mind.

Joyous Sunday, and a hearty *smooch*

>162 karenmarie: What she said.

>157 drneutron:, >156 quondame:, >155 drneutron: It's truly weird. What the heck so irritated this guy?

>158 connie53: Hi Connie!

>160 PaulCranswick: It's peculiar to the review-writing class, PC, but it's human nature. But Goodreads works differently to LT in that one is notified of responses to one's posts...can you even *imagine* the outrage and complaining if such a system were even mooted here!...so it wouldn't require looking for it to determine of someone responded to one's review.

>159 Helenliz: Someone does indeed, Helen.

>163 Crazymamie:, >162 karenmarie: I'm still boggled. My Sunday, however, isn't boggled and is no longer sweat-soaked! I'm SO GLAD the heat dome's broken.

>161 katiekrug: Many do, and for less cogent reasons.

>166 richardderus: - YOUR heat dome is broken? Lucky duck! Ours is still low and heavy. And won't go away till later in the week. I am so done with it already!

Happy Sunday, Richard. Birds in the morning. Books in the afternoon. Living the life. The only blip, was not seeing Jackson. Hopefully tomorrow.

>168 msf59: Well, Mommy and Daddy need a turn, too. Let's all be happy they live close by!

>167 jessibud2: "Broken" is a little more than reality warrants. "Cracked and splintering" maybe? Heat is still here, humidity too, but significantly less awful than at the end of the week thanks to cloud cover and a bit of a breeze.

'Morning, RD, and happy Monday to you.

I'm off to the chiropractor in about 25 minutes - major pain starting yesterday. I don't know if I did something that torqued it or that it's just reached critical unadjusted mass...

*smooch*

Morning, BigDaddy! It's Monday - try not to make eye contact.

145 My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award-winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There are all sorts of ways to read a Stephen Graham Jones book. Surfaces work...there's always a story hanging around, you won't be wandering lost in thickets of writing-armpit sweat-watered weeds...references work too, you can unpick your memories of the midnight movies or frightfrests your friends threw (or open IMDb if you're really young)...but I think the best way is to make it through as it's happening, to be there as Jade walks across the graduation stage or through walls or up into skies limited only by the basic laws of physics.

The reason I feel that last works best is that, by the time I'd reached the end of this read, and then read Author Stephen's Acknowledgments after the wrenching and impossibly sad final scene, I was so wrung out that I simply accepted that everything I'd just been through had been intended to do what it did to me. As I'm not one to write book reports (ask Mr. Singleton! never turned so much as one in during high school) I'm not going to try to do that at this late date. I referred to this book's immediate older sibling, The Only Good Indians, as "gore with more" and that's an assessment I stand by as applied to all of Author Stephen's books. Part of that "more" is the strangely hypnotic effect of the story arc receding from view...the interstitial "SLASHER 101" essays addressed to the One Good Teacher (of history, naturally) Mr. Holmes are well and truly weirding Your Faithful Reader out. When they switch addressees, it gets even weirder...but in the end, it's painfully intimate and deeply instructive to read them.

In common with all Author Stephen's books, you mere peon of a purchaser have no rights. You're not stupid, you've read some of his other work (at least The Only Good Indians!), you're aware that horror is in store. So surrender your volition. Then the entire experience of being in Jade Daniels's rage-filled head makes all the sense in the world. Because then you're not actually sure if ANY of this is happening in meatspace. Is this an adolescent with anger and abandonment issues responding to the end of what never was childhood? Is this a young woman processing the pain and rage of a life that was wished on her by weaker, worse people than she was? There's a sparkling moment of fizzing delight when Jade meets Letha, a beautiful rich kid whose father has a trophy wife and whose presence in the town of "Proofrock" (think a minute, and hard, for more than the surface snicker; that's all it takes to turn it into a shiver), when Jade anoints her "the Final Girl." That's both when the tale gets grounded in consensus reality and when its ascent into the dark and cold vault of Jade's own head is cemented.

I'm always a fan of gerunding done with panache...Author Stephen does it with panache. At one point, Jade Holden Caulfields across a lawn, and that's me dead cackling. I think there are few greater pleasures than easter-egging your readers' experience...hoping they'll get most of them. I think the fun of reading a book whose author has chosen a niche to write in, one with an astoundingly vast mythos/history/background to explore, is in part the recognition factor of word-play. Yes, it's about slasher-film homage, and no Holden Caulfield isn't slashed to death (though generations of English students have no doubt fantasized that Salinger met that fate after writing it), but he *is* the prototype of the Angsty Teen too smart for easy answers. With everything Jade's carrying around, she's not one whit less burdened than Holden and possibly by some similar troubles given that she's got A Thing growing up strong for Letha.

Adolescent sexuality is always fraught. Parents play their roles in shaping it, either with rule or without them, with clamp-downs or without supervision, there's no right way to ride this roller-coaster. But the issue facing Jade isn't made any easier by her absolute conviction that Letha is The Final Girl, that staple of the slasher film, therefore of necessity being lustrous and almost superhuman in her glorious Otherness. That's how she's supposed to be, right? Jade "doesn't make the rules...just happens to know them all." Her unique and defining obsession with slashers is gong to pay dividends, right? Because she's preparing the Final Girl for her role, unlike most...she won't be surprised by the tragedies.

I think I speak for all readers when I say that the way this blows up can only be described as FUCKING EPIC.

And from that point on, the cigarette boat is away and the pace does not let up.

There are the obligatory twists and turns, the reveals that aren't *quite* reveals, and the accustomed ways that Author Stephen's practiced to get your kishkes kicking and your shvitzer sprinkling. You can't fault the man on delivering the suspenseful goods! If you're in the market for a low-gore delivery of suspense, however, look elsewhere. The way this works is for your expectations to be manipulated so I won't be discussing particulars. Suffice to say I was taken in. More than once. And I'm a pretty well-broken-in reader....

Still, there's no point it wondering why no good deed goes unpunished or how exactly it is that one's expected to walk away from what can not help but feel like a set up straight from a film. The pain and the passionate pull of it will reach some screeching crescendo, won't it, just give it a little more time and it has to!

Nonsense, says the Great God Author.

By the time we've reached the moment when there is no more to give, when the entire story's gone to the most extreme place that it can go...there is something more in the tank for a send-off, and there's no way that you'll believe your eyes when you get there.

Some things just can't be put right. And others can't be left wrong. The issue is...who decides.

>171 Crazymamie: Considering how late I was up working on the bloody review for My Heart is a Chainsaw, I ain't makin' eye contact with nothin' today. They're scary-lookin' Portuguese flags...red and green with a tiny dash of white.

>170 karenmarie: Yuck on major pain! I hope your trip to the chiropractor works. I hate to think of you all huddled up in pain! *smooch*

>172 richardderus: Not for me, but a nice review all the same. I buy his books for my patrons, though the small faithful horror crowd is much smaller than the thriller/mystery readers.

>174 bell7: Thanks, Mary...and goodness gracious great balls of fire is this book Not For You! Oh me oh my. Really, you shouldn't even bother reading the blurb.

But do recommend it to your Ready Player One and horror patients! I mean, patrons.

That review is full of fabulous, so at least your sacrifice was for a worthy cause. I especially loved this:
"I'm always a fan of gerunding done with panache...Author Stephen does it with panache. At one point, Jade Holden Caulfields across a lawn, and that's me dead cackling." Ima add that one to The List and wait for the right mood to read it. I no longer watch horror movies, but waayyyy back in high school we used to get a big group together and go see the latest ones in the theater.

>172 richardderus: - I'm not a horror reader, but I still appreciate that great review.

>177 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie. It's a different literary road than your most-traveled, but the book earned my warbles honestly.

>176 Crazymamie: You're so sweet, Mamie! I wonder if its day will dawn at Pecan Paradiso...maybe as nostalgia for the 1980s slasher genre...?

Keeping you posted on my reading, Mr. Derus, because you sanctioned a couple of the books read. First off, Piranesi is now under my belt. Epic fun. Second, I read Connie Willis's Inside Job, mostly on your recommendation. Bingo! Another winner. Now I'm being entertained by Shit Turd and Dennis. I bought Hollow Kingdom and its sequel Saturday, primarily because of the link you posted (somewhere!?) to the Buxton interview.

I might have to read Bleak House next. Well, after Feral Creatures.

>179 weird_O: Egads! I seem to be on a streak with you, Bill. I hope you loathe the Chuckles book, just to keep it alive.

I'm unsurprised that you've enjoyed to books I've bulleted you with so far. They are best-of-type examples, one and all.

Hey, RD. Excellent review of My Heart is a Chainsaw. I did not realize Jones had a new one out. The only one of his I read was The Only Good Indians but I really liked it.

>181 msf59: Thanks, Mark! I enjoyed the book quite a bit, but anyone who's not interested in old-timey slasherology is likely to feel...at sea...so trim your sails accordingly.

'Morning, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>172 richardderus: Beautifully written review. You won't be surprised that I'm giving it a hard pass.

*smooch*

>183 karenmarie: Thank you, Horrible...and I'd be appalled and deeply concerned if you *didn't* give the book a hard pass!

AUGUST IN REVIEW

I won't finish another book today, so my stats are:
18 books read and reviewed
25 reviews posted on my blog...the discrepancy comes from the books whose reviews I reposted for Women In Translation Month
and I had two reads, both story collections on gay themes, that stood out from the rest:
Afterparties: Stories
Gordo
Nothing earned the full five this month. It was still a much better than average month with nine reads (half the total!) earning four or more stars. My goal of 190 blog-posted reviews had 90 left to fulfill as of end July; that's now down to 65! That comes out to a hair over 16 a month, or four a week...this is perfectly doable.

Look at you go! Those are awesome numbers. My Heart is a Chainsaw came close to the full five. Speaking of which, I went to the library today, and guess what was front and center? Yep - so it came home with me.

Hoping Tuesday is good to you. *smooch*

>186 Crazymamie: Thank you, Mamie dearest. I am really pleased that you'll be experiencing it...I think....

>187 richardderus: *belly laugh*

So, my birthday's this month...62!...and I have to do something I absolutely hate to do:

Ask for something.

The dentist was most clear with me: stop using the cheapo battery-powered brush as it has worn enamel down to a disturbing degree. I can't use a plain brush anymore, either, the hands just won't do it.

So I've made a wishlist: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1O4M9C49J5RYM/ref=cm_wl_huc_view

The doc recommended this model because it's rechargeable, has a pressure sensor (this was the sine qua non for me), and was refillable. So, since one person shouldn't buy it, would a few folks help me out with some Ammy giftcards to help defray the cost? I didn't plan on this expense so didn't save stimmy money for it. Annoyingly.

Anyway. Thanks, if y'all can help it's something I do really need.

>189 richardderus: So sorry, Richard dear, I understand you hate to ask.
I went to Amazon, to find out how/if I could help. But the item seems to be gone, so I guess someone took care of it.
Happy September!

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Wednesday to you. Happy Birthday Month to you, too.

>185 richardderus: Congrats on a good month and a doable reviews goal for the rest of the year.

>190 FAMeulstee: What Anita said – no items there.

*smooch*

146 Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan’s intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal’s violent past in a new light.

A drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a small-town farming community, Deer Season explores troubling questions about how far people will go to safeguard the ones they love and what it means to be a family.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you looked at the cover image of this book? Go on, get your nose up to the screen...now did you notice the shape of that "D" in "Deer"? There's a clue in it.

Author Flanagan, no stranger to the "Flyover Fiction" series with two story collections in it, here gives us her first novel. It's set thirty-five years ago in a rural place that, in our own time, has doubtless vanished entirely. Farming being the corporate endeavor it is now. This time, the one we're inhabiting in this novel, feels like something from a Russian novel with peasants and kulaks and tsars in their palaces so far above us. Actually, it's just families farming land they'd inherited and living lives they don't feel embarrassed by.

The major event of the novel is the disappearance of teenaged minx Peggy Ahern. The rampant drinking culture of the area and era was the source of the problem...Peggy, too smart and too young to control it yet, was in the habit of sneaking out on weekends to partake of the big, wild world of the after-hours partying at Castle Farm. You know, as practice for when she'd be off at college.

But one fine night...the one before her little brother's going to be confirmed in the Lutheran Church, no less...she doesn't come home to have her hangover in her bed. And days go by. She doesn't come home; she isn't Found; and the town decides that Hal Did Something. Hal, big and nice-looking but sadly with an intellectual incapacity, has about an eleven-year-old's scope to understand the world. And an adult man's body, and an adult man's needs; without the wherewithal to get context of Peggy's flirting, or realize when he was going too far in responding to her. As he does for the first time at a town picnic. In front of everyone, including Peggy's drunk father.

But Alma and Clyle step in, as usual. They are his de facto parents and they, as has been their habit for a decade or more, disentangle him from the worst of the consequences. They took him on when he was still in high school, and really into their family, partially because they could never have kids. They're in their late fifties, so a twenty-eight-year-old man-child is the right age and, though Alma would bristle at the idea, his absence of adulthood soothes an ache left from desiring motherhood and not being given it.

Now, though...now the town that Clyle isn't much inclined to leave but Alma genuinely despises is in formation against Hal, their only family, their changeling chick, and despite their staunch stance in support of him they begin to wonder. After all...temper and strength of a man...no functioning social sense...pretty girl he fell for when she flirted with him....

There's a long, slow road to follow, like driving on the noisy gravel roads of the area, to get to the deeply saddening and utterly infuriating resolution to the plot. But you already know: Hal will never, ever be free of the stain of Being A Suspect. Rightly or wrongly accused, accused is enough. In the end, the resolution to the disappearance is...curiously irrelevant. Secrets get unburied in hearts that just don't open that easily. Words are said, the kind that never heal, the kind that have to lacerate for the pain to find a way out. But the world changes every day, and how many times do we get to look that change in the eyes as it comes at us? To decide, yes I will do this or no I can't be that any more. To use the horror of a life-altering misery for good; to sluice the life-long wretchedness of old and dirty hurts out.

Those moments are, and I expect all y'all know it, rare, and horrible, and greatly to be treasured.

What Author Flanagan does with this story is to make the inevitable a damn sight more high-stakes for everyone than it usually is in real life. Milo, the preteen brother, is the one who quietly and completely revamps his life. Alma and Clyle are old, but there's no need to die before you lie down! Their souls, despite never getting what they wanted, still yearn...so the world after the crisis is resolved (and the resolution made me so goddamned mad I screamed at the book) takes a deeply familiar form.

It's a funny old thing, fiction, it lets us work through our bitterest disappointments safely. It doesn't promise it'll be fun. In the case of this novel, the satisfaction of the plot's resolution is mostly schadenfreude. I know some people think there's a Sanctity about Motherhood, but I am decidedly not among them. I don't think Author Flanagan is, either. This is her third book, though first novel, all in the "Flyover Fiction" series. Her two story collections, 2013's It's Not Going to Kill You, and Other Stories, and 2005's The Usual Mistakes, all have mothers without maternal credibility in them.

I can't give the book all five stars because there are so many w-bombs dropped that I've got sleaze-shrapnel in every single one of my eyes. I don't enjoy stories with as much helplessness as this one made me feel...the fact is that from the moment we learn Peggy's disappeared, we know there can't be a Happy Ending...but this story's not about the ending. It's about the ways and means of putting a life together when you don't have a single solitary scrap of hope. It's about loving someone enough to be sure they have dinner when you'd like to brain them with a rock. It's about what happens when you can not even try one more time, then you get up and do the chores because they don't do themselves.

I would strongly encourage you to read it, to get your eyes into it. The way the world is today, we need this example of making the effort because there's work that needs doing inside, outside, betwixt and between. And Author Flanagan (her penchant for w-bombs aside) does this with assurance and in a style replete with the smallest pleasures of being in this world of the senses.

Morning, BigDaddy!

>190 FAMeulstee:, >191 karenmarie: Me, three.

>192 richardderus: This is a most excellent review. I think that book would rip my heart out, so Ima say no.

Back to say your touchstone goes to the wrong book, but I found the right one and added my thumb. *smooch*

>194 Crazymamie:, >193 Crazymamie: ...butbutbut Maaamiiieee the writing and the timeliness of a story about Othering and the power of crowds to do harm! And say! Didn't you read The Mercy Seat? And what an excellent heart-remover that was! Pleeeeeeze?

Thanks re: touchstone, I fixed it.

>191 karenmarie: Wow! Thanks, Horrible, for the well-wishes and good gravy apparently generosity runs deep here. The two things I needed (brush, refills) are already gone. Very touching to get such generous things in seconds flat (apparently). And as birthday months go, it's apparently going to be a good one.

>190 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, I'm amazed but it's just...done...and I am so thrilled all y'all want to help so much. You're all fleecy lambkins!

>179 weird_O: I've loved everything Connie Willishas set before me.

Bleak House is LOOOOOONG but it's a good one. See if you can find the PBS adaptation starring Diana Ring.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled thread postings

So is the toothbrush a done deal? Or can we still get in a bristle or two of it?

Brush my teeth and call me smiley!

>192 richardderus: - I must get my hands on this one!

And then you mentioned The Mercy Seat in the same breath! Swoon....

>195 richardderus: Oh, dear! Ima think on it, and really that shows my True Love for you. I did not read The Mercy Seat, but I do have it in the stacks.

>199 Crazymamie: I appreciate your vote of confidence, Mamie. And there's no sense waiting now, I'd say, get The Mercy Seat (which Book-Bulleteer Katie sprayed us both with) into the pile soonest!

>198 katiekrug: It has that same "epic things happen in the most quotidian way" that we both resonated with in The Mercy Seat, Katie.

>197 magicians_nephew:, >196 magicians_nephew: Diana Rigg was in Bleak House? As whom, John Jarndyce?

I'd normally be much more, erm, dismissive, but I'll be posting a poetry-book review here pretty quick.

...who even am I...

I've been instructed to change the brush-heads every four weeks and not to skimp, because they problems I'm able to stave off if I do will be a LOT worse if I do my usual frugal thing. I'm going to add some more packs of replacement heads and let y'all do that for me.

This is so humbling...the way folks just *do* stuff for me is so wonderfully kind!

>200 richardderus: Lady Deadlock

My old tried and true Sonic has me change the brush heads every three months

>202 magicians_nephew: That's apparently what I am *NOT* to do, in order to avoid my increasing propensity towards gingivitis. He was extremely specific. Every four weeks! Like religion!

>201 magicians_nephew: A meaty, if smallish, role.

For anyone who likes to read about success stories in the climate-change mitigation field: Wild Hope: On the Front Lines of Conservation Success is FREE from University of Chicago Press's monthly gifting program (sorry to all who don't have access to a non-Kindle reader) here. Sign up for their monthly program! A free and almost-always fascinating ebook every month?! Yes please!

Just dropping off mid-week smooches. *mwah*

>205 MickyFine: Well timed, Micky...I just got my annual flu shot and am feeling pretty punk right this minute. Sore arm, headache, eye-grit...in less than an hour!

I'm just *dancing* in eagerness to get the COVID booster end of the month. Yippee.

But I feel a little better now with your mid-week smooch!

You know, if I were asked to identify you to a bunch of LTers without words, the Fucktopus photo up there would work really well. I think mos t would say, oh sure, Richard, if they saw it.

So you liked The Pull of the Stars, too. All rightee-then.

Excellent review of Deer Season. Another one where I don’t think I’ll read the book, but I enjoyed your review.

>206 richardderus: Sorry to hear the flu shot is being nasty to you, RDear. You go tell your immune system who's boss. Or you know, curl up with some comfort reading/watching until the world feels more tolerable.

>207 jnwelch: Heh, I concur about that, Joe. It really is my spirit animal in so many ways.

I haven't quite given up on you vis-à-vis Deer Season, Joe...it's just too good a tale, too much of a meditation on how easy it is to Other people and how seldom it works out. You're the natural audience for it! Maybe ust Kindle up a sample? Here, the page is right here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08ZHZDZB2/

It's worth a sample read, surely! (And I'll keep calling you Surely until you do it!)

>208 MickyFine: Option B, please. And even a mug of lemon-ginger tisane.

Glurch...I must feel crummy for tea-like stuff to pass my lips.

>196 magicians_nephew: Hey, you know this is RD's thread and he's almost as down on CW as he is on CD and yet you do poke him!

>211 quondame: No no, it wasn't a comment aimed at me! It was made to Bill the (aptly named in this case) Weirdo. It's fine with me if people have conversations about things I'm not mad for, honest. Just don't ever in life post in here any photos of domestic c-a-t-s. That wouldn't be okay at all in any way shape form or fashion.

And that was very kind of you, Susan, to be protective. Thank you for thinking to do so.

147 The River in the Belly by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (tr. J. Bret Maney)

Rating: 3.5* of five

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I enjoyed Tram 83 a good deal more than most of my friends (see my almost-4-star review); it's a successful read for me because it has an energy that makes me want to keep reading the words. That was also what I got out of this collection of poems. I think the overall likelihood of my agreeing with most anyone on matters poetical isn't high. What I will say is that I read the collection here without dramatic snorts or theatrical eyerolls. The one time I found myself thinking "oh, really?" was in the description above...the author's "invented solitudes"...when I thought, "someone hasn't met Henry Dumas's "Kef 24" and its fellow kefs. This is one frequent problem I experience with poetry. People either think I'm a know-it-all or an ignoramus because I make connections like this and, being poetry types, are not in the least reluctant to say something insulting or scathing either way. Tiresome sorts.

Anyway, this collection. I don't think it will hit right with formalists, who overlap pretty far with monoglot English speakers among my own acquaintances. There are, in Author Mujila's work, words and ideas that can't be translated into an English word; there are times when those words and phrases aren't obvious to the not-Congolese reader. Some patient Googling, a bit of contemplative cogitation, or simply moving on will solve most of these problems. I encourage the reader whose eyes just rolled to give the read a try...it's a shame not to become a more informed, better equipped reader for lack of mere exposure.

Author Mujila also isn't reluctant to use sexual imagery or crudely physical imagery. If you flinch at describing male fowl as "cocks," you really need not pick this book up. The idea of a river as entrails, with dysentery, gives you the primmylip purseymouths? Horseman, pass by. One of the greater pleasures, to my mind, of reading translated work from other cultures is the opportunity to learn what *their* boundaries are, what sets a word or idea apart as transgressive in their world-view. I got a very great deal out of reading this collection; I am not an eager seeker of experiences poetical; and I think that means many, if not most, of y'all could get a lot out of the read as well.

Another BB with Deer Season with me. It will probably be ages before I ever get to it, but its on the list. :)

>214 mahsdad: *chuckle* There are book-bullets that hit me when I first got on LT...2006!...that still sit on my shelves awaitin' Their Turn.

We're all guilty of it, and I have no regrets. It is impossible for me to imagine *not* having the perfect read for any given moment. Not infrequently in triplicate....

Hi Richard, Happy Birthday month. Good to hear your toothbrush problems are solved.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

'Morning, RDear.

>210 richardderus: Glurch...I must feel crummy for tea-like stuff to pass my lips. You definitely must have been feeling vile.

I hope you're over the flu shot lurgy.

*smooch*

>218 karenmarie: Hi Horrible, thanks for the Thursday wishes. I'm not too bad today. Slept like a dead thing last night! Quite the mad rush on awakening, in consequence. Just been discombobulated all day.

This too shall pass.

>217 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, thank you and Thursday orisons heartily returned!

>216 connie53: Thanks, Connie! It all happened so fast...I was expecting a bit here, a mite there; instead *whomp* there it is. It was very, very kind and quite special.

Morning, BigDaddy! Glad you are feeling a bit better today.

"One of the greater pleasures, to my mind, of reading translated work from other cultures is the opportunity to learn what *their* boundaries are, what sets a word or idea apart as transgressive in their world-view." YES! This is endlessly fascinating to me.

>220 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie! *smooch*

Hi Richard. No idea what's going on in your threads... they filled so fast I missed most of the last but I do know you've been shellacked by Henri and Ida, at least I think it was that pair.

I updated my September thread and maybe you saw that. I keep forgetting to refresh the cache! I do hope your sticky humid weather has abated.

>222 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! Luckily for my little city, we didn't have *any* effect from Henri and a negligible one from Ida...the gutters got deep, some garbage got where it shouldn't've been, and that was it for us. I feel incredibly fortunate. I've visited your new thread, and left good wishes...I'm glad you got to BC during a lull in the catastrophes.
***
For once I'm having a devil of a time deciding something. (!!) Prime Reading offers us a choice each month from nine or ten new books that we can download and read free. I take advantage of this every month. THIS month I had it down to two...and can NOT decide which one I should go with.

Like, at all.

Help?

First? Thriller
Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark
The murder of a police recruit pins a black LAPD detective in a deadly web where race, corruption, violence, and cover-ups intersect in this relevant, razor-sharp novel of suspense.

Black rookie cop Trevor “Finn” Finnegan aspires to become a top-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Police Department and fix a broken department. A fast-track promotion to detective in the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division puts him closer to achieving his goal.

Four years later, calls for police accountability rule the headlines. The city is teeming with protests for racial justice. When the body of a murdered black academy recruit is found in the Angeles National Forest, Finn is tasked to investigate.

As pressure mounts to solve the crime and avoid a PR nightmare, Finn scours the underbelly of a volatile city where power, violence, and race intersect. But it’s Finn’s past experience as a beat cop that may hold the key to solving the recruit’s murder. The price? The end of Finn’s career…or his life.

Second? Psychological Thriller
Welcome to Cooper by Tariq Ashkanani
In this explosive thriller of bad choices and dark crimes, Detective Levine knew his transfer was a punishment—but he had no idea just how bad it would get.

Cooper, Nebraska, is forgettable and forgotten, a town you’d only stumble into if you’d taken a seriously wrong turn. Like Detective Thomas Levine’s career has. But when a young woman is found lying in the snow, choked to death, her eyes gouged out, the disgraced detective is Cooper’s only hope for restoring peace and justice.

For Levine, still grieving and guilt-ridden over the death of his girlfriend, his so-called “transfer” from the big city to this grubby backwater has always felt like a punishment. And when his irascible new partner shoots their prime suspect using Levine’s gun, all hope of redemption is shattered. With the case in chaos, and both blackmail and a violent drug cartel to contend with, he finds himself in a world of trouble.

It gets worse. The real killer is still out there, and he’s got plans for Detective Levine. And Cooper may just be the perfect place to get away with murder.4 SEPTEMBER RESULTS

AFTER THIRTY-EIGHT VOTES IT'S UNDER COLOR OF LAW!

>223 richardderus: Sounds like a no-lose situation to me. I might lean slightly to No. 1, but I voted Undecided.

>185 richardderus: Hooray for Afterparties: Stories & Gordo. Two of my faves, as well.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Great review of Deer Season. You sure got my attention and I would also love to try some of her short fiction. Sounds like my cuppa.

>225 msf59: Thanks, Mark! I'm right pleased with this month's reading, as who wouldn't be really.

I think you'll really dig Erin Flanagan. Her work's so exactly *you*! Real-life dilemmas...real-world people...no one great shining Savior coming to Fix It All...

>224 laytonwoman3rd: That's what makes it so darn frustrating! I can't decide between them because no matter what I decide I won't forget the other one!
*gaaah* FOMO bites me hard!

>223 richardderus: Helps you or muddies the plot yet further I don't know but my vote has been cast, RD.

>223 richardderus: I'd suggest some P.G. Wodehouse. Get some froth in there man!

>228 quondame: Sir Plum's lost his lustre with me, I'm afraid. I failed to crack a smile the last time I read a Jeeves story...that is, I fear, a Statement from whatever internal process passes for a soul.

>227 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC!

Had to go with the second book. Sounds like I need to hunt it down too.

>229 richardderus: Oh that is sad. If you are having not thrills about choosing between thrillers, I still think some light nonsense is in order. Perhaps just a peruse through an old Chas. Adams book if you must stay in the shade.

>223 richardderus: I am as usual so disgusted that Amazon Prime once again has THREE thrillers up for grabs and not a single SFF genre book--it's not like that's a small fandom!!

>223 richardderus: - In all honesty, I can't vote (though I did). I don't read those genres and as such, haven't read or even heard of either of the contenders. But it's 2021, so why should knowing nothing stop me from voting? (says she, whose country go to the polls in under 3 weeks to pick a new Prime Minister from a very weak pool of contenders. Feh)

That's all....

I voted for the second one only because we just finished watching Major Crimes and I'm LA copped out.

I voted for choice #1 but they both sound like excellent reads. Good luck with whichever you choose!

My vote was for the second book by the way but I could see your quandary - almost a coin toss choice.

>223 richardderus: I clicked the "Yes" so I guess that's my suggestion to choose Under Color of Law.

It sounded more interesting and other than inevitable police tropes that glut American cop stories, I liked the framework the story was conceived around (assuming the publisher's blah-blah is at all reflective of the actual narrative.)

Ashkanani's book sounded too gritty for my tastes and who needs to rot their mind with that type of thriller, hmmm?
Simply my candid opinion. I don't know the authors, which is a handicap for a more informed opinion.

Edited to add that you'll have to add a neon sign on the post to let us know what you chose!

I’m not helping your case; I went with undecided. Thrillers are not my genre and they are similar in that they both seem to be about outsider policemen whose careers/ lives are on the line with this case. 🤗

I voted for the second one because I like the psychological part of books. And I did not help because now it's 8-8
Maybe read a few pages of each book and see what gets to you?

Impossible choice, Richard dear, an undicded from me. Maybe read them both?

Good morning, Richard!

I voted for the second one.

Hi Richard,

I see why it is a close call. I went for the second, but either would be worth a shot.

Morning, BigDaddy! I have voted.

I'm going to be no help. Neither sounds like my thing.

Although I have just finished A Wizard's guide to defensive Baking which I think I can lay at your door. Fan-bloody-tastic. That might be reaction after my previous, dire, read, but I loved it. Almost every minute of it. *sob* Molly *sob*

'Morning, RDear, and happy Friday to you.

*blinks* Nothing else to add. Coffee and books on tap for this morning.

Thanks for inviting me vote -- both sound good, but I am generally more drawn to scenarios in less urban settings. So that's my bias.

>246 sibylline: That's very helpful indeed, Lucy, thank you! I appreciate knowing *why* someone votes as they do.

>245 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, what's new? I'm sure coffee will help us both function. I'm hoping for soon....

>244 Helenliz: Hiya Helen, yes indeed I'm the one who bonked you with T. Kingfisher's fun little story! I'm glad you've enjoyed it.

I know, I know...Molly...*sob*

>243 Crazymamie: Thank you, Mamie my sweet. Have a Friday to beat the band!

>242 sirfurboy: Which is *precisely* the problem! I can not, even today after sleeping on it, choose between them. Thanks for voting.

>241 figsfromthistle: Hiya Anita! Thank you.

>240 FAMeulstee: In the end, Anita, I'll probably end up doing exactly that. Just...can't not, apparently. But I still need to know which one to read first! Paralysis...aaarrrgh

>239 connie53: The wonderful part of voting is that ties don't last...I'll check the results for the final time at 5pm today.

>238 humouress: You've encapsulated the problem most eloquently. They're similar, they're both outsider/psychological problems...which one makes your spidey-senses tingle?

That's my issue!!

>237 SandyAMcPherson: Eventually I'll find out whether the puffery is accurate on them both, it's only down to which one comes first that's vexing me. Thanks for voting!

>236 PaulCranswick: A coin toss would've broken a tie...this is a deeper thing. Has to do with that ineffable something that requires us to make choices.

>235 bell7: Thank you, Mary! And thanks, honestly it really does seem like a can't-lose scenario doesn't it.

>232 ronincats: Awomen. Never so much as ONE. And it's not like 47North and AmazonCrossing don't get the submissions!

>231 quondame: I think my funny bone's broken. I can only laugh my guts to achin' when Joe Rogan gets COVID or one of those preachers dies from it.

>230 drneutron: You're not a Prime member, Jim?! It's a monthly Prime perk! One, some months two, free downloads of books coming out that month from one of Amazon's imprints. It's given me some pretty ~meh~ reads and some really wonderful ones.

>234 karenmarie: *chuckle* That's the ol' pepper, kid! And it's exactly that factor I'm seeking through putting up a poll...stuff I don't consider, don't realize, can't anticipate. Hence "the wisdom of the crowd."

>233 jessibud2: Ha! That's also part of "the wisdom of the crowd," Shelley! People who vote randomly are still, statistically, going to be right at least some of the time.

>232 ronincats:

Seriously...just go look at the Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards finalists...
I mean...

Isn't that perfection?

>252 richardderus: So many captions leap to mind...

>252 richardderus: Yes, perfection. Also, me, at this very moment.

>254 weird_O: That's a Monday face to me, Bill.

>253 laytonwoman3rd: Yeah!

>223 richardderus: That was fun. I voted for #2, hoping that the author might have some insight into small town Nebraska. Feels like a coin toss would be a valid method, but I hope to be asked again!

I'm sorry that you've lost your taste for Sir Plum. I hope I remain silly enough to giggle at him forever. Oth, my mother's sense of humor is intact and she has never been able to see the appeal. I feel the same about Pratchett although I have Lucy's favorite lined up for reading this year.

>252 richardderus: Yep. Perfection.

>223 richardderus: I'm getting #1. It just sounds more my style of mystery/thriller (I love a good police procedural. And Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins is one of my favorite series - I learned so much from it. If this is anything like that, I'll be happy.)

ETA I wish there were a way for us to share, so you could get #2 and borrow #1 from me and vice versa. (IS there a way to share?)

>232 ronincats: With you on that.

>257 Storeetllr: Hi Mary! I checked on the book's Ammy page, and none of them are lending-enabled as Prime Reads. I guess they would be if one then bought them, but not unless.

>256 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! Thanks for voting...I'm going with the winner as of 5pm tonight.

I never got Pratchett either. I've just lost my taste for Wodehouse, whose works I lapped right up. I do not understand why...it makes me feel a bit bereft.

I’m no good at choosing either - thrillers or psychological thrillers don’t really do it for me!

>259 SandDune: Even the Undecideds count, Rhian, because there are plenty of us who simply can't pick...yet that also fits into the wisdom of the crowd.

>260 richardderus: I have voted as Undecided then. Looking at the results I don’t think you’re going to get a conclusive answer!

>261 SandDune: A plurality is all I require, or expect. After all, if *I* couldn't decide and I'm as opinionated as a person can be, others won't necessarily have an easier time.

I voted for the big city one, Richard, which tied things up again. Hope you are right about that not lasting long!

>263 Familyhistorian: Ha! This is really hilarious...34 votes...evenly split! Okay, TOMORROW at noon. The next vote could be The One....

Thanks for the invite, Richard. I went with #1 but had leaned earlier in the day to #2. I’ll probably get that one. You know with whichever one you chose, you’ll pine for the other as the one that got away. Good luck!

>250 richardderus: That's rather a high standard. A hint of wry smile, a huff of grudging amusement, that may be about the limit. But if you must have dark demon wrestling, by all means.

>266 quondame: I'm a lot more evil-souled than you are, Starless. My schadenfreude runs deep as the Marianas Trench with a special Challenger Deep of it for religious nuts who die of "following their beliefs." Just...comedy gold!

>265 Copperskye: I'll know tomorrow, Joanne, and will come let you in on it.

>223 richardderus: I voted :)

>258 richardderus: Richard, do you still laugh at Saki? I do hope so.

‘Morning, RD! Happiest of Saturdays to you.

I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath for the decision on which book you're going to read next...

>252 richardderus: Great photos. I voted for the otters but backed out when I had to give them my email address for a confirming link. I guess I understand, but just ... nope.

>252 richardderus: You know I love this. Hard to pick a winner but I am partial to the sleepy or deeply skeptical owl.

>271 msf59: I'm so glad you appreciate his silly face. I myownself think of it as a hangover face.

>270 karenmarie: They're fun to look at, but voting isn't the best idea....

Have a wonderful Saturday! *smooch*

>269 LizzieD: I haven't read Saki in decades. Permaybehaps I should try!

>268 LovingLit: Thank you, Megan, the men with the butterfly nets are steadily retreating. I appreciate you!

Hi, Richard. The voting has been so close, I suspect you’re going to end up reading both books, flipping a coin as to which first.

DRUMROLL PLEASE

it's Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark!

Thank all thirty-eight of you who voted!

I guess I just missed the vote. But I voted for #2
Hugs!

>250 richardderus: Huh. Yep, we’re Prime members, but I haven’t been paying attention to the books. I will be now!

>276 drneutron: I should hope to kiss a piglet! Y'all can really choose from some good stuff every month, and sometimes even two books. They don't "add up" like Prime reading ones, either, so you don't have to "return" one to get another.

>275 ChelleBearss: Well, Chelle, it'd just have narrowed it to a one vote lead. #1 won fair and square...and when >276 drneutron: reports on #2, I'll know whether or not I need to go procure one of those for myself.

>274 richardderus: Well, that was entertaining.

>272 richardderus: 'the men with the butterfly nets are steadily retreating' They are? I'm tempted to change my 'undecided' to a vote for the second book and bring it back to a tie *evil laugh*

>278 SandyAMcPherson: It was entertaining, Sandy, but somehow I feel like I lost having chosen #2!

You should do it again, RD, so many of us enjoyed choosing for you.

'Morning, RDear!

I hope you enjoy #2. I'm happy that I voted for the winner.

*smooch*

>281 karenmarie: #1 won...so I'll be reading and enjoying *it*...but otherwise, yep!

*smooch*

>280 PaulCranswick:, >278 SandyAMcPherson: It was an interesting experiment. I very, very seldom have a situation where I can read two such similar books, equally positioned within my wheelhouse. This was a fascinating case on that level, too. I can't remember the last time I was so torn about picking a book to read.

>279 humouress: I would expect nothing different from you, La Overkill, but absent the invention of time travel it's too late to do anything about it. And if you've invented time travel, I have a few ideas of how much more disruptively you could deploy it.

>282 richardderus: Not yet. But I ought to. Hmm ...

>283 humouress: Do let me know when it's working.
***
I read this on a friend's homepage.

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do.
Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner.

It's by Hugh Howey, a writer whose stuff holds little appeal for me. This phrase, from Visitor (part of the Beacon 23 project), has quite arrested me, however, and to my surprise. Succinctly and I suspect completely accidentally, he's defined the most insidious and cruel aspect of the world we live in: It isn't *just* the nastiness of doing unpleasant tasks that steals away our personal happiness, it's the awareness of their inescapability and inevitability that truly stamps out even the flickers of fulfillment. Four Thousand Weeks should be required reading for all high-school seniors.

I've been casting about for a new topper topic. Birthday? Ummm...Taylor Caldwell, the anti-semitic right-wing nutjob who wrote such terrifically involving family sagas? Arthur Koestler, serial-rapist anti-totalitarian writer of Dire Warnings we'd do well to heed? Oh, *I* know! D.H. Lawrence, he of the fungus-friendly humid-crotched "sexy" stuff because, proof y'all's gawd has a sense of humo(u)r after all, his birthday is 9/11.

Haw.

Roald Dahl...another little rape problem. Eleanor Hibbert? Closet cases aren't my jam, no matter how many pseudonyms they produce good books under. All poets are off the list by definition...why force myself to look at reminders of an art form I tolerate at best, and only when it's excellent?

But this week, my olds, changed the face of the planet sixty years ago.

Susanna Clarke spoke to The Guardian about her reading. This passage struck me just right...until the end:

The book I’m ashamed not to have read
I’m not fond of the idea that there is a list somewhere of books that you “ought” to read. There are too many “oughts” already. Read the books that help you flourish, that enlarge your world. Your books are bound to be different from other people’s. For myself I would like to be enlarged by reading more poetry and finding a way into Dostoevsky.

The whole thing is here: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/03/susanna-clarke-neil-gaimans-the-sa...

>284 richardderus: Bizarrely I liked school, so Mondays never bothered me. Still don't, as I love my job. I also really enjoy my 06:45 monday morning spin class - sets me up for the week.

I know I am not one of the normal people. But who want to be normal?

I've seen several intriguing reviews of 4000 weeks.

Yay for the winner! Good response from Susanna Clarke.

>288 jnwelch: I know, right?!

She's a delight.

>287 Helenliz: We're all built differently, Helen, and the result for each of us is that we experience life so differently that it's a wonder we possess anything describable as "consensus reality". It's an astonishing patchwork quilt of realities and so much richer for it!

...weirdo...

This.

>290 richardderus: So loving this. It's me without the book tossing part.

Richard, have you ever thought of hosting an online class on lit crit?

*smooch*

>290 richardderus: Nothing so calm. Remember the Bilbo face when he asks Frodo for a look at the ring? That's the face.

Just popping in for a Monday Morning wave - having pretty much got myself up to date! Love the owl, the reviews and that author on Goodreads is a prize idiot, and brush carefully and aren't people on here lovely?

Think that's my precis for now.

Just after 9 am UK time, spin class done, gym visited, shower had and work started. It's Monday - happy mondays all.

>:-D

Weirdo & proud.

The new thread is up here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/335023#
***
>295 Helenliz: *snort* Weirdo for sure.

>294 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka! You'd think someone whose business model depends on the goodwill of the punters would craft a more, um, pleasant image for the public.

>293 quondame: Ha! Well *I* feel like a Monadnock of Tolerance...quite a new feeling for me.

>292 ronincats: *smooch* New theme's finished!

>291 SomeGuyInVirginia: ...but...sweetiedarling...why would one toss the book one is attempting to read at the one preventing that desired consummation...?

The fucktopus!!! OMG!!!! That's so awesome.

>298 The_Hibernator: I know, right?! I laugh every time I see it.