swynn reads stuff in 2021

Dit onderwerp werd voortgezet door swynn reads stuff in 2021 (2): more stuff.

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swynn reads stuff in 2021

1swynn
Bewerkt: dec 28, 2020, 12:47 pm

I'm Steve, 52, a technical services librarian at a medium-sized public university. I live in Missouri with my wife and son and Buddy (name and occupation), a Terrier-mix chaser of squirrels, rabbits, opossums, deer, and (alas) skunks. This is my 12th year with the 75ers.

My reading follows my whims, but is heaviest with science fiction and fantasy. I also read mysteries, thrillers, and horror. I don't read enough non-fiction, but when I do it covers a range of subjects including history, language, popular science, unpopular mathematics, running, library science, and shiny stuff.

I'm usually reading at least three books:
(1) something on the Kindle app, which I read whenever I'm standing in line or when the lights are off;
(2) a paperback, usually from my own shelves, which I read while walking Buddy; and
(3) something borrowed from the library, of which there is usually a larger stack than I can reasonably expect to finish and which I call "The Tower of Due." Here's what it looks like now, including a couple I expect to finish before Jan. 1:

2swynn
Bewerkt: apr 2, 2021, 12:06 am

(A) The DAWs

For several years now, I've been reading through the catalog of DAW, the first American imprint exclusively devoted to science fiction & fantasy publishing. It launched in 1972 under the editorship of Donald A. Wollheim (hence the name), and continues today, publishing new books at a rate faster than I'm catching up. Last year I read only 8, mostly because of delays to read previous volumes in a series. Case in point is the next DAW, which is also the last in Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu series, in which I have still a few volumes to go.

DAWs so far: 0
Next up: The Wrath of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer

(B) Bestsellers

For the last few years, Liz (lyzard) and I have been reading through American bestsellers at a rate of one per month. I'm running behind, and my goal this year is to catch up -- just like last year.

Bestsellers so far: 4
Next Up: The Source by James Michener

Not Straight Not White Not Dudes

Left to itself, my reading skews straight, white, and male. Wonder why. For the last couple of years I've tracked proportion of non-straight, non-white, and non-male authors in an effort to be more conscious of this. I met my targets last year: 15% LGBTQ, 22% authors of color, and 52% women (including trans women, in case of doubt), and nonbinary authors. (Targets were 10, 20, and 50.) Targets this year are 15%, 20%, and 50%. Recommendations welcome.

(C) Not Straight: 3/28 (10.7%)
(D) Not White: 10/28 (35.7%)
(E) Not Dudes: 14/28 (50%)

Every spring, my employer sponsors a Children's Literature Festival, at which invited authors and illustrators talk about their craft to students from the region's elementary schools. Every year I try to read at least one book by each guest author, and every year I fail. This year, the festival was scheduled with the same guests as last year's canceled festival, so I'm starting at an advantage.

(F) CLF authors: 6/11

Other Good Intentions

(G) Read more books off my own shelves.
So far: 3

Continue more series than I start. According to the spreadsheet where I keep track, I have started but not finished 309 series. My insufficient strategy for managing that number is continue more series than I start and to finish a series every now and then. Last year I started 23, continued 26, and finished 12. I'd be happy with similar numbers for 2021.


  • (H) Series started: 3

  • Fable by Adrienne Young
    George Smiley by John Le Carré
    Vatican Tetralogy by Morris West

  • (I) Series continued: 0

  • Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
    George Smiley by John Le Carré
    Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo

  • (J) Series finished (or up-to-date): 1

  • Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo

3swynn
Bewerkt: apr 1, 2021, 11:59 pm

Letters in parentheses refer to annual goals listed in post #2 above

1) Library Improvement Through Data Analytics by Leslie J. Farmer and Alan M. Safer (E)
2) Breath by James Nestor
3) Mach nicht so traurige Augen, weil du ein Negerlein bist by Marie Nejar (DE)
4) The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (B)
5) Hänschen klein, ging allein ... by Hans Massaquoi (DG)
6) If It Bleeds by Stephen King
7) Crossroads by Laurel Hightower (E)
8) Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter (BE)
9) Temper by Nicky Drayden (DE)
10) Outbreaks and Epidemics by Meera Senthilingam (DE)
11) The Floating Opera; and, The End of the Road by John Barth
12) The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West (BH)
13) The Atheist in the Attic by Samuel Delany (CD)
14) When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (CDEIJ)
15) One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse
16) Cirque Berserk by Jessica Guess (DE)
17) Call For the Dead by John le Carre (H)
18) Just South of Home by Karen Strong (DE)
19) A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré (I)
20) Cove by Cynan Jones
21) Cinderella is Dead by Kaylynn Bayron (E))
22) Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett (E)
23) Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (DE)
24) Daheim Unterwegs by Ika Hügel-Marshall (CDE)
25) Island of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (I)
26) Fable by Adrienne Young (EH)
27) The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
28) Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois

4swynn
Bewerkt: dec 28, 2020, 5:05 pm

In the interest of keeping it short: I run. And then I don't. And then I run again. When I'm running I'll talk about that. I will also make music recommendations from my playlist -- my taste runs to blues, rock, industrial metal and German pop. When I'm not running, I'll probably blame my body for some reason or another and will try to avoid talking about that. In any case, I'll mark running posts thus:

** RUNNING POST**

for the benefit of those who look for running stories and those who look for anything but.

5swynn
Bewerkt: apr 2, 2021, 12:07 am

** The Perry Rhodan Post **

Perry Rhodans so far: 5
Next Up: #147 Amoklauf der Maschinen

For those who have never encountered it: Perry Rhodan is the hero of a weekly German science-fiction serial that is marketed as the world's largest science fiction series. I don't know whether that claim is true -- no doubt it depends on how one measures "large." Measured by words in print, PR has few if any competitors, certainly neither the Star Wars nor Star Trek franchises, which are relatively puny. The main series has been continuously published since September 1961 in weekly novella-length adventures. Its 3,100th episode will appear in early 2021. Stop and think about that: the English translations of these episodes ran to about 100 pages per, so we're talking about a story 310,000 pages long. And growing. And that's just the main series. Besides the main series there have been over 400 standalone paperback novels, not to mention spinoffs (the spinoff series Atlan ran for 850 episodes), reboots (the reboot series Perry Rhodan NEO reaches its 250th episode in 2021), miniseries, video games, comic books, and one comically awful movie.

* Why am I reading this?

I first encountered the series as an exchange student to West Germany in 1986. I fell in love with everything about the series: the complicated backstory, the cheesy plots, the lurid covers, even the cheap newsprint. At that time I had access only to the latest issues and random back issues as I discovered them at flea markets so plots were frequently opaque, which actually added to the series's appeal. A couple of years ago I discovered that digitized back issues could be bought in packages online: I started from issue number 1, and all of that love came back.

So my reasons for reading are multiple and personal. It's about nostalgia, maintaining language skills, and feeding my inner middle-schooler. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the series except in small doses for curiosity's sake. But neither will I apologize: I love this crap even (maybe especially) when Perry Rhodan is an asshole. Which, actually, is most of the time.

* The Story So Far

Episodes 1-49: The Third Power (1971-1984)

The series opens in the year 1971. Perry Rhodan is an American astronaut commanding the first crewed mission to the moon. On the moon Rhodan's team discovers a foundered spacecraft of the Arkonide Empire, a galaxy-spanning civilization in decadent decline. Perry rescues the ship's commander and its science officer in exchange for Arkonide technology. Rhodan uses the technology to establish a government capable of rising above petty human squabbles and confronting the threats that begin to appear from around the galaxy. For personnel he seeks out psychically-talented mutants, many of whom have been born in the wake of the mid-twentieth-century's atomic testing. But even a newly unified Earth and superpowered army are no match for extraterrestrial threats who have been building power for centuries. Perry Rhodan must buy time for Earth to develop security and technology. To this end he fakes the destruction of Earth, thus distracting Terra's most dangerous enemies until a more opportune time.

Episodes 50-99: Atlan and Arkon (2040-2045)

The series picks up again in 2040, fifty-six years after Perry staged Earth's destruction. The Terrans have kept a low profile, but have built a small space fleet, and colonized the solar system. But the secret cannot be kept indefinitely, though. When Earth's true location can be kept secret no more, Perry hatches a plan to simultaneously court and provoke Terra's most dangerous threats, in hopes of turning their hostilities against each other. Those threats are the powerful Arkonide empire ruled by a Robot Regent, the "Springers," a society of galactic merchants, and the Druuf, inhabitants of a parallel universe -- the Red Universe -- that temporarily overlaps ours. While Perry plays at galactic strategy, we also get the story of Atlan, a practically immortal Arkonide who has been living on Earth since prehistory. Perry and Atlan first meet as rivals but later become friends. Atlan returns to Arkon where the Robot Regent recognizes him as the rightful head of state. And as the story cycle closes, Perry's and Atlan's friendship lays the basis for a Terran-Arkonide alliance.

Episodes 100-149: The Posbis (2102-2112)

In 2102 during the testing of an experimental space drive, Perry accidentally discovers "The Blue System," a planetary system home to Akon, the parent civilization of Arkon. Akon does not appreciate being discovered, and makes several attempts to destroy Terra, but Perry teams up with Atlan to force Akon to surrender. Back home, Perry deals with an epidemic of drug addiction, a revolt led by his estranged son, and an Arkonide revolution that temporarily unseats Atlan and permanently destroys the Robot Regent. Also "bacon moss". Then come extragalactic threats: two forces threaten all life in the galaxy. One is the Posbis, machine/biological hybrids who fly cubical warships and seek to destroy all organic life (similarities to the Borg have been noted, let us say); the other is the Laurins, invisible warriors in conflict with the Posbis and anyone else who gets in their way. The mutual threat cause the Terrans, Arkonides, and Akons to form a mutual defense alliance

As we join the story in episode 142, the Terrans have recently stolen a Posbi "transformer cannon", a weapon they hope can be turned against the Posbis.

6swynn
Bewerkt: dec 28, 2020, 11:37 am

... and it's all y'all's. It'll probably take me a little while to fill in the "reserved" posts, so don't wait on me. Happy 2021!

7richardderus
dec 28, 2020, 11:58 am

Ooohhh, The Floating Opera! Yay.

Happy 2021 when it dawns.

8PaulCranswick
dec 28, 2020, 12:22 pm

Great to see you back, Steve.

9drneutron
dec 28, 2020, 12:45 pm

Welcome back!

10thornton37814
dec 28, 2020, 9:34 pm

Have a great year of reading!

11swynn
dec 30, 2020, 2:45 am

>10 thornton37814: Thanks Lori!

12DianaNL
dec 31, 2020, 6:18 am

Best wishes for a better 2021!

13swynn
dec 31, 2020, 4:14 pm

Thanks Diana, and welcome to the thread!

14FAMeulstee
dec 31, 2020, 6:42 pm

Happy reading (and running) in 2021, Steve!

15MickyFine
jan 1, 2021, 12:20 am

Looking forward to following your reading adventures for another year, Steve.

16PaulCranswick
jan 1, 2021, 1:28 am



And keep up with my friends here, Steve. Have a great 2021.

17lyzard
jan 1, 2021, 5:03 pm

Hi again, Steve. Love your thread set-up! :)

Since I ended 2020 with an apologetic voicemail from my librarian explaining why my next 1000+ page best-seller may be late showing up, there's a possibility you'll have a free month for catching up...

18Berly
jan 1, 2021, 8:55 pm

Happy 2021. Hope it's a brighter, better, bookier year.

19swynn
jan 1, 2021, 11:27 pm

>14 FAMeulstee:
>15 MickyFine:
>16 PaulCranswick:
>17 lyzard:
>18 Berly:

Welcome, Anita, Micky, Paul, Liz, and Kim! Looking forward to the next 365 days of reading, at least!

(And Liz, while I don't want you to slow down on my account, I'm not disappointed to hear that I may have some help ... )

20swynn
jan 1, 2021, 11:45 pm



1) Library Improvement Through Data Analytics / Lesley S.J. Farmer
Date: 2016

It's a nice little manual of exactly what its title says, with advice for evaluating services and processes based on Six Sigma, a primer/refresher on statistics and statistical tests, and about a dozen use cases for quantitative analysis of library services and processes like access/retrieval (metadata creation), data sets, digitization, and collection development. The statistics section is too terse for beginners and too elementary for statisticians, but just about right for people who have learned some statistics but are rusty and need reminders. Feels like it could be useful, and I think I'll keep it around.

21swynn
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2021, 12:08 am

And having read my vegetables I'll jump right to dessert:



Perry Rhodan #142: Agenten der Vernichtung = Agents of Destruction / Kurt Mahr
Date: 1964

Bad actors smuggle 3,000 Laurins to Earth. Laurins are invisible aliens hostile to humans, and they soon spread around the globe mostly undetected, destroying infrastructure and even entire cities with improvised nuclear bombs. Terran scientists are working on Laurin-detecting technology but it is not yet available, so the only "Laurin detectors" available are telepaths, who can locate aliens by sensing their thoughts. But there aren't nearly enough telepaths to stop the destruction. Desperate, Rhodan sends Atlan to beg help from the Laurin's archenemies: the Posbis. Of course, the Posbis aren't exactly friendly to humans either. Or at least they haven't been ...

I've mentioned that I'm fond of explosions, and this episode delivers them with the frequency and magnitude of a Roland Emmerich film.

22MickyFine
jan 2, 2021, 10:36 am

>20 swynn: Hmm, I'm curious how robust the section on collection development is and what factors they encourage looking at?

23richardderus
jan 2, 2021, 11:28 am

>20 swynn: Sounds immensely useful. Metadata is one of those terms that causes most peoples' eyes to glaze over but that's when I get the most interested...that's where the lies and the biases show up.

>21 swynn: *aaahhh* back in the day! A dirty bomb would likely do more damage than any BOOM bomb could, but the BOOMs look so cool.

24BLBera
jan 2, 2021, 11:30 am

Happy New Year, Steve.

25ronincats
jan 2, 2021, 12:04 pm

Dropping off my and wishing you the best of new years in 2021!

>2 swynn: Love this. More interesting than my goals. I may have to revise...

26swynn
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2021, 8:32 pm

>22 MickyFine: probably not what you're looking for, Micky. There's a chapter on "ebook collection development", which discusses comparing ebook v. Print acquisition based on costs, including processing time; and selecting an ebook vendor based on considerations like book costs, variety, acquisition models, and platform features. There's also a section on Acquisitions that discusses analyzing costs of selection and processing; and of comparing costs and outcomes of different selection models: by librarian selectors, blanket orders, or demand-driven acquisitions. There's also a chapter on analyzing the costs of adding data sets to a library's collection.

27swynn
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2021, 8:43 pm

>23 richardderus: I think you would also be disappointed, since the book's focus is on workflow analysis and calculating the costs of metadata creation and correction.

You're not wrong though. And if you haven't met him yet, please let me introduce you to one of my professional heroes, Sanford Berman:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Berman

28swynn
jan 2, 2021, 8:44 pm

>24 BLBera:
>25 ronincats:
Happy New Year Beth and Roni!

29justchris
jan 3, 2021, 2:40 am

>5 swynn: OMG, that sounds like the best of terrible space operas that beats anything that ever aired over American radiowaves (which is what the plot summaries remind me of!).

30MickyFine
jan 4, 2021, 9:54 am

>26 swynn: Thanks, Steve, that summary was helpful. Won't be something I'll need to pick up then. :)

31swynn
jan 4, 2021, 11:50 am

>29 justchris: That's exactly it, Chris. PR owes huge debts to series like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. I'm told that the series changes its aesthetic over the decades, depending on the creatives running the show and the tastes of its audience -- like the James Bond films, I suppose. I know that the stories I read in the mid-1980's had environmentalist themes that aren't even on the radar of these early stories.

32swynn
jan 4, 2021, 11:50 am

>30 MickyFine: Glad to help, Micky!

33richardderus
jan 4, 2021, 1:13 pm

>27 swynn: Sandynista here. What a secular saint.

34swynn
Bewerkt: jan 4, 2021, 6:33 pm



2) Breath : the New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
Date: 2020

Nestor discusses research that suggests the way we breathe is connected to our general health. "Breathing wrong," he argues, can cause all sorts of ailments, and he offers anecdotes of people who corrected maladies from asthma to scoliosis (also emphysema, anxiety, depression, headaches, ADHD, orthodontic problems, and epilepsy) by changing the way they breathe. Some of the breathing programs he discusses are pretty hard-core, and probably shouldn't be attempted without guidance. But the basics are pretty accessible (SPOILERS, I guess): breathe through your nose, more slowly, and exhale completely. Also chew things -- gum is fine.

Mixed feelings about this one. He refers to some pretty interesting studies -- the evidence about nasal breathing seems to be best documented -- but he doesn't pay much attention to counterarguments (I assume they exist because why wouldn't they?) except to dismiss criticisms like small sample sizes as medical-establishment-fuddyduddery. Which I suppose they may be, but Nestor's presentation feels so much like hucksterism that I'd really like another opinon, especially with respect to some of the more agressive programs he discusses, which involve deliberate hyper- and hypoventilation and are supposed to trigger altered states of consciousness, "reset" your neurological system, and make possible superhuman stunts like maintain body heat while submersed in ice-water. Yeah, cool, have fun with that I think I'll just read a book.

On the other hand: breathe through my nose, more slowly, and exhale completely -- what can that hurt?

Chewing gum, though --- blech, not worth it.

35richardderus
jan 4, 2021, 6:41 pm

A long, long time ago, I met Carola Speads. I've been a diaphragm-nose breather since my yoga-mad stepmother got hold of me in 1968, and Speads' classes reinforced it. Lot of percussive breathing possibly kept me from getting the respiratory COVID symptoms.

Haven't had asthma in decades...then the neti pot fixed nasal allergies...which have come back since I lost mine & haven't seen another like it (longer spout, enamel-on-metal).

But orthodontics? Epilepsy? Color me skeptical.

36swynn
Bewerkt: jan 4, 2021, 9:29 pm

>35 richardderus: Thanks for sharing that, Richard. It seems very plausible to me that breathing methods can affect health, especially respiratory conditions -- it's breathing-methods-as-panacea that has me suspicious.

For orthodontics, it may help credibility that he says breathing methods are mostly useful in youth, while the skull is still developing. The argument is that mouth-breathing and lack of chewing (encouraged by industrialized soft-food diets) is associated with shorter, narrower jaw and palate. By adulthood, says Nestor, it's probably too late to correct major problems, though you might try mewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmf-pR7EryY

It is plausible to me that breathing and chewing habits in childhood could affect oral development for better or worse. But the mewing seems a little woo.

37swynn
jan 5, 2021, 11:24 pm

Stacy Abrams is my brand-new favorite superhero.

38justchris
jan 6, 2021, 12:54 am

>36 swynn: For orthodontics, it may help credibility that he says breathing methods are mostly useful in youth, while the skull is still developing. The argument is that mouth-breathing and lack of chewing (encouraged by industrialized soft-food diets) is associated with shorter, narrower jaw and palate. By adulthood, says Nestor, it's probably too late to correct major problems

I can attest to this. I have crooked teeth because my jaw isn't large enough to accommodate all of them. Apparently I didn't chew enough in my early years thus the smaller than average jaw.

I've been a lifetime mouth breather particularly in my sleep or during aerobic exercise. I tried using netipots but would end up in tears because I couldn't get the saline solution through one nasal passage to the other. Finally got help a few years ago in my 40s: deal with deviated septum, remove swollen adenoids (these really surprised the surgeon), trim falconettes. The difference in my breathing was profound. It felt like I had wind tunnels in my nose where before I'd always struggled to get a full breath in through my nostrils. Like, I had no idea other people could breathe so easily.

39scaifea
jan 6, 2021, 9:03 am

40swynn
Bewerkt: jan 6, 2021, 9:28 am

>38 justchris: Thanks for sharing this, Chris! It makes sense to me that dental problems and breathing problems are associated, and that one can affect the other. The degree to which this is true surprises me.

41swynn
jan 6, 2021, 9:31 am

>39 scaifea: I really thought this was going to go the other way, and had convinced myself that as long as it was close I'd call it a positive sign.

Now let's hope we do so something with it.

42scaifea
jan 6, 2021, 9:44 am

>41 swynn: Agreed.

43rosalita
jan 6, 2021, 10:08 am

>37 swynn: You said it, Steve. What an amazing woman, to turn a devastating and unfair election. loss into making it very hard for it to happen again. I hope other states reach out to her and ask for guidance on how they can accomplish the same thing — including Iowa.

If we can get past today's Congressional farce and Biden is actually sworn in on Jan. 20, I might even start sleeping through the night again!

44swynn
Bewerkt: jan 6, 2021, 1:24 pm



3) Mach nicht so traurige Augen, weil du ein Negerlein bist by Marie Nejar
Date: 2007

This is a memoir of Marie Nejar, an African-German woman born in Hamburg-St. Pauli in the early thirties. Nejar survived the Nazis then had a brief, successful career in the 1950s as singer and film actress "Leila Negra." She actually began her career during the Nazi era as an extra in escapist films -- her first film was the special-effects extravaganza Baron Munchhausen. In the postwar era, she especially became associated in the public mind with Besatzungskinder, mixed-race children of German women and Black Allied soldiers, many of whom were abandoned. The "Leila Negra" song, "Ich möcht' so gern nach Hause geh'n" ("I would so like to go home") was used in the film Toxi, in which a middle-class family takes in the abandoned Besatzungskind Toxi. As Nejar turned thirty, tired of being offered only songs about being Black and being a child, she left show business to become a nurse.

I read another memoir last year about being Black in the Third Reich: Hans Massaquoi's Destined to Witness, and the experiences are quite different. Though both Nejar and Massaquoi grew up in Hamburg. Nejar was somewhat sheltered by the district she lived in: St. Pauli was a more cosmopolitan section of the city, with an international population and more liberal political leanings. Compared to Massaquoi's experience her life was somewhat sheltered by kind teachers and sympathetic authorities. She certainly faced discrimination and outright bigotry -- even in the postwar years -- but by her own account she was fortunate in her community.

Nejar comes across as a confident and self-aware memoirist, and her material is irresistably fascinating. Unfortunately, it's not available in English. You can see & hear many of Nejar's performances by searching "Leila Negra" on YouTube. I especially recommend her bit with Peter Alexander, Die süßesten Früchte

NOTE: counting this for TIOLI #6, "Read a book by someone from or with ties to West Africa" because Nejar's father was Ghanian. (Her mother was Caribbean-German.)

45swynn
Bewerkt: jan 7, 2021, 10:35 am

Jeez, when Paul posted his TIOLI challenge, "Read a book that starts with a conflagration," I had no idea that I would be able to fill it "2021."

I see that Fox News is pointing the finger at "left-wing radicals." That sounds about right for Fox: you don't start a fire in the Reichstag without a plan to blame the Communists.

46lyzard
Bewerkt: jan 8, 2021, 4:37 pm

>45 swynn:

I nearly fell over when I heard someone literally blaming the Communists.

I spent most of Thursday distracted by CNN, which is not something that happens very often. Apart from the fact that it is now impossible not to see that the emperor has no clothes*, the other thing that struck me as a positive outcome is that people were actually shocked and enraged (and let's face it, frightened) into non-partisan behaviour.

I suppose in spite of everything it won't last; but there might be a window for Biden to build a few bridges if he can act quickly.

(*I apologise for that mental image.)

47swynn
Bewerkt: jan 11, 2021, 5:10 pm

>46 lyzard: I apologise for that mental image.

No worries, I've been shouting it for the last four years. That and, "My God, we've elected Howard Beale." And also lots of cusses.

As arrests roll in, it's getting harder to pretend that Antifa or Communists were involved (not that people won't keep trying.) I am a little encouraged by what seems to be a general sense that "storming the capitol" was a bad thing -- though very discouraged by the number of people I've heard saying that the terrorists and their leaders should get a pass.

(And my junior senator who I called a Fred Van Ackerman? He's that fist-pump inciter dude, and seems to be going through a rough patch -- which I hope contradicts my prediction that he wouldn't get a Van Ackerman slapdown. But his ambition is large, and our attention span is brief, and here in my part of the state I don't sense that he has lost much support.)

I really hope the terrorist attack on the capitol was the worst of it, but I'm not sure 2020 is over just yet.

48lyzard
jan 11, 2021, 12:20 am

>47 swynn:

Yes, I had a 'Oh, crap, Missouri!" moment the other day. I hope you're flattered. :)

It's always a bit weird from my position (geographically and electronically) realising that you guys are in the middle of different aspects of what comes to us just as "news"---trying to place everyone in the correct context.

We can only hope that this Senate is as determined (and as successful) as Drury's fictional one in holding people accountable.

49swynn
jan 11, 2021, 10:09 pm

>48 lyzard: I hope you're flattered.
Yeah, a little.

I share that hope.

50justchris
jan 11, 2021, 10:28 pm

>48 lyzard: Well, my state's newly elected and just sworn in Rep was one of the asshats who objected to certifying the electoral vote; 2 of our 8 Congress folks participated in that travesty. He's been a pain to Wisconsin for years, and I guess he decided he needed a larger stage and more people to victimize. And our Republican Senator has been happy to signal boost all sorts of conspiracy bullshit while simultaneously assuring us that neither he nor Trump bears any responsibility for recent events. Sigh.

I second your hope regarding accountability.

51swynn
Bewerkt: jan 12, 2021, 6:21 pm

>50 justchris: while simultaneously assuring us that neither he nor Trump bears any responsibility for recent events

My House representative is also one of the problems, entirely separate from my Senator(s). About the terrorist attack he said, "This is not how we settle disputes in America," but also voted against the way we *actually* settle disputes in America.

My senior senator announced that Trump has touched the "hot stove" and learned not to touch it again. Which, baloney --Trump long ago learned that if he touches the hot stove, it's the stove's fault and the stove must be punished.

It enrages me to watch these "representatives" insist they had no responsibility for January 6 when we all know that if things had gone differently they would have crowed that it was their idea all along. And it keeps me awake at night to know that it might go differently still -- these fist-pumping fake patriots are doing all they can to make sure nobody is held accountable because they want a second chance.

Goodness, I hope I'm wrong.

52richardderus
jan 12, 2021, 2:56 pm

>36 swynn: Mewing.

No.

>44 swynn: A fascinating look at a world I forget exists: Non-white Germany. Turkish Gastarbeiter have kids who're mixed race or all Turkic, but whose worlds are German, fall out of my awareness too easily. Germany's brand, in my mind at least, is Nazi-white-supremacist.

53HanGerg
jan 12, 2021, 4:29 pm

Hi Steve! I'm here for the DAWs and have found much else of interest as well! I'd never heard of this epic German space opera - fascinating stuff! And I would like to add my vote for Stacey Abrams as the new Wonder Woman. What an amazing story of overcoming adversity by just rolling your sleeves up and getting to work righting wrongs. As for everything else in your neck of the woods - well, it's not that shocking, in that they've been telling everyone they were going to do it, but it's still appalling. My interest as an outsider looking in is this - what was up with the Capitol police, and those that made decisions about policing that day. It seems they messed up in a big way. Deliberately, one wonders? And if so, to what end? Were they on the side of the terrorists? Because actually I think an angry mob that doesn't get into the building itself but is repelled by overwhelming police presence doesn't play as badly as a mob that does get in and runs riot. So if their effort was the help, it may well have backfired. But maybe it was just good old incompetence, I don't know.
Also, I took up running last year - in a very minor way, I've only recently run 5K, but I look froward to some running tips here as well.

54swynn
Bewerkt: jan 13, 2021, 9:31 am

>52 richardderus: A fascinating look at a world I forget exists: Non-white Germany.

Agreed. When I learned about the Massaquoi biography last year, it surprised me that such an account existed. And of course it shouldn't have (surprised me, that is). I'm trying to fix my ignorance on that. There exists also a memoir by Ika Hügel-Marshall, friend of Audre Lorde, and there is also a follow-up to Massaquoi's memoir in which he recounts his post-German in New York. I hope to get to both this year, and would be delighted to learn about more. The Massaquoi, Hännschen klein, ging allein, arrived in the mail on Monday.

>53 HanGerg: Welcome Hannah to my 2021 thread! I know only what I read in the news, but it looks very much like at least some of the people who are supposed to protect us from this sort of thing were, in fact, in on it.

And congrats on the 5K! I do mean to get back to running soon, but I'm afraid of the gym, and there is ice, so we'll see when that happens ...

55justchris
jan 15, 2021, 1:12 am

>44 swynn: Thanks for the great review and bringing these stories to our attention. They definitely need to be shared. Because yes, I'm another American who automatically thinks white Nazis and Jewish victims when hearing Germany, and of course it's much richer and more complicated in its history and reality.

>53 HanGerg: Yes, the "oversights" and glad-handing and minimizing and outright abetting of white supremacist terrorists by law enforcement (and Congressional members) is an ongoing thing here. The FBI had a whole section focused on homegrown right-wing extremists; they were shut down, their reports suppressed, and any mention of white supremacist terror groups erased or minimized in briefings and news coverage. This was long before Trump, and the Democrats were complicit in continuing to focus antiterror efforts on Muslim commnities over the years.
See this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/21/i-warned-of-rig...
That's clearly no longer the situation at the FBI, but it certainly had a profound chilling effect on tracking this particular vector of violence. Trump's reign just made all of this visible to the majority in ways that cannot be ignored any longer. Local law enforcement around the coutnry has been complicit or actively in cahoots with right-wing groups like Proud Boys. See all the news out of Portland last year. See the targeting of leftie protestors by California law enforcement effectively partnered with Proud Boys/Atomwaffen.

>54 swynn: Reports of Republican Congress members giving guided "tours" in the days before the siege make me grind me teeth. And now the reports that they are also responsible for turning it into a super-spreader event and getting their colleagues sick. Grrr.

56PersephonesLibrary
jan 15, 2021, 5:26 am

Awesome mix of different genres! And they all look very tempting! Happy reading weekend!

57richardderus
jan 18, 2021, 12:36 pm

58swynn
jan 18, 2021, 8:13 pm

>55 justchris: The whole thing is frightening and enraging, the last week gut-clenching. I'm somewhat relieved that the weekend went more quietly than I expected, but we still have a few hours to go. Party Wednesday.

>56 PersephonesLibrary: Thanks Kathy! And welcome to the thread!

>57 richardderus: I wasn't aware of that source, Richard. Thanks for the link!

59swynn
Bewerkt: feb 14, 2021, 1:05 pm



Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. January/February 2021

Latest issue of F&SF, the last under C.C. Finlay's editorship. Stories struck me as mostly just okay, but standouts for me were Jonathan Howard's affecting "Interludes with the Gunwright" and Susan Palwick's vivid "The Litter Witch." I also got a kick out of the DiFilippo and the Morrow. Cover by Kent Bash.

Integral Nothings by Robert Reed
Mysterious, anonymous aliens make adjustments to Earth's environment. At first the changes are benign to humans: correcting effects of climate change, for example, so the mystery benefactors are called "The Blessings." But the Blessings have their own aims, not necessarily including humans' welfare.

The Diamond Family Glitters by H. Pueyo
From grandmother vovò Miriam on down, all members of the Diamante family have some kind of supernatural power -- "brilliance," they call it. But as vovò Miriam approaches the end of her life, the Diamantes worry that their brilliances may die with her.

Interludes with the Gunwright by Jonathan L. Howard
A soldier needing guns enters the shop of a gunwright whose products she cannot afford. The soldier and the gunwright come to an agreement for a secured loan: the weapons the soldier needs, for the temporary use of an artifact the gunwright admires. So begins a relationship.

The Dark Ride by John Kessel
Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley at the Pan-American Expedition in 1901. But first he visits a carnival ride that simulates a visit to the Moon. Historical-fiction scenes of Czolgosz's crime and its aftermath alternate with scenes of his visit to the Moon and meetings with revolutionaries there.

A Little Knife Music by Jenn Reece
A girl with a talent for throat cutting goes to an assassins' school. Feels like a first chapter.

N-raptured by Justin C. Key
Set in a future where any white person who says the N-word seven times turns into a rat.

Hard! by Van Aaron Hughes
A divorced father looking to bond with his son encourages the boy's sudden interest in curling. He takes his son to a curling tournament, where some players hail from outer space.

The Litter Witch by Susan Palwick
A sort of surreal fairy-tale about a girl who leaves her abusive family to build a home in the woods. She is happy and sheltered there until a survivor of a small-airplane crash stumbles on her residence.

Plumage from Pegasus by Paul DiFilippo
The trend in sf anthologies has become annual "best of" collections featuring excessively niche subgenres (e.g. The Year's Best Science Fiction Stories Featuring Big Guns, Large-Bosomed Female Spies, Ethnic Bad Guys and Speculative Realpolitik Adventures) The narrator is an agent whose job it is to arrange publication of sufficiently many of these niche stories to fill the anthologies every year.

Wild Geese by Lavie Tidhar
The intro to this story calls the setting "post-post-cyberpunk," and I have no idea what that means but it feels an awful lot like dying earth, which seems to me pre-cyberpunk, therefore almost certainly pre-post-post-cyberpunk. Anyway, the plot is a young man and his android friend who wander into the wilderness where they find a city-building machine.

Bible Stories for Adults 51: The Great Fish by James Morrow
Rebekah Margolis, philosopher and author of a new thesis about God's nonexistence, is on a transatlantic voyage when her ship is attacked by a whale-like creature. Rebekah and her son fall down the whale's gullet. In the whale's belly they meet an otherworldly being who has been kidnapping philosophers who have disruptive theological positions; they also meet other hostages like Lucretius, William Blake, and Baruch Spinoza -- philosophers Rebekah has never heard of.

The Piper by Karen Joy Fowler
In a pseudo-medieval fantasy world, two boyhood friends grow up to take different paths.

60swynn
Bewerkt: jan 18, 2021, 9:31 pm

The reading seems to be going pretty slow so far this year -- I have a couple of projects going on at work, where I need to up my skills a bit (anyone have a favorite WordPress bible?)

I'm trying to take the time to read a short story every day, hence the F&SF. I have plenty of sf magazines lying around, so maybe I can make a dent in those at least.

Still making progress on The Agony and the Ecstasy, though it's more of a slog than it feels like it should be. If I can maintain a rate of 30 pages a day, I can still make the end of the month.

61lyzard
Bewerkt: jan 19, 2021, 1:23 am

>60 swynn:

Yo.

BTW I've officially written off The Source this month so you have the opportunity for a catch up (if you need extra motivation).

62justchris
jan 18, 2021, 9:58 pm

>59 swynn: Nice summaries.

>60 swynn: Good luck with the projects. I hope you do make a dent in the sf magazines. Glad you have digestible reading material for your current circumstances.

63swynn
jan 18, 2021, 11:07 pm

>61 lyzard: Thanks, Liz! I'm optimistic about The Agony and the Ecstasy, but less so about Ship of Fools, for which I've never heard an enthusiastic review.

>62 justchris: Thanks, Chris! I sure have a bunch of 'em.

64RBeffa
jan 19, 2021, 1:02 am

>59 swynn: Gosh it feels like Finlay just got here. Have not been reading recent issues of F&SF and have only read maybe 4 issues with Finlay at the helm.

65swynn
jan 19, 2021, 7:53 am

>64 RBeffa: Finlay has been editor for six years so, yeah, a respectable but not especially long run. Taking over is Sheree Renee Thomas, whose work I've heard of but haven't sampled.

66richardderus
jan 19, 2021, 12:08 pm

>59 swynn: "N-raptured" sound like a fever dream of fairness to me.

>60 swynn: Stress does a number on concentration, so no surprise to me that you're going slower than normal. My response has turned from "not right now" to hamster-on-a-wheel paced productivity. I'm six or seven books ahead of my projected goal's required pace!

Blissful Wednesday to come.

67justchris
jan 19, 2021, 10:22 pm

>65 swynn: I know Sheree Renee Thomas from the Dark Matter collections. I definitely benefited from reading those stories. Some I so didn't get, others I loved, and plenty were very illuminating to me as a white person. Definitely keepers in my personal library.

68swynn
Bewerkt: jan 20, 2021, 3:38 pm

You know that feeling when you're expecting the almost-forgotten joy of complete sentences coherently arranged -- and the speaker overdelivers by saying things you actually want to hear and really want to believe?

That was the inauguration I needed, is what I'm saying.

69swynn
jan 20, 2021, 1:48 pm

>66 richardderus: It's a solid story, clever and funny and knowing when the joke has run its course.

Yeah, stress is a big part of what's been going on. It's probably good to acknowledge that.

70swynn
jan 20, 2021, 1:50 pm

>67 justchris: I have the first Dark Matter collection in my very large unread-on-Kindle collection. This seems like a good time to dig it out. Thanks for the nudge!

71justchris
jan 20, 2021, 2:13 pm

>70 swynn: My favorites are "Chicago 1927" (still haven't found the complete Gilda stories collection), "Can You Wear My Eyes," "Ganger (Ball Lightning)" (well, everything by Nalo Hopkinson, really), "The Goophered Grapevine," and "The Evening and the Morning and the Night."

72lyzard
jan 20, 2021, 3:57 pm

the almost-forgotten joy of complete sentences coherently arranged

Is it wrong that the reverse has almost been overshadowing all the rest for me?? :D

73richardderus
jan 20, 2021, 6:05 pm

>68 swynn: I'll look it up on YouTube, since I spent my day being cardiologisted. (If you had any time soon in the pool about my demise's date, get your money back.)

74swynn
jan 20, 2021, 6:17 pm

>71 justchris: Looking forward to those. I'll probably pick that up after I finish the Nov/Dec 2020 issue of F&SF.

75swynn
Bewerkt: jan 20, 2021, 6:22 pm

>72 lyzard: Probably, but I hear you. I have thought many times over the past four years, "He'd probably get away with this if he weren't such an inarticulate buffoon."

Of course, that thought was usually followed by "Dang, he's getting away with it anyway."

And usually the next time he lowered the bar further.

But enough about the Trumpression. Today is a good day.

76swynn
jan 20, 2021, 6:21 pm

>73 richardderus: Good news, Richard! May that pool be long unprofitable.

77drneutron
jan 21, 2021, 8:43 am

>75 swynn: Trumpression. I’m stealing that!

78richardderus
jan 21, 2021, 11:48 am

Steve, University of Illinois Press sent me a newly-published notice today about Mobilizing Black Germany:
Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement by Tiffany N. Florvil. Since we were just talking about it....

79swynn
jan 21, 2021, 4:27 pm

>78 richardderus: Oooh, that's definitely on topic. Thanks!

80swynn
jan 21, 2021, 4:35 pm

>77 drneutron: You're welcome to it, Jim!

81PaulCranswick
jan 30, 2021, 8:53 pm

>75 swynn: He must be the most inarticulate world leader for many a moon if not ever.

82swynn
jan 31, 2021, 10:47 pm

83swynn
Bewerkt: feb 1, 2021, 8:48 am

I didn't finish many books this month, but I *did* finish this one:



4) The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
Date: 1961

The bestselling novel (in the U.S.) of 1961 is not so much a novel as a dramatized biography of Michelangelo. Unlike the film, which focuses on the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's relationship with Pope Julius II, the novel lingers on every part of Michelangelo's life, from a youth conniving an apprenticeship against his father's wishes, to his elder years as a recognized master artist. It's very episodic: in a typical episode Michelangelo articulates a vision and works through the challenges of a particular piece; or he finds himself required to produce a work in an unfamiliar medium, then find that actually he's the best there is in *that* medium too. Some of the episodes are absorbing: I found especially effective a set piece where Michelangelo teaches himself anatomy by (illegally) dissecting corpses in a morgue, or an episode where he is required to engineer a road to an inaccessible marble quarry.

Stone's theme is the tension between artistic vision and the messy world in which that vision must be realized. But while he admirably depicts the messy world, his idea of artistic vision feels romanticized and simplistic, a problem magnified by the way he repeats the point over and over again with little change in nuance. Have I mentioned it is long? It is long. Despite the book's merits, its repetitions and length made completing it a chore. It probably didn't help that I've been unusually distracted this month, and it's very possible the fault lies in my attention rather than the text. Which, by the by, is long.

Also, sex is weird, in ways that I'm not sure I followed. Michelangelo frequently admires male bodies. Not so much female bodies, and he even says he finds the female form uninteresting. (Though he seems to change his mind for his work The Last Judgment.) Yet despite his fascination with male bodies, Michelangelo's lovers are women. Well, his human lovers, anyway; he seems attracted more to marble than to any human: the act of sculpting is described in erotic terms, and his lovemaking to humans invokes imagery of sculpture. What is this about? Is it kink? Sublimation? Is Stone just trying to tell us that Michelangelo really likes to sculpt? To convince us that Michelangelo may have had sort-of sex with rocks but certainly not with men? There's probably a term paper in here somewhere.

84rosalita
feb 1, 2021, 7:32 am

>83 swynn: Nice review, Steve. You might have mentioned this already, but how long is it?

;-)

85swynn
Bewerkt: feb 1, 2021, 11:44 am

>84 rosalita: It's pretty long. :)

My copy was about 650 pages, but the print was dense and my page-per minute rate was about half of baseline.

86richardderus
feb 1, 2021, 10:45 am

>83 swynn: We call this "straightwashing." Michelangelo had female lovers, and male lovers. This was unremarkable in that time. It wasn't until the 19th century and its extreme prurience and pursey-lipped judgments that most public discourse decided to focus on the genitals of the sinners instead of the acts.

Permaybehaps if he'd been allowed more room to develop his theses, he'd've found a way to bookhorn in some more nuanced analysis.

87swynn
Bewerkt: feb 1, 2021, 12:59 pm

>86 richardderus: Thanks, Richard. I was unfamiliar with the term, but recognize its referent. And straightwashing is what it feels like, Stone's account of Michelangelo's admiration for men but sexual preference for women and marble.

It's the "and marble" that complicates it for me. I'm intrigued be the idea of an artist's erotic attraction to their medium. Surely it happens, and surely more often than artists care to articulate publicly. Is Stone just straightwashing -- really folks, it's All About The Art -- or does he have sources? Did Michelangelo leave letters or diary entries that suggest object sexuality? (Also a new term to me, but a thing.) I don't know, and my patience for investigating the question ran out after a few fruitless Google searches.

88lyzard
Bewerkt: feb 1, 2021, 4:25 pm

>83 swynn:, >84 rosalita:, >85 swynn:

It is a bit long... :D

The problem I had with it is that M. never changes or even learns anything. He doesn't even have to learn his art, or rather arts, he's just inherently perfect at all of them. It doesn't make him an interesting protagonist.

But as you say, some of its aspects are gripping in themselves, including the extreme eroticisation of the act of sculpture. I would agree that straightwashing is what this is, though I think it's not reflective of Stone's own discomfort with M.'s preferences but his realisation that he couldn't at the time get away with anything more explicit. I would interpret this as his way of conveying as much truth as he could.

I must admit that the thought of erotic attraction to marble per se hadn't occurred to me but I guess that could well be A Thing.

89justchris
feb 1, 2021, 4:28 pm

>83 swynn: I've seen the book around, and I certainly love Michelangelo, but I'm sure this is not the book for me. Thanks for the review. I think I missed how long it was?

90justchris
feb 1, 2021, 4:28 pm

>83 swynn: I've seen the book around, and I certainly love Michelangelo, but I'm sure this is not the book for me. Thanks for the review. I think I missed how long it was--could you repeat that?

91swynn
Bewerkt: feb 1, 2021, 5:42 pm

>88 lyzard: The problem I had with it is that M. never changes or even learns anything. He doesn't even have to learn his art, or rather arts, he's just inherently perfect at all of them.

I agree that this makes it a difficult novel. Lack of development, along with instant natural perfection, makes it very Mary-Sue-ish. On the other hand, it may be a dull narrative arc but also fit the facts: the man produced the Pieta and the David in his mid-twenties, after which he had little left to prove. It helped for me when I stopped thinking of it as a novel and instead as a biography with dialogue, and an especially admiring one. And though the protagonist may have lacked dimension, some of the most interesting content for me was the social and political context, which was fascinating and surprisingly easy to follow.

92swynn
feb 1, 2021, 5:33 pm

>90 justchris: Happily!

Reader, it was long.

93RBeffa
feb 1, 2021, 6:45 pm

>83 swynn: 35-40 years ago when I read this it gave me an appreciation for Michelangelo that I am sure I would never have had otherwise. I thought it a great book at the time. I don't think I ever saw the film.

94scaifea
feb 2, 2021, 7:35 am

Ha! I love that this discussion about the eroticism of sculpture is going on in the same week I've taught Ovid's Pygmalion story to my myth class... Anyway, yeah, there's a long tradition of men falling in love with their sculptures.

95swynn
Bewerkt: feb 2, 2021, 9:47 am

>94 scaifea: Of course! Pygmalion should have occurred to me, though I think there is something slightly different going on here, in that Pygmalion fell in love with his creation and was rewarded by the gods turning his sculpture into a human. In this case, M. seems to be in love with the stuff with which he creates -- turning the stone into a human would remove the very qualities he finds alluring.

(If in fact that's what's going on. I'm pretty sure it's not what Stone intended.)

96scaifea
feb 2, 2021, 10:40 am

>95 swynn: Ooooh, that's a very cool comparison! I may now need to read the Stone book just to think more about it...

(Don't care one bit whether it's what Stone intended - I'm Team Reader Response all the way.)

97swynn
feb 2, 2021, 10:50 am

>96 scaifea: I may now need to read the Stone book ...

Did I mention it's .... oh yeah, I mentioned.

You might find it interesting in many ways. Another theme is the revival of Roman aesthetics in an atmosphere of religious judgment. Classical allusions are pretty common. I'm a little leary of recommending it because it is not a trivial undertaking, but its merits are considerable.

98scaifea
feb 2, 2021, 10:54 am

>97 swynn: Ha! Thanks for the fair warning about the... I'll keep that in mind.

99swynn
Bewerkt: feb 2, 2021, 11:31 am

>93 RBeffa: I think it is a good book, Ron, and hope that I've communicated some of what I see as its strengths. I think a big piece of my less-than-enthusiastic reaction to it had to do with other things competing for my attention.

100RBeffa
feb 2, 2021, 6:25 pm

>99 swynn: Some of these monster sized books from when I was younger don't always hold up so well to my older sense. As far as I know that was the only Irving Stone book I ever read and I probably only read it because it was one of my mom's books. But she handed off to me some good ones in my twenties. I may grab a library copy in the future and nibble at it. Your review certainly piqued my interest.

101swynn
Bewerkt: feb 9, 2021, 12:47 pm

Reading Hänschen klein, ging allein..., Hans Massaquoi's follow-up to Destined to Witness, in which he shares stories from his career as a journalist and editor in the United States. He shares stories about his friendship with Alex Haley, who worked for twelve years on a book that he expected would make his career. Whenever Massaquoi asked how the book was going Haley always replied "Slowly," so often that Massaquoi came to suspect it would never be finished.

Finally, one day Haley told him that the book was, in fact, finished.
_____
I was speechless. "Honestly?" I asked, as soon as I had found my voice again.

"One hundred percent," he replied with a grin. "I finally did it."

All that was missing was a title, he said, and the book could be published. He had narrowed the choice to two titles, and wanted to know which sounded better to me. "How do you like
Before This Anger?" he asked, to which I responded that in my opinion it was an excellent title for such a book. "What do you think of Roots?"

Without hesitation I said, "
Roots will never sell." And the rest, as they say, is history.
_____

This story fascinates me because I find it hard to grasp that Haley's book could ever have been titled anything else.

102swynn
feb 8, 2021, 5:48 pm

>100 RBeffa: Hope you find it holds up, Ron!

103richardderus
feb 8, 2021, 7:16 pm

>101 swynn: It is indeed hard to think of it as anything but Roots, but I've always thought it was a decidedly difficult-to-sell title before it was a bestseller. I mean, "try this amazing book! The title? Roots. Wait! Come back!" must've happened a dozen zillion times before the first readers found it.

104swynn
feb 9, 2021, 9:58 am

>103 richardderus: I don't know, it's never struck me as off-putting.

There is probably a reason I'm never invited to sit on marketing committees. (Not that I'm complaining, mind.)

105richardderus
feb 9, 2021, 11:41 am

>14 FAMeulstee: I don't think off-putting is it...just blah, unexciting, unpromising for a book that is at heart a rip-snortin' white-knuckle battle for survival from giddy-up to whoa.

Roots says gardening manual, or like something they accidentally left the subtitle off: "A Comprehensive Study of the Literary Exegetical Texts of Chattel Slavery, 1600-1800"

106swynn
feb 9, 2021, 12:46 pm

>105 richardderus: Roots says gardening manual

Ah. This I grasp.

My gut (which as noted has not the best marketing instincts) says that the alternative, Before This Anger, would have been a turn-off to White audiences anxious about Black anger.

107richardderus
feb 9, 2021, 12:59 pm

>106 swynn: Your gut doesn't lead you astray in this instance. Anything about Blackness makes white people anxious and afraid, though, so the balancing act is to avoid triggering their pre-emptive rage.

So tedious.

108brodiew2
feb 9, 2021, 2:51 pm

Hello swynn! I hope all is well with you.

>83 swynn: Your reviews are always a pleasure to read, regardless of my interest in the subject. Sounds weird. ;-)

109lyzard
feb 10, 2021, 8:15 pm

>105 richardderus:, >106 swynn:

It's particularly awkward here where the word has an additional vernacular meaning. :D

110swynn
feb 14, 2021, 12:29 pm

>109 lyzard: Yes, that complicates the perception. But honestly I like the ambiguity -- individual heritage, collective heritage, sources of a social condition, the fields (literal and metaphorical) in which the characters labor -- and maintain that once a reader gets past an initial confusion, it's a uniquely apt title.

111swynn
Bewerkt: feb 14, 2021, 1:02 pm



Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. November/December 2020

The Nov/Dec 2020 issue contains 6 novelettes and 4 short stories, also poetry by Beth Cato and Mary Soon Lee, and book reviews by Charles de Lint and Michelle West. The standout for me is Nadia Afifi's moving novelette, "The Bahrain Underground Bazaar", though I found Nick Dichario's bizarre "La Regina Ratto" weirdly charming, and Lyndsie Manusos's "How to Burn Down the Hinterlands" a gutpunch of controlled anger. Most of the others I found okay. Cylin Busby's story is effectively creepy but also felt familiar. I think I'd have appreciated Hughes's and Hartmann's stories more if I had read earlier entries in their series. Dorie's story feels like a joke that I just don't get.

The Bahrain Underground Bazaar by Nadia Afifi
The Bahrain underground bazaar offers recordings of experiences taken from people with neural implants. A woman with terminal cancer frequents the bazaar seeking death experiences and becomes obsessed with one.

La Regina Ratto by Nick Dichario
A man befriends rats who help him in his career, and who advise him when his new boss is a giant rat. They warn him not to become romantically involved but ...

How to Burn Down the Hinterlands by Lyndsie Manusos
A high-fantasy story about a young blacksmith whose mother was killed by the king for forging a forbidden weapon. She is visited by representatives of the king with commission to forge a forbidden weapon.

The Glooms by Matthew Hughes
A couple of wizards' henchmen go on the run from wizards, become couriers for revolutionaries, then get found by the wizards anyway. Last in a series that makes frequent references to earlier entries.

The Homestake Project by Cylin Busby
A Princeton researcher goes miles deep into a mine looking for extremophiles.

On Vapor, Which the Night Condenses by Gregor Hartmann
Homicide detective Philippa Song investigates a murder where the weapon is an artificial sea star, and the apparent target is a disagreeable artist.

A Tale of Two Witches Albert E. Cowdry
A retired Army officer with a sixth sense investigates the disappearance of her niece's son.

A Civilized and Orderly Zombie Apocalypse per School Regulations by Sarina Dorie
An elementary school teacher tries to protect her class when the school is attacked by the walking dead.

The Silent Partner by Theodore McCombs
A dealer in antique furniture appraises the estate of a rich family who acquired many of their pieces during the Japanese internments of the 1940s.

Skipping Stones in the Dark by Amman Sabet
When residents on a generation ship resist regulations, the ship's AI has to find a way to teach them a lesson.

112swynn
Bewerkt: feb 14, 2021, 2:02 pm



5) Hänschen klein, ging allein ... by Hans Massaquoi
Date: 2004

Last year I read Massaquoi's first memoir, an account of his childhood growing up Black in Nazi Germany. After the war he moved to Liberia to live with his father's family, but he soon emigrated to the United States on a student visa, where he was drafted into the Army and served as a paratrooper in Korea. And damn, how do you top that?

You don't, of course, and Massaquoi explains that he had no plans to write a second book. But Destined to Witness was phenomenally successful in Germany (where it was published as "Neger Neger Schornsteinfeger" which means exactly what it looks like if you know that a Schornsteinfeger is a chimney sweep -- there's a whole 'nother conversation about titles and marketing, I tell you), and his German readership requested that he continue his memoirs with a volume about his career as a journalist and editor at Ebony magazine.

So this is that. It's a very different book to the first, of course, with much less peril. It begins with Massaquoi's honorable discharge from the Army, after which he attended UI-Champaign, got married, had kids, struggled to find employment in a world where nobody would hire a Black reporter, and finally landed a job at Johnson Publishing Company, a publisher of magazines for the African-American market. Massaquoi started out writing copy for Jet magazine and rose through the ranks to retire as managing editor of Ebony. The really interesting stuff, of course, are the people and events he encounters through his career, during a period when "pioneers" ("the first Black _____") were aplenty. He interviews civil rights icons, athletes, entertainers, military officers, and world leaders. And though the struggles of Black Americans are always present, Massaquoi emphasizes successes, as he must have done for Jet and Ebony. As one might expect, it's frequently fascinating and also sometimes less so, but always a unique perspective.

The first memoir was originally written in English, but this follow-up is available only in German and I don't expect a translation soon. Massaquoi hints that his first book sold respectably in the U.S. but not well enough to warrant a sequel. On the other hand, he hints that an American movie adaptation of Destined to Witness was in the works, and if that ever happens then maybe. But I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, the German adaptation was pretty successful in its market, so it's not impossible.

One last note about titles: this one is derived from a German children's song about "Little Hans" who sets out to seek his fortune, and when he returns nobody recognizes him but his mother. The title means "Little Hans went alone ..." and the lyrics continue "... out into the wide world." I like it. (The title, not so much the song.) You can hear the song here, but be warned: I did say it was a children's song.

113brodiew2
feb 14, 2021, 2:34 pm

Hi swynn. Did you miss me in >108 brodiew2:?

114swynn
feb 14, 2021, 2:41 pm

>113 brodiew2: I did, Brodie! Apologies for that. I need to be more faithful about visiting the thread, and more attentive when I do.

Always glad to have you visit, Brodie!

115richardderus
feb 14, 2021, 3:51 pm

>111 swynn: The Amman Sabet story sounds really fascinating. I do love me some generation-ship stories!

>112 swynn: !!!

Happy week-ahead's reads, Steve.

116swynn
feb 15, 2021, 9:29 am

>115 richardderus: It wasn't a standout for me -- it's the kind of story that feels more like a thought experiment than a story -- but it was interesting.

Sabet is a new-to-me writer, so I'm looking forward to seeing more from him. In the meantime, I recommend his twitter feed where he waxes gnomic:
https://twitter.com/ammansabet?lang=en

e.g.:

"Over time, algorithms that make recommendations based on our tastes leave us soft and intolerant of art that we don't like or agree with. They make us more rigid and less flexible in our thinking. We think we are exploring our tastes, but our tastes are being explored.

117brodiew2
feb 15, 2021, 1:56 pm

swynn, any chance you watched The Stand on CBS All Access? If so, a penny for your thoughts. Did you see the 1994 mini-series? Did you like that one?

118swynn
Bewerkt: feb 15, 2021, 6:27 pm

>117 brodiew2: Hi Brodie! No, I don't have CBS All Access so haven't seen it yet. I did see the 1994 mini-series and liked it fine, though I am fuzzy on details. I find the Flagg character intriguing and remember liking Jeremy Sheridan's cool smirking take on it.

I am not a huge fan of the novel, so that probably affects my opinion. I remember reading the original version of the Stand and liking it fine but thinking parts needed tightening, especially an ending that just wouldn't end. Then the revised version was released and I remember thinking "Holy cow he made it *longer*?!?!?"

It's obviously a matter of taste, and I'm always interested in others' reactions to things whether or not the thing works for me. Did you see the new CBS version, and if so did it work for you?

119swynn
Bewerkt: feb 17, 2021, 9:40 am

Speaking of Stephen King,



6) If It Bleeds by Stephen King
Date: 2020

I enjoy King's stories but I do find him rambly, sometimes unbearably so. I prefer his story collections, where the sprawl is better controlled. This one is a collection of four novellas -- or "three novellas and a short novel." I liked them fine. Best was "The Life of Chuck" -- its three pieces don't really coordinate all that well, but it has a couple of poignant ideas, and the unusual structure keeps it fresh. Least favorite was "Rat," which is another iteration of the writer-with-emotional-issues-goes-into-seclusion-then-crazy trope of "The Shining" and "Secret Window."

Mr. Harrigan's Phone
Mr Harrigan is a rich old man who employs a boy to read to him and do odd jobs. When Harrigan does, the boy puts Harrigan's iPhone in the casket with him.

The Life of Chuck
Triptych of stories, presented in reverse chronological order, about a boy who grew up in a sort of haunted house, becomes an accountant with fond memories of his high school rock band, and dies early with the Whitmanesque thought that he contains multitudes and that the multitudes pass with him.

If It Bleeds
A detective notices that when tragedies happen, the same news reporter always seems to be first on the scene.

Rat
To finish his novel, a writer retires to a backwoods cabin where he either has a supernatural encounter with a rat, or goes mad. Or maybe both.

120richardderus
feb 17, 2021, 9:23 am

So so agreed about algorithmic culture! And it's so true that King's stories are much more pleasurable for those who enjoy concision to read.

A Kindlebundle of Irwin Shaw's fiction is $3.99 today: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075KY8L4D

Since you show every sign of enjoying tormenting yourself with long reads by windbaggy old men, I thought The Young Lions, The Troubled Air, and Bread Upon the Waters would appeal...and they come with his magisterial short story collection, Short Stories: Five Decades, which is worth the $4 all by itself.

121swynn
feb 17, 2021, 9:33 am

>120 richardderus: Clicked. The windbaggy stuff will probably sit in my account indefinitely, unless one of them shows up on some challenge or other, but I'm reading quite a few short stories right now, and will queue that collection.

122richardderus
Bewerkt: feb 17, 2021, 2:38 pm

>121 swynn: Yay! So glad I thought of letting you know.

ETA My favorite story of his, "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses," I reviewed on Goodreads last year...this year I'm adding another favorite, "Night, Birth and Opinion." Very necessary reading in a doomscrolly time.

123swynn
feb 17, 2021, 6:12 pm

>122 richardderus: I note both of those are in the short story collection, so I look forward to them.

124swynn
feb 17, 2021, 6:21 pm



7) Crossroads by Laurel Hightower
Date: 2020

This is a novella about a woman who loses her son in an automobile accident. One day visiting her son's roadside memorial, she accidentally spills blood on the ground and he seems to come back. But is it really her son, or something sinister? In either case, the price of seeing him again is more blood, and she is willing to pay. This one follows grief to a very bleak place. I have multiple contradictory feelings about it, but no question that it's powerful. TW for self-harm.

125swynn
feb 20, 2021, 3:14 am



8) Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
Date: 1962

A bunch of passengers take an ocean voyage from Mexico to Europe. We mostly pay attention to the upper-class passengers -- Europeans and Americans -- but there are also several hundred working-class passengers crammed into steerage. The cast spends the voyage being awful to each other, until they arrive, at which point it's over.

I've heard of this novel since I was an undergraduate, but never heard a positive review from anyone who had read it. I was dreading this entry in the bestseller challenge, because I had learned to expect an unpleasant parade of hateful characters and an almost complete lack of story. My expectations were met, but also ... you know what? It is also not as bad as I expected. Thank the magic of low expectations, I suppose.

True, it's a plotless aimless muddle of petty sniping, egotism, and unchallenged bigotry. On the other hand, the writing is quite good -- Porter knows how to put a sentence together, has a sharp eye for evocative detail, and a way with characterization that makes keeping track of the large cast not difficult at all. True, however good the writing it is here employed in the service of a misanthropic fever dream. But goodnesss knows it could be worse. After all, the dog survives, so I cannot hate it completely.

This was the bestselling novel of 1962, despite lacking all the usual qualities of a bestselling novel. Well, most of the usual qualities. It has a bestseller's length, I'll give it that.

126MickyFine
feb 20, 2021, 7:46 pm

At some point these bestsellers have to start being good, yes?

127swynn
feb 20, 2021, 10:48 pm

Probably. The one after next is one that I loved when I first read it in high school; but good ones have been scattered among the less good all along. Advise and Consent was pretty good, though overlong. Some especially memorable ones for me have been Edna Ferber's So Big, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and Mika Watari's The Egyptian.

Next up is Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman. I know nothing about it except that it's about a pope whom Anthony Quinn played in the film version, which I saw oh probably over thirty years ago and remember nothing else.

And I don't think we'll ever be clear of the awful ones. I mean, I haven't looked that far ahead but I'd be suprised if Fifty Shades of Grey isn't somewhere down the road.

128lyzard
Bewerkt: feb 21, 2021, 1:57 am

>127 swynn:

:D

I'd have less of a problem with an outright bad book than I do with all these "worthy" ones.

BTW, though I'm still open to persuasion, my plan at the moment is to call this challenge after 1995, which gives the neat 101 years I'm fond of. It's also at that point that the lists starting being dictated by who owned what publishing house: the point has been made that the Harry Potter books never officially made the US charts, for instance, so it offers a good excuse to bail.

129richardderus
feb 21, 2021, 12:00 pm

>125 swynn: Brilliant book. A scathing, vicious take-down of every revolting American right-wing archetype. Horrible, soulless capitalists held up for universal scorn and ridicule? What's not to love?

>127 swynn: Best of luck with ol' Morrie's overcooked dumpling. Both dry and stodgy, with a nauseatingly sweet mucilaginous custard. Better you than me.

130swynn
Bewerkt: feb 21, 2021, 2:04 pm

>128 lyzard: An off-ramp before Twilight? Tempting. Well see how I feel when we hit exit 1996.

>129 richardderus: Just so relentless, plotless, and long. I understand why it might be admired, since there were things I admired. But it's too bleak, too long, and just exhausting -- which, I grant, may be the point.

Re: Shoes of the Fisherman: the bestselling religious epics haven't been an especially satisfying genre for me, so I am not optimistic. But I'm trying to keep an open mind. Because there have been exceptions. I liked Ben Hur, and, on balance, The Song of Bernadette.

131richardderus
feb 21, 2021, 2:18 pm

>130 swynn: Well. I know you better than to expect this to work, but srsly dude...skip the painful, caltrop-strewn bed of hot coals West has tossed with such magnificent maleficence before you:
"Who cares about theology except the theologians? We are necessary, but less important than we think. The Church is Christ—Christ and the people. And all the people want to know is whether or not there is a God, and what is His relation with them, and how they can get back to Him when they stray.”
–and–
“You are not born to peace, my friend. This is the first thing you must accept. You will not come to it, perhaps, till the day you die. Each of us has his own cross, you know, made and fitted to his reluctant shoulders."
Dialogue. From the actual book.

I fear for your good nature after 400pp of this viscid insipid specious ooze.

132lyzard
feb 21, 2021, 3:07 pm

>131 richardderus:

No, no, no, you're missing the point!

It's only 250 pages!!!!

A doddle, really.

133swynn
feb 21, 2021, 4:44 pm

>131 richardderus: You are right on both counts: (1) it won't work, and (2) this doesn't look like one of the good exceptions.

>132 lyzard: Alas, the copy I have requested is 374 pages. Richard's estimate is closer. On the other hand that's still, what?, a third of a Michener?

134lyzard
Bewerkt: feb 21, 2021, 5:10 pm

>133 swynn:

{rechecks} My copy was 257 pages. You're a victim of your font. :D

(So a quarter of a Michener!)

And yes, it's basically a dissertation on what the church ought to be doing while the Cold War is heating up (plus some weird subplots).

135swynn
feb 21, 2021, 7:55 pm

>134 lyzard: Oh, how I hope it's just large print for the visually impaired. (Actually, that's increasingly appealing for other reasons ... )

136swynn
Bewerkt: feb 23, 2021, 8:39 am

Bret Stephens on Ted Cruz in the NYT:

Also, isn’t the whole Cancún Caper such a perfect encapsulation of Cruz’s character? He’s what happens when “All the King’s Men” meets “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” He’s Shakespeare’s Richard III as interpreted by Mr. Bean. He is to American statesmanship what “Fifty Shades of Grey” was to English prose writing, minus the, um, stimulus.

** Update: In my original post I misattributed this to Gail Collins. The linked article is a conversation between Collins and Bret Stephens, and it was actually Stephens who said this, in an especially perceptive moment. Thanks Julia for correcting me!

137drneutron
feb 22, 2021, 10:34 am

>136 swynn: That's a perfect description... Richard III interpreted by Mr. Bean... 😂😂

138richardderus
feb 22, 2021, 10:58 am

>136 swynn: I just posted that on Twitter. Priceless! Perfect!!

139swynn
feb 22, 2021, 11:05 am

>137 drneutron:
>138 richardderus:

I love Collins's columns. She seems pleased that Cruz gives us a dog story to rival Mitt Romney's, but I guess we ought to be grateful that at least Cruz didn't try to carry Snowflake in a cage attached to the plane's exterior ...

140rosalita
feb 22, 2021, 12:55 pm

>136 swynn: Gail Collins is a national treasure, for sure. I believe the hilariously apt quote you mention was actually from Bret Stephens, of whom I am much less enamored. I have to admit he hit the mark here, though.

141swynn
feb 22, 2021, 1:05 pm

>140 rosalita: Rats, you're right. I've edited the post above. It's still a good quote -- like you, I'm less a fan of Bret Stephens but am happy to give him credit when he's right.

And Gail Collins is still a treasure.

142richardderus
feb 22, 2021, 1:52 pm

>141 swynn: Still a truly great paragraphic dismissal of a dismal, drearily incompetently evil being.

My monthly visit to the facility's doc is accomplished to the accompaniment of an old Zelazny novel I found out is being adapted for the HBO linear-dinosaurians: Roadmarks. It was sufficiently resident in my head already that it was an hour-long refresher-flipping, not a deep reacquaintance.

There are dragons. Absent ones, possibly mythical ones. And where there are mediocre dragons, there also is George RR Martin...and so it was.

143rosalita
feb 22, 2021, 2:05 pm

>141 swynn: Agreed on all counts!

144swynn
Bewerkt: feb 22, 2021, 6:59 pm



9) Temper by Nicky Drayden
Date: 2018

Last year I read and loved Drayden's debut novel, The Prey of Gods, a wild mashup of folklore, theology, and urban fantasy in a South African setting. I find this one harder to love. It's set in an alternate South Africa, where everyone has a twin, twins are psychically linked, and sometime in childhood seven vices (and their opposite virtues) are ritually distributed between the twins and marked on the skin. The number of vices assign to a person determines their opportunities through life. This social structure is explained by twin gods, a good and a bad one, who recreated the world along these vice/virtue binaries. The story focuses on a pair of twins with a very imbalanced distribution of vices. One of them becomes possessed by a wild spirit, and their efforts to exorcise the spirit lead to an exploration of the world.

I think that's the story, anyway. I'm not sure I followed it all. Drayden seems to be saying something about ambiguities like vice and virtue, good and bad, male and female, that exist on spectra (to the extent they can be defined at all) but are forced into fake binaries. I share what I read as her skepticism of such categories. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me as a story: the setting felt too contrived, and the characters' motives were too often unclear to me.

In any case, the cover is outstanding. It's by the terrific Thea Harvey, of whose work you can see more here:

https://www.artstation.com/peixel

145richardderus
feb 22, 2021, 7:09 pm

>144 swynn: I expect you'll like Escaping Exodus a lot more. Plus its second volume comes out tomorrow! There will be a series by the time you've got around to the first one!

(I think the idea got ahead of her, too, though I don't criticize aloud because it's so damned ambitious that I want to cheer her for rejecting binary thinking more than I want her to make the twins thing more organically part of the world.)

146swynn
feb 22, 2021, 10:50 pm

I agree it's ambitious, and despite my criticism I think it's a more interesting exercise than many of its peers. I'm still looking forward to Escaping Exodus

147brodiew2
feb 23, 2021, 1:14 am

Hello swynn!

>119 swynn: I can see how you find King bloated at times. I have never been a big fan, and prefer his more psychological suspense above the blood and guts, but can go on sometimes. I was thinking of taking a look at The Outsider, but I don't know.

>144 swynn: I have to hand it you for seeing through so many ultimately disappointing reads so far. I'm sorry this one didn't work out either. At least you are mixing up the genres. ;-)

148Dilara86
feb 23, 2021, 2:55 am

>144 swynn: Shame about Temper, but I've just added The Prey of Gods to my wishlist, thanks to your mention.

149scaifea
feb 23, 2021, 7:58 am

>136 swynn: *snork!* Oh, that's perfect!

150swynn
Bewerkt: feb 23, 2021, 10:10 am

>142 richardderus: Zelazny is an author that I feel I *ought* to have read more of. I read the first couple of Amber books back in high school, or maybe earlier, and remember very little of them except it was a portal fantasy series for which my interest ran quickly out. I also remember reading, but none of the plot of, Coils which he co-wrote with Fred Saberhagen. And a few years ago as part of the DAW project I read To Die in Italbar, which I remember as a mess.

The one I think I really need to read but haven't gotten around to is Lord of Light, which gets lots of love. But maybe I'll add Roadmarks, if you thought it worth a revisit and if it's about to blip on the pop-culture Zeitgeist. Thanks for mentioning it!

** Update: and after seeing your three-star review on your thread, I think I'll keep Lord of Light at the top of the someday-list.

>147 brodiew2: Both supernatural or psychological suspense, appeal to me and King's stuff is so well-loved that I feel I should admire it more than I do. But I find his prose frustrating. Happily, I find that Joe Hill covers very similar territory with a tighter style.

Has it been that disappointing? It doesn't feel like it, but as I review my list I agree that I've been unenthusiastic about most books, excepting the Nejar and Massaquoi memoirs which were fascinating; and Lauren Hightower's Crossroads. Maybe those help dilute any disappointment over the other works; I've also been reading more short stories this year and have enjoyed a lot of those. Maybe my head is in a place where it prefers leaner works?

>148 Dilara86: Hope you like The Prey of Gods half as much as I did, Dilara!

>149 scaifea: Isn't it though?

151swynn
feb 24, 2021, 12:58 pm



10) Outbreaks and Epidemics by Meera Senthilingam
Date: 2020

I saw this on somebody's "Best of 2020" list (maybe the Guardian's?) It covers a lot of territory in about 170 pages, all about diseases, ways we try to control them, and factors that make control difficult: things like anti-vaccination movements, population mobility, and climate change. There's even a little bit about COVID-19, which was probably added late in the book's development. It's admirably compact and informative, but maybe a little textbook-y.

152richardderus
feb 24, 2021, 2:48 pm

>150 swynn: Most sensibly done, Steve. Lord of Light is, by any measure, a more successful book.

153swynn
Bewerkt: feb 25, 2021, 8:51 am



11) The Floating Opera, and, The End of the Road by John Barth
Date: 1957-1958

I first encountered "The Floating Opera" in high school and became briefly obsessed with it. It's the story of a lawyer who wakes up one morning and decides to kill himself by the end of the day. We follow him through his day as he lays out his history: his father's suicide, a traumatic experience in a WWI foxhole, an unusual romantic triangle, a struggle to make sense of the world, and an overwhelming sense of comic futility. I'm happy to report that it mostly holds up on rereading. Oh, I am less enchanted by the nihilism and less intrigued by the adultery, more suspicious of the narrator's motives and less impressed by the way women throw themselves at him, more wary of his rationalization for self-destruction, and much more disturbed by the resolution. But it still made me laugh, and think, and envy John Barth for his sentencecraft.

"The End of the Road" is a new one to me. It is about an academic, Jacob Horner, who suffers from a sort of existential paralysis he calls "cosmopsis." As part of his treatment, he gets a job teaching grammar at a rural state teachers' college where he quickly becomes involved with the wife of a hyperrational colleague. The colleague learns about the affair, and doesn't exactly mind (or so he says) but insists on exploring the reasons for it, an exercise meaningless to Horner, for whom any explanation is as good (and as bogus) as another. The back-and-forth between incompatible perspectives would be more fun if it weren't for the third corner of the triangle, caught between her husband's manipulativeness and Horner's indifference. My feelings on this one are even more conflicted than they are for "The Floating Opera,' thanks to relationship abuse both physical and emotional. But here again: dang, but Barth can write.

154richardderus
feb 25, 2021, 10:31 am

Love, love, love The Floating Opera! Perfect sentences telling the deeply common story of "why not?" being the question to the answer "Forty-two."

The End of the Road is perfectly titled. If you're here, you're there.

I would sell organs to be able to write sentences as perfect as Barth's.

155swynn
Bewerkt: feb 25, 2021, 1:42 pm

Perfect is the word for them. Since a brief fascination with Barth in eleventh grade (or so), I have read barely anything by him -- only Lost in the Funhouse a couple of times in my undergrad years. Revisiting The Floating Opera has convinced me I must fix that. Happily, I have a copy of The Sot-Weed Factor and hopes of getting to it next month.

Or, you know, maybe April.

156richardderus
feb 25, 2021, 5:27 pm

>155 swynn: It could be sooner if you took off a certain pair of shoes....

157swynn
Bewerkt: feb 27, 2021, 7:06 am

>156 richardderus: it may not have been a mistake to read Morris West (I have my reasons ...) but it may have been a mistake to read him so soon after John Barth.

It's not awful, but rather like a sermon sprinkled with quotation marks and speech tags.

158justchris
feb 26, 2021, 11:30 pm

>136 swynn: I haven't particularly paid attention to the clownery that passes for current events, but that quote feels very spot on from what little I've caught.

>144 swynn: The Prey of Gods sounds good. And that Temper cover is great!

>150 swynn: I read Lord of Light as part of my Hugo challenge. It was okay. I didn't think it was all that after years of hearing it extolled. I never got around to the Amber books despite their ubiquity in my youth.

I went through a Stephen King phase because I too enjoy supernatural and psychological suspense. I preferred Dran Koontz because he accomplished the same without the verbosity and bizarre kinda meaningless elements. I also consumed a lot of Robin Cook's thrillers.

159swynn
feb 26, 2021, 11:44 pm

>157 swynn: Hi Chris! Do read The Prey of Gods -- incidentally, it has a pretty awesome cover too.

Hmm, a middling response to Lord of Light? Oddly, that makes me want to bump it up the list to finally form my own opinion.

I've enjoyed Dean Koontz to, and agree that he can get to the point more efficiently than King. I have also enjoyed Clive Barker and Peter Straub very much too. I don't think I've read any Robin Cook yet, though.

160swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 6, 2021, 4:17 pm



12) The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
Date: 1963

The bestselling novel in the US for 1963 is a religious drama centered on a pope who goes from Soviet persecution to the Holy See, where he deals with various issues that were hot-button topics in 1963. His background makes him uniquely situated to negotiate between the United States and the Soviet Union and help the world avoid a devastating conflict. It's very prone to moralizing and the dialogue is straight out of Sunday School. The sermonizing becomes wearing, though I am broadly sympathetic to most sentiments expressed -- that peace is important, that people are more important than institutions. Fortunately, Liz was right about length: it is short for a bestseller. My 374-page copy has a well-spaced, very readable font with generous margins.

One subplot developed differently than I expected. It involves American reporter George Faber, who is in a relationship with Chiara, the unhappy wife of young politician Corrado Callitri. Corrado is a gay man who married Chiara for social respectability, and now that she wants out Corrado won't give her a nullification. "She knew what I was when she married me," he says. Faber sets out to dig up dirt to pressure Corrado into releasing Chiara. At first it looks like a "Depraved Homosexual" trope. But as things proceed it becomes clear that Corrado is not exactly a villain and that Faber is not intended as a hero. In the end, Faber is punished (with expulsion from Rome) while Corrado and Chiara are rewarded (with a path to power and freedom from an unhappy marriage, respectively). The especially surprising bit comes at the end when Corrado has an interview with the Pontiff, who knows Corrado's history. Corrado defends himself saying "I am drawn to men. Why should I be ashamed of that?" The Pope replies: "You should not be ashamed. Only when your love becomes destructive..." One suspects this leaves too much room for weaselly definitions of "destructive," but I found the implied openness a pleasant surprise.

It is not all pleasant surprises: in particular, another subplot involves a paleontologist priest (based no doubt on Teilhard de Chardin) who is silenced because his theories offend religious technicalities. And, you know, fuck that. For that matter, the whole Faber/Callitri subplot would be a nothing if it weren't for rigid religious ideas about permissible relationships. But that's just the territory of religious drama. In the end, it's a perfectly okay example of a genre I dislike, and I liked the book better than my low expectations. Still, the chances of my reading more Morris West are extremely slim. Unless he shows up again in this challenge, I guess

161swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 7, 2021, 2:38 pm



13) The Atheist in the Attic by Samuel R. Delany
Date: 2018 (novella originally published 2016)

This is a novella describing a meeting between mathematician/philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza, in the form of pages from Leibniz's diary. It's very ruminative, as one might expect of the diary of an introspective man, and ranges over themes of class, antisemitism, language, desire, civilization, philosophy, and god. (Alas no mathematics, I can't help adding, but really I did not miss it.)

The volume also includes Delany's essay on "Racism and Science Fiction," which I had encountered before but bears rereading, and an interview with series editor Terry Bisson, which I found less rewarding -- Delany responds to many of the questions with "Yeah, I'm not the one to answer that." But the interview does contain a coda to an incident described in "Racism and Science Fiction," in which Delany was attacked at a Nebula awards banquet -- an incident about which I've long wondered how that played out. (On Delany's part, it turns out, with grace and insight.)

162swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 7, 2021, 2:51 pm



14) When The Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo
Date: 2020

This series, y'all. Last year I read and loved The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and doubted that any follow-up could follow adequately. So I'm happy to report that WTTCDTM is more than adequate, and touches some similar territory about how stories work in the context of a story that works. In it Chih, the folklorist from TEOSAF, is waylaid by shapeshifting tigers and must tell a story sufficiently interesting to postpone becoming their dinner.

Let's just say that if Chih were telling me the story I would not eat them for at least a thousand and one nights.

I see that Nghi Vo's next work is a riff on The Great Gatsby -- a work which has been a gap in my reading history so long that I take a sort of pride in it. Now I'm going to have to swallow that pride and close that gap because I really want to enjoy Vo's next.

Also: that cover is by Alissa Winans. If any publishers wander through: I wouldn't mind seeing more of her work.

163richardderus
mrt 7, 2021, 2:56 pm

>160 swynn: I suppose there's something to be said, in 1963, for a "shame, no; just don't *do* anything about it" attitude. I'm not too tolerant, I must say, of the weasellyness of my ancestors...my mother's brother was, basically, Corrado and never escaped the censorious weight of Judgment.

It seemed short to you! Those half-million-word homilies dragged on and on and on. How to make 374pp feel like 1374pp....

>161 swynn: (Alas no mathematics, I can't help adding, but really I did not miss it.) *chuckle*

164lyzard
mrt 7, 2021, 4:20 pm

>160 swynn:

If you coped with this one you'd probably be okay with the rest: this was West's "State Of The Church" novel and though he dealt frequently with the same themes he never did anything else quite so concentrated as this one.

You're ripping through them! You'll have caught me up again soon, or at least you will if James A. has anything to say about it. :D

165swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 7, 2021, 8:33 pm

>163 richardderus: If "destructive" just means "physically intimate" then yeah, fuck that too. It took me awhile to realize that Kiril's own chaste relationship with Telemond was probably intended to model permissible male intimacy and that the words of openness probably just hide the same old hate.

166swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 7, 2021, 8:33 pm

>164 lyzard: More West? Thank you but no thank you.

I intend to read Call For the Dead and A Murder of Quality before The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. That may slow me down a little, but they're pretty short so maybe not much.

167richardderus
mrt 7, 2021, 9:19 pm

>163 richardderus: My older sister's Jesusy moments included several memorable attempts to shame/guilt me about gay sex. I reminded her that, by her definition of FORBIDDEN!!! NO!!! DO NOT DO THIS!!! our mother's sexual abuse of me was perfectly fine. After all, look at Lot and his daughters...and who, please, were Cain's and Abel's wives?

After the Deefense of Marriage Act argument wherein she said this was a good law because what if "some gays" wanted her church to marry them we pretty much don't talk about...well, anything really. Religion is a horrible, poisonous, evil force in the world and the religious keep proving it for me.

168swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 8, 2021, 9:10 am

>167 richardderus: Ugh. My own experience with religion has been less uniformly toxic, and it is a continuing mystery to me why the benefits of religion -- cooperation, social support, a forum for making sense of the world -- are so consistently paired with a determination to define and condemn outgroups and to control their behavior, while hiding or excusing or even rewarding in-group failures.

Speaking of which, I'm midway through Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God, a history of how corporations bankrolled conservative religious movements in the 1930s to fight the New Deal, and also how Business lost control when civic religion became its very own monster.

169richardderus
mrt 8, 2021, 8:59 am

>168 swynn: No human thing is perfect. Sort of the reason for forgiveness in the first place, innit?

170swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 10, 2021, 5:26 pm



Perry Rhodan #143: Für Menschen Verboten = No Humans Allowed by William Voltz
Date: 1964

Following the events of last episode, the Terrans raise the urgency of developing technology that will let them "see" the invisible Laurins. One lab working on the problem is located on the planet Surprise, first visited in episode 139. But the lab is destroyed when a Posbi fleet unexpectedly attacks the planet. Fortunately most scientists were evacuated, except for a team of five who surely perished in the cataclysm.

Except they didn't perish. A transporter, activated by the emergency, sent them *somewhere* else in the galaxy. They arrive safely -- but arrive in a complex on a Posbi outpost crawling with robots. These robots are more of the sort that want to destroy all organic life, but the scientists temporarily convince the robots that they too are robots through clever use of prosthetics. The scientists know that when the robot brain completes its analysis of the data their ruse will not last, so they use their temporary freedom to escape the complex before the robots discover the error.

But as they make their escape, the scientists stumble across a room containing the Posbis' Laurin-locating technology. Now the scientists must not only survive but get news back to Earth, and as soon as possible.

171swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 12, 2021, 6:03 pm



15) One Nation Under God by Kevin M. Kruse
Date: 2015

This is a history of civic religion in the U.S., beginning in 1930 with the rise of organized religious opposition to the New Deal; through the 1950s mania of public religiosity that added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" our official motto; and closing in the 1970s with Richard Nixon's co-optation of evangelical Christianity as a partisan tool. It's tremendously interesting and hits many points that I'm embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing about. The Becker Amendment, for instance -- I had no idea how close we came to having a school prayer amendment to the Constitution. That we do not, is thanks mostly to the work of NY representative Emanuel Celler, who slow-walked the amendment through Judiciary Committee hearings while he and other opponents of the bill mobilized church leaders against it. That story alone is worth the read, but the whole book shines a bright light on the growth and development of the monster that is American religious politics.

But the subtitle promises to tell "How Corporate America Invented Christian America," and I think that's an overstatement. The introduction promises to show how "under God" and "In God We Trust" are not really so much about opposition to Communism as is commonly thought, but rather about opposition to New Deal policies, and I don't think his account supports that.

Kruse himself notes that FDR, an Episcopalian, frequently employed religious language in defense of New Deal policies. So the movement Kruse examines, it seems to me, is really a counter-movement within an already-existing civic religion, not an "invention" of one. As to whether "corporate America" invented it, Kruse tells how James Fifield, a prosperity-gospel megachurch minister, was already preaching against the New Deal before corporations got involved. Corporations can take credit for recognizing the potential of Fifield's nascent movement, and for bankrolling its growth and marketing. They also bankrolled Dwight Eisenhower's God-drenched campaign. But the movement escaped its benefactors' control after Eisenhower's inauguration -- ironically, when Eisenhower left New Deal programs alone it had the effect of bestowing divine blessing upon them. (Kruse calls it "sacralizing.") Civic religion moved past the New Deal, and politicians from both parties competed to out-pious each other, and yes, promoted and passed various acts to show how much more godly they were than the godless Communists. This is Kruse's own narrative, so it's a bit puzzling why he promises to expose the New Deal as the real motivator for the mid-1950's "Under God" craze.

Another gap in Kruse's account is the parallel development of civic religion outside of the (white) evangelical movement. In particular, there is no mention of the civic religion that developed among Black churches in support of civil rights. One would think that conservative white Christians were the only ones employing religion for political ends. This is not true.

So my criticisms are that Kruse overstates his thesis, and that his scope is narrower than some of his claims suggest. It's a very good account of the development of civic evangelicalism from the 1930s to the 1970s and one I very much appreciated. I was left wanting broader chronological and demographic contexts, but those involve other stories. And really, a book that leaves one wanting more has often done its job.

172richardderus
mrt 12, 2021, 1:41 pm

>171 swynn: To my mind, the primary failing of his thesis is that it doesn't start with "The Great Awakening" and its revolting business-ification that held the US hostage to its spiritually bankrupt and morally evil "self-reliance" doctrine.

Fucking christers. We need to expropriate the entire wealth of their denominations and give it, dollar for dollar, to fund atheist education efforts.

173swynn
mrt 12, 2021, 1:45 pm

>171 swynn: Yes, there's clearly something going on already at the point where Kruse says it begins. I'm embarrassingly deficient on that prehistory, though. Do you have a favorite account of it?

174richardderus
mrt 12, 2021, 1:56 pm

Religion and the American Mind It's not explicitly anti-religious, so it's working to understand religion on its own terms. I think that's not precisely what I'd like to read now, but it is very thorough and contextualizes how the Enlightenment values the Founders espoused came to displace the more common Protestant emotional religiosity. I'm very glad I read it during Shrub's term.

175swynn
mrt 12, 2021, 2:14 pm

Thanks, Richard! Fortunately, my library has that one. I will add it to the Tower of Due.

176swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 13, 2021, 2:24 pm



16) Cirque Berserk by Jessica Guess
Date: 2020

A bunch of teenagers, looking for a memorable senior night, visit an abandoned amusement park where a mass murder happened in the 1980s and which has had a haunted reputation ever since. Mayhem ensues. It's an hommage to dead-teenager slasher movies of the 1980s, which are a guilty pleasure for me. It hits that vibe well, delivers what it promises, and offers an interesting variation on the psycho-family trope.

177swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 13, 2021, 3:11 pm



17) Call For The Dead by John Le Carre
Date: 1962

First in Le Carre's series featuring spymaster George Smiley. Smiley is a spy opposite to romantic characters like James Bond -- the opening line refers to Smiley as "breathtakingly ordinary." In this one, Smiley investigates the suicide of foreign service agent Samuel Fennan. Fennan had recently been denounced in an anonymous letter, charging that he was a secret member of the Communist Party; Fennan's suicide letter complains that the unfounded charge had ruined his career and his life. But Smiley himself had interviewed Fennan the day before his death, was convinced that the accusation was false, and reassured Fennan he would be cleared. So what happened between the interview and the suicide? And why would a man planning to kill himself ask the telephone exchange to call him in the morning?

I admire this one-- pace is good, the prose is efficient, the hero relatable, and the world of ambiguous ethics and unintended consequences well established. Looking forward to the next.

178lyzard
Bewerkt: mrt 13, 2021, 4:18 pm

>171 swynn:

All that stuff is very interesting and very scary. Our incumbent is in with the local branch of Hillsong, and though this is *not* considered "normal" here and a close watch is kept, it has more influence than anyone likes.

>177 swynn:

I'm not organised enough to have plans at the moment but I am intending to move on to A Murder Of Quality before much longer.

179rosalita
mrt 13, 2021, 3:53 pm

>177 swynn: And now the eternal conundrum — my library only has The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which are the third and fifth (I think) in the Smiley series. Do I need to start the beginning and look harder for this one and the others? Or can I cheat and just read the ones they have?*

* This question is not for Liz, if she's reading this. I already know what your answer will be!

180lyzard
mrt 13, 2021, 4:17 pm

>179 rosalita:

Hey, I *am* reading these out of order! :D

Call For The Dead fills in a lot of political / espionage background which would have been helpful for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, particularly considering how that novel uses George Smiley; so I would recommend finding a copy if you can.

Steve?

181swynn
mrt 13, 2021, 4:37 pm

>179 rosalita:
>180 lyzard:

It's been about thirty years since I read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, so I may not be the one to ask. It was the first Le Carre I read, and I liked it well enough to read some more, so chances are it's not necessary. I see that the UI library has a copy of Call for the Dead; do you have borrowing priveleges there? (And I'm comfortable with the answer being, "None of your business.")

182swynn
mrt 13, 2021, 5:10 pm

>178 lyzard: My sympathies. The relationship between church and state is supposed to neutral here, but as you can tell it is in fact ... complicated. I wouldn't wish our gods/state complex on any other country. Of course, some nations have it worse than we do, for which I am grateful. (And a disturbing number of Americans are envious.)

183rosalita
mrt 13, 2021, 5:22 pm

>181 swynn: I do have borrowing privileges at UI, but being in a high-risk Covid category and no prospects for getting vaccinated any time soon I've pretty much been a shut-in. I could inquire whether they offer curbside pickup but I doubt it.

I'll keep it in mind for when things get back to whatever normal will look like.

184PaulCranswick
mrt 13, 2021, 11:24 pm

>171 swynn: & >172 richardderus: I am neither atheist nor anti-faith in any sense but I do believe that so much of the evil in the world is perpetrated in the name of organised religion of variation hues and ilks. The church or the temple or the mosque should be kept firmly out of the business of the state.

185swynn
mrt 14, 2021, 6:56 pm

>184 PaulCranswick: Yes. My own relationship to religion is complicated, and depending on the moment and context can range from support to angry resentment. But in any mood I want a solid wall between church and state. Holes in that wall benefit neither the church nor the state.

186swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 14, 2021, 11:38 pm



Perry Rhodan #144: Roboter lassen bitten = A Robot Invitation by K.H. Scheer
Date: 1964

A sketchy space merchant lands on Arkon III with an urgent message from an unidentified sender, instructing Perry and Atlan to come alone to a rendezvous point. Terran telepaths confirm that the merchant is in earnest, and investigations show that the message can only have come from the Posbis. But is the invitation an opportunity? Or is it a trap?

Of course they go. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? (Well, okay, the last time Perry accepted an invitation to "come alone" he was kidnapped and replaced with an evil twin who very nearly brought both the Terran and Arkonide Empires to ruin, but how often can that happen?)

Fortunately, this time it is an opportunity. At the rendezvous point Atlan and Perry meet a jellyfish-like creature who convinces them to board a Posbi ship and travel to the Posbi homeworld: a planet deep in intergalactic space, lit by a ring of artificial suns. Perry dubs it the "Hundertsonnenwelt," World Of a Hundred Suns. They descend to the planet's surface, where they meet the intelligent plasma whose extensions are the "biological" part of the positronic-biological Posbis.

Exposition ensues, as the plasma explains Posbi origins and motives. Reduced to essentials, Posbis developed from robots originally built for the Laurins. The Laurins wanted the robots to destroy all organic life other than Laurins, so they coupled the robots with the plasma and added a "hate circuit" to the robot overmind. The plasma would make the robots able to feel emotion, and the hate circuit would guarantee they would feel the *right* emotion. But the hate circuit turned against the Laurins too (I mean, did these guys never read any science fiction at all?), hence the long-standing war between Posbis and Laurins. But there is conflict within the Posbis too, between the robot's hate circuit and the plasma's better nature. And that brings us to the reason for Atlan's and Perry's summons: the plasma wants no longer to be subject to the hate circuit, and wants Atlan and Perry to destroy it. After all, it's just down the hall. Of course it is protected by a few security measures, but would they mind terribly?

187swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 15, 2021, 9:34 am

**German Nerdery**

Here are a couple of new-to-me idioms (idiomata?). The spoiler tags hide translations into (American?) English idiom:


  • Beybo war mit der Tür ins Haus gefallen, wie man ouf der Erde sagte.

    "Beybo fell with the door into the house, as one said on Earth."

    Beybo came straight to the point, as one said on Earth.


  • Jede Einheit versucht, die andere gewissermassen übers Ohr zu hauen.

    "Each unit tries to strike the other across the ear, so to speak."

    Each unit tries to pull the wool over the other's eyes, so to speak.


188richardderus
mrt 15, 2021, 10:45 am

>187 swynn: Violent bunch, the Germans...those're some biff-thud-crunch ways of saying stuff.

189swynn
mrt 15, 2021, 11:48 am

Indeed. But then, it's a biff-thud-crunch series so its authors may be inclined to that sort of image.

190swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 16, 2021, 1:26 pm



18) Just South of Home by Karen Strong
Date: 2020

It's a middle-grades thriller about some kids in rural Georgia who wake the spirits haunting the ruins of an old church burned by the KKK a generation ago. It has a good cast, moves fast, and touches lightly on hard subjects.

191richardderus
mrt 16, 2021, 1:34 pm

>190 swynn: What a great premise for a ghost story!

192brodiew2
Bewerkt: mrt 16, 2021, 8:06 pm

>190 swynn: Sounds interesting. How did you get onto this one with all the LeCarre going on?

193swynn
mrt 16, 2021, 9:58 pm

>191 richardderus: Agreed!

>192 brodiew2: Oh, it's between le Carres. I've started on A Murder of Quality now.

194swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 11:17 am



19) A Murder of Quality by John le Carré
Date: 1962

Second in le Carré's series featuring spymaster George Smiley, though this one is barely about spies at all. Retired from the service, Smiley gets a call from Alisa Brimley, an old friend who has also left the service to become editor of a small-circulation parochial magazine. One of Brimley's subscribers, a teacher's wife at an exclusive public school, has written a letter pleading for help because she fears that her husband plans to kill her "in the long nights"; Brimley reaches out to Smiley because the woman's account is not easy to dismiss, but probably would be dismissed by the police. As he begins to investigate, Smiley learns immediately that he is too late: the woman is dead, the crime scene is gruesome, and the husband has an alibi. As Smiley continues to investigate he unravels the petty squabbles, ambitions, and resentments among the school's staff: le Carré's project here seems to be an explosion of romantic tropes about public schools, as much as he spent the rest of his career exploding romantic ideas about espionage.

It's pretty good for what it is, and in a parallel universe is the first in a successful series of mysteries. But in this timeline, I'm happy that for his next novel le Carré brought Smiley out of retirement and back to the Circus.

195swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 11:31 am



20) Cove / Cynan Jones
Date: 2016

Shortly after his father's death, shortly before the birth of his child, an unnamed man sets out in a kayak to scatter his father's ashes, to catch a fish for supper, and to spend some time with his memories and hopes. But he is caught in a thunderstorm and struck by lightning. He wakes up lost and disoriented, wounded, and with less than all of his memory.

It's a riveting survival story, but also a terrific piece of prose: spare, visceral, and arranged on the page with plenty of whitespace like the poem it sort of is. I found this on Richard's thread, where it was described as the book he wished The Old Man and the Sea had been, and was not. I agree. And I *liked* The Old Man and the Sea.

Thanks Richard for this rec. It was a good one.

196drneutron
mrt 22, 2021, 11:44 am

Ok, well, you and Richard got me with that one.

197swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 22, 2021, 12:27 pm



Perry Rhodan #145: Armee der Gespenster by Clark Darlton
Date: 1964

Perry and a team ask the superintelligence IT for help finding Barkon, a planet floating somewhere in the void between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. Perry hopes Barkon will offer some clues for interpreting the behavior of Posbis, who have been curiously quiet since last episode when a Terran team destroyed the Posbi hate circuit.

IT provides coordinates, but instead of Barkon the team finds a barren hollow planetoid whose mass is too small for its volume. Shortly after the team lands they are attacked by noncorporeal creatures who feed on energy and live in the planetoid's hollow interior. Teleporters Gucky and Ras Tchubai take Perry with them as they jump into the interior, where they discover a space drive and a hall full of dead Laurins. Perry concludes that the Laurins plan to attack the Posbis by transporting the energy-eaters ("Luxites" he dubs them) from the Andromeda galaxy to Posbi planets of the Milky Way. Almost certainly, this planetoid is not the only Laurin craft carrying such cargo.

When they return, IT explains that it deliberately led them away from Barkon, which holds a threat Terrans are not yet ready to face. On the other hand, the planetoid held secrets the Terrans needed to know. Even more cryptically, IT tells the Terrans they are not yet ready to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, which holds untold dangers and the Luxites are the least of them.

198swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 12:18 pm

>196 drneutron: Hope you like it Jim!

And if you don't, at least it's short.

199swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 2:10 pm



21) Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron
Date: 2020

Dystopian YA fantasy, set in a world where the Cinderalla story is gospel and law: young girls of age are required to attend a ball to be claimed by a "handsome prince"; girls who fail to be matched after three balls are regarded as failures and condemned to drudge work or worse. Our heroine Sophia doesn't want to be chosen by a handsome prince. She'd rather pick her own partner thank you and frankly prefers princesses. Such independence the patriarchy cannot countenance, so Sophia finds herself on the run, learning about her world's secret history, and hooking up with a rebel to fight the monarchy.

It's okay. The allegory tends to be heavy-handed and the world far-fetched. But I'm sympathetic to its project and am happy it seems to be finding its audience.

200richardderus
mrt 22, 2021, 2:16 pm

>195 swynn:, >196 drneutron:, >198 swynn: Wow I'm good...I even catch 'em on the ricochet!

It's a beautiful book so I'm very glad you liked it, Steve.

201swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 22, 2021, 8:07 pm



22) Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Date: 2020

Here is a compact summary of current ideas about the brain, written by an actual research neuroscientist, in the form of 8 brief essays aimed at readers who want to avoid the math and jargon and who find illustrations helpful. The book's website calls it "the world's first neuroscience beach read," and that's not far off. It is very readable, but also packs quite a bit of message about how brain science has changed over the last few years, the main points distilled to punchy "Lessons": "Your Brain Is Not for Thinking", "You Have One Brain (Not Three)", etc.

Most interesting to me was lesson 5: "Your Brain Secretly Works With Other Brains," an essay about how we rely on others for our neurological health. This really resonated with me as I have watched a loved one deal with isolation caused by the death of a spouse and compounded by the social restrictions of COVID. I was already convinced that this isolation affected their mentation. Barrett's account of brains relying on other brains resonates with what I'm seeing, and offers an explanatory mechanism for it. Obviously: I'm not a neuroscientist and there are nuances of which I remain ignorant. And still: yes, Dr. Barrett, yes.

Recommended.

202swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 6:04 pm

>200 richardderus: Thanks again for recommending it, Richard. I hope to squeeze some more Cynan Jones into my reading this year.

203ronincats
Bewerkt: mrt 22, 2021, 6:53 pm

>201 swynn: Okay, book bullet!!I'm #16 in line for 4 copies, all currently out, at the library. It is good the library has it--I spent part of today getting my cognitive psychology books down from the high shelves in my office preparatory to packing them up for the student school psych association at SDSU to have. This, incidentally, is newer than all of them.

204richardderus
mrt 22, 2021, 7:04 pm

>202 swynn: You're in luck, they're all pretty short if also intense.

205swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 8:09 pm

>203 ronincats: Hope you find it enlightening, Roni! And I hope the school psych association appreciates your donation.

206swynn
mrt 22, 2021, 8:13 pm

>204 richardderus: The Long Dry is on its way.

207richardderus
mrt 22, 2021, 8:44 pm

>206 swynn: Oh boy!

208PaulCranswick
mrt 22, 2021, 11:52 pm

I read The Dig the other year, Steve, and rated it very highly.

209swynn
mrt 23, 2021, 9:25 am

>208 PaulCranswick: Noted. Thanks for the rec, Paul!

210swynn
mrt 23, 2021, 10:15 pm

211rosalita
mrt 24, 2021, 7:11 pm

>210 swynn: well done, Steve! You love to see it.

212swynn
mrt 26, 2021, 6:02 pm

>211 rosalita: Thanks! I'm pretty happy about it.

213swynn
mrt 26, 2021, 6:16 pm



23) Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
Date: 2020

This one is a YA fantasy, set in a world inspired by Persian folklore, featuring a girl whose touch is poison. It's a bit too YA-angsty in the beginning, and too leisurely in its wrapping up, but you know what never mind because this world is a fresh wonder and I loved its themes of storytelling: the stories we tell and choose not to tell each other, and also to tell ourselves. I look forward to more from Bashardoust.

(O look! she has another, blurbed as "a feminist fantasy reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale." Fairy tale reimaginings do not necessarily excite me, but "by Melissa Bashardoust" promises to.)

214richardderus
mrt 26, 2021, 6:49 pm

>213 swynn: Outstanding discovery! An author who's got those chops is worth pursuing.

215PaulCranswick
mrt 26, 2021, 10:28 pm

>210 swynn: Congrats, I think, Steve.

216justchris
mrt 27, 2021, 12:23 am

>177 swynn: I read a couple of Le Carre books ages ago, but never the full Smiley series. The last one was The Constant Gardener after really enjoying the movie.

>171 swynn: I'm completely clueless about all of this religion/politics history. So thanks for pointing me toward that, though this book doesn't sound particularly interesting to me. Good review!

>195 swynn: I was wondering why that sounded so familiar and then I got to your last line and realized where I'd heard about it before. The inimitable RD.

Wow! Your reading is all over in terms of genres.

217swynn
mrt 27, 2021, 4:47 pm

>216 justchris: I started the Smiley series for the bestseller challenge since the next bestseller is #3 in the series. But I'm enjoying them so much I may just continue on to #4.

You're welcome on the ranty religion/politics comments. Religion for me is a sore tooth I cannot help prodding from time to time, so hang around and you'll probably see more.

As for RD: agreed -- so glad he's part of this community.

As for reading variety ... Yeah, I think I may have an undiagnosed attention problem.

218richardderus
mrt 27, 2021, 8:01 pm

219swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 28, 2021, 9:13 pm



24) Daheim unterwegs by Ika Hügel-Marshall
Date: 1998

This is the memoir of Ika Hügel-Marshall, an "occupation child" born in 1947, daughter of a Bavarian domestic worker and a Black American soldier. In the social-problem-lexicon of the time, her mixed national and racial parentage made her a Besatzungskind, or "occupation child," and therefore a perplexing social issue. Hügel-Marshall quotes an article exposing the "problem," published when she was five years old, and observes:

I was five years old and had no idea, that for most people in my country I would never grow up but always be an occupation child.

I was five years old and had no idea, that the name my mother gave me had no meaning for others. They called me "Negermischling."

I was five years old and had no idea, that for my neighbors I represented a humanitarian and racial problem.

I was five years old and had no idea, that it was not I for others but the others for me that represented the real problem.


Ika's early years were spent in a loving home, but when her schooling began, her mother faced increasing pressure from Ika's stepfather and state social services to put her in a Christian children's home -- "for the child's own good." Eventually her mother agreed; and for the next several years Ika was systematically and brutally taught to hate herself. Though she once aspired to become a teacher, her career choices were constrained based on the supposed capabilities of her race. Nevertheless Ika created her own opportunities, pursuing a career in social work and an avocation in activism. Ika finds a family of her own, including a friendship with Audre Lorde and a partnership with Dagmar Schultz, Lorde's Berlin publisher; and eventually locates her American father. The story is by turns horrifying, informative, and inspiring.

This is the third memoir I've recently read about the Black experience in Germany, and -- unexpectedly, since Hügel-Marshall's experience is completely post-war -- the most disturbing. It is also the most eloquent in assessing the problem of racism in German society. And really: the problem of racism in Western society, because her diagnosis applies equally well to the U.S. Fortunately this one is available in English translation, as "Invisible Woman : Growing Up Black in Germany." I recommend it -- if the translation is faithful you'll find it readable, compact, and rewarding. (The German only runs to 140 pages, so in English it should either be less than that or have generous margins.)

220richardderus
mrt 28, 2021, 9:28 pm

>219 swynn: ummm
ya know what I think I'll pass on that'un.

221swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 29, 2021, 10:05 am

>220 richardderus: Respectable choice. Parts are pretty intense and unpleasant. Here's one that *really* won't tempt you:



25) Island of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
Date: 1941

Tenth in Rohmer's series featuring supervillain Fu Manchu. In this one, Fu Manchu has moved operations to Haiti, where he plots to rule the world. His plans aren't entirely clear to me, but they involve a secret submarine base, lost treasure, a voodoo cult and a zombie army. Also a supervillain lair inside an extinct volcano. (I spent more time than I want to admit Googling supervillain lairs to determine whether this might be the earliest example of a volcano lair. Duh, it's not: Captain Nemo beat Fu Manchu by over seventy years.) Our dashing young hero is Bart Kerrigan again, whose love interest is once again Ardatha whose memory has been erased so that she can be re-recruited into minionhood and re-persuaded into instant inexplicable romantic devotion.

It has a sort of bonkers plot and breathless energy that would be easy to enjoy if it weren't for the series's un-ignorable problems with race and gender -- which I could hardly have failed to expect, but I certainly shouldn't have read this right after Hügel-Marshall's memoir.

222swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 29, 2021, 10:15 am



Perry Rhodan #146: Hinter der Zeitmauer = "Behind the Time-Wall" by Kurt Mahr
Date: 1964

A Terran spy on Akon reports a mysterious launch of an Akonide starship, which is puzzling because the Akonides have an extensive system of teleporters. Their starships are used mostly for combat, but this ship is headed to a strategically unimportant planet occupied by Springer exiles. Agents of the special-forces Division III investigate. After a an episode's worth of poking around, getting captured by and escaping from the Akonides, the agents discover the secret: a Posbi ship is on the planet, hidden behind a time-distortion field. The ship is disabled, and the Akonides happened to intercept the Posbis' request for aid. When Division III's robot agent Meech Hannigan discovers the ship though, he is immediately attacked. The agents conclude that since destroying the hate circuit (back in episode 144), the Posbis' aggression has been redirected away from organic life and toward robots.

A couple of plot points irk me -- our heroes escape captivity by exploiting an Akonide weakness that seems to have been invented purely so that our heroes can escape:

-- "As you know Larry, Akonides are especially hypnotically susceptible to certain frequencies."
-- "Why no, Ron, I did not know that because nobody has mentioned their hypnotic susceptibility since we first encountered the Akonides almost fifty episodes ago. How convenient that it occurred to you."

is a conversation that should but does not happen. In another scene there's much made of the formal vs. informal pronoun -- literally, whether one character addresses another by "Sie" or "Du" in a context where there is no reason to think either character would be speaking German. It's not a great episode, which is too bad because it is the last adventure featuring Division III, who deserved a better finale.

223swynn
mrt 31, 2021, 4:16 pm



26) Fable by Adrienne Young
Date: 2020

Fable's father is a powerful sea captain and merchant who abandoned her to fend for herself after her mother died. She has been surviving as "dredger," a sort of sea-floor scavenger diving for valuable stuff, but she works for the day she can track down her father and join his crew. Events force her hand when she finds a valuable trove that gives her both the stake she needs and also dangerous rivals. She buys her way onto a small trader, where she meets initial suspicion but eventually friendship and alliance.

A couple of plot points didn't make sense to me, and there's a romance that feels forced (in fairness, most do to this romance-averse reader), but it's fun enough that I'll read the next. Speaking of which, fair warning: it ends in a cliffhanger, so you may want book 2 handy before you start.

224richardderus
mrt 31, 2021, 4:23 pm

>221 swynn: no
>222 swynn: no
>223 swynn: oh HELL no; I've been *inundated* with offers to read YA/coming-of-age stuff lately and it feels like the Universe is laughing at me, taunting me for greedily stockpiling books, by waving ones I'd rather be dead and buried in a ditch than read!

Persecuted! I'm being persecuted!!

(I think it's the plot of your latest Rhodan that triggered it)

225swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 31, 2021, 4:37 pm



27) The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
Date: 1963

The third of Le Carré's George Smiley books was also the bestselling novel in the U.S. in 1964. Smiley's role is minor here, with the focus on his colleague Alec Leamas, who goes undercover to target an East German counterintelligence agent. It's tight, twisty, and morally ambiguous. There are some pensive passages about means and ends: how does a society that claims to value individuals justify sacrificing individuals for the collective good? But most importantly it's a terrific spy story, with secrets, with a bewilderment of enemies and allies, and with a resolution that feels both unexpected and inevitable. I am conflicted about some casual racism and homophobia -- an early N-bomb, an effeminate male character criticized repeatedly for his manner -- I know it's 1963 and and the whole point is the blurry ethics of doing necessary things with imperfect tools, and we're not expected to admire these guys anyway, but still it sits unwell with me.

226swynn
mrt 31, 2021, 4:35 pm

>225 swynn: Good choices, I expect, though myself am continuing all three.

227swynn
Bewerkt: mrt 31, 2021, 8:12 pm



28) Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois
Date: 2019 (Originally published 2016 in French as "Les lois du ciel")

Twelve first-graders go on a camping trip with three adult chaperones. None survive. This isn't a spoiler, it's right there on page one. And that's pretty much the plot.

I have deeply conflicted thoughts about this one: the prose is excellent. Courtois uses an interesting technique where he shifts viewpoint character without warning, often from one paragraph to the next but sometime mid-paragraph and at least one mid-sentence. The effect is curiously disorienting, and forces connections that would not otherwise be obvious. It's remarkable that he pulls it off as well as he does. It also has more on its mind than the average thriller. Its themes are radically antiromantic and I largely sympathize with them.

But -- old guy talking here, maybe -- I can't get past that we're talking about the gruesome deaths of six-year-olds, in a series of events so unlikely that it often feels more like slapstick than splatter. It does sometimes help that the six-year olds don't really behave like six-year-olds but more like slasher-movie teenagers who cry "Mommy" a lot.

And yet. Others have loved it. Someone decided it was worth translating. It made the Locus Recommended Reading list for 2019. I get the love: it's very well-written and there are ways I admire it -- and still can't recommend it.

TW for extreme violence against children, obviously.

I cannot help this mini-rant: Several characters meet their end when they trip on uneven terrain. I call baloney. I've been a trail runner and have fallen over tree roots, gopher holes, rocks, tire ruts and my own damn feet. I've bruised, bled, scraped, sprained and ached but my rate of permanent injury per fall is 0%. And I'm in my sixth decade; six-year olds I'm telling you are made of rubber. Not that worse doesn't happen. It does, but rarely. In Courtois's world, children losing their footing yields a fatality rate of 100%. One such accident is plausible; two is an unlikely coincidence; three and you're not writing a thriller anymore, you're writing a Three Stooges script.

228justchris
mrt 31, 2021, 10:35 pm

That's a lot of different books. Most them are on my Do Not Read list now.

I agree, 6-year-olds bounce. Survival trait. I've done my share of trail running and lots of pratfalls in this life, and look! I'm still here! Also, who in their right minds takes a dozen small children into the woods? Hell, I'm dubious about a class trip with 4:1 odds to the local park for a few hours.

229swynn
apr 1, 2021, 2:57 pm

>228 justchris: Happy to help reduce the unclimbable mountain of worthy reads ... not that it will make it any more climbable.

The inadvisability of a class camping trip with six-year-olds does come up in the book, and is not really answered satisfactorily. The teacher is ambitious and naive, or maybe he is using the trip as an excuse for a tryst with one of the parents (again: ambitious and naive) ... but why would parents agree to such an outing? I remember camping trips with Cub Scouts when my son was that age, but the parent-camper ratio was very close to 1:1.

230swynn
Bewerkt: apr 2, 2021, 12:15 am



29) Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Date: 2020

I agree with the hype on this one: fascinating, disturbing, well researched, and very well-organized and -written. If you've missed the hype: it's a nonfiction account of the Galvins, a large Colorado Springs family with 12 children, of whom 6 were diagnosed with schizophrenia, some with dangerous symptoms. In parallel with the Galvins' story, Kolker traces a history of the understanding and treatment of mental illness since the mid-20th century, and how the Galvins helped shape that. The story is based on extensive interviews with the family, who seem to have been surprisingly open about their experiences. TW for physical and sexual abuse.

231rosalita
apr 2, 2021, 7:50 am

>230 swynn: Interesting review, Steve. I just saw something about this book recently but of course I can't remember where or the details. But it made me want to find out more about it, and right on time here you are with a fine review. Thanks!

232swynn
apr 2, 2021, 12:03 pm

>231 rosalita: It's a good one, Julia, and I hope you find it as engaging & enlightening as I did, if you can get your hands on it.

233rosalita
apr 2, 2021, 3:14 pm

>232 swynn: I've put myself on the library hold list, where I am currently #90. So it's gonna be a while.

234swynn
Bewerkt: apr 3, 2021, 1:21 pm



30) Probably Approximately Correct by Leslie Valiant
Date: 2013

"Probably Approximately Correct" is an idea from machine learning theory that describes a class of learning algorithms with high predictive power and low error. I picked this up expecting a popular introduction to the idea and its applications. It did not meet that expectation.

Leslie Valiant was a leader in developing PAC back in the 1980s, so has spent a good chunk of his career thinking about PAC, ways in which it is applied, and ways it might be applied. Rather than a popular introduction, this seems to be a sort of manifesto or proposal for a program of research, in particular in education and in biological evolution. The benefit -- to the extent I understand his argument -- is that PAC introduces a quantitative, computational approach to fields that lack quantitative, computational content. I think it's generally true that quantitative approaches are helpful (or lend the feeling of being helpful), but I lack the background in education and biology to judge whether Valiant's proposals are needed. In particular, my sense is that researchers in evolution have recently been prolific in developing and applying quantitative methods. Valiant himself acknowledges this, and argues that the quantitative methods used in evolution are the wrong quantitative methods. He may be right, but I'd really rather hear a computational biologist's perspective before I swallow that claim. In any case, I think it's the computational biologists that Valiant is hoping to reach, and other academics like them, hoping to convince them to adopt a PAC learning approach. Readers who fall outside that audience will probably find it a challenging read with limited reward.

235richardderus
apr 3, 2021, 3:41 pm

>234 swynn: Sounds...unrewarding.

Happy weekend's reads!

236swynn
apr 3, 2021, 5:48 pm

>235 richardderus: Accurate, at least for the insight I was looking for. Better stuff coming.

237swynn
apr 4, 2021, 12:08 am



31) A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
Date: 2021

Second in Penny's Three Pines series, this one has Inspector Gamache investigating the death of a hateful self-help guru, from electrocution at a curling match. Loved it: the community's dynamic and the extreme humaneness of Gamache. I read the first in the series four years ago and liked it pretty well then -- but it took me this long to read book two. There may be something wrong with the way I attack series.

238lyzard
apr 4, 2021, 2:24 am

>225 swynn:

I don't disagree with your criticisms but felt it was more le Carré reporting the world as it was than reflecting his own attitudes.

>237 swynn:

There may be something wrong with the way I attack series.

No, there's just too damn many of them.

(We won't discuss *my* neglected good series...)

239swynn
Bewerkt: apr 4, 2021, 5:27 pm

>238 lyzard: I agree that it's probably accurate to the time and the characters we're looking at. But in such a lean work, what function does Ashe's homosexuality serve? Leamas interprets Ashe's mannerisms as indicating weakness and inferiority. And I think Le Carre expects readers to share that interpretation, since Ashe is the lowest rung on a ladder of increasingly powerful, increasingly embedded, increasingly dangerous agents.

This may not tell us much about Le Carre's private opinions, but it does say something about stereotypes he's willing to reinforce for literary effect. In 1963 he was hardly alone. He's hardly alone still. Still makes me squirm.

Re: series. I daren't compete with you in an unfinished series contest. Yes, there are too many -- but I keep starting new ones.

240lyzard
Bewerkt: apr 4, 2021, 8:01 pm

>239 swynn:

I think it's intended as a commentary upon Leamas' own position. He doesn't see that his handlers view him very much as he views Ashe, as someone to be used but never allowed inside because of his "weakness".

So it's more about le Carré's cynical understanding of how people like Ashe would be perceived and exploited. Against the contemporary social background of criminalised homosexuality and homophobic witch-hunting and blackmail (this was the same year that Dirk Bogarde made Victim) I'm inclined to consider this a lesser offence---but it is absolutely still an offence.

241swynn
Bewerkt: apr 4, 2021, 6:46 pm

>240 lyzard: I hadn't thought of that. It's certainly consistent with the theme of Leamas thinking he's a player when really he's a pawn, and adds a layer of complexity to Le Carre's use of the trope. Thanks Liz for pointing that out.

242swynn
Bewerkt: apr 4, 2021, 8:50 pm



Perry Rhodan #147: Amoklauf der Maschinen = "Machines Run Amok" by William Voltz
Date: 1964

The destruction of the hate circuit (ep. 144) has split the Posbis into two camps: those who follow the Posbis' robot overmind and those who follow the bioplasma. The first continue in their hostility to organic life, but the former have turned their hostility onto machines -- and in particular, onto Posbi followers of the robot overmind. This division leads to a Posbi civil war.

The anti-machine Posbis invite Terrans to come to the Posbi home planet, the Hundertsonnenwelt ("World of a Hundred Suns"), in hopes of settling this dispute in favor of organic life. Surprisingly, Perry Rhodan decides that sounds too dangerous for him to go personally -- a novel policy which will doubtless be discarded with the next peril -- but sends a Terran team of six scientists and mutants. The team departs with the Posbis in a bay of the Posbis' fragment-ship. En route to the Hundersonnenwelt, the ship is attacked by anti-life Posbis and is forced to crash-land on an unkown planet.

As soon as the ship crashes, Posbis swarm out of the ship and begin to destroy any machines they can find -- of which there are many, because the indigenes have well-developed steam technology. Teleporters Ras Tschubai and Tama Yokida rush to help the natives protect their technology. Meanwhile, the rest of the team searches the alien ship for a way to send a distress signal. But the Posbis' hostility to machines lasts only so long: the fragment-ship's control center includes both bioplasma and robot controls, and the plasma was injured in the crash. When the plasma dies the robot controls take over the Posbis, who turn on the natives and the Terrans. It is then a race against time: can the Terrans call for help before they are overwhelmed by the (now) anti-life Posbis?

243lyzard
apr 4, 2021, 8:06 pm

>242 swynn:

What I love about your examination of this series is the completely casual way you get to say things like---

...those who follow the Posbis' robot overmind and those who follow the bioplasma...

244swynn
apr 4, 2021, 8:48 pm

>243 lyzard: I love having the opportunity to say things like that.

245swynn
Bewerkt: apr 5, 2021, 11:06 am

Speaking of good series, this one isn't.



32) Shadow of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
Date: 1948

Scientist Morris Craig has developed a device capable of nearly unlimited clean energy (interesting that, in 1948, Rohmer was already concerned about the polluting effects of "atomic plants") -- but of course could also be used for unprecedented destruction. Or rather, Craig has *almost* developed the device, because it will not be ready for production until Craig has finished developing a transmuter, which will ... well, something. Whatever it does, he figures he can wrap it up by the end of the week. As Craig's work nears completion, he has attracted attention of intelligence services from all over the world (well, from the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, and who else really counts?) who have converged on Manhattan to steal his secrets. Among the agents is Nayland Smith, acting for the FBI, because he has heard that supervillain Fu Manchu plans to steal the technology for himself. Smith is correct about Fu Manchu's interest but not his motives, which are to prevent the Communists from acquiring the technology. (And with good reason -- late in the book, the Soviet agent reveals that his government plans to destroy all life on earth except for a carefully curated remnant. But sure, Nayland, let's stop the crazy Chinese genius.)

This is an odd entry in the series -- although Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu appear, many of the series's standard tropes are absent. There is no brash young romantic lead, no alluring Asian or quasi-Asian romantic interest with ambiguous loyalties, no underground lair, no insects or snakes or creepy-crawlies, no car chases. There is no method of assassination with an ominous name and exotic source: the best we have is an unidentified poison more dangerous than curari \sic\ but Smith never lectures about its origin nor even identifies it by name. The action takes place entirely in Manhattan, and nobody appears unexpectedly who was thought to be on the other side the world or maybe dead. Nayland Smith does not don a disguise. The prose itself seems different: it is short on atmospheric description and long on small-talk dialog. Sentences are short, sometimes incomplete. Honestly, I wonder whether Rohmer even wrote this himself; if he did then he was experimenting with a new style.

Unfortunately -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- the changes make the product even worse. We still have the series's fundamental problems with race and sex, but we lose the purple prose, improbable settings, and bonkers plotting that give the series what charm it has. (Also no marmoset.)

246richardderus
apr 5, 2021, 11:09 am

>245 swynn: (Also no marmoset.)

Abandon ship! The marmoset is the sine qua non of the series.

247swynn
apr 5, 2021, 12:50 pm

>246 richardderus: Abandon ship!

Not this close to shore -- two more FM novels then I'm back to the DAWs. It's my mini-goal for the month. But yeah ... I'm hoping for marmoset in the next.

Maxi-goal is The Source

248richardderus
apr 5, 2021, 1:36 pm

>247 swynn: The Source all in one month?! WOW

That's a brain-bendingly big amount of story to install in your ROM in a mere twenty-four more days. I'm pullin' fer ya.

249lyzard
Bewerkt: apr 5, 2021, 6:06 pm

>245 swynn:

Yyyyeah, that one's slipped back to "when there's an appropriate TIOLI". :D

>247 swynn:

Maxi is right: The Source took me exactly a fortnight, I'll be interested to see how you go.

250swynn
apr 5, 2021, 6:43 pm

>248 richardderus:
>249 lyzard:

I have a few weekends left so I'm optimistic. So far it's pretty engaging and Kindle tells me I have less than 29 hours to go.

251swynn
Bewerkt: apr 10, 2021, 3:32 pm



33) Re-Enter Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
Date: 1957

Twelfth in Rohmer's series featuring supervillain Fu Manchu. This one is more or less a return to form, with a brash young romantic lead who couldn't clever his way out of a room with four open doors, in love with a woman of questionable loyalties. We have Egyptian settings and imagery, disguises and imposture and traps, and the return of Peko the marmoset. Our hero is American Brian Merrick, a senator's son who goes to Cairo for an opportunity to work with Nayland Smith. It's not clear what Merrick's job in Cairo is, even afer he arrives, and he begins to suspect that the whole situation is an elaborate setup to entangle him in something criminal. It's more complicated than that but of course Fu Manchu is involved, now fighting Communism and engaged in a nefarious plot to supply the United States with missile defense technology. (You'd think such a plan would not require a nefarious plot, but the niceties must be observed I guess.)

This is one of the more tolerable entries so far. The racism is kept to a minimum, since Rohmer's anxieties have fully shifted from "yellow peril" to red-baiting, and his evil Asian has turned into a sort of antihero. We have a woman character with motivations other than the men in her life. There's even a surprising bit of self-reflection when Nayland Smith admits that he fell into a trap that even a schoolboy should have avoided. Which is not to say that it's a *good* book, and I'm glad there is only one left to go.

252richardderus
apr 10, 2021, 4:38 pm

>251 swynn: Ew. Better you than me. Best of all: No one anymore.

253swynn
Bewerkt: apr 12, 2021, 12:04 pm



Perry Rhodan #148: Sprung in den Interkosmos = "Jump Into the Intercosmos" by Kurt Brand
Date: 1964

A Terran firm ramps up production of "antiflex glasses," which will make it possible for wearers to see the otherwise invisible Laurins. Meanwhile Perry, Atlan, and a force of three thousand Terrans fly to the Posbi homeworld, the "World of a Hundred Suns," to defend the Posbi bioplasma against the anti-life machine forces. The action here is uneven and the narrative is episodic, but really the purpose here is to set up the story arc's climactic showdown. It fulfills that purpose just fine, and closes with the Terran team awaiting reinforcements on the Hundertsonnenwelt as they receive news that Laurin forces are also on the way.

254swynn
Bewerkt: apr 13, 2021, 2:11 pm

The Hugo nominees have been announced. You can see them all here:
https://discon3.org/whats-on/hugo-awards-wsfs/hugo-awards/#novel

I've read only one of the nominees for best novel (Martha Wells' "Network Effect,") but none of the other nominees are a surprise (well, maybe Piranesi which I've heard mixed things about). Definitely looking forward to working through this list.

Best Novel

  • Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press)
  • The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
  • Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
  • (READ) Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
  • Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
  • The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)


I'm more prepared for the Novella list, where I've read about half (the Vo, the Cipri, and the Onyebuchi). Of those, Vo's is my favorite but Onyebuchi's is painfully powerful. (Both were on my nomination ballot.) Comments are forthcoming about Cipri's but spoiler: I liked it pretty well too.

Best Novella

  • Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
  • (READ) The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tor.com)
  • (READ) Finna, Nino Cipri (Tor.com)
  • Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com)
  • (READ) Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tor.com)
  • Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey (Tor.com)


I'm more familiar than usual with the series this year. I've read the first volume of more than half, and am actually caught up on one. (Well, until the end of the month anyway, when Murderbot 6 is released). On the other hand, I tried to read book 1 of the Scalzi series and bounced off.

Best Series

  • (READ 1/3) The Daevabad Trilogy, S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)
  • The Interdependency, John Scalzi (Tor Books)
  • (READ 1/3) The Lady Astronaut Universe, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books/Audible/Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
  • (READ 5/5) The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
  • (READ 1/15) October Daye, Seanan McGuire (DAW)
  • The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)


Novelettes, short stories, and Lodestar (YA) nominees are all new to me, but I'm looking forward to working through them.

Best Novelette

  • “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super”, A.T. Greenblatt (Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2020)
  • “Helicopter Story”, Isabel Fall (Clarkesworld, January 2020)
  • “The Inaccessibility of Heaven”, Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2020)
  • “Monster”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2020)
  • “The Pill”, Meg Elison (from Big Girl (PM Press))
  • “Two Truths and a Lie”, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)


Best Short Story

  • “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse”, Rae Carson (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2020)
  • “A Guide for Working Breeds”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris))
  • “Little Free Library”, Naomi Kritzer (Tor.com)
  • “The Mermaid Astronaut”, Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2020)
  • “Metal Like Blood in the Dark”, T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine, September/October 2020)
  • “Open House on Haunted Hill”, John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots – 2020, ed. David Steffen)


Best YA (Lodestar)

  • Cemetery Boys, Aiden Thomas (Swoon Reads)
  • A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
  • Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
  • Legendborn, Tracy Deonn (Margaret K. McElderry/ Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing)
  • Raybearer, Jordan Ifueko (Amulet / Hot Key)
  • A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Productions)


This is the first year I remember that conventions have been nominated in "Best Related Work," and I have feelings about that. I have a strong preference for consumables -- I like the idea of the Hugos as a reading list, and find it difficult to imagine how conventions fit that. I don't even know how to evaluate a conference I didn't attend. OTOH, the Beowulf translation and the Octavia Butler book both look very tempting.


  • Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley (FSG)
  • CoNZealand Fringe, Claire Rousseau, C, Cassie Hart, Adri Joy, Marguerite Kenner, Cheryl Morgan, Alasdair Stuart
  • FIYAHCON, L.D. Lewis–Director, Brent Lambert–Senior Programming Coordinator, Iori Kusano–FIYAHCON Fringe Co-Director, Vida Cruz–FIYAHCON Fringe Co-Director, and the Incredible FIYAHCON team
  • “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)”, Natalie Luhrs (Pretty Terrible, August 2020)
  • A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, Lynell George (Angel City Press)
  • The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy, Jenny Nicholson (YouTube)


The other categories are less interesting to me. This is probably the first year that I have not yet seen a single nominee in "Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form" (basically, "Best Film") and am surprised to find that I don't much care.

255MickyFine
apr 13, 2021, 1:35 pm

>254 swynn: Looks like some good lists, Steve. I'm impressed at how many I've read this year and a few are already on The List.

256swynn
apr 13, 2021, 2:14 pm

>255 MickyFine: They are good lists, Micky; most of the longer-form works that I haven't read were already in the Someday Swamp. And I should be able to get to them all: there is an unusually long voting period this year, because WorldCon has been postponed to December.

257richardderus
apr 13, 2021, 2:45 pm

>254 swynn: The new Beowulf is, really for the first time in my adulthood, *n*e*w* and so different from the genius versions of the past (eg Seamus Heany's gorgeous work) that it took/is taking me some time to settle it into my literary reading-room of the skull.

That the *Fringe* con is what is nominated tells me that this is a stunt, not a nomination. It is long past time that my generation of white males faced up to our pusillanimous failure to do the right thing while we had the chance, stand down, and let the women and men who grew up with a PC in the living room do what they need to do to fix shit.

258swynn
apr 13, 2021, 6:08 pm

>257 richardderus: I've heard a variety of responses to the Beowulf, and hadn't planned to go out of my way to read it, but I probably will now. I agree that Seamus Heany's translation is wonderful; it's his that I pull out from time to time, in an edition with lovely illustrations of artifacts from Sutton Hoo and such.

I honestly don't know what to make of the cons, though you know, fine. I've heard excellent things about the FIYAH Con, but the Fringe con was off my radar. In either case I don't even know how to approach it in comparison to, say, a Beowulf adaptation or an appreciation of the eminently appreciatable Octavia Butler.

259richardderus
apr 13, 2021, 7:31 pm

>258 swynn: Exactly. What are non-attendees meant to make of this? Shouldn't voting for them be limited to proven attendees?

Seems like it is just a stunt, or a poorly thought-through new idea.

260justchris
apr 13, 2021, 8:17 pm

Thanks for sharing the lists! I've heard of a bunch of these, and especially the buzz around the Beowulf. But haven't read *any* of them. Because I live in back catalogs where I can take my time and nothing is urgent.

261jjmcgaffey
apr 14, 2021, 1:11 am

I've read, or have available to read, several of the novels, novellas and series. I've read most (all?) of October Daye...hope it wins this year, but it may lose even on my ballot to Murderbot or Lady Astronaut. And in YA - I have not (yet) read A Deadly Education or Elatsoe, have both to read. Right now I'd vote for the Kingfisher, 'cause that's fantastic.

For all the shorter stuff - hope it's in the Hugo packet, because I haven't seen any of it. Ditto the art and fan stuff. I hadn't realized that was two conventions (or parts of conventions) in Related Works...those aren't "works" in the sense of published things, to my mind. We'll see, but...yeah.

262swynn
apr 14, 2021, 9:24 am

>259 richardderus: It will be interesting to see what's in the voter packet.

>260 justchris: I usually have a similar mismatch between what's nominated and what I've already read. I was surprised at how many of the novellas I've already covered, partly because I've been favoring shorter reads for the last few months. (The Source notwithstanding.)

>261 jjmcgaffey: I've read the first October Daye book, and liked it enough to continue ... and then never got around to it. Same story for lots of the series I've started, I'm afraid.

Noting the Kingfisher as one to prioritize.

Same for me on the shorter works. I note that there seems to be a strong preference for works that are freely available online. So for most (a) there's no strong argument for the publishers against providing them for the voter packet, and (b) even if the publishers don't provide them they should generally be accessible.

263swynn
apr 14, 2021, 10:43 am



34) Finna by Nino Cipri
Date: 2020

This is a fun novella about a couple of minimum-wage workers in an imitation IKEA store. When the store's disorienting layout opens a wormhole into another dimension, a customer goes missing and our heroes -- a recently-separated romantic couple with feelings still raw -- have to go to the rescue. (This wormhole problem happens now and then, and the store used to have a specially-trained customer-retrieval team for such events. But the team was cut as a cost-saving measure, and the hazard duty reassigned to employees with the least seniority. Because, you know, capitalism.) It's an excellent satire on consumer culture but also a surprisingly effective emotional journey. Recommended.

264lyzard
apr 14, 2021, 6:56 pm

>260 justchris:

Because I live in back catalogs where I can take my time and nothing is urgent.

Soulmate! :D

265bell7
apr 14, 2021, 7:54 pm

I've read three of the Hugo award nominees for novel, and the other three are on my TBR list. The ones I read were all very good, so I'm looking forward to seeing which one wins. Up until last year, I hadn't really been reading many novellas, but I'm changing that. Upright Women Wanted was okay, imo, and I'm hoping to read Ring Shout. I'm a little surprised to see A Deadly Education in the YA section (my library has it in adult), but I've read half of those too, and either A Deadly Education or Legendborn would be my pick of the those.

266swynn
apr 15, 2021, 10:56 am

>264 lyzard: Chris, Liz. Liz, Chris.

>265 bell7: It's a promising list, for sure. A Deadly Education hasn't been on my radar, though I recognize the author and liked her Uprooted very much. It's not always clear to me what designates a YA book: there are things that obviously are, and things that obviously aren't, and a rather large Venn-diagram intersection.

267bell7
apr 15, 2021, 9:02 pm

>266 swynn: That's fair, and I think, particularly tough in fantasy. Even as a reader, I am certainly just as likely to pick up a YA fantasy as an adult one.

268jjmcgaffey
apr 16, 2021, 1:30 pm

Mercedes Lackey was pretty solidly shelved in YA (and I went there looking for her!) until she wrote a trilogy with a gay protagonist. Suddenly her books started showing up in adult SF/F instead... I found that rather amusing.

269swynn
apr 18, 2021, 9:28 pm

>268 jjmcgaffey: I haven't followed Lackey's career closely, and continue to think of her as a YA author. I did not know about this change to the marketing of her books. I read the first few Valdemar books, and have a vague recollection of the Herald-Mages being inclusive from the get-go so I'm curious about which book finally raised the concern of the moral guardians.

270jjmcgaffey
apr 19, 2021, 12:04 am

>269 swynn: The Herald Vanyel trilogy - Magic's Pawn is the first. There are quite a few same-sex pairings in the background of the Herald stories, but this was the first where the protagonist was homosexual - and that's a large part of the point of the first story (family trying to hide the concept from him, and the problems derived therefrom). The second and third are broader in scope, but his sexuality is an important factor throughout.
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