richardderus's sixth 2021 thread

from In a Lonely Place
An only child born in 1904 to Midwestern Protestant parents, Dorothy B. Hughes has been shunted aside in the public consciousness despite having three excellent movies made of her mid-career highlight novels: In a Lonely Place, Ride the Pink Horse (filmed three times in all), and The Fallen Sparrow. Two more novels were adapted for Golden Age anthology prestigious television shows.

But what that doesn't say is that she wrote twelve books in fifteen years while raising three kids, and not one of 'em was a dud.

Read LA Review of Books' profile of Dorothy B. Hughes. She was a damned fine writer, she was a woman who wrote very noir stories, and she was...comme d'habitude...silenced by her domestic woes: Her mother got ill, her daughters presented her with Grandkids, and she couldn't focus on the complex task of making a novel work for eleven years.

Her mother died in 1961. In 1963, her final novel appeared: The Expendable Man, which is one fine story about race in America. NYRB Books re-issued it, that's how good it is. I reviewed The Delicate Ape, a very much less popular novel of hers, back yonder.

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

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




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

First five reviews? 1st 2021 thread..

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

The 26th through 36th reviews occupy thread three.

37th through 44th reviews belong where they are.

Reviews 45 through 58 are listed here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

59 Life in the Iron Mills saddened me, post 22.

60 Before the Coffee Gets Cold annoyed me, post 37.

61 King's Man deeply satisfied me, post 55.

62 Great Kings' War conflicted me, post 66.

63 Nick wasn't at all bad, just BLEAK, post 100.

64 Poems of the First Buddhist Women...take a guess how much I liked that, post 287.

65 The Crime at Black Dudley didn't age well, post 288.

66

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

In 2020, I posted over 180 reviews here. In 2021, my goals are: –to post 150 reviews on my blog
–to post at least 99 three-sentence Burgoines
–to complete at least 190 total reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

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

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

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

Think about using it yourselves!

Oh, very well. The next post is fair game.

Happy new thread!

I just finished Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water and the vocabulary brought you to mind.

Happy new one, RD.

*smooch*

Happy New Thread Richard.

In a Lonely Place is such an amazing movieI knew about Bogart and of course Nicholas Ray but not Miss Hughes.

Have to see about filling the gap in my education

Hi, Richard. Glad to have the opportunity to join this thread while it is short.

I told my sister that I'm in the process of transforming the dining room into The Library. She laughed and said, "Well, wasn't it already a library."

Happy new thread Richard!

>12 weird_O: So will you move the dining table out to make more space for reading?

Good evening to you RD,
I come to you from the future and can report that Sunday evening is marvellous. :) I would say that though, as am currently making eyes at my pile of 4 recently purchased books.

Happy new thread. Hoping Sunday is full of deliciousness.

Happy new thread, Richard!
Wishing you a lovely Sunday.

Happy New Thread!

Happy Sunday, Richard. Happy New Thread. I love the Hughes quote and brief profile up there. I do not think I have read her but I am sure I have seen a couple of those films.

'Morning, RDear.

*smooch*

Good Sunday Morning to you, RD!

I hope you enjoyed the sun yesterday. Doesn't look like we'll be having any here today...

Good morning!

59 Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis

Rating: 4* of five

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

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air.

Choosing to bring her story to us via a first-person introductory passage was a stroke of genius by Author Harding Davis. At first, I felt very nervous because the idea of first-person present-tense narration for a whole novella's length isn't, um, too terribly appealing to me; but we get into the action when she has the narrator say that the people he's going to talk about lived there thirty years ago and....

Well! All is on track, then! Stand down, adrenal gland.

But mere lines later, my mind hit another conceptual pothole:

She did not drink, this woman,—her face told that, too,—nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up,—some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone.

Wow! That's not even a little bit judgey, is it. (And "nothing stronger than ale" must resound oddly in the modern Puritanical no-booze no-sex no-fun ear! The paeans to the clean air and the purity of this bygone world make me itch. The entire world drank some sort of beer or wine because drinking water could kill you via cholera and/or diphtheria and/or typhoid fever.) Kim Kelly (author of Top Ten Words Women Hate which is short and to the point besides having a great title), in her Foreword to this second Feminist Press edition, says of the author:

Rebecca Harding Davis was born into a life of relative ease and had next to nothing in common with the workers in her story, and yet she writes about them and the proletarian struggle with such compassion and depth of insight that it's hard to believe she was merely watching from the window.

I must decline to co-sign, Kim Kelly. To my elderly man-ears, this story sounds like the Abolition era's standard christian social-reform literature à la Uncle Tom's Cabin. Built into its very real sympathy is the distancing judgmental mind-set inescapable by a woman of Author Harding Davis's background. She isn't all about the judgments, it is true, because her point is to bring into sharp relief the inequitable, really iniquitous, world that has done this to Deb, the character described here. But baked into the clay is that vocabulary of blame and othering inescapable in 1861's world-view.

The capitalist mouthpiece character is a piece of work. He's called Kirby, but really could've been called Carnegie or Rockefeller. His anthem:

"I do not think. I wash my hands of all social problems,—slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit,—the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible."

In that unlovely speech, addressed to one Mitchell, the dilettante character of no special moral fiber but a deep and abiding aesthetic sensibility, one hears echoes of "I don't see race" and its ilk, doesn't one. Mitchell is moved to say in riposte, "Money has spoken!"

Kirby and Mitchell are discussing the existence of one of the mill-hands, Hugh Wolfe. He is a true Other, a man out of place in his place of residence. He has had a modicum of schooling; he is aesthetically aware of the world around him; therefore he is the subject of the other mill-hands' bullying. He has created a statue of great aesthetic interest to Mitchell, a carved woman whose anatomy Mitchell criticizes for being not starved-looking when Hugh tells him the korl sculpture is meant to be hungry. In a passage that felt to me more than a little codedly homoerotic, Wolfe, Kirby, and Mitchell pass around the idea of bodies on display (half-naked men abounding in the smelting-furnace heat, summer or winter) being essentially lower-class unless they are Art.

Mitchell ends his part of the conversation with a "cool, musical laugh." ::eyebrow:: Then Author Harding Davis delivers this about him:

Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the two.

The hairpins are dropping...nay, flying! And then she has him speak Scripture, "De profundis clamavi" no less!, at which juncture he is compared to the Devil. Now I do not know Author Harding Davis's other works, but these are Uranian markers in nineteenth-century gay parlance. Mitchell, and to a lesser degree Kirby, are assessing Hugh Wolfe as a sex object. And he's right there with 'em.

Think not? Thus Hugh of Mitchell, so recently departed and he fears and expects not to return:

Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him,—the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at {Hugh's} pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature, reigning,—the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men.

And the rest of the story might as well have been A Tragic Gay Romance. I'm fine with that, and don't feel the need to chisel away my impression of what Author Harding Davis did because it might not be what she intended (note use of conditional).

If you've paid me the slightest attention at all, you'll know that the anti-capitalist message of the story is so in tune with my own thoughts about a properly run world that this really needs no belaboring. I was absolutely sure I'd enjoy this story when I read this:

Everything old is new again, including the tension between the workers who make and the bosses who take. How many more Hughs are there out there now, working dangerous, soul-sucking jobs instead of following their passions? How many more will have to suffer before this wretched capitalist system finally breaks down and sets us all free?

I don't know, Kim Kelly. But the short answer is "not soon enough."

Happy new one!

>13 humouress: The table stays, Nina. Right now it's covered with stuff, none of which has anything to do with dining. I'll admit that my reading style IS expansive, so I need plenty of surfaces to hold the clutter.

>24 weird_O:, >13 humouress:, >12 weird_O: Well, what else is a room notionally set aside for eating fancy meals in for but to store books? We don't have Dinner Parties in this day and time.

So the large, flat surface needs a purpose. Reading/stacking books on is a vital purpose. Ergo, dining tomb = tome home. QED

>23 drneutron: Thank you, Jim!

>21 London_StJ: Cheers, m'dear, and a happy week ahead to you and the whole crew.

>20 katiekrug: Cheerio, Katie! Yeah, sunshine is Gone. It's clammy, as well, and that is just *gross* to me. To feel sweaty and chilly is an Affront.

>19 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible, and a happy Sunday to you. *smooch*

>18 msf59: Birddude! Sunday may now commence. Hughes's various books are well worth your time. Start with In A Lonely Place and then take in the film...great. Just flat great.

>17 SilverWolf28: Thank you most kindly, Silver. Have a lovely week's reads ahead.

>16 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Thank you for the (heartily returned) wishes.

>15 Helenliz: Greetings, Helen, and may all your wishes come true! Deliciousness will, I fear, be in short supply because the facility I live in keeps kosher...and it's Passover. *whimper*

>14 LovingLit: *eerie theremin music* ...oookaaayyy...so Sunday evening will be lovely, good to know from the future...

I'm experiencing serious book lust about those four new pretties.

>13 humouress:, >12 weird_O: Hey there, Nina and Bill.

>11 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim! Like I said to >18 msf59:, that a great place to start your Hughesing. Plus the film was (for its day) faithful to the book.

>10 karenmarie: Horrible! You were here yesterday?! I guess I went to bed early.

>9 quondame: First place!

I hope this week brings you nothing less than three-and-a-halfs, Susan.

C________ D_______ wrote a lot about this is his book Hard Times

(ducking behind the couch)

Happy new thread, Richard. It's busy in here this morning!

>31 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley! Lots of place-marking...it's the first day and all.

>30 magicians_nephew: I shall Loftily Ignore suchlike carryins-on. The very idea of mentioning him in a decent person's household. *tsk*

>27 richardderus: oh dear. Hoping for somehting slightly more interesting for Easter next week then. Easter eggs and simnel cake mayhap? IMO Simnel cake is vile, but I know some people like it.

>33 Helenliz: Blessèdly, there will be no simnel cake in my future here. Marzipan *urp* shall ne'er again pass my lips; while my gnashers do gnash at its mention, not in anticipation but in horror.

>33 Helenliz: On that subject I entirely agree with you.

>35 Helenliz: Because I'm addicted to the Great British Bake Off, I've convinced my (kitchen-havin') YGC to make some things...he tried making a simnel cake without running it past me, and we both threw our slices away. His roomie the weirdo liked it.

Since then he's experimented with pecan "marzipan" and we both like it a lot better. But the thing "marzipan" just ain't a favorite around here.

60 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (tr. Geoffrey Trousselot)

Rating: 2.5* of five; on Goodreads, where there are no half-stars, I rounded down because I've seldom felt so condescended to! Anne/AQMS inspired me to Burgoine this thing. Thank Thalia I checked it out of the library!

"At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change."

Pseudoprofound nonsense. I disliked it *intensely* and haven't yet found a way not to review it by any other means than the light of its own flames. These are tawdry, brummagem gauds trying to pass themselves off as unpolished gems.

Happy new thread Richard, hope you are having a good weekend, sending love and hugs from both of us dear friend.

>37 richardderus: I'm sorry you disliked it so greatly, but I loved your description of "I disliked it *intensely* and haven't yet found a way not to review it by any other means than the light of its own flames. These are tawdry, brummagem gauds trying to pass themselves off as unpolished gems."

>39 London_StJ: Heh. I was on a roll, there, wasn't I. *smooch*

>38 johnsimpson: Hi John! I'm glad you dropped in, and I send my hugs back to all y'all!

>37 richardderus: I'm sorry you had to read it, but it was worth it for us to read your review, and heed your warning to stay well clear.

Hi Richard. You look to be in very fine form. The top post >1 richardderus:, I'm sure this is a new author for me that I need to put on my list (yup, I have a New-to-Me Author list; Zaina is already on it, so at least I'm making progress in wider reading).

I really liked "THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS", so that I could zip-quick to view. I did skim the rest of all the greetings, but my eyeballs are falling out of my head, 'cause we have to the tax documents to our 'preparer' earlier this year. Last year was a major fuss waiting for a reissue of a document the bank people messed up. We are going to look for a new tax return person. I think our usual guy is ready for retirement.

I finished a great book last night, The Bride Wore Black. Cornell Woolrich was a N-T-Me author and I super enjoyed his snappy writing. Review when my head hasn't felt like it exploded.

>42 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! I'm not surprised you enjoyed Woolrich's work. He had a way with words, he did.

A list like that is an excellent way to stay excited about literature. There will always be new names to add, so more things to read.

The review links list started as a way to look up what I've already done easily. I'm always puzzled that others don't seem to use it the way you just did.

>41 Helenliz: Heh...my suffering wasn't in vain, then.

Happy new thread and happy Sunday, Richard! Though I'm not enjoying the rainy weather to end the week, at least I avoided all yard work guilt-free today. *Smooches* and hope your next read is better.

Happy new one, RD.

>45 PaulCranswick: Thanks, PC!

>44 bell7: Heh. You clever clogs to get the Weather Goddess to rain on your yard-work days. Y'all divinities stick together, eh what?

>37 richardderus: Richard your review was way more entertaining than the book (I'm glad I'm not alone). If it had been longer I'm sure I would have Pearl Ruled it. But that's a perfect use of the Burgoine framework AND I picked up some new vocab. I hope your next read is better.

Happy new thread! I hope you have a great week.

>1 richardderus: That meme pretty much sum sup today for me. I should probably finish the work day before I have drink though. Probably...

Happy new thread *smooch*!

>48 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka! Thanks for the *smooch* and be cautious on that before-work-ends tipple...after all, if you're casting out transAtlantic smooches before that slosh o' grog....

>47 AMQS: Heh, thanks Anne! I needed the push to do more than stew in my own resentment, ruminating on how cheated I felt.

My next read is a lot better indeed: King's Man, an American-Revolution era lovers-divided-by-war dollop of goodness.

Much, much more fun to read.

>49 richardderus: No need for booze for trans-atlantic smoochies! It's a lovely day here on my rock - I'm even contemplating taking the bigger monkey for a swim later if the tides are right.

‘Morning, RDear!

>36 richardderus: Although I love almonds and have been known to just grab a handful from the freezer to much on, marzipan is vile stuff. Simnel cake would be a hard pass.

Yay! You rolled over! I've been waiting for the giants among us to start afresh before dipping back in--double digits are so much more doable than triple.

>1 richardderus: I discovered Dorothy B. Hughes when I read a great retrospective about women noir writers (maybe it was this?). Not long after that, In a Lonely Place aired on my local tv. I'd seen some Bogart movies before, but this one! It turned me into a Bogie fan. I haven't yet read the book, but I'll get there.

>22 richardderus: Does not sound like a book I would like. But I very much appreciate the education in coded gay parlance of the era, maestro.

>37 richardderus: Hee!

>52 justchris: There's no known method to get past a triple-digit deficit. Just wait and start afresh is the only way.

The film's a great achievement, and the book stands next to it. Hughes was a tremendously talented noirist. Her story, raising kids then losing her muse to raising *their* kids while caring for her dying mother, is bog-standard typical of the wasteful and foolish way Society treats women.

>51 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! Yeah, fruitcake with marzipan in and around it is about as appealing as botflies. *shudder*

>50 BekkaJo: These are full-moon tides we're talkin' here, so exercise all your caution!

All quiet on the Richard front yesterday, I see.

Happy Tuesday, full of good coffee, books, and etc.

*smooch*

61 King's Man by Sally Malcolm

Rating: 4.5* of five

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

What you need to know is that I loathe Sally Malcolm inexpressibly. You see that "HEA guaranteed" half-truth purveyed above? Shyeah, like she means that. Burgling and being arrested on a hanging offense and all while guilty of being a sodomite in a London that loved killing its citizens as much as Texas does now? Being subjected to period-accurate violence and imprisonment and all while numbed-yet-hypersensitized by your very most belovèd's horrible silent betrayal?! I mean! (Oh and ABSOLUTELY read Rebel before even thinking of reading this book. Ab so lute ly imperative that you do.)

Does any of that sound like it's leading to "happily" at all, still less "ever" and there's nothing but after when you're so broken, so violated in your core, that the notion of living is gone and the drudgery of existing feels too burdensome most days.

And you know what? The cotton-candy version of "HEA" is not only NOT guaranteed, it's risible even to moot it. So what's left? How the hell does a romance novel come from this set-up?

I'm elderly by world standards. Old enough by American ones. But in these sixty*cough* years and counting, I've learned that breaking up with the past is the worst, least successful break-up you'll ever attempt. In fact, I've never seen it succeed. Nate and Sam don't have a future together after the events of a horrible night in 1778. They are never, ever going to get back together, not least because they're prideful men but also because it's the eighteenth century and getting unfindably lost is so very easy at the best of times, but during wartime it's damned difficult not to even when unplanned. And Nate's going to go around the world pining for the unfindable, unfixable Love of His Life. Who, oh y'know how ya do, he totally and utterly failed when failure could've been lethal. So he figures why not go the rest of the way down the weasel-hole, becomes a spy, and ends up in London searching for a certain special kind of traitor to the newly born United States. Like his much-mourned belovèd.

Sam, that belovèd, isn't an easy man. (I suspect he's a Taurus born in 1757, the Year of the Ox. He's damned near the perfect match for the profile!) He's quite stubborn, he's pig-headedly unwilling to compromise when it's A Matter of Principle, he's sunny and sweet and deeply devoted...until betrayed. His country, this colony America, the town of Rosemont in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, has lost its fucking mind and is going to war with the *winners* of the planet's first World War (comme d'habitude, started by the Germans)! Yes, the British Parliament needs to welcome Americans if the laws they pass are going to apply to them and no, the taxes that pay for the colonies' protection from the French aren't wrong and besides who the hell likes tea anyway?

(I might've made that last bit up.)

These are men whose very essence is called into question by the other. And yet that is an attraction that's utterly unkillable, Opposites Attract, and its power is awe-inspiring. So they meet in the last place either really wants to be: London! A million people...just think of how *staggeringly*huge* that is to men who think Boston is a city!...and Fate *glowers at La Malcolm* in her blind ill will smashes the two into each other in a completely unavoidable, unignorable, and intimacy-demanding way.

What happens then is really quite fun, although it involves a lot less sex than I was expecting. The mud-wrestling (of a carriage!) doesn't count; the skinny-dipping (a perfectly astounding amount of the smexytimes in this series appears to be al fresco) isn't like that, and, when they Get It On at last, they're only slightly more ready to roll than is the reader. A vile person in the form of a barely-ennobled Baron does vile things to keep them apart. It works. There are misunderstandings, and missed opportunities to speak plainly (which, for once!, do not feel contrived to me), and machinations of people whose agendas have little to do with the spirits of two badly wounded, barely coping men who should be beside the Pawtuxet River fishing for their Sunday dinner. The entire time I was making my way around England with them, I felt so sad and bereft that they could never go back to Eden.

And really, that's what I mean about the obligatory HEA here...the two men who lost their demi-Paradise did not find it again in England's green and pleasant land. They found each other's bodies. But they had to work, and work hard, to find the way to be back in relationship. Like any long-term love, there are dark bits and things we don't say out loud and long, long silences. For many people, there isn't anything to cause them to seek ways to fix the broken bits. For Sam there isn't any way to forgive Nate's betrayal; for Nate there isn't any way to batter down Sam's walls.

It takes Death to do that job. And do it She does. That's your HEA for you, snatched from the actual jaws of Death Herself is the clarity and the love and the means to live with the awful hurts that never, ever go away, that leave scars. Tattoo a rose around the scar...make a feature out of a bug...love anyway, harder than ever.

Oh, and Author Malcolm...about that hit I had to place on you...tell your husband I am ever so sorry, but the w-bomb you dropped at 51% is simply not to be tolerated and Standards must be maintained.

>54 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Yeah, I was busy with reviewer chores. Twitter takes up a lot of time, but I get hundreds of review-views from it every day so the time spent is rewarded.

I admit to being more than a little engrossed in King's Man, review above, because I am always looking for more historical stories set among My People. Bonus is that the short story introducing the men was so very sweet, while the novel is about what happens when it all goes sour. I expect the reality of politics ends more love affairs than we'll ever know.

Happy week-ahead's reads!

I'm going to have to look for a Dorothy Hughes book. I admit I never heard of her.

>57 weird_O: Oh, you're in for a treat, Bill! Miss Hughes is probably most famous for In A Lonely Place, and that's a *great* introduction to her stuff.

Happy discovery reading!

Hey RD, Happy Tuesday.

Just wanted to let you know that your review (and the smallness of the cost) convinced me to buy The Psychology of Time Travel. Goodness knows when I'll actually read it. :)

Ricardo--Catching up with my favorite review-writer! I am not sure which I enjoy more -- when you fall desperately, unavoidable in love with a book, or when you slash and murder a despicable waste of time and paper. Both are so fun. : )

>60 Berly: Hiya Kimmers! *smooch*

It's the ~meh~ ones I have trouble with. I dunno how to make reading about something I can't be arsed to coo or crush interesting.

>59 mahsdad: Hey Jeff! Glad you're at least some ways towards reading La Mascarenhas's book. It's worth your time. Happy new week!

^Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, (NMP). Yes, this is a real bird and we have been waiting for them to pass through. Nailed it today, by seeing several. I could never snap off a photo though.

Hi, Richard. I saw that you were also a fan of Old Baggage. Thanks to Bonnie, I started it today. I like her easy style.

>62 msf59: A real yellow-bellied sapsucker! Wow. I can die with all my bucket-list birds seen!

Have a great time going a-Gardaming.

>24 weird_O: >25 richardderus: Obvious, really, now that you point it out.

>62 msf59: We have a woodpecker in the woodland out back. We used to have a bird feeder on the kitchen window, where the children could see the birds when they were small (when the children were small, not the birds. Bird sizes have not changed significantly in recent years!).

If the woodpecker came to the feeder, it sounded like the house was under attack!

62 Great Kings' War by John F. Carr and Roland J. Green

Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded up because I'm a sucker for military SF/fantasy that really knows what the hell it's talking about, and I will (with reservations explored below) read on

Sequel to Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen by H. Beam Piper, in the Paratime Universe (see The Complete Paratime for details).

A novella-length book, the last written by its mentally ill author (who probably starved himself to death because of some absurd sense of "honor"), spawned a series of sequels exploring in detail (see the author of this work, and successive ones, at his website Hostigos) the accidental transposition of a man out of time on his own world, into a world exactly suited to his strengths. "The Road to Hostigos" section at the website explains this with admirable brevity.

This first sequel is the story of the first year after Kalvan's metamorphosis from Corporal Calvin Morrison, apostate Presbyterian clergyman and Korean War veteran, into Great King Kalvan of Hos-Hostigos. We're in the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Kalvan is the rare survivor of cross-time contamination and, in the view of the academics at Dhergabar University on First Level, is a Dralm-sent opportunity to test paratime theory's self-evident but ordinarily unexplorable real-world action. Will Kalvan, whose arrival from nowhere makes his ideas and knowledge and opinions reek of Divine Intervention, succeed in staving off the doom slated to fall on Hostigos for its impious defiance of the local theocrats? Will the multitudes of fates altered by this uncontaminated-by-planning accident change enough about the multiverse to rank as a Subsector? Is the Great Man Theory right?!

One thing Author John F. Carr gets absolutely right is that academics are bloodthirsty political infighters. This book contains a good bit of that world. It also contains passages from the points of view of people who were merely names in the original novella. It also contains points of view absolutely unique to the expanded world. It contains, in fact, a lot of words that I don't entirely agree are necessary to tell a cracking good yarn set in this multiverse. Points of view of the vile theocrats? They're reinforcing what I already knew: They're unbelieving con artist scumbags. ::shockhorror:: Points of view of minor players in the battles, I get; they can realistically and without obvious infodumping clue us in to important action. But all of this comes at the expense of a cohesive narrative for the two parties I came to this bar to talk to: Kalvan and Verkan Vall, the newly minted king and the Paratime Police leader whose interest in Kalvan's ability to beat out a trained, technologically advanced security apparatus and then set himself up as the new power in the Earth he's landed in, is what's keeping him alive.

The players are many; the action is constant; but the problems are real. Kalvan's impending fatherhood is the only thing that's prevented his Great Queen from leading an army to defend what was, until he arrived and changed everything and won her heart, her future realm. What's pinning her down, in other words, is her difficult pregnancy..."she's a Girl." Her own mother having died in childbirth, Kalvan suffers some sleepless nights wondering what the hell he'll do if she dies too. But folks: SHE WAS THE HEIRESS TO THE THRONE UNTIL HE GOT HER PREGNANT AND SHE "HAD TO RETIRE." She's already proven herself an able politician and a brave commander of men. And now she's going to be a wife and mama?

Well, as it happens, no. She's royalty. The child she bears has a wetnurse from the word go, and within a month, The Great Queen Rylla's on horseback and bringing her husband supplies and men at a siege (along with a mentioned-on-page entourage for childcare). Much to his Our Time Line 1960s-cop distress. But Author Carr did us a solid, and an unusual one considering this book was written in the SFnal universe of the 1980s. Kalvan *listens*to*Rylla* and acts on her advice. They have a bruising fight...they reach an understanding...and they roll over the opposition, in tandem, partners.

I was not expecting that. I'm glad I got it.

A lot more "of its time" is the dismissive homophobia and the gratuitous fatphobia. I don't like it, but it's there, and it's not foregrounded. I guess I like the candy of multiverse-battle-politickin' enough to screw up my eyes and wrinkle my nose at the frankly-coulda-been-worse social attitudes we don't hold with anymore.

This series has been chugging along now for almost sixty years. Wargamers took to it with cries of glee. (The maps...!!) The incels and Proud Boys see it as Aryan enough to make them happy, and while the evidence doesn't support a full patriarchal view of this world, when has that stopped them from ignoring what they don't care to see. It's not a series I will be warbling my fool lungs out to beg you to pick up, because most people will bog down in the battle scenes and the tactical details that make my geekly heart go pitty-pat.

But if you like 1632 and its myriad follow-ons, or Warhammer 40,000 et alii, this is another option for the moments you're feeling a bit done with what has held your attention a minute too long.

MARCH IN REVIEW

I managed sixteen reviews posted on my blog this month! I'm on track to meet my annual goal of 190 reviews posted there. I posted seventeen reviews here, which isn't at all bad, and I flat refuse to contemplate still less report the number of books I've acquired by various means. It's clear that, were I just slightly more mentally healthy, I'd be worried about my tendency towards hoarding.

Luckily I'm blissfully un-self-aware! Biblioconcupiscence HO-O-OOO!

>65 sirfurboy: Hi Stephen!

>64 humouress: Perspective checks are always useful, no?
***
I spent my morning writing my last review for March, I got some nagging bureaucratic chores handled, and generally was productive. Rob was kinda needy, so we spent a lot of time being together online. I wore out two devices, and was glad I had a third! It cements my determination to get, with my stimmy, a more flexible device than the Fire. *sigh* Needs must, but these damned things cost the EARTH.

First world problems! I'm dry, warm/cool, medicated, and well fed.

*smooch* to all who wander by.

Hey, there! Somehow I lost track of you. (And by "somehow" I mean "I haven't been keeping up very well with anyone lately" but I do mean to be better, tho I will never *be best*.) Glad I stumbled on your new thread. Interesting reviews up there. I read your reviews but did not make note of the titles because I do not need more on my TBR list. Even so, I know where you live so can find them again.

So, did YOU get your 3rd stimmy yet? I didn't. Both prior stims came within a week. Interesting that this one has been delayed. I have a conspiracy theory about that.

Smooches!

>69 Storeetllr: Hiya Mary! Nope, no stimmy yet, but we didn't pay taxes in 2020 so that's perfectly ordinary.

Out of morbid curiosity, what's your conspiracy theory?

*sigh* I'm only 4 days late. 70 messages? Yes, I've read through them all and now I'm too exhausted to comment. Or is that because of all the craft supply sorting I've been doing today?

*smooch*

>71 ronincats: At a guess, both. You're going at one helluva lick!

*smooch*

>68 richardderus: OK. What the heck is a "stimmy"?
And, >69 Storeetllr:, >70 richardderus: Yes, *we* want to know what this conspiracy theory is and why you expect 3 stimmy thingies...

>71 ronincats: I'm too exhausted to make sensible comments, Roni. I've been organizing income tax receipts and it is driving me bonkers because I don't know what ones I "ought" to have. My accountant wants our info and slips a lot earlier this year (thank goodness we hire the same one every year to save what mental capacity we have for things like reading). Canadian taxes are due April 30th (compared to 15 April for Americans, IIRC).

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Morning, BigDaddy! Happy new one. I have not read Dorothy Hughes, but she is in the stacks - I am a big fan of In A Lonely Place.

I enjoyed reading through the reviews, so thanks for those. I might have snorted my coffee when I got to "(I might've made that last bit up.)". You are the dog's bark, dear one.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday.

>67 richardderus: Ignorance is bliss in book acquisition for you. I, on the other hand, like to keep track. It’s a combination of gratification and guilt.

>70 richardderus: We haven’t submitted our tax forms for 2020 yet, and our first two stimulus payments came via check, but this time the payment was direct deposited into our checking account two days before the website Bill checked said it would be deposited. Money’s already spent in advance on the tree service coming out sometime in this month.

Governor Cuomo has serious problems. He's a flawed person. But yesterday he signed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act which contains provisions to go a long, long way to repairing the carnage wrought by the racist, classist, politically motivated "War on Drugs" criminal enterprise. He deserves praise for this legislation passing on his watch.

>76 karenmarie: - Once again, New Jersey was ahead of NY on an issue :) It was on the ballot in November and passed, and I think the legislation just did last month. I personally don't care whether I can now partake, but I love to see low-level drug convictions being expunged!

>76 karenmarie: Hey there Horrible, happy Thursday. I'm not a gratiguiltion person, no. I'll take gratification and leave guilt every time...grew up in a hellbrew of guilt and won't voluntarily increase the world's supply thereof for anyone I don't loathe.

Yay for the stimmy paying for your tree work!

>75 Crazymamie: *smooch* You're either very sweet or more Southern than I gave you credit for....

:-P

>74 FAMeulstee: Happy Thursday, Anita my dear!

>73 SandyAMcPherson: Ha! Well, yes, it's not instantly obvious that "stimmy" means "Biden Administration direct stimulus payment," now is it.

>78 katiekrug: That's the sort of detail that makes me feel there was actual and thoughtful discussion of what needed to happen here. I'm so so pleased!

Happy Thursday!

Happy April, Richard. I caught this red-tailed hawk, while hitting the trails with my birding buddies yesterday. This hawk was not bashful at all, and I was able to get fairly close.

>81 msf59: I've never experienced hawks as particularly skittish unless they're hunting, Mark. They don't really have a lot to fear in general. They're very near the top of the food web! And they don't fear us, so much as feel annoyed by our loud, loutish ways as they're out hunting.

He's probably thinking some hawk-like version of, "what you starin' at human?"

April! Good heavens.

Nor have I rd. I wasn't sure if it was the nature of the beast or just that the locals are used to the small amount of bustle in my neighborhood. And the one that watches us from the phone pole. I walked up to a car once a while back whole walking Lola and was nearly eye to eye with a hawk on the roof of a car, chilling and watching life pass him by. Now that we have eagles in the area, I'm always trying to catch them when I have my binoculars.

I am having an absolute flurry of hummers this year. I have been kept busy refilling their feeder

I'm with you on Governor Cuomo. He did some things right and did some things grotesquely wrong, but during the first part of the COVID shutdowns when everything was unknown and nobody was talking any near sensible, he, along with a few others around the country, were at least talking to the people. Whether that was a good decision or a bad one, only time will tell. One thing is sure - his political career is over.

>84 benitastrnad: as a New Yorker, i always knew Andy was a weasel, but he was OUR weasel (and Mario's son) so we gave him a lot of slack.

Agree that his COVID "fireside chats" were vital and essential - also agree that his political career is over.

>85 magicians_nephew:, >84 benitastrnad: He was Mario's enforcer! Get real, New Yorkers, we all knew what he was & voted him in because he could get stuff done. He did; his day's done. He needs to go home now.

>83 mckait: Hummingbirds! No wonder the hawks are hangin', it's smorgasbord. *smooch*

>70 richardderus: >71 ronincats: Well, if you insist. :) I'm wondering if the delay isn't on purpose to make Biden look bad to seniors. I mean, it was TFG's appointee on the SSA Commission who held up passing info to the IRS, which held up the IRS getting money into our accounts, but I'm betting a LOT of seniors don't know that and will be blaming Biden and the Dems. BTW, still nothing in my account and, according to the IRS site, either they don't have enough info (whatever that means-I mean, the IRS knows pretty much everything) or I'm not eligible. Oh, well, I'm not starving, but I imagine it's rough on a lot of seniors who live hand-to-mouth.

'Morning, RD, and happy Friday to you.

*blinks* I got nothing to add except

*smooch*

>88 karenmarie: So a happy-Friday *smooch* back at'cha!

The Pornification of America is pretty disheartening.

>87 Storeetllr: Mmmm

I don't really see that as a conspiracy theory so much as being clear-sighted, possessing a sharp BS filter, and thinking cynically therefore accurately about the baseness and casual cruelty of the personalities at the top of the political food chain...particularly towards the right.

Wishing you a good weekend, sir. It's a 4 day weekend here so I'm already on Saturday and just getting confused. Have a good one.

>90 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen...I forgot it was Eastre, too. I live in a facility run by Orthodox Jews so it's been Passover (the nastiest, cruelest holiday I can imagine) (well, next to the one where they tortured that guy to death and I'm supposed to be grateful for it) for a while now.

More reading time! That's a win, surely.

I need to do some shopping either later today or Sunday so I can make my family traditional Easter foods--specifically the dessert (banana pudding). The rest of the menu will be there, but it's the banana pudding I crave!

>92 thornton37814: With or without vanilla wafers?

Happy Friday, Richard. No FOY birds to report and it is still damn chilly. A big warm up coming though and I can NOT WAIT! Hope those current reads are treating you fine.

>94 msf59: Good news re: warm up! No FOYs isn't too bad, so long as the birbs are comin' through.

Thanks! The reads keep a-comin'.
***

“Looks like we legalized marijuana just in time.”

>93 richardderus: I layer vanilla wafers and bananas then pour hot custard over the top. No cool whip!

'Morning, RD!

>89 richardderus: I must admit that as much as I thoroughly enjoyed my 20s and 30s, I just don't like seeing, reading, and hearing all the what-used-to-be-X-rated stuff on prime time TV and all over the internet. And the sexualization of young girls and boys is truly disgusting.

>95 richardderus: I like it.

>97 karenmarie: Isn't that one hilarious? And a take on Godzilla v Kong I'd never seen.

It's really pervasive. It's gone into pathology, and the author's making me squirmy. It really needs to be dealt with, and that means discussed, and that means (for biblioholics anyway) read about so this book's perfect at its job.

>96 thornton37814: What-Whip?

>96 thornton37814: banana pudding and vanilla wafers -- I'm on my way over - save me a piece.

63 Nick by Michael Farris Smith

Rating: 3.5* of five, on benightè Goodreads where there are no half-stars I rounded down because BLEAK!

Great spaces of solitude in the same house that was sometimes filled with the smiling faces of friends and family but during this blackness the house seemed to grow and the space seemed to stretch in height and spread in width and Nick was left to wonder where the voices had gone.

Sums up my overall impression of the read. Deeply bleak, in an existential way, as we somehow always knew Nick Carraway's life would be. Much of the suffering appears gratuitous, self-inflicted; I came to believe that was the author's intent.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF THE LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY, FOLKS!

I'm supporting them on three continents via Overdrive :0)

I would. >:-( Unfortunately our library system has stopped doing transfers between branches since we first went into lockdown. So I can borrow from my local branch but only what is in my (rather small) local branch. I reckon I've got more books in the house than they do - and I don't read a lot of under 5's, YA, chick-lit or elderly-lady-friendly romance.
I have been borrowing audio through the BorrowBox app though, so I am still using it, in a way.

>100 richardderus: Of course I support my library, Richard dear.
Frank picked up my eight reserved library books last week. Last year they changed from eight books a month, to no more than eight books being processed. So when the books are picked up, I can start reserving again.
And then I have 9 e-library books out, so I do my share ;-)

I'm not going to read 103 posts! That's just to much. Wishing you a very Happy New Thread, Richard.

Happy Easter, Rdear. I hope all is well at your place.

'Morning, RD! Happy Sunday.

SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY, FOLKS! Preaching to the choir. Since ours is opening with reduced days/hours and with time limits tomorrow, after being closed since March 17 of last year, I'm thrilled, and may actually wander on over there to say hi.

*smooch*

Hi Richard!

For some reason I lost your thread. Don't worry, I found you again and have you starred so it does not happen again.

Belated new thread wishes :)

>106 karenmarie: Yup, our library system has started taking appointments for people to come in and browse. A little more light showing at the end of the tunnel!

>108 drneutron:, >106 karenmarie: They were the only significant interest group left out of Biden's infrastructure bill, though, so we-the-patrons need to step up our obvious support for their services.

>107 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! Here you are, so no worries.

>106 karenmarie: *smooch*

>105 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara! It's a lovely day, not too much of anything. That's always a plus.

>104 connie53: Agreed, once the unreads pass ~50 I'm just startin' afresh wherever I am.

But look in >2 richardderus: in case I've reviewed anything you're interested in, since that's where the links to reviews live.

>103 FAMeulstee: You're pretty much the dream patron for a librarian, I'd imagine. You've always used their facilities with verve! *smooch*

>102 Helenliz: That's crummy but completely understandable...the herd-immunity chimera we're all chasing will crunch that excuse into powder, though, and we'll be back to borrowing from all branches. I myownself have had to shift to the county-wide ebook system, which annoys me but is I fear just inevitable reality biting me.

>101 humouress: Living in a small country backed into a corner by the arcane and archaic copyright regime we badly need to modernize will do it!

Hiya RD. Are you munching chocolate offerings by pretend deities this morning?
Yeah, me neither.

I did get to eat an extra-large cheese baking powder biscuit. Yum. And lots of Rancilio-made espresso with foamy milk. More yum. All homemade, too.

Just reviewed The Bride Wore Black and have put in for the next available tree book of Woolrich's. As you said way back, he sure is a potent writer.

I for one think we learn all we need to know about Nick Carroway from The Great Gatsby and so the Nick book doesn't much interest me.

If he's that much of a Gloomy Gus to start with then what happens during TGG shouldn't affect him in any way, am I right?

If you haven't listened to The Ezra Klein Show on the New York Times Opinion site, you certainly should. And keep in mind that I am someone who can't ear-read anything longer than 10min w/o sleeping. Ted Chiang's episode is delightful.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ted-chiang.html/

>113 magicians_nephew: Oh, the prequel story isn't useless by any means. But it's not a whoop-de-doo I-never-thought-of-that experience, as it's mostly just filling in cracks with gesso. So...well...say it's best left to cultists.

>112 SandyAMcPherson: Hey Sandy! No, no chocolate gifts from Eastre's Basket...I bought myself a peanut-butter chocolate egg and ate it, but there's an end to it. Oh, it being Passover too, we were served some tasty coconut macaroons with lunch. That was pleasant.

I hope Woolrich keeps you flipping pages! Might also consider Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze...another vivid and passionate noir novel of that period.

>110 richardderus: I will visit there, Richard. Thanks for the tip.

>113 magicians_nephew: honestly i'd rather read a prequel about Daisy and Tom - or even Jordan, that little minx

>117 magicians_nephew: Wait a minute, they'll be along directly.

>116 connie53: :-)

>100 richardderus: Three of them. The forth has a pretty posh base.

SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY, FOLKS! Amen, Richard!

I hope you are having a nice Sunday and having a good time with Cowboys Are My Weakness.

>120 msf59: Hey there, Birddude. Glad you came by! I'm enjoying Pam Houston a good deal indeed. Thanks again for the surprise.

>119 quondame: Posh bases need circ level help, too. Juuust sayin'

>121 richardderus: It's just that the Beverly Hills library is located in a difficult to navigate corner of that city, one of the few areas near here that I've been to repeatedly and still have no feel for whatsoever. So I don't think about it.

>122 quondame: All I ever knew about it is it's very pretty and near a park. Lots of faux-Moorish arches and a nice cloister. I've driven in LA twice in my life, and BH exactly never, so I bow to your experience of the place.

>123 richardderus: In the long ago it was on the Red Line which became the northern limit of urban BHs and the southern edge of the lesser mansions. There are very few N/S roads through what was a rail line and the grids get messy in that area about a mile west of where Melrose used to be an interesting place to check out.

>98 richardderus: I really hate Cool Whip. It's so fake. My mom never made her banana pudding with it. I know a lot of people put it in banana pudding, but that is NASTY! I don't mind real whipped topping that you whip from scratch, but Cool Whip is NASTY!

I think it's the sodium caseinate they add to keep it shelf stable. It tastes a lot like barf. Same ingredient I can't abide in most chocolate stuff that doesn't have a powerful other flavor to mask it.

>95 richardderus: yea well, we didn't. We had a referendum with the last election (Nov 2020) and by a slim margin, we voted not to legalise.

>120 msf59: I love my local libraries :) :) :)

'Morning, RD!

Ugh. Cool Whip. It's one of the key ingredients in the dessert category Church Food. There's casserole Church Food with Cream of Anything Soup, too.

Then there's my sister's recipe for skillet pilaf which uses Mrs. Grass Noodle Soup with Chicken Broth (eensy noodles and flavored granules). Even though it's technically in the Dried Soup Mix category of Church food we love it, and call it Church Rice.

Anyway, today's a coffee, reading, and possible Library-visiting day. Yesterday got away from me and I didn't visit.

*smooch*

>100 richardderus: So, not for me, then.

Thanks for the library love! I'm heading out for work soon where I will be letting folks in by appointment and fielding all the questions about when we'll be fully open (we don't know) while I'm still weeks away from vaccine eligibility...
In the meantime, I have way too many books out from the library that I'm schlepping to my dogsitting job. Now that Overdrive upgraded Libby and I can see across cards (several consortiums in the state, the Boston Public Library, and the out-of-state card I have in my sister's system) which libraries own an e-book, if it's available, and if not how long of a wait, I'm going to have more digital books than ever as I maximize where I'm getting it from instead of waiting patiently for holds.

*smooch*

>129 bell7: Oh, *so* not for you, Mary. Avoid handling it without gloves, in fact. And the joys of borrowing ebooks, when available, are hard to overstate. I'm curious about the Oracle-v-Google decision's downstream effects on copyright law...and, as I've mentioned to you before, the arise of NFTs...much interesting stuff to come.

*smooch*

>128 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, what a nice day that sounds to be. Except for the church-food part...and now I understand church rice! It's ho-maid rice-a-roni! So it's perfectly understandable y'all'd love that.

*smooch*

>127 LovingLit: Absurd. There never was a reason to criminalize the stuff. Never. *sigh*

Library luuuv across continents! I am among my own.

To my complete absence of surprise, I was in that fuck Zuck's 533MM leaked-details cohort...which I kind of already knew since finding out I couldn't log into Insta or FB anymore. Check your exposure: https://www.haveibeenpwned.com/

I don't think I'm part of the FB leak, but I am part of 12 others on my main email.

My only suggestion is use a password manager, use long passwords and if nothing else NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use the same password between different sites. That's the biggest problem with these breaches user account/password-wise. Nevarious individuals will buy these lists and then try these passwords at other sites (especially banks) to see if they can get in. No need to hack a password if they already have it

>132 mahsdad: I've spent hours w/my Google security lists to fix the passwords, sometimes it feels as though it's my primary job! And every...E VER Y...alert gets handled the instant I see it.

Too late for Zuckerworld, since the hackers changed my recovery questions. Oh well.

This is exactly why I hibernate from most social media. I don't have a Facebook, or Twitter account and I don't bank online. I had some checks stolen once and that was a real mess. I can't imagine what it would be like to have somebody get into my bank account. (I don't have Facebook, because I decided a long time ago, that I was not going to provide Zucker___er with one iota of income if it could be avoided.) If that means I don't receive a wedding invitation or two, or get notified that cousins had babies, well, they made that choice that Zucker___er is more important to them than I am.

I am not naïve enough to think that totally protects me because I do have a credit card but I don't pay online, and up until the powers-that sign my paycheck told me I had to work from home last year, I didn't have internet in my house. I keep waiting to find out that somebody has hacked into the University systems and gotten all of my information from them, but if they do, then they are darn good at what they do and probably nothing would have kept them out of my accounts.

That's too bad that your FB account got completely taken over. Not that I spend much time there anymore, its pretty much all AD posts with some friends sprinkled in occasionally.

>135 mahsdad: It's not worth it to me to try to do much, so...gone goy.

>134 benitastrnad: There's absolutely no way to be 100% safe, Benita, but it's good to limit one's vulnerabilities. I don't think anyone's going to ignore the 533MM people's data being dumped!

Hi Richard good morning to you. I hope your day is a smooth one.

>131 richardderus: >134 benitastrnad: The one time that we have money taken out of our credit card account unlawfully wasn’t a data leak, it was a good old-fashioned stealing of credit card when we were in holiday in Portugal. Stole credit card and pin and spent £3,500 in the next two hours buying designer handbags and taking cash out of the account. I was really annoyed with the credit card company that they didn’t block transactions as suspicious. I mean 3 maximum cash withdrawals within 15 minutes at 3 different ATMs in a foreign country isn’t suspicious, (especially for someone who never gets cash out on her credit card)?And I’ve never bought a designer handbag in my life.

We got the money refunded pretty quickly but it was scary while it lasted.

>138 SandDune: Good gracious, Rhian! How terrifying, and revealing. Those behaviors aren't suspicious?!? I know for a fact that I'd've been happy to be summoned to the phone to give some agreed-upon code proving it was really me.

>137 connie53: Hi Connie! Thank you for the good wishes. So far, so good.

I'd never suffer from constipation in *this* bathroom.

64 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Rating: 1* of five

Read in the Aughties. Found it *insufferable* and conceived a deep and abiding loathing for the dudebro who wrote this. I tried two other books by him, What Is the What (um, who the hell asked you, white guy? actual African writers tell it) and Zeitoun (liked it a lot, and of course it turns out 1) he took other peoples' work and 2) Zeitoun was no angel at all); and that was that.

So I saw someone on Goodreads' review yesterday, ordered up a Kindlesample to refresh my memory, and:

I did not enjoy this exercise in self-aggrandizing pointlessness.

>141 richardderus: - Welp, good to know I can just skip over his work. AND deaccession the copy of Zeitoun I've had on shelf for 10 or so years....

>141 richardderus: That's too bad, I read/listened to it about 7 years ago and while I have no memory of it, my "review" said that I liked it. It must have left SUCH a good impression that I have no current opinion as to its worthyness, I doubt its one I'll ever pick up again. :) I've read The Circle, that was okay and I read You Shall Know Our Velocity many years ago before I started keeping track and I liked it enough to keep it on the shelf.

Different strokes for different folks

>143 mahsdad: Different strokes for different folks

Yes! Exactly...we all enjoy things for our own reasons, and are always at liberty to vary in our own personal tastes.

what a weirdo liking that tedious bore's sludgy effluent of verbiage

>142 katiekrug: I will not attempt to dissuade you, Katie. Not even slightly.

I resemble that remark. LOL

>131 richardderus: Thanks for the link, Richard. I checked and found that all my present e-mail adresses are fine.

>141 richardderus: I have a few books by Eggers on the shelves but haven't read any of them yet. Sounds like they may be used to keep me warm if the ace age descends on Kuala Lumpur.

>147 PaulCranswick: Sounds like a good plan to me, PC, though in the event a table leg needs propping up....

>146 FAMeulstee: You are in luck! I'm very glad, Anita.

>145 mahsdad: :-)

>140 richardderus: Not a place for a claustrophobic-galeophobia sufferer.

>149 quondame: Oh hell no! Nightmare fodder, in fact.

I didn't hear about the FB leak. Aggravating that it was your account, Richard. Mine was not affected probably because my account was locked and I rarely unlock it. I did that after someone hijacked FB account that I set up on another email and, despite attempts to reach out to customer support, I never received an help or acknowledgment of the issue.

I'd much rather support libraries than FB!

>143 mahsdad:
I read The Circle when it came out and thought it was a good commentary on the state of life that revolves around social media. But I also thought he botched the ending of that book horribly. I haven't read anything else by Eggers because he hasn't written anything that has appealed to my reading interests. Apparently, I haven't missed much.

>141 richardderus: Hmmm - well that gives me a clue why I started it a long time ago and never finished it. Remember nothing about it. I have a sneaking suspicion it's a 1,001 though, so I'll probably pick it up again at some point.

Maybe not this decade!

Happy Thursday, Richard dear.

I haven't read any of Dave Eggers books, I might try one day as The Circle is on the Dutch 1001 books list.

>153 BekkaJo: I can't find any books by Dave Eggers on the 1001 lists. As mentioned above, he is on the Dutch list.

-Wilson's Snipe (NMP)

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I did get my FOY snipe the other day. Not a very good look though, so no photo. They breed here, so I will be seeing them more often. Cool looking birds but very stealthy.

Sorry, your allergies have you down. Mine have been hammering me too. Not a whole lot of symptoms but fatigue and itchy eyes.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Thursday to you.

>130 richardderus: Homemade rice-a-roni is a good way to describe it. I’ve recently become a convert to Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter for toast and pancakes and waffles and such (too expensive to bake with), and the last two times I’ve made church rice I’ve used it. We’ve both noticed how much better it tastes.

>141 richardderus: On my shelves, never felt inclined to read it. I also have two other books by him that have wonderful covers – A Hologram for the King and The Monk of Mokha.

>156 karenmarie: Hey Horrible, how is it possible this is Thursday? Feels like Sunday to me. Help....

The best, best butter on the planet is ghee. All the umami of real butter and less of the slithery stuff. Kerrygold's the absolute most delicious thing for butter-flavor adding, next to it.

Don't sprain anything getting those Eggers books down. *smooch*

>155 msf59: Hiya Birddude! Never seen a snipe before except this one:

A Humber Snipe from 1950. Prettier color, uglier overall.

I slept very, very poorly last night. Woke up at 5am and never slept more than 30min at a stretch after that. Bad allergy season!

>154 FAMeulstee: I don't wish an Eggersing on anyone, Anita. Leave it for last is my advice.

>153 BekkaJo: Maybe not, Bekka...check your local 1,001 list before you embark on this "read" to see if it's been removed.

>152 benitastrnad: I would definitely say that you haven't missed a darn thing, Benita. Don't hurry to fill that gap in.

>151 Familyhistorian: Oh my heck, yes, it's a huge hole in their credibility. They were so desperate to plug it that they said it was "old data" that came from an already plugged back door.

...um...Zuck...that AIN'T a comfort...

How I've felt for DAYS.

I need a new neti pot!

>160 richardderus: Oh dear, I am sorry to hear that, Richard.

>1 richardderus: Okay, I just created a shopping cart at NYRB.com (I love those editions!) and added The Expendable Man to said cart.

>141 richardderus: I gave that one a try several years back. It went into the DNF pile. Not my cuppa, although I liked What Is the What quite a bit when I read it in 2011.

And, um, just yes to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY. But buy books, too. ;-)

>161 EBT1002: Yay for NYRB.com's new patroness! And I am utterly unsurprised that you weren't in any way excited by Eggers's icky effluent.

Were you to read what he wrote in What is the What in an #OwnVoices world, I suspect it wouldn't please you near so much.

*smooch*

It's not! Huzzah!! No Eggers for me. *Surreptitiously slides the copy of Zeitoun that's been on the shelf for years, into the charity pile*

>160 richardderus: Me too! I can't work out if I have a filthy cold or just allergies. Either way I feel shocking and my nose is very unhappy with me. Plus, while I'm whinging, I bit into my bottom lip whilst stressed at work on Tuesday (I tend to chew it when concentrating), so now it's all swollen and yucky.

Whinge over. Get through work today, four day weekend, big stack of SUPPORT MY LIBRARY library books to read. All good.

>158 richardderus: The Eggers is nowhere near the top of the pile, Richard dear. And I will never read them all. Some are not translated (despite being on the Dutch list), a few others are only available in 17th/18th century translations. But I love lists, and love x-ing out the ones I have read :-)

>160 richardderus: I've suffered headaches with my sinus stuff this week. I've sneezed tons I really need the Arm & Hammer saline that works similarly to a Neti pot but is easier to use. When I grabbed my can, I noticed it expired last August, so I decided to add it to my Walmart pickup scheduled for this afternoon. Walmart tends to get a lot of my business on pickup because they don't charge a fee. Food City charges $5. Ingles doesn't even offer the option. Food City doesn't stock the coffee I like best--only Walmart and Ingles. There's coffee for work and home on the order! I try to go to Ingles or Food City at off times to pick up fresh meat and produce. I'm pickier about those. If the retired lady does my shopping at Food City, I'm fine, but if it's a teenager, they don't have a clue!

'Morning, RDear, and happy Friday.

Boo hiss to the pollen woes - I am feeling them a bit, but take Claratin-wannabe every single day of my life. It definitely helps me. For the first 5 or so years in NC I had sinus infections that frequently went into bronchitis from allergies and pollen - we're talking 5-10 a year. Claratin was prescription but totally worth it and now it's generic so it doesn't break the bank.

When i was in London in the 70's a lot of the cabs were Snipes. Ugly as sin but a back seat you could raise a family of four in

>166 karenmarie: I wish Claritin worked. I might as well be taking a sugar pill. But whatever works is definitely my 'tude towards allergies...if it's your answer it's all golden. Benadryl is the only allergy compound that helps my swollen tissues unswell.

Happy Friday, Horrible dear, and a weekend of delicious reads ahead.

>165 thornton37814: I used to be a regular visitor to Asheville and always giggled when I saw "Ingles." In my Texican head, it was "inglés" and that just cracked me up!

A teenager shopping for you?! Perish forbid! The horror, the horror. Why would the store even allow it? Surely there are retirees whose wallets need fattening and time needs consuming. It's not like it's a worse job that Walmart greeter.

Have a good weekend's worth of reading!

>164 FAMeulstee: There is something so satisfying about that, isn't there, Anita. A palpable sense of Task Accomplished.

Happy weekend!

>163 BekkaJo: You dodged that bullet, Bekka. *shudder*

I expect it's your allergies acting up. A cold should be warded off by the general distancing we're practicing as a matter of course. In either case, feel better soon.

Richard, Richard! Go look at what I did!

>170 ronincats: I did; they're just lovely!

Thank you!!!

>115 richardderus: Good tip. Thanks.
I'm just nearthe beginning of A Winter in Arabia at the moment. I'm trying to finish it before the library wants it back. It's a 'tree' book so I could be unscrupulous and hang onto it to finish.

>173 SandyAMcPherson: The only time I'd say that was unscrupulous is if there's a hold on the book...has the library got an online-renewal tool? If it won't let you renew the book, the chances are someone's waiting for it. That's the only time I'd say it wasn't perfectly okay to keep a book that will only go to be reshelved out in your hands for an extra day or so.

>174 richardderus: Just checked and the book is 'renewable'. I should have remembered I could check out the renew option. Just goes to show you how rarely I've been reading older books. Not the same reading demands!

>175 SandyAMcPherson: Ta-daaa! Glad to have been some help.

Happy Saturday, Richard! I had never heard of a Humber Snipe. What a bizarre name for a vehicle. No birding for me today. It has been drizzling off and on. I gave up on A River Called Time. This is rare for me but enough is enough.

>177 msf59: I did too, Mark! I got to 15% and said, "there's too little time ahead," and now I have to find a way to say "it's me not the book" and make it sound like I mean it.

Hi Richard!

Sorry to hear about the allergy issues. Benadryl and Aerius were always the ones that worked for me.

>179 figsfromthistle: How do, Anita, I'm hoping you're not having these or similar seasonal woes. Benadryl works...no clogging, no dripping...but also no intelligence. Rob asked me if I was taking something today, with a slightly furrowed brow. "Benadryl," and he nodded knowingly. It was a surfing visit so he didn't have a lot of time, which I expect was a relief when I turned out to be lousy company.

>180 richardderus: So wading in to the allergy conversation (if you don't mind opinions), I have had terrible hay fever all my adult life.
I was sent to an allergy specialist last year and he recommended "Reactine" and to avoid Benadryl, because it not only has a brain-fog effect, but it is not as effective in controlling the histamine types from pollen allergies. A big plus is that you need take only 1 (10 mg) capsule/tablet per day!

The other 'weapon' is even more awesome: a nose spray that you start as soon as pollen season is expected: the brand names vary, but the active ingredient is fluticasone proprionate.
The spray is a maintenance product for the allergy season and for me, I didn't even need the reactine tabs at all last spring.

In Canada, neither item needs a prescription but I do recommend strongly that you consult your physician or healthcare person at least by telephone to establish these being appropriate meds. I am not a medical practioner and simply wanted to comment on what was a very happy resolution for me.

>181 SandyAMcPherson: Hi Sandy! Thanks for the ideas...Reactine is called Zyrtec in the US. Sadly it is utterly ineffective for me, as are the other wonderdrugs now out. I might as well take a sugar pill. I'm still stuffed up and sore-throaty when dosed up on loratidine and cetirizine.

Fluticasone is a corticosteroid, which for someone on my gout med regimen is a non-starter for regular use.

So me and my Benadryl fog soldier on. *smooch*

>129 bell7: Ooh, tell me more about the Libby upgrade; I did get the app a while back but I decided that Overdrive worked better for me (I forget specifically why, now).

I'm sorry to hear that allergies are picking up now.

'Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you. I hope you are less brain-foggy today.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>184 karenmarie: I, um, well uh

...and you are...?

>183 humouress: Hello "humouress" and thank you for those kind wishes!

where am I anyway

Hi there, just wandering through threads.

It's like you were in my head about A Heartbreaking blah blah blah up there in >141 richardderus:. What an insufferable jerk.

And allergies ... I get that too. I have a heart condition that makes Sudafed ill-advised, so I would always take Claritin (always, like every day whether I thought I was going to need it or not) but if the sneezes etc got a foothold, it would not make any difference at all. And they did still get a foothold, despite the daily regimen (maybe slightly less than without? Or just magical thinking.) The ill-advised Sudafed would about 50% of the time if I took it and immediately laid down and slept for 2+ hours. Not exactly banner success.

Hello Ursula, and welcome...I think a lot of us are thinking that way about Eggers and always were. It was just never "safe" to say so since there are people who take radical umbrage at their opinions being devalued (as they see it). What kind of insecure idiot are you that someone not sharing your ideas is a threat to those ideas?!

We really need to figure out how to de-stress our immune systems instead of stopping them from reacting. All it means is pollen looks like a threat to a hypervigilant defense department; how can we tell it to chill without forcing it to stand down completely?

Pooh to allergies. My main trigger isn't out yet, but it won't be long. May or Hawthorn is mine. But it's sooo much better than it used to be. I used to freak my parents out when my eyes would be so puffy that I couldn't actually close my eyelids. So it looked like I was asleep with my eyes open - or dead. On that pleasant thought, I'll cross my fingers, arms, toes, legs and eyes to hope I haven't jinxed it and will leave you again. >8 richardderus:-)

Ah, Richard. I'm sorry about the allergies. If I'm reading correctly, you'll be better in a few more weeks when the pollen is gone. I hope so.
I have a full-time regimen of fluticasone (which I see that you can't take), azalastine/Aste-pro (= Zyrtec, which I see is no good for you), and the gold standard Atro-Vent (Ipratropium bromide), which I use as needed as much as twice a day. Within twenty minutes after spraying the post-nasal drip has dried up. My doc does say that it's a toss-up as to whether it will work for any given person. It has made my life much, much better.

Just popping in (again) to keep up with things and waving!

>190 connie53: Hi Connie! Glad to see you here.

>189 LizzieD: Hiya Peggy! I'm mostly annoyed with myself for lapsing from my years-long neti-pottery as I experienced much less allergic misery while I was doing it. I'll have serious catching up to do when I finally find a good pot again.

Benadryl does do yeoman duty as a night-time combo knock-out drop-cum-breathing aid. I snore so much less when it's on board.

>188 Helenliz: Hey there Helen. You're describing me in the presence of cat dander. Luckily there are no botanical irritants to equal that in nastiness. Mold, followed by conifer pollens, are my chief sources of misery. Not really sensitive to ragweed or grasses, blessedly!

>187 richardderus: Weren't tapeworms clandestinely used for allergy relief, the theory being that your immune system was developed to fight such beasties so giving it some to fight would reduce other symptoms.

>192 quondame: Ew!! I hadn't heard that but don't, quite frankly, care as I will NOT voluntarily be parasitized. Just the hardest possible pass, the strongest imaginable NO, and whatever other superlatives of words meaning negation and refusal you can discover and/or invent.

>182 richardderus: might as well take a sugar pill. My DiL is taking part in one of those blind tests of an allergy drug's efficacy. It starts this week. She's hoping hoping hoping she gets the drug and not the placebo. I don't know the duration of the trial, and she doesn't know if she'll ever find out which group she was in—placebo, regular dose, high dose.

She just wants relief.

>194 weird_O: It's bad enough to feel crummy for a while every year, but some folks like your DiL are truly incapacitated and for them I hope something truly effective will come out soon.

I'll just sleep it off, so don't mind my snoring.

Cheers Bill!

>191 richardderus: I use an inferior neti pot and swear by it. Don't know why I neglected to mention it when I was regaling you with my current upper respiratory treatments. I haven't had a cold since I started almost ten years ago, and I wonder whether it's not helpful in getting rid of both flu and COVID viruses.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

>193 richardderus: I know. *shudder*

*smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

Morning, RD! Sorry to hear the allergies continue to plague you.

My Bored Meetings are over and I feel a great sense of freedom, though I still, you know, have work to do. Drat.

>187 richardderus: Yes about telling the immune system to chill the bleep out. As far as I can tell what my body is allergic to is ... nothing. Or everything. Or me. Mine aren't seasonal, they seem to come for years at a time and then leave for a while. Ugh. But hey, I had about 5 years straight where no doctor would talk to me about anything, let alone about that. I hit 45 and suddenly I was invisible, or stupid.

"I'm eating a good diet, exercising, which about 5 years ago had excellent weight-loss results. I'm actually gaining weight at a rather alarming rate instead for about the last year. I'm worried there's something going on."

"Maybe you should eat fewer units of food."

(Actual conversation.)

Sorry, that was sort of tangential but the allergy thing has been ongoing for a long time. So far here in Istanbul it's been ... acceptable. Guess I'm not allergic to car exhaust, haha!

>199 ursula: "Maybe you should eat fewer units of food." Oh for evermore! What an idiotic response! I had a very similar conversation with a dietitian when I'd just recovered from dysentery. She was very, very eager for me not to eat dairy or wheat. No yogurt, she said, only probiotic pills! *snort* I ate a 2lb container of plain yogurt a day & recovered normal bowel function in 6wks.

Anyway, the problem with most human beings is that they don't listen, they wait to talk again.

>198 katiekrug: Work...the curse of the reading class. Bleargh, so sorry you're still in those years. *smooch*

>197 karenmarie: View halloooooo! Very deep shudders indeed.

Has been an interesting day...Rob had me in a Zoom w/his therapist. The therapist asked if I'd do it, so of course I was tempted to say no. It was perfectly innocuous. I don't get why it was desirable, but whatever. We exchanged our "I love you"s before signing off, while he was still there; maybe he wanted to see that...?

More reading done, none remotely memorable. *smooch*

>196 LizzieD: I want to find another ceramic not hefty pottery or flimsy plastic neti pot. So far no luck. They are truly astoundingly effective! I am really feeling the absence of a good lavage. The damned plastic ones let the water get cold too quickly!

Happy new week's reads, Peggy!

>200 richardderus: "the problem with most human beings is that they don't listen, they wait to talk again."
Bingo, RD, ya got it in one! So true. I wanted to emphasize the last part. It is such a common error not to fully read e-mails, either. I bet you've noticed that, too?

>202 SandyAMcPherson: Good heavens, Sandy, I consider it an achievement for someone to *open* one of my emails! It's hard enough to pay good enough attention to what's really being said to get the gist without expecting they'll actually reply constructively.

Communication is hard work, no one's ever done it perfectly, and forgiving errors and omissions really should be the default, the norm, the baseline; and somehow it never is. So much so that it's a source of joy when someone demonstrates willingness to own up to error!

I take Zyrtec (or non-brand equivalent) every day. 365 days of every year. Even when I lived in the Willamette Valley, grass capital of the world, it helped. It didn't help 100%, but it helped. And since I will stick my face into Carson's lovely ginger coat when he is in the mood to allow it, the Zyrtec is pretty important.

I am enjoying Murder in Old Bombay. That is all.

>204 EBT1002: Oh, Murder in Old Bombay sounds like fun! I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I would require LifeFlight to take me to a clean room if I got that close to a cat's fur.

*smooch*

Hey, RD! I hope you are feeling a bit better today and keeping the allergies at a moderate level. I had a good outing with my birding buddies this morning, racking up 4 FOYs. Yah!

>206 msf59: Four! That's the beauty of spring, though, isn't it...all the birbs are on the move. Glad they were busy enough to be seen today.

Oh, the effin' allergies aren't abating soon enough, but at least I have the right drug to knock the gasping clawing clogged-up-ness out.

>204 EBT1002:, >205 richardderus: Snap!
Coincidentally, I borrowed the e-book of Murder in Old Bombay just yesterday.
I hadn't heard of this author until recently ~ I'm alternating my reading with 'new-to-me' authors and ones I've had on my TBR or WL for yonks.

Planning to start it tonight. I'm a bit bogged down with A Winter in Arabia but I did renew it, so will have another attempt to finish it before it's due.

>208 SandyAMcPherson: March is the first-ever Desi to win the Minotaur/MWA Award for First Mystery Novel (this one), which means you are on the bleeding edge of discovery!

Freya can take a back seat, being well and truly dead, to experiencing a brand-new talent now don't you think?

>202 SandyAMcPherson: >203 richardderus: I hate in emails when the person spells your name incorrectly, then the name is right there in the email address! Same on Facebook actually.

Good morning Richard. I hope you have a good week.

I'm happy to see all the love for Murder in Old Bombay. It's on my TBR list. I'm working my way down the list to it.

'Morning, RD.

>201 richardderus: A Zoom meeting with Rob and his therapist. If it was that innocuous, perhaps it was the “I love you”s.

*smooch*

Just dropping by, Richerd, to let you know that I've seen trailers (over here on Blue Ant Entertainment) for Junior Masterchef Australia. Worth watching if you can find it. I saw the first series many years ago, and those kids are AMAzing cooks as well as being serious about it.

>214 humouress: Oh, that will get my attention indeed. Blue Ant Media appears to have a deal with Netflix in the US so permaybehaps the show's on the platform.

>213 karenmarie: Really, it's the only thing I can think of. He didn't suddenly confess to a rampaging desire to flense me or ever-so-casually mention he was trying to figure out how to say "it's over" or anything else unpleasant. It's our usual goodbye ritual..."got to go, my own, thank you for spending your afternoon (night, morning) with me, I love you" and he says it back and done.

Pretty standard stuff, I'd've thought. Well, anyway, have a lovely and *smooch*

>212 thornton37814: I'm bettin' you'll give it over three stars, Lori.

>211 connie53: Thank you, Connie! I've started a Kindle-book bundle of Louis Couperus novels because Anita makes them sound so good and it was $1.99. A recipe for a good week, I'm hoping.

>210 LovingLit: I beg your pardon, Margery? I mean, Ms Aspe?

>209 richardderus: "you are on the bleeding edge of discovery"
That's gotta be a first!

>210 LovingLit:, happily, I do not have FB or Twit accounts.

>217 SandyAMcPherson: Heh. It comes for us all in the end, does vanguard duty.

>208 SandyAMcPherson: Murder in Old Bombay is both fun and oddly slow going....

>219 EBT1002: I'm enjoying the unwinding of the mystery. I like the pace and it suits the East Indian, 19th Century setting, no?

>220 SandyAMcPherson:, >219 EBT1002: Slow-paced mysteries...stories in general...aren't always less pleasurable. It always depends on what the author is doing with my time as to whether I feel their pacing is off.

Coincidentally, just watching the rerun of the GBBO mini cheesecake challenge.

Sort of agree with Matt Lucas...disappointing to have minis when clearly a maxi is better.

>209 richardderus: I had some confusion over your comment about a Desi. I'm still confused!
Also, Nev March is written up at first as "Marsh", here.

The novel referred to in the MWA-Minotaur Books (First Crime Novel Competition) was renamed for publication as Murder in Old Bombay, but started off (in the competition in 2019) as The Rajabai Tower Mystery. Who knew?!

I guess the publisher thought the original title didn't mean much to a North American audience. The tower is in fact part of a World Heritage site, in Mumbai. Nope, I didn't know that either...

I still didn't figure out Desi, but I know you'll sort me out, RD.

>216 richardderus: I hope you enjoy Couperus, Richard dear!

>220 SandyAMcPherson: Oh, good point. That helps. I mean, I have been enjoying it -- and I read a chapter while eating my lunch today, something I'm getting better at doing now that I'm working in my office again, rather than in my "home office." But I like the notion that the pacing fits the time and place.

Hi Richard! *smooch*

>226 EBT1002: Hiya Ellen! *smooch*

>225 FAMeulstee: I will be *sure* to blame you entirely for making me buy the collection let you know how I like him, Anita.

>224 SandyAMcPherson: A desi is someone from the Indian subcontinent living elsewhere. Nadiya Hussain, the baking maven in the UK, used it and suddenly *click* I realized what it meant after hearing it for years.

Sorry to hear about your allergies, Richard, and everybody else's. Hope you're back to your regular pre-allergy self soon.

>167 magicians_nephew: Were they black, Jim? If so, I've probably been in one of those cabs.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear.

>227 richardderus: I happily take all blame for the Couperus collection hope you like them.

Morning, RD! Have you heard anything about the bit of controversy over at GR about an author complaining about a 4-star review? I keep seeing references to it on Twitter, but I don't know what the book was/who the author is...

Hiya, RD! Happy Thursday to you. I'm having occasional sneezing fits because of the pollen, even with my every-day-Claritin-wannabe.

*smooch*

>228 Familyhistorian: yes! big Black Super Snipes! Always had to dodge them on London street corners.

>232 magicians_nephew:, >228 Familyhistorian: :-) Funny-looking things, aren't they.

>231 karenmarie: Hi Horrible. I'm so sorry! Today's the first day in over a week I did not wake up with allergy detritus on me. I was so thrilled. Not to say the headache is gone, that awful behind-the-eyes one, but I will take what victories I can find.

*smooch*

>230 katiekrug: Lauren Hough went off on a reviewer who didn't ***LOVE*** her debut collection, Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. The reviewer had rated it 4.5/5 and still quibbled with some infelicities they felt eluded a stern editorial eye.

Then Hough went OFF on a Twitter rant about how authors work HARD and writing is HARD and waaah waaah waaah boo hoo poor widdle me. (I trotted out "Gold star, muffin" for the occasion.) She also called GR reviewers assholes and bullies and losers, determined to punish people doing what they couldn't do. The book's GR ratings dropped to 1.74* at one point.

Her excuse when, inevitably, the internet got busy smacking her down, was that she was stoned.

My bit was when mystery writer Anthony Neil Smith said "writers work hard, everyone deserves to vent," to which I replied "so vent...but this is the internet, so don't think there won't be blowback."

His response made me so effing furious that I've blocked him everywhere I can find him:

>229 FAMeulstee: Heh. Brave, brave lady. Or you know both Couperus and me well enough to know, or suspect strongly, we'll get on!

>233 richardderus: - Oh, yikes! I was actually interested in reading her book. Maybe not so much now...

>233 richardderus: ????? Gobsmacked. On multiple levels.

>235 katiekrug:, >236 Helenliz: These are the moments that try a publisher's soul. Pia Pera went on a similar rant about Barney Rosset when he published Lo's Diary years ago...in the middle of the paperback auction.

That was damned depressing. Never sold, and it was all down to no one in publishing wanting to work with that volatile angry personality that works against its own interests.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I am glad my trip leader bird excursion went well today. I nearly had a few folks believing I knew what I was doing. I still got it. Grins...I also snagged 2 more FOY birds. No photos though. I didn't even bring my camera along.

>238 msf59: What a great thing to know for sure you can still dazzle 'em with BS (bird shit)!

'Morning, RD. Happy Friday to you. (I just wrote Thursday but realized that Bill just tootled off to work so it has to be Friday.)

>233 richardderus: I haven’t even heard of Lauren Hough, so just checked her out. Huh. Thanks for the NO-BB. Her cussing is boring and I don’t want to feel her pain.

>240 karenmarie: You definitely don't care to know more than you do about Hough.

Happy Friday back! *smooch*

Happy Friday, Richard! I got an early start on the long weekend by taking today off, but I'm making up for it by shoveling a path for the dogs to go out in the snow...

... and Finally caught up with the last episode of the 2020 GBBO. So now you’re free to discuss ;0)

Just to let you know that friday ends well. 2nd in the group quiz, so no need to set next week's edition.
Happy weekend (when it arrives with you).

HAppy weekend, Richard!

>233 richardderus: Never heard of this author. Probably won't be reading/supporting this author in the future. Newsflash for Hough: Without fans to buy the novel and read, there is no point to write and so therefore Hough's job would become redundant. Just saying ;)

>245 figsfromthistle: Yeah, there's no one I can find who's interested in reading her stuff now.

Happy weekend!

>244 Helenliz: Second! Excellent result! Happy weekend, Helen.

>243 humouress: Peter's a sweet, innocent-looking assassin-level stealth competitor, ain't he?

Happy weekend!

>242 bell7: Heh. She said "snow" in April! *bwaahaahaaa*

Serves you right, sending me that fully stuffèd near occasion of sin.

>246 richardderus: Six inches of HEAVY snow, mind you, and the driveway isn't plowed because everyone's put their snow gear away. It'll melt soon and I don't have anywhere to go the next few days anyhow.

These last couple of months of BookPages seem to have some particularly tempting titles, no?

>246 richardderus: Not so stealthy; he looked pretty strong from the beginning and got the first Star Baker.

The weekend has begun, over here. I was hoping to spend it buried in books but the kids have got things set up which will dig me out of there. Hope you have a good weekend.

'Morning, RDear, and a very happy Saturday to you.

I'm reading an interesting book about one of George and Martha Washington's slaves who escaped while he was serving as President and their efforts to get her back. Never Caught is fascinating so far.

>249 karenmarie: yes anyone who thinks that The Father of Our Country was soft on slavery should read this book. He weren't.

We heard an interesting talk by the author sponsored by the New York Historical Society a few months back

>250 magicians_nephew:, >249 karenmarie: There is nothing about that tale that I find edifying. Just damned depressing, in fact.

But good that you're getting a lot out of it. *smooch*

>248 humouress: The entire reason people between 40 and 60 get out of their houses at all is down to driving (grand)kids from pillar to post, attending their science fairs and plays and *shudder* choir recitals, and then bailing them out when the law recognizes them as adults.

Kissy-wissy for a less hectic weekend than usual.

>247 bell7: The Pandemic's End uncorked the pipeline of publishing. I'm both delighted and overwhelmed.

Happy Saturday, Richard. I am really enjoying that story collection. A lucky find. I also snagged Dolly Parton: Songteller. It was the Audible Daily Deal, with Dolly narrating, of course. Looking forward to it.

Do I remember correctly that you like the Freddy the Pig series by Walter R. Brooks? My smarter younger brother is a staunch, lifelong fan of that book series. Well, almost lifelong; since third or fourth grade, anyway. So I have on loan five titles from his collection. Don't know if he's got them all or not.

Anyway, I finished Freddy the Magician this evening. I'll get to the other four shortly.

>251 richardderus: *wails* But I wanted to spend the weekend with books. The week is for chauffeuring duties (not attendance anymore because a) teenagers and b) social distancing)

Hi RDear! Happy Sunday to you. *smooch*

>250 magicians_nephew: I’m envious that you got to hear a talk by Dunbar.

>253 weird_O: Yes, I'm a big olden-days fan of Freddy's, and am a little shocked anyone remembers that at all. Freddy and the Popinjay was my all-time favorite, because the word "popinjay" had never creased my cranial meat prior to seeing it on the cover. There was a stern warning from my mother not to call her that when I started (over)using it, so that cemented my fondness forever.

That it's derived from parrots to begin with just makes it all the sweeter.

>252 msf59: TWO great reads! Saturday was superpowered indeed. I hope at least one of them is occupying you even as I type.

>255 karenmarie: Hidy-ho there, Horrible, and a delicious Sunday to you. I'll come see if your Saturday steak'n'cheese was a success directly.

>254 humouress: Yes, attendance is now down to Actual Performances at the eldest's age, I'd forgotten. I don't recall you mentioning him as a drama or choir person, actually, so you're probably golden from here on in. The driving thing will end, only to be replaced by the white-knuckle terror of him driving!

>257 richardderus: No, my kids are not stage people. They play sports and I'm requested not to watch them play.

My son drive? My car? No way! He claims to be a better driver than me, which just goes to show you how much he knows, since he isn't even old enough to apply for his learner's licence yet.

>258 humouress: Mm hmm

The donor of the other 23 chromosomes might have an idea or two in relation to that reality.

Hi Richard. I hope you love the Couperus collection when you read it.

Hiya, RD, and happy Monday to you.

Friends Board meeting this morning, should go well, and then nothing on the agenda. Which is as I like it.

*smooch*

>261 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Thanks for the Monday wishes, they've already come true as you are in time to usher in bright blue cloudless and warm.

The perfect balance of accomplishment and arsing about. You've cracked this retirement thing!

*smooch*

>260 connie53: Hi Connie, I'm sure that Couperus and I will get on famously given how many folks are in his corner. He clearly has That Certain Something. Spend a lovely week ahead.

Morning, RD!

I've closed the shutters in my office so I can't see the lovely day outside that I'm missing. I hope *somebody* is able to enjoy it...

>263 katiekrug: Heh. I just teased you about that very thing in your thread. I shall endeavor to breathe extra-deep so I get yours, too.

Morning, BigDaddy! Sorry to read about the allergies - me, too, dear one. I just started a routine of nasal spray and some kind of decongestant in the morning, and then I take Xyzal at night. I don't know what the decongestant is because Birdy opened all of the individually packaged pills and put them into a bottle for me because that packaging was so not carpal tunnel friendly. Good thing I trust Craig (who purchased the meds) and Birdy - I was too miserable to try to decipher it all at the time, so I said please just tell me what to take and when. So far so good as I am not yet dead.

>100 richardderus: Bummer. I have this in the stacks. But I might be a member of the cult, since I have a thing for The Great Gatsby, so it might work better for me in my deranged cult state. *crosses fingers*

>200 richardderus: "Anyway, the problem with most human beings is that they don't listen, they wait to talk again." This is SO true.

>236 Helenliz: What Helen said.

*smooch and a bear hug*

>265 Crazymamie: Mamie darling! How excellent to see you!

Come, sit, let's have tiffin.

It's just awful when someone like that tyro essayist decides to self-destruct. No one in 2021 has *any* excuse not to know what will happen if you show your bare backside to the world on the internet. There is no good reason for her to have given herself this black eye, and the major problem is it's permanent. Not one single solitary chance it will go unremarked and un-reviewed in detail should she poke her head above the trench wall ever again.

And rightly so, in my never-remotely humble opinion, because what someone does in stupidity one time they *will* do again no matter what one does to try to keep them from it.

Have a gorgeous, decreasingly painful week ahead! *smooch*

I like how you think! Yes, please, and that looks oh so charming.

I do think that sometimes people learn lessons from their own stupidity and are able to grow from what they learn, but that seems to be a rare thing. I don't know how you can put your stuff out there and not expect that there will be discussions of its merit. This is why it always surprises me when an artist attacks what is basically just one person's opinion - counter what is said if needed, open a dialogue, but there is no need for the ugly. I have not read the review, but 4.5 stars is not an insult in any forum. It just boggles the mind.

Thanks so much for those good wishes - much appreciated.

>267 Crazymamie: I do think that sometimes people learn lessons from their own stupidity and are able to grow from what they learn, but that seems to be a rare thing

It is a rare thing, it always has been, and one cannot count on it occurring in any given situation. This young person has doubled down more than once on her behavior since the kerfuffle began. I have no hope whatever that this is the time she will learn her lesson.

Pass the scones, please. More chai-latte-flavored coffee?

I won Big Dark Hole: Stories in the March Early Reviewers batch, and received it today! Thank you, Small Beer Press!

The cover's pretty...and ominous...

Yes, please, to the coffee. Always.

I also tend to be without hope when it comes to those who chose to sling insults instead of having an actual conversation. This seems to be a thing now, and it is sad making.

Hooray for the win!

Thanks! I'm very pleased...I like Ford's fiction. A Natural History of Hell is terrific...Emily Dickinson on a carriage ride with Death, a pair of upscaleys get invited to a neighbor child's exorcism...he sees the world WEIRD!


I might've gone a bit heavy on the chocolate...

ETA size!!

>271 richardderus: A drink and a bullet. Well done. Adding A Natural History of Hell to The List - I love weird fiction.

>272 Crazymamie: 'twasn't even deliberate! *smooch*

Much, much fun to be had!

Hey Buddy, couple bullets for me. I'm putting both these Ford books on the list. :)

>275 mahsdad: Oh yay! More target practice I wasn't expecting! Happy week ahead's reads, Jeff.

>259 richardderus: He's permitted to have ideas. (But, since father and son share their Y chromosome, I'm more likely to discount them.) ;0)

>274 richardderus: Excellent.
Tuesday has dawned brightly, hope it brightens your day too.

>274 richardderus: HA! Love it - just worked through everyone who's birthday I could remember!

Must go do some work...

>216 richardderus: I beg your pardon, Margery? I mean, Ms Aspe?
Le sigh. Exactly!
Haha.

>274 richardderus: lolololol. The first two parts of mine were so promising, however, I am not interested in 'found manuscripts in the author's handwriting', I would prefer 'old-timey murder ballads'.

Just to get us started. Morning, BigDaddy!

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>262 richardderus: Yup, I’ve got the retirement thing down pat. It was 5 years in January.

>274 richardderus: I’ve done mine and 3 other family members – two of us have birth years that end in 3, which is particularly amusing given where I live.

>274 richardderus: - The Importance of Blood-Trickling Horror in the Blog Part of Recipe Posts.

Yeah, I wouldn't read it either...

Hey, RD! I hope the allergies have loosened their grip. Mine have somewhat abated the past few days but I am sure they will return. Shudders...

After reading the excellent Shooting Midnight Cowboy, I decide to watch the film again. I had not seen it in many years. It remains, a dark, unsettling masterpiece. Did you ever read the original book? I have not.

>284 msf59: Oh, I'm glad to know that Shooting Midnight Cowboy was a good read! The film's very, very dark indeed, and the Oscars it won were well deserved. What a great idea to read the book! I never have, and it's never once occurred to me to wonder if it was still in print, either. The hardcover's $900, but the Kindlebook is $2.99!

>283 katiekrug: Ha! Great title. Mine was The Prevalence of Mystical Anarchy in Rollover Image Descriptions, which isn't *wholly* unappealing.

>282 karenmarie: Oh, that *is* delicious! Them Southren Gothic Poets're so often drunken, no?

*smooch*

>281 Crazymamie: Oh, that *is* delicious! You know exactly what makes a day would getting out of bed for, Mamie. The Elixir is warming my innards even as I type.

>280 LovingLit: Oh, now, "Found Manuscripts in the Author's Handwriting" isn't so bad...my goodness, imagine "Heartfelt Bathroom Grafitti"! Ew. But "Old-Timey Murder Ballads" wins hands down over them all.

>279 BekkaJo: Work, schmerk, there's nothing that won't be there tomorrow.

Of course, that's sort of the problem....

>278 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen, it's a lovely day indeed. I'm pleased that I slept so hard that my medication delivery lady had to shake me awake...means I breathed well through the night. Maybe the allergies are calming down at last!

>277 humouress: *sigh* Of course, silly me. Supervillainesses are always the final arbiters, you'd think I'd know that one by now!

April is National Poetry Month! Isn't that just the most *me* holiday of them all?! And what should today's email deliver unto me but Harvard University Press's delightful offer of a free sample from Poems of the First Buddhist Women: A Translation of the Therigatha? Well, I mean! Could any reasonable poetry person turn this down?

There's an extremely long introduction, about five hundred pages or so, and then the first gem of lyrical perfection floats ineffably before one's wondering eyes:

    Therika
    spoken by the Buddha to her

Now that you live among theris, Therika,
the name you were given as a child finally becomes you.

So sleep well, covered by cloth you have made,
your passion for sex shriveled away
like a herb dried up in a pot.

Yes, there is nothing like poetry to celebrate the threads that bind us together across cultures, is there? Who here has not had these very feelings? The sheer delight of making one's own shroud, the joy of losing interest in sex, the reminder that one's parents thought ahead and named an unlucky girl a double-meaninged word that is both "sudden, shocking stroke of good luck" and "old, dried-up crone"!

And thank the goddesses I live in the time of Google or I'd have literally *NO* idea what any of these words meant, what cultural context to put them in, and why the hell I should care about them anyway.

Truth is: I don't.

65 The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham

Real Rating: 3.25* of five, rounded down because WOW this didn't age that well

Albert Campion's neurodivergent character is something we're not unfamiliar with in the 21st century. It was baffling in the 19th, whence Allingham derived her world-view. I don't want to give you the wrong idea: she isn't making fun of Campion, she's making sport of him, and the difference is not mere distinction.

Campion appears for the first time in this story as comic relief. He isn't very important in the proceedings at all. This is a case of the publisher getting feedback..."we LOVE that looney, he made us laugh!"...and requiring the author to make more of him in future. A similar thing happened, in my observation, to Louise Penny: The Three Pines series was originally about Clara, a very lonely and dissatisfied married Artist living in a rural Quebecois village with an interesting history and a future as a criminal hotbed. Along came Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté and hey presto! The books are now centered on him.

So this, the first outing, isn't A Campion Story. That's the source of my downward rounding. But that doesn't mean that it's not worth reading. I think, despite social attitudes I don't much like, that stories from this period are very fun reads because they set the standards of fair-play puzzle-based series mysteries that we-the-bookish devour with insatiable appetite. I do want to let you know that those sensitive to the portrayal of the neurodivergent should either skip the read or, and this is what I encourage you to do, go into it prepared for the attitudes of the past to prevail over your preferred standard.

And it's only $1.99 on Kindle today, 20 April 2021.

>286 richardderus: What can I say?

>287 richardderus: Ah; for a moment there I was wondering how I’d missed you turning into a poetry person.

Excellent news on the allergies calming down and sleeping.
>288 richardderus: It's an outlier compared to the rest of the series, isn't it? I'm slowly working my way through them. Death of a Ghost is next up for me. I know what you mean about the rules and fair play. The puzzle is there to be solved, and usually can be. They rarely resort to a surprise confession, which a lot of current mysteries seem to. That feels like a lazy solution to me.

>290 Helenliz: That feels like a lazy solution to me. It is indeed a lazy solution, Helen, one that reeks of "nyahnyah" energy. Suck it up, puzzle people! with a snook cocked.

The first one of a series is, most often anyway, less perfect than the rest. This one...well, yeah. Less perfect, and I suspect unintentionally the first! It seems as though she wasn't thinking "series" at all.

>289 humouress: You couldn't possibly miss my turning into a poetry person, Nina. The skies would grow black and the Earth would catch fire, the seas would batter all vestiges of Humanity and its works into powder, and the sun would wink out.
***
I'm delighted to introduce, laddies and gentlewomen, my new spirit animal:
The Fucktopus.

The new thread is up. Go on, look.

>291 richardderus: To be followed by the don't-give-a-fucktopus.

>294 humouress: That's perfect! The "Don't-give-a-fuck"topus to a tee!

>291 richardderus: Man, I need one of those... Perfect background for my Zoom meetings!

>296 drneutron: ...if just a touch on-the-nose...