Bragan Reads Stuff in 2024, Pt. 1

Hello all! Happy New Year, and Happy new reading! This is Betty, back for the... 14th? 14th-and-a-fraction?... year in a row at Club Read. I'm hoping for lots of great reading in 2024, or at least to avoid being crushed under the ever-increasing weight of my TBR for another year. (Seriously, it now fills an entire room. One whole, actual room.) No doubt we can expect the usual eclectic mishmash here, heavy on the speculative fiction genres and non-fiction, but with a smatterings of darned near everything else.

As usual, I like to just leap into the actual reading part, so here we go: my first book of the year! Which I was kind of hoping would be the last book of last year, actually, but best-laid plans and all that. Anyway:

1. 13: The Story of the World's Most Notorious Superstition by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer



A look into superstitions, beliefs, and attitudes surrounding the number 13, including how they've changed and developed over time. It's not incredibly well-organized and in places it gets pretty repetitive. The whole book is only 200 pages, and yet I feel like it could and should have been tightened up a lot.

Still, I respect how much effort the author put into researching the topic, and I did learn some interesting stuff. I was particularly interested to read about the existence of Thirteen Clubs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose members enjoyed flouting, defying, debunking, and generally having fun with superstitions. They sound like my kind of people. For my own part, I've always had a real fondness for the number 13. Partly because I dislike superstitions and am happy to champion an unfairly maligned numerical underdog (an attitude that the author also talks about a bit in the book), but also because I turned 13 on a Friday the 13th and have 13 letters in my full name. I've always said that if there was anything at all to superstitions about the number, I would never have survived to adulthood!

Rating: 3.5/5

Happy 2024, Betty. I grew up associating #13 with my sports hero, Dan Marino’s number. So I’ve always liked the number. My son’s birthday is the 13th and he will turn 18 on a Friday.

>2 dchaikin: Amusingly, the book did point out that people who like the number 13 generally do so because they associate it either with birthdays or sports. So maybe we're both a bit predictable there!

>1 bragan: Does the book have a page 13?

I was also born on the 13th (April), but it was a Thursday

Happy new year, Betty

I turned 13 on a Friday the 13th and have 13 letters in my full name. I've always said that if there was anything at all to superstitions about the number, I would never have survived to adulthood!

Or, YOU are Voldemort. :)

My middle son was born on Friday the 13th. I had been at the doctor and he said I could be induced, but then said, are you sure you want the baby to be born on a Friday the 13th? I said yes, I wasn't superstitious. Then as I was walking up the steps to the hospital, I went into labor. As the doctor said, that baby was going to be born on the 13th, whatever. It turns out that his son was also born on the 13th, just not a Friday the 13th.

>4 dukedom_enough: It does, but it would have been funny if it didn't. :)

>5 baswood: I think I was born on a Tuesday, but telling people that I turned 13 on Friday the 13th is much more fun!

>6 LolaWalser: Happy New Year! And, shhh, don't give away my secret identity!

>7 arubabookwoman: It honestly staggers me that that's something a doctor would even ask you about.

My son is also a 13 baby. Whenever his birthday falls on a Friday, he watches the Friday the 13th" movie(s).

>9 avidmom: A fun tradition! The book talks quite a bit about those movies. Apparently they've had a pretty big influence on the spread of Friday the 13th as a superstition worldwide, which is interesting to contemplate considering that the first one was almost named something else entirely and the connection to Friday the 13th was kind of added in belatedly.

It’s neat that you turned 13 on a Friday the 13th! In France it’s supposed to be unlucky if there are 13 people at a dinner table. For some reason I thought about this not long ago and wondered if it had something to do with the last supper.

>11 FlorenceArt: Oh, you've just hit on the the main point of the book, really! Apparently 13-at-a-table is the original source of the superstitions about 13, that got generalized to other stuff later (and then, at least in the US, was lost almost entirely). And it does seem to come from the idea of the last supper, despite a lot of other speculative explanations that came along about it later.

Hi and a happy new year!

I already like the discussion about 13. Friday the 13th is also connected to superstitions here in Germany. I will be interested in your review of the book.

>13 OscarWilde87: Happy New Year!

I do think that's as much of a review as you're getting, I'm afraid. It was a very short book. :)

>14 bragan: Oh, silly me. I looked at the cover of the book, skipped to the discussion below to read the review afterwards and then never went back to it. Whoopsie. So sorry. I do like your personal 13 connection. Coincidence? ;)

>15 OscarWilde87: LOL! Well, that just means that I was able to deliver on your request before you even asked for it, right? :)

>16 bragan: Indeed! Never had anyone respond to my requests that fast. :)

>17 OscarWilde87: I knew finishing 2023 with that giant book on time travel would pay off. :)

2. Uprooted by Naomi Novik



Every ten years, the wizard known as the Dragon demands a girl be sent to his tower to serve him. No one likes the idea of giving up their daughters, but not only is the wizard their lord, they desperately need him to fight back against the Wood, a forest full of monsters and corrupting evil. He always picks the best and the brightest, so everyone is certain that this year he will pick Kasia... including Kasia's best friend Angieszka, until she gets picked instead, and finds herself drawn into the world of magic and the struggle against the Wood like none of the other girls before her.

I utterly adored Novik's Spinning Silver, so I was very much looking forward to reading this one. I can't say it enchanted me quite as much as that one did, and there are some elements of it that didn't work for me quite as well as others. (A sort of rapid time-skip early on, for example, that I wanted more details on, and a romance that I still don't quite know how to feel about.) It's only by comparison that it's at all wanting, though, because overall it's a good, strong, engaging fantasy novel, with a likable main character, an interesting plot, and some cool magical worldbuilding.

Rating: 4/5

3. Monty Python's Big Red Book



A companion book of some sort to Monty Python's Flying Circus, published in 1971. There's a lot of familiar stuff in here: the Upper-Class Twit of the Year competition, silly walks (in the form of a series of still photos), Dinsdale and his hedgehog, etc. There are also lots of very silly ads, naughty pictures, a bunch of forewords consisting entirely of people complaining about not being invited to write the foreword... Basically lot of the kind of silliness you expect from Python. The result is random, surreal, and ridiculous. So, pretty much exactly like the experience of watching an episode of the show, only without having the actual Pythons to watch, so not quite as good.

Still. I paid 50 cents for this at my local library sale, and I got at least a dollar's worth of laughs out of it, so I'm happy.

Rating: 3.5/5

>20 bragan: Is the Big Red Book's cover being blue an allusion to Holy Grail? "What is your favorite color?"

>20 bragan: That sounds very similar to the Monty Python book I got from a second hand book shop as a kid, but that one was called something like Monty Python's Brand New Bok. I loved Flying Circus and Holy Grail as a kid. The book was the same assortment of randomness. It had a very plain white dust jacket and I'd had it ages before I held it in a way that the jacket fell away at one end and saw the cover underneath was made to look as if it was a pornographic magazine. Took me a bit by surprise! Somehow I think it might not have been intended for my age group.

>21 labfs39: Ha! I hadn't thought of that, but it might be.

>22 valkyrdeath: These things can be fun library sale finds! But, yes, if that one was anything like this one, it was probably really not intended for children.

>19 bragan: my 1st thought was that she really needs Vimes.

>24 dchaikin: Well, really, who doesn't need Vimes?

>1 bragan: My parents were both born on the 13th day of different months, so I also have only positive things to say about the number!

>26 AlisonY: 13 babies (and their children), unite! :)

>19 bragan: I thought Naomi Novik’s books were no more than OK, until A Deadly Education. I loved that book and its sequels.

Finally remembered to check for your thread - it's now starred so I'll no doubt pick up some BBs at some point this year from your non-fiction reads. Hope you had a good Christmas/New Year.

>28 FlorenceArt: I have A Deadly Education on the TBR, and at least one person I know keeps bugging me to read it because they loved it so much.

>29 Jackie_K: Hello and welcome! I had a pretty good holiday season, and hope you have, as well!

>1 bragan: So one of those non-fiction books that really should have been a long magazine article instead? :)

>19 bragan: *mumble* I really should stop putting authors into "I know I like them so they can wait" category... :)

>31 AnnieMod: So one of those non-fiction books that really should have been a long magazine article instead? :)

It certainly would have worked perfectly well for it, yeah. Although maybe I'd have been less likely to read it then, and it was at least interesting, so... *shrug*

I really should stop putting authors into "I know I like them so they can wait" category

Oh, god, that's exactly what I've been doing, too, isn't it? At least, it may be part of why I didn't get to this one until something poked me into doing it. (Specifically, my Santa for SantaThing this year giving me the first of her Temeraire series, immediately prompting me to go, "Oooh, great, but I really ought to read this standalone novel of hers first!")

Although in my case it's also often "I need to wait for the exact right time so I can properly appreciate this thing I expect to love," and then, of course, when does the exact right time for anything ever come?

>32 bragan: That's the big issue with these non-fiction books, isn't it? Too short to be a book and long articles don't have that many visible places to go (the few magazines such as New Yorker for example probably won't get them the visibility they want). So authors pad them enough to make up a whole book out of it and then I often get annoyed when I read them.

Yep. One of my goals of the year is to actually read my authors and my series and not just keep them waiting while I explore new authors and genres and styles (or keeping them for the times when I know I need something I will like). We shall see how that goes.

>33 AnnieMod: This one fortunately managed not to annoy me too much even though it felt padded, but I've read plenty that really, really did. I suppose I can't blame the authors or publishers too for much wanting to put things into book form, but that doesn't change the fact that some things really just should not be. It occurs to me now that what I'd love to see is more collections/anthologies of article-length non-fiction, but maybe those don't sell all that well.

And I don't exactly have goals for this year, but one of the things that is at least sitting in the back of my mind is a desire to continue with/get to more series instead of putting them off or stalling out on them. Something I'm working on right now, in fact...

>30 bragan: Adding my voice to the chorus recommending A Deadly Education.

>35 rhian_of_oz: It's becoming a very loud chorus, really!

4. The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian



Book 12 in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, which I've just gotten back to after a bit of a hiatus. I suppose it features Captain Jack Aubrey on a bit of a hiatus of his own, come to think of it: having lost his commission in the Royal Navy thanks to a false accusation, he has turned instead to a stint in command of a privateer-- Oh, excuse me. A letter of marque. Apparently we don't much like the p-word.

I can't say it's a favorite installment of the series. It feels, perhaps, as if having set up a shocking reversal of Jack's fortunes at the end of the previous volume, O'Brian then had to spend the length of this one just writing his way back out of it again, making it feel more like an odd little interlude than anything. And I did have an issue with it that I sometimes have with these books, in that for maybe the first third of it I frequently had no idea what was even going on. Someone would explain a complicated naval situation and end it with the equivalent of "you understand what I'm getting at here, right?" and while the person they were talking to always did, well, your humble land-lubbing reader here, not so much.

Fortunately, though, after a while either I finally got my sea-legs back, so to speak, or O'Brian started putting things more simply for me, and after that I did enjoy it more. Character-wise Jack feels very consistent, although there's nothing that feels like it adds much insight into him: basically he takes the whole matter pretty much exactly as you would expect. But there's some very nice stuff with Stephen towards the end, and one or two of O'Brian's typical moments of delightful humor. So not bad, in the end, but still not exactly a standout.

Rating: 3.5/5

>37 bragan: Too bad that this instalment in the series is not that good.
I've been meaning to read this series for soooo long. A few days ago, I was actually lurcking at the omnibus tome on my shelves that containts the 4 first books. Following your review (not so positive for the 12th book, but more encouraging for the previous ones), it's going up on my mental should-read-sooner-than-latter list!

>38 raton-liseur: It wasn't bad, mind you. One thing it did do was remind me of some of the reasons why I do like that series, even if it wasn't actually the very best example of it. Anyway, I'm not sure this series is for everyone, and it did take me a little bit of an effort to get into it, but even with some of the books doing less for me than others, I've been glad I've been reading it.

I will say, if you do start it, give it at least until book 2, Post Captain, before you decide if it's for you or not. I was not at all sure about book 1, but if it's going to charm you at all, it'll probably happen in book 2.

>39 bragan: When I was in mu twenties, I was a sucker for seamen and pirate books (oops, I should not use the p-word when talking about Captain Aubrey), hence this classic being on my shelves. I hope when I'll finally get to it that I will like it.
I'll keep your advice in mind and give it some time.

I too have the first book in the series on my shelf, and I want to get to it, hopefully this year. I always like "sea-faring" books, both novels and nonfiction.

I have the first one too, someday!

>41 arubabookwoman: If you happen to have read and enjoyed the Horatio Hornblower, books I suspect you'll like these, too. I find the the action harder to follow, admittedly, but I think I like the characters even more.

>42 labfs39: It does seem to be one of those books lots of people hope to Get Around to Eventually. :)

It's a great series, as far as I lasted (I think I sank around Treason's Harbour? Or the next one?), and presumably longer. I remember practically inhaling the first 8-9-10... however many I got to, in maybe ten days or so, something ridiculous. (Then a move interfered.)

>40 raton-liseur:

I loved them from a kid! Verne's Un Capitaine de quinze ans was a formative book.

>44 LolaWalser: It's 20 books, apparently! Which is a lot of books. They're lasting me quite a while, as I dip in and out of the series. I can't imagine reading that many of them in that short of an amount of time.

5. Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa



The third of Woodward's series of books about Trump, this time with co-author Robert Costa. Although this one is really half about Trump and half about Biden. It covers the campaign for the 2020 election, the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and their aftermath, and Biden's first actions in office. As with the previous volumes, there's not a whole lot in here the I feel I didn't already know about. The stuff about Jan. 6, in particular, is not especially in-depth. I did, however, very much appreciate how much the book gives us of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley's perspective on events. I remember getting more than a little desperately needed reassurance from his clear statements about where the military stood on matters, and it was satisfying to get some more background on the man and on where he was coming from.

Like the previous volumes, this does sometimes feel disjointed, perhaps even a little disorganized. But it's a pretty fast read, anyway, at least for as long as you can stomach the subject matter. (I admit, there were times when I couldn't quite face picking it up again, for reasons that had nothing to do with the writing.)

Rating: 3.5/5

6. Adventure Time, Vol 5 by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, & Braden Lamb



The fifth collection of comics based on the great Adventure Time cartoon series. This one features a one-shot that's basically a comic written in second person, which is a mildly cute gimmick, but not an especially memorable story. The main story, featuring a mind-controlling gum monster, is pretty darned entertaining, though, mostly because it's got some great stuff with Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, including PB getting to be especially mad sciency and loudly bossing physics around.

Rating: 4/5

>46 bragan: There will be no Mark Milleys in Trump's second term, of course.

>48 dukedom_enough: I cannot even think about that sentence. It makes my stomach clench very unpleasantly.

>46 bragan: i’m not ready for these books…

Probably a good idea to Read Adventure time vol 5 after Peril

>50 dchaikin: I read three of them, and I don't think I was ready for any of them. Sad thing is, I sort of forced myself to do it out of a sense that it was good citizenship to be more informed on this stuff, but I don't necessarily think it helped with that all that much.

>51 baswood: That was 100% the idea! Boy, did my brain need something happy and wholesome and fun after that.

7. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah



Set in a not-too-distant (and, distressingly, not-too-implausible-feeling) future, this novel depicts a revival of gladiatorial combat as a combination of blood sport and reality television, featuring convicted prisoners fighting to the death.

I'd previously read Adjei-Brenyah's short story collection, Friday Black, and there's a piece in there that absolutely devastated me. Just one of the most painful, most pointed, most viscerally effective pieces of angry social commentary I've ever read. This novel is trying very hard to be much the same sort of thing, and by god the anger and the pain are absolutely here. But I think that's harder to keep up at novel-length, and the extent to which this succeeds as a novel, for me, was rather more variable. There are chapters and moments that absolutely nail the horror and injustice that Adjei-Brenyah wants us to feel, and others where he makes it nauseatingly clear how ordinary people might embrace such things. But then, there were also some contrived-seeming details and some unconvincing bits of characterization that pushed me out of things a little, made my connection with what the author was trying to show me and say to me feel like more of an intellectual exercise than a horrible reality. And the footnotes pointing out just how much of what happens in the novel is already horrible reality in US prison systems sometimes hit like a punch, but sometimes just left me sort of thinking, "yes, yes, okay, I get it already."

Basically, as a cri de coeur, as an expression of righteous, passionate, and well-aimed anger, as a plea for us as humans to do better by each other, I admire this a lot. As a work of art, I find it intermittently powerful, but also somewhat flawed.

Rating: Geez, how do you even rate something this? I'm going to call it a 3.5/5, but I don't think that tells you much of anything at all.

>53 bragan: Great review of Chain Gang All Stars. I had bookmarked this last year, I'm looking forward to reading it.

>54 rv1988: Despite my mixed feelings, I do think it's definitely worth reading.

>28 FlorenceArt: >30 bragan: >35 rhian_of_oz: I've definitely taken a hit on A Deadly Education. I thank you all.

>56 Jim53: Now I just need to take my own hint on it!

>53 bragan: Great review! I recently had this one out of the library, but had to send it back when the due date came and I hadn't started it. (I am trying to read fewer library books this year.) But your review has convinced me I need to check it out again.

>53 bragan: I'm waiting for my library hold on this to come in and your review agrees with much of what I've heard about it. It may be that Adjei-Brenyah is a far better short story writer than novelist and I will continue to complain about how being good at writing short stories is no longer a talent that can support someone. Fifty years ago, there were enough publications regularly publishing short stories in their magazines and paying well, that someone could live comfortably off of a career writing short stories.

>58 arubabookwoman: I'm very glad the review isn't putting people off, even if I couldn't be 100% positive about it, because I actually don't at all want to discourage anyone from reading it.

>59 naman0: So.... Not sure if this was meant to be posted elsewhere, or if it's some sort of weird spam?

>60 RidgewayGirl: Yeah, I was definitely thinking that Adjei-Brenyah might just be a better short story writer, and the two aren't necessarily at all the same kind of skill. Then again, maybe novel-writing is a skill he just needs to hone a bit, as this is his first novel, and it's already doing a lot of things right, just not all of them, IMO. And I definitely hear you on that complaint. I suspect a lot of people write so-so novels instead of fantastic short stories because that's where the money is, or even the chances of being published at all.

>61 bragan: I'm leaning to naman0 as being very weird spam. The posts are popping up everywhere, and while not obviously commercial, are... weird. Do you want me to remove the message?

>62 labfs39: Based on the fact that they've only joined a few days ago and have nothing cataloged, it does seem like it. Not sure if I should actually mark it as spam or not, but if you can and want to zap it, go for it! Personally, I'm not much for positive thinking, anyway.

>53 bragan: one I’ve been wondering about, and now in a different light. Great review

>64 dchaikin: Thanks! Glad it's been of interest to people.

8. Images of America: White Sands National Monument by Joseph T. Page II



A collection of black-and-white photographs taken at New Mexico's White Sands National Park (which was still White Sands National Monument when this was published in 2013), spanning the 1930s to the 2010s. Oh, and some from neighboring White Sands Missile Range, too, even though photography there is, shall we say, somewhat limited. There's also some text about the history of the park, but, as is usual for this kind of book, it's not particularly great or in-depth. The pictures are reasonably interesting, though, and at least the dunes photograph pretty well in black-and-white, even if they are much more striking in color. If you're ever at White Sands -- which I recommend! -- this is a decent souvenir to pick up at the Visitors' Center. Although probably the only way to make the cover price feel acceptable, given the number of pages, is to remind yourself that you're supporting the park by buying it.

Rating: 3.5/5

>66 bragan: i have great memories of White Sands from…1994. I was on a geology field trip.

>67 dchaikin: It seems like a terrific place for a geology field trip!

Living in New Mexico, I've been many times, and I always enjoy it, especially when I get to bring people who haven't been before.

>60 RidgewayGirl: >61 bragan: Even novel writing doesn't pay enough to live on for most writers these days. Almost all novelists except the very, very big names - and even some of them - have some other source of income (day job, spouse's job, inheritance or other non-work income). It's a pretty common topic in writing circles, and it's been getting worse for years.

>69 Julie_in_the_Library: Oh, I know. Well, I don't think it ever did, for most people, but I'm not remotely surprised if it's getting worse.

So, yeah, don't blame anyone for writing whatever will do the best for them, financially, but it's a damned shame if it means they're not following their talents or their passions. (Not that I know anything about the author's motivations in this case, I hasten to add as a disclaimer.)

>53 bragan: Agree with you about Chain Gang All-Stars. I felt like it really packed a punch (no pun intended) but kept dipping into these oddly disaffected passages. Then again, maybe that was his writing strategy to pull back a bit from so much intensity. I appreciated what he was after with the setup, to the point where I was ready to let some of my stylistic criticisms go (also because I read it to interview him on a panel, which wasn't the place to bring any kind of attitude on my part).

>71 lisapeet: I think there were some chapters where pulling back from the intensity actually worked well (especially when we got to see things from the POV of, say, the people watching as spectators, which was its own kind of effective and uncomfortable), but moments where it felt like the main characters really should have been having more of a reaction to certain things than they did tripped me up some.

>72 bragan: Yeah, I can definitely see that. It's been a while since I read it, so it's not super immediate in my mind. (Let's face it, yesterday isn't super-immediate in my mind...)

Great review of Chain-Gang All-Stars, Betty. I started reading it last year but had to return it to the library before I got very far. I also loved Friday Black.

>74 kidzdoc: Despite my mixed feelings about it, I'd say it's worth another shot when you have time for it.

9. I Am the Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord by Peter Anghelides, Mark Wright, Jacqueline Rayner, Mick Tucker, Beverly Sanford and Matthew Sweet



A collection of six stories about Doctor Who's arch-villain, the Master. Each one features a different incarnation, including the often-neglected post-Roger Delgado version, when he was all gross and crispy and mostly dead. More precisely, there are five shorter pieces and one that I think is (or at least closely approaches) novella length. The shorter ones were all readable enough, and generally they each featured at least one reasonably interesting idea: the answer to the question of where the Master gets all his amazingly lifelike masks, for instance, or a plot in which the aforementioned undead-ish version partly inspired the novel Dracula. But I can't say any of them stood out, particularly. The longer piece, on the other hand -- "The Master and Margarita" by Matthew Sweet -- was just weird. Even by Doctor Who standards. There's, like, a capitalist mushroom, and the Master appears to be dating a Silurian, and... I don't even know, honestly. I also don't know whether it's ultimately good-weird or bad-weird, but it was certainly interesting, and in its own way entertaining. (I do imagine it's parodying the novel of the same name to some extent, but I couldn't really say. That one's been sitting on my TBR shelves for years, but I still haven't gotten around to reading it, so all I can do is judge the story on its own trippy merits... if I could quite figure out how!)

Rating: 3.5/5

>53 bragan: I started Chain-Gang All Stars and then stopped, afraid it would be too gory for me. But, your comments have made me rethink it, and I may give it another try.

>47 bragan: Adventure Time looks entertaining. Would it be appropriate for a middle schooler?

>77 BLBera: Well, it definitely does not get any less gory. :)

Adventure Time, on the other hand, is suitable for everyone from fairly young elementary school kids on up. (The spinoff series, Fiona and Cake has a higher rating, though, and is more aimed at teens.)

>76 bragan: I loved your review. "A capitalist mushroom" - even for Doctor Who, this sounds wild!

>79 rv1988: It was a humanoid sort of mushroom. I'm honestly not sure whether that makes it more or less weird. :)

>66 bragan:

That looks so gorgeous. That's my biggest regret about the time I spent in the US: didn't visit enough of the nature preserves.

>76 bragan:

Matthew Sweet does a lot of the extra features (interviews, histories...) in the Doctor Who Collection on blu-ray, I've come to like him a lot. And referencing Bulgakov--nice.

>81 LolaWalser: I think no matter how much you see of the US's national parks, it's never actually enough. And White Sands is unique among them, I'd say. I don't think it looks quite like anywhere else on Earth.

I keep being tempted by those Blu-Ray collections, but there are so many of them, and I have access to all the episodes streaming now, so I haven't talked myself into any of them yet.

>76 bragan: I became rather enamoured of the last two characterizations of the Master, and honestly, I often rooted for Delgado over Pertwee - I may just have to read this.

>82 bragan: BBC has finally made the whole collection available, including plenty of commentaries, audio adventures, confidential and all sorts of good stuff.

>83 leamos: Yeah, the most recent ones have been great! Gomez, in particular, is solidly cemented in my mind as the best version since Delgado, and that's high praise indeed. If you're interested in this collection and also a fan of Missy, you might want to check out The Missy Chronicles, too.

>84 bragan: I've seen them post some of the DVD extra stuff on YouTube (including the lovely introductions featuring past companions), and I knew they'd made classic Who stuff available online (at least in the UK? not sure?), but I hadn't realized they had commentaries up as well. Although possibly I shouldn't go looking for them, I'm likely to fall into a rabbit hole of Who and never emerge. :)

10. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu



Well, I have to say, my main thought about this novel, or at least the one I can most easily articulate, boils down to "I should have known better than to expect he could pull it off twice." The Three-Body Problem, the first book in this series, left me shaking my head in wonder and repeatedly saying, "this just should not work, but somehow it does." Which was sort of delightful. That thing was so full of just absolutely insane, ridiculous, weirdly written stuff, but it held my attention, even fascinated me, and I happily let myself get swept along. Whereas this one... Well, it's over 500 pages long, and for the first 250 of those pages, the main thought running through my mind, over and over, was "this is stupid." This idea is stupid, this plot point is stupid, this character is stupid, OMG this romance is offensively stupid, and, and, and... Thankfully, in the second half, while that voice never exactly shut off and my suspension of disbelief for any of it never really came back, there was also just enough stuff that was sort of cool and interesting, or thought-provoking, or surprising in a good way to make me feel like it was worth reading. Well, until the weirdly abrupt and unsatisfying ending, that is. It's not even abrupt and unsatisfying because the real conclusion won't happen until the sequel, although there is still one more book in the series. It's genuinely wrapping up this whole giant insoluble problem we've just spend five hundred pages on in a few anticlimactic pages.

Rating: Man, this one is hard. For the first half, I was certain I was going to give it a 2.5/5 (solidly meh). The second half at least kept me engaged enough that I think I'll bump that up to 3/5 (which, in this case, can be translated as: deeply flawed, but interesting enough to be worthwhile). Although I do wonder if that's just the result of me liking the first book so much that I really don't want this one to rate any lower.

>84 bragan: Thanks! I'll check it out for sure. I was in that very rabbit hole a good chunk of last year, doing a fairly full re-watch from the very first episode. It can get rather... engrossing!

>85 bragan: well, too bad Betty. Will you pursue book 3?

>87 dchaikin: Yeah, I already have it, and I also have a) at least a minor curiosity about what the heck the author is going to do with it, and b) an annoyingly completist soul, so I'm almost certainly going to read it at some point. Plus, I am sort of interested in the upcoming TV show based on the series, but I do feel like I should finish it before I watch. Even if I'm feeling a lot less eager about the prospect now.

Just popping to see what you have been reading (a very nice mix!)

>89 avaland: Hello!

>85 bragan: Great review, and you're spot on about the romance subplot (if we can even call it that) being 'offensively stupid'. Such a let down after the first book.

>85 bragan: Apparently I read this in January 2021 but I have zero memory of it and my review for it in my thread says "Placeholder" - not helpful past Rhian!

I have number three on my TBR shelves but I think I will need to reread the first two before tackling it. Might be a job for the second half of the year.

>91 rv1988: Yeah, I sort of didn't want to call it that, but couldn't think of a better description, and coming up with one would have required thinking about it more than I wanted to.

>92 rhian_of_oz: That's a lot to re-read!

11. Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell



The second collection of Shaun Bythell's diaries about the day-to-day running of his secondhand bookshop in Scotland. It's very much the same stuff as in Diary of a Bookseller: lots of mundane details about what books he's bought or sold interspersed with relatable complaints about customers, descriptions of quirky employees, and glimpses of life in small bookish town. I didn't find it quite as inexplicably absorbing as the first volume; possibly there's a limit to just how many times I'm happy to read an account of how many books he bought from who for how much, or a note that the online ordering system has crashed again, or whatever. But it's still somehow a much more pleasant read than it seems like it should be, and strangely restful on the brain (even none of it may have been particularly restful to Mr. Bythell).

Rating: 3.5/5

12. The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss



A short spinoff of Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles series centering on the character Bast, seen here trading in favors and secrets with the local children. It's a decent enough story (as well as a very nicely illustrated one), with an appropriately magical feel and an ending with its heart in the right place, although perhaps not quite as clever or moving as it felt like it wanted to be. It was revised and adapted from an earlier story, "The Lightning Tree," and while I haven't read that one to compare them, I do sort of wonder if it actually needed the 15,000 words the author says he added to it, or if it might have been better off without them.

Rating: 3.5/5

>85 bragan: Second books in a trilogy? never seem to fare well... I will look for the first one. Although I don't generally read a lot of Sci-fi, it does sound interesting.

>94 bragan: I'll look for the first one. I do like reading about running a bookshop.

>96 BLBera: "Interesting" is 100% the word for that one! And it is possible, by the way, to read it on its own and think of it as self-contained, if you don't care to read the second one and if you don't mind a downer ending.

How it might read for someone who isn't in the habit of reading much SF, though, I don't know, as I wouldn't exactly put it in the Science Fiction for Beginners category.

>94 bragan: I like your phrasing here a lot: "still somehow a much more pleasant read than it seems like it should be, and strangely restful on the brain". Sounds like something I need.

>98 OscarWilde87: Sometimes that's exactly what you need, really!

13. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad



Here's one of those works traditionally considered a classic that I'd managed to not read until fairly late in life. I was surprised, by the way, at how short it is: only 72 pages in the Dover Thrift edition I have.

I can see where the supposed classic status comes from. Conrad's writing is incredibly evocative. As for what it's evocative of... Well, it's certainly an interesting thing to read this here in the 21st century, on the other side of the colonial era. It is, as they say, very much Of Its Time, but in a complicated way that I find worth pondering. Conrad is writing about the absurdity, the inhumanity, and, yes, the horror of Europeans' exploitation of Africa. He's also writing that criticism very much from inside the cultural framework that produced those horrors, which means that there's an incredibly limited effort and an even more limited ability to imagine what things look like from other perspectives. It also means a preoccupation with ideas of "civilization" and "savagery" that seem, now, to be quite simplistic and wrongheaded, but which are explored here in a complex way that gives a genuinely interesting window onto the thoughts and fears surrounding these ideas at the time. And, yeah, let's not mince words: it's super racist. I mean, by the standards of the time, even the repeated insistence that the Africans in the story are completely human may have been unusual, but, y'know, one kinda wants to set the bar higher than that. In my mind, though, the value of reading this doesn't lie in the way it lets us pat ourselves on the back for being more enlightened, but in getting this rather dark and tortured glimpse into that past and into what it looked like to someone who, despite all that comparative lack of enlightenment, was still horrified by it.

I'm not sure if I've expressed any of that very well. I also feel like I ought to have a lot more intelligent things to say about the story and the writing, and especially about the character of Mr. Kurtz. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the character of Mr. Kurtz. He's not exactly what I was expecting from what I'd osmosed about this piece of writing, either. If nothing else, I was expecting there to be... more of him.

Rating: I'm going to call this 4/5, for the writing, and for how worthwhile it is from a cultural and historical perspective, but, y'know, take that with all the appropriate caveats.

>100 bragan: Great review of a book that must be very hard to review. A sticky wicket for sure.

>101 labfs39: So hard! Thanks. :)

>100 bragan: I liked your review. I haven’t read HoD either. Your view has prompted me …

>103 kjuliff: It is weird and, let's say, dated, but it's interesting, has some really good writing, and is short. :)

Nice to see your take. I can’t disagree with anything there. You don’t, however, sound ready to follow with Apocalypse Now or King Leopold’s Ghost.

>105 dchaikin: I actually have a copy of Apocalypse Now on DVD that I ended up with when Netflix went out of the business of mailing DVDs and told everybody to keep what they had, but that I never actually got around to watching it.

Well. Assuming you have a dvd player to go with it, enjoy! 🙂

>107 dchaikin: I do! They'll take it from me when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands. I have far too many DVDs I've accumulated over my lifetime. :)

Next to the VHS player? 🙂 We still have a dvd player. And there’s my son’s xbox too. (No vhs player)

>109 dchaikin: I finally threw my VHS player out a few years ago. :)

Enjoyed reading your thoughts on Heart of Darkness and the way you tackled the racism that could prevent modern readers from venturing there.

>111 baswood: Thanks! I never blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that stuff in their reading, but in this case I really did find the experience of reading it... I almost said "enlightening," but that feels like a really weird pun, somehow. :) Anyway, it was very much Of Historical Interest, if you want to put it that way.

14. Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger



Jeffrey Kluger is the co-author, with astronaut Jim Lovell, of Lost Moon (later renamed Apollo 13, after the movie based on it came out). Here, he returns to cover Lovell's previous mission, Apollo 8. It's a mission that lacks some of the cinematic drama of 13, but it's one that was thrilling in its own right, a remarkable achievement full of historic firsts: the first crewed mission to the moon, our first look at the far side of the moon, humans' first time orbiting another body in space, and the first time anyone was able to see the entire Earth as a tiny blue marble hanging in the darkness and, not incidentally, to snap its picture and bring that image home for the rest of us.

This is a very readable account of the mission, and one that captures some of that thrill... or at least, it did for me, but I am admittedly an easy sell on this stuff. It is perhaps not quite as detailed as one might expect for a book devoted solely to this one mission, but in fact, it covers a lot more ground than just Apollo 8 itself, which doesn't begin until maybe a third of the way through the book, after a thorough biography of mission commander Frank Borman and a discussion of the most relevant of the Gemini and the previous Apollo missions. I'd also say there's considerably more emphasis on the people than on the hardware, keeping things relatively light on the technical details, although when it does come up, all of the scientific and technical stuff is certainly explained clearly enough.

If you're interested in reading about the Apollo program in general, I always recommend Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon first and foremost, and I very much recommend Lost Moon, as well. But it's nice to see the first of the moon shots getting some love, and I'd say even those with even a casual interest in the subject could do much worse than to pick this one up.

Rating: 4/5

>113 bragan: I've been learning astronomy this year alongside my nieces, and although it's been at their level, it's still interesting. For instance, Friday at the planetarium, I learned that Saturn's rings are only 30-300 feet deep, despite being over 175,000 miles wide! Thirty feet, imagine. Anywho, we've also read a few juvenile biographies of astronauts. A Man on the Moon might be a nice segue for me. I'll look for it.

>114 labfs39: That sounds awesome! I think more kids should learn astronomy and read astronaut biographies. (Did they read Leland Melvin's? I know he has a version of his autobiography for kids.)

I recommend A Man on the Moon to anyone interested in Apollo at all. It's my favorite book on the subject I've read, and I've read... well, probably too many, if I'm honest. :)

>115 bragan: We haven't read that one, but we did read Leland Melvin by J. P. Miller, as well as these others on astronauts (as I know you have to know, wink):

Space Traveler Sally Brown by Ximena Hastings
I am Neil Armstrong by Brian Meltzer
Gutsy Girls Go for Science: Astronauts by Alicia Klepeis
Astronaut Training by Aneta Cruz
If I Were an Astronaut by Eric Mark Braun (videobook from space!)
Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed
The Astronaut with a Song for the Stars: The Story of Dr. Ellen Ochoa by Julia Finley Mosca
My Journey to the Stars by Scott Kelly
Buzz Aldrin: Pioneer Moon Explorer by Jessie Alkire
Mousetronaut by Mark E. Kelly
Who Was Neil Armstrong? by Roberta Edwards
Living in Space by Katie Daynes
50 Animals that Have Been to Space by Jennifer Read

I was able to request a copy of the Chaikin book through ILL.

>114 labfs39: I haven’t read any of his books, but have been watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s YouTube videos which give me all the information on space and quantum physics that my mind can take.

>116 labfs39: Heh, I was curious, thank you! That looks like a fun list. Glad you're able to get the Chaikin book, and I hope you like it as much as I did!

>117 kjuliff: Tyson is pretty great about presenting that stuff for the general public.

>118 bragan: I am like his fall-guy with my questions. I’m so uneducated in physics.

>114 labfs39: I went looking for Apollo 8 and discovered that Kluger wrote a children's version as well - To the Moon! (I had to find the work number to get that to show up). I don't know what level it is (yet - I got it from the library, along with Apollo 8). Your nieces might be interested.

Shotgun book bullet! Two Klugers and a Chaikin so far...

>120 jjmcgaffey: Thanks, Jennifer, I'll add it to the list to check out.

>119 kjuliff: Well, that's precisely what people like him are for! If everyone were educated in physics, we wouldn't need him. :)

>120 jjmcgaffey: Ah, nice, I hadn't realized he had a kid's book. I also hadn't realized he had a novel -- it's set on the international space station -- until I randomly happened across it in an online book catalog just a couple of hours ago, entirely by coincidence. Of course I ordered it. I mean, it's clearly fate.

So, space Book Bullets for everyone today, I guess!

>113 bragan: I loved this book on Apollo 8. Glad you enjoyed. I listened to it and really got into it.

>116 labfs39: fun days to teach Lisa. I can recommend science picture books for elementary kids. (I’m sure you have plenty of your own favorites). My favorite series was Lets-read-and-find-out science. They’re older now, but so well done. Your library might have a few.

>123 dchaikin: Glad to know you enjoyed it, as well!

>123 dchaikin: I would love suggestions, Dan. Let take this conversation over to my thread.

Great review of Heart of Darkness.

We still have our DVD player, though we rarely use it. In fact, our unit has both a DVD and a VHS player built into it. Hey, ya never know!

>126 rocketjk: That's amazing. I don't think I've ever even seen a machine like that. Must have been a very, very specific period of time when manufacturing one seemed like a good idea. :)

>100 bragan: I think I will read this. Thanks for your in-depth review.

>127 bragan: Yes, I'm sure it dates from the time that people were switching over from one technology to the other and still had a bunch of movies and the like on VHS in their homes. My wife and I have our wedding videos on VHS. We've had it digitized onto files since, but still have a fun time watching the original tapes occasionally.

>128 kjuliff: It is an interesting read, I think whatever else one might thing about it.

>129 rocketjk: I'm glad they're still playable!

>126 rocketjk:, >127 bragan: I have one too (combined VHS/DVD player). It works nicely for me (though these days I'm more apt to watch a DVD on my computer, despite needing an external drive to do so).

My mom has one that's not only a combined player, it's designed to play a VHS and copy it onto a DVD disc. The quality isn't great but it's a neat and simple way to transfer video.

>131 jjmcgaffey: Oh, that does sound handy, if you're looking to digitalize things.

15. If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong)



This is the fourth book in the series of comedy/horror novels that started with John Dies at the End, and the first Justin Pargin published under his own name (having, I believe, come to the conclusion that a white guy using an Asian pseudonym isn't super cool, even if he did adopt it for innocent reasons). If you've read the previous volumes, you probably know more or less what you're in for here, although I think maybe it does see the characters... well, I hesitate to say "maturing a little," because "mature" is not remotely the word you want to use for these people. But something like that, anyway. And if you haven't read the previous volumes, this one can be read on its own. There may be a couple of points that'll be a little confusing, but as the author himself notes in the afterword, having read the rest of the series is probably not actually going to make anything significantly less confusing. And that's okay! The confusing weirdness is part of the fun. And it is fun. Weird, and wacky, irreverent and sarcastic, and wild and fun, with some glimpses of thoughtfulness and heart beneath it all. Also, brain-hurting time travel, haunted toys, nihilistic teen nerds, and a monster made out of hair and tongues.

Rating: 4/5

>133 bragan: Sounds like fun!

>133 bragan: Insane, but fun! :)

>113 bragan: I remember being so excited about the Apollo missions. Was 17 years old for #8.

>126 rocketjk: >131 jjmcgaffey: We had one of those for a while. I think.

>136 dukedom_enough: I was still in diapers when the last one landed, and have always felt vaguely melancholy about having missed them.

I remember going out on the front steps to watch sputnik go by.

>138 dianeham: I remember trying to see it in the sky too. But I was in the southern hemisphere. I wonder if that would’ve made a difference. I know we can see different stars and more of the Milky Way from Australia. Maybe Rockman can tell us.

>139 kjuliff: "Rockman!" 😀

For years we had a newspaper of the first moon landing. I was two - don't really remember.

Someone made a comment, many years after, that I think of every time I think of the moon landing - there have been millions of stories, for literally thousands of years (the ancient Greeks had some) about people going to the Moon. And not one of them, not even the ones written while Apollo was in progress, suggested that the moon landing would be televised - visible to everyone, in (nearly) real time.

I'm loving hearing about these memories, guys. :)

>141 jjmcgaffey: I suppose that is, when you think about it, almost as remarkable a thing as the journey to the moon itself.

>141 jjmcgaffey: Interesting. I hadn't thought about that.

I clearly remember the Mercury launches. I was 7 in 1962 when John Glenn did the first American orbits of the earth. Each launch was an event. If they took place during school time, TVs would be rolled into our classes to watch the launch live. If they were on the weekends or during summer vacation, we'd watch live for up to an hour before the launch, listening to the Mission Control scientists discussing conditions and having Walker Cronkite or someone similar explain the proceedings. This continued through the Gemini flights and up through the first couple of moon landings. I watched the first lunar landing with my father in our den, only seven years after Glenn first went up. Towards the middle of the Apollo program, the whole thing finally seemed to get ho hum, if you can believe it!

>144 rocketjk: Towards the middle of the Apollo program, the whole thing finally seemed to get ho hum, if you can believe it!

I have always heard that. I know that, before everything went wrong, Apollo 13 did a TV broadcast from space that the networks didn't even bother to carry. But I can never quite wrap my brain around it. Of course, I'm sure it all seems very different when you're looking back with the knowledge that, far from being routine, this was an accomplishment that would not be repeated at all in the next five decades.

Anyway, I really am kind of jealous of all that excitement you got to experience while it lasted. I grew up with the space shuttle, but it really just was not remotely the same.

(Also, may I just say how refreshing it is to be in a place with so many people who are able to remember things I'm too young for. I've reached a point in my life where it's usually the other way around, and I still haven't quite recovered from the time a co-worker told me they were too young to remember the Challenger explosion.)

>145 bragan: "this was an accomplishment that would not be repeated at all in the next five decades."

I don't think any of us at the time had an idea that the space program simply stop at some point. I don't know what we foresaw, exactly, but just knocking it off didn't seem at all to be in the cards.

But, yeah. And then you hear all the crazy numbers such as the fact that most of us have much more computing power in our phones than the Apollo astronauts had access to while orbiting the moon. Thinking about the skill and guts and faith those folks had to go up in those tin cans is still astonishing inspiring to me.

>146 rocketjk: Thinking about the skill and guts and faith those folks had to go up in those tin cans is still astonishing inspiring to me.

Me too! There are reasons I find the whole program endlessly fascinating and incredibly moving, and I find the more I read about it, and the further we get from that time technologically, the more astonishing it all seems to me that it happened when it did.

>144 rocketjk: >145 bragan:

In the 1977-1978 academic year, my PhD advisor brought in a new grad student, who was an immigrant from Australia. Very bright guy, widely read, including but not limited to science fiction, enthusiastic about aerospace. Would have been born around 1955. He once told me that he had only recently realized that there had been more than one moon landing.

The world's interest dropped off that quickly.

>148 dukedom_enough: Wow, that's hard to imagine! 1955 is when I was born. But I guess it makes sense that the perspective of an American and an Australian would be different. After the initial admiration of the accomplishment of the first landing, I can see now that you mention it why the rest of the world would turn to more pressing affairs.

>148 dukedom_enough: !!!!!!

That's it. I have no words.

Then again, my mother once asked me how the Apollo 13 thing came out, because she couldn't remember, and she lived through it. I really don't understand people sometimes.

Arthur C. Clarke somewhere said that moon landings were 21st Century events that had been advanced to the 20th Century by political circumstances. Looking at current lunar events that seems reasonable to me.

>151 dukedom_enough: I've heard that, too, but given how the 21st century has gone so far, I still think he may have been off by a century, to be honest. I'm not sure if anybody'd even be trying it now if it weren't for having fifty years of actively not doing it hanging over our heads.

The way I've been thinking about it lately is that it's a thing we did pretty much the very second it was technologically possible, which was long before it was technologically sensible. But, of course, Kennedy nailed the reasoning: you do it not because it's easy, but because it's hard. You don't show up your ideological opponents by doing easy things. It's like the peacock spreading his giant tail for the ladies. Look how evolutionary fit I am, that I can pull off this big, impressive thing I don't need for survival, and have enough resources to spend on it! :)

But while that motivation feels less then noble, the results, my god. the results really do feel like they speak to so much of what's best and most hopeful and most admirable in humanity.

Like I said, it fascinates and moves me.

>148 dukedom_enough: I’m Australian and thought there was only one manned landing till your post. I just looked it up and I was travelling overland through Asia the time of the second. . The only major events I remember from my traveling period round that time were the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin and allied offensives in Vietnam.

>153 kjuliff: Did you ever see pictures of the golf-cart like Lunar Rover the astronauts drove around the Moon for Apollo 15, 16, and 17? That might be the main image from the later landings that has gone into public memory.

>154 dukedom_enough: I only saw the first landing. I haven’t seen any footage of any other landing. I had no idea there were other human landings at all. I’m surprised myself, because except for the long period of overland travel - 18 months, I’ve always had access to newspapers and television.

>155 kjuliff: This really fascinates and astonishes me. I mean, I know I miss a lot of stuff on the news, myself, but still!

>156 bragan: But US news is no big thing in other countries. I’m sure these landings were reported, but not where I was. There’s so much other stuff going on outside North America.

I’m pretty well informed but I only remember one human moon landing and one Apollo failure when it failed shortly after launch. And then only because I was friendly with a few NASA scientists at the time.

>156 bragan: - I checked the dates. I was in Thailand in 1969, not India as I previously thought. The were heaps of GIs there on R&R. The moon was far rom travelers’ minds. For the next 18 months I was traveling with no TV access.

>157 kjuliff: Well, hey it didn't happen in the US, it happened on the moon. ;) But a lack of TV access certainly makes a difference.

>159 bragan: I know where it happened. But it wasnt important news in Thailand at the time. It’s important to you, but I think it’s an American thing to think everyone in the world knows American news. Well not only America, many countries put their own news first. But it is particularly strong in America.

When I talk to my friends back home - all tertiary educated - they have little idea of American news. They ask about Trump and that’s about it.

I realise the moon landing was on the moon, but the landing was an American event. The first landing was a major event, just but the second is just a repeat.

Do you know the major news stories coming out of Australia today? If you think of it that way you’ll probably see my point.

>160 kjuliff: I know American news isn't as important in other parts of the world as it is in America, and I don't expect it to be. I do, however, personally think that the moon landings, completely aside from the question of who performed them, are one of the most profound things humanity has ever done. I know not everyone thinks that way, but I can't help the fact that it blows my mind a little that there are people who don't care at all, or who think of it as solely an American thing.

Accuse me of being so blinded by my own love of space stuff that it's hard for me to fully understand the mindset of those who shrug at human footprints on the moon, because I'll readily admit it, but please don't accuse me of being someone who thinks the world revolves around the US, because that I do take exception to! :)

>161 bragan: I can see you are interested in space research, and it’s understandable that Americans in general are more knowledgeable about the moon landings than are people in other countries. I’m just not so interested. There are other areas of science that interest me more.

>162 kjuliff: Fair. I'd definitely still be just as interested in the subject if it was the Australians who'd done it, though!

>163 bragan: If Australians had walked on the moon we’d never have heard the end of it! ;)

16. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead



This sequel to Harlem Shuffle is a novel in three parts. In the first, set in 1971, Ray Carney, self-made furniture salesmen and sometime fence, has been on the straight and narrow for four years... until his daughter wants impossible-to-get Jackson 5 tickets, and he looks for help from a crooked cop and gets drawn into a night of unexpected violence. The second, set in '73, sees a high-minded Blaxploitation film shooting a scene in the furniture store... until the leading lady goes missing. There is, you guessed it, more violence, although this time mostly involving Pepper, the muscle hired as security for the film set. The third, in '76, features a political campaign, Carney attempting to find who set a fire that injured his tenant's kid, and one hell of a lot of arson.

Really, though, I found the crime-laden plots only moderately interesting. The real draw here is in the way Whitehead brings to life the New York City of the 1970s, with all its seediness, depression, and intractably corrupt systems. That, and Whitehead's fantastic writing skills. The man can absolutely turn a phrase, evoke a scene, and draw you into a time and a place, not to mention being full of dark and unhappy insight. I'm also impressed by the way he plays with structure, especially within a scene. He can jump around in time in strange ways or leave out things you'd expect him to include, and while that seems like it should be distracting or confusing, he pulls it off so well most of the time that it's easy to not even notice that he's doing it.

Rating: 4/5, although the writing really is good enough that I feel a bit stingy not throwing it another half-star, however I felt about the plot.

>152 bragan: And as soon as you said that about not-so-noble reasons, this song popped into my head...

https://matchlyric.com/julia-ecklar-leslie-fish-surprise*

Leslie Fish's politics are seriously wonky, but damn can she write. Her early stuff is worth looking at.

*Heh. Looked at the lyrics again - they mostly got it right but the second to last line is "that goose in the sky", not upstart. And it's not talking about a bird...

>166 jjmcgaffey: Ah, I remember Leslie Fish from way back in my early Trekkie days. :) That one is definitely ringing a faint bell.

>165 bragan: I haven’t read Whitehead yet. Great review

>168 dchaikin: Besides this and Harlem Shuffle, I've read Underground Railroad and Zone One, and I've thought all of them were good, in very different ways.

Great review of Crook Manifesto, Betty. I wasn't sure that I was going to read it, since I wasn't overly fond of Harlem Shuffle, but I definitely will now.

>170 kidzdoc: I think it has a slightly different feel to it than Harlem Shuffle. But whether it will appeal as strongly if you didn't care for that one, I don't know. I liked both, myself.

I loved The Intuitionist and Underground Railroad and thought Harlem Shuffle was OK, but really, I haven't felt called to read Crook Manifesto. I might look for a different Whitehead that I haven't read.

>172 BLBera: I've had The Intuitionist on my TBR sheves forever. I really must get around to it sometime.

Oh, a lot has happened here since my last visit. I could have gone with many direct answers to posts, but I thought I'll do just one in the end because it would be too hard to follow when I refer as far back as post 100.
I haven't read Heart of Darkness yet and quite frankly, I had no idea about it until I read your review. It's quite some way down on my reading list but I might give it a try, though.
The discussion about the moon landing and the 'American news in other parts of the world' aspect also piqued my interest. First off, I was not alive at the time of the moon landing and I would not consider myself overly knowledgeable about it. I do think that it is being referenced in other news a lot, though. I would have thought it was a global thing. Having lived in New Zealand for a bit around 2010 I can only say that American news was a lot more prominent there than European news for instance. It was not the center of attention, but you still read or heard about the 'big things', for lack of a better word. I think the moon landing would have fallen into that category, not as news from the US but rather as the most prominent global event of the time. This is merely my assumption, though, as I haven't been alive back then.

>165 bragan: Thank you for putting this on my radar. I think I will have to read this. Probably even this year, if I can get to it.

>174 OscarWilde87: Hello!

I can't say I exactly recommend Heart of Darkness, but I did find attempting to sort out my thoughts about it a really interesting exercise, which may be enough to feel it was worth reading all by itself.

It startles me to hear the moon landings referred to as merely "American news," too, honestly, but of course I also wasn't there (and would have been in America anyway, if I was).

17. The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas



I visited the Everglades about a year and a half ago, and picked this book up in a visitor's center there after repeatedly hearing it, and its author, mentioned as being extremely influential in the history of the Everglades and in Everglades conservation efforts. I have to say, it's not at all what I was expecting. It does start out with a chapter on the natural world of the Everglades and ends with one that makes some very strong statements about how much damage humans have done to the place. But mostly it's really a history of the Everglades, or even of south Florida as a whole, from prehistory up through 1947, when the book was first published. I have to admit, I wasn't always in love with Douglas' writing style, which is a bit purplish towards the beginning and a bit disjointed towards the end. But most of the history itself is quite interesting, and was either unfamiliar to me or involved things I only knew about in broad and general terms. And she really does try very hard to bring it vividly to life, sometimes with pretty good success.

I'm also pleased to report that, while she does of course use language that's very dated now and certain kinds of descriptions that modern authors would hopefully avoid, her treatment of the native peoples of Florida is way more respectful than I'd have expected for 1947. She very much treats all the people in her narratives as people, whatever their race or culture, and accepts those cultures on their own terms. (Mind, you I can't speak to how accurate her depictions of native cultures are, but she does seem to have at least wanted get it right.) And while she might not exactly be condemning the evils of colonialism on every page, she doesn't remotely whitewash them, either, and is always ready to call an injustice and injustice and a horror a horror. So, y'know, a considerably less racist and sanitized/mythologized account of American history than I got growing up decades later, anyway.

The edition that I have also includes an extensive afterword by journalist Michael Grunwald describing what's happened to the Everglades' environment and the various efforts to both develop and conserve it since the original book was written... which is a lot, good, bad, and ugly. He also talks about Douglas's own involvement in that history, which continued well into a ripe old age.

Anyway, even if this wasn't remotely what I was expecting, I can certainly see why it was influential, and whether or not I always loved her writing, I have come away with considerable respect for Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Less so for humanity and how we treat each other and the natural world, but let's be honest, that was kind of a given.

Rating: I'm giving this a 3.5/5 as a reading experience, but as a piece of history in itself, arguably it should rate higher.

18. Adventure Time Vol. 6 by Ryan North



It always brings a smile to my face to revisit the world of Adventure Time via this comics series, and that's true of this one, too, but that having been said I think it maybe didn't work quite as well for me as the previous ones.

As usual, there's a short one-shot here followed by a longer story. The one-shot is just... weird. Yes, even by Adventure Time's weird standards. There are dinosaurs (which very much bring to mind Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics in some downright surreal ways), and narration from sentient gemstones, and Ricardio for some reason?, and an art style I don't especially love. It does have some decent stuff about Marceline and Princess Bubblegum's relationship, although I found my eyebrows raising a bit over how strongly they are described as friends who are buddies who are really good pals, yep, yep, yep, until I realized that, oh, this was actually published before the cartoon established them as something a bit more than that.

The longer story features Finn and Jake exploring an old factory of some kind and finding a machine that turns them into ghosts. They try to be helpful ghosts for their friends, but it doesn't go well. Ghostbusters are called in, and next thing you know there are ghosts everywhere. This one felt a bit rambly, maybe, like it could actually have been three different episodes of the show. It's also maybe a smidge too on-the-nose with the moral lesson of the story. But it does still have some fun moments and bits of entertaining dialog, anyway.

Rating: 3.5/5

>176 bragan: I’m glad it came off well for you. MSD is one of my angels. She was a special person.

>178 dchaikin: I do get that impression, especially after all the things the other author had to say about her in the afterword.

As someone who born in '91, reading everyone's reminiscences of the moon landings was very interesting.

>180 Julie_in_the_Library: It's history to me, but I suppose it must be really ancient history to you, having come along 20 years after I did!

Just caught up on your thread...always interesting! :-)

>182 avaland: Thanks and hi! :)

19. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi



In Tokyo, there is a cafe with a chair that has the ability to transport someone who sits in it through time. You can't change the past while you're there, but you can talk to people who are (or were, or will be) in the cafe at the time, giving at least a few people the opportunity to revisit certain moments, or conversations, or loved ones.

It's a fantastic premise, packed with possibilities for both whimsy and real emotional punch, and I'd seen the novel described as both moving and charming, so I was hoping for something rather lovely. But, boy, did it not live up to expectations. The writing was just... Well, look. Quite possibly the translation from Japanese did it a bit of a disservice, and maybe differences in cultural expectations for pacing and such don't help, either, but even after making allowances for all of that, the writing is just... not good? It's incredibly repetitive -- we're told the not-actually-very-complicated rules about the time-traveling at length probably nine different times in the course of 272 small pages -- plus it's almost exclusively telling us things it should be showing us, and not even doing that especially well. The specific situations of the characters and the reasons they want to make use of the time travel chair should actually be really affecting, but the characters are so unbelievable and impossible to sympathize with that, for me at least, it all just falls flat.

At least it's a quick read. And I still think it's a fantastic premise. But I find this novel's popularity befuddling.

Rating: 2/5

>184 bragan: Although I liked it more than you, I was disappointed that there wasn't more depth to it. As you say, interesting premise that fails to deliver.

>185 labfs39: As you say, interesting premise that fails to deliver.

Really, I think being able to imagine how interesting it could have been with that premise just makes it seem much worse. Actively very disappointing, rather than just kind of meh.

20. Toilets, Toasters & Telephones: The How and Why of Everyday Objects by Susan Goldman Rubin



A slim book on the design and history of various household objects. It's clearly aimed at younger readers -- I'd say probably middle grade? -- which I think isn't something I realized when I got it. It was published in 1998, so it's rather dated now, something that's probably most obvious in the chapters on telephones and typewriters. It also doesn't really go into any detail at all on how any of the technology it covers actually works, just the design aspects of it. But the author covers that with a lot of enthusiasm for the subject, and it's an interesting little glimpse at how some familiar objects have evolved, along with a bit of of historical trivia. There are also some nice black-and-white pictures of various objects, although I'm a little sorry there weren't more, as some of the things I would have been most interested in seeing weren't pictured.

Rating: 3.5/5, but, really, it's pretty good for what it is, even if a bit too dated for its intended audience now.

>184 bragan: Ouch, too bad! Did you read The Miracles of the Namiya General Store? The premise is rather different but it involves dialogue with the past, of a surprising nature. I liked it.

>188 FlorenceArt: Nope, hadn't even heard of that one! Maybe I'll check it out. It would be nice to see something like that done well.

21. Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips



A collection of short stories (some very short) set in worlds that are slightly off-kilter from our own, sometimes in ways that only slightly exaggerate or distort reality, others in ways that feel rather more surreal. Cities so removed from nature that even the wind has ceased to exist, worlds where you can easily put in a request to learn the date of your death, versions of reality where a person can wake up suddenly able to see everyone else without their skin or witness time suddenly stopping at the end of a dinner party, planets full of counterparts that people can fuse with to become one complete, perfectly happy being, a la Plato. But all this strangeness, for the most part, is grounded in the details of everyday life, of romantic relationships, parenthood, loneliness, the gaps between rich and poor, and the general experience of living.

I will say, this collection didn't wow me quite as much as I thought it was going to after reading the first couple of stories, as not all of them worked nearly as well for me as those did. But even the ones I didn't entirely get or click with were still bizarrely intriguing, and they're all very well-written. If you like this kind of strange, thought-provoking stuff, this is definitely one to check out.

Rating: 4/5

>190 bragan: I’m intrigued. But I already have so many short story collections that I’m not reading, or reading very slowly…

>191 FlorenceArt: I have a ton of short story collections I'm not reading, too, but then, I have a ton of pretty much everything that I'm not reading. :)

22. The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith



Book number 19 in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. These books in general are great comfort reading, and can often feel like the literary equivalent of a warm, fuzzy blanket. This one, I think, didn't give me as much of that as many of them. But the feeling it did give me was that of dropping in on old friends for a pleasant little visit and to see what they happen to be up to.

Which, in this case, involves being persuaded to run for the town council (Mma Ramotswe) and finally finding what might be a serious long-term relationship only to run into some romantic obstacles (Charlie). Oh, and investigating a hit-and-run accident while they're at it, although as usual the plot is not remotely the point and only serves to provide us more some character stuff and some gentle musings on morality.

Rating: I kind of feel like I've reaching the point where rating these has become almost meaningless, but I'll give it a 4/5, anyway.

23. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The Making of the Classic Film by John Tenuto and Maria Jose Tenuto



These days, I sometimes describe myself, only half-jokingly, as a "lapsed Trekkie." But I will never, it seems, lapse anywhere near enough to lose my deep and heartfelt love for The Wrath of Khan. All these decades later, and it's still my all-time favorite movie. I don't care what anybody thinks.

So I was, naturally, very pleased to come across this coffee table-sized book on the making of the film, and I'm even more pleased by its contents. There are lots of pictures, but unlike with many of these kinds of image-heavy books, the text does not come across as something of an afterthought. Instead, there really is quite a lot here about the various behind-the-scenes stuff that went into making the movie (costumes, special effects, etc. etc.), and the people who made that stuff happen. I particularly appreciate the way it acknowledges the work of people who are often overlooked, including camera operators, stunt doubles, and even the hairstylist. And I was very interested to read about the various earlier versions of the script and the huge changes it went through before it become the finished version on our screens. Especially as it seems like every choice that was made about what to change just made it better and better, and, well, how often does that happen? Here I didn't think much of anything could make me appreciate Spock's death scene more, but seeing pieces of earlier versions where it's honestly pretty bad has definitely done it.

Anyway. This one is definitely recommended for fans of the movie!

Rating: 4/5

>194 bragan: ". . . it's still my all-time favorite movie. I don't care what anybody thinks."

I know what you mean (I think!). "All-time favorite" doesn't necessarily mean "best." My all-time favorite movie is the Jim Jarmusch film, "Down by Law" with Jonathan Lurie, Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni. Not the best movie I've ever seen by a long shot but my favorite, absolutely.

Anyway, that looks like a very interesting and fun book. I wonder if there's enough film in the can to make a documentary about Wrath of Khan.

>195 rocketjk: "Favorite" and "best" are indeed very different things, and I'm not remotely going to try to argue that it's the best movie every made, but I am prepared to argue that it is, in fact, actually a good movie, as well. :) And I would watch the heck out of a making-of documentary.

I'm not sure I've even heard of Down by Law.

>196 bragan: Down by Law is an excellent movie, and worth catching at least once.

>190 bragan: I was sure I had a copy of Some Possible Solutions lying about, either on the shelves or in the ether, and went looking because your review piqued my interest. But no, just an (unread) print copy of The Beautiful Bureaucrat and an (unread) e-galley of her newest, Hum. I'd pick up any of those, though of course I really want to read the one I don't have... typyical.

>196 bragan: You will like Down by Law if you like gritty but offbeat comedy in which the plot, what there is of it, doesn't really hold together, but the character development and interaction is sublime. My wife and I were singing the movie's praises to friends of ours in California and they decided to host us for a Down by Law-watching party before we left for New York. When the movie was over and they turned the lights up in their living room they were both grinning, but both admitted that they didn't know what the heck they were watching for the first 15 minutes or so.

>197 lisapeet: So typical! I have The Beautiful Bureaucrat on my own TBR shelves. I'm definitely looking forward to reading it now.

>198 rocketjk: That does sound like a lot of fun! I may have to check it out at some point.

>199 bragan: I was going to post a link to the movie trailer, but I watched both the U.S. and U.K. versions and both are full of spoilers. I hope you have a watch sometime.

>200 rocketjk: Apparently it is available on at least one of the gazillion services I'm subscribed to, so it's just a matter of actually finding the time to watch it! I will be sure to do so without watching the trailer, if and when.

24. Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen



Sarah and David are constantly bickering and on the edge of divorce... until they show up for their couple's counseling session one day and their therapist tries to eat them. But will surviving the zombie apocalypse together save their marriage?

OK, with a premise like that, I think you have two possible ways to end up with something actually good. One is to use the horror and absurdity of the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop for an actually insightful exploration of the nature of a troubled marriage. Based on the title, the cover, and the cheap mass-market nature of the publication, I was not expecting this approach. The other option is to write a fun, Shaun of the Dead-style romp with the troubled marriage thing there to add humor, character moments, and maybe even a touch of heart. This is definitely the approach this one is going for. Does it succeed? Eh, not really.

I mean, I guess there's a moment or two when I came close to smiling at some comment one or the other of the central couple made, but that's about all I can say for it. Really, it's just a bog-standard zombie story. Well, all right, that's just a little unfair, as it does use a slightly different-than-usual idea about how people turn into zombies, where the bloodlust actually precedes the zombification. That is something that could be used to add horror, tension, and emotional impact, but unfortunately the story doesn't really do anything all that interesting with it. So, well, I may be less tired of zombies than most people, but this one still kind of left me yawning. I definitely won't be going on with the rest of the series.

Rating: 2.5/5