QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part IV

There are serious fires right now in the province where I live.



image from The Hamilton Spectator

QUESTION 21: Disaster Reading

Do you read nonfiction about disasters, be they fire, flood, hurricane, shipwreck, earthquake, plague, or any other catastrophe?

Are you more interested in those from the past, or the current ones that foreshadow future events?

Do they feature in any fiction you've read?

Do you think reading about disasters helps understand them, or do the descriptions make them seem too farfetched?

What books stand out for you?

_________

Short Note: There are all too many other kinds of disasters in the world, but this question is aimed more at those arising from natural events than those created by people.

Q21

The final remark is a moot point, given what effect people have had and have on nature. Global warming and the ensuing effects, as well as the destruction of habitats and millions of species, can all be ascribed to human activity.

I've read some non-fiction (perhaps quite a bit, relative to what one might wonder) about "disasters" but I don't actively seek out sensationalised accounts of things like shipwrecks. (Although those are the bread and butter of the adventure stories I grew up on).

I recommend Elizabeth Kolbert's books and Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.

As perfectly formed category 5 hurricane Rita headed towards Houston in 2005 and we evacuated, I read Isaac’s Storm, on the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston, tx without warning (well, without heeded warning). Rita came in obliquely, ended up gliding past Houston and wrecking havoc further east. But it made for a really intense read.

I don’t pursue natural disaster books, past or future, because they tend to prioritize for drama and shock value over other aspects. I do occasionally read about global warming and other human impacts on the natural world.

>1 SassyLassy: QUESTION 21: Disaster Reading

Do dystopias count? What happens after a big disaster is a common trope in science fiction and I usually enjoy reading them - being it climate change or a more distinct event such as a hurricane or an earthquake or a plague. They somehow feel safer than reading about a hurricane hitting now or a plague closing the world (well, 2020 proved that as usual, facts can be worse than anyone's imagination).

I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction and because of that I rarely end up reading much about catastrophes in the current times. Plus I got lucky enough to have lived in two areas which are safe from the most of the usual issues - Bulgaria has some seismic activity but chances of a big one are not very big all things considered and the Valley of the Sun in Arizona will run out of water long before it gets something else (well, we have sandstorms and some of them can be nasty but nowhere near what a hurricane or a blizzard can do in other parts of the country).

I enjoy adventure stories - so shipwrecks (both at sea and in space) feature in my reading often enough. So do asteroids hitting Earth :)

PS: I am also the person who reads novels about planes hijacking and planes going down while on a plane. I know this one is off-topic but it kinda works like a coda to my musings.

>3 dchaikin: I don’t pursue natural disaster books, past or future, because they tend to prioritize for drama and shock value over other aspects.

And I think Dan said what I was trying to say about contemporary fiction about disaster better than I could have. :)

Question 21--Disaster Reading

I do read nonfiction about disasters--usually about something I feel a connection with, or that interests me. Since I lived many years in New Orleans, after the Katrina disaster I read many books about that over the years. Some of the better ones, books that still haunt me are:

The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley (a professor at Tulane at the time)
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Nine Lives by Dan Baum
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (my 3 oldest children's were born at Memorial)
One Dead in Attic by Chris Rose

Im not big on reading about natural disasters; I read many books with disasters within the story,(triangle fire in Hidden Palace for example. but its not a topic I search out for. However our used book store puts travel and adventure together so inevitably when I am looking for a travel book I find an interesting adventure book. I have read some non fiction isaacs storm , into thin air ,the childrens blizzard, and river of doubt, pretty sure I read a Titanic book but dont remember the title

and I agree when it comes to man made disasters; drama and shock usually go along with really bad or just over the top writing. There are exceptions of course Jurassic Park, Jaws and others.

Q21 Disasters

This immediately makes me think of the “disaster movies” that were popular back in the seventies, a species of awfulness that I can’t imagine ever wanting to look out for in books. (And no, I’ve never actually read Jaws or Jurassic Park, so I can’t tell if my prejudice against them is well-founded.)

Obviously, I must have read all sorts of books in which disasters, fictional or real, play a part, but it’s hard to think of any good examples. It’s just not a type of subject-matter that attracts me in itself. Maybe Thomas Hardy’s novels would be the exception? In books like Far from the madding crowd or Jude the obscure, it’s just one long series of catastrophic accidents…

From a quick glance at my shelves, the most relevant title I can come up with is Patricia Highsmith’s story collection Tales of natural and unnatural catastrophes.

>7 thorold: I must read Tales of natural and unnatural catastrophes. I had thought I’d read everything Patricia Highsmith wrote. Imagine though ig she’d been able to write about the disasters of the last couple of decades …

>2 LolaWalser: This was a difficult note to word properly, as I subscribe to your view, but part of me was also thinking of the sheer untrammelled force of nature both on its own, and also once set in motion by humans.

>4 AnnieMod: Dystopias absolutely count. I think in their own way they make us consider what can happen for real.

>7 thorold: Interesting take on Hardy, but so true.

>7 thorold: I actually read both Jaws and Jurassic Park a decade or so before the movie came out. Both scared the hell out of me so I ended up not seeing the movies. But loved the books. Suspect they would be very dated reads now.

I would have thought that for those readers who like contemporary novels, then books featuring natural disasters will be increasingly hard to avoid. Contemporary fiction tends to take a time to catch up on changing times and so climate change may feature or be a backdrop to many future novels.

I don't go out of my way to read dystopia novels, but an interest in science fiction ensures that I read a few. I am about to start J G Ballards The Drowned World.

Coincidently my French library book that I am reading at the moment is La Tempête by Jean-Guy Soumy.

I am more interested in those disasters that foreshadow future events. Most of the natural disaster books that I have read do not seem too far fetched. We have all seen the forest fires on the news and so we are well equipped to imagine what they would be like.

If disaster books seem over the top, or too sensational, is there another way to get people reading and thinking about possible events in the future?

Always happy to make a list, I browsed my collection and came up with the following:

Nonfiction
Five days at Memorial (hurricane)
The Children's Blizzard
A Night to Remember (iceberg)

Fiction
Doomsday Book (plague)
Dog Stars (environmental disasters and flu pandemic)
The plague
A high wind in Jamaica (hurricane)
Who was changed and who was dead (flood)
Now (fire)
Year of Wonders (plague)-don't recommend this one, read Doomsday Book instead

In high school I read quite a few survival stories, which is a related genre. Books like Alive about surviving a plane crash in the Andes and The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor.

>13 labfs39kids: Night to remember was the one I was trying to think of that I read. Very good. Also agree with you about year of wonders, I didn't care for very mcuh

Interesting how many people read stories of ship wrecks and sea disasters. Maybe it's because they were featured in so many children's stories - everything from Edward Ardizzone's wonderful Tim books to >13 labfs39kids:'s High Wind in Jamaica, with edifying stops in between, like Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson.

Some of my favourites can certainly be found in that realm, with the later addition of tales of hubris from explorers or fiction like Moby Dick

QUESTION 22: Mutual Aid

Book binding, fly tying, photography, ecclesiastical embroidery... everyone has at least one particular pastime.

Think of something you do well, and come up with a list of five or so books that would help someone new to that endeavour, either on a technical level, or perhaps in a fictional setting, to help them understand what it's all about.

Now name something you would like to learn, and get help from your fellow LTers, who may then be able to supply you with a suggested reading list.

Had to think what else I do besides read, but wait whats all that green stuff around the house? oh yeah, we garden. Since we live in a very dry climate, Id choose books that focus on how to garden in this environment

1) dry climate gardening:growing beautiful sustainable gardens in low water conditions

This book was recently released written by our own Az Plant Lady who has a popular blog. We are using this book to help us make some over due changes and so far finding it very helpful

"Gardening in an arid climate doesn’t have to mean a yard full of rocks with a few cacti plunked in. With careful plant selection and thoughtful design, you can create a low-water landscape that’s an oasis for humans and wildlife alike. There are hundreds of plants well-suited to xeric conditions, and with the proper care, they create a living desert landscape that will stop passersby in their tracks. Let Dry Climate Gardening be your guide to crafting a climate-appropriate outdoor living space that’s the envy of the neighborhood, whether you live in the American Southwest, the Mediterranean region, or any other arid climate."

in this book you'll learn
-The best arid-adapted plants to feature in your landscape
-Information on which plants struggle in dry climates and how to avoid them
-The five “desert seasons” and which are best for planting
-How to handle desert soils
-Plant care techniques specific to dry climates, including pruning, fertilizing, and more
-How to design a planting for maximum impact and minimal water needs
-Plant profiles and charts for every category, from trees and shrubs to groundcovers, vines, succulents, and perennials
-Sample garden designs and plant lists you can adapt to your own space

2)Growing Vegetables in Drought, Desert & Dry Times: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening WithoutWasting Water by Maureen Gilmer

"Here is the definitive guide to growing healthy organic vegetables without wasting our precious water resources! This incredibly timely book will give dedicated home gardeners the know-how to grow delicious produce in dry times, focusing on four different low-water conditions in the western United States: voluntary water conservation, drought, and both high and low desert. Using modern techniques, as well as tips and stories from native traditions ranging from the southwestern United States to the Middle East, this guide offers the best of ancient wisdom and the newest innovations in conservation, and includes varietal recommendations and a seasonal crop guide."

3)A Place All Our Own Mary F. Irish This is an oldey but goody, the stories of their beginnings at gardening in the desert is filled with humor and basic information. They have written several other books about the joys and frustrations of dry climate gardening

"For twenty years Mary Irish, along with her husband Gary, tended a garden in Scottsdale, Arizona. Over the years they transformed it into a lively and lovely spot that reflected both its place in the world--hot, dry, and often hostile to gardeners who don't understand its ways--and the particular passions of its two creators. Of course, not everything went as planned, and the garden talked back as much as it obeyed. But for these two gardeners, the unexpected outcome is one of gardening’s great pleasures. … Mary Irish is a delightful writer. With grace, wit, and obvious affection, she tells the story of how she and Gary transformed a barren half-acre plot around their house in the center of Greater Phoenix into a haven: for its creators and their friends, for the birds and insects and other critters that have discovered it, and for the plants that have made it their home. Although it describes the experience of gardening in one of the most extreme climates in the inhabited world, A Place All Our Own will interest anyone who gardens—and everyone who enjoys a well-told, true-life nature tale.

4)A Desert Gardener's Companion

For old hands or inexperienced newcomers, A Desert Gardener's Companion is the essential reference for creating and maintaining a bountiful and environmentally sensitive Southwestern garden. Master Gardener Kim Nelson provides a wealth of information in an easy-to-use seasonal format, covering what to do week-by-week in the desert climates of southern California, Arizona, southern Nevada, southern New Mexico, and west Texas.

5)This isnt a book its a website: Native Seeds Search nativeseeds.org You can purchase seeds of native plants there and learn about growing with them.

"Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a nonprofit seed conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona. Our mission is to conserve and promote the arid-adapted crop diversity of the Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security. Native Seeds/SEARCH seeks to find, protect and preserve the seeds of the people of the Greater Southwest so that these arid adapted crops may benefit all peoples and nourish a changing world. Since its founding, Native Seeds/SEARCH has been dedicated to conserving the rich agro-biodiversity of the arid Southwest. Preserved in our seed bank today are nearly 2,000 varieties of crops adapted to arid landscapes extending from southern Colorado to central Mexico, many of them rare or endangered."

while searching out these books I came across a tidbit that will help us in our planning. We alway say there are two growing seasons here October, and February. But I saw this: "The Sonoran Seasons Garden is designed to showcase the five seasons of desert plant life in the Sonoran Desert — winter, dry summer, monsoon summer, fall and spring" that makes so much more sense.

sorry this is so long, but you did ask :)

Q22: Mutual Aid

I think of myself as a serial bodger: I get to the level of "acceptable quality" in most of the practical things I undertake and don't ever advance much beyond that, so something you do well is difficult.

I also tend not to use books much to learn practical skills. Most of the time, if you want to learn how to do something, the best way is to get someone competent and experienced to show you (and ideally try to repeat it under their supervision), or failing that, to watch them doing it on YouTube (caveat: it's so easy to drop down the rabbit hole of watching endless demonstrations of skills you never have any intention of trying to put into practice yourself...). Books are important for gaining deeper insight into the history and background of the topic, and occasionally for looking up specific instructions, but it's rare that a book will be sufficient in itself to get you into a practical activity. I'm sure no-one ever learnt to paint by reading Gombrich, but I don't suppose anyone who read Gombrich without learning to paint felt cheated by the outcome...(*)

Since SassyLassy mentioned bookbinding, which is something I got into quite recently (at a very bodgy level), I'll list a couple of the classic books there:

Bookbinding and the care of books (1901) by Douglas Cockerell

A beautiful little book by a bookbinder and teacher who was at the heart of the Arts and Crafts movement. As well as an overview of the history of bookbinding and the different techniques involved, there's a lot of discussion about the aesthetics of book decoration and some practical stuff about long-term stability of materials. A good introduction, even if the scientific part is a bit out of date.

The art of bookbinding (1880) by Joseph William Zaehnsdorf

Despite the title, this is more of a survey of bookbinding as a trade in late Victorian London, with detailed attention to the organisation of a commercial workshop, the use of machinery and purchasing of materials and that kind of thing. Not all that much that you could use practically, but quite a lot of interesting historical background. And Zaehnsdorf is fun to read because of his strong opinions about the mistakes other people make.

Peripheral interest:

The Book On the Book Shelf (1999) by Henry Petroski

The mechanical engineer's history of the book and book-storage. Fun, if you like that sort of thing.

Private enterprise (1947) by Angela Thirkell

One of her endless series of Barsetshire novels, amusing in this context because the grand set-piece in the middle is the Red Cross amateur bookbinding exhibition!

---
(*) This rather random example replaced a first draft referring to The joy of gay sex.

come up with a list of five or so books that would help someone new to that endeavour, either on a technical level, or perhaps in a fictional setting, to help them understand what it's all about

My primary non-reading activity is knitting, and while I have waaaaaaaaaay too many books connected to that, I think they can pretty well be divided into six categories: (1) Straight-up instruction for beginners; (2) collections of patterns; (3) practical tips for knitters who want to try new things; (4) essays discussing the craft; (5) scholarly studies that often expand to look at social and/or feminist issues, and (6) fiction with a knitting background.

I'm going to skip over categories 1 and 2, because there are so many candidates. Total newbies would be best advised to visit a local yarn shop -- not a big-box craft store -- for help choosing the basics.

(3) For practical tips presented with humor and style, you can't beat Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Knitting Rules! and Stephanie-Pearl McPhee Casts Off are both great. 'Knitting Rules' has knitting tips and sassy commentary, and knitters of any level will probably find some new ideas here. There are no patterns per se, but lots of basic recipes that will allow you to plug in your own yarns and stitch patterns to make socks, hats, scarves, shawls, etc. 'Casts Off' looks at" the country of Knitting", complete with commentary on getting there, the language, religion, social customs, endangered species, and everything the traveler needs to know.

(4) The Yarn Whisperer, by Clara Parkes, and Knitting the Threads of Time, by Nora Murphy are both thoughtful and informative collections of essays. Murphy's book, particularly, includes reflections on the history of fabric-making and its relationship to the power of women -- both personal and political.

(5) The classics here include No Idle Hands, by Anne L. Macdonald, and Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Macdonald's book is more knitting-specific, while Barber takes a much broader view but is certainly applicable to knitting.

(6) Two of the better fiction pieces I've read that make good use of knitting as a background are Knitting, by Anne Bartlett, and The Yarn Woman, by Brooks Mencher. Her main character is sort of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Elizabeth Zimmerman by way of Glinda the Good Witch. ‘Yarn Woman’ is head and shoulders above most fiction with a knitting background, much of which runs to the cozy mystery series, with all the luggage that carries.

Now name something you would like to learn, and get help from your fellow LTers

Oh, dear. I don’t have enough room in my house (or my head) for another hobby! Though I might enjoy reading something about tai chi. (So as to have yet another excuse for not working on Snake Creeps Down today…)

forgot to say what I wanted to learn: ive tried to learn to cook by looking at recipes and I always mess something up. Its not my fault my parents owned a deli, my sis is a gourmet cook and my brother just has a knack for everything,So by the time I came along the cooking gene was all used up. :)

Thing is I dont like to cook -the prep, the timing, the clean up, but going out to eat has gotten so expensive I feel like I need to learn more than eggs. quice. mac and chees and othre college basics . Im not looking to make anything fancy. just something quick and easy with not much fuss. I have a crock pot and a mixer and a blender.

And I can bake pretty well, not sure why cooking is so hard for me So educate me! pls

>16 SassyLassy: Interesting question. Will have a good think and come back....

I do generally start a new hobby with books...which means I have piles of books on hobbies that never quite took off for me (but I might start them! (fat chance)). I could list knitting (yes), crochet (no), quilting (no...or not yet), bookbinding (no), weaving (yes, with variations), braiding (oh yes! I've taught classes - fingerloop, mostly)...But either the books didn't work for me, or they worked so well I haven't consulted them in ages. Oh, I know, knotting. That one I do regularly but not frequently, so my books get a workout.

The bible is The Ashley Book of Knots - a huge compilation of knots found and "created", named, described, diagrammed and explained. I only use a half-dozen knots out of there - mesh knots, mostly, for making nets for my garden - but I enjoy browsing from time to time. It doesn't cover all knots, probably...and finding a particular knot can be difficult to impossible unless you remember what name Ashley gave it. But for an encyclopedia, it's fantastic.

Then I have a bunch of smaller books - The Complete Guide to Knots and How to Tie Them, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Knots (yes, it's _much_ smaller, in physical size and in contents, than Ashley), The Klutz Book of Knots, and a bunch of very old, almost pamphlets - one (that I have as an ebook, from Project Gutenberg) is Knots, Splices, and Rope Work. Sometimes a smaller book is just easier to look through; rarely, it's got a clearer explanation of how to make a particular knot than Ashley does; or it may have knots Ashley doesn't mention (or that I can't find in Ashley). Everything comes back to Ashley...

I don't currently have a "something I want to learn" - I'm strenuously resisting learning to quilt (even though I've gotten books and kits for it...), working on sewing actual clothes (but that's mostly not from books - though I have some books on making patterns from clothes that fit me), and enjoying myself gardening, knitting, braiding, knotting, baking, making candy and cheese... I may be maxed out, or just in a pause for hobbies/skills.

>20 cindydavid4: Do you like the science of cooking? You might check out some of the Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen cookbooks - they tend to explain the _whys_ of doing something or other, which makes it work better for me. I also bake quite a bit and tend to cook in a throw-it-together fashion. I keep cooked brown rice (made in my Instant Pot - can also make it in a crockpot) in the fridge, and add pesto (made in a blender, from whatever greens are in my garden plus garlic, nuts, Parmesan, and enough olive oil to make it move - put it in jars and freeze most of them, keep one in the fridge for use), cheese (cheddar and blue, because I like those), and avocado (chunked). Microwave until the cheese melts, stir it all together and top with sprouts. Sometimes half the rice is riced cauliflower (also out of the freezer). I'll eat that 9 nights out of 10 - the tenth night that's too much work and I'll have cheese melted over bread, maybe with veg (frozen, defrosted in the microwave) on the side. It's a good thing I don't have to feed anyone but myself.

I do have fancy meals I like to make, but I don't make them for myself - it's just so annoying to spend an hour assembling and cooking a meal that's done in 15 minutes. Bah. That said, if you want to show off or you have more toleration for time spent than I do, cheese souffle is surprisingly easy, very filling, keeps well in the fridge or freezer, and basically tastes like the world's best scrambled eggs. I use the Joy of Cooking recipe for Make Ahead Cheese Souffle (it's not much in advance, and you still have to bake it just before serving). I make it for my family regularly, when we get together; I _plan_ to make it for myself frequently, but then I'm hungry and I just throw together "rice and" instead.

Here's a recipe, approximately the one I use - http://www.happyinthekitchen.com/Site_1/Cheese_Souffle.html . On mine, I've added a big note at the top to have everything ready before you start - grate or cube the cheese, measure the flour and spices, separate the eggs, beat the yolks (you can beat the whites when the cheese sauce is off the heat, or do it at the start) - milk does nasty things if you abandon it on the heat. Hmmm - also, just 8 eggs separated (she adds a couple extra whites, I'd rather keep it even, less waste - and I just use large eggs. Whatever you have).

>15 SassyLassy: To clarify, I was thinking about the description of the hurricane before the children even board the ship. It's an amazing description of a tropical hurricane. High Wind in Jamaica isn't a shipwreck book, the kids are captured by pirates.

QUESTION 22: Mutual Aid

I have several hobbies, but the one that I'm best at, and for which I have the most books, is definitely writing. I have an entire librarything collection for my writing craft books.

Of the 14 writing craft books in my collection, these are the ones that I'd reccommend to someone who wants to get started writing fiction or poetry:

1. Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern is great for learning about short story structure.

2. Writing Poems by Robert Wallace is an excellent place to start with poetry, perfect for beginnners with little to no experience. This one was actually a required text in an undergraduate poetry writing seminar for creative writing majors that I took in college.

3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a beautiful and beautifully written memoir from an author, with lots to say about writing itself as an art and craft.

4. How Story Works: An Elegant Guide to the Craft of Storytelling by Lani Diane Rich is a good guide for all fiction writing, though the structure section is more about novels than short stories, if memory serves. Also check out the podcast!

5. Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card breaks down point of view and narrative distance in a way that beginning writers especially will find helpful.

Bonus: No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty is a great introduction to National Novel Writing Month, for anyone interested in participating. NaNoWriMo is great fun, and I highly reccommend trying it one year if you're into fiction writing. No prior experience, skill, or intention to be published required or expected!

As for a hobby I'd like some books on, I'm going with crocheting. I already know the basics, and I've made a few projects already and have a blanket in progress, but I've never read any books on the subject, and I'd like to.

>24 Julie_in_the_Library: didn't nanowrimo used to be called National November Writing Month? Or is thi different?

>25 cindydavid4: It's the same thing.

Ok gotcha. I loved how many of my reading friends were involved in that writing

>22 jjmcgaffey: it's just so annoying to spend an hour assembling and cooking a meal that's done in 15 minutes.

I am cooking for two and i think thats my problem, you do all this work and its done in secondes, and then clean up.. Plus you have all these left overs...I did find a website that gives recipes for one or two people, with items like mac and cheese whice I love, eggs in a cup, tomato soup for one, and others that I havent explored but should. Most of them are enough for two people, so not a lot a waste. https://onedishkitchen.com/cooking-for-one-recipes/main-dish/

>27 cindydavid4: I am always confused when I see people mentioning leftovers as if they are a bad thing... It is an already cooked meal -- stick it in the fridge (or freezer if there is a lot of it and it freezes well) and you have a ready-to-eat meal.

I cook for one which can be very annoying as I have a heavy hand with things (especially veggies...) so it is almost never for one person so unless I am doing eggs or pasta (or something else in that vein), I cook 2 or more portions and just reheat the next days. This week all my lunches were a zucchini, potatoes and chicken stew which I made on Sunday for lunch - and planned for 6 portions so I do not need to think what to have for lunch through the week...

>28 AnnieMod: Those are called "planned-overs"! :-) Yes, cooking for two (or one) is a total PITA. Some things are easily downsized -- "fried chicken" means a couple of thighs, not the whole freakin' bird (which has been disassembled and packed by parts in the freezer). Spaghetti sauce, of course, freezes in small containers. But how do you make a small meatloaf or a small potato salad? (I can start with one potato and one egg and still end up with a washtub full of the stuff.)

Fortunately, hubby doesn't mind leftovers, and would much rather have last night's ribs for lunch today than a sandwich. Left to my own devices, I'd eat sandwiches for supper probably five nights a week, and fill in the cracks with cookies. Not a real healthy choice!

>29 LyndaInOregon: I've stopped kidding myself that I am able to cook for one so these days most of my left-overs are not just planned-overs but also portioned and refrigerated separately so all I need is to pull a container and either reheat in the microwave or transfer for other reheating means (or eat cold if it is a salad). And as I do not mind eating the same thing a few days in a row, it works out as a charm :)

Real left-overs? In the fridge they go as well. I grew up in a household where throwing away any food was considered the worst thing one can do. It was not about frugality - my parents are the generation that moved away from the villages and half of the food on the table was still produced in the extended household (grandparents, cousins and what's not) so it was more of a "you don't respect the food, you don't respect the person who produced it" kind of thing.

PS: Meatloaf? Why would you want to make a small one? It refrigerates well and works with any vegetable dish (cooked or raw) to make a lot of meals through the week :)

>28 AnnieMod: Oh I dont mind left overs, but just not several nights later. I also worry about how long things last. I love my moms recipe for Tzimmes, a sweet potato cassrole with potatoes, carrots, peeled apple slices, brown sugar and pineapples the recipe serves four and so I make it for four meals, but sometimes I forget and am not sure how long its good for. and not sure it can be frozen, whic I do for somethings like chicken

>23 labfs39: I was thinking High Wind in Jamaica falls under the sea disasters part of my thought. There is indeed a hurricane on land at the beginning, but that leads to the voyage and pirates (definitely a disaster at sea), and then on to the final emotional disaster for Emily in the courtroom. For some reason, I always think of the book as a sea story.

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>17 cindydavid4: Xeriscaping is so important, thanks for the list and the details about the books.

>18 thorold: it's rare that a book will be sufficient in itself to get you into a practical activity

I would have agreed with you until about two weeks ago, when I read Machine without Horses, which despite its title is a novel about Megan Boyd: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/sports/megan-boyd-eccentric-master-of-fish-fl...
Since I have always loved the look of flies, it made me think perhaps I could try it, and so inspired the question.

>19 LyndaInOregon: >22 jjmcgaffey: I recognize some of these titles from my own forays into various fields! Making note of the titles.

>24 Julie_in_the_Library: Another well rounded list
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Sounds like books on food storage are required her. >31 cindydavid4: Try prunes instead of pineapple for a different taste.

>32 SassyLassy: possibly yes, I do have food containers but I am always worried about how long things last in the refr9g or freezer. I usually make quiche a few times a month, with ham but once I open the ham cube package I don't know how long it will still be good. I sometimes end up tossing stuff coz Im not sure.

Prunes? Sorry just no, not for me. I have used raisins instead tho.

>33 cindydavid4: Ham is so heavily processed that until it starts molding, it is pretty much safe. If you are not sure, smell it - and touch it. If it is not slimy and/or smelling off, you are good. I try not to have an open package of ham/other sandwich meats for more than 2 weeks but it has gone longer than that with no ill effects (and salami and the like probably will last months). Just put it in something fully wrapped (a bag or a box - I leave it in the original package and put the whole thing into another one) and you should be fine :)

thanks; I usually put the dates that food packages are opened to give me a better idea

>16 SassyLassy: Q22 - mutual aid

I have several clusters of how-to books: computer programming, gardening, crocheting, exercise... but I typically don't start at the beginning; I peruse a range for inspiration, try stuff, backtrack when I realize I don't know what I'm doing. I learned computer programming with fractals, inspired by The Fractal Geometry of Nature not long after its publication (early-mid 1980s) and then I was in a computer lab typing something, recognized a display of fractal printouts, asked who had done them, copied a code example and took it from there. I started gardening by going to a big box store and putting seeds/bulbs/plants in the ground and watching what happened, then switched gears entirely to native plants with Bringing Nature Home but that's more of a why-to than a how-to. Crochet is a recent entertainment, but I actually learned the basics 50 years ago and when I have a question I'm more inclined to watch a video and see a stitch in motion. Oh, I went vegetarian in high school and the prominent book at the time (mid-late 1970s) was Diet for a Small Planet, which I still have for sentimental reasons but I haven't read it in decades and I'd expect it to be dated.

>17 cindydavid4: After a month without rain here in Pennsylvania, these are looking useful...

>20 cindydavid4: I don't enjoy cooking either. (And I'm an oddity in my various gardening groups for this. Sooo many conversations about recipes.) My typical dinner is rice or pasta with stuff in it: tempeh/tofu and veggies, which takes about 10 minutes to chop and... stir-fry? Is that what I'm doing? With a bit of oil in a wok-ish thing on the stovetop. This about maxes out my patience but keeps me from starving.

>22 jjmcgaffey: I have several knot books, but not the same ones. Picked up over the years when I happen to see them. I don't have the encyclopedia and now aspire to.

Interesting responses all, but I thought there would be a lot more weekend lapidarys, luthiers, or lepidopterists out there. Perhaps they're all off reading Nabokov.

If anyone knows any good books (fiction or nonfiction) on wooden boat building, feel free to mention them. Arthur Ransome types of books are welcome.

Moving right along...

image Clare Schneider/NPR

QUESTION 23: Real Life Book Clubs

Many of us belong or have belonged to a real life book club. They generate all kinds of mixed feelings.

Are they even a good idea? Do you belong to one, or have you sworn off them forever?

If you are a non believer, what are the reasons?

If you are a member of one or more book clubs, how are they organized (there's a big assumption there!)?

How are books selected? Is there a range of books, or is it a group dedicated to a particular topic or field?

What would your ideal book club be, and how would it be run?

I do belong to a book club, and I think they’re a good idea… but as with most things, “it depends”. For years I was in one with two of my best friends (among other people), but when we met we mostly talked about everything other than the book. Seems we craved social time with each other more than the book discussion.

Then a year ago I was invited to join a group that was sort of re-forming with several of the previous members. I knew three and didn’t know the other four, but apparently they believed I’d be a good fit. It’s turned out well… we discuss the books (but also eat and chat), and they’re smart, interesting ladies. At the beginning of the year, we each proposed three or four books, we agreed on one out of each three or four (so everyone had a book chosen that they’d proposed), and the person who proposed that book hosts and we have a potluck lunch (with attempts to have the food reflect the book in some way). There are no real topics or themes… just good, interesting reading. I haven’t read/finished them all, but I’ve gotten at least something out of each book.

I find this works well for me - probably the most successful book club I’ve been in (there were others before the one with my best friends). Do I wish more of the books were exactly what I want to read? Yes, probably, but as I said… I’ve gotten something from each book.

Generally, I've not been a part of a traditional physical book group. I suppose I very much prefer choosing my own reads and reading on my own...but that said....

When I was working at the bookstore, I created several store/public book clubs (classics, SF/F. contemporary fiction...etc) Other than the set-up, some overseeing and augmenting until the group could function on it's own, that was it. The store groups were all a bit different from each other. The SF/F* group, for example, had a large group and got together to report what they as individuals were reading. It was mostly men and it's what worked for them. With a large group as a base I could invite authors to the groups and store-in-general. The contemporary group took turns to pick the books they read. With the Classics group, they chose their next book by consensus. We augmented the group sometimes with "period" refreshments, and at least once, we had a guest teach Regency dancing in the center of the store! (cramped, but great fun)

Of the groups who read one common book, they decided by consensus or by taking turns.

The groups who came together to talk about what they had individually read over the last month, seemed to be happy with their format.

I left the bookstore in '06 and was told about LT by one of the publishers' reps....Now, LT is another kettle, isn't it?

*Sf&F is still going now over 25 years, though much smaller...they meet once a month at the now much smaller store, and once a month on line (hubby is in it )

Back in the 80s Borders and Barnes and Nobel started book groups. In both cases the leader chose the books for us to pick from. I usually liked the books but ithe groups were way too big; not unusual to have 30 people. My local indie started one at about the same time which was much more my style. At the time one of the staff lead the group until someone was able to lead. Every year we are asked to submit two titles for the year, then when we get the list, pick 6 theyd like to read (numbers change depending on group size) Then one is picked for each month with the person who chose it leading the discussion. at the end we rate the books 1-5*. Sometimes the group got big depending on what book was read but usuallythe numbers stay around 10, so we actually were able to discuss the books. Unfortunately for some reason, after COVID we lost a tone of people. we are down to 6 regulars, Hopefully that number goes up soon Groups been going for about 30 years, would hate to see it go

One of my favorite group set a theme,like we do here, or choose an author for each month everyone picks a book from that theme. we only had 6 people so we all got to talk about our books. Got so many new authors and titles from those discussions! Unfortunately people started moving or dropping out. but it wa fun while it lasted.

Worst one? group leader read the questions from the book reader guide one at a time, and everyone answered one at a time, they shed go to the next question. I don't like those guides in general, they are way too HS for me. I don't mind using a few and having a conversation. But she liked the power I think, and when I suggested a change she got angry and said I wasn't following the rules. Stood up and walked out. At least the book was good

Id love to run another group that picked books from the same theme. but we already do so here

>41 cindydavid4: …when I suggested a change she got angry and said I wasn't following the rules…

Wow, that’s unfortunate. 🙁 Good for you for walking out. Life is too short for that!

I also invoked the "life's too short" rule about 6 months ago with a book club I had belonged to for years.

The club is/was run through the local library. Originally, the leader (who was a staff member) would ask for suggestions from members (we had 12-15, with usually 6-10 showing up at any meeting), and choose most selections from that list, occasionally throwing in one she thought we would enjoy. Discussions were lively, often strayed from the topic of the book itself (imagine that!), but usually got herded back on point.

Then she left the area a couple of years ago, and the head librarian stepped into the position. Input from members on books to read was the first thing to go. This guy apparently has an agenda, and it largely seems to be "white people are being / have been mean to people of color". Ummm ... okay. Point taken. (He happens to be white, and belongs to a religion which has in the past been notoriously racist, so maybe he's working out some personal issues. Fine. But do it on your own time, fella.) While there are some fine books out there dealing with the topic of racism, there are also a lot of other fine books out there dealing with other topics, and some of us would like a little variety in our recreational reading.

Nope. Three months out of four, that was the main theme. Questions for discussion come directly from the reader's guide, and since this guy apparently doesn't know how to direct a discussion, responses are generally sparse and noncomittal. He often came to the meetings and admitted that he hadn't even read the book! We have one member (bless her heart) who wants to compare each and every question to her personal experience. ("This reminds me of the time when I was in college and.....", often going off on an anecdote that has little or nothing to do with events or themes from the book).

I put up with it for about 18 months, made several suggestions for books to read (as did others in the group), got increasingly discouraged as membership waned and the leader ignored the suggestions he had asked for to help get new members, and ultimately decided it really wasn't worth my time.

Still looking for a good local book group, but the pool may have been irretrievably poisoned by peoples' experience with the library group.

>38 SassyLassy: Q23 - book clubs

Until recently I was in two RL local book clubs, one primarily fiction and one primarily non-fiction.

The fiction group began with a post on a neighborhood forum and an initial meeting of about 15 people to decide on its focus. Aspirations were high (early books I recall were Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Signature of All Things), with monthly meetings and a Facebook group for planning. Then one person asked in the FB group not entirely jokingly "Hey, can I just be there for the conversation and not read the books?" and a couple of people who knew her said sure, and I alone expressed reservations. So she started a monthly brunch with several book group members, and didn't invite me. Tensions increased with political differences in 2015-2016, and two members got into an emotional argument about religion after one made a joke that the other considered offensive. Our meeting location in an institutional space became a problem so we began rotating houses, and by then we were down to a half dozen or so politically aligned regulars. After a sorry episode with Middlemarch when the person who chose it didn't read it, we paid more attention to the page count. The rotating houses became mostly one person's house, two core members moved away, the regulars dwindled to three or four, we put out a call for more members and several people attended once or twice but didn't return. Then COVID hit, and meetings switched to Zoom. I attended the first few Zoom meetings, then got pulled into a family emergency with elderly parent decline and attended only sporadically for another two years. Every month I'd check the selection and decide whether or not to read the book, and if I read the book then I'd attend the meeting. But on the occasions I was there it seemed the group had settled into a conversational style that I couldn't fit into without more effort than I had the energy for, and after one especially difficult meeting a year ago I stopped trying.

I heard about the non-fiction group from someone who was in the fiction group, and asked to join. This group was small, about a half dozen regulars, with monthly meetings at restaurants. The books were (and still are) typically historical/biographical/cultural. Over a period of a few years, two people dropped out because the books were too depressing, and two people had competing demands and eventually stopped responding to email. One person recruited two friends who I vaguely knew from another organization. For awhile we had five regulars, then the founding member who had social ties to everyone else moved away. One of the remaining objected to anything political and with fewer members became more vocal about it but was also often traveling, so sometimes after we'd cooperatively constrained the selections she didn't show up. When COVID hit we stopped meeting because nobody was enthusiastic about Zoom. Shortly after vaccinations made life imaginable again, three of us happened to cross paths at an outdoor event and decided to give it another try. None of us had heard from the anti-political person in over a year, and we didn't go out of our way to reconnect. One person's daughter sometimes joins us. There's more social chitchat than book discussion, but I like the people and the books are worthy.

Oh, I was in a non fiction group made almost entirely lawyers or retirees who work in the government buildings down town. Theyd been together for years. A good friend happened to join and then she invited me. we had about 12 regulars and met at a restaurant early in the morning.The books were incredible as were the discussions: these folk were intelligent well read and curious. One book I remember reading just before Covid was polio: an american story,also River of Doubtand I cant remember any of the others unfortunately but they all opened my eyes. My friend says its starting to break up which is too bad, but not surprising

I did an online book club for a few months once as part of another (now defunct) community. Enough people were involved that if a particular book wasn't interesting to me, I could skip that month without worrying that there would be too few participants for a decent discussion.

But in general, I'm not a book club kind of guy. I'd rather let my reading wander down whatever weird alley it wants to wander down this week than worry about whether I've finished my Required Reading for the next meeting. Too much like homework.

I don't mind a little bit of shaping to my reading, especially if it feels like a game. To that end, I take part in the Bingo Dog and Alpha KIT challenges; I can find a book with an author's name starting with J or a book that has a cat in it without those challenges locking me into one specific book.

The "broad genre and each member reports on their own reading" would be less stressful, and isn't that essentially a more focused version of what LT provides for many of us? We get regular reports from a lot of interesting people on what they've been reading. If a particular reader's tastes (or, in rare cases, personality) are too far removed from our own, we can forget them; if someone else consistently provides us with book bullets that pay off when we read them, we pay more attention to their thoughts (and maybe even "raid" their libraries for more ideas!).

>46 KeithChaffee: I'd rather let my reading wander down whatever weird alley it wants to wander down this week than worry about whether I've finished my Required Reading for the next meeting. Too much like homework.

That's a good point, Keith. I worry about that sometimes with book clubs, although generally I read enough, and fast enough, to fit in the book club selection along with my other preferences. And fortunately my group isn't so uptight that not finishing (or even not starting) the book once in a while is a problem. We also only meet about every six weeks, so that helps too.

I wonder if book clubs are more appealing to those among us who zip through multiple books in a week; having to read one specific book every month would feel less homework-y if it's one out of twenty books that you're going to read instead of one out of four.

Book clubs just don't work for me - I seem to have a built-in resistance to reading anything I "have" to. Even when it's something I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy, or even an old favorite, having to read it on a deadline totally puts me off. I've tried various book clubs - in college, in various libraries, etc - and 90% of the time I had not, could not force myself to, read the book. Which makes me not very useful to the discussion, and makes the discussion not interesting to me. I quit trying quite a few years ago.

The "get together and discuss what you're already reading" type of group _might_ work for me - I encountered one for the first time only a year or two ago, and have not yet decided if I want to try it.

>49 jjmcgaffey: Re: The "get together and discuss what you're already reading" type of group

I’ve always wanted to join a group like that, although it would likely wreak even more havoc with my TBR list. That said, a lot of get-togethers with friends end up being that kind of a group naturally, since most of my friends are readers… and it’s looking like LT might somewhat serve that purpose too!

Definitely!

Especially the "expanding your TBR list" part.

QUESTION 23: Real Life Book Clubs

The book club I belong to formed, more or less by accident, round the coffee table at work some fifteen years ago. I think someone was asking for reading suggestions and someone else said "that sounds interesting, what if we all read it?" Membership has varied over the years, the coffee table (and the building it was in) have vanished, several of us have retired, but we're still just about going, with a solid core of six members and a few more people on the mailing list who join in occasionally if there's a book they are interested in. We read around four books a year, more in a good year, fewer when we're particularly disorganised. The most interesting feature of the group is that we're all different nationalities, with several preferred reading languages between us.

We started out by asking each member in turn to pick out a book from their own culture, but we lost track of that years ago, now it's more of a free-for-all: anyone who has a book in mind can nominate it, and we decide between them in semi-democratic fashion (vetos are weighted more heavily than votes in favour). Availability of the necessary translations is always an important consideration. Mostly we read novels, recent or quite often older, but we have read short stories and memoirs on occasion, possibly other things too. More difficult than choosing books is getting everyone to finish them more or less at the same time. We're a mix of "zip through multiple books a week" and "finish a book every couple of months" types. It's sometimes frustrating to go to a meeting to discuss a book you finished last summer when there are other people there who only read the last few pages on the bus a few minutes ago, and therefore remember the book much better.

Obviously, we aren't a typical book club where strangers are brought together by books. In our case the main raison d'être is to give a group of friends a reminder to meet fairly regularly (over a nice meal, or sometimes even a weekend away); being prompted to read books you might not otherwise bother with is a nice bonus. The discussion isn't necessarily very profound, but it often throws up things about the book that didn't strike me at the time I read it, and it's always interesting to hear different points of view, and a useful exercise to have to defend your own ideas about the book.

>49 jjmcgaffey:, >50 PlatinumWarlock: Isn't this generally what Club Read is? :-)

>48 KeithChaffee: It's sort of a tradeoff. Book groups collect bookish people who are often compatible in other ways. So reading the books is the price of admission, and it works if the books are reasonably in line with my interests or aspirations. We've selected books in various ways, sometimes including voting, but essentially my groups have been small enough that each person chooses 2-3 books per year. I'm OK with homework if it's a mild prompt and not an onerous obligation. If I don't especially care for the book, I skim which is typically good enough for conversation.

>49 jjmcgaffey: I was in one of those and if it wasnt for the distance and time (on a school night) I would have joined. Try it you may like it. Tbh Im finding myself less enthused with the ones Im in esp since I get so much from here.

>37 SassyLassy: Wooden boats: I love this one, by Stanley Stearns, from Popular Science, April 1954. Not so much for its practicability as for the bluff “you know you’re going to mess this up” approach…

https://books.google.nl/books?id=xyADAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA200#v=onepage...

Now for launching; we'll slide over this quickly—it's rough. Sometime when no one is around, sneak the boat down to the water. Steel yourself. Push the boat in. Beware of the suction as it plummets to the bottom. Keep calm. Fly out of there. Act like it never happened. Return the next day and bail it out. If you find you can't make any headway against the inrushing water, wait another day. Pull the boat out, empty and relaunch. This time, mark any places that still leak. You may have to be fast at this, especially if you can't swim.

(He doesn’t actually mention that the point of all this is that wood swells when it gets wet: if you don’t happen to know that, you probably would panic…)

I've never been in a traditional book club - the whole idea just does not appeal to me in any of its iterations (alternate hosting or a meeting in a central location). I like reading and I like talking about books occasionally but I am not a very social person and that feels more like a social occasion than a reading one. Plus the easiest way to make sure I do not read a book at a specific time is to make me need to read it so I can talk about it.

I think of our club here as a modern version of a book club - we occasionally read the same book but most of the time, we just talk about books (and sometimes we end up reading the same book almost by chance or because someone's reviews sends multiple people into reading it). Same with the Author of the month group -- albeit it is a bit more focused in there. And even with these, I need to step back occasionally...

>57 AnnieMod: totally agree

>58 cindydavid4: >57 AnnieMod: Totally agree. I can se little point in traditional book clubs apart for social reasons. A big problem for me is that one is forced to read at the same pace as everyone else. I read in bursts and would hate to have my reading-time regulated.

Who comprises the members ? If it’s one’s friends the taste in books is likely to vary widely. I have no desire to read the same books as some of my friends. And then there’s the possibility of offending people if you think the book of the month is garbage.

I put book clubs in the same category as Tupperware parties. Social event for people moving to a new area.

Well no they are not that bad! When we all get the opportunity to choose books there is a better chance that at least one wil interest you. My book group allows members to come in if they havent finished the book as long as they dont mind spoilers (i do this frequently if I am not sure if a book is for me. Usually the discussion will let me know) If people enjoy discussing books it makes it more enjoyable Just sayin, dont paint them all with the same brush! :)

If the book group is for reading the book, as opposed to the ones that are a drinking social party yes. I have walked out of the latter

that being said, places like this work, because it i flexible in many ways and you choose what you want to read about

>59 kjuliff: "I put book clubs in the same category bas Tupperware parties. Social event for people moving to a new area"

Interesting, and the more I think about it, the more truth there is in it. (Except that members don't feel obligated to buy the 12-piece picnic set...)

Anyway, one of the first things I used to do when we moved often was to suss out the nearest library and/or bookstore(s), in an attempt to find the community of readers in the new stomping grounds. Looking back, it seldom led to book clubs, but often led to friendships. So, yeah.

>53 avaland: LOL It certainly seems that way!

>61 LyndaInOregon: I suppose my view of book clubs is tainted by the few I’ve joined. I joined book clubs when I was living in outback Australia and I really joined to make friends. It was either the book club or the local branch of the CWA (County Women’s Association). So the books of the month were rarely to my taste.

And alternative to a book club that serves as a place for discussion of literature and for meting people, is going to writers’ readings, or to book fairs. Here in NYC we are lucky. I live not far from a cultural center where I’ve been able to listen to and met, authors of the calibre V.S. Naipaul.

>37 SassyLassy: My husband has been making wooden boats for years with a sailor friend; they both made recommendations

Jim Michalak boatbuilding for beginners and beyond "There are six fold out plans of boats that you can build for your first project. He also has a website jimsboats.com that is updated twice a month.

building the weekend skiff and building the six hour canoe

instant boats and build the new instant boats

traditional boatbuilding made easy

10 wooden boats you can build

Anything by Phillip C. Bolger his books are out of print but all are gems. Websites like Duckworks and Small Craft Advisor are great to poke around.

go here for a llist of his books

I've been in several book clubs over the years. They are a good way to meet other book-oriented people, at the very least. I have learned not to count on a serious discussion of the book -- one book club in Munich met with the book as the excuse to take time out of busy lives to sit with fun people and chat over coffee or a glass of wine. Once I made the mental adjustment, it was an event I really enjoyed.

Last year, I moved to a new place and discovered that there are two neighborhood book groups, a literary fiction one and a mystery-themed one. There is some overlap and people come and go as they have time, although there is a core group at each. Books are discussed, but because most members read widely, the conversation tends to range to include other books and authors. It's fun to be able to walk to and from the book club, often with a few other people, too.

Going back to question 22 and mutual aid >17 cindydavid4: very useful suggestions as the last two summers here have been problematical for growing vegetables because of water rationing. I have installed water butts wherever possible and was all set to beat the dry conditions this year. However continuous weeks of stormy conditions which are still going on has resulted in most of my crops being over watered.

Anyway cindydavid4 I will definitely check out your book recommendations for future dry years.

Book clubs - I am ambivalent towards book clubs. I administered one for several years for English readers here in France and we kept a fairly constant membership. I think you have got to at least like the other people in the group and be open to other peoples choice of books, otherwise it can feel like a waste of time

We took it in turns to choose two book to read for our six weekly meetings (one of which would be a classic) There was no discussion on the choice, but after people get to know each other a little, then people tend to choose books that others in the group might find interesting. We took it in turns to host a meeting and usually it was the host who got to choose the books. As the majority of the members were available to meet during the day we usually met in the afternoon and cakes would feature rather than wine.

I love a list and so here is a list of the books we read:

The God of small things - Arundhati Roy
Room - Emma Donoghue
Translations - Brian Friel
The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
The Junior Officer's Reading Club - Patrick Hennessey
The Vagabond - Colette
Bleed for me - Michael Robotham
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
Tiger Hills - Santa Mandanna
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Vanity Fair - W M Thackary
Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder
The City and the City - China Mieville
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Why be Happy When You Could Be Normal - Jeanette Winterson
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D H Lawrence
Lost in Translation - Eva Hoffman
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
The Green Child - Herbert Read
The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edward de Waal
What Maisie Knew - Henry James
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Billy Budd and Selected Tales - Herman Melville
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Red Sorghum - Mo yan
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Limassol - Yishai Sarid
Tono Bungay - H G Wells
The Trumpet Major - Thomas Hardy
A thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
The Parables of Banios - Stafford Whiteaker (member of our book club)
Room with a View - E M Forster
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Casual Vacancy - J K Rowling
Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb
The Testament of Mary - Colm Tiobin
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Fault in our stars - John Green
The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Resurrection - Leo Tolstoy
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Island - Aldous Huxley
Paradise - Toni Morrison
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Search Warrant: Dora Bruder - Patrick Modiano
Dark Star - Alan Furst
Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee
The Master - Colm Toibin
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Villette - Charlotte Bronte
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Island of the Lost - Joan Druett
World Light - Halidor Laxness
The Last Wish: introducing The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Mersault Investigation Kamel Daoud
Children of the New World - Assia Djebar

>67 baswood: I love a list too, and that one would certainly have something for everyone.

There used to be a game where you would tell three stories about yourself: two true and one untrue. Then others in the group would be able to ask a determinate number of questions to uncover the untrue story. This is a simple variation of that game.



image from shutterstock.com

QUESTION 24: How well do you know your titles?
How well can you fool others?

Take a word from each column and come up with a title, real or imagined. You can add extra words if you wish, use different forms of a verb, make any alterations needed. Basically, create a believable title.

List your titles, without the brackets we would normally use to highlight them, so that others can't spot the real ones among the imagined ones: that is, use War and Peace, not War and Peace.

List as many as you want; the more titles, the more challenge.

Then separate the real from the imagined in other people's posts.

Column A

Silent
Blooming
Riddle
Bees
Earth
Wind
Walk
Against
Rage
Hard
Naked
Ponder

Column B

Black
Café
Island
Soul(s)
Madmen
Sails
Seven
Dead
Gone
Herbaceous
Whisper
Rose(s)

Reminds me of a very funny book from umpteen years ago, My Dish Towel Flies at Half-Mast. In one chapter, the author lists the seven permissible words to be used in the title of "bodice-ripper" romances, which were coming into vogue at the time. As I recall, they included:
Love - Passion - Flaming - Desire - Forbidden - Sweet- and -Savage-

And you could title your bodice-ripper with any three of these words, in any form, and be guaranteed a best-seller (especially if Fabio was on the cover): Sweet Savage Love ... Passion's Flaming Desire ... Sweet Forbidden Flames ...

And what makes it so funny is how true it was!

Anybody else remember those, with the titles printed in some kind of metallic ink (magenta, emerald, or gold were favorites), embossed on the cover page, and the two lovers generally posed either with both facing the reader (man behind the woman) or going in for the kiss ... he bare-chested, and she wearing a Scarlett O'Hara off-the-shoulder ballgown, regardless of the period.

My best friend an I got kicked out of a UBS after we wandered into a room which was pretty much wall-to-wall bodice-rippers standing up to display the covers and we were overcome with giggles at so many biceps and bosoms.

Ah, the good old days!

Q24: Match

The bees at seven — Poirot investigates the mysterious death at sherry-time of an apiarist’s prize queens

Gone with the wind? — a guide to repairing defective mainsprings in clocks and watches

The naked whisper — No idea what it’s about, but the lady on the cover isn’t entirely naked. And she has her face buried in someone’s shoulder.

Hard Cheese Café cookbook — the illustrious TV chef shares some of his easier recipes.

Ponder roses — quiet reflections from a California garden

"Rage Island" -- tourism for angry people

"Earth & Wind Café" -- mudcakes and singing in the rain

"Riddle Me Dead" -- mystery; death by puzzles

"Walk and Whisper" -- the new meditation craze that increased the popularity of

"Silent Madmen"

>71 thorold: The bees at seven
I just noticed that I have another one, almost overlapping:

The Bees at Number Seven — when Beatrice and Basil Butterworth come to live at 7, The Broadway, they find themselves in the midst of a wave of killings extreme even by the standards of a sleepy Border village like Bellweather (pr. “Bother”). Is the vicar’s nephew, Benedict, all that he seems (or could he be a Vatican spy?)? Could Miss Bottomley’s millinery business be a cover for people-smuggling? Does the Brigadier really need night-vision goggles for bird-watching behind the Cottage Hospital? Is the barman at the Seven B’s slipping a little-known oriental poison into the Boddingtons? Will the entire population of the village be wiped out before the author even has time to write twenty more in the same series? Or will Beatrice’s bowmanship and Basil’s esoteric bookbinding knowledge allow them to save the day?

Silent Sails - a contemporary update of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Whispering Rages - a psychological explanation of those behaviours you sometimes see displayed in public, that put a damper on everyone else

Herbaceous Bees - how bees adapted themselves to the plant world after first restricting themselves to trying to pollinate the animal kingdom

Madmen's Riddles - an analysis of all those Madison Avenue ads that went right over your head

I’m filling in this week as SassyLassy is disconnected from the web. She gave me free reign for a question.

We near half way through the year and I’ve been thinking about mid-year reflections. I remember a question we had once about literary characters and how interesting it was to think about my reading in terms of specific characters. It was, to me, a slightly different take giving a new perspective. I think some other club readers felt the same.



So, Question 25:

Review your reading so far this year, and find one character, fictional or nonfictional, that really captured your imagination. What is the one character that stands out the most? Tell us the title, author and the characters name, and the briefly tell us what drew you to this character.

Have a few of them, both by the same author the girlslooks at three generations of women in a family in early 1900s. The character I loved was Great Aunt Charlotte Thrift, Charlotte was a very strong character even when she was young. She fell in love with a man from the other side of the tracks and they had an affair until WWI . They were able to keep it secret when her lover is called up. Durng the parade where all the brave boys are loading on to a train, she cannot help her self but run to him to hug and kiss him. Well needless to say that caused a scandal and her strict parents refused to allow her to contact him Through the coming decades she becomes a major part of the family even when she bumps up against her sister. I loved watching how she made her way through the world and its changes, and was so glad when at last she made a connection from her passed.

The other character was from show boat about Magnolia, a little girl who loves her fathers boat theatre on the mississipi and grew along with it. despite the warnings from her mother. I loved how she grew and how she made her own decisions despite loss and betrayal.

I need to think of a character from earlier in the year, so stand by

Thanks for sharing, Cindy.

Well, i’ll try to answer my own question. 🙂

I’ll give two answers.

The first is V.K. Ratcliff, a sewing machine salesman in the tiny Mississippi village of Frenchman’s Bend, in The Hamlet by William Faulkner. He’s a listener and deal seeker, but outwardly he’s calm, warm, gentle. When pressed, he calms men down by starting with, “Sholy”. We don’t learn about his internal life, or his love interests, and anything but what’s on the surface. And i think I liked that about him, a kind of dignity he maintains. Also his ability to connect to anyone and everyone around him, no matter their class, mental state, or hygienic state.

That one is fresh. Looking over my year, I actually find it little tricky to crawl back into any specific characters mindset. My memory is first of vague impressions, not details. But i’ll go with Maali Amleida, the title character in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. We meet Maali in his afterlife. He’s been murdered but he can’t recall any details. He was a gay photographer in Sri Linkan with a collection politically hot photographs hidden. So there were reasons to kill him. What i liked about Maali was his youth and coming awareness, his strong beliefs out of sync with the politics and civil war, and cultural boundaries and how he comes to see beyond even all this in his own way, how all this stuff gets subsumed by more human and personal desires for connection, and how compelling his unintended lesson was.

ok one more early in the year haven n seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks--young Trian and old Cormac--he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?

I was most taken by Cormac, who had to try and temper Artts fanatical leanings towards realism, and help the young more idealist Trian survive. Hes character that I could see as a leader in any storm. Thought about him in the end about how the next chapter in their lives woud go

>75 dchaikin: I almost decided on Claudia in Penelope Lively.s Moon Tiger. I liked the character but she was too much like me in personality. Plus in the novel she is dying and remembering her life events. A little too close to the aged bone!

Instead I decided on John Bartle the protagonist of The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.

Why - several reasons. I’ve read a lot of WW1 novels about soldiers in the trenches and felt the portrait of Private Bartle stood out more than any other war-affected solder. Also it was easier to identify with him, as the war in The Yellow Birds is set in my time (Iraq) and I could more understand the issues he confronted. I like conflicted characters and I could identify with this man. He brought that war on the ground to life.

If you haven’t read The Yellow Birds and want to find out more about the novel itself see the well-reviewed in both senses DeltaUeen50’s review HERE.

>80 kjuliff: Claudia is one of my personal all time favorite characters. Wish I could have toured historic Jamestown (and whichever colonial living history village she visited) with her.

>81 dchaikin: oh yes. I so loved what she said to the people acting the parts - and their reaction. Could be a good idea for a time travel comedy….

>75 dchaikin: QUESTION 25

My favourite character from this year was a real person, whom I discovered in a fictionalized version of her life: Megan Boyd. The book was Machine without Horses.

Boyd was an expert at tying salmon flies, although she did not fish herself. She lived alone in a cottage on a Scottish estate and pursued this calling for over 60 years. Helen Humphreys did an excellent job in making this remote and solitary life matter to the reader.

I'd also have to agree with >78 dchaikin: about V K Ratcliff in The Hamlet, which I am still reading.

Question 25

For me as well one of the memorable characters of the quarter was Ratliff in The Hamlet. The word."Sholy" resonated with me as it did with Dan. I'm sure I will find myself silently muttering that word in times of frustration from now into the future. Also as I thought about Ratliff after I finished the book, he served as kind of a counterpoint to Flem Snopes. Like Flem, he's a wheeler-dealer, but unlike Flem, who's venal and evil, Ratliff is Nice. And he somehow seems to do his wheeling and dealing for the sport of it rather than to actually gain by it. And, his chosen victims are usually bad guys, like Flem Snopes. It's unfortunate that in the instances we see in the book in which Ratliff tries to outwit Flem, he actually loses and gets outwitted by Flem.

But my overall favorite this quarter was Teddy in A God in Ruins. (He also appears in Life After Life which I also read this quarter--both instances being rereads for a book club). Teddy is earnest, honest, brave, and most overall Kind. He had vowed that if he survived his career as an RAF pilot in WW II he would be kind. And indeed he was.

SPOILER-As stated this was a reread for me, and on this second read I realized something I either did not catch the first time I read it, or had blocked entirely out of my mind because I loved Teddy so much, and it was this: As the novel ends with Teddy dying at nearly 100 years of age (sad enough in itself), we learn that none of Teddy's life after WW II was real: he died liked thousands, tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands, in the war. His one life which we've just experienced with him was merely an imagined life to represent all those RAF flyers who died in their teens and twenties without having a chance to live. That just broke me up.

>84 arubabookwoman: I’ve read both Kate Atkinson books you mention but can’t remember Teddy at all. Did he have sisters? Any other characteristics that might bring him to mind?

>84 arubabookwoman: see that would put me totally out of a book, like an ending where the guy wokes up and discovers it was all a dream. I get the idea, and it is poigniant (and I love Atkinson) but is the journey to this end of the book worth the read at the end?

>85 kjuliff: Yes Teddy had sisters--Ursula who featured in Life After Life was his sister. Teddy as a young boy was featured by his Aunt Izzie in a series of books about the adventures of a mischievous young boy, the Adventures of Augustus. After the war, Teddy married his childhood sweetheart Nancy, and had one daughter, Viola. Viola was a pretty selfish and awful creature, and Teddy ends up raising her two children, his grandchildren Sunny and Bertie. Does any of this awaken your recollection?

>86 cindydavid4: Ordinarily Cindy something like this would destroy a book for me too. In fact in a recent review of another book (can't remember which one now), I noted exactly that and panned the book. This one was so subtle and quietly done, so unobstusive that I almost didn't notice it. And when I first noticed it I thought maybe Atkinson was playing tricks like she did in Life After Life, in which she gave Ursula alternative lives, do-overs if you will. And I was wondering whether she was merely saying this was just one of Teddy's alternative lives. I ultimately decided that no, she really meant it, Teddy really did not survive WW II. But the whole book was so beautifully done, even including this device, which as I said ordinarily I would HATE, that it is definitely worth the read. I have now read it twice, and both times it was a 5 star read for me, and I rarely give 5 stars (maybe 4-6 a year, out of 100-125 books read).
Have you read Life After Life Cindy? It and A God in Ruins are "companion" books, both featuring the Todd family and focusing on British experiences during WW II. Life After Life focuses on Ursula and on London during the Blitz, A God in Ruins on Teddy, and the RAF pilot experience. I definitely agree with you about loving Atkinson.

I have read life after life and and remember Teddy also."This one was so subtle and quietly done, so unobstusive that I almost didn't notice it." is really Atkinsons best feature in her books. So Ill take your word for it and try a god in the ruins on your very strong recommendation.(no pressure:) It might be later than sooner with all Im trying to read right not, but Ill keep you posted.

>75 dchaikin: My favourite character so far this year is Louise Maigret. I have read five of Simenon's Maigret books this year and Madam Maigret his wife has featured in them all and finally in Les memories de Maigret her Christian name was revealed. I think I am really getting to know her now.

>87 arubabookwoman: oh yes, I remember him now. The part about his aunt Izzie and the book series really brought him back to life to me. I’ve never been good with names - in real life and in books, but I remember the people.

>89 baswood:

lol

A woman who's rarely seen and almost never heard--what's not to love.

>89 baswood: >91 LolaWalser:

It’s fascinating how he makes all his other female characters complicated and messy, but leaves Mme Maigret as this absurdly stereotypical middle-class housewife, sensible, practical, only interested in cleaning, cooking and shopping for her man, spying on the neighbours (and occasionally spotting a vital clue that solves a case), going on holiday once a year, and visiting her boring relatives. Someone very unlike any of the real women in Simenon’s own life, as well.

>92 thorold:

That's a very interesting observation. (Sorry about the digression, dear All!) I'm watching at the moment four different televisual Maigrets--Jean Richard and Bruno Cremer for the francophones; Michael Gambon and Rupert Davies on the Anglo side. I've really come to admire the sheer magnitude of the gallery of characters Simenon drew. And every version (except maybe Richard's, but his was the longest-running and changed in style), treats Mme Maigret more warmly than the books, gives her a more appealing character.

Who knows, maybe the boring housewife, always ready with a hot meal, was Simenon's femme idéale after all.

>93 LolaWalser: …and I was forgetting: there was one obvious real-life prototype for her: Henriette Liberge, the Norman village girl he called “Boule”, who came to work for him in the 1920s and stayed with him as housekeeper and childminder for the rest of his life. From the way he writes about her he obviously considered her as more like a close personal friend than a domestic servant, but we don’t know how she saw it.

>75 dchaikin: Question 25
That would have to be Mary Cussie, the Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek. This was a reread for me. I was drawn to her because she was one of the packhorse librarians (fictional) taking books to patrons up in the hills and hollers of Kentucky. This was also a novel about the "blue" people of Kentucky - honest to God, they had blue skin because of a genetic blood disorder. And I am related to those people by ancestry, so I was fascinated to read a novel about them.

Back again - thanks to Dan for filling in.



QUESTION 26: Spoofs

Sometimes a spoof is irresistible; other times it falls completely flat.

Do you enjoy a good literary spoof, be it cartoon, film, novel, or other format? Do any leap to mind?

If you were writing a spoof, what work would you choose to lampoon? How about a brief blurb of it?

Several come to mind. In film, Woody Allen's 'Play It Again, Sam', though whether that was a spoof of or an homage to 'Casablanca', I'm not sure. And the Deep Space Nine TV series mined the same ground with its episode "Profit and Loss". (It was also during the watching of that episode that it was revealed that my husband had NEVER SEEN 'Casablanca' -- a grievous oversight which we quickly remedied, via Netflix.)

The novel National Lampoon's Doon took several healthy swipes at Herbert's classic. It's been several years since I've read either one, so not sure how well they have aged.

What's the difference between a spoof and a parody? 'Weird Al' Yankovich is the king of the latter; does he also qualify as a spoofist? (Spoofer?) Lots of parody songs out there (and most of my favorites are science-fiction/fantasy based). Tom Smith's 'Operation Desert Storm' comes to mind, which is not at all about what you think it's about from the title. YouTube explains it all here.

My sister and I at one point were going to co-author a bodice-ripper romance spoof, but since the genre does such a good job of spoofing itself, it hardly seemed worthwhile. The only thing I remember was that we had a wonderful name for our hero: Dirk Random.

Looking forward to hearing about other LTers' favorites.

I was wondering about where “spoof” falls between “parody” and “hoax” as well, but lets read it broadly…

I think the old favourites are still the best, things like the classic send-up of misremembered school history, 1066 and all that, or the delightfully straight-faced parody of a mountaineering memoir, The ascent of Rum Doodle (which I only read for the first time this year).

It was nice to see how a lot of ideas from 1066 came back recently in Charlie Brooker’s spoof TV documentary Cunk on Britain, with Diane Morgan quite superb as the presenter who never realises what nonsense she’s talking, and all kinds of real academics playing themselves with commendably straight faces.

Most parodies eventually go past their use-by dates, of course: a lot of J K Jerome isn’t all that funny any more, and I’ve got something on my shelves called The Moxford book of English Verse by Archibald Stodart-Walker, published in 1913, which goes to great lengths to send up OUP’s classic typography and page-layout, but is surprisingly dull to read, as most of the actual parodies turn out to be about either golf or Asquith, and many of them are parodies of Edwardian poets we’ve all forgotten anyway.

But I’ve perpetrated quite a few spoofs and parodies myself over the years, or written copy for hoaxes other people were perpetrating, and I know how unrewarding it can be. It’s always nice when you can make people laugh, but the proportion of people who don’t read carefully enough to spot the supposedly-obvious flags that are there to tell them that it is a spoof is astonishingly high. Even people like lawyers who earn their livings by reading carefully. A lot of people get unreasonably angry when you inadvertently expose their gullibility…

well the first thing that comes to mind are movies, including:

Shakespear in Love
Airplane
Hot Shots part deux
Top Secret
Young Frankenstien
Blazing Saddles
Men in Tights
The Producers
Silent Movie etc

However we are talking books and I have long been a fan of what I call "fractured fairytales" as those of you from the US will remembr from 'Bullwinkle' But there are so many more out there

kissing the witch
the true story of the three little pigs

the author Kelly Barnhill has a ton of these but rather dark

Gregory Maguire has several, including wicked, Confessions of a ugly stepsister and Mirror

"but the proportion of people who don’t read carefully enough to spot the supposedly-obvious flags that are there to tell them that it is a spoof is astonishingly high."

Ive heard that called sarchasm the difference between satire and the person who doesnt get it

Personally I dont care for most hoaxes. Whats the deal by people posting tat a famous person has died when they havent? I don't think its funny

> Question 26: Spoofs

I looked -- surely I must have read one or two....best I have come up with is Joyce Carol Oates' The Bloodsmoor Romance, which plays somewhat on Little Women. I wouldn't call it a cut & dried spoof. It is my favorite Oates....

I do like an occasional satire or humorous novel and have about 140 books marked either "satire" or "humor" (8 of which were authored by the Russian author Victor Pelevin!)

Question 25: I've been away from this thread for a bit. I'll just go back one question, if I may. My favorite character, the one who most captured my imagination, from my first-half 2023 reading was the narrator, mostly first-person but not always, sometimes called Dolores but often unnamed, who comes to us through the often interweaving stories of Lucia Berlin's short story collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women. Throughout the stories, this character deals with alcoholism, with raising children mostly alone, with love and failed marriages, with menial and/or difficult jobs - a cleaning woman or an emergency room nurse - with the occasional respite of a holiday by the ocean, and with helping her sister who is dying of cancer. It all sounds grim, I know, and there is despair at times, but the writing and observations are so acute, the wry humor so effective, that the overall impression this character leaves us with is one of empathy rather than despair.

Question 26: Spoofs - I went back through my reading lists as far as 2017 and was surprised by how few of the books I've read could be properly, or even tangentially, described as spoofs. I am differentiating spoofs from satires, such as The Sellout by Paul Beatty. However, I do love Jasper Fforde's books, in particular the Thursday Next series, which I think can be qualified as spoofs of crime novels and/or science fiction, while also providing some fine social satire.

I'm a few books into the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson (though I haven't read one in a while), which I guess can be called spoofs of upper middle-class life in England in, as I recall, the 1920s and 1930s.

A lesser-known Philip Roth work, but one of my favorites, is his The Great American Novel, which is both a love song to the baseball of Roth's youth and a spoof of baseball nostalgia.

Question 26:
Well, last month I read Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse which is pretty definitely a spoof of gothic novels, and maybe literature in general. You can read my review on my thread.

>102 WelshBookworm: And there’s always the classic spoof of gothic novels, Northanger Abbey!

QUESTION 26: Spoofs

I tend not to like satire that much because it often feels mean-spirited or cutting to me. That's a problem I ran into in my forays into Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels last year. (I did enjoy what I read, and even loved some of them. I'm definitely planning to read more. But the satire aspects bugged me).

On the other hand, there is one satire short story that I read last year that I absolutely loved: Neil Gaiman's short story "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire."

It's an excellent spoof of the gothic genre. It's very funny, and more importantly for me, pokes fun without being mean. It's a great take on the genre vs literary discourse, as well as a loving, gentle, satire of the gothic genre from an author who clearly has a soft spot for it.

"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire."

Oh that reminds me bimbos of the death sun an hilarious send up of sci fi/fan conventione and comic cons. Its said that the main character was based on Harlan Ellis

QUESTION 26
When I posted this question on spoofs, I had difficulty finding a reasonable definition of the word. I would have gone with the OED, but mine is missing in action and online dictionaries didn't quite describe what I was thinking. Egocentric I know, but I thought I had a reasonably good idea of what I meant!

"Parody", which I also looked up, was the most frequent synonym found.

So what was I thinking? Spoof and parody are funny on some level, which is what makes them time sensitive as others have mentioned. To me, satire, which some have mentioned, is in a completely different class, as >101 rocketjk: says. While it can be funny, there is an underlying bite, one which may be close to the surface or deeply buried.

Sometimes a good author may write both. Thinking of Ilya Ilf, Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip reads as spoof/parody. On the other hand, The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf definitely veer into satire, while still maintaining a humourous surface. They also seem to have survived the dreaded "best before" date.

Completely unrelated, it also strikes me that Mr Darling's treatment of Nana in Peter Pan is a great spoof, one which makes me laugh every time.

>99 cindydavid4: Films always welcome.

>104 Julie_in_the_Library: Great title

>104 Julie_in_the_Library: What is it about the gothic genre that seems to invite poking fun at? How about romance? I remember one of the Star Trek novels way back when had a side plot of Data writing a romance novel, that I thought was quite hilarious.

>107 WelshBookworm: "What is it about the gothic genre that seems to invite poking fun at? How about romance?'

I think that any time a genre becomes too rigid (and therefore predictable), it's ripe for spoofing. I couldn't begin to estimate how many chicklit novels I've read in which they meet cute, hate each other on sight (but not really), spend the next 100 pages fighting (with an erotic undertone), have hot-monkey-sex by page 125, followed by 25 pages of happy, and then one of them misinterprets something they've seen (which could be remedied by the simple expedient of confronting the other and asking what was really going on), followed by about 40 pages of weeping (her), tight-jawed anguish (him), and silent recrimination (both), until the innocent truth comes out, after which all is forgiven, and it's sexy-ever-after.

Read a dozen or so of these, and the spoof just writes itself.

Hmm. Spoofs aren’t something I typically read. Terry Pratchett is an exception. I have a lot of affection for his Unseen University and its primate librarian, a spoof of England’s and Europe’s secret semi-scientific and often occult societies. But Pratchett works best on charm, I think. The spoof is more background.

>108 LyndaInOregon: Heehee, I'd say you have it nailed!

QUESTION 27: Folly

Several readers have mentioned on their respective threads that June was a lighter reading month than usual, with fewer books read.

Perhaps it's time to find inspiration in a completely different place? LT has some random ideas for you it calls "Folly"

On the left hand column of your Home Page, under "Discover", you will see "Folly".
Selecting this should take you to "LibraryThing Roulette"

Go to a random member and see what you should borrow from that library.

Go to a random review and see if the book interests you. If you've already read it, try again.

Keep going through the list and tell us what appears for each.

Have you read the random Book of Yours? If not, maybe it's time.

Have you ever heard of the random Author?

Does the random Location or Place spark any interest?

If you're really inspired, perhaps a little "Recent Book Haiku" by you is in order.

_____________
edited for typo

Q27 Folly

Random member (first spin): CatieN
What to borrow: the top few are
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell (etc.)

…I’ve read about half the books in the top part of the list (in pre-LT times), and the others are mostly either Booker winners or crime stories by people I know about. New to me and perhaps interesting to follow up is The colony by Audrey Magee

Random review:amdase writes “Review to come” for a book called Vengeance (Transcend Time, #2). Even without that incisive analysis, I think the title alone would be enough to kill any interest I might have had in the book. ( https://www.librarything.com/work/12195410/reviews/113772190 )

Random book of yours: County chronicle by Angela Thirkell. Read and reviewed in 2013.

Random author: Emily Anne Croom (1943–2018), Author of The Genealogist's Companion & Sourcebook. Obviously appreciated by genealogists, but off my radar…

Random location: Perth, WA. A city I’d probably visit if it were nearer to … well, to anywhere. ( https://www.librarything.com/local/place/Perth%2C+WA%2C+Australia)

Random place: USA (!) setting of some 16,000 books, apparently. The top (most recent?) hit is L' unificazione italiana vista dai diplomatici statunitensi, vol II by Howard Rosario Marraro, a title that doesn’t really set my pulse racing. But I do have friends who are involved in Italian politics, maybe I’ll check whether they are excited by Marraro’s work…
( https://www.librarything.com/place/USA )

Somehow, I’d have expected “location” and “place” to be the other way round, but that’s LT for you. Once you start using a term, you have to be consistent with it.

Random popular work: Le petit livre des couleurs
by Michel Pastoureau & Dominique Simonnet. Actually sounds quite fun, and I can think of at least one person here who might be interested…

Random tag: vintage+children's+book — seems to be an ex-tag, presumably someone who had a theory that plus signs were better than spaces and then changed their mind. ( https://www.librarything.com/tag/vintage+children%27s+book )

Random work: Células, Herencia y Clasificación - Grado 6 — probably useful if you are into Spanish-language biology textbooks, but otherwise a one-member work…

Random page: also takes me to a one-member work in Spanish, Cambio climico : lecciones de y para ciudades de Amica Latina by Sylvie Nail. Possibly a title mangled by missing diacritics, but there’s nothing on the author page to combine it with.

Random Publisher Series: Taurushistoria — only seems to contain one book at the moment, and that’s not one that I’m going to be rushing to buy. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/76684

Random Series: Seaside Love by A J Alexander — also only seems to contain one book at the moment, and that’s a one-member work. The author page could probably profit from some combining, if there’s any romance expert out there who knows how her books fit together https://www.librarything.com/nseries/345095

Random Award: James Tait Black Memorial Prize shortlist — OK, that’s one I’ve heard of, the long-running Edinburgh University prizes for fiction and biography. Lots there that I’ve read, and more that I should have read. https://www.librarything.com/bookaward/James%20Tait%20Black%20Memorial%20Prize%2...

Random Venue: Médiathèque de Sainte-Savine — not a part of France I know, but if I’m ever in Troyes, I might check it out. https://www.librarything.com/venue/74507/Médiathèque-de-Sainte-Savine

Random Group: TinyCat — I don’t have a use for TinyCat, but if I did have… https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/18541/TinyCat

Random Character: Roy Chapman Andrews. Real explorer, dinosaur hunter, possible prototype for the Indiana Jones character. I think I vaguely knew about him, but I wouldn’t have recognised his name out of context. https://www.librarything.com/character/Roy%20Chapman%20Andrews

>112 thorold: I wondered how likely it was that “random member” would land me on someone like that with whom I have a pretty big overlap, so I did a few more spins:

(2) radsci (which happens to be the institutional page of a (life sciences) librarian from the Radcliffe Science Library, the sterile basement where I wrote some of my best undergraduate essays…): 3 books shared, only “book to borrow” is The selfish gene, which I have of course read

(3) Twelve90: 10 books shared, all Tolkien and Harry Potter, books to borrow The hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy and Romeo and Juliet. Oddly enough, I’ve read both of those too…

(4) sturmvogel: 84 books shared, mostly history. Decent list of books to borrow, mostly crime and (military-) historical fiction, but a few more unexpected titles.

(5) smhslibrary: nothing shared, 19 books to borrow, mostly classics headed by Elizabeth Bishop’s Complete Poems, a book I probably ought to have in my library but don’t.

(6) aisoardo: an Italian member, 39 books shared, some interesting books to borrow headed by Alex by Pierre Lemaitre and Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo

(7) Bookish59: a lady with a huge library, nearly 500 books shared and a similar number of books to borrow. Lots of Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh and Edmund Crispin, but some stuff I don’t know as well.

(8) arielfl: 53 books shared, 37 recommendations. Kate Atkinson, Elizabeth Strout, Michael Ondaatje, nothing very unexpected

(9) AlanWPowers: a small library, but still 37 overlaps and 17 recommendations. Mostly classics, but there are a couple of things there I should have read but haven’t.

(10) MeganLore: the second one with zero overlaps, seems to be all YA stuff, no recommendations for me

So it looks as though there might be more useful overlaps than not, based on that small sample.

Also based on that, I ought to add at least the following books to my “Read but unowned” collection for noise-reduction purposes:
- The hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy
- Romeo and Juliet
- Madame Bovary
- Hotel du lac
- Moon tiger
- The selfish gene

Go to a random member and see what you should borrow from that library.
Either a mystery by two authors I don't particularly like or Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Go to a random review and see if the book interests you. If you've already read it, try again.
I was taken to a book that only has two reviews -- a 5-star review from the author and a review that was removed for violating site policy.

Random Character
Natcha from what appears to be a French graphic novel series

Random Page
Tag: non-fiction other. (Now I'm really beginning to suspect LT is plotting to only show me things I don't read)

Random Tag:
Book+of+Genesis There are no results.

Random Group
TinyCat, the official group for LibraryThing's online catalog for tiny libraries

Random Place:
Grenoble, Isère, France (only one book on the page)

Random Work:
Remembering Railroading on Prince Edward Island Well, I've been to PEI. I think this random work was intended for thorold, though.

Random Series:
EDGE: Slip Stream Graphics

Have you read the random Book of Yours? If not, maybe it's time.
Why yes, I have read Ficciones

Random Popular Work:
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (310 members, 2 reviews = popular? Only on LT)

Random Publisher Series:
Harlequin Superromance Duos (Australia) (only one book listed)

Random Venue:
Books Futaba - Murasakino (on the outskirts of Kyoto)

Have you ever heard of the random Author?
I've not heard of Chi Ta-wei or the one book this author has published.

Random Award:
Tartt First Fiction Award, only one book listed; it won the award in 2012.

Does the random Location or Placespark any interest?
Sure, right now any place other than NYC is of interest and France or Long Melford, Suffolk, United Kingdom are definitely greener pastures.

>112 thorold: >114 ELiz_M: There must be a bug that sends us to those empty plus-sign tags: I've filed a report. https://www.librarything.com/topic/352192

Q27 - The folly function:

Go to a random member and see what you should borrow from that library.
I landed on the page of LT member MarissaKings, with whom I share 55 books, and from whom LT suggests I borrow . . .
The top five appearing (out of 48):
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

And just for fun, the bottom five:
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
The Song of Roland by Turoldus
Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I kind of like the bottom five better than the top five, though I have been meaning to get to those O’Brien books one of these days.

Go to a random review and see if the book interests you. If you've already read it, try again.
The first review I landed on was
5th Australian Computer Conference Brisbane 1972
by Australian Computer Society
I’m going to pass on that one. Though the state of computing and computer technology in Australia in 1972 is sort of an interesting topic, I’m guessing that the technical papers collected in this volume were not written for the layperson. This book is only listed by one LT member, lcl999.

I tried again, and up popped
Doggie Dreams by Nancy Kapp Chapman. LT member calamia’s 3-star review from 2011 (the 2nd of three reviews of this book) was “Children often wonder and imagine what dogs dream about. This book shows funny things dogs like to dream about and how their dreams are very similar to ours. This book includes great rhyming, which creates a flow to the story.” So that’s much more up my alley than Australian computer technology circa 1972.

Have you read the random Book of Yours? If not, maybe it's time.
I have not read Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac (edited by Paul Marion). I’ll get to it one of these days, I guess, though I’m not in a great hurry about it.

Have you ever heard of the random Author?
I had never heard of Marie E. Isaacs, the author of three books about bible commentary/literature:
Reading Hebrews and James: A Literary and Theological Commentary 27 copies
Concept of Spirit (Heythrop Monographs): a Study of Pneuma in Hellenistic Judaism and its Bearing on the New Testament 11 copies
Sacred space : an approach to the theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews 9 copies

Different strokes for different folks, of course, and I'm sure Isaacs is a fine writer, but none of these are likely to make it to my TBR stack.

Does the random Location or Place spark any interest?
The random place I got was Indiana. I’ve been through Indiana a few times and thought it was quite nice overall.

The random location was Gstaad, Bern, Switzerland. That’s definitely a place I’d like to visit. I’ve been to Switzerland once and enjoyed my time there quite a lot.

If you're really inspired, perhaps a little "Recent Book Haiku" by you is in order.

I don’t know, is this a haiku?

Iconic windup
Knee smudge, fastball, curve
One series win

Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life by Bill Madden

Great question. This was fun.

Go to a random member and see what you should borrow from that library.
Hello, Macumbria! We definitely have some reading interests in common. The top book on the "should borrow" list is definitely one I'd like to read -- The Lost Moon, by Jim Lovell, In fact, I'm surprised it wasn't already on my BIR or Wish List. (It's on the Wish List now). No need to borrow the other three top items -- The World According to Garp, Little Big Man, and The Martian Chronicles, all of which I've read. In fact, I've read my paperback copy of the Bradbury book to tatters and it needs to be replaced.

Go to a random review and see if the book interests you.
Not really. Désirée is the fictionalized diary of a young woman once engaged to Napoleon Bonaparte.

Have you read the random Book of Yours?
Yes, though I only rated The Animal Contract two stars.

Have you ever heard of the random Author?
Nope. S. Hamil appears to write "alpha male" romances about Nay SEALs. Not my cuppa.

Does the random Location or Placespark any interest?
Location, no. Place, yes. I'm sure Cambridge is worth visiting, but Dublin is definitely on my bucket list.

Didn't have much luck with the "Work" or "Publisher Series" hits. After three tries for each, all I got were non-English works. And since I'm, sadly, monolingual, those didn't prompt further investigation.

The Awards spin took me to "Readers' Favorite Book Awards" -- a site I didn't realize existed. Alas, a quick scan of the top of the list (maybe 50 titles?) didn't turn up much of interest. Wonder if there's a way to sort those by rank.

Haiku
TBR stack looms,
Yet I dither. What to read?
Too many choices!

>111 SassyLassy: FOLLY

Inspired by the random responses above, which were really quite amusing, it's time to try it myself.

Random Member and see what you should borrow from that library.

This turned out to be fitchburghistorical, otherwise known as the Fitchburg Historical Society.
It only had two books to recommend to me:
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel and
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American World, 1700-1750 by Marcus Rediker

Both of these would work for me, but it's not a great haul, so I thought I'd try again and see what happens

Random Member #2 turned out to be TheIdleWoman, which sounded right up my alley. Her library included 6,021 titles, and there was an encouraging tag: Need to Review which had 289 titles.
She had 256 suggestions for me, the top five being:
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
Four out of five are by Anthony Trollope?! This woman is either really idle, giving herself enough time to read Trollope, or not idle at all, as she reads Trollope a lot.
Taking a cue from >116 rocketjk:, I checked out the bottom five too, and found:
The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music by Friedrich Nietzsche
Georges by Alexandre Dumas
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, which I actually have, and
The Life of Benvenuto Cellini by himself, read in university
Altogether though, this was a more promising quintet.

Random Review
This produced Sand Creek Serenade by Jennifer Uhlarik, a "sweet, short story" featuring Sadie, who "was willing to stand for what she believed in and what she thought was right". Quoting another reviewer this ...is a book for those who love romance fiction set in the old West.
No thanks, and seeing only 6 members have this book, I suspect many others thought the same.

Dare I try again? Jumping in, I found Moonlit Bamboo Forest (Vol 1-4) with only one member.
My stubborn streak said I had to find at least one book more than a handful of people found worthwhile, so my third attempt yielded The Clock Maker's Daughter by Kate Morton an author I've actually read, as had the first reviewer who was not impressed with this one, saying
if you are looking to read something by this author, start with literally any other book. The average rating was 3.86, so it could make a good summer read, or winter tucked in bed book.

Random Character Netta Rowlands of Surgeon at Witteringham which sports a classic nurse romance cover

Random Page took me to the Author Page for Junji Ito, a writer of manga, with 9,741 members reading him.

Random Tag was "Apes and Monkeys" with 114 uses. Folly seems to be taking me to the more obscure corners of LT.

Random Group turned up British and Irish Crime Fiction, which could be interesting, but then I notice the last post was January 2. Still there might be some good titles here.

The Random Place was France. Somehow I thought it might be more specific. The Random Location was Japan.

Random Work was Homeopathic First-Aid Treatment for Pets, again with 6 members. This was absolutely of no use or interest to me.

Checking out my own library, where theoretically at least there should be something I'd like, under Random Book of Yours I found Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter, which I read back in November 2012. Among the bleaker books in my somewhat bleak collection, I did like it and thought I had read it more recently.

That made me think it was time to check out a Random Popular Work, but with 167 members, Abracadaver didn't quite seem to fit, or maybe I'm missing the definition of "popular".

The Random Venue turned out to be an Anthropologie store in Torrance California. I try and avoid this chain which tries to have all our homes looking the same.

The Random Book Award was also American: the Lambda Literary Award for "published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes". There were several categories, including AIDS, Poetry, Non Fiction and Mystery/Science, which seems an odd blend.

Finally, the Random Author was Ellen Ullman, an American science and technology writer whom I had not heard of.

No haiku here. I will follow up the What Should you Borrow? list from TheIdleWoman which was the most promising thing on offer.

>118 SassyLassy: Random Work was Homeopathic First-Aid Treatment for Pets, again with 6 members. This was absolutely of no use or interest to me.
You’re missing the point of homeopathy books. They are effective even though you might only have encountered one or two of the letters of the text in another book…

>119 thorold: very funny 😄

Go to a random member and see what you should borrow from that library.
First pick - nothing to recommend
Second pick - "Bookwormgeek", One book - The Druids - I have it on my LR bookshelf with a lot of other books on the Celts and the Druids. I have probably read it, but can't say for sure.

Go to a random review and see if the book interests you.
The Island of Dr. Moreau - I've read some H.G. Wells, but not really interested in more.
Second pick: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story - Uh, no thanks. He may be a gifted surgeon, but otherwise he is an idiot.

Have you read the random Book of Yours?
Gawn Ni Stori? - Yes, I have read at least one of the stories.

Have you ever heard of the random Author?
First pick: Ezra F. Vogel. Nope. Apparently he has written books on Deng Xiaoping, China and Japan.
Second pick: Jerry Siegel. Maybe? He writes Superman comics, and TV shows like Smallville and Lois and Clark.

Does the random Location or Place spark any interest?
Location: Melbourne, Australia.
Place: Edinburgh, Scotland.
I don't understand the difference between Place and Location... I don't have a Melbourne shelf, but I do have Australia. I do have an Edinburgh shelf with 8 books.

There's also Venue listed. I got some used book store in Finland.

Group gave me Canadian Bookworms which doesn't appear to be very active.
Second pick was Name That Book. I'll pass. That would be like going down a rabbit hole...

Character:
Vincent Van Gogh.

Popular Work:
Zombie Queen of Newbury High - Uh, no thanks.

Series:
The Arm of the Stone and its sequel by Victoria Strauss. Could be okay. I like fantasy and it had a 3.7 rating.

Tag:
"bit-lit" - which seems to be used for vampire stories.

Awards: P.E.A.R.L. which if I had to guess would be "Paranormal Erotic and Romance Literature." Okay I was close.

Haiku
Need something to do
So I'm writing a haiku.
Now what shall I read?

I did the random tag thing again and corrected the URL manually, since the bug hasn’t been fixed yet. It gave me the tag “craft room”, which is obviously used as a location tag by a small number of people. The top five books with this tag were:

Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spirit by Beth Moore (3 times)
Knit Edgings & Trims: 150 Stitches by Kate Haxell (2 times)
Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques, Patterns, and Traditions by Nancy Bush (2 times)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (2 times)
Lingerie: A History and Celebration of Silks, Satins, Laces, Linens and Other Bare Essentials by Catherine Bardey (2 times)

Obviously 2,3 and 5 are books that are at least peripherally relevant to activities likely to be carried out in something called a craft room. Harry Potter books are so prevalent that they will presumably work their way into any book storage space, given enough time. But (1) rather disappointingly confirms the cliché that the sort of people likely to have craft rooms will be churchy American ladies…

More rewardingly, a little way down the list is Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall. Obviously the only computer science book to have in your knitting-room!

>121 WelshBookworm: I don't understand the difference between Place and Location

Location is a placename in LibraryThing Local, a town or city associated with a collection of bookshops and libraries.

Place is a real or imaginary location that has been entered into Common Knowledge as an important place (setting or subject) associated with one or more works.

OK, this seems like kind of an interesting exercise!

Random Member takes me to a catalog of a library's collection of art books. Being generally not someone who's super into art books, it seems there is not that much for me here. The only thing LT recommends for me to borrow is Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, which does seem like something I probably should have read long before now, but likely never will.

Random Review: Tomorrow Is Now by Eleanor Roosevelt. Which feels like something that I ought to want to read, but kind of don't.

Random Book of Yours: Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way by Bruce Campbell. I have read that one, but I seem to have found it pretty forgettable. I much preferred his actual autobiographical books to this silly bit of fiction.

Random Author: Dumitru Staniloae. Who appears to have been some sort of Eastern Orthodox theologian? Haven't heard of him, not remotely interested.

Random Location or Place: Springfield, VA, United States, and Caerdydd, Cymru (aka Cardiff, Wales), respectively. The latter is much more interesting to me, but perhaps more of that than I'd like to admit is due to the fact that Doctor Who has informed me there's a spacetime rift there.

>119 thorold: Of course - I stand corrected - how silly of me!

>122 thorold: Programming Perl (3rd Edition) = Maybe s/he confused it with purl in a wild bout of cataloguing! Must be a hit in some worlds; I see there is now a 4th edition

>121 WelshBookworm: >123 thorold: I don't understand the difference between Place and Location...
I thought the difference would be the same as thorold suggests, but given an entire country for each category in my search, it seemed a somewhat vague recommendation.

>125 SassyLassy: Are you sure you got the whole of Japan for Location? I tried it repeatedly and always got a specific town or city, albeit with the name of the town and province in Japanese characters when it was in Japan (e.g. this one: https://www.librarything.com/local/place/三浦郡葉山町%2C+神奈川県%2C+J... )

I think it must be weighted somehow by number of venues in a location, because big cities seem to come up more often than small places. Or it’s picking a random venue and then getting the location from it.

Just went through an amazing 21 hours of intense thunder and lightening, not to mention torrential rain, so not on my computer for fear of power outages, which happened all around, but luckily not here.

>126 thorold: I tried place/location again, three times for each. It was more interesting this time, with location yielding: Madrid, Premer NSW, and Melbourne.
Place had Antarctica with some interesting looking associated titles, Oudenaarde Belgium with lots of titles not translated into English, and Mexico - unclear whether the city or country.

Over on KeithChaffee's CR thread, there was a review of The Paradox Hotel, which led Keith into an interesting discussion of the basics of mystery books and SF books, since this book was a combination. Looking first at mystery books, SF to come in another question, here is some of Keith's idea (with his permission):


image from Wikipedia

QUESTION 28: What are you looking for in a mystery/procedural?

To quote Keith:Mystery writers read "cozies" and "procedurals," a word implying that if we simply follow the right steps, order will be restored.
Is order what you are looking for in this type of book? Is that what makes them such an attractive fall back when the outside world is threatening?

Quoting Keith again ...for a mystery reader, every new development in the basic rules of the world -- especially as you get further into the story -- can feel like cheap deus ex machina, a trick that gives the author an quick and easy solution to the mystery.

Do all mystery/procedural writers fall into this trap, or are there some who can pull it off without resorting to it? Is it inevitable that in a long series devoted to a particular character, the writing will fall off and become more rote as time goes on?

Who are your favourite writers in this genre?

Q28 Mysteries

Well, isn’t movement towards an ordered resolution something that happens in pretty much every field of the arts? Umberto Eco said something once about all fiction being a kind of mystery story that needs to be resolved, and the same kind of thing applies in music: the composer’s job is to get us to the appropriate final cadence in the most interesting way possible.

What interests me in a crime story usually isn’t the plot as such, which is just a kind of skeleton to hang everything on, but the way the writer uses the situation to do interesting things with the characters, play with unusual background details, or even make political points. To use your image above, nobody remembers how Inspector Clouseau solves a crime (if he ever does), we all enjoy his capacity to create chaos completely without meaning to in absolutely any situation where he might find himself. Good mystery writers tell us about how crimes mess up people’s lives, or how extreme situations can push someone into crime, or what it might be like to work in a situation where you meet the results of crimes every day, or they use crime and police work as metaphors for society as a whole, or they tell us interesting things about food and wine or Jacobean drama or life in a nurses’ hostel (or boring things about cars and weapons…). Or they make fun of the whole thing and just enjoy using words in an extravagant way.

>128 SassyLassy:

Q#28

I lost interest in the "puzzle" aspect of the detective story once in my twenties, I think, because by that time sheer habit taught me to anticipate most of the solutions. This is not to say I guess "whodunnit" every time; but the really tough puzzles (imo) are of the sort where one has to compare timetables, figure out architectural layouts and the like, which is all more effort than I care to expend. So, no, painstaking procedure isn't something I revel in particularly.

Nowadays a "mystery" can grip me based on what it brings besides--character, atmosphere, perhaps a specific situation/time/place... Daniel Pennac, Boris Akunin, Fred Vargas come to mind as writers on the more flamboyant side, whose interest is in more than the mechanics of a puzzle. I like Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Andrea Camilleri mainly for the setting and the politics. Rex Stout and, to a lesser degree, Janwillem van de Wetering draw me in for the interactions between the recurrent characters. Reginald Hill and Sarah Caudwell simply write so well, and with such a characteristic sense of humour and erudition, it's a joy to read them.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's police procedurals are a rare exception to my dislike of this sort of mystery. Notably it's a series set mostly in what is now the past, in Sweden at a specific stage of development, before neoliberalism irrupted into Europe (I read it in the nineties).

A couple recommendations out of the ordinary, although I'm not sure translations are available:

the memoirs of Ivan Putilin, chief inspector in St. Petersburg, the "Russian Sherlock Holmes" and supposedly Dostoevsky's inspiration for the character of investigator Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment... Memorie del capo della polizia di San Pietroburgo

the memoirs of Eugène-François Vidocq, a picaresque character who turned from a life of crime to police work and general anti-crime activities. He too served as a literary model, to Balzac for Vautrin, and to Hugo for possibly more than one character--Valjean AND Javert. Mémoires de Vidocq, chef de la police de Sûreté, jusqu'en 1827

>129 thorold: What interests me in a crime story usually isn’t the plot as such, which is just a kind of skeleton to hang everything on, but the way the writer uses the situation to do interesting things with the characters, play with unusual background details, or even make political points.

Along with that Id say twists and turns that keep us guessing. sounds about right.

>130 LolaWalser: ditto, ive never gotten in to those procedual books ( but I was a huge fan of Hillstreet Blues and Law and Order, go figure) But there is a branch of this style I think is called a psycological thriller, which I like, where we knew who did it, and procede to get the whole story. . Som fav authors of this style are ruth rundell, patrick Mcgrath Atwood has done a few of these as has Kate Atkinson. Then there is Sleuth, the play/film by Anthony Shaffer Had me on the edge of my seat.

I like mysteries where there's a puzzle, and an interesting person (or persons) trying to solve it. I enjoy following along and seldom try to figure out the answer ahead of time - in fact I'm annoyed if the answer becomes obvious to me and the detective is still oblivious. I do read some police procedurals, some cozies, some...others. But it's the detective that makes the difference, for me.

Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey is a favorite. So is Miss Seeton. Police procedurals - the two series that come to mind are Ellis Peters' Felse Investigations - Felse (and his wife, and his son) are amazing people and make great stories - and (speaking of a mix of fantasy and mystery) Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. The latter is a perfectly standard London cop (with a not-unexpected disdain for procedure...he follows it, but not because it works, just because it's required. And sometimes works)...who discovers that there's magic about and he's pretty good at it. Great stories, great characters (main and secondary both). Rhys Bowen's Constable Evans is another...technically police procedural, actually character study. I've never been able to get into her other series, but I love Evans.

And so on...

The most important aspects of good mysteries/crime novels for me are, as others have stated, the characterizations and the use of setting/time period, etc., to frame the story. Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther Berlin Noir series is a good example of a series I've enjoyed. Gunther, at series start, is a Berlin homicide detective trying in late 1930s Berlin trying to steer clear of Nazis. As the series develops, Gunther and becomes, against his will, more ethically compromised, the complexity of the characterization deepens. Also, Kerr wasn't shy about working top Nazi figures into his narratives, much to Gunther's discomfort. Also, the storytelling is quite good.

Procedurals, where the solving of the crime is more or less the be-all and end-all of the proceedings, can be fun if the sentence-level writing is good, but not as interesting as mysteries that use the environment (time, place, etc.) itself as an important element.

In either case, I find that often in mysteries we have the sleuth following clues and leads in an interesting manner, but not until he or she actually solves the crime and/or figures out what's occurred, but instead finds the person who actually knows what happened, or knows a significant portion of the situation, and explains it all to our hero. That's always a let down to me.

133> find the person who actually knows what happened, or knows a significant portion of the situation, and explains it all to our hero.

Probably my biggest gripe about many "mystery" stories. The hero has the villain at bay, and with his dying breath, the villain Explains It All. Or the detective gathers everyone in the library, points out the guilty party, and explains how the conclusion was reached. Don't tell me -- show me!

I guess that means I like suspense procedurals. Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series is a favorite. One crime has been committed, they know there's another on the way, and they're racing the clock as they examine the clues. Plus I like the core characters.

Mysteries were the first book genre I ever loved, and remain one of my favorites to this day. I read a bunch of different subgenres - golden age, procedurals, cozies, suspense. I've never really given much thought as to why I love them, though.

Part of it is definitely that I like books that raise questions that invoke my curiosity and then provide answers by the end. That's very satisfying for me. And curiosity and a need to know the answers works well to help pull me through a book when executive disfunction might otherwise have me putting it down even though I'm enjoying it.

I also enjoy the window into different environments, cultures, and subcultures that mysteries can provide. The mystery plot provides momentum and keeps me reading where a non-genre story in those same settings might bore me.

There's probably more to it, but that's what I've got off the top of my head. I've enjoyed reading what the rest of you like about one of my favorite genres, as well. What a great question!

I enjoy the occasional mystery, if the mystery plot itself is interesting, or the characters are good, or if there's some fun humor. It's not remotely comfort reading for me, though. Well, except for the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which is the most comforting comfort reading ever, for reasons that don't necessarily have a whole lot to do with the mysteries.

My absolutely favorite thing a mystery/detective novel can do is to give me that moment where, right before the detective reveals whodunnit, all the pieces snap right into place in my brain and I find that, aha!, I suddenly know the answer, too. For me, that sort of epiphany is, if you'll forgive the analogy, the exact mental equivalent of an orgasm. But of course, most of them don't quite manage to do that.

image from Grammarly

QUESTION 29: Vernacular Dialogue

Writers have long used vernacular forms of language to flesh out their characters. A few examples over the years:

"Whet are ye for?" he shouted. "T' maister's dahn i' t' fowld. Goa rahned by th' end ut' laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him."
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847

"Her digester's a' tae nonsense. She gets scunnered at a'thing. Ye wudna wonder noo, wud ye? Matty's nae great hand at the cooking - her awa' a'day an' a' - .... Losh, laddie, I didna mean naething. "
Nan Shepherd, The Quarry Wood, 1928

" Got drunk on two spoons of shine an' half a chew. Man. That was a time. Sittin' back... listen to them ol' honkers and sittin' back. I growed up quick. Had to to stay alive. You ever know my daddy?"
"Nope", said Bo, thinking wonder what movie that was.
"Your daddy knowed 'im. Meaner'n a teased snake."
Breece D'J Pancake, "Fox Hunters" in The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, 1979

Does such usage give insight into the characters, or does it drive you to distraction?

Since it is usually people of lower socio-economic status represented in this way, what is the reader meant to take from this?

If you grew up with local dialects, does it mean more to you than just a narrative device? Do you feel a certain recognition, or is it somehow demeaning?

Jump in - if you can do it in a regional speech pattern, so much the better.

For me, I differentiate between when authors change spelling and remove letters to try to capture accents and what language sounds like, versus when authors portray dialect in things like word choice, idioms, word order, etc.

I find phonetic spellings difficult to parse and distracting, even when they're not racist or otherwise "problematic," for lack of a more precise term.

Dialect in the form of word choice (bubbler or water fountain, hoagie or sub, etc), idiom, common phrases, word order changes, etc, I have no issue with if it's done well.

Q29 Vernacular

The big arguments for not using representations of dialect in fiction are that it can confuse the reader, especially readers separated in space or time from the setting of the book, that it is often inaccurate, governed more by literary conventions than by the way people really speak, and that it can be patronising to the (usually lower-class) characters who use it in the book. The classic example is Hard times, where Dickens had spent about two weeks in Lancashire and hadn’t got a clue how people really spoke.

Emily Brontë and Nan Shepherd were both writers with a deep commitment to the regions they were writing about and a very precise sense of language (I don’t know anything about Breece D'J Pancake), they are clearly both best-case examples of the use of dialect speech. They respect the dialect speakers in their books and they use the local speech creatively and consistently to add depth to their characters.

I’m not a dialect speaker, and I don’t even have much of a regional accent any more, but I grew up in a region where the dialect was still important for the older generation, and I do enjoy books where regional speech is used in interesting ways. Even when it’s a kind of literary abstraction, like Milkman. But not the sort of books where the gardener and the housemaid have a lot of apostrophes in their lines…

>138 Julie_in_the_Library: I totally agree with you with Ii highly dislike dialectic writing. There have been a few books that I sadly put aside because I could not read them. I am a fast reader and it slows me down if I have to parse out every word. I lose the story completely

There are a few authors such as Mark Twain, who does it enough to give you a flavor of the region but you can still make sene of it.

For audio books, i think it should be done more often

>140 cindydavid4: For audio books, i think it should be done more often

Interesting distinction, which I hadn't thought of before.

>137 SassyLassy:

Q#29

If it's done well, other-than-standard language (I think vernacular and "dialect" aren't complete synonyms) can even make for the success of a tale. If it's done badly, it can ruin it, or at least the pleasure of some readers.

So, in a phrase, "it depends". For example, I'm enjoying the language in Flann O'Brien's The best of Myles: a selection from Cruiskeen Lawn and it definitely contributes to the sense of a specific world I'm getting from it.

I suppose that it boils down to whether the author knows what they are doing or not. "Comedy" accents tend to displease, but real class- or ethnicity-tinged talk ought to contribute to the authenticity and vivacity of the text.

As an active speaker of one dialect (and passively knowing several other), I always regret the loss of, shall we say, charm, zest, spice, poetry, lilt, special music and atmosphere, when a dialect is rendered in standard language (something that happens almost always in translation).

>142 LolaWalser: Yes, translation is another problem area with non-standard speech. If a character uses a distinctive regional dialect in the original, that’s information that is always going to be lost in translation, and the translator has to decide whether to turn it into nondescript standard language, give it some non-specific markers (stick in a few “ain’t”s), or map it onto a regional dialect with similar status in the new language. None of those things ever quite works. And the last one can be very distracting sometimes, e.g. for me as a European reader if it’s a book set in Europe and the US translator has made a character use some kind of American regional language.

That speech from Wuthering Heights in the German translation by Gisela Etzel (1908 - the first one I came across online):
»Wat 's los?« schrie er. »De Här is drunnen uf der Schafweid. Geht 'nunner, wann 'r mit ihm sprechen wollt.«
…and Alfred Wolfenstein:
»Was wollen Sie? Der Herr ist unten auf dem Felde. Gehen Sie ums Haus herum, wenn Sie mit ihm reden wollen.«

The first one is in some kind of dialect (vaguely Plattdeutsch?) the second in standard German.

>141 SassyLassy: well I reall dont know since I rarely listen to audio books (I get too distracted) But in my head, hearing dialect would be just like listening to a play that uses it I understand it better, that being said there are many times I turned on to closed caption because I couldnt understand what they were4 saying

>142 LolaWalser: >143 thorold: While I wanted to find an example to use in the question from a translated work, it proved more difficult than I had thought, as in most cases I had no idea whether or not it was true to the original, so omitted such an example.

>144 thorold: Well that second translation certainly wouldn't give any indication of Joseph's speech or character!

>142 LolaWalser: Even in English, I miss the sound of regional speech from areas with which I am familiar, when the character speaks standard English. It is better though than someone from outside trying to replicate it and mangling it instead. Just about the only outside I can think of who did this successfully was Annie Proulx in The Shipping News. Unfortunately the actors weren't as successful when it came to making the film.

>138 Julie_in_the_Library: Interesting distinction between speech and language. Thinking of >140 cindydavid4:'s comments, how do audio books sound to you when different accents are employed?

Still thinking of >137 SassyLassy:, most authors who use such devices are portraying characters with a lower socio economic status, and many reader consciously or unconsciously ascribe this status to the speaker. However, in Weir of Hermiston, Robert Louis Stevenson uses plain language from a father, an eminent judge, to his son:

Weel I'm an old man that does. I was glad to get Jopp haangit, and what for would I pretend I wasna? You're all for honesty it seems; you couldn't even steik your mouth on the public street. What for should I steik mines upon the bench, the King's officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to evil-doers...
Mair than enough of it! Heedious! I never gave twa thoughts to heediousness. I have no call to be bonny.

Stevenson comments that "the plain words became invested with some of the dignity of the Justice seat."

Does it seem unusual for such a character to speak so? Does it lessen his stature as a judge, or make him seem more forthright?

>137 SassyLassy: Q28

When done properly, it adds to the atmosphere even if it takes awhile to get used to it. Take William McIlvanney's DI Jack Laidlaw series. I suspect that it will read a lot flatter without the dialects when the locals are speaking... and the language used becomes a code for the characters and their lives...

Or as I said in my review of the first in the series: "And then there is the language -- the usage of slang and the local dialects in the dialogues makes the novel hard to read if you are not used to it. They are not unreadable but they take a bit to get used to it (and occasional rereading to see if you got it right). At the same time his language outside of this verges on the poetical (a gritty poetical but still poetical) and that mix can be a bit jarring.".

>147 SassyLassy: Yes and no. Scotland is one of the places where “dialect” from one point of view can be “high status” speech from another. Especially if you’re talking about the eighteenth century. Educated Scots didn’t speak standard English, even if they wrote it. But of course it’s also all about setting up the contrast between the coarse rustic judge and his modern, Romantic son.

>146 SassyLassy: I don't do audiobooks nowadays (can't keep my focus on verbal words), but when I was growing up we had, and listened to over and over, Nicol Williamson's audiobook of The Hobbit. Aside from being almost unabridged and beautifully done (single voice), he used a neat trick - each 'race' had a different regional English accent. So as soon as someone spoke you could tell if it was a hobbit or a dwarf or a troll or an Orc or a human... I didn't, and still don't, really know what accent was what - I think the trolls were Yorkshire, a guess derived from reading James Herriot's books with Yorkshire dialect and idiom nicely depicted. I've never had the audiobook, a source of (accurate) accents, and the time all in one place, so never worked it out in detail.

Not really pertinent to the question at hand (or maybe it is...I think humans spoke BBC English. Were the dialects chosen, consciously or unconsciously, to depict the various races' status?), but "audiobook" and "dialect" in the same conversation will always send my mind to that work.

>146 SassyLassy: Audiobooks. This was my comment on Anna Bentinck’s reading of Shirley a year ago:

The audiobook read by Anna Bentinck works well: she has a very good feel for the rhythm of Brontë's prose, and she has no trouble at all making French with a Yorkshire accent sound different from French with a Belgian accent, a trick that is required rather more often in this book than in most other Victorian novels.

I had actually started listening to what turned out to be some sort of community project audiobook, with a different volunteer reading each chapter. Well-intentioned, but without stage training none of them managed to make the narrative prose sound natural, and they were equally baffled by the bits of French dialogue and the Yorkshire dialect, making it very difficult to listen to. Also, some of them had North American or Australian accents, which felt very distracting. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if the whole book had been read by the same person, but as it was I gave up after about four chapters.

>146 SassyLassy: I don't really listen to audiobooks, so I can't really answer that one.

>149 thorold: Agree with Educated Scots didn’t speak standard English, even if they wrote it. But of course it’s also all about setting up the contrast between the coarse rustic judge and his modern, Romantic son and the rest of your comments.
While my intellect knows this full well, reading it, I somehow expect to hear the tones of a Malcolm Rifkind or Gordon Brown in my ear. (no political comment here)
_____
Stevenson did have another lawyer in David Balfour who didn't speak standard English either, but his Scots was much less biting than Weir's. Of course, that was all part of the character portrayal.

Going back to >128 SassyLassy:, the second half of Keith Chafee's thoughts on murder mystery and SF:


image source Lincoln City Libraries

QUESTION 30: What are you looking for in SF?

Quoting Keith again: SF asks for constant surprise, world-building that keeps evolving and developing....
The SF writer diving into mystery is obliged to lay out the basics of their created world quickly and clearly, so that the reader has a fair shot at playing along and figuring out the solution. That can frustrate the SF reader, who may feel that the story's getting bogged down in mere plot.

Contrasting this with mystery writers, he goes on to say: Mystery writers* read "cozies" and "procedurals," a word implying that if we simply follow the right steps, order will be restored; SF readers read "hard" SF and various flavors of "punk," with its connotations of anti-authoritarian rebellion.

Are rebellion, "constant surprise" and "world building that keeps evolving and developing" the elements of SF and its cognates?

What happens when the action and /or narrative slows? Does the reader lose interest, or is there a formula for pacing, the way there is in many mysteries?

Who excels at writing like this? Recommendations please.
___________
*I suspect "mystery writers" should be mystery readers.

Well that last question didn't have any takers, so moving right along, I went back 10 years in questions to see what people were discussing then. rebeccanyc had asked for suggested questions. From that list, here is one from japaul22, still very active on LT. It goes right to the heart of CR:


image from essaypro.com

QUESTION 31: LT's Influence and Your Reading

How much do LT reviews colour your reading of a book?
Do you find yourself looking for a reason to love a book that got positive reviews even though you might not have liked it on your own?
What about the opposite - do you dislike a book that others have found little literary merit whereas without outside influence you may have enjoyed it?

>155 SassyLassy: I can't say that either of the phenomena you mention apply to me. I may find myself surprised if I'm not particularly impressed while reading a book others here have praised, but I don't go out of my way to look for good things in books for that reason. However, I guess it's the case that if I've read positive reviews here about a book, I will go into my reading of it forearmed with knowledge of those elements that people have enjoyed, and so those might come to the fore for me more naturally than if my own feeble brain had to find them on its own.

If the converse were true (disliking a book others have found little literary merit in), then I guess I'd simply be unlikely to read books that have been reviewed poorly here. And that, come to think of it, is mostly the case. There are a lot of books to read, so I might avoid one that has been trashed here. I often don't agree with individual opinions on books, but as a group, I for me one of pleasures of Club Read in particular is the overall level of literary discernment among my fellow CR members. Of course it's true that in passing up a book because it's been poorly reviewed here I'm passing up a book that I might enjoy. Certainly. However, life's about probabilities and risk/reward calculations. I'm much more likely, I think, to enjoy a book I pick up purely at random than a book I've heard of via so-so (or worse) reviews here.

I will add another dimension to this, if I may, and say that I am sometimes surprised when others highly praise a book I've found less interesting or just bad. And also the converse. Although sometimes I'll read reviewers who point out things about a book that I might have missed and therefore I'll reevaluate my reaction. It's good to keep an open mind.

Once I've read a book, the reviews really don't influence my feelings about it all that much. They may help me clarify, in my own mind, something that was bugging me about a book that I just couldn't pin down, but that's about it.

I'm much more apt to take a look at LT reviews if I'm thinking about buying a book from an unfamiliar author. The amount of influence the review has on my eventual decision often depends on the nature of the review. A thoughtful, well-written review, whether positive or negative, may tip the scales, but a one-line "This was the best book I've ever read!!!!!" or a "Total trash; don't waste your time" doesn't really give me much to go on unless it's a reviewer I follow on a regular basis.

A review that briefly outlines the plot, points out the book's strengths and its weaknesses, and makes legitimate comparisons to books with similar themes, can be extremely helpful. A review that begins with "If you loved 'The Bridges of Madison County'..." is enough to kick the work right off my list, but one that says "its sense of place is reminiscent of Rick Bragg's autobiographical work" will have me moving it to the head of the line. These are personal preferences, of course, but in both cases the review includes specific information that helps me decide.

While we're on the subject... I've often been guilty of one-liner comments because I want something to help jog my memory about the book but I'm not up for a full review. I wish there was a field for "personal notes" in addition to one for complete reviews.

Like you, I use reviews to check on books and authors Im not familiar with. Sometimes I will check reviews on books that I am reading that Im having trouble with and want to see if i should continue (but actually I use you guys on LT for that as well, and found you are the most trustworthy of critics!

I'm probably an oddball ... I have never used the LT reviews to help me choose what to read. I want my own experience with a book first (I guess my fear is that others' reviews will color my experience).

However, I very much enjoy reading the book reviews of books I'm NOT reading, written by members here in CR or LT members at random.

PS:
I'm fairly sure this developed during early in my bookstore/bookseller era...

PPS: I have written all manor of reviews over the years, and have a just few more before I hit 700 and then I've decided I'm done (at least re the book's page)

>159 avaland: I write my reviews primarily for myself - so I can remember what I thought of the book when I just finished reading it (or whenever I get around to writing the review - been very bad this year). I often find my memory of the book doesn't agree with that immediate review at all - or even, that I don't remember reading the book but oh look, there's my review. Which is to say, I'm never going to stop writing reviews!

>155 SassyLassy: I don't go looking for LT reviews of books I'm considering reading - except in the threads (I get hit with a lot of BBs). Oddly, I do read Amazon reviews to decide if I want a book I'm not familiar with (new author, usually). But of the thread reviews I do read - sometimes someone will gush about a book and I will say (to myself, I don't post it) "OK, not reading _that_ one" - usually because they're talking about the wonderfully presented misery of the characters, and I avoid books that will depress me. Similarly, I've read 2- and 3-star reviews that made me go pick up the book - the things that bothered the reviewer don't bother me, and/or the themes sounded so wonderful I'd overlook problems. And frequently the book was good for me. But generally I don't remember the reviews that triggered my getting the book well enough to remember if I'm supposed to be enthusiastic or cautious - I have a (bad?) habit of grabbing a book as soon as I find I'm interested, and then not reading it for a month or a year or...

>160 jjmcgaffey: "I have a (bad?) habit of grabbing a book as soon as I find I'm interested, and then not reading it for a month or a year or..."

Hello! Is there an echo in here?

And do you, as I do, sometimes find that a book has floated to the top of the TBR stack, and you have a vague memory of bringing it into the collection (but not why), and after reading it (or attempting to read it), you're left scratching your head and saying "What in the world was I thinking?"

Q31:

Like everyone else, I try to separate the process of choosing books to read — when others’ opinions are an important factor, of course — from the process of forming my own opinion about the book when I read it. My reviews are my own, or at least they should be.

In theory the two processes are quite independent (like most people here, I tend to separate them by the height of a TBR pile), but in practice, who knows how much crossover there is? I can’t tell how much of what I’ve heard and read about the book ahead of time is still sloshing around in my head at the time of reading. And of course there are subtle temptations to make you want to agree with the herd, and other sly temptations to stand out by being the one wildebeest going the other way…

I read somewhere that the main purpose of reviews (this was by a professional book critic) is to make you aware that a book exists, after which it's up to you to decide whether it's for you or not. I think it's true. But of course the content of the review plays a role in that, what the reviewer liked or didn't like and why. Reading >160 jjmcgaffey: I realized that I read Amazon reviews too, only in the case of non-fiction, to try to determine if there is valuable content or if it's just fluff.

All this will influence how I perceive the book I'm sure, though it's hard to say how, it's mostly how I can be unconsciously prepared to what I'm going to read. Also I agree with >162 thorold: that it can go both ways. I tend to be very contrary, and if too many people gush about a book I will become extremely wary.

>161 LyndaInOregon: Or worse, have that same question about an ER book you've requested...

>163 FlorenceArt: when reading reviews on LT in order to decide whether to get the particular book - which often happeens if I don’t know of the author, I generally check the reviewer´s “Books you share” to see if we have similar tastes.

>165 kjuliff: That's a great idea!

>154 SassyLassy:

Q30

Unoriginally, what I look for* in sf is the Grail of "sensawunda". The feeling that I'm really out of this world, that I'm really meeting aliens, that the infinite cosmos is opening up with unimagined new vistas and knowledge.

*I don't really approach books with any rigid sort of determination, it's less of a definite expectation than a standing hope, shall we say.

>155 SassyLassy:

Q31

I don't usually read reviews before reading a book, and not regularly after, but if I had a notably strong reaction, bad or good, I might look for a whole slew of reviews.

Reviews of books I haven't read generally tend to encourage me positively more than negatively. That is, praise is more likely to intrigue me than negative reviews are likely to turn me off, even if they feature my known bugaboos. It's like I want to love what others loved, but what I hate I need to face on my own.

But nothing is 100%, lots of exceptions.

>155 SassyLassy: Q31

The reviews in CR are its best feature for me. They are often my primary source for new to me titles. I try to keep a list of titles that sound as if I would enjoy them.

If there is a review of a book I am currently reading, I will usually skip that, not wanting to be influenced by it, but I then go back to it after I have written and posted my own thoughts.

Unfavourable reviews are often quite fun. However, as with films, an unfavourable review would not influence whether or not I read the book, if the subject matter or author was one of interest to me.

image from Atlantic Boating Magazine
Race Start for Bluenose Class Boats

QUESTION 32: Name that book, summer edition

Well this past week was Chester Race Week in this part of the world. This week sees the International Dory Races. It's summer by the sea.

If the lure of the ocean isn't reflected in your library, feel free to make up a title and an author to go with it.

Name a book that:

a - features the noun "sail" in the title

b - is about a dastardly pirate, real or fictional

c - involves a picnic

d - has the word "row" in the title, as in "row, row, row your boat...", not as in an argument

e - has the action taking place at sunset, or the sunset itself is the action

f - is about a gale

g - has a character or title using the word "Ahoy"

h - ties the reader up in knots

i - has "whale" in the title, not Moby Dick

j - has lots of wave action, the watery kind, not the signalling kind

k - is marine in content (trade, technical, history, etc)

l - takes place in a port, the sleazier the port the better (no safe harbours here)

m - takes place in a lighthouse

n - is about a battle on the high seas

o - features rum (you may need some by now)

Q32:
Hmm. I seem to have more sailing books than actual sailing adventures these days, for all kinds of reasons. Let’s see what I can do. The simple answers would just be to say “Arthur Ransome” — that would cover almost everything below. But maybe there are more obscure possibilities lurking on my shelves:

Name a book that:

a - features the noun "sail" in the title

The Hal Roth seafaring trilogy : three true stories of adventure under sail — this is literally the only one in my library that does, and it’s an omnibus of three books none of which have that word in the title! Site search brings up James Patterson’s Sail as the top hit, but it’s not clear whether that’s a noun or an imperative…

b - is about a dastardly pirate, real or fictional

Tricky: Nancy Blackett is definitely a pirate, but I don’t think she qualifies as dastardly. Actually, I realise that I’ve never been quite sure what a dastard is: the OED talks about a mean, base, or despicable coward, one who does malicious acts in a despicable or skulking way, so that doesn’t really fit the romantic type of pirate at all.

Maybe Defoe’s Captain Singleton would fit?

c - involves a picnic

Well, obviously it ought to be Swallows and Amazons (don’t forget to pack the ginger-beer!), but it also makes me think of D H Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia, where Frieda is always lugging around a picnic-basket referred to as the "kitchenino".

d - has the word "row" in the title, as in "row, row, row your boat...", not as in an argument

All I have in my catalogue is Thackeray’s The Bedford Row conspiracy, which I rather think refers to a street, not a boat. The same goes for Cannery Row, of course, and for the very land bound Gerald Murnane’s Tamarisk Row.

A book I have read that had a lot of rowing in it was The unlikely voyage of Jack de Crow : a Mirror odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea by A. J. Mackinnon — a mad Australian schoolmaster who managed to cross Europe in a Mirror dinghy. Highly recommended. Or there’s RLS’s classic An inland voyage, but that’s really a kayak, not a rowing boat.

e - has the action taking place at sunset, or the sunset itself is the action

Sunset at Blandings — but that’s not an actual sunset, it’s an editorial reference to it being Wodehouse’s final, unfinished book. I do have a poetry collection by Anne Rouse called Sunset grill.

f - is about a gale

How about Der Schimmelreiter, Theodor Storm’s North German classic about keeping the sea from coming over the dyke?

g - has a character or title using the word "Ahoy"

I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone using this word in a serious sea story. But of course it comes up all the time in Swallows and Amazons or Treasure Island.

h - ties the reader up in knots

Site search comes up with R D Laing’s Knots as the top hit. Hard to beat, I suppose…

i - has "whale" in the title, not Moby Dick

Inside the whale by George Orwell is the obvious one.

j - has lots of wave action, the watery kind, not the signalling kind

Well, I have got a book called Vibrations and waves in physics, but that wasn’t what was meant… From my recent reading, I remember a lot of waves breaking on the coast of Jutland in the course of A line in the world by Dorthe Nors.

k - is marine in content (trade, technical, history, etc)

Knight’s modern seamanship, the only book I know of that tells you how to park an aircraft carrier.

l - takes place in a port, the sleazier the port the better (no safe harbours here)

Treason’s harbour by Patrick O’Brian. There had to be at least one POB in the list! Set mostly in Malta.

m - takes place in a lighthouse

It should be RLS, really, but the first thing that comes to mind is Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping.

n - is about a battle on the high seas

Aren’t they all? But there aren’t many on my naval history shelves that are just about one battle. Maybe Castles of steel, which is essentially about Jutland.

o - features rum (you may need some by now)

The ascent of Rum Doodle (although that actually has more about champagne than rum…). I’m not going to say Treasure Island, I’m sure that also falls out if you read it carefully: they probably sing about rum much more than actually drinking it. Jamaica Inn???

Im gonna need to use DHs library too, if I may (surprise you didn't include treasure!)

a - features the noun "sail" in the title sailing to sarantium

b - is about a dastardly pirate, real or fictional a darker shade of magic (shes not dastardly, but she is a pirate)

c - involves a picnic enchanted april

d - has the word "row" in the title, as in "row, row, row your boat...", not as in an argument cannery row

e - has the action taking place at sunset, or the sunset itself is the action Last Light of the Sun (has a picture of a sunset on the cover)

f - is about a gale Margaret Gale: books, biography, latest update *

g - has a character or title using the word "Ahoy"penguin pete ahoy we dont own it but my schools library had ut

h - ties the reader up in knots notting hill tho I love this one I just saw The Napoleon of Notting Hill. ...A comical futurist fantasy, first published in 1904, about a tradition-loving suburban London community of the 1980's at war with its modernizing neighbors.

Ive never read any of his books but I want to read this!

i - has "whale" in the title, not Moby Dick a song of the whale

j - has lots of wave action, the watery kind, not the signalling kind the waves

k - is marine in content (trade, technical, history, etc)Ultrasimple Boat Building: 18 Plywood Boats Anyone Can Build

l - takes place in a port, the sleazier the port the better (no safe harbours here) Last port of call*

m - takes place in a lighthouse lighthouse keeping

n - is about a battle on the high seas Sharpes Trafalgar

o - features rum (you may need some by now) Death By Rum Balls (New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles) actually I was looking for cookbooks for rum balls, but this popped up?*

* a little help from google

>170 thorold: A book I have read that had a lot of rowing in it was The unlikely voyage of Jack de Crow : a Mirror odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea

Oh duh, I have enough books about Wales this would have been easy! Oh well Ill stick with what I have

>171 cindydavid4:(surprise you didn't include treasure!) Good thought, which hadn't occurred to me. Perhaps it's because there isn't much treasure to be found in these parts, unless you believe in the mystery of Oak Island. The hunt for treasure there has spawned a TV series and innumerable books. Naturally it is supposed to be cursed. You used to be able to just go there, but now it is privately owned.

>170 thorold: Arthur Ransome and RLS would just about cover it all!
Love the idea of a man named Storm writing such a book.

QUESTION 32: Name that book, summer edition

Name a book that:

a - features the noun "sail" in the title - Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson - Swedish crime fiction in the Erik Winter series.

b - is about a dastardly pirate, real or fictional - Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

c - involves a picnic - The Wind in the Willows

d - has the word "row" in the title, as in "row, row, row your boat...", not as in an argument - The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware by Patrick K. O’Donnell

e - has the action taking place at sunset, or the sunset itself is the action - Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? - a case study of uxoricide

f - is about a gale - Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester

g - has a character or title using the word "Ahoy" - nothing

h - ties the reader up in knots - Why Knot?: How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots!

i - has "whale" in the title, not Moby Dick - The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard

j - has lots of wave action, the watery kind, not the signalling kind - The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance by Mensun Bound

k - is marine in content (trade, technical, history, etc) - Seamanship Secrets: 185 Tips & Techniques for Better Navigation, Cruise Planning, and Boat Handling Under Power or Sail

l - takes place in a port, the sleazier the port the better (no safe harbours here) - drawing a blank

m - takes place in a lighthouse- Sentinel of the Jersey Cape: The Story of the Cape May Lighthouse

n - is about a battle on the high seas - The Guises of the Morrigan - The Irish Goddess of Sex & Battle - probably not sea battles.

o - features rum (you may need some by now) - Prohibition in Cape May County : wetter than the Atlantic by Ray Rebmann

>171 cindydavid4: etc. Treasure
There seems to be a lot of treasure-hunting fiction on my library. From my recent reading, Je m’en vais by Jean Echenoz and Le chercheur d’or (The prospector) by JMG Le Clézio would both fit well. Further back I liked Pérez-Reverte’s La carta esferica (The nautical chart), a play on the classic sunken treasure plot. And of course Simon Raven’s twisted treasure-hunts, especially The roses of Picardie. But there’s a lot more where those came from…

>171 cindydavid4: Chesterton is odd, in a weird kind of Roman Catholic/anarchist/conservative way, but The Napoleon of Notting Hill is fun, you’d probably enjoy it. The Father Brown detective stories are enjoyable too.

Jack de Crow is only minimally about Wales: he starts his voyage on the Severn. But it is one of the most offbeat cruising books I’ve read. If you don’t know it, the Mirror dinghy is a tiny and very simple boat design, really meant for kids to learn to sail in, definitely not for long voyages. I came across the book when I read a whole bunch of books about people crossing Europe by water via the Rhine and the Danube, and that of course ties in with Paddy Leigh Fermor doing it on foot...

thanks for your comments Napolean is on its way. the unlikely voyage of Jack de Crowlooks fun, and it seems like so many books tie in to Paddy!

image from Legacybox - how long until people won't know what these are?

QUESTION 33: Books Needing a Film

Books and film have a long and complicated history.

What books are in desperate need of a film treatment? Who would you cast? Would you change the book, say perhaps its location, or time frame?

Are there any film treatments of a book already out there in need of an update? How would your film differ from the original?

Are there book films so classic you can't imagine them remade in any other way?

Question 33:

What books are in desperate need of a film treatment? Who would you cast? Would you change the book, say perhaps its location, or time frame?

Personally, I don’t think any books, especially good ones, are in desperate need of a film treatment, but that’s just me being a semantics brat. To the spirit of your question, however . . .

* I would love to see film treatments of the first three Bernie Gunther novels, Philip Kerr’s noir series about a non-Nazi homicide detective in 1930s Berlin.
* I would also like to see a well done bio-movie about Fannie Lou Hamer based on Kate Clifford Larson’s biography, Walk With Me.
* Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon could make an excellent movie.
* I'd very much like to see a movie version of James Baldwin’s play, Blues for Mister Charlie. Does that count?
* All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski
* Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
* And finally, Philip Roth’s hilarious baseball novel, The Great American Novel

I wouldn’t change any of these in terms of location or time frame, though. And I’m going to leave the casting question alone, as my knowledge of current actors is limited. However, I am reminded of a Mark Leyner short story (I believe from the collection, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist) in which a new software (this was before the days of the app) allows you to see any move you like, but with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the lead role.

Are there any film treatments of a book already out there in need of an update? How would your film differ from the original?

I would very much like to see The Natural remade so that it actually adhered to the spirit of the book, particularly the ending. When we read The Natural in high school English class, my teacher said that Malamud intended the novel to be a recasting of a Greek tragedy in baseball terms, with hubris being the fatal flaw.

Are there book films so classic you can't imagine them remade in any other way?

The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden come to mind. Also, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.

>178 rocketjk: I was looking through my recent reading and Kempowski’s All for nothing was one that struck me as quite a cinematic kind of book too. It doesn’t seem to have been done yet. You might have to mess the timeline about a bit to balance the static and dynamic scenes. I can imagine starting with them all escaping from the Russian advance and then doing the scenes at the estate in flashback.

Generally, I seem to be at an age where remakes of anything feel like a bad thing — you don’t want to see your favourite stories suddenly invaded by people with 21st century haircuts and addressing each other as “you guys”. But I did enjoy Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood take on Jane Austen in Bride and Prejudice, so perhaps there would be scope for some more nineteenth century classics re-imagined in non-European settings: I’m sure you could do interesting things with the Barchester novels in modern Nigeria, for instance, especially if you could persuade Wole Soyinka to write the script…

>179 thorold: I can imagine starting with them all escaping from the Russian advance and then doing the scenes at the estate in flashback.

Yes, that would make a lot of sense.

Generally, I seem to be at an age where remakes of anything feel like a bad thing — you don’t want to see your favourite stories suddenly invaded by people with 21st century haircuts and addressing each other as “you guys”.

Amen. That remake of West Side Story. Ugh. What in the world for? (Yes, I know, money.) (And yes, I know, West Side Story is already a remake of Romeo and Juliet.) There was so much blather about it when it was first released (the WWS remake, that is), and two years from now, no one will remember that it was even made.

. . . more nineteenth century classics re-imagined in non-European settings: I’m sure you could do interesting things with the Barchester novels in modern Nigeria, for instance, especially if you could persuade Wole Soyinka to write the script…

Right. And Shakespeare!

And, it just occurs to me, back to the original questions, that I would like to see a dramatic movie version of Sholom Alechem's "Tevye's Daughters" stories. Don't get me wrong; I certainly enjoy Fiddler on the Roof, but I've read that collection of stories within the past few years and they are extremely moving. Without the singing and dancing and American-audience-pandering pseudo joyousness, those tales stand as a set of extremely effective character studies of a fraught and difficult time and place. I would love to see their through-story handled more seriously in a well written and acted film.

I like that idea

One of my fav authors is Sharon Kay Penman, who wrote a Welsh triology starting here be dragons plot starts with King Johns illegitamate daughter married to the Prince of Wales and the push and pull she went through loving both of them. So many scenes . Another of her books is when christ and his saints slept about the 20 year civil war between King Steven and Empress Maud, the mother of Henry 2. Lots of action and drama here, but the scene i most what to see is maud, dressed in white fur, scaling a rope down to the snow and sneaking passed Steven soilders to escape.

>177 SassyLassy:

Q33

I don't think it's ever happened that I read something and thought "this should be a movie!" but I've often liked movies that turned out to be based on books. However, typically it's been genre fare--thrillers and mysteries that were turned into film noir, fantasy and similar. Many of these movies I can't imagine remaking (or wanting to see a remake)--who needs another Laura or Out of the past etc.? But that's just me, I'm sure in some cases a modern remake could do better justice to the material in terms of allowing more freedom dealing with taboo themes etc.

Incidentally, recently-ish I saw Mosfilm's adaptation of The brothers Karamazov from the sixties. Given that I dislike "grand" literary adaptations, especially when it comes to philosophical authors like Dostoevsky, it's a surprise how it drew me in and held (almost 4 hours long). It has to be all due to the actors. Although they looked nothing like the characters I had in my imagination (all these decades), they were so... perfect... anyway, maybe a rare exception to "my" rule.

>178 rocketjk: >179 thorold: All for Nothing would indeed make a good film, but it would have to be a European director, so that it didn't get too sanitized.

>183 LolaWalser: Something to look for, although highly unlikely to be found.