Magician's Nephew: It's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

When I was a kid and went to the New York World's Fair in 1964-65, one of my favorite things was the "Carousel of Progress"


It was a show done by Disney with primitive Audio-Animatronic Robots, that showed a modern family looking into the future in the 1880's 1930's and beyond. Electric lights! Wow! The Radio! Oh Boy. Computers! Hurrah!

The show is now set up in Disney Florida and I sat through it again a few years ago. Still gives me a charge. Still believe in it

"A man has a dream, and that's the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me.

So it's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
And there's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
Just a Dream Away"

Let's see what we can dream up together in 2021

Welcome back!

Hi Jim !

Welcome back, Jim.

Have a good year of reading!

Happy new year, Jim!

Best wishes for a better 2021!

Happy reading in 2021, Jim!

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

Happy new year Jim!

Here's to a better, brighter, bookier 2021!

Happy New Year!

>9 PaulCranswick: Paul I remember you posting similar wishes in early 2020 - fingers crosses nothing cataclysmic happens this year to derail my good intentions.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by. Keeping up with LT is one of the joys of my life

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

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread!

Thank you Silver and welcome.

First book of the new year is an old friend - sort of.

Robert B. Parker wrote a mess of books about the Boston Private eye Spencer ("Like the English poet") who despite his lack of a first name has an engaging supporting cast and some great adventures.

The bewitching Susan is the smart ass Harvard Shrink, and the scary but lovable Hawk is the sidekick and the reminder that Death is always very close at hand.

Anyway Parker has stopped writing these and now that he is gone a fellow named Ace Atkins (come on is that really his name?) has picked up the thread.

The first book is called Robert B. Parker's Lullabye and its both great and not so good. Great in that Mr. Atkins really has an ear for these characters and the sweet sharp witty thoughtful banter that goes on among them.

Not so good in that the plot just seems to be a throw away, bumbling along and then quickly resolved in a hail of gunfire.

But glad to see Spencer and Hawk and Susan on the prowl again, and I will look for the next one in the series.

“Susan said. “You’re a violent man. You wouldn’t do your work if you weren’t. What makes you so attractive, among other things, is that your capacity for violence is never random, it is rarely self-indulgent, and you don’t take it lightly. You make mistakes. But they are mistakes of judgment. They are not mistakes of the heart.”
― Robert B. Parker

Hi Jim, I did not attend the New York World's Fair, but whenever I am in Disney world, I always head over to The Carousel of Progress.

No doubt about it, Walt Disney was a genius.

I send all good wishes to you and Judy for a wonderful new year.

Of course if you're going to read Michael Chabon the book they always point to you is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. But he's written a bunch of other good stuff too.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union starts off as a classic hard-boiled detective novel in the style of Sam Spade where the wounded and damaged detective tries to bring order to a broken society.

The plot is classic - druggie dies in a fleabag hotel and everyone wants to sweep it under the rug. But it goes on from there to larger than life issues of love and love and isolation and homelessness and being kicked out of sanctuary.

However in this alt-history world the society is the"Sitka District" a strip of land in the territory of Alaska where after World War II the Jewish refugees from the European war wound up. On top of everything else, it's sixty years later and times up and the Jews are going have to go somewhere else.

So its not just a murder mystery. And its a wonderfully Jewish book. It's a wonderfully funny book.

And the guy can write! I highlighted great lines and saying all over the place until i gave up. Lovely to find an author who can delineate character and locale in a few deliciously well chosen words.

Good Book. My Book Group raved up and down and all over the place. If you haven't read Chabon before this is a great place to start.

Baronshteyn looked genuinely puzzled. The Jew desires to be informed. This may Landsman thinks, be the only desire the man ever permits himself to feel
-- Michael Chabon

>18 magicians_nephew: - I've had this one on my shelf for - seemingly - ever. I've loved everything by Chabon that I've read. I am determined to read it this year!

Hoping for dreams rather than nightmares in 2021, Jim. I've only read the one Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, of course. Your review of The Yiddish Policeman's Union makes that one look tempting.

Another Chabon fan here! You are off to a great start. : )

Just happened to look up here on LT all the books that Chabon has written. I haven't read half of them. The ones I have read have really stuck with me.

After we read this my Book Group was eager and raring to read another Chabon this year. So maybe we will.

Hi Jim! I've never read Chabon, though I really should try him out.

Chabon's work is first rate, Jim. I'm hoping a copy of Wonder Boys will fall into my hands. I think I've read it, but it must have been before 2010, because it isn't included in my reading log. Movie was excellent, too.

Seeing reports that Neil Sheehan the journalist died this week after a cruel bout with Parkinson's disease

from The Arnheiter Affair through his courage with the Pentagon Papers and his masterpiece A Bright and Shining Lie he told complex stories with clarity and color and fairness and compassion.

In the time of Trump with the practice of journalism under attack we should remember his name and his service to America.

Neil Sheehan Obit

In these grim days after a shocking country rocking event i went back to read a book from other grim days after other shocking events.

Lawrence Block writes two wonderful detective series, "The Burgler who ... " and the Matthew Scudder books and they're both pretty good.

But once in a while he does a one shot and they're usually pretty amazing.

Small Town is a dark and grim book about a New York City reeling in the days after 9/11.

It's a mystery but it's really just a collection of character studies of people who lived through the attack and then went on to live their lives. It's a violent book, and there is some explicit sex in this one. Believe it or not the ending is satisfying, and even comforting

I think Block is a terrific writer but I think I shocked him once when I said I thought this was the best thing he had even written.

Highly recommended

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
-- William Carlos Williams

I'm going to look for Small Town.

I've read a few books in 2020 regarding the 9/11 terrible event. I'll look for Small Town.

I've missed Spenser and Susan and Hawk and have not had the courage to try the new ones by the new guy.

>29 EBT1002: It's really a bit and a miss. The new guy really captures the rhythm of the Spencer - Hawk - Susan dialog - he just needs to work on his plotting.

Have to admit some of the original Robert B. Parker novels could have weak or silly plots sometimes too.

Judy and I caught up with "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" this weekend. What a powerful play with two great actors digging deep down and working at the top of their game.

August Wilson's plays have never been that strong on plot. What he does better than anybody is let you see how Black people talk among themselves, sharing memories of bitter humiliation as well as unfettered joy. There's poetry here.

Remember seeing the play as a young man in New York and marveling that Theresa Merritt, known for sitcoms and light stuff, could peel the paint off the back wall of the theatre with a look or a word.

If you haven't see it yet and have Netflix, you should.

Having fun with a new mystery series - new to me anyway.

Verity Kent the heroine of This Side of Murder is a young smart war widow trying to deal with her loss and the new society in the days right after the First World War in England. For reasons not totally clear she is summoned to a house party on a remote island with a group of men who served in the war with her husband. Of course there are secrets to be revealed and of course a few murders for Verity and her charming young man assistant to unravel.

The first episode has a lot of back story to unpack and some of it feel sort of perfunctory. (Does she REALLY have to have been part of the British Secret Service too?) And you may get tired of lengthy descriptions of the woman's fashions of the day and What She Wore

But the period details are fun and the character is captivating and I'm looking forward to the next one.

>31 magicians_nephew: - This one is in my queue...

>32 magicians_nephew: - Yay for a new series! One can never have too many ;-)

Don't want to make this a political thread but this from Twitter wouldn't leave my head. We grew up with Duck and Cover - the next generation grew up with "Active Shooter Drills".

Picked up casually and then found myself in a deep re-read of The Paris Wife a fictionalized version of the life of Earnest and Hadley Hemingway in America and in Paris as Hemingway writes and learns to write.

I fell in love with the voice of Hadley in this book her understanding of the strange genius of the man she married and her wit and warmth and good humor.

Rocky marriage doesn't begin to describe it and of course the marriage didn't last.
Nice sketches of the Paris set in the 1920's a lot of the usual suspects very sharply observed and described.

If you don't like Hemingway this book is not going to make you like him much. If you do like Hemingway, this is one person's idea of the writer-ly life and what people do to pass the time when they are not pounding out the next chapter of The Sun Also Rises.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
-- Earnest Hemingway

>35 magicians_nephew: I have that one on the shelves, Jim, and must get to it sometime soon.

>34 magicians_nephew: That they would be prepared for that from school does not excite a pleasant feeling. What a world we live in.

Thanks for stopping by, Paul.

I remember as a kid they blew the "Air Raid" siren every day at noon as a "drill" and we were expected to dive under the desks when it happened. We did.

At least we never actually experienced a bombing raid. The kids growing up today have most assuredly experienced "active shooter" situations where students and teachers were shot and died.

What a world, indeed.

When I was a kid there was a guy on TV with a shiny satin tailcoat and a big smile who did wonderful magic tricks with his pretty wife and sometimes his kids. "The Magic Land of Allakazam" it was called and I watched every episode. Big stage filling illusions and little sleight of hand tricks you had to watch real close to see. I loved it.



Mark Wilson died this month. Gonna miss him. Gonna remember him.

Seem to recall that Ellen or someone was working her way through a re-read of all the Dorothy Sayers books, so on a lazy day i revisited Five Red Herrings an early Lord Peter Wimsey book and was reminded how much I disliked it.

The later books are full of depth of character and lovely little asides and real people doing real things even in the clockwork world of an English Murder Mystery.

But this! Train schedules and time-tables and alibis and an incredibly complex plot that I read twice and didn't totally follow. Not enough of the divine Bunter who has only one small scene worming information out of a Scottish ladies maid and of course no Harriet Vane at all.

Did i mention the book is set in Scotland? Sayers does a huge job in having everyone speak in broad Scottish dialect, and after the first few pages it REALLY gRRRRRR-ates on the air, mon. Just for fun in the middle of it all she introduces a Jewish traveling salesman - with a strong Yiddish accent - and a STUTTER!!!!! (OY! G-G-G-G-gevelt!)

One has to walk (as a writer) before one can fly. The later books are better. Won't be reading this one again. Shuddered delicately

>39 magicians_nephew: - Onto better things!

Better things? Well Maybe.

W. G. Sebald is a writer that came out of Post world War II Germany with a style of writing seemingly all his own. He called it "Documentary Fiction" Well, OK.

My Book Circle took a look at Vertigo his first novel and part of a famous trilogy. The book consists of four sections: A short sketch of the live of the writer Stendal, is his early life in the army and his unsuccessful love affairs.

This follows with a long discussion of Franz Kafka attending a conference in a small city in Germany (I think).

The longest section is a narrative of the author (Narrator) visiting the city of W. where he grew up and revisiting people and places he knew as a boy.

So it's a book about memory and history and war, and love, and the complexities of it all. But i finished the book not knowing what the heck the book was about, or what the heck the author was trying to tell me.

There is some beautiful writing here, either by the author or his translator and I marked up the book with many sections I admired.

But that's about it. He wrote a book later called Austerlitz that was also a rambling journey but seemed to have more to say about Germany and the horrors of World War II. But this one left me cold. Maybe one day I'll pick it up and read it again. But there are other books to read, believe me.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”
-- Christopher Isherwood

>41 magicians_nephew: I have his books but have been a bit reluctant to make myself feel stupid by reading them and not understanding them. At least I will be in good company, Jim.

Paul our own Chatterbox - Suzanne -- was at the Book Circle and had a lot of good things to say about Sebald. I liked his Austerlitz because it had things to say about Germany and the Holocaust.

Be happy to be in your company in almost anything from reading to putting the shot, Paul

In New York They predicted we would get two feet of snow

>44 magicians_nephew: - *grin*

>44 magicians_nephew: Love it!!

Oh, wow I can't believe it's already time for me to be vaguely aware that it's Super Bowl Weekend.

sorry guys unless there's a New York team playing I just fast forward to the commercials.

Alison Lurie wrote so many great novels its hard to know where to begin.

Her Pulitzer winner was Foreign Affairs a small novel about two Americans abroad.

Vinny is an older single woman an academic a scholar of nursery rhymes who loves England and is believed me when i say this really set in her ways. Unloved and thinking herself unlovable, she has worked out how to live her live without being touched and without being hurt.

But as Chekov might have said if you meet a garrulous vulgar American in Act I, you'd better have someone wind up in bed with him in Act III.

Fred is a younger man and QUITE attractive to women coming over to England after a rather improbable fight with his free-spirited wife and looking for - what? - himself? He's studying John Gay the playwright who came up with "Mac the Knife". He falls in with Lady Rosemary a popular actress swanning her way through Societywhose most interesting performance may have only been enjoyed by a few people.

The cast of characters is vast and interesting, from American Tourists to English demimondes and they all have things to say. Her writing about sex and sexuality in "older" women is compassionate and understanding and warmly sympathetic. She understands Vinne and Fred and brings us to understand them too.

The ending is sad, but lovely. Makes you want to go right back and read it again from the beginning.

Loved her The War Between the Tates which was made into a pretty good movie. But this is her best book.

Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes.
-- Alison Lurie

>47 magicians_nephew: - Snork. Welp, you didn't miss much anyway.

>48 magicians_nephew: - I have Foreign Affairs on my Kindle...

>48 magicians_nephew: nice summary, Jim. I read it years ago, loved it and you're making me want to read it again.

A Witchly Influence is a new book by Stephanie Grey that I got through LT Early Readers.

It's a charming little book about modern witches -- the "Bewitched" or even "Bell, Book and Candle" type of witches -- that use magic for doing the dishes and cleaning the house, but go to Starbucks, drive cars, take hot yoga classes and have romantic adventures.

So OK. Carman is a witch recently divorced from a mortal (A "Mundane") and assigned to work as an "Influencer" to do good work and help people with her powers. So it's kind of a "Touched by an Angel" kind of book too and the people she is assigned to help are interesting and people we care about.

Carman is an engaging character and the book bubbles cheerfully along in a "Real Housewives of Salem Village" kind of mode. And there is time travel and "Fate" and a lot of things going on.

If there's a quibble its that there is maybe just too much going on. The author has thrown everything into the cauldron to see what bubbles. Some of it works, some of it is just grin-and-bear it. World building is harder than it looks.

But i enjoyed it and if this is a series, I'll be looking out for the next one.

when shall we three meet again?
In thunder lightening or in rain?
When the hurley burley's done
When the battles lost - - or won?
-- Shakespeare

Frederick "Tex" Avery was one of the funniest cartoon directors and writers of the golden age. He was MGM's premier gag man and loved to break the fourth wall with ironic, slightly subversive cartoons. Note that these were made for movie theaters NOT the Saturday morning kiddie shows. .

Someone has collected the best of Tex Avery (Road Runner not included) and polished them up and offered them on DVD. Fresh, bright crisp and Funny! Did i mention funny?

The modern eye would find some of these to be sexist, and in a few cases more than a little racist. But even so good stuff to watch here.

Wish the DVD had come with some commentary or background info but the toons are here and thats just wonderful. That's "Little Hot Riding Hood" in the picture. Wowsa!

Hello magician's_nephew! Is is it too late or a Happy New Year?

I had a good time reading through your thread. I enjoyed your comments on the mysteries you've been reading.

>16 magicians_nephew: I, too, have been a long time Spenser fan and was unsure how things would progress with Ace Atkins after he picked up the torch. I have not been disappointed over all. Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn and Cheap Shot. The others have been passable and, as you said, Parker's plots could be thin once in a while as well. I agree that Atkins does well with characterizations and dialogue. That's why I keep coming back.

>31 magicians_nephew: Thanks for your comments on 'Ma Rainey'. I have not seen it yet, but it's on the queue. You've inspired my to get to it sooner than later. Does Boseman deserve an Oscar?

>53 brodiew2: . Boseman is incredible in "Ma Rainey" but the Oscars rarely give posthumous awards. We will see.

Yes I read Spenser books much more for the bi-play among Susan, Hawk and Spenser, and the Ace Adkins books capture that pretty well. Half a loaf, they say?

thanks for dropping by.

Hi Jim. I lurk but seldom post here but I had to reply to >55 magicians_nephew:. This is hilarious and reminds me of Richard Lederer's most famous piece, called The History of the World According to Student Bloopers, which you may have already seen at some point:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/fcc/humor/history.html

>56 jessibud2: lurkers always welcome. Yes I've been to MENSA Gatherings and heard Richard Lederer's very entertaining talks on language a few times a very funny and very literate gentleman

Hey Jim! Hope you are doing well! You're a member of MENSA? How is it as an organization?

>58 The_Hibernator: boy what a question Ive been involved with MENSA since i was in college and have made many friend through the group. Their Annual Gatherings held in July and Regional Gatherings held all through the year are usually tons of fun with great speakers and events and things to do in the host city.

That said I may say that some MENSA local chapters can be clique-y and spend more time playing politics than holding events. But not all for sure.

I rarely miss the Annual Gathering and I'm looking forward with fingers crossed to the next one in Metro Washington DC this coming July.

>55 magicians_nephew: I'm glad you suggesting sticking with it. In the end it crackled me up!

Night Boat to Tangier is a strange and VERY Irish novel, rich in poetry and sadness.

Two men who used to be pretty major drug dealers and are now not really much of anything are waiting in the ferry terminal for "Dilly" a young woman who may be daughter to one of the pair. As they wait they talk, and the talk is rich and musical -- regret mixed with bravado.

In alternate chapters we see our two roaring boys as young men making drug deals, being violent, being loving, meeting women and meeting failure all over Europe. It's like hearing the backstory of the two tramps in "Waiting for Godot" and it's very moving.

If they meet Dllly will there be a reconciliation? a Quarrel? A New beginning? Or another failure and another missed opportunity?

Kevin Barry is a young and very talented writer and this is a book to savor like a mug of good Irish Stout.

”Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”
-- James Joyce

ooo

Emma has always been my favorite of all of Jane Austins books.

It's true that Emma is a snob and a ninny, but i love her anyway. (Jane did too!).

Our Book group revisited the story this week, and this is a book that rewards a re-read. Unlike other Austins this is one where the central character is just WRONG! WRONG! and WRONG! so many times yet wends her way to a happy ending anyway. (The modern dress version was called "Clueless" and it fit her perfectly).

Sharply observed characters of English country life (I did say it was Jane Austin) gentle satire, long slabs of effortless dialogue that charm the ear and move the story. I will fight any man in the bar that calls this a "Romance Novel".

Odd to see Jane Fairfax, the governess-to-be that makes good pushed into sub-plot status in this one. but it works.

Slow moving at times but just more time to enjoy its
many pleasures.

I may go back and read it again!

"Indeed I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise"

But Jane is BOTH merry and wise. Oh Boy!

A friend in Massachusetts sends me these -i like this one a lot

Having fun with a new series of Medieval Murder Mysteries.

The Gilded Shroud is the first in the "Lady Fan" series so the author has some ducks to get in a row first, in fact our heroine detective is NOT "Lady Fan" at the beginning of the book.

She is a young widower who finds herself "companion" to a wealthy dowager noblewoman. Before anyone has time to settle in there is a shocking murder, a murder suspect flying the coop, and our girl is interviewing witnesses and laying traps and wending her way to solving the mystery. AND falling in love with his Lordship and becoming a Ladyship and we're off to the races.

Period details, good. Characters, lively and interesting. Mystery challenging but not getting in the way of the fun.

Were it not for the Amazon boycott I would be downloading the next two or three to my Kindle. Or something. But soon enough.

>63 magicians_nephew: - *groan*

Adding my *groan* for >63 magicians_nephew:, Jim.

>55 magicians_nephew:, >56 jessibud2: Chuckling is a good way to start the day. I almost died of wedlock, too, so I can imagine how Socrates felt. Time to hurl the biscuits and throw the java. :-)

>61 magicians_nephew: I very much enjoyed Kevin Barry’s City of Bohane although it’s not an easy read. I don’t think he’s young though. I think he’s in his 50’s.

>67 SandDune: Thanks for stopping by Rhian. I read a few things about Barry and thought he was younger - he had the ego and the ambition of a much younger man.

On the other hand "Night Boat" is a perfect example of a bunch of 50-plus characters talking (or trying to talk) like their 30-plus former selves

Call this a re-read I guess but this week i happened on a couple of the old C. S. Forster Horatio Hornblower books and ate them up with joy.

The books in question were Commodore Hornblower and Lord Hornblower. I've read the earlier books where he is a Midshipman or a Lieutenant but somehow these later books when he is deep into grand strategy and not so much into minutia are the ones i keep going back to.

Here he finds himself and his small flotilla on the fringes of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia and later on the run for his life when the Corsican tyrant makes his return between his first and second exile. A lot of real life historical figures make an appearance, and the action is fast moving and the story telling is first rate. There is even a doomed romance playing out in rural France while Hornblower's high born English wife swans around with the nobility of Europe.

Gene Roddenbury always said that he based Captain Kirk in "Star Trek" on Hornblower and you know - i can just see it.

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
-- John Masefield

One of my Facebook friends sent this to me

>70 magicians_nephew: LOL! That made me laugh out loud :-D

>71 FAMeulstee: I just kind of hear Dr McCoy from Star Trek in my mind

"He's deaf, Jim"

>72 magicians_nephew: Yes, from the Star Trekkin' song ;-)

>70 magicians_nephew: Well, he is decomposing.

>69 magicians_nephew: I listened to a couple of these back in the day, but watched all of the Ioan Gruffod films. Great fun.

>70 magicians_nephew: >72 magicians_nephew: Nice one, magicians_nephew!

>75 brodiew2: Thanks for stopping by, Brodie.

If you get a chance the 1952 movie with Gregory Peck Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN is pretty good Virginia Mayo is great as Lady Barbara

Rick Atkinson wrote a trilogy of wonderful books about three major battles of World War II and did an amazing job of bringing out interesting and enlightening details about the people and the battles and the war.

Now he's back and he's taking a look at The American Revolution. The British are Coming is the first book of a new trilogy and Atkinson is in fine form. Starting off with the King and Parliament he makes you see how just so ---- unlikely this war was. (Perhaps if Farmer George had been a little less "touchy" about the whole thing it never would have happened.)

Atkinson has real understanding of the forces driving His Majesty's Government, and how the long lag time between messages to and from the colonies affected reactions and responses. No colony had ever broken away from the mother country at that time -- daunting.

It's a BIG book and only covers not quite the first two years. Still it's wonderful writing and wonderful history. Can't wait to see how the story ends.

We have it in our power to remake the world from the beginning
-- Thomas Paine

Oh, this sounds interesting!

>77 magicians_nephew: Love your review, Jim. I have had my eye on that one too to be honest.

"Can't wait to see how the story ends." ...........classic!

>70 magicians_nephew: LOL!! and the Star Trek reference. I needed that. Happy weekend!

The Unisphere was the centerpiece of the New York World's Fair in 1964-65.

It's still there in all its gleaming glory, not far from me in New York City

Happy Spring to all on here

The Red and the Black is Stendal's BIG novel about France after Napoleon and after the French Revolution.

Julian Sorel, the nobody son of a carpenter, is plucked out of his low class existence to become the tutor for the children of the Mayor in rural 1830's France. Though he is addressed as "Monsieur" and allowed to eat with the family he is always made aware of his low status and poverty. Oddly he winds up in a curious love-her hate-her affair l'amore with the mayor's young and naive wife. It doesn't end well.

Later he becomes the letter-writer and secretary for a well do to nobleman in Paris and we see him interact with the glittering nobility and the scheming clergy of Paris. And another hard to fathom romance that really doesn't end well.

The book is stiff with contempt for the class structure of Paris and the hypocrisy and the role-playing and game playing that everyone does almost as a matter of rote. The Revolution is in everyone's memory and everyone is looking over his shoulder ("Don't make the coachman mad ; he may come for you after the next Revolution")

There's good writing here but it goes on for a LONG time and Julian as a hero is kind of hard to root for - he hates the upper classes but he's just as shallow and stuck up as they are. The portrait under his pillow is not a girl - it's Napoleon!

This was a re-read and i really didn't enjoy myself this go round. Perhaps it was a bad translation. Or perhaps the time for this book has past.

Your milage as always may vary.

He's a well respected man of fashion
doing the best things so conservatively
-- Ray Davies

I totally agree with your take on Five Red Herrings, excruciating. Looks like you are enjoying The British Are Coming that's one that I picked up recently because I have an interest in the American Revolution. One of my ancestors fought for the American side which is odd from my point of view.

Good to hear from you, Meg. Some American historians seem to believe that the world began with the Boston Tea Party.

It's instructive to hear from the British side about the money they had put in to defend "the colonies" over the French and Indian Wars (at a time when England was also involved with major European wars).

And to hear how little tax an American paid, actually, compared to the tax bill of a Cornishman or a Cockney.

The British are Coming (something that was NEVER said during the time of Paul Revere's ride) takes a while to get going but its an amazing read.

Be curious to know what you make of it, cousin.

Laraine Newman was one of the founding members of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" in the glory days of "Saturday Night Live" (which is a while ago, alas) and she got a lot of good licks in. She never became a huge star like Jane Curtain or Gilda Radner but she was always funny and smart and hit her marks, as they say.

Now she has an audiobook out called May you Live in Interesting Times and it's worth a listen. It's not a line line line JOKE kind of book it's her life growing up and doing comedy and dealing with image stuff and insecurity stuff and body image stuff and drug stuff and other not fun things.

But it's also about her SNL friends and her later life doing voice overs and audio books and it's a lot of grand wonderful stories.

If you're my age and remember Laraine from those days, you might give it a look (or a listen) . Read by the author too, of course.

Lorne Michaels told me that SNL would be a cross between 60 Minutes and Monty Python. I didn’t know what Monty Python was and the idea of going to New York was really scary to me, but I thought, ‘Well, you know it will only last 13 weeks. That’ll be fun.
— Laraine Newman

>84 magicians_nephew: French and Indian Wars Over here it’s called the Seven Years War (I suppose there were so many wars with France that calling a war ‘French’ wouldn’t have been a very good description.) And it’s seen as part of a global war against the French with just some of that activity being in North America. I’d never heard the expression ’French and Indian Wars’ until we were on holiday in Virginia and went to a historical re-enactment.

>86 SandDune: you know your history, Rhian.

A lot of people on the American side know the French and Indian wars only as the time where George Washington learned to soldier, participated in a rather messy massacre, and wrote of finding "Something Charming" in the sound of bullets passing overhead.(Probably less charming if they actually hit you.)

But most people see it now as what Churchill described as the Real "First World War" involving fighting between major powers on several fronts on multiple continents.

The French got a black eye, and the British got Canada. King George decided that he needed a permanent standing army in the American colonies and he thought Americans should help out supporting it by paying some new taxes. Sounded pretty reasonable.

It didn't end well for him.

>87 magicians_nephew: I have no choice but to know a certain amount. I am surrounded by people who think discussion of something that happened in the eighteenth century is appropriate dinner time conversation. And they know much more than me!

Her Majesty's Government in England has announced plans to issue new fifty pound notes to honor Alan Turing, noted mathematician, computer logic pioneer, and World War II codebreaker.

Considering that the police hounded him to death for being homosexual, this is a nice token of reparation. (He received an official pardon for his conviction for "immoral acts" posthumously in 2013).

Don't know if i ever touched a fifty pound note when i was in England but I wish i could get my hands on one now.

>89 magicians_nephew: I can’t remember ever actually seeing a £50 note. I don’t know what they use them for. But cash in general seems to be dying out ..

>90 SandDune: yes the use of hard money seems to be dying out here also. I ran a book club that had dues of five dollars every six months. Dues day came and one young woman a new member was surprised - said she didn't have cash on her. The following month she came in wiht five singles in a little envelope from the bank - had she gotten the cash just to pay me? I always wondered

>90 SandDune:, >91 magicians_nephew: Thanks to covid, I've had the same $20 bill in my wallet for almost a year now. I really only used to use cash to buy my lunches at work, and since that's gone have almost no reason to carry it anymore.

I went to the ATM in March 2020. Haven't been since.

Yes and I know people here in New York who know a lot about "Big Data" -- and are steeped in electronic paranoia -- who avoid using plastic money because it leaves a "tracking trail" and shows Big Government (and other bad guys) where they've been and what they've purchased.

I guess I come down somewhere in the middle.

I really don't care who knows where I've been or what I've purchased so I'm happy with the plastic which seems cleaner and easier to me anyway.

>95 RebaRelishesReading: Yes i think the "contactless" or "touchless" buying is a big selling point for plastic in these times of COVID

Murder on the Last Frontier is a new series I started this week.

Charlotte Brody is a New York woman, a feminist, a journalist who follows her brother -- a doctor -- to small town in Alaska circa post World War I or so. She's running away from a man and a dissapointment and - like a lot of people - looking for a new start in the new frontier.

But almost on her first day there is a messy murder of a "lady of the evening" and Charlotte decides to investigate.

"A woman can't do that" is what she hears a lot and "Well yes she can!" is how she replies.

There is a will-he/won't-he love interest of course that goes on almost long enough to be annoyed but happily not quite. The cosy's and the romance novels sometimes swim together. This is not a romance novel, thank Goodness.

The author gets her Alaska history right and there are a lot of good touches here. If the murderer wasn't exactly too hard to spot, well sometimes they aren't.

I see there are two more in the series already out and I will be looking in on Charlotte again.

Nothing super special but a nice outing anyway,

There are many things done by the Midnight Sun
by the Men who moil for gold

One of the nice things about Murder on the Last Frontier is its knowledgable and sympathetic portrait of sex workers the women of the local house who took care of the men of the town.

In this time the man to woman ratio on the frontier was about 5 to 1 and sometimes worse. Brothels filled a need and the local sheriff learned to look the other way or simply accept the way things were.

Good Time Girls is a good solid history of the sex workers and others of the Alaska frontier. Though the book talks a lot about times earlier than in the mystery novel the stories and the issues are about the same.

Women came to Alaska like the men did to get away and make a fresh start. A lot of women did sex work to raise a stake and then went on to other things - shopkeeping and real estate and more.

It's a fascinating story and Lael Morgan tells it well. Recommended.

Sometimes I miss giving presentations at work

My book group took a look at Nights At the Circus Angela Carters big messy magical hard to describe wonderful novel.

in the waning days of 1899 a skeptical American Journalist is sent to interview "Fevvers", the "Cockney Venus" a big bawdy musical hall Artiste who performs dazzling tricks on the trapeze and - by the way - has real wings growing out of her shoulders that -- she claims -- she can fly with.

The journalist is out to prove her a hoax - but then he falls in love. The Swansdown-Scheherazade is having too much fun spinning a comic tale of her outrageous upbringing in several different brothels where fantasies are peddled wholesale to wealthy punters.

The story follows Fevvers on tour from London to St Petersburg in Russia and in a manic train ride across the wild lands of Siberia. We meet clowns and con men, musicians and tiger tamers, Grand Dukes and Shamen , and it is phantasmorigical and "WHAT did she just say?"over and over again. Whatever the pig says, goes.

The writing is amazing and baroque and lyrical and funny and heartbreaking sometimes in a single sentence. Carter has things to say about modern Capitalism and Society and women and society and all that is worth reading but mostly it's just an entertainment and hang on to your hat. Lots of memorable characters to meet and fall in love with along the ride.

People either like it or hate it. I loved it.

Damn everything but the circus
-- T. S. Eliot

>100 magicians_nephew: Great review. Better than mine.

I opened a book and in I strode
Now nobody can find me
I've left my chair my house my road
my town and my world behind me
I'm wearing the cloak I've slipped on the ring
I've swallowed the magic potion
I've fought with a dragon, dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean
I opened a book and made some friends
I shared their tears and laughter
And followed their road with its bumps and bends
To the Happily Ever After
I finished my book and out I came
The Cloak can no longer hide me
My chair and my house are just the same
But I have a Book inside me
-- Julia Donaldson

From a Facebook friend

Following up from an online talk at the New York Historical Society I picked up a copy of Renegade Women in Film and TV a slim volume of capsule biographies of women some very well know, some all but forgotten, in the long history of the Film industry.

Liz Weitzman has done her homework and there are lots of great stories in here of women pioneers and women trailblazers going back to the days of the two-reelers.

If I have a caveat it's that all the bios are basically the same length one (or sometimes two) pages with accompanying image. There are some women -- the wonderful Anna May Wong for example - where i could have been happy to see more stories told and some women - Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey for example - where I could have been happy to see fewer.

Good little book to thumb through and browse and learn something. I enjoyed it

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
-- Hedy Lamar

My current audio book to read (listen to?) in the gym and on the subway is The Splendid and the Vile Erik Larsen's latest.

It's a deep dive into that time during World War II where England stood alone against the German war machine, where Churchill "Marshaled the English Language and sent it off to War" when he had precious little else to marshall or send anywhere.

I've read a few books about this period (including Churchill's own The Second World War but Larsen knows how to dig down and find the little detail and the personal story that illuminates the whole. Lot of diary entries lots of great insights.

Hitler for the longest time saw England as his one real ally against Russian Communism, and dragged his feet when time came to really go to war with the Empire. But Churchill was not dragging his feet during the same period - to the contrary.

Lucky to have a reader on the audiobook with just a slight British accent who goes low and growls deep when Churchill himself is speaking. Really makes it live. Recommended.

“At the beginning of this war, megalomania was the only form of sanity.”
— Winston Churchill, writing in 1915!

Hi Jim!

>1 magicians_nephew: Born and raised in LA, we went to Disneyland about once a year throughout my childhood. I sat through the Carousel of Progress at Disneyland many times, always fascinated with the rotating stage and audio-animatronics.

>39 magicians_nephew: Five Red Herrings is the only novel by Sayers that I will also never, ever read again. All the same reasons as you gave plus none of the artists is even remotely likeable. I r-read all of Sayers fiction in 2019 and I think there is a reading challenge that started last year, with quite a few 75ers participating. Anyway, Sayers is one of my favorite authors ever except for this horrible book. Insult to injury: I had a tattered mass market paperback copy that turned out to be too tanned and too finely printed to read, so in order to complete my personal challenge I had to buy a new trade paperback copy.

>55 magicians_nephew: Clever.

>62 magicians_nephew: I still haven’t been able to stick the landing on Emma. It’s on my Currently Reading shelf, but I just can’t get past the WRONG! WRONG! And WRONG! Parts to get to the happy ending. The only of the 6 Austen novels I’ve never finished. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll try to open it again soon, and try to actually finish it.

>89 magicians_nephew: I still haven’t read The Enigma} by Andrew Hodges but have seen The Imitation Game based on the book. I’d love to have one of these £50 notes, too.

>105 karenmarie: thanks for stopping by Karen! Nice to see you in these parts.

I loved the movie of The Imitation Game so much for the sympathetic portrait of Turing by Benedict Cumberbach, that I was willing to overlook the MANY liberties that the film took with -- you know -- the actual FACTS of the case, which Hodges' book covers so well.

The movie will make you love Alan Turing ; the book will make you stand in awe of the so many things that he actually accomplished in his too short life.

This is a computer joke.
When i was at work I used to give a lecture to new hires about managing cookies.

When i'm reading something and want to take a little break from it - a palate cleanser you might say - I flip on my Kindle to my collection of Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" books.

This time it was two from the early days, Some Buried Caesar and The Golden Spiders

The first book brings Wolfe and Archie out of their comfort zone to a punkin doin's (a State Fair) in rural upstate New York between the wars. A millionaire's son has made a daring bet, (and is killed for it ) and a championship bull is listed among the murder suspects. Wolfe figures it all out very early in the day -- pure brain work - and then has to scramble to find proof to bring it all home.
(Spoiler alert: The Bull didn't do it).

The Golden Spiders is set in the back alleys of New York City and the beloved supporting cast makes appearances. For this one Archie and the gang really take center stage in a hard boiled murder case involving a gang of pretty nasty people who blackmail "Displaced Persons"(DP's) which was what they called Illegal Immigrants back in the days Post World War II.

The writing is witty and fast moving, the characters are larger than life but richly human too, and a good time was had by all.

Good times.

“A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But ((Nero Wolfe)) is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to West 34th Street in Manhattan and didn't find him."
-- Rex Stout

At the tail end of Oscar Season Judy and I signed up with the "Hulu" service and sat down to watch "Nomadland". The movie is still reverberating in my heart.

Fern is a woman of middle age who has lost her husband, her home and even her home town in the Great Recession. With what money she has left she buys a second hand van and fits it out with a bed, a stove and a toilet and goes on the road.

She makes ends meet by working at Amazon at Christmas, at the beet harvest in the fall, and at odd jobs in between. On the road she meets a lot of other people living the same way that she is, making do, not complaining, but always one missed paycheck or one expensive car repair away from disaster.

The movie is spare and clean and beautiful like a Hopper painting, with lots of images of empty land glowing in the clear desert sun. But it's the people, some of them played by real nomads really out there, who make the story sing.

Three conclusions:

(1) Frances McDormand may be the best actor working in America today, always fearless, always listening, always reacting always saying so much with little perfect small gestures and smiles and words.

(2) The American people who believe in independence and self reliance are still out there, getting along and getting by, one way or another

(3) The way America deals with the problem of unemployment and poverty in our elderly populace is a National Disgrace.

I will be curious to see if a movie that is being shown only on one small Streaming Service like Hulu can walk off with Best Picture on Sunday. But it has my vote.

>109 magicians_nephew: - I heard an interesting interview this morning on the radio with one of the guys in the film who played himself. It does make me want to see the film. I don't have Hulu so not sure if I will get to see it but the interview was worth a listen:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-22-2021-1.5997619/real...

>109 magicians_nephew: I totally agree that Nomadland, the film, is wonderful. So is the book it's based on -- highly recommended.

>108 magicians_nephew: Great minds… I started a read/re-read of the Nero Wolfe series last April while in a pandemic funk and just finished #34 of 47, Too Many Clients.

>109 magicians_nephew: I very much want to see Nomadland and will probably just pay Amazon’s $14.99 to stream it. I’d like to get my husband to watch it too, but no guarantees.

>110 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelly. We saw that Hulu would give us a month free trial and then would be 11.95 a month or so. Seeing Nomadland was worth spending 11.95 and more for us.

>111 RebaRelishesReading: I am very eager and curious to read the book now.

This week's Atlantic Monthly had an interesting little piece about the movie calling it a new take on the classic Western. Fern roams the dusty prairie like the Lone Ranger, living on her own but having little interactions and adventures in each small town or camp she passes through. A different way to think about the movie.

>112 karenmarie: a lot of the fun of the Nero Wolfe series is watching Stout play with his titles: "Too Many (Detectives, Women, Clients)", and "The (Mother, Father) Hunt" , and "Death of A (Doxy, Dude, Demon)".

The early ones are I think deeper and more psychological, especially Fer de lance and The League of Frightened Men, the later ones are more playful but still wonderful galloping reads. Not quite a "cosy" but certainly comfort food

>112 karenmarie: as Too Many Cooks exposes Archie's ( but not Wolfe's) not so subtle racism Too Many Clients has always bothered me for a brief scene at the end. (And Stout wrote A Right To Die to show a more racially sensitive Archie years later)

in "Clients", one of the characters has beaten up his wife, very seriously, blood and bruises in evidence, and Archie responds by sending the wife beater a bottle of champagne!

There was an ongoing thread about this on "The Wolfe Pack" club site years ago , with some people seeing Archie's gesture as ironic and NOT approving. But I dunno.

I think it's in Please Pass the Guilt where Archie has an extended scene with a passionate feminist, and seems at least to be supportive, even approving. Maybe Stout trying to make amends?

I just found that scene, Jim, and re-read it since the book was still out on my desk. It puzzled me when I read it last week and puzzled me again this morning, because it didn't seem logical. However, I thought then and still think that since the wife beater was so insanely jealous of his wife, precipitating Archie's involvement in the case with his original hair-brained idea, that Archie chose to send it to him instead of the wife so as to not precipitate any further jealousy. Archie does ask the wife if he should send a doctor.

Judy and I watch with the subtitles on.

>116 magicians_nephew: ...as do we. Love the cartoon.

>116 magicians_nephew: - HA! So, I am not the only one who thinks this! Good to know....;-)

Love the John Masefield "pome" you mentioned up top. Have you heard it put to music by John Ireland? Here's a recording of Paul Robeson singing it; it's one of my favorite pieces (not necc. Robeson, but anyone, really....)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K76xOYF-8Ss

>116 magicians_nephew: We do it too...

>119 Chatterbox: nice to hear that Suzanne. We hear a lot of Broadway singers we like but the real bass baritone voice is a rarity. Paul Robeson gives me shivers.

Brian Stokes Mitchell sings in that range sometimes, and of course we heard Paulo Szot a few years ago making the rafters rumble in the Enrico Caruso role in "South Pacific"

Some Enchanted Evening

After seeing the wonderful Flannery documentary on Public Television I was ready to read her again, and my Book Circle was doing Wise Blood so there you go.

A young and very much disillusioned man returns to the small town South after World War II. He believes in nothing he loves nothing his faith is gone.

After encountering a strange street preacher/beggar he decides to start a new Church, the Church of Christ WITHOUT Christ. Without faith. Without forgiveness. Believe in nothing and you won't be fooled.

He encounters a number of classic Southern grotesques and suffers for his new conviction. Men are monsters under the skin and there is much brutality and violence before an ending that seems brutal and meaningless. (The author says this is a story of "redemption" it is certainly a story about martyrdom.)

Her descriptions are well observed and unpitying and her writing is sharp and vivid. A lot of good stuff here but in the end it didn't come together for me.

The Violent Bear it Away her second novel, holds together better. And her short stories are gems to be treasured.

“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people”
― Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Jim, I'm updating the reading stats but am completely lost as to the total of books you read this year. Around 20 I'm guessing but it is a complete guess. Can you help?

Just ran the list Paul and it comes to 26 as of today.

Right on schedules (if I'm lucky) to get my 75 by the end of the year.

All best regards

-j-

And this will be 27, Paul.

Melissa Febos is a bright smart writer in the subject of sex and sexuality. (Her most recent collections of essays is "Girlhood")

So this week i went back to her first book, Whip Smart a curious coming of age story about a girl in college at loose ends who falls into being a professional dominatrix "to earn some extra money".

She is quick to point out that while a dominatrix is considered a "sex worker" she does NOT actually have sex with her clients. What she does instead is role play complex fantasies of domination and submission where detailed scenarios require her to look the naked needs of her clients full in the face; (and perhaps look into her own needs as well).

She starts out saying she's only in it for the money, but quickly comes to understand that feeling powerful and feeling desired in a space that she can control is a scenario that she gets something out of too. Hmm.

She notes that sex workers who have their heads on straight sometimes migrate to medical careers, nurses and physical therapists and suchlike. Learning to be un-squeamish about the human body means learning to be equally un-squeamish about yourself too, perhaps?

The writing is cool and clinical except when it is tart and funny. She's a terrific observer. She is a terrific writer.

I have her new book on the Kindle, cant wait to dive in and meet the older and wiser Melissa.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
-- Theodore Rothke

>124 magicians_nephew: Thanks Jim. As I get older I don't count as well as I used to! :D

A library card works wonders

>128 magicians_nephew: lol :)

I think it was Darryl who mentioned in passing that he was going to read Interior Chinatown and I thought -- "That sounds interesting. Let's have that"

Charles Yu has written a novel in the form of a Movie Script about the life of a young man from China and his family. He lives in a Room in a shabby hotel and works - when he works - as a face in the crowd for scenes set in Chinatown of the popular cop show "Black and White". He dreams of moving up to "guy actually plying a character" or even "Special Guest Star" employing his fancy but limited Kung Fu skills. But even he realizing that playing that role - even when you're good at it - is a trap.

(Need I mention that the movie script and the TV show are basically just metaphors for things happening in this mans life?)

Through the lens of this slam bam TV show (so proud of itself for addressing the issues of Black and White Racism) we see the day to day of an Asian life - being invisible.

We see Willis' father and mother also torn out of their homeland culture and trapped in the web of stereotyping and otherness. We see his wife and his daughter learning to redefine themselves in new American ways.

The book ends with a riotous courtroom scene that lays out the historic discrimination that Asians have experienced in America for centuries. If you don't know your history some of this may be shocking for you.

Yu is a talented writer who totally gets that we are all running movies of our lives.

Our book group loved this book. Maybe you will too.

Having fun with a new book from the LT 'Early Readers" program.

The Play's the Thing is a Time Travel fantasy with a LOT of twists. Jessica is an English Professor at a small American college teaching Shakespeare to undergrads. Suddenly she walks through a door and finds herself not only in Shakespeare's time and city but also in Shakespeare's bedroom!

The author has done her homework and the details of life in Shakespeares time ring true. This is a "Life in Shakespeare's Day" history brought home very up close and personal.The things that a modern woman takes for granted that are just not available in the 1600's would boggle the mind.

Fun adventure book with a lot of lovely details and a spunky funny character. Lots of time travel stories gloss over the day to day minutia but not this one - and thats the fun.

First book by a new author. Looking forward to reading her next one.

“Wonderful women! Have you ever thought how much we all, and women especially, owe to Shakespeare for his vindication of women in these fearless, high-spirited, resolute and intelligent heroines?”
-- Dame Ellen Terry

As I get older I read on my Kindle more and more but I remember and honor Books!

>134 magicians_nephew: - *snort*

>134 magicians_nephew:

Way back in 2000, my sister the librarian sent me this:

"Technological Report: Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized
Knowledge device called B.O.O.K.

The "BOOK" is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: No wires, no
electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on.
It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover!
Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere-even sitting in armchair by
the fire-yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM
disc.

Here's how it works...

Each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs in half.

Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in information density; for now BOOKs with more information simply use more pages. This
makes them thicker and harder to carry, and has drawn some criticism from the mobile computing crowd. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering
information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening
it. The BOOK never crashes and never needs rebooting, though like other display devices it can become unusable if dropped overboard. The "browse"
feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.

An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session-even if the BOOK has been closed.
BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous bookmarkers can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK.

The media is ideal for long term archive use, several field trials have proven that the media will still be readable in several centuries, and because of its simple user interface it will be compatible with future
reading devices.

You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication
Language Stylus (Pencils). Portable, durable, and affordable, the BOOK is being hailed as the entertainment wave of the future. The BOOK's appeal
seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform."

Of course, now in 2021, she reads everything on her tablet.

>136 ffortsa: - We have a bookstore here in Toronto, called Book City. They have their own version of the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device called B.O.O.K. printed on one side of the store's bookmarks! I love it!

>136 ffortsa: Isaac Asimov wrote a very clever short story called The Holmes-Ginsbook Device (and why do i remember this?) where two engineers worked backwards from the then ubiquitous electronic book to the "Scroll" to, at last, pages from a scroll / ebook printed out and stacked and bound into the titular "Holmes-Ginsbook" device. Most people just referred to it as a "Book" for short.

>137 jessibud2: I love that the library has that posted!

Having a great time with The Secret to Superhuman Strength Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel cum memoir of her lifelong journey towards physical strength and confidence and perhaps something more.

You may remember Bechdel as the one who wrote Fun Home and Dykes to Watch out for and other thoughtful and funny cartoon based ruminations.

She started out as a kid with her family running and riding her bike up the local "bike Hill' in New England. Riding meant freedom. Riding meant independence.

From there we see her exploring running and yoga and karate and meditation, with side trips into the life stories of female (and male) philosophers and others. (Emerson could have a baby and hand it off to his wife and go on lecturing - women philosophers and thinkers sometimes had to go on doing the dishes and milking the cows. But they persisted.)

People who read comic books might remember those "Charles Atlas" ads in the back that promised "superhuman strength" and the ability to smack the bully on the beach right in the kisser. Guess what? Women like to be strong too.

There's a "Where's Waldo" tone to the book that is charming and engaging. Our heroine realizes in the end that when you pump your way to the top of the mountain, what you may see before you is the NEXT mountain you are going to want to climb - some day.

Highly recommended. Enjoy it. I did.

“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.'
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't know but we gotta go.”
― Jack Kerouac

I'm not really a fan of "cosy" mysteries bit I do enjoy what I call "Comfortable" ones, with a regular supporting cast and a lot of human touches - even comedy - from the little excentricities of the community that the book is set in.

Which brings us to A Killer in King's Cove, the first book of a new series set in British Columbia post World War II.

Lane is a British woman looking for a change after a stressful war. She comes out to rural small town BC to write and rest. But her past follows her - and her new neighbors may be more than meets the eye too.

It's hard to kick off a new series - there is so much scenery to hang up and spear carriers to introduce. Some of this drags and some of this is just in the way.

You would not believe the number of young women who were top notch intelligence analysts during the War but here comes yet another one.

And if everyone says "Oh yes, good old "A" - he died mysteriously in the war" -- then you can just bet your Wellington boots that good old "A" will show up unexpectedly and drop a trout in the milk with some unexpected consequences..

You can also just bet that if the female lead locks horns with the local Detective Inspector, that the two will fumble their silly ways into some sort of romantic entanglement by book three. (boo! hiss!) .

But despite all that I liked our Miss Lane and her supporting cast and will look for the next ones in the series.

What can I say? I'm comfortable with it

During Asian American and Pacific Islander month and following up on reading Interior Chinatown a new book on the whole history of Asians in America has fallen into my hands.

The Making of Asian America is a big scholarly book commendable for its detail and its depth of research. Think the first Asians showed up in the Americas at the time of the California Gold Rush? Chinese and Filipino sailors and businessmen were active in Peru and other parts of Spanish South America at least a century before that.

When the British in the Caribbean "freed" their Black workers they turned around and imported Chinese "indentured servants" in their place.
Though the "indentured" had some rights they were cruelly treated and lies to and abused.

There are details here of the internment camps during World War II that will tear at your heart. The book makes it clear that the treatment of American born Japanese was based much more on politics than on any danger they might have posed to national security.

It's a scholarly book with some dry stretches, interspersed with stories that excite and fascinate. One of the very first ships sent out from the newborn United States of America was the "Empress of China" sent around the horn to buy tea for American tables to bypass the (former) British monopoly.
(Gee where did you think the tea came from anyway?)

I got a lot out of it. History is always about then - and its always about now.

>144 magicians_nephew: - I remember that one, Jim. It's a poignant one, isn't it? November 11 is our Remembrance Day here in Canada, traditionally when we all wear our poppies. Do you have the poppy symbol in the States for your Memorial Day (which I'm assuming is your equivalent)?

I also remember learning the poem in school, written by Canadian Dr. John McCrae:

In Flanders Fields
BY JOHN MCCRAE

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

yes the poppy is an important symbol here too - though we are also forever explaining it to the next generations.

In the States we have Memorial Day (this weekend) to honor the fallen and Veterans Day on November 11th to honor all those who served.

Do you know this one, Shelley? It's another poem about flowers.

Naming of Parts (1942)
BY HENRY REED

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.

Just a few words about The Finkler Question a Man Booker prize from a few years ago that seems curiously topical these days.

Treslove is a man of middle years, NOT Jewish, living in the London of the new millennium.

He has two Jewish friends, Libor an older man a recent widower who has a comfortable career as a film writer, and "Finkler" a successful writer and speaker who describes himself as an "Ashamed Jew" a Jew who cannot does not approve of what the Jews in Israel are doing to the Palestinians.

So there's a lot going on here. "Moral Behavior" for Jews as individuals and as a state, what being Jewish means exactly, friendship and competition, truth and lies, duties and responsibilities of men as fathers and husbands, and a whole lot more.

The writing is amazing and can go effortlessly from sadness to howling farce in a sentence. The conversations are crisp and sharp and really move the book along and delineate the characters. The characters are complex and interesting if not always likable.

Interesting that Finkler was written ten years ago as an anti Zionist Jew and more or less the villain of the piece; nowadays Jews and Liberals who questions the actions of the Jewish state are perhaps seen a little differently.

As a non Jew who grew up in a very Jewish city and community, I felt a little bit Treslove's standing both inside and outside of the Jewish conversation.

The author is keeping a lot of different balls in the air as he tells his story - easy to get overwhelmed.

"The Finkler Question" - is what used to be called "The Jewish Question" in franker times - what is the role of the Jew in modern society? A living fossil? A moral compass? or something somewhere in between.

Recommended. Your milage may vary.

>147 magicians_nephew: Nice review Jim. The book certainly does sound "curiously topical". It's sad that there are so many questions humanity seems unable to deal with. I'm torn between wanting to read the book and wanting to just bury my head.

>146 magicians_nephew: - I am not familiar with that one, Jim. Makes me a bit uneasy...

>147 magicians_nephew: - I have had that book on my shelf for ages, just never got to it. You may have just nudged it up a few notches!

And while it sounds virtuous and reasonable, I am not 100% sure I can agree with those Ethics of the Fathers.... there are always exceptions, ya know!

Having a good time this week with a book from LT's "Early Reviewers" stash.

Bury the Lead is a new Young Adult novel with a lot going for it. The heroine is a high school journalism student, and a lover of Sherlock Holmes, who dreams of becoming an investigative journalist and using Holmes' methods of deduction to solve mysteries.

Of course, there is a mystery on hand where a few kids from Kennedy's school have gone missing, or died, which may be tied in to a "Curse" going back many years before. Lot of suspects and lots of clue tracking until the hair raising conclusion.

Our author takes her time to get her story up and running, but she is such an entertaining narrator, that you don't mind that so much.
There is a lively and interesting supporting cast including a man who runs the local doughnut shop, and Kennedy's sister, a feisty paraplegic who is training to ride horses in the next Para Olympics.

A curious aside: Our heroine Kennedy establishes herself as an "ace" -- an asexual person -- with no sexual feelings towards boys or girls or anything else apparently. This aspect of her personality is described and discussed with clarity and with sympathy and in detail, so much so that I thought it would be a factor in the solving of the many mysteries at the end of the tale. But it wasn't. To be continued.

The book is clearly hoping to be book "1"of a new series, and more power to it, if so. Be happy to spend time again with Kennedy and her sister and her high school friends.

The Game's afoot!

"Romance and detective work won't mix tonight
-- Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock

>147 magicians_nephew: I read The Finkler Question some years ago when it came out first, and to be honest can’t remember anything about it (which is unusual for me) except the fact that I didn’t like it at all.

>151 SandDune: Interesting Rhian.

Though the book is set in London our New York City based book group mostly liked it - with some exceptions.

New York is a very Jewish city - perhaps more so than London - so some of the talk about the Jewish community and the Jewish culture and the Jewish response to modern Zionism may have landed differently.

Hope all is well with you.

>152 magicians_nephew: I read it for my book club, and I think we had had a run on books on angsty middle-aged middle-class men living in North London, and were totally fed up with them, which probably didn’t help. But I don’t think anyone at my book club liked it, from what I remember.

>153 SandDune: everyone in my book group agreed that the women in the book are much more interesting and likable than the men.

We have a rule in our club not to read books about Jewish men kvetching (*) more often than once a year

(*) Bitching

>133 magicians_nephew: Yes indeed. We still gotta love real paper books. ; )

Nice reviews of the Finkler Question and Bury the Lead. I was not familiar with the term Ace. Good to know. Wishing you a happy weekend!

From a Facebook Friend

Having a good time with Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry which I have been listening to - slowly - as an audiobook.

Dr. Tyson is an affable and low key guide alternately awe-struck and matter of fact about the mysteries and wonders of the universe around us. He is comfortable with exponding the newest theories as well as teaching the history of science from generations ago.

Some chapters you want to go back and listen to again - Wait? What? - the concepts and the Big Picture here and how that thing relates to this thing can take a while to get your head around.

But if you're curious about the current state of play and how astronomy and physics sometimes play with the same toys, this is a pretty good place to start. I liked it.

The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation. Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
-- Albert Einstein

Happy Father's Day, Jim, if you are celebrating and if not have a splendid weekend anyhow.

>159 PaulCranswick: Thanks for stopping by , Paul.

It's a day for remembering my Father and Judy's father too, both now passed on.

Good memories.

Went back to read Ursula K. le Guin's The Disposessed again after many years and was struck again by what an amazing book it is.

Ther are two planets who sort of circle each other - each planet is the other planet's "moon" .

One planet is poor and arid with few resources and is organized in a society that is based on a curious form of Anarchy - where Anarchy doesn't really mean "no government" but it means no private ownership (of anything really) and no coercion - no one is forced to participate on any level, but most everyone helps out and pitches in to get things done that need doing to keep the world moving along. It's a classic frontier society.

The other planet is rich with resources and organized around "Profiteering" - buying and selling in a free form version of Capitalism and "democracy" . And fierce competition for power and status and "owning" things.

So a scientist from the anarchy planet visits the rich planet, which gives Le Guin free rein to discuss the plusses and minuses of BOTH societies and how they get along and how they each limit - and empower - their citizens. Prepare to have some of your most cherished assumptions thrown down and tromped on.

If i have a complain it's that the book is so chock full of world-building - Le Guin doesn't want you to pick holes in her logic or find flaws in her model - that sometimes it can be very dry and didactic. But honestly - not a word is wasted.

The writing is clear and fluid (though very different from the rich flowing poetry of the EarthSea books) and I found myself underlining words and highlighting phrases on every page.

She is honest enough to show the flaws in BOTH arguments - and wise enough to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

An amazing book. Le Guin is not just the best fantasy writer of the century she is one of the best WRITERS, period.

Very Highly recommended.

The conventionality of simultaneity pertains to judgments of events in just one inertial frame. It asserts that there is no single, correct judgment of simultaneity. One person may assign relations of simultaneity one way; another person may do it differently. Within some limits, neither is factually wrong.
--Albert Einstein

Some history writers really make you work for it.

Niall Ferguson is a curious combination of historian and economist and his books reflect that.

His The Pity of War is World World I seen through the eyes of a somewhat contrarian economist, poking holes in "what everybody knows" and questioning some of the long lasting misconceptions about the war.

Again it's not a book to pick up as an introduction to WWI history; he assumes you know the people and the places. Helps to have Max Hastings or even B. F. Liddell-Hart at your elbow for cross checking.

But it's a great book to make you start thinking and thinking fresh thought about the war and the history of the war. Fascinating. Surprising. and Good!

If you're my age or close to it and you hear "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" your mind may go to the hapless Mickey Mouse in that sequence of "Fantasia" where he tries to cast a spell and it doesn't work out so well.

But the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" theme goes back a lot farther than that. (In fact you could argue that the whole of the "Harry Potter" universe is just one big "Sorcerer's Apprentice" story).

So The Sorcerer's Apprentice a new anthology edited by Jack Zipes crossed my path, I ate it up with sugar and jam.

It's the kind of book I love, half scholarly half story telling, and i can't tell you which half i like best. Lovely to read stories collected from different cultures including Ovid and the Brother Grimm, and lovely to read analysis and historical information on where these stories came from and why they have resonated down the years.

A book to keep by the bedside table to dip into one story at a time.

Glorious.

Once upon a time, O best Beloved . . . . .

The Secret to Superhuman Strength looks like a good one, Jim. Nice to see that you are enjoying the Lane Winslow series. That's one I enjoy reading.

>166 Familyhistorian:

Thanks for stopping by, Meg. Mysteries set in BC must be extra fun for you - the same way that mysteries set in New York City always have a little extra something for us here - even when, on occasion, they get the geography or the history of a place hilariously wrong.

Our book group took a look at Graham Greenes
The Quiet American and though ive read it before i was again just struck by what a really remarkable piece of work is it.

We come in on Viet Nam in the middle 50's. The French are still hanging on; the Americans are just beginning to sniff around. War is daily; war is always.

We met Fowler an older and much disillusioned Brit who fiercely is not on anybody's side ; he's just a reporter, get it? He'll give you the facts -- don't ask for any opinions.

And Pyle the young naive but tough American who sees the world in Black and White (or Red and Not-Red) and has a book of theory to back him up. Victory is his goal and morality is NOT his shield and buckler.

And Phoung the Phoenix the young girl who moves between them, not speaking not judging just waiting and waiting to see what she can make of it all.. She's a survivor.

It's a book about guilt and responsibility and morality and honesty and it slowly and elegantly draws the world for us to look at. Fowler is far from perfect but he is our hero and our guide in this mirror mirror universe. The ending is as perfect and as inevitable as tropical sundown.

I've read a lot of Greene and this is the one that really stays with me. Amazing. Read it.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-- W. B. Yeats

>168 magicians_nephew: very apt quote, Jim

so sue me I think this is funny.

>170 magicians_nephew: Got a smile from me :)

had a three hour train trip from Boston to New York ahead of me and nothing on my Kindle or in my bag appealed to me.

So I hit the Kindle buy button and came up with Landslide Michael Woolfe's pop-up book about the last days of the Trump Administration.

The writing is breathless, bombastic, and obvious. It makes Trump and everyone around him look like a half-witted baboon. Jared Kushner is presented as the king of Cover-your-Ass, curiously burnishing his OWN legacy, and everyone else is just there to scamper to and fro and tell the King what the King wants to hear. No adults in this room.

The only new insights for me were (1) that the "Election was Stolen" idea seems to originate from Rudy Giuliani, and (2) that the defense at Trump's second Impeachment trial was just as dizzy and disorganized backstage as it looked on television.

This is Woolfe's third book on Trump in three years. You would think he had something interesting to say about his subject. You'd be wrong.

If this had been a physical book I would have pitched it out the train window as we rumbled through the Bronx wastelands.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

"Journalism is the first rough draft of history"
--Philip L. Graham

Judy turned me on to Regeneration a new historical novel and an author Pat Barker who was new to me too.

Siegfrid Sasson, the soldier poet of World War I has published a "Declaration" of his feelings that the war is accomplishing nothing but the death and mutiliation of tens of thousands of men.

This in the middle of the war is shocking. Some want to court-martial him and send him to prison. But instead he is sent off to a "Nerve Regeneration" clinic where a wise and sympathetic doctor will try to work with him and come to understanding.

We meet other soldiers who have been brutally traumatized by the war, and the horrors of war are not skimped or understated. Trench warfare was a brutal ugly, horrifying soul destroying business

The goal of "Nerve Regeneration" is to get men "fit", somehow to be sent back to the front for more service and more horror.

The book details treatment and compassion for men who have suffered terribly and lost everything even their sanity.

Beautiful understated writing. Barker has been called "The only woman who understands war" and the deep research she has done shows here.

First book of a trilogy and I can't wait to read the next two.

Powerful, Brilliant. Wow!

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do"
-- Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

>173 magicians_nephew: I was as impressed with Regeneration, Jim. I found next two also very good.

>174 FAMeulstee: Thanks we're looking forward to reading them

Should have saved this one for next Veterans Day

>176 magicians_nephew: lol -- literally :)

>176 magicians_nephew: Hilarious!

>178 kidzdoc: Thanks for stopping by, Darryl!

Hope to see you F2F one of these fine days.

>179 magicians_nephew: I would love to see you and Judy again soon, Jim! I'm long overdue for a trip to NYC; the last time I was in the city was when I met up with Katie, Liz and Vivian in 2018 or 2019. With any luck I can get back there sometime this autumn, and I'll touch base well in advance if that is a possibility.

>180 kidzdoc: Yes, do give us a heads-up. We have some trips planned for September and October (if I ever actually make the plane reservations), and I'd hate to miss you when you come up.

>176 magicians_nephew: Epic. I laughed out loud.

>182 weird_O: Thanks for stopping by Bill. yes I can just hear the Group Captain telling the story and chuckling to unload the punch line at the end.

The News From Paraguay is a book that both fascinated and frustrated me.

It's the story about Ella, an Irish demimonde who finds herself in Paris in the 1850's running out of money and casting about for something new.

She falls in (and falls in love) with Franco Lopez, the son of the current ruler of Paraguay, who is in Paris as ambassador and courts her with rich presents and his own band of traveling musicians.

So this starts out kinda like a romance novel with a meet-cute and all the trappings, no?

But then Elle and Franco return to Paraguay, and the book charges off in a whole new direction. Franco wants to make Paraguay "as great as France" with an opera house and modern roads and all the cultural la-de-dahs.

But his way of getting there is to start a messy, bloody, torturous war with his neighbors, Argentina and Uruguay, and you know it doesn't go well.

Aside from Ella and Franco there are sisters, servants, horses, English advisors and other hangers-on. The book is set up as history (and a lot of these people are real people) but you never really get to know them. Some of the little side stories are funny and some are terrible and heart-breaking.

So what's it all about, Alfie? I'll tell you - I don't know. Won itself a National Book Award but confused the pants off a lot of the voters and readers too. I liked the writing (and the research) but it confused the pants off me too.

Your milage may very.

Nobody can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or María, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of (. . . . ) Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name.
-- Pablo Neruda

>181 ffortsa: Will do, Judy. Right now I have two trips definitely planned: Aug 25 to Sep 2 to Philadelphia to visit my parents, and Sep 14-28 to Lisbon. I'll go to the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Philadelphia from Oct 8-12, but I've also requested two weeks of vacation that month, which I plan to use to return to London.

Poking a nose into a new historical murder mystery series with a lot of promise.

Eve Swift and the Blitz Bad Wolf introduces a plucky young girl who works with the Women's Volunteers during World War II and the Blitz. For a nice change the book isn't set in London but Norfolk, a city that also was hit hard by German bombers and struggled to survive.

The book is fast moving and full of lovely little details of Norfolk life and times. There is a engaging cast of nice characters including Eve's policeman boy friend and an old woman who may have some kind of magic powers.

The plotting is straightforward and for a while i thought this was meant to be a Young Adult book, if not for the detailed exploration of the girls burgeoning sex life. A lot of girls during the scary days of the War declared "I'm not going to die a virgin" and took such matters into their own hands. Nice to see sex between two young people depicted so directly and without judgement.

There's a second book out already and I'm looking forward to it.

(curious no touchstone for this book on LT)

>70 magicians_nephew: Hilarious!

>170 magicians_nephew: This one got me, too, Jim.

>116 magicians_nephew: We also watch the British detective shows with subtitles. The charming accents can be difficult to decipher.

I'm glad The Splendid and the Vile worked for you. I liked that one a lot. I just wish he'd said a bit more about the daughter, who ended up being high profile in her own right.

I've requested The Secret to Superhuman Strength from the library. I'm glad it got your thumbs-up.

>186 jnwelch: Thanks for stopping by Joe - its a pleasure to see you in these parts.

I wrote "In these parts" and the LT autocorrect demon changes it to "Enthuse parts" - so I guess that means my parts are enthused to see you posting here.

all good wishes.

>158 magicians_nephew: Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry was one that I enjoyed. Happy Sunday and happy reading! : )

>188 Berly: Thanks for stopping by Kim. Hope you are getting back on your feet this week.

I've spent the week re-reading old mystery books, as Judy likes to do. The pick this week was Robert B. Parker's Early Autumn one of his books about the Boston Private eye with no first name, Spenser.

In this one the "mystery" is almost secondary to the story of Spenser finding a teen age boy being ignored and left unattended by his battling and divorced parents.

Here the mystery is : can Spenser and Susan pick up this aimless affectless boy and teach him manners - and humanity - and agency in the difficult and morally ambiguous world.

Paul the boy in question is one of the few recurring characters in the Spenser series and its a joy to see him here in his early unformed state. And see the progress he makes in growing up under Spenser's rough hewn tutelage.

There are good books and bad books in the Spenser series. This is one of the really good ones.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-- Henry David Thoreau

>189 magicians_nephew: - After our short trip to Boston, I'm tinkering with trying a Spenser novel while the city is fresh in my mind...

I Know! Parker describes the city so well and if you know Boston its a kick - like reading books set in New York City if you live in New York City.

I remember laughing out loud a while back when Spenser was negotiating (and wryly cursing) snarled traffic around the (then) Big Dig tunnel project that messed up Boston traffic for ever.

Early Autumn is one of the really good ones in the series. It’s the one an uncle started me with in the series, and I was quickly hooked. Another one that stood out for me was Looking for Rachel Wallace.

>192 jnwelch: Looking for Rachel Wallace is the one I'm reading now.

And for a change of pace from the Spenser books I picked up This Girl For Hire the first of the series introducing Honey West, the tough smart sexy female private eye working the decadent and corrupt Hollywood Beat.

(and are we meant to think of This Gun For Hire Eric Ambler's semi serious little comic spy novel? )

This is the death of a once famous actor now on the skids, and EVERYBODY within earshot has a connection and a motive. The action is fast paced, and Honey is an interesting character, sexy and smart, and the windup is highly satisfactory.

When a suspect invites her to swim (Practically) nude in his pool she politely declines, then pushes the guy into the pool says goodnight and calls herself a cab and goes home. How would Mike Hammer have handled that?

Remember Anne Francis playing the role in a too-brief sixties TV show. I think thats when i first heard of the character.

If Modesty Blaise had been a California girl, (or Emma Peel) she might have grown up to be Honey West.

Hi Jim!

>194 magicians_nephew: Bill and I just watched, for the first time ever, Columbo, and Anne Francis was in several episodes. I recognized her from Honey West, although I don't really remember watching the series.

This Girl for Hire is available on Kindle today for $2, so I clicked and now have it. No willpower.

>195 karenmarie: Love it. We happened to look at the "oldies" TV channel here and happened to find an old "Mission:Impossible" episode where Anne Francis was the girl agent on the team. Cool and smart and sexy, as always.

The Honey West Books are formulaic but fun with the twist of a woman instead of a man being the detective. Back in the days that was a real novelty.

James Loewen, the man who wrote Lies my Teacher Told Me and many other wonderful books, passed away this week.

His patient cool dissection of the Columbus Fables that were common when i was a kid is wonderful and enlightening. If we celebrate "Indigenous Peoples Day" instead of Columbus Day, Loewen is one of the big reasons for the change.

He wrote about the myth of the "Lost Cause" after the Civil War. Those Lies take a powerful lot of killing. But every time i see someone pulling down a hunk of ballast disguised as a Confederate General, I think of Loewen.

You have to take your hat off when someone sits down and changes how you see the world.

“He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins."
—Frederick Douglass

Coincidence, Jim. I happened upon a clean copy of the second edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me just in early July. I've had it on the TBR "short shelf" since I got it. Then I read Loewen's obit in the Times. Shifting it closer to the "read-me-next" position.

>198 weird_O: bet you will be glad you did, Bill

>176 magicians_nephew: Priceless, I don't know how I missed that one the last time I lurked here.

Sad to see that Loewen has passed away. In the writing of history we have of course the benefit of a modern and fuller perspective but some of the stuff written (and not just about American history) is plain deceit. His clear-eyed corrections did a lot of good.

>189 magicians_nephew: I love the Spenser character and I have missed that installment. Duly added to my WL!

And I have lived in and around Boston for many years, so I love the backdrop, too.

The Leopard has been called the greatest novel in all Sicilian and perhaps all Italian history. That's a lot to live up to. Let's have a look.

Our "Leopard" is the Prince the current Lord descended from centuries of Lords, who with his family rules over a vast holding that is farmed and run by his overseers and his staff.

It's 1860 or so. Italy and Sicily are just a batch of loosely knit principalities, not yet in any way unified as a nation.

With his Mistress at his beck and call and his own personal Chaplin on hand, he is oriented to the sacred and the profane.

But there are changes in the wind. Garibaldi and his Red Shirts have landed, and the nation may be united under a government that does not particularly look kindly on hereditary Princes.

The Princes neighbor the vulgar peasant farmer has schemed and bargained (and maybe stolen?) and guess what? may have more money than the Prince does. And in the modern Scicily it is Money more than dynasty that calls the tune.

The book is a melancholy tale of the decline and fall and the end of an era. The Prince is a likable sod who wisely decides to go along with the new regime and not make a fuss. He sees clearly around him the suffering and the poverty of his people, and yet does nothing. His Title and his power will evaporate in a generation.

The author has great affection for these people even as his x-ray eyes see the good parts and the bad ones too.

Lovely writing and a leisurely pace but an enjoyable journey. You may remember the movie with Burt Lancaster.

If you haven't read it, highly recommended.

Dorothy Parker, the jazz age poet, critic and "wit" lived a troubled life and then fell into an equally troubled afterlife. Her copyrights were assigned to The NAACP and Martin Luther King ; her executrix was her long time friend Lillian Hellman.

But with one thing or another, and another, and another, they did never get around to deciding what to do with her ashes. After fifty years of marking time in the filing cabinets of various lawyers, she was laid in the earth last year in the Rothschild family plot on Brooklyn.

And now friends and readers (and the makers of Dorothy Parker gin!) have chipped in and provided her with a headstone.

Mrs. Parker left so many possible epitaphs in her writings:

Excuse My Dust
If you can read this, you've come to close
I'm here against my better judgement

But they settled on this one:

Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way, and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty.

The Portable Dorothy Parker is a good place to start if you want to reacquaint yourself with her work.
What Fresh Hell is This is my favorite of several books about her life.

One more if you will permit:

(Her) little trills and chirpings were her best.
No music like the nightingale's was born
Within her throat; but she, too, laid her breast
Upon a thorn.

Rest now, Dottie. And thanks.

>203 magicians_nephew: Thank you Jim. That was lovely.

A Bargain of Blood and Gold is a new "Paranormal Romance" book I received from the LT Early Reader program.

It's about a young man, Johnathan, in a late 19th century New England. He has been trained by "The Society" to be a Hunter, a man who goes out and does battle with vampires and other supernatural evils. He has had a troubled past.

On his first assignment he is sent to a small logging town to find and do battle with something that is killing young girls. Spoiler alert: it's NOT a vampire.

in fact he meets and teams up with the resident vampire in the town, and a smart and fierce parson's daughter, and we're off at a gallop.

(Did I mention that the vampire hunter - and the vampire - are gay? Interesting turn of events that is written sympathetically and engagingly. If i was the parsons daughter, I think I would feel let down. (Or as Dorothy Parker would say "If you don't knit, bring a book". ))

It's the first book in a hoped for series and the author has a lot of world building to do. Some of it is well done and some of it is rather slapdash and some of it is "Wait -- what?". There is just Too Much Backstory and a lot of sometimes confusing plotting that is just get on with it already.

The author has done her homework on Irish myths and legends, and she is all over with about fairies being cute and innocent with gossamer wings. There is real genuine horror here.

The ending is rather a fumble and a rush with a LOT of things unresolved, and seems mostly to be to set up the next book in the series.

I might pick up the next one. Or maybe not. But this one needed another pass through the authors typewriter.

Your milage may vary.

>197 magicians_nephew:. “Like”

I’ve thought about reading The Leopard several times over the years and have never done it. A tip of the hat to you for getting it done. You’ve got me thinking about it again.

Hi Jim!

>203 magicians_nephew: Very nice. And I’m glad she’s finally resting in peace. I’ve got The Portable Dorothy Parker and What Fresh Hell is This on my shelves, as yet unread. I also have on my shelves, and have read and loved, her book of poetry Enough Rope.

Jim! I can always count on you to be around. :) I should read The Leopard thanks for reminding me.

>208 karenmarie: some of the best parts of Enough Rope are included in the "Portable" Dorothy. They say of all the "Portables" the only ones that have been continuously in print over the years were The Bible, Shakespeare and Parker. Tells you something.

>209 The_Hibernator: Nice to see you in these parts Rachael. I know you have your hands full these days.

We liked The Leopard a lot and now want to track down the Burt Lancaster Movie.

A Facebook friend sent me this.

Just back from a whirlwind trip to San Francisco where Judy had a family wedding to attend.



We found the time for a tour of Angel Island, the Pacific Coast version of Ellis Island in the east, which was a processing station for (mostly Chinese) immigrants at the time of the Second World War.

Chinese access to American shores was still strictly limited even then, and they would only let you in if you could prove you had a relative already living here. This lead to Men spending weeks and longer in barracks. trying to remember family trees of ancestors, and who had been married to whom, in order to provetheir claims and not be sent back the whole weary way to China

Angel Island: Gateway to Gold Mountain is a pretty good book on the place and the period.

Worth a visit if you ever are in the area.

twenty years ago I went in to work and went up to the 23rd floor of an office building in downtown Brooklyn to see my co-workers staring out the window at the burning towers in downtown Manhattan.

A bunch of us were hustled over to a "secure location" where we listened to the news on someone's crackly transistor radio and worked to try to bring the New York Stock Exchange trading day to an orderly close. (Our company was the clearing bank for the NYSE.)

We were glad to have work to do to keep our minds off of the horror. and it didn't really hit us until we went home late that night smelling the ash and the burning twisted steel even miles away in Brooklyn.

It felt like a time of unity for America and Americans and the world too. Seems like a long time ago. But I remember. I hope you do too.

>211 magicians_nephew: 😂

>213 magicians_nephew: I certainly remember even in the U.K. I was working in the City at the time and the person at the desk next to me was on the phone to the office in Wall Street when the phone line went dead. And the person on the other side was so upset as she’d just been to a wedding of a friend who had married someone in the New York Fire Brigade. And I got home early and I remember Mr SandDune being surprised, as I’d said I had a lot of work to do that day. He thought it was awful, but in the same way that he thought the Boxing Day tsunami was awful or the tsunami in Japan. Something that was terrible but not directly affecting him. Whereas we felt that it was people like us, the people that were working in the big finance firms, and none of us could focus on work.

>215 SandDune: Thats exactly what it was here Riann. People we knew in firms in the towers and friends who worked near there. Trying to be computer professionals running updates and patching lines around outages and also praying for news of people who had been downtown and hadn't checked in.

>213 magicians_nephew: Wow Jim! That's quite a story.

That day I was just a couple of months into a new job in Sausalito (just a pebble toss from Angel's Island) and woke to see the second tower fall while I was preparing my breakfast. Trivial way to hear but certainly a day none of us will ever forget.

Grabbed a few books onto the Kindle to read on our trip. Oh well.

Witchnapped in Westerham is not a bad book but it's a lazy book.

A woman in Australia working as a wedding photographer is suddenly snatched up by a stranger and carried off to England.

There she learns:

(1) that her brother, who is missing, is a witch
(2) that she herself is a witch, (though this information was (for some reason) kept from her).
(3) that there is a bunch of hard cases called the "Psychic Investigation Bureau" who are at once Inspector Javert level nasty and also Inspector Clouseau level stupid, as the plot requires.

So it's up to our girl to discover who kidnapped her brother. However since the kidnapper does everything but wear an "I am the Villain" tee shirt, this act of discovery does not tax her brain. (One suspects that anything more complex than checkers would tax her brain, but I digress)

So its a book of being captured and escaping, and ridiculous coincidences and unbelievable characters, and the rules of the magic are half baked and inconsistent, and the heroine is a ditz and a klutz, but not in a good way, and if you look down the road the author has already written seventeen sequels since 2018. That's not quite one a month but you have to allow the author some time for her real profession, stealing sheep, double parking in handicapped spots, and writing bad checks.

No. Simply No.

Fair warning: One day all the real witches in this world are going to rise up and turn into newts all the "cozy" mystery novelists who think being a witch is funny and cute. It's not. This book isn't either.

Waiter, pray take away this pudding. It has no theme
-- Winston Churchill

So glad you had a great visit to SFO. We haven't been in many years and I've been thinking about it.

A Vow of Silence is the first book in a new mystery series centered on a small community of nuns in England and Ireland in the time after World War II.

It's a good book and a well written one. The character of Sister Joan, a cloistered nun with a worldly past, is well drawn.

The details of the lives of the sisters in isolated religious communities are interesting and you really get involved and care about this woman and these people.

But halfway through a very realistically drawn novel about the day to day life of these people we are suddenly drawn into a rather impossible to believe in "feminist" plot to bring on the second coming of the Christ, with holy women involved in murder and breaking of vows as a centerpiece of a new "Marion" devotion and say what?

I remember reading Rosemary's Baby where the trick was that it started out very realistic in chic wealthy Upper East Side Manhattan and devolved step clever by step into devil worship and horror and madness. This book is like that except it just doesn't make a peck of sense.

I'm going to give the second book of the series a try. But this one cannot be recommended.

>220 magicians_nephew: The idea of a story about cloistered nuns during war time sounded so interesting...but then I read on. I'll pass.

>221 RebaRelishesReading: It's actually Post WWII the small Order the sisters belong to was founded in the name of a woman who died in Dachau.

The writing was good the plotting was just crazy making. Swing and a miss.

Norm MacDonald a great wise funny friendly comedian and actor died this week. Going to miss him.

>222 magicians_nephew: I need to read more carefully :)

As I predicted, Kim found the thread for Portland:
here
I've listed our dates and asked for a list of participants.

Arthur C Clarke was fond of saying "The Future ain't what it used to be". I know what he means.

On LT Recommendation I had a look at Back to the Moon a new book of "hard" science fiction that feels like an old book.

In fact it reminds me of nothing so much as Clarke's A Fall of Moondust which was written a LONG time ago.

This is what Isaac Asimov use to call a "Solve the Equation" book. Set up a (science or engineering) problem, gather a crew, then show step by methodical step how to solve the problem -- with Science!

In this case a Chinese moon mission fails spectacularly and an American mission has to be quickly jury rigged into a search and rescue mission. The characters are fine but pretty shallow, but the story drives on from "Hurrah! We did it!" to "Oh No, Now What?" with energy and intelligence and solid if not fancy writiing.

If it isn't actually grand opera (or even Space Opera) its a fun read and i enjoyed it. Going to keep an eye on what these authors are up to.

Been a while since I checked in Jim. You've been reading some tempting mysteries (along with the not so tempting ones.)

>176 magicians_nephew: Love the story about Douglas Bader. I remember reading a book about his escape from prison camp when I was in elementary school. It was an impressive feat for a guy with no legs.

>167 magicians_nephew: I had to laugh when I read your reply to me about being familiar with the area because the Lane Winslow mysteries are set in BC. One of the books in the series I enjoyed the most was the one which was set in England because I was more familiar with the setting.

>227 Familyhistorian: Nice to have you stop by Meg.

Been busy IRL hereabouts I will have to get back and start tending my garden here on LT too

The Impending Crisis is an amazing book for the American Historian.

It's a big book that covers just a few years the years leading up to the American Civil War.

Books that think the war began in 1860 make me tired. Potter goes back to 1848 (James MacPherson goes all the way back to 1837) to dig up the roots both political and economic of the sectional conflict and the war.

He has lots of interesting things to say about John Brown who may not have been quite the "madman" he is seen as today, and the rise and fall of Stephan A. Douglas who tried to do good for his country and his party and sadly failed them both.

It was a time of great passion and great partisanship. You can see a lot of parallels to here and now with the "democratic" party in decline and split disastrously between Northern and Southern wings and while no longer able to elect national figures could sit and block legislation for no other reason but to show that they could.

Nativism was rampant then too, not so much about Mexicans but about Irish Catholics entering the labor force from Europe. The "Roman" Catholics were feared almost as much as "Muslims" are feared today and the Irish were accused to taking good jobs away from "Honest Americans". Sound Familiar?

It's a big book and Potter assumes this is not the first book about the War that you have read. But it won a Pulitzer - and it shows. Recommended.

"(a) Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.“
-- Robert E. Lee

Nathanial West is probably best known for The Day of the Locust his scalding tale of dreams and despair set in 1930's Hollywood.

But I will always think his best novel is Miss Lonelyhearts a bare bones tale of misery and hopelessness that will tear at your heart with every word.

A reporter (we never learn his name) is set to work the "Sob Sister" beat on a big city newspaper. The letters that come in tell of cruelty and grinding poverty and illness and loss and hurt. Can nothing be done? The newspaper offers lukewarm Christian cliches and not much else. In the height of the depression the letters are popular and people like to read them.

West was a Marxist and this may have been his attack on the milk and water Christianity that speaks well and does little. The story is thick with Biblical themes and motifs. It ends in ambiguity. It may well be that no ending would have been suitable so no ending is provided.

Hard to recommend it - it's a tough slog for a book that's barely a hundred pages. But there is poetry here. Give it a try.

“At the door of life, by the gate of breath
There are worse things waiting for men than death"
-- Swinburne

>31 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim. I'll look for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" on Netflix I hope you are Judy are well. After my recovery, I would love to invite you and Judy to stay. There is a Bethlehem library sale In Bethlehem.. I'll check the date tomorrow. I'm heading off to bed.

All good wishes!!!!

It was great to miss you, Jim, thanks for coming to Portland.

>231 magicians_nephew: LOL!!!

Hi Jim, It was so nice to meet up with you in Portland. It's much nicer to lurk or even comment when you have a face to put with it.

I'm adding The Impending Crisis to my list. I'm always looking for good American history.
Have a great week.

Picture posted on my thread. Can't believe I got to see you guys twice in one year!! Dinner was so much fun.

>235 Oregonreader: Grand seeing you two guys in Portland. Lovely so talk books with you all.

>236 Berly: LOL try twice in one WEEK!!!!

You always wonder - will two different groups of friends put around the same table get along with each other. Well! Not to worry with THIS gang! Grand lovely dinner with people who spoke up and had interesting things o say too. Just Glorious.

Had a big trip out to Portland and so in preparation downloaded a bunch of stuff in Kindle and Audio book format to the good old tablet.

Fan Fiction is good old Brent Spiner from "Star Trek: the Next Generation". (He played the android, Data)

He's a fine funny actor we have seen in other things (He was my favorite John Addams in "1776" in a revival some years ago.)

So i downloaded the audio book and waded in.

It's sort of based on his life working on "Trek" and its fun to have other voices from Trek read their characters in the tale.

Fun to hear the bemused reaction of an actor who suddenly finds himself starring on a cult TV show and dealing with the cult obsessed fans of said show. (Watch the movie "Galaxy Quest' if you want to get the gestalt.)

Enjoyed it. It passed the time pleasantly. But if it was not for being in the middle of a three thousand mile airline flight I might not have finished it.

What you are doing is fine for tragedy, sir - but comedy is serious business.
-- Oscar Wilde

Ok here's a toughie. Shakespeares Dark Lady is a delicious work of English history telling the remarkable story of Amelia Bassano, a young Jewish noblewoman of the Elizabeth period who was attached to the court (her family were court musicians) and mistress at an early age to a wealthy nobleman and courtier (in the fullest sense of the word) and a survivor in that strange and distant time.
I really enjoyed reading about her and her life.

But I have to choke on the author's basic premise: which is that Amelia Bassano was the REAL author of Shakespeare's plays, slipping manuscripts to Will Shakespeare the actor who played front man to her for a dozen of years.

The author rings the changes of all anti-Shakespearians: that Will was a hick from the sticks, with a sixth grade education and no knowledge of court or history or French or Latin and blah and blah and blah.

Ain't a buying it.

Under a layer of "We can surmise" and "We must therefore assume" the author can provide next to nothing to support his thesis, even to a reader with more of an open mind than mine.

So read the book as history and biography of an interesting woman and you will enjoy it.

But if you think someone other than Will Shakespeare the glover's son from Stratford wrote "Much Ado About Nothing" - well don't sit next to me at dinner.

I mean it.

“When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.”
-- W. S.

Hey, Jim. I agree with you, so I can sit next to you at dinner! The best response to all these spurious claims of authorship is Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Will was not a hick. His father was the mayor of a good size town and Will's education was average for the time. He didn't attend college but then neither did Ben Jonson and no one accuses him of being a fraud. But I guess conspiracy theories are nothing new!

I hope you are doing well and happily reading.

Hi Jim!

>229 magicians_nephew: And onto the wish list it goes! Interesting about when to start a book about the Civil War. One could go all the way back to the Constitution, of course, 1787, which discussed enslaved people in the three-fifths rule, prohibited Congress from passing laws that banned enslavement until the year 1808 and prohibited free states from protecting enslaved people under state law. That’s the genesis.

>231 magicians_nephew: *smile*

>239 magicians_nephew: Interesting – I’ll pass, but found that your comparison to Galaxy Quest explained a lot. I don’t anticipate being a captive audience in an airplane any time soon, sad to say.

>240 magicians_nephew: Milward Martin’s book Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence and Bill Bryson’s book Shakespeare: The World as Stage both convinced me, although I was already on the side of the angels, that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.

>242 karenmarie: Shakespeare of London is my go-to book on Our Will.

Written in the 1940's, it presents him as a working actor who wrote plays and did pretty well for himself.

A really good "Life and Times" book. And recommended.

Had an opportunity to revisit A Gentleman in Moscow this week when one of my IRL book clubs picked it.

It's the story of a man a rich aristocrat at the time of the Russian Revolution who for no particular reason is sentenced to life time house arrest in a small room in the fabulous Metropole Hotel, the finest and the best in Moscow.

Reading it again I'm struck by how much of a fairy tale it is. Our hero the Count always has money, always makes friends, takes a beautiful lover and raises a brilliant and talented child as his adopted daughter. This is being punished? The villains are largely offstage and largely ineffectual, like Warner Brothers wolves.

But there is a darker story here of people whose lives were destroyed by the same revolution, and how art and friendship maybe survives when all else is lost.

It's the best Russian novel you'll ever read written by an American. He's done his homework and it shows. The ending is lyrical and lovely. The writing is sublime.

I have his new book The Lincoln Highway on the TBR shelf -- reading this make me want to bump it up a couple of notches.

Good stuff.

I loved A Gentleman in Moscow and didn't really like Rules of Civility so I can't decide whether to read The Lincoln Highway or not. Looking forward to your comments on it to help me decide.

>244 magicians_nephew: - I very much enjoyed Rules of Civility and have had A Gentleman.... on my shelf since right around when it came out. Not sure why I haven't picked it up yet, but I will. Eventually. I promise. I am also looking forward to reading his new one.

I listened to A Gentleman in Moscow on audio and it was narrated by someone with an elegant British accent, which you might think odd and might think wouldn't work, for someone who is supposed to be Russian. Except it did work, beautifully!

>247 jessibud2: The keyword i think is "Elegant". It's an elegant book filled with elegant characters and some truly elegant writing.

Curious to read his The Lincoln Highway and see how well he handles backroads rural Americans

>248 magicians_nephew: - Probably won't be the same narrator, if it makes it to audio! ;-)

I must read one of the books by Amor Towles that I have on the shelves.

This month my Book Club had a look at Three Junes a National Book Award winner from a few years ago.

In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, head of a Scottish family, travels to Greece, where he connects with a young American artist and reflects on the complications of marriage while mourning the recent death of his wife.

In June of 1996 Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully protected view of the world. .

And finally, in June of 1999, a chance meeting brings Fenno together with Fern, the artist who once captivated his father on his Greek trip so many years ago. The circle is completed.

I found the story well written, the characters engaging, and the book rich with insight about love and parenting and how people connect and fail to connect over the years.

There is a lot about mothers in this.
There is a lot about dying in this.
There is a lot about painting in this.
There is a lot about food in this.
There is a lot about birds in this.

My Book Club found the plot "contrived", and the "chance meetings" and many coincidences hard to swallow. Not me.

It's a slow moving book with a LOT of characters to keep track of. I found it worth the effort.

Reading the LT reviews of the book it's clearly a "Loved it or Hated it" book. I loved it.

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut

>251 magicians_nephew: I read Three Junes many years ago and remember enjoying it a lot.

>252 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks Reba. Glad to hear.

Used to be reading "Calvin" was a big part of my day.

>254 magicians_nephew: - It still can be; it's one of the first things I do in the morning: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes

LOVE Calvin!

THE YOUNG DEAD SOLDIERS DO NOT SPEAK

Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.

They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.

They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.

They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.

They say, We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.
-- Archibald MacLeish

Stuck in the doctors office and time to kill (just a checkup no worries) and I turned to Golden Age Detective Stories put together by the hard working editor anthologist Otto Penzler.

Penzler used to run a mystery themed bookstore in New York and he knows the field very well. (His books about Sherlock Holmes are delicious faux scholarship.)

So we have an early Ellery Queen short when Ellery was in his pinch nez and Harvard tweeds phase - in other words, an insufferable twit. But the story is a good one -- "fair to the reader" -- and with a nifty conclusion.

There's a sharp little Perry Mason novella with the whole stock company on hand, and that slightly salacious edge that flavored the best of the Perry Masons.

And there are a few I never heard of including the magician detective "The Great Merlini" and a few hard boiled and a few cosies for a change of pace.

Penzler is a good companion and his brief intros put each story and author in context. It's on Kindle for cheap - you might go a lot farther and do a lot worse.

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”
― Dashiell Hammett

>257 magicians_nephew: Sounds like a good one! On to the list it goes...

>254 magicians_nephew: I used to love ve Calvin, too. I was so sad when the artist retired.

Thought you might be interested in this article, why Calvin & Hobbes is great literature. From Lit Hub:

https://lithub.com/why-calvin-and-hobbes-is-great-literature/

Not catching up, Jim, just hoping to keep better track from here on out. Have a wonderful week!

>260 jessibud2: Thanks for posting that Shelly. Interesting stuff.
There are still people who will stop and stare if i remark that Calvin was named for the philosopher John Calvin and Hobbes was named for Thomas Hobbes the writer of Leviathan

>261 alcottacre: Nice to see you in these parts, Stasia even if only for a flying visit.

But at my back i always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near

Gives me a prompting to revisit your profile page and reread all those lovely quotes.

Judy and I just got back from our annual trek to Mohonk Mountain House a lovely resort spa in upstate New York.

We call this our "Puzzle Weekend" but it's really a "Words" weekend and they bring up interesting speakers about English Grammar and Puns and Wordplay and suchlike.

As witness Arika Okrent's Highly Irregular her new book on the weird and wonderful (did I mention weird?) little nooks and crannies of our English tongue.

If you ever wondered why a thing can be "uncouth" but never "couth", why we can name someone the "Sexiest Man Alive" but not the Sexiest Man 'Blond' and why "could", "would" and "should" have those silly silent L's -- this is a book for you.

The book is subtitled, "What the Hell, English?" and the tone ranges from wryly exasperated to down right "WTF?". There are clever little cartoons here and there to charm and illustrate.

Fun to meet the author and chat with her about the oddities of English.
Fun to just pick up the book and read at random or to sit down and read right through it, which is what I did.

Why Clifford is a Big, Red, Dog and not a Red, Big Dog is covered in here too. (And try explaining THAT to a non native speaker!).

For Word Nerds. I suspect there are a lot of us around here.

Recommended.

>263 magicians_nephew: - I just love books like this. It goes right onto Mt. TBR!
I have a whole shelf of books about language, more than a few by Richard Lederer (specifically, English. Thank goodness it's my mother tongue. I don't think it would be easy to learn!)

>263 magicians_nephew: OK, I have to have that one, Jim. I love those kinds of books. Thanks for the mention!

Happy Wednesday!

>263 magicians_nephew: - Sounds like a fun one!

>263 magicians_nephew: Well, *that's* one for the TBR!

When people started publishing books about the 9/11 attacks, I usually just turned away. I had lived through it, thank you - i didn't need to READ about. And I avoided visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum for a lot of the same reasons.

But while browsing the history section of Powell's Books in Portland, a copy of The Only Plane in the Sky caught my eye and then curiously enough jumped into my basket to be bought and taken home.

It's an Oral History so it's just the real words said by real people responding to the events of that horrible day. No commentary, no interpretation, no theorizing.

Nothing but the voices. Cops, people on the street, people in Washington, even (chillingly) people on the doomed Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who managed to call their family or friends before charging in and fighting.

Reading it brings back that day and that story in sharp focus. It makes the big story into a collection of small personal stories that turn around and illuminate the big story. It's an amazing achievement.

The Looming Tower is the book to read if you want to know the WHY of 9/11. But if you want to know the WHO and the WHAT of 9/11, this is a pretty good place to start.

Glad I read it.

I recently listened to that one on audio, and thought it very good.

>269 katiekrug: was it just one narrator/reader, or did they have multiple readers read the different speakers?

>244 magicians_nephew: I enjoyed The Gentleman in Moscow so much, I am afraid to try The Lincoln Highway. LOL. I am sure he did a great job with this one too and I have to get my hands on it.

>263 magicians_nephew: Highly Irregular sounds absolutely great! Onto my WL it goes.

Have a great weekend!!

>268 magicians_nephew: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Jim!

Happy weekend!

>270 magicians_nephew: - There were multiple readers, some of whom were the actual people. I know Andy Card, the WH Chief of Staff, read his own parts.

Hi Jim!

>251 magicians_nephew: I’m sorry to say that my MiL gave me a copy of Three Junes but I eventually donated it to the Friends of the Library without having read it. Now I want to read it, of course.

>254 magicians_nephew: One of the best parts of getting the LA Times daily was looking for the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon.

>263 magicians_nephew: And onto the wish list it goes! How exciting to meet the author and chat with her.

>274 karenmarie: Good to see you out and around again Karen

Happy weekend, Jim!

Just a word or two in celebration of the wonderful jazz pianist and songwriter Dave Frisberg, who died this week at the age of 88.

He wrote smart, witty, funny songs like "I'm Hip" and cabaret classics like "My Attorney, Bernie" and sweet bluesy songs like "Sweet Kentucky Ham".

If you ever watched the ABC Afterschool Specials you've heard of lot of his songs including "I'm Just A Bill" talking about how a bill becomes a law. Wonderful stuff.

Happy we have his music to remember him by.

Here's a link to My Attorney Bernie

You're welcome.

Thanks for the link! Love it. I also remember that ABC Afterschool Special song, "I'm Just a Bill'! It's been a while since I thought of those songs. Fond memories indeed.

>277 magicians_nephew: Lovely tribute, Jim.

Having fun with a book i first read decades ago. The Moving Target is the first of the "Lew Archer" detective series by Ross MacDonald. (They made a movie out of it with Paul Newman and called it "Harper".)

Archer is hired to find a missing businessman in Southern California by his crippled, bitter second wife and his sullen, just nubile daughter. This leads to a nightmare jungle cruise through the dark alleys of Los Angeles, with sad women and savage men and grotesque cult leaders and a dapper crime boss who knows more than he's telling.

There are images of wealth and power, and scenes of helpless poverty and desperate hunger. These are stories driven by money and by sex. Nobody seems to get much pleasure out of either.

There is much fear and violence and much deep seated misogyny, and the "case" is resolved in a way that probably satisfies no one. The figures of the law are brutish and corrupt, and Archer moves among them like a knight without armor in a savage land.

The writing is complex and surprising and sometimes approaches poetry. I was constantly underlining passages just for the wonderful turns of phrase.

I think in later books in the series the plotting was sharper and the characters a little better defined. But this one does just fine.

In Archer’s world, people believe the vastness of the country can allow them to outrun themselves. His characters have gone to the literal edge of America—seeking paradise and their manifest destiny—only to find themselves atop a precipice from which they are always in danger of falling.
-- Charles Taylor

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

In difficult times
a friend is there to light the way
to lighten the load,
to show the path,
to smooth the road

At the darkest hour
a friend, with a word of truth
points to light
and the encroaching dawn
is in the plainest sight.

Jim, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

>281 PaulCranswick: That made me smile, Paul. Thanks for visiting us today.

Happy Thanksgiving to you both Jim!!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and Judy!

Jim, I am so very grateful for you, my wonderful friend here on LT. I loved seeing you twice this year. Maybe we should make that a trend?!

I wish you and Judy happiness and health on this day of Thanksgiving. And cookies. : )

And rumor has it that someone is celebrating a birthday??

Stephen Sondheim the wonderful composer and lyricist of Broadway Musicals for the last fifty years died today.

Though people will always remember his music for me he was just a wonderful storyteller, spinning yarns that were new and strange and beautiful and one of a kind. Going to miss him a lot.

White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities...
-- Stephen Joseph Sondheim

>286 Berly: Thanks Kim for the kind words and the lovely cake.

My cake was a little cupcake size piece of key lime pie in the company of good friends so a day that could not be beat.

Definitely hope to see you again in the new year. It wsa such a joy!

Sorry to have missed your birthday, Jim. Sounds like it was a good one though :)

It used to be such fun to have a birthday so near to Thanksgiving - usually a lot of relatives were visiting and they (usually) brought me a present!

Reading the Sunday New York Times and they call out the first book of a new series Fortune Favors the Dead, describing it as a female Nero Wolfe and a female Archie Goodwin in post World War II New York.

So I had to give it a look see.

Mrs. Pentecost (have to love the names) is an older woman with a touch of MS, so she's not quite as house bound as Wolfe but close. And she's a feminist and a fierce one and a do-gooder and there is probably more about that then you wanted to hear.

And her legman assistant Will Parker is an ex-carnival side show girl with a lot of circus skills up her skinny sleeves. But perhaps again wayyyyy to much back story that stops the plot in its tracks just when you want it to go full ahead.

The case is a fun one, with wealthy businessmen and shady spiritualists and family secrets laying thick around.
And the New York City of the era is well defined and lovingly detailed.

But the somber tone and the weighty issues of the day rather slow matters down, and there is a LOT of scenery to paint and hang up (as in any first novel I suppose) and this heavily loaded circus train never really gets up a good head of steam. A shame. There's a lot of good stuff in here.

The second one in the series is out and I might give it a try. But honestly, I'm not a hankering - and that may tell you all you need to know about this new series.

“There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.”
-- Rex Stout

>291 magicians_nephew: I love your description. If only the book were as good.

btw, Jim you mentioned a cranberry sauce with spices and walnuts on another thread. Would you be willing to share the recipe?

>292 RebaRelishesReading: it's so simple it's barely a recipe. Easy and popular.

12 ounce bag of cranberries
3/4 cup of orange juice (apple juice works too)
1/2 cup dark maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar (white)
1/4 cup dessert wine (port wine)
1 tablespoon ginger
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 tablespoon nutmeg
1 cinnamon stick
salt

1 cup walnuts chopped coarsely


1) put the cranberries in a large saucepan and stir in
-- orange juice
-- maple syrup
-- sugar
-- wine
-- ginger
-- nutmeg
-- zest
-- cinnamon
-- pinch of salt
2). simmer , stirring for about ten minutes until berries are cooked through and soft and juice is flowing. Remove saucepan from heat.
3). Cook walnuts in a dry skillet over medium heat about five minutes until golden brown. Don't overcook.
4). dump walnuts into cranberry mixture. stir until coated
5). turn into a covered bowl and refrigerate until it jells
6). serve

Yum! Thanks for posting. : )

>293 magicians_nephew:
Thank you, Jim!. I will give it a try at Christmas. It sounds yummy.

A belated Happy Birthday, Jim. I love your book descriptions. Have a great holiday season.

>296 Oregonreader: thanks, Jan.

Looking forward to the holidays here.

Saw this in the subway yesterday. Felt good. Bonus points for naming the shows each of these characters have stepped out of to appear here.

Still coming down from a Book Club high last night after discussing one of my favorite books with a group of intelligent engaged fellow readers.

Grendel by John Gardner takes the Beowulf story that some of us read in high school and turns it on its head.

His Grendel is an articulate monster, curious about life and art and his role as "Brute Extant" and mead hall wrecker. He wants to fit in, He wants to understand. He's lonely.

The Shaper - the King's blind harper - sings of a world of noble warriors and a benevolent God. Grendel knows better. He sees the world as a place of random violence and greed and lust and savagery. He's not the only Monster around here.

The Thane's government, sung about as wise and merciful, is just the way that the rich and powerful STAY rich and powerful. Sound familiar?

There is a curmudgeonly and know-it-all dragon, who pokes holes in all of Grendel's beliefs, and Beowulf himself, who shows up late in the book "Terminator" like to carry out his assigned role in the history. (Free will? Or pre-destination? You decide).

It's a advanced seminar in Existential Philosophy wrapped up in breathtakingly beautiful poetry, asking questions that are still valid and still important. Who shapes society? The Poets -- who dream and tell lies? Or the monsters -- who tell the truth about "evil" and teach men to be "Better".

You want Answers? Talk to the dragon.

Lovely book. VERY highly recommended.

"I was a victim of a series of accidents.
As are we all"
-- Kurt Vonnegut

Hi Jim! Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

>299 magicians_nephew: I'm glad you had such a great discussion with intelligent engaged fellow readers. And I always love seeing a quote by Kurt Vonnegut.

>300 karenmarie: You get the prize for the 300th posting on my thread!

It was so close to year end i didn't want to bother creating another thread - so all of you bear with me.

>298 magicians_nephew: Love that! I have been watching what I can of the Broadway shows on YouTube on "The Shows Must Go On" channel. One of these days, I would love to see a play on Broadway. I love live theatre and rarely get to see it.

Have a wonderful weekend, Jim!

Two long train trips - from New York to Saratoga Springs and then from Boston to New York, gave us plenty of time to read this weekend.

What fell out of my Kindle app was In Cold Blood Truman Capotes take-your-breath-away Crime Story that created a new genre - the non fiction novel - when it first appeared back in the 1960's.

The case was one of those "Crime of the Century" stories - a family of four in a small Kansas town brutally murdered by a pair of nondescript drifters from nowheresville. No real motive, no real clues, just horror at death sudden and real as a punch in the gut in a farming community in Small Town USA

The remarkable thing about the book is how Capote was able to go and get up close and personal with these people and show great insight and compassion both for the victims and for the luckless pair of losers who committed the crime.

Nellie Harper Lee, his childhood friend, came along to assist in interviewing the townspeople and her patience and empathy undoubtably added a lot to the grim intimacy of the reporting in the book.

It's brilliant journalism. It's brilliant writing.

I don't think Capote ever did anything as good again in his life. But we have this one. and it never gets old.

O Death, thou comest when i had thee least in mind
-- Everyman

Never thought I'd salute a typo. Ha!

>303 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim, right you are about In Cold Blood. And, yes, it was indeed Capote's finest. While a brilliant writer, he had quite a dark side. The ugly beast jealousy was a large part of his life. When Harper Lee won the Pulitzer for To Kill a Mockingbird, he claimed he wrote most of her book.

In fact, she opened the door for many interviews when they were in Kansas researching his book. She never took any responsibility.

I send all good wishes to you and Judy for a wonderful holiday!

>306 Whisper1: Beautiful, Linda. Thanks for stopping by. You are much in our thoughts here

Winter Solstice 2021
May the light of the returning Sun warm you and lead you safely home.

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

-- Susan Cooper

>299 magicians_nephew: Grendel sounds fascinating and nice accolades for Capote. Two good ones in a row!

>308 magicians_nephew: So lovely. Thanks.

>303 magicians_nephew: Totally agree about In Cold Blood. I did not know about Harper Lee though.

Merry Christmas, Jim!

Having fun with a new series, which like a lot of series, has a bunch of plusses and and a bushel of minuses to catalog.

A Girl Like You is set in Irish American Chicago in the time between the wars. Henrietta our heroine is a young and beautiful Irish girl working to support her mother and her many siblings. Her father is dead. Times is hard.

Though a string of not totally believable coincidences she finds herself first working as a taxi dancer, then as a sort of sexy usher at a mob run burlesque theatre. She meets Inspector Henderson of the Police, who asks her to "keep her eyes open" as they may be skulduggery afoot in the theatre. Girls are disappearing.

Plus, the Chicago era backdrop is rendered with intelligence and sympathy and praise be, historical accuracy.

Minus, the characters of Hen and Hen are sort of straight out of Central Casting, and the grim poverty of the dark scary world is depressing to spend a lot of time in.
The plot moves forward s-l-o-w-l-y. Either you get the rhythm of the book or you are going to be annoyed.
And the story is kind of humorless, which does not help.

Thankfully the romance novel aspects of the book do not cloy or slow down the plot any more. You know that Henrietta and the Inspector are going to end up together, and you know, I'm OK with that.

First novels get a lot of free passes from me. I liked this one and will look out for the next one.

"And the moral of that is ?"?

Hi Jim!

>301 magicians_nephew: I’d be a liar if I said I planned it that way, but it did work out well. *smile*

>303 magicians_nephew: I remember how fascinated I was with In Cold Blood. I don’t have a copy on my shelves these days and should probably remedy that in case I want to re-read it.

If you haven’t already read it, you might want to read Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Quite a bit of the book tells the story of her trip with Capote.

>304 magicians_nephew: Took me a minute, but then, LOL.

.

Or in other words: Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, Jim! Have a wonderful holiday. I received your Christmas card yesterday. Thank you very much. Happy Reading!

Have a lovely holiday, Jim.

Time to put up the tree



Happy Christmas and much love and good wishes to all my LT Friends.

That's me doing my "Happy Snoopy Dance"

From the Gospel of St Luke.

And when the days of (Mary's) purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought (Jesus) to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when (Mary and Joseph) brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

To you and Judy, Jim. Thanks for the Christmas card!

>318 magicians_nephew: Wonderful! Thank you for posting.

These were our family ornaments this year and, despite COVID, a merry time was had by all. I hope the same is true for your holiday and here's to next year!!

just to finish up for the year my book circle took a look at Don Delillo's Running Dog.

It's a book very much from the 1970's full of conspiracy nuts and paranoia and people looking over their shoulders to see who is following them.

It seems that there may be a secret home movie shot in the waning days of World War II showing Hitler and maybe others cavorting in the Bunker. a Hitler Sex Tape, you might say. OK.

There is a sort of underground journalist who wants to get her hands on it and a dealer in erotica who wants it too for different reasons. And a senator who collects porn and suchlike. And a mercenary sort of secret agent who doesn't ask any questions but is on the case too. A bunch of other characters pop up, have their moments, and disappear.

But the film is just a McGuffin for everyone to chase everyone all around the country, shooting off guns, having sex, and talking. And talking. And talking.

I think DeLillo can write but this one is just flashes here and there of good storytelling that never connect up and never lead anywhere. He's written books I've liked better. Have to say he's never really read a book I liked unreservedly.

So maybe I just don't "get" DeLillo. Maybe you like him better.

“Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.” ”
― Don DeLillo

>320 Berly: I love the "I tried" ornament.

I hear Master Yoda in my head. "There is Do and Not Do. there is no TRY"

>322 magicians_nephew: LOL. Now every year I will see that ornament and think of you and Yoda! : )

I loved that I got to see you twice this year. What a treat!

And now as they say for something completely different.

The Woman Between the Worlds has one of the niftiest openings of any book I have ever read. In 19th Century London, a woman comes to a tattoo parlor and asks to be tattooed head to foot "Full Body" tattoo. Why? Because she has been rendered invisible by a curious scientific process, and needs "Skin" in order to live a normal life in society.

The book goes on from there into an H. G. Wellsian romp, which alien invasions mysterious disappearances and one hairs-breadth escape after another. Wow.

F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre was involved with the early days of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and wrote limericks and short humor pieces in almost every issue. This i think was his only novel and its a corker. Fun Recommended.

Vizzini: INCONCEIVABLE!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Happy and safe New Years to all my dear wonderful LT Friends.

See you on the flip side.

Forget your stresses and strains
As the old year wanes;
All that now remains
Is to bring you good cheer
With wine, liquor or beer
And wish you a special new year.

Happy New Year, Jim.