richardderus's tenth 2022 thread

Another May-blooming Springtime joy: The Cassia fistula or Golden-Shower tree.

It's an Indian native, suited to harsh climates with powerfully divergent seasonal conditions.

It's in its full glory here, so it's kinda clear that it won't make the best neighbor in the neighborhood award ballot.

Its seeds and flowers are used as food and ayurvedic medicines for catharsis. The leaves are fed to livestock dependent on poor forage.
It's surprising how little research has been done on this tough survivor of a tree.Science should be looking into its ways and means of protecting hardihood!

For 2022, I state my goal of posting an average of 4 or 5 book reviews a week on my blog, for an annual total of 250. This year's total of ~200 (I need to do more to sync the data on my reads between my blog, Goodreads, and here this year for real) posts in 50 weeks of blogging shows it's doable. My *actual* blogged total for 2021 was 229.

I've long Pearl Ruled books I'm not enjoying, but making notes on Goodreads & LibraryThing about why I'm abandoning the read has been less successful. I gave up. I just didn't care about this goal, but I need to learn to because I *re*Pearl-Ruled five books after not remembering picking them up in the first place. What I've decided to do is have post >7 richardderus: be the Pearl-Rule Tracking post!

And now that I've gotten >6 richardderus: Burgoineing as a habit, I'm going to make a monthly blog-only post with my that-month's Burgoined books. It will appear the last Sunday of each month.



My Last Thread of 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2021 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

Reviews one through eight? Seek them thitherward.

Looking for nine through sixteen? Click that link!

Reviews seventeen up to twenty-six? You know what to do.

I know you think reviews twenty-seven to thirty-three are here...well, you're right, they are.

Seekest ye the reviews entitled thirty-four to thirty-eight? They anent just so.

I understand you're curious about thirty-nine to forty-seven. Go back there.

Longing to view reviews forty-eight to fifty-four? Advance towards the rear.

The reviews numberèd fifty-five through sixty-four are por detrás.

Sixty-five, -six, and -seven, eh? Seekest thou in arrears.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

068 Mercury Rising slammed, post 113.

069 Starry-Eyed Love worked hard, post 142.

070 Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir excelled, post 156.

071 First Time for Everything: A Novel delighted, post 181.

072 Mister N pleased, post 215.

073 Bitter Orange Tree soured, post 216.

074 Brisbane: A Novel surprised, post 272.

I've decided to use BookRiot's 2022 Read Harder Challenge as a spice-me-up of meeting my reading goals. Since I'll post 225+ reviews (posts aren't the same as reviews posted, as some posts cover as many as four books!) on my blog this year *easily* I think I need to get a little more pushy. 225 reviews posted seems like a cheat as a goal since I'm on track for that now. I'm thinking 250...approximately 10% increase over 2021's actual total.

This is the list:

1. Read a biography of an author you admire.


2. Read a book set in a bookstore.


3. Read any book from the Women’s Prize shortlist/longlist/winner list.


4. Read a book in any genre by a POC that’s about joy and not trauma.
   30 Things I Love About Myself FTW!


5. Read an anthology featuring diverse voices.


6. Read a nonfiction YA comic.
   The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is illustrated and that'll have to do.


7. Read a romance where at least one of the protagonists is over 40.


8. Read a classic written by a POC.


9. Read the book that’s been on your TBR the longest.
   Central Station was awarded to me on NetGalley in 2016!


10. Read a political thriller by a marginalized author (BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+).


11. Read a book with an asexual and/or aromantic main character.


12. Read an entire poetry collection.


13. Read an adventure story by a BIPOC author.
    We Could Be Heroes did the business


14. Read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you’ve seen (but haven’t read the book).
    Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story out on Netflix now...saved the book for me, no smallest doubt.


15. Read a new-to-you literary magazine (print or digital).


16. Read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes.


17. Read a memoir written by someone who is trans or nonbinary.
    High-Risk Homosexual! What a read.


18. Read a “Best _ Writing of the year” book for a topic and year of your choice.


19. Read a horror novel by a BIPOC author.


20. Read an award-winning book from the year you were born.


21. Read a queer retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, folklore, or myth.
    Briarley FTW! I can start 2022 with one task accomplished.


22. Read a history about a period you know little about.


23. Read a book by a disabled author.


24. Pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat!
    I choose 2018: Read a mystery by a person of color who is also LGBTQ+
    

I liked all of them except the comic and I'm still looking for GNs that don't make me want to scream and barf, so it's a good challenge.

I'm wondering if, in lieu of setting a numerical goal for Burgoines (see >6 richardderus:), I could just agree with myself to use the technique on 3-stars-and-under reads about which I don't much care and count them as reviews here. I've decided that I'll post 'em & collate them in each thread's post #6. Then I'll just blog 'em in gangs, once a month on the last Sunday in the month...I dunno, but I read a lot of books I don't talk about because someone loved it & I loathed it or just didn't care much about it, or I simply have no useful response...it filled time, it failed to offend or delight me. Is that information useful to anyone? Would you care if I did that and gored your reading ox?

I suppose we shall find out.

2021's five-star or damn-near five-star reviews totaled 28, a marked decrease from last year's 46. Fewer authors saw their book launches rescheduled, but publishers still had to cancel many of their tours and events because COVID-19. The inflationary pressure that supply-chain issues are exerting causes a lot of economic drag on the market, though there is as of yet a lot less trouble than I expected getting tree-book copies of things.

My annual six-stars-of-five read is Cove (my book review), a perfect, spare, evocative story of the pain of existing when you genuinely can't process what is happening to you, around you, despite your best and most well-practiced efforts there is just no righting the boat. I cannot stress enough to you, this is the book you need to read in 2022. I can not forget this read. I refer to it in my head, I think about its stark, vividly limned images. I am so deeply glad Author Cynan wrote it. To quote myself from my review: "This is the book I wish The Old Man and the Sea had been, but was not."

In 2020, I posted over 215 reviews here. In 2022, my goals are:

to post 250 reviews on my blog

to post three-sentence Burgoines of books I don't either adore or despise

to complete at least 275 total reviews of all types

Most important to me again this year is to report on DRCs I don't care enough about to review at my usual level. I still don't want to keep just leaving them unacknowledged! There are publishers who want to see a solid, positive relationship between DRCs granted and reviews posted, and I do not blame them a bit. To 1 May 2022, I've posted 96 reviews of all types on my blog. That makes an annual total of 288 seem attainable.

Ask and ye shall receive! 'Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >6 richardderus: below. I just need to keep getting better about *applying* it!

I stole this from PC's thread in 2020. I like these prompts, so I've decided to re-do them every December!
***
1. Name any book you read at any time most recently that was published in the year you turned 18:
The Street Where I Live by Alan Jay Lerner (2010)
2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird
3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover?
St. Mary's and the Great Toilet Roll Crisis by Jodi Taylor
4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?)
Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond by William Dalrymple & Anita Anand because I lost interest
5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you?
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard...how easy it is to fail, to do the wrong thing
6. Name the book that read either this year or last year that takes place geographically closest to where you live? How close would you estimate it was?
Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow by Christina Henry...Sleepy Hollow's about 100mi from here
7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read?
Queer people's history and the Quaker resistance to slavery
8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book?
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard which I managed to get several LTers and tweeple to pick up *buffs nails*
9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it?
Briarley by Aster Glenn Gray, a gay WWII-set retelling of Beauty and the Beast, that I finished this week (and reviewed!)
10. Name a book you read that led you to specifically to read another book (and what was the other book, and what was the connection)
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy was a #The1976Club read, and was so disappointing that I went on to read The Malacia Tapestry by Brian W. Aldiss to cleanse my reading palate
11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with.
Aster Glenn Gray
12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year?
The Multiverse in Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series
13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)?
How to Catch a Vet; the Afghanistan War
14. What was the last book you acquired or borrowed based on an LTer’s review or casual recommendation? And who was the LTer, if you care to say.
There isn't enough space for all the book-bullets y'all careless, inconsiderate-of-my-poverty fiends pepper me with (bold added for emphasis)
15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way?
The Toast of Time is part of The Chronicles of St Mary's by Jodi Taylor, so it involves the future, the past, and the Multiverse
16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall?
Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere?
Ife-Iyoku, Tale of Imadeyunuagbon by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover?
Your Honor, it is my intention to assert my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to any and all questions pursuing this subject
19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die?
Brian Aldiss, 2017
20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read?
good goddesses, I don't remember...Goodnight Moon to my daughter?— STET
21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read?
Officially it's part of the Jack Lennon series, though he barely even appears in it, so The Ghosts of Belfast via Stuart Neville gets the nod.
22. What was the shortest book of any kind you’ve read so far this year?
The World Well Lost, ~28pp
23. Name the last book that you struggled with (and what do you think was behind the struggle?)
see #4. I just...quit caring.
24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT?
see #9
25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics)
Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker, art by David Lester

I liked Sandy's Bonus Question for the meme above, so I adopted it:

26. What is the title and year of the oldest book you have reviewed on LT in 2021? (modification in itals)
The Sleeping Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, 1962.

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

Think about using it yourselves!



MAY 2022's BURGOINES

#33 One Way Street disappointed, post 275.

#32 Sorcery of Thorns is very YA, post 273.

#31 The Red Mill satisfied, post 46.

***

APRIL 2022's BURGOINES

#25 through 30 are backlinked here.

#20 through 24 are backlinked in this post.

The first two for April are linked here.

MARCH 2022's BURGOINES

The last one for March is linked here.

The first 4 in March are back-linked here.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's BURGOINES (through #12) are here.

***
JANUARY 2022's BURGOINES are here.

This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. I just didn't care about this goal as a separate goal, but I need to learn to because I *re*Pearl-Ruled five books this December just passed after not remembering picking them up in the first place. I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to really track my Pearl Rules!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each thread's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.



MAY 2022's PEARL-RULES

#31 The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep stank, post 21.

***

APRIL 2022's PEARL-RULES are backlinked here: post 75.

The first one in April is linked here.

***

MARCH 2022's ONLY PEARL-RULE

It's linked in right here.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

***
JANUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

Okay. Your turn has arisen, hasn't it.

Happy new thread, Richard! Sneaking in before heading off to work. *Smooch*

>1 richardderus: Is that a Laburnam tree, RD?

Happy new thread, dear fellow.

>1 richardderus: Gorgeous!

>10 PaulCranswick: I think not....Laburnum is toxic, if I remember correctly.

Happy new one, RD!

Happy new thread! Smooches.

Happy new one! Beautiful tree.

>10 PaulCranswick: it looks very like one. But yes, they're toxic.

>1 richardderus: it looks lovely as well as useful. Happy new thread.

>15 Helenliz:, >11 laytonwoman3rd:, >10 PaulCranswick: It's a Cassia fistula...as it says right there on top of the post....

>15 Helenliz: I think they're beautiful indeed.

>14 drneutron:, >13 Berly:, >12 katiekrug: Thank you Rocketdoc, Berly-boo, and Katie!

>9 bell7: Two crowns in a row! You're amassing quite the collection...the Royal Consort's Crown of Bavaria?

I think it's quite lovely, don't you?

Happy new thread!

Lovely trees to look at. Not sure I'd want one in my yard, especially if I had a pool, but otherwise, yeah. Can't be messier than the oak and maple we've got.

Just back from the nursery and I have my eye on a weeping Katsura. They are gorgeous!
Oh!
Happy new thread!

>19 mdoris: Aren't they spectacular trees? So beautiful and elegant. Something extra-special about weeping trees, isn't there.

Thank you, Mary!

>18 Storeetllr: I think I'd *hate* having one, honestly, though looking at them is pleasant. I don't think they have an overpowering scent but that's always a concern with flowering trees.

PEARL RULED @ 10%

The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep by Steven Heighton

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: Elias Trifannis is desperate to belong somewhere. To make his dying ex-cop father happy, he joins the military - but in Afghanistan, by the time he realizes his last-minute bid for connection was a terrible mistake, it's too late and a tragedy has occurred.

In the aftermath, exhausted by nightmares, Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylul, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers' reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974.

Hidden in the lush, overgrown ruins is a community of exiles and refugees living resourcefully but comfortably. Thanks to the cheerfully corrupt Colonel Kaya, who turns a blind eye, they live under the radar of the Turkish authorities.

As he begins to heal, Elias finds himself drawn to the enigmatic and secretive Kaiti while he learns at last to "simply belong." But just when it seems he has found sanctuary, events he himself set in motion have already begun to endanger it.

My Review: The author died last month of cancer. He was sixty.

This story opens with consensual (or as consensual as heterosex ever can be) sex turning into a shooting and a melodramatic follow-up crime committed by crazed-by-hate Turkish Muslim men in divided Cyprus.

I quit caring fairly quickly. This kind of crime isn't immediately interesting to me because it's using violence against a woman as an excuse to cause trouble for a man. And to be extremely clear, the violence isn't the sex. Which, yes, it was icky but it wasn't coerced or compelled. The violence was some Muslim men taking umbrage that a white guy was going to have sex with a Turkish secular woman.

Great. What the world needs now. However it was going to end, the beginning was pretty crappy by my lights and I don't need this. So Vale Author Heighton, we will not meet again.

Hi Richard, Happy new thread dear friend.

>17 richardderus: I'd forgotten I managed to post first in your last thread as well. That does look quite lovely! Perhaps a bit heavy too... I confess I don't actually know how some of these royals can wear such things for various functions and bit have a perpetual crick in their necks.

Hi RDear! Happy new thread.

>1 richardderus: What a beautiful tree.

>21 richardderus: Your Pearl-Ruled book is my never-even-open book.

*smooch*

Happy new thread, RD!

>21 richardderus: Sounds like I can live without that one and will happily do so.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

Happy new thread!

>26 ArlieS: Thanks, Arlie!

>25 alcottacre: *smooch*

>25 alcottacre:, >24 karenmarie: Y'all're missing deathless stuff like:

In his current state, Elias can’t begin to imagine the optimism and entrepreneurial hustle it must have taken to plan, rapidly construct, and operate this riviera. Somehow people go on doing such things—building cities, waging wars, growing and cutting down forests, organizing international movements, training as bodybuilders or concert violinists. He can only look on in wonder at such committed vim, like the paralyzed casualty of a roadside bombing watching a frantic sprint relay race on television.

See?

>24 karenmarie: *smooch*

>23 bell7: Indeed, Mary, you're gettin' quite the crick-giver collection.

>22 johnsimpson: Thanks, John!

Happy new thread!

Beautiful tree! It would be a great gift to give your enemy though...all that cleanup especially if they have a pool!

>28 figsfromthistle: I might even plant it myself next to someone I really disliked's pool.

Thanks, Anita!

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: At first glance I thought it was a Laburnum, then I saw the flowers and fruits as food, and realised my mistake. In Dutch Laburnum anagyroides is called "Goudenregen", and Cassia fistula "Indische goudenregen". Looks like it only grows in the tropics.

'Morning, RDear! Wednesday orisons, as someone I know would say.

>27 richardderus: Painful, just plain painful.

Right now I'm indulging in Bridgerton prequels, the Rokesby series. So much fun! So easy to download onto my Kindle!

*smooch*

Wordle 319 4/6

🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
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AEONS, NASTY, DRAIN, TRAIN. I learned where the A and the N *had* to be from NASTY. Too bad I chose the wrong one to try first, at #3.

>31 karenmarie: Pretty blah stuff, isn't it.

Bridgerton away, m'dear, and send up those ever-welcome orisons! *smooch*

>30 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita! Laburnum anagyroides is called "golden rain" or "gold chain" here, too...the Cassia is "golden shower" which, TBH, makes me snigger but is named without apparent stabs at double entendre.

It's a better grower in the subtropics than the tropics as its bloom sets best in a place with a discernible winter. Not too cold, above freezing, but say the band around 50°/10C. Say, Orlando, Florida or Harlingen, Texas, north to about Houston, Texas. Then the winters get just a little bit too cold.

Happy new thread, Richard. That's a pretty tree up top and looks familiar. So do the petals on the ground as it's blossoming tree time around here although most of the heavy drifts of petals here are pink.

My long-standing loathing for the PDF continues. I got one of David Duchovny's new novella, and being a PDF, my Kindle won't let me adjust the type size so I can't read it. Amazon's killing the MOBI at last, and accepting EPUB files...except I emailed myself some EPUBs and they were rejected.

Their rollout of this change has not been seamless, transparent, or frankly competent.

>34 Familyhistorian: Hi there, Meg, happy to see you...if the petals are pink and the drifts are deep, my money's on some ornamental Prunus species. They're quite prevalent in landscaping because the blooms are so vibrant and later the leaves are attractive all the way through fall.

"The GOP has slipped so far to the right that virtually all of them, every legislator, governor, justice, and peon, seeks to reify the US as a white, Christo-fascist, patriarchal plutocracy."
https://when-if.ghost.io/the-assault-on-autonomy-trans-rights/

>35 richardderus: Shocked I tell you! Bug tech demonstrating that they can't be arsed to make anything convenient for their users? Next news story: dog bites man.

>37 richardderus: And just think how good this is for the big money people. If the populace is busy fighting over whether or not we should all be required to pretend to be Christian, they aren't doing anything to inconvenience the increasingly wealthy, that might rein in the ever increasing inequality.

>38 ArlieS: ...which, if they look up and try to do the reining-in so desperately needed, will turn into the authoritarian state in mere moments and They Win Again.

Hard to argue with algebra.

I know! A consumer-happiness-focused org like Ammy?! This behavior is deeply uncharacteristic.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Happy New Thread. I love the Golden-Shower tree topper! It was still cool here today but plenty of sunshine sure felt nice. I also saw my FOY, scarlet tanager:



-NMP. I did not have my camera.

>40 msf59: My favorite-ever birb! They're frequent sights in Texas...several kinds of tanager are...but their drama, sheer spectacular vividness, is nigh-on irresistible.

Thank you for the new-thread wishes, and the tree-preciation. I wouldn't like to be the one to keep the yard under one clean but I sure like lookin' at 'em.

>32 richardderus: I got it in three today which was annoying because the Wordle word was one of my three usual starter words.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

After Wordling three days in three, I failed today :-(

*smooch*

'Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

>37 richardderus: I'm absolutely ill with what the Gang of Psychos is trying to do to our country.

I got Wordle in 4, my usual. I'm also drinking coffee and will do a bit of reading when I get off of LT.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Wordle 320 3/6

⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
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That's never happened to me before!

Burgoine #31

The Red Mill: A Musical Comedy by Victor Herbert, Henry M. Blossom

Rating: 3.5* of five

Completely goofy 1907 play about Yankee con-men doing their thing in a tiny Dutch town. It's not anything special in plot terms. It's a musical, so it doesn't have to be. There's a raft of forgettably pleasant tunes telling its sentimental story. What makes it more than a single-star snooze is "Because You're You," a terrific and very ear-wormy meditation on loving someone just cause they's them.

There's a condensed performance of its highlights on The Railroad Hour with Gene Kelly, Gordon MacRae, and beautiful mellifluous soprano Lucille Norman as Gretchen, the Dutch love interest. Check it out, it's only 45min, plus it has a super-funny ad or two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBlo7...

"Because You're You," the tune I like, is ~12min in.

>44 karenmarie: You have *got* to look at >45 richardderus:! That has literally never happened to me before!

Thursday *smooch*

>43 FAMeulstee: I'm so sad for the streak being over, Anita. I could not believe that I got all five letters in two guesses...not *one* in its proper place!

>42 Copperskye: Oh, that really hurts, Joanne, it's so frustrating to, entirely by chance, do yourself out of a 1-guess thrill. *there there, pat pat*

Wow! A bunch of yellows then perfect green. You da man.

>48 karenmarie: I got all five letters, and if you can think of another word to make out of 'em I want to know what it is.

>45 richardderus:. Wow. I had the opposite experience, 4 greens and lots of options for the middle letter. I did it in 6. (phew)

There used to be a group in New York called "LOOM" (for Light Opera of Manhattan).
They did lightweight versions of the old goodies like "The Red Mill" and "Desert Song" and even "The Student Prince" with a piano and maybe a percussionist.
It was nothing like a modern Broadway musical but I always enjoyed them from a company who played it straight and sang the great songs with love and enthusiasm. Wish they were around now.

Humming "Margo, Margo Queen of France" from "The Desert Song"

>45 richardderus: What the heck was that word? I gave up once I saw the 3 greens because there were too many possibilities but I wouldn't have got it anyway.

Wordle 320 X/6

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Happy new thread, by the way.

>52 humouress: Thanks, Nina, and the answer is HOMER. I can certainly see that having the three letters you did would be less than helpful.

>51 magicians_nephew: I remember LOOM! I saw my only-ever live production of The Merry Widow there in one of the 1970s but I don't remember which one.

>50 Helenliz: *phew* > X...let's celebrate that!

>53 richardderus: Well, I was given the answer once I used up my six goes - but I'm none the wiser.

>54 humouress: OIC
***
My favorite read of the 1990s, Montana 1948, is on Kindlesale for $1.99 now:
https://smile.amazon.com/Montana-1948-Novel-Larry-Watson-ebook/dp/B003YJEY2Y/

>54 humouress: - HOMER is a baseball term - most easily understood as when a player hits a pitch out of the field of play, thus scoring himself and any players who might be on base at the time. Shorthand for "home run."

>56 katiekrug: Ah, thanks. I didn't know the short form.

>45 richardderus: Congratulations on the three-fer! I found it a little tougher, got it in 5.

Karen O

>45 richardderus: Nicely done!

Wordle 320 X/6

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I roll my eyes at this one

>55 richardderus: Montana, 1948 was one of the books I worked on when I was editing at Milkweed Editions back in the day! Pretty great book. : )

>61 Berly: It really, really is, isn't it. I can re-read it now with just as much pleasure as I read it back in the day. That almost never happens.

*smooch*

>60 mckait: It *does* help for one to appreciate the source material, and I do, so there was that going for me. *smooch*

>59 MickyFine: Thank you, Micky!

>58 klobrien2: I'm glad you got it, Karen O., since it seems a lot of folks are whiffing on this one. Some of my Brit friends were...disgruntled...by this choice.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Friday.

>55 richardderus: I bookmooched a copy based on your recommendation in 2010, have not yet read it, found a beautiful hardcover with perfect dust jacket last month at the thrift shop. Alas, still unread.

*smooch*

Wordle 321 5/6

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It hit me...almost too late...and only after eliminating 12 letters.

>55 richardderus: I have that somewhere RD. I'm sure it will climb to the top of the mountain sometime.

>65 Caroline_McElwee: No time like the present, Caro, so haul its skinny spine down and commence to enjoyin'.

>63 karenmarie: Maybe it's just not appealing to you...? Still, it looks lovely on the shelf, doesn't it.

*smooch*

>64 richardderus: Five for me today too, RDear. Ah well, it's almost the weekend. *smooch*

>64 richardderus: Five tries also and 13 letters eliminated!!! LOL

>68 Berly:, >67 MickyFine: I wonder what it was about this word! I got it, typed it in, thought "wait no it could be GAUGE and then thought "nope I'm goin' alphabetical" & for once it paid off.

Happy Friday RD. I too, thoroughly enjoyed Montana, 1948. Mark gave it to me long ago, and I think my copy has made its way on to some other worthy recipient.

>70 mahsdad: Hi Jeff! Thanks, it's been a very pleasant Friday so far.

I'm glad you're keeping Montana 1948 in circulation, it's such a terrific story.

Coming by to thank you for your recommendation of The Ponder Heart, Richard. I just finished it and loved it!

>72 alcottacre: Yay! I'm so glad that it spoke to you. Happy weekend-ahead's reads, Stasia.

>36 richardderus: Definitely prunus species, Vancouver and BC's Lower Mainland are noted for their cherry blossoms although this year we've been reminded that some of the flowers are actually plum blossoms.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hiya, RDear! I hope today's a good'un for you.

I'm off to cashier and Treasurer at the Friends of the Library Audio Visual Sale. I might find a Great Courses set or two, but other than that the pickings are slim.

*smooch*

Wordle 322 3/6

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AEONS, MIRTH, MIDST
There's something to be said for using the same go-to words.

>75 karenmarie: I hope you get a pleasant surprise, Horrible!

*smooch*

Rainy day smooches, RD.

I got Wordle in 2 so am feeling very smug. xx

>78 katiekrug: As well you might! Two!

It's really disgusting out there, not rainy enough to be really raining but too much to ignore like one would mist. What's between "drizzle" and "light rain"? Still...no better reading weather, is there?

Happy Saturday. Too bad about the pissin’ rain (is that in between?😝)

Got mine in 3 as well. I agree about starter words. Sometimes they do pay off

Wordle 322 3/6

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>80 mahsdad: That is a testament to tenacity, isn't it Jeff? (Or are we just stubborn as some woman is getting ready to type right now...)

Sadness. Four tries for me today. Sigh.

>82 Berly: But you got it, and ain't that the bee's knees? *smooch*

>76 richardderus: Also in three today, Richard dear, with the same second word.

*smooch*

>84 FAMeulstee: Congratulations, Anita!

>79 richardderus: "What's between "drizzle" and "light rain" ......Grizzle !

>76 richardderus: Good job on wordle!

I grizzled all righty all right, in the intransitive-verb sense. Have only stopped because...wait, I haven't stopped, never mind.

>87 richardderus: What was bothering you, Richard dear, that made you grumble grizzle?
I had my second fail on Wordle today :-(

Happy Sunday, Richard. We have some glorious weather moving in. I am really looking forward to it. Not getting in as much reading as I would like but that is a minor issue. Have a great day.

Wordle 323 3/6

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AEONS, FANNY, CANNY I am *gobsmacked* at my good luck!

>89 msf59: Hi Mark! I'm only a little jealous of your beautiful weather because a version of it is building in here. At last!

I hope some surprise reading time gets thrown your way.

>88 FAMeulstee: Weather woes, Anita, the changeable nature of the season gives me the achy-breaky yuck.

>90 richardderus: Well done. In order to maintain a sense of balance in the universe, I snuck in with a 6.

>92 Helenliz: Given the word, Helen, I'm actually surprised I got it in fewer than six.

I hope y'all will read Young Mungo, and if you won't do it without a push: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/douglas-stuarts-young-mungo/
he's very eloquent about why you should.

>90 richardderus: Excellent Wordle!

Karen O

Hi RD! Happy Sunday to you.

>77 richardderus: I scored 5 Great Courses and was pleased.

*smooch*

>96 karenmarie: As well you might be! That's an excellent haul.

Sunday *smooch*

>95 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O.!

Smooch

>97 richardderus: gm

Good weather easing in our direction. Sunny and warm. I'll be basking in it. Have to sacrifice indolence to the demands of lawn mowing. So be it. Happiness to you!

>100 weird_O: Lawn mowing! Makes me so glad I have no such of a thing.

Happy mowing, I guess.

>99 luciferzap7: Good morning, and welcome.

>98 Berly: *smooch*

Another glorious tree that I knew nothing about!

It is cool enough to need a bit more than a sweater for our walk. I loved it!

Now I sail on out with a *smooch* for your new week!

>102 LizzieD: Thank you, Peggy, have a lovely week's reads ahead! *smooch*

>90 richardderus: I'm impressed. A friend of mine said, "That's not a word I use.

>104 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori, like your friend it isn't part of my brain's muscle-memory vocabulary. I'm really not sure why I chose guess #2 apart from watching Meet the Romans last night and Mary Beard used it except blind luck.

Wordle 324 3/6

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For ONCE my alphabetical obsession would've been the way to go. AEONS, SPINE, SHINE

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

>100 weird_O: and >101 richardderus: My Bill was complaining about the price of off-road diesel this morning - $6.50/gallon – which is what we use for our tractor/mowing deck. Still better than hiring someone, which we’ll have to do eventually. I hope it's not this summer.

>106 richardderus: Alas, I did the same and didn’t follow the alphabet. It took me 4, though.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>107 karenmarie: That's about what gasoline will end up costing late this year, if not sooner. *sigh*

I know, once I resist my need to be alphabetical and look! just look what happens! A 2 slips through my ham-fists. *sob*

Oh well, I won't die. No one else really cares, it impacts climate change not at all (except my additional exhalations of irked hot air), so.

*smooch* for a good week-ahead's reads.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for the week, RD! I hope you have a great one!

Wordle 324 4/6

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Yours was SHINE? I had a completely different word. Mine was FETUS. The dictionaries are diverging. 🤷‍♂️

Weird

>110 mahsdad: No, they aren't. NYT pulled your word, Jeff, given the topical happenings this week, but for whatever reason it didn't take for some users. I also got Richard's word.
Wordle 324 4/6

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Richard, my dear, I finally picked up A Master of Djinn on sale and read it. So good!

>111 ronincats: Thanks for the clarification. I didn't refresh the page on my phone. It was just set for the next day. I guess that's probably why. If I had gone to it fresh and it reloaded, I probably would have gotten the new word.

068 Mercury Rising by R.W.W. Greene

Real Rating: 4.75* of five (rounded down because the w-bombs! the w-bombs!)

The Publisher Says: Alternative history with aliens, an immortal misanthrope and SF tropes aplenty

Even in a technologically-advanced, Kennedy-Didn’t-Die alternate-history, Brooklyn Lamontagne is going nowhere fast. The year is 1975, thirty years after Robert Oppenheimer invented the Oppenheimer Nuclear Engine, twenty-five years after the first human walked on the moon, and eighteen years after Jet Carson and the Eagle Seven sacrificed their lives to stop the alien invaders.

Brooklyn just wants to keep his mother’s rent paid, earn a little scratch of his own, steer clear of the cops, and maybe get laid sometime in the near future. Simple pleasures, right? But a killer with a baseball bat and a mysterious box of 8-track tapes is about to make his life real complicated…

I PRACTICALLY HAD TO BEG THE AUTHOR FOR A DRC. I *THOUGHT* WE WERE FRIENDS. MY FEELINGS ARE STILL HURT.

My Review: No, really. Mortally wounded that this wingèd not my way until I groveled. *sniff* (And seriously NO MORE W-BOMBS. Cut that crap out, dirty-old-man-in-training!) I was calmly enjoying the mental soundtrack, the 1970s jukebox that's permanently cued up in my head, when *wham* another revolting w-bomb.

But about that jukebox...would we, in fact, have the precise same pop-cultural artifacts in a world that didn't slow down its climb to the stars? The 1968 Cougar, well, okay, that was already on course from 1958. The planning window of a car in those days was five years...so the 1958s wouldn't've been much altered from our world, as I understand the timeline, which diverges first in the middle 1940s and so those cars can be explained. Pop culture spins on a nailhead. Elvis electrifying the country is one example, the Beatles knocking off his cool-cat cap is another, but both of those came in response to specific cultural stimuli. Wouldn't the world be more law-and-order oriented when the Oppenheimer Nuclear Drives are dangling before the lust-drenched gaze of every young testosterone factory? Can't get in one of those unless your nose is clean.

Which, of course, our PoV character (Brooklyn Lemontagne) flouts. But the reason he's able to flout that social control mechanism is simple: Invaders from Outer Space! The ultimate Golden Age of SF trope. This time they're Mercurians, the patent absurdity of whose existence gives even the Hero of the piece (who apparently dies early on) some pause. Can't argue with the presence of stonking hostile warships and evaporated cities, can you.

This takes place among Americans! Of course you can! The whole planet pulls together to combat the Enemy from Beyond...and there are ignorant goofballs talking conspiracy theories, there are hemi-hippies rebelling against the controlling hand of the grown-ups. This is the world, and honestly I agree with Author Greene's take on it. I quibble with some details, but I believe he's exactly correct that even an existential threat with ample death and destruction to demonstrate its reality won't create more than a façade of unity among the irredeemable mass of humanity. (Look around, tell me, and him, we're wrong.)

So I buy the premise. So I consent to set aside my niggling nuh-uh generator. I'm in for the ride.

There is more, should you wish to visit my blog to read all the progress notes.

>112 mahsdad:, >111 ronincats:, >110 mahsdad: I am awfully glad the NYT people chose to do that.

>111 ronincats: Yay!! I'm so, so glad you liked it, Roni. It is a delightful story and a really intriguing world, one I hope to revisit soon.

*smooch*

>109 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia, and I'm hoping for Kerry to feel better soonest so you can relax. It's so stressful when Mr. Man is ill.

*smooch*

>113 richardderus: - Not my cuppa, but your review is wonderful, as usual!

>115 katiekrug: Thank you, Katie. And I appreciate your solidarity in the matter of his perfidious silence until I outright begged for a DRC!

>113 richardderus: Certainly looks an interesting what if premise, RD. The nuclear engine?! Gadzooks the mind boggles.

Hi, Richard. I probably missed the ill will, but i’m filled with goodwill toward you to offset it.

I’ve read that David Duchovny is a skilled writer? What do you think?

You can't be Richard. Everything this year has been 3.75**** or more.

Wordle 325 5/6

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Thank goodness I decided to sacrifice a word. AEONS, BELOW, METRO, HEIGH, GECKO.

>119 humouress: ...but this is...and you're ignoring the Pearl-Ruled and Burgoined books.

>118 jnwelch: I got his novella, Reservoir, which comes out later this year and it was more than competent but less than thrilling. (Well, the 25% I could read...his publisher sent a bloody PDF so I couldn't adjust the text size. I had to give up.) And that is what I know.

The ill will is not new, so missing this iteration of it (aimed at my blog) is unsurprising.

>117 PaulCranswick: It was under development in the 1950s, PC. The difference seems to be that the process got started a lot earlier and was somehow directed by Robert Oppenheimer. I'm quite sure some historical something, and a big one, got rearranged by the author!

>121 richardderus: Ahh ... yes, of course. So it's one extreme or the other for you, is it?

>122 humouress: ...maybe...? My overall average rating is just over 3.5* so, well, the math works out for either lots of fives and ones or mostly 3 to 3.5 over just over 2700 ratings.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Karen’s-in-self-imposed-quarantine Tuesday to you.

>113 richardderus: You and the W-bombs. Lately I’ve been reading books by Julia Quinn – really enjoying the Kindle Kandy – but I hate the G- and C- bombs – grins and chuckles.

>120 richardderus: I sacrificed a word, too, and also got it in 6. Wordlebot scolded me quite a bit today for stupid choices.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>124 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! As I tend to practice the g-word fairly often, and am guilty of c-bombing all and sundry, I can only assume that you do not; I would be dead and buried under the ditch before I committed the solecism of closing and reopening one of my eyes out of phase with the other. Deliberately. If one's drooping, call 911!

SIX!! MADAM! I shall have you to know that I got the word in FIVE (5) not six.

I'll just leave this here, shall I?

Wordle 325 4/6

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>126 katiekrug: Yes. Do.

*grumble*

*smooch*

*whistling innocently*
Wordle 325 3/6

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>129 laytonwoman3rd: - Oooooohhhhhhh.....

>125 richardderus: No excuse, but I bow to your superior Wordling. 5 is infinitely better than 6, for sure.

>131 karenmarie: *smooch*

>130 katiekrug:, >129 laytonwoman3rd: Oh. My. Isn't that...lovely. Just lovely. Indeed.

>128 katiekrug: *smooch*

>131 karenmarie: Not to be pedantic... um... ok..well actually, to be *totally* pedantic... but 5 is incrementally better than 6, surely (or decrementally maybe). Anything could be infinitely better than 0 though.

I'll get my coat. :)

>133 sirfurboy: LOL

I love you, Stephen.

>129 laytonwoman3rd: Impressive!

I also did it in 4.
Wordle 325 4/6

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>135 Familyhistorian: I needed #4 to give me the answer, so it was 5.

>113 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. I like the premise a lot.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Wordle 326 5/6

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*snort* It was, and is.
AEONS, HATER, BARRE, LARGE, FARCE

>138 richardderus: You are up late/early, Richard dear.

Other words, same result.
Wordle 326 5/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 adieu, heart, gaper, early, farce

Happy Wednesday, Richard. Funny, last week we struggled to stay in the high 50s- now it is pushing 90 and we have the A/C on. WTH? Well, bird migration is in full swing so I plan on getting out the next couple of days. I had a couple of these visit my feeders lately. Some migrate through, some stay:



-Rose-breasted Grosbeak (NMP)

Morning, RD. I got a book from the library yesterday featuring a Tentacled American - Remarkably Bright Creatures. I, of course, immediately thought of you.

069 Starry-Eyed Love by Helena Hunting

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Charming, hilarious, and emotional, Starry-Eyed Love is Helena Hunting at her very best!

Having just broken up with her boyfriend, London Spark is not in the mood to be hit on. Especially not when she’s out celebrating her single status with her sisters. So when a very attractive man pays for their drinks and then slips her his number, she passes it right back to him with a ‘thanks, but no thanks’. As the business administrator for their family’s event hotel, the Spark House, London has more important things to worry about, like bringing in new clientele.

As luck would have it, a multi-million-dollar company calls a few months later asking for a meeting to discuss a potential partnership, and London is eager to prove to her sisters, and herself, that she can land this deal. Just when she thinks she has nailed her presentation, the company’s CEO, Jackson Holt, walks in and inserts himself into the meeting. Not only that, but he also happens to be the same guy she turned down at the bar a few months ago.

As they begin to spend more time together, their working relationship blossoms into something more. It isn’t until their professional entanglements are finally over, that London and Jackson are finally ready to take the next step in their relationship. But between Jackson’s secretive past and London’s struggle with her sisters, London must question where she really stands—not just with Jackson, but with the Spark House, too.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's a very, very different experience to read a straight-people romance than my usual M/M reads. In this case, I think I came in after some character work had already been done in the first Spark House book, When Sparks Fly, on this entry's PoV character. London Spark, to those who might not know her from before, is a rather serious-minded and goal-oriented participant in a family enterprise called Spark House. It is an event hotel-cum-venue, and London has somehow been foisted the job of numbers lady. She's not a natural number-cruncher but she knows about sacrificing for a greater goal and gets her considerable wits marshaled to the task of making the finances run.

I, like all other readers, am meeting Jackson the love interest with London. He lets her know he's interested without being more than ordinarily persistent. She declines; he leaves her possessed of his details and accepts his rejection without drama. So far, so good. When a time has passed and Spark House attracts business interest from a tech-bro investor, one who's made to sound like Elon only hot, absolutely not one soul is surprised it's Jackson the rejected suitor.

We know this drill: what's going to happen, the misunderstandings, the idiotic miscommunications, the resolution of HEA or HFN; so the point of reading this book is *how* not what.

The satisfaction of a superior craftworker's results is this very thing. Now, the M/M romance world will usually have something very sexy pretty early. Not so this book. London's been burned and isn't in a huge hurry to try the waters with a tech bro. She is, once he shows back up as a potential financing source, perfectly happy to work with him. They come to know each other, and the readers each of them, as their work brings out facets of their lives quite naturally and unforcedly. Again to no one's surprise Jackson is a good guy, and he's got a solid head on his shoulders; he comes to like and respect London, he fully engages with her as an equal in business (if one with different skills from his); the result is a slow-burn low-steam character study of two young people whose lives are pressurized by goals instead of ambitions.

Why I enjoyed reading it enough to rate it more than a solid three or possibly three-and-a-half stars of five was London's affectionate but exasperated relationships with older sister Avery and younger sister Harley. They were...warm. They didn't ring swords of wit in battles for prominence, they half-ribbed and three-quarters snarked and generally behaved the way friends do. It worked to give me a sense of their bond that was less intense than the Three Musketeers and more positive than the Three Stooges but still very real.

You can't go wrong with a read that does this kind of work when one accidentally reads book two in a series. I am glad I spent time with the Spark family.

>141 katiekrug: Because he's a Tentacled American?

Wordle 326 3/6

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>143 humouress: - You know, as soon as I posted that, I was like, "Hmm, maybe I should re-phrase that..."

I was referring to his affinity for Tentacled Americans :)

>145 katiekrug: I'm quite happy to go with the first :0)

>141 katiekrug: *baaawww* thank you, smoochling! It's a cute-looking book, so come tell me about it!

>140 msf59: NINETY!! Holy Weather Goddess! That is a dreadful thing to have in Chicagoland in May. Evict the birds from the birdbath and go take a dip.

Grosbeaks are purty. They kinda deserve the name, though. The seeds they chow down on must be resistant in the extreme.

>139 FAMeulstee: Early...Rob had a rough spell, so I was needed. Stress is part of the career, so I'm glad he's dealing with it in a proactive way.

>137 alcottacre: Morning, Stasia! I expect it will give you smiles. *smooch*

>146 humouress:, >145 katiekrug:, >143 humouress: *tucks arms five through seven back into hiding*

I do not understand to what you air-breathers might be referring.

>144 thornton37814: Oh. Good for you, Lori. I'm so pleased it only took you 3 to get to where it took me 5 to reach.

Really. Honest.

*smooch* I've finally emerged for an update (and a new thread)!

I did not get the wordle in time, although I would have had it in the next guess, thanks to TWO complete blanks.
Wordle 326 X/6

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>149 ronincats: Ooohhh, I really, really hate the X days. *smooch* for a sad one.

I was just at your new place! I love the ottoman/chair...shaped ever so bookishly, no?

‘Morning, RD!

>133 sirfurboy: Gah.

>138 richardderus: 3 for me, my friend.

>142 richardderus: Well darn. A contemporary romance that sounds like lots of fun. I’ve added the first in the series to my wish list.

*smooch*

>151 karenmarie: 3. Sigh...well, my excuse is I did it at 3am while Rob was having a crisis of nerves.

Sigh.

I can't speak from direct knowledge of the first in the series but I can say the author has a style that leads you smoothly on and resistance is necessary to keep one's own reading schedule not simply accept hers: "finish this book before anything else" being her pace.

*smooch*

I'm sorry that Rob was having a crisis of nerves, glad you were there for him.

I'm still chugging away on fake Regency romances, enjoying them immensely. However, I've downloaded the last of the Bevelstoke trilogy and just might be done for a bit. That will make 18 in a row by Julia Quinn.

>153 karenmarie: That will make 18 in a row by Julia Quinn. Fresh fields! New horizons! If for no other reason than to avoid getting stale with Ma Quinn.

Rob's in a trajectory where the main knowledge they're imparting to him is how to cope with the *huge* stress of food's commercial planning and preparation. I'm so pleased that his first thought is to ask me what he can do to manage the emotional side of the equation. It helps that my mother managed the dorms' food!

Have you tried this?

Phoodle #3 5/6

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https://phoodle.net

this is my wordle

Wordle 326 4/6

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070 Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome

FINALIST FOR THE 34th LAMMY AWARD—BEST GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY! Winners announced 11 June 2022.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2021!

Listen to this interview with Author Broome!

The Publisher Says: Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in.

Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.

Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: You won't get a whisper of a whine from me about Author Broome's beautiful phrase-making. He is up there in the poetic-prose rankings. He could, and most likely will, give James Baldwin a run for his epoch-making money in the poetic eloquence on the Essence of Blackness derby.

Yes, I said that and I meant it. Moreso than other writers on Blackness, Author Broome's dual Othering of being a Black gay man adds the ingredient so often missing in manifestoes like Heavy or Between the World and Me. Worthy reads, even necessary ones. Tears We Cannot Stop offers a more religious, sentimental slant on the subject of Black maleness, and is an equally necessary voice to attend to. But James Baldwin, in his significant for its being so overlooked essay Nothing Personal, brings his religious past and his queer present and his uncertainty about the future into focus in much the same way that Author Broome does: as fact, as solid ground, as new, everlasting source of Otherness among the Othered. There being fifty-plus years between the two books, there are differences of tone made possible by the progress that has happened. There is not, however, a difference of kind in the subject of these books: The authors are Othered Others and are not allowed to make a life that doesn't center their Othered Otherness in this, our glorious country.

Author Broome uses the framing device of a young Black boy being psychologically shredded by the father who, I do not doubt for an instant, loves him and wants him to become a superstar in this world. To that father, as he browbeats and abuses his probably-queer young son, that means beating the gay out of him. That's also what it meant to Author Broome's father, emasculated by the same round of deindustrialization that created so many billionaires, and to Baldwin's religious-nut stepfather. The truth is these men, these fathers, aren't alone in thinking that they as well as their sons would be happier if the boys were either straight or dead. A quick flick of one's eyes over the statistics on adolescent suicide and teen drug use...this last plays quite a role in Author Broome's life...teaches us the toxic price paid by father, son, acquiescent or indifferent mother in death and destroyed personhood and family.

I think the power of reading the author's memories of growing up the Othered Other really rests in this: However easy it might have been for him to give in and let his addiction to drugs drag him into death, he does not. He stands on the rocks of his father's failed life, his mother's rage at...well, everything, and the cruel bonds of racist hatefulness (the dance party scene broke me), and he creates beautiful phrases and uses them to limn horrifying images onto my grotesquely privileged brain.

I have no method to persuade you that the act of shoving your most tender feelings way down deep or trying somehow to numb them will only result in someone else having to pick up your pieces later.

That, I feel, pretty much sums up the value in reading this book.

>155 mckait: Excellent Wordle-ing!

I hadn't heard of Phoodle. Blast you.
Phoodle #3 3/6

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PASTE, BACON, MANGO
https://phoodle.net

Oh well. Who needs sleep anyway.

>147 richardderus: Glad you could be there for Rob, and help to handle his stress.

>158 FAMeulstee: It was a good feeling, Anita. I like knowing that he sees value in talking things over with me. I delight in that facet of relationships, the support and love bit.

>142 richardderus: Sounds like I need to spend some time with the Spark family too! Thanks for the review and recommendation, Richard.

>156 richardderus: The comparison to James Baldwin, whose works I have read and loved, got me, RD.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today!

>156 richardderus: That one is currently in the Tower of Due, so I dodged that bullet by being struck by it already.

>161 swynn: I hope I chucked it a place or two up, at least. You will, I feel confident, enjoy his writing.

>160 alcottacre: Twice! I got the Artful Book-Bullet Dodger twice!!

I'd pat myself on the back but I'd require orthopedic care afterwards if I tried.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Hiya, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

>156 richardderus: Beautiful review, will pass.

*smooch*

Wordle 327 3/6

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AEONS, BRUNT, SLUNG
It said "impressive"
I said something unprintable. It was down to two words I could think of with the "N" where it was and I, foolish mortal!, succumbed to my (&^$#@)) alphabet fetish.

>164 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! You'd like the writing.

*smooch*

>163 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita, and the same wishes heartily returned. (Although your Thursday is pretty much over at this point.)

>166 richardderus: Still Thursday has nearly six hours to go :-)
My Wordle went less adieu, cough, turfs, swung, slung, I even took a long break after the fourth word, as I had no idea what the answer could be.

Just catching up. wishing you well and hope Rob's on an even keel after the 3 ams.

>168 Helenliz: Hi Helen! Rob's keel is even again, and since stress is a given in his learning trajectory, he's learning how to manage that reality with far greater speed and success than most. Amazing man...he listens when presented with information.

Be well, read good books and abandon the ones that aren't doing it for you ever sooner!

>167 FAMeulstee: It's a weird word. Useful but infrequently needed.

Six hours left means three times as many gone.

>165 richardderus: Eh. I tried skunk (appropriate, imo) before the winning word, which I got on the 4th try. I'm always happy when I get it at all.

>170 Storeetllr: 4 > 5 > 6 >> X

And I agree, re: spoiler. Very very.

*smooch*

>162 richardderus: I would pay to see you trying to pat yourself on the back, Richard :) I would even foot the orthopedic bill.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

>172 alcottacre: *chuckle*

No.

Sorry to deprive you of the laffs, but...no.

*smooch*

>165 richardderus: Wordle 327 4/6

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Phoodle #4 3/6

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https://phoodle.net

catastrophe 90% love 10% ummm

>174 mckait: Evil.
Phoodle #4 4/6

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https://phoodle.net

ETA I'm more 80% *still* love, 10% umm, 10% WTF!!

Wordle 328 2/6

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I thought I'd show off share.

>2 richardderus: and word of the day goes to.....thitherward! I audibly gasped when reading this. It's a great work, nay, concept!

(yes, I reveal that I am *that* far behind)

I have refined my Wordling process. Now, instead of using the previous guesses to build on (i.e., always including letters that are shown to be either in the right place, or even present at all), now I use a vowel-heavy first guess, then a consonant heavy second guess, and: HEY PRESTO! I hope to get it on the third guess! My scored have improved, so I am pleased :)

Happy Friday, Richard!

Wordle 328 5/6

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I only wish I was.
AEONS, MIRTH, VISTA, BITSY, TIPSY

>178 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, same to ya!

>177 LovingLit: Hi Megan! Take a look under my spoiler tag. *sigh*

>176 humouress: YOU need not look, two-woman.

071 First Time for Everything by Henry Fry

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. He always dreamed of escaping the small-town life of his parents’ fish-and-chip shop, moving to London, and becoming a journalist. And, after five years in the city, his career isn’t exactly awful, and his relationship with pretentious Tobbs isn’t exactly unfulfilling. Certainly his limited-edition Dolly Parton vinyls and many (maybe too many) house plants are hitting the spot. But his world is flipped upside down when a visit to the local clinic reveals that Tobbs might not have been exactly faithful. In fact, Tobbs claims they were never operating under the “heteronormative paradigm” of monogamy to begin with. Oh, and Danny’s flatmates are unceremoniously evicting him because they want to start a family. It’s all going quite well.

Newly single and with nowhere to live, Danny is forced to move in with his best friend, Jacob, a flamboyant nonbinary artist whom he’s known since childhood, and their eccentric group of friends living in an East London “commune.” What follows is a colorful voyage of discovery through modern queer life, dating, work, and lots of therapy—all places Danny has always been too afraid to fully explore. Upon realizing just how little he knows about himself and his sexuality, he careens from one questionable decision (and man) to another, relying on his inscrutable new therapist and housemates to help him face the demons he’s spent his entire life trying to repress. Is he really fine, after all?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's far from my first time for...well, almost anything. Yet this British tale of being a twentysomething soul whose entire world turns upside down, whose every point of trust in his relationships is called into question because he wasn't having the same relationship with others they were having with him, just called to me.

Danny is our PoV character, a young man who's daring to think his life is going well and he's among the people who understand and love him. It's a heady place to be. So, this being a story, we know it's not the way things will stay. First, Tobbs (his long-term love) brings home an STD. So there goes that whole monogamy fantasy...and his love says some self-serving things about it being heteronormative and I cringed so hard I looked like I was trying out for the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've used that line, though I hasten to say not to excuse my transmission of an STD! Just...well, Author Fry, you scored a point with me by holding the Ouch Oculus up to my face.

Thank goodness, given this, that Danny doesn't live with that knob Tobbs. Laura and her husband seem...nice. Do please note I said "husband" and extrapolate from there that there is procreative activity taking place. We who have paid attention in sex-ed classes (or just had families) will be unsurprised to learn that Danny's rent payments are less desirable than the space he's taking up when the inevitable pregnancy occurs...just as his relationship with that knob Tobbs is over.

Danny's in therapy...terrible anxiety issues...and that completely won me over. Nina, Danny's therapist, is brilliant (in the UK sense) and comedy gold. She's not a comedy therapist, the kind you read in older books who either bumbles or is sibylline. She's commonsensical, not here for self-pity, and deeply committed to Danny learning to manage his issues. Her solidity and warmth were equaled by the obligatory wild BFF: Jacob. They are enby (non-binary), ace (asexual), and so utterly FABULOUS that I think they should have a book of their own.

Hint, hint.

The things that happen in Danny's world, in hindrance that proves to be help, are all relatable. The voice the story's told in makes the project of reading it a pleasure, and the laughter it evokes is frequently tinged with sad recognition as well as joyful anticipation. Given that Author Fry, in an interview with Debutiful.com, says he was inspired to write this story in part by television sitcoms, it's no surprise that he's already got an adaptation in the works from Aussie production company Moonriver as it expands its UK footprint.

This debut novel is a delight from giddy-up to whoa. I'd've kept this review back until my June Pride Month cavalcade of Queerness but I just couldn't...I want you to go get one and read it now.

>181 richardderus: Great review. Sounds like a book I might actually enjoy, though I'm not much into romantic comedies these days.

Happy Friday!

>182 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary! I think you'd get a kick out of it. It's not a rom-com, though I can definitely see how it would come across that way. It's more a quest for self and meaning.

Happy Friday back at'cha!

>177 LovingLit: Did you see that Wordle has a “hard” mode, where “any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses”? That’s the way I usually like to play, but your way seems more efficient!

Hi, Richard!

Karen O

>183 richardderus: Rom-coms can be a vehicle for the quest for self and meaning, and I'm not denigrating them. Just, at this time in my life, they aren't my favorite books. Of course, neither are young adults' quests for self and meaning, usually. I did read one recently that I enjoyed a lot, so maybe my tastes are changing. Yet again. Anyway, I'll give it a shot, thanks to your review!

*smooches*

Edited to make sense

>185 Storeetllr: Ah. Well, much as the rom-com beats get hit in this book, I'm not sure it's a full-on one...so I'm very pleased I talked you into trying it out! *smooch*

>184 klobrien2: Hi Karen O!

>177 LovingLit: When I was doing it, briefly, I had a set of starter words that, paired up, had at least 4 different vowels between them, and many common consonants. That plus a good vocabulary helped me get it in 3 reasonably often.

>173 richardderus: Well, rats.

>181 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD!

Happy Friday! ((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes for a wonderful weekend.

>188 alcottacre: Yay, Stasia! I'm sure you'll enjoy Henry Fry's warmth. *smooch*

Happy weekend-ahead's reads.

You got me with two reviews, Richard. The first Sparks book from your review of the second and I agree, First Time for Everything does sound good.

Wordle 329 6/6

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I really quit caring about this one. When it's down to a guessing game (4, 5, 6) I just don't feel engaged.
AEONS, DEATH, TERRA, FETAL, PETAL, METAL

ETA typo

>190 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg! I'm glad you got interested in Henry Fry's book. I was surprised at how charmed I felt.

>191 richardderus: Wordle 329 4/6

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this game drives me crazy, but it's addicting ...ugh

>193 mckait: It's addicting because it's so intensely satisfying to solve a puzzle, to put together clues and come up with the "right" answer (ie, the one They are looking for).

That's why, when it's down to the guessing part, I quit caring. Anyway. *smooch*

Hallo, RDear. Happy Saturday to you.

>181 richardderus: On to the wish list it goes, and thank you for expanding my vocabulary with enby and ace.

>184 klobrien2: I just turned that feature on, Karen, although the Wordle-Bot guys use words that sometimes don’t have any of the revealed hints. I don’t play that way, so this will help me, I think.

>191 richardderus: I almost chose fetal because it’s one of the legitimate 2,309 words, but then thought they might have removed it because of the furor over fetus.

Happy Saturday, Richard!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

>196 alcottacre: Hi Stasia, happy Saturday! *smooch*

>195 karenmarie: re: spoiler I'm pretty sure they'll take that one off their 2309. Which I steadfastly refuse to look at.

Given your partial QUILTBAG community inclusion, it pays to have the vocab.

Saturday *smooch*

>191 richardderus: I had better luck today:

Wordle 329 4/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 adieu, heart, teens, metal

>198 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Yay for a 4 day this Saturday.

*smooch*

Saturday *smooches*

I also got Wordle in four and was pleasantly surprised to do so.

>200 bell7: No, no, dear, only *other*people* on my thread got it in 4. I got a "Phew" today.

*grumble*

>201 richardderus: Oh sorry, I read too quickly and mistook Kath's score for yours. It was definitely one of those annoyingly-too-many-possibilities days.

>202 bell7: Oh, if only...*grousegrumble*

Was pleased to get Wordle in 3 today. Luckily two of the multiple possibilities had been ruled out by my first two entries. FEAST, PECAN, METAL.
Wordle 329 3/6

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Happy Sunday, Richard. I had a busy day yesterday doing chores, inside and out but today I am heading out on a walk with a birding buddy and then the afternoon will be reserved for the books. I hope you are enjoying weekend .

‘Morning, RD! Happy Sunday.

>197 richardderus: My justification for looking at the list of 2,309 words occasionally is that some valid words in the English language, and not even weird ones at that, are not valid guesses but they let you use them. To each their own.

I am proud to have partial QUILTBAG community inclusion. Is there an LT badge for that?

Three! I got it in three today.

*smooch*

I Wordled in 6 this morning. A guess the first letter kind of day for me.

Which reminds me... while at the airport last Monday I saw a chap on his PC start Wordle, then go to a word finding site, to put in his found letters and check possible words. I found myself thinking that was not at all in the spirit of the thing. I, at least, have never checked the list of possible answers or possible valid words.

Wordle 330 4/6

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It helped that I got that one crucial letter in place.
AEONS, MIRTH, BILGE, YIELD

>208 richardderus: Whereas, I had to get to the very last possible first letter...

Wordle 330 6/6

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>209 ChrisG1: Oh that is the pits! I'm sorry, Chris, it's always a drag to get to the guessing-game stage like you and Helen did.

>207 Helenliz: ...!!...

Well, it's not how *I* would choose to play it. And boo-hiss on the guessing game. Yucky when it's reduced to that lowest common denominator.

>206 karenmarie: Oh, in 3? It wasn't that kind of day, or word, for me. *sigh* But 4 > 5 > 6 > X.

PFLAG welcomes you! I wonder what they've done for that acronym. We have much, much more inclusion so need so many more letters. I still decline to use the ubiquitous mathematical operator to refer to people. Television channels are even iffy.

There's no need to justify. It's not like you're instructing me to use it! I just wonder how the hell they got up the nerve to limit the over-11K five-letter words used in English to an arbitrary smaller number, still less one that gives them only six years and four months of answers. That's some kinda oversized stones IMO. *smooch*

>205 msf59: Hi Mark! It's been a busy one for me, I've got a dual review of two Arabic translations by women writers to disentangle and make into separate reviews. (The format got some stern feedback. Sigh.)

Still, ready for Monday! All good. *sigh* again

I don't think it was stones, I think it was love. According to Wikipedia:

Initially, the game used all 13,000 possible five letter words in the English language, but he found that his partner Palak Shah had difficulty recognizing some of the less common words and made the guessing as haphazard as it was in Mastermind. He then used Shah as a simple filter to trim down the word list to around 2,000 words that were more recognizable - roughly five years of puzzles on a daily basis.

>211 karenmarie: I see! Interesting, and perfectly understandable. Interesting that he only innovated the one-a-day thing recently. I love that...the whole internet trying to solve the same puzzle means we're coming up with so many different ways to interact with it to create extra social capital from the resource.

Thanks for getting the info since it inspired me to go looking as well. Always welcome to get a reminder to go look for facts.

Hi Richard! Hope you’re doing well!

>208 richardderus: you start with some interesting words! I didn’t get today’s word unfortunately

>213 ChelleBearss: Hi Chelle! Welcome! I hope this means your entire house is COVIDless now.

I'm doing fine, thanks, and intend to remain just that way. *smooch*

072 Mister N by Najwa Barakat (tr. Luke Leafgreen)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Modern-day Beirut is seen through the eyes of a failed writer, the eponymous Mister N. He has left his comfortable apartment and checked himself into a hotel—he thinks. Certainly, they take good care of him there. Meanwhile, on the streets below, a grim pageant: poverty, violence and fear.

How is anyone supposed to write deathless prose in such circumstances? Let alone an old man like Mister N., whose life and memories have become scattered, whose family regards him as an embarrassment, and whose next-door neighbours torment him with their noise, dinner invitations, and inconvenient suicides. Comical and tragic by turns, his misadventures climax in the arrival in what Mister N. had supposed to be his “real life” of a character from one of his early novels – a vicious militiaman. Now, does the old writer need to arm himself…or just seek psychiatric help?

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

My Review: And Other Stories publishes unusual and often puzzling books. This one feels a little bit like someone found Kafka's Akashic records and channeled them through a Lebanese American writer's intense psychedelic dreams.

He liked precision and hated rough estimates. The approximate was arbitrary, the arbitrary was random, the random was chaotic, and chaos was a killer. Mr. N liked to cut away the imprecise, as he did with his pencils when he sharpened them, shaving their tips into points to make their lines clear and defined. Pens? Pens were unacceptable. Pens could leak, flooding pages with smothering ink. Ink behaved like a dictator: ordering, forbidding, controlling, brooking no dissent. Lead, meanwhile, was merciful, quick to forgive mistakes. Whatever your soul was brooding over, lead would let it speak. Ink soiled the white page; lead dissolved upon the surface, exactly as pain dissolved in the act of writing…

–and–

The human ability to adapt—to things positive and negative, to plenty and scarcity, to life and death—is terrifying. I watched {her} transform day by day. She contracted within the apartment; then she expanded to fill it. She feared her pimp would find her; then she relaxed into her new situation and her new identity. … …I felt her skin expanding, her limbs lengthening, her face settling into gladness. I saw her unwinding into something more tender, like dough when it relaxes.

Mister N is a guest in a swanky hotel. Mister N's a writer...published several novels, well-received ones...whose home is Beirut with all that implies. Mister N's...not feeling himself. Mister N's been through some stuff. Mister N's older brother is the last vestige of family he has, dead father, dead mother, in fact only his old, established nemesis, his Moriarty, a man called Luqman, is visiting Mister N despite his many vociferous complaints to Mr. Andrew, the, um, concierge or owner or someone like that, that these are unwelcome and invasive occasions of great upset.

The blows to Mister N's fragile peace of mind never really stop coming. There are so many old issues that need to be put to rest. There are absurdly youthful old people acting like hormonal kids! (Not Mister N...beta blockers, don't you know, those desire-slayers, are among his meds.) Mister N witnesses a...a...hanging, certainly, though not actually a murder as Mister N tells it. Mister N rides herd on the unruly voices in his head, the ones that enable Mister N to write their stories. As I've always said, being a writer is actually the socially acceptable face of schizophrenia. And sometimes just barely that.

The blows to Mister N's reality don't stop coming. Author Barakat is not kind. In memory, in fantasy, in reality...none of these states, and they all exist in the course of Mister N's time with us, are delineated. I don't think one gains a single, solitary thing trying to tease out the "different" frames of reference in this story. It won't make passages such as this:

Our mosquitoes and other local insects have developed quite the work ethic in recent years. They toil now not only to feed themselves, but from the pleasure of causing pain, which, having tasted once, they find impossible to relinquish. Rats, mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, feral cats, pariah dogs: all of them are vicious now and liable to get drunk on the simple taste of killing, much as humans do.

...one whit more or less effective to think of them as belonging to "reality" or "fantasy" within the book's constructed world. Mister N, you see, is not in the least who he thinks he is; and, as we are all the sum of our memories, that simple fact makes Mister N a construct, a chimera of parts from we can never know where. More to the point, neither can Mister N:

My head is a train of many cars, each of them going in a different direction. All I need to do is put them back in line so they might travel in the correct direction. Is this my entire life that I have put on the wall? How old have I become now?

The only necessary answer to this question, directed from and/or to wherever one may, is "as old as my eyes, a little older than my teeth." (The Santa Claus response.) Mister N can not really answer it as phrased. Reality passes at different rates on different scales...the days drag, the years fly by...for us all, but most of all for those of disordered thinking. And to some degree, that's my beef with the read. I don't think the story itself comes out of the time-frame-hopping all the way intact. I grant that characters in this récit are all internal to Mister N, but they still jar with their sudden vanishings and dangling conversations. An itchy lack-of-closure feeling pervaded my reading experience.

Exactly how disordered Mister N's thinking is, for all that, is one of the pleasures of reading this short, powerful, frequently authorially self-referential récit all the way to the end. I recommend you do that soonest. Preorder it now!

073 Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi (tr. Marilyn Booth)

Read the Electric Literature mutual interview between Author Alharthi and Translator Booth!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From Man Booker International Prize–winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.

Zuhour, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she can’t help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Amir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhour left the Arabian Peninsula.

As the historical narrative of Bint Amir’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhour’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips and dreams mingle with memories.

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

My Review: Celestial Bodies, Author Alharthi and Translator Booth's previous literary collaboration, revolved around three women and their men...present, absent, loved, loathed, and longed for. It received the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, as it was called then. I myownself checked it out of the library and would've given it a three-star review had I bothered to review it at all...stories centering women organizing themselves and their worlds around men don't appeal to me. The prose was lyrical and pungent.

That last is what I love about this read:

I had gone. And then she had gone. And it wasn't possible to change anything. What the hand of fate had written could not be unwritten. That ancient line of poetry: All your tears, all your pleas, will erase not a line of that which is written. For I had gone, and I went away without smiling. I just went, in my cocky presumption that I could look the other way. That I didn't know; that I didn't need to know. And then remorse. Harsh, grating regret, making me more fragile than the brittle autumn leaves crumbling under the janitor's broom beneath my window.

–and–

"My grandmother would've given anything to be a peasant farmer," I said. And then immediately I regretted my abrupt reaction. Suroor raised her head. "Your grandmother?" Right. The words had come out and they couldn't be put back. I had said it: my grandmother. Why don't words come automatically with threads that we can yank to pull them back inside ourselves? But there are no threads attached. Those words had been said. What's done is done.

It's all there. Author Alharthi's style, the sentences not too terribly complex but the interrelationship of the words and images is dense, is active, is trellising the reader's vines of awareness into specific patterns that cast wildly distorting shadows on the life in the text.

It is exhilarating to read a simple story that reaches into shadows and under storage shelves and behind armoires in the reader. It means the writer and the translator have offered us everything they found when they rummaged through those spaces in themselves. If you, as I strongly suggest that you do, read the Electric Lit piece I've linked above, you'll come at this read with a vastly bigger experience of the intentionality of the writing. I think the best thing about that awareness, acquired before (in your case) or after (as in mine) finishing the novel, is its honing, its sharpening, of the decoding tools you have at your disposal to be in the read. I've chosen those two passages from the same early section of the story to illustrate that enriching quality.

What reading Bitter Orange Tree offered me was a stroll in a garden planted with almost-familiar-scented plants in service of a geometry slightly not what I am accustomed to (read: not centered so heavily on the women's men). The way the choices I've selected above interrelate and build on the character of Zuhour's perceptual world, the sensory and the eidetic, are the principal pleasure of this read. Like my stream-of-consciousness idol Virginia Woolf, the words build images and the images are shaped by the words as well as by the things the words evoke from us in their saying. Everything Zuhour senses is an image from her startlingly acute inner world...no fogs of forgetfulness (even when summoned, as above) cloud her quietly desperate longing for one more, once again, please just this single time.

Of course she gets none. No one does, and no depths of longing can break the iron arrow...crossbow quarrel, more like...of time. No matter how many times one says ignore, actually performing the act of ignoring is entirely different and often opposed by the metaphysical gravity of love. (I think it was this strange, off-kilter perceptual frame that reduced my rating from five to four stars, though....)

Because yes, this is a love story. Aren't they all. Yes, they all are but this love, Zuhour's love, is so tragically lacking self-love that it's the desperately sad kind of love-ungiven story that can reshape a life. Yours, o reader, if you will allow it; better or worse, as you use it.

Bitter Orange Tree sounds like it might be a good one for me. I shall check the library!

Monday *smooch*.

'Morning, RDear. Happy Monday to you.

I'm groggy - woke up to an earlier than usual alarm to prepare for the Friends Board meeting.

Coffee's helping...

I hope he's found work....

>218 karenmarie: Ugh! I'm glad coffee's helping. I'm pretty sure I've got nothing but a doc visit today so I got to sleep my usual. *smooch* for a better-than-expected Monday

>217 katiekrug: I definitely think the story will appeal to you, Katie. I'm not all the way confident that the style will, but hope so.

*smooch*

Good luck at the Docs, RD.

>216 richardderus: I will look out for that one, her debut prize-winner was imperfect but promising.

Phoodle #8 4/6

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https://phoodle.net

Thanks a bundle Kath!

Wordle 331 4/6

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It was a weird one. But the answer's what, in fact, I did.
AEONS, REIFY, LEECH, DELVE

>221 PaulCranswick: Just off to see him now, so thanks!

Heh...Kathy's aim is true, yet again.

I was looking at a list of new and forthcoming books and spotted this Wordle Challenge book. I can't quite figure out how a print book shades your guesses.

regarding Wordle certainly there are legitimate five letter words in any large dictionary that would be obscure to the point of random guesses.

Was staring at REARM the other day and parsing it as REAR - M -- Judy kindly set me straight its good old Re arm. Didn't get that one

Can't for the life of me understand cheating at Wordle. Really? What's the point?

>221 PaulCranswick: Well done ! phoodle has me stumped today. I have one guess left. I'm waiting to see if I get smarter later today :)

>222 richardderus: Wordle 331 5/6

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sheer luck

>228 mckait: It wasn't an obvious word today, was it.

>227 mckait:, >221 PaulCranswick: I X'd.

>226 magicians_nephew: This response has been deleted by its author.

>225 magicians_nephew: It's amazing what a perpspective check offers, no? I was absolutely blind to today's solution...had it entered...thought, "that's not a word!"

But of course it is.

>224 thornton37814: Unless printing technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since I left the field, I can't even think of a possible way to do that.

>225 magicians_nephew: How do you cheat at a game in which your only opponent is yourself? Why bother?

>230 PaulCranswick: Perzackly!

Hi Richard.

>221 PaulCranswick: - Phoodle? Never heard of it. But I was curious:
Phoodle #8 2/6

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https://phoodle.net

Hmmm. A new time suck?

>225 magicians_nephew: - Funny! That reminds me of a time long ago, in childhood, when my younger brother was learning to read. He was sounding out words and sounded out this: to get there. The actual word was *together*. ;-)

>232 jessibud2: It certainly can be a new time suck...

:-)

>233 richardderus: - I am sure I just had beginner's luck, ;-)

Tentacled American? Or Brit.

>215 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Richard!

>216 richardderus: That one too!

Have a wonderful week, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>236 alcottacre: Oh goody good good! I got 'er twice in one day. I hope you'll enjoy 'em, at least; I expect Mister N will be a special read for you.

>235 humouress: Tentacled American, of course, so isn't it ineligible to be PM @ #10?

>237 richardderus: Well, between you and Mary, I have been hit 5 (count 'em), 5 times today! Unfortunately, I am now on a self-imposed book diet: I can order no more books until I lose 10 pounds. That ought to keep me in line, lol.

>219 richardderus: I'm sure it's run off somewhere with mine, enjoying a carefree life of thought-free bliss. *smooch*

>219 richardderus: I think it must have run off with mine and is now enjoying a carefree life of thought-free bliss. *smooch*

>240 Storeetllr:, >239 Storeetllr: Heh...thought-free bliss has a sweeter ring to it than was once the case, for me at least.

>238 alcottacre: ...as Stasia vanishes into supermodel thinness...

>235 humouress: He couldn't do a worse job, Nina. x

Wordle 331 5/6

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Same as you today, dear.

>239 Storeetllr: >240 Storeetllr: How in the world did that happen?

You were right, The Ponder Heart was a good one.

Wordle 332 5/6

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*sigh* I hate guessing-game days.
AEONS, SEINE, VEINY, FEINT, BEING

>245 Familyhistorian: Oh, I *am* glad! It's probably the best not-short-story thing Miss Eudora ever wrote.

>244 Storeetllr: Who ever knows, Mary. It's one of those "too-many-ways-to-fail" problems with tech.

>246 richardderus: yeah sometimes you can have all the letters and still not pull it out of the hat

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you.

>246 richardderus: My 4 was marginally better than your 5.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>249 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! *smooch* for a smooth Tuesday for your errand-running self.

>249 karenmarie:, >248 magicians_nephew: It's the guessing-game days that make me feel so irked...WHICH word _EIN_ do you want?!? Ugh

>250 richardderus: It helped today that my English vocabulairy is limited, Richard dear, I could only come up with one _EIN_ ;-)

>251 FAMeulstee: - Anita, you make me laugh. *limited* is not a word I'd give to your command of our language! In fact, your command of it is probably greater than many native speakers! ;-)

>252 jessibud2: LOL! My written English is way better than my spoken English, I have a heavy Dutch acccent ;-)

Drive-by *smooch*

>254 katiekrug: *smooch*

>253 FAMeulstee:, >252 jessibud2:, >251 FAMeulstee: Speaking and writing and reading are very different skills. I've known many a gifted speaker who flat can not write as well as they speak. Likewise writers of rare eloquence who can barely utter a sentence.

Let's celebrate the strengths!

>238 alcottacre: Ow! That's probably great motivation for weight loss, but ow! ow! ow!

>256 ArlieS: Yeah, it is hurting already, Arlie! Lol

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD!

>257 alcottacre:, >256 ArlieS: It's just flat inconceivable (and I *do* know what that word means) that this could fail as a motivator.

>238 alcottacre: What a great idea. The pounds would simply fall off me although I could resort to the culling of limbs if I was prevented from my weekly book buys.

>259 PaulCranswick: Brian Evenson has a book for you: Last Days. Or you could read James Meeks's deeply traumatizing The People's Act of Love...be careful what you wish for....

>260 richardderus: I have Meek's book on the shelves RD. I wish to lose weight, I wish to keep buying books, I need all my limbs to reach the shelves especially being otherwise vertically challenged.

>246 richardderus: I had one of those guessing game Wordles yesterday. Sigh. Today was a fair 4.

>238 alcottacre: Does it count if I lose the same 10 pounds that keep coming on and off? LOL Otherwise I might never be able to buy a book again! LOL

>262 Berly: I hate 'em, Berly. I know one isn't meant to hate, but wow do I hate the guessing game days!

...I never once thought of that dodge...you GENIUS you!

>261 PaulCranswick: Go get it and read it. Then see how you feel....

>263 richardderus: I will go and look for Brian Evenson's book too, RD. Thanks for the tip.

>262 Berly: Clever, Kimmers. xx

>246 richardderus: At least your first word gave you something to work with, Richard. I had nothing going in but ended up doing it in 5.

>265 Familyhistorian: I just commented rather sourly on that subject in your thread!

>264 PaulCranswick:

>258 richardderus: It's just flat inconceivable (and I *do* know what that word means)

*giggles*

Happy Tuesday, Richard!

Gotcha!

>175 richardderus: Familyhistorian: That must be it! Sandy has a lot to answer for....

'Morning, RDear, and a happy Wed-nes-day to you.

I got Wordle in my usual 4. I am drinking coffee. I have a fun book to look forward to. Life is good.

*smooch*

>250 richardderus: I lucked in with my first _ein_ word, getting it in 3.

>235 humouress: I think, at this point, we'd take it.

Hoping Wednesday does you well.

>270 Helenliz: Hi Helen! Luck is all it is, when one gets into the guessing-game part of the festivities that I dislike so much.

>269 karenmarie: Life is, indeed, good my dear...they're putting in my a/c this morning ahead of the high 80s predicted for the weekend. *smooch*

>268 SandyAMcPherson: Heeheehee

Why am I not surprised that lured you out from behind your cloaking device, book-Romulan lady....

>267 bell7: *smooch* for a happy Wednesday all around, Mary.

074 Brisbane: A Novel by Eugene Vodolazkin (tr. Marian Schwartz

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the winner of Russia’s biggest literary prizes, a richly layered novel in which a celebrated guitarist robbed of his talent by Parkinson’s disease seeks other paths to immortality: by authorizing a biography and by mentoring a thirteen-year-old virtuoso battling cancer.

This personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning will resonate with readers of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Umberto Eco, and Solzhenitsyn. Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, belonging and purpose, time and eternity. At the stunning finale of Brisbane, all the carefully knit stitches unravel into a riddle: Whose story is it – the subject’s or the writer’s? Are art and love really no match for death? Is Brisbane, the city of our dreams, our only hope for the future?

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

My Review: A guitarist with Parkinson's. A son without parental care...with a grandmother's undivided devotion. A half-Ukrainian, half-Russian child caught in between identities, whose life's course was taken *despite* not because it mirrored his father's...and he exceeds the father who didn't believe he was suited for the life of a musician.

Plough Publishing House (link) is a christian-focused organization whose primary focus is on the *good* that religion can do...the support for the unsupported, the care for the abandoned, and justice for the victims, that defined the main character's entire identity in the badly plotted, overwritten fantasy novel they build their philosophy on.

What? You thought I wouldn't insult religious nuts for their delusional identity basis? More fool you.

That said, this Ukrainian-Russian story of the pain associated with finding, building, losing, and loving an identity is an excellent example of what this publishing enterprise does best: Bring us the best there is of what there is that aligns with their worldview. This allows all of us to find the places we can stand together, to be in solidarity with even those who aren't like us and might not even like us.

But Gleb, whose story we're being told, is in the hands of a storyteller: A writer called Sergei whose work in writing Gleb's story of average beginnings and a rocket-ride to success and stardom comes just as the trajectory enters its terminal velocity. As must happen to us all, Gleb's facing mortality and the sad end of productive life. What he does, in chronicling his life with Sergei's help, surnamed "Nestorov" or "of Nestor's line" which gave me quite the chuckle), is bridge the ever-widening gap between the past's ghostly and fantasy-based "unity" and the present's angry animosity. Gleb's life, his struggle to win through to a meaningful use of his passion and his loneliness in abandonment by his Russian mother and his obsessive, judgmental Ukrainian father, is Ukraine's story. It seems to Gleb that he loses his life to no end, to no result...then he orients himself towards a future of hopeful and fruitful action in mentoring a young, lost, rejected soul. Pay it forward.

If you've read Author Vodolazkin's award-winning book Laurus (the genus of evergreen trees called "Laurels" and used, as your history brain will remind you, as victory-wreath material), the themes of christian redemption through works and the need to seek a purpose to make life into A Life won't be unfamiliar. Where that book was a medieval fantasy, and one of rare and joyous elegance and compassion, this is a modern and more basic, more brutal in a sense, version of the story. Death plays its part in the proceedings but it is the death that you and I, Westerners and rationalists, know; in Laurus, Death like all other supernatural forces is embodied, personified. Our names for him have changed (eg "Parkinson's disease") but his dark, demanding, denying power have not.

It is in the face of Death that some people find their only moments of clarity. Gleb isn't exactly one of them, he's organzied his life around music and willed into being a life centered on making music count. But he hasn't, until he meets Sergei Nestorov, put his lived experience into an ordered, planned, meant-to-be-shared form. This is a major act of grace. He's done something so selfless in this examination of the pain of being not enough, discovering he can make others experience joy, then losing it all.

When Gleb finished writing his rain compositions, people told him they bore traces of despair. Gleb didn't respond. He remembered the particular expression in his father's eyes, an expression that could only be defined as despair. What really happened then? Was Irina frivolous? More likely, she took everything light-heartedly, showing a marked preference for the sunny side of life. And was disinclined to delve particularly into its shadowy aspects. She often repeated that she'd like to live in Australia: for some reason, that country seemed like the embodiment of the carefree life. Jokingly, she would ask people to find her an Australian husband she could travel the world with. It was in one of those conversations that Gleb first heard the word "Brisbane." Talking about the city of her dreams, his mother named Brisbane.

–and–

Irina allowed Gleb's father parental visits but derived no joy from them. Strictly speaking, neither did Gleb himself. When Fyodor took the boy for a walk, he mostly was silent or recited poetry, which for Gleb was worse than silence in a way. Sometimes, when Gleb got tired at the end of their walk, Fyodor would pick him up. Their eyes were on a level then, and the son would examine his father with a child's unblinking gaze. Under this gaze, tears would well up in Fyodor's brown eyes. One after another, they would roll down his cheeks and disappear forever in his fluffy mustache.

It can't escape your attention in either of these passages that the child isn't centered. It won't surprise you to learn that neither parent was There for their son. It can't escape your notice that, in that case, a child is left to his own devices, no matter the other sources of support he discovers over his life, to define what love and care are.

It won't shock you then to learn that Gleb married music, and focused on becoming a star when the Universe presented him with the possibility. And now...ending that life and without another prepared for himself...now he gifts all that he's learned to a writer who will tell of his lifelong struggle to be whole when his antecedents left him to figure out for himself what that would mean, what that would look like.

Much the way Ukraine is experiencing its national-identity crisis in a cruel war with its cold, needy, selfish mother who abandoned it when it was in need. Time after time after time.

Gleb forgives, accepts, and gives his all to the future, to the child he mentors, the child challenged to remain alive...does she have his luck, does she have his singleness of purpose to make music and make Life give him more music to make?

And Nestor(ov) does what he must do, he brings the legend to life by writing a life of the legend. I hope you'll read Vodolazkin's work. It is beautifully translated, with none of the stiltedness of transferring meaning from one tongue to another; Translator Schwartz started from a high mountain, it's true, but she also blazed her trail there with surefooted grace.

Burgoine #32

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF THE LIBRARY. USE THOSE LIBRARIES, THEY NEED US!

My Review: I was absolutely ready, in my loving fandom for Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series, to gobble this book down with ecstatic slurps and croons of rapture. I was given so much good stuff about books, the love thereof:

It was always wise to be polite to books, whether or not they could hear you.
–and–
Books, too, had hearts, though they were not the same as people's, and a book's heart could be broken: she had seen it happen before. Grimoires that refused to open, their voices gone silent, or whose ink faded and bled across the pages like tears.
–and–
“You like this place?"

"Of course I do. It has books in it.”
–and–
"I knew you talked to books. I didn't realize they listened."

I was so on board! And then! Then!

“I like girls too, Scrivener.” Amusement danced in Nathaniel’s eyes. “I like both. If you’re going to fantasize about my love life, I insist you do so accurately.”
–and–
Nathaniel nodded. “If you can believe it, I used to fancy him. Then he went and grew that mustache. Or he murdered a gerbil and attached it to his face. For the life of me, I can't tell which.”

Unremarkably, given the necromantic nature of the being speaking, Elisabeth Scrivener is presented with casual, unrepentant male bisexuality. This being a creature rarer than a toothy hen, I was ever so ready to love this book. That it is from a professèdly wicked male being...well.

That's sort of where I got myself into the downs. The fact is that it's a YA novel and I'm extra-sensitive to the YA Twee Syndrome. Banter is fun, I like banter, but there's got to be something substantial in the soufflé to make it fix its claws in me. And that is where I just wasn't getting the underpinnings I needed for my edifice of pleasure. I'm sure as sure can be that a bookish young person wouldn't have my sliding-closer-to-seventy-daily old man's sense of wanting something more. The story rests on good foundation: Enemies to lovers, accepting Otherness in self and companions, defending Right and Truth against prejudice and ignorance. It just does as little with them as is practicable.

Fine for YA and not enough for old-man me.

A soufflé with claws? ;0)

Burgoine #33

One-Way Street (var. title Monodromos) by Marian Engel

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Said: Her first two books, Sarah Bastard's Notebook and The Honeyman Festival, demonstrated that Marian Engel is a Canadian novelist with a marvelous talent for portraying women. In One Way Street (formerly titled Monodromos), we meet another one of her heroines. Audrey Moore, intelligent Canadian, 36—facts which help her not at all during her solourn on a Greek island where she is staying with her estranged husband, a has-been concert pianist with sexual proclivities that do not include Audrey. Although she senses that life on the island will be a one-way street for her, the heroine becomes deeply involved in the island's characters and finally takes a Greek lover—to the disgust of an island crone who sits in Audrey's doorway loudly lamenting the young woman's sins to passersby. The tensions of Audrey's island life explode in a hilarious finale as she ends her stay with pilgrimage to a Greek monastery where the Bishop attempts her seduction. A tragi-comic masterpiece, One Way Street is an intensely readable novel about Canadians in an alien land.

I BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM ARCHIVE.ORG HERE.

My Review: I read this book because Jo Walton liked it. Me? Well...it was okay. I certainly didn't hate it. I was slightly surprised that Author Marian Engel was married to Howard Engel whose Benny Cooperman mysteries I read in the 1980s. They're not stylistically similar at all, in the manner of divorced spouses around the world I suppose.

This book failed me by being a "straight-woman-saves-gay-ex" narrative that portrays him as a hapless and manipulative with it ne'er-do-well. Now, in 2022, I am less horrified and more simply impatient with that kind of dumb-man stuff. But it not only colored but darkened my appreciation for Author Engel's lovely descriptive prose and perceptive aperçus.

>274 humouress: Yes, claws and hooves and digit-tipping nails. Things it should not have. At All.

*sigh*

Wordle 333 2/6

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This almost *never* happens! It's only the fifth time in 108 games played!!

>277 richardderus: Wow! Congratulations!

Karen O.

>278 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O. I'm really pleased...turns out being busy cleaning all morning to get my AC installed was inspiring!

>277 richardderus: WOW! Congrats! That never has happened to me, though it almost did once if I'd used my usual second word guess. That was the time I decided to try being clever and used a different word.

Hope you're having a good week!

>280 Storeetllr: Thanks, Mary! I spent the morning moving books, vacuuming, getting ready for the a/c to be installed ahead of Saturday's heatwave...then moving everything back. I'm fried!

I can't quite believe it's the 5th time in 108 games played that I got it in 2. I guess it was inspiration from my activities that gave me the idea.

>281 richardderus: It's a good second word anyway, especially if you used your usual first word that begins with s.

Your morning activities give you ample excuse to take a nice long afternoon nap! I didn't realize there was going to be a heatwave this weekend. Guess I better pull out the A/C too. It's a drag, because it takes up most of my one window's light, and my house is already dark and dreary on a good day. I was hoping to get by with just fans until June. Oh, well, I'll just have to put all the lamps on.

>277 richardderus: Wow, Richard dear.
Today was our lucky day (Wordle day 333, nice number) we both had it in two, although for me it was in the Dutch version.

>281 richardderus: Busy day, I bet the a/c is well worth the work.

>283 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Yes, 333 did us both proud in our respective languages.

It really, really is. *smooch*

>282 Storeetllr: Sadly, Mary, Saturday and Sunday are expected to get to almost 100°! Yep...drag out the a/c!

I'm going to try to power through the afternoon and evening so I can get to sleep a little early tonight. Rob's not working and we're both plumb tuckered out.

I'm really glad I told you about the heatwave...what a hellish weekend it would've been!

*smooch*

Nice reviews, Richard. I may have to add Brisbane to the list. I think the Rogerson one may already be on there, so here's hoping I like it more than you did. There's something about reading kids and teen books and realizing I'm their parents age (or older) that makes for, hm, a different reading experience than it used to be.

Hope the AC keeps you cool this weekend!

>273 richardderus:
I choose to look at the twee-dom of much of the LBGTQ literature available in YA as a portent for the future. Today's YA's are so much more liberal minded than their parents. About most things. That gives me hope for the future. There might be red and blue states now, but these YA's are mostly blue, and likely to stay that way. Politically that means that this country is going to change. It will be after I am gone, but it is going to change because these young people just don't see what all the angst is about sexual preferences. They think the reaction of the older generation is a tempest in a teapot. What bothers me is that none of that makes them angry enough to go vote. Either that, or they just don't get the connection between voting and all this nonsense about sex. If we have discussions about these things at work, I try to tell the college students that it is so important for them to go vote, and almost always they reply that there is no sense voting for those stupid OWG's. I tell them the stupid OWG's are going to be there forever if they don't get out and vote and that's when I can sense them shutting their ears. That's when I think C'est le guerre.

>286 benitastrnad: It's the interconnectedness that really presents the problem. It's honestly invisible to them. And that means we're getting our time in the driver's seat unnaturally extended!

>285 bell7: Goodness yes, Mary, definitely get Brisbane: A Novel! The Rogerson, now...mmm...as reasearch, permaybehaps.

Thanks! *smooch*

>277 richardderus:. W0W! well done

Wordle 333 3/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Congrats on wordle in two tries!

Also congrats on reading and reviewing 75 books already!

>289 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, I'm a busy boy indeed.

>288 mckait: Thanks, sweetness! *smooch*

>259 PaulCranswick: Yeah, I have gotten to the point where if I do not come up with some kind of motivator, I might not go back to losing weight at all!

>262 Berly: I thought of that too, Kim, but that is kind of self-defeating, isn't it?

>272 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole, where hopefully it will eventually emerge from, if I can ever lose ten pounds, lol.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD.

Oh, hey. The magic 75 already? Congratulations!

>277 richardderus: I Wordled 333 in 3 but since I can’t remember what the word was, I can’t tell you how I got there. Congrats on your 2.

My latest YA read has quiltbag characters and people of colour scattered all over the place as a matter of course but that’s not the focus of the story (characters are ostracised on a different basis); they are interwoven into the narrative as the norm so it is barely worth mentioning. Which, I think, is as it should be.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

ETA: My thoughts about Fado Alexandrino can now be found on my thread.

Good morning, RDear. Happy soon-to-have-AC Thursday to you.

>275 richardderus: an island crone who sits in Audrey's doorway loudly lamenting the young woman's sins to passersby. The tensions of Audrey's island life explode in a hilarious finale as she ends her stay with pilgrimage to a Greek monastery I did not commit sins while at his mother’s house on the Greek Island of Andros with my romantic interest in 1979, but we did do a lot of sitting in the doorway, with a glass of thickened syrupy sugar in a glass of ice water talking to all the folks who passed by. Of course nobody but Tony spoke English, so it was a lot of trying to pick out the Greek words I knew. Tony also arranged for us to go to one of the Greek Orthodox Monasteries on the island. Happy memories. Let's not talk about the lesson I learned about food: don't name the goat.

Congrats on posting 75 reviews. You’ve probably read 100 books by now…

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>294 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! 140 books so far, 138 of them reviewed.

Named the goat, did you. Oh me oh my. "Another slice of Maisie, anyone?"

*smooch*

>293 FAMeulstee: Oh, I'll be over to see you soon so I can either dust off or brush off Fado Alexandrino.

Happy Thurs!

>292 humouress: Long since, Nina, but it's a good milestone.

The word was SCOUR not really common, not really uncommon...the perfect vocabulary weight for Wordle.

I completely agree with your observation about QUILTBAG characters being unremarkable in modern YA. We're in the part of the culture war where that's the right treatment: just part of the scenery. It's always safest to be in the crowd.

>291 alcottacre: I expect we'll see you down to 100lb in no time, Stasia, as the books you can not have become more and more desirable.

Happy Thursday! *smooch*

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I have to admit to skimming through the many posts. Lots to catch up with around here, while I was gallivanting the marshlands of WI. We had a good time but I caught a nasty cold, which put a slight damper on things. I did do a self-test last night, just to be sure. It was negative. Whew! I hope you have been having a good week.

>296 msf59: Happy to see you, Mark! I'm glad the trip to Wisconsin was a good gallivant. I'll come check for photos later.

We're getting your heatwave late tomorrow, for which I in no way thank you. Good news is my building's maintenance guys put in my a/c!
***
From Morning Brew, my fun-to-read daily update on Business, I gleaned this amusing tidbit: "WNWN announces world’s first consumer sale of cacao-free chocolate."

...!!...

And the library hold on The Guncle came in, so I know what I'm reading this weekend.

The new thread's open now! https://www.librarything.com/topic/341849