Reading in 2022 - Jill Reads in Snatches, Part Two

Yesterday, I sat in on a discussion with five women about West From Appomattox by Heather Cox Richardson. The book offers an enjoyable overview of the United States in the immediate wake of the Civil War and focuses on the westward expansion of the country. It’s quite readable and not overly dense in presenting information. I had picked up the title at some point this year (last year?) intending to use it as a reference for picking up names, places and events when doing the historical freelance work. However it wasn’t until this past month that I began to read the book in an actually linear fashion (intro, chap one, chap two, etc.). The book group that was discussing did range over a number of topics during the hour we were online, but the group was small enough that everyone got to weigh in. These were women who while they aren’t professional historians, for the most part do have professional degrees. It was a lively hour on a Friday afternoon and I exited the discussion feeling energized.

Tomorrow, there’s another book group discussion with just a trio of women, discussing Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Links. Certainly, that novel is less cerebral than the non-fiction West From Appomattox but there is always something to pick apart in a discussion of Christie. How does she misdirect the reader’s attention? Does the logic of the puzzle hold up? Was there fair play, etc. I have known the women in this group for more than a decade – perhaps more than two decades at this point – and I know what to expect of the discussion. Some sessions we are very focused on the book and other sessions we kind of shrug and leave it alone, but it’s always been a nice break in the routine. Even on Zoom. I feel as if I have a sufficient sense of them as friends to know when to steer clear of sensitive areas (for the most part), when they need to vent about real life, and how much advance preparation and intensity to expect of the discussion. (For the record, they have almost always read the book in its entirety; once or twice we’ve had a member fling the book against the wall as a DNF, but not very often.)

Today, however, I tried to participate in a Jane Austen discussion group and whether it was me being an unknown entity in their group or whether it was due to some other aspect of the group discussion, I came away feeling sadly disappointed. It’s a three-session discussion of a three-volume novel Sense and Sensibility and during the first session (held last month), I just sat and kept quiet, trying to gauge the level of discussion and the desired approach to participation. (Who were these people and was I going to feel out of my depth?) I minded my manners and thanked the group in the chat for the interesting commentary and for allowing me to join.

So I was jazzed for the second segment. Please understand that Sense and Sensibility is one of my great favorites of Austen’s work.This was supposed to be a close-read, an in-depth analysis of, most specifically, the second volume of the three parts. It’s the part where Elinor is suffering quietly as she watches Lucy Steele’s seeming acceptance by Edward’s family and where Marianne goes to the ball only to be ignored by the great cad, Willoughby. There's a lot there to be examined and I knew that the crowd was capable of real insight. I went prepared. I’d looked at the occurrence and use of words like conscience, consciousness, and embarrassment, because this is the part where the author makes clear the range of duplicitous behavior in various individuals as well as in society as a whole. Sadly, the whole discussion only lasted a half hour and focused for the most part on a single paragraph.(one in which none of my words appeared…) I did my best, I tried to join in the conversation, but I must have blown it in some fashion because my “golden nuggets” failed to spark ideas or reactions. Maybe it was due to the summer heat? I don’t know. *murfle* It was JANE AUSTEN.

For the record, the word conscience occurs 12 times in S&S. And it is specifically noted that Elinor recognizes from Willoughby’s behavior that he is conscious of his own horribleness in misleading and then ignoring Marianne. He’s a scuzz-bucket and by the end of the book, I’m still not convinced that he did in fact love her.

sigh Honestly I’m starting up this second thread just because...

Most rewarding reads thus far in 2022 have been:
(1) The Empress of Salt and Fortune
(2) The Phantom of the Opera
(3) No-Name
(4) Arcadia
(5) The Witness for the Dead
(6) The Stones of Grief

Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

>1 jillmwo:
I suspect you were better prepared for the S&S discussion group than the other attendees. I have the impression that you always prepare well for events, whatever their nature.

By the way, how often did the term "scuzz-bucket" appear in the book?

>1 jillmwo: Oh, I'm sorry. That does sound dreadfully disappointing. (That is my second favorite Austen.)

(Hey, I've read four of those!)

>2 pgmcc: Ha!

>2 pgmcc: I'd check with Marissa_Doyle on this, but I believe the term may actually have entered common parlance during the Victorian era....

>3 clamairy: I take it you love P&P best? In some moods, so do I.

>4 jillmwo: Yes, it's P&P, but only by a hair or two.

>1 jillmwo: Congrats on the new thread and West From Appomattox sounds very interesting. That's too bad about the disappointing discussion group sessions! They were video chats?

>4 jillmwo: I actually would not be surprised were "scuzz-bucket" to be heard in the new Netflix version of Persuasion (which is tied to P&P as my favorite Austen, closely followed by Mansfield Park.)

>4 jillmwo: & >7 Marissa_Doyle:

I am delighted with this etymological diversion for "scuzz-bucket". This is one of the delights and joys of LT and GD in particualr.

>6 Karlstar: Yes, these were all book discussions carried on via Zoom. W/ regard to the Austen discussion, I had raised my hand and was never recognized so spoke up in response to a question put forward. (I suppose that might have been the unforgivable faux pas.) And yes, if you have any interest in American History, West from Appomattox is decidedly worth your time.

>7 Marissa_Doyle: and >8 pgmcc: I haven't mustered up the wherewithal to watch the new streaming version of Persuasion because, having seen the awful trailer, I suspect I'd begin flinging things at the television screen. (But I wouldn't be surprised if some script writer flung in an instance of suzz-bucket in that one.)

And like you Marissa_Doyle, I too cherish a fondness for Mansfield Park.

Today's discussion of Murder on the Links helped a bit. In part because I actually discovered that the whole premise of the crime in that was based on an actual crime in 1908. Marguerite Steinheil is the model for one of Christie's characters and the story she told about how her husband and her mother were killed one night by intruders. (She was not truthful in her testimony in court but she was sufficiently feminine and delicate that the jury and judge forgave her anyway.) She was able to faint on cue in court and there is a later rumor that a president of France died in her bed.

I think I'm going to sample some science fiction that's been sitting on the TBR pile for more than a year.

>9 jillmwo: I think I'm going to sample some science fiction that's been sitting on the TBR pile for more than a year.

You cannot say that and not tell us the title, or titles. As you would say, enquiring minds want to know.

>9 jillmwo: I don't think Netflix's Persuasion is so much a "streaming version" as a "steaming pile"...

I think I need to go rewatch the Amanda Root version with a large glass of wine at hand.

>11 Marissa_Doyle:
I love how your use of language creates such a vivid image in my mind.

Yuk!

:-)

>10 pgmcc: Okay, so digging out of boxes and sliding things gently from piles, the choices are these:

(1) A Desolation Called Peace
(2) The Hidden Palace
(3) All the Seas of the World

My current mood indicates I'm weary of British and/or American detective stories from the 20th century and I need to find an alternative. At the moment, Number (1) there is winning. In point of fact, I don't think I ever did get around to reading the final volume in Chakraborthy's trilogy. Empire of whatever-it-was. Gold? Would have to ferret through other boxes and piles to locate it. (I know it's here somewhere.) And sakerfalcon recommended The Hands of the Emperor so I got it in Kindle. I think clamairy and Marissa_Doyle also ganged up on that particular recommendation. Maybe not clamairy; it's possible she was standing next to me at the time and we both got winged....

Gad I WANT TO RETIRE sooner rather than later. There are so many books i haven't yet read. And I keep acquiring them so that I will have something to amuse myself with when I'm old and unable to afford such luxuries.

>11 Marissa_Doyle: So it's really just as bad as the trailer seemed to suggest it might be? I'm not going to subscribe to Hulu just for that then.

>13 jillmwo: I have All the Seas of the World on my list to get to soon. I also am ready to have more time to read!

>13 jillmwo: Yes, I was hit by the same spray of BBs! I would recommend the 3rd Chakraborty over A Desolation Called Peace, especially for Summer reading. I found that second Arkady Martine to be a bit more tedious than the first. I still enjoyed it, just not as much.

I'll probably watch Persuasion on HULU anyway, or at least start it. My milage often varies from every else's. LOL

I am moving slowly through A Desolation Called Peace but it is slow -- in part because one has to pay attention to know whose story we're in -- Three Seagrass, Mihrit/Yskander, Eight Antidote (the young Emperor to be) or Nine Hibiscus, the captain of the vessel dealing with the aliens.

It's easier to read the far less challenging domestic fiction by O. Douglas. I had originally thought I was just dipping into a re-read of one of a soothing romance of sorts. The prose style was comfortingly simple and/or familiar (much description of cozy, domestic interiors, protecting one against harsh winds and cold) and at the same time the story line seemed unfamiliar. So since it was niggling annoyingly at the back of my brain -- was this or was this NOT a re-read -- I went back to review. It seems I had the one on my Kindle, The Proper Place, confused with Penny Plain which I had read ten years back. Not surprising I was a tad confused. The plots have much in common and are not overly complex; most noticeable is that all the people are kind to one another. That last bit may not sound like much of a recommendation, but it's remarkably reassuring when an author isn't sneering at the nouveau riche for having more money than grace but rather suggesting a bit of empathy with their insecurities. Good manners go a long way these days.

Meanwhile, I got a much overdue tax refund this week from the State of Maryland and went all profligate in purchasing books I don't need. I shall never worry about the Thingaversary enforcers hunting me down at this rate.I shall simply invite them to come in and sit down on one of the various piles of books (as the couch is currently covered with books) while I rustle up a cup of tea and a plate of cookies. Or cheese, depending upon preference, as the case may be.

Postscript and Historical Note re The Proper Place: One of the important characters in The Proper Place is part of an expedition attempting to reach the top of Mount Everest. The Perfect Place was published in 1926. In the first half of that decade, there had been several failed attempts to reach the summit and resulted in death for members of the expedition. The trauma of those experiences is a running element of the novel. The 1924 expedition had a major public relations campaign attached to it; postcards mailed to school children from one of the base camps, etc. It was during this period, that a reporter asked one of the men why he wanted to climb Mount Everest and received the reply “Because it is there.” The sadness of the changes wrought by the First World War as well as the danger of these expeditions is an on-going thread of the novel.

Sometimes it takes a while before all the pieces of an author’s work fall together in the reader’s brain. I read A Memory of Empire in January 2021 and the novel’s plot of a potential overthrow of the government made it challenging to read at that particular moment in time. When I wrote of my reactions to the book back then, my comments were really fairly shallow. I liked the Teixcalaanli culture, but I didn’t comment at the time about the author’s intent, which seemed to be drawing attention to how powerful governments (imperial governments) fail to effectively recognize and absorb the other cultures that they may dominate.(see https://www.librarything.com/topic/328063#7388899) The imago technology that Ambassador Mahit Dzmare has embedded in her carries with it the partial consciousness of her predecessor Yskandr and she struggles throughout to understand how to work with that consciousness.

Having now read A Desolation Called Peace, I feel as if I have a much better sense of the depth of thought behind this duology. The first novel was about human issues in learning to absorb the thinking of those others who seem alien but who really may not be terribly different from ourselves. There may be cultural gaps in how we perceive and handle the world around us but the gap can be bridged with authenticity and effort. The second novel seems to me to be less optimistic with regard to the more complex phase of integration, when one is dealing with an OTHER that is so different that one must doubt whether a bridge is even vaguely possible. The aliens introduced in ADCP are presented as deeply different, beastly, ravening and repulsive. How do you bridge the gap and create connections with those who truly are so very alien.

Amidst all of this you have the deeply challenging dynamic of sociall power and politics. The imperial types from Teixcalaanli and those operating from technically advanced but decidedly smaller stations like Lsel are still playing political forms of 3D chess.

Definitely, there were some issues with the prose and/or the narrative construction in places, but this is what speculative fiction from my perspective is supposed to be. Thought-provoking and decidedly uncomfortable.

I honestly would never have encountered The Hands of the Emperor if it hadn’t been for those of you in the Pub here. So thank you to Sakerfalcon and others for the recommendation. Sakerfalcon is absolutely right that these characters are people you come to like; during a period where so much of popular fiction focuses on traumatic pain and despair, this is a refreshing and enjoyable opportunity to read something more down to earth.

To my mind, this is a story about the process of realizing one’s problem with isolation (whether due to social role, miscommunications or external events) and then working back into being once again a part of a communit. Cliopher is isolated by virtue of his work, his cultural background and distance from family. The Emperor is isolated by virtue of his status and by virtue of his Empire’s entrenched practices and customs.The two men must find their way back to being fully human and reconnecting with other human beings. This is not an action packed adventure nor is it a romantic comedy. It’s just a nice tale of how Cliopher discovers things aren’t going “right” and his efforts on behalf of the Emperor and himself to work out a solution. It’s not a fast-moving tale (which makes it ideal as a book one reads in bed before turning out the lamp for the night) but there are nicely placed twists that surprise one and make one keep turning the page to find out what happens next. And on at least one night I stayed up well past my normal bedtime on the basis of that curiosity.

A few quibbles but not perhaps particularly well articulated (hence spoiler tags)
The book is long and I think I recall Marissa_Doyle saying that she thought it might have benefited from judicious editorial tightening. I agree with that but must honestly say that I don’t quite know what I would have dropped out. It was a very slow build, but as a reader I was intrigued by some of the fantasy elements of the imagined setting. I really wanted to learn more about the very intriguing event, The Fall. I still don’t quite grasp what happened or how that kind of temporal shift could happen. Magic is important in this setting, serving as some kind of centrifugal force (remove it and it all goes to pieces), but one doesn’t quite understand the rules under which it operates. I loved Kip’s backstory but it took us a long time to get there. On the other hand, it might not have been nearly as impactful if it hadn’t unfolded as carefully as it did. Nor did I understand what occurred precisely during the Emperor’s encounter with the Moon Goddess. They were once together? Did the love affair happen in some other world? Was it even really a love affair or was it something more mystical? And to be honest, there were portions that teetered strongly on rather facile thinking about how to improve the world so if one isn’t open to that, it would be a very real downside. Some readers might characterize it in places as being a tad “preachy”.

I’d certainly recommend it to others (and have already done so), but with very specific caveats. It’s not an adventure story or space opera. It’s not a rant – political or otherwise. It’s a nice recognition of how things progress, both externally and internally. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the fictional world. It was a light read and I’ll gladly revisit it through some of the other novels she’s set in that universe.

>20 jillmwo: This is great news. It popped up as ready to borrow at the same time as another shorter book, so I delayed it a week. Looking forward to diving in!

>20 jillmwo: You get more of the "bigger picture" about magic and the Fall and events around it from her Greenwing & Dart series (which I adore), and from a bunch of her shorter works. It's like a giant puzzle to piece together.

>20 jillmwo: I'm so glad you enjoyed this! It's such a nice change to read a book without "traumatic pain and despair" as you say.

Mary Roberts Rinehart was a bestselling novelist in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was the first female American war correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post during World War One. President Herbert Hoover and his wife were huge fans. She traveled the American West extensively, becoming an advocate for and respected by indigenous tribal nations. If the critics had gone into her work with an open mind, they might have found much more was being communicated to her public. All too frequently, experts note her negatively as the source of the clunky transition technique of “had-I-but-known” or as the originator of “The butler did it”. Neither of those pigeonholes does the woman justice.

In her 1938 novel, The Wall, the narrator is Marcia Lloyd, a 29 year-old woman who may have been passed over in life. She has been raised as a beloved child in an affluent family (town house, summer cottage, a trust fund). Following a financial crash and the deaths of her parents, Marcia is coping with changed circumstances. The trust fund certainly isn't what it was prior to the Great Depression, but Martha isn't entirely without resources. Despite challenges, Martha has managed to keep the Lloyd household relatively intact, holding on to two or three elderly family retainers. However, without warning, her brother’s ex-wife, Juliette, has arrived to take up residence with her in the summer community up near Bar Harbor. Neighbors in the know warn her that it would be wisest to dislodge both the unpopular Juliette as well as her sullen maid. Privately, of course, it’s not that easy. Juliette wants a new financial settlement from the divorce and won’t leave until she gets it. Consequently, there are a series of disruptions, break-ins, and mysterious deaths. Those events set both the year-round community at odds against those who only visit during the summer months. “You people always stand together,” thunders the local sheriff about three-quarters of the way through. Rinehart’s novel reveals how unethical treatment of others (whether criminal or otherwise) alters communal ties in a solution as complex as any constructed by Christie.

Part of what throws readers about this book is that Marcia is on the sidelines for the bulk of the action. So much of the activity happens off screen. The technique feels awkward to those who expect to be directly in the scene with the protagonist, but it’s possible that Rinehart may have written a very slow build to the novel purposely. The ripples created at one point by Juliette throwing a rock into a pool take a while to reach the wider shore. The author was working to establish the ripples felt in the larger community from wrongful acts. For me, The Wall parallels Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park with its discussion of duty and ethical behavior in the context of family and community. The narrator (Marcia Lloyd) and the murder victim (Juliette Ransome) are respectively Fanny Price, the boring person who is working to sustain normalcy amidst crisis, and Mary Crawford, the selfish one luring others away from any inconvenient sociall standard. Mary may be the more engaging personality, but an eager permissiveness can all too easily corrupt a functioning social order.

I’m not generally a great fan of romantic suspense thrillers nor would I recommend The Wall on the basis of fabulous prose. The book (written ninety years ago) has a different pace to the story-telling, but I thought that the pay-off was satisfyingly complex.

And, hey, I just saw the list of Hugo winners emerging from Chicon 2022. For the first time in years, I'd actually read more than one of the winners, a fact due entirely to the recommendations emerging from this group in the Pub! So yay, all of you!

Edited to note that I just watched one of my favorite movies (Desk Set) with Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and I am reminded yet again how a couple of decades may cause some things to feel dated or quaint. It's a fun romcom, but look at cultural shift in how we view information technologies.

>25 jillmwo: I was thinking the exact same thing when I read the list. And I'd watched the movie that won, as well! (Though I'm sure I would have seen that without this group.)

>26 clamairy: And then you went and recommended Signal Moon. I read it all unsuspecting and mid-way through, I had to stop because I just wasn't going to be able to bear it if harm fell on either of those two characters. Honestly, you must WARN people if you're going to lead them into a reading experience like that. Yes, of course, it all turned out but it might not have done and then I'd have been a basket case. There might have been great wailing.

>27 jillmwo:
You are a very sensitive person. Clam hit me with that BB too.

>27 jillmwo: Well, I might not have recommended it so vigorously if it hadcaused me to wail and rend my garments.

I'm so glad you liked it.

Of course, pgmcc hasn't written anything about it yet, but for the record, I have gotten all the way through Colin Watson's Snobbery with Violence with the result that it set me to re-visiting The Wall and Mary Roberts Rinehart to reconsider the protagonist's circumstances.

As a side note, Watson's chapter on the cars driven in detective novels was a hoot. He explained what a Hispano-Suiza was (and now I'm much more impressed by Phryne Fisher).

I also spent some time last night reviewing the index in his book. Agatha Christie gets ten consecutive pages devoted to her work but he doesn't give nearly as much space to Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter. Or to Ngaio Marsh or Josephine Tey. He's fairly scathing in his comments about Fu Manchu. The man does have a gift with a turn of phrase and associated snark.

I'm so glad to have come across this January 2022 interview with Robin McKinley. I was fearful that she'd given up writing completely as she had stopped updating her public blog. Read: https://www.slj.com/story/robin-mcKinley-seeks-to-create-boundary-breaking-fanta...

>30 jillmwo: When I finish Have His Carcase I will read Snobbery with Violence. Your gentle pushing, and your interesting post, are propelling me towards that book. :-)

While I have a novel by Ngaio Marsh, I have not read it yet. I see from my records, that I acquired Artists in Crime as the result of a book bullet fired by one jillmwo.

>31 jillmwo: This is great news, and such a relief! I was thinking about her recently and searched in vain for new blog entries. It's really good to hear that she is coming through the dark times and is writing again. She is directly responsible for me taking up bell-ringing, as she wrote about it in her blog.

>33 Sakerfalcon:
I love the word, “campanology”.

>34 pgmcc: It's a good one!

>31 jillmwo: Thank you. I especially love this part:

"Ordinary real life, with the laundry and bills to pay and taking the trash out—or the homework and the mean teachers and the cliquey school politics—can feel stifling. Fantasy is one way to take flight out of the ordinary. It’s not the only way, but it’s a very good one for those of us with minds and imaginations built on those lines. LOTR undoubtedly changed my life. It is far from perfect—it is, for example, one of the places where my burning need for capable, interesting, active women characters in the books I read came from—but when I was 11, it gave me wings."

I'm sure it's due the events of last week, but apparently the London Review of Books is allowing people to revisit The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. The url is here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n05/alan-bennett/the-uncommon-reader

Great quote attributed to the Royal Reader herself: "...briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up."

Such a nice quiet delight.

Edited to include one more quote: "Sir Kevin had a very muscular face, the Queen thought. He seemed to have muscles in his cheeks and when he frowned, they rippled. If she were a novelist, she thought, that might be worth writing down."

and this:

"One reads for pleasure," said the Queeen. "It is not a public duty."

>37 jillmwo: Shoot, I thought reading was somehow improving the cosmic balance somewhere, someway.

>38 Karlstar: Well, there's never been adequate research into that aspect, so please don't stop reading. We can't take that risk. Balance is key. (I say this after watching an apocalyptic movie this morning, where it was not about climate change but rather about atomic bombs spinning the world off its axis. No matter -- the end result was the same. The earth was heating up and evaporation was drying up all of the rivers.) So again, I say, you have a responsibility -- we all do -- for continuing to read and keeping the cosmic balance in correct alignment.

Another interesting discussion, this time by award winners at Bouchercon, the WorldCon for crime fiction. https://crimereads.com/state-of-the-crime-novel-bouchercon-anthony-awards-2022/

Those who have studied the mystery genre in recent years wouldn’t find this to be a particularly surprising conclusion, but at the time these books were originally brought out (Watson in 1975 and Mann in 1981), these conclusions were striking ideas / observations:

Colin Watson writing about Mayhem Parva in Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and Their Audience

“There would exist for these people no really sordid, intractable problems such as growing old or losing faith or being abandoned or going mad. One or more would get murdered; the rest would be suspected for a while; one of them would ultimately be trussed for the gallows, if he or she had not first bitten on a pill smelling of bitter almonds or fall from a train or something. And then, the air cleared, everything would be set to continue as before – right, tight and reliable.”

“Such was England as represented by Mayhem Parva. It was of course, a mythical kingdom, a fly-in-amber land. It was derived in part from the ways and values of a society that had begun to fade away from the very moment of the shots at Sarajevo; in part from that remarkably durable sentimentality which, even today, can be expressed in the proposition that every church clock has stopped at 14:50 hours and honey is a perpetual comestible at vicarages”

“It was the puzzle-setters who dominated the field of crime fiction up to the 1940s…Their policy was to keep the grief of these characters short and to hurry everyone along to the interviews in the library in good time for them to dress for dinner – a social obligation that not even the most extravagant multiples of homicide were allowed to disrupt.”

In Deadlier Than The Male: Why are Respectable English Women So Good At Murder, Jessica Mann writes about the development of the mystery genre (as did Watson) but puts the greatest emphasis on Christie, Sayers, Tey, Marsh and Allingham.

Speaking of Christie, Mann writes that “Her sympathy and interest were saved for the innocent…In her fantasy world, the innocent were always compensated.” (147-148)

What Agatha Christie presented was a nostalgic generalization, incomplete, but not, historically, quite false. There were really people like her characters and her places like her settings – especially in South Devon and the Thames Valley; but there was more to them than she described, perhaps more than she wanted to notice, and there were vast areas of life and experience which she ignored. (page 151)

What has changed is the general message of the crime novel…the importance of preserving the existing state of society is no longer implicit in them. (page 236)

Christie is quoted as having said “No one could have dreamt then that there would come a time when crime books would be read for their love of violence, the taking of sadistic pleasure in brutality for its own sake.” (page 237)

I note both of these because much attention is being given to a new collection of short stories that came out over the summer, entitled Marple: Twelve New Mysteries. The short stories are by noted modern writers and are fine insofar as the genre goes, but none of them (IMHO) have managed to get the sound of the dialogue attributed to Miss Marple quite right. I can’t prove it, but I suspect the authors were told to tone down the sweet fluffiness of the character to appeal to the market.

*murfle*

>41 jillmwo: Christie is quoted as having said “No one could have dreamt then that there would come a time when crime books would be read for their love of violence, the taking of sadistic pleasure in brutality for its own sake.” (page 237)

That's a great quote. I used to read mysteries for the puzzle of figuring out who did it and the why, I do not want to read about the how any more than necessary. Probably one of the reasons I don't like horror movies either.

>42 Karlstar: Seconded.

>42 Karlstar: Yep, yep. I also read them for the atmosphere, the setting, the "fantasy" of it all. My favorites have clever dialog, and at the heart of the story is justice. The bad guys get their comeuppance, I don't particularly care whether that is through the legal system or Karma, so to speak.

Okay. This week's infinitesimal incident of "disaster". (*) I have lost my favorite leather bookmark. None of the books on the reading ottoman have it tucked inside. None of the recently "boxed" titles have it. Can't find it ANYWHERE. I am beside myself.

(*) For the record, I am very much aware that many people got hit by a disastrous, life-changing hurricane this past week and truly, I do not mean to minimize their pain, as I have friends down there as well as family members. That's why I pointed out that mine was infinitesimal and why disaster was inside scare quotes. If this is the worst thing that happens to me over the course of the next month, I'll be in FABULOUS shape.

>45 jillmwo: Better see if the couch or chair ate it. You might find some other interesting things if you delve deep. I am sorry hope it turns up soon!

Thank you, MrsLee. I just can't think which book might be holding it hostage.

As for responses to an earlier posting, my dear >42 Karlstar:, >43 haydninvienna: and >44 MrsLee:, I have always said that if I could work out the whodunnit, then it probably wasn't a very good mystery. My brain doesn't generally pick up on the logic gaps in an initial reading of a mystery. I’m focusing on what happens to the characters, the chain of events, and descriptive language. But it’s important to me that I like the individuals in the story because I don’t want the angst or the despair, the serial killers, etc. It's easy to like Christie’s people for the very reason that Mann notes – Christie’s interest centers on the innocent parties. Nowadays, readers tend to find that somewhat simplistic. We don’t believe that there are any innocent parties, either in the story or in real life. This may improve the realism of the work, but it isn’t much fun to read.

>47 jillmwo: I'm the same with mysteries. I rarely figure out who did it.

There are still innocent parties in this world, I believe. I guess that's why I don't enjoy stories where every character is some shade of awful, or grey.

>47 jillmwo:

Christie’s interest centers on the innocent parties.

Hmmm! There might be an exception to that: Murder on the Orient Express.

it’s important to me that I like the individuals in the story

Hear! Hear!

I stopped reading The Hunting Party when I realised there was not a single likeable character in the book. Likewise, Gone Girl, was full of loathsome characters.

I have always said that if I could work out the whodunnit, then it probably wasn't a very good mystery.

That must mean all the mysteries I have read were good. :-)

>49 pgmcc: Not to be difficult but wouldn't it depend on whom you designate as being the innocent ones in Murder on the Orient Express. Given that the Armstrong families were the original victims of the crime, she was certainly sympathetic to the devastation that the immediate family experienced in the loss of the little girl.

(For the sake of those who may never have read the book or seen the movie, I'm putting the rest of my argument behind the spoiler tags)

Those who committed the actual murder of Casetti were not immediate family but were those members of the household and others with close relationships. Thus they were equally victims of the original murder. Her sympathy lies in the fact that Poirot doesn't turn them all over to the authorities, because she recognizes that they are in some ways as much the victims of the original crime.

>46 MrsLee: And sure enough, this evening the missing bookmark was released by the volume that had taken it hostage. My anxiety is thereby reduced and I can actually consider what to read next because i have the critical equipment at hand. Last night i went upstairs to bed without my KIndle being charged and there was all sorts of sturm und drang as a result.

>48 Karlstar: We must stick together in our mutual belief. And actually your previous comment up there in #42 reminded me of a woman in one of my old library book groups. We'd read the book Gone Girl which shows the two primary characters to both be unreliable narrators and generally not nice people. This woman was horrified by that particular book because she felt that the behaviors shown in the book should not be a source of entertainment. Which just goes back to the comment that Christie made about her surprise that people would read (for purposes of entertainment) stories of graphic violence.

>50 jillmwo: Hurray! Glad you found it.

>50 jillmwo:
I agree with your point about Murder on the Orient Express, but the acceptance of that point puts our intrepid consulting detective in the role of not just an investigator, but also that of judge and jury. This is not uncommon in detective series, is necessary for the author to give the reader a sense of justice having been served, but is it not an example of their acting ultra vires and bypassing society's justice apparatus? (Snobbery with Violence looms strongly in my mind.)

Well done in negotiating the release of your bookmark. Was a ransom involved? Are you withholding the name of the hostage taker as part of some deal? Does the offending book have something on you that it threatens to publish if you reveal its name?

Gone Girl inspired me. It inspired me never to read any more books by Gillian Flynn. I see no place for graphic violence in a book, or graphic gore in films or TV shows. It adds nothing other than a possible shock effect. If anyone gets anything more from it, then I would be worried about that person. (Yes, that is my putting myself in the position of judge.)

>50 jillmwo: I am also glad you found it!

>50 jillmwo: It is always disappointing when I want to read something on my Kindle at bedtime and it stubbornly insists that I haven't charged it in a week and it just won't cooperate.

Luckily my Paperwhite only needs a charge once every few weeks. If I'm using the Fire, though, that baby is a lot needier.

My Paperwhite appear to be acting up. I am annoyed with it. That said, someone around here recommended The Apple Tree Throne. Remarkably evocative writing -- necessary to a gothic tale of death, war-torn existence, and the ghosts that don't leave us. Gave me the "willies" reading it in bright morning sunshine.

If you want your dark autumnal reading, you couldn't do better. (I, of course, being a wuss will need to go into therapy.) For those of you who've read some of her other work, what do you recommend? I saw the three titles in her Solaris Satellites series and they look intriguing.

Oh, and to respond to Peter (speaking there in >52 pgmcc:). The hostage was being held not in the 1000 pages of an out-of-the-way Brown book as might have been expected, but rather was confined to the hinge between initial sheets of an inconspicuous and flimsily made paperback. It was in danger of being crushed there but then recovered just in time and is now recuperating in the respectable biography with the dreamy White dust jacket. (Note: Names of the books have been changed to protect the innocent...)

>56 jillmwo: Uh oh. How old is it? Have you tried just restarting it? LOL A month or so ago mine suddenly wouldn't connect to the WiFi for more that a couple of minutes at a time, but *knocks wood* a simple restart seems to have taken care of that.

Holy-moly! Did you all see this thread about Tolkien's pub in OXford? https://www.librarything.com/topic/344985

>58 jillmwo: I didn't! Thanks for the link, that's great news.

>58 jillmwo: Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

>58 jillmwo: Thanks for this news! I'm sure I wouldn't have seen it if it weren't for your link.

Even though our literary passions don't overlap by very much, I enjoy reading about yours. And all passionate readers stand as a reminder that reading deepens and enriches our lives. I doubt that nonreaders have a way of understanding that.

And actually >61 Meredy:, you provided me with a wonderful lead in for one of my 2022 reads that I find I've not said anything about here in the pub as yet. It's Portable Magic by Emma Smith and I find it plucks at my heart strings in all the right ways. The focus on the materiality of the book, which all too frequently gets downplayed by the information community in some ways. They (publishers, librarians, etc.) have to focus on the pragmatic challenges of the printed volume -- things like finding space to house the books, identifying sustainable ways to continue printing the words on paper, the issue of pricing the commodity at an affordable level for the masses.

As Emma Smith writes in her introduction, “Portable Magic is not a study of platonic writing but a book about pragmatic books. Literary works don’t exist in some ideal and immaterial state; they are made of paper and leather and labour and handling.” She explores the “undersung inseparability of book form and book content…the books here are every day rather than aristocratic, mass market and marked with a coffee ring rather than unique and kept in a glass case. Still, form works its magic on them all.”

She talks about the concept of bookhood which “includes the impact of touch, smell and hearing on the experience of books.It focuses on paper, on binding, on cover illustrations, on bookselling, librarie and collections. It explores how size creates meaning and shapes expectations.”

Call me a romantic, a luddite or what-have-you. I love my printed volumes and Emma Smith GETS me! The book is solely available in the UK at the moment, but by mid-November will be available here in the United States. There are some ghoulish bits (book bindings using human skin housed near here in a Philadelphia medical museum), but there are other much more appealing accounts of what we mean when we think about our books. Certainly reminiscent of Leah Price's book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books, but somewhat better in my view.

>62 jillmwo:
That sounds fascinating.

>62 jillmwo: Ok, Jill, chalk it up as another hit. I have ordered the hardback. Given your review and another review I read I can only imagine hardback being the appropriate format for reading this book.

>64 pgmcc: *snort* I am not even sure if it's available in ebook form.

Be that as it may, my time with my current employer as a full-time employee is coming to an end at the close of this month (although I'll continue doing some part-time editorial work for them for a few more months). I was explaining this to someone who'd asked me what I was going to do in my free time. With my usual flippancy I responded by saying that I'd read all the books on my TBR pile as I've been hoarding books for quite a while. I said I though I might make it thru a year or maybe 18 months before I ran out. My husband snorted in disbelief. Josh then asked me if I anticipated re-reading anything and I said "Of course!!!". So these piles and piles of physical books -- those previously sucked down as well as those sitting untouched -- may last me even longer.

Of course, then I looked at all the bargain books I had stashed away on my Kindle. I will be just fine for possibly even longer than 18 months. I may make it through the first five years of retirement before the various stashes have been exhausted.

>65 jillmwo: Congratulations on ending your full-time employment. I hope you'll enjoy the change.

>58 jillmwo: That's great news about the Lamb and Flag. I couldn't believe it when I heard that both it and the Bird and Baby had closed down. Just awful. I wish them every success.

>65 jillmwo: Congratulations on your (semi) retirement! I hope you find many pleasant ways in which to fill your time.

Since I live near Oxford, I might have to drop in to the Lamb & Flag soon.

>65 jillmwo:
Amazon were selling a hardback, paperback and Kindle version.

Good luck with the move from full-time. I hope you enjoy your new freedom.

>65 jillmwo: and hopefully it means more from you in the Pub! Best wishes for your semi-retirement.

>65 jillmwo: Congratulations! Methinks you are forgetting something in your calculations of reading materials. You forgot about all the books you will buy due to the bullets which fly carelessly about here in the pub.

>58 jillmwo: Road trip!!!

>65 jillmwo: Congrats on your semi-retirement.

>62 jillmwo: Congrats on the semi-retirement! I hope you get to spend your time doing what you want.

Portable Magic looks incredible, but Amazon tells me that it won't be available for Kindle (or in print) until November. I'm very confused..

>74 clamairy:
Portable Magic is available on this side of the Atlantic in the following formats: Kindle; Hardback; Paperback; Audible

As pre my comments above, I believe hardback is the only format appropriate for reading this book. My copy arrives tomorrow. :-)

I suspect jillmwo had connections that enabled her to get her hands on a copy before the plebeians.

>75 pgmcc: I wondered if it was a re-release... But perhaps it is just debuting over here in November. And don't forget, it sounds as though Meredy had it before any of you.

>76 clamairy:
And don't forget, it sounds as though Meredy had it before any of you.

That puts me in my place.

:-)

ETA: I just checked. The first edition was published over here on 28th April, 2022.

>77 pgmcc: Yes, I checked as well. Perhaps I'm misreading Jill's post, but it sounded as though she implied that Meredy was the one who recommended the book originally. Now I'm wondering how either of them got their copies.

>78 clamairy:
The plot thickens.

No, no, I don't have it! in >62 jillmwo:, Jill said my remarks had supplied a segue for mentioning the book. She's the one who brought it up. I'm intrigued, but I also have at least two books about books ahead of it in my queue.

*snort* I never cease to marvel at the drama suggested by a few casual post.

First of all, what Meredy said up there in >61 Meredy: was this: all passionate readers stand as a reminder that reading deepens and enriches our lives. I doubt that nonreaders have a way of understanding that. Portable Magic is to some extent about that enrichment, the love that the physical book can engender in us. Albeit sometimes in weird ways. Ask me about the artist who with help from his friends masticated pages from a library book and then tried to return it (the remnants of the book) in its new form. How the s.o.b. got his so-called artistic output exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art eludes me. Sometimes the acronym of WTF really is the only appropriate response.

More seriously, I had been thinking about personal library collections, after reading The Library: A Fragile History and Unpacking the Personal Library and Portable Magic. One key aspect of libraries is that they operate on cycles of collection, consolidation, dispersal and integration. We don’t want to get rid of our physical books (OK, I don’t want to have to reduce my own personal collection.) On my bad days, I become depressed that libraries are being reduced to spaces that are not primarily spaces for BOOKS, but for a host of other community-based sharing activities. I know I sound like a luddite, but I don’t want my library to minimize the books on the shelves in favor of lending out baking pans or briefcases. Yes, the community may benefit from those things, but I still want the library to be primarily about books! But increasingly libraries don’t believe they can survive that way. For one thing, they run out of shelf space for all the books (storage space is at a premium); new buildings cost money that taxpayers grumble over. Some libraries are more interested in digital editions (ebooks) because that’s what their patrons want. But again, I miss beautiful physical books. (Folio may be outrageously expensive but they do gorgeous and well-crafted physical volumes.)

Don’t misunderstand me. Physical books are still with us and the AAP reported a very good year for print books in 2021. But one has the sense that fewer and fewer of the rising population have the same attachment to print because it’s just not as convenient as pulling out your phone and reading on whatever app you carry there for reading. Books are for use (some of you I know are familiar with the 5 laws of library science and Ranganathan.) and honestly, I don’t forget that. Books get used in different ways by people in a variety of circumstances. Do I need a Folio version of The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass or can I get by with an aged Penguin paperback? If I’m a broke student, a yellowing, aged mass market edition will do me just fine. But – perhaps mistakenly – I grieve over any diminishing of the physical book. It may have to recede at some point, but I don’t want to have to watch it. Don’t worry – long-form content will still be with us. It just may be poured into different types of containers in a digital world.

I want to read attractive books. I want to own my books. I want to use those books in a variety of ways, but I want to know that they’ll withstand the occasional moment of abuse (sometimes as minimal as the abuse of dog-eared pages) as well as the long haul of time. Saying this out loud in a room of publishers and/or librarians makes one sound like a Luddite or at the very least, like some whiny soul who doesn’t properly realize the harsh realities of business and sustained user access. It’s all very complex and we live in a very imperfect world. On some level, I know that the book will survive and I hold my tongue. But I grieve over what we may be allowing to slip away.

Fortunately there are all of you here in the pub who I know think about books in good ways and who remind me of the goodness found in sharing our reading experiences and sometimes our books.

*snort* I never cease to marvel at the drama suggested by a few casual post.

First of all, what Meredy said up there in >61 Meredy: was this: all passionate readers stand as a reminder that reading deepens and enriches our lives. I doubt that nonreaders have a way of understanding that. Portable Magic is to some extent about that enrichment, the love that the physical book can engender in us. Albeit sometimes in weird ways. Ask me about the artist who with help from his friends masticated pages from a library book and then tried to return it (the remnants of the book) in its new form. How the s.o.b. got his so-called artistic output exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art eludes me. Sometimes the acronym of WTF really is the only appropriate response.

More seriously, I had been thinking about personal library collections, after reading The Library: A Fragile History and Unpacking the Personal Library and Portable Magic. One key aspect of libraries is that they operate on cycles of collection, consolidation, dispersal and integration. We don’t want to get rid of our physical books (OK, I don’t want to have to reduce my own personal collection.) On my bad days, I become depressed that libraries are being reduced to spaces that are not primarily spaces for BOOKS, but for a host of other community-based sharing activities. It seems lacking in social compassion, but I don’t want my library to minimize the acquisition of books on the shelves in favor of lending out specialty baking pans or briefcases for job interviews. Yes, the community may benefit from those things, but I still want the library to be primarily about books! But increasingly libraries don’t believe they can survive that way. For one thing, they run out of shelf space for all the books (storage space is at a premium); new buildings cost money that taxpayers grumble over. Some libraries are more interested in digital editions (ebooks) because that’s what their patrons want. But again, I miss beautiful physical books. (Folio may be outrageously expensive but they do gorgeous and well-crafted physical volumes.)

Don’t misunderstand me. Physical books are still with us and the AAP reported a very good year for print books in 2021. But one has the sense that fewer and fewer of the rising population have the same attachment to print because it’s just not as convenient as pulling out your phone and reading on whatever app you carry there for reading. Books are for use (some of you I know are familiar with the 5 laws of library science and Ranganathan.) and honestly, I don’t forget that. Books get used in different ways by people in a variety of circumstances. Do I need a Folio version of The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass or can I get by with an aged Penguin paperback? If I’m a broke student, a yellowing, aged mass market edition will do me just fine. But – perhaps mistakenly – I grieve over any diminishing of the physical book. It may have to recede at some point, but I don’t want to have to watch it. Don’t worry – long-form content will still be with us. It just may be poured into different types of containers in a digital world.

I want to read attractive books. I want to own my books. I want to use those books in a variety of ways, but I want to know that they’ll withstand the occasional moment of abuse (sometimes as minimal as the abuse of dog-eared pages) as well as the long haul of time. Saying this out loud in a room of publishers and/or librarians makes one sound like a Luddite or at the very least, like some whiny soul who doesn’t properly realize the harsh realities of business and sustained user access. It’s all very complex and we live in a very imperfect world. On some level, I know that the book will survive and I hold my tongue. But I grieve over what we may be allowing to slip away.

Fortunately there are all of you here in the pub who I know think about books in good ways and who remind me of the goodness found in sharing our reading experiences and sometimes our books.

Edited to add one add'l clarification: I had ordered my own copy from the UK. I am not paid to wax lyrical over books but while I still have disposable income and a regular paycheck, I take a certain pride in paying for books so that I own them and so that the poor starving authors can rely on whatever meager royalties they're able to eak out from publishing houses.

Additional follow-up: See Association of American Publishers announcement about how the industry was doing in 2021. https://www.niso.org/niso-io/2022/09/aap-releases-statshot-annual-report-2021

Thank you for your heatt-felt post. I think many people here share your feelings for books.

Sounds like a book title: “Ms @jiilmwo’s feelings for books”.

>84 pgmcc: It *was* a heart-felt post and it felt good to get some of it articulated, but emotional responses are not necessarily reflective of actual reality. I have to remind myself that publishers and librarians are doing the best they can with what they have. Somehow or other everyone thinks that publishers go into their money vaults every day and roll around in greenbacks like Scrooge McDuck and that's not true, any more than its true that librarians are all busily weeding out all the good stuff from their collections in favor of Bulwer-Lytton best-sellers.

Besides, I saw a headline today that indicates that publishers were experimenting with NFTs as a way of allowing people to really own their ebooks. So what could possibly go wrong? (Of course, they also promised us that digital rights management software and blockchain would solve everyone's issues with regard to ownership.) *Jill runs laughing maniacally offstage*

>85 jillmwo:
This reminds me of the emperor’s new clothes.

Mid-way thru Christie biography (Thompson rather than Worsley) so rather than discussing a book, I want to share a bit of cheesy horror movie joy. I also just started the latest Guy Gavriel Kay book.

Last night for the first time ever, I watched a B-movie thriller entitled The Curse of the Faceless Man (B&W, 1958) I started it late in the evening, not expecting anything of it, but turned it back on for the final 22 minutes this morning to see how it finally turned out. The premise was on the low end of the scale with regard to plausibility. A slave – a gladiator – falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy Roman as Mount Vesuvius erupts. Their love survives the volcano and further even, the subsequent centuries. The gladiator is encased in stone and ash but is revived in the 20th century due to a bit of chemical techno-babble. He pursues a blonde, thinking her his long-lost Roman love, killing any who would seem to be in the way. The team of scientists are befuddled in any number of ways, but eventually track Quintilous and his captive to the Bay of Naples. The details may be found in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Faceless_Man

So much of this movie was clunky and yet I found it a rather fun thing to watch. A modicum of novelty as I'd never encountered it before, a bit of interest in the Vesuvius/Pompeii tie-in, no real scariness to it due to the obvious narrative homage being paid to old Boris Karlof version of The Mummy. (Historical question re accuracy for whomever might actually know the answer: In reality, were the citizens of Pompeii caught between the fiery ash falling from the sky and the overly-warm waters of the sea? In the baldest of terms, would anyone escaping actually have died from being boiled to death? )

At any rate, while it wasn’t an example of great film-making, I happily whiled away about an hour, 10 mins with this movie. Has anyone else seen it? Did it frighten you as a child or was it a deliciously cheesy viewing experience the way it was for me?

Have been slowly working my way through this month's Halloween Ghost hunt. 13 out of 15 ghosts so far and I still have a week before the deadline. Kind of thing that I can dip in and out of...

No progress made in lengthy books this week. Read poetry in snatches and then mulled over the stories. I'm sure I probably read the Browning in college in the Norton Anthology but don't really recall it. And I read King Hilary and the Beggar Man as a kid. The refrain from that one just popped into my head - "never, never, never, quoth he" so I went and found it again.

Porphyria’s Lover (full text here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46313/porphyrias-lover) by Robert Browning
King Hilary and the Beggarman (full text here:
https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/king-hilary-and-beggarman ) by A.A. Milne

The man sits alone in a darkened hut, listening to the storm outside, unsure of whether the woman he loves will come to him. He’s depressed and brooding, “vexed” by the woman as the lake is vexed by the storm. Has he been waiting for hours? Is he feeling chilled and miserable? She enters in and immediately creates light and warmth – a hearth/home-like environment for him – she builds the fire up and takes off her own dripping coat and shawl. She attempts to cajole him into a better frame of mind.

And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me

Here is where the narrator begins to make assumptions as to what is in the mind of his lover. She speaks to him but he doesn’t reply to her. She sits beside him and she is the one who pulls his arm around her waist. She bares her white shoulder and moves her hair and pulls his head onto her shoulder. He is being rather pettish and she treats him as if he were a little boy. Reassuring him that she loves him. She’s left the party to come and sit with him – he’s so pale. She tells him she loves him and that it is her wish that they could be together forever. Is she telling the truth? He seems to think so and proceeds to strangle her to death

It’s a perfect set up, a perfect opening scene set for a murder. – shot of the weather outside – gothic setting as murderer sits waiting alone and cold; the victim arrives, appears to transform his world with her presence; then the man coldly kills her by strangling her, using her long blonde hair as the rope.

Stepping away from Browning’s creepy madman and the Gothic tone, I read A.A. Milne’s story about King Hilary and his arrogant Lord High Chancellor.

Proud Lord Willoughby,
Lord High Chancellor,
Laughed both loud and free:
" I've served Your Majesty, man to man,
Since first Your Majesty's reign began,
And I've often walked, but I never, never ran,
Never, never, never, " quoth he.

Of course, the childlike King who is always excited about the possibilities of the day -- wanting to know what new person or thing might be at his gate -- finally wises up to the idea that Proud Lord Willoughby is not a satisfactory kind of guy. He welcomes instead the beggar man with one red stocking who has been knocking at his door all this time. He invites the man with the odd socks to come throw Lord Willoughby out and take his place as Chancellor. The story ends with two morals –

The first: " Whatever Fortune brings ,
Don't be afraid of doing things. "
(Especially, of course, for Kings.)
It also seems to say
(But not so wisely): " He who begs
With one red stocking on his legs
Will be, as sure as eggs are eggs,
A Chancellor some day."

Not sure why these two caught my eye this week but each had its place in my drifting off to sleep at night.

Ever stop to wonder why some things make their way into print? I’m not talking about novels necessarily, but rather non-fiction. Sometimes, one wonders what the assumptions were that the publisher had in mind when choosing to put a book under contract. I recently came across two books by a former librarian, Anne Hart. I recently acquired two books by Hart – both fictionalized biographies of Agatha Christie’s two most famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. The one on Marple is rather slim but quite delightfully cozy in tone; the one on Poirot is bigger in terms of pages, but approaches its subject slightly differently and (in some ways) with less detail. Both are quick and easy reads, but seem to me to have most of their non-fiction publishing value in the excellent bibliographic work that appear in their appendices. I know that back in the mid-eighties there was much attention being given over to the mystery as a genre and as a subject for academic study, but aside from the bibliographies in the back of the book, these are not academic titles. I’m not sure WHO reads this kind of non-fiction – except for obsessive types like myself. The two titles are both still in print: The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot but I do wonder why. Quite frankly, I can’t work out who the target market might be that justifies the revival of these titles in paperback now, when they were just moderately successful back in the 80’s and 90’s… Maybe because so much of Christie is beginning to enter the public domain and Christie's literary heirs want to continue to drive awareness of the various spectrum of available titles. (I truly don’t know.)

I had started Guy Gavriel Kay’s All the Seas of the World but put it down after about 80 pages. There were two assassinations in those initial 80 pages and I just wasn’t feeling lulled into a friendly immersive world. (Paid pirates seem willing to kill each other off with surprising alacrity.) I’ll try it again at a later date, because I usually like Kay’s stuff, but this one wasn’t doing it for me.

Instead I picked up R.F. Kaung’s fantasy Babel which is not any more reassuring, given some of the setup in Chapters One and Two, but which seems to be heading in new and unanticipated directions.

Oh, and I have retired. Or at least, I have left full-time employment with the idea that I shouldn't have to continue to earn a full-time living... (despite the on-going fluctuations in the stock market). I will of course continue with some side gigs.

>91 jillmwo: Welcome to retirement! I’ve done it twice now and can recommend it.

>91 jillmwo:
Congratulations on your retirement. Enjoy it your way.

>91 jillmwo: Congrats on your retirement! I hope All the Seas of the World improves for you.

>91 jillmwo: Congratulations on retirement!

>91 jillmwo: I'm confident that you will never be one of those who wonder what in the world to do with themselves in retirement. I hope your new freedom is blissful.

>91 jillmwo: Congratulations on your retirement! I hope you find many happy ways to fill your time.

Many thanks to you all for the kind wishes!

Meanwhile the winners of the World Fantasy Awards were announced. Here are just two of the categories:

NOVEL

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho (Ace Books/Macmillan)
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom/Orbit UK)
The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros (Inkyard Press)
WINNER: The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (Nightfire/Viper UK)

NOVELLA

“For Sale by Owner” by Elizabeth Hand (When Things Get Dark)
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire)
WINNER: And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed (Neon Hemlock Press)
Finches by A. M. Muffaz (Vernacular Books)
“A Canticle for Lost Girls” by Isabel Yap (Never Have I Ever: Stories)

Additional details may be found here: https://www.tor.com/2022/11/07/announcing-the-2022-world-fantasy-awards-winners/

Congratulations! I hope it is everything that you hope(d) it would be!

Well, four days in a row of not working in front of a computer have helped my general mental outlook enormously. My brain has had the space to think (despite one or two people who are hiring me to do contract work dancing up and down and asking me if I can do this one thing for them NOW...No, you silly human, I'm trying to take this week off!! As it is, I will have do a bit of the contract work ahead of schedule which is nearly always the case when dealing with newsletter crap during the holidays.)

At any rate, let me say that Babel (while clearly not going to be a happily-ever-after type of story) is working for me far more successfully as a leisure read. On the one hand, the author's agenda is front and center. (She's against imperialism and colonialism. And thus far, the grown men in the book who hold power do seem to be consistently evil and/or thoughtless.) On the other hand, the bits about the challenges of engaging with language as an expression of culture and the work of accurate translation are really just awesome and remarkably well articulated. (Did I ever share before that I did a paper back in high school on Tolkien's elvish language? No depth to my effort, but it was the first time I'd ever considered the subject of linguistics and writing.)

Babel by R.F. Kuang

A young boy is rescued from poverty amidst a cholera epidemic in Canton, China. He becomes the ward of a faculty member of Oxford University. His facility with languages is fostered and bolstered so that he will be able to join Oxford – specifically as a part of Babel. Babel is a distinctly academic research environment in support of silver-magic which operates in this alternate version of 1830’s England.

This is an excellent read if not a relaxing one. (Indeed, one early incident in the narrative shocked me – a truly well-calculated, intentional placement by the author.) One should probably pay attention to the subtitle which is Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. Other than hearing positive buzz about this particular title in the trade press, I had few expectations of what the story might be. I was expecting fantasy rather than speculative fiction -- a coming-of-age story, perhaps with dragons or something more eldritch. Consequently, after a very slow initial build of character and environment, even when I thought I was able to guess in advance where the story was going, I was caught off guard. I would fully expect this one to be up for a Hugo next year. The arc on this one escalates and escalates and escalates.

Kuang (who is working on a PhD in linguistics) fits in explanations of what the reader should know about how languages work very well. You don’t get page long info-dumps.You do get the occasional footnote complete with Chinese characters associated with a translated phrase. She writes in relatively short sentences as well so the prose isn’t difficult to absorb.

To borrow from what pgmcc was discussing a few days ago, the themes found here do include attention to imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism, but of equal importance is the work of translation and understanding where and how such work fails in the task of conveying complex meaning across deeply different cultures. There are also themes of loyalty, betrayal, ownership and obligation. If I had a quibble about the book it was that, at times I thought the magic system (silver-working) was too simplistic; the author all too easily might have replaced that phrase with the phrase “21st century technology” and we might have gotten the same message.

I don’t know that I’ll search out Kuang's previously published Poppy Wars trilogy, but this was a big book with many ideas and plenty of emotional punch. It’s not a soothing read by any means, but it is worth your consideration if you see it in the bookstore. I was reading it in two-chapter chunks to allow time to process.

>101 jillmwo:
Babel sounds interesting. I have seen it in some bookshops. I believe I saw it in O'Mahony's yesterday. Had I read your post before my trip to Limerick I might have been inclined to buy it. As it is now I will, as you suggest, give it my consideration if I see it in a bookstore.

I suspect it will not be long before you can chalk this one up as a HIT! Your mention of the themes and the importance of translation are topics that attract me.

>101 jillmwo: Babel is on my wishlist. Your review has pushed it up in priority.

Some weeks ago, someone around here was looking for spooky ghost stories. It's dark November now rather than October, but I wanted to share. Sorting through an old box of books as well as clutter on the Kindle, I found myself reading these selections before bed at night, thereby giving myself at least one nightmare.

From Ghosts From the Library an anthology edited by Tony Medawar
– Terror by Daphne du Maurier - an imaginative child scaring herself in the nursery; the shadows grow longer
– Personal Call by Agatha Christie - that phone call seeking to be met at the train station; an old radio play never before published – this is the kind of thing one could have fun with and produce on Zoom. Anyone want to do a Christmas ghost story broadcast for the pub?
– The Witch by Christianna Brand - just what it says on the label, *might* be called romantic suspense. I’m a trusting soul but I didn’t see this one coming.

From Ghost Stories (Everyman’s Library Pocket Classics Series), edited by Peter Washington
-- The Looking Glass by Edith Wharton - the ghost of a long-lost love. What would those Edwardian families do without the salt-of-the-earth family retainers?
-- Unlikely Ghosts by Penelope Lively - humorous tale of the ghosts who materialize on the first day a family moves into their new home. A house benefits from smart kids...

Honestly, I shifted reading some of these to the early morning with my coffee so that I could avoid the heebie-jeebies. What was it that the Cowardly Lion said in the movie? "I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in ghosts."

Maybe I will shift to a gentle domestic fiction or even some Blitz Lit.

Edited to add the reference to the Penelope Lively short story -- not a scary tale of ghosts, but one that was really rather fun.

Free Article from The Washington Post (I'm gifiting it to you all.) From this week's Book Review, Michael Dirda on the value of reading the classics.
(https://wapo.st/3TQOYvY)

>105 jillmwo: Good article, thanks!

>105 jillmwo:
Very interesting. Thank you!

I cannot say I am as enthusiastic as the author of the article about reading contemporary novels having done that with our book club and found the years are necessary to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. There is too much chaff to wade through and the job is not helped by marketing material promoting the most dreadful dross.*

*Controversial!

I was sent on a media management course. The instructor was a journalist from The Times. He was obviously also an agent for MI5, but that is a different story.

One of the points he was making was that in radio or TV interviews (and this would go for podcasts, news streams, and any other sort of news reporting mechanism that exists or is going to exist) the interviewer is only interested in boosting viewer/listener numbers, and hence they are trying to get the interviewee to say controversial things. The interview is never personal, never about the truth, only about boosting ratings to enhance their own earning potential and the channel's marketing revenue.

Sometimes I read the WRONG reviews. I trusted the review of Lauren Groff’s novel, Matrix, found at the Historical Novel Society and I ought to have paid more attention to the Harvard review. At some point, I had run across a news story about Groff listening to an academic discussion of the work of 12th century poet Marie de France and taking inspiration from that presentation for this relatively short fictionalized biography. I thought “Oh, cool” – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry, and courtly intrigue – and ordered it. Matrix isn’t what I anticipated.

We meet Marie de France as Queen Eleanor is exiling her to a convent far from court. She is to rapidly take vows as a Benedictine nun and assume the role of prioress there. Marie is overly tall, on the plain side with regard to looks, and seems unlikely to be a useful pawn in marital alliances. Upon arrival, Marie finds the poorly-managed convent to be a bleak environment. But unlike the others housed there, Marie knows enough about tactics and strategic diplomacy to turn the situation around and build self-sufficiency for all associated with the house. There are no male contributors to the growth of her community – all is accomplished by women, some of whom are quite competent, good allies, and others who are elderly, mad or simply less careful. Groff underscores the difference between this enclosed life and the life ultimately experienced by the queen as prisoner. One sentence provides Marie’s perspective very well – In fact, the queen might have been far better here as a nun than as a caged queen”. Marie has had a greater degree of autonomy in her life as an unwilling nun than did Eleanor with all of her royal lands and status.

The narrative themes examine the exercise of power, adapting to circumstances not of one’s own choosing, and recognizing the long view of one’s contribution. Marie is shown as a remarkable leader – very nearly a Wonder Woman.

Groff has a definite literary style and constructs her narrative thoughtfully. However, one of the quirks of her presentation is that there is no actual dialogue in this book (a very real and striking absence in the use of quotation marks). We are told about the conflicts she encounters and the resulting outcomes rather than being there in the actual moment. Not a bad book, quite good in some ways, but I found the author's approach too remote as well as too artful in delivering her meaning. For me, the book was far less immersive than it might have otherwise have been. (One caveat to potential readers: there is way more sex in this novel – a novel with no male characters – than some may care for. There is also a surprising amount of Christian mysticism. Again, not quite the kind of historical fiction I had anticipated. YMMV, because Common Knowledge here on LT says Matrix won a couple of literary prizes this year...)

Edited to correct some egregious typos!!

>108 jillmwo: I read Matrix recently and agree with you that I felt somewhat removed from the characters and events. It was a good plot and good characters, but it felt as though I were watching them through glass rather than there alongside them. This in spite of the powerful depiction of the hardships of life in those times.

>109 Sakerfalcon: And I thought Groff did a good job by not sanitizing some of those hardships. I can't pull up the precise reference but somewhere in the book she mentioned the winter chill and the chilblains caused by the severe cold actually disfiguring someone's face. In my general reading experience, chilblains are habitually connected with feet in fiction and so she caught my attention by mentioning other parts of the body that might have been equally and unpleasantly affected. I was less enamoured of her resorting to the idea of heavenly visions as rationale for how some of Marie's ideas came forward. (If that technique was supposed to be how Marie assumed her ideas came to mind, it just didn't entirely work for me.)

>107 pgmcc: You're quite right. It's unfortunate that marketing of the BOOK as a commodity for sale means that blurbs are sometimes entirely misleading. Based on word from the grapevine, agents urge bloggers and other reviewers to adopt the attitude that if you can't write a positive review of something, you should just avoid writing anything at all. Even worse is the lack of marketing dollars that trade publishers seem to be willing to put into marketing their authors. They'll market Stephen King or James Patterson out the wazoo (even though those authors hardly need the support) but they're not willing to do even a fraction of the same for a novelist just starting out because they feel they can't afford the lack of return on investment.

All of that said, Peter, I confess to enjoying the classics for no other reason than that the story telling style works for me. I don't necessarily need authors to astound me by their innovation. It's useful in some genres to do so, but it's not always a requirement. The Victorians did well by us in their adoption of the novel as an entertainment form. Wilkie Collins may not always be plausible in his plots, but his humor and his liveliness is remarkably compelling. (Which is why publishers go mad in trying to sell us new titles. They don't like having to compete with the cheap availability of public domain copy...) The whole Simon & Schuster acquisition lawsuit was centered on whether or not it would mean less competition for Penguin Random House. The publishers kept saying it was already a competitive environment with which they had to deal and no intervention by the DOJ was needed. But that's true only up to a point.

Which goes to the point that the overblown hype in the marketing practices is apt to continue. Fortunately, I still have a bunch of unread titles by Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope sitting about the house.

Follow-up to the above. Come to that, I might also re-read Possession by A.S. Byatt. Triple success combo of contemporary fiction, luxurious poetry and a Victorian heroine.

>110 jillmwo:
I think we have similar tastes with regards classics. Like you, I have several Collins and Trollope novels in the house. I have enjoyed what I have read of their works. Trollope particularly appeals to me. He is so tongue-in-cheek in his descriptions and plots.

When I have read the classics I have always been struck by how current and up-to-date they are in terms of themes and human problems. The publishers who are widely read in the classics must be hard pressed to find new books they can claim in all honesty to be original. No matter what the surrounding technology, social order, or political environment, human beings always turn out to be human beings with the same feelings, fears, and dilemmas as their fellow human beings from 100 or 200 years ago.

... if you can't write a positive review of something, you should just avoid writing anything at all.

You are reminding me of Thumper's lines in Bambi.

'My papa says, "If you can't say nothing good about someone, don't say nuthin' at all!"'

because they feel they can't afford the lack of return on investment.

I have seen the change in marketing practices of the publishing companies. As you say, they will only invest promotional budget on sure-things. Anyone who isn't a Stephen King, Lee Child or Richard Osman, has to roll their sleeves up and drive the promotion for their book. They are expected to go around bookshops and negotiate for prime spots in the stores; do reading and signings; and to even organise their own publicity events. It is all about cost reduction in the publishing house. It is all the cost accountant's fault.

The Internet has added a job to the author's workload. Rather than the publishing house promoting their authors' books on their social media platforms, the authors have to develop their own web presence, and gather a following of fans who are inclined to buy their books when they become available.

>112 pgmcc: I absolutely agree with you on all of that, most specifically with your point that the Internet has added to the author's workload. (It's done that in scholarly publishing as well as in trade publishing...)

This week was a thread of Victorian literature (although I hadn’t planned it that way). One of the books on the TBR was an essay collection entitled My Victorian Novel from University of Missouri Press. The basic idea was to get 15 academics to write up their favorite Victorian novel and explain the “why” of that preference. I like collections like this because sometimes it will drive me to go read something I might otherwise have ignored. The book is intended for the mainstream market for the most part.

I started out reading one of the very last essays in the book because I chanced on a page that had a sentence about Dracula and how it reflected a new period of technological tools and the ease with which individuals could transport themselves across national borders. That sent me to the Kindle edition of Dracula where I quickly spun through the first four chapters of the novel to see if I picked up on the same theme. Instead, those first four chapters creeped me out to the point that I decided that maybe I would NOT buy myself the Folio Society edition of Dracula after all. Even the author of the essay admitted that this was not a title one would want to find by one’s pillow at night.

I also took a quick look at the chapters on Jane Eyre (which sent me to re-read the chapter where Mr. Rochester proposes marriage to Jane, closing with a lightning bolt splitting the old chestnut tree. It’s an omen.)

The chapter on North and South praises Gaskell for putting forward a Christian response to poverty in industrial England. For those of us who delighted in the Masterpiece production with Richard Armitage playing the main love interest, this was a nice reminder that the novel was more than your basic romance novel.

I haven’t yet read Bleak House, although I started it at one point back within the past decade. The title of that chapter connects the heroine, Esther, and sex; I don’t know how just yet, but that tidbit might also whet your interest.

Thinking about Victorian novels meant I dipped into A.S. Byatt’s 1990 novel, Possession and I Googled some reviews. One of the most interesting comments I encountered in those blog posts was how readers skipped some of the very segments (letters, diaries, epic poems, etc.) that caused the book to win the Booker Prize. They were more focused on the love story and action sequences and following the basic story of the novel. Of course, some of those segments took up entire chapters of the novel. (Flipping through the pages of my print copy of Possession reminded me that I’d probably done the same thing in my initial read. Only on subsequent readings did I pay attention to all of the thematic weaving in.) This week also reminded me that I never have read her book The Children’s Book. I might do something about that over the next year or so...

So this is what I’ve been reading and ruminating over this holiday week.

Edited some eight weeks after the initial posting in order to correct a really bad touchstone.

>112 pgmcc:
I enjoyed your post. I may not chase up the book of essays, but I have read all but North and South of the books covered. Nor have I read Byatt's Possession. I have North and South on a shelf awaiting attention. It is accompanied by The Cranford Chronicles and Tales of Mystery and Macabre. It is shameful that I have not read any of her work yet.

By the way, Barchester Towers was my first foray into Trollope. I loved it. It was very entertaining and amusing. The political twists were intriguing.

>114 pgmcc: I love Trollope as well. My Victorian Novel has a chapter on the final volume of his Palliser novels, The Duke's Children. I haven't read that particular Trollope novel either, although I have a copy of it. My defense is that one really has to have the attention span for these Victorian novel and I've only been retired for three weeks. Of his stuff, I was going to pick up Phineas Finn next. That's been on the TBR pile for awhile as well.

>115 jillmwo:
I have yet to read The Warden, which I believe is the first of the series with Barchester Towers being the second. I must say, reading Barchester Towers without having read The Warden did not in any way impair my enjoyment. I just wonder what I missed not having read it first.

Do you remember my mentioning the role Trollope had in spreading the postal service in ireland?

>116 pgmcc:. I do remember you drawing my attention to that fact. I don't think I had really been aware of it until you did. (Really, at your next available break in activities, give The Warden a shot. It's a *short* Victorian novel -- less than 300 pages -- and it's nice. I was charmed.)

>117 jillmwo: I have a copy of The Warden, so I have no excuse.

>111 jillmwo: I have both a paper and digital copy of Possession, and I just keep putting it off. The depths of Winter seem like it might be an appropriate time for this book.

I haven't had a chance to read that WaPo article yet, but I try to read at least a couple of classics each year. I used to have a huge thing for Thomas Hardy, and I haven't read anything of his for quite a while. It might be time to indulge myself soon-ish.

>119 clamairy: I am in awe of you then. I have never been able to enjoy Thomas Hardy. Perhaps I should give him another try.

I remember reading Possession in paperback and finding it hard to put down, although it was a different time and place (NYC in the 90s, when I would either read on the subway uninterrupted or on an express bus) I am sure I skipped over some of the very long poetry and tales to find out what would happen next, because for me the interwoven stories were compelling. I got through it in great gulps.

>120 jillmwo: My first time reading Hardy was Tess of the D'Urbavilles, and though I liked the style I hated the story. My second was Jude the Obscure, and I hated that story too. Those were for college & grad school classes. Don't ask me why, but after college I picked up The Mayor of Caster bridge and I loved it. Likewise Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native. So the next time I'm going to pick one up I'll check the rating statistics and reviews in here first.

I hope I enjoy Possession as much as you did. I suspect I'll be skipping the poems, too.

Have you all seen this SFWA announcement re Robin McKinley being named as a Damon Knight Grand Master? https://www.sfwa.org/2022/11/28/robin-mckinley-39th-sfwa-grand-master/

>122 jillmwo: Oh, that's great news!

>122 jillmwo: I did see that! Wonderful news and very well deserved.

Some interesting titles on this list of best fantasy published in 2022: https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/lists/best-fantasy-books-of-2022/

I see a couple that might make it over to a TBR pile.

I'm the last one to see this list, aren't I?

>125 jillmwo: I don't think I'd seen it before but some of the books have shown up on other lists.

>125 jillmwo: I hadn't see this list either!

Must resist list... have a dozen books out from the library and a bunch of my own to read... must resist...

>128 Jim53: I am finding it very difficult to refrain from quoting the Borg right now...

>129 clamairy: Isn't that effort, um, what's that word I'm looking for?

>129 clamairy: I think it is a waste of time to refrain.

I am two-thirds of the way through The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip. I am pausing at Chapter 17 because there are only 26 chapters in the whole and I don't really want this story to end. On their threads, clamairy and Karlstar were reading Od Magic but Bards was immediately available to me, sitting unread, and I went with that. It feels like a catch in the throat -- so very well done, a mix of poetry and prose and I don't want it to end. She's a wonderful, wonderful writer. I really don't see how she manages to balance the reader's feeling of mundane and enchantment juxtaposed over so many chapters but she does.

>132 jillmwo: I believe I tried reading that one either last year or the year before and I got stuck very early and bailed. It was during the pandemic, so perhaps my attention span wasn't up to snuff. But I am glad you're enjoying it. I will try it again at some point.

I am adding The Bards of Bone Plain to my list of favorites from McKillip's body of work. The story centers around the interactions of a few key musicians. There is Nairn the Pig-Singer, there is Phelin, the graduate student coasting out the end of his training at the Bardic school and there is Declan, the courtly bard. There are multiple cooks in the kitchen and there is a Princess who also is something of an archaeologist. The story is -- at least to some extent -- the transmission and transformation over centuries of the stories of actual historical figures. The historical records are fragmented, incomplete, and demand effort in understanding the people; the music, the lyrics from folk songs further add to the mystery. How do we get to the point of understanding what was reality? I finished this off sitting in bed w/ my breakfast coffee. And it's so good.

>133 clamairy: I do think one needs to be in the right mood to read her style of fantasy narrative. Give it another shot at some point! McKillip weaves different types of narrative together so reading all the bits at the beginning of each chapter is revealing and lends to the unfolding of the story. Honestly, I wish I could write the way McKillip does.

Quick edit to add that McKillip does a lot in this book with three images, three familiar story-telling elements appearing in poetry/fantasy/folklore. Those are (1) the Turning Tower (2) the Inexhaustible Cauldron and (3) the Oracular Stone.

Edited to correct a typo

>134 jillmwo: You definitely winged me with this one. I just got Od Magic from the library, and after that, my next McKillip will be The Bards of Bone Plain. Thank you!

>134 jillmwo: I read Bards back in 2020 and also enjoyed it very much. I do recall when reading it that it took a while to get any sort of plot going and I found that a little irritating, but the characters were so interesting it didn't bother me that much.

jillmwo holds the record for the most BB hits on me. I have not read anything by Patricia McKillip, but I am studiously avoiding the temptation to try her writing. I want to wade through more of Mount TBR before I try a new author with several books to her name.

>137 pgmcc: So what you're saying is that when Karlstar and I (and many others) talk about how great McKillip is you simply ignore us... but as soon as Jill joins in you're suddenly interested? 😜

>138 clamairy: That's the vibe I was getting too. Possibly because we never worked for Marvel.

>138 clamairy: and >139 Jim53: I pay pgmcc to say that kind of thing in order to improve my standing in public spaces like LT. I'm told the money is going towards his retirement fund which is why he believes he can retire in something like 71 days and however many hours...

>139 Jim53: We just never had jobs that cool.

>140 jillmwo:
70 days, 20 hours, 5 minutes, 20 seconds.

>138 clamairy: >139 Jim53: >141 Karlstar:
As I suspected; a conspiracy.

It is unusual for conspirators to openly announce their identities and involvement in the conspiracy.

>143 pgmcc: Nobody said it was a brilliant conspiracy.

If you have a block of time to give to it, there's an outstanding online exhibit from the Grolier Club on the history of book bindings, entitled Building The Book From the Ancient World to the Present Day
https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/rare-book-school

Very informative and it comes with a ton of photos illuminating the exhibit text. Seriously, go look at it. The in-person on-site exhibit in New York City ends on December 23 and I'm not sure how long the online version will be available...

>145 jillmwo:
That looks fascinating. It certainly deserves a "block of time".

I would love to spend a couple of hours going through that exhibit.

Thank you for posting.

>145 jillmwo: Very cool, it will take a bit more time to get through.

This past week my former employer celebrated my retirement in a marvelous way. All of my old colleagues, my husband, and myself gathered for dinner at the Four Seasons, a night in a hotel (not the Four Seasons), and a massive set of retirement gifts presented in a box. There was a theme to the evening – one you all will appreciate – and that theme was BOOKS. One of the thoughtful gifts found in my box was a signed copy of the title Bibliophile by Jane Mount. Jane Mount is a self-taught artist (although she’s had other jobs as well, I believe) and one of the ways she got started was by painting the spines of books found on an individual’s shelf. They’re remarkably fun “pop art” (see as just one example: https://20x200.com/collections/jane-mount/products/ideal-bookshelf-974-feminists.... The book’s inscription is one I will treasure – To Jill, With thanks for 30 years of service to the publishing industry. Some of the other gifts included a limited edition pen and a wooden bookstand/lap desk. A full size print of one of Jane Mount’s illustrations. Oh, and some truly fantabulous chocolates. As one might expect, as part of the finale, there was a traditional “gold watch” – one of those cheesy promotional items inscribed with the name of my former employer. (The next morning was the second installment of breakfast as a group with a percentage of the colleagues suffering from a bit of the "morning after" headache.) Lest you think all retirement parties are like this in the publishing industry, be aware that I've known my old boss for 20+ years and he swears that I was kind to him at an earlier stage of his career. I have no particular recollection of being kind, but it seemed more polite to take him at his word.)

Bibliophile itself is a fun hodge-podge of genre illustration, tidbits about books and authors, and a global miscellany of “beloved bookstores” and “striking libraries”. It’s a colorful book that deserves a slow review of all of its pages. I can’t think of any member of the Pub here who wouldn’t enjoy it. There were plenty of titles that I recognized but a percentage that I’d never heard of. The book lists covered a spectrum of genres and topics – Reference cookbooks, Dystopia, Essays, Southern Lit, Short Stories, Fantasy, etc.

Clearly, even working remotely as I have been for the past umpty-ump years, my colleagues picked up on the things that make me happy – books, chocolates, and sufficient time to enjoy a deep dive into whatever book is immediately to hand.

>148 jillmwo: That sounds like a lovely, and I'm sure, well deserved celebration.

>148 jillmwo: What a wonderful way for your coworkers to honor you. Congratulations, again.

>148 jillmwo:
That was a beautiful way to celebrate your retirement. Your boss and colleagues obviously think a lot of you. I am not surprised.

Congratulations.

>148 jillmwo: Congratulations! I'm glad they showed their appreciation in such a fun way.

>148 jillmwo: Well done to all concerned. Well done to you for being so well thought of, and well done them, for acting accordingly.

>148 jillmwo: What a lovely retirement party. Congratulations!

Congratulations on your retirement! I'm glad you were given such a nice send-off. They clearly thought about what you would enjoy.

Phew -- what a busy time of year! But may I wish all of you (wherever you may be situated with book, blanket, and beverage) the happiest of holidays. The big family gathering was yesterday, but I still have one son with me -- a most marvelous offspring who took over the responsibility of preparing our Christmas dinner for this evening.

I was most fortunate -- in addition to the above, I got a sippy-cup wine glass with a bottle of wine, two books and a gift certificate for the Folio Society.

In terms of titles received as gifts, I got Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from this Universe to the Multiverse and a marvelously produced illustrated special edition of The Silmarillion. (No, I didn't need another copy of this particular title, but the production values are through the roof. It is just gorgeous. Jill pets pretty book.and sighs happily.).

Happiest of holidays to everyone here in the Pub.

>156 jillmwo: Happy holidays to you! Sounds like a nice gathering.

To all: We woke up this morning to a plumbing issue that is impacting on the wiring in the house. Any absence from this platform is due to us trying to conserve on use of power as we hope for and await engagement with plumber and with electrician. At least it didn't happen on Christmas Day!!! Before anyone asks, we do have heat and we do have food.

>157 Karlstar: Thank you for those holiday thoughts!

>158 jillmwo: Good luck with the plumbing issue!

Huzzah and hip-hip-hurray! Thank you, electricians and plumbers! (Even those whose pricing is obscenely high.) We were only out for about 36 hours in all and happily did not feel we needed to decamp to the nearest hotel in order to survive the night.

I did miss out on my happy DNBR day but I don't dare moan too much about that. I was glad that I had laid in a variety of food types prior to the holiday so that even amidst the disruption we were not feeling overly deprived. (Although we did go to bed with the cows yesterday. None of this staying up late and noshing while you watch old classic films...)

>160 jillmwo: Huzzah and hooray indeed!

>160 jillmwo: Glad that's all straightened out. I came home after about an hour at work because there was no power there. Had power at home, but most of the town is out. Power line fell in the high winds.

>160 jillmwo: Good to hear that it is fixed.

Okay, could someone please pry the chocolate box out of my grubby little hands? I'm being really bad here over in my little corner...

The topic of the day has to do with Tom Bombadil. My boys (really, both grown men in their 30s) were chatting on Christmas Eve about The Lord of the Rings and talking about whether or not you should skip the parts in Fellowship about Tom Bombadil as being irrelevant to the larger point of the story. I pointed out that Bombadil was that figure of Providence who helped the hobbits in the early stages of their journey before they got to a higher level of maturity in understanding what was at stake. But from their perspective, he never again materializes in the story so he couldn't really be important as a symbolic element in the story. He has far less screen time, say, than Gollem or even someone like Boromir or Faramir.

So weigh in here. How important is Tom Bombadil in LOTR? Would a good editor have chopped out those early chapters as a way of tightening up the narrative?

Tolkien thought Bombadil was important. That’s reason enough not to skip those bits. Also, it’s apparent that Sauron and his minions have no power over Bombadil. It should be possible to construct a symbolic significance out of that, if necessary.

>164 jillmwo: I think Tom's role as a model of someone unaffected by the ring is understated. He also is critical in the barrow mound chapter, which helps tie the current events back to past events and is just another example of how the hobbits, while critical to the entire story, are not going to 'win' by physical strength and combat skill, but by endurance and ultimately, love and mercy.

>164 jillmwo: I remember enjoying the Tom Bombadil part of the book and being disappointed when I discovered he was not included in the movies. My two sons, one in his 20s and one in his 30s, are both delighted Tom is not in the movies.

My thinking, gentlemen (>167 pgmcc: >166 Karlstar: and >165 haydninvienna:), is that a younger generation of readers may find Tom Bombadil to slow the action of the narrative. Actually, I think some percentage of the older generations may as well. So I wonder myself how to think about Bombadil as a necessary element of the narrative. I have worked it out for myself as a reader but (based on my conversations with the offspring), I have not been able to satisfactorily articulate the case so that they are convinced as well. I have concerns that I may have failed as a mother and educator...

(Parenthetical added after the fact: And he must have relevance in the story because he tries on the Ring as well! And it has no impact on him.Certainly, it's not the test for him that trying on the Ring proves to be for Galadriel.)

But also the conversation reminded me of the wonderfulness of LOTR:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

>168 jillmwo: I think Tom Bombadil is important to the world building of Middle Earth. "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Frodo (youngsters), Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." He is important because we don't understand completely who he is or why he is there. I love the interlude with him and Goldberry in the books (I didn't always feel this way), but I don't miss him in the movies. The books are all about the introspection and long thinking, the movies are about the adventure.

By the way, I treated myself to a set of wine glasses, each one of which has a line from that stanza you quoted, engraved on it.

I have always found the Tom Bombadil interlude slow and boring, songs and all. Every time, that portion is just something to get past. It's as if Tolkien just used him to warm up on, and then later didn't want to let him go.

My guess is that some editor did try to trim that part out, but JRRT put up a fight and the editor capitulated. A good editor always has to remember whose name is on the cover.

Thank you all for engaging in the whole Tom Bombadil discussion. Thinking about it set me off and I am in the middle of re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring

However, one last review for 2022 before I set up another thread.

In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton University Press, 2022)

I’ve spent the past month with this single non-fiction title. It was a “best book” recommendation from my former boss. He’d said reading it had reminded him of the overlap in the roles of both libraries and bookstores. While not a book I’d hand to just anyone, this is definitely a good book for those of us who lurk in either of those two venues. One or two of you commented on an extract from the book at one point earlier in the year when it showed up in the Atlantic; the excerpt focused on the various types of browsers in a bookstore. (My initial post is #93 here https://www.librarything.com/topic/338187#7808738 and responses from Karlstar and clamairy appear in #95 and #96.)

The author, Jeff Deutsch, has served as the manager of an independent bookstore, the Seminary Co-op, in Chicago for 25-30 years. Given the ups and downs of bookselling over the course of those decades, it wasn’t an easy job, and his approach as described in the book in running the Co-op has been very different. (The co-op tends to serve a more academic population than your average suburban Barnes and Noble might serve.) As an example:

Books make up over 99 percent of our inventory, compared to an industry average of 83.7 percent. Our overall margins deflated by our large selection of academic books which have an even lower margin than books by mainstream presses, are 37.7 percent, compared to an industry average of 43.3 percent. We are patient with our books and deliberately maintain a large inventory, acknowledging that we are providing a browsing experience as much as selling nay particular book. Our books sit on the shelf for 280 days, compared to an industry average of 132 days.

To put that difference in proper context, as a rule, retail outlets from books carry about 20% of non-book product and that percentage of “stuff” represents the difference between the shop failing and maintaining to sustain itself. Most bookshops roll their print product over in a four-month period whereas the Co-op keeps titles on their shelves for twice that time frame. .

A couple of other good quotes and observations from this title:

Books require patience at every level – creating them, producing them, marketing them, selling them, and reading them. If we measure them alongside more ephemeral products, we will necessarily elevate books of the moment over books of all time.

The book talks about the need for a new business model for bookstores. It talks about this segment of the distribution chain according to such diverse facets as space, abundance, value, community, and time.

I don’t quite know how to integrate this book into the bulk of everything else I have been reading about the topic of the printed book in this day and age. It requires that I re-think each of those five distinct facets because (1) books absorb space; (2) there is an abundance of available titles and it's hard to properly draw the attention of the marketplace when trying to match book to reader; (3) we predicate the value of the print product according to elements that may be less important in setting the value of the digital format; (4) the shape of the book community has shifted because of how books are perceived and how reading are valued; and (5) no one has as much time to read as they might want to devote to the activity.

The author is also incredibly well-read; he brings in all kinds of authors and literary references in what is actually a fairly short book.

This one is truly, truly worth the time of those who seek to immerse themselves in the creation, marketing, distribution and reading of books. Really, really worth the time.

**
And now to sit with Frodo as he awakens in Rivendell.

>171 jillmwo: Sounds like a great book, I will add it to the list. Thanks for your thoughts and excerpts!

>171 jillmwo:
This one is truly, truly worth the time of those who seek to immerse themselves in the creation, marketing, distribution and reading of books. Really, really worth the time.

While reading that paragraph the hairs on the back of my neck bristled. I felt someone was taking careful aim at me with a BB gun.

>171 jillmwo: More, it sounds like a great bookshop. I’m almost glad that I have roughly zero chance of getting to Chicago, because it seems like the sort of shop where I would spend far more than I can afford.

I'm late to the Tom Bombadil discussion! I love those parts, but I understand why Peter Jackson left him out. I don't think he could figure out a way to include him and have him be taken seriously, while still using Tolkien's description of his appearance. (Not to mention all those songs!) If he'd turned him into some dark foreboding bad-ass I don't think it would have worked.

PS Enjoy the chocolates!

>171 jillmwo: In honour of the book's subject I will be buying this from my favourite independent bookshop, "Books Upstairs". I think it would be scurrilous to buy a book about bookshops online when the book is available in a favourite bookshop. It would be just the thing not to do.

What I am saying is, "Yes, you can chalk up another hit."

>176 pgmcc: I want you to know that you were indeed someone who I KNEW instinctively would want to read this book, but I did not wish to publicly TARGET you. (Based on photographs, your bookshelves are already crowded. You're about to retire and even ONE MORE BB FROM JILL in 2022 might mean you would have to work an additional 2 days, 4 hours and 37 minutes more in 2023.) Thus, I was trying to be surreptitious in my dispersal of BBs and keep you out of trouble.

That said, yes, I'm thrilled that you have ordered it from Books Upstairs and I am confident that you will enjoy it immensely. I also most sincerely hope that you will subsequently engage with the store's manager over a pint in a bar somewhere, talk about the struggles that the business faces, and assure him or her that you will be buying books at a great rate.

(And, as a post-script, the design of the book cover and the end papers is another particularly nice feature....)

>171 jillmwo: How lovely it is to sojourn among civilized litersry companions who will reread a Tolkien classic at the drop of a hat.

>178 Meredy: Isn't that why we are here? Not only Tolkien classics either: I never cease to be amazed at the breadth of reading among GDers.

>171 jillmwo: Sadly, Talking Leaves...Books only has the audio book available. I'll stop in and order in person someday.

Am I the only reader whose heart breaks just a little when Boromir succumbs to temptation, frightening and sending Frodo and Sam off on their own way, and breaking the Fellowship? Every single time. Because you just know how it goes from here. *sobbing noises*

Suppose I ought to have hidden that behind spoiler tags, oughtn't I?

>180 Karlstar: And actually, you were also one of those who I thought might like In Praise of Good Bookstores.

>181 jillmwo: Every time. The first time I cried in the book, and the movie was even more moving. It wracked me. The confession to Aragorn and the forgiveness to Boromir. the ultimate scene of human frailty.

>181 jillmwo: & >182 MrsLee: Poor Boromir. It's distressing in both the book and the film. That 'forgiveness' scene in the film was handled perfectly, IMHO.
*passes around tissues*

>181 jillmwo: You were correct. It has been something of a goal of mine for a long time to have my own bookstore/game store.

>183 clamairy: That was a great scene in the movie.