richardderus's twenty-second 2022 thread

Esto es una continuación del tema richardderus's twenty-first 2022 thread.

Charlas75 Books Challenge for 2022

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richardderus's twenty-second 2022 thread

1richardderus
Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 12:41 pm


Happiest of Solstice wishes to you all. A better 2023 to our entire world.

2richardderus
Editado: Dic 31, 2022, 2:54 pm

For 2022, I upped my goal of posting an average of 4 or 5 book reviews a week on my blog to an annual total of 288. 2021's total of 229 (I need to do more to sync the data on my reads between my blog, Goodreads, and here this year for real NB this goal's officially dead because Goodreads has implemented its hideous user-unfriendly redesign and lost portions of my data) posts in 50 weeks of blogging shows it's doable.

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

And now that I've gotten >3 richardderus: Burgoineing as a habit, I'm going to make a monthly blog-only post with my that-month's Burgoined books. It will appear the last Sunday of each month.



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

Reviews one through eight? Seek them thitherward.

Looking for nine through sixteen? Click that link!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sixty-eight up to seventy-four aren't hard to find by using that link.

There are reviews numbered seventy-five through ninety, you know. This post links you to them.

Ninety-one through one hundred ten? Try that link, it'll sort you out.

111 through 131? Go back there.

Those reviews numbered 132 up to 142 will be found at the linked post.

Reviews 143 up to 150 can be found in a specific post back there.

Oh, are you looking for 151 up to 165? Follow that link!

Interested in 166 on through 178? This post should be your goal.

So, it's reviews 179 up to 188, is it? This is a dry hole, go back there for links.

So, you missed 189 all the way up to 211, did you? Don't sleep on 'em forever!

Reviews 212 to 224...let me see...I *think* I left them back there.

225 up through 244 on your list of reads? There's a place to go for that.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

258 The Strangest was indeed, post 176.

257 Hugs and Cuddles shocked, shocked!, me!, post 165.

256 A Minor Chorus enrobed, post 162.

255 Other Names for Love saddened, post 159.

254 A Fractured Infinity uplifted...sort of, post 156.

253 An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement gobsmacked, post 150.

252 When They Tell You To Be Good: A Memoir intrigued, post 147.

251 No One Left to Come Looking for You nostalgia-basted, post 138.

250 After the Lights Go Out slammed, post 137.

249 All the Living and the Dead: from Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work fascinated, post 115.

248 This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals educated, post 114.

247 Little Jewel: A Novel gobsmacked, post 41.

246 The Téuta's Child happened, post 24.

245 The Engagement: America's Quarter Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage ruled, post 22.

3richardderus
Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 11:33 am

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

Think about using it yourselves!




DECEMBER 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #84, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination, in post 16.

Burgoine #83, It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, in post 15.

Burgoine #82, The Conscience Economy: How a Mass Movement for Good Is Great for Business, in post 14.

Burgoine #81, Why Bad Governments Happen to Good People, in post 11.

Burgoine #80 is linked back here.

NOVEMBER 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #76 through #79 live in this post right here.

***

OCTOBER 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #71 through #75, are in this post right here.

Burgoines #69 & #70 live in that post there.

***

SEPTEMBER 2022's BURGOINES

All (through #68) are linked in this post right here.

***

AUGUST 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #53 through Burgoine #58 are linked in this post right here.

***

JULY 2022's BURGOINES

Burgoine #52, is in this post here.

#44 through #51, are linked in this post here.

#37 through #43, are linked in this post here.

JUNE 2022's BURGOINES

***

#37 through #43, are linked in this post here.

#36 is in thread twelve, post 279.

***

MAY 2022's BURGOINES

#34 and #35 are linked in this post here.

#31 through 33 stay linked right here.

***

APRIL 2022's BURGOINES

#25 through 30 are backlinked here.

#20 through 24 are backlinked in this post.

The first two for April are linked here.

MARCH 2022's BURGOINES

The last one for March is linked here.

The first 4 in March are back-linked here.

***

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

***
JANUARY 2022's BURGOINES are linked here.

4richardderus
Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 3:44 pm



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

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

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



DECEMBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rule #51, Life After Coffee, in post 34.

PEARL RULE #50, The Steam Man of the Prairies , in post 31.

PEARL RULE #49, End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I. Costello #3), in post 30.

Pearl Rule #48, All Are Welcome, in post 29.

NOVEMBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rules #45 up to #47 reside in a post of known location.

OCTOBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rules #43 & #44, live in a post found here.

Pearl Rule #41 & #42 live in this post
right here.

SEPTEMBER 2022's PEARL-RULES

There weren't any! I love months like this.

AUGUST 2022's PEARL-RULES

Pearl Rule #37 up to Pearl Rule #40 are linked in this post right here.

JUNE & JULY 2022's PEARL-RULES

#36 is in this post right here.

Pearl Rule #33 through #35 are linked in this post here.

***

MAY 2022's PEARL-RULES

#32 is linked in this post right here.

#31 is linked here.

***

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

The first one in April is linked here.

***

MARCH 2022's ONLY PEARL-RULE

It's linked in right here.

***

FEBRUARY 2022's PEARL-RULES are here.

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

5richardderus
Editado: Dic 30, 2022, 4:15 pm

See the new thread for the last-month, year-end, goal-setting post.

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

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

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

  • to post 288 reviews on my blog accomplished; on to stretch goal below


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


  • to complete at least 320 total reviews of all types accomplished! Yay me.


  • Most important to me again this year is to report on DRCs I don't care enough about to review at my usual level. I still don't want to keep just leaving them unacknowledged! There are publishers who want to see a solid, positive relationship between DRCs granted and reviews posted, and I do not blame them a bit.

    Ask and ye shall receive! 'Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >3 richardderus: above. I just need to keep getting better about *applying* it, being less prolix and more productive!

    6richardderus
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 9:38 am

    I'll be planning in this spot...though my plans all too seldom turn into reality, don't they.

    The current plans for December/#Booksgiving posts of DRCs from NetGalley
    The Middle Class Comeback: Women, Millennials, and Technology Leading the Way by Munir Moon
    The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence
    The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World's Greatest Salesman by Carmine Gallo

    And from Edelweiss+
    Variations on the Body by María Ospina (tr. Heather Cleary)
    Decolonizing Wealth, Second Edition : Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva
    The Web of Meaning : Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find our Place in the Universe by Jeremy Lent
    The American Surveillance State : How the U.S. Spies on Dissent by David Hotchkiss Price

    ***
    I've started my #Booksgiving posting this past Friday, the 25th.

    Y'all remember Jólabókaflóð? The Icelandic give-a-book-then-read-it Yuletide gifting custom? That's what I'll be riffing on again this year. Gifting ideas for all the bookish. And of course ourselves...can't be martyrs about this.

    This November, which I've truncated at the 20th, I wrote and blogged thirty-one reviews of all three types. That means I'm well past 320 reviews, this year's stretch goal, with 346 blogged reviews. I'm going to keep my 2023 goal at 350 for now because if I get COVID again, or come near to die of some horrible plague yet to hit us, I'll have wiggle room. Looking at >7 karenmarie:, I've got the Yokomizo books to fit into #Booksgiving, which I'll end on December 18th. I won't be posting to the blog the week of the 19th to 25th for what are, I trust, obvious reasons.

    My best-book-of-November is Kibogo, a beautiful braided-stories novella set in Author Scholastique Mukasonga's native Rwanda as it copes with the stresses of syncretism between Roman Catholicism and the indigenous religion centering the titular god Kibogo. It's most certainly in the running for the annual six-stars-of-five award. There is a full month of things I really, really liked ahead, though...stay tuned!

    As I've mentioned above, it's going to be #Booksgiving from here on out. I'll post reviews of books I liked a lot and feel confident that you'll get happy responses from people you choose to give them to. I've talked up the Icelandic custom of Jólabókaflóð before. I like its name, but honestly it's not likely to catch on is it...that "eth" at the end? Not a-flyin' here in the xenosuspicious US of A. My purpose in using this tag on my blog is to make that hard-to-shop-for giftee a little easier to pick out a fine quality book for, or get something really special for yourself to celebrate the Yule festival with a great get-away read.

    ***
    Okay, it's safe to post.

    7karenmarie
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 9:33 am

    First? Me? Well. Happy new thread and all.

    *smooch*

    8jessibud2
    Dic 21, 2022, 9:33 am

    Happy new one and happy solstice!

    9richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 9:41 am

    >7 karenmarie: You are indeed first one in! It being the Winter Solstice, I figure you need a seasonally-appropriate fancy chunk o' headgear:

    10richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 9:41 am

    >8 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley!

    11richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 10:08 am

    Burgoine #81

    Why Bad Governments Happen to Good People by Danny Katch

    Rating: 3.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: The election of Donald Trump has sent U.S. and the world into uncharted waters, with a bigoted, petty man-child at the head of the planet’s most powerful empire. Danny Katch indicts the hollowness of U.S. political system which led to Trump’s rise and puts forward a vision for a real alternative, a democracy that works for the people.

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

    My Review
    : I'm decidedly a leftist in my political stances. I would never, ever, ever vote for 45...not even for his execution.

    I'm in sympathy with this book, then. Why would I only give it three-and-a-half stars? Because it's a humorous look at how the oligarchy got to control the political landscape...Obama would've been a Rockefeller Republican in the rational politics of my youth...that's short on ideas for what to do to replace the consensus.

    Taking shit away from people is satisfying on a personal, vengeful level..."look! LOOK what your gullibility and stupidity have cost actual, real human beings!"...but look to the Soviet revolution for what happens when all you do is take away things with no plan for what to replace them with. Stalin. Putin. All the awful abusive cruelties and murderous outrages those men got away with by stepping into a void and saying, "obey me and I will protect you."

    We got 45. And deserved him. The issue I take with this book isn't that it's wrong, it's that it's naïve and almost willfully unrealistic about what it will take to change the course of modern politics.

    Explaining the problem ain't anything like enough anymore. The entrenched scream machine bellowing idiotic ideas into otherwise thoughtless heads isn't going to crank down on its own. It needs to be made unprofitable. And it needs to have a palatable-to-decent-people alternative to shove Them towards or it will fail and that catastrophe is what we're living through.

    Real change for the better, please. No more cleverly insulting analyses, please.

    12drneutron
    Dic 21, 2022, 10:14 am

    Happy new one, Richard!

    Looks like I can avoid #81...

    13Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 21, 2022, 10:24 am

    Solstice wishes to you too RD. We really need some sweet happenings in 2023 (I like odd numbers so am optimistic).

    14richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 10:26 am

    Burgoine #82

    The Conscience Economy: How a Mass Movement for Good Is Great for Business by Steven Overman

    Rating: 3* of five

    The Publisher Says: A generation of people around the world, from Boston to Bangkok, from New York to New Delhi, are making everyday choices in ways that defy traditional logic. They are judging where and how their clothes were made, not just how they fit. They are thinking global but buying local. They are spending their money and their time, forming loyalties, casting votes and even enjoying entertainment based increasingly upon their desire to make a positive impact on others and the world around them. This new generation believes they can and must make the world better, and they expect business and government to get with the program.

    The implications of the Conscience Economy are not “soft.” Ignore it, and your consumer or voter base will rebel, using a host of free tools and cheap connectivity to spread their rejection to peers around the world in real time. Leverage it, and Conscience Culture is a wellspring of financial upside.

    The Conscience Economy is the must-read guide to this unprecedented shift in human motivation and behavior. Author Steven Overman, Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak, provides context, inspiration and some basic tools to help readers reframe how they evolve and grow whatever it is they lead—whether it’s a community, a business, a product, or a marketing campaign. From the boardroom to the startup loft, from the State Department to the pulsing marketplaces of the developing world, The Conscience Economy will help international leaders, influencers, investors and decision-makers to manage, innovate and thrive in a new world where “doing good” matters as much as “doing well.”

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

    My Review
    : Exactly what it says on the tin. A corporate exec is talking to his fellows in front of us, making the point that there's lotsa money out there chasing Doing Good projects and products. This is news we don't hear that much...like the very real progress made on slowing down climate change in under a decade...that we could *just*maybe* not lose everything as Earth shrugs her shoulders to dislodge the fleas and ticks that we resemble.

    Lower rating for using the corpocratic speechifyin' tone mixed with self-aggrandizement, but not the citations and suchlike gubbins one would expect to back it up.

    15richardderus
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 10:51 am

    Burgoine #83

    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics by David Faris

    Rating: 3.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: It's time for Democrats to strike while the iron is hot...

    The American electoral system is clearly falling apart--more than one recent presidential race has resulted in the clear winner of the popular vote losing the electoral college vote, and Trump's refusal to concede in 2020 broke with all precedents...at least for now. Practical solutions need to be implemented as soon as possible. And so in It's Time to Fight Dirty, political scientist David Faris outlines accessible, actionable strategies for American institutional reform which don't require a constitutional amendment, and would have a lasting impact on our future.

    With equal amounts of playful irreverence and persuasive reasoning, Faris describes how the Constitution's deep democratic flaws constantly put progressives at a disadvantage, and lays out strategies for "fighting dirty" though obstructionism and procedural warfare: establishing statehood for DC and Puerto Rico; breaking California into several states; creating a larger House of Representatives; passing a new voting rights act; and expanding the Supreme Court.

    The Constitution may be the world's most difficult document to amend, but Faris argues that many of America's democratic failures can be fixed within its rigid confines--and, at a time when the stakes have never been higher, he outlines a path for long-term, progressive change in the United States so that the electoral gains of 2020 aren't lost again.

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

    My Review
    : Too late. Even with the clear and ringing message of 2022's midterms in their ears, the Democrats...comme d'habitude...aren't taking action to protect, and extend, voting-rights legislation or moving to curb the lunatic right-wing majority on the Supreme Court's power.

    So Faris's arguments are hot air blowing in the wind. He's correct. His prescriptions would work. But laddies and gentlewomen, there's no political will to do the sensible, morally correct thing among the oinking grafthogs battening on the dark-money dollars of contemptible scum.

    16richardderus
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 3:59 pm

    Burgoine #84

    Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination by Alexandra Minna Stern

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A critical analysis of the intellectual productions of the alt-right—necessary reading for all who seek to counter its appeal and expansion.

    The "alt-right" has sadly become a household term. From a loose movement that lurked in the shadows in the early 2000s, it has achieved a level of visibility that has allowed it to expand significantly through America's cultural, political, and digital landscapes. But the alt-right is also mercurial and shape-shifting, encompassing a range of believers and ideas that overlap with white nationalism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism. It provides a big and porous tent to those who subscribe to varying forms of race and gender-based exclusion.

    In Proud Boys and the White Ethno-State, historian Alexandra Stern begins with the premise that alt-right literature, most of which exists online, should be taken seriously as a form of intellectual production that has distinct lineages, assumptions, and objectives. Applying the tools of historical analysis, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary approaches, she explores its conceptual frameworks, language, and narratives. In doing so, she is able to probe the deeper meanings and underlying constructs, concepts, and frameworks that guide the alt-right and animate its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, sexism, and other social hostilities.

    Like George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, Proud Boys and the White Ethno-State is a key tool for combating today's white supremacist ideologies.

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

    My Review
    : What?! A four-star Burgoine review?! That...that's not what you do, Sirrah.

    Let's say I've learned my lesson. Political stuff is very much not what most people I know want to read. Y'all should read it because...never mind. No one's going to eat their spinach because I said to.

    What I *will* say to the two or three whose noses are as yet unwrinkled and eyes still open is that the author delves deep into the cesspit of this reprehensible "ideology"'s apologetics. She does so without coming across as minatory or dismissive, as I do. She clearly shows what the "reasoning" is behind this claptrap and, being an academic, points out where it's deficient in its grasp.

    What makes that so very valuable is that we, the unconvinced but still engaged, don't have to experience the awfulness of a people trying to talk themselves into believing they are Superior. I can barely type that sentence without wanting to laugh while barfing.

    Anyway. The point of me reviewing it is to say you definitely would learn a LOT about the January 6th events if you read this; you would understand a lot more clearly why the movement is moving peristaltically through the Body Politic of the US; and your grasp of what is at stake in 2024 will impel you to action in place of apathy.

    Learn what you don't know that you don't know. Through 12/31, it's 30% off at Beacon's website! Use code SPARKJOY30.

    17richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 11:26 am

    >13 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you, Caro. We do need to get the neoliberal jackanapes off the necks of decent people in 2023 transAtlantically.

    >12 drneutron: Thank you, Jim! I doubt you'd derive too much from the read, TBH. Safe to flip past it.

    18Helenliz
    Dic 21, 2022, 11:40 am

    Happy new (final?) thread, Richard.
    All worthy books, I'm sure. But not for Christmas.

    19richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 12:05 pm

    >18 Helenliz: Ha! Yuletide giving is over, far as I'm concerned. 'Tis the season for Booksgiving, the Yule Book Flood where you give a book to yourself to read one night this week.

    But none of these are likely to climb that hill, either. People don't want to think about it, it's hard, it's ugly, I get enough of that already, etc etc etc.

    So here it is crammed into the end of the year when they're already too busy to need to make excuses. I still did my part to offer a raise of awareness, albeit without much expectation of success.

    20PaulCranswick
    Dic 21, 2022, 12:37 pm

    Happy new one, RD and >1 richardderus: is a lovely thought for the coming year.

    21FAMeulstee
    Dic 21, 2022, 12:42 pm

    Happy new thread, Richard dear, and happy winter solstice, in a few hours it is the exact moment!

    22richardderus
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 3:56 pm

    245 The Engagement: America's Quarter Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage by Sasha Issenberg

    A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2021!

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States—the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium

    On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable.

    It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over twenty-five years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8 and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched.

    This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

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

    My Review
    : I disagree with the publisher's decision to use the phrase "same-sex marriage" in the sales copy. It's not about the sex organs of the people involved. It's about the equality of access to the benefits of the legal state of marriage to all people who wish to avail themselves of it.

    If marriage is a cornerstone of a properly functioning society, then what is the justification for denying access to it to the people who wish to engage in it? If your church doesn't choose to solemnize or recognize marriages between people of different faiths, or skin colors, or the same sex, no one can force you to do so. It's against the law that separates church from state.

    Your personal fantasyland has no place in the county clerk's office where marriage licenses are issued.

    If that's not how you see it, you're wrong.

    This book's almost a thousand pages and there's a LOT to learn in here...the role of activists in changing the public conversation is delightfully thoroughgoing...and there's a lot of good reasons to learn it. What gives me pause is the sheer heft of the tome! I very definitely have a dog in this fight and it was still a serious commitment that I took a long time to fulfill. As the current Supreme Court has shown us, there is no such thing as established law when the scum of the Earth want to resist things changing in ways they're not comfortable with.

    Might be time to get your eyes around this well-written and thoroughly sourced and closely argued tale of how Justice was finally served.

    23richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 12:47 pm

    >21 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita! It's astonishing how much of the year has been spent waiting for this one special week by so very many people.

    >20 PaulCranswick: Let's hope it's a thought that, against all odds, comes to fruition. Happy Yule, PC!

    24ArlieS
    Dic 21, 2022, 1:00 pm

    Happy new thread, and glad to read that your foot is doing a bit better.

    25richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 1:02 pm

    >24 ArlieS: Thanks, Arlie, and thank GOODNESS the infection that threatened went away! There's nothing I want less than to be chucked into the hospital for another MRSA infection.

    26Helenliz
    Dic 21, 2022, 1:26 pm

    We're on slightly different mental timeframes - Christmas not yet started here - finished work yesterday, so this is all downtime. Yes, I agree, how we all go into the mess we are in (and we're in as big a mess as the US from a politics situation - a different mess, for sure, but still one hell of a mess). But let me recharge the mental batteries a bit first. Then I'll pick up the baton & start picking away at trying to change the world for the better. Again.

    27richardderus
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 3:56 pm

    246 The Téuta's Child by S. G. Ullman

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: Once upon a time in the Téuta, the ground shook. The cliff fell, and boulders came tumbling down, crushing everything and everyone in their path. The surviving villagers blamed Welo, the nightmare giant, for the disaster.

    When little blind Kaikos notices mysterious spiritual activity on the ground, she must keep it a secret. The villagers will not hesitate to sacrifice Welo's cursed granddaughter if it stops the earth from shaking again.

    With the fragile line between love and hate erased by fear, Kaikos must brave growing darkness to survive.

    The Téuta's Child is a gripping tale of loss and redemption, set in neolithic times.

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

    My Review
    : I think you need to be in the proper mood for this story to work its magic on you. This week of all weeks of the year, it's the time to read about the fates of those Different and what simply living their lives can demand of them.

    It's not like there's a lack of evidence that we're responding the same ways now as we did then.

    Author Ullman tells his tale at a deliberate pace. There's not a single moment that he shorts its proper attention. And that is, in this story, a strength. He's making a world for us that isn't like the one outside. The people, now...they're always just people. But in response to stresses and pressures that we don't really experience the same way in the modern world, they use the same tools out of the same toolbox that we do.

    This isn't a knock on the author's choices, it's a compliment...I'm noting for you the best thing a read can do: Make the Other into a familiar figure by taking us, the readers, outside our little compartments of mind. Among the pleasures of fiction is this one, this shock of the novel tempered into explorations of the nature of novelty. I recommend this for a long, comfortable reading in the Solstice's cold days.

    28richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 1:46 pm

    >26 Helenliz: Heh. I'm always out of sync, Helen. It's one of my life-long facts-of-life. Y'all's mess is similar in its roots to ours, depressingly enough: dark, evil-souled people want things that're changing to stop changing and go back to being the way They like 'em. Sunak's the perfect choice for their agenda: Looks different but sounds the same.

    Yuck.

    29richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 2:10 pm

    Pearl Rule #48 (18%)

    All Are Welcome by Liz Parker

    Rating: 2.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: A darkly funny novel from a fresh new voice in fiction about brides, lovers, friends, and family, and all the secrets that come with them.

    Tiny McAllister never thought she’d get married. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t think girls from Connecticut married other girls. Yet here she is with Caroline, the love of her life, at their destination wedding on the Bermuda coast. In attendance—their respective families and a few choice friends. The conflict-phobic Tiny hopes for a beautiful weekend with her bride-to-be. But as the weekend unfolds, it starts to feel like there’s a skeleton in every closet of the resort.

    From Tiny’s family members, who find the world is changing at an uncomfortable speed, to Caroline’s parents, who are engaged in conspiratorial whispers, to their friends, who packed secrets of their own—nobody seems entirely forthcoming. Not to mention the conspicuous no-show and a tempting visit from the past. What the celebration really needs now is a monsoon to help stir up all the long-held secrets, simmering discontent, and hidden agendas.

    All Tiny wanted was to get married, but if she can make it through this squall of a wedding, she might just leave with more than a wife.

    I CHECKED A COPY OUT FROM PRIME LENDING LIBRARY. THANK YOU.

    My Review
    : Ineffectual Dick musing, "If Robbie didn't come home, it meant Dick couldn't disappoint him," drove the final nail in the coffin of my increasingly decaying readerly corpse. I was ready for this to be dark, and funny; instead it was sad, and sarcastic.

    This had the ideas of an episode of Schitt's Creek, which was blessed with an amazing alchemical miracle of writers and actors and producers and directors. This is the story that didn't make the cut, got flensed in the writer's room and worked over by the showrunner, and now washes up here in front of me, homophobia and clueless rich privileged assholes *galore* sitting in the same seats.

    If I'd paid for it, I'd be spittin' mad. As it is, I won't get those eyeblinks back but it was at the very least a cashless transaction. I don't recommend it to you.

    30richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 2:42 pm

    PEARL RULE #49 (30%)

    End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I. Costello #3) by Elizabeth Flynn

    Rating: 2* of five

    The Publisher Says: Brendan Phelan, rock star, is playing in a stage show that includes guns and whips. As it reaches its climax, a shot rings out—but it's not part of the show. The body of Oliver Joplin, one of the road crew, lies lifeless outside the stage door. Detective Inspector Angela Costello and her team investigate, but they quickly discover that several stage hands, and Phelan himself, are adept with firearms—and that Joplin was widely disliked and distrusted. So why had Phelan kept him on, despite the reservations of his crew? Joplin's emails reveal the presence of a shadowy figure stalking the dead man. Who might profit from Joplin's death?

    Little by little, Costello unpicks the web of lies. But unless one key person opens up, she can't crack the case. And that is not going to happen.

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

    My Review
    : When the production manager of the rock star's road show takes six lines to say "the star added the dead guy to the staff, not me, I hated the bastard," I realized I wasn't going to finish this story.

    Gay is hilarious, you see, thinking a famous rock star might be gay can cause a room full of his sycophants to clutch their sides in laughter, and the fact that he's accused of having sex with a fourteen-year-old girl elicits a flurry of justifications like "plenty of girls that age are sexually active" (with middle-aged men? that's a problem, folks) and "how was he to know?" (maybe keep it zipped while on the road? just spitballin' some thoughts here).

    The sleuth and her team follow procedures, I suppose, but I couldn't tell you what those were. I'm spoiled by Ann Cleeves and her ilk in this regard: The say what the procedures are. Anyway. It comes down to "I do not like this book or the characters in it so I am exercising my readerly right to bugger off now."

    I do not recommend this read to you.

    31richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 3:04 pm

    PEARL RULE #50 (51%)

    The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis

    Rating: 2.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: One of the earliest examples of steampunk literature, this 1868 tale was also among the first American science-fiction novels and the very first literary instance of a mechanical man.

    Extremely popular and much imitated in its day, the story concerns a teenage inventor who constructs an automaton to help him explore the American prairie.

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

    My Review
    : "...and with not a single Indian in sight!" reads the cliff-hanger to chapter 11 of this early science fiction story. It was then that my last nerve, frayed by racism and the passage of 150-plus years, snapped.

    I can't do it. I can overlook and explain away with the best of 'em if I'm gettin' somethin' for it. I was not only not gettin' nothin' for it, I was puttin' in a damn sight more effort than I care to put in for a pleasure this attenuated. I tried three separate times, before and during the pandemic, and now ~after(?) it. I think that's more than fair, and I've never made it past this point.

    32Kristelh
    Dic 21, 2022, 3:07 pm

    Happy new thread.

    33swynn
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 3:18 pm

    The Stern, the Issenberg, and the Ullman are all bullets for me. Thanks!

    The Ellis is unread on my Kindle and I expect I'll read it someday not soon.

    And happy new thread!

    34richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 3:31 pm

    Pearl Rule #51 (34%)

    Life After Coffee by Virginia Franken

    Rating: 2.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: Last week, high-powered coffee buyer Amy O’Hara was trekking through the Ethiopian cloud forest on the verge of a discovery that could save the coffee bean from extinction. This week, she’s unexpectedly fired.

    Suddenly Amy’s days are no longer filled with meetings and upscale tastings, but with put-together PTA moms, puke-ridden playdates and dirty dishes. Her husband has locked himself in the garage in order to write the Great American Screenplay, while both kids are steaming mad at her because she insists on dressing them like normal people and won’t give up sending them to school with healthy lunches.

    It’s becoming clear that Amy may just be the world’s most incompetent mother, and she’s beginning to wonder if the only thing she’s good for is bringing home the bacon. When salvation appears in the form of a movie mogul ex-boyfriend who wants to employ her husband and rekindle their relationship, Amy starts to find she’s sorely tempted. . . .

    One thing is certain: whatever happens, she’s going to need a lot more caffeine.

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

    My Review
    : It was the title. The title made me do it. And by gawd I slugged it out through nine chapters! I can not be accused of short-changing this story in the attention department.

    I think I've mentioned how little I like the sexist and stupid "dumb-ol'-dad" plot...the one where the breadwinner comes home and, for reasons best known to comedy writers of the last century (or those stuck there), becomes incompetent and borderline moronic.

    Here we are in a brand new century and here's that plot again! Only this time it's extra-funny stuff because it's Mom who's the clueless schmoe! Barely seems to know her kids. Definitely doesn't know the other mothers whose lives center on their own kids, or get what the power politics are.

    Honestly, whether well done or not, this stuff's tired and needs to be laid to rest. This version's got tolerable writing. I am not the audience for it. I don't like to think most of y'all are, either, but you know your own tolerance for tired old comedy tropes from Bachelor Father and Married...with Children.

    35richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 3:36 pm

    >33 swynn: Oh yay! I'm glad you find them interesting and hope they'll give you some good information to use.

    I don't think you should sprain anything running to the Kindle to get the Ellis read, but, well...you do you, boo.

    Thank you, Steve!

    >32 Kristelh: Thank you, Kristel. I'm very glad you came to visit.

    36MickyFine
    Editado: Dic 21, 2022, 4:20 pm

    Happy new one, RDear, and happy solstice!

    37richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 4:18 pm

    >36 MickyFine: Ha! Perfect GIF, Micky! We're halfway out of the dark...now as always. I'm hoping we're all in for a good Solstice of positive surprises.

    Wouldn't that make a lovely change? *smooch*

    38johnsimpson
    Dic 21, 2022, 4:50 pm

    Hi Richard, Happy New Thread dear friend.

    39ocgreg34
    Dic 21, 2022, 5:05 pm

    >1 richardderus: Happy new thread, and happy Solstice!

    40figsfromthistle
    Dic 21, 2022, 5:10 pm

    Happy new one!

    41richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 5:12 pm

    247 Little Jewel: A Novel by Patrick Modiano (tr. Penny Hueston)

    Rating: 4.25* of five

    The Publisher Says: A mesmerizing novel by Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano, now superbly translated for English-language readers

    For long standing admirers of Modiano’s luminous writing as well as those readers encountering his work for the first time, Little Jewel will be an exciting discovery. Uniquely told by a young female narrator, Little Jewel is the story of a young woman adrift in Paris, imprisoned in an imperfectly remembered past. The city itself is a major character in Modiano’s work, and timeless moral ambiguities of the post-Occupation years remain hauntingly unresolved.

    One day in the corridors of the metro, nineteen-year-old Thérèse glimpses a woman in a yellow coat. Could this be the mother who long ago abandoned her? Is she still alive? Desperate for answers to questions that have tormented her since childhood, Thérèse pursues the mysterious figure on a quest through the streets of Paris. In classic Modiano style, this novel explores the elusive nature of memory, the unyielding power of the past, and the deep human need for identity and connection.

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

    My Review
    : I understand that many Modiano fanciers find this to be a slight, even a negligible, entry into his oeuvre. I am, of course, required to bow to their expertise since I do not have it. I will say, though, that if this is a slight entry into Author Modiano's catalog, the Nobel committee slept on this award by leaving it unawarded until 2014.

    Thérèse, in common with most of us whose mothers weren't all that motherly, sees and feels the present with intensity and immediacy that our better-grounded peers seem to lack. It's a hypervigilance, an awareness of things that aren't always notable or even noticeable to others.

    Thérèse's mother abandoned her for that most selfish of reasons, addiction, and so Thérèse can never really find her mother in her memories. We, listening to Thérèse, don't know what images among the blurry watercolors inside her head are real. Is her mother dead? Did she abandon Thérèse in that absolute and final way? Thérèse doesn't seem to know, so we don't know.

    But that's the nature of the child of loss: We don't know what, if any, of our memories are valid, externally valid that is, and that is all we've come to trust. Validation must come from outside when your life has consisted of things you simply can't control, can't even influence...they just Happen, from the outside. So that is where Reality lies.

    And lie she does, does Reality.

    That is the genius of this work. It's not the usual third person exploration of the Idea of Identity, the Scenes of Paris, that Modiano is so very very good at. Thérèse is telling us about the grey, grim Paris of her life. Thérèse is putting herself in the frame deliberately, and that is unique. To Modiano, whose work is always at a very French remove from the immediacy of American novels. To Thérèse, whose marginal life is never even the center of her own thoughts...that position belongs to her mother. (That there is a father is self-evident, but one it never treated to a thought centering him. He exists only because The Mother got pregnant by him, whoever he was.)

    We, the audience, see that there are men...an older pharmacist, a young student...who care for the waiflike Thérèse. She remains unable to process their proffered affection. It is here that Modiano achieves something I am absolutely stunned by: In a novel told all in first person, he manages the feat of making the emotional reality of other characters as clear to the reader as are Thérèse's disordered thoughts. It is a rare stylistic attempt, and it succeeds more often than not.

    Why, you'll be excused for asking, isn't this a five-star review? Because, ma amie, Thérèse is nineteen and solipsistic in the extreme as are all emotionally abandoned children. It grows wearisome to trudge around after this yellow-raincoated woman to no avail, with no closure, by no authority empowered to address her. I don't for an instant think this is Thérèse's mother. I'm familiar with the trajectory of addiction and it's unlikely that someone lied to the girl Thérèse about her mother's fate. That's the sort of lie that comes with good intentions. No one's ever had an intention towards Thérèse, good or bad.

    The ending of this novel is not really an ending. It is a place where we can leave Thérèse, like a safe street-corner near a police station, but knowing that we're out of there and no longer responsible to looking on at her life's messy, pale, unlikely to come into focus, trajectory. It's the proper place to leave her. It's what the entire trajectory of the story demands.

    It feels a bit like we, the only people who will ever see Thérèse from the inside, are repeating the cruelty and abandonment that has been and will be her lot.

    Brilliant. Unsettling. Evoking the eternal question that consuming art, novels in particular, wrenches forth from the sensitive: Is this just fancied-up voyeurism? Am I not being the low-life peeper that I condemn when she's listening at bedroom doors, he's got one eye on the braless busty babe?

    42msf59
    Dic 21, 2022, 5:30 pm

    Happy Wednesday, Richard. Happy New Thread! I hope you had a great reading year, my friend. I could always read more books but I am happy with what I did read.

    43richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 6:10 pm

    >42 msf59: Hey there, Birddude. It was a quality reading year. Everything was superior to the average reads of years past but...six stars territory was elusive. Only two possibles.

    That doesn't make it easy to decide, drat the luck.

    >40 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita!

    >39 ocgreg34: Thanks, Greg, I'm glad you came to visit.

    >38 johnsimpson: Hi there, John! Thank you most kindly for the new-thread wishes.

    44klobrien2
    Dic 21, 2022, 7:01 pm

    Happy new thread! OMG, look at all of those reviews! That's fantastic, but don't tire yourself out too much! Hope your foot is better!

    Karen O.

    45richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 7:24 pm

    Burgoine #85

    The Jolly Coroner: A Picaresque Novel by Quentin Canterel

    Rating: 3* of five

    The Publisher Says: Evil wakes while the people sleep.

    Amongst the strip malls, concrete blocks and empty parking lots of the Southern town of Hokum, the American dream lies broken. A helpless immigrant the state has declared dead finds himself unable to prove otherwise. Abused Mexican kids abduct their schoolteacher escaping back across the border. A haunted hillbilly dangles from a flagpole refusing to believe his wife and children aren’t ghosts. The Warden, a camo-wearing military obsessive pedals drugs whilst blaring Stockhausen. A down on her luck junkie fails to drown herself and resurfaces to find love. All these characters have one thing in common: they will all find a way to wind themselves in to the coroner, Billy’s life.

    Billy’s love of celebrity and aversion to hard work leaves a growing trail of wronged members of the public—a trail that he just can’t seem to shake. Although he can’t understand why, the townsfolk begin increasingly to mistake him for the devil. Amidst all the fun, THE JOLLY CORONER poses questions about moral decay and proves that a casual string of circumstances, in the right conditions, can lead to the rise of a dangerous man... only it’s so accidental no one seems to notice.

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

    My Review
    : Mildly amusing, always interestingly presented story of sorts. The Ignatius J. Reilly-esque character of Billy isn't exactly a comedic dynamo. Much of the book...almost 2/3, at 63%...is spent building up to a completely wacky ending.

    I got very close to Pearl-Ruling the book at multiple times and didn't because Billy's got something I like in a fictional character: An infuriating ability to be right. When you're sure he's wrong, he's weirdly right.

    I don't think this is for everyone. I do think anyone who starts it will know by the 10% mark whether they're even going to be able to take the full trip. But if you can stick to it, there's a payoff in chortles and whinnys of laughter that made me think "oh...okay, that was a good time."

    46richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 7:29 pm

    >44 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O.! I'm a machine today.

    I'm glad to report that the toe's not more swollen or painful. It's the direction I want to see it heading.

    47richardderus
    Dic 21, 2022, 7:43 pm

    Burgoine #86

    Black Ops: Zulu (Tom Stiles Thrillers Book 1) by Arthur Bozikas

    Rating: 3* of five

    The Publisher Says: Tom Stiles. Businessman, adrenalin seeker, devoted father, Black Ops agent.

    The Black Ops Trilogy explores the hidden connections between espionage, international fraud dealings and the deadly potentials of information technology. Although predominantly set against urban Sydney backdrops, Stiles confronts the encroaching world of international crime and conceit.

    Stiles is a conflicted character who measures materialism against ethics and desire versus love. His progression from suburban family man to government paid assassin is a brutal tale of emotional disintegration. The Tom Stiles thrillers are action packed character explorations of a man who is part philosopher, part killing machine.

    The first in a series of thrillers starring Tom Stiles follows his journey from family man and fraud investigator to elite Black Ops secret agent.

    The deaths of his parents and brother in a house fire when he was a child and, more recently, the death of his wife, have left Tom craving distraction in the form of an adrenalin rush.

    “Black Ops Zulu: Pivotal Velocity” begins with a car crash and the death of Tom’s latest lover, Natasha Mikula, daughter of Vlad – a member of the Chechen mafia.

    As Tom struggles to hide his affairs from his current partner, Victoria, Vlad demands a dangerous favour that gets Tom in too deep with Cerberus, a criminal mastermind with links to international terrorism. When the Prime Minister of Australia appoints him as Chair of a new International Fraud Taskforce, Tom is left wondering if there’s more to all this than it first seems.

    Tom’s fight to uncover these mysteries while holding onto his family and his secrets, culminates in a battle of epic proportions, played out in the suburban streets of Vaucluse, Sydney.

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

    My Review
    : Lotsa women die around Tom. Lots. I really think this is a story about fifteen years older than will fly these days. Had the book come out in 1992, it would've soared. By 2002, some querulous complaints would be heard; now, in 2022, this sexist testosterone-poisoned stuff ain't more than a niche player.

    Thank goodness.

    Anyway, it was competently paced and better than average in the geopolitics of Tom's theatre of operations. Not many books use Chechens as the Mafia, and it's both realistic and presented well. Just...no women need concern themselves with the read.

    48Familyhistorian
    Dic 21, 2022, 8:37 pm

    Happy new thread, Richard. That's a lot of reviews. Do you aim to keep it up until the end of the year while you sit with your foot up in the warmth?

    49SandyAMcPherson
    Dic 21, 2022, 10:45 pm

    >11 richardderus: absolutely fantastically insightful review. Ummm, well, yeah, okay, I didn't read the book.

    But that's not the point. I've read enough rhetoric here, and north of 49° which calls out electoral stupidity but does little else to provide alternatives that will change the polarized politics. Besides which, all the reports regarding what went on with 45 point unequivocally to the same naïve, unrealistic outlook you've critiqued.

    Too many political pundits haven't addressed the fact that (imho) the electoral process both sides of the border is deeply flawed and all about power, rather than governing by consensus from the centre.

    Okies. Done ranting ... will slide back into lurking.

    50FAMeulstee
    Dic 22, 2022, 6:03 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

    >41 richardderus: If Little Jewel wasn't already on my list, I would add it after reading your review.
    I haven't returned to Modiano since September, when I read 3 books by him. Should get to this one soon :-)

    51karenmarie
    Dic 22, 2022, 6:43 am

    'Morning, Rdear. Happy Thursday to you.

    >11 richardderus: and etc. Good Burgoine reviews. Pass anyway.

    >22 richardderus: I disagree with the publisher's decision to use the phrase "same-sex marriage" in the sales copy. It's not about the sex organs of the people involved. It's about the equality of access to the benefits of the legal state of marriage to all people who wish to avail themselves of it. You’re absolutely right, of course.

    >29 richardderus: and etc. Pearl Ruled. Thanks for taking one for the team.

    >42 msf59: Excellent review. Almost tempts me, but not quite.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    52bell7
    Dic 22, 2022, 7:58 am

    Happy new thread, Richard! Whew, already populating it with many new reviews, too. Hope you have a lovely day and your foot and knee continue to heal quickly.

    53msf59
    Dic 22, 2022, 8:14 am

    Sweet Thursday, Richard. Some very nasty weather arrives later this afternoon. I am watching Jackson for a couple of hours this morning and then coming home and curling up with the books. Woodsburner is turning out to be a surprise hit, although Thoreau seems to be more of a secondary character.

    54richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 9:36 am

    >53 msf59: Thoreau seems to be more of a secondary character
    I'd argue that's exactly what he always was and should remain. Tedious lumpen spoiled brat.

    I'd say "happy weekend to come" but it's stressful to be under that kind of weather alert....

    >52 bell7: Hiya Mary! *smooch*

    I've got a LOT of backlogged reviews and have again recovered a few from the other old hard drive. Why I didn't post them back in the day I do not know. But I just give 'em a coat of "what I do now" and they're off!

    55richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 9:48 am

    >51 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Thanks re: my reviews. I'm always impatient with the branding message of "same-sex marriage" which gives the eww-ick homophobes acres of cover for their do you know what those disgusting men DO I mean ewwwww whispers. Sad little lives that kind of titillation-seeking snobs lead. I'm also not going to point out the startling amount of ewwwww that goes on in hetero coupledom. No need, really.

    What, Madam, do you mean "ALMOST tempts you?! Get back here and read >41 richardderus: properly! Then go spend $10.38 on the Kindle edition! Chop chop!

    *smooch*

    >50 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, thank you most kindly for the kind words! *glowers upwards* Others are bent on resistance to my blandishments.

    I do think this one's not like the other Modianos you'll read so it will serve up a different take on the man's inimitable style. He can be a bit much, can Modiano, when taken in too large a gulp. This is a perfect way to escape the samey-ness of reading too many books by one writer in too short a time.

    Happy to see you! *smooch*

    56richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 9:58 am

    >49 SandyAMcPherson: We're done with that now, Sandy. We *know* what the problem is, there's an absolute Alp...nay, a Rocky!...of evidence identifying the problem.

    How do we go about fixing it?

    "Governing from the centre" (note intentional misspelling, done to create a sense of welcome and solidarity for the tragically not-French who are bent on imitating their {notably obtuse} orthography to add a spurious air of Kultur I suppose) always makes my hairs rise. There ain't nothin' in the middle of the road but yellow lines an' slow armadillos. But it's true that we're stuck in the Right lane, missing exit after exit, and holding up traffic something fierce.

    Thank you for ranting, and very happy to see you around! *smooch*

    >48 Familyhistorian: Greetings Meg! While I'm stuck in the prone position with this foot at an awkward angle I'd best find *something* productive to do or I'll go mad(der)! Plus I've got an entire generation of already-published and quite good (but short of very good, and not in the same post code as excellent) stuff that really needs some kind of closure.

    Stay tuned....

    57richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 10:06 am

    Wordle 551 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    I stared and stared and stared and stared before I tried this word...and it was the answer! AEONS, MIRTH, EXCEL

    58MickyFine
    Dic 22, 2022, 11:24 am

    >57 richardderus: That is so impressive, Richard! It was a fiver for me today.

    59ArlieS
    Dic 22, 2022, 12:47 pm

    >49 SandyAMcPherson: Of course it's about power. On a bad day, I figure human "leaders" are a bunch of power mad gorillas, incapable of any calculation other than "what's in it for me". But I'm probably insulting gorillas with that metaphor.

    60richardderus
    Editado: Dic 22, 2022, 12:53 pm

    >59 ArlieS: "Probably" can be removed from that sentence. Gorillas are lovely beings unless you deprive them of food and/or sex. Which, I suppose, is really all about power anyway....

    >58 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky, it was a disappointment to me that "ululate" had too many letters to be the answer.

    Is "ululate" an onamatopoeia?

    61klobrien2
    Editado: Dic 22, 2022, 1:10 pm

    >57 richardderus: Great Wordle-ing, as always! I found myself in the same situation—a vowel, a vowel, my kingdom for a non-“e” vowel!—and I love the solution! Took me 4.

    Karen O

    62Berly
    Dic 22, 2022, 1:05 pm

    Hello there! Smooches. : )

    63MickyFine
    Dic 22, 2022, 1:07 pm

    >60 richardderus: Not quite sure it's onomatopoeia but it is very fun to say.

    64richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 1:44 pm

    >63 MickyFine: It really is, isn't it.

    >62 Berly: Hiya Berly-boo! I'm so glad to see you! *smooch*

    >61 klobrien2: Ha! Well, there's only one right word and over 1,900 left they haven't used before, so inevitably there'll be days where you just flounder.

    Happy weekend-ahead vibes, Karen O.!

    65richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 3:51 pm

    There are FOUR HUNDRED AND TWO best books of 2022 on NPR's list.
    FOUR HUNDRED AND TWO!
    Even *I* think that's excessive.
    Bloody gorgeous, though, innit?

    66richardderus
    Dic 22, 2022, 6:42 pm

    Sad news today: my old friend D'Anne Waligore died today after several years of failing health. She was the eldest child of my mother's closest, dearest friend, Irene. A young mother when we met in 1969, her life was a roller coaster with so many ups that even the downs never seemed to bother her.

    A bit more of my past gone. I'm glad she's not in pain any more. I'll miss her indomitable spirit. I'm happy to have memories of her time on this Earth.

    D'Anne Waligore, 8 November 1944 to 22 December 2022

    67The_Hibernator
    Dic 22, 2022, 6:47 pm

    Sorry about your loss Richard! I hope you are doing well, otherwise.

    68Kristelh
    Dic 22, 2022, 7:12 pm

    My condolences Richard.

    69ArlieS
    Dic 22, 2022, 10:20 pm

    >66 richardderus: My condolences. I'm sorry to hear that.

    70LizzieD
    Dic 22, 2022, 11:47 pm

    I'm sorry, Richard.

    71FAMeulstee
    Dic 23, 2022, 3:41 am

    >66 richardderus: So sorry for your loss, Richard dear.
    Vale D'Anne.

    72bell7
    Dic 23, 2022, 7:08 am

    >66 richardderus: I am sorry to hear that, Richard. *hugs* to you and may you have many good memories of D'Anne come to mind.

    73karenmarie
    Dic 23, 2022, 7:22 am

    ‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Friday to you.

    >55 richardderus: *THIS other is studiously ignoring the demand to spend $10.38* I did buy, and received in yesterday’s mail, my own hardcover copy of The Atlas of Atlases, so you have definitely BB’s me this month. You should get much satisfaction out of that. And, I agree about the ewwww in hetero-land.

    >66 richardderus: I’m sorry that your friend D’Anne died, and I can relate to the ‘A bit more of my past gone.’ Beautiful picture.

    *smooch* from your own Horrible

    74richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 8:19 am

    >73 karenmarie: *hmmmf* Just fancy refusing a sad, lonely old shut-in without a friend in the world a simple request...these modern young people...I swaNEE

    Hi Horrible! I know you'll really dig The Atlas of Atlases because, well, who in their right mind isn't fascinated by beautiful artwork and fascinating history?

    Thanks, re: D'Anne. She was special, and irreplaceable. Our pasts shrink a lot when the people who "knew us when" check out.

    >72 bell7: She'll be there a lot today! I'll miss being outrageous together. Heh.

    >71 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita. She will always be in my mind but a little less reachable now.

    75richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 8:22 am

    >70 LizzieD: Thank you, Peggy. We think we're ready for it, losses like this, but we're not.

    >69 ArlieS: Thanks, Arlie, I appreciate the kindness.

    >68 Kristelh: Thank you, Kristel. Very kind of you indeed.

    >67 The_Hibernator: I'm very grateful, Rachel, and thanks.

    76msf59
    Dic 23, 2022, 8:23 am

    Morning, Richard. Sorry to hear about the passing of your friend D'Anne. Sounds like a special lady. The Freeburgs will be hunkering down today, with no plans to venture out until early tomorrow afternoon. Keep snug, my friend.

    77richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 9:23 am

    >76 msf59: Thank you, Mark, I will miss her. Huddle up and stay warm! It's going to be BRUTAL for a few days.
    ***
    Wordle 552 3/6

    🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    If I hadn't had three letters in the proper places, this would've been a day I got skunked! AEONS, MIRTH, AORTA

    78Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 23, 2022, 9:25 am

    >66 richardderus: Sorry to hear of the loss of your dear friend RD. Revell n the sweet memories.

    79richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 9:57 am

    >78 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you, Caro. Fifty-three years is a long time to know someone.

    80tiffin
    Editado: Dic 23, 2022, 10:17 am

    God Jul, Richard!



    81Caroline_McElwee
    Editado: Dic 23, 2022, 6:39 pm



    With every good wish of the season RD. i hope you have a pleasant celebration, and a book shaped parcel or two beneath the tree.

    82Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 23, 2022, 10:16 am

    >79 richardderus: It is RD. Such a gift too. I have several friendships in the 45+ years. Treasures.

    83richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 10:32 am

    >82 Caroline_McElwee: They are indeed. Treasure them extra hard!

    >81 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, but really? A cat? Ick.

    >80 tiffin: Thank you, Tui! What adorable elves for the Yule celebrations!

    84drneutron
    Dic 23, 2022, 11:00 am

    85jessibud2
    Dic 23, 2022, 11:05 am

    Sorry for your loss, Richard. But glad you have the memories (and photos).

    I am still in the midst of pondring wordle today. I have 3 letters so far, only one in place. But I have all day, right?

    86SandDune
    Dic 23, 2022, 11:15 am



    Happy Christmas from my Christmas gnome!

    87richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 11:41 am

    >86 SandDune: Gnome matter what, I'll remember that one Rhian! *smooch*

    >85 jessibud2: You do, indeed, have all day. It's not like there's a time limit...other than 11:59:59 local time.

    Thank you, re: D'Anne's death. I will miss her.

    >84 drneutron: If y'all haven't yet, making a new thread's easy...even I can do it!

    88ArlieS
    Dic 23, 2022, 12:13 pm

    >84 drneutron: Woohoo! I wondered when this would be going up!

    89Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 23, 2022, 1:08 pm

    >83 richardderus: Er, would you rather a poem....

    90richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 5:00 pm

    >89 Caroline_McElwee: I never trust kindly offers like that...oh, here's a poem! about a cat...so I'll just feel relieved that there's not very long to go before the thread's shut down.

    But really...a cat? What were you thinking?

    >88 ArlieS: :-)

    91Caroline_McElwee
    Editado: Dic 23, 2022, 6:47 pm



    Better RD?

    92figsfromthistle
    Dic 23, 2022, 8:18 pm

    >66 richardderus: I am so sorry for your loss, Richard.

    93richardderus
    Dic 23, 2022, 9:13 pm

    >92 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita, she was an original.

    >91 Caroline_McElwee: *baaawww* isn't he a punkin pweshus?

    Yes indeed, muuuch better.

    94weird_O
    Dic 23, 2022, 9:37 pm

    >79 richardderus: Fifty-three years is a long time to know someone. How well I know that, Richard. I grieve with you the loss of an irreplaceable friend. My condolences to you.

    At some point this evening, an Emissary of the Amazon leaned a package against the house beside the door. Just by luck, I flipped on the porch light and saw. Lightly dusted with snow. Two copies of Mythopedia I ordered. A BB you fired at me. Wow! Such a book! I shoulda ordered three copies.

    95Familyhistorian
    Dic 24, 2022, 1:14 am

    Sorry to read of your friend D'Anne's passing. The longer we live the more we lose but it's hard when it's the good ones.

    96karenmarie
    Dic 24, 2022, 8:10 am

    ‘Morning, RDear. Happy Christmas Eve to you.

    >74 richardderus: You really try hard to tug on the old heart strings, but… no dice.



    *smooch*

    97msf59
    Dic 24, 2022, 8:23 am



    Morning, Richard. Still very cold here. We will have to venture out for our Christmas Eve festivities this afternoon but we will have our little Jackson to keep our hearts warm. Have a great day, my friend.

    98richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 10:11 am

    >97 msf59: Happy partying, Mark! May the weather loosen its grip by surprise in time for the day.

    >96 karenmarie: Howdy do, Hard-hearted Hannah. I hope...despite your spiteful refusal to part with a lousy $10.38...y'all have a lovely holly-jolly happytime.

    >95 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. It's not a thing for sissies, this getting-old stuff.

    >94 weird_O: It's always an amputation to lose someone who held a position in your life. Your loss is incalculable, Bill. Mine is no fun. But the truth is, we had them and that was the good part.

    99richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 10:22 am

    Wordle 553 3/6

    ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    Well, well, well...Wordle offers hints for how we should behave in the Yule celebrations. AEONS, MIRTH, POISE...I typed BOISE before I realized that it *might* take the word but it's never gonna be the answer.

    100richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 10:33 am


    From my Facebook feed.

    101richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 10:38 am

    From the New York Times daily newsletter's "Highly Specific Best-ofs of 2022" segment:
    The best phrase Kelly Nichols of Highland Park, Ill., learned (in English) was “weaponized incompetence.”

    45's eventual presidential biography has a title!

    102johnsimpson
    Dic 24, 2022, 11:45 am

    Merry Christmas

    103richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 1:34 pm

    Tom Gauld: Truthteller for the Ages

    104richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 3:06 pm

    >102 johnsimpson: Thank you, John, the same to you and all yours.

    105Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 24, 2022, 3:07 pm

    >103 richardderus: That made me chuckle when I saw it in this morning's paper RD.

    106richardderus
    Dic 24, 2022, 3:27 pm

    >105 Caroline_McElwee: Ha! Well, Gauld's genius is undeniable to the bookish, I declare.

    107richardderus
    Dic 25, 2022, 8:43 am

    Wordle 554 3/6

    🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    It seems obvious, for today. AEONS, MIRTH, EXTRA

    108Kristelh
    Dic 25, 2022, 8:58 am

    Merry Christmas to you and yours.

    109humouress
    Dic 25, 2022, 10:11 am

    Condolences for your loss, Richard.

    110PaulCranswick
    Dic 25, 2022, 11:19 am



    Malaysia's branch of the 75er's wishes you and yours a happy holiday season, my dear fellow.

    >66 richardderus: Lovely tribute to your friend, RD. Good man. xx

    111karenmarie
    Dic 25, 2022, 11:19 am

    'Morning, RDear. Happy Sunday to you. Merry Christmas, too.

    >103 richardderus: Yup. I've done the same, although not with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

    *smooch* from your STILL spiteful Horrible

    112richardderus
    Dic 25, 2022, 1:12 pm

    >111 karenmarie: Haven't we all, you spiteful wretch. Haven't we all...though the idea of the Baby Jesus getting those expensive gifts and still growing up poor was an early unanswered question that brought the edifice of xian belief crashing down. Did Mary have a gambling problem? Was Joseph renting call boys? Where'd the spondulix go? No answers, only a mantra of "accept with the faith of a child" repeated and repeated...

    Remarkably ineffective when spoken to an actual child bursting with questions.

    *smooch* you Horrible being you

    >110 PaulCranswick: Ooo, lovely image, PC! I think there's nothing so beautiful as the bright blue Earth seen from afar.

    Merry happy ho-ho-ho!

    >109 humouress: Thank you, Nina. It's never, ever easy to lose a part of one's life.

    >108 Kristelh: Thanks Kristel!

    113humouress
    Editado: Dic 26, 2022, 12:25 am

    >112 richardderus: I know. My parents' generation, especially their siblings, have held out remarkably well until this year. It's all too scary to think about.

    114richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 6:26 am

    248 This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals by Erica Buist

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: What if we responded to death... by throwing a party?

    By the time Erica Buist’s father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies.

    With Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world—one for every day they didn’t find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia—with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one—Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety.

    This Party’s Dead is the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.

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

    My Review
    : I grew up in the Southwest. It's part of my mental furniture to know what calaveras are and to appreciate that marigolds are the right floral tributes on Día de los Muertos. Skeletons, and skulls, are endlessly fascinating. An old artist-friend of mine created one of my most treasured possessions, sadly destroyed in a move, of a drawing she entitled "Martinis on My Horizon" with stylish skeletons quaffing the elixir of the goddesses, the gin martini.

    I am, in other words, the exact reader Author Buist aimed at. She shot; she scored.

    I found her grief for the death of her friend Chris, father of her future husband, entirely ordinary. He sounds to me like someone it would very much hurt to lose. And, since humankind can't physiologically stay in protracted peak states like grieving, what better way to cope with the pain than toss a party? The author's dedicatory "Love is not a reward, and death is not a punishment. If you thought they were, this book is for you," made me legs twitch with the fight-or-flight response. It's that true, it's that deep.

    What made me glad that I got the book from the publisher via Edelweiss+ is the timelessness of grief and grieving. Every generation of humans feels it, which is why we have so many grave goods for archaeologists to plunder and ponder; many of our animal cohabitants seem to as well, eg elephants and crows; life being, then not being, inside someone we know and love is just flat weird. My old friend D'Anne died just before Christmas. I'd known her for fifty-three years. All the things that meant something to her in relation to me are now only in my mind. It's...strange.

    And I hope her current husband is planning a bash! She'd've loved that. It's a great way to remember someone. As witness some of the author's rowdier experiences of parties where the guest of honor isn't breathing anymore. Offering the dead many of life's little luxuries has an old and distinguished history. The Japanese and Chinese, in today's cultural landscape, are the masters of the offerings with many things like paper iPhones burnt for the departed's use in the afterlife. Mexico's Day of the Dead isn't quite that au courant but it's got the best material culture, the calaveras de azúcar offered to the ancestors:

    ...and the modern innovation of the Día de los Muertos parade that the James Bond film Spectre made popular before COVID killed it, too.

    So as I said, the author found her dream reader here. Why, then, didn't I rate the read more highly? I enjoyed it. I was educated by it, as painlessly as I think is possible. But the very thing that made it a painless read, a lovely glass of juice with a hefty glug of 151 rum in it (as the author discovers in New Orleans, visiting the Museum of Death and quaffing a Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's for afters), makes it feel more like it's about Author Buist on a weird kind of very amusing dark tourism trip. (I myownself vote that we start normalizing "thanatourism" for this; it's not necessarily dark!), is the thing that wore thin: It's about her. Her grief, her loss. Learning about other cultures was her way of coping, of giving her husband support in his own grieving process.

    I know that's what it said on the tin. I know that's the explicit purpose for the book's existence. I support the author's quest and am glad I made her acquaintance, happy that her journey was rewarded as richly as it was in ways familiar and unfamiliar as her friends and her bosses and her husband made room for it all.

    But I can't help my feeling of slight "I'm done now"ness. Her job, ably performed, merits the full four stars. Her amusing and emotionally resonant narrative voice merit the other half-star. But the tone, in the end, brought my personal enjoyment down from all the stars to almost all of them.

    Still very much a book I'd urge you to make room for on your shelf.

    115richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 6:38 am

    249 All the Living and the Dead: from Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work by Hayley Campbell

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.

    We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

    Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

    Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

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

    My Review
    : A book with a truly tragic genesis, the author losing a baby at birth; but it led her to look for her grief to be assuaged in discovering the connective tissue in our society's death industry. She made a terrible tragedy into a very interesting study and came away with the kind of book that many of us read with squeamishness as we're utterly disconnected from death.

    No one doesn't think about death, and dying; and, as we've professionalized and medicalized every part of the process, we're going to the bookshelf for our answers. Luckily there are those among us who like learning things and then explaining them. (As long as they're not men, they're lauded for it.) Author Hayley Campbell did a major research project in this book's genesis. It comes across more in the endnotes...they're extensive. I realize I'm very much in the minority here, but I prefer endnotes with spiffy little superscript numbers that, in ebooks, function as hyperlinks; I'm perfectly willing to navigate away from the page when I want to know something's source. But la, the wishes and the wants of one not the author, or the editor, are mere wing-flappings of the tiniest of midges. (I'm waxing lyrical. Send help!) Encountering, for example, the saline hydrocremation process was something I wanted to know more about right then and there...but you can bet your sweet bippy I've bookmarked the UK WIRED Magazine story for future discovery.

    A less delightful thing that somewhat tarnished my reading experience, and is the source of the missing half-star on the rating about, was the lived experience of her tragic loss of a baby. It was very, very present in the text. It is a loss second to none in the world for painful permanence. As such it felt, to be honest, overused as a rhetorical device. This is a subjective measure, and I freely acknowledge that a recently bereaved parent might find this inclusion unobtrusive, or positively helpful. I did not.

    The other side of that coin, however, was my discovery that there are certain souls, who if there is a god deserve a total and complete remission from their sins, who specialize in bereavement midwifery. How very, very beautiful a soul those people must possess. How vast their reserves of kindness and empathy must be. And how deeply glad I am that they do this job.

    Executioners, on the utterly other hand, aren't people I think should be employed. I have this wacky idea that killing people is wrong. Killing them as a profession is not one iota different in my own eyes to being a serial killer. And that, mes vieux, is that. (The executioner interview was interesting, I will admit, but changed my opinion not one jot.)

    While I'm sure others might feel triggered at a frank discussion of the process of one's body's cessation of function, it fascinated me. It is a sad truth that most people in today's Western, privileged society have little or nothing to do with their dying fellow beings. They're the ones most in need of this book's honesty. I fear they won't pick it up and I truly advise you, should you be so unfortunate as to face your own mortality in an imminent way, to read and gift this fascinating story of what dealing with death truly entails.

    I will always advocate for the "it's better to know than to wonder and fear" end of the information-reading spectrum. Author Hayley makes the process of educating yourself about the aftermath of dying as painless and as compelling as is, for example, one of the mysteries or thrillers that so many of us devour.

    116richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 6:48 am

    >113 humouress: It's our turn at the head of the table, I'm afraid. You'll get used to it. (And when you do teach me how, please.)

    117Helenliz
    Dic 26, 2022, 6:52 am

    >114 richardderus: OK, I'm massively tempted by that one.

    >113 humouress:/>116 richardderus: it's a very odd feeling being the grown up.

    118richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 8:17 am

    >117 Helenliz: Ain't it, Helen? Like a suit you got on sale but never had altered.

    Get it! The book's a gas.
    ***
    Wordle 555 5/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    It was guessing-game day! Oh whee. AEONS, MURKY, BUGLE, FUDGE, JUDGE

    119SandyAMcPherson
    Dic 26, 2022, 8:31 am

    >114 richardderus: Very informative review. Other than having heard of Day of the Dead celebrations, I had no idea there are so many cultures that incorporate the philosophy you describe. Up-thumbed your review. I particularly found your explanation of how you arrived at star rating insightful.

    120bell7
    Dic 26, 2022, 8:35 am

    >118 richardderus: We had a remarkably similar thought process but I had QUEUE before BUGLE and NUDGE in there too and ran out of guesses.

    121richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 8:40 am

    >120 bell7: Hi Mary! Oh, thank GOODNESS I go alpha-order or I'd've flopped like an orca in a kiddie pool because of course I would had I thought of QUEUE, the one that pushed you over the limit.

    >119 SandyAMcPherson: Thank you, Sandy! I'm glad you liked that aspect of the review. I'm usually left wondering why people slap the stars they do on a read so I try to remember to explain myself.

    122drneutron
    Dic 26, 2022, 9:47 am

    Huh. #249 sounds interesting. Keeping an eye out for it…

    123richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 10:13 am

    >122 drneutron: I think you'd really enjoy the read, Jim. It's an underknown facet of our society and one that's very relevant to folk in our insurance bracket. Enjoying the writing won't be a problem.

    124karenmarie
    Dic 26, 2022, 10:38 am

    ‘Morning, RichardDear. Happy Boxing Day to you. Yes, I’m up and about, coffee- and Dutch-Apple-Pie-infused. Jenna’s upstairs playing more God-of-War:Ragnarok. She goes back to work tomorrow after a nice four-day break. I don’t know what, if any, days she gets off for New Year, but am assuming another Friday/Monday break. Bill's watching Premier League soccer, and I'll be there for the 3 p.m. Arsenal game and perhaps wander in and out otherwise.

    >112 richardderus: Thank goodness I wasn’t slurping coffee when I read this, you snarky man. Gambling, rent boys, and ANOTHER NEW RD WORD, spondulix. You’re the best for new words, you know – much better than Word-A-Day, about 80% of which I already know. Faith is that – faith, which (what's a good synonym for t****s since That Evil Man has ruined the word for me?) logic – and I have never internalized the faith needed to make a personal philosophical commitment to most (not all, obvs) faiths ‘my way or you’re going to hell’ rules. I be a Liberal Theist. So, not an atheist, not an agnostic, but On The Spectrum, as it were. *smile*

    >114 richardderus: Well written, as always, enticing in some ways, but still a hard pass, which shouldn’t surprise you. Your Still very much a book I'd urge you to make room for on your shelf. recommendation won’t work on me this time. I’ve got more books on my shelves and on my Kindle (excluding the Kindle Unlimited stuff I’m mostly reading these days) than I've ever had on LT, 5510, to not have the twitchy need to fill shelves simply to fill them. I am, however, rather excited with my new idea of getting one or more antique lawyer book cases (5 stack if possible) for the living room. I've warned Bill about this idea, but he doesn't know how imminent it might happen.

    >115 richardderus: On the other hand, this one is now on the wish list.

    >118 richardderus: I went with budge then judge and also ended up at 5.

    *smooch* from your caffeine-and-sugar-loaded Horrible

    125richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 12:00 pm

    >124 karenmarie: Hey there, Horrible. I'm so pleased you're enjoying the reviews you refuse to accept as purchasing guidance. Really. Pleased.

    *hemhemhem* said Mr Dolores Umbridge

    If you ever get word to Miss Gawd, tell that strumpet that I want a word about the State of Things. I have some pressing questions for such a slatternly housekeeper. Speaking of which, is "spondulix" really new to you? I learned it from PG Wodehouse, it's a Bertie-ism. I do so love the memory of those reads! I bet I'd find them pretty blah if I read one now.

    Yay for the new shelving in its multiples! Stock up under cover of the holidays and before the relief at your STEMI survival wears thin. Oh...what's the position of Tottenham Hotspur? They have The Coolest Name!

    Well, anyway, I hope you enjoy the fun of getting your shelves! *smooch*
    ***
    The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery is a moment Americans don't learn much about but was *pivotal* in British abolition. It's by James Walvin, published by Yale University Press, and on sale for $1.99 on Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005PW5L8Y

    126Storeetllr
    Editado: Dic 26, 2022, 6:14 pm

    Happy holidays, Richard! Hope your Christmas was calm and bright.

    My deepest condolences for the loss of your dear friend. I’m so sorry.

    Well, you really got me with 3 of your reviews: >16 richardderus:, >114 richardderus: and >115 richardderus:. Congratulations on posting so many outstanding reviews and much gratitude for helping me avoid the stinkers.

    127richardderus
    Dic 26, 2022, 6:44 pm

    >126 Storeetllr: Hiya Mary! I'm glad to say my Yuletide went without a hitch.

    Thank you re: D'Anne. I'm sad, and it's the grateful kind, so I suppose that's the best anyone can ever hope for when we lose someone.

    ::nailbuff:: I'm also very pleased you UNLIKE SOME >124 karenmarie: OTHERS I COULD >111 karenmarie: NAME were amenable to my modest attempts to entice your interest in a few little baubles and gauds. I hope they'll give you the greatest possible pleasure when you do come to read them!

    128Storeetllr
    Dic 26, 2022, 7:16 pm

    Heh.

    I’m not sure pleasure is what I’ll be getting with the one about the Proud Boys, but I agree it’s something that needs to be read. Nor do I expect pleasure from the ones about death, tho the one about death traditions sounds fascinating. Anyway, I’ll be interspersing those with a number of more lighthearted reads.

    {{{hugs}}}

    129ArlieS
    Dic 26, 2022, 7:31 pm

    >115 richardderus: You aren't alone in preferring real endnotes.

    And the book sounds interesting too. ;-)

    130ArlieS
    Dic 26, 2022, 7:35 pm

    >124 karenmarie: You might want to consider polytheism, while exploring liberal theism. It neatly solves several of the "you have got to be kidding" issues that seem to be inherent in every monotheism I've encountered, except perhaps deism.

    Of course it has its own issues, but at least they aren't the bog standard ones familiar to most intelligent Christian children.

    131karenmarie
    Dic 27, 2022, 7:40 am

    ‘Morning, RD. Happiest of Tuesdays to you.

    >125 richardderus: Confession time – I’ve never read Bertie/Jeeves. Perhaps one story here or there, but not enough to remember anything at all. I have, however, watched Jeeves and Wooster with Fry & Laurie. I need to watch it again because it's quite wonderful. Sometimes it’s wise to not attempt a reread to keep the original experience untarnished.

    Tottenham is currently 4th, 10 points off the leader, Arsenal. We watched Tottenham beat Brentford yesterday. And, I just went down the rabbit hole of the TOT squad. 11 went to the World Cup.

    I’m going to check to see if Hickory Mountain Antiques is open today for my lawyer book case(s).

    >130 ArlieS: Hi Arlie. I’m pretty comfortable with liberal theism, having wallowed in the monotheistic world growing up although we never went to church and I’ve never considered myself Christian. I was raised with Christian kids and Jewish kids, no Muslim kids as far as I know. Judaism implies multiple deities in the 10 Commandments, and I’ve always accepted that there are other deities.

    *smooch*, RD

    132msf59
    Dic 27, 2022, 8:21 am

    Hey, RD! Keeping warm & snug? We have one more chilly day here and then we a nice warm up begins tomorrow. We may hit 50 on Thursday. I have Rehab duties this AM. Books in the PM. I hope your week is off to a good start.

    133richardderus
    Dic 27, 2022, 10:00 am

    >132 msf59: Morning, Mark, it's a tropical 32° out there right now and we're flirtin' with 40° today...over that tomorrow! Why, it's like moving to Florida without the hassle or the evil politicians.

    I know you love Rehab days. I hope you meet someone short, chirpy, and feathery today.

    >131 karenmarie: If you haven't by now, I don't know that it's a great idea to start on Wodehouse. Fry and Laurie versions are more than good enough!

    *thrilled bouncing Tigger-tail*

    I can't wait to hear what you find out!!

    134richardderus
    Dic 27, 2022, 10:06 am

    Wordle 556 4/6

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    Irritating word! I don't like it. *grumble* AEONS, MURKY, NOTCH, CONDO

    135johnsimpson
    Editado: Dic 27, 2022, 5:13 pm

    >131 karenmarie:, Hi Karen my dear, i hope you have luck getting your bookcases and it sounds like a place i would like to have a good wander around. Sending love and hugs to all from both of us dear friend.

    136karenmarie
    Dic 28, 2022, 8:28 am

    'Morning, RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

    >134 richardderus: Yes, to its being an irritating word. Today's is ... well. Anyway, I got it in three.

    Alas, I did not check out Hickory Mountain Antiques yesterday. Perhaps today.

    *smooch*

    137richardderus
    Dic 28, 2022, 8:38 am

    250 After the Lights Go Out by John Vercher

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: A harrowing and spellbinding story about family, the complications of mixed-race relationships, misplaced loyalties, and the price athletes pay to entertain—from the critically acclaimed author of Three-Fifths

    Xavier "Scarecrow" Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia—a struggle he can no longer deny. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to keep in shape while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension.

    Until then, he watches his diet and trains every day at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt. Xavier makes ends meet by teaching youth classes at Shot’s gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier has been forced to commit to a nursing home because of the progress of his end-stage Alzheimer’s. Dementia has revealed a shocking truth about Sam Wallace, and Xavier finally gains insight into why his Black mother left the family when Xavier was young.

    As Xavier battles his aging body and his failing brain, each day is filled with challenges and setbacks. Then Xavier is offered a chance at redemption: a last-minute comeback fight in the largest MMA promotion. If he can get himself back in the game, he’ll be able to clear his name and begin to pay off Shot. But with his memory in shreds and his life crumbling around him, can Xavier hold onto the focus he needs to survive? After the Lights Go Out is a haunting, unflinching look at the aftermath of a career in MMA—as Xavier forgets everything around him, you'll want to remember every single word.

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

    My Review
    : This is one rough ride of a book. There are people whose road through life is not paved, has many potholes, throws up gravel and clouds of caliche dust as their bald-tired forty-year-old chassis bounces and shakes over to one ditch, down into another. And that is who we're with here. Xavier is not, was never, expecting a limo ride, not even waiting for a cab ride...he's still rollin' but the roll is slow and it's not getting faster.

    The bad marriage he came from was made worse by its permanent poison-gift to him. His mother was Black and father white, so he knows something a lot of people don't have to: Not belonging to either side in a war isn't being neutral. That's a gift only those with a clear side, one that can't be denied, are given. He's mixed. He's mixed up, he's mixed it up in fights his whole life. No one wanted him on their team so he used what strength and speed he could find to go one-on-one with other rage-filled testosterone-poisoned Others.

    Now nearing forty, he's sure he's got no future. So is everyone else but they never thought he had a present. His efforts to get one more headline bout in Mixed Martial Arts are, as we meet him, wavering in and out of existence in front of eyes that don't connect to his brain right anymore. The voices he hears clearest are the ones in his battered head, they aren't competing with tinnitus. At least they aren't the ones telling him things he doesn't want to hear...his father, foundering under Alzheimer's disease's heavy burdens, doesn't remember him but does remember how to hate, his chances to fight again, more, are steadily melting away and there's nothing else he can do to make a living.

    The life of someone always on the margins is, realistically, never going to turn into a happily ever after. Xavier never once thought it would. He chooses his own adventure, like he always has, right up to the last bitter dreg from the cup.

    Author Vercher tells this deeply moving, unbearably honest story in direct, immediate prose. He selects the small images...a texting app's continuation icon of dots keeping him on tenterhooks about his future, the feeling of hanging his hand out the window while driving his dad's old car bringing back the times he did the same thing as a kid...that make Xavier real. That keep him, however fleetingly, locked in to the present moment. They work very well, are sharp but still small enough to make them fit right on everyone.

    What isn't quite as smooth is the passages where Xavier is learning his mother and father, very late in life from my point of view, are fully human people. What Author Vercher does to make Xavier aware of his mother's full humanity was a scene both a little long as well as underdeveloped. It needed not to feel rushed as Xavier learns Evelyn was a very different person than the mother he had. The issues around dementia were handled very well, in my experienced opinion. When Xavier realizes that disinhibition is part of the course of dementia, it rocks his world. It did not need to be played out in the over-the-top manner that it was. Honestly, the choice to make Xavier's pathology so very foregrounded wore on my patience at times. Every reader has their own crotchets...these are mine.

    Perfection not being of this Earth, I can honestly say that your Yule gift cards, spent on this deep and emotionally honest journey, will not be wasted. This second novel tells me that Author Vercher is a gift to the readers who want to get into a story and come out changed.

    Bravo, good sir.

    138richardderus
    Dic 28, 2022, 8:54 am

    251 No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: A darkly comic mystery by the author of Hark and The Ask set in the vibrant music scene of early 1990s New York City.

    Manhattan’s East Village, 1993. Dive bars, DIY music venues, shady weirdos, and hard drugs are plentiful. Crime is high but rent is low, luring hopeful, creative kids from sleepy suburbs around the country.

    One of these is Jack S., a young New Jersey rock musician. Just a few days before his band’s biggest gig, their lead singer goes missing with Jack’s prized bass, presumably to hock it to feed his junk habit. Jack’s search for his buddy uncovers a sinister entanglement of crimes tied to local real estate barons looking to remake New York City—and who might also be connected to the recent death of Jack’s punk rock mentor. Along the way, Jack encounters a cast of colorful characters, including a bewitching, quick-witted scenester who favors dressing in a nurse’s outfit, a monstrous hired killer with a devotion to both figure skating and edged weapons, a deranged if prophetic postwar novelist, and a tough-talking cop who fancies himself a retro-cool icon of the homicide squad but is harboring a surprising secret.

    No One Left to Come Looking for You is a page-turning suspense novel that also serves as a love letter to a bygone era of New York City where young artists could still afford to chase their dreams.

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

    My Review
    : Coming home to my era of Manhattan living in this story was a pleasure. It has Author Lipsyte's requisite snarky, biting wit. It felt like I was back in the after-hours club post-Save the Robots listening to the coke-fueled motormouthing. Oh my...I've said too much.

    But it's true, this is the way it felt, and looked, and even smelled.

    What I think makes this a good read, then, is its way of being in harmony with my own memories. It's an evocation of a vanished time and place. So how will it hit someone whose memories aren't like mine?

    Right on the funny bone.
    Later, we go get a drink at the Jew-Hater's bar.

    The merry old pogromist, with his lovely shock of alabaster hair and craggy fascist visage, pours us free shots with our beers. Maybe he means to lubricate his audience.

    "The Yids, they cut the penis," he says, casual, as though relaying news of an off-season baseball trade. ... "God makes people perfect. The penis, perfect. Why cut it up? Only the Yid thinks of that."

    The bland face of evil, played for a few yuks...if you're going to work as this book's audience, you'll need to see that as humor. Offensive and crass and humorous.

    Otherwise this isn't a story I think you'll get into. And you'll need to want to get into it...the blizzard at the end of the book needs to feel like we felt then, a suspended moment of possibility, a confusing intersection of many corners all hidden behind drifts and shockingly cold winds forcing your face away from the way you started out wanting to go. That moment in the narrator's life was one where there were many ways to go. He went too far away from the one he thought he wanted and it took a blizzard to show him where he had to be.

    Author Lipsyte won't be going back to the days of wine and roses, as the old saying has it; he's fifty-four now, and this story just couldn't come from anyone not fifty-four. My viewpoint, ten years ahead of him, was different enough to make this fun trip to a time I loved familiar enough. I wouldn't have seen it from this angle but it was still speaking to me.

    Over forty-five? Give this a read today. What else is that gift card for if not to try to time travel?

    139richardderus
    Dic 28, 2022, 9:59 am

    Wordle 557 3/6

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    AEONS, MIRTH, IMPEL

    140richardderus
    Dic 28, 2022, 10:07 am

    >136 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Happy Humpday. I got Wordle in 3 as well...took me no time, just looked at my three correct letters and saw it. ::nailbuff::

    I hope today brings some lawyer-case goodness. *smooch*

    141magicians_nephew
    Dic 28, 2022, 2:51 pm

    I enjoy reading your reviews Richard.

    Happy New Year to you and all.

    142richardderus
    Dic 28, 2022, 7:49 pm

    >141 magicians_nephew: Thank you most kindly, Jim. It's a source of delight to me, is writing my reviews.

    143LovingLit
    Dic 28, 2022, 11:32 pm

    >1 richardderus: I love that graphic. I notice the difference in the setting sun but that really drives it home.

    >118 richardderus: Yes. Well. I didn't even get that one! Apparently there are a stoopid number of ~udge possibilities.

    144FAMeulstee
    Dic 29, 2022, 4:29 am

    Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

    Forgive me for skimming your thread. I made a start in catching up on the threads last night, and my eyes tell me this morning it was no good. So back to very short times behind the screen.

    145karenmarie
    Dic 29, 2022, 7:57 am

    ‘Morning, RDear. Happy Thursday to you.

    >140 richardderus: Yesterday got away from me, but I’m determined to at least leave a message for Bob today if they’re not open. I'm now toying with the idea of three book cases along the living room/foyer wall - I've posted a pic of it on my thread.

    *smooch* from your own Madame TVT Horrible

    146msf59
    Dic 29, 2022, 8:09 am

    Sweet Thursday, Richard. It is currently 43F. Last week at this time it was 40 degrees colder. We are in for a warm snap and I am okay with it. A solo bird ramble this AM. Books in the PM. Have a great day, my friend.

    147richardderus
    Dic 29, 2022, 9:17 am

    252 When They Tell You To Be Good: A Memoir by Prince Shakur

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur’s family is rocked by the murder of Prince’s biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince’s father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family’s secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of conquering one’s inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora.

    When They Tell You to Be Good charts Prince Shakur’s political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump’s America. Shakur journeys from France, the Philippines, South Korea, and more to discover the depths of the Black experience, and engages in deep political questions while participating in movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. By the end, Shakur reckons with his identity, his Jamaican family’s immigration to the US before his birth, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence.

    A profoundly composed narrative parallel in identity to that of George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue and Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Shakur compels the reader to consume the political world of young, Black, queer, and radical millennials today.

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

    My Review
    : Introspection is part and parcel of getting old. But, and this is relatively new to my consciousness, that's because it's part and parcel of the Othering that US/capitalist society perpetuates, perpetrates even, daily. Old people are Othered, queer people are Othered, Black people, Asian people, female people: All are Othered by the depressing, repressive regime of normalizing cis-white male-straightness.

    I'm sure that condition suits some people, but it gives me the shuddering horrors. Sounds more like something Cthulhu uses to torment victims than a desirable identity.

    Author Shakur decides, early on, that "...if I was going to be lost and swallowed alive out in the world, then I’d at least get something for myself out of it," and he definitely makes good on that promise to himself. He is a generous soul and shares pieces of his journey to living authentically as an out, gay Jamaican-American man. He sees through structures at twenty-seven that took me another decade to understand as designed systems of repression, so of course I'm jealous as well as impressed. In about equal measure.

    His mother, the one who chose his father, doesn't really know what to do about her wild, ungovernable son. Of course she sees his dad in him and, as the man was murdered for being his own resistant, wild self, she's got to be scared witless for her baby boy. His gayness seems to her an unnecessary provocation of the people who already hate her son for being. Being Black, being Jamaican, just (when you boil away the froth) being is his unatonable sin, his unwittingly committed crime.

    The issues between mother and son don't stop; they are my own favorite moments in the book. After all, I'm old, and I'm thinking about the awful patterns of my own family that I've repeated ad infinitum. Reckoning with family damage will always command my attention. But Author Shakur, decades behind my age and out front of my life experience, is going through his travails for hisownself. That meant I got more of his politics than I, ideally, would've had. Not that I disagree with him! Just that I can already see where this truck is headed and am, therefore, not confident he'll get off voluntarily.
    I realized that taking our history seriously and the fact that we are a part of shaping it is important. If we don’t engage with and protect our history, it will be mutilated or erased.

    Very true, Author Shakur; but your mother's "don't be gay when you're here" is, in spite of being the antithesis of this truthful moment, excellent survival advice. While the two aren't from the same passage in the book, both represent the passage of Author Prince Shakur from angry kid to dangerously committed-to-action young adult.

    What makes this first-ever book from Editor Hanif Abdurraqib less than a five-star read for me is the very thing that makes it a pleasure to read: The digressive and conversational writing of a talented young man. A bit of pruning of dangling participants, mentioned once and never again; a few smoothings of filler description when talking about places he's been to set a scene for us; minor, and understandable lapses from a tyro team. (Authors aren't always the most helpful editors...they already know where their fellow creator is headed, where we-the-readers don't always.)

    I'll make a prediction: We will, if we are lucky, hear more from Author Prince Shakur. And it will get better and better. When it starts out this good, that's a wonderful future to look for.

    148richardderus
    Dic 29, 2022, 9:24 am

    >146 msf59: Hi Mark! Thursday orisons back at'cha. It's about the same weather here, and I for one am not complaining. 40s suit me fine, thanks.

    Ramble well, bag a lifer, and see you on the flipside.

    >145 karenmarie: I hope you'll get good news, Horrible. The good thing about being as old as we are is that the time pressure is purely notional...no one's on the outside pushing!

    >144 FAMeulstee: Anita, don't give it a second thought! You take care of those eyes first and foremost, nothing else comes close to mattering that much.

    *smooch*

    >143 LovingLit: There are a LOT of *udge-words in this, our mother tongue. I condole with you, Megan, for the snapped streak.

    New one's goin' though!!

    149richardderus
    Dic 29, 2022, 9:48 am

    Wordle 558 4/6

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    Messed up my usual second word and got a letter! Lucky me. AEONS, MUCKY, COACH, HAVOC

    150richardderus
    Dic 29, 2022, 10:00 am

    253 An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement by Jim Elledge

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation.

    Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary.

    Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924.

    When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened.

    Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine.

    An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.

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

    My Review
    : A lifelong member of one or another sexual minority, I'm here to tell you that I've never once heard of Henry Gerber. Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist and early campaigner for gay equality, I'm familiar with, I've even seen movies about him; Henry Gerber is terra incognita. And he lived in my own country!

    This is why visibility matters, laddies and gentlewomen. This is why we need Jim Elledge and Hugh Ryan and Peter Staley and thousands of others who were there when things changed, whose voices are lifting the stories "They" would prefer to forget exist and are taking every action to be sure do not reach any wider an audience than "They" can prevent.

    The publisher's synopsis above does a good recap of the outlines of the story being told here. I can add to it a few ideas I came away from the read sure I'd felt because I read Gerber's story: Some of us are born cranky and contrarian, prickly and often unpleasant to interact with. That was Josef Dettlef, as he was when he came to Chicago in 1913. He never changed...very few of us do.

    The Germany he grew up in, not a privileged childhood by any means but not starving either, had a nascent gay-rights movement (follow the Hirschfeld link above) and was flirting with an unthinkable thought: Transgender people should be treated as the gender they identify, not simply in accordance to the sex organs the genetic lottery assigned them. The ethos, then, in young Dettlef's life wasn't like the one he found when he emigrated to Chicago (with a younger sister in tow) to find his future in Amerika. To be sure, Dettlef wasn't about to stop having sex with other men. Like every city everywhere ever, Chicago had such people in it who were amenable (often, for a price, the most surprising people become amenable to sex outside the ordinary) to handsome young Josef's advances.

    What happens next is no surprise to any twenty-first century US citizen: entrapment and arrest, a stay in a mental institution being "cured". But young Josef, in World War One America, had a skill the US Armed Forces needed...he spoke fluent German. He was offered a fresh start if he'd go forth and sin no more, while working for a forces newspaper. What a mistake, a glorious, beautiful error of judgment that exposed Henry (as he now was) to organized, science-based, and well-led gay rights groups. A model, then, for Henry's future plans in Chicago where he returned in 1923.

    I will say that, knowing what is to come, I felt desperately sad as Henry's legally constituted Society for Human Rights met its inevitable end at the hands of our very own Federal Government. Such a woke organization, what? Henry's energies being vast, he continued to work for the betterment of QUILTBAG people everywhere through multiple channels, including encouraging Robert Scully to finish A SCARLET PANSY, and during times when the risks were mortal. (One of his organizations, "Contacts," was one my own gay uncle belonged to in the 1930s!) It was part of Henry Gerber's life-long quest to make himself normal...not by changing himself, but by changing society.

    What made this book so delightful to read was an accident of history. Henry Gerber would've faded into dust by now, dying as he did in 1972 before the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality off its list of mental disorders, but for a lovely surprise. His friend Manuel boyFrank started, and maintained, a correspondence with Henry Gerber that ranged over the rest of each of their lives. Since he kept all Henry's letters, we have the words of the man himself to tell us of his efforts, his feelings about them, and his life-long loneliness. (Cranky, spiky people often end up alone.)

    That accident has delivered the twenty-first century a trove of real-life, real-time even, materials that aren't mediated in the way of most historical figures' life stories. There is, and make no mistake it is in this book!, a paper trail of some breadth behind Henry Gerber. It alone would give us none of the richness and texture of Author Jim Elledge's book. While that is greatly to the credit of the story-teller's art, it also tends to lead him into speculative reconstructions of things not necessarily on the source material's pages. This isn't a crime, however, and while I myownself would prefer not to have that much of it, the picture of Henry Gerber's life is deep and beautifully colored. It acts as a strong base and as a wide frame around gay life a century ago, when we weren't supposed to be here among you at all.

    ***PLEASE NOTE there are hyperlinks galore at the review as posted on my blog. Too many to port over, I'm afraid!

    151weird_O
    Dic 29, 2022, 11:20 am

    Hi, Richard. Passing through, reading about your reading. I'm with you on appreciating the warmer weather. Sunshine.

    152Caroline_McElwee
    Dic 29, 2022, 11:23 am

    >137 richardderus: Some good reads after a flurry of pearl ruleds RD.

    This one goes on my list.

    153bell7
    Dic 29, 2022, 2:31 pm

    >149 richardderus: I took a different route, but also had it in four. *Smooch*

    154richardderus
    Dic 29, 2022, 5:59 pm

    >153 bell7: Hi Mary! I'm not surprised...this isn't a 3day kind of a word, at least not for us it's not.

    *smooch*

    >152 Caroline_McElwee: Hi there Caro, I'm very pleased that you're allowing yourself a small amount of persuadability unlike SOME I could name *glowers >153ward*

    Enjoy the read, if such a thing's really possible...not all the way sure it is...but you know what I mean.

    >151 weird_O: Your Weirdness! Howdy do. Let's hope the sunshine moderates in a few months. I'd prefer not to broil oversummer.

    155karenmarie
    Dic 30, 2022, 7:25 am

    ‘Morning, Rdear. Happy Friday to you.

    >147 richardderus: …the Othering that US/capitalist society perpetuates, perpetrates even, daily. Old people are Othered, queer people are Othered, Black people, Asian people, female people: All are Othered by the depressing, repressive regime of normalizing cis-white male-straightness. Yes, and it’s getting so old. I’ve got the female thing going, as does my daughter.

    >150 richardderus: Excellent, informative review. Onto the wish list it goes.

    Wordle took me 5 today.

    *smooch*

    156richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 7:49 am

    254 A Fractured Infinity by Nathan Tavares

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A thrilling race across the multiverse to save the infinite Earths—and the love of your life—from total destruction for fans of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, The Time Traveller's Wife and Rick and Morty.

    Film-maker Hayes Figueiredo is struggling to finish the documentary of his heart when handsome physicist Yusuf Hassan shows up, claiming Hayes is the key to understanding the Envisioner—a mysterious device that can predict the future.

    Hayes is taken to a top-secret research facility where he discovers his alternate self from an alternate universe created the Envisioner and sent it to his reality. Hayes studies footage of the other him, he discovers a self he doesn’t recognize, angry and obsessive, and footage of Yusuf...as his husband.

    As Hayes finds himself falling for Yusuf, he studies the parallel universe and imagines the perfect life they will live together. But their lives are inextricably linked to the other reality, and when that couple's story ends in tragedy Hayes realises he must do anything he can to save Yusuf's life. Because there are infinite realities, but only one Yusuf.

    With the fate of countless realities and his heart in his hands, Hayes leads Yusuf on the run, tumbling through a kaleidoscope of universes trying to save it all. But even escaping into infinity, Hayes is running out of space—soon he will have to decide how much he’s willing to pay to save the love of his life.

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

    My Review
    : Likeable people can be reprehensible. Gay men who will do literally...literally...anything for the men they love can be villains. Because, you realize as Hayes perpetrates some truly terrible actions while retaining the same charm and winning ways as led you to invest in him from the beginning, the world doesn't have that many univalent monsters.

    What I love best about stories with flawed protagonists is how relatable they are. We're all flawed. And Hayes, he's flawed enough to make him a menace, what he does...causes...to be the engine of this exciting and action-heavy multiverse thriller. Being awakened to an undreamt-of reality, to be chucked into a world that one never once thought might be real, to have the shocking and sudden revelation that someone until now a stranger is, in fact, The One...that's just the first few pages! This script is gonna keep the butts in the seats with no popcirn trips for sure!

    Well...okay, that's a small exaggeration. It's not quite that action-packed but it sure as hell feels as though it is. The strangeness of a filmmaker being the one and only person who could resolve the problem of how to use, whether to believe, a fortune-telling device was, honestly, short-changed. It's a point raised, dealt with by saying, "yep that's how it is" and we're off to the races! In fact, there is a lot of the world-building that is treated in this "just the facts, ma'am" laconic way and then it's Gospel.

    You did notice the absence of a fifth star...now you know (most of) why.

    The merry chase that Hayes and Yusuf, the inamorato, go on across the dimensions is like reading a spec script from a super-excitable young person with not clue one what "budget" means. What makes that fun is the budget is your mind's dopamine-reward system. What makes that sometimes wearing is the film metaphor is the spine of the book...it is literally holding every scene in the story up, leading them together, and the casting of the characters is exactly that: Casting. It's going to be a rough ride for some. I am one. But the roughnss of the ride isn't a deal-breaker because the way this sled handles is *chef's kiss*

    Think of Boston. English people, think of Oxford. Got the picture set? Now...change the color of the streetlights and make the roofs green. That's the experience of traveling in Hayes's multiverse...it really is his, he (one of him) is the inventor of the device that enables all this traveling that we're here talking about. And that Hayes, whom the characters we're following most closely refer to as "Figueiredo" to be clear that they mean the evil SOB who wants (for perfectly understandable reasons) to blow the multiverse up one strand at a time, even he isn't a caricature. Insane. Lost to Humanity. But not ever a risible over-the-top cartoon villain.

    But those green-roofed mercury-vapor-lit alt-timelines are real, and he's made it impossible for "our" Hayes and Yusuf not to know, and deal with knowing, what it costs to stay alive in a truly random quantumverse. It changes a person to realize what carnage they've left in their wake through this one "wild and precious life" that Mary Oliver so beautifully committed poetry to describe. Now...think about this...there's a lot more than one, and you now know because you can't not know exactly what carnage you've left behind in it all.

    It's damned hard to believe this is Author Tavares's first novel. The economy with which he built the pyre of stakes for each strand of the multiverse...and the aplomb with which he lights the stakes into an inferno of loss and rage and gut-hollowing sadness...usually come to a later-career novelist. It takes time to build faith and willingness to go all in and all out at the looming obstacles armed only with one's talent. Yet here he is, attempting and succeeding first time out.

    So maybe a few details fell under the table. A last serving of your favorite dish disappeared and you don't have a dog to blame. Big fat deal! You're in great hands as a truth gets told you: Gay men love hard, care deeply, and fight dirty to protect their man.

    Even when it's not pretty.

    This is what I look for. It's what I want more of. And it's only his first novel! What a great way to celebrate a new year: Read a high-delivery first novel.

    157msf59
    Dic 30, 2022, 7:59 am

    Happy Friday, Richard. Continues to be cloudy here but stays mild. I am happy with that. I will be hanging out with Jackson for most of the day so you know I will be smiling.

    I wanted to thank you for putting Good Girls Don't Make History on my radar. I loved it. Talk about fighting the "Good Fight". My favorite type of GN.

    158richardderus
    Editado: Dic 30, 2022, 8:01 am

    >157 msf59: Hi there Mark! Happy to see you on this mild, lovely last-Friday-of-2022.

    Yay for GGDMH! I'm not surprised you loved it, with its excellent story and its beautiful art.

    Enjoy your Jackson-time!

    >155 karenmarie: G'mornin' Horrible. Yeah...the monolith, the juggernaut in its original colonial interpretation, keeps on squashin' and squishin' and generally wreaking havoc. But "They" don't even feel the bumps as it goes on and over.

    I'm nowhere near Wordleable at the mo...coffee still being drunk. I'll coddiwomple thitherward ex post facto.

    ...wonder how many more nuggets of sesquipedalian verbiage my brain will squeeze out this morning...

    *smooch*

    159richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 8:06 am

    255 Other Names for Love by Taymour Soomro

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A charged, hypnotic debut novel about a boy's life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story of fathers, sons, and the consequences of desire.

    At age sixteen, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family's feudal estate in upcountry, Pakistan. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive.

    Instead, over the course of one hot, indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants: the people, who revere and revile his father in turn; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and most of all, Ali, who threatens to unearth all that is hidden.

    Decades later, Fahad is living abroad when he receives a call from his mother summoning him home. His return will force him to face the past. Taymour Soomro's Other Names for Love is a tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country's troubled history, told with uncommon urgency and beauty.

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

    My Review
    : What there is to say about fathers and their gay sons...well, that's just an ocean of story without any limits that I'm aware of. Fathers and sons...disappointments...sadness and silence, rage and screaming...all and none and more. It's a relationship most sons have, even if sometimes it's a relationship with an absence or a cipher. It's always going to resonate with fathers because of the terror of being inadequate, as their own fathers were, and with sons for the same reason.

    This short, powerful read is the kind of take on the evergreen that leaves the reader not sure where his sympathies lie. Rafik is not really sure what the hell to do with Fahad; and equally, Fahad is not sure how to take Rafik's overbearing attempts to induct him into a life and lifestyle inimical to him. Not solely heterosexuality...the powerful political and economic family that Rafik comes from and wants to perpetuate.

    I don't suppose anyone reading this is surprised that this is the crux of the story.

    What transpires, and how we respond to it, is all down to the manner in which this eternal and evergreen tale is told. I wasn't always sure I liked the third-person narrator's abrupt shifts from Rafik's to Fahad's point of view. It's effective, in the sense that it conveys the broken relationship and poor communication between father and son. It's not always pleasant, though. It can feel jarring, and while I accept that was Author Soomro's intent, it's not always a positive service to the story.

    What the family saga, no matter how compact one makes it, always does is spread the emotional focus of a story. Mousey, Rafik's cousin and rival for control over their feudal family estate, is limned deftly in relatively few words. His presence is more air than flesh...and then Ali, the local of Rafik's family estate, the one whom he entrusts with manning-up his fey son, is from the moment he appears a fleshly figure, outlined in the light of young love and intense desire. And, like those things, as fleetingly there but always, always part of one's mind, heart, body.

    The beautiful as well as beastly problems of family, then, are our roadmap. And their inevitable end. There's no one gets out of this family alive, my father once said to me; I've never been sure if it was humor, threat, or sad truth he spoke. And so it is with all families. I'm totally sure the events of this novel...and its multivarious progenitors, from Lawrence's Sons and Lovers back to Balzac's Sarrasine...took place in slightly different form somewhere, sometime. The gift Author Soomro offers us is that he found the uniquely, specifically Pakistani iteration of this deviant's tale, and deftly turned it into the Platonic solid of the story.

    While the son never has a father he can relate to, he never gives his father any kind of solidity by denying him a future. A lot of what Rafik can't reconcile himself to is the way the world changes, has changed. It's a grandparent's trick, to turn that terror of loss into an anchor of immanence. Rafik and Fahad don't ever see the world through the same lenses. (Where did those glasses come from?) They, like real fathers and sons, never wonder "what can I do?" but bemoan "what could I have done?"

    A story of great affecting power, told elegantly, with honest sadness and truthful anger. Sounds like a great way to spend a winter's afternoon reading.

    160bell7
    Dic 30, 2022, 8:14 am

    >159 richardderus: *grumbles* oh FINE, you got me with one. I could've sworn it was already on the TBR list but the spreadsheet tells me otherwise.

    Happy Friday *smocohes*

    161richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 9:26 am

    >160 bell7: *wheeeee* I finally book-bulleted Mary! Yay me!

    Friday-delighting *smooch*

    162richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 9:30 am

    256 A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: A debut novel from a rising literary star that brings the modern queer and Indigenous experience into sharp relief.

    In the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel, informed by a series of poignant encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus introduces a dazzling new literary voice whose vision and fearlessness shine much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival.

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

    My Review
    : When one reads the book description, there's very little doubt that most of us will be reading this as autofiction...as Billy-Ray Belcourt using the antique roman à clef to give us the keys to the kingdom. But that's never said anywhere. It's not part of the interviews I've read or listened to. I think, in fact, that's a quiet and much-thought-over means of demonstrating how identities are forced on us. Are forced by us, the readers of a novel, onto the author of the novel.

    Indigeniety is an indignity of an identity. "Indigenous" is a label of Otherness, much as is "Queer" or "Gay" or "Two-Spirit." Labels are the source of stories, though, and the world's words were invented to make stories so us gossipy apes could make Othering a thing. Assigned by others, Othering is a burden many of us bear and many of us bear multiple ways. We aren't, as it unfolds, allowed much in the way of access to the main character's self-ness; he's collecting data, having copious amounts of sex, and eliciting intimacy from people still carrying horrible scars from being abandoned as children, being addicted to substances, being belittled and having their characters besmirched for queerness or Indigeniety. Or both. No one in this mill-race of ideas and images is in sharp focus. It's that fact that ate a star off my rating...if I have only misty-edged portraits to look at instead of vibrant, violent even, alive people, I respond without the visceral burst of passion I seek in novel-reading as I read their stories.

    Author Belcourt being a tyro novelist, and his profession being a poet, this is completely understandable as a technique. It felt chosen, selected for its effect, not as though he simply didn't know how to do any different. That's why that fourth star is still there. I'm forgiving of first-novel mistakes or overreaches but I note them and grade my responses accordingly. I did not get that "oops" sensation from these memory-speaking characters, despite the fact that I wanted to know more about them. More was not to be offered. That is, as I realized, part of the point: What the reader wants is what the colonial master wants, more! more! always more! where Author Belcourt isn't offering it.

    There is, then, a subtlety of reflection in this examination of the gulfs between striving and surviving; between surviving and thriving. The novel's structure and style are offers of mirror time. See what this world's demands cost? The price that some must pay while most will never even realize it's exacted on their behalf?

    It's a delight of a read. It speaks its truth honestly and makes its voice honey-sweet.

    But it is here to tear the tape off your eyes and yank the sock from your mouth.

    163richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 9:37 am

    Wordle 559 4/6

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    Ha! That was really fun. AEONS, MIRTH, MORAL, MOLAR

    164jessibud2
    Dic 30, 2022, 9:45 am

    >163 richardderus: - I did the same thing with the last 2 words! Also in 4

    165richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 9:50 am

    257 Hugs and Cuddles by João Gilberto Noll (tr. Edgar Garbelotto)

    Rating: 4* of five

    The Publisher Says: After abandoning his traditional life in a deteriorating Porto Alegre, the narrator of Hugs and Cuddles zealously recommits himself to a man he calls “the engineer”, a childhood friend with whom he shared a pivotal sexual encounter. Many years have passed since their prepubescent wrestling; everywhere around them is a nation in decline. Representatives of the Brazilian state—everyone from government officials to the impoverished—endlessly harass passers-by for donations to “the cause,” even as a mysterious plague rages. Never mind that. Our insatiable narrator, driven to discover his true self through increasingly transgressive sexual urges, is on an epic journey through the shadows of this dysfunctional yet polite society.

    The resulting novel is the late João Gilberto Noll’s most radical statement: A Book of Revelations-grade voyage to the end of gender and the outermost reaches of sexual and artistic expression. Nimbly translated from Portuguese by Edgar Garbelotto, Hugs and Cuddles is an unapologetically explicit fable of fluidity that takes readers from decaying city centers to the dark corridors of a mysterious submarine to a miserable hovel in the rainforest, where, at long last, our narrator finds peace.

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

    My Review
    : Remember when I reviewed Quiet Creature on the Corner back in 2016? It's the very first Noll story to appear in English. It contained non-consensual heterosex, and it gave me a definite dirty-old-man vibe. That is to say, the book's for a dirty old man not that I'm one!

    Buckle up for this tale, ye of little sexcapade tolerance.

    There is nothing for it but to say it: Noll's got the one-handed reader squarely in his sights from giddy-up to whoa. If you can think of a way to think about sex, it's in this book. I'm not at that stage of life anymore, but let me tell you it's a heavy breather's dream book.

    There is a salad dressing of family secrets, of loyalty given but not reciprocated, reciprocated but betrayed, of gender identities as traps and prisons and comforting hiding places...it's a story that never settles into one groove. There are half a dozen grooves. They each matter, and in the end, each contains a clue to the preoccupations of Author Noll's writing: Honesty and clarity are only so useful in this life but a well-crafted line of bullshit can guide, sustain, and reward you.

    The style of the book should be no issue to those who read Milkman or Poguemahone. It's a long, divagating paragraph of startling complexity. Yet the burden of the lyric is simple, that being centered on sex as activity is only fun if you play with sex as biology defines it. The way in and the way out of a soul is the same as it is for a body.

    If the roman-fleuve formal technique were somehow packed tight into this book's sausage-casing of 240 pages, it would resemble the scope and the effect of the paragraph as we move from a submarine to a rural shack, from the kind of sex that lives in your memory to the kind you'd pay money to forget. There's not one page not steeped in sex, whether actual sexual activity or contemplating it.

    All of which, most curiously, is the opposite of erotically thrilling to me. I quickly discounted the erotic tone of the writer's discussion of personhood, belonging, and power dynamics. It became for me a kind of background, a soundtrack...the sounds!...and thus led me to the sad, wistful realization that Author Noll was always questing, Quixote-like, for the one greatest possible reward of sex: Connection. Giving your sexual energy to someone in return for their emotional vulnerability isn't routinely rewarded. It felt to me that, through this entire read, I was hearing a longing tone and a sad wistful sigh as another orgasm rocked the narrator.

    It is, in the end, a sad acknowledgment of the "eternal hell of libido" as the organzing principle of a life. Fascinating, strong meat yet savory in its easy-goes-down tartare preparation. Definitely a worthy addition to your shelf.

    166Storeetllr
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:15 pm

    Really enjoying your reviews, Richard, even if they don’t always result in me being hit by a BB. Thank you!

    167richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:21 pm

    >166 Storeetllr: *hmmmf*

    *Clearly* you don't really read them, o cruel woman, or you would fly on wings of flame to the One-Click Button and mash, mash, mash!

    *sob*

    ...I am unloved...without honour in my own land....

    168Storeetllr
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:27 pm

    There, there. *pat pat* There.

    The fault is all my own, shallow creature that I am, for not immediately jumping on that one-click button.* Your reviews are gems in and of themselves.

    *Also, I mostly listen to books these days, and it’s not so easy (or affordable) to find audiobooks. Not an excuse, I know.

    169richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:36 pm

    >168 Storeetllr: It's all better now. (I'm elozable!)

    I also don't review on the regular the sorts of books that have audio editions. It would be a shock to me if, for example, >165 richardderus: had an audio deal! (Actually, I'd have to buy it because I'd be so curious to know how the heck anyone could read that aloud in any representative kind of a way.)

    170Storeetllr
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:49 pm

    Heh, yes, no.

    You are right: some books would not work as audiobooks, and that’s definitely one of those.

    171ocgreg34
    Dic 30, 2022, 2:50 pm

    >150 richardderus: This sounds interesting. I'll have to find a copy...

    172richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 4:11 pm

    >171 ocgreg34: It's genuinely shocking to me, Greg, that someone as pivotal to the gay-rights movement could come so close to vanishing entirely! I now wonder how many, of equal stature to Henry's, actually have vanished. Makes me feel sad.

    I hope you enjoy the read when it comes to you!

    >170 Storeetllr: No. Joke! *smooch*

    173richardderus
    Dic 30, 2022, 4:13 pm

    I'll post one more review tomorrow sometime. But it's already counted into the totals, so there's no point shilly-shallying: My 2022 report and 2023 plans and goals.

    174richardderus
    Dic 31, 2022, 9:13 am

    Wordle 560 3/6

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    Very strange...did not expect this one to be the answer. AEONS, MIRTH, MANLY

    175LizzieD
    Dic 31, 2022, 2:11 pm

    In and out in a rush because I must bid you a Happy and Most Welcome New Year, Richard! I wish that you may continue to do what you do, and that I may continue to profit from it.

    *smooch*

    176richardderus
    Dic 31, 2022, 2:20 pm

    258 The Strangest by Michael J. Seidlinger

    Rating: 4.5* of five

    The Publisher Says: Michael Seidlinger has dared tackle one of the literary classics of the 20th century literature and reimagined it for the 21st: and in Albert Camus’ anti-hero Meursault, at once apathetic and violent, unable to connect with his fellow humans, Seidlinger exhumes a perfect metaphor for the Internet Generation. Zachary Weinham, anchorless in terms of morals and committed to nothing except commenting on comments and their comments etc., finds himself involved in the sinister machinations of Rios, someone he meets in a bar, and allows himself to be set up—whether out of apathy or a desire for self-destruction it’s hard to tell. A murder ensues. Shunned by his friends and associates, not sure of what he has gotten into, Zachary heads for confrontation with society—and his own moral values.

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

    My Review
    : Routine readers will recall Michael Seidlinger's name. The Fun We've Had was 2014's 6-stars-of-five read; Mother of a Machine Gun, a novella deconstructing Identity and Motherhood from a son's perspective; Falter Kingdom, Anybody Home?, all of them four star-plus reads for me. This book's appeal to me wasn't as immediate or as visceral as the other reads were. I'm somewhat trapped in Meursault's Otherness via Camus. Exploring his identity further didn't necessarily strike me as urgent, and there's nothing Michael Seidlinger creates that stops short of Urgency.

    I've said of him before:
    Every writer needs a trope. Seidlinger's is musical brevity. He'd be called a poet if he made less sense.
    –and–
    Seidlinger is what a mating between Djuna Barnes and Samuel Beckett would've produced: Illusionless in his pessimism, joyful in his schadenfreude, and both human and humane enough to wrap his bitter pills in pretty words.

    I stand by those words, I believe them to be fair in their assessment of his talent and his presentation of it. So this book? It came out almost a decade ago and...I wasn't a fan, exactly, because...well...Meursault.

    In my never-ending quest to tie up loose ends, since I can't tie Michael up but *can* finish reviewing the DRCs of his work that I have, I thought a real review of this book to end 2022 would feel condign.

    When taking on classics, there are two ways to approach them from a positive energy field: Hommage or retelling. Leave it to a poet to say, "naaah," and enter into a dialogue with the piece. The Stranger, subject of Camus's astonishing and ever-fresh novella of Meursault's crime and punishment, is now about Zachary, The Strangest...the man, like Guy is to Bruno from Strangers on a Train, whose blankness is observing the surfaces of a mediated landscape with no concrete referents. Only what is outside The Strangest is real. This, of course, means he has no reality because his internal world is only the external world reflected on the shiny, frictionless surfaces of his many mirrors. Like a human Hubble Space Telescope, he has only the visible light of distant, unreachable reality to furnish meaning and encourage existence.

    What makes that so dangerous is visible in the social-media obsessed, whipped to a froth "activism" and "radicalization" of many, many empty shells with AR-15s. Nothing outside can give a person a core, as Camus made plain in Meursault's completely avoidable descent into murder. And here, though it's framed by a modern concern unknown to the Camus of 1944, we're going down the same rabbit-hole. No core? Barely a shell! Constantly obsessed with fitting in, The Strangest isn't ever going to achieve that.

    "For a line to exist, it would first have to be crossed."

    You can't fit if you have no shape.

    And that is the thing, in 2015, Michael Seidlinger saw and said that, to my slight embarrassment, I did not pay enough attention to. The way that Meursault would go along the hot and sandy beach in Algeria to get along was fundamentally different from The Strangest's endlessly, heatlessly reflective but never reflexive attempts to build Reality from the weak material of light. There is no real reason not to murder someone, a lot of someones in fact, if there is no texture or heft to the world for you. It's light, from a screen or from a geometric solid, it's only light and therefore has only the meaning your analysis gives it.

    If light and its shadows are all you possess, there is no reason to obsess over life and fate and pain and grief. Death is only the light going out, only the local light covered or extinguished. Light still exists. Shadows and darkness aren't real.

    Maybe one of the most chilling meditations I've read in 2022. I can't call it perfect...it's cold and disconnected, so doesn't make the impact something so important should...but I can call it excellent. Highly recommended for serious thinkers about twenty-first century life and society.

    177richardderus
    Dic 31, 2022, 2:54 pm

    >175 LizzieD: *smoochiesmoochsmooch*

    178Familyhistorian
    Ene 1, 2023, 1:45 am

    >174 richardderus: I didn't get that one at all ending my streak but perhaps it was due to the word. Hope your New Year was a happy one.