richardderus's tenth 2024 thread

Seeking excellence? Keep seeking.

Reviews 001 through 008 are linked here.
Reviews 009 on thru 017 are linked here.
Reviews 018 to 026 are linked there.
Reviews 027 to 033 are linked there.
Reviews 034 through 040 are linked here.
Reviews 041 to 045 are linked here.
Reviews 046 unto 050 are linked here.
Reviews 051 to 059 are linked there.
Reviews 060 up to 064 are linked here.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS

065 The Jinn Daughter in post #55.
066 Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot in post #74.
067 You Should Be So Lucky in post #90.
068 Three Assassins: A Novel in post #110.
069 Bullet Train in post #111.
070 The Deepest Lake in post #117.
071 Beasts of a Little Land: A Novel in post #128.
072 The Reformatory in post #142.
073 Afterlight in post #155.
074 Vladivostok Circus in post #160.
075 Seeker (The Sentinel Archives #1) in post #186.
076 The Guncle Abroad in post #248.

All my threads in the 75ers linked somewhere here
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.
My Last Thread of 2022 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2023 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

All previous Burgoine reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S BURGOINE REVIEWS:

#021

All previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:

#010

Seriously...not a great venue for normies here.
My 2023 goals are here, for reference.
2024 GOALS
If I reviewed 222 books in 2023, why not go for at least 250 in 2024?

So I will.

All but 36 of 2023's reviews were from NetGalley and Edelweiss+, the DRC aggregators I use to get my biblioholism fixes. That's 16% of the total actually read and reviewed. In 2024, I think that percentage is just fine to maintain, so I'll settle on 41 reads not from those two sources as my soft goal...I don't much care if I hit it exactly, but I do need to leave room to read and review books I've been gifted over the years!

2023's #Booksgiving review blast resulted in my blog views for the month being 177% of November's total. So that worked. I only used Twitter for all of November, then for #Booksgiving, added Bluesky and Tumblr. That worked, too. The sadness of my #PrideMonth limp, flaccid performanceless unblast made me realize that, if I'm going to get a big project done, I need to break it down into steps. This is new for me, and a result of the actual limitations that the strokes have imposed on me. Like no longer being able to read handwriting or decode graphics like Wordle, this acquired dyslexia is a limitation I need to acknowledge. Not to say I won't keep pushing against it...but it's real, and planning needs to be based in reality.
***
End of Q1 thoughts on goals
I've had to drop Tumblr from my review-posting because the owner/president/head jerkoff posted transphobic maunderings, then the trans employees said "y'all CTFD he didn't mean it" which well totally relate to needing the gig, but no. THEN announced Tumblr would sell to AI scrapers everything users have posted there...so that, plus their porn ban, means they get axed from me creating anything there, posting or boosting things there. And they don't care, or notice, but I get to keep my own moral high ground.

I don't see, or feel, any reason to adjust any of my annual goals. I've posted 51 blog posts in 2024, or on track for 200 annual posts; but that does not account for the heavy months of June and #Booksgiving to come, and there are already eleven reviews banked for those two.

See >5 richardderus: for 2023 achievements & 2024 goals.
My January 2024 summary is here.
My February 2024 summary is here.
My March 2024 summary is here.
My April 2024 summary is here.
***
And with >248 richardderus:, #PrideMonth launches! Yes, in the US Pride Month is a June celebration, but lag times must be built into all holiday seasons. I'll be reviewing mostly stuff from, by, about those people somewhere on the QUILTBAG rainbow of identities. My intention is to get as close as my corpus callosum will support to a full-on review posted five times a week. Burgoines and Pearl-Rules aren't subject to my targeting, though that could happen depending on my capacities. Goodness knows I have the raw material, and a few reviews in the queue ready to go, so I like my chances of success.

Thank you for your patience. Normal service resumed.

Well looky here, a new thread. 🧵 Happy Friday, kind sir

Happy new thread - and happy fri-yay to go with it.

>1 richardderus: I dunno...I think it appears here from time to time.

Happy new one. I resemble that topper!! lol

>8 mahsdad: Good gravy! You're up early! In that case have an ancient one for your sovereignty...from the Etruscan files:

>9 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen...happy FriYay to you, as well.

Happy number 10 dear fellow. I trust this one will find you in good form.

>10 laytonwoman3rd: I think it appears anyplace...mediocracy that is...*smooch*

>11 jessibud2: Moi Aussie, chere amie. *smooch*

>14 PaulCranswick: It will have to hunt "fine form" elsewhere, I'm soft and blubbery these here days. Ten! It seems impossible, don't it.

Happy new thread, RD.

>15 richardderus: You KNOW what I meant.

>18 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie!

>19 laytonwoman3rd: *smooch*

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and happy new thread!

Have a fantastic Friday!

>12 richardderus: Thanks! I'm so conditioned now that I'm pretty much awake without outside influences, between 5:45 and 6 every day. I get up and goof off on the internet until its time to commute to work (and by commute, I mean get up and walk from the living room to the office :) )

>1 richardderus: You got me with a healthy laugh this morning, Richard, on your happy new thread! Honestly, I'd be thrilled if my part of the world raised itself to mediocrity, but that's another story.

Now I need to go back and finish your last thread, you wicked tempter and shooter of BBs.
*smooch*

>22 alcottacre: Thanks, you sweet little silver-tonguèd devil you.

>23 mahsdad: Your fortitudinous tolerance of that terrifying commute is a shining example to us all. I, like you, basically wake up and flip open the computer to start my day. We're very, very fortunate.

>24 LizzieD: Moi, madame? I endeavor mightily to make my reading sound as tedious as possible. I'm all too aware of the perils of entering a biblio-AR15's field of fire *glower*

I do need to warn you that a 5-star story collection review is on its way. *smooch*

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: That is how I finished highschool, just enough points to pass the finals.
My remaining brother always said when one of us came home with excellent points: 'You did way more than needed'. :-)

Happy new thread, Richard

>28 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita! I understand how your brother feels, but it's kinda scary to think about people really doing that as a practice.

>29 ArlieS: Thank you, Arlie!

Dropping my ⭐️ relatively early. Happy new 🧵! And happy Friday!

What? No Jello!? Happy new thread, RD!

>32 Storeetllr: Hey there, Mary! Happy Friday, and welcome!

>33 atozgrl: Here ya go:

I live to serve.

>35 richardderus: Oh, dear, I hope I didn't start another jello discussion.

>33 atozgrl: I forgot...dinner before dessert:

AND it lights up!

>36 atozgrl: *eville cackle*^^^

>26 richardderus: About 7 years ago, I traded a 10 year 80mile round trip commute for my 25ft one. Granted it wasn't a voluntary change, but it was a good one.

>39 mahsdad: Sometimes change *is* good! Not often enough, but just enough to keep us sane.

>37 richardderus: Ack! That does not look remotely appealing. And lit up too? Yikes!

>41 atozgrl: The Pee Wee Herman website has always contained comedy treasures. It's the lighting that sets me off every time.

Happy Friday, Richard. Happy New Thread. A beautiful day here. I hope you are enjoying the same.

>43 msf59: Pretty weather indeed, Birddude, spring in her finest feathers. A couple pied oystercatchers showed up, to my pleasure.

Hiyah, Richard! Happy new one!

>37 richardderus: Happy new thread...although it looks like the old dessert has been served up again ;)

Happy new thread. Enjoy all those congealed salads!

>45 drneutron: Greetings, Rocketdoc! I thank you.

>46 figsfromthistle: Oh nay nay nay...this one's very different. Human perversion is stunningly inventive within its chosen amplitude of revoltingness.

>47 thornton37814: "Enjoyment" is purely theoretical on this topic...*ew*

>51 thornton37814: ROFL

>35 richardderus: That's bad.

>37 richardderus: That's obscene.

*smooch* for you anyway.

A bit late as always but I wish you a very happy new thread and a wonderful weekend, Rdear. *smooch*

>37 richardderus: OK, that makes me want to vomit. . .repeatedly

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and wishes for a wonderful weekend!

065 The Jinn Daughter by Rania Hanna

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunning debut novel and an impressive feat of storytelling that pulls together mythology, magic, and ancient legend in the gripping story of a mother’s struggle to save her only daughter

Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds—the souls of the dead—that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death.

But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants.

Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala’s fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance.

Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death.

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

My Review: Mythology that tantalizes with its familiar outlines, and its very intriguing shifts, is always going to get my attention. Nadine has a very unusual job as a Hakawati jinn who must tell the story of the dead before their spirit can move to the next world. This is very appealing to me, as the medium of delivery is pomegranate seeds that fall from the sky. This use of the many-cultural pomegranate as a deliverer of information about the dead in its very numerous, sweet-fleshed seeds seemed like it should be used in more myths!

Demeter and Persephone add their cultural mite to the familiarity stakes as Nadine, our jinn mother, needs to keep her daughter from being drafted to assume the role of the soul-sickened, dying, Death. I don't guess any mom wants her little girl to grow up into a being universally feared and loathed. The tension seemed logical if overplayed: In the quest to save her half-human child from becoming Death, Nadine takes us through an afterlife of surprising charm and a weird kind of gentleness. I guess when Death and her court are female, that is what happens...? As a side note, the men here are one-dimensional walk-ons. I was fine with that, others might not be.

I kept thinking that Death sounded like a fine ruler, where do I go to learn necromancy? Nadine was way ahead of me. Lots of the stories in this very literary fantasy novel center on death as a bargain, making deals, and the like. That is not really something I think is factual, but this being fiction not religion I have no kick with it. The book is short enough that its one note, Motherlove, does not become tiresome. She needs to make some hefty decisions with serious consequences to keep her daughter safe, including the hail-mary pass of digging up her dead partner's horrible father, but in the end only truly good people can help Nadine do good things.

Does it all make sense? Not to me; but I am a cynical old man who thinks the job of being Death sounds spiffing. There is a lot of time spent doing the same thing a couple different ways...go with it. Be in the flow of the story. I recommend this quiet, loving story for US mother's day, as a gift or as a celebration of a deeply missed Mom.

>51 thornton37814: :-)

>52 LizzieD: ...it's the tomato-beef consommeé colored light, isn't it Peggy?

>53 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara! I'd commit mortal sins for those croissants.

It appears to me that I've failed to wish you the best with your new venture here. So...Best Wishes, Richard.

>54 alcottacre: *there there, patpat* At least you can't SMELL it, the lemon Jell-O made with Sprite and then loaded with Spaghetti-Os in that reddish allegedly tomato-flavored goo...imagine that melting over a little red-colored lamp....

>59 weird_O: Thanks, Weird One!

Just waving now I've caught up. Have a good weekend.

>53 Ameise1: Now THAT is a picture of food and drink!

>60 richardderus: Those are Spaghetti-Os and not sliced pimiento-stuffed green olives? Either is disgusting. Mostly, I think it's the wieners or cocktail franks diving into the horror. Neon tomato consommé - gag.

Nevertheless, I regroup long enough to wish you a lovely weekend when nothing congeals on your plate.
*smooch*

>62 Caroline_McElwee: *waves back*

>63 LizzieD: Heh...they're vienna sausages. Gagsome things, vienna sausages. There is no item in that assemblage that I would choose to eat, and most probably would not consent to eat absent intense social pressure from a man I very, very badly wanted to shag. Even then it's iffy...lotsa guys in the world and only one tongue to be outraged.

>55 richardderus: The Jinn Daughter looks very good, Richard! I’m going to put it on my TBR.

Happy Saturday!

Karen O

>66 klobrien2: Happy Saturday back, Karen O., and enjoy >55 richardderus: when you get to it. The story charmed me with its just-right blend of familiar elements and new takes on them. *smooch*

>35 richardderus: *shudder*

>37 richardderus: *double shudder*

>68 Storeetllr: Not changing your dinner plans to serving a molded ring of slippery, slick gloop? *cackle*

Happy New Thread!

>70 SilverWolf28: Thank you most kindly, Silver! Hope the readathon goes well.

>65 richardderus: You do know that those are pronounced Vye-EEENa sausages, don't you?

>72 LizzieD: Only in the South.

066 Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot by Jonathan Alexander

THE TRADE PAPER EDITION PUBLISHES ON THE 7TH, SO I'M REVISITING MY RECOMMENDATION OF THIS BOOK.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An archive of personal trauma that addresses how a culture still toxic to queer people can reshape a body

In the summer of 2019, Jonathan Alexander had a minor stroke, what his doctors called an "eye stroke." A small bit of cholesterol came loose from a vein in his neck and instead of shooting into his brain and causing damage, it lodged itself in a branch artery of his retina, resulting in a permanent blindspot in his right eye. In Stroke Book, Alexander recounts both the immediate aftermath of his health crisis, which marked deeper health concerns, as well as his experiences as a queer person subject to medical intervention.

A pressure that the queer ill contend with is feeling at fault for their condition, of having somehow chosen illness as punishment for their queerness, however subconsciously. Queer people often experience psychic and somatic pressures that not only decrease their overall quality of life but can also lead to shorter lifespans. Emerging out of a medical emergency and a need to think and feel that crisis through the author's sexuality, changing sense of dis/ability, and experience of time, Stroke Book invites readers on a personal journey of facing a health crisis while trying to understand how one's sexual identity affects and is affected by that crisis. Pieceing and stitching together his experience in a queered diary form, Alexander's lyrical prose documents his ongoing, unfolding experience in the aftermath of the stroke. Through the fracturing of his text, which almost mirrors his fractured sight post-stroke, the author grapples with his shifted experience of time, weaving in and out, while he tracks the aftermath of what he comes to call his "incident" and meditates on how a history of homophobic encounters can manifest in embodied forms.

The book situates itself within a larger queer tradition of writing—first, about the body, then about the body unbecoming, and then, yet further, about the body ongoing, even in the shadow of death. Stroke Book also documents the complexities of critique and imagination while holding open a space for dreaming, pleasure, intimacy, and the unexpected.

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

My Review: I reviewed the hardcover edition of this book in June, 2022. In January, 2023, I had three strokes. As Fordham University Press is releasing this trade paper edition Tuesday next, it seemed like a good time to revisit the read, and to tart up my review. In the year-plus since my own strokes, I have had a lot of time to think over what happened to me, how it happened, and what I have lost as well as gained from the terrifying bodily othering of one's brain being altered physically.

Here is my 2022 review:

Author Alexander does a lot of thinking. It is all in his prose.

I found myself thinking beyond {others}'s formal approach to the even more particularly queer nature of how I understood my stroke, of how I had been invited by a homophobic culture to think and feel about my body. A pressure that the queer ill contend with is feeling at fault for their condition, of having somehow chosen illness as punishment for their queerness, however subconsciously.

His world includes a husband, Mack, and a bunch of doctors who see him at need. So yes...he's white male privilege on legs. He's loved, employed, and creatively gifted (even works with my dote Michelle Latiolais!); he's able to get a publishing deal, so he's well connected.

None of that matters to cholesterol hanging onto the walls of this one artery, though, and when it takes off and lands in a new place that leaves him partially blind (and him with amblyopia already! PLUS it's his dominant eye that has the stroke!) He lands in that weird place called "chronic illness." And he'll never leave it. As a Queer man, that's a bad, grim journey...so many, many side-paths and so many losses and so much rage against the medical establishment that excuses its homophobia as "concern for patient privacy". But mostly, the fact is, this is a new resident in a community he's circled for decades, since AIDS through some "calculus of divine justice" has been seen as guilty without trial or concern for truth of Deserving It. Whatever bad thing "It" is, the gay men of the world Deserve It.

Not true; never was true; but there it is, like a rock in your panna cotta. Author Alexander asks, as he copes with his new situation as well as his mother's decline into old age, "is this what aging is like?" And answers himself, "Too soon. Always too soon." Amen, Soul Sibling. A-bloody-men!
***
So what would I add, what would I change, now that it has happened to me?

Really, not a whole lot of anything. I'll say that my recovery from three strokes has felt miraculous at times. I can't recall feeling as though I would need to adjust my quality-of-life expectations downward because of the strokes and their effects. My pre-existing issues have not worsened due to the strokes; if I have less and less energy, well, I'm not growing younger am I?

In short, I feel so very fortunate. I think the author realizes he was as well, though honestly he doesn't really make much of a meal about how he has changed, so I felt very much in tune with him and his attitude. Join him on a meditative journey through the changes that aging and its occasional curveball events will ring on your life.

>73 atozgrl:, >72 LizzieD: They were Vee-ENNuh sausages in Texas, but that didn't make 'em one whit less vile. I can't believe I ever ate them! Yet I did, cases of 'em.

Happy Sunday, Richard. We had a good, productive time on the Spring Bird Count yesterday. It helped that it was such a beautiful day. I came home and vegged the rest of the day with the Juno and the books.

Glad you got to see the oystercatchers the other day. I think you are seeing American Oystercatchers on your side of the coast.

>76 msf59: A perfect day for the bird count! We are back under clouds but it was mostly beautiful yesterday. Our oystercatchers must have Noo Yawk accents. Wouldn't surprise me!

Oh, thank goodness. Happy NEW thread Richard!

>35 richardderus: >37 richardderus: Wait, what? *exits hurriedly* (>53 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara but that's not enough to save us.)

>78 humouress: Ixnay on the Ello-Jay, Nina? But it's so refreshing for hot-day eating! Just slides down, all wobbly and slick and superdooper sweet!

*urp* I'm making myself queasy...BRB

>1 richardderus: Lol. Seriously, lol!

>37 richardderus: And that's just gross... I don't think my mother ever made a Jello mold anything (thankfully). Jello, yeah, but no molds.

Looks like you've been doing some pretty good reading, Richard!

Enjoy those books!!

>80 Copperskye: I love Mediocrates, too, Joanne!

My mother made a Jell-O mold once...one time...just so she could have a reason to use her favorite wall-decor copper mold. She left it in the fridge and didn't say a word when spoon-shaped divots kept appearing in it and never, ever used it again. The unmolded stuff appeared in ramekins if I had a bout of diarrhea. Because we lived near Mexico, she bought the good, tropical flavors...guava, mango...that we could get. I love mango Jell-O!

I've had a decent run indeed...tomorrow's is a favorite. Enjoy your reads, smoochling!

>74 richardderus: It seems to be much easier to be female-categorized and queer; I haven't really gotten flack for it since I was in my 20s, lo these many years ago, and it's never manifested in a personal medical context. OTOH, my soft skills have never been great; I may well have failed to notice all kinds of subtle social disapproval.

>82 ArlieS: It is, I venture to say without the intent to insult or offend, almost impossible for that not to have been the case.

One way I've developed to deal with insulting or offensive behaviors is simply to act as though the behavior is not insulting or offensive and flip the perceived insult right back onto them thereby.

Dropping off new week smooches for you, RDear.

>84 MickyFine: Thank you, Micky! *smooch*

I don't remember if it was Horrible, Peggy, or Karen O. (heck, it could a been PC for all I remember now) who most recently brought up the bizarre bouncy-castle of baking called B. Dylan Harris, but YouTube remembered that someone said something to me about him and served forth the knee-slappin' fun of his Food For The Gods episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PcJYLc2J3k&ab_channel=B.DylanHollis

Happy Monday! *smooch*

>55 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, RD!

>60 richardderus: imagine that melting over a little red-colored lamp. Do I have to??

>74 richardderus: My local library still does not have a copy of that one. Rats.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today and hopes for a marvelous Monday!

ETA: I just checked Hoopla and it has a copy of the Jonathan Alexander book. Woot!

>37 richardderus: *barf*

>53 Ameise1: Ooooh, that's more like it.

>55 richardderus: Well, on to the TBR that goes...

*smooch* and happy new thread!

067 You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.

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

My Review: I'm a Cat Sebastian stan. Her writing chops, her eye for a story, her politics...all *chef's kiss* in my experience. This derfinitely is, please note, a slow-burn love story. I don't think this is a bug, rather a feature; I'm pretty au fait with what happens between men in bed. I'm as interested in how they got there, and why, as in what it is they're gettin' up to.

The fun in this read is that, once the guys get their bodily freak on, I believe that they'll be able, and willing to stay there! These relationships, the ones you can actually picture as real and lasting, are all too rare in fiction...let alone in romantic fiction. It is not, I hurry to reassure the bodyloathers, a meaty, intimately observed intimacy; more of a noises-off kind of affair, where we know what happened and now we see what that brought to Mark and Eddie. One-handed reading is not really Author Cat's stock-in-trade, she hasn't started now.

That being my expectation, and it being met, next point of tension for many readers (including me) is the elephant in the room of any midcentury m/m story: Outing. A reporter and a baseball phenom in physical intimacy would've had a lot of anxiety about being seen to be...a little too close, a bit off in the macho world of baseball...because it would uneash the horrors of public, untrammelled homophobia on the men. This was, after all, the time of The Lavender Scare.

So this backdrop means, in my reading, the HEAs and even HFNs many writers engineer for two men being publicly together in this time-period ring hollow. "That could not happen!" I think, all suspension of disbelief flying away on noisy bat-wings of knowledge. As always, Author Cat spares me the discomfort by making these two behave circumspectly. Mark, a reporter, knows the Power of the Press, and respects the cultural norms to avoid awakening it. He's also just lost his longtime love, and so isn't exactly in a huggy-smoochy frame of mind; Eddie's in his first-ever existential crisis..."I can't do this thing I get praise and an identity from anymore! Help!"...so he's, well, not gonna rock the boat. Such a good way to ensure there's layers of meaning behind their period-appropriate decorous public demeanor.

What makes any story centered around grief readable is hope. The men here don't have a path forward, can't see through the fog of the present into a brighter, better-defined future. Only as they learn to trust each other's love and support as real, solid stones capable of being made into a foundation do they find the ease they're seeking. That was the payoff I needed from this unlikely duo's coming-together: The sense that, to their mutual surprise, they had found together the path that neither had been able to see alone.

In the end, these two find their happiness in their connection. They are, it felt to me, solidly, enduringly connected and will weather their future storms better for being together. Now, how often do fictional people draw out that level of thought and that depth of interest? For anyone who hasn't read Author Cat's earlier work, it might sound surprising that this has happened. I assure you who haven't had the pleasure that this is a long-term feature of all her stories.

Lastly, I hope you'll read this, and resonate to it. It is a very clear statement of a deep, abiding truth of the experience of being Other:
It’s not just the burden of continually lying, it’s keeping your existence a secret. When the world has decided that people are supposed to be a certain way, but you’re living proof to the contrary, then hiding your differences is just helping everybody else erase who you are.

This book, in a period-appropriate way, presents two loving souls whose socially unacceptable love and connection truly prevent them from being erased.

>87 figsfromthistle: Monday orisons, Anita! *smooch*

>88 alcottacre: Yay for Hoopla! Enjoy it. (What's Hoopla?)

Monday *smooch*

>89 bell7: It is indeed urpsome stuff, Mary. I think you'll enjoy The Jinn Daughter when its turn comes, with its very well-drawn characters and unusual world-building.

Thanks! *smooch*

I'm wishing you all good things, Good Richard, as I likely disappear until the end of the week. I'll feel good knowing that you will be holding down the fort here.

*SMOOCH*

>94 LizzieD: Have a wonderful shore vacation, and wave at the surf...it will get north up to me sooner or later!

Monday orisons, good sir. I liked them reviews, and you have my vote should you ever run for that Death position. Stroke Book - is it really considered a stroke if it doesn't go to the brain? I'd not heard of the self-blame problem for queer medical patients. Sigh. Life provides too many burdens sometimes, doesn't it.

"Mediocrates" = LOL

Good review of The Jinn's Daughter. Maybe too soft and subtle for the likes of me.

Oh, hey: Happy New Thread, and Happy Start to the Week. I hope Spring is Springing around you.

>96 jnwelch: Howdy do, Joe, happy to see you here! I'm pretty well pleased with the way the day is trending now. I'm glad the trend from the morning has changed for the better.

A stroke is any occlusion of a blood vessel that results in diminished function of the occluded vessels body part. I think you would enjoy >74 richardderus: just fine FWIW. The case for >55 richardderus: is a little murkier. It's got the charm of being very sweet; the only thing that I can see that might not work for you as a reader is the way it unfolds slowly. Not as much payoff as investment would seem to expect.

Jumping back in with a quick gander at this thread. I'm going to leave the ones I missed alone -- never get caught up otherwise.

>98 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! I'm sure there's nothing in the past that you absolutely need to know. We'll figure that out, I suppose, if it happens, and fill you in.

I'm very glad you're home and settled back in on the new computer.

>92 richardderus: "Hoopla" is www.hoopladigital.com, a service that has been recently provided by my local library (in essence extending its holdings) that allows me to check out 6 titles per month using it. Hoopla has just about everything - films, documentaries, TV series, ebooks, e-audiobooks.

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

>100 alcottacre: Oh! Is that what replaced Overdrive?

*smooch*

>101 richardderus: As far as I know, yes.

I believe Hoopla and Overdrive/Libby are two different platforms. Many libraries offer both.

>101 richardderus: >102 alcottacre: >103 katiekrug: No Libby is the app that replaced Overdrive. Technically its still Overdrive, but the front-end app changed from Overdrive to Libby

As Katie said Hoopla is a different service. My library does offer both. They are different catalogs. I use Hoopla mostly for any graphic novels I read.

Hoopla licenses their stuff differently, there's not supposed to be any wait times for borrowing from them, but you might not see the same books you see from Libby.

I don't borrow many ebooks, from either, but I'm pretty much exclusive on Libby for my audiobooks

Thanks for the explanation, Jeff. I don't use Hoopla, but I use the Libby app for audio books. For ebooks, I don't use the app but the Overdrive site and have them downloaded to my Kindle.

There are things I liked better about Overdrive (such as the wish list that is easier to manage than the tags). In Libby, it's a pain to remove something from the wishlist after you've read/listened to it. However, I do think the listening experience is superior in Libby.

TA DAAAAA! Honey! I'm home!

Sheesh. What a month. Mense horribilis!

Both Ken and I caught HPV3, which presents as horrible bronchitis. And, of course, due to my poor health, I ended up in the hospital again.^

While I was there my stepfather, Robert, died - three days before my brother's wedding. Thankfully Robert's family swooped in and took care of my mom.

It's really amazing. Their mother was married to Robert for 49 years. Almost two years after her death, Robert went looking for mom (they were high school sweethearts and he kept track of her now and then.) Other than the daughter who eventually came around and now loves her, everyone accepted her with open arms from the beginning. They are good people.

And, RD-dear? I owe you double cheek air kisses.

I've been stuck in a rut for I don't even want to tell you how long reading porn smut erotica romances. Okay, fine. Quote unquote steamy romances.

*whispers, "On fire! Five alarm fire!*

😉

Anyway, you broke my rut with Saint Elspeth and I'm reading it now.

And, RD, while I was reading my ... AHEM... romances, I came across a character type that you may find... intriguing.

^ Fairview University of Minnesota East Bank - best dang hospital I've been to in 35 years and I've never going any place again. TOTALLY patient-centered. At least on floor 7B. First time I've felt listened to and seen by everyone from aides and nurses to doctors and therapists. Even the janitorial staff was friendly. (CT staff were A holes but aren't they always?)

>106 thornton37814: back to >103 katiekrug: I never knew any of this! Fascinating stuff to someone who doesn't really interact with the wider world of library initiatives. Thanks, y'all!

>107 Morphidae: Oh no! I'm so sad with you about your stepdad's passing. It says a lot when people close ranks and take care of others when many wouldn't.

Well? WELL?! Who's this mystery man I'll find so...intriguing? Title, author, ISBN, and be quick about it! I'm glad that Saint Elspeth is the right book at the right moment.

068 Three Assassins: A Novel by Kōtarō Isaka (tr. Sam Malissa)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Three Assassins feels like a fever dream that makes sense when you’re in it, but whose strange contours linger long after you wake up.” —New York Times

Three Assassins is the high-stakes, high-style, and utterly propulsive follow-up to Kotaro Isaka’s international bestseller, Bullet Train, a Crime Reads “Most Anticipated Book of 2021.”

Suzuki is an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. To get answers and his revenge, Suzuki abandons his law-abiding lifestyle and takes a low-level job with a front company operated by the crime gang Maiden, who are responsible for his wife’s death. Before long, Suzuki finds himself caught up in a network of quirky and highly effective assassins:

The Cicada is a knife expert.
The Pusher nudges people into oncoming traffic.
The Whale whispers bleak aphorisms to his victims until they take their own lives.

Intense and electrifying, Three Assassins delivers a wild ride through the criminal underworld of Tokyo, populated by contract killers who are almost superhumanly good at their jobs.

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

My Review: I read these books out of order; the fact is I didn't realize at the time I read them that there *was* an order! I strongly recommend reading this book before reading Bullet Train, because many details will make a lot better sense in the latter if you do.

A truly trippy, peculiarly anime-inflected story about...about...umm...Life, The Universe, and Everything, maybe? How easy it is to come unmoored from societal norms when they stop serving you? When an ordinary teacher's wife is assassinated, he doesn't grieve and get on with life. He turns his entire existence into a revenge-dealing machine. (Okay, okay, it's totally fridging and it's not a little icky in 2024, but the book was written in Japan in 2004; your 2020s US sensibilities are a liability in this read.)

What kept me reading in spite of feeling, quite often in fact, that I wanted to give Suzuki a hard shake and a two-cheek slap, was the inventiveness and gonzo pace of the exercise. Read it in chunks, not driblets. You'll think too much about how incredibly implausible the entire enterprise is unless you build a solid head of steam. The first ~30 pages at the least should be taken at a gulp.

A big part of the universe created here is the awful, cruel nature of modern society. The assassins who commit mayhem for money are no more horrible than corporate lobbyists who pay to pass laws that get their masters out of having to pay taxes, or damages, or take responsibilty for any awful thing that their (in)actions cause.

And that really os the heart of the book: Who are the clients for the terrible deeds that Suzuki and his co-workers are performing? Who has the money to make these terrible things happen, untraceably, repeatably, repeatedly?

Those in Control.

I'm not going to belabor this point. If you get it, you got it already. This, however, very important in the events that you're reading about in this book, and the next. The cruelty of the universe isn't personal. There isn't some vengeful gawd looking down on you and pointing an accusatory digit, using that to hurl thunderbolts and maledictions upon you more precisely. It would be, I suppose, comforting if there were.

Instead it's those in control looking at a population-level situation and moving the pieces of the solution into place. The motives, the results, the consequences...never vouchsafed to any of the victims inevitably suffering from those impersonal moves. Give someone a target for their misery and that target takes the heat and bears the blows. That's gawd's purpose in religion: the heat for the awfulness of the world is justified because gawd is mad at you, or your neighbors, or The Gays, or...the list is endless, changes with (often generational) fashions, and never includes the real culprits. If one depersonalizes, takes the face away from, the abuser, there's no outrage to build into rage, then erupt into violence.

Suzuki learns this horrible truth in the first thirty pages. No one murdered his wife. She was killed by a person, but not for a reason. Now what? Knowledge is power. Power over what you do next. Suzuki has to decide what will replace his desire for personal revenge.

And that, mes amis, is this novel's point. I'm not particularly edified by it, I'm not too happy about the violence herein so lovingly described. I was entertained by the full-throttle pace of the storytelling. I was abosrbed by this Everyman's decisions, the thoughtfulness of them, and the resultant mayhem. If you saw the westernized adaptation of Bullet Train, you have a grasp on the pace and style of events. But, and this is CRUCIAL!, you have no smallest idea of what the story is about. Read the books.

069 Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka (tr. Sam Malissa)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Five assassins on a fast-moving bullet train find out their missions have something in common in this witty and electrifying thriller

Satoshi—The Prince—looks like an innocent schoolboy but is really a stylish and devious assassin. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate, such as . . . is killing really wrong? Kimura’s young son is in a coma thanks to The Prince, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard.

Nanao, nicknamed Ladybug, the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world,” is put on the train by his boss, a mysterious young woman called Maria Beetle, to steal a suitcase full of money and get off at the first stop. And the lethal duo of Tangerine and Lemon are also traveling to Morioka. The suitcase leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will make it off alive?

A bestseller in Japan, and soon to be a major film from Sony starring Brad Pitt and Joey King, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

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

My Review: Not the movie. The movie is fast and loud, American and violent. The book is slower, more nuanced, and very Japanese. It also has a universal message for its readers: Nothing, but nothing!, can be allowed to get in the way of Revenge. Call it Retribution: It is the eternal weighing of deeds for the pinpoint-accurate design of their equal and opposite results.

Revenge alone is sacred.

If you haven't read Three Assassins, a lot of the why of this story is not going to make a blind bit of sense. I strongly recommend getting into the universe of the assassins before embarking on this exciting outing into their world. Don't spend a lot of time asking "why" of this book only to get the unsatisfying answer a) because, 2) read Three Assassins, that's why.

A must for initiates, though. The increased famailiarity the book assumes you have is license for it to really ramp up the use of multiple, intersecting though definitely not parallel, PoV chapters...and that narrative technique requires practice to get used to when decoding tangentially connected story lines. This weird story of five assassins doing similar but not causally related things on one speeding train that's going nowhere special or significant to no unusual purpose. It's just moving at speed, and it's not going to stop for a predetermined period of time; perfect for a murder or two. The assassins, like in the first book, are very highly skilled at very weird specialties of killing. They operate at a superhuman level of concentration. They are, in short, very fictional. Since this is unabashedly fiction, that's okay by me. Big fun, nothing deep; the original story had more of the Message, this one merely plays the videogame for you.

Now, about that film: Like 3 Body Problem, it shifts things to a safely western, US-white-male footing so as not to run afoul of the clucking hens of the right wing who glare with their beady little eyes and three functioning neurons at any and all things queer (let alone Queer!) because...well, here I sit with my teeth in my mouth, unable to come up with any reason for their hostility except "they's stupid." Anyway, whatever the source of their rage, the entertainment studios won't take risks that will unquestionably, positively not pay off as increased profits in short, medium, or long runs, so here we are with a pallid, denatured action flick of what was a more subtle, subversive idea once in its life.

>99 richardderus: Thanks, Richard. I'll rely on you to keep me up with the important stuff ;)

>112 RebaRelishesReading: Thass me...CNN with added leftist politics.

>109 richardderus: I noticed I worded my post oddly now that I reread it. To clarify, it should read, "Their parents were married for 49 years."

It's a character type rather than a specific character. I'll see if I can find a MM book with this trope. Then I'll give you a link
And a picture. 😉

Bwhahahaha!

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this...

MARINE BIOLOGY PROFESSOR: So an octopus can change its color to mimic its surroundings. When octopi do this it's called-

ME: An octo-lie.

PROFESSOR: ... Metachrosis.

ME:

PROFESSOR:

ME: Mocktopus.

>114 Morphidae: Mocktopus! Such a card, you are! (Catchier than "metachrosis" which sounds like something they're developing a vaccine against.)

*smooch*

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

070 The Deepest Lake by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, a grieving mother goes undercover to investigate her daughter’s mysterious death.

Rose, the mother of 20-something aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter’s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen? When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America’s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion—and find closure.

When Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter’s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid—and controversial—memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlan a place where traumatized women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted?

Perfect for fans of Delia Owens, Celeste Ng, and Julia Bartz, The Deepest Lake is both a sharp look at the sometimes toxic, exclusionary world of high-class writing workshops and an achingly poignant view of a mother’s grief.

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

My Review: Simplicity is a virtue in plotting, if not writing, a thriller. What complexity there is, in a truly involving example of the genre, comes from the characters and what they want that takes them far outside the safe confines of bourgeois life. The death of a child's good for rage, and even revenge; but the death of a child who evokes a guilt or a regret in a parent...that will move one far outside behavioral norms.

This iteration of the mother-hunting-murderer starts to show us complexity about halfway through. The first half is a not-that-exciting takedown of the Writing Industry as a hollow, pretentious ego farm. Been there, read that. I kept going because, as a hardened old reader, there was something prickling my arm hairs, something I couldn't quite put a finger on. The writing about the titular lake was lovely, but not unusually so. The character of the snobby writing coach, if that's what she is and not some super Svengali creating murderous minions out of lonely women who like to write, is in a word predictable. The mother...easiest point of failure because pathos wears thin fast...it's the mother, I thought. But why? echoed back at me.

I couldn't answer myself.

On I read, waiting for the...something. That was it! I was reading a book waiting for this unknown, but subtly prefigured somehow I couldn't quite grasp...something to occur. Let me say that again: Without being able to say what, or when, I got my expectation set on, I was hooked into not being able to put this book down. To beat you about the forehead some more with what an impressive feat that is, I'll tell you that I started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in...well, let's just say people born that year are grandparents. Several times over.

No, I won't tell you what happens. I will tell you that, while I was satisfied that what ended the book ended the story, I was that smallest bit, that vague hint, disgruntled at how long it took to get there. That constitutes a quibble given how much enjoyment I'm going to get from exploring Author Romano-Lax's back catalog from Soho Crime. The synopsis writer gives you some very apt comps, and those should hint at the direction you can expect the story to take.

>116 FAMeulstee: Thursday already! How does this keep happening, anyway?

Always a pleasure, my dear lady. *smooch*

>117 richardderus: - Sounds like one I might like. I'll check the library...

>117 richardderus: Well, you got me with this one! It’s on hold at the library.

My sister in law used to live in Guatamala near Lake Atitlán. I almost visited her there, but I caught pneumonia and spent my 2-week vacation in bed feeling like Death.

>119 katiekrug: Good luck! I'm pretty pleased to find a new author whose backlist I want to explore.

>120 Storeetllr: Oh that ROTS! I'm sorry that you missed the beauty of the lake. Stunning.

*smooch*

No further text.

>123 richardderus: Horrifying.

>123 richardderus: Scary but apt

>117 richardderus: You got me with The Deepest Lake which my library has on order. They also have other books by the author so thanks? for that.

Great review of The Deepest Lake, Richard. It sounds interesting. Like you, I was hooked into mysteries as a kid. I think I started with the Bobbsey Twins, then mysteries by Enid Blyton and then onto Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. That's how old I am.

Oh, and Happy New Thread!

071 Beasts of a Little Land: A Novel by Juhea Kim

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter

In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected—and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.

In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.

From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.

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

My Review: Starting an historical novel with a hunting scene is pretty much a statement of intent: We're heading into conflict! There's nothing about this going to be smooth and easy!

It isn't, for the characters at least. The value of self to family, to society; the value of individuation, personal or political; the value of loyalty, fidelity, honor: All strands in this novel's braid. What keeps these weighty themes from becoming burdensome to follow is the resonant writing.

It appeared to him that no matter how much he gave, he would always have more than enough. As he grew older, he even relished the struggles brought on by his sacrifices. There was a soaring awareness that illuminated his soul whenever he did the right thing, which also cost him something. This euphoria, however, was balanced by the utter terror he felt when he looked around and saw so many others to whom this consciousness was not only absent, but unknowable and abhorrent. Most people, MyungBo realized, were made of a different material than his, and it was not something that could shift, as from coldness to warmth, but an elemental and fundamental difference, like wood from metal.

This is, in my reading ear, the musing of a smart man on an immutable truth that does not ever appear the same way from person to person preceiving it; and, in his musing, retaining that awareness. I rang like a bell to this soft hammer striking me.

Current event make this read all the more trenchant. The world has never lacked people or peoples hard done by, consigned to lesser states of being than is their natural right by some standard or quality invented, "discovered," or detected without evidence of its relevance or importance. This passage in history, well, if I really need to spell it out for you I don't want to. This novel has a thriving culture that is suddenly deemed inferior, much to their mass outraged disbelief; this invented inferiority excuses a colonial oppression that has as its purpose eradicating a people's soul to be replaced with their oppressors' vision of perfect slaves.

And that, I expect you already know, is a hateful, criminal enterprise with many, many collaborators inside the edifice being created, as well as...much more terribly...many times more outside. When the day arrives that the false and ill-fitting, ramshackle and improvised, structure collapses, things brak and shatter and split and buckle in random-seeming shapes without patterns. Lives and loves and entire branches of family history jumble in lethal chaos, not every deat physical.

It might be the psychological ones that cause the most suffering.

What Juhea Kim has done for us is map that chaos onto one family of highly effective people who still can't save their lives, their loves, their lands without unthinkable suffering rippling out from the Korean nation's convulsive death-agonies, its multiplicity of death-agonies, and find in that chaos the undetected in the time of crisis pattern that supports random bits of the past just enough to provide the seeds for pearls to come, yet to come.

In 2024, this rread, beautiful for and in itself, means so much more than it did when it came out in 2021. It can speak its truth of betrayal and cruelty into a landscape more like itself; more like the one that needs to hear that truth said without rage or outrage or plangent pleading blame-shoving. I'd love for everyone I know, everyone I can reach, to at the least try this lovely flower's powerful fruit.

Please.

>124 atozgrl: Agreed.

>125 Familyhistorian: Oh, excellent news, Meg. I think Romano-Lax will be a new favorite for you. I sure hope so!

That image is chilling.

>126 vancouverdeb: We're on the same generational page, my dear lady. I am unendingly delighted that we got to get into the reading game while there was lots less controversy. *sad sigh*

>127 vancouverdeb: Thank you!

>128 richardderus: Beasts of a Little Land—an RD 5-star read?! Must go on the TBR!

Have a great weekend, Richard!

Karen O

>128 richardderus: Wonderful review, Richard! I'm pretty sure I got an eARC on my Kindle back in '21 and neglected to read it. I'll do my best to move it up the list to "read soon".

>123 richardderus: Somebody had to think to do this --- inevitable --- no less horrific.

>128 richardderus: Got me again! Maybe not yet, but on my radar with thanks.

I'm back, filled with happy memories and gratitude that we were right when we became friends 70+ years ago. The food was pretty spectacular too. I am, however, GLAD TO BE HOME!!!!!

*smooch* and a wish for your good weekend

>132 klobrien2: I hope it hits you as hard as it did me, and in the same places!

*smooch* for a fabOO weekend's reads, dear Karen O.!

>133 bell7: I read my DRC at last, thinking that world events might add some resonance to the read that my 2021 run at it did not.

Won that round against the DRC monster! I hope the same happens for you, dearest Mary.

>134 LizzieD: Peggy me lurve, the image's ugliness is a sign of its aptness and fit for today's world. Urpsome being reminded of 45's existence, but sadly....

YAY for old friends showing up at just the right moment! I'm quite sure you're glad to be snugly ensconced in your routines...I love it when Valerie visits me, and thoroughly luxuriate in my cocoon after she goes home. *smooch*

>123 richardderus: Really good. Is this generated by Artifical Intelligence?

>138 weird_O: Not in this instance, Bill. It's part of an artist whose work more often pair photos to famous artworks:

>128 richardderus: BB for me. I probably would not have chosen this if I saw it in the store or library. What an excellent review. That's the beauty of LT!

Happy weekend reading

>140 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita! I'm pleased I could hit you with a book-bullet on such a great read.

Enjoy the weekend's reads yourownself, my dear lady.

072 The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead. Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

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

My Review: FINALIST FOR THE 2024 LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL! Award will be given at the ceremony on 22 June 2024.

This is one long story. Long in words, long in facts, long! What it isn't is a dragging mess to read. Ghosts, abused boys, wretched families, the oppressive miasma of Florida's hideous climate...any one of these could've sent me on my way. Instead they all work as a gestalt of Horror, suffering, and terror that left me drained but made me as happy to know this story as an old white man who has never had to fear this kind of abuse and calculated cruelty can be at knowing, from the inside out, what the system I and mine have benefited from did while we were looking anywhere but there.

The single most awful part is that it's fictionalized, not fiction.

I just do not know why anyone would, based on skin color or other cosmetic or cultural factors, engineer a life designed to end quickly and prematurely for innocent victims. Othering, a long-standing weapon of mass destruction, is the cruelest and excuses the cruelest means of hurting those unloved. Why we keep burying our knowledge of its occurrence is perfectly clear after reading this story: Admitting that we tolerated this, knowing on some level that it was happening because these people vanished, but not how, not what horrifying acts occurred in our names, is acutely painful.

So is torture. So is the murder of your loved ones.

Suddenly the pain of reading about it isn't quite so bad, is it.

I hope this book wins the Best Horror Locus Award on the twenty-second of June. Pity it won't be Juneteenth.

>104 mahsdad: Thank you for the clarification, Jeff! I do not know about all the Libby, Overdrive, Hoopla stuff except to know what my local library offers.

>107 Morphidae: I am glad you are out, Morphy, but sorry to hear about the loss of your stepfather. Stay healthy, will you?

>128 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole since you so nicely added "please."

>142 richardderus: My local library has that one although I do worry about the horror aspects of it for me. I just cannot do horror.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes for a super Saturday, RD!

>142 richardderus: Another day, another BB. I got *Beasts* on my Kindle because I had a credit that paid for it. I'll have to wait for this one or any other by T. Due. Thanks, Richard!

*smooch*

>143 alcottacre: Morning, Stasia...please, please cross >142 richardderus: off your list. I want you to sleep calmly before 2026. If you read this book, you won't. Pretend I talked about applied chemistry of internal-combustion engines or something equally not your thing. Seriously.

>128 richardderus: OTOH...and tomorrow's read...well, those you're urged to pick up. Strongly.

STRONGLY.

*smooch*

>144 LizzieD: Morning, Peggy! I think the Locus Award shortlisting might bring her price down, especially if she wins. It's a tough read but one I think you'd get a lot out of.

Have a beautiful weekend, smoochling.

Happy weekend Richard!

>147 The_Hibernator: Thank you, Rachel, and the same to you and the family!

>142 richardderus: I don’t want to read this, but I think I must.

ETA the Touchstone goes to the wrong book.

>128 richardderus: OK -- on the list for my next trip to White Oak Books :)

>149 Storeetllr: Thank you for telling me, I've fixed the touchstone. And yeah, I think you should read it. This is a big subject and one that's just not wise to avoid.

>150 RebaRelishesReading: All the YAY! *smooch*

>151 richardderus: 😘

Okay, I put a hold on it at the library. It says 11 weeks, so it’s getting a lot of buzz. I think I can manage to wait. 😉

>153 Storeetllr: It isn't like you'll run out of reads, absent an apocalypse that makes reading moot.

073 Afterlight by Jaap Robben (tr. David Doherty)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This moving novel gives voice to the silent grief of the mothers of stillborn children

The young free-spirited florist Frieda grew up in a strictly Catholic environment in the 1960s. When she steps onto a frozen river on a late winter afternoon, little does she know that everything is about to change for her. On the ice, she meets the married Otto. They experience a love that begins stormy and ends with Frieda becoming pregnant—a scandal in the world in which she moves. And so she must never be the mother of her secret child.

For decades she kept her memories of this episode in her life to herself. But the grief for the lost child remains, despite the later marriage, despite the son she still has. At the age of eighty-one, Frieda is suddenly alone again. The silent sorrow returns with force. Only then does she dare to face her story—and to share it.

With Afterlight, inspired by true events, Robben not only pulls back the veil on Frieda’s story but also shines a light on the experiences of countless women between the 1950s and 1980s. The result is an impressive story about buried female trauma, caused by society, organized religion, and the dominant social mores.

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

My Review: I lost my love a lot earlier in life than Frieda did. He needed the level of care that Frieda does as the story begins, not me; nor have I yet reached the point where she is, of needing basic-living help.

Thank goodness the strokes I had in 2023 didn't make that help a lifelong need. But I still had the points of recognition and connection with Frieda from my life's story. I was right there with her as she adjusted to a new place to live that doesn't belong to her; I felt her dislocation as the night's disturbances had her groping around the unfamiliar space to find things she's sure she has, and still needs...only they aren't there and won't be again.

I am also familiar with the awful pains of being Othered by "religious" people, and told by The World that who you are is bad, and wrong, and will always cause their gawd to hate you and doom you to an eternity of punishment. Poor Frieda. I wouldn't say she overcomes that abusive horror in this story. I would say she makes her own way in life with the miracle of love offered her by the now-dead Louis...the one who fully expected he would survive her as she declined and lost more and more of herself. I asked Rob to read this book, and, after hearing what it was about, he looked at me through the computer screen and said, "No." Simple, final. Understandable.

It's a lot to ask: Frieda's happiness was bookended by a lot of pain. It is, though, the kind of pain that older people will relate to. It is a very familiar world that Frieda brings back to us in each time period. We've all been too young for some major life event that happened to us anyway. We've all felt unloved and abandoned...rightly, as in Frieda's case, or wrongly...and many, if not most, of us can relate deeply to loving someone and losing them. A lot of my readers are getting to the place where they, or their parents, are needing help that wasn't needed in the recent past. And all of that is what you and I share with Frieda.

Do you want to read about it for entertainment? Well, I did. I was pleased to have the fellow-feeling of Frieda's journey into the undignified, unpleasant (to me) world of bodily aging; as this is a story set in two timelines, though, I was expecting to be led into the sunnier meadows of the earlier life she led, and its youthful exuberance. Here is where the story fell short of the five stars all stories I read start with for me.

This is not a short book—three hundred-ish pages. There was space to develop the dual timeline, and it wasn't done. What's enjoyable about the way Author Jaap writes Frieda's story is the immediacy of it. He gets the sense of her, at every age, as a woman very much alert to the world around her; and yet unable to reach it, grasp it, without mediation...hearing aids, glasses, nurses, her husband, gawd...and so never fully having her own undiluted experience of anything.

Youthful inexperience prevented her from seeing the man who impregnated her in 1963 with any clarity, led to her downfall by the mediation of a religious upbringing that so starved her for genuine experience that she fell for the most unsubtle of lures. There's the consequences part of that in the book, but the stick gets applied without the carrot in my estimation.

That said, I liked this read. I liked its soft edges on hard realities...its gentle Impressionistic blur is, though, down to poor vision, not to a soft reality. That made it the more poignant to read. It's an enjoyable, relatable story well-told by an author who knows his subject. It's deftly translated...no clunks or clanks, and nothing that my early-learner study of Dutch saw as out of place...which helps.

Good is not the enemy of great when it is enough in itself.

Morning, Richard. Happy Sunday. I am back, after a fun birding trip. We go at it hard, so it can be a bit exhausting. I decided to have a lazy day with the books, since I read nothing for the past few days.

Dropping off new week smooches. Looks like the books have been treating you well.

>156 msf59: Morning, Mark, welcome back! Enjoy your bookish rest-day.

>157 MickyFine: Merry week-to-come, Micky!

074 Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin (tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Tonight is the opening night. There are birds perched everywhere, on the power lines, the guy ropes, the strings of light that festoon the tent . . . when I think of all those little bodies suspended between earth and sky, it makes me smile to remind myself that for some of them, their first flight begins with a fall.

Nathalie arrives at the circus in Vladivostok, Russia, fresh out of fashion school in Geneva. She is there to design the costumes for a trio of artists who are due to perform one of the most dangerous acts of all: the Russian Bar.

As winter approaches, the season at Vladivostok is winding down, leaving the windy port city empty as the performers rush off to catch trains, boats and buses home; all except the Russian bar trio and their manager. They are scheduled to perform at a festival in Ulan Ude, just before Christmas.

What ensues is an intimate and beguiling account of four people learning to work with and trust one another. This is a book about the delicate balance that must be achieved when flirting with death in such spectacular fashion, set against the backdrop of a cloudy ocean and immersing the reader into Dusapin’s trademark dreamlike prose.

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

My Review: In less time than it takes Houellebecq to clear his throat in The Possibility of an Island, a book which goes on a similar trip, Dusapin starts and finishes this story. Nathalie is a woman who leaves, finds, and abandons in a country that, unluckily for the author, is an international pariah at the time her novel appears in English. Even more unluckily, it features a Ukrainian acrobat performing in a Russian circus troupe. So, through no fault of her own, Dusapin has created an artifact of a bygone time in this story.

Swiss-educated Nathalie has a fashion degree, which she is using in Vladivostok, Siberia, to work with a troupe of acrobats as they pursue a very difficult performance piece. So, already the theme of leaving is prominent: She left tidy, bourgeois Switzerland for the extreme edge of the wildest place in a wild country, Siberia, at the edge of Russia. The country is itself at the edge of the Asian continent; something I think a lot of people forget is that Korea, Dusapin's previously centered culture, is very close to Siberia. Nathalie is now, temporarily, in a port city, working with a troupe of performers who tour with a circus, and who are practicing an extremely difficult maneuver called "the Russian Bar," a name that carries a whole different cultural freight of metaphor in 2024 than it did when she wrote the book in 2020.

This is, one would expect, the McGuffin, the thing that motivates the action but, in itself is fungible. I thought it sounded like a great McGuffin for a young woman abandoning the bourgeois life that a Swiss fashion design degree virtually condemns one to, by literally running away from home to join the bloody circus.

Only partially true.

We do indeed have the young woman (instead of Daniel, the narrator of The Possibility of an Island and my idea of "the Houellebecqian man") on a voyage of self-discovery among the acrobats. Their extremes of hard, dangerous work, their deeply set bonds of trust built from many, many painful falls and much incredibly focused work on balance and dexterity, aren't exactly subtle metaphors for the young woman who abandons an entire life in Switzerland to start afresh to encounter. The work that Nathalie does, the external and honestly almost extraneous work of dressing these finely honed athletic bodies pales beside their training. Her choreography likewise is just a way of getting them out of one position in time to enact another athletic feat, while telling a story.

So she is only a part of the externals, the appearances of the actual group...the men and women whose work and commitment to each other, to building their trust in each other, makes the act...verb and noun...possible in the first place. But this semi-outsider is the one needed to refine and design the public face, the pretty dress that they need to sell the act...verb and noun...to a group of judges.

Okay? You with me on the meaning, and the stakes?

But the McGuffin is decidedly not just the moitvator here. Author Dusapin, deft of phrase, makes this McGuffin into a deeply explored reality:

Backstage, a pungent animal smell hits me. Straw scattered on the ground. Streaks of dirt on the walls. Like a stable but with velvet lining—hoops instead of horses, waist-high wooden balls, metal poles, tangles of cables, drones in the shape of planes, straw hats hanging on hooks. Leon tugs a cord and the curtains part.
–and–
She places a chair on the bar, balances it on two legs. They hold it in place for as long as they can, barely moving a muscle. Sometimes Leon is there with me. He explains to me why exercises of this kind are so important: the flyer has to rely entirely on the bases for balance and not try to stabilise herself at all. Think of Anna as the chair, he says, that’s how passive she has to be. It’s one of the hardest things about the Russian bar discipline.

There's a lot more detail about the specifics of the Russian Bar, and while I applaud Author Dusapin for making the physicality of the act...verb and noun...so starkly plain to us, and drawing our attention to the extreme discipline it takes a woman to perform as expected under the constant pressure of a hypercritical, unseen audience, its details are rather more prominent in the story than my interest in them required. It gave me rather less pleasure, then, than Author Dusapin's previous novels did.

But let's be clear about this: I enjoyed this novel a good deal more than most. I enjoyed the lovely translation. I enjoyed the thought-provoking metaphor of acrobatic performance for a young woman's acquired presentation of self; I enjoyed the Asian setting's evocative potentials. This is a compact, intense dose of good storytelling.

>145 richardderus: Thank you for the advice regarding your recent recommendations, dear sir. It has been duly noted!

>155 richardderus: >160 richardderus: Adding those to the BlackHole.

Have a terrific Tuesday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today

Thanks for dropping encouraging comments on my thread about what I'm reading. Returning the favor, Richard, is fraught with all the book bullets zinging around. My WANT! List has about 130 titles on it already. Book sale tomorrow, too.

Good morning, Good Richard! I am continuing to enjoy Saint Elspeth. I had hoped to finish it in the doctor's waiting room yesterday and was aghast to find that my Kindle was almost out of battery juice. I will finish today. I ponder getting to Dr. Welker to say that his work deserves a higher level of English usage. I find it hard to believe that an educated man could get so far in life and still write, "between him and I" or "Me and him did this and that" or even "they were laying on the floor." Oh well.

I was also just looking at my wish list. I think the *Epitome Apartments* series must have come from you, and I want them. I am going to be an adult and read a few more before I indulge in them.

*smooch*

>161 alcottacre: So happy I've helped both hitting and missing your reading singularity, Stasia. I'm hopeful that steering people away from books I suspect they will not like is just as valuable as towards the ones they might.

*smooch*

>162 weird_O: I'm glad you're here, Bill, can't book-bullet absentees.

You're off to a book sale? How I envy you! Haul in some good bibliofoundlings in my name.

>163 LizzieD: *chuckle* I'm pretty sure Welker would accept the critique, he's a class act.

I am guilty as charged on the Epitome Apartments series. Candas Jane Dorsey is unjustly underknown. Indulge, is my exhortation to you. *smooch*

>155 richardderus: I have tried Jaap Robben twice (You Have Me to Love and Summer Brother), both times it was an unstatisfactory read for me. So I ignored his later books. Now you, and some readers with similair taste on a Dutch readers website, are positieve about Afterlight. I might give Jaap Robben a last chance.

>167 FAMeulstee: I think it is a fair, and well-founded, suspicious attitude. Neither of those stories would make me want to read more from him! (Especially Summer Brother.) (*shudder*)

This book is...I don't know, less artificial? Less contrived? Something about it resonated with me, felt like it was being carefully handled not slung at me like a rock the way those others were. If you do not like this one, Jaap Robben just is not for you, and you've been so much more than fair to him.

Happy to see you here! *smooch*

>163 LizzieD: Ack! I don't like any of those grammatical errors, but "between him and I" makes me want to scream bloody murder. I hear even worse ("between he and I") and similar on TV all the time. I don't know if I could tolerate it in a book.

*peeks* Is it safe to come back yet?

075 My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In a world where the dead can wake and walk among us, what is truly real?

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the only good thing in Roos’ life, which is filled with sordid backroom séances organized by her mother. That is, until wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop attends one of these séances and asks Roos to come live with her at the crumbling estate she inherited upon the death of her husband. The manor is unsettling, but the attraction between Roos and Agnes is palpable. So how does someone end up dead?

Roos is caught red-handed, but she claims a spirit is the culprit. Doctor Montague, a psychologist tasked with finding out whether Roos can be considered mentally fit to stand trial, suspects she’s created an elaborate fantasy to protect her from what really happened. But Roos knows spirits are real; she's loved one of them. She'll have to prove her innocence and her sanity, or lose everything.

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

My Review: Satisfying sapphic romantic story of a woman who uses legit psychic powers in service of a horrible, harridanly charlatan. Or the story of an impressionable mentally ill young woman in thrall to a horrible, harridanly charlatan who grabs hold of sapphic love to effect her escape from abuse.

Either one fits. Both take us down the very dark, quite chilling paths that Author Johanna ushers the reader down. Roos, our PoV, has never experienced a normal life. It's the second culturally Dutch novel I've read this month that paints a very bleak picture of Dutch life after WWII, though I suppose that isn't exactly a shock is it. What does surprise me is the deeply homophopbic atmosphere Author Johanna portrays...I suppose the patriarchal horror of the world she's limned before our utterly appalled eyes is a big part of that, as the homophobia in question is directed at sapphic lovers.

If I'm to offer you one inducement to exceed all the others to get this book into y'all's hands, I'm going with: Dutch Author Johanna wrote this book in English, about lesbian survivors of a horrifying war in the Netherlands, because she's Dutch, because she's lesbian, and because she's clearly not quite right. How many people can accrete so many out-of-mainstream identities, write a story directly centered in them all, and get it published in the insular US market? And then, topping the high-calorie literary sundae with its obligatory gorgeously red cherry, create the undead/zombie character that twangs your readerly heartstrings with her fullness and pathos? Sweet, dead Ruth...my favorite zombie!

There are no others, just this one.

You can read, and there's a synopsis above this, so you know what's going on. I'm here to tell you if I think Author Johanna did the job of convincing me to invest in her world: Yes. Did she make me think long and hard about how the transactional world cheapens, while defining, human relationships: Better than the Southern Gothics. Roos is a classic Tennessee Williams character, a Blanche Dubois plus agency, with the psychic fragility and serious Love problems; Ruth puts me in mind of a gender-flipped Darl Bundren, articulate, doomed. Did her writing cause me to sit quiet for long moments, committing parts to memory: once, which is once more than most books I read. (It's a spoiler, so I daren't share; the Spoiler Stasi are ever vigilant and quick with their truncheons.)

The unique quality I literally never expect from horror, especially Gothic horror, novels is, here, the pervasive Dutchness of the story. It could not be reset in the US, or England, without losing the special something that kept luring me past my usual guardrails against con-artist faux psychics and fantastical stories of spirit lovers. These are usually the tropes I use as reminders that I have compararively few eyeblinks left and don't want to waste them. Author Johanna, in using postwar, post-Occupation Netherlandish settings, convinced me not to pre-judge these characters. Their long national trauma, their dark personal traumas, their battles faught against real cultural horrors, all formed a gestalt of world and people that convinced me to set my usual intolerance for these ideas aside and consider them as real...to the characters, thus opening the door to my belief as well.

That's a huge achievement for an author I'm unfamiliar with. I'm really pleased to say that I felt the ending was indeed a payoff commensurate with my investment of care and attention.

Brava, Johanna van Veen. Clearly your genesis as the odd-triplet-out was predictive of your sui generis selfhood. I'm eager for more from you.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. I had a fine time hanging out with Jack yesterday. Honestly, he is a joy to be around, although it can get exhausting. Picking up my other "kids" this morning and then playing some pickleball. We are also gearing up for another camping trip this weekend. The first of 3 this month. Whew!

>169 atozgrl: I guess I'm getting desensitized by the volume of bad grammar there is out in the world. Scares me, until I remember the way my grandfather railed against "hopefully."

>170 humouress: I shall not Jell- your -O, I promise.

>172 msf59: Morning, Mark! Kids are, as you remember, fun for sprints and exhausting for marathons. Hard blinkin' work. Enjoy your good-busy day!

>172 msf59: Good thing you can hand him back to his parents then :0)

Hello Ricardo!! Thanks for keeping my thread warm. You da best. Smooches in return. Now I am leaving before I make some grammatical mistake. ; ) Happy Wednesday!

>177 Berly: Hi Berly-boo! *smooch*

The best thing to do, in life, is keep it zipped and don't make anyone irked.

Never works for long, but it makes sense from the peaceful-life standpoint.

>173 richardderus: What bugs me is that I'm somewhat of a sponge - I unconsciously copy whatever I see a lot of. Bad spelling, bad grammar - but also new idioms and new ideas.

>179 ArlieS: I think that's a common experience for many of us, if not most. That's such a key skill, though, finding and emulating good new ideas, that the bad ones aren't so prominent on Evolution's radar.

A belated Happy Thread, Richard! I'm enjoying the dreadful Jello dinner and desert. Ugh! Wednesday *smooch*

>181 vancouverdeb: Good Wednesday, Goody Deborah, and a most cordiall welcome unto this, my thread the tenth.

(Just finished a fantasy novel. You should, please, to forgive.)

>173 richardderus: I have loathed "hopefully," and have quite given it up as another lost cause. I will not start on what I loathe even more now. I know that language changes, but I hate to see ours become unrecognizable. Pronunciation is bugging me. if current trends continue, we wouldn't be able to understand what they were saying if we lived another 50 years. (Holy Moly! Look at the construction of that sentence!) I won't. I guess some of your friends here may. Good luck to them!

>171 richardderus: Of course I did a search for Johanna van Veen, seems this is her first, and not available in Dutch! She has my mothers last name, probably not family, as it is a fairly common name.

What does surprise me is the deeply homophopbic atmosphere
Sadly large parts of our country are like that, often not openly, under the surface. And deeply felt by those who are excluded.
It won't get any better with our brand new goverment :'(

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

I've posted an inventory of yesterday's gains. Over at my place. :-)

075 Seeker (The Sentinel Archives #1) by Samuel Griffin

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: "Today I am equipped with the knowledge that my future was to be far greater, more exciting, and more disturbing than anything so simple as my young imagination could then conjure. Indeed, looking back, my forecast was positively quaint. I ask myself a question often, and it is this: if I had understood all that was to befall me, would I have run, that day, or exulted?

I find I do not know."

Ancient leviathans have stirred from their long slumber. Their scent song marks where they might be found but only to those who have the means to somewhat hear it: Sentinel Archivists.

Shay Bluefaltlow finds herself training to become such a specialist when she is forced into indentured servitude. Her new home, the city of Fivedock, is strange and unfamiliar, as are her new companions: a belligerent surgeon, a remarkable little boy, and a formidable Sentinel Archivist tasked with teaching Shay the terrifying ways of the trade.

Her unanticipated position requires rigorous training, diligent study and a strong constitution. Shay, afraid she is unequal to the prodigious task but desperate to impress her superior, struggles to prove herself.

When war breaks out across the Concord, the office of the Sentinel Archivist is threatened by a terrible betrayal. And Shay has secrets of her own.

Packed with era detail to bring the world to vivid life, realistic, but with strong fantastical elements, a rich regency voice, and a bewitching touch of strangeness, Seeker is an immersive first-person fantasy for adults.

Griffin does for regency era fantasy what Robin Hobb did for medieval: this isn’t just a fiction, this is a living and breathing world you dunk yourself in. An intimate journey with real characters. With incredibly accomplished, enchanting prose, and a beating heart of a story.

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

My Review: You like fantasy novels more than I do. I promise you this is true. So why did I get a DRC of this title?

To see if there are cracks in my walls of resistance. And, well, I like this novel just fine. The ideas don't cause me to roll my eyes...the worldbuilding, in other words, does iits job with reasonable facility...but neither did the idea of an orphan-special-chosen-one meets scoobygroup cause me to get all excited. Executed well, or I'd've made tracks for the door; still, not the most energizing choice for this fantasy agnostic.

The faux-archaic tone, for some reason, hit me the right way. I was surprised by this, honestly because I usually find it arch and/or tedious. Author Griffin did a good job finding a middle ground between those unpleasant poles. As a result, I really enjoyed the read.

It moves slowly. The first half of the book is just not paced correctly, in that there were many times scenes went on way too long, and I was sorely tempted to shut the Kindle and move on to other things. That I didn't is honestly a little miracle. The Archivists kept me going. I wanted to know what the heck this was all connected to. But keep in mind I'm not a fantasy-novel reader as a rule. Maybe you fantasy aficionados will respond differently. Those who like the trend towards library- and archive-centered stories could, in particular, find something special.

Why I think you should give it a chance really boils down to that. You read the genre? Read widely! Wider than usual, for you "high-fantasy" folks. Much on a par for those who loved Susanna Clarke's magisterial Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Magic and fantasy, books and lore, people and quests, just belong together. Come get some more.

>186 richardderus: That one sounds intriguing, but it's not in my local library system and I'm not willing to shell out the bucks for the Kindle version right now with all the other books clamoring for my attention. I shall take it under advisement.

>183 LizzieD: The pace of change is absolutely never comfortable, for everyone, and often enough for the majority. I don't expect to be alive in fifty years, either...I sure as hell hope I'm not, anyway...and, well, yes indeed we'd be absolutely undone by the world as it will be. I hope they're more happy than unhappy, but history says that's risible. Would I understand them? Nope. Do I want to try? Nope.

Language will need to suit them, not me, so let 'em rip says I. I think it's unlikely to be beautiful, but my standards won't apply. *sigh*

>184 FAMeulstee: Thursday orisons, Anita! The way tthe world's headed makes me ill with despair. The lowest, least intelligent, most hateful scum are emboldened by the cynical rapacious avatars of their inner rot that are being installed in power.

That is not, I console myself, the majority. But throughout history those low-minded, amoral scum have always managed to strangle the good, decent people's will to improve and accept change and create just and inclusive structures. I see no reason to believe the same scum will not repeat the trick this time.

>185 weird_O: I shall coddiwomple thitherward here directly.

>186 richardderus: Hmm. Well, let's see if the libraries have it.

......

ETA: sadly, no luck. The closest I got was The Diary of Samuel Pepys and A Family Sketch by Mark Twain.

>191 humouress: It just got released Tuesday, Nina. I doubt anyone will look at the list of a teensy little UK press that soon! Even in its former colonies. Patience, grasshopper....

>186 richardderus: That's another BB for me, the lover of fantasy, but like Mary I'll wait for my reading to catch up with my spending - sort of. I wish that I felt that I could bully you into reading The Hands of the Emperor, which is my fantasy find for at least the decade, and then that you might move on to At the Feet of the Sun with its theme of love in gender issues. I can't do it in good conscience even if I thought I'd be effective. They are both too long, but the fangirl in me wishes that they had gone on longer.

>188 richardderus: Agreed, Richard, except that I doubt that the majority notices or would care if they did notice.

*smooch*

>193 LizzieD: It's the apathy that really grinds my gears. "It's not ME, so, so what?"

It's not you yet. It will be. The world They (paranoid voice) want needs enemies, and They decide who those enemies are.

Victoria Goddard *flees shrieking* nononononono not me pleasepleaseplease not me!!

>194 humouress: IJBOL

That image simply never occurred to me! Well spotted!

This article about the King's new official portraitas romantasy novel covers is a scream:
https://lithub.com/king-charles-new-royal-portrait-as-romantasy-covers/
I luuuv THE MAN WHO RUINED PASTA NIGHT!
For reference, this is it, unmodified.

>173 richardderus: >183 LizzieD: My mother used to complain about "hopefully" also. Unfortunately, I always heard it used that way, and I'm afraid I'm as guilty of that particular error as most people. I'm with you on the pronunciation thing too. I hear things pronounced in ways I never heard when I was younger. Some of them seem to be adoption of Brit-speak. But others... why are people dropping the first "T" in Atlanta and Atlantic? However, I hope it's not quite as bad you think, and that we could still understand them in 50 years. Not that I will be here then.

>197 richardderus: I shared that glorious article with some co-workers today (it's work related...well, book related). Thanks for the laugh!

Also you missed me at >187 bell7: between posts :)

>187 bell7: Good gravy, Mary! I'm sorry I missed you! And no indeed, don't rush out to get more ~meh~ on your own dime. It wasn't that great.

>200 bell7: So I did, sorry! Wasn't that a hilarious diversion? *smooch*

>201 richardderus: and >202 richardderus: All good, my friend, I have certainly missed a comment or two, especially when I'm posting a couple in a row and they sneak in between. I will not rush out and get the book then; I certainly have enough on my list not to rush out for meh. And the LitHub article is hilarious! *smooch* back

>173 richardderus: >198 atozgrl: Can someone explain what's wrong with 'hopefully'?

>136 richardderus: I like the look of that one.

My reaction to that portrait of Charles was that it looked like he finally became that tampon he once aspired to be...

Happy Friday, RD.

>204 SandDune: Morning, Rhian...I think you'd like >136 richardderus: so I hope you'll give it a go.

No one can explain what's wrong with "hopefully" because nothing is. Like prepositions at the end of senteces and split infinitives, it's the ossified snobbery of the latinists whose perception of overcomplicated, underflexible Latin as The Exemplar of clear thought when it's really just a pettifogger's delight somehow is accepted as Correct.

>205 katiekrug: IJBOL

Perfect!

Happy Friday, Richard. We are getting ready to push off for our next camping trip. This time Juno is tagging along. We are hoping she will be a good girl. Have a wonderful weekend.

>208 msf59: Have a lovely time, Mark! Juno hasn't been a problem before, has she? I hope the trip is without unpleasant incident.

>206 richardderus: Well-stated, Richard! Language is changing all the time, it will happen in spite of any “rules.” You reminded me so much of John McWhorter! The latest article I read by him dealt with apostrophes, and how they probably don’t serve any good purpose anymore.

Happy weekend, Mr. Richard!

Karen O

Here’s a link to the article. I hope it works. Let me know if you’d rather I didn’t post it here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opinion/lets-chill-out-about-apostrophes.html

>206 richardderus: Of course, I am an ossified snob of a latinist. I still think words mean what they say.

Hopefully, you will do it.
If I am predicting that you will do the thing with hope, that's a fine sentence although the word order is screwy.
If I mean that I hope that you will do it, that's not fine.

As I say, I've given that argument up. We all know what people mean, so let it go.

*smooch*

>210 klobrien2: Thanks, Karen O.! McWhorter, for all his occasional forays into jerkdom, does make a lot of sense to me. I suspect apostrophes are on the way out because people have such trouble with their use. I wonder, though, about fighting that one...the meaning argument comes to the fore. It's not likely to win since so many seem to be more confused than assisted by its plural-vs-possessive use, and the concept "elision" is all but dead... *sigh*

>211 LizzieD: Well, not so ossified as to keep poking your rockier mental appendages at the hoi polloi. As you say, we all know what we mean, so let it go.

It's a lesson I'm ramming my noggin into here at my facility...the drunkard's having TIEs, and not a soul can be arsed to give it more than a sympathetic "oh, that's too bad." Like the gift package that someone walked off with, nothing will be done.

>206 richardderus: Oh I see. It is a 'fronted adverbial'. They are definitely considered proper grammar in British English as there has been much controversy about the fact that primary school children are being taught to use and recognise them. Not controversy from the point of view of it being an incorrect use of language, but from the point of view that it is a stultifyingly boring way to teach English to 9 or 10 year olds!

When I was doing my English literature degree we were discussing this issue in a seminar and most of us had no idea what one was (although I have since learnt).

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/23/dear-gavin-williamson-could-yo...

OK, I'll admit it. I like McWhorter, I like apostrophes and I like the King's portrait.

>214 SandDune: "fronted adverbial" is one of those phrases that makes sense when scanned but sounds impenetrable and complicated despite not being any such thing. Better marketing, English-course designers!

>215 RebaRelishesReading: I'm fine with the first two; the last, nope. *smooch*

>212 richardderus: I have to say that people using apostrophes in simple plurals really annoys me. Unfortunately, the NYT article is behind a paywall so I can't read the argument for dropping them altogether.

>218 atozgrl: Boils down to gatekeeping when it's clear from context what's actually meant. The argument will win formally because it's already won on Norma Scribendi's watch. It's a mistake IMO.

>171 richardderus: Was that book number 75?

Congrats on reaching the collective goal!

>220 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! I'm at about 102-103 in total reads; that's #75 of the full reviewed book, not three-sentenced.

So thanks, but not necessary to offer congrats!

I liked the King's portrait. I was reminded of the furor over the Obama's portraits when I heard the story. I think that portrait's should be a reflection of the time and the person. I think this portrait does that. It would be a shame if somebody painted him in the style of Holbein. I am thankful that Charles had the hutzpah to give the commission to somebody with a different vision who carried it out with aplomb.

>222 benitastrnad: I approve heartily of the King's decision, and of his response to this portrait...it's a surprisingly not-anodyne choice and his even-tempered response is a good idea in a world where his job is on the line like his mother's never was.

It's hideous. It looks like potted ham too thickly spread on white bread and then the spreader got a nosebleed. Separate issues, aesthetics and politics.

>220 figsfromthistle: Oh, I missed that. (Not unusual for me.)

Congratulations on 75 Richard!

>224 humouress: Thanks, but I'm at 104 actually....

>225 richardderus: Yes, but you passed 75 to get there.

Tcha! (I can rescind the congrats if you prefer.)

>225 richardderus: >226 humouress: Oh, you two! I am always happy to see another round between you.

*smooch* for the day with wishes for some uninterrupted reading and some decent food at the very least!

>227 LizzieD: Happy to oblige. Would you like more? ;0)

>212 richardderus: It does not help at all that some of the "spell check" and "grammar check" bots don't seem to have been programmed correctly for apostrophe use.

I am not even trying to catch up, RD, just dropping off ((Hugs)) and **kisses** and hopes that you have a super Saturday and a wonderful weekend!

>226 humouress: No need...just commenting.

>227 LizzieD: *smooch*

It's Saturday...no cooking because their gawd doesn't think that's necessary, so I'll be drinking Ensure since I abhor their egg salad.

>228 humouress: *snort* As though a mere supervillainess could touch me. Remember, the all-powerful gawd that rules the youniverse hates me personally and has condemned me to hell...
...
...
...which explains the egg salad, come to think of it....

>229 ArlieS: Edge cases bewilder technology even more than humanity so it's no wonder the programmers just throw up their hands.

>230 alcottacre: *smoochiesmoochsmooch*

>235 richardderus: They are needed right now. The black dog is encroaching again.

>236 alcottacre: Beat that bastard back with more *smoochiesmoochsmooch* then! Begone foul fiend!

>233 richardderus: There's no 'mere' about this supervillainess, thank you.

(You think the egg salad didn't have some help?)

>238 humouress: Then the egg salad needs *more* help.

>237 richardderus: You tell it, Richard!

>223 richardderus:
That response made me laugh. The Separate issues, aesthetics and politics.

I saw the Obama portrait in real life and was very impressed by it, but just standing in the National Portrait Gallery, there were many comments about why was he in flowers? I thought it was the kind of portrait that made you stop - look - and think. Isn't that what portraits are supposed to do? Even that god awful portrait of Henry VIII by Holbein does that - as much as I despise the personage represented. I just think that the portrait of Charles is of that same ilk. So separate issues - aesthetics and politics.

>241 benitastrnad: I think that one was about the idea of A Presidential Portrait. It looked frivolous to people expecting it to be some sanctioned idea of Presidential. OTOH it was a great portrait of who President Obama was to the country, and was also aesthetically interesting to me. So again we run into the political issue of what a particular portrait is for: whose commission it was, whose property it will be, all the rest of the details that more often than not go completely unexamined in the honking and bleating that passes for discourse when art is the topic.

Today's Thought from Anu Garg's A Word A Day:
Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand. -Mark Abley, writer and editor (b. 13 May 1955)
The image my friend Rod Duncan posted as today's mood strikes me as perfect to go with:

>223 richardderus: When I saw that picture on your thread above, I just assumed it was an unfinished portrait. I was honestly stunned this morning when I saw a short blurb on a news program indicating that that was in fact the completed portrait. It's certainly ... odd.

>244 atozgrl: "Odd" is a polite way to put it. Idiosyncratic choice to give the entire *portrait* such a uniform palette. The surprise to me is that HM the King, quite opinionated on aesthetics, indicated what seemed to me quite genuine approval of it.

Go know from people, eh? Never can tell what they'll think.

>245 richardderus: I couldn't give a fig for the King and his family but I do agree with you, dear fellow, the portrait is hideous.

Happy Mondays, RD. Hope the week starts well at least.

076 The Guncle Abroad (The Guncle #2) by Steven Rowley

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the nationally bestselling author of The Guncle comes the much-anticipated sequel, in which Patrick O’Hara is called back to his guncle duties…at a big, family wedding in Lake Como, Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is finally in a league of his own…professionally. Inspired by his stint as Grant and Maisie’s caretaker after their mother’s passing, Patrick has "un-stalled" his acting career with sit-com, Guncle Knows Best. Still, some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single and lonely after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has family, right?

When his brother Greg announces his big, second wedding in Lake Como, Italy, Patrick feels pulled toward Grant and Maisie and flies to Europe to attend the lavish event, only to butt heads with a newfound Launt (Lesbian Aunt), curb his sister Clara from flirting with guests, and desperately restore himself to the favored relative status in the eyes of the kids, as they struggle to adjust to a new normal. But is it Patrick’s job to save the day? Or is simply celebrating love enough to quell the family chaos?

Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley delivers the long-awaited sequel to a beloved story, all about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.

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

My Review: Teenagers. Yikes! Maisie's dad is getting remarried to a Very Glamourous Italian, which is NOT a way to a bookish teen girl's heart. Grant is eleven, doesn't really have a lot of interest in the wedding parts, but will—he thinks—definitely prefer his life without an Italian marchesa for a stepmom, since Maisie's churned those waters. The gruesome twosome turn to their truly belovèd Guncle Patrick, their Dad's big brother, for help stopping what they see as impending disaster.

Guncle ("gay uncle" if you need a refresher) has, in agreeing to "help" them, got a plan. The issue with plans is that teenagers, with their fully adult-strength emotions and complete absence of perspective, most often see through plans and get...stroppy...when they feel manipulated.

Clever Guncle...take the kids on a European tour, since he's already finishing up a film role in London, and talk to them...remember "Guncle Rules"? now they're "Love Languages"...while working through their fears about their Dad moving on from their Mom's early death. It will, not coincidentally, help him move on from his recent breakup with Emory, whom I feel sure we've all forgotten from The Guncle. At any rate, it's a welcome distraction from the entertainment business for a successful...again...sitcom...again...star, and a man about to turn the Big Five-Oh. Yep, the guy who found being loudly reminded by his loving niece that he was forty-three tantamount to a hate crime is a half-century old.

Does his wiliness now exceed his willingness to be there for his family? Close-run thing if you ask me.

Well, Rowley's still got his humor vein open. I loved this bit:

“Sequels are either too bloated, too stuffed with B-team actors or characters or Ewoks—things that weren’t good enough for the original. A cash grab to profit off something that was probably a fluke in the first place.”

Cassie glanced at the surrounding patrons, perhaps wishing she could dine with one of them.

“The only time it maybe works—and I mean the only time—is when there wasn’t an ending that was entirely happy, when not everything was tied up in a neat little bow. Otherwise you have to undo someone’s happy ending to create more drama for your characters, and no one likes a happy ending undone. And what stories these days don’t have happy endings?”

Thus Patrick to his long-suffering agent...and Author Rowley tipping his hat to the audience. It's not the first time I've been here, so pay me the respect of telling me you're aware of that fact. I appreciated it, and was simultaneously amused by it. It joins the host of amusing moments that this whirlwind tour of Europe that must be completed in time for the destination wedding on Lake Como...shades of Patrick Dennis and Around the World with Auntie Mame, another sequel that has to undo a happy ending...and you get a fun, funny summertime escape in book form. That is a wonderful lot.

Of course, this is not the first time we've met these characters, so there's a lost sparkle that can't be recreated no matter what one does. In its place is a luster, the warm burnished glow from a fine silver samovar, one that always spills its tea warmed to perfection into your perfectly prepared cup. Sweet...the return and humanization of oldest sister Clara in her latest reinvention of self...bitter, Patrick's jealousy of the marchesa's lesbian sister who woos her way into Maisie and Grant's affections...fun, the comical nightmare rehearsal dinner like something from The Philadelphia Story, only...um...earthier, and honestly de trop. Tropes. Well polished, gleaming tropes that most story-loving readers want to read because they are familiar and dear and relatable. What story about a wedding that deserves one's attention at all doesn't feature some concatenation of mishaps?

The utter charm of how the world rights itself in romantic fiction is a source of delight.

Come be delighted. (But dear GOD, the w-verbing has got to stop!)

>246 PaulCranswick: On an aesthetic level, I think it fails to convey any clear vision for why it should exist. Politically, go Chuck! Don't be any stuffier than you can possibly help being.

>247 Helenliz: Thank you, Helen. At least I got a good read reviewed to start my week, and that always begins my efforts with something to smile about.

Dropping off new week smooches and delighted to see the new Guncle novel was a good read for you.

>251 MickyFine: Hi Micky! Happy to see you. I was very pleasantly surprised by how very willing I was to re-enter this world without HUGE expectations. It charmed me where the first one wowed me, so I was worried...sequelitis averted, thank goodness.

*smooch*

Your review reminds me I need to get to The Guncle which I've had for a couple of years now...

>253 katiekrug: It's a fun read, despite centering around grief and loss. I hope you can get into it soon!

*smooch*

>237 richardderus: Doing better today, RD. Thanks for the *smoochiesmoochsmooch*. I am sure that did the trick!

>248 richardderus: I definitely need to read that one. I thoroughly enjoyed The Guncle.

Have a marvelous Monday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today.

Good morning, Good Richard. I'll have to wish for The Guncle first, thus postponing another opportunity to be delighted.
I wish you some delight in your day with a *smooch*!

I thought the portrait was forward thinking and edgy. It did what it was supposed to do - make people think. I think the artist deserves kudo's for doing it and Chuck for approving it. With a smile.

On another subject - the portrait was done as a gift for the art collection of the Draper's Guild. I was curious about this organization and so did some digging. The Draper's Guild is the modern day remnant of the Cloth and Wool Merchants Guild and traces its history back to the 1100's. Today, these are the people who make the livery and suits. Seville Row tailors can be members of this, now charitable organization. Charles III is not the first monarch to be a member. That honor goes to William of Orange. (the William in William and Mary).
The official name for the guild is - The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mystery of Drapers of the City of London. Both men and women can be members that has been the case almost from the inception of the organization. Charles III has been a member of this guild for 70 years and the portrait was commissioned by him to add to the art collection the guild has. Turns out this art collection is nothing to sneeze at. The site of their present home was purchased from Henry VIII after it was confiscated from Thomas Cromwell. They have an extensive archive of documents dating back to the 1200's and they have a full time archivist. They give tours of the place, including the archives and the art collection to groups. Donations to be used for the charitable organizations supported by the guild are requested instead of paying a fee for the tours.

I am sure that Charles' portrait will be one of the most popular items on the art tour. Perhaps that was the point of the painting? Controversy almost always translates into money for somebody.

>255 alcottacre: That's great to hear, Stasia. I think, given the nature of the stories that appeal to you, this one will succeed in entertaining you in all the right ways.

I'll bet your library will buy it, but it doesn't come out (!) until tomorrow, so give it some time...but go put your hold on it now!

>256 LizzieD: Goody Peggy! How delightful. My day is brightened considerably now, and yours will be when you get to The Guncle, which I feel confident your library has now. Hint, hint.

*smooch*

>257 benitastrnad: Politically the portrait was a stroke of excellent insight: controversy, as you note, is a money-spinner. The Drapers Guild is going to get a boost from this! That they are a charitable org is another piece of savvy positioning by HM the King. When your face has value, use it to create more for those who need help.

Aesthetically I hate it but it's doing a fabulous job for worthy causes.

>248 richardderus: I’ve got The Guncle requested, and I’m on the wait list for The Guncle Abroad.
Both sound very good. Thanks for your review!

Karen O

>261 klobrien2: Oh wunderbar, Karen O.! I hope the series wiles its way into your heart as it has mine.

And with >248 richardderus:, #PrideMonth launches! see >6 richardderus: for an outline of The Plan.

>259 richardderus: I'll almost guarantee that my library does not have a copy of The Guncle. They buy romances for women and I have no idea what for men - maybe James Patterson. They did buy one copy of The Underground Railroad for me when it came out, but they hadn't heard of it. They also bought one of the Cormoran Strike series when it was new and I was poor.