swynn reads stuff in 2021 (3): even stuffier

I'm Steve, 52, a technical services librarian at a medium-sized public university. I live in Missouri with my wife and son and Buddy (name and occupation), a Terrier-mix chaser of squirrels, rabbits, opossums, deer, and (alas) skunks. This is my 12th year with the 75ers.

My reading follows my whims, but is heaviest with science fiction and fantasy. I also read mysteries, thrillers, and horror. I don't read enough non-fiction, but when I do it covers a range of subjects including history, language, popular science, unpopular mathematics, running, library science, and shiny stuff.

I'm usually reading at least three books:
(1) something on the Kindle app, which I read whenever I'm standing in line or when the lights are off;
(2) a paperback, usually from my own shelves, which I read while walking Buddy; and
(3) something borrowed from the library, of which there is usually a larger stack than I can reasonably expect to finish and which I call "The Tower of Due." Here's what it looks like as of mid-August:

(A) The DAWs

For several years now, I've been reading through the catalog of DAW, the first American imprint exclusively devoted to science fiction & fantasy publishing. It launched in 1972 under the editorship of Donald A. Wollheim (hence the name), and continues today, publishing new books at a rate faster than I'm catching up. Last year I read only 8, mostly because of delays to read previous volumes in a series.

DAWs so far: 17
Next up: Tides of Kregen by Alan Burt Akers

(B) Bestsellers

For the last few years, Liz (lyzard) and I have been reading through American bestsellers at a rate of one per month. I'm running behind, and my goal this year is to catch up -- just like last year.

Bestsellers so far: 10
Next Up: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Not Straight Not White Not Dudes

Left to itself, my reading skews straight, white, and male. Wonder why. For the last couple of years I've tracked proportion of non-straight, non-white, and non-male authors in an effort to be more conscious of this. I met my targets last year: 15% LGBTQ, 22% authors of color, and 52% women (including trans women, in case of doubt), and nonbinary authors. (Targets were 10, 20, and 50.) Targets this year are 15%, 20%, and 50%. Recommendations welcome.

(C) Not Straight: 28/154 (18.2%)
(D) Not White: 34/154 (22.1%)
(E) Not Dudes: 75/154 (48.7%)

The "Children's Literature Festival" challenge is postponed again this year.
(F) CLF authors: Nevermind

Other Good Intentions

(G) Read more books off my own shelves.
So far: 21

Continue more series than I start. According to the spreadsheet where I keep track, I have started but not finished 309 series. My insufficient strategy for managing that number is continue more series than I start and to finish a series every now and then. Last year I started 23, continued 26, and finished 12. I'd be happy with similar numbers for 2021.

• (H) Series started: 22

Aldair by Neal Barrett, Jr.
Birdverse by R.B. Lemberg
Bunduki by J.T. Edson
Camelot by Arthur Landis
Eridanus by Neal Barbet
Fable by Adrienne Young
Finna by Nino Cipri
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
Frightville by Mike Ford
George Smiley by John Le Carré
Great cities by N.K. Jemisin
Kelly Pruett mysteries by Mary Keliikoa
Maya by Rena Barron
Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs
Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers
Morgaine by C.J. Cherryh
Radiant Emperor by Shelley Parker-Chan
Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Vatican Tetralogy by Morris West
Wars of Vis by Tanith Lee
Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire
Zoey Ashe by David Wong


• (I) Series continued: 18

Darkover by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Dray Prescot by Kenneth Bulmer
Dumarest by E.C. Tubb
Frightville by Mike Ford
Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
George Smiley by John Le Carré+
Glass and Steele by C.J. Archer
Henry Rios by Michael Nava
Jumbies by Tracy Baptiste
Khokarsa by Philip José Farmer
Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir
Murderbot by Martha Wells
October Daye by Seanan McGuire
Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo
Tensorate by JY Yang
Twin Pines by Louise Penny
Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire
World's Best Science Fiction Annual


• (J) Series finished (or up-to-date): 7

Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
Jumbies by Tracy Baptiste
Khokarsa by Philip José Farmer
Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir
Maya by Rena Barron
Opar by
Murderbot by Martha Wells
Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo

Letters in parentheses refer to annual goals listed in post #2 above

1) Library Improvement Through Data Analytics by Leslie J. Farmer and Alan M. Safer (E)
2) Breath by James Nestor
3) Mach nicht so traurige Augen, weil du ein Negerlein bist by Marie Nejar (DE)
4) The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (B)
5) Hänschen klein, ging allein ... by Hans Massaquoi (DG)
6) If It Bleeds by Stephen King
7) Crossroads by Laurel Hightower (E)
8) Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter (BE)
9) Temper by Nicky Drayden (DE)
10) Outbreaks and Epidemics by Meera Senthilingam (DE)
11) The Floating Opera; and, The End of the Road by John Barth
12) The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West (BH)
13) The Atheist in the Attic by Samuel Delany (CD)
14) When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (CDEIJ)
15) One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse
16) Cirque Berserk by Jessica Guess (DE)
17) Call For the Dead by John le Carre (H)
18) Just South of Home by Karen Strong (DE)
19) A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré (I)
20) Cove by Cynan Jones
21) Cinderella is Dead by Kaylynn Bayron (E))
22) Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett (E)
23) Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (DE)
24) Daheim Unterwegs by Ika Hügel-Marshall (CDE)
25) Island of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (I)
26) Fable by Adrienne Young (EH)
27) The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré (B)
28) Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois
29) Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
30) Probably Approximately Correct by Leslie Valiant
31) A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (EI)
32) Shadow of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
33) Re-Enter Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
34) Finna by Nino Cipri (CEH)
35) The Mapmaker's Apprentice by C.J. Archer (EI)
36) Moon Called by Patricia Briggs (EGH)
37) Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (CEH)
38) The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
39) The Source by James Michener (B)
40) Emperor Fu Manchu
41) Pretty Things by Janelle Brown (D)
42) Humble Pi by Matt Parker
43) Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (CEH)
44) The Long Dry by Cynan Jones
45) Was Preema nicht weiß by Sameena Jehanzeb (DE)
46) True Story by Kate Reed Petty (E)
47) Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (EIJ)
48) Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (DE)
49) The Wrath of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
50) The Bible Doesn't Say That by Joel M. Hoffman
51) Don't Let the Doll In by Mike Ford (CH)
52) Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (BE)
53)A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (CEGI)
54) Ironcastle by J.H. Rosny and Philip José Farmer (G)
55) Curse of the Wish Eater by Mike Ford (CI)
56) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (DE)
57) Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
58) An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire (CE)
59) Far Away Across the Sea by Toon Tellegen
60) Harrow the Ninth (CEIJ)
61) Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh (EGH)
62) Shit, Actually by Lindy West (E)
63) Talk Like a Man by Nisi Shawl (CDE)
64) Educated by Tara Westover (E)
65) Crota by Owl Goingback (D)
66) Hombre by Elmore Leonard
67) To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu (D)
68) Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire (CE)
69) Armada of Antares by Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer) (GI)
70) The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg (CH)
71) Ancient, My Enemy by Gordon R. Dickson (G)
72) Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (CEI)
73) The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
74) The Shattered Chain by Marion Zimmer Bradley (EI)
75) The Dig by Cynan Jones
76) Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong (H)
77) Salzgras & Lavendel by Gabriele Behrend (E)
78) 1976 Annual World's Best SF (GI)
79) The Arrangement by Elia Kazan (B)
80) The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee (EGH)
81) The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
82) The Mind-Riders by Brian M. Stableford (G)
83) The Yellow Peril by Christopher Frayling
84) Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger (E)
85) This Is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo (DE)
86) Five Children and It by E. Nesbit (EH)
87) The Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (E)
88) Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock (E)
89) The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal (E)
90) Aldair in Albion (AGH)
91) Letters to Anyone and Everyone
92) Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire (CE)
93) Maya and the Rising Dark (DEH)
94) The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (H)
95) Airport by Alex Hailey (B)
96) One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire (CE)
97) Beyond Tomorrow by Ingo Cornils
98) On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed (DE)
99) Come Closer by Sara Gran (E)
100) Tales from the Loop by Simon Stålenhag
101) Perilous Dreams by Andre Norton (AEG)
102) The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard
103) Stillicide by Cyan Jones
104) Das doppelte Lottchen by Erich Kästner
105) Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin
106) The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (DE)
107) Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire (CE)
108) All the Dancing Birds by Auburn McCanta (E)
109) The Best Writing on Mathematics, 2019
110) The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
111) Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (B)
112) Hadon of Ancient Opar by Philip Jose Farmer
113) Flight to Opar by Philip Jose Farmer (AJ)
114) A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes (D)
115) Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (DE)
116) Freedom by Sebastian Junger
117) Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire (CE)
118) Love After the End (CD)
119) The Ravenmaster by Christopher Scaife
120) Paradise Now by Chris Jennings
121) In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire (CE)
122) Jack of Swords by E.C. Tubb (AGI)
123) Love Story by Erich Segal (B)
124) The Silence of the Wilting Skin by Tlotlo Tsamaase (CDE)
125) Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (DE)
126) One By One by Ruth Ware (E)
127) The Napoleons of Eridanus by Pierre Barbet (AGH)
128) Jumbie God's Revenge by Tracey Baptiste (DEIJ)
129) The Hidden Law by Michael Nava (CI)
130) The Shoelace Book by Burkard Polster
131) Derailed by Mary Keliikoa (EH)
132) The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf
133) Upright Women Wanted by Sara Gailey (CE)
134) The DAW Science Fiction Reader (AG)
135) Winter in Sokcow by Elisa Shua Dusapin (DE)
136) A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (CEH)
137) Wheels by Arthur Hailey (B)
138) Bunduki by J.T. Edson (AGH)
139) She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (DEH)
140) The Maximum Security Book Club by Mikita Brottman (E)
141) Black Girl Dangerous by Mia McKenzie (CDE)
142) Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (CE)
143) Love is the Law by Nick Mamatas
144) A World Called Camelot by Arthur H. Landis (AGH)
145) Price's Last Campaign by Mark A. Lause
146) Assembly by Natasha Brown (DE)
147) Globe by Catharine Arnold (E)
148) Deutsch sein und schwarz dazu by Thomas Michael (D)
149) The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck
150) The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
151) Quicksand by John Brunner (A)
152) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
153) Dear Laura by Gemma Amor (E)
154) The Descent of Monsters by JY Yang (CDE)

** The Perry Rhodan Post **

Perry Rhodans so far: 20
Next Up: #162: Der Pakt mit dem Tod

For those who have never encountered it: Perry Rhodan is the hero of a weekly German science-fiction serial that is marketed as the world's largest science fiction series. I don't know whether that claim is true -- no doubt it depends on how one measures "large." Measured by words in print, PR has few if any competitors, certainly neither the Star Wars nor Star Trek franchises, which are relatively puny. The main series has been continuously published since September 1961 in weekly novella-length adventures. Its 3,113th episode appeared April 15, 2021. Stop and think about that: the English translations of these episodes ran to about 100 pages per, so we're talking about a story over 310,000 pages long and growing. And that's just the main series. Besides the main series there have been over 400 standalone paperback novels, not to mention spinoffs (the spinoff series Atlan ran for 850 episodes), reboots (the reboot series Perry Rhodan NEO reaches its 250th episode in 2021), miniseries, video games, comic books, and one comically awful movie.

* Why am I reading this?

I first encountered the series as an exchange student to West Germany in 1986. I fell in love with everything about the series: the complicated backstory, the cheesy plots, the lurid covers, even the cheap newsprint. At that time I had access only to the latest issues and random back issues as I discovered them at flea markets so plots were frequently opaque, which actually added to the series's appeal. A couple of years ago I discovered that digitized back issues could be bought in packages online: I started from issue number 1, and all of that love came back.

So my reasons for reading are multiple and personal. It's about nostalgia, maintaining language skills, and feeding my inner middle-schooler. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the series except in small doses for curiosity's sake. But neither will I apologize: I love this crap even (maybe especially) when Perry Rhodan is an asshole. Which, actually, is most of the time.

* The Story So Far

Episodes 1-49: The Third Power (1971-1984)

The series opens in the year 1971. Perry Rhodan is an American astronaut commanding the first crewed mission to the moon. On the moon Rhodan's team discovers a foundered spacecraft of the Arkonide Empire, a galaxy-spanning civilization in decadent decline. Perry rescues the ship's commander and its science officer in exchange for Arkonide technology. Rhodan uses the technology to establish a government capable of rising above petty human squabbles and confronting the threats that begin to appear from around the galaxy. For personnel he seeks out psychically-talented mutants, many of whom have been born in the wake of the mid-twentieth-century's atomic testing. But even a newly unified Earth and superpowered army are no match for extraterrestrial threats who have been building power for centuries. Perry Rhodan must buy time for Earth to develop security and technology. To this end he fakes the destruction of Earth, thus distracting Terra's most dangerous enemies until a more opportune time.

Episodes 50-99: Atlan and Arkon (2040-2045)

The series picks up again in 2040, fifty-six years after Perry staged Earth's destruction. The Terrans have kept a low profile, but have built a small space fleet, and colonized the solar system. But the secret cannot be kept indefinitely, though. When Earth's true location can be kept secret no more, Perry hatches a plan to simultaneously court and provoke Terra's most dangerous threats, in hopes of turning their hostilities against each other. Those threats are the powerful Arkonide empire ruled by a Robot Regent, the "Springers," a society of galactic merchants, and the Druuf, inhabitants of a parallel universe -- the Red Universe -- that temporarily overlaps ours. While Perry plays at galactic strategy, we also get the story of Atlan, a practically immortal Arkonide who has been living on Earth since prehistory. Perry and Atlan first meet as rivals but later become friends. Atlan returns to Arkon where the Robot Regent recognizes him as the rightful head of state. And as the story cycle closes, Perry's and Atlan's friendship lays the basis for a Terran-Arkonide alliance.

Episodes 100-149: The Posbis (2102-2112)

In 2102 during the testing of an experimental space drive, Perry accidentally discovers "The Blue System," a planetary system home to Akon, the parent civilization of Arkon. Akon does not appreciate being discovered, and makes several attempts to destroy Terra, but Perry teams up with Atlan to force Akon to surrender. Back home, Perry deals with an epidemic of drug addiction, a revolt led by his estranged son, and an Arkonide revolution that temporarily unseats Atlan and permanently destroys the Robot Regent. Also "bacon moss". Then come extragalactic threats: two forces threaten all life in the galaxy. One is the Posbis, machine/biological hybrids who fly cubical warships and seek to destroy all organic life (similarities to the Borg have been noted, let us say); the other is the Laurins, invisible warriors in conflict with the Posbis and anyone else who gets in their way. The Terrans are able to establish an alliance with the Posbi central plasma, source of the Posbis' biological component, who brings the Posbi robotic brain under control and helps the Terrans beat back the Laurins.

Episodes 150-199: The Second Empire

Two hundred years after the final battle with the Posbis on the World of a Hundred Suns, the Posbis are now close allies with Terrans. the Terran and Arkonide Empires have merged, with Perry serving as Grand Administrator and Atlan as head of a new intelligence service, the USO. The cycle starts ominously when the superintelligence IT announces that IT will no longer offer immortality treatments; instead, it is fleeing the galaxy to avoid an unidentified looming danger. As compensation, it scatters 25 immortality-granting "cellular activators" around the galaxy, thus prompting a broad and sometimes perilous hunt for the things. On planet Eysal, a cellular activator is accidentally destroyed, releasing an energy wave that wakens the next apocalyptic danger: planet-destroying monsters, the hornschrecken and schreckworms.

** RUNNING POST **

I recently started running again. I've recently had some health concerns that have convinced me to make some dietary changes and work on cardiovascular health. Running is the only exercise I've ever enjoyed, so that's what I'll do for now. Back when I was running, I enjoyed keeping track of cumulative mileage and sharing a weekly favorite workout track. I also used to track weight loss/gain, but that's something I've decided to worry less about for now.

Miles last week: 9
Total miles: 9
Soundtrack: Unzertrennbar by Die Kreatur

... and the necessary posts are done. Come on in!

Happy new thread, Steve!

You made me happy with the return of the soundtrack in your Running Post :-)

Happy new one, Steve.

Happy new thread, Steve!

Happy new one!

>6 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita! I'm looking forward to sharing some good ones.

>7 PaulCranswick:
>8 scaifea:
>9 drneutron:

Thanks!

Happy new thread, Steve!

>12 MickyFine: Thanks Micky!

98) On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Date: 2021

This is a slim volume of essays on Texas's messy racial history, and by extension the United States' same. The author was born and raised in East Texas, and mixes personal experiences with Texas history to tell a complicated and contiuing story about America's relationship with race. It's enlightening and moving and also short -- y'all should read it.

99) Come Closer by Sara Gran
Date: 2003

This is a novella about a happily married young architect who thinks she may the victim of demon possession. Early symptoms are ambiguous, but as the signs become more distressing it also becomes more difficult to change course. I started this too close to bedtime last night, figuring I'd read a chapter or two but then went and read the whole damn thing. I have no regrets.

I got it from Jim's (drneutron's) thread. Thanks Jim!

Happy new thread, Steve. >14 swynn: On Juneteenth sounds good. I'll look for that one. I liked the Gran I read, so I might give that one a try as well.

>15 swynn: Glad you liked it!

100) Tales From the Loop by Simon Stålenhag
Date: 2015

It's an art book with a small amount of text, depicting an alternative later-20th-century with robots, dinosaurs, hovercraft, and weirdness. It's brilliant and gorgeous and enthusiastically recommended.

I missed this when it first came out, but it came to my attention when it won the Kurd-Laßwitz Award this year for Best Foreign Work Published in German. And it turns out Amazon has a new television series based on it -- though I'm already pissed that they moved the setting from Sweden to !@€%ing Ohio.

See more of Stålenhag's work here: https://www.simonstalenhag.se/

>16 BLBera: Hope you like them if you get to them, Beth! I'll be interested in your thoughts if you do.

>18 swynn: I watched the show without knowing they'd moved it at all...makes for excellent viewing.

So, anyway, I'm here. I moved too.

>20 richardderus: That's encouraging. I'll probably catch an episode or two this weekend. And happy new one!

Happy new thread, Steve! Glad to see you liked On Juneteenth too.

101) Perilous Dreams by Andre Norton
Date: 1976

This is a collection of four stories set on Ty-Kry, a planet where the idle rich can pay (or buy) psychic Dreamers to bring them into shared dreams for adventure and diversion. Norton's stiff prose is as usual a barrier for me, complicated here by a couple of stories that lack resolution and a world whose rules are opaque. On the other hand, there are some terrific set pieces, like the hold full of bodies shown on the cover by George Barr. I'll note that Barr has it backwards: in the text, it's the heroine who saves the hero from the hold of death.

Toys of Tamisan
Tamisan is an especially talented Dreamer bought by the wealthy, disabled Lord Starrex. Tamisan plans an experimental dream set in an alternate past, but everything seems to go wrong from the outset: she and Starrex are separated; the dream features elements she did not create; she cannot break out of the dream; and an adversary seems to have joined them: Starrex's evil cousin Kam.

Ship of Mist
Tamisan and Starrex have jumped into a different dream-setting, still pursued by Kam. In this one, Starrex has assumed character of the leader of a seafaring tribe. He must investigate a phantom ship that appears and disappears in mist, and which causes anyone who boards it to vanish.

Get Out of My Dream
Oslan Sb Atto is deep in a dream, when political and financial events occur that mean he must be awakened. The only way to do this is to join him in the dream and convince him to wake. Agent Itlothis Sb Nath assumes this task, only to find that Oslan regards his dream-work as more important than anything happening in the "real" world. Even more surprising, he may be right.

Nightmare
Five men have recently died while dreaming in Ty-Kry. (And yeah, the victims are all men: apparently Dreamers are always women and clients are always men, and Dreamers and clients fall in love mid-dream with surprising regularity.) Agent Burr Neklass reluctantly agrees to investigate, by posing as bait and risking becoming the sixth.

>22 bell7: Thanks Mary! I think I need to seek out some of Gordon-Reed's other work.

>23 swynn: Oh my...what a difference a half-century makes. Imagine the outraged shrieks of ableism in the event this came out today! Holy hell. Still, for its day it was groundbreaking because he was differently abled. At all. In fiction. *gasp*

Good reminder of the way the world's changed.

Happy New Thread, Steve! Good luck with your return to the road. :)

>25 richardderus: My take was that it was an example of "character sheds their disability by fantasy magic" like Donald Blake/Thor, or Lin Carter's Green Star series. I agree that representation of disability in genre fiction is generally improving.

102) The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard
Date: 1969

After several westerns, this was Leonard's first crime novel. My "Armchair Detective" edition (not the cover pictured) includes an essay by Leonard, in which he explains that he had focused on westerns in order to learn his craft and because there was a thriving market for the genre. In 1960, when he quit his ad agency job to become a full-time writer, though, the market for westerns seemed suddenly to dry up. Hence his turn to crime fiction. And although that works out well in the long run, this one feels a little rough. Mean, even. It features Jack Ryan, a might've-been baseball player turned migrant worker in northern Michigan, who turns to petty crime to get by. He gets involved with Nancy, a local boss's girlfriend. Nancy is a beautiful daughter of privilege, who turns to petty crime for kicks. (Apparently at some point in the book's development, "bounces" competed with "kicks" as slang for "thrills," and thus the title.) Nancy lures Ryan into a plot to steal the boss's payroll, but as Ryan develops a plan he also grows increasingly wary of his partner's thrill-seeking. It's okay. Leonard's prose and dialog are already sharp, but nothing like the snap of his later works; and the ending is unexpected, but in a way that misfires. (Literally, even.)

This was filmed twice: once right away in 1969 with Ryan O'Neal as Ryan and Leigh Taylor-Young as Nancy; then again in 2004 with Owen Wilson and Sara Foster. Leonard apparently liked neither adaptation: he once called the 2004 version the second worst movie ever made, surpassed only by the 1969 version.

>28 swynn: Clearly Mr Leonard never saw Boom!. It was *the* worst film ever, in all of history, made.

>29 richardderus: I've never seen any of the three, and should probably count myself lucky. But I'm curious, so went to our library catalog and sure enough, we have Boom! in our collection. I read the summary and realized that I once read an interview with John Waters where he called this his favorite film that everybody else hates. I'll have to watch it before I forget it again.

I'm not sure whether to thank you for the reminder though -- better wait till after I've seen it.

>30 swynn: Pink Flamingos is Loves of a Blonde meets Citizen Kane compared to Boom!.

Richard Burton's face when he mumbles "...buhm!" in that semi-Welsh accent...! ::eyeroll:: Pseudointellectual faux-portentous codswallop.

>31 richardderus: On the Boom: John Waters v. everybody else .... I've now seen "Boom" and am pretty firmly on Team Everybody Else.

** RUNNING POST **

Miles last week: 10
Total miles: 19
Longest run: 3.5
Fastest mile: 12:47

Soundtrack: Ding by Feuerschwanz

Feuerschwanz is a medieval metal band, covering a club dance hit from about a decade ago. (You can see the original by SEEED, with a hoot of a stop-motion video, here) The Feuerschwanz cover is such a fun mix of things that don't go together but work anyway, performed by a band clearly having a good time, that it's easy to run to.

>33 swynn: The Feuerschwanz video was fun, Steve.

>32 swynn: I am astonishingly unsurprised.

My summer reading slump seems to have arrived late. Still running, though ...

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 10
Total miles: 29
Longest run: 3.5
Fastest mile: 11:55

Soundtrack: Let Me Live/Let Me Die by Des Rocs

Normally I am a person who Knows My Own Mind. Startling, I realize, for you to hear this...as I've always been such a soft-spoken crowd-goer-alonger.

Stop laughing.

Anyway. I need help. The wisdom of the crowd is sought to help be decide between two equally strong contenders for Read of the Month. I am simply incapable to unparalyzing myself from the FOMO I get thinking about this problem.

Please vote on the poll or you will be directly responsible for my re-admission to the Goofy Garage this birthmonth.

Steve...Steve ol' buddy ol' pal...There was an exact tie at 5pm, so I've settled on TOMORROW (Saturday 4 Sept) at 5pm for the final decision. Please come vote! https://www.librarything.com/topic/334521#7593915

>38 richardderus: I voted in the first round for Under Color of Law; hope you enjoy it! (And more selfishly, that it provokes interesting comments.)

103) Stillicide by Cynan Jones
Date: 2019

Not so much a novella as a collection of scenarios set in a near-future world dealing with climate change, centered on a project to supply London with fresh water by harvesting an iceberg. The stories sketch a frighteningly plausible picture of desperation at the ass end of power in a world with not enough to go around: not enough food, not enough space, not enough water. And Jones's minimalist prose and and genius imagery is perfect for it.

>40 swynn: Yay! You liked it!

>39 swynn: This being a crowd-sourced decision, I'm going to read and review it this month. Stay tuned....

104) Das doppelte Lottchen by Erich Kästner
Date: 1949

Lotte and Luise meet at summer camp, surprised to find that they share the same face, the same birthday, and the same birthplace. When Lotte produces a picture of her mother, whom Luise remembers from an old photograph at her own home, the two hatch a plan to switch places.

Das doppelte Lottchen (available in English as "Lottie and Lisa") was filmed almost immediately, and it seems continuously since. Author Kästner contributed to the script of the original 1950 version, directed by Josef von Báky (best known for his direction of the Nazi-era special-effects spectacle "Münchhausen") with Antje Weisgerber playing both Lotte and Luise. Von Báky's film won the inaugural German Film Award for best picture. Since then, Wikipedia counts some 25 film and stage adaptations, including Emeric Pressburger's 1953 film, "Twice Upon a Time" and of course Disney's 1961 "The Parent Trap" and its 1998 remake. Apparently there is a musical stage adaptation in the works.

So is the book any good? Well, I'm not really in the target audience and I picked it up mostly out of curiosity so I am maybe not the best reader to ask. But given that it's a children's novel from 1949 about twins who reunite their divorced parents, it's less creaky than I expected -- it has aged surprisingly well. Kästner has a lot of respect for children, which helps. There's no tut-tutting or evasion about the divorce itself, though such would have been de rigeur at the time. Kästner acknowledges this expectation, and in one passage addresses the reader directly, saying (roughly), "If the parent looking over shoulder thinks you shouldn't be reading about divorce, I'd like to remind them that lots children have the experience and if children can be subjected to the experience then they can surely endure the experience of reading about it." In our current YA landscape, it's hard to imagine the force this must have had in 1949 but even in 2021 I found myself responding, "damn straight." I also find it appealing that Kästner does not humiliate the father's fiancé, which I've always found gratuitously mean in the Disney adaptations.

>42 swynn: So THIS is the proximate cause of The Parent Trap! It must be burned and proscribed and interdicted on the high seas!

*ahem*

That is not a project for which I feel a great deal of sympathy, I'm afraid.

>43 richardderus: No argument. I was never a fan of the films (Matchmaking plot? Wake me when it's over. Kids get their divorced parents back together? Sounds creepy, but you do your wish fulfillment and I'll do mine.) But Mrs. swynn likes the 1961 Disney version and young swynn was briefly obsessed with the 1998 Lindsey Lohan version in grade school, so I'm more aware of both than I would be on my own.

I only recently learned that the films were based on a 1949 German novel -- or maybe it only recently caught my interest. Because it occurs to me: obviously the story is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but whose wishes are being fulfilled? A fantasy about children repairing the foolish decisions of childish-behaving grownups? In 1949 Germany? That just might appeal to almost anybody old enough to read. I can now report that the text itself studiously avoids any mention whatsoever of the war, so if a political-allegorical reading is intended, it's all subtext. Still ...

Anyway, my curiosity is satisfied.

**RUNNING POST**

Missed a post last week, so here are some stats for the last 2.

Miles last week: 10
Miles the week before: 10
Total miles: 49
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 11:05

Finished a couch-to-5K program; next project is to bring the 5K pace down under 10 minutes. One foot hurts a lot the day after a run, but instead of just complaining about it and then giving up again after a few more weeks, I've scheduled an appointment to get a referral to a podiatrist about it.

Soundtrack: Broken and Ugly by Beth Hart

105) The Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin
Date:2013

A sort of people's history of the First World War, based on Rubin's interviews with the last remaining veterans, collected in the early 2000s when all interviewees were over 100 years old. In some ways it's what you'd expect from such a project: interesting, sometimes horrifying, sometimes charming. It also includes asides and tangents on subjects of personal interest to the author, some more interesting than others, such as: observations on interviewing centenarians, French memorials to American soldiers, the trade in war relics, and the treatment of the war in Tin Pan Alley sheet music.

This was an audiobook for me, "read" mostly on long car drives.

106) The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
Date: 2020

First in a projected trilogy, featuring New York's "avatars": super-powered personifications of the city's boroughs. In this one, they fight a weird incursion from another dimension. It's fun, but also has some of that series-opener awkwardness where the balance is off among world building, introducing new characters, and the central conflict. But we have two more installments and I'll be interested to see where it goes.

>47 swynn: ...as will we all...her imagination is impressively untrammeled!

>46 swynn: That sounds quite charming. Amazing to think they were still alive in this new century.

Happy weekend's reads.

>48 richardderus: Amazing to think they were still alive in this new century.

Right? And lucid still, with vivid memories of their service! Servicemen who lied to recruiters about their age are overrepresented, which makes sense, but still. It's an incredibly valuable project Rubin undertook.

>49 swynn: It just doesn't make me think too hopefully of the historians of 2113, TBH.

I hope there's nothing seriously wrong with the foot, Steve. Keep running!

>49 swynn:

My father joined up underage during WWII, mostly to relieve his family from having to feed him (and because the thought of being regularly fed outweighed the fear of being killed), got booted out briefly, but then accepted when things were sufficiently desperate in 1942 when he was still only sixteen.

>50 richardderus: I only hope there's still history to write in 2113 ....

>51 BLBera: Thanks, Beth! I'm optimistic.

>52 lyzard: ... mostly to relieve his family from having to feed him (and because the thought of being regularly fed outweighed the fear of being killed) ...
This motivation pops up several times in the WWI interviews too. I can't imagine facing that choice. Where did your father serve?

107) Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire
Date: 2012

Sixth in McGuire's "Toby Daye" series. This one have Toby & friends on the trail of a superpowered changeling whose uncontrolled talent threatens the stability of the faerie realms ... and who may be the unwitting tool of nefarious political interests. I'm enjoying this series, but am not a superfan. This one is pretty much what you expect for the series by this point.

I spent the weekend enjoying the FIYAHcon virtual SF/Fantasy/Horror conference featuring BIPOC creators in genre fiction. It was three days of terrifically interesting panels with terrifically interesting creators, even through the middle of the night -- they included a special "BonFIYAH" track for international participants who do not observe Western-hemisphere waking hours. If they do it again next year, jump on it when registration opens.

My major takeaway is, "Malka Older is brilliant and why in the world did I never finish her Centenal series?"

My bought-it-because-of--FIYAHcon list is as follows:
Machinehood by S.B. Divya
Clarkesworld Issue 175 (for the story "Submergence" by Arula Ratnakar)
Stone and Steel by Eboni Dunbar
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
Butcherbird (no touchstone) by Cassie Hart
A Phoenix First Must Burn

>55 swynn: Oooh, that sounds like a great time!!

>56 scaifea: Definitely was. My favorite session was "Consciousness and capitalism," in which a panel of smart creatives (Malka Older, S.B. Divya, Arula Ratnakar, Sascha Stronach, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, and Katie Zhao) discussed issues at intersections of AI, machine intelligence, economic systems, and social justice. Lots to think about. And to tremble.

After last year's conference they made many recordings freely available online (at: https://theconvention.fiyahlitmag.com/the-archives/). I hope they do the same this year, because there were a couple of sessions I want to point others to.

>57 swynn: The conference sounds like a solid hit!

>55 swynn: Lush haul. Love the choices!

>53 swynn:

Oh, and shoes! Three meals a day and shoes, neither of which he had had with any regularity in his life to that point.

I mean, I'm sure there were lots of people who joined up for noble reasons but we do tend to hear the prosaic Depression-era stuff here. :D

He served mostly in New Guinea and on some of the islands, including Morotai. (Scene of two separate mutinies! - one now fairly well known, the other not...)

>57 swynn: Oh wow, that *does* sound interesting. And complex. I'm particularly interested in the social justice aspect - U Dayton is all about gearing courses toward teaching aspects of social justice, so it's been on the brain lately. Last year I worked on getting my mythology course approved as a CAP course in Diversity and Social Justice and now that it is I'm sorting through tweaking it to emphasize the SJ issues that have been in there from the start and also adding new aspects.

>58 richardderus: It was, and thanks!

>59 lyzard: Well, that led to a Wikipedia stroll. Very interesting.

>60 scaifea: ... and now I want to take your Mythology course ...

**RUNNING POST**

Missed a post last week, so here are some stats for the last 2.

Miles last week: 12
Total miles: 61
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 10:35
5K trial: 34:40

I've been running 3 days a week, but added a 4th last week, starting with 2 low-intensity miles. Saturday I ran a practice 5K to give me an idea where I stand and .... um .... I see room for improvement. It's an exercise I hope to repeat every few weeks. Thinking of signing up for a race in early 2022 if things go well.

Soundtrack: Faster by Samantha Fish

>62 swynn: You didn't miss a week this time, Steve ;-)
Btw, did you get a referral to a podiatrist, or is your foot behaving better now?

>63 FAMeulstee: Hi, Anita!

I've found that, with some daily stretching and strengthening exercises, the pain is manageable most days. I expect that to change as I increase mileage (based on experience) so I still plan to look for help before that happens. My appointment for the referral is next week.

108) All the Dancing Birds
Date: 2012

It's a drama about a former poet who develops Alzheimer's. Chapters are a series of the poet's first-person narratives and letters to her children, tracking from early in her diagnosis to a posthumous epilog. It's light on plot and heavy on wordy melancholy but it's fine for what it is, a pensive character study in cognitive decline. My few complaints are versions of "I'd rather it were something else," which is not fair.

>65 swynn: Perfectly fair...just not in any way helpful except as a warning to those whose literary tastes don't run to decay-in-story-form.

Care Giver was one of my favorite dementia reads. So much more effective, to me at least, for being about someone who has no one, and pines still for the one that got away.

>66 richardderus: ...just not in any way helpful except as a warning to those whose literary tastes don't run to decay-in-story-form

Yeah, probably not. Based on Amazon and Goodreads reviews it seems to resonate with a lot of readers, and I don't want to scare anyone off with my grumpiness, especially when I suspect that my complaints have as much to do with my own headspace as any actual faults in the book. For me it felt a little too much "Isn't it a shame that this bright light is fading, and isn't it charming how she still loves her children so?" And that's fine -- it is a damn shame, and yes the sentiments are nice. I just kept waiting for something to happen, or for it to provoke a sentiment other than the obvious ones, and it didn't. Not maudlin, exactly, but it sometimes skated close.

Care Giver sounds intriguing, though I may not be in the headspace for that either.

>67 swynn: Re: spoiler...telling us it's rather a one-note story, and that made it hard to stay invested, would do everything except spoil what it is.

I really recommend Care Giver for, well, whenever.

>68 richardderus: "One-note story" is accurate for my response to it. Thanks for the suggestion.

>69 swynn: So glad it served. It's an annoying quality, one I strive hard to avoid.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 12
Total miles: 73
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 11:05

I probably had a faster mile than that, but wasn't keeping track on a couple of runs last week.

Soundtrack: Spirit in the Sky by JG and the Robots

I'm puzzling over how I feel about this electronic take on Norman Greenbaum's novelty hit. In a couple of weeks I expect it will sound to me like an Alvin & the Chipmunks cover (in case of doubt: ugh) but in the meantime I can't stop listening.

A Perry Rhodan catchup post:

When last we visited the Perryverse, Perry and the Terran-Arkonide Empire faced two threats. First are the Hornschrecken, caterpillar-things (omnivorous acid-spitting rapidly-reproducing caterpillar-things) capable of reducing entire planets to wasteland within days, leaving only barren land and "Molkex", the monsters' voluminous excretions. The second threat are Schreckworms (energy-absorbing, blaster-beam throwing overgrown worm-things). Both monsters appeared first at the empire's frontiers, but were appearing on more colony planets and closer to the Empire's center. Something Must Be Done.

   

Perry Rhodan 160: Der Spiegel des Grauens by Kurt Mahr
Perry Rhodan 161: Vier von der USO by William Voltz
Perry Rhodan 162: Der Pakt mit dem Tod by William Voltz

In episode 160, "Mirror of Horror", a crew of specialists return to Zannmalon, the planet where Hornschrecken were first discovered, on a mission to discover any information that might be useful in battling the caterpillar-things. From space, Zannmalon's Molkex-covered surface is smooth and reflective as a mirror. On descending to the planet, the team finds it still overrun with Hornschrecken, and several of the specialists die in encounters with the monsters (also, it must be said in fairness to the monsters, through remarkable displays of stupidity and clumsiness). The expedition is not in vain, for the crew discover the essential connection between the two monsters: they watch as the Hornschrecken die off, their bodies turning into more Molkex, which accumulates into mounds, out of which newborn Schreckworms emerge. After emerging, the Schreckworms contact alien ships of unknown origin, who arrive to collect the worm-monsters.

In episode 161, "Four From the USO", a team of USO agents is sent to the planet Euhja to attempt communication with a Schreckworm. This seems like a fool's errand, but the giant computer NATHAN speculates that Schreckworms may be intelligent -- although clearly not of high-level intelligence -- and Perry decides to take a chance. Planet Euhja is mostly covered by ocean, so the available landmass accumulated enough Molkex for only a single Schreckworm. Part of this adventure is narrated from the Schreckworm's point of view, so we know that even before the humans arrive, the Schreckworm has called the alien ship -- but he is conflicted about having done so. It's not clear how much the worm knows about its situation, only that it is born with some sort of species memory, which includes a directive to call the aliens, whom it calls "The Merciful." Despite the name, the worm has increasing dread about meeting The Merciful, which it knows use Schreckworms for their own purposes. When the humans arrive, the Schreckworm hits upon an alternative plan. The episode ends with the Schreckworm having slaughtered the Merciful sent to collect him, and boarded their ship. The humans, too, board the ship just before it launches automatically and speeds away to an unknown destination.

Episode 162, "The Deal With Death", continues on board the Merciful ship, where humans and worm alike are trapped. The humans have no idea where they are headed, but the Schreckworm does, and it has no desire to go there. Unfortunately, it lacks the manual dexterity to operate the ship's controls. So it offers the humans a grim truce: the humans have learned that Schreckworms are intelligent, which is a secret that cannot be spread and therefore they must die. However, the Schreckworm will let them live a little while longer if they will help alter the ship's course. With no other options, the USO agents agree to the deal but also immediately plan for their own survival.

>72 swynn: Ooohhh, cool arc! "Hornschrecken" made me giggle when I parsed it aloud.

...ummm...the "np" might wanna get transmogrified to "nb" sometime soon....

>73 richardderus: Re: "Hornschrecken." You have correctly parsed it as "horny terrors." I don't imagine it would do any good to burble that in this context "horny" refers to the little monsters' durable integument (as if made of horn) and that the name itself is a play on words, referring to "Heuschrecken", "hay-terrors" or locusts. I mean, there was a reason I left it at "Hornschrecken" -- what was I gonna do with *that*?

Wow you were fast: I noticed the "np" right away (or what I felt was "right away") and fixed it. Thanks for the heads-up, though!

>74 swynn: I don't imagine it would do any good to burble that in this context "horny" refers to the little monsters' durable integument

None whatsoever.

...the name itself is a play on words, referring to "Heuschrecken", "hay-terrors" or locusts

Still no good re: giggling, but way cool info! I'd never known the German word for "locust" before. (It doesn't come up that often in my conversations, sadly.)

I must've caught your post in its first milliseconds of its life somehow. One does one's poor best to be Of Assistance.

>75 richardderus: I'd say that locusts appearing rarely in conversation is no occasion for sadness. But it *is* a cool name, and I'm happy to share it!

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 3
Total miles: 76
Longest run: 3 miles
Fastest mile: Let's not talk about it

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later and I'd hoped later. I went out for a night run last Thursday and rolled my ankle when I stepped on the edge of the path. Apparently it's time to start carrying a flashlight, at least on overcast nights. Good news is, it's on the mend: I put in 3 miles last night and only feel it a little this morning. Also, I got an appointment scheduled with a podiatrist next week to address longer-term questions.

Soundtrack: Untot im Drachenboot by Feuerschwanz

Only a few weeks ago I linked to "Ding," a reimagined dance club number covered by German folk-metal band Feuerschwanz. So it may be too soon to raise their signal again, but their newest release, "Undead in the Dragon-Boat," is my favorite track of the week so I'm mentioning them again.

Folk metal is grey territory for me: the music appeals to me, but I'm also aware of the genre's adjacency to right-wing extremism, and I'm not into it enough to know the angels from the devils. I have a dread of recommending something only to hear, "You know they're Nazis, right?" But the vibe I get from Feuerschwanz is exactly what I want: joy in making music coupled with a firm policy of not taking themselves too seriously. (Also, fruitless attempts to Google-connect them to terms like "neonazi" and "rechtsrock.") And of course: a beat you want to run to.

109) The Best Writing on Mathematics 2019, edited by Mircea Pitici

This is a collection of essays on mathematical subjects published in 2019. Most of these were originally published in scientific or mathematical publications, but most should be accessible to a general audience. For a collection titled "Best writing" I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to engage with some of them -- essays on philosophy of mathematics I found especially dull. Favorites, which have more to do with the ideas presented than the prose, are the essays on gerrymandering, Sloan's essay on sequences from the OLEIS, and (my top pick) Sugihara's essay on "topology-disturbing" optical illusions.

Geometry v. Gerrymandering by Moon Duchin
Slicing Sandwiches, States, and Solar Systems: Can Mathematical Tools Help Determine What Divisions are Provably Fair? by Theodore P. Hill

The first couple of essays discuss the mathematics of gerrymandering. The surprising result here contradicts my intuition that gerrymandered districts are by definition contorted objects. In fact, the idea of "fairness" is a vague idea that is difficult to describe mathematically -- and even where "fairness" is mathematically defined, it is possible to draw "unfair" districts that are not misshapen. (In the sense that the districts are "convex", i.e., having the property that any two points in the gerrymandered district can be connected by a straight line lying within the district. Such convex districts, even though they're engineered for gerrymandering purposes, don't appear "gerrymandered" on a map.)

Does Mathematics Teach How to Think? by Paul J. Campbell

Maybe, but we seem to be doing it wrong.

Abstracting the Rubik's Cube by Roice Nelson

Nelson contemplates Rubik's-like puzzles on different topological objects, tilings, and higher dimensions.

Topology-Disturbing Objects: A New Class of 3D Optical Illusions by Kokichi Sugihara

These: https://youtu.be/oWfFco7K9v8 And how to make them.

Mathematicians Explore Mirror Link between Two Geometric Worlds by Kevin Hartnett

Hartnett gives a 10,000-foot view of mirror symmetry, a surprising correspondence between two very distinct "geometric worlds."

Professor Engel's Marvelously Improbable Machines by James Propp

Propp introduces a teaching tool developed by Arthur Engel that uses simple grids and tokens to calculate simple probabilities.

The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences by Neil J. A. Sloane

Integer sequences are a rich source of mathematical surprises, and the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) is to some mathematicians what cat pictures are to Twitter users. Sloane, who founded the resource back when it was published in print, offers a few gems recently added to the OEIS.

Mathematics for Big Data by Alessandro Di Bucchianico, et al.

Di Bucchianico and colleagues discuss advancements in mathematics that made possible the advancements in processing huge data sets.

The Un(solv)able Problem by Tory S. Cubitt, et al.

Cubitt and colleagues discuss how they solved a long-standing problem in mathematical physics -- the "spectral gap" problem, which they proved to be unsolvable -- while trying to solve a simpler and more trivial problem whose solution still eludes them.

And yes, in mathematics proving that something is unsolvable is itself a solution.

The Mechanization of Mathematics by Jeremy Avigad

Avidad discusses developments and controversies in the use of computer programs to prove theorems and check proofs of theorems too large to solve by hand.

Mathematics as an Empirical Phenomenon, Subject to Modeling by Reuben Hersh

Hersh discusses various schools in the philosophy of mathematics, and argues that each has insights into the practice of mathematics.

Does 2 + 3 = 5? In Defense of a Near Absurdity by Mary Leng

And speaking of philosophy of mathematics: Leng is a philosopher of mathematics, and a "nominalist," which means that she does not believe numbers exist, except in a very constrained sense. Here she offers nuance for her perspective.

Gregory's Sixth Operation by Tiziana Bascelli et al.

Bascelli and colleagues discuss the analytical methods of James Gregory, a 17th-century mathematician and predecessor of and inspiration to Leibniz.

Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning: What Math Can Teach Us about Finding Order in our Chaotic Lives by Noson F. Yanofsky

"Kolmogorov Complexity" is an idea from information theory, in which the "complexity" of a text is measured by the length of the shortest computer program that can reproduce it. The idea has intuitive value, but is difficult -- in fact, provably impossible -- to calculate. Yanofsky discusses the problem, and connects the problem to insights about uncertainty in general experience.

Ethics in Statistical Practice and Communication: Five Recommendations by Andrew Gelman

Gelman identifies five practices to improve communication, reliability, and transparency in statistical practice.

The Fields Medal Should Return to Its Roots by Michael J. Barany

Barany argues that the Fields Medal has strayed from its original intention, of reducing nationalism in mathematics and rewarding promising mathematicians early in their careers. Returning the Fields to its original purpose, says Barany, would promote national, ethnic, and gender diversity in ways that are sorely needed.

The Erdös Paradox by Melvyn B. Nathanson

Nathanson remembers his collaborator and friend, the phenomenally prolific 20th-century Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös (which I've heard pronounced "erdish" by non-Hungarian mathematicians, for what that's worth).

Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning: What Math Can Teach Us about Finding Order in our Chaotic Lives by Noson F. Yanofsky

>78 swynn: That's actually a picture of me upon completing Reuben Hersh's essay on "Mathematics as an Empirical Phenomenon." Yanofsky's I found appealing.

>80 swynn: ...sooner I would die, thank you please...

Wow, that’s one I *have* to find!

>78 swynn: I looked at the title and started to skim over it, but it actually looks pretty interesting. I've never read an essay about math, I don't think.

>81 richardderus: Well, I tried.
>82 drneutron: Hope you find it at least as interesting as I did, Jim! I liked it well enough that I think I'll seek out more volumes.
>83 BLBera: Looking back at my comments I think I may have indicated that I liked it less well than I did. I was expecting something a little different under the phrase "best writing," and the prose was mostly not noteworthy and a couple entries (for me) fell flat, but with a few exceptions the ideas presented were consistently interesting, and in a few cases terrific. If it sounds interesting, I'd encourage you to pick up the volume and browse.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 13
Total miles: 89
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 9:51
5K trial: 31:47

I seem to have bounce back from last week's sprained ankle: I logged my fastest mile of the year so far, and knocked about 3 minutes off my 5K time. Monday I met with the podiatrist, who told me that the foot/ankle pain that isn’t last week’s sprain is probably my peroneus somethingus tendon, and gave me some advice for managing that -- including to stop doing a stretch that was probably making things worse.

Soundtrack: Rhythm and Blues by the Hooten Hallers
BPM: 175

110) The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
Date: 2009

It's an engaging, sometimes horrifying, account of the National Forest Service and its losing fight against the Great Fire of 1910, which burned over 3 million acres of timber, mostly in Idaho and Montana. There is nothing not to like here: there is fascinating history that throws light on current policies, there are powerful personalities in conflict, and there is extreme peril. Recommended.

>86 swynn: Oh hell! That was one of the casualties of my Great Move disaster. I'll have to re-get it.

>85 swynn: Glad your ankle is bouncing back, Steve.
I hope the advice of the podiatrist works out.

Your link to the Hooten Hallers didn't work, but I found them with a search on YouTube :-)

>87 richardderus: Hope you like it if you get around to it, Richard!

>88 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita! And thanks for the note about the Hooten Hallers link. The link appeared to be correctly coded, so it was a puzzle why it wasn't working. It turned out some nonprinting characters had somehow been added to the front of the link. The extra characters made LibraryThing interpret it as a relative link and add an LT path to the front of the URL. Deleting and retyping the "https" fixed the problem.

>89 swynn: I expect to...Egan, Teddy Roosevelt, how can it be bad?

BTW I have a new thread.

>90 richardderus: Ooh, I'll go check it out

Hey, Steve, hope the ankle continues to improve and breathlessly anticipating the Schreckworm's next move.

>92 ronincats: Thanks Roni! A Schreckworm update is coming very soon ....

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 13
Total miles: 102
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 9:41

Foot/ankle pain is under control, and conditioning continues to improve.

Soundtrack: Noise by Die Ärzte
BPM: 104

New Ärzte album last month -- not their best, but also not terrible. (I am old, and remember when these guys were a threat to the morals of Germany's youth. Now they're three dudes who never grew up and like making music ... which, yeah, I miss the edge but I'll take it.)

111) Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Date: 1969

So now I know. I probably should have read it back in the 1980's when I first became aware of it and it sounded edgy and I thought I'd like to read it someday.

Now I can't work up much enthusiasm, much less shock. It's an extended rant by a horny young Jewish man about the parents he loves and loathes, the women he loves and loathes, the Blacks he mostly loves in a paternalistic way, the religion he mostly loathes for its paternalism, the self he loves and loathes. It all makes sense when you remember that "self-love" and "self-abuse" are synonymous euphemisms for his favorite hobby. He has issues.

I get it and I don't. I understand that it's satire: we're not supposed to sympathize with Portnoy, but to enjoy the way that he explodes conventions and middle-class hypocrisies in the middle of a sexual revolution. And it is sometimes funny. Roth's prose gallops along, and his timing is good. But here, fifty years distant, I sometimes feel he's poking fun at things I just don't see. Here, on the far side of other shifts in the way we talk about race and gender, it's hard to give Roth the benefit of the doubt for racist and misogyniistic language. Here, where TMI self-indulgent rants are just a mouse-click away, it's hard not to look for the TLDR summary.

>95 swynn: An of-its-time read. I read it in the 70s, to my mother's disgust, but honestly never really cared one way or another about it. T.D.Us.

I've never seen the appeal of Roth's auto, um, fictions.

>96 richardderus: It would certainly have struck me different back in the 1980's -- would I have been shocked? Liberated? I don't know. I probably would not have caught some of the satire even then. I have no opinion on the rest of Roth's oeuvre and probably won't seek to develop one.

And yet ... whatever I have said about Portnoy's Complaint, I've just taken a look at 1970's bestseller and expect that I will like it even less.

Oh holy goddesses! Not *gag* Love Story!! Read The French Lieutenant's Woman it was an equal bestseller that year!

(Though it's not a particular joy, either, but better by leaps and bounds than...that.)

>98 swynn:

Didn't I cite that in my long-ago "Where is the best-selling crap?" musing?? :D

I'll say this, though: I can see how it might have benefitted from reaction to Portnoy's Complaint (which I expect to finish tonight, though goodness knows when it will get written up).

>95 swynn: Excellent review! I think I'm just going to give Roth a hard pass in general from now on. Yeesh.

>99 richardderus: Whatever its flaws -- and let's assume they are legion -- Love Story has the admirable quality (per my library's catalog) of being 115 pages long. I find myself warming to it.

>100 lyzard: Be careful what you wish for?

Oh, but by the way: 115 pages long.

>101 scaifea: Good choice, probably.

>102 swynn: There is a charm to 115pp. Until one realizes there's stuff on it like:

I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me - to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like, when I woke up in the morning and Jenny was there. Still there. I'm sorry, embarrassed even, but I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to.
–and–
“But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?” Jenny asked.
“Make me,” I replied.
“Beg pardon?”
“Make me,” I repeated.
Her eyes widened like saucers. “You mean like incest?” she asked.
“Don’t give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own.”
“Like what, Oliver?” she asked, “like just what is it he makes you do?”
“The ‘right things’,” I said.
“What’s wrong with the ‘right things’?” she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.

I'm just saying that, with...stuff...like that 115pp reads like 345pp.

I'm not saying it will be pleasant; just that it will be over soon.

I've read The Shack, so surely I can read Love Story.

>106 swynn: You've *read* The Shack?! Like, read the whole thing? Big ups, dude. You ain't no weenie when it comes to suffering your punishment.

>107 richardderus: Yes, at the enthusiastic insistence of a friend who somehow found it enlightening. I didn't like it.

A couple hours, tops, of Love Story? Doable.

>107 richardderus: Well! That was...bracing. I suppose I went that kind of cuckoo when The Celestine Prophecy came out. (Such awful writing!)

At the moment I'm inclined to give Love Story a pass just on the assumption that it isn't 250 pages of self-loathing and misogyny.

"Faint praise", anyone...?

>110 lyzard: However it turns out I'm certainly expecting a very different read from the last.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 14
Total miles: 116
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 9:16

Pleased with progress: I shaved nearly 30 seconds off my fastest mile, and logged two consecutive sub-10-minute miles. Pain is under control, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Here's a soundtrack pick in honor of Portnoy:

Soundtrack: Was ich liebe by Rammstein
BPM: 172

Was ich liebe = What I love

I can do without happiness.
Because it comes with unhappiness,
I must destroy it.
What I love, I want to judge.
That I am happy - that cannot be - no.

I do not love that I love something.
I do not like it when I like something.
I have no joy when I am joyful.
I know that I will regret it.
That I am happy - that cannot be.
Who loves me, diminishes thereby.

>112 swynn:

:D :D :D :D :D

>112 swynn: Thanks for sending me to YouTube, Steve, and having an enjoyable half hour with Rammstein. I like their new Official Lyric Video's.

>114 FAMeulstee: You're welcome, Anita! I agree the videos have a sharp design.

And speaking of pointing each other to YouTube ... last year you shared a link to Floor Jansen singing "The Phantom of the Opera" with Henk Poort on "Beste Zangers." I note that Jansen is in the cast of next year's season of the German show, "Sing meinen Song," which was announced last week.

Steve, you've got to go watch this hilarious trash-art creator's Halloween video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2BB2Jwt9v8

>116 richardderus: That's ... really cool. Thanks Richard!

Perry Rhodan 163: Das zweite Imperium by Clark Darlton
Date: 1964

For backstory see the catchup post above above.

Episode 162 ended with a new friendship between a handful of Terran agents and a Schreckworm now named Peterle. Trapped on a damaged Merciful ship, they have called the Terrans for help, but also expect to be located soon by the Merciful. And so it is: this episode opens with a looming space battle between Terran and Merciful fleets. The Terrans have superior weapons, but the Merciful have superior shields made of the Schreckworm-excretion Molkex. Neither fleet can overcome the other's defenses so casualties are few. While most of the ships shoot at each other in vain, a Terran team heads back home with Peterle and the damaged Merciful ship.

Most of the plot is taken up with an adventure of Gucky and Ras Tschubai, teleporters who have been ordered to board a Merciful ship and make videorecordings of its crew. But the mission goes awry, apparently foiled by technobabbilistic qualities of Molkex. After an unlikely series of events, Gucky and Ras are retrieved by the Terrans no wiser than when they began.

>118 swynn: When in doubt, apply liberal coatings of handwavium.

>117 swynn: Isn't it!

Geisterjäger John Sinclair - Folge 6 :Schach mit dem Dämon (= Chess With the Demon) by Jason Dark

In October 2020 to celebrate Halloween I read several episodes of the Heft-series, "Ghost Hunter John Sinclair." For October 2021, mid-reading-slump, I only logged this one, and it's a disappointment. It involves our hero playing chess against a demon for the lives of his friends -- who have been transported to a demon dimension where they occupy a live chessboard. It's kind of a mess, since the villain's motives are unclear -- whatever his motive, his strategy is remarkably clumsy considering he's a chess-playing demon. Between the stuff that hasn't aged well and the stuff that doesn't make sense, there's little to like here.

(I note that the next episode takes place at a haunted sex club. Between the stuff that hasn't aged well and the stuff that doesn't make sense, it might be hoot. But it'll wait til next Halloween.)

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 15
Total miles: 131
Longest run: 5 miles
Fastest mile: 8:48

Lower temperatures no doubt helped me get a sub-9-minute mile, but it still feels like a time I don't yet deserve. We'll find out this week. In other news, I signed up for my first race in almost two years: the ROC 7K, a four-and-a-third mile trail race in January. I'm eager to race again. And speaking of comebacks:

Soundtrack: Atmen by Jupiter Jones
BPM: 170

German pop-punk band Jupiter Jones broke up in 2018, having never really recovered from the departure of frontman Nicholas Müller in 2014. Müller left the band while dealing with severe anxiety attacks, a journey described in his memoir Ich bin mal eben wieder tot (I mostly liked it.)

Anyway, it's 2021, and Jupiter Jones is back albeit with just two of the founding members, Müller and guitarist Sascha Eigner. They've released several singles this year, and while there's nothing as terrifically runnable as, say, "Kopf hoch und Arsch in dem Sattel," they've been solid tracks. This one has the 170 beats per minute I've been trying to hit on my cadence runs. Also a feel-good video.

>121 swynn:

This seems like the perfect time for you to jump on The Three Investigators' bandwagon! :D

>122 lyzard: I may do that. The series was a childhood favorite, so when you started reading them I thought I might join in, but found availability of the books was spotty -- the first especially I couldn't find for a price I cared to pay. But it turns out I failed to check Internet Archive, which has Secret of Terror Castle at least, for my favorite price ever. I just might.

>123 swynn:

Whoo!!

They can be found as ebooks here. (Thanks to Julia for pointing this out.)

>121 swynn: You are doing well with running, Steve, a mile more in total and longest run!
This means your ankle isn't bothering anymore?

Thanks for sharing an other Jupiter Jones video :-)

Don't forget...it's #Noirvember!

>124 lyzard: Well, with a complete set of free Three Investigators I really have no excuse!

>125 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita, and you're welcome! The ankle pain is under control: I'm aware of discomfort, especially the day after speed work or a cadence run, but I'm doing the exercises the podiatrist prescribed and so far I feel good. I intend to raise the weekly volume slowly so as not to mess up what seems to be working, and to spend the early part of the year focused on shorter distances. Maybe a half marathon late summer, we'll see.

>126 richardderus: I was not aware of Noirvember but I think I can meet that challenge.

112 (DAW #100) Hadon of Ancient Opar by Philip José Farmer
Date: 1974

This is a reread for me: the sequel is the next volume in the DAW project, and when I began it I realized (a) that I didn't remember this volume very well, (b) this one ends on a cliffhanger, and (c) book two does nothing to explain the perilous situation it opens with. Hence the re-read. I think I liked it a little better this time, since I remembered it well enough not to be disappointed by its problems, but my comments on the first reading are still apt. Except that I don't think the cliffhanger is the worst of its sins.

There are only two volumes in this series, so I expect no need for this exercise again.

>128 swynn: I never read that one. I read the followup Flight to Opar long ago but don't seem to still have it and don't remember any enthusiasm for it. Since I was a big Tarzan fan and still have a couple of Farmer's other books I'd guess I was disappointed. I think I would enjoy re-reading the Tarzan series, esp the early books.

>129 RBeffa: I'm currently reading Flight to Opar and it's pretty much the same sort of thing. If you lacked enthusiasm for book two, I recommend that it's not worth tracking down book one.

>130 swynn: I frequently found it hard to enjoy reading Farmer's works. I know I donated away most of the books of his that I still had while I was inventorying my books for LT. At the time I don't think I knew or thought about marking books read but unowned as I do now.

I know what you mean about enjoying Farmer. I don't think I ever finished one of his novels until the DAW project.

Perry Rhodan 164: Im Banne des Riesenplaneten (= "In the Spell of the Giant Planet") by Kurt Brand
Date: 1964

Meanwhile, back on Impos ...

Back in episode 152 (My comments here), the Terrans discovered an advanced star map inside a mountain cavern on Impos, one of seventeen Earth-sized moons of the gas giant Herkules. The descriptor "giant" here is unusually apt: Herkules has a diameter larger than its own sun. Since we last visited, scientific teams have been investigating the star map and also excavating ruins of the "Oldtimer" civilization that built it. But their archaeological projects are interrupted by a planetary mystery: routine system scans indicate that Herkules's center of mass has wandered from its geographic center and remains in motion. Mission leader Tyll Leyden speculates a planet may be orbiting *inside* Herkules. He sends drones to investigate, but learns very little before the next crisis: the moon is rocked by a series of increasingly violent earthquakes. Intrigue and peril follow, then a warning from the vanished civilization: Herkules is not a gas giant; in fact, it is not a planet at all but rather a gobsmackingly huge mass of Molkex, the substance that Hornschrecken secrete and from which Schreckworms spontaneously emerge. What could emerge from such a mass of Molkex? The Oldtimers knew, and feared it: they called it "suprahet", for "supraheterodynamic existence." With their advanced technology the Oldtimers were able to immobilize the suprahet, and it has been sleeping ever since. But the events of episode 156 have caused it to awaken. Lacking the Oldtimers' knowledge, the Terrans have to come up with their own plan, and quickly: they hit on a desperate strategy that involves the Empire's entire stock of gravity bombs ....

113) DAW #197: Flight to Opar by Philip José Farmer
Date: 1974

This is the sequel to "Hadon of Ancient Opar", though it's not so much a sequel as book two of a two-volume novel. The events of book one leave Hadon and his allies stranded in Khokarsa, a city-state in the middle of civil and religious war. For reasons of survival and prophecy, Hadon and company must return to Opar, facing hostile forces, natural dangers, and treachery.

It's okay for what it is, which is an extended piece of Burroughs/Haggard fanfic, filling in backstory for the Tarzan and Quatermain novels (and more, I guess: Wikipedia tells me that "Khokarsa" is actually derived from an Ambrose Bierce story). I expect it would appeal most to those who know the source novels well enough to catch the references better than I do, but it also works fine as an adventure story.

>133 swynn: Gravity bombs! What a lark. I think they're a great idea myownself.

...ignoring all Farmer shenanigans...

Happy new week's reads, Steve.

114) A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
Date: 1957

It's a crime novel set in mid-20th-century Harlem, with a cast of not especially sympathetic characters trying to get their hands on a trunk of gold ore. It's twisty, violent, bitterly humorous, and I loved it.

I don't remember the context, but Richard (richardderus) mentioned Himes on his thread a few threads ago, which prompted me to pull this out of the someday swamp. Thanks, Richard!

>135 richardderus: It's a good episode, one that turns the "sense of wonder" up to eleventy-eleven. And yeah: gravity bombs are great. (You'll be delighted to hear that the desperate plan worked, and the heroes survive for a few more episodes, at least.)

>137 swynn: They survive?! But...that's amazing!! Heh.

>136 swynn: Oh my, yes, Chester Himes. What a fabulous, largely forgotten, writer.

>136 swynn:

I read the second in the 'cycle', The Real Cool Killers, a few years ago: it was in a crime omnibus that I'd picked up for something else. The series went onto The Lists then but I haven't gotten back to this first book yet. Obviously I should!

Ah, yes: Crime Novels: American Noir Of The 1950s, edited by Robert Polito. I was reading David Goodis' Down There (the source of Truffaut's Shoot The Piano Player); the omnibus also includes Charles Willeford's Pick-Up, Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, which I have just now followed up on. Impressive collection.

>139 lyzard: Coincidentally, I've just checked out that volume because it's also the one in which my library has The Real Cool Killers. Of the contents, I have already read Down There but liked it well enough to read it again, and the others have been in the Swamp since long time gone. Looking forward to the lot.

And by the way: #Noirvember challenge achieved.

>140 swynn:

Well that's ridiculous. :D

From memory it's pretty grim when taken altogether so you might want to space the contents out (loan period admitting).

115) Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
Date: 2020

This one is getting a lot of love, and yay for YA reading. Unfortunately, it struck me as a kitchen sink overflowing with angst, but I am not the target audience. I wish author Ifueko much success and many followers.

>143 swynn: There is value in seeing yourself in the fiction you read. I did not see myself in that mirror either. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, as we're both north of fifty.

>142 lyzard: We'll see, but yeah. A good crime book goes pretty fast for me, and these all look good. But it's 900 pages of murder and mayhem altogether so it's likely I'll take them one at a time.

>144 richardderus: Agreed.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 15
Total miles: 146
Longest run: 5 miles
Fastest mile: 9:20

Reporting late, but still building nicely and injury-free. Fastest mile was way off from last week's crazy fast time, but I'm happy with it.

Soundtrack: American Landfill by 3TEETH
BPM: 173

116) Freedom by Sebastian Junger
Date: 2021

Junger tells bits and pieces of a project he embarked on with a few friends: walking railways in the northeastern U.S. The purpose of the project is not entirely clear, but you get the idea that it was just an exercise in freedom: to get away from civilization, to sleep under the stars, to find a connection with one's body in motion. From these experiences, Junger launches into a series of meditations on freedom: the tension between freedom from want and freedom from social control; connections between freedom and conflict; and the grim bargain that any organization powerful enough to protect freedom is also powerful enough to deny it. Junger draws lessons from anecdotes about nomadic societies, Native American history, the Easter Uprising, chimpanzees, labor conflicts, and whatever else pops into his mind.

It's consistently interesting, and Junger writes well, but the dilemmas have few resolutions. In fact there is a feeling of inconsequence about the whole thing, as if these are just the kinds of things that bubble up in the mind while your body puts one foot in front of the other for hours on end and then when it's over -- well, Junger closes the book by saying, "It was time to get back to my life."

117) Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire
Date: 2013

Seventh in McGuire's series featuring part-human part-fae (the proportions vary) knight Toby Daye. In this one, Toby is investigating the traffic in goblin fruit -- an supernatural drug deadly to changelings and humans, though harmless enough to pureblood fae. Unfortunately, the Queen of the Mists profits from the drug trade so when Toby gets too close, the Queen exiles her. While contemplating her next move, Toby learns that the Queen is not in fact the rightful monarch but rather usurped the throne years ago, driving the true heir into hiding. So Toby sets about restoring the crown.

I think this is where I take a break from the series. The jokes have all been sounding the same for the last few volumes, and now this one asks me to cheer for the restoration of a hereditary monarchy. And not only cheer for the idea, but for a monarch who show no interest or aptitude for the job, and has been kept sheltered since a child. It briefly occurs to Toby that perhaps the next queen will be no better than the last, but she quickly dismisses it with the reassurance that the new queen is smart so everything will be okay. Yeah, no that's not how it works. Look, I get that the Queen of the Mists is a cartoonishly evil villain and has no business running a country. But I've recently had my fill of discontents with nothing better to offer wanting to overthrow a government because they didn't get their way and I just can't get my cheer pants on for this plot.

I'm pretty unenthusiastic about the Toby Daye books because the writing's so bland to me. The idea is a good one, but it just...sits there.

Not even trying to catch up, Steve, but hoping I can keep better track from here on out.

Happy Sunday!

>150 richardderus: I've enjoyed them more than you did I think, Richard. I like the world, and the cast appeals to me. But yeah, seven episodes in, it's still one that hasn't caught my enthusiasm the way it has so many others. I thought I'd read through them for the 2021 Hugo season, but I feel like I have the idea -- and with the slump I've had the last couple of months, I'm not going to get through the rest of the ballot in time anyway. And I do want to get to the Roanhorse ....

>151 alcottacre: Hi Stasia!

>153 swynn: Hi, Steve! I will be going back and looking at your recommendations throughout the year, so I am hoping for a bunch - especially sci-fi. My reading in that area is sadly lacking.

Just wanted to check: I was hoping for a shared TIOLI read with Love Story, since we're now back on the same page. I was going to list it for the 3+ languages challenge but I see you've already got a book there. Are you okay with doubling up or would you rather keep it one book per challenge? I can shift to the 2021 challenge challenge (!) if you'd rather.

I'm fine with the 3+ language challenge. I'm not going to get a sweep this month, and half of the things I'm reading don't fit neatly into any category anyway. So: happy to drop it where it fits best for you!

>156 swynn:

Thanks!

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 16
Total miles: 162
Longest run: 5 miles
Fastest mile: 9:08

Progress continues. I have some heel pain from Sunday's "long" run, which I'm blaming in part on the shoes, which are past their proper retirement date. The podiatrist's exercises do help.

Soundtrack: Diese Welt braucht Liebe by Nico Suave, Teesy, and the "Liebe All-Stars"
BPM: 89

This earworm hasn't left my head all week, so it's the obvious choice. It's a popstar-filled "We are the world" kind of thing with cheesy lyrics -- "This world needs love ... Where have all the heroes gone?" -- though it also drops a "motherf**r" which you don't hear often in this kind of thing. It probably won't age well but it hasn't worn out its welcome just yet so I'm not apologizing. The BPM works out to a cadence-pushing 178 steps per minute so pretty runnable.

118) Love After the End (edited by Joseph Whitehead)
Date: 2020

Collection of 9 short stories by "Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer" authors. I'm not sure what the boundaries of those terms are, so won't pontificate. I will pontificate briefly, however, about the stories, which I enjoyed. Recurring themes are apocalypse (especially climate apocalypse); being an outsider within a group of outsiders; exploration of kinship relationships; and relationships with technology. My favorites were Adam Garnet Jones's effective story about balancing loyalties to one's partner, child and self; and Darcie Little Badger's weird story about a girl kidnapped to serve a machine.

Abacus by Nathan Adler.

An AI rat, built on a space colony in orbit around one of Jupiter's moons, plots its escape, and finds love.

History of the World by Adam Garnet Jones.

In a world facing a climate apocalypse, an opportunity opens to escape to an Earth-like world in a parallel universe. The narrator's wife wants to go; their daughter wants to stay. Then a message comes from the parallel-earth, which had been thought uninhabited: "Your circle is not round."

The Ark on the Turtle's Back by Jaye Simpson.

In a world facing a climate apocalypse, an opportunity opens to escape to a distant Earth-like world. But getting there may utterly destroy the original Earth.

How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls by Kai Minosh Pyle.

After an apocalypse (that may be climate-related), the narrator survives with a group of Anishinaabe. But when the community targets her friends, she questions the meanings of kinship and what family she wants to survive with.

Andwànikàdjigan by Gabriel Castilloux Calderon.

In an oppressive future society, storytellers are rounded up by the government and thrown in prisons where they cannot spread the disapproved stories. But some storytellers find ways to make more storytellers, even in prison.

Story for a Bottle by Darcie Little Badger.

The narrator is kidnapped and forced to labor on an automated floating city, originally built as a haven for rich people to escape a climate apocalypse. The floating city is now abandoned and in disrepair and in need of more maintenance than the narrator can provide.

Seed Children by Mari Kurisato.

When humans evacuated Earth to escape the climate apocalypse, they left behind the cyborgs and artificial humans to fend for themselves. But these, too, dream of finding a safe home.

Nameless by Nazbah Tom.

This story follows dual timelines: one of them close to our own time, following the daily life of a social worker; the other set in a postapocalyptic future, where guides communicate across time to prepare their ancestors for the coming catastrophe.

Eloise by David A. Robertson.

Sometime in the near future, a mobile app is developed that can interface directly with the brain, allowing users to experience years within just a few moments. It is used for various purposes-- extending subjective life for people with terminal illness; simulation of immortality; forgetting missed chances at love ...

>159 swynn: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Steve.

>159 swynn: You have made this sound quite enticing with the story descriptions and my library actually has 2 copies of this collection. Since you declined to pontificate I will, just a bit. I am increasingly offput by the tagging of everything by increasingly narrow parameters. That said, your description here - "being an outsider within a group of outsiders" makes this a universal sort of thing, and I will check this book out some day I hope.

>160 alcottacre: Hope you like it if you get around to it, Stasia!

>161 RBeffa: I do find myself bewildered by the abundance of terms and I know that that sometimes users of the terms are adamant about nuances which lie outside my experience. So my position is mostly one of listening. If someone finds this term useful and some other one not, then I'm curious about the reasons, but am wary of repeating my (mis)understandings.

I should have mentioned that "Two-Spirit" and "Indigiqueer", whatever their boundaries, are categories at the intersection of LGBTQ+ and Native American. And that is enough to appreciate this collection, which wastes very little time on taxonomy. Hope you like it when you get to it, Ron!

119) The Ravenmaster by Christopher Skaife
Date: 2018

The author is "Ravenmaster" at the Tower of London, in charge of caring for the Tower's resident birds and also for leading tours. He's perfectly frank that if you're interested in the Tower then there are books for that, and if you're interested in ravens then there are books for that too; the reason to read his book is for his unique perspective, which he provides. It's the kind of thing you'd expect on a tour: light and box-ticky, more anecdotal than informative, but also a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

>164 swynn: I enjoyed that one as well, Steve. If you're on Instagram, he posts some lovely pictures of the ravens on a regular basis.

>164 swynn: I saw him on QI a couple years ago! He's a pleasant-seeming sort. Should his book swim across my path, I'll give it a read.

>164 swynn: My local library has a copy of that one, so I will have to check it out some time.

Happy Thursday, Steve!

>165 MickyFine: Thanks for the tip about Skaife's Instagram account.

For everyone else who might enjoy pics of beautiful brilliant birds:
https://www.instagram.com/ravenology1/?hl=en

>166 richardderus:
>167 alcottacre:

You get the same impression from the book. Nice guy, seen some things, loves the birds. Hope you like it if you get to it.

Huh. That guy spells his name wrong. Weird.

(/kidding)

>170 scaifea: Not a cousin, then?

>171 swynn: Ha! Not that I know.

120) Paradise Now by Chris Jennings
Date: 2016

Jennings surveys 19th-century American utopian communities through the lens of five movements: the Shakers, Owenism, Fourierism, Icaria, and Oneida. These movements range from celibate fundamentalists to atheist liberals to free-love communist Christians. But they were remarkably interrelated, sometimes setting up shop in the abandoned digs of a rival movement, sometimes finding common cause across ideological and dogmatic lines. Jennings discusses each movement's history and principles, and traces their relationships with each other and also with other utopian movements that don't fit within his project.

In the 21st century we tend to look at these movements as naive and even silly and frankly it's hard not to, but Jennings encourages us to try. It's important to realize that it was a different time, when the possibilities for the New World seemed endless (for European-Americans anyway); that utopian communes addressed social injustices that the broader society refused to acknowledge or actively promoted; and that it is not inherently naive or silly to apply your resources and labor toward your ideals. Jennings himself occasionally targets snark at the utopians (he calls sexual arrangements at Oneida "ménage à trois-cent"), but equally at their prudish, profit-obsessed, and religiously extreme critics who were themselves ... well, no models of rational thought. Say what you like, the utopians recognized problems of sexual inequality, for example, or the economic monstrosity of raw capitalism, and they did something about it. And say what you like, is utopian experimentalism more silly than our current mania for dystopias and thinking, "well at least we're not that"? Worth wondering.

It's fascinating, lightly humorous, engaging, and recommended.

>173 swynn: Well, that looks like a fun one!

>174 drneutron: It is! It's one of those books that makes me think differently about something I had pretty firm opinion about, which I always appreciate.

>173 swynn: "ménage à trois-cent" LOLOL

I will buy it because of that line alone.

>176 richardderus: Thought you might enjoy that one, Richard.

121) In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Date: 2019

Fourth in McGuire's "Wayward Children" series featuring refugee children from portal fantasy worlds, this time set in a "Goblin Market" world, where principles of fair trade are magically enforced. Like others in the WC series, it has an appealing mix of fantasy, adventure, and melancholy at a length that knows when to close.

122) DAW #198: Jack of Swords by E.C. Tubb
Date: 1976

Galactic traveler Earl Dumarest has already spent thirteen volumes looking for his home planet, "Earth," but is repeatedly told that such a planet is only a legend at best. Now, stranded on the planet Teralde, Dumarest runs afoul of the law, but is given shelter by a powerful landowner with a quest of her own. She wants Dumarest to provide muscle in her search for the "ghost world" Balhadorha -- a planet Dumarest believes is only a legend at best. I am fond of this series, and this entry is fun as usual. The resolution involves one too many unlikely coincidences for my taste, but it delivers on action, suspense, and exotic settings.

>179 swynn: I didn't remember that Dumarest books were still coming out in the 1970s! Somehow I still associate them with the 1960s.

Happy new week's reads, Steve.

123) Love Story by Erich Segal
Date: 1970

Spoilers follow, which I will not attempt to hide because I assume we all know the story's outline. If you don't, then proceed with caution.

Oliver Barrett IV is a child of privilege attending Harvard, who falls in love with working-class Radcliffe student Jennifer Cavilleri. When Oliver and Jenny plan to marry, Oliver's father cuts him off from the family's wealth, but they press on, subsisting apparently on love. But when they decide to have children they learn that Jenny has a terminal illness. (Well, Oliver learns anyway.)

I've been aware of this book forever (I mean, how could I escape "Love means never having to say you're sorry," possibly the worst bestselling relationship advice of all time?) but it's not really my kind of thing, never saw the movie, wasn't interested, still am not. So I was pleasantly surprised at its novella length, and even more surprised to find it pretty readable. True, the prose is vapid (as Richard points out above), but it's direct with short words and short sentences and lots of dialog, and barely took an hour from start to finish -- faster than the movie, so I see no reason to subject myself to that.

Fast and mostly painless does not mean I found it good. Oliver's troubles with his father are largely of his own making, and his romance with Jenny is no model: their interactions are heavy with mutual ridicule, which is supposed to be cute, I guess, but an insane way to conduct an apology-free relationship. Oliver selfishly prevents Jenny from pursuing her dream of studying in Paris. The thing that will probably stick with me the longest is that when Jenny is diagnosed with leukemia, the doctor does not share the diagnosis with her. Instead he tells Oliver and suggests that Oliver also hide the diagnosis from Jenny as long as he can. And Oliver does. I guess in 1970 this probably wasn't unusual, but it sure feels slimy today. In short, it's a story whose appeal baffles me -- but then we all know my position on romances, so we are not surprised and focus instead on the positive.

Yay for 100-page bestsellers!

124) The Silence of the Wilting Skin by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Date: 2020

On the night of her grandmother's death, the narrator is visited by her grandmother's "Dreamskin" with a warning that she has been deceived: "There are enemies who alter your vision so they have power over you."

As indeed there are. The narrator lives in a segregated city, citizens living on opposite sides of railroad tracks. Not everyone can see the tracks, but they carry a train whose passengers are ghosts. The Dreamskin warns that the citizens from The City on the Other Side have altered her senses in order to assert power over her:

You are a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Your sight, your hearing, the gem dissolved in your skin, the language on your tongue is a product that neither profits you nor promotes you in this 'beloved' city. You think you are invisible, that is nothing! Wait until you are not white-washed but turned translucent!

And reader, from there the story gets weird. The narrator's skin color begins to peel off. She is concerned about her skin turning transparent, but some of her neighbors disappear altogether. Her neighborhood is targeted for development, and even the railroad is being built over as the City on the Other Side seeks to expand. All of this in the context of ghosts and Dreamskins and supernatural goings on that are often dreams and sometimes maybe dreams and not necessarily related chronologically. It is about colonialism and assimilation and loss of identity -- not only of self but of heritage. It's powerful stuff, with powerful images and language but it was rarely clear just what was going on and I'm torn between "omigosh you guys this is terrific" and "wotthehell did I just read"

Which probably isn't very helpful in answering the question whether you want to read it too. Well, Lavie Tidhar blurbs it as "a surrealist masterpiece," and though I'm no judge of that category, I think what I read is not inconsistent with that assessment. If "surrealist masterpiece" is a thing you dig then seek this out and let me know whether Tidhar is right.

>122 lyzard: I last read a Dumerest story in 2010 - the 19th in the series and I thought it pretty weak. I have had #20 Web of Sand sitting on the TBR shelf since then. I have all the Dumarest books including the rare ones except for #26 which I will look for once I restart the series ...

>182 swynn: oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Yep, that's for me!

>181 swynn: That, OTOH, is very much not.

>180 richardderus: Oh yes, and even into the 1980s. The last volume (33) wasn't published til 2008, but really Tubb was basically finished in the mid-80s.

>183 RBeffa: Too bad about #19. I think there have been better and worse adventures, but mostly it's been reliable adventure formula.

>184 richardderus: Very much looking forward to your take if you get to it.

>185 swynn: My bargain book find of this century anyway was getting #32 in nearly mint condition - unread and pristine. For about 25 cents in 2015.

>187 RBeffa: I checked AbeBooks to discover that the cheapest copy available from that source is currently priced at $928.

Yeah, two bits is a good deal.

>181 swynn: I haven't read this one, but I have watched the movie and, well, yeah, you'll able to live a full, happy life without it. Segal is a classicist, which has always sort of fascinated me, the fact that he was a classics professor *and* wrote a bestselling romance. Weird.

>189 scaifea: I saw in the book's brief bio that Segal "taught Latin and Greek at Harvard", and thought that bestselling author of fluffy romance was an odd side gig, but nice for him that it paid so much better than his day job.

But that's just the surface. I found an obituary in The Guardian that explores everything he was into, including screenwriting and sports commentary, in a varied and interesting life.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/19/erich-segal-obituary

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 17
Total miles: 179
Longest run: 6 miles
Fastest mile: 8:54

Pretty good week. The six-mile run means a sustained running pace (well, about 10:30 average) for an hour. My fastest mile dropped under nine minutes again. Heel/ankle pain persists, but with the podiatrist's exercises I'm keeping it to a dull ache.

Soundtrack: The Creeps by Garbage
BPM: 170

>190 swynn: Ha! Yeah, Classics academia does not pay enough to support a glamorous lifestyle, for certain.

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

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

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

Steve, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

>193 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul!

>173 swynn: >179 swynn: Into the BlackHole they go!

>182 swynn: Yeah, I do not think I am the target audience for that one.

       

125) Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Date: 2020

It's a middle-grades book about a middle-grades monster hunter, drawing on Navajo folklore. It's fun, and knows its audience.

126) One By One by Ruth Ware
Date: 2020

A business retreat at an alpine mountain chalet is complicated by an avalanche trapping the chalet's residents snowbound with a murderer. It's okay, though there's very little mystery: the murderer's identity is concealed more through coyness than suspense.

127) DAW #199: The Napoleons of Eridanus by Pierre Barbet
Date: 1976 (French original, "Les grognards d'Eridan" 1970)

A small group of soldiers in Napoleon's army wandering the snowy fields around Moscow stumble upon an unlikely shelter: warm and stocked with food and drink and Russian women. Soon, soldiers and women are transported across the galaxy. The shelter was in fact a trap set by peace-loving decadent space aliens facing a hostile invasion but have lost the skills and temperament to fight back. The aliens convince the soldiers to plan and carry out a campaign against the invaders, but humans being human the grognards just might not know when to stop ... The premise is fun, though the execution is sometimes cringey. There's a bit where the heroes slaughter their prisoners of war, and the women are little more than trophies.

128) Jumbie God's Revenge by Tracey Baptiste
Date: 2019

Third and most recent in Baptiste's middle-grade series drawing on Caribbean folklore. Events of the first two books have annoyed a god, who intends to silence humans and jumbies by wiping them out with a devastating storm. It's okay, though it sometimes felt too busy to me, and I didn't buy the resolution. But then I'm not the target audience and I listened to this as an audiobook on a long drive.

129) The Hidden Law by Michael Nava
Date: 1992

Fourth in Nava's series featuring gay Latino lawyer Henry Rios. In this one, Rios defends a young addict accused of murdering a Latino state senator. While Rios defends his client and solves the murder he also deals with a personal breakup and confronts difficult feelings about his relationship with his father. The mystery is not especially mysterious, but has interesting connections and parallels to Rios's personal development, which is surprisingly affecting.

>195 alcottacre: Hope you like the Jennings and the Tubb if you get around to them, Stasia!

I've found most of the Dumarest adventures to be pretty good. There is an overarching story that develops throughout the series but most adventures also stand on their own.

>196 swynn: #126 "the murderer's identity is concealed more through coyness than suspense" Ooohhh, that is bad when that happens. I get ragey. I commend you for your patient forbearing response.

#127 I even read this in the 1970s. I got it after I found his Baphomet's Meteor in my library. Ages later, I found Cosmic Crusaders had the sequel in it. I doubt I'd be as kind as you are if I read them today, but they slid down easy with teenaged me.

>198 richardderus: And it's one that has bothered me even more after reading it. I can't recommend it except to say that others have loved it.

As for the Barbet: I think I would have enjoyed it more if I'd encountered it younger also. Its theme of "can-do humans overcome technologically superior opponents through wits and persistence" resonates with me, and it strongly reminded me of Poul Anderson's The High Crusade, which I encountered young and have reread repeatedly and to which I will admit no fault. The Napoleons of Eridanus I can do without, but who knows what my preferences might have been had I read it instead of THC as a teenager.

130) The Shoelace Book by Burkard Polster
Date: 2006

First, watch this: What is the best way to lace your shoes? A dream proof

Then ask yourself whether you want all of that with even more math. If the answer is yes, then I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

As for the math, this is a volume in the American Mathematical Society's "Mathematical World" series, whose theme is mathematically rigorous texts for a nonspecialist audience. Ideally, the MW books are supposed to be accessible to "motivated" high school students. I think this volume fits that description, though fair warning that it isn't leisure reading (or at least wasn't for me). Proofs occasionally assume familiarity with some basic combinatorial counting techniques and calculus.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 12
Total miles: 191
Longest run: 4 miles
Fastest mile: 9:14

Pretty good week, except that on Saturday's "easy" run I turned an ankle slightly -- enough to hurt, not enough to interrupt the run. I ran through it on Saturday, but Sunday morning the foot was swollen and bruised, so I skipped the long run. I'm hoping that this week will be back to usual.

Soundtrack: Warum spricht niemand über Gitarristen? by Die Ärzte
BPM: 102

Love the backbeat on this one, and the self-directed humor (Why doesn't anyone talk about guitarists? ... I expect it's because there's nothing interesting to say about them.)

Ahem.

Can I nudge you to add Love Story for last month's TIOLI?

I appreciate you may be trying to block it out, but... :D

>202 lyzard: Done. Sorry about that ... somehow I thought I had done it already.

>203 swynn:

See also >202 lyzard: :D

Thanks!

>204 lyzard: Yeah ... hypothesis confirmed, apparently.

Perry Rhodan update.

   

Perry Rhodan 165: Kontaktschiff Terrania (= "Contact Ship Terrania") by Kurt Brand
Date: 1964

Peterle, the Terrans' new schreckworm ally, travels with agent Tyll Leyden to the Schreckworm homeworld Tombstone to convince other Schreckworms to join with the Terrans. Though they have small reason for a friendly reception, they also know that the schreckworms resent their relationship with the Merciful, who keep too much molkex for themselves in exchange for transportation services.

Perry Rhodan 166: Das Labyrinth von Eysal (= "In the Labyrinth of Eysal") by Kurt Mahr
Date: 1964

A team of scientists explore a vast multilevel labyrinth beneath an abandoned temple on the planet Eysal and discover that, while the temple may be abandoned, the maze is not. In fact, the complex is an active base of "The Merciful" and so the research team, unprepared for hostilities, makes first face-to-face contact with the mysterious lords of the schreckworms. "The Merciful" turn out to be tall, saucer-headed, seven-fingered bipeds with blue fur, from which derives the name they'll be called for the next three thousand episodes: The Blues. In this initial encounter they are not friendly. Plenty of action in this one, in a setting used to good effect.

Perry Rhodan 167: Spione von der Erde (= "Spies from Earth") by Kurt Mahr

Interrogating a prisoner captured during the hostilities on Eysal, Terrans learn much about the Blues' language and customs. Researchers use this knowledge to design portable projectors and automatic translators to disguise humans as Blues. So disguised, a team of agents travels a secondary system of the Blues empire, where they hope to learn even more, and to establish contact with a Blues insurrectionist movement. But when their cover is blown, they mostly just want to get out alive.

131) Derailed by Mary Keliikoa
Date: 2020

First in a mystery series featuring Portland PI Kelly Pruett who juggles managing the PI business founded by her recently-passed father, coparenting a deaf child with her controlling ex, dodging her interfering ex-mother-in-law, and flirting with a handsome deputy. In this one, an old friend of her father's comes asking for help: the friend's daughter Brooke stumbled in front of the light rail while intoxicated, the police quickly ruled it an accidental death, but the friend believes she was pushed. And as Pruett digs into the victim's past she uncovers secrets and draws the attention of dangerous people.

This one was nominated for several awards last year, but I found it just okay. I liked the spare prose style and steady pace. But other things annoyed me, like the excessive relationship angst and the have-it-both-ways attitude about Brooke's secret life as a dominatrix, bouncing between "Oh em gee the kink!" and "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

132) The Copernicus Complex by Caleb Scharf
Date: 2014

Copernicus taught us that the universe does not revolve around us literally, and since then science has worked best when assuming this is also true metaphorically. Author Scharf calls this idea the "Copernican Principle" or "human mediocrity" -- there's nothing really special about life on Earth, if it happens here then it probably happens elsewhere too. Except.

Except that (per Scharf) recent discoveries in astronomy tell us that our solar system actually *is* an unusual one: our planetary orbits have low eccentricity (for now anyway); we have no planets of super-earth size; our sun is warmer and brighter than average. Is it possible that our solar system's unusual conditions are also unusually beneficial for development of complex life? We are so far the only life we've observed -- what are the odds that's because complex life really isn't all that common? And what does that mean for "human mediocrity"?

We don't know, of course, and Scharf's book is a 230-page exercise in saying, "We don't know." Still, he hits some really interesting material along the way, from history, microbiology, and astronomy to give our ignorance context. Although ... geez, this is seven years old now ... I really ought to go look for an update.

133) Upright Women Wanted by Sara Gailey
Date: 2020

In a post-apocalyptic American southwest, civilization has reverted to a wild-west scenario, with mostly nineteenth-century technology and nineteenth-century public mores. When Esther's best friend and secret lover Beatrice is hanged for possession of forbidden literature, Esther escapes to join the Librarians, a roving group of upright women who distribute government-approved literature. Except that the Librarians turn out to be just the sort of people Esther feared she was becoming: queer, subversive, and dangerous to the status quo.

I like the idea, but the setting makes little sense to me. It especially bothers me that these independent towns, developed in a region that is ... well, not famous for its respect for federal authority ..., seem to be so accepting of the demands and dictates of "the government." And while it's cool that the Librarians plant subversive literature while overtly distributing "government-approved" material, it seems to me that ruse probably would not survive long. Besides my worldbuilding questions, it bothered me that a significant character conflict was resolved by everyone just forgetting that it was problem. FWIW, I think I'm not the primary audience for this and I consumed it on audiobook, which I'm not very good at.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 18
Total miles: 209
Longest run: 6 miles
Fastest mile: 9:08

Getting ready for my January race, I moved a run this week to the trails of a nearby state park. Those miles were slow -- about 11:30 average -- but I stayed upright, which is challenge #1 on trails.

Soundtrack: Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine
BPM: 169

Like so much of RATM's oeuvre, it's about thirty years old now but could have been written yesterday.

134) DAW #200: The DAW Science Fiction Reader
Date: 1976

The 200th DAW volume (milestone!) is an anthology of seven stories by seven authors who Wollheim must have considered his most marketable. Most fell flat for me. The most interesting was Norton's juvenile novel, Fur Magic, a secondary-world fantasy based on Native American folklore. It's hard to read this in 2021 without discomfort about cultural appropriation; and yet the themes of impending disaster and human stupidity have lost no resonance in the last fifty years. Dickson's story is also pretty good-- I like the idea of a revenge plot carried out with impunity under observation of the very authorities charged with preventing it. I also liked the pensive melancholy of Stableford's story, though it does get a bit talky. I had mixed feelings about the rest.

Fur Magic by Andre Norton
(Reprint. Originally published: 1968)
After his father goes to Vietnam, Cory Alder goes to live with his Native American "uncle." A mishap with a medicine bag leads to a ritual which transports him into a world populated only by animals, where he inhabits the body of the beaver Yellow Shell. As Yellow Shell, Cory must spoil a plot by Coyote to disrupt the order of the world.

Warrior by Gordon R. Dickson
(Reprint. Originally published: 1970)
Dorsai commander Ian Graeme travels to Earth to settle a debt with James Kennebuck, the brother of a disgraced Dorsai captain. Graeme blames Kennebuck for his brother's death, and has a plan for justice.

The Truce by Tanith Lee
In a distant postapocalyptic future, the last baby machines have broken down. In a desperate attempt to continue the race, Earth's two factions agree to a truce in order to attempt making babies as the ancients did.

Wizard of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers (i.e., Kenneth Bulmer)
It's a typical Dray Prescot adventure, set somewhere between volumes five and six of the series. Prescot and his wife Delia take a break from adventures to attend a wedding ... from which the bride and Delia are subsequently kidnapped. Adventures ensue.

The Martian El Dorado of Parker Wintley by Lin Carter
A con artist takes a get-rich-quick scheme to a Martian colony.

The Day of the Butterflies by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Consensus reality breaks down as people experience increasingly realistic visions of a pastoral world.

Captain Fagan Died Alone by Brian M. Stableford
The abandoned son of a space captain goes looking for his wandering, misanthropic, probably-mad father.

>209 swynn: This sounds like an interesting idea, Steve. Too bad, the execution didn't work.

>211 swynn: I have a small stack of three pretty yellow DAW's sitting on the bookcase behind my reading chair. These are ones I plan to read before too long - a Dumarest, a Dray Prescott, ... and literally on the top of the small pile is DAW #200. I'm glad it wasn't a fail. I've been looking forward to it.

>212 BLBera: It didn't work for me, though others have loved it. You might give it a look anyway if the premise sounds interesting -- even if it doesn't work for you it's pretty short.

>213 RBeffa: Quelle coincidence! I'm looking forward to your reactions.

>211 swynn: Fun memories!

>209 swynn: I liked it even less than you did. I'd've given it two stars because my sole printable response was to roll my eyes a lot.

>208 swynn: I'm all down with admitting "we don't know" but I need more to make me read a whole book....

>207 swynn: Oh NAY NAY NAY! That coy little fan-flip of "not that there's anything wrong with that" makes me too impatient for coherence.

>206 swynn: *aaahhh* Rhodan goodness.

I'm back to my wifi'd computer, as you see. SO glad not to be living in 1995 anymore!

>215 richardderus: Welcome back Richard!

And by the way, thanks for this one:



135) Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
Date: 2020 (French original 2016)

This is a gem of a novella about a young French-Korean woman, recently graduated from college, working as a housekeeper in a resort town near the North Korean border. The overriding mood is ennui: it's winter so the tourist traffic is a trickle; the job, which keeps her near her aging mother, is a dead end; her college boyfriend is away at modeling school and decreasingly a factor in her life; she's stuck in the awkward transition from Promising Youth to Productive Adulthood and the paths from one to the other are as unappealing as staying where she is. She finds a break from the ennui in cooking, and in a new guest: a French artist who has arrived looking for inspiration for his next graphic novel and who asks our narrator to help him scout locations. That makes this sound like a romance, which it isn't, though it is about romance. It's also about seeing and being seen and the competing demands for one's time and loyalties. And the prose is terrific: bare and precise and I promise you will forget you are reading a translation. Recommended.

>216 swynn: Yay!



I'm always glad when a book bullet hits the target.

136) A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Date: 2021

You know that author whom everybody else seems to love and you just don't get it? For me that's Becky Chambers. Her low-drama, low-conflict, low-action stories about nice people being nice, press none of my buttons. But I keep trying because people whose tastes I respect rhapsodize over her work, and her stuff keeps showing up on "Best of the Year" lists. And maybe it's starting to grow on me. This one is a low-drama novella about the friendship between a nice monk and a nice robot who go on a quest that promises peril and delivers occasional discomfort. Their conversations contain a lot of forgettable self-helpy talk about purpose and passion, but still I found their relationship ... well damn it, they're sort of charming, and I am pleased to be looking forward to the next ... adventure, if that's the word.

So do you want to read it? If you're already a fan then you don't need me to tell you. If you haven't tried Chambers yet, then it's not a bad place to start. Or, if you bounced off The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, you might give Chambers another chance with this one.

>218 swynn: Interesting - I enjoyed A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and planned on continuing the series, while A Psalm for the Wild-Built didn't really do much for me. Kudos to her for writing such different books that appeal to different folks, though.

>200 swynn: Proofs occasionally assume familiarity with some basic combinatorial counting techniques and calculus.

That lets me out - I never took calculus.

>218 swynn: I need to get to that one. I am a Chambers fan.

>219 bell7: That is interesting, I would have guessed the audiences for the two series would be similar. And yes -- whatever difference made this not work for you, I'm happy that it clicked for me!

>220 alcottacre: No worries -- the video covers most of the results, and the book fills in details. If you're curious about the details you could probably skip the calculus parts.

And I hope the Monk & Robot book works for you!

Glad you found a Chambers novel that worked for you, Steve. I really loved A Long Way but needed to give myself space between it and the rest of the series. I knew each of the books focused on different characters and that I'd resent the later books for not being about the characters I loved from the first one if I read them too close together.

>222 MickyFine: That is the way I approached them too, Micky.

Have a wonderful weekend, Steve!

>222 MickyFine: Me too. Hope you like the other Wayfarers books as well when you get to them.

>223 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia! It was a good one.

137) Wheels by Arthur Hailey
Date: 1971

This was the bestselling novel in the U.S. for 1971. It's my second Hailey, after his 1968 bestseller Airport, which I enjoyed for its detailed behind-the-scenes tour of problems and controversies of contemporary aviation. The pleasures here are similar, where the setting has changed to the Detroit automotive industry. Once again, the setting is the main character, and the dramatic characters mostly serve to illustrate topical themes, from administration to product development to marketing and sales, to labor and race relations. It doesn't have anything like Airport's thrilling air-crisis episode but still moves along nicely, and I think does a better job of working its exposition into dialog. Though I've managed to avoid Hailey before this bestseller project I've found these two books engaging, and am inclined to seek out Hotel.

>226 swynn: I mainly remember this for its (new-to-me) economic lessons in mass production. The characters were discussing the costs of fixing a bug and one says, "it'll cost about five bucks a car." The one it was said to blew his stack, explained Hailey, because the math makes that into multiple millions spent.

In 1971, I'd never so much as given that a thought! I suspect that many even older than I hadn't either, and that was one of Hailey's big contributions to US society: It's all down to perspective, what's cheap and what isn't.

>227 richardderus: Your memory is excellent, and that scene stood out to me too. The scales are mind-boggling -- and rage-invoking when you realize how the strict attention to pennies is applied to assembly-line jobs.

>228 swynn: Heh...when your world gets rocked, it's memorable! It really was a key realization in my early days of wondering exactly how capitalism gets away with its vileness, as well.

>226 swynn: The only Hailey I've ever read is The Moneychangers and I highly recommend it for the (now dated, I'm sure) behind-the-scenes into Big Banking. Like you, that's my favorite part of these sorts of novels. I feel the same way about Dick Francis' mysteries set in the English horseracing world, which often had protagonists in racing-adjacent professions like flying taxi pilot or gemstone dealer or glassblowing artist or meteorologist; learning how those professions work is as much fun as the mystery.

>230 rosalita: Thanks for the rec! If my attention hasn't wandered to something else after I get to Hotel (or before), I'll try The Moneychangers next. In any case I'll Someday-Swamp it.

138) DAW #201: Bunduki by J.T. Edson
Date: 1975

Hey y'all, this is a thing that exists. J.T. Edson built his career on paperback westerns, most prolifically the 66-volume "Floating Outfit" series. But he was also apparently a fan of pulp adventure, and to scratch that itch he wrote four books about Tarzan's adopted son Bunduki and Tarzan's adopted granddaughter Dawn and their jungle adventures on an alien planet. It all starts when Bunduki and Dawn are driving around their African game preserve and accidentally drive their jeep into a ravine. Instead of falling to their death, they are whisked away to a planet on the far side of the sun (just like Gor!) where they fight ape-like "hairy men" and zebra-riders who want to sacrifice Dawn to the "Quogga-God." Edson has bought into Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton project, and makes several references to Farmer's work on Tarzan for background. It's firmly in the 1970's "men's adventure" genre, where women characters are introduced with bust-waist-hip measurements and weapons are introduced with footnotes. Among the many action scenes is an extended description of a fight between Dawn and the principal female villain -- according to his Wikipedia entry, this sort of "catfight" was a signature scene for Edson and ... yeah, you can see was enjoying himself.

This is the only volume that appears in the DAW catalog, so I guess I'll probably never know how the story develops. And I'm okay with that.

>226 swynn: I still have not read any of Hailey's books. I am going to have to fix that one of these days. Just not today.

Have a great week, Steve!

>233 alcottacre: No hurry. They're not *that* good.

139) She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Date: 2021

Oh my this was delicious. It's the first in a historical fantasy series based on the rise of the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang -- except in this series the future emperor was born a girl and assumed her brother's identity in a bid to survive. It's more about politics and character than magic -- though there is some magic, largely for atmosphere and it was exactly the kind of absorbing, thought-provoking read I needed just now.

The lovely cover is by JungShan.

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 19
Total miles: 228
Longest run: 6 miles
Fastest mile: 8:50

I did two runs on trail this week, including the long run, for a total of 10 miles. Four of those miles were on the trails where my January race will be held and ... I'm nervous. This course has a generous amount of roots, rocks, and sapling stumps decorating the trails, and I had forgotten how much different the mental game is in trail running. Throw a cover of fallen leaves over treacherous topography and yikes. Still: i've remained upright. I've also remained slow. I think the two are related. I also expanded my 4-day schedule to a 5-day one, running Tues-Thurs and Fri-Sat.

Soundtrack: Bonnie & Clyde by Die Toten Hosen
BPM: 167

140) The Maximum Security Book Club by Mikita Brottman
Date: 2016

It's the memoir of an English professor who leads a literature course in a maximum security prison. Content of the course was reading and discussing novels -- basically, a maximum security book club. It's okay: the premise is appealing, and the discussions are occasionally enlightening. But also the author sometimes comes across as naive or self-superior or both. It's puzzling to me, for example, that she should express frustration with her students' dissatisfaction with Heart of Darkness -- and then admit that she struggled with it too for some time. Most uncomfortable to me was her attempt to convince the convicts that Lolita is really a beautiful love story and they just need to get past the pederasty. To her credit, she often acknowledges her missteps and does not attempt to justify them; also she is willing to hear her students perspectives -- notably, she learns to appreciate their reading of Humbert Humbert as a smooth-tongued con artist. Occasionally interesting, it's also often hard to sympathize with the author or see what the takeaway is supposed to be.

I listened to this on audiobook, so it's likely I missed some things.

>235 swynn: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Unfortunately, my local library does not have a copy yet.

>237 swynn: I love books on books, but somehow that one puts me off.

Happy Wednesday, Steve!

141) Black Girl Dangerous by Mia McKenzie
Date: 2014

This is a collection of posts from the blog Black Girl Dangerous. They are brief and passionate statements about race, sexuality, gender, and surviving in a world where the range of values for those categories are not equally respected.

For samples, you can check out the blog. It looks like it hasn't been updated for several years, but the content was written in an environment that hasn't much improved, so they still have power.

>238 alcottacre: I hope you get to She Who Became The Sun. I liked it a lot.

The Maximum Security Book Club felt off to me too. I won't push it, though others may appreciate it more. It did make me add On the Yard to the Someday Swamp.

>236 swynn: Good you stayed on your feet at the trail, Steve.
Die Toten Hosen was fun :-)

>232 swynn: I'm a little surprised that I don't have an Edson book or two cataloged on LT. I will admit to having owned a couple of the westerns at one time but most of the westerns I had got the boot unread years ago. I don't think I knew he did a Tarzan spinoff. The things one learns on LT ...

>242 RBeffa: I was never into westerns much, though I've read a few Louis L'Amours (my Dad was a fan), Elmore Leonards, and some scattered others. I'm not sure whether I've read any J.T. Edsons, but from the action scenes in Bunduki, I expect they would be just fine.

I'm not surprised you haven't heard of Bunduki. I hadn't either, and it seems not to have taken off, based on DAW's decision not to continue the series. Having read it, I've little interest in continuing: it's an odd premise with odd execution, but the things that make it distinctive also put me off. The Bunduki books -- along with many of Edson's other titles -- are available as ebooks now for a couple of bucks each, so if you're curious you could check it out cheaply.

>243 swynn: I might check it out one day altho it would be fun to have the actual first DAW. Scouting this out last night I discovered there were four books in the series along with an unpublished fifth that the ERB heirs apparently didn't approve of. Your book was apparently authorized by the estate. I linked the four books here on LT as part of the series. In my experience most Burroughs pastiches and spinoffs have been pretty disappointing but a few like the two done by S M Stirling were enjoyable.

Rinker Buck, commenting in 2015's The Oregon Trail about George Washington's business as a land developer:

"Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump."

Oh, sweet summer child 2015. If but that were the only day job they had in common ....

>244 RBeffa: I look forward to your thoughts if you get around to it, and especially if you continue the series.

>245 swynn: OH MY GODDESSES
U
G
H

I know that Washington wasn't some saintly modern hero but that particular analogy hadn't occurred to me. I feel sickened at its accuracy.

>247 richardderus: Yes, I could have gone my whole life without that connection.

142) Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Date: 2020

Fifth in McGuire's Wayward Children series featuring refugees from portal fantasies. This one returns to characters from books 1 and 3: Jack and Jill Wolcott, from the Moors fantasy-world that resembles old Universal horror movies. Things have gone very wrong in the Moors, and Jack runs to recruit help from the School for Wayward Children to set things right again.

I continue to find this series appealing.

143) Love is the Law by Nick Mamatas
Date: 2013

Here's a gutpunch. The narrator is a young woman in the 1980s, a punk rocker and follower of Marx and Aleister Crowley and aware of the contradictions, whose mentor has been murdered. The mentor had been paying her for sexual favors but still represented the most trust-based relationship of her life. Investigating the murder of course uncovers secrets, some close to home.

I have mixed feelings about this one. It's an uncomfortable read -- TW for sexual abuse and racist and ableist language -- but it also has uncomfortable points to make about the '80s and the corrupting effects of late capitalism, and at that it's powerfully effective

>250 swynn: I do so enjoy Mamatas's writing. I don't enjoy his language at all, which sounds weird doesn't it.

>251 richardderus: No, I think I get what you're saying. This was my first Mamatas, though I'm now intrigued. I have I am Providence on Kindle, which presumably I picked up on sale sometime. What are your favorites?

>252 swynn: The People's Republic of Everything is a terrific collection, and its version of Under My Roof is The Definitive, so there's that. Sensation is ab.so.lute.ly bonkers and also fascinating. Any of those will either finish your assimilation or provoke anaphylactic shock.

>253 richardderus: Noted and noted. Thanks!

144) DAW #202: A World Called Camelot by Arthur H. Landis
Date: 1976

This is a mashup of science fiction and fantasy, where a galactic space agent goes undercover on a planet with medieval technology and feudal economics, and where magic works. Going undercover among the planet's furry indigenes, the agent represents himself as the return of a legendary hero, leads their armies in battles against forces of evil, and falls in love with the princess. Also, there is some intrigue with telepathic teddy bears. The story is fine, but the characters are thin and the mannered prose is frequently grating.

145) Price's Lost Campaign by Mark A. Lause
Date: 2011

In the U.S. Civil War, Missouri was a "border state": a slave state that did not secede from the Union. It's not that nobody tried, but that's a whole 'nother story. The upshot was that after some early campaigns, Missouri had a provisional government supported by Federal authority, while former governor Claiborne Jackson and friends set up shop in Texas as the rightful government in exile. For most of the war, Missouri was under Union control though it suffered widespread guerilla attacks by small bands of raiders.

Then, in Fall 1864, with Lincoln's reelection looming and prospects looking difficult the Confederacy was looking for wins. Sterling Price, Confederate general and Missouri native, led a campaign from Arkansas into Missouri, pointed first at St. Louis but then veering west to state capital Jefferson City. It has often been called "Sterling's Raid" to associate it with the less-organized activities of bushwhackers like "Bloody Bill" Anderson and William Quantrill. But Sterling's project was of an entirely different order of magnitude and with loftier ambitions. It is very difficult estimating how many men Sterling had at his disposal -- and this is the Civil War so "disposal" is not just a term of art -- but author Lause throws around numbers like 12,000 or 15,000. Sterling's intent, per Lause, was to take Missouri for the Confederacy, cutting off any flow of recruits from Missouri to Federal forces eastward, and causing enough trouble to upset Lincoln's hopes for re-election. It did not work out that way: what plays out instead is a sometimes-horrifying, sometimes-comical drama of imperfect information, missed opportunities, shifting priorities, and total war. Sterling's expedition was incredibly destructive, but failed in its main goals. In fact, Lause argues that Sterling's brutally destructive tactics actually hurt the Confederate's cause, sealing Missouri's support for Lincoln come November.

Lause follows Price's campaign and the Federal response to it as well he can. Sources are often inconsistent and mutually contradictory, and Lause points out why reporters would have reasons to exaggerate, lie, assume, misremember, or just make stuff up when they didn't actually know what the hell was happening. And this, to me, is one of the most interesting parts of the story: how do we reconstruct a narrative from such a mess of clues? This isn't the sort of thing one asks in a popular history, but this isn't a popular history and I'm grateful. It's slow going in spots, but fascinating.

>240 swynn: I only wish my local library had a copy of She Who Became the Sun.

>250 swynn: >255 swynn: I think I will give those two a pass.

Have a great week, Steve!

**RUNNING POST**

Miles last week: 20
Total miles: 248
Longest run: 7 miles
Fastest mile: 8:34
5K trial: 29:02

Achievements and a disappointment this week. I broke 30 minutes over 3.1 miles, and logged my fastest mile yet since restarting a running regimen. Once again I did my long run on trail but unfortunately failed to stay upright. At about a half-mile I turned my right ankle but it felt mild enough to run through. I completed the run slowly (at about a 14:20 pace, more speedwalking than running), but shortly afterward realized that the ankle was not going to shut up so easily. Definitely feeling it today.

Soundtrack: I'm Getting Better by The Record Company
BPM: 100

>258 swynn: Sorry to hear about the ankle. I hope you have it propped up and are giving it time to heal!

>257 alcottacre: Too bad about She Who Became the Sun, I'm pretty enthusiastic about it.

Probably good choices about the Mamatas and the Landis.

>258 swynn: Boo hiss ankle pain!

>256 swynn:, >255 swynn: Ah! Well. Aren't those...nice. I mean, all that bookish stuff goin' on. Pages and covers and, well, just as book-ly as a book needs to be!

>235 swynn: Our library has it altho checked out. I put it on my list for the future from the libe. Sounds good.

ETA: They have an ebook and a 15 hr audiobook available now. Sigh.

>261 richardderus: Thanks for the commiseration, Richard! Yeah, I didn't expect those last two to draw much enthusiasm, even though I found the Sterling Price book more interesting than expected -- I expected to skim it, but ended up reading. Just like a regular book and all.

>262 RBeffa: Hope you like it if you get to it, Ron! I'm looking forward to the sequel which is due ... let's see ... the author says, "whenever I finish writing it." Crap. To be honest with myself, my attention will be in a completely different universe by then.

>255 swynn: So no Prime Directive in that universe... 😀

>264 drneutron: Sort of, but only when it's convenient. The amount of interference is supposed to be minimal -- although it's not clear where the limit of "minimal" lies when impersonating a resurrected cultural hero is allowed. At one point the hero is reprimanded for overinterfering, but when everything turns out okay he is forgiven.

So basically an Original Series episode after all! 😂

May all your surprises be good ones this Holiday season.

>258 swynn: I hope your ankle is a bit better by now, Steve.
Following your soundtrack, I eventually ended up watching an eye opening TED-talk: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong by Johann Hari. His talk about depression was also good.

Have a lovely holiday, Steve.

>266 drneutron: Exactly.

>269 FAMeulstee:

>267 ronincats:
>268 richardderus:
>270 PaulCranswick:
Thanks for the holiday wishes Ronnie, Richard, and Paul! Hope yours were good ones as well.

>269 FAMeulstee:
Thanks for the tip about this. I found the video Everything You Know About Addiction is Wrong. Very interesting.

146) Assembly by Natasha Brown
Date: 2021

Here's a lean and powerful novella, about a Black woman who who has risen to success in the banking industry, following all the rules and checking all the boxes and who still has to justify her existence every day to every one. Then, facing a health crisis, she has to justify it to herself.

147) Globe : Life in Shakespeare's London by Catharine Arnold
Date: 2015

I spent Christmas with my mother in northeast Iowa, and this was my entertainment on the drive there & back. It's an account of Shakespeare's career, with a focus on the London theaters and theatrical community. I've heard most of these stories before, but they're nicely arranged and engagingly told.

148) Deutsch sein und schwarz dazu by Theodor Michael
Date: 2013
Published in English 2017 as "Black German"

Author Michael was born in Berlin in 1925, to a German mother and a migrant father from Germany's African colony of Cameroon. This is his memoir of being Black and German through the 20th century. As a child, Michael worked in a traveling "Völkerschau" or human zoo, then as an "exotic" extra in Nazi-era films and as forced labor in an assembly-line factory ("screwing together two metal plates") during the war. After the war he struggled in a postwar economy that offered few opportunities for "colonials" or for workers without a basic education -- never mind his birth in Berlin or the fact that he'd not been allowed to finish his education. Eventually he found a path that touched on theater, journalism, and government service. His story is hard and sometimes infuriating, but also an important witness.

You can find an interview with Michael from the German television series, "Schwarz Rot Gold" -- with English subtitles -- on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/-sNjAGzPHkA

Michael was also the subject of a Google doodle last October.

149) The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck
Date: 2015

In 2011 author Buck and his brother drove a mule-drawn covered wagon from Missouri to Oregon along the historic Oregon trail. This is the story of their trip with anecdotes about settlers who went before. Buck plays himself and his brother as mismatched personalities who come to respect each other through adversity, which sometimes feels a bit too neat, but the stories are entertaining and the history is enlightening. Prior to hearing about this book (it's been in the Swamp for awhile), I had no idea that the trail had been preserved in such a way that a project like this was even possible. Nice that it's been done, and done by such a genial storyteller.

150) The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
Date: 2021

This is a collection of what Haig calls "life rafts," thoughts that have "kept him afloat" through bouts with depression. The pieces range from short sentences to a few pages, affirming self-worth and hope. I find that a little bit of this sort of thing goes a long way, but in fairness it's probably intended to be read selectively on occasions when it's needed.

>276 swynn: Congratulations on reaching 2 x 75, Steve!

Congrats on your double 75, Steve!

Congratulations reaching 150, Steve!

>276 swynn:

Yay! (And Theodor Michael's story sounds fascinating.)

>277 FAMeulstee:
>278 MickyFine:
>279 bell7:
>280 richardderus:

Thanks! (And yes the Michael memoir was fascinating, though sometimes a little cursory about things that would have been even more interesting at greater length.)

151) DAW #203: Quicksand by John Brunner
Date: 1976; originally published by Doubleday, 1967

Paul Fidler is a psychiatrist in a rural mental hospital with challenges both professional and personal. His deep secret is that several years ago he was himself a patient following a nervous breakdown. He is recovered, but hides his history from his colleagues and even his wife. Keeping this secret has not kept his marriage happy -- his wife is plainly unhappy with his lack of professional advancement and desire for children. She has taken an extended vacation, and he suspects she is seeing someone else. His life needs no complications, but when a young woman inexplicably appears in a nearby wood, naked and alone and unfamiliar with local customs and language, her case is assigned to Dr. Fidler. As he investigates the case, the doctor becomes increasingly invested. He starts taking risks that jeopardize his professional and personal lives, which triggers old anxieties ....

Fidler's anxiety manifests as a sort of paralysis in the face of vividly-imagined negative consequences of his actions. Brunner's most interesting theme is the connection he draws between this anxiety and many-worlds theory: is Fidler losing his grip, or is he somehow sensitive to multiple real futures? It's an intriguing story, but unfortunately spoiled by misogyny, homophobia and an abrupt, infodumpy last chapter that feels like Brunner wasn't quite sure how to end this thing.

152) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Date: 2021

I love this kind of old-school science adventure that throws unsolvable problems at its heroes, who then engineer solutions. This one just keeps it coming with the puzzles and the clever what-if-we-did-thisses. It's gotten a lot of love, and deserves it all.

153) Dear Laura by Gemma Amor
Date: 2020

Knocking off a couple of short ones before 2022: this one is a horror novella focused on a woman being stalked by the creep who disappeared her boyfriend when she was fourteen, demanding personal sacrifices for clues to the boyfriend's fate. It's dark and disturbing and recommended for readers who like this sort of thing.

154) The Descent of Monsters by JY Yang
Date: 2018

Third in Neon Yang's "Tensorate" series of novellas. This one is about a lower-level government official tasked with investigating a disaster at a research facility -- and by "investigating," her superiors mean "rubber-stamp the official report." But she cursed with integrity, and the instructions to assist in a cover-up only make her more tenacious.

I'm afraid I've let too much time pass since reading books 1 & 2, so I had that feeling of missing references. Still, this one works pretty well on its own. It's an intriguing story set in a fascinating world. Fair warning that the ending leaves some narrative threads unresolved, which I assume are picked up in (the thus-far last) book 4.

And with that I'm calling it a wrap on 2021's reading. Have a happy New Year, everyone!

Forget your stresses and strains
As the old year wanes;
All that now remains
Is to bring you good cheer
With wine, liquor or beer
And wish you a special new year.

Happy New Year, Steve.

>286 swynn: congrats on your reading year. I had picked up Hail Mary from the library and when I started it I didn't get very far. Not the bathroom humor again I thought. The story simultaneously interested me and put me off. Your brief review suggests I owe it another chance at least.

>286 swynn: Yay! Going out in style with >285 swynn:. See you on the Dark Side.

>287 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul!

>288 RBeffa: Yeah, I've had near my fill of snarky first-person narrators. And if you found that a deal-breaker early in the book I'm sorry to report that you can expect more of the same. For me, the hard-sf challenges and the engineering solutions were a joy.

>290 swynn: well, snarky seems to be Weir's shtick so that wasn't completely unexpected. The book is due back in a few days so I have some fast reading to do. I have gotten farther in and it is getting better.