richardderus's seventeenth 2021 thread

#Booksgiving time...your new annual treat



#Booksgiving, y'all, is my translation of Iceland's Jólabókaflóð (yo-la-bok-a-flot)—the annual tradition, most of a century old, of giving your gifting circle books for the long winter's nights ahead. As Iceland is a far northern country that straddles the American and Eurasian geological worlds, let's adopt this idea with more than usual glee. A country like Iceland has a lot to teach us quarantine-prone global plague survivors about how to spend a lot of time indoors whether one wants to or not.

What's so different about the idea of giving books for the holidays, I hear you ask. And rightly so, as most US, Canadian, and UK publishers rely on the gifting season for most sales...but the focus of #Booksgiving as I'm calling it isn't the buying. It's the reading. On Christmas Eve, Icelandic families exchange their gifts, and then...wait for it...settle in and read their new books! This is the beauty of the custom. "Thanks for the book, Aunt Lurlene," as it hits the shelf behind the laundry-room door. "I bet it's a corker." And fire up the terabyte-stuffed Xbox! But...and this is crucial...can you *get* the Xbox? The supply-chain problems around the world aren't easing quickly...the factories are struggling to find their rhythm...and while tree-books are having this issue too, your phone or your tablet's a Kindle at your command. Or, half-bit fruit company dupes, your iCrap connects to Apple Books.

Maybe try this new idea, this read-on-a-device-you-already-have in a group idea, in this straitened, inflationary, second pandemic holiday season. There maybe won't be a big gathering this year either; there might not be much electronic bling; but instead, a room full of people who love each other enough to stop fighting and be still in their own company...and read! If it works in snowed-in Iceland, it can work is bottled-up Birmingham, can't it? You'll never know without trying.

A formally organized holiday observance celebrating the immersive, escapist pleasures that reading offers is ideal to adopt in a crazy climate of lockdowns, easings leading to skyrocketing infections, and the general insecurity and instability of this second plague year. Icelandic publishers, like publishers across the world, depend on Holiday sales to fuel their activities for the other ten and a half months of the year.

The Icelandic book industry, however, benefits from the unique, government-sanctioned and supported "Bókatíðindi" or book catalog containing listings of the titles Icelandic publishers are hoping you'll fall in love with and give as gifts. It is mailed free of charge to every household! And, in case you're thinking "well, how many publishers can there be in a country with fewer residents than the Upper West Side?" the fact is that Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country on Earth: 3.5 per 1,000 people! Add to that the fact that one in ten Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime, and the effect and the appeal of this long-standing custom are made clear.



So what I'm going to do, not for the first time!, is review from this point on only the books I believe will make wonderful gifts for yourself and your readerly loved ones. (As a reminder, on my blog or here I do not use affiliate links, and you do not see any advertising on the blog. I am unpaid except in free books...and believe me that's enough for me!) Happy ending for 2021? We're not out of the woods yet, we've got vaccine resisters and COVID deniers galore. But we also have hope, with new disease-management medications coming sooner than ever before in history thanks to Science. So why not try a new slant on our Western consumer-society's wretched excess-fest. One that privileges the quiet, intimate pleasure of reading with someone you care for. I guarantee it can't hurt to try.

I'm delighted to introduce, laddies and gentlewomen, my new spirit animal:
The Fucktopus.

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In 2021, I stated a goal of posting 15 book reviews a month on my blog. This year's total of 180 (there are a lot of individual stories that don't have entries in the LT database so I didn't post them here; I need to do more to sync the data this year) reads shows it's doable, and I've done better than that in the past.

I've long Pearl Ruled books I'm not enjoying, but making notes on Goodreads & LibraryThing about why I'm abandoning the read has been less successful. I give up. I just don't care about this goal, so out it goes.




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

First five reviews? 1st 2021 thread..

Reviews 6 all the way through 25 can be viewed in the thread to which I have posted a link at left.

The 26th through 36th reviews occupy thread three.

37th through 44th reviews belong where they are.

Reviews 45 through 58 are listed here.

Reviews 59 through 65 present themselves in that spot.

Reviews 66 through 75 reside in this thread.

Reviews 76 through 98? Seek them before this.

Reviews 99 through 110 remain becalmèd thitherward.

Reviews 111 up to 123 actualize their potential in the linkèd thread.

Reviews 124 through 136 locatable in this locale.

Reviews 137 to 147 (inclusive)? Back up.

Reviews 148 to 155 are available here.

Reviews 156 unto 169 remain, patiently, behind.

Reviews 170 all the way to 177 are just doin' their thang.

Seek ye reviews 178 unto 194? Yea verily, they reposeth thitherward.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEW LINKS

195 Cockroaches slapped, post 69.

196 Queer As All Get Out: 10 People Who've Inspired Me thrilled, post 74.

197 Razorblade Tears excited, post 151.

198 56 Days excited, post 209.

199 Wed to the Barbarian ensorcelled, post 211.

200 The Barbarian's Vow pleased, post 212.

201 Satan Claus is Coming to Town amused, post 214.

202 How to Catch a Vet occupied, post 215.

203 Mr. Frosty Pants entertained, post 216.

204 Vampire on the Orient Express offended, post 240.

205 The Black Flamingo delighted, post 243.

206 The Malacia Tapestry pleased, post 245.

207 All I Want frothed, post 287.

2020's five-star or damn-near five-star reviews totaled 46. Almost half were short stories and/or series reads. While a lot of authors saw their book launches rescheduled, publishers canceled their tours, and everyone was hugely distracted by the nightmare of COVID-19 (I had it, you do not want it), no one can fault the astoundingly wonderful literature we got this year. My own annual six-stars-of-five read was Zaina Arafat's extraordinary debut novel YOU EXIST TOO MUCH (review lives here), a thirtysomething Palestinian woman telling me my life, my family, my very experience of relationships of all sorts. I cannot stress enough to you, this is the book you need to read in 2021. A sixtysomething man is here, in your email/feed, saying: This is the power. This is the glory. The writing I look for, the read I long to find, and all of it delivered in a young woman's debut novel. This is as good an omen for the Great Conjunction's power being bent to the positive outcomes as any I've seen.

In 2020, I posted over 180 reviews here. In 2021, my goals are:

to post 200 reviews on my blog

to post at least 99 three-sentence Burgoines

to complete at least 210 total reviews

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

Ask and ye shall receive! Nathan Burgoine's Twitter account hath taught me. See >7 richardderus: below.

I stole this from PC's thread. I like these prompts!
***
1. Name any book you read at any time that was published in the year you turned 18:
Faggots by Larry Kramer
2. Name a book you have on in your TBR pile that is over 500 pages long:
The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream by Michael Wood
3. What is the last book you read with a mostly blue cover?
Wasps' Nest by Agatha Christie
4. What is the last book you didn’t finish (and why didn’t you finish it?)
The Perfect Fascist by Victoria de Grazia; paper book of 512pp, can't hold it...hands too feeble now
5. What is the last book that scared the bejeebers out of you?
Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump
6. Name the book that read either this year or last year that takes place geographically closest to where you live? How close would you estimate it was?
The Trump book; set in Queens and the Hamptons, so just down the road a piece
7.What were the topics of the last two nonfiction books you read?
The last successful rebellion on US soil and caffeine
8. Name a recent book you read which could be considered a popular book?
The Only Good Indians, a horror novel that's really, really good
9. What was the last book you gave a rating of 5-stars to? And when did you read it?
Restored, a Regency-era romantic historical novel about men in their 40s seizing their second chance at luuuv
10. Name a book you read that led you to specifically to read another book (and what was the other book, and what was the connection)
Potiki, which Kerry Aluf gave me; led me to read The Uncle's Story by Witi Ihimaera
11. Name the author you have most recently become infatuated with.
P. Djeli Clark
12. What is the setting of the first novel you read this year?
Hawaii and PNW
13. What is the last book you read, fiction or nonfiction, that featured a war in some way (and what war was it)?
The Fighting Bunch; WWII
14. What was the last book you acquired or borrowed based on an LTer’s review or casual recommendation? And who was the LTer, if you care to say.
There isn't enough space for all the book-bullets y'all careless, inconsiderate-of-my-poverty fiends pepper me with
15. What the last book you read that involved the future in some way?
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason
16. Name the last book you read that featured a body of water, river, marsh, or significant rainfall?
Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky by David Connerley Nahm
17. What is last book you read by an author from the Southern Hemisphere?
Red Heir by Lisa Henry
18. What is the last book you read that you thought had a terrible cover?
please don't ask me this
19. Who was the most recent dead author you read? And what year did they die?
Agatha Christie, 1976
20. What was the last children’s book (not YA) you read?
good goddesses, I don't remember...Goodnight Moon to my daughter?
21. What was the name of the detective or crime-solver in the most recent crime novel you read?
Poirot by Dame Ags
22. What was the shortest book of any kind you’ve read so far this year?
The World Well Lost, ~28pp
23. Name the last book that you struggled with (and what do you think was behind the struggle?)
Lon Chaney Speaks, because I really, really don't like comic books
24. What is the most recent book you added to your library here on LT?
see #23
25. Name a book you read this year that had a visual component (i.e. illustrations, photos, art, comics)
see #23
I liked Sandy's Bonus Question for the meme above, so I adopted it:

26. What is the title and year of the oldest book you have reviewed on LT in 2020? (modification in itals)
The Sittaford Mystery by Dame Aggie, 1931.

I really hadn't considered doing this until recently...tracking my Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winners read, and Booker Prize winners read might actually prove useful to me in planning my reading.

1918 HIS FAMILY - Ernest Poole **
1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington *
1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton *
1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington **
1923 ONE OF OURS - Willa Cather **
1924 THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS - Margaret Wilson
1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber *
1926 ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined) *
1927 EARLY AUTUMN - Louis Bromfield
1928 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder *
1929 SCARLET SISTER MARY - Julia Peterkin
1930 LAUGHING BOY - Oliver Lafarge
1931 YEARS OF GRACE - Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck *
1933 THE STORE - Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1934 LAMB IN HIS BOSOM - Caroline Miller
1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 HONEY IN THE HORN - Harold L Davis
1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell *
1938 THE LATE GEORGE APLEY - John Phillips Marquand
1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings *
1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck *
1942 IN THIS OUR LIFE - Ellen Glasgow *
1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
1944 JOURNEY IN THE DARK - Martin Flavin
1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey *
1947 ALL THE KING'S MEN - Robert Penn Warren *
1948 TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC - James Michener
1949 GUARD OF HONOR - James Gould Cozzens
1950 THE WAY WEST - A.B. Guthrie
1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
1952 THE CAINE MUTINY - Herman Wouk
1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway *
1955 A FABLE - William Faulkner *
1956 ANDERSONVILLE - McKinlay Kantor *
1958 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee *
1959 THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS - Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury *
1961 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee *
1962 THE EDGE OF SADNESS - Edwin O'Connor
1963 THE REIVERS - William Faulkner *
1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau
1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter
1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
1968 THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER - William Styron *
1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday
1970 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JEAN STAFFORD - Jean Stafford
1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner *
1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty *
1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara *
1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow *
1978 ELBOW ROOM - James Alan McPherson
1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever *
1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer *
1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole *
1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike *
1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker *
1984 IRONWEED - William Kennedy *
1985 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Alison Lurie
1986 LONESOME DOVE - Larry McMurtry *
1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison *
1989 BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler
1990 THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE - Oscar Hijuelos *
1991 RABBIT AT REST - John Updike *
1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley *
1993 A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN - Robert Olen Butler *
1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx *
1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields
1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY - Richard Ford
1997 MARTIN DRESSLER - Steven Millhauser
1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth
1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham
2000 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES - Jumpha Lahiri
2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon
2002 EMPIRE FALLS - Richard Russo
2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides *
2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones
2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson
2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz *
2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout
2010 TINKERS - Paul Harding**
2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD - Jennifer Egan
2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson
2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt
2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr **
2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen **
2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead **
2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer
2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers
2020 THE NICKEL BOYS - Colson Whitehead

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

1969: P. H. Newby, Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1970: J. G. Farrell, Troubles ** (awarded in 2010 as the Lost Man Booker Prize) -
1971: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist ... and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey, Saville
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea *
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children *
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac *
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People **
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger *
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda *
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day *
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance *
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient * ... and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road *
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin *
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang *
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little **
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty *
2005: John Banville, The Sea
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering
2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question *
2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending **
2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
2013: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings *
2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout
2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
2018: Anna Burns, Milkman
2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain

Links are to my reviews
* Read, but not reviewed
** Owned, but not read

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

Think about using it yourselves!

Okay! You're up.

Happy new one! I love your topper post - well said! *smooch*

Happy new thread, Richard.

I'll happily embrace the book giving idea. And anyone can give me books at any time. >:-)

Happy new thread, RDear. Happy almost weekend *smooches*!

>9 Crazymamie: Thank you, ThreadQueen Mamie Who's First!

>11 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! I'm delighted it's almost the weekend for y'all who don't get to laze around snacking and reading and drinking coffee 90% of their lives like I do.

>10 Helenliz: Hi Helen! I feel the way you do about books...any ol' time, any ol' book. (Though goodness knows it's more efficient to use a gift card.)

>1 richardderus: Any excuse to give, get, read more books is a good one in my book.

Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread!

(Now I'll go back and read >1 richardderus:)

Happy new one!

>1 richardderus: - Wonderful, just wonderful! Without knowing it, my family celebrated the Icelandic tradition in our own way - always lots of books exchanged and after the gifts were opened, we all retreated to our corners to read most of the day. Now, I am sent wish lists from the niece- and neph-lets, and I toss 'em out, unless there are books on them, in which case I buy those tout de suite so no one else can gift them but me :)

>17 katiekrug: An exceedingly sensible course to follow! *smooch*

I fail to be surprised that your family followed such a course. How else could it be? Readers are made, not just born.

>16 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita!

>15 quondame: Hi Susan, thanks for giving it a read...I expect you'll agree with me.

>14 mahsdad: No! Really?! You think giving and getting books is a good idea? I swaNEE!

Happy new thread, Richard. I must be Icelandic as books have always been the gift of choice in my family and friends circles. Who knew? Love that topper pic, too!

>19 jessibud2: Thank you, Shelley, and I'm still trying to figure out how I got to be Icelandic, too....

I see you took my advice. Cthool new thread!

>1 richardderus: I love this idea! Of course, not much would be different for me if we adopted it in my family. ;)

>21 Storeetllr: Indeed I did! I know I'm proselytizing to the presbytery here, but I've been blogging about and tweeting about and pinning #Booksgiving since 2017...I keep hoping, pushing for it to get some serious notice!

Three watchings of #GBBO later:
Rob and I talked about what happened...he's got a different perspective than I do, and told me that *as*entremets* Crystelle's were *perfect* and her flavor profile was exactly right...Jürgen missed on style and flavor both. "But the sablé breton!" I whined...nowhere near as good as would be needed to pass muster, he tells me, the fruit weren't glazed properly (side note: I love this man, he'll stop the playback and point to exactly what he means!) and the chocolate curls were limp. His flavor profiles were off on all three!

Jürgen actually *did* deserve to get kicked out of the final. *sob*

Happy New Thread! I think the Icelanders have a very good idea!

>24 SilverWolf28: Thank you, Silver, and I completely agree...now, let's take it wide.

-Harry Bliss

Happy New Thread, Richard. Of course, I thought of you when I saw the Bliss comic. We could use a little humor today.

>1 richardderus: I love the idea of Jólabókaflóð! I would make it a national holiday here in the States if I had the authority :)

Happy new thread, RD, and happy weekend! Make it a great one.

((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>27 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! Let's get a petition to Congress going, what say? *smooch*

>26 msf59: HA!! I LOVE IT!! Thanks Mark, that gave me a great big belly laugh.

Happy new one!

This is how I've felt all day.

>29 drneutron: Thanks, Doc.

Happy new one, RD.

Love the idea of Book Giving Day. I will be near the front of that particular queue for the giving at least.

A slightly less depressing political cartoon :

Happy new thread!! I love the Icelandic gift-giving-book-reading holiday celebration. Right up my alley! I look forward to your you-should-buuy-this-book reviews. Smooch.

>34 Berly: Hey there Berly-boo! Thanks, I think we need to push this idea now as there's so much change out there in the world. Perfect time to get something like this adopted, no?

>33 PaulCranswick: Ha! Cute. Thanks, PC.

>32 PaulCranswick: The giving and receiving really takes a back seat to the reading-together of our new books. Setting aside the distracting miscellany and communing....

>1 richardderus: Jólabókaflóð is great, but at my house it would have made Christmas Eve like every other night - everyone in their own corner/room reading. Well, me, dad and my mother when she'd let herself relax.

>36 quondame: LOL. That sounds perfect. : )

I wanted to let you know that I showed Hench to a library patron today and talked that person into taking the book home. I really and truly hope that student finds time to read this next week because classes end here on Tuesday at 5 PM and when the students come back it will be one week until Finals. The downside is that now it will be another month before I can get my hands on this volume. So what will I be reading over Thanksgiving - To Serve Them All My Days by the late R. F. Delderfield. Somehow I missed this one the first time around. But I will get to Hench.

>28 richardderus: Where do I sign? I am ready, willing, and able.

Happy weekend, RD!

Happy new thread, Richard dear!

>1 richardderus: One of the few thing my mother did right, was giving us all a book each Christmas. After church we would all be reading our new books. Other presents were given with St. Nicolaas.

>30 richardderus: That one is really frightning, and depressing :-(

Sorry to be late. I wasn't around on LT last night, as I was doomscrolling to find the latest news about the riots in Rotterdam. Harrowing to see familiar places in the background.
I hope your weekend is much better.

>38 benitastrnad: I loved To Serve Them All My Days, Benita and I hope it has the same impact on you.

Love the idea of "Booksgiving!" I think that's why I enjoy Santa Swap and SantaThing so much. While I still love the idea of SantaThing overall, I find I enjoy it a little less each year.

I agree with your more recent thoughts on this week's GBBO. Jurgen was in trouble from the signature. I thought 3 handshakes was excessive and made them sort of meaningless, but for him not to get one told me everyone had really stepped up their game, except him. And I hated his weird "Murder at the Opera" theme. It just seemed creepy to me. They looked like little coffins with grave markers sticking out of them. I'm so pleased for my husband, Chigs - his showstopper seemed so intricate and he obviously pushed himself. I think Giuseppe is probably the favorite to win, thanks to his consistency, but I'm glad to see Crystelle and Chigs in the final. Jurgen's "aw shucks" schtick was wearing thin on me.

Oh! And I loved Matt's octopus shirt.

Oh! Oh! And "poopy porridge" made me giggle.

Morning, BigDaddy!

>43 katiekrug: I concur with Katie's comments. Except that I'm not sure Giuseppe is the favorite to win. I think it's anyone's game now because Crystelle and Chips have stepped up.We were MOST PLEASED with the end results.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy new thread!

>1 richardderus: Lovely topper, in all respects.

Wishing you a loverly Saturday.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>45 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, you have a loverly Saturn's Day, too.

I know we're the weird minority in the country at large, being dedicated readers, but I keep hollerin' about the idea of reading together just to see what effect I can have. I hope there's some, somewhere!

>44 Crazymamie:, >43 katiekrug: GBBO: It was a blow to my sense of ma'at that Jürgie-the-pooh would go home, but it really was the proper decision...but I still, Mamie, see Giuseppe as the natural winner unless he fails à la James's showstopper next week. It's clear they're all really good bakers. But Chigs is a newb, and Crystelle's nerves betray her on the regular. Giuseppe had his nervous collapses a while ago! He's a professional engineer, stress is part of the job description. His poopy porridge on the tiramisù slices was hilarious but sounded really, really good.

I ***NEED*** MATT'S SHIRT!

My husband Chigs did push himself on that showstopper. He also deserves huge praise for the way he freaked out, then solved the problem, when the cinnamon biscuit snapped. That was super impressive. But those apples looked like they fell into the Tide vat! Ugh! But his gloriously gorgeous, elegant, and probably scrummy slices made up for that.

Crystelle's showstopper was truly gorgeous. Colors, flavors, textures, no miso or tahini. What a triumph. If she can do this three times next week....

>44 Crazymamie: *smooch*

>43 katiekrug: It just shows to go ya we're all still 10 years old inside, huh?

>42 thornton37814: It's always fraught doing these exchanges with big groups. One never really knows what to expect, which always wears on my nerves. The fun, for me at least, gets lost quickly.

Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

>41 PaulCranswick:, >38 benitastrnad: That's one of the best reads of my mother-influenced books. Delderfield's Swann Saga was, I think, the one that hooked her in the early 1970s.

>38 benitastrnad: I'm so glad Hench is so compelling an idea for you! I'm really glad I found it. I've been enriched by reading it.

>40 FAMeulstee: It's just *awful* what's happening, Anita. I am so saddened by Rotterdam's convulsions. I am appalled by the injustice of the Wisconsin verdict. I just...don't know what to do, or to think, or even to feel.

So let's be happy with what we can find to be happy about: Our not-great mothers did us the one perfect favor by enabling our reading habits!

>39 alcottacre: *smooch* Me too! Now to figure out the "how"...

>37 Berly:, >36 quondame: Heya Berly-boo! Hi Susan!

We're all on the weird end with our reading habits but I'm so very grateful for my mother's bookish escapism.

>1 richardderus: I love this sentiment and all the elements you mention. Hopefully the tradition appeals widely, but I suspect that here, it is the happy situation of "preaching to the choir".

I have books squirreled away already for giving. Plus homemade cookies, as usual. Happy Thanksgiving almost nearly...

I have not been around much Saturday and so missed wishing you the returns of the day. Happy Sunday though, RD! (Hugs)) and **smooches**

>50 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! *smooch*

>49 SandyAMcPherson: Indeed, Sandy, it's not like I'd need to do a sell-job on this crowd for the idea of reading on the Holiday season get-togethers. Or the benefits of using them as gifts, either. Where it still needs sellin' is out there among Them.

A daunting task.

A daunting task, indeed. Morning, BigDaddy! Not much on ta today except books and football and checking my grocery list for tomorrow's market run. Pretty exciting, huh?!

>52 Crazymamie:
I am *woozy* with excitement! Sounds a lot like my day, TBH.

*smooch*

Morning, Richard. Happy Sunday. I have a pretty much lazy day planned. Books & football. I should finish up Swann's Way today. It certainly is impressive in it's scope but he sure makes it a chore to get through at times.

>30 richardderus: It sure sums it up, doesn't it?

>54 msf59: Hi Mark! It's a Lifer of a read done. You can say, with utter clarity and honesty, "I have read Proust."

And now you don't need to do it again.

Your day sounds like the day most of us will have! (I don't want football but will get it anyway.) Enjoy it.

'Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you.

Sorry you'll get foos-ball anyway.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>56 karenmarie: Well, there it is. I can't break his TV so I can't prevent it.

*smooch*

But at least he reads now sometimes, right? That's gotta be some consolation and eensy source of pride to you.

>58 karenmarie: There is that. More often than he plays solitaire or watches TV, even. I'm just grouchy enough and hate the constant assault of commercials enough to resent the existence of TV.

My darling husband mutes the commercials about 99% of the time. Sometimes I have to ask him to unmute because the action's started again. I am lucky in this way. Except with Bill, I don't watch TV. I do occasionally watch a series on YouTube on my cell phone - I'm watching season one of Kingdom with Stephen Fry, but it's getting a tad twee.

>60 karenmarie: Yes, Kingdom jumped the twee/plaid shark early. Quite tediously, too.

Muting them is better than not muting them, of course; best of all is SVoD à la Netflix/Prime. Nary a goddamned commercial! (House promos are a mild annoyance at worst, and have even informed me of things I wanted to see. The Boys was fun for three episodes, f/ex.)

I concur with your thoughts on what happened in Wisconsin. This is why I am spending more and more time with books. I have been trying to keep reading broadly on many different subjects but I know that in many ways my reading is tunnel visioned. I don't want to read books that I don't like and I can't read so much of that conservative crap right now. Even editorials in newspapers bug me. Right now the state in which I reside is having a tizzy fit about CRT (Critical Race Theory) and it is having repercussions in my job. I keep telling myself that retirement is that far away and I can last this latest crap in the cultural wars, but it is getting harder and harder.

Hench does intrigue me and I will be reading it soon. But first, To Serve Them All of My Days.

I can't *even* with this CRT crybabying...they want *their* hegemony to continue, so this (non-existent) attempt to replace it must be resisted!!

...never noticing that 1) this acknowledges *their* race is presented as superior and 2) this is a deliberate and intentional exclusion of Others.

The arrogance and the wrongness is breathtaking.

Anyway, Delderfield on.

Okay, I'm all caught up on GBBS and can join in the fun!

This is going back a bit, but I think while Free From challenges really do test a baker's ability to make the right texture with ingredients they may be less familiar with, it doesn't come across well on TV. Kinda boring, since we can't tell the success or not just from looking. And of course, it would've been right up Freya's alley, she'd been doing it all along.

The semi was soooo tight, it was great to see them all do well (though the technical was a challenge for all of them), and the person I thought should won Star Baker. I am sorry to see Jurgen go - I thought early on that he and Giuseppe were the guys to beat, but to see Chrystelle and Chigs really develop over the course of the show has been satisfying too. It's really anyone's final, isn't it?

>64 bell7: Yay! True on the free-from week, but it's crummy television.

It really is anyone's final...and Jürgie-pooh's slices, which came in for Rob's critical drubbing, could be seen to be the wrong stuff...he thought the beet cream had flecks which would make it the wrong flavor and texture, and the sponges looked like they were overmixed. Haul Pollywood's lack of criticism aside. Pause the playback on the closeup of his slices! It really looks like it's very wide-open textured. That equals tough. And his showstopper?
Booooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggg. Blah color, no shape, again Rob said the textures were terrible...the tuile-sails were falling over because they were overbaked, the layers were "just shades of whitepeople" to quote my sweetiedarling...and he noticed the "soup-vomit green" coating had splodged off into corners of the "french-fry baskets" they got "plopped into." And no one even deigned to try his torii gate....

My husband Chigs (I called him that to Rob and he snorted, "if he was in New York I'd have to kill him") has really stepped up his game every week. He *listens* to them! And really works his non-existent backside off to make sure he doesn't make the same error twice.

Crystelle's either brilliant or lousy. If she wins it will be a fluke. But it's not like I have any opinions....

Yeah, Jurgen definitely didn't have the same strong first band as everyone else (though Prue said she liked it), and though he came first in technical, they all struggled to some degree. And his showstopper did look boring, though one could also argue that Chigs' color was off, he definitely had the layers and flavor. Crystelle has had some rough weeks, but she seems to be peaking at the right time and if this week is anything to go by, she does well when she doesn't expect much of herself and just goes out to have fun and do her best.

All that being said, though, I wouldn't have argued if they decided to do one of those, "We really couldn't decide, you're all in to the final" things.

Oh, and Noel and Matt are both starting to irritate me. I thought last year had done of the funniest interactions between them and the contestants and the judges, but for some reason this year it appears that they're just going around trying to annoy the contestants while they're busy, and it's not working as well.

It's definitely true that Crystelle's done the very, very best she can do but the FINAL is, by definition, the highest pressure point of the competition. Her history doesn't bode well. Rob told me that sablébreton is supposed to be an inch-plus thick and those weren't anywhere close! Plus only Jürgen made a dome of the fruit...and his crème mousseline was the only one that was the right color and texture.

Chigs got points because he had an extra baked element...the cookie the sludge-drenched apples sat on.

Good goddle mitey. Noel and Matt did ONE funny bit...the whole "free-from" episode, they were amusing. Other than that I want to fire them myself. we shall see.

>64 bell7: through >67 richardderus: - Very much enjoyed this exchange but must raise one point of order: Chigs is *my* husband.

(I'll see myself out.)

195 Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Imagine being born into a world where everything about you—the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth—designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people.

Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches is the story of growing up a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda—the story of a happy child, a loving family, all wiped out in the genocide of 1994. A vivid, bitterwsweet depiction of family life and bond in a time of immense hardship, it is also a story of incredible endurance, and the duty to remember that loss and those lost while somehow carrying on. Sweet, funny, wrenching, and deeply moving, Cockroaches is a window onto an unforgettable world of love, grief, and horror.

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

My Review: Each and every time you try to explain away hateful, horrible things someone you love says, you bring the fate of the ones they're spreading hate for a small step closer to Scholastique Mukasonga's family's fate. She is not dead because she was away at boarding school, by a lucky chance, when the Tutsi people she was born among were once again displaced by the Hutu.

The soldiers demanded that President Kayibanda’s portrait be hung in every house. The missionaries made sure the image of Mary was put up beside him. We lived our lives under the twin portraits of the President who’d vowed to exterminate us and Mary who was waiting for us in heaven.

The boarding school in Kigali, thank goodness, was close enough to Burundi that her Hutu classmates, who called her "inyenzi" (the cockroaches of the title), weren't successful in eliminating her after the school no longer taught Tutsi students in 1973. Her family, driven out of the place she was born during the 1959 pogrom by Hutu against Tutsi, made the horrible decision to save Scholastique and her also-educated brother André. Their time in Burundi led Scholastique to marry a French man in 1992. She was in France when the genocide occurred.

But, in all honesty, she makes it plain that the genocide was set in motion when the Belgians divided the Hutu majority from the Tutsi, and placed the taller, straighter-nosed Tutsi in power over the Hutu. The country's independence was always going to be a starting bell for a race war after that. Incidents; laws backing them up; and those "harmless" socially acceptable slurs made 1994 a slow-motion cataclysm.

The last chapter of this book is so painful to read that it took me a month to finish it.

What the hell, I hear the voices mutter as they click away, this is supposed to be the recommended-reading season on this blog! And it is. I recommend you read it as our neighbors, our families, even (perish forbid) our friends fall into the hateful, ignorant, yet addictive rage-mind that we're seeing "populist" authority figures promote around the world. We in the US are primed for it by the existence of vaccine refusers, Holocaust deniers, CRT scare-mongers, gay-baiters, and all the "socially conservative" religious liars and hate-mongers. Conservative my ass! They're radical right-wing dictatorship-building under decent (or at least not actively evil) people's very noses. They're gerrymadering something as close to permanent power as they can; packing the courts with their vile minions; and it won't take that long, well under forty years, for the Rwandan genocide to come true here, as well.

All I have of my loved ones' deaths are black holes and fragments of horror. What hurts the worst? Not knowing how they died or knowing how they were killed? The fear they felt, the cruelty they endured, sometimes it seems I now have to endure it in turn, flee it in turn. All I have left is the terrible guilt of living on amid so many dead. But what is my pain next to everything they suffered before their tormentors granted them the death that was their only escape?

Do not wait until it's too late. Buy and read this uncomfortable, disquieting tale of a country that lost its mind and then threw its soul away. We in the US should not be forced to endure this, when we still can head it off.

Over and over, I write and rewrite their names in the blue-covered notebook, trying to prove to myself that they existed; I speak their names one by one, in the dark and the silence. I have to fix a face on each name, hang some shred of a memory. I don’t want to cry, I feel tears running down my cheeks. I close my eyes. This will be another sleepless night. I have so many dead to sit up with.

I survived the AIDS years. I relate to what Author Mukasonga is telling us in this book with, perhaps because I am a survivor, a great deal of urgency. I do not want some young gay man's sister to write these words after the next Kyle Rittenhouse gets his jollification from opening fire on a group of gay protestors. I live in dread of the #BlackLivesMatter moms and dads writing these words for their sons, dead at the hands of murderous bigots.

Learn from the past. At long last, look. Learn. Do not allow the whole country to sleepwalk down the tracks to another Auschwitz.

‘Morning, RDear, and happy Monday to you!

>61 richardderus: Bill and I watch a lot on Netflix/Prime. We also record stuff off of Spectrum cable, which has commercials, but Bill fast forwards through those. It’s just the pesky sporting events where we have to mute what we can’t fast forward through.

>69 richardderus: Excellent review, hard pass.

*smooch*

>70 karenmarie: "Hard pass"? Horrible, you shock and wound me! I thought you'd read it and order a case to be sent to your Cali relatives! *chuckle*

The mere existence of the goddamned things pisses me off, but fast forwarding through them is exactly what I want to do on linear TV. The Midas Plague made this point ages ago...only the rich can opt out of compelled capitalism. They can afford to pay for peace and simplicity. It's truer now than it was 65 years ago but it's never been not-true.

>68 katiekrug: Chigs? Funny, I thought The Wayne held the position...does he know he's been made redundant? *I* am OTOH perfectly free to

*OW*

Rob smacked me.

>71 richardderus: re >68 katiekrug: LOL

>69 richardderus: The last chapter of this book is so painful to read that it took me a month to finish it.

Great review, has me crying already. I don't think I have the fortitude to read it just now, but I'm putting it on my list to read when/if I find the strength.

>71 richardderus: - Well, if Wayne can have Crystelle as his make-believe wife, I can claim Chigs...

196 Queer As All Get Out: 10 People Who've Inspired Me by Shelby Criswell

Rating: 5 shining, proud, delighted stars of five

The Publisher Says: Take a walk with one queer artist from Texas and explore the lives of ten LGBTQ+ people from history.

What does it take to live your truth? And how do we each navigate the struggle for personal acceptance within a society that is so often intolerant? In this galvanizing story of resilience, Shelby Criswell takes us by the hand and leads us through the lived experiences of ten inspiring people. Each an example of how to find your way as your own authentic self.

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

My Review: This US Thanksgiving, or "Happy Holocaust of the Native Americans" Holiday as I am prone to call it, I wanted to offer something I am truly thankful for: Young Queer creators telling their authentic stories from the places they live. It's not a luxury I had; it's not a luxury to be taken for granted anywhere, if you listen to Scholastique Mukasonga; and so it should be celebrated as much as we're able to do so.

This is a strong open, the simple act of getting one's order in a coffee shop made without awkwardness or fuss or hostility. The kindness of simply not assuming anything and still making the effort to be polite is, sad to say, still revolutionary and worthy of comment and praise. But it's a fruitful moment: It gives birth to the concept, "who came before me? who else struggled with the world's pig-headedness and intolerance?" As the marketing material offers this list of people profiled in the book, I can do no better than to offer it to you in my turn:
Mary Jones (mid 1800’s);
We’wha (1849-1896);
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935);
Dr. Pauli Murray (1910-1985);
Wilmer “Little Axe” M. Broadnax (1916-1994);
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973);
Carlett Brown (1927-?);
Nancy Cárdenas (1934-1994);
Ifti Nasim (1946-2011);
and Simon Nkoli (1957-1998)
Comprehensive! Impressive! I loved the profiles, as brief as they were by necessity, because they were handsomely illustrated and clearly selected for Author & Artist Creswell's personal connection to their message(s). First up is late-life out lesbian Nancy Cárdenas:

I found the story of Cárdenas's coming out so touching, that she was inspired to do it by the horrors of the AIDS plague (Beauty Salon came out the same year she died of breast cancer). It is an ongoing tragedy that breast cancer's ravages deprive so many of us of people we love, and the world of so many bright and shining stars. Cárdenas led an exemplary life and I'm delighted to meet her here.

The other nine protagonists are equally well-chosen, equally share their space with the everyday bravery of a trans person living in Texas well. The idea of being openly anything in Texas is something that slightly stuns me. Yes, I grew up in Austin; I wasn't ever really *in* so coming *out* wasn't very necessary; but it was always, always clear to me in 1970s Texas that I was suffered to exist and that sufferance was revocable at any time.

That young Shelby Criswell isn't as threatened in their environment thrills and delights me. This lovely book exists because they made it; they made it because it spoke to a need in them; and that need, as is so often the case, is the normal human need to see yourself in the world, past and present.

Anyone out there who needs to hear this, here's the message in lovely images and direct words without fear or judgment. If you know someone who's got a tablet who needs to hear this message of being seen, being valued and valuable, being the heir to a lineage of ancestors, here's a #Booksgiving treat to gift to them.

>73 katiekrug: Waitaminnitwaitaminnit I thought The Wayne was all hung up on Nadiya! You mean she's back on the fantasy-spouse market and *I*didn't*KNOW?!*

...the noive...

>72 Storeetllr: Rob's visit was timely....

Right now might not be the most opportune moment for you to take on Mukasonga's tale, May...and it's not as though you're in dire need of The Message, so it's permaybehaps a longer-term sort of "I'll read it at some time" thing.

I will say, in the spirit of full disclosure, you'll be thrilled by the translation.

>69 richardderus: Well that one must be read.

>76 swynn: Yes indeed it must. Soonest.

Hey, RD. I hope your week is off to a good start. Great review of Queer As All Get Out. I hope I can get a copy through the library. Always looking for a new GN.

>74 richardderus: I'll read this as soon as I can find it.

>69 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole, RD. I still remember the impact of Paul Rusesabagina's An Ordinary Man when I read it. Sounds like Cockroaches is another must read. Thanks for the review and recommendation.

Have a terrific week! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>80 alcottacre: Yes indeed, Stasia, it was a big fat hairy deal when that came out. It was so hard to read the books that came from that tragedy, and I hope it never gets any easier.

>79 SilverWolf28: Good! I hope you'll enjoy it, Silver, and get a lot out of it.

>78 msf59: Hiya Birddude! I expect you'll need to put in a request for it. I hope they'll get it.

>81 richardderus: Agreed, RD. If and when it gets any easier to read such books, we need to seriously take a look at our humanity.

>81 richardderus: >82 alcottacre: Exactly. Great review Ricardo. BLBera just sent me A Good Time For The Truth: Race in Minnesota so that will be my next hard read.

Hiya RDear, and happy Tuesday to you.

>71 richardderus: Believe it or not, most of my Cali relatives are reasonably intelligent people who believe in covid vaccines and didn’t vote for t*****. I’m not sure how many of them would like this book, however. Of course, like isn’t the right word...

Compelled capitalism – oh, my, yes.

>74 richardderus: Beautiful review. I love the opening.

>84 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, for the compliment. I'm not ever all the way sure about my decision to make honest, upfront reader-response reviews my goal.

It's the ones that *aren't* so high in the intellectual food chain who need it most, and are least likely to mess with it. Mama was like that when she had that Conversion Experience after we moved to Austin. "If it's good enough for gawd..." began a lot of sentences justifying her prejudices.

*smooch*

>83 Berly: That doesn't sound like an easy one, Berly-boo. But it sounds like something that's necessary to read and process.

*smooch*

Hi, Richard. My post didn’t post, so I’ll try again. I add my kudos for the >74 richardderus: review, a nd I like the idea of saying “friend” when you’re unsure abou preference. People around here seem to take it in stride when someone screws up on a gender identifier, as long as the someone is being respectful and friendly. I try to find out preference ahead of time, but that’s not always possible, and I’m not yet bold enough to ask.

>86 jnwelch: Hey there, Joe. Happy to see you here, and thanks for the kudos. "Fried" works well, doesn't it; but then, we're already of good will, so will be trying to convey acceptance and not simply fumbling for something to say.

I think that makes a huge difference, no?

I'm hoping it'll be a good week ahead for your reads!

Just dropped by to say "Thank you" for your recent recommendation of The City Beautiful, RD. I finished it tonight and loved it, giving it 4.5 stars. Polydoros' website indicates that he has 2 more titles on the horizon. I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next!

((Hugs)) and **smooches**

>88 alcottacre: That's wonderful, Stasia! I'm so glad the read got your goodness circuits humming. I'm sure his next will be equally well-written, so that will be fun to read.

*smooch*

Hiya, RD! Happy Wednesday to you.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Horrible! How amazing to see you here for, what is this?, the first time ever?

*smooch*

Happy Thursday, Richad dear!

We are having a happy Thursday, as Frank is celebrating his 60th birthday :-)

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.

RD, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

>93 PaulCranswick: Thank you, PC! I hope you're spending the day well, if not wisely.

>92 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Happy Thursday to you, too, and a very happy birthday to Frank.

>94 richardderus: My day has been fine RD, but it is almost over. Have rewarded myself with a couple of days off so I wont be back to work until Monday.

>95 PaulCranswick: It's a good plan, that one. Some destressing time after such a distressing time is solidly merited.

Read hearty!

'Morning, RDear, and happy ... Thursday to you. I hope you dodge the turkey bullets aimed your way.

*smooch*

Happy Thursday! I'll be veggie today. I'll make myself rice-n-collards casserole, since I ain't feelin' it for dressing or meat today. I'll always eat rice-n-greens! I don't particularly want dessert either, but this place traditionally gives everyone a slice of pumpkin pie as a nighttime snack today. If they do, I'll get some but if they don't it's okay too.

*smooch* Enjoy y'all's meal today!

Have a lovely day, RDear. *smooches*

>99 MickyFine: Thank you, Micky, and you do the same...since you're halfway through the conscious portion of it. *smooch*

Another GoodwillBooks.com sale for the Black Friday Weekend! This time the code to unlock 20% off is: GOODWILLBOOKS

It's a little different, though, as Friday's sale applies to books & audios; Saturday's to movies; Sunday's to games & music; and Monday applies to everything. Standard shipping is always free, and there's no supply-chain hoo-hah because everything already exists in their warehouse.

Ricardo, I am so very grateful for you, my wonderful friend here on LT.

I wish you (and yours) happiness and health on this day of Thanksgiving. And cookies. : )

>102 Berly: Thank you, Kimmers! I just spoke to Rob...he's done with Thanksgiving, and is he *done* with Thanksgiving! He sleepwalked back to Jackson's while I nattered at him to keep him alert enough not to get killed.

Cookies like that make me feel guilty for eating them, they're so pretty. But eat them I do. Num!

Happy Thanksgiving, Richard. Hope all is well with you and the reads are going down easy. Here we are hunkered down for rain once again and hope it doesn't make our flooding worse.

>104 Familyhistorian: Thank you, Meg, it's been a perfectly fine day and while I'm bouncing around among three reads I'm getting plenty of pleasure in each.

I'm all the way with you on the "no more flooding" desire. I hope the rains don't make things worse!

Hi Richard, my dear friend, a belated Happy New Thread and we both wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving Day dear friend.

Happy Thanksgiving, Richard. Glad to hear you are blessed with good reads (not to be confused with Goodreads...;-)

>98 richardderus: I went traditional all the way! (Turkey tenderloin, Southern cornbread dressing, turkey gravy, cranberry sauce, baked sweet potato with butter and a little brown sugar, green beans, rolls, and pecan pie) Since it was just me, I didn't want to do a full sweet potato casserole and decided to bake the sweet potato. I mashed it up with butter melting into it and then sprinkled it with just the right amount of brown sugar--not too heavy. The result was great for a single person. The potato was rather large so I have enough for one more serving from that one. We all know you have to have Thanksgiving leftovers! It hit the spot! I was a little concerned about downsizing my cornbread dressing. I decided to use my smallest pyrex casserole dish. Amazingly, I got the portion perfect and the dressing turned out fabulous!

>108 thornton37814: I'm really glad it came out so well, Lori! I'm delighted to report my rice-n-greens was absolutely delish. The most important part of your meal...the dressing...came out well, so it is literally all good.

Thanks for coming over!

>107 jessibud2: Ha! I'm blessed with lots and lots and lots of stuff. It's all good.

>106 johnsimpson: Thank you, John! Happy to see you here.

Howdy, Richard!

Glad you had a pleasant day and you are able to get some quality reading time in.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Just a de-lurk - love the GBBO commentary :)

Happy Friday, Richard. It sounds like you had a nice quiet holiday. Did you get the pumpkin pie? Ours was not a quiet affair but we enjoyed it and it was nice visiting with family I don't get to see that often.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Friday to you.

>98 richardderus: I hope you enjoyed your rice-n-collards casserole. We enjoyed our meal. It certainly wasn’t the same as other years, but we were satisfied.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Good morning, RD! I hope your collard and rice casserole turned out well and that you got that pumpkin pie slice...

Hi all! I did enjoy my rice-n-collards a lot, but the place brought in "blueberry" pie. Having had the blue-colored gelatin with artificial flavor and color added, I declined.
***
>115 katiekrug: Hey Katie! See above...yeccchhh

I know you enjoyed y'all's meal, such a nice setting for it, too! *smooch*

>114 karenmarie: Howdy, Horrible! *smooch* Happy Friday, and have a great weekend-ahead's reads.

>113 msf59: I hope the unquiet wasn't political badness, but in any case I'm glad you got to have a good time with the family you don't get to see much of.

>112 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka! Happy to see you de-cloaking, you Book-Romulan you. Having seen the final...wellll...I shall Have Words.

>111 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! *smooch*

>110 figsfromthistle: Hello Anita, happy to have you visit.

Just to let you know Karen just put up the 5,000th post on your threads this year, RD. Well done.

Morning, BigDaddy! Sorry about the fake blueberry pie - gross. Hoping today is full of the lazy for you, although I know you like to keep busy, so maybe full of some of the lazy. Anyway, whatever your day is full of, I hope it is happy making. *smooch*

Hallooo Richard. I had a great week. I'm thankful, but melancholy. My wife was the kingpin of Thanksgiving for so many years. And then I capped the holiday by finishing Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

GBBO FINAL, some ruminations thereupon
The signature bake caught them all flat-footed...the carrot cake of my dreams was Chigs's scrumdiddlyumptious pineapple-y cream-cheesy loaded-with-carrots one, though Crystelle would've won because of the texture of hers; had they not fallen into the trap of "less moisture in the mix because carrots are crispy water".

Crystelle's flavors sounded amazing! But that was a spice cake with carrots in.

Giuseppe making the one big cake was doomed from the get-go. That cake would've needed the rest of the day to cool before he cut it. And carrot cake freezes badly because it's so moist, so cooling it in the freezer (which wicks more moisture out, and that moisture then has nowhere to go except sitting on the cake) was another nail in the coffin.

So no one did well, nor did they deserve to. Then the technical...how nasty of Haul Pollywood. "Belgian buns" without any instructions? What the actual! And it was here that Chigs lost. He rolled the damn buns up wrong! I mean, never do you roll dough up on the short side! Giuseppe overbaked his; Crystelle made hers exactly right and won the technical!! But, as always, the showstopper...

...the showstopper. Oh the showstopper. The Mad Hatter's Pique-nique. Not even reasonable to think that it could be done in that paltry 4.5hrs!

Crystelle won, based on the technical; she lost because her focaccia was so awful. She would've won otherwise. Every bit of her presentation, every flavor, every texture...perfect, until the disaster of the focaccia. Raw. No.

Poor Chigs, it really was the buns that scuppered him. His Cheshire cat grin should've been the first thing he piped and just left everything else off!

Giuseppe's win was earned over all ten episodes. He faltered, but so what? And he's no longer able to live in Eng-er-land because fucking Brexit. So the choice was even more, um, pointed. Fully earned! But also pointed.

>119 weird_O: Good afternoon, Bill, glad you stopped by! I mean, were you trying to make yourself unhappy?! Roz Chast is not someone whose work one reads to feel good, get energized, go all chipper and whoopee!

Still. You survived. Another one done.

>118 Crazymamie: Hiya Mamie me lurve, it was indeed morning for a solid six hours. Glad it's not anymore. I'm not eager to eat blueberry pie any time but this stuff was unusually vile.

My day's going to be full of...nothing much. I'm happy I have some good reads going and I'm happy I have some leftovers left over and I'm happy it's going to snow on Sunday. All good!

>117 PaulCranswick: What a milestone! I didn't really process the information that I was so close to getting 5,000 posts at all. Yay! Thanks for letting me know.

Snow! How full of fabulous. Soak some up for me.

I will be back to read your GBBO comments as soon as we have watched it, which will be later tonight.

>122 Crazymamie: I expect I'll be inside watching. I'm not big into going out when things are slippery....

Oh, are you in for a ride. Wow.

>120 richardderus: Nice, thorough comments, and I do agree. Even Prue said leaving off any directions was mean, and I have to say, that did end up being a little rough. It was nice to see that mostly the showstoppers were good (I hate it when it's the best of a bad bunch...), which made Crystelle's raw focaccia that much more heartbreaking. So I knew it was down to Giuseppe and Chigs, and I would've been happier with either winning. I love seeing how much of a friendship starts up among the bakers, both with Chigs and Crystelle being so genuinely happy for Giuseppe, and also the bits at the end describing them getting together again on their own. I SO want to read Giuseppe and his father's book when it comes out! What an enjoyable episode overall!

>124 bell7: Wow! You've already watched it! Quick on the draw, you.

That bit with Lizzie and Freya driving around the country was cute. Of course neither is my favorite person, but the two of 'em cruisin' around and doing the Thing was perfect.

I know what you mean about Chigs and Crystelle being so happy for Giuseppe! It's one of my favorite aspects of the show, the pal-dom of them all. I like the final's results. And yes, I'd like to preorder the Dell'Anno book, please Amazon. I don't care how much it costs or who's publishing it. Just gimme.

>125 richardderus: yeah, today is a floating holiday for me, so I took advantage this morning and enjoyed myself thoroughly 😊

Can't wait for the finale and to read your and Mary's comments!

>127 katiekrug: Hey there Katie...I too am eager to hear the impact of the final on you...wow

>126 bell7: Perfect use of a day off, if you ask me. Do something you'd otherwise have to wait to do? Yeup.

Happy Leftover Day! And, yeah, don't eat that fake blue stuff. ; )

>129 Berly: No fear of that, Berly-boo! Sooner I would die, thank you please.

The not really blueberry pie is extra regrettable, for itself and for displacing real pie. May you soon have a piece of pie to be thankful for.

>131 quondame: I had some delicious corn muffins today, so I'm inclined to be charitable about that vile spoodge.

Stephen Sondheim has died at 91. Sad that such a monadnock of musical theater has gone.

And equally saddening is the news that Doug MacLeod, author of the blackly funny The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher, has died at 62. SIXTY TWO!! Revolting!

>133 richardderus: Sad news for musical theater. I think my daughter performed in some of his shows. At least I know she was in "Into the Woods." I wasn't able to get to that one, but I did see the film adaptation one Christmas with her when she was visiting me for the holidays. I've never heard of Teenage Body-Snatcher. Sounds like fun. I'll have to check it out.

Glad you're having a good time with GBBO. I haven't seen it - but, then, I don't watch TV very much. Although I was thinking of watching the Beatles thing on Amazon Disney channel.

Snow. On Sunday. *sob* I really am not ready for winter yet. Glad you are happy about it though.

ETA correct TV channel.

>134 Storeetllr: I am always ready for cold, and never ever ever ready for the blasting, battering sunshine of summer. I hate it. So I rejoice when I'm as far away from it in the year as I can get!

Yes, Sondheim's age certainly explains his prevalence in US culture...he started writing his lovely indelible music in the 1950s! West Side Story and Gypsy?! We've all heard at least bits and pieces, and those are all his words!

Netflix and Prime are my go-to TV channels and they aren't even on TV. Hopefully you'll stumble across the GBBO bug at some point. It's really good fun.

KINDLE DEAL TODAY! Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So is $2.99!!

My 4.5* #BookReview tells you why you shouldn't wait, just click the AmazonSmile non-affiliate link & load it now.

Hello there, BigDaddy! I have read and agree with your GBBO comments. Really, I would have been happy with any one of them winning. I thought the technical was mean-spirited. I felt bad for them with so much on the line and all of them really wanting to win.

>135 richardderus: "...blasting, battering sunshine of summer. Yes. That is it exactly - I was just talking to Craig and Abby about this. The near constant blazing sunshine in Georgia is exhausting to me. I am craving overcast and dreary - overcast and dreary are my people.

>136 richardderus: I totally snagged that when I saw it yesterday.

>137 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie! *smooch* I'm pleased, but unsurprised, that you got yourself the So collection...and sad that it's the only one we'll get.

"Not a summer person" has always seemed to me to be the sine qua non of being a reader. But what the hey...you'll get used to summer there after your thirtieth year in residence. *evil chortle*

I completely concur re: GBBO!!

It's turned cold here as well this weekend, as well as a bitter cold wind - not nice out. Had to defrost the car this morning. Whilst I like the heat (well, the UK's version of heat) I found that the thing I missed most about the weather while I was in Texas for a year was drizzle. The heat I could take (the air con less so), the unrelenting nature of wall to wall sunshine I eventually found to be a touch dull.
Loved the thunder storms though, they were stunning!

Happy Sunday, Richard. I am back from my boozy, Milwaukee adventure. It sure was fun though. I am birding this morning and then hopefully spending some time with Jackson in the PM. I miss this kid. Not sure how much reading I will get in, though. Sighs...

>140 msf59: Morning, Mark. I don't think anyone, in your shoes, would give up grandbaby time to read. Books will still be there, today's unique in the life of a baby.

>139 Helenliz: ...missed...drizzle...::sideeye::

I'd spend the national debt of Greece to get away from grey, drizzly, damp yuuuk, and the same again to avoid the 40C thunderstorms we used to get in Texas.

No a/c, no life. I understand it's weird to people who don't routinely get Sahara-level heat, but I've spent my entire life in that level of hot air...makes a/c a godsend.

‘Morning, RDear! Happy Sunday to you.

>116 richardderus: Ugh. Fake blueberry pie. My friend Karen in Montana says that the next time I come to visit I need to have a piece of huckleberry pie. The berries are small and there’s competition between humans and bears to get them, which makes them all the more enjoyable, I suppose.

*smooch*

>142 karenmarie: Thanks, Horrible, it's certainly Sunday isn't it. Football everywhere including Old Stuff's fucking TV.

Huckleberries? I guess they're different from blueberries somehow though I admit I can't taste it. They have more seeds, but that's all I can recall about the experience of eating them in Idaho years ago.

>141 richardderus: I missed it. I never said it was at all understandable... All I can say is that us Brits talk about the weather for a reason, I think it's pre-programmed.
My issue with the aircon was that it was set so cold. I'd go everywhere with a jumper - which I'd put on when I went indoors. Aircon, as a principle, I get; aircon that's cold, I'm afraid I don't understand.

Smooches

When I worked in an office building in downtown Los Angeles, we had to wear sweaters and half-gloves in the summer - because they always had the air conditioning on so cold - and short sleeves in the winter - because the heat was always blasting. It was a misery, and also a mystery. I mean, I lived in a loft a couple of blocks from my office for a few years, and I seldom needed to use either the air conditioning or the heat because the weather in both seasons (there is no spring or fall in Los Angeles) was so mild.

>146 Storeetllr: In big office buildings, it's not pleasure that the a/c is there for, it's health. Absent forced-air ventilation, you'd be a lot hotter in the elevator than in your shower, and probably as wet from accumulated breath.

*shudder*

>145 Berly: Hi Berly-boo! Glad to see you, and hoping for a good Sunday's reads chez vous.

>144 Helenliz: It's an evergreen topic because of its impact on us, I think; and because your weather is so unspeakably awful, it's definitely something to chew over.

I'm told that being cold has little appeal for those whose lives are spent trying to get warm...likewise, the sensation of *getting* cold is delicious to one whose life was spent trying to drink enough not to dehydrate from the sweating. The delight of walking into a 68° wall of a/c from trundling across the 110° parking lot is *exquisitely*thrilling* because I so urgently crave cold.

Oh, I know the A/C is for ventilation, but it wasn't just cold. It was C.O.L.D. It didn't need to be turned down that low. My favorite work places were buildings where we could open the windows, at least a little, to let in the fresh air. Not possible in high rises, of course.

>148 Storeetllr: There are algorithms that determine the optimal temps for occupancy rates and wow are they complicated! And, IMO, really really bad at optimizing for comfort. I'll take being cold over sweating any old day, though.

Well, sure. You can always put on a sweater or coat (and half-gloves) when it's too cold, but when it's too hot in the office you aren't allowed to strip down to your skivvies. :)

197 Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2021!

I very much admired and enjoyed Blacktop Wasteland. I got real close to making it my 6-stars-of-five read; what scuppered that was the sheer glory of that year's reading.

This story of two homophobic fathers of gay sons losing them made every hair on my body stand up. Author Cosby's chops are amazing, his ability to flay a character's nervous system is equal to a Fragonard écorché in words. Anyone who likes a solid puzzle should read it; everyone who's lost a child needs to read it; any father whose gay son's sexuality is uncomfortable to him is exhorted to read it.

You GO Shawn!

>150 Storeetllr: ...you aren't...
...
...
...so much is now explained...

>147 richardderus: I remember well the intoxicating sensations of going from supercooled AC to 100℉ air and radiation blacktop back to AC in the desert summers. Though the coldest working conditions were in the basement computer room where I wore a down jacket and yes, gloves, coding communications protocols.

>153 quondame: Oh well, yes, the computer room was always sub-zero. One day the a/c broke at a place I worked & I got the joy of going into the computer room to do something.

Bliss!

It's been really cold in the Sunday School classroom at church the last couple of weeks. Apparently the unit that serves our room needs a part which is back-ordered. We keep joking about needing to take up an offering to pay for it.

>155 thornton37814: In this pandemical supply-chain horror-movie moment, maybe laying on of hands and a serious beseechment for a miracle?

Happy Sunday, Richard! I hope it has been a good one for you. ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

I am heading to Joplin tomorrow and will be out-of-pocket for a week or so. Behave yourself while I am gone!

>157 alcottacre: ...behave...myself...



No.

*smooch*

>158 richardderus: Somehow or another, I was sure that you would not.

Monday *smooch.*

'Morning, RDear! Happy Monday to you.

Just starting my first cup of coffee, will read a bit, then Jenna'll be here.

*smooch*

>161 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Happy for y'all...you've got your chick home in the nest.

I'm caffeinating, too, so here's to a more conscious late morning. *smooch*

>162 richardderus: Hiya Katie! Happy new week's reads. *smooch*

>159 alcottacre: We've known each other long enough that you're under no illusions, eh what?

Happy new thread Richard!

>163 humouress: Thank you, Your Supervillainess-ness. *smooch*

Morning, BigDaddy! I also couldn't promise to behave myself while Stasia's away.

>165 Crazymamie: Hi there! You're out and about on Mmmday? Is everything okay?

More than being unable to promise such a thing, I can't really see any point to trying. Being have sounds so deeply tedious. Just...blech!

Still appreciating the GBBO spoiler tags, thank you.

>75 richardderus: Nadiya may be back on the fantasy-spouse market because, as she tells it on the Graham Norton show, her (RL) husband is more in demand than she is.

>144 Helenliz: >146 Storeetllr: Possibly the reason for keeping the interior of building so cold you practically get frostbite is to encourage global warming? The first place I worked in, in Singapore, had the a/c on so low I had to wear a jumper indoors. When my parents, who were visiting from Australia, came to meet me one lunch time and walked down from the station in 97% humidity and 32ºC heat (90F?), they thought I was mad walking out still in my jumper since it would take a good 5-10 minutes in full sun for me to get my body temperature back up to normal.

Well, yes, because I have to do the CyberMmmday shopping. So far, so good, and I am avoiding eye contact.

If I am honest, and I really try to be (honest, that is), I must admit that I am really no good with the behaving. It starts to go sideways as soon as I contemplate it.

>168 Crazymamie: There are some people in the world who really, honestly enjoy the freedom from anxiety of being obedient.

I am not one of these people.

I suspect you aren't either. The mere *existence* of a rule requires me to think up ways to break it, circumvent it, or change it to suit me.

>167 humouress: I suspect we're about done with the topic for 2021, Nina, so it's unlikely to present much of a problem around the threads for now.

Why would a sane person want the world to be warmer?!

WTF JUST HAPPENED?! ALMOST 3,000 VIEWS ON MY BLOG TODAY!

>169 richardderus: Perxactly.

>170 richardderus: I can't see the image, but GO YOU! How exciting!

>149 richardderus: Yup, and the problem is they're pretty old and based on men. This 2015 NYT article about heating calculations explained so much of why I was almost always freezing at work.

>171 Crazymamie: ...well...of COURSE the work world was made for men's comfort, since the entire rest of society was too.

>170 richardderus: I took another screenshot and it should show up now, but I've also breached the 3,000 mark.

One of the few times I've done that in a day. The usual high is around 500 views a day. Six-plus times that! In one day! Whooo eee!

>173 richardderus: I can see it now! That is just so awesomesauce!

>170 richardderus: Wow, that's great!

>173 richardderus: Sigh. Ain't that the truth?

>176 MickyFine: Yep, sho'nuff is.

>175 drneutron: Thanks, Jim! I'm *gob*smacked*!

>174 Crazymamie: Thank you, sweetiedarling, I'm so so pleased...and shocked.

>170 richardderus: Wow!
So I went to your blog to boost the numbers ;-)

NOVEMBER IN REVIEW

ANOTHER good month! I'm enjoying 2021's reading a lot. I reviewed and blogged twenty-one books—again! I've raised my goal to 200 from 190. December, therefore, will need me to post twenty-four reviews on my blog to reach 200. That's a stretch, but I don't find it un-doable.

I rated five books with five stars; Prophet Against Slavery, a graphic novel about Benjamin Lay the Quaker dwarf; The Colour of Milk, another Katie book-bullet and *delightful* if really tough read; The Prophets, a gorgeous work of imagination about the effects and the fallout of two slave-boys in love; Cockroaches, the *agonizing* and gorgeous memoir of 1994 Rwanda's roots; and Queer as All Get Out, a graphic novel that lays out the struggles and lives of the forebears of today's multivarious community of QUILTBAG people.

Those with sharp eyes and good memories will note that two (2) of these five (5)-star titles are comic books. That is, graphic novels. An "art"form I'm pretty dismissive of, as I'll be reminded if I don't stipulate it now. But this is a process, this reading thing, one aimed at expanding the reader's world not contracting it. So...like Nationalist Love, an earlier-in-2021 five-star comic book...I look for stories, for subjects, that can't be told better in other media, that *expand* a subject's meaning with their graphic presentation. These two, Prophet and Queer, aren't much more than essays on trenchant topics of immediate relevance. Presented in essay format, they'd get posted on a website, read, possibly lauded; then forgotten. As they are, the artwork of each of these two stories made them much more immediate, less reportorial, without obfuscating or minimizing their respective factual bases.

What else can one ask for of a read?

Of these well-made books, the one I crown as my "November's Most Delectable Read" is:

Both NPR and the New York Times chose it as a Notable/Best-of-2021 book; I can honestly say that, for a wonder, I agree that it's a best-of and a notable book because it's as limpid and as nourishing a tale as anyone could wish for in a world largely devoid of the love these two men shine so unmistakably.

Happy to see you are willing to revisit the Graphic Novel "spinner rack" Richard.

As I told you years about about Watchmen there are rewards here.

Persepolis might be worth a glance from you also for a story told graphically.

>170 richardderus: Such a nice way to crest the day!

Okay, somehow I got way too far behind on your thread, but I'm caught up now. Just had some of my delicious apple pie from T-day so want to commiserate with you re: the offering of pseudo-blueberry pie. Wish I could share this with you. *smooch*

>170 richardderus: Congratulations!! Well-deserved attention. : )

>179 richardderus: I hope to have a few more graphic novels in my reads next year. The few I have read have been so good!!

Happy Tuesday, Richard! Glad to see your blog is getting a robust readership lately and that November was such an excellent reading month for you. May both continue!

>170 richardderus: Woot!! I am so happy for you, RD!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** Happy Tuesday from Joplin!

*peeking in*

Hellllooooo?

*leaves smoch*

>4 richardderus: I like this! I finally read "Ring Shout" from Clark this year and loved it. The publisher, Tor.com, has a free, e-book of the month club (though it hasn't been as consistent this year), and one of the books this year was Clark's "The Haunting of Tram Car 015" that I'm looking forward to even more now.

Oh, and I answered the questions on my own thread. Hope you don't mind...

Hey, RD. Is the week off to a good start? I am glad to hear you had such a fine November with your book picks. I really need to request The Prophets. It does sound awesome. I am still feeling under the weather, so I plan on just curling up with the books for the rest of the PM.

Okay... just a heads up.. RD is having internet issues, due to the apparent inattention of his facility to bill paying. oops and damn

I'm sure he will be back as soon as possible, he misses everyone and is of course...send good thoughts.

Thanks, Kath! I was a little worried.

I understand, I worry about him too. Especially since his is phone playing up. I don't like him being isolated

edit: for skipped word and second thoughts.. not sure I should have shared that.

I thought I'd leave this for you when you got back.

Thanks, Kath, I was also a bit worried about the silence here.

Thanks for the update.

Hiya, RD!

Sorry about the internet issues - I must admit I've been playing LT hookey with Jenna visiting.

Hope you're otherwise fine.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>189 mckait: Kath, thanks for that update.

Morning, BigDaddy! Hoping you get your internet woes fixed soon - we are missing you. We have made it to Wednesday and to December, so there is that. *smooch and a bear hug*

Dropping in to say hi! Hopefully you are back up and running soon :)

Calling in to say a big congrats for the other day (>170 richardderus:) and you are in absentia. Hope you find your way back in soon!

Hi RD.
Adding my name to the list of those looking forward to hearing from you.
If your internet is the problem, not so disastrous (in the scale of things).

If health or ... other event has intervened, wah!

I spoke with Richard today and he's okay. Just the internet and a phone that won't let him post or text much, so far calling is working. Bad luck there that both of his means of communication are not working. Hopefully, the internet will be back soon and the phone issue can be resolved. Crappy ending to yet another crappy covid year. Bah. I'm not sure if he can read the posts just now, something about the app. I did let him know that he is missed ~

>201 mckait: This was a relief to know. Thank you so much for checking in to let us know you've been in touch.

Thanks for keeping us updated, Kath!

Here's hoping you get your Internet and phone back very soon, Richard.

Hey Richard. Internet woes? Nothing to do with me of course *bats eyelashes*

>201 mckait: We appreciate the updates, Kath.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. I hope this is the day you can get back on board. We miss you.

Miss you for sure, RDear!

*smooch*

Missing you, Richard dear, especially on a Thursday!

Hi all...I'm in the library using their wifi, so this will of necessity be a brief update. My facility's internet bill wasn't paid so the residents are without access to the internet. My five-year-old phone is very cranky and refuses to be used as a hotspot. The LT app might actually be worse than before...will NOT let me log on...so I can't read posts or reply.

I'll be back in the library at some point next week to check in again. If somehow they get the darn bill paid before then, I'll come and say so! In the meantime, sending hugs and smooches...some review posts follow.

198 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No one knew they'd moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who - and what - he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime?

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANK YOU, KIND ELF!

My Review: There’s always room for the thriller genre to expand. It’s been a generation since gay characters were allowed to live past the ending, as mysteries made their peace with us in the Brandstetter books; we’ve been promoted to sleuths! It’s been a generation, too, since heroines were normalized in the hardboiled end of the genre, with Sue Grafton’s damaged and flawless Kinsey Milhone.

But what hasn’t happened all that often, and what still feels surprising and fresh and fun to read, is the moral grayness of female thriller leads. They’ve been haunted; they’ve been vengeful; but they’ve either Done Wrong and Suffered, or Been Victims and Suffered. Isn’t that tedious? Isn’t that unrealistic? I know actual women, I know they’re (mostly!) neither Supervillainesses without a shred of conscience or Saintly Martyrs. They’re messy, muddleheaded people. They fuck up, they attempt to atone for it, they make awful mistakes and terrible decisions. They are, in other words, just...people.

Fiction hasn’t adjusted to the reality of women’s ordinariness. But Catherine Ryan Howard has.

Ciara Murphy is an ordinary, plain-old-folks, woman. She is about to turn herself into a pretzel of anxiety when we meet her because an impossibly handsome man has just Noticed Her and she isn’t able to believe that he’s actually behaving like a decent guy who’s just seen someone he wants to get to know better. That doesn’t happen between Adonis-like men called something as elegant as Oliver Kennedy and pleasantly plain lasses like her. Happen, however, it does:

And he’s so attractive that she knows instantly the world he lives in is not the same one in which she does, that he can’t possibly experience it the same way. A face like that affords a different kind of existence, one in which you arrive into every situation with some degree of preapproval. But you don’t know it, don’t realize that you’re being ushered into the priority lane of life every single day.

She wonders what that does to a person.

Nothing good, Ciara. Nothing good, and sometimes quite terrible things. As we’re all aware, there is male privilege and there is nothing good that comes from the possession of that plus good looks plus...though this is Ireland, and therefore the whitest of the white-people countries...white privilege. But Ciara’s white, too, and it’s time to face up to this book’s blind spot. Everyone in this story is a privileged and spoiled First Worlder having seriously First-World problems.

She keeps a screenshot on her phone of a quote by, supposedly, Abraham Lincoln: Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want the most. Maybe that’s true, but discipline has never been her problem. It’s fear she struggles with. She thinks courage might be choosing between what you want now and what you want most, because what she wants now is to walk away, to shut this down, to close the door.

That said, we move on. And it’s where we move on to that makes 56 Days a deeply compelling, fully absorbing, surprisingly exciting thriller.

We know as readers that the purpose of a thriller is to thrill. Often that comes in the form of action, chase scenes, danger and blood and pain as Events Unfold. But this story is set on the brink of a worldwide pandemic and its uncertainty, its movement-restricting lockdown(s), its fear of others and its focus on somehow staying safe. But safety means different things to Oliver Kennedy and to Ciara Murphy. How much different is what what becomes so clear after the scene is set. They’re going to spend the lockdown cocooned together. This is, for reasons that are slowly and steadily brought into focus, something each urgently desires. They’re both unable to believe their luck, the way the world’s conspired to give them what the need the most.

They’ve been on a few dates. That, and some sex, and an undeniably mutual sense of their rightness of fit together, is what they decide when they’re forced by the pandemic to choose between lockdown apart and forming their own household. They each know they’re being rushed into this too fast; they each decide, for their own reasons, to make the lockdown into an opportunity to explore the new, strange-to-each sense of connection they’re experiencing. Neither decides to share their decision with others in their lives. I sure as heck wouldn’t, would you? Imagine the lectures, the sermonizing, the sheer next-to-panic worry the decision would evoke in a loving family member or even a very good friend. I’d be harping on the idiocy of thinking you know someone who’s barely even an acquaintance enough to spend two weeks of 24/7 days with them!

And now, I suspect there’s something you’re beginning to notice isn’t adding up. I’ve called this story a thriller. And it’s taking place in lockdown. A notoriously sedentary and isolated time. What kind of thriller are we going to get out of that? Just lots of sex, of discovery that Mr. Right is barely Mr. Right Now and Miss Congeniality is in fact vanilla ice cream with blue cheese dressing?

Author Howard has prepared a path for us that takes us into and back out of the past in several layers. The chapters are titled things like “23 Days Ago” and “Now” and the like. Each “Now” chapter focuses on the national police of Ireland, the Garda, investigating the discovery of a dead, badly decomposed body in a new, upscale apartment development. The lives of the senior investigating officers are sketched in but are done so in a way I found compelling and convincing. Like the senior officer getting a text from her junior that he needs her to come unlock him from the handcuffs his last lay left him hooked to the headboard with. We don’t get details. We do get some banter and some clues to the relationship she has with her foolish Sergeant.

What we also get is the certainty that we’re in good storytelling hands. In a chapter of under three thousand words we’re clear that she’s a good friend, a solid mentor, and he’s a foolish risk-taking adrenaline junkie with a great future behind him. They’re going to do everything they can figure out together to solve the puzzle of a dead person in a shower whose name they don’t know and whose life is so unmoored to anyone that the reason the body was discovered is the smell of it rotting bothered the people living in the same hall.

It is in these jump-cuts, these bits of time out of order, that the tapestry of awful crime and condign punishment play out. It is Ciara’s and Oliver’s story, as deeply intertwined and as messily disguised as each facet is, that keeps readerly fingers flipping pages. (Tapping them, in my case; this was a Kindle purchase using up 99¢ of a gift card.) As the points of view shift each time there’s a new date, more and more of the dead body’s tale of woes and wretchedness and unbearably poignant longing to explain and comfort and make things better comes into focus. There is never just one strand to the story. There is never just one angle of attack from which we’re approaching it, as Ciara and Oliver each reveal to the reader how few facts they’re revealing to each other. Every perspective shift offers a different story, both being told and potentially veering off from what has happened...there is a rotting body in a shower in an apartment.

It’s the why of it that is so gripping not the what. It’s the uncertainty that Author Howard uses to make us care...who is the dead person? Why are they dead? How and when did it happen?...over and over, on more and more layers of facts gleaned and fitted into the central puzzle of who the victim is. That answer is revealed as each layer of fact, each question answered, build the shape of the truth underneath the simple set up. A dead body is found in a shower by gardaí called to make a wellness check in a pandemic lockdown.

When all is revealed, as it is, the tense and frustrating ride is very much worth taking. It was never going to be exactly what I expected it to be, as I expected. After all, it’s a thriller. The point of the genre’s conventions is to go on a journey, to make one’s expectations go in ways the answer will not. As accustomed to that fact as I am, I was not expecting the resolution to the central mystery to take the final twist that it did. I’m not at all sure that it was the resolution, in fact; I can see Author Howard’s wicked little smile and devilishly quirked eyebrow as the facts she presents are snapped into a solid, firmly fitting pattern.

That isn’t at all the Truth. Unless it is. But it...really, honestly...might not be. It might be a shadow cast in a weird way by the always fickle Moon moving in its speedy course.

Lies are spindly, unwieldy things. Delicate filaments, like bundles of nerves in the body. Easy to twist, hard to control, impossible to keep hold of.

At the end of this story, Ciara Murphy and Oliver Kennedy are each deeply enmeshed in delicate, twisted filaments of lies told, believed, sold to a desperate self in need of something to hold on to. At the end of this story, there is no ending because the Truth can’t be packaged by being sculpted from facts. In the end, I think the best thrillers are the ones that obey the rules of evidence, that make sure you have facts that matter and are making the story make sense; this story does that at every turn.

Then it stands the facts on their spindly, delicate bundles, and shows you that the truth is you can’t be sure there’s any Truth in the facts. But there’s a thumping good read in them and a pleasure to be derived from their collection. (Just ignore the five (5) w-bombs.)

>208 richardderus: So good to see a message from you, Richard dear!
*smooch*

199 WED TO THE BARBARIAN BY Keira Andrews

The Publisher Says: Will an innocent prince forced into marriage choose passion?

Sheltered in the palace with his books, Jem’s life is peaceful. Even if he’s lonely and yearning for romance, the big, strong men he wants don’t crave small, timid princes.

Then he’s forced to marry a mysterious barbarian.

Jem must do his duty—even if it means being stuck with Cador, a brute who dismisses him as weak. Even if it means a fake marriage in name only for the sake of their homelands. Even if he must leave behind everything and everyone to journey to a forbidding island of ice and stone.

Even if there’s only one bed.

Alone with this wild—yet tender?—man, Jem discovers desire that burns hotter than he ever imagined. Can two strangers learn to trust, or will dangerous lies tear them apart?

Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending (eventually). This is the first action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet and must be read before The Barbarian’s Vow.

I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: I don’t recall reading anything by Keira Andrews before this duology, which honestly I think is best called a “Duet”...a choral piece for two voices, invoking lovely, layered harmonies and rich contrapuntal passages of musical intensity. There are things about it I didn’t enjoy, but on balance, this secondary-world fantasy is enjoyable and well worth reading.

Twenty-year-old Prince Jowan of Neuvella, in the land of Onan (!), is small, slight, and shy. He doesn’t particularly like his big, butch older brothers who have a history of playing pranks on him and making him feel picked on and targeted. His non-binary older sibling Santo is more to his taste, being artistic and far less hearty-big-guy. Jem, as he’s called by one and all, is very much a dreamer, a soft-hearted animal rescuer, a romance-fantasy-novel reader, and a deeply unwilling virgin. He’s at a seasonal summit meeting with his parents, the Queen of Neuvella and her consort; he’s bored out of his mind by the politicking and the ceremonial stuff. He decidedly is not bored by the barbarian hotties from newly-returned-to-the-fold Ergh to the north...he’s been eyeing one of them up pretty thoroughly, tall broad and handsome in his leathers and furs blond god Cador.

Unrepentant horndawg Cador can’t be arsed to look at anyone from Onan, effete little weaklings whose dark skins and eyes are signs of soft, luxurious living impossible in cold, northerly Ergh. But he, too, is bored out of his mind, and dreading his inevitable fate: Marrying one of the weakings, a Prince apparently called Jowan. Whichever one he is. But his tas, the Chieftain of Rusk and leader of Ergh, has made this marriage a duty he can not avoid...he doesn’t want to marry anyone, still less a foreigner, but he must or there will be dreadful, dreadful consequences, things that are bad will become terrible, unbearable.

And so the reindeer games begin! The culture of Onan (!) is sex positive, identity fluid, and clearly set for a major conflict. The royal alliance that’s being formalized here between Ergh and Neuvella (the one that’s about to be sprung on uninformed and unsuspecting Jem) is meant to solidify ties with the newly reunited with their polity “barbarians”. They’ve all come seeking trade, and other advantages that are revealed slowly over the course of the two stories. The cost is to be borne by Jem and Cador, unwilling husbands bound by the gods to serve their parents’ aims for their peoples.

What happens is a good story of young men who love their families and their ways of life, and whose sense of duty impels them to behave with all the honor and honesty they can in every situation. The obstacles to the pair becoming more than political mates are, bit by bit, overcome, climbed over, or worked around. They’re very, very compatible in bed. Their sex life is vigorous, once it begins. I don’t happen to like that kind of sex, not finding humiliation at all erotically enticing. Lots of flippity-flippity-flip until the “dirty talk” ended.

What I was invested in was these men’s world. I think their culture was interestingly drawn, with its clear and unambiguous rejection of binding gender roles and abundantly evident sexual freedom. The cultural conflicts over religion were framed interestingly...the clerics, male and female, are not particularly welcome in Ergh, whose people’s long-ago exodus from Onan (!) included leaving “the gods” behind. Now that there’s a major crisis in Ergh, the clerics have sought to use it to bring these lost folk back into the fold...and under the clerics’ power. This is not to Cador’s taste, nor to Jem’s, as it turns out. Neither man is eager to see the clerics expand their power over the people.

The time Jem spends in Ergh, where he and Cador live together in a rough unprincely manner, changes him. He is eager to be part of Cador’s world once their initial wary hostility is overcome, once they begin to accept and love each other for their unique selves. But there are secrets, ugly, terrible secrets, at the heart of his marriage to Cador. These come to light in hurtful, painful ways that re-open Jem’s barely healed trust wounds inflicted by his hearty dudebro brothers during his childhood. And then, as the true depths of the secrets is revealed, Jem’s new and fragile love for Cador is shattered.

That’s where this book ends, and my gift-giving friend said to me in giving me the second book, “can’t leave you without book two!” I protested then that of course, getting any gift was great!

I meant it. But, you see, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about because I would’ve gone *stark*staring*MAD* if I hadn’t had book two to dive into the very second I finished book one. The story has a great hook for my readerly interests. Religious folk being the bad guys? Say hallelujah! But not being the bad guys because they are persecuting gay people for being gay? Bring the jubilee! This world, this secondary world of “love who you love and be who you are,” is one I’d read about all day long. The fact that the religious establishment is gender blind, solemnizes marriages between people with any plumbing whatever, and is *still* evil...well, it’s like the author ripped my convictions about the nature of religion out of my head and wrote them into this story.

It’s reasonably clear that there is some kind of interesting history to this world, permaybehaps one of colonization from Earth in a past not remembered. How else are there dark- and light-skinned people, living separately, but not divided along “racial” lines? The conflicts in this story are no less bitter and hateful, I grant you, but there’s no sign that the differing skin colors of Jem and Cador feature in any way in their societal conflict. That’s something I approve of, and of course the absence of sex-based or identity-based phobias is much to my liking as well. No sooner did I finish this read than I went on to book two.

200 The Barbarian's Vow by Keira Andrews

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: He claimed an innocent prince—and surrendered his heart.

Cador only married a pampered prince from a faraway land to save his people. He never expected he’d grow to respect Jem. He never expected to find comfort with him. He never expected to want him with a fierce passion.

He never expected to fall in love.

Now Cador must secure his people’s future and win Jem’s heart. For without it, he has no future at all.

The Barbarian’s Vow by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending. This is the second and final action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet. Wed to the Barbarian must be read first.

I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: Finishing Jem’s and Cador’s story...after the ending of book one, I was wondering how the hell the author was going to get the necessary HEA out of the place she left us! And had my sweet elf not gifted me both of these books, I think I’d’ve behaved like Jem does in this book, scratching at my scalp until it bleeds just to distract myself from the awful agony within.

Luckily this was not necessary.

As the book opens, the badly betrayed Jem and contrite, desperate-to-reconcile Cador are embarking for Onan (!) to meet with Jem’s mother, the Queen of Neuvella, and the clerical hierarchy to solve the pressing issue that’s driven the entire plot. Cador’s initial reasons for marrying Jem have come to light and, as they were truly terrible reasons, base and cruel reasons, Jem is understandably not well disposed towards Cador. He is his husband...he is absolutely not Cador’s friend just now.

As this is a perfectly reasonable response to the things he’s discovered, the hurts that have been inflicted on him, there’s no blame attached to him for being as cold, withdrawn, snarky, and/or unkind as he’s got a mind to be. Yet here he is with Cador and several other of the Erghians who conspired to cause him serious harm. He’s actively working to solve this terrible problem. He’s got all the Good Boy Points in this scenario.

What transpires from the moment the ship lands can only be described as a clusterfuck. There is not a single, solitary moment when Jem (still angry at all the Erghians) and Cador (trying, trying hard, to make up with Jem) actually communicate. I get it, Author Andrews! Jem’s angry and hurt...but the number of silly and frankly incredible excuses made for them to stay away from having a real conversation stopped working around halfway through the book. It became ridiculous and repetitive.

There were a few other problematic things...Cador’s tas, the chieftain, being absent from his post while the place is in a crisis, for example...but honestly it’s just the silliness of the inner excuses and rationalizations (“I’m so tired, we’ll talk in the morning”) and external obstacles (...and then {someone} came pounding on the door! Or “the Queen commanded us to…”) put in the way of these men having a simple conversation that wore on me. The more there were the less credible they were.

Worldbuilding issues were present as well. Why, for example, are there maple trees and horses and chickens and goats and boars...but also sevel fruit and tew trees and dillywig birds? Speaking of sevel fruits, there is a reason that these are precious that is made obvious to us. But how the effect these fruits have could simply have gone unnoticed by humanity for so long is utterly unclear, unexplained. The issue of the condition sevel fruits prevent is one that has haunted humanity for millennia. It’s unlikely that people have forgotten it, given its horrors. And the moment Jem has his realization about the implications of the sevel fruit’s effects being known to some, withheld from others, really demands a lot more story space!

The ending of the tale was, to my mind, about the most encouraging part. For Jem and Cador, their prayers were answered, and for Ergh and Onan (!) as a whole, the best possible changes came about. With the leaders changing, the generations rolling into new grooves, it sounds to me like their futures are indeed bright. I was so enrapt in the story, so invested in its telling, that I am sure I’ll try more of Author Andrews’ stories soon. This duet being over, however, I bid my farewells to Cador and Jem and their families with a happy, wistful smile. If, by some good chance, I see there are new stories set in this world, I am so there!

Just stop with the revolting w-bombs.

Yay! Richard gets a wonderful review posted! We miss you. Fie, fie on the facility.

201 Satan Claus is Coming to Town by Catherine Lievens

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dear Satan Claus…

That’s how the letter Satan received starts. The little girl who wrote it asking for her father to be happy again meant it for someone else, and while that’s obvious, Satan doesn’t care. Santa will never find out, as long as Satan’s nosy assistant, Jasper, doesn’t tell him. Satan isn’t sure why he decides to watch Zoe and her dad, except that he’s bored and lonely. He surprises himself when he moves into the house next to theirs and introduces himself as Sam—because he couldn’t exactly give Riley his real name, could he?

Riley has been divorced for years, and he doesn’t have time for a relationship. He has trust issues and no will to get over them, not when his daughter is the center of his life. Then a new neighbor moves in, and he’s adorably awkward and sexy. Riley tries to keep Sam at arm’s length, but he can’t help but fall in love with him, and he’s pretty sure Sam is falling for him, too.

Then Sam confesses his real name is Satan, and that he’s the king of Hell.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANK YOU, KIND ELF!

My Review: Frothy, fun silliness about a kid’s bad spelling...Satan Claus! Heh...leading to the mother of all meet-cutes. Riley’s daughter Zoe wishes for her daddy to smile more and be happy in her Santa letter, delivered to Satan since it was misaddressed. Bored by beng the King of Hell, Satan decides to give Zoe her gifts. How to make divorced, gay dad with abandonment and trust issues Riley smile more? Lie to him, ghost him, and make his daughter like the ghoster! Simple, no?

Of course it’s a category Holiday romance, we know there’s HEA at the end. What it entails is no less than a family rapprochement between Satan and one of his brothers (Archangel Gabriel, no less), as well as a new romantic start between Riley, nice guy, and Satan, King of Hell.

Gravity-free froth, high-concept silliness, and a pleasant but insubstantial afternoon’s entertainment. There are ZERO winks! Not one! It can be done, M/M romance writers...there is no need to lard the stupid things into your work.

202 How to Catch A Vet by Ana Ashley

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.

Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in...well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANKS, ANONYMOUS ELF!

My Review: Author Ana Ashley was brand new to me, but this entry is in a series of connected gay romances that wasn’t at all new...it’s the sixth in an all-from-one-town trope of small-world-building interconnected stories. In this case it’s called “Chester Falls, Connecticut.”

An Army veteran and a small-town veterinarian from the same little town get tangled up...literally...in a meet-cute that got my smiles. Hot guy falls for ordinary one works, too. The fact that it’s in an interconnected series detracted a little bit from my enjoyment because I didn’t get the in-jokes; the way they’re presented I couldn’t miss them being in-jokes. I definitely think the author relies on them being familiar more than is entirely wise.

I do mildly recommend the read though with the reservation that there are eight (8) w-bombs and none of them were in any way needed to make any kind or sort of point about the characters doing it or having it done at them.

203 Mr. Frosty Pants by Leta Blake

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Frosty former friends get a steamy second chance in this Christmas gay romance!

Can true love warm his frozen heart?

When Casey Stevens went away to college four years ago, he ghosted on his straight best friend, Joel Vreeland. He hoped time and distance would lessen the unrequited affection he felt, but all it did was make him miss Joel more. Home for the holidays, Casey hopes they might find a way to be friends again. But Joel’s frosty reception reminds Casey of just how hard he had to fight to be Joel’s friend in the first place. It’s going to take a Christmas miracle to get past that cool façade again.

Joel isn’t as straight as Casey believes, and his years of pining for Casey have left him hurting and alone, caring for his abusive father and struggling to get by. Unable to trust anyone except his rescue dog—and with no reason to believe Casey is interested in him for more than a holiday fling—Joel’s icy heart might shatter before it can thaw.

Can Casey and Joel’s love overcome mistrust, parental rejection, class differences, and four long years apart?

Mr. Frosty Pants is a stand-alone, Christmas gay romance by Leta Blake featuring a virgin hero, childhood friends-to-lovers, second chance romance, and romantically steamy scenes.

I RECEIVED THIS FROM HOLLY GINGERSNAP FOR YULE! THANK YOU, KIND ELF.

My Review: Five revolting w-bombs dropped. Why, I wonder, did the m/m romance writing community decide this was somehow okay?

A charmingly typical Holiday-themed Second Chance romance set in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Hallmark Movie Channel plot works exactly as you want, need, and expect. There is explicit sex so it’s not suitable for crossover straight reading, though it’s interesting that the grouchy character is the bottom! I was rooting for the couple to succeed because the family healing that had to come from it was for them both.

Worth the time and the effort to read, made of the Right Stuff, and presented with polished and pleasurable style.

Morning, BigDaddy! Thinking about you and wishing you restored to The Web. You are missed. *smooch*

‘Morning, RD, and happy Friday to you! I hope LBAL gets resident internet back soon.

>209 richardderus: Ya got me! I just snagged 56 Days on Kindle for 99¢.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Thought of you (and me and many of us) when I saw this!

>218 karenmarie: I just started reading that one as my new insomnia book.

>219 ronincats: LOVE that, Roni!!

Just dropping a quick note to let you know I'm thinking of you. Hope your facility gets its act together soon and pays its internet bill so you can get back online and get back to sharing your salty wit with us. Smooches!

Happy Friday, Richard. Fun reviews, as always.

I’m late to the discussion, but I watched the GBBO buildup and final with Debbi and our daughter. i was pulling for Crystelle in the final - what an unexpected sprint she made toward the show’s end! What the heck happened with her foccacia? She must’ve had a blankout and thought she had it covered when she didn’t.

Nonetheless, I was happy for Giuseppe. What a nice guy. Jurgen was, too, but he didn’t bring the big bakes at the right time like Giuseppe did.

That carrot cake episode nearly did me in. I banged my head trying to get inside the tv. They should do an all carrot cake holiday special!

>218 karenmarie: And I just borrowed 56 Days from overdrive. Very intriguing premise. I skipped the review in case I found spoilers!

>219 ronincats: That is *me* all over... love it, Roni

Happy Sunday, Richard. I sure hope they get you connected soon. We miss you. I bet you are getting in lots of reading, though. Can't wait to hear about it.

Hiya, RDear! My, my. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

You're missed.

*smooch*

Sorry to hear about t'internet issues and that they are resolved soonest. Hope that the weekend is treating you well, regardless.

56 Days is a confirmed bullet. Available from the library as well.

Gee, miss you, Richard.

Missing you on this sunny Sunday.

Gee get the internet sorted already we miss ya, you old(ish) curmudgeon.

>229 PaulCranswick: Yup, what he said. Do we need to air lift you a hot spot?

Ridiculous! We need you!!!

*smooch*

>231 ronincats: What she said. This place isn't the same without your wit and charm and snark and insights. Missing you muchly. *smooch*

>233 Crazymamie: - What she said!

Backing up what everyone else said!

*aaahhh* and here I am! Thank you all for coming by Bekka, Katie, Mamie, my dear Horrible, Roni, Susan, PC, Mary the Kontrary, Your Weirdness, Helen, Mark, Sandy, and Joe!

How extremely surprising. People noticed I was gone. Huh. Go know from this. I thought I'd have to reintroduce myself after the past week.

They paid the bill, I'm back on, and boy is it a relief. I fried my poor 2016 LG Smartphone using it so much. (Side note to the PTB: Your phone app stinks. Litsy is no substitute.) Restoring it to factory settings got some more life out of it, but I'm on notice...time to get the Pixel 5a I've been coveting. Now to wait for a sale....

Joe, I agree with your spoilers...except my rooting was for the winner. Sheer perfection! And I'm off to figure out how to get to Love Productions' development person to get that carrot-cake episode idea off the ground.

Roni, I do indeed break out in sarcasm to alarming extent. I tweeted this yesterday:

And I stand by every syllable.

Someone mentioned reading (gasp)...I finished and reviewed five more books since the six I posted from the library, so I'm going to post those ASAP. I'm extra delighted that 56 Days has made such a hit! I really enjoyed that read. I *did* find the final twist...um...OTT but there it is.

So I'm off to start organizing the posts, getting my poor blog updated, etc etc. Thank you all from the bottom of whatever heat-pump takes the place of a "heart" in me for your continuing interest.

*smooch*

Thank God you are back! It has not been the same without you :)

>236 richardderus: I need that graphic for Mondays.

>238 Crazymamie: Heh. I love the graphic!

Please, feel free to snag...I got it from a Tweep who hates Mmmday with a verve equal to yours, so it's fulfilling its role.

*smooch*

>237 figsfromthistle: Hi Anita! Thank you!

204 Vampire on the Orient Express by Shane Carrow

Rating: 3* of five, barely

The Publisher Says: Paris, 1914. American adventurer Sam Carter boards the Orient Express, departing France in style after an impulsive decision to desert the Foreign Legion. British diplomat Lucas Avery is already nursing a drink in the smoking car, resenting his assignment to the distant Ottoman Empire. Neither man expects anything more from the next three days and three thousand miles than rich food, expensive champagne and fine cigars.

But something dangerous is lurking aboard the train, hiding in plain sight among French aristocrats and German businessmen. Through fire and darkness, through blood and ice, the Orient Express is bearing an ancient evil across the continent - and not all its passengers will live to see Constantinople...

THIS WAS A GIVEAWAY ON AMAZON. THANK YOU.

My Review: I mean, what Agathite could pass up the chance to read such a blatant homage to her dameliness’s most famous creation? To know it was made specifically to call forth the echoes of a mighty and miraculously made mountain of storycraft made it utterly impossible to resist. (Free didn’t hurt my feelings or slow down my One-Clickin’ finger.) I didn’t try very hard to do so, it must be said.

It is February 1914, and a cold and wet one it is. A loutish criminal American, an effete aristocratic Englishman, and an ancient vampire get on a train. Many deaths will ensue. Paris’s posh purlieus long behind them, Constantinople’s exotic staginess still ahead of them, and them in a hurtling bottle on a trip through the benightèd Mitteleuropan landscape in which (as all civilized people know) anything can happen and usually does. It isn’t rocket science to follow this trail, is it.

But oh the scenery! The author’s delightful evocation of the barely-still-Belle-Epoque world in which his characters are moving (and have moved, in memory flashbacks) is lush and fully immersive. The story’s resonances with Dracula in its vampire strand and with Murder on the Orient Express in its mystery strand are very, very well handled. The deft winding of the two is one of my fullest pleasures in the read.

I am rating it two-and-a-half stars for that.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Gawd/Religion angles did not work for me, even moreso as they’re used in unpleasant and judgmental ways. Much emphasis on how it’s one’s Faith In Gawd that protects one from the Ancient Evil of the Vampire…the explicitly labeled Jew Doctor who dies while being a good carer for a Muslim girl who survives…the gay guy who’s small and blond ranged alongside the big, bluff, “normal” (and explicitly described as such *by* the gay Englishman) American who comes right out and says “of course I know what you’re hinting at but I’m not interested” at the very end of the book…the male vampire whose gayness deepens his evil.

I don’t like or subscribe to that view of the world, and I’m faintly contemptuous of those who do. I’m also very opposed to them spreading such pernicious and specious claptrap.

Even when it’s well written…maybe more when it’s well-written than when it’s not. So, despite the evident pleasures of the read, I won’t seek the next one in this series.

Welcome back. I hear bells!

Well, well, well…. So glad that you’re back, RD!

>240 richardderus: Tempting, but not tempting enough to get around the Gawd/Religion angles.

Another Tuesday *smooch* for good measure.

205 The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Stonewall Book Award Winner * A Time Magazine Best YA Book Of All Time
A fierce coming-of-age verse novel about identity and the power of drag, from acclaimed poet and performer Dean Atta. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, and Kacen Callender.

Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he’s navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican—but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough.
As he gets older, Michael’s coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs—and the Black Flamingo is born.
Told with raw honesty, insight, and lyricism, this debut explores the layers of identity that make us who we are—and allow us to shine.
I USED MY YULE GIFTCARD TO BUY THIS ON SALE. LOVE YOU, SWEETIENUBBINS. (But seriously, no more.)

My Review: Y’all. Get down on your poetry-lovin’ knees and say “Hallelujah” cuz your anti-Homeric un-Shelleyed non-Ginsbergly poetry Grinch just read a five zillion page YA coming-of-age book.

In full. No skippity-hoppity-next-please.

I shall accept your plaudits in the comments below. Books suffice as tribute. Please consult my Elfster list for recommendations.

What I didn’t do was much enjoy myself. The story’s fine, read it a million times, but that’s hardly the point with a coming-of-age tale in the hands of one from the vaults, as Frank N. Furter once said. I’m perfectly happy, then, as I am not the one being addressed, to step into observer mode and make my judgments on what the Author’s story sets out to do without the distracting sense of seeing myself and my struggles in his words.

First, of course, we have that perennial whine, “why poetry? just come out and say it!” For me to read the whole book, there needs to be something I can hang my hat on, some protuberant part that absolutely can not be expressed without Author Atta committing poetry before my affronted eyes. (This is also how I feel about comic books…I mean graphic novels!...as regular readers have heard and heard and heard me say.)

The Black Flamingo, in all its tremulous adolescent fumbling for Identity in a world that strongly prefers safe, restrictive labels, goes over that bar with room to spare. Lovely Mikey and his first…the bloke he loses his virginity and his innocence to…that simply could not have worked in prose. It would’ve made the entire exercise into a late 1950s kitchen-sink drama, something only slightly more authentic than EastEnders. The way Michael comes out to his mother…the way his grandfather and he communicate with the television story about the black flamingo…all of those moments are not adequately renderable in simple (or even fancy and complicated) prose.

Of course the story ends on a high note. It has to; those are the coming-of-age/YA rules for gay fiction nowadays. And, may I just say from my standpoint as someone who never had anything remotely like this book to read as a teenager, y’all GO! Write it, read it, talk about it, make it spread far and make it spread wide, get these words in front of as many who might maybe kinda sorta almost be confused or wondering or just plain curious.

This is the world the men who died of AIDS while I held their hands wanted to bring to life. I’m so far beyond happy that I’ve lived to see it, to know it flourishes, and to say “thank all those useless gods it’s here at last.” Now…you lot need to make sure it lasts. Nothing is free, if you’re not out there pushing and shouting and making noise then it’s all under the radar and the threats to women’s and Black peoples’ and all the other folks They don’t like will be the small end of the wedge.

Your turn will come.

If you can’t do anything publicly, do it privately…make calls to legislators (don’t know what to say? https://5calls.org/ has you covered) to let them know you’re a constituent, you pay attention to them and their votes, and you will vote them out. If you live in a scary place, send money through the big organizations like ActBlue. They don’t give anyone anything personal about you, just your money to people who maybe aren’t exactly perfect but they are a lot better than Them.

And that’s it. That’s the review, that’s the speech, that is all I know how to say to break someone, anyone, free from paralysis and inaction.

>242 karenmarie: Thank you, Horrible dear, I was slowly going mad while also experiencing a lot of fear that my poor elderly LG phone would decide to collapse. Luckily it didn't...I was on the landline with Rob and he said, "not being sarcastic...have you turned it off and back on again?"

*gobsmacked* "n...no..."

That worked well enough to get me to the point I could reset it to factory settings and get back on with something like my life. But the LT phone app? Useless.

>241 quondame: Thank you, Susan! I heard the bells, too.

206 The Malacia Tapestry by Brian Aldiss

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In a grand medieval city where all change has been outlawed, a roguish young actor tempts fate and dinosaurs, all in the name of love

By law, nothing can change in Malacia—a teeming, eternal city of dukes, players, wizards, merchants, beggars, ape-men, lizard-boys, and courtesans—but that is of no great consequence to Perian de Chirolo. An out-of-work actor and unabashed rogue, he is well satisfied with his lot as long as there’s coin, eager young women to bed, and the occasional adventure. Perhaps it is this thrill-seeking spirit—or simply the lure of noble beauty—that makes Perian imprudently agree to take part in a mad inventor’s illegal experiments, since such foolishness will never be tolerated in Malacia. But Perian’s rash actions will only lead him on to further indiscretions, winning him first fame and then notoriety, causing him to be hunted, hounded, martyred, and trapped in a fight to the death with a razor-toothed Ancestral Beast on the outskirts of the city. And perhaps most frightening of all, Perian de Chirolo will find himself in love.

Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss, one of science fiction’s most able and ingenious creative artists, performs a truly astonishing feat of alternate-world building, immersing the reader in an unforgettable Medieval fantasy realm rich in color, incident, invention, and peril—and of course, giant lizards. Welcome to Malacia.

I USED SWEETIENUBBINS' YULE GIFT CARD ON A SALE FOR THIS LOVELY TREAT. THANK YOU.

My Review: A hangover from The 1976 Club, I had this tee’d up on my Kindle to give myself a bit of backup in case I really hated my chosen title, WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME, and needed to abandon ship. I didn’t like that read too terribly much, but it wasn’t so awful I had to Pearl-Rule it. This book, as a back-up choice, would’ve fared about the same.

I don’t hate it; I’m as drawn to the fantasy of a medieval Balkan city trapped in Time by powerful forces that aren’t christian in the way of our world as I ever was. The existence of Ottomans (a very real branch of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia) doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Muslim…and I didn’t specifically notice but am pretty sure we’re not really made privy to their religious beliefs. (If no christians, then no Muslims.)

I’d forgotten a lot of my skills at navigating heteronormativity. Forty-five years on, living in a world where even the slow-moving laws of the land now recognize my right to marry anyone I choose to, I’d completely forgotten how it feels to have to insert myself into straight stories without recourse to my real home. There are oodles of SF/fantasy stories with men who love men in them now. I don’t *have* to come to the straight-people’s table to get a scrap grudgingly thrown!

And that was worth three stars to me. I’m clear now about how very, very much my world has changed. The flipside of that is I’m also clear on how awful it is for bigots and small-souled withholders to live in this more accepting and generous world…why they’re fighting so hard to close the floodgates that were opened very much against their wishes and desires. It is, after all, Author Aldiss’s primary thesis. The great and the good of Malacia have, in concert with the rest of this not-our-Earth, stopped Progress since they can’t stop Time. My half-formed hypothesis is that (fictional) Malacia and its Byzantium and Duchy of Tuscady and so on are in exact parallel with 1976…just on a different Earth in a Multiverse. Not being a Copenhagenist about matters quantum, I’m pretty sure that’s Reality.

If you need any further evidence for my hypothesis, there’s the continuing existence of dinosaurs aka “ancestral animals” and the presence of actual half-human, half-goat satyrs. But tech is stalled in the sixteenth-ish century, and has been for quite a long time if the internal chat is to be credited:

”Perian thinks the story banal, Papa, Armida said, “flashing me a glance I could not interpret. “He says it might as well have been written a million years ago.”

“An interesting remark. Surely one’s interest in the play is precisely that it might have been written a million years ago. Some things are eternal and must be eternally re-expressed. Those desperate straits of love…appeal to us because they apply as much today as yesterday.”

It is absolutely no surprise at all, having read that…peroration…to learn that Author Aldiss describes the speaker, a nobleman of Malacia, as speaking with “...words {of} a dry quality, as if his mouth had developed a prejudice against saliva.” Oh myyyy, as Takei would say.

The tale’s a solidly crafted one. It is, I confess, a bit of the read’s pleasure that it rides the rails already laid down by generations of tale-tellers gone before. What I enjoyed was the worldly setting, the worldbuilding that Author Aldiss chose. His zahnoscope, that not-quite-daguerreotype means of photography…do pardon, mercurization...described in it outlines so the reader can see in their own eye the end results. The careful and wordy descriptions of clothing…after all, a first-person story told by an actor would dwell on surfaces and details!...the same with the ceremonies, the hurly-burly of Malacian life, the small and immediate circle of roving player Perian de Chirolo’s eyesight. It also establishes reasons for Author Aldiss to make snide remarks like the director of the story being told in the new photographic process “moving us about like chairs” and Armida, his love-light, being snappish with his faithless self so he observes, “We bit our tongues—being unable to bite each other’s…”. That’s the fourth star right there.

Then the lumpen-ness endemic to Aldiss's expository writing obtrudes.

”Beware of all things fair, my son, whether a girl or a friend. What looks to be fair may be foul under the surface. The Devil needs his traps. You should regard also you own behaviour, lest it seem fair to you but is really an excuse for foulness.” And so on.

That last is Perian making it plain Author Aldiss knows he’s moralizing and in a tiresome way…a suitable ironic distancing from the fact that he means it. How can I say that with such certainty? Because this is merely the first iteration of the same “shiny surfaces do not cover great depths” message. The second, more beefily stodgy, is the plot of the play that Perian and his Armida are part of in this new mercurization zahnoscope technology: It is literally, beat for beat, the plot of the book we’re reading. You’d have to be insentient not to Get It.

Therein the lack of that fifth star. While I agree with the reviews of the time that this is a good entertaining story, I don’t think…and didn’t then, because of my lack of memory of anything except the broadest strokes of it…that this is a Great Work, a Classic of the Field.

Good read, though.

>236 richardderus: What about the rest of us then? Don't we count?

I seem to be behind on the tech again; the LT phone app I have is good for scanning in books (love that function) but I've never tried it for looking at the forums.

>245 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Unfortunately, the local library does not have it.

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

Great to see you here, RD.
As for that LT phone app, I couldn't agree more. It is *utterly* unreadable.

Someone in the dev department needs to look at other phone apps and see what a good one looks like. The hubs has no usable devices anymore except his phone and has a lot to say about the disparity in userfriendly software for mobile phones. (I used to keep encouraging him to at least buy a tablet but I've given up. My "encouraging" had descended into nagging and we all know how pointless that is).

Glad to see you back, RDear. *smooches*

Hooray for restored Internet and having you back on LT! Oh, and I sent out a little package yesterday. *smooch*

*happy dance*

Missed you, Richard dear, so good you have wifi back!

>251 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Thanks for the Dutch dance moves...I'm so pleased you simply can't imagine. Trying to keep up with any part of my massively online life was *wretched* on that old phone. At least it wasn't permanently fried, like I feared it was. What a relief!!

>250 bell7: Oh yay! Thank you, and thanks, and *smooch*

>249 MickyFine: Thanks, Micky! I'm pleased to be here. I can't believe you noticed I was gone through the Arctic snowfalls. heh

>248 SandyAMcPherson: Gadzooks, Sandy, having lived it I feel his pain but *not* getting at LEAST a tablet...?! Okay, yeah, the time for encouragement is over (nagging makes me more stubborn) but what about a Yule gift? Would he be the guy who leaves it in the box and ignores it because he didn't ask for it?

Anyway. Glad you've been happied by my return as much as I have.

>247 alcottacre: They probably deaccessioned it decades ago, Stasia. It's a lovely read but it's deffo not a Classic, so there'd be no reason for a not-repository library to keep it in circulation.

>246 humouress: We're not really possessed of a mobile app for Forum-reading (see >248 SandyAMcPherson:) but it works very well for scanning, indeed. That is, I'm sad to report, not a function I use any longer because I have stopped acquiring tree books as a regular thing. *sigh*

Of COURSE you count, La Overkill.

*smooch*

Hello there, nice to see you back in the land of the connected.

>253 richardderus: There you are, Richard. So nice to see you back. :0)

Good to see you're back! Nice reviews - I picked up a bullet with the Aldiss, but will avoid like the plague the Orient Express thingy.

>256 drneutron: It was such a disappointment, Jim. I was all ready to adore it...then he smacked me with gawdfish and stabbed me with homopobiknives. Bitter dregs.

I am so so delighted not to be stuck in 1995 anymore.

>255 humouress: *smooch*

>254 Helenliz: Thanks, Helen! What a difference functioning wifi makes.

Yowza! What a great slew of reviews! Glad you were able to keep busy :)

>258 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I have more...watch this space. *smooch*
***
It seems like it'll never get old...Keira Andrews liked and retweeted >211 richardderus: and >212 richardderus:! I feel so silly for being this pleased, but when I like something I'm always happy that the creator of same notices that I'm approving of it.

To many people (including Stoker, alas) seem to believe that vampires are a Judeo-Christian sort of monster, ignoring vampire stories and legends that go back to Second Kingdom Egypt.

Richard did you ever read the National Lampoon parody of Dracula? Made me howl to see the things that a gay vampire would be vulnerable to -- and it wasn't crosses and holy water, no not half.

>260 magicians_nephew: Hi Jim! Yes, I read that parody Back in the Day and was hugely amused...I don't know I'd find it funny today but I'm happy to leave it a smile-worthy memory.

I'm endlessly irritated by christian presumptiousness and chauvinism.

>253 richardderus: *sigh* You are very insightful. That would be a 'yes'.

I have suggested this as a gift for our geeky daughter to give (since the hubs, dear man in so many ways, is usually so difficult to find something he wants, besides books, I will add). She tried to ask her Dad what sort of device he'd like. That went over like the proverbial lead balloon.

>262 SandyAMcPherson: ...?!?...

That's very unhappy-making. I'm so sorry.

They didn't pay the bill - unbelievable. But you notice that the wifi got cut off just after you laid out your review goal for the rest of the year? If anything is going to screw up, that's when it will happen. Good to see you back, Richard.

I hate to admit it, but I am sort of glad you didn't post for a week. It gave me a chance to catch up. I haven't had time to spend on LT due to my traveling to my sister's for Thanksgiving and then having to catch up at work. I am glad to see you back on. I missed you years ago when you were offline and I miss you now when you are offline.

>265 benitastrnad: What a sweet thing to say, Benita, thank you. Since the Collapse of 2014 kept me away for so long, I've been super-alert to making the community aware of how & why I'm not around if I possibly can. It's awful to have someone just vanish and be left hanging!

*smooch*

>264 Familyhistorian: Oh, I can believe it. They've done it before, just never for this long. Crappy people. Thanks, Meg!

'Morning, RichardDear! Happy Wednesday to you.

>243 richardderus: and >245 richardderus: It's always a joy to read your reviews. Neither made it to my wish list, alas, but both got my intellectual juices flowing.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Yes. Vanishing is to be avoided by all means

>268 mckait: Not up for another round of sleuthing, Miss Marple? *smooch*

>267 karenmarie: Happy Humpday, Horrible. I'd be *gobsmacked* if either of those made your heart go pitty-pat! Well and truly not KarenBooks.

Tomorrow and Friday won't be either, so's you know. I *think* one of next week's could be, but really only marginally: Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond probably wouldn't bore you rigid and might even, given that we both enjoyed The French Blue, appeal.

Anyway, off to the mines. I'll be wandering around later. *smooch*

xo

The latest Kimberlee Martin is out. I started it last night. Nothing like the first is my guess...rough start . I think this will be a heartbreaker.

edit:
because I hate autocorrect

>271 mckait:, >270 mckait: Ooo! I asked Berkly Books for it but they said No. I'll put it on my Elfster list and see if anyone decides to gift it to me.

eh, library maybe?

Maybe, if they get it this year. Never can tell, their ebook purchases are not consistent throughout the year.

You're back! Yay! Doing a double happy dance - double because 1) you're back and 2) finally got Sinopticon on my Kindle and, if the first short story is any indication, it'll be going on my top 5 of 2021 list.

Agree with you and others about the LT phone app. I tried to use it awhile back and found it useless and annoying, so I only come to LT when I'm on my laptop. Kind of cuts down on the time I could be here, but that might not be a bad thing.

>275 Storeetllr: Thank you, Mary, it's a good thing to be back but I'm pretty sure I won't get eleven reviews done in six days again soon!

Well, maybe some sites aren't best suited to mobile app-ing and that's okay. IDK if the overall LTer is someone whose life is phone-tied. F/ex, my blog's accessed by a 50/50 split between laptop and mobile users w/very occasional tablet access. I'd guess LT's mobile users aren't a preponderance of us.

I'd guess LT's mobile users aren't a preponderance of us.

And that won't change unless the mobile app is upgraded to make it more user friendly. It's okay, I guess, but there are times I wish I could access Talk and other features from my phone.

Happy Wednesday, Richard. So glad to have you back online. I was on Trail Watch duty this AM. We walked 3-plus miles. It was sunny but cold. Still nice to be out. I wanted to let you know I plan on finally getting to Hench. Hopefully next week.

I find the app's OK if you just want to read short, snippet style Talk posts, but it's a pain to type and it's difficult to read a long review type post.
I've never tried adding a book via it, but have used it to check if I own a book. I prefer typing on a keyboard, so do most of my LT activity via PC.

>279 Helenliz: Adding new books via the phone app is the best. Not so great for older books without bar codes.

>274 richardderus: I can't keep reading and I Can't look away. Problematic. I'll look for something different for night. Do read the description well.

Happy Wednesday, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Glad you're back!! On the topic of LT on phones, I don't like the app either, so what I do is find the LT website on Chrome and then pin it to my home screen. It works very good for Talk, but not quite as good as a PC for looking at your books and wish lists.

>263 richardderus: Don't be sad. He's obviously happy. It's me that would hate to be confined to a phone app. There *is* an old PC desktop here too. Windows 7. *ugh* Semi works. But I'm not going to be concerned. Never does any secure stuff like banking or buying online etc.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Yesterday I managed to write four short reviews, now I am sure I love the books by Alan Hollinghurst.

I have to agree that it is hopeless trying to keep up in the group via mobile phone. The few times I have had to, I have struggled and my thread was filled with even more typos than usual.

207 All I Want by Stella Starling

Rating: 4 sappy stars of five with the caveat: straight people are strongly cautioned

The Publisher Says: “All I want for Christmas is someone to love.”

Shy retail clerk Elliott Gaffney’s Christmas wish isn’t something Santa can grant him, but that doesn’t stop it from being his favorite time of year. Especially since he gets to work at Chicago’s prestigious Ashby’s department store in “the North Pole,” doing his part to make the magic of Christmas come alive for others.

All Bennett “Ash” Ashby wants for Christmas is to forget about it. Unfortunately, his father is forcing him to pay penance for the media frenzy caused by his latest public sex scandal. The Ashby heir, working as a lowly department store Santa? Only the fact that no one will know it’s really him can save Ash the embarrassment of being stuck in a fat suit instead of partying with his friends.

But when Elliott catches Ash’s eye, Christmas starts to look a whole lot brighter. And even though Elliott would never have the guts to say yes if he knew who Ash really was, falling for “Ben,” the new Santa, is another story all together…

I RECEIVED THIS HOLIDAY THEMED ROMANCE AS A FREEBIE ON AMAZON.

My Review: There are far, far, far too many w-bombs (over a dozen!) in this book. A few of them at the beginning are not what they initially seem to be, but the fact is that they don’t stop coming.

Speaking of coming…there’s more of that than I expected in a silly frothing Holiday-season treat like this book. It was an agreeable surprise that I got as much as I did, since it suited my mood that day perfectly. What was also comforting and comfortable was the plot’s absence of fanciness. There wasn’t anything grafted on or poked through to make it more Writerly. It’s a straightforward workplace grump-and-sunshine romp with the usual status and wealth gap.

“Ben” aka Ash the company’s big-boss’s son is forced among the hoi polloi for Xmas…into duty as the flagship store’s Santa! Tell me that’s for a single second believable…but Elliott, the humorously cast nutcracker positioned next to Santa, is there to whisper in “Ben”’s ear the requisite clues on how to handle the kiddies. Which he instantly turns into winning charm and sweetness!

Okay. So you see the Disbelief-alaya you’re going to be required to climb. Summiting K2 in tuxedo slippers without external oxygen would be easier for many, including me in another mood.

Also stretching one’s credulity muscles: Ash is being punished for being caught by the paparazzi in a car having sex with a fellow company director. (No word on that poor bastard’s fate. Can’t’ve been pretty.) Ash’s Page-Six priors are all with socially acceptable men…models, celebs, the like…and Ash’s father, while disapproving of his latest and one must acknowledge supremely stupid escapade, is barely even implied to be upset that it’s with a man. Just that man. And that he got caught. (Even when Ash's earlier struggles to be his queer self are touched on, they aren't foregrounded.)

For Elliott, whose gayness also isn’t remotely disapproved of by his gay and RGBFF colleagues at the store, “Ben” is the “pinch me I must be dreaming” guy, the one whose Look you intercept and turn around to see who he’s looking at…and it’s YOU!...and the bells ring and the birds sing! *wistful sigh* memories do have power.

For Ash, Elliott’s sincere and bone-deep love of the magical way the Holidays make hapiness so much easier to find and to share is intoxicating. A sincere pleasure is a rare thing in the world of the very privileged. Everything is much less simple when you’re rich. Every apple has a worm; every horse is Trojan. It’s all very easy…there’s always someone whose job it is to do the labor…but you pay (and pay and pay) for it with the complete and total absence of simplicity. This is why Marie Kondo’s nonsense is so very appealing to wealthy people.

The end product of these two very different men coming (!) together is a somewhat unsustainable HEA. We're in a romance world, but still a HFN would've worked fine...and left room for Reality. These are people from radically different backgrounds, and while opposites attract, similarities endure. You're given many chances to see bits of Ash's growing up process (eg, the Grinch call from his dad, his rescue of the dog and subsequent ability to overcome his collywobbles at dealing with poochie's ticks) and similar opportunities to see Elliott coming to terms with his quite normal fears about someone as handsome as Ash falling for him. But really? What my brain says is, "not a damn chance, they're from different worlds, they'll run out of common ground in seconds flat." The gift Stella Starling has is for making my sentimental "I always cry at weddings" side ruthlessly club that bastard into submission and take over the endocrine system, flooding me with oxytocin. I want to bond, so I want Ash and Elliott to bond, and therefore the...um...not-sturdy framework (too harsh to call it "flimsy" but...) of this relationship Is. Just. FINE.

That issue firmly dealt with (ignore the muffled screams coming from my closet-locked logic centers), we can touch on (!) the sex scenes: Hot enough, not too many or too few, and VERY MUCH NOT HETERO SAFE. No! Down! The mechanics of deflowering a man aren't skimped or dwelt on; and, for a wonder, the top's the PoV character! That's not ordinary, and Stella Starling did a good job of it...sadly, not the usual case. All three of the sex scenes have a certain...lovingkindness...to them, so they're not icky but they're likely to be uncomfortably detailed for those whose tastes don't run towards men with men.

At all events, this is a novel, not a novella; this is a story, not a set-up delivered with pretty wrapping paper; and this won't weigh you down as you're sipping your venti toasted white chocolate mocha, pondering how to survive the weirdness of a second Plague Yule. Smiles and fun all the way, please, Bibliosanta!

>286 PaulCranswick: Typos are the least of it, PC. It's awkward and lumpen and just not worth the effort to figure out which line associates with what. My biggest mistake was not putting my tablet on the 4G network!

>285 FAMeulstee: Happy Thursday, Anita, and I'll come look at your reviews directly. Hollingshurst has something special, doesn't he?

>284 SandyAMcPherson: Win7?! And it gets you onto the internet okay? Wow, I know back-compatible tech is real but that is serious.

I can't help myself...I see that kind of self-limitation as sad, even though it's often simply saying "this is enough for me, no more, thank you." It's valid to set boundaries, after all.

'Morning, RD! Happy Thursday to you.

I'm drinking coffee and eating a bit of brekkie and will head off to rehab later this morning. Sigh. Do I want to do this? No. Will I do this? Yes.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>283 SilverWolf28: Hi Silver! Thank you for the greeting, and what a great idea. I'll give that a whirl!

>282 alcottacre: Wednesday *smooch* back, Stasia me lurve.

>281 mckait: Hmmm...ominously phrased, but I know what you mean about can't look away. Duly taken into consideration.

>280 quondame: It really works beautifully for that, and is invaluable for shopping.

>279 Helenliz: Completely agree re: typing. I'm possessed of sausages not fingers, so screen-typing is miserable. I prefer the tablet with its pointer to trying to aim my fatties at a screen! Though even it has a keyboard, a purchase I consider absolutely invaluable.

>278 msf59: Hey Mark, it's high time to get Hench under your belt, and the perfect moment to. It was a sweep-me-up read, so I hope it does the same for you in this weird middle-stage part of the month.

>289 karenmarie: Happy Thor's Day, mighty misery-defeating goddess. I'm very glad you see the value in doing your rehab despite its many PITA aspects. Anything that lessens the chances of your having another Event is a good thing.

*smooch*

Good morning, Richard dear!

>293 ronincats: Hiya Roni! I resemble that Maxine meme. Strongly. *sips fifth water serving*

Happy Thursday, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** if you will accept them

>295 alcottacre: *hmmf*

I shall take it under advisement.

(Cool skeletal jpg!) *smooch*

>291 richardderus: Now if I shopped for books as in days of yore that would be useful. Alas, I've only cataloged the PB wall to Ds or Es, so when I wanted to read an M I just ordered one up w/o hobbling down the hall to check. Now I've an extra copy of Winter Rose. And I never got around to reading it in any case. If only more of the PB wall had barcodes.......

I probably still wouldn't get around to cataloging them.