ArlieS continues her reading addiction

I'm Arlie, and this is my second year of the 75 books challenge. Last year, I managed to complete it, with just a little bit over - 80 books completed as of December 21, with two more in progress that I'll probably finish by the 31st. But I've slowed down since the start of 2021, so I may not hit 75 in 2022.

I'm a Canadian living in California, US. My profession is software engineering, but I expect to retire in 2022 - for real, this time - unless I can find a project making appropriate technology for my fellow baby boomers, or other socially useful work that needs my particular skills; the right project might cause my retirement to be delayed indefinitely, but I'm also very much open to volunteering.

I read about half-and-half fiction and non-fiction; the former mostly SF/Fantasy, and the latter mostly science, technology, and history. Last year's addition to that list was economics, which I've been devouring in large quantities; I don't know how long that will continue.

I mostly read in English, but occassionally pick up something in French or (even more rarely) German to help me retain my less-than-stellar linguistic abilities.

I'm once again going to restrict my official books read count to books I'm reading for the first time this year. I probably reread one book for every 10 new ones, and may mention rereads in the thread, but won't count them towards the 75.

Link to my thread from last year: https://www.librarything.com/topic/328797

List of books read cover-to-cover for the first time in 2022:

1. His majesty's dragon by Naomi Novik Jan 3-11, 4 stars
2. The Great Leveler : Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel Jan 1-17, 4 stars
3. We shall rise edited by John Ringo and Gary Poole
4. The price of inequality : how today's divided society endangers our future by Joseph E. Stiglitz
5. The complacent class : the self-defeating quest for the American dream by Tyler Cowen
6. The last graduate : a novel by Naomi Novik
7. Throne of jade by Naomi Novik
8. Autism equality at work : removing barriers and challenging discrimination by Janine Booth
9. Beyond by Mercedes Lackey
10. Rewriting the rules of the American economy : an agenda for growth and shared prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz
11. The economics anti-textbook : a critical thinker's guide to microeconomics by Roderick Hill and Anthony Myatt
12. Black powder war by Naomi Novik
13. Princess Elizabeth's spy by Susan Elia MacNeal
14. Lifelines : a doctor's journey in the fight for public health by Leana S. Wen
15. Last best hope : America in crisis and renewal by George Packer
16. At the end of the world by Charles E. Gannon
17. Purgatory's shore by Taylor Anderson
18. The Victorian city : everyday life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders
19. Governor by David Weber and Richard Fox
20. Briarheart by Mercedes Lackey
21. The lady's guide to celestial mechanics by Olivia Waite
22. The silver bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey
23. The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration by Isabel Wilkerson
24. Underbug : an obsessive tale of termites and technology by Lisa Margonelli
25. Operation shield : a Cassandra Kresnov novel by Joel Shepherd
26. The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
27. To end in fire by David Weber and Eric Flint
28. The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
29. Goliath : The 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy by Matt Stoller
30. The new class war : saving democracy from the managerial elite by Michael Lind

Book Stats

Books read: 30 (through 30 Apr 2022)
Books in flight: 4 (as of 30 Apr); not counted in statistics below

Fiction: 17

- alternate history: 0
- fantasy: 9
- historical: 1
- mystery: 0
- romance: 1
- science fiction: 6
(i.e. anything set in a non-magical future, or with interstellar travel)
-- hard science fiction: 0
- time travel: 0
- none of the above: 0

- short story/novella collections: 0
- juvenile, including "young adult": 0

Non-Fiction: 13

- biography: 0
- economics: 2
- history: 2
- media: 0
- medicine: 1
- politics: 7
- popular social sciences (including self help): 0
- science: 1
- social sciences, psychology etc. (when primarily concerned with research and its results): 0
- technology: 0
- none of the above: 0

Books from a series: 16
(First books of a series: 4)

Language read
- English: 30
- French: 0
- German: 0

Author Gender
- male: 16
- female: 16
- multiple authors of mixed gender: 1
- genderqueer, ambiguous, etc.: 0

Author profession
- academic: 1
- activist:1
- economist: 5
- historian: 2
- journalist: 3
- medical doctor: 1
- novelist: 18
- mixed: 1
- policy analyst: 1
- scientist:
- science journalist:
- unknown:

Number of unique authors: 24

(neither editors nor contributors to anthologies are counted)

Publication year

2006: 3
2009: 1
2010: 2
2012: 3
2014: 2
2016: 2
2017: 2
2018: 1
2019: 2
2020: 2
2021: 9
2022: 1

Author nationality (may wind up with country of residence, depending what I can find):

Austria: 1
Canada: 4
UK: 2
USA: 24
mixed: 1

Book Source
- Public library: 15
- Purchased new, some years ago (TBR shelf) : 1
- Purchase, new: 0
- Purchase, used: 0
- Borrowed and subsequently purchased: 0

Cumulative pages: 11,363

Books read or skimmed, at least in part, but not counted for my 75.

Cookbooks, and others not read cover-to-cover
1. Fix-it and Forget-it Instant Pot Diabetes Cookbook by Hope Comerford
2. The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook by Nisha Vora
3. Healthy and Delicious Instant Pot: inspired meals with a world of flavor by America's Test Kitchen
4. Instant Pot Miracle: From Gourmet to Everyday, 175 Must-Have Recipes

Rereads
1. The Galleon by Ronald Welch
2. Sun of York by Ronald Welch
3. Foundation by Mercedes Lackey
4. Intrigues by Mercedes Lackey
5. Changes by Mercedes Lackey
6. Bastion, by Mercedes Lackey
7. Redoubt , by Mercedes Lackey
8. The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey
9. Oathbreakers by Mercedes Lackey
10. Oathblood by Mercedes Lackey

Pearl Ruled
1. Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
2. Underland : a deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane
3: Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

Welcome back! Glad you joined us for another stellar year!

Happy New Thread!

Ooops - already wished you a happy new thread! Oh, well, you get double wishes!

>7 drneutron: double wishes are good.

Arlie, I'm returning your visit...and wondering if, as a SF/F reader, you've made tiffin/Tui's acquaintance. Her *prodigious* reading is focused on the same subset and she's Canadian so frequently hears tell of/reviews books we here in the USA might not.

Her 2021 thread is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/335255

I wouldn't expect to see a 2022 one until the date.

>9 richardderus: I hadn't noticed her before, but a quick skim of her thread has me adding books to my overgrown TBR list, so I'll just have to follow her too. ;-)

>10 ArlieS: I can see we'll be playing "AAAHHH MY TBR!!" a lot.

I will be with you again this year, Arlie, welcome back. x

This group always helps me to read; welcome back, Arlie.

Howdy do, Arlie. Caught up to your thread late in 2021 - hope to get in on the ground floor this year.

>13 PaulCranswick: This!

>14 magicians_nephew: And I'll hopefully say more on yours, this year.

Edit: actually, I was fooled by having seen you on many threads last year. I don't think I actually had yours starred in 2021. But I've got you starred for 2022.

Yikes!

I'm now in an eleven hour dry spell - anything I start reading in the next 11 hours won't count for either 2021 (unless I finish it before midnight) or 2022.

What's a poor addict to do? I feel a case of the jitters coming on!

---

I've got it - I'll catalog more of what I already have on my shelves, finish tabulating my 2021 reads, fine tune my tabulation for 2022 (and create the corresponding spread sheet), and maybe, just maybe, do something non-book related - like getting some exercise, or cooking ;-)

Happy New Year!

Happy reading in 2022, Arlie!

Enjoy your 2022 reads!

Happy New Year!

>17 SandDune:

>18 FAMeulstee:

>19 thornton37814:

>20 SilverWolf28:

Happy New Year and Happy reading to you all!

>16 ArlieS: Excellent plan! Did it work?

>22 ffortsa: The jitters were staved off, but mostly by trying to keep up with all the threads, along with a side order of computer games and jigsaw puzzles.

Looking forward to seeing what you are reading in 2022, Arlie! Happy New Year!

>24 alcottacre: Same backatcha, and adding a star to your thread as well.

Happy New Year!

Hi Arlie and Happy New Year!

Arlie, I set up a health-related thread for the group here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/338329

Thank you for the suggestion!

>28 alcottacre: Thank you for acting on it.

Happy New Year, Arlie! Dropping a star & looking forward to your 2022 reads.

Today's status:
1) I've achieved a miracle - twice in the last 2 days, I managed to read fast enough that I caught up on all the threads I've starred; zero unread.
2) Libraries are wonderful, but there's a catch; the book I brought home most recently, and haven't yet started, now has a hold on it and cannot be renewed. It was published in 2006, so I wasn't expecting this. Fortunately I noticed this while renewing something else, so I should be able to read it before it's due; I've re-ordered my reading queue.
3) Today's my first mammogram since treatment for breast cancer. (Naturally, they want extra-frequent mammograms, to catch it fast if it dares to return.)
4) I'm officially off disability (recovering from cancer treatment) some time early this month, but there's been some kind of snafu about the date - I'm not sure exactly when. (Ask 3 bureaucrats, get 3 different answers ?!) Whatever the date, my plan is to officially retire once that date arrives, and it's past time I discuss this with my manager.

I hope your mammogram results are good and there's no concern about a return of cancer!

>32 drneutron: Thank you

{Edited to add - and the mammogram results were good.}

Today is the first day of the rest of my life:

I've given my notice, effective the day after my disability ends, which should be two weeks from today - i.e. last day (not) worked should be 21 Jan 2022.

So in two weeks, I'll be officially retired.

>34 ArlieS: Congratulations on your retirement! I’m really pleased that I decided to retire last year

>34 ArlieS: Brava! I'm very happy for your improvement in status. And it goes without saying that the cancer-free-ness is excellent news, too.

Congrats on the good mammogram results and retirement!!

>33 ArlieS: & >34 ArlieS:

Yay!!
&
Yah!

Have a great weekend, Arlie,xxx

>34 ArlieS: Congrats on your retirement! Just think of all that time for reading ahead...

>35 SandDune: >36 richardderus: >37 curioussquared: >38 PaulCranswick: >39 scaifea: Thank you all.

Retirement is surprisingly scary, even though being on disability recovering from cancer and its treatment has given me a bit of a trial run. Too much of my identity is tied up with the label "engineer". Once I retire, I'm still the same person - but the label change makes me feel otherwise. ("Retired engineer" just isn't the same.)

>39 scaifea: Lots of books in the queue. This includes some I won't be reading cover to cover - the latest book I've borrowed from the library is Fix-it and Forget-It Instant Pot Diabetes Cookbook by Hope Comerford. I figure I'll sample a recipe or two, and then either buy my own copy, or not.

>40 ArlieS: Oh, I love checking cookbooks out of the library! I take photos of the recipes I want to try with my ipad and then return the book and am still able to try them out whenever I want without worrying about the due date.

Good news about the mammogram.

Retirement is both wonderful and weird. I've been retired since May 2016, and my biggest problem is structuring my time, which seems to be a common complaint. With Covid, I've had fewer chances to interact with groups that might organize my time, but when this mess ends, I plan to look for involvement, which I think will help. Never aspiring to management, I need to be doing things, preferably with others. But that took me a long time to recognize.

Did your disability time give you clues to what would be rewarding to do?

>42 ffortsa: I've picked up some structure for my days from the time on disability. So I won't be trying to do weekend every single day, which is good.

On the other hand, I don't seem to have reached the point where I have so much spare energy that I'm spontaneously generating new projects, beyond pulling things off my "postponed because I'm far too busy" list. That list is far too long, and still extremely unattractive.

So I'm reading and playing computer games a lot, as well as doing a somewhat expended set of basic maintenance activities - trying to eat better and get more exercise.

I'd thought - before covid, and before my illness - that volunteering at the local animal shelter would be a good thing to do in retirement to provide structure, get me out of the house, and provide the kind of casual social interactions one gets at work. That doesn't seem as attractive now, much as I love both dogs and cats; I'm finding I'm quite happy indulging my introverted homebodiness ;-)

My other thought was that I'd write a lot of software - but I wrote one little program, I think mostly to prove to myself I was over the chemo brain, and haven't done any more since, not even little tools I know would come in handy.

So I guess I'm still looking for a focus, but not too worried about not finding one. I'm enjoying myself, most days, with only normal levels of aggravation. (Unless I look at politics. That's not good for my peace of mind.)

>41 scaifea: Well, the current one didn't do it for me. A few recipes look interesting, but my list of critiques is longer than my list of attractive recipes.

I love that I can return it, and not feel bad about having bought a book I'll almost never use.

>33 ArlieS: Glad to hear that the mammogram results were good, Arlie.

>34 ArlieS: Congratulations on your retirement from one retiree to another!

Have a wonderful week!

>44 ArlieS: I found a very attractive (in terms of content) site, The Mediterranean Dish. Lots of really nice looking recipes. I did an approximation of one of them for breakfast today - quite good.

>46 ffortsa: Thank you. I'll take a look.

Congratulations on retirement, and the good report, Arlie!

1. His majesty's dragon by Naomi Novik

This novel was a lovely start to my reading year. Rated for shear reading pleasure, it would get one of my extremely rare "5" ratings. Sadly, it's set in an alternate history that's too obviously impossible, and all the sympathetic characters have 21st century sensibilities; those two together caused me to downgrade it to a "4". (I'm a very hard marker, since I eagerly put library holds on the next book(s) in the series when only partway through this one, and might wind up buying them all.)

The novel is set during the Napoleonic war, but an alternate version with fighting dragons as well as ships and ground forces. The hero (and sole viewpoint character - none of this skipping around that tends to drive me crazy) starts as a naval captain whose ship captures a French frigate transporting a dragon egg. The dragon hatches soon thereafter, and refuses to bond with anyone but this captain, forcing an originally very much unwanted transfer to the dragon service.

We follow the hero and his dragon partner through training, intrigue, and battles, along with many surprises as he learns more about dragons and the people who work with them. I'd say much more, except for wishing to avoid spoilers; bottom line, it was a page turner for me, and I'm eager to get to the library to pick up the sequel.

I do find the modern sensibilities jarring, as well as being 100% certain that a world with dragons in it would not have developed to be otherwise exactly the same, even to the point of empires, alliances, wars and fashions, up until the early 19th century (setting of the novel), and presumably even thereafter. But if I take it more as a fantasy novel than as an alternate history, it works reasonably well; not all fantasy worlds need to have economies or histories that make sense, though it's always better when they do.

Statistics:
- Fiction, fantasy (+alternate history), first of a series, 2006
- Author: female, American, born 1973, novelist and computer programmer
- English, public library, 376 pages (including excerpt from the sequel), read Jan 3-11, 4 stars

>49 ArlieS: This is one reason I don't read many books labeled "alternate history"...majgicqk doesn't work because physics, y'all. And it irks me to see "history" appended to those fantasy novels.

Call 'em what they are: Fantasies.

>49 ArlieS: I read the first one in that series and then decided I would not read any more. I think I will continue to give it a miss.

Happy Tuesday, Arlie!

>50 richardderus: Yep.

I'm happy with one big change in the back story, even if it violates physics - and this one had an inadequate nod to physics in the form of air sacs inside the dragons, lessening weight and perhaps providing extra lift. What bugs me is when the whole thing is chaotically inconsistent with itself, or a new deus is pulled out of the machina every time the plot needs to be unstuck.

I just risked my health and visited the library, coming back with 5 books from the hold shelf and (gasp) two I pulled off the shelves myself. Two of them are by the same author as my #1 for the year, one of those being the next in the series.

No, it's not really that big a risk, I'm 64, fully vaccinated, with a booster exactly two weeks ago today. But with the covid test positivity rate for the state at 22%, it feels daring, particularly as low test availability and failure to track home test results means the rate of covid in the local population is higher than we know, as well as notably higher than it's ever been before. (Locally, we're having 243 new cases reported per day per 100,000 residents. The state average is worse, at 273.)

My housemate, also 64, remains unboosted. I'd hate to give the damn bug to her.

I rather wish the library would return to curbside pickup, for the sake of the most vulnerable among their readers. But they themselves may well have too many people out sick to manage that.

>53 ArlieS: The things we do for books, Arlie!

I am sure that even the double jabbed awaiting boosters are in a much better place than those who for some reason believe that they don't need to bother. Kyran is double jabbed and has tested positive in the UK. I was online in a video call with him earlier and he is chirpy and fine and without symptoms.

I think we need to follow Spain's example shortly and concentrate on hospitalisation numbers and then those specifically for COVID not those hospitalised for other reasons who subsequently test positive rather than simple calculations of case numbers as it is both unhelpful and a cause of often quite undue anxiety. The key is to tackle hospitalisation and death rates and that does seem to show signs of hope.

Have a great weekend.

2. The Great Leveler : Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel

This weighty tome is, in a sense, a historian's response to Piketty's work on inequality. Prof. Scheidel examines the question of the historical conditions under which inequality has decreased, and concludes that they always involve some combination of mass-mobilization warfare, violent revolution, state collapse, and epidemic disease. Moreover, the degree of equalization accomplished appears limited by the degree of death and violence involved.

He particularly examines peaceful means of equalization, such as voting in a Scandinavian or European-style redistributive government, and concludes they only work in the aftermath of violence and catastrophe (the world wars, in that case), and the equalization gets clawed back over time.

He farther concludes that sometimes, in spite of these potentially leveling forces, elites hang on to their power, and prevent or even worsen inequality. E.g. Eastern Europe after the bubonic plague.

Finally, to complete the depressing message, he suggests that none of these forces have much chance of again reaching a significant level anywhere in the developed world, short of a civilization-destroying catastrophe.

This is backed with lots of numbers, but those numbers are accompanied with a lot of warnings about the impossibility of anything approaching accuracy in estimates of economic statistics before the 18th century, with real accuracy much later - and not complete even now. With that warning, it becomes easier to notice the amount of hand-wavium being introduced; to some extent, he's assuming his conclusions, particularly in describing ancient events.

Overall, it's a good book, and issues a clear and depressing warning. Perhaps the aftermath of the two world wars - aka the time I was born - was the best period for economic equality (and thus also political equality) since soon after the invention of agriculture. The assumption of my generation that equalizing and democratizing trends would continue might just have been the result of our limited viewpoint. I certainly hope this is wrong. But hope should not be confused with data. Prof. Scheidel might be right, or close enough to right that current trends of increasing inequality and reducing effective democracy will continue well beyond the lifetimes of all those alive today.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics (economic history), series: n/a, 2017
- Author: male, Austrian, born 1973, historian
- English, public library, 506 pages, read Jan 1-17, 4 stars

It seems my enhanced system of tabulation (post 3 above) is a bit fragile.

1) Book #2 is part of a "series" of sorts, but doesn't really count as a series in the sense I meant it.

2) Book #2 has an Austrian author, but he holds a named chair at an American university, and for all I know has spent more time in the US than in Austria.

3) Book #3 has two male editors, probably both American, but it's a book of short stories, and their authors come from at least two countries, and include both men and women.

I'm making the following adaptations:

- unless non-fiction books are intended to be read in sequence, such as a set of history books that cover sequential periods of time, their "series" status is "not applicable"

- fiction can be a series even if there's no entirely clear sequence, and they aren't all by the same author, as with the Ring of Fire series. But something like the Assiti Shards series isn't a real series - it's a grouping of series that don't interact at all except for sharing the conceit that the unrelated events at the start of each series are all caused by the same off-stage event

- I may go farther and just declare "series" to apply only to fiction, but I did read the first in what was obviously a non-fiction series last year

- For anthologies of stories by multiple authors, I'll look at the authors of the stories, not just the editors, for my author information.

- Neither short story authors nor editors of anthologies will be counted in "unique authors"

3. We shall rise edited by John Ringo and Gary Poole

Short stories in the Black Tide Rising series. The series itself is about a zombie apocalypse caused by an engineered virus. This anthology focusses on the recovery period, after the main threat has mostly been dealt with.

Read this if you are a completionist and have already started the series, or if you really love guilt free fantasy violence. (Both of these apply to me.)

But the new world post-apocalypse seems to me to require an implausible human nature, as well as being somewhat inconsistent from story to story.

And the guilt free fantasy violence fix was better in earlier books of the series, when the mindlessly attacking ex-humans were much more of a threat.

3 stars because I finished it. And enjoyed it, truth to tell, but that's because when I'm in a bad mood, reading stories of implausibly effective (heroic) violence generally makes me feel better.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2021
- Authors/Editors: 14 people, including both males and females, many living in the United States and at least one living in Canada; coding both gender and nationality as "multiple"
- English, public library, 292 pages, read Jan 1-17, 3 stars

>56 ArlieS: Neither short story authors nor editors of anthologies will be counted in "unique authors"

Not sure I understand this re: story authors...? Editors, yep, makes sense; but story authors are, surely, unique?

>58 richardderus: I added the unique authors counter without thinking it through.

The basic idea was to notice to what extent I'm reading lots of works by favorite authors and to what extent I'm branching out. But the interesting thing for this isn't really the number of unique authors; it's the ratio between the number of unique authors and the number of unique books.

The odd book with 2 or 3 authors doesn't mess that up very much. But a short story collection with a dozen authors does. So leaving them out simplifies things for me.

If I read more short stories, I'd have to do something more complicated, not just leave them out of the count. But last year only 5 of my 82 books were short story collections, and I think that's typical.

>59 ArlieS: Ah! I get that, thanks for explaining it to me. Anthologies are tricky beasts, how does the editor(s) role play out in one's calculus?, etc...but story collections (one author) present me with a similar problem in that they sometimes contain novellas which my rule is to count as a separate title read. Add it? Leave it in the collection? Why, in either case? So far I leave novellas not otherwise available in their home collections but increasingly feel that's not sufficient.

Amazing how complicated data collection really is.

>49 ArlieS: I read through the entire Temeraire series, the first few were fun and I enjoyed the "Napoleonic wars but with dragons!" premise but the story was too melodramatic for me by the end. I'm curious about what you think of the later books. I really like everything else I've read by her, though.

>61 kgodey: I'm only on the second one so far, but I'll be posting my mini-reviews as I get to them. (However, I just got the same author's The Last Graduate from the library, which came with a hold already on it, so Throne of Jade will be dropping behind it in my fiction queue.)

>55 ArlieS: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Arlie!

>63 alcottacre: You're welcome.

I'm hereby officially retired, having successfully navigated the required bureaucracy. Bonus: I had to take an at-home quick covid test in order to be allowed into the building to return borrowed equipment and collect anything I'd left there; I was not, at that instant, detectably infected with covid. (With omicron, that's about all you can say.)

I celebrated by playing an off schedule duplicate bridge game online, and, distracted by that, forgot to take my evening medications. Fortunately, the most important ones are taken in the morning, but I can expect to be the raving bitch from Hades off and on for the next 24 hours, peaking 36 hours after the missed anti-depressant dose.

In other news, I'm reading 2 somewhat unsatisfying non-fiction books, which suffer from lots of very definite statements not backed by any kind of footnotes, on topics well known to be controversial. I'm also skimming/scanning 2 Instant Pot cookbooks, one of which is just asking for a terrible review. (Note that I'd come to these conclusions before I missed the anti-depressant dose. But I won't review or Pearl-rule anything until my neurochemistry returns to its usual equilibrium.)

On the good side, I'm also reading two engrossing novels. And while we came fifth in last night's bridge game, we tied for first in our regular Wednesday night game. I've also just received an email notice from the library that two more of my holds are now available. And I'm singing "after you're gone, there'll be a lot more room in my closet office", as I admire the gap on my desk where the office computer used to be.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

>55 ArlieS: I just posted over on my own thread a comment and link to an essay by George Packer on the current political divisions in the U.S., and found it very interesting. It might resonate with what you read in the Scheidel book.

And I see you are a bridge player. When we were in Portland, Kim (Berly) ordered us to get our game together so we could play online. So far, we haven't been organized enough to review and retrain so that we are partners (I used to play with someone else many years ago, and Jim played in college, and on and off online), but I will keep you in mind if we get some of our stuff together.

>56 ArlieS: Oh, a statistics person. I'll just quietly pass by.

eta: Oh, right! Happy retirement!

>65 ArlieS: Brava! Very happy for you! (Please read after neurochemical Hiroshima has subsided.)

Congrats on retirement! I’m counting down to the day - though still a few years out.

>65 ArlieS: Congratulations on your retirement, Arlie!

Congrats and happy retirement, Arlie!!

Congratulations on your retirement. Mine will come in a few months.

Let me add my congratulations on your retirement - may your reading be multiplied!

>67 ffortsa: Bridge has been good for me, as well as lots of fun. It's how I finally learned not to obsess over past mistakes - the fastest way to lose the current hand is to distract yourself thinking about the prior one ;-)

If you are interested, I have a number of favourite bridge books I can recommend.

>68 richardderus: What a lovely term for an unlovely phenomenon. "Neurochemical Hiroshima" it is, any time I make this mistake again. (I wish I could say it won't happen again, but since it's already happened often enough that I knew what to expect, there's really no reason to expect suddent perfection.)

>66 PaulCranswick: >67 ffortsa: >68 richardderus: >89 ArlieS: >70 FAMeulstee: >71 scaifea: >72 BLBera: >73 ChrisG1:

Thank you all.

>67 ffortsa: That essay looks interesting. (It's currently sitting in a browser tab, waiting for me to actually read it. I was too cranky to deal with anything remotely political when I read your message; now that I'm over the 'neurochemical Hiroshima' I'll be able to appreciate it properly.)

Congratulations on your retirement, Arlie! Use it well :)

Skimmed book #1 (doesn't count for the 75, because it was skimmed, not read):

Fix-it and Forget-it Instant Pot Diabetes Cookbook by Hope Comerford

I won't be purchasing my own copy of this cookbook, which I borrowed from the local library. It was somewhat of a curate's egg: I found a few recipes I could use for inspiration, netting it a rating of 2.5, but I also had so many complaints that I'll be avoiding this author in future.

The author gives a number of rules for healthy eating in the introduction, which probably don't apply to all diabetics, let alone all people. That's bad, but what's worse is that the recipes don't consistently follow the rules she gives.

In particular, she regards animal fat as something to be avoided by all people at all times. She explicitly says that diabetics can eat sugar, provided it fits in their carbohydrate allowance. But she doesn't think anyone should eat a chicken breast with the skin still on. All cuts of meat must have all visible fat removed, etc. etc.

This has never been good universal advice. It got treated this way for a while, thanks to what now appears to have been misleading/fake research sponsored by sugar producers, who at the same time insisted that carbohydrates were never a health issue, also on the base of dubious, sponsored research.

I'm particularly sensitive to anti-fat and anti-animal-fat advice because of my family history. So I was annoyed by the introduction, and prepared to believe that the author didn't know what she was talking about, whether or not she could cook.

Then I noticed the amount of bacon in some of the recipes. One especially notable recipe, making 4-6 servings, includes a pound of bacon. I also noticed the odd habit of using coconut oil as a general purpose cooking fat, when not using melted margarine (ugh!).

She hates dairy fat - using low fat sour cream, reduced-fat cheese, etc. fairly consistently. She wants fat trimmed off most cuts of meat. She specifies low sodium broth in many of her recipes. But she sure loves bacon, which has nitrates (common migraine trigger) as well as animal fat and salt.

Congratulations on retirement Arlie! And too bad about the cookbook.

>79 ArlieS: I find a lot of cookbooks for specific diet plans either too complicated or not consistent. Just was reading a Mediterranean diet book where the meals are full of bread. Now I love bread, but if I eat bread, I look like a loaf of bread, and I'm not talking baguette here! So yeah, can be frustrating.

And I am also an afficionato of skin on the chicken. We all make our own persnickity adjustments to rules, don't we?

>79 ArlieS: *sigh* Not worth the eyeblinks. Too bad about that.

So many good cookbooks out there for the IP and considering the diabetic diner's needs. Wasting reading time feels like theft to me.

>80 swynn: Thank you Steve

>81 ffortsa: I don't really expect any eater to follow rules exactly, unless it's something like avoiding triggering a severe allergy. But my standards for authors are higher. (And for the record, I'll happily eat chicken breasts with skin on, and bacon. I'm even managing to keep some chocolate in my diet, in spite of the pre-diabetes.)

>82 richardderus: Every other IP cookbook I've gotten from that library required placing a hold to extract it from some other borrower's clutches. Now I know why this one was available immediately.

4. The price of inequality : how today's divided society endangers our future by Joseph E. Stiglitz

I was disappointed in this book, but mostly because it was much more a political book than an economics book, and what I wanted was economics.

The conventions of the genres differ, and statements in the body of the text lacked the amount of supporting evidence I expected; in an economics or even a history book much of the supporting evidence would have been in the text; here it was relegated to the (extensive) notes section. This misled me at first into fearing that the book was factually unreliable.

I also have high expectations of the author, based on his other works; this one wasn't quite as good as I've come to expect from him.

Finally, it's showing its age - making predictions about things which have already happened, whose results I already know.

Given all this, I only gave it a 3.5. It's not a bad book, but I've read many I got more from, enjoyed more, or both.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (American), series: n/a, 2012
- Author: male, American, born 1943, economist
- English, public library, 414 pages, read Jan 12-26, 3.5 stars

5. The complacent class : the self-defeating quest for the American dream by Tyler Cowen

I had some difficulty figuring out the point of this book - i.e. what the author was attempting to convey. My eventual summary: "Change is good; stasis is bad. The current state of America is good for many individuals, but bad for the nation as a whole and will blow up - not because of those it's leaving behind, but because of too much stasis and personal satisfaction. The old ways were better."

My guess is that it would be clearer to someone who'd already read other books by the same author, and either agreed with his overall worldview, or had a general appreciation for anything that denigrated present behaviour and predicted doom. (Folks with that general appreciation would also be happy consumers of predictions of doom due to collective sinfulness, or due to inattention to climate change, or due to increasing selfishness, or basically anything that could be cast as sinful, immoral, etc.)

One interesting point is that the author has a lot to say about the modern ability to make good matches - finding something close(r) to what one wants rather than settling for whatever's easily available. E.g. the ability for me to order the coffee beans I most prefer, on-line, in spite of the local grocery stores being erratic about stocking them. Or my ability to connect to a social group that's into reading and discussing books, in writing, with individuals from many parts of the world, rather than making do with neighbours who'd prefer to be discussing sports. This is pleasant for individuals, but according to the author leads to bad things overall, well beyond the oft-cited problem of people dividing into echo chambers and only seeing news stories that reinforce their prejudices.

I found the arguments mostly unconvincing, and this was not helped by the writing style - full of statements of Truth without supporting evidence. Maybe these facts are so well known to those following relevant media as to require no citation. But it's at least as likely that they are supported primarily by being what the author and his usual audience prefer to believe, and thus claim as "common sense obvious" or similar. Either way, I strongly prefer that authors support their statements; the absence of such support always causes me to downrate any work of non-fiction, even though I'm aware that many people prefer works unencumbered by footnotes.

Note that there were some footnotes, and a long list of references; this isn't a complete case of pontification from the author's bellybutton; I'm complaining not because there was no supporting evidence at all, but because of the presence of statements that didn't seem self-evident to me, and lacked either nuanced elaboration or supporting footnotes.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (American), series: n/a, 2017
- Author: male, American, born 1962, economist
- English, public library, 241 pages, read Jan 19-26, 3 stars

Dropping by to say "Thank you," Arlie for stopping by my thread while I have been sick. It is much appreciated.

Have a wonderful weekend!

>86 alcottacre: Thank you.

6. The last graduate : a novel by Naomi Novik

This is the second book in a series I started late last year, by an author I first encountered late last year, whose works I'm now eagerly devouring. Sadly, the next volume in this series isn't out yet, and this one ended on a bit of a cliff hanger. But I'll forgive that, because I loved this book so much.

I don't want to include spoilers, but we see major changes in the dystopic boarding school for mages, and our viewpoint character is very much coming into her own as a magical power house. OTOH, her character is becoming less interesting and somewhat more conventional (for fantasy novels, I mean, not for real life).

Rated 4, edging towards 4.5 (I'm a very hard maker.)

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2021
- Author: female, American, born 1973, novelist and computer programmer - same as my 2022 book #1
- English, public library, 390 pages, read Jan 20-28, 4 stars

7. Throne of jade by Naomi Novik

This is the second book in the series that started with my #1 for this year, by the same author as my #6 above.

In this book our hero and viewpoint character and his dragon companion are compelled to visit China, in support of British diplomacy. The chief Chinese envoy accompanying them wants the dragon returned to China, without his human companion - our viewpoint character - but neither Laurence (human) nor Tremaire (dragon) want to be separated.

Diplomacy and violence both ensure, leading eventually to a happy ending for Laurence and Tremaire.

However, a new theme is introduced - In China, dragons have as much freedom as humans, and maybe more - AFAICT, the very lowest rank of dragon has more freedom and self-determination than any human peasant, though the book never notes this. Dragons and humans mingle freely, and the capital city (at least) is laid out for the convenience of both. And Tremaire decides to go back to England specifically to seek equivalent freedoms for the dragons there, including those he knows and cares for, leaving behind a female Chinese dragon he's become involved with.

In spite of this theme of freedom etc., and China being held up as a bastion of freedom, both England and China still have somewhat of a caste system, as is historically correct. Some people are more worthy than others from the moment of their birth. This seems to be especially true for dragons in China - some breeds are higher status than others. (Tremaire is in the top breed.) This is tempered, somewhat, by the famous Chinese examination system, which dragons and humans both participate in. Also, China is presented as an absolute monarchy, where the Emperor's word - or whim - is law.

Note that none of the characters have a problem with any of this, or even really notice it, except for the unfortunate case of an albino dragon, who is generally regarded as unlucky, having been born the Chinese color of death and mourning.

The book was still a great read, as a story of adventure in a strange country. But I'm concerned with what's foreshadowed here. It's possible to do adventure stories where the adventurers are freedom fighters of some kind, and it's outright common to make adventurers critical of social iniquities in the societies they visit. But it would be too easy to lose the adventure story in a morass of social commentary. And I get more than enough social commentary in my non-fiction; I want most of my fiction to function as escapism.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2006
- Author: female, American, born 1973, novelist and computer programmer - same as my 2022 books #1, and #6
- English, public library, 423 pages, read Jan 22-28, 4 stars

>61 kgodey: I think I already see what you mean about the Tremaire series. I hope it doesn't turn into an extended series of angst about slavery, complete with mostly failing attempts to combat it.

Wow! I made it to 7 books in January, on target for 75 in the year.

For a while there, I figured I was likely to wind up with some number between 3 and 5.

And I'm currently reading one very short book, and one larger (but fast reading) tome of escapist fiction, either of which I might finish in the next two days.

>91 ArlieS: I'll root for you to get to eight, then. It's within your grasp.

Hoping your Sunday's reading is satisfying and completes one of the candidates.

>92 richardderus: It worked. I finished the smaller of my two books in flight, which not incidentally is also the next one due at the library.

8. Autism equality at work : removing barriers and challenging discrimination by Janine Booth

This was an interesting little book, which I picked up only because the local librarians had it on a display table, one of several where they put things they hope their patrons will find interesting - this particular table was devoted to issues of social (in)justice.

I believe that I and most of my family are on the autistic spectrum ourselves, so much of the content was quite personal. I'd be considered "high functioning", maybe even outside of diagnostic criteria, particularly now that I'm an older adult - so the worst of the author's statistics and examples didn't apply to me. But some of them did.

In particular, I've just retired from a poisonous job, the first one where I ever felt it necessary to "disclose" my autism, just to get certain monkeys off my back - and the accommodations I negotiated there had the obvious side effect of making me next to invisible whenever promotion opportunities came around. Obvious to me, that is; the set up might well have fooled a younger or more autistic person with otherwise the same skills. (I accepted this because I knew my plan was to top up my retirement funds and leave, so lack of promotion wouldn't cost me very much - little time for cumulative missed pay raises and bonuses to affect me.)

I don't think there was anything new to me in this book, but it had a lot in a small space, including discussion of legal requirements in many large English-speaking jurisdictions. (US, UK, Canada, Australia.) It appears to have been written both for autistic and non-autistic people, and also incidentally covered the case of accommodations which might be useful to - or legally required for - non-autistics caring for autistic dependents.

I spent a lot of time angry, being reminded of a lot of bad experiences in a very small space. But that's not the author's fault; that's the fault of everyone who thinks that the only good engineer is one with expertise at small talk, office politics, body language, and similar. Or similarly for the only good labourer, truck driver, welder, or short order cook etc.

The book itself is a little gem, suitable for giving to others who need or want to become better informed.

It is a little bit too union-positive for an American audience; the author lives in the UK, and was a workplace trade union representative at the time the book was published. That context doesn't bug me - I'm Canadian, and my father was a good union man, believing (correctly, I think), that without unions, workers would be easily exploited, particularly by very large business. (He either didn't live to notice predatory union leadership exploiting their membership, or judged it the lesser evil. And frankly, I think it generally is the lesser evil, though not in all cases.)

Note: I classed this as "politics" below; this isn't really right, but I only have a few large categories, and both "social science (research oriented)" and "popular social science" fit even worse. If I read 2 or 3 more on similar topics in the year, they will get their own topic, and I'll retroactively revise this comment.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (really disability rights), series: n/a, 2016
- Author: female; British (presumed based on residence); unknown birthdate; activist (union rep, disability activist, author of prose and poetry)
- English, public library, 128 pages, read Jan 27-30, 4 stars

9. Beyond by Mercedes Lackey

This is the 38th volume in a mega-series, composed of numerous sub-series, by a very prolific author. The series reliably consists of comforting escapist fantasy in a medieval universe with magic, including magical intelligent beings. This volume - the start of a new sub-series - is no exception.

The author is read-on-sight for me, and I've almost never been disappointed. (One series of collaborations she participated in was too dark for my tastes, but that's my only serious disappointment.) I like some books more than others - either the ones I prefer press personal buttons of the good kind, or ones I like less feel like the author is trying too hard to fill in a bit of backstory - but they are always worth my time.

This one's no exception. I read it almost as soon as I extracted it from the library, jumping it ahead of books I'd had on hand longer, and devoured it in only 4 days.

If you like the idea of a multi-generation plot by a noble family to escape an increasingly oppressive and dysfunctional empire - with any of their tenants, subjects, and retainers who want to come along - then read this book. If you like fantasy novels where the magic gets worked into the economy, read any of the later books in the series, but don't expect really deep thoughts, as much as interesting examples. And if you like escapist fantasy, where the good always triumphs, though sometimes with casualties, then read all 38 books.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2021
- Author: female, American, born 1950, novelist
- English, public library, 377 pages, read Jan 28-31, 4 stars

10. Rewriting the rules of the American economy : an agenda for growth and shared prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

In this book, a Nobel prize-winning economist makes recommendations for changes to the legal rules within which the American economy operates. The goals are political, and the means legal, but the recommendations are essentially economic.

The author's goals fit within the left wing side of the US political divide, and are not otherwise clearly described, being essentially presumed rather than stated. (Someone wanting to study the author's opinions could derive some of them via statements like "this (current rule) causes X so should be replaced by this (other rule) which will cause Y".) I suspect his goals are also at least somewhat wooly, but that's normal for political exercises.

The good thing about this book is that it makes abundantly clear that the rules aren't cast in stone. They have been different even within relatively recent US history. (i.e. in my politically-aware lifetime, and the author's, though maybe not that of half the US population.) They've also been very different in different times and places, and still are, even among developed countries.

I suspect a lot of people don't realize that. There's no reason e.g. that capital gains should be taxed less than earned income, or that one year should be considered "long term" for taxation purposes. The rules for CEO compensation changed drastically in my lifetime; now they rake in proportionately much much more. The (lax) rules and badly chosen incentives for financial institutions probably created the 2008 crash, and the jobless recovery that followed. Lots of Americans talk like those rules are laws of nature - and to an individual trying to make a living, they might as well be. But not to a politician, and still less to a political movement.

This is the same author as my #4 for this year, and at least one of my 2021 reads. I prefer his works on Europe to those on the US, perhaps because both he and I are less personally involved with Europe. But this book was decent enough. 3.5 stars.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics (American), series: n/a, 2016
- Author: male, American, born 1943, economist
- English, public library, 237 pages, read Jan 31-Feb 4, 3.5 stars

Somebody, probably in their own thread, left me a link to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas... and the book by George Packer it came from (Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal).

It took me a while to actually read the essay - somehow, every time I started it someone would come by and interrupt me - but last night I finally finished it.

Congratulations! Your book bullet has scored! I just put a hold on that book at my local library.

{ edited to add: The "somebody" was ffortsa }

{second edit - nope, the library has the book, but also has a bug preventing me from placing my hold. Grr.}

>97 ArlieS: In those circumstances, I'm at the point in life where I think a phone or physical visit with a librarian is in order...I think too often we don't try to let the powers that be know about these bugs.

>96 ArlieS: "The Market" comes in for a lot of blame, and the realization that "the market" is a bunch of twentysomething testosterone-poisoned Aynholes seems to be beyond most citizens' grasp.

>95 ArlieS: I'm not particularly excited by that end of the fantasy so I haven't read much by her. I liked The Heirs of Alexandria series okay. That might be the one that was too dark for you....

Happy weekend's reads.

>97 ArlieS: Oh, I'm glad you liked the Packer essay. It's always nice to share.

>98 richardderus: Nope. I like the Heirs of Alexandria.

And I've had no luck finding the books I remember, searching LT for things she wrote - or searching my physical TBR shelves. They were collaborations with Rosemary Edghill IIRC; maybe I'm misremembering Lackey as one of the other authors.

Re library bugs: I'll give it another try, next time I convert the most interesting of my virtual TBRs into holds. If that doesn't work, it's definitely time to talk to a librarian and/or get it from the other local library. (It's so nice to have one in walking distance, and another a mere 30 minutes drive away, with separate collections.)

>96 ArlieS: I enjoy reading Stiglitz and Krugman although I don't agree with every assumption they make.

No epithets with my post you'll notice. x

My mean vicious (sic) fellow library users have put holds on two of "my" books, and I'm currently reading a very slow example of academicese, in a genre where I don't know the academic basics. So no completed books to record.

On the good side, 3 of my own holds are now available for me to pick up, and I skimmed enough of the second of the cookbooks I borrowed to decide to buy my own copy. (And what else will I buy at the same time to get free shipping? I couldn't decide yesterday, so my Barnes and Noble shopping cart is still sitting un-ordered. But the shipping to be charged is twice as much as the amount remaining to reach free shipping, so waiting until I decide to buy another book makes sense to me.)

I'm on the fence about pearl-ruling the academicese offering, so I'll read a bit more of it today and see whether that topples me off the fence. And then I'll read more of the two books my fellow library users have put holds on, and finally see whether I have time for the book I really want to read. (Household chores are getting urgent.)

I'm looking forward to finishing that book, BTW, and it's a strong candidate for my non-fiction book of the year. But because I've already purchased it, there's no deadline, so urgent books keep crowding it out.

>102 ArlieS: It's a serious drawback to library-booking, the holds system. Shouldn't they have figured out by now that tsundoku-having biblioholics trump the Common Reader's silly whimsical hold-placing mischief?

I mean!

>95 ArlieS: Wow. I had no idea that Mercedes Lackey had such a longstanding series. I am reading one by her now - and I think it might be the first of hers I have ever read, By the Sword.

>104 alcottacre: I liked that book a lot - it's one of hers that I actually own.

Pearl rule #1: Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

Like my #8 for the year, I picked up this book because the local librarians had it on a display table devoted to issues of social (in)justice, one of several display tables where the librarians put things they hope their patrons will find interesting.

Given the title, and a picture on the cover of what appeared to be a sculpture of a black torso with cattle/minotaur horns, I presumed it would be an individual black author writing about their experience of conflict with the dominant culture and privileged Others, particularly featuring dehumanization and reactions to it.

What it turned out to be was a work of literary criticism, writing about symbolism in a variety of works by black artists. Or perhaps it would be better referred to as a work of race theory, using selected works of art (mostly literature) to support its theses.

I don't like literary criticism. I don't speak the argot of critical theory in any of its overlapping branches (race, gender, etc.). I wasn't familiar with most of the artwork referenced. It was very hard going for me, mentally translating unfamiliar terminology. I gave up at the end of the first chapter, after 82 of 302 pages (including the index).

I think this is a good example of its genre.

I like the author's idea that it's oversimplistic to refer to black people as dehumanized (in cultural memes, and by mistreatment), and trying to re-insert them into majority culture concepts of "human" (as e.g. in the works of Frederick Douglas and some (white) abolitionists of his time) is ultimately useless - the oppressors simply switch their labelling from "animal" to "bad/sub human", and continue the same behaviour.

But it's not for me.

I gave it a bit more of my time than I would have given a similar work not related to hot button political issues in the country where I live. (Any other lit crit book would have gone straight back to the library posthaste.) But if I'm going to give time to this general area, it would be better devoted to a 101 introduction that would teach me the technical language, and what concepts will be treated as well established in the field.

Skimmed book #2 (doesn't count for the 75, because it was skimmed, not read):

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook by Nisha Vora

As I type this, I've got this book sitting in my shopping cart on the Barnes & Noble site, waiting for me to decide what to add to get free delivery, or whether to simply pay for delivery.

Meanwhile, I'll give the library back their copy; there are two holds on it already, so since I've already decided to buy it, I might as well give back the borrowed copy before it's due.

I'm not vegan, or even vegetarian, but I'm happy eating food both with and without animal products, and I was looking for interesting things to do with beans in my new Instant Pot. Now I'm looking for places to buy various non-bean ingredients that don't show up on the shelves of mainstream grocery stores locally.

Once I caught myself thinking of where to buy the ingredients, I knew I'd be buying this book.

I expect I'll convert many of the recipes to non-vegan - why use a vegan cheese substitute when I have real cheese on hand, unless I'm feeding someone with dietary issues. And I'll be skipping the ones where there's more sugar than my body can happily handle, unless I can get them to work with the sugar removed. But I still expect to have fun with the book, and plenty of recipes not requiring modification. And the cooking time tables on pages 37-41 are much more comprehensive than the ones that came with the Instant Pot.

>107 ArlieS: Interesting choice, since you'll be de-veganizing it. But the IP is my favorite modern invention, so however it get used gets a plus.

>106 ArlieS: Very interesting indeed! Just...well...too much for pandemicbrainèd moi.

Lovely weekend-ahead's reads, Arlie.

>108 richardderus: It's not as strange as it may seem. I'm interested in recipes that showcase foods which are not meat. But I don't care whether the broth used in a soup is made from vegetables, chicken, or beef, unless the choice affects the flavor.

And I despise imitation animal products - to someone who regularly eats the animal product, vegan substitutes don't taste like the real thing. So I happily eat tofu, seitan, and all kinds of bean burgers. But not "chick'n" or "beyond beef", unless sharing with someone who can't or won't eat real meat.

Vegan "dairy" products are kind of borderline to me. Coconut milk seems like its own thing, not like a not-quite-right imitation of cow's milk. Soy milk can substitute undetectably for cow's milk in baking - and it keeps longer when unopened, which can be useful. But I'm more likely to have cow's milk in the house.

>109 ArlieS: Vegan cheese...oh my. What an abomination! Nutritional yeast isn't terrible tasting, but it gives me almost instant gout. And it doesn't closely resemble Parmesan...even the Kraft-in-a-bottle kind.

Pearl rule #2: Underland : a deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

I picked up this book bullet from Jackie_K, and discovered that our tastes don't overlap enough. There's nothing wrong with this book, AFAICT, except that it isn't what I want to read.

This is a book about the world under the earth. I eagerly seek out both science and history, so I expected to love it. But the author writes somewhat poetically, rather than matter of fact. And he never loses an opportunity to describe a person, or to personalize anything and everything by expressing it as what someone's doing or feeling. The result is prose I find myself rereading to check whether it said anything of interest to me - the reading experience for me is a bit like skipping over/skimming unwelcome sex scenes in a novel, and realizing you may have missed some key detail that advanced the plot.

I don't care who was the guide to the author's experience of the prehistoric burials in the Mendips, or what kind of insects may be observed in his garden. I want to know more about the geology, but not as comments made by the author's host, in between unrelated social chit chat. I'm sure the area is beautiful, but I'm inclined to skim any paeans to its beauty. And why does he keep citing comments by well-known authors who weren't subject matter experts - and who mostly wrote fiction?

Put another way, I'm interested in the land, not feelings about the land. Or if interested in the feelings, it's as a sociologist - I'm not reading to experience similar feelings myself at second hand.

This just goes to show that people's tastes vary. One person's first 5* book of the year becomes another person's second pearl ruled book.

>111 ArlieS: I've never really got on with Robert MacFarlane either. I feel I ought to like him, given the subject matter. But I just don't.

Reread #1: The Galleon by Ronald Welch

This book would have qualified for British authors challenge in January - Ronald Oliver Felton was a British history teacher who wrote children's books long before 1997 (he died in 1982), which he published under the pen name of Ronald Welch. I read almost all of them in childhood, generally several times, and considered him a favorite author.

They all follow a common pattern - a boy or young man comes of age while participating in important historical events, generally taking a pivotal role. The lead character is entirely invented, along with his family, but often some of his key actions actually happened, performed by someone else.

Each book ends with a historical note, describing which parts were fiction and which were not.

This particular story takes places during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and the young hero learns seamanship, is imprisoned by the Spanish, escapes, returns to England, and eventually helps foil a plot against the Queen. (This touches almost the high points of the history of the period, as taught to British school children - the defeat of the Spanish Armada is missing, and the privateering takes place off stage, but everything else is there.)

I reread it because I wanted something that would cheer me up without requiring much in the way of concentration. It did the trick.

11. The economics anti-textbook : a critical thinker's guide to microeconomics by Roderick Hill and Anthony Myatt

This book teaches microeconomics while critiquing the majority of microeconomics textbooks (or at least the majority of English-language microeconomics texts in in use in 2010, when this book was published). I purchased it more than 8 years ago, when I first decided to learn economics, but put it on the shelf and worked with more conventional sources, which pretty much confirmed the basics I'd learned from newspapers and from reading part of a textbook in the 1970s.

This book then sat on my shelf until this year. I'd had time to read a lot more economics in 2021 and early 2022, and I was becoming aware that a lot of microeconomics was not as cut and dried as you'd think from basic textbooks - and the problem with what I'd learned so far was NOT that the basics are generally well understood, with the unsettled parts more advanced and hence not covered in basic materials.

There has, in fact, been somewhat of a cottage industry of economists questioning one or other axiom of textbook microeconomics, publishing research showing that the axiom is inapplicable in some large number of common situations - often the majority of cases - and eventually being awarded the Nobel prize for their work.

But this work wasn't being reflected in basic undergraduate courses or the textbooks they used. Instead, the same old models were presented as useful and descriptive of the real world. Probably non-coincidentally, the standard models tend to support some political positions better than others. This would, of course, be fine, if those models did a good job of describing the real world, and making predictions that did a good job of describing the future. The problem, though, is that some of them are unfalsifiable in practice (i.e. anything can be interpreted after the fact as fitting the model), and some of them are both falsifiable and falsified.

This book is arranged like a standard microeconomics textbook, but each chapter offers a fairly standard presentation, followed by a larger and throughly footnoted section pointing out the problems with that presentation. It's also full of little boxes labelled "Question for your professor", containing a question which, answered honestly by a competent economist (even an economics graduate student), would point up some problem with the textbook presentation.

The goal, clearly, is for the average "educated person" who took an intro course in economics on their way to some other degree, to have a far better idea of what professional economists know and don't know, and far less of an impression of economists as competent technocratic oracles. And just incidentally, to doubt large chunks of the "economic common sense" generally cited by right wing(*) politicians and their supporters.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, economics, series: n/a, 2010
- Author 1: male, Canadian, born approx. 1957, economist, became quadriplegic in 2015
- Author 2: male, probably Canadian, age unknown, economist
- English, purchased in 2013, 305 pages, read Feb 3-Feb 15, 5 stars

(*) Actually, using the term "right wing" here is misleading. The authors appear to be Canadian, and according to biographical information I found on the web, have both been involved in politics on behalf of the NDP. The NDP would be mainstream left in Europe, and until Bernie Sanders came along, I'd have described them as beyond-the-pale left in the USA. Canada's mainstream left shares much the same "economic common sense" as Canada's mainstream right. And in the US a fair chunk of it's been both supported and implemented by the Democratic party, not just the Republicans.

>114 ArlieS: I've had only marginal interest in economics, but the project and strategy of that book sounds brilliant.

I've had a productive day so far, but oh dear, what a forest of red tape I've had to deal with.

Simple plan: retire, sign up for COBRA (American for "keep my job-related health insurance for up to 18 months"), and then when I turn 65 and am eligible, switch to Medicare (American for "government health care for old folks").

Steps/results to date:
1) Wait for paper medicare enrollment info to be mailed to the house
1a) Receive email notification that auto-renewal of one of my prescriptions has been cancelled. Neither the name of the medication, nor reason for the cancellation was supplied.
1b) Call the insurance company, discover that this is because my inurance has been cancelled, effective the date of my retirement. The mail-order pharmacy is associated with my insurance company, so apparently cannot conceive of allowing me to stay with them while uninsured, paying out of pocket, let alone merely putting things on hold while I re-establish the same coverage, supposedly with the same ID numbers etc.

2) Call the relevant office (number on the paperwork) and authorize a direct withdrawal, paying my first month. Discover that even done this way (rather than mailing a cheque) it'll still be 3 business days until they officially have my payment, and anything else can happen.

I'm also told that after that there's a batch job, run only twice a week, for updating the insurance company.

Also that while it is possible to set up automatic payment of the monthly bill, that can't be done until the first payment is officially received.

Also discover that while I could in theory set up coverage on their web site, cancelling it again - when I start Medicare in a few months - requires a phone call. (Or, presumably, non-payment of a bill, but setting up automatic payment should prevent that.)

3) Call the relevant office again, 3 business days later, on one of the 2 days they run their batch job. Stage 1 has happened, but *after* the batch job ran.

3a) Learn that I still owe them money, because payment is supposed to be at the beginning of the calendar month, for the month ahead. And because my coverage ended in the middle of the month, part of my one month payment went to the prior month. Fortunately I have 30 days grace to pay it without losing coverage.

3b) Successfully get onto their web site, and pay the partial month, so that I'm covered until the end of February.

Also set up automatic payment for the first of each month.

4) Later that day, receive an email from a medical provider, asking me to enter my insurance information before my upcoming appointment; they now have me as having no insurance.

4a) Call the medical provider, tell them I'm in COBRA limbo.

That was 4 days ago.

4) The day after the second batch job ran was this morning. The insurance company's web site still had me as not covered. Their pharmacy has historical information, but nothing about current prescriptions.

4a) Call the insurance company. Discover from them that actually, the first batch job goes from the COBRA people to my ex-employer, which then runs its own twice weekly batch job to inform the insurance company.

After some time on hold, discover that information about me being on COBRA has reached the insurance comany, but not yet taken effect. And that can take up to *ten* business days.

But that shouldn't be a problem, because by the time any insurance claims from next week reach them, it'll be more than 2 weeks from now. Also, it's worth checking next Wedn (the day of my upcoming appointment) as the update might have completed, and I'll be able to start getting the prescriptions straightened out.

5) The doctor I'm seeing next Wednesday wanted labs done in advance. I can drop in to their lab any time ... The appointment's too early in the day for me to do the labs that day. So since there's zero chance of coverage being in place before the lab visit, I decide to do that today.

5a) Well, they weren't going to trust me that COBRA would be straightened out and put in the claim a bit late. Nor would they settle for me acknowledging responsibility for any amount insurance didn't cover. They wanted cash on the spot, but it took at least half an hour, and at least one consultation with a supervisor, for them to figure this out.

So now I'm also going to have to negotiate reimbursement from the insurance comany.

5b) And I rather expect the same experience next Wednesday, probably with a larger amount billed.

>116 ArlieS: That seems like hair-tearing experience, Arlie. Good luck in navigating that morass.

>116 ArlieS: Oh my, yes, we're going through a similar rigmarole. My wife retires in April and we'll COBRA my insurance (I'm self-employed) for 18 months. Endless calls, letters, clarifications, obfuscations, etc.... persistence is vital.

>118 ChrisG1: I wish I could at least sue them in small claims court for e.g. potential lost income due to time spent dealing with their hassles. Preferably at the effective hourly wage I was earning before I retired, dividing my weekly salary by hours typically worked.

>116 ArlieS: That sounds a nightmare! What a complex process. I had (what I considered) a bit of a nightmare getting a prescription yesterday because of a mix-up at the G.P. surgery, but it pales into insignificance compated to what you have had to go through.

>120 SandDune: "America has the worst healthcare system money can buy."

The insurance bureaucracy deserves "credit" for some of that.

I'm told the Canadian system has gotten worse in the 2.5 decades I've lived in the US, thanks to cost cutting, and even the British system isn't what it once was. But both still lack the perverse incentives of the US system.

>117 PaulCranswick: It will probably all come right if I keep checking on them, and pushing them to move along if and when anything gets stuck. But I really feel for anyone who can't keep after the bureaucracy - it takes time and energy people might well not have, plus simply knowing to check them at every stage.

I've once again accomplished the miracle of getting completely caught up on all the threads I have starred.

Since it won't last, I'm recording it for posterity.

Plans for the day:

1) Do something tasty with an Instant Pot, some variety of legume (too many choices to list), and 3/4 of a pound of beef hamburger. I also have cabbage, celery, celery root, spinach, potatoes, squash, and three types of grain (rice, barley, millet). Also herbs and spices. Obviously they won't all get used, but I'll give priority to whatever's most perishable, and try not to spend too much time browsing recipes online.

2) Call my sister, and chat about whatever we feel like - sometimes that's whatever we've been reading.

3) Read some more of Lifelines: A doctor's Journey by Leana Wen, Last Best Hope by George Packer, Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal and/or Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

12. Black powder war by Naomi Novik

This is the third book in the series that begins with my #1 for the year and continues with my #7.

Sadly, it didn't work as well for me as the first or even the second volume.

Part of the problem was the plot - it's disjointed, with 2 or 3 stories in one, glued together only by them occurring in sequence, with the same characters.

The other part is the constant reference to Tremaire (the dragon)'s ambition to have his fellow dragons be treated as real people, respected allies not potentially dangerous livestock. It's there, but nothing whatsoever is being done about it. Dragons are being shown as people, and thus effectively slaves everywhere except China. But the people - human and draconic - neither stop mentioning it nor actually do anything about it.

Meanwhile, a dragon from the previous novel has made it her life's work to bring misery to Tremaire, and she's being taken seriously by Napoleon, with at least some amount of authority being given to her.

Statistics:
- Fiction, fantasy (+alternate history), series, 2006
- Author: female, American, born 1973, novelist and computer programmer same as my 2022 books #1, #6 and #7
- English, public library, 384 pages (including excerpt from the sequel), read Feb 1-19, 3.5 stars

Reread #2: Sun of York by Ronald Welch

This is another children's historical fiction, read somewhat as a comfort read, in between dealing with bureaucracy, by the same author as my reread #1 for the year.

As you can guess from the title, this novel is set during the Wars of the Roses. It's also one of the few historical novels by Ronald Welch that doesn't somehow involve the same family, which we see as early as the third crusade, and as late as world war I. It is however partly set in Wales, with a bilingual English and Welsh speaking protagonist, just like many of Welch' other novels.

It follows the usual successful formula: young man comes of age while participating in important events - the kind that might be on a teenage reader's history exam. And the young man is somewhat of a wish fulfillment fantasy for the intended reader - unusually talented and skilled, particularly in some kind of combat, and often a member of the nobility.

Read it, if your inner teenage boy needs cheering up by fantasies of masculine prowess, or if you want one author's take on what being a fortunate young man was like in this historical period.

Would have met the British authors challenge if I'd read it in January.

>116 ArlieS: wow. Just wow.

Last year I had what the bank euphemistically called "Fraud Activity" on my local checking account and they unceremoniously closed the account and opened a new one with of course a new number.

I had to scramble to call write go on web sites to change all my Direct Deposit payments (and credits) to the new account. There was a lot of two-factor security hurdles to jump over and doing and waiting for conformation and all that jazz.

Perhaps paying for everything with small bags of gold dust would be easier.

>126 magicians_nephew: I've had the "fraud activity" experience too, some years ago now. No fun, and it's probably even worse now. You have my sympathy.

13. Princess Elizabeth's spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

This is the second in a series of mystery/espionage novels set in World War II. I started this series with my book #79 of 2021.

In this novel, Maggie is sent to Windsor castle as Princess Elizabeth's math tutor - this being a cover for her real counter espionage work.

While I rated both books at 4, I found this one somewhat more believable. Either the author got some good historical advice between writing the two books, or I've become more accustomed to modern conventions for historical fiction, and less aware of protagonists having blatantly 21st century sensibilities.

The heroine also feels less of a Mary Sue - she's still great at math and similar, but she's inadequate at tasks requiring extreme physical fitness, even with the best of training - and we see more of that than of situations involving extreme math. She also makes lots of mistakes, and while the day is saved at the very last minute, it takes the combined efforts of many people, including the princess.

I enjoyed it, and will eventually read the sequel, but it won't be jumping my queue, which has been growing at a great rate, in part thanks to certain of my fellow participants in the 75 books challenge.

Statistics:
- Fiction, historical fiction, series (not first), 2012
- Author: female, American, born 1968, novelist - first time read this year, but not new to me
- English, public library, 369 pages (including excerpt from the sequel), read Feb 6-21, 4 stars

>128 ArlieS: I'm not much of a royalist to be honest, Arlie, but your reading is timely with Her Majesty contracting COVID. It seems she had been getting late night visits from her second son and heaven knows where he has been!

>79 ArlieS: I learned two things. The term Curate's egg and not to look into this cookbook.

>94 ArlieS: I spent a lot of time angry, being reminded of a lot of bad experiences in a very small space. But that's not the author's fault; that's the fault of everyone who thinks that the only good engineer is one with expertise at small talk, office politics, body language, and similar.

This made me laugh. My god the engineers I have worked with in Silicon Valley don't even come close to meeting any of those criteria. Most of them are introverts anyway which cuts the small talk right out.

I'm sorry you had such a toxic environment to work in. Glad you got to retire out of it. My current job is the best I've had of everything in my 62 year life. My supervisor listens to me, no one bullies me and I don't have to make nice with people in the office (when we worked in an office). I love working from home.

>131 AuntieClio: I'm a tad envious, but also very glad for you.

>116 ArlieS: Update on the COBRA bureaucracy:

- United Health's web site now has me as insured, retroactively.
- This is in time for my appointment tomorrow morning, and a day before the earliest I expected it. I should only have to pay my copay out of pocket.
- Optumrx (United Healthcare's mail order pharmacy) has "improved" its web site, and it took two phone calls, but I've now got all 5 of my prescriptions on auto-refill, and the missed refill should be on its way, arriving by March 3rd, which is plenty of time
- I *may* have succeeded in convincing Optumrx' balky software to include the first 3 letters of all medication names in future emails sent to me.

Still to come:

- dealing with the 2 claims they denied
- submitting the clam for the lab test I paid for out of pocket last week
- checking with my dental insurance, and my dentist, about what kind of chaos is happening there.

But basically, it feels like the whole thing is pretty close to over.

>123 ArlieS: I have once again managed to get completely caught up on all the threads I have starred. I hope that doesn't mean the rest of you have been overwhelmed by Real Life (TM).

Plans for today involve reading quietly until M wakes up, and then jointly attacking her ever growing list of errands. Fortunately since she retired (well before me) she tends to get up well after noon, so I almost certainly have at least 3 hours of laziness remaining.

Skimmed book #3: Healthy and Delicious Instant Pot: inspired meals with a world of flavor by America's Test Kitchen

This looks like a decent cookbook, if you want to do complicated and probably quite tasty things with an Instant Pot, possibly reducing overall cooking time but still with plenty of effort, and most likely plenty of dishes to wash as well.

I just want to make decent tasting, healthy food, with as little effort as I can get away with.

This book is going back to the library, where someone planning a dinner party will probably fall in love with it.

14. Lifelines : a doctor's journey in the fight for public health by Leana S. Wen

This book is a combination of an autobiography and an argument for the importance of the field of public health. The author is a rare fish - an immigrant to the US, who grew up quite poor, but managed to make it into the Technocrat class - retaining her identification with the poor and concern for their welfare. Rarer still, she was born late enough that her adulthood pretty much misses even the remnants of the Great Society; someone of her age and demographic had the cards stacked against them, though not as much as if she'd been black rather than asian. So her "rags to prosperity" story is statistically unusual.

She did have some advantages - multiple generations of family dedicated to education, high intelligence, and a family that taught her how to use contacts and generally work the system. So she wound up with a scholarship to medical school - which she engineered by choosing an MD-PhD program, as pure MD programs lack funding - and later as a Rhodes Scholar. But her early life was very much restricted by money, and she saw peers die of preventable and treatable illnesses.

She went into emergency medicine - the one medical specialty in the US where everybody gets treatment, regardless of finances and insurance status - and then became commissioner of the Baltimore City Public Health department, where she specialized in being an apolitical technocrat with a focus on the possible, rather than the ideal. She seems to have been quite effective.

Then she took a wrong turning (IMO) and became president of Planned Parenthood, where she tried to reinvent them as a health care provider that also did abortions. This failed, and, I think, got her thinking in political terms despite herself. The Covid 19 epidemic began soon after she was ousted from Planned Parenthood in July 2019; the last part of the book is basically a rant about everything Trump did wrong in handling the epidemic. (She appears to have finished the book very soon after Joe Biden was elected in Nov. 2020, so it has little to say about the ongoing muddle.)

I picked up this book from the library's display of interesting new books, and I'm glad I did. I've always enjoyed biographies, but read them far less frequently now than I used to, and this has led to few of them being recommended to me, e.g. by Library Thing's recommendation system. And any rags-to-prosperity story appeals to me, particularly if non-fiction, since that's also my own background - my family was desperately poor until my father got enough seniority in a decent union job to stop being constantly laid off; I still remember the changes in what we could afford to eat as his employment status changed, though we weren't so poor as to actually go hungry.

OTOH, the politics got a bit thick towards the end of the book, and the language Dr. Wen used for those she most wants to help moved from stressing poverty to stressing racial demographics. She is, of course, better at "saying the right thing" than I'll ever be, and her language change will doubtless help her avoid being cancelled, not to mention improve her future employment prospects.

She has, unfortunately, managed to become emotionally invested in the US left wing political paradigm, in ways that deny her prior apolitical stance - and I'm not sure whether she even realizes it. This isn't going to improve her effectiveness.

Perhaps it's inevitable - her natural career lies in public service, and US right wing calls to "starve the beast" are a direct threat. And heavens knows, there's a strong strain of "devil take the poor" in US right wing attitudes, particularly when the poor are also non-white. But there are also a lot of poor struggling Republicans, many of them in atrocious health - and people who care about them, politically as well as emotionally. I think she'd be wiser to look at other countries in more detail, and get her mind out of the false dichotomies of her adopted nation.

Overall, it's a good book, and a fairly easy read, even though I wanted to argue with her through large chunks of the last chapter, and in some cases even questioned whether her facts were accurate. (No obvious falsehoods, but much of what she attributes to Trump was plausibly caused a bit lower down the political food chain.)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, medicine, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: female, American (born in China; immigrated to US in childhood), born 1983, doctor
- English, public library, 335 pages, read Feb 14-24, 4 stars

Hoping your bureaucratic follies are even closer to a positive-for-your-needs ending than you think.

>136 ArlieS: Important stuff that I would sooner eat the bags y'all's tea is made from than read.

>137 richardderus: Oh! What an image!

Thanks for the good wishes; I ought to poke them again today, since their promised communication hasn't arrived, but may put that off till tomorrow.

>134 ArlieS: Sounds like Judy and I I go to sleep at 11:00 and wake up at 7:00 wanting my breakfast.

Judy reads after I go to sleep and sleeps until 9 or 10.

So we each have a few hours alone 'Me" time which i think is a Good Thing

15. Last best hope : America in crisis and renewal by George Packer

This is a book about US divisions, particularly divisions in myths and values, as well as a book offering one possible path to renewal.

The key part, for me, was the book's categorization of American political tribes into four rather than two, each with catchy sound-bite labels. That's also summarized in an essay in the Atlantic, which allows non-subscribers to read at least a few articles.

Hyper-summarizing:

1. Free America. Libertarianism, especially economic. Individualism. Don't tread on me. Property Rights. Tax cuts and deregulation.

2. Smart America. Meritocracy. Merit in part defined by educational attainment. Individual attainment.

3. Real America. Small towns. Working class. Anti-elitist. Sarah Palin et al. Mistrusts elite learning. Nationalism of the isolationist variety.

4. Just America. Young people angry about ideals betrayed, and founding myths that were never true. (E.g. "equality" being in fact only for white people.) Tends toward regarding the American project as unsalvageable due to its core injustices. Identity politics.

There's nothing new about attempts to categorize US politics a bit more than merely left vs right. In my youth, the key attraction of libertarianism may have been that it presented a 2 axis categorization, creating a home of sorts for those who wanted social freedom (not to be a vanilla het Christian) and economic freedom (lack of redistribution, mostly).

But this system seems useful for the current period, and probably easily understood even from the soundbite labels.

Of course it doesn't have enough detail for some purposes, and omits some very popular causes. I certainly can't be described as wholeheartedly part of any of these groups. But an awful lot of Americans seem likely to see themselves and their neighbours in this list.

I found the second part weaker. Packer wants a revitalized American democracy, with more of a sense of all being in it together, because Americans are in fact stuck with each other. There's no way to split the country geographically, and no faction is strong enough to utterly defeat its opponents.

He points out, correctly, that the American project has been in trouble several times before, but has always been recoverable - and only once via civil war. He brings up inspiring stories from past crises. He cites classics about American peculiarities.

But he has a political direction he wants, which is anything but inevitable. I sympathize with part of it, but I really don't see it happening.

Judy (ffortsa) suggested this book to me, and I'm glad she did. I not only enjoyed it, and learned some new ways to refer to problems that interest me - I also added a bunch of other books to my TBR list, from its "further reading" section. I gave it 4 stars, but if I were rating only on the value I got from it - rather than also on the presence of flaws - it would have been 4.5 or even 5.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: male, American, born 1960, journalist
- English, public library, 226 pages, read Feb 18-26, 4 stars

16. At the end of the world by Charles E. Gannon

This is a novel in a series (Black Tide Rising) about a zombie apocalypse. The originator of the series invited others to write in his playground. This novel is the first of a mini-series by one of the invitees, and 7th in the overall series.

My #75 for last year was the 8th in the series, by the same invitee, and dealt with events immediately after those in this book. I read the two books out of order because my library acquired book 8 several months before book 7.

I have an embarrassing weakness for books featuring fantasy violence, preferably with unrealistically effective protagonists, and an utterly guilt free reason for their activities. This whole series scratches that itch, and this volume included interesting characters, active in an area of the world my reading rarely visits. The teenage viewpoint character is especially fun - almost the entire story is in his voice.

This gave me the not-quite-heroic violence fix I wanted, and wasn't spoiled by me having already read its sequel; in fact I was kind of curious about details of things I already knew from the sequel. Unlike the sequel, it didn't feel like wish fulfillment for teenagers - at least, not over-the-top, Mary-Sue-ish wish fulfillment. (The characters are very competent, and rise to the occasion better than I imagine most would manage, but only to an extent normal to adventure story protagonists. And they both make errors and notice those errors - the viewpoint character in particular is constantly trying to improve)

Read it if you like stories of dealing with disaster and its aftermath, with emphasis on (aggressive) defence and survival needs. Don't read it if you want a realistic disaster, or even details of how this disaster occurred - much of the detail is covered in other books of the series, and omitted here. (The main characters in this story were out at sea when the disaster occurred, and know only what they heard on the radio.)

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2020
- Author: male, American, born 1960, novelist - first time read this year, but not new to me
- English, public library, 264 pages (including excerpt from the sequel), read Feb 24-28, 3.5 stars

>140 ArlieS: I will look out for that, Arlie. As you know I am fascinated by the political mess that the US seems to find itself in and many of the so called prescriptions to put things right don't seem to me to be anything other than papering over cracks.

Happy weekend, by the way!

>143 PaulCranswick: Happy weekend to you also.

Big George Packer fan here. We used to see him on Book Tour every now and then pre COVID. His books always make me think

Yesterday I had a very annoying experience with the Barnes & Noble web site, which led to me remembering Powells - a giant bookstore with a huge used books section, too far for me to visit, but happy to sell books online.

I now have 11 used paperbacks en route to me. Most are books I'd already read from the library, and expect to want to reread, but at least a couple are books I'd been recommended but wasn't able to find in my usual libraries. All are fiction. I also have two new books and a set of informational kitchen magnets en route from another source; none of those are fiction.

When they get here, I'll probably read all of them (except the cookbook), sending my new-books-read-for-the-month count even farther into free fall.

Meanwhile, I have 3 on the go, plus another cookbook I'm skimming. None of them are short, which is why I still haven't recorded any books completed this month.

LibraryThing seems to be unusably bad today.

When I select "Your books" I get a list page fairly fast, but the search field for contents is ultra-slow - I can't see what I type there, and wait at least a minute for what I type to finally display.

And when I finally do a search, it produces results quickly enough - but only shows a subset of the books that should turn up, given that I was searching within "all collections". (E.g. Maelstrom by Taylor Anderson appeared when I searched for maelstrom but not when I searched for anderson.) I suspect, but am not certain, that it's loading the first n books, for some value of n, and nothing more, not even an indication that there's a second page of results. But perhaps it's just plain wrong.

>147 ArlieS: I haven't had any serious problems today, but that describes my Sunday.

??

>148 richardderus: And 11 minutes later, it's gone back to working properly for me.

***headdesk***

My observations and ignorant speculations are here

17. Purgatory's shore by Taylor Anderson

This novel starts a new series in the same world as Destroyermen. As with the first book of Destroyermen, a mostly military group is unexpectedly transported from our world to the same location on an alternate earth, where various remnants of now-extinct species have survived and developed. In particular, there are dinosaurs and dinosaur derivatives, many large and exceedingly dangerous. There are also 3 intelligent species, including humans; two of them (not the humans) may be native to this earth.

Situations requiring violence are plentiful. This world is cursed with at least two evil empires dedicated to expansion, with the goal of exterminating just about everyone else.

This provides a setting for military fiction, without much in the way of grey areas or ethical conflicts. Everyone outside those empires has a choice of kill, be killed, or run far away - and hope either that someone else will stop the expansion, or at least that you'll be long dead before the expansion reaches your new location. Of course any transported military unit will decide to fight.

In this series, the units transported were American, on their way to participate in a war with Mexico, plus a small Mexican unit, and some mostly-civilian Britons. This was presumably sometime between 1846 and 1848, with tech to match. (The Destroyermen series transports units from World War II.) The transported units have particular skills with mobile horse-drawn artillery; hence the sub-series name of Artillerymen.

They arrive in a border area that the local expansive empire is beginning to take over, ally with the locals, and bring enough new ideas and trained fighters to give them at least a fighting chance. A crash program of munitions manufacture, recruiting, and training ensues, followed by a climactic battle.

This is a decent example of the genre. No deep thoughts, but plenty of conflict, with a sprinkling of character development, and a romance or two beginning to develop on the side.

As with most historical and semi-historical novels published this century, the characters tend to be rather more woke than I'd expect from their backgrounds. No one turns a hair when one of the Texas Rangers turns out to be female, but continues her military role. There's minimal argument when the black sailors are armed. Abolitionists abound; no one is strongly pro-slavery. And the most racist sentiments expressed are by a local mother, who tries to prevent one of the soldiers from courting her daughter, seeing him as "too pale" and thus likely to father sickly babies.

Nonetheless, this novel works just fine, if what you want is military fiction, that isn't either a rehash of some real world campaign, lightly fictionalized, or yet another variant on sailing ships in space. It's not great literature, or even great military fiction, but it provided me with several pleasant hours of reading. And many people these days would have difficulty reading a novel where characters they were supposed to identify with were even half as sexist, racist, and for that matter imperialist as was normal in the middle of the 19th century. (That's probably also why the opponents are irremediably evil.)

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction, series (counting as not first, but as part of Destroyermen), 2021
- Author: male, American, unknown birth date (publications start in 2008), novelist - first time read this year, but not new to me
- English, public library, 482 pages, read Feb 22-Mar 13, 3.5 stars

>107 ArlieS: I can recommend the Instant Pot cookbooks by Jill Nussinow, Arlie. Like the one you mentioned, they are vegan based, and full of all kinds of helpful information. I really like her The New Fast Food one.

>152 alcottacre: Thank you. I'm still very much in learning mode with my new toy, aka my Instant Pot.

>153 ArlieS: I love mine and use it several times a week! I found the charts in the beginning of Nussinow's books invaluable when first getting used to my IP. I still use them.

18. The Victorian city : everyday life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders

This non-fiction book does almost exactly what the title promised, with chapters on various aspects of life in London, well provided with references to sources, and often including discussion of changes that occurred within the period covered. The only liberty the author takes with her title is that the period she covers is Dickens' lifetime (1812-1870) rather than Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901).

This book bullet came from mickyfine, and I'm very glad she posted about it, as I might not have found it on my own.

I loved this book. It expanded things I knew a bit about, added things I hadn't known before, and explained areas where I'd picked up mutually contradictory impressions, perhaps due to change over time.

I had feared that the specific focus on Dickens would be nothing but a gimmick intended to humanize the story, but it turned out to be nothing of the kind. The author uses his fictional descriptions from time to time, as well as his non-fiction, but generally contextualizes both with her estimate of their accuracy and completeness.

There's a lot of discussion of sources, and the extent to which they are likely to be reliable, but not so much as to swamp the main narrative thread. (E.g. contemporary discourse about prostitution appears to have been full of gross overestimates, and the same author often gives wildly different estimates in different contexts.)

Read this if you like history, especially history of ordinary people's lives (as compared to history of battles and rulers). Read it if you want to contextualize modern issues of various types by seeing how similar issues played out more than a century ago. (The author won't do this for you - no comparisons with modern times here. But modern parallels occurred to me regardless.)

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2014
- Author: female, British (raised in Canada), born 1959, historian
- English, public library, 520 pages, read Feb 27- Mar 15, 4.5 stars

I was feeling grumpy and somewhat deprived this afternoon, so I placed a total of twenty holds on library books, ten at each of my two relatively local libraries.

Before covid, I might just have turned up with a large backpack, and took home rather more than ten (the limit on simultaneous holds at the nearer library).

But while my housemate finally got her covid booster yesterday, there's another two weeks before she's as well-protected as we know how to manage.

I have once again achieved the minor miracle of catching up on all the threads I've starred.

I've also finished another book, but my impatience for the sequel won't be satisfied for a while - I don't think it even has a projected publication date yet.

(Routine) colonoscopy on Friday. Bleah. Hopefully nothing worse will be found than polyps, which I so far have always had.

>157 ArlieS: It is one of the benefits of not working full-time, Arlie: it is feasible to be caught up on the threads you'd like to stay reasonably current on, albeit unlikely to be a permanent condition.

I myownself think of it as a major win.

19. Governor by David Weber and Richard Fox

This novel is the start of a new series by an author who's read-at-sight for me, collaborating with another I had never heard of. Given the fame of the first author, this could have been a case where a junior author does the actual work, with the big name contributing only his name and perhaps a plot outline - but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The book reads similarly to other books by the author I know, as well as being similarly enjoyable. But it at least partly escapes the curse of success - it isn't a rehash of that author's other series, though sharing some elements.

The setting is space, during a war that's now on its 3rd generation - grandchildren of the original participants are old enough that they are being drafted. Few people alive remember the days before the war began.

Both sides are human multi-system polities, in a universe which also includes non-human space faring species.

As seems to be human nature, the oligarchs in these systems mostly do what we've come to expect of oligarchs - make lots of money, consolidate their power, and exempt their own children from the draft. Sometimes people from the Five Hundred Families go to war voluntarily - as officers, of course - but often primarily in pursuit of their post-war political aims.

One of these oligarchs gets himself the plum post of Governor and commanding officer of a sector far from the front, ostensibly to enhance his partly deserved reputation as a heroic leader, to farther his eventual run for the top political job in his polity - a figurehead job primarily, but still useful to his family and its business operations.

There's only one problem - the man has a conscience, and goes into the job with his own hidden agenda. We see at least some of that agenda unfold during this book, with political maneuvering, undercover skullduggery, and (of course) fleet battles in space.

This is heroic fiction, in that the hero and viewpoint character is amazingly competent. But that's normal for the genre, and not extreme enough to destroy my suspension of disbelief.

Overall, this was a lovely romp. And while the main character doesn't develop much, he's accompanied by a son, who moves from callow idiot to useful engineering officer, while developing what I suspect will eventually become a love affair with someone too disadvantaged for most of his peers to treat as a real person. (She's another case of hyper-competence, particularly given her background.)

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction, series (first), 2021
- Author 1: male, American, born 1952, novelist, first time read this year
- Author 2: male, American, age unknown, novelist (and previously military officer), first time read
- English, public library, 484 pages, read Mar 8-15, 4 stars

Reread #3: Foundation by Mercedes Lackey

This is book 1 in a five-volume sub-series of the same 38 or more volume series of fantasy novels as my book #9 for this year. I've read all 5.

I recently bought a bunch of used paperbacks, and now own 4 of the 5, so I'm celebrating by rereading the 4 I own.

This sub-series features an exceptionally talented protagonist from an exceptionally disadvantaged background. He starts volume one as a half-starved young teenager, and ends it much the same age, but with an established position as a trainee for a high-status, high-importance role. In the meantime, he saves several lives, meets important people, and generally over-achieves.

I.e. it's an excellent wish fulfillment fantasy. I reread it while feeling kind of down, and duly became more cheerful.

>160 ArlieS: I've never read Lackey & she's been so prolific, I don't really know where to start - any suggestions?

>161 ChrisG1: Hi Chris. I'm afraid I've written somewhat of a wall of text here. I hope you don't mind.

The first question is which of Lackey's worlds to start with. Valdemar is the largest, and probably the best place to start unless you are looking for something specific. And the simplest approach would be to read in publication order, starting with Arrows of the Queen.

The Valdemar universe is a medieval fantasy world, with lots of magic. Lackey has written many small series (trilogies etc.) in this world. Valdemar itself is a kingdom in that world, with an unusually high level of justice and social justice for any medieval environment. This is administered/enforced by Heralds, who always have some level of mind magic, and unusually strong ethics. They ride supernatural white horses known as Companions, who choose their Heralds-to-be, generally in their early teens. And the kingdom itself is kept on its ethical track by the requirement that the King or Queen must themselves be a Herald, i.e. chosen by a Companion.

Many of these stories start with a young teenager, and do the coming of age trope. Sometimes the teenager is oppressed or disadvantaged in some way.

If that's not your jam, there are other series, all smaller.

There are a bunch of retellings of fairy tales that do a hilarious job of subverting the genre, set in the Five Hundred Kingdoms, where the protagonists tend to be aware that they are living in a setting where fairy tale rules apply. Some of these are linked from the series page for Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, but that list appears incomplete to me; e.g. I'm presently reading Briarheart, which obviously belongs to this group but is not in the LT list. The novels are not connected, so any one would be a good start.

The third series I'd recommend as potential starting point would be The Elemental Masters. These postulate a type of magic, which comes in four varieties - earth, air, fire, and water - and various strengths. Magic is done primarily by interacting with elemental spirits. People with the ability to do this exist in what's otherwise pretty close to our own past; the first one published was set in the US in 1905; there's also a clump of them, with repeating characters, set in Victorian London. At least one of these stories is also a fairy tale retelling, but not in the 500 kingdoms.

The problem with this series is figuring out where to start. Many of the books are completely stand alone, but some feature the same characters in several novels, and would be best read in order.

The sub-series are not conveniently grouped into mini-series on LT, or by the publisher. The Wizard of London is the first of several books in one unlabelled mini-series, which includes A Study in Sable , A Scandal in Battersea, the Bartered Brides, and the Case of the Spellbound Child. The other mini-series is Blood Red, From a High Tower, and probably The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley.

I'd recommend picking one of the earlier books - it doesn't matter which one - or perhaps Jolene. Just don't start one of the sub-series in the middle.

Finally, if you happen to be into the occult/neo-pagan scene in the present day, start with the Diana Tregarde Investigations, if you can find them. The protagonist is a modern-day (1989, when the first book was published) Guardian, protecting normal human beings from dangerous evil magic, with a new problem to handle in each of the three novels. The Jennifer Talldeer series is similar, except the protagonist is a native-American shamaness in a modern world where her traditional magic is effective.

Catching up with your reading this year! Lackey is an old favorite for me and Novik a more recent favorite. I'm slowly working my way through the Temeraire books (I've read 5) and while I do think the later books are weaker, I love the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire too much to stop. Have you read Uprooted or Spinning Silver? They're both fantastic.

>162 ArlieS: I always recommend starting with Arrows of the Queen, The Oathbound, or Magic's Pawn. Valdemar is my favorite series of hers and those first few trilogies always hit the spot for me.

>163 curioussquared: The Vows and Honor sub-series is my personal favorite of the whole Valdemar series, but it's hard to pick among so many.

I haven't read either of the Novik books you recommended, so I've just added them to my ever-growing TBR list. Thank you.

>162 ArlieS: Thanks for taking the time - I've not done much fantasy reading of late. This certainly seems to be worth a try!

>155 ArlieS: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Arlie!

>159 ArlieS: A lovely romp, eh? I will have to see if I can find a copy!

I was feeling somewhat meh last week and the week before, so decided to cheer myself up by bringing lots more books into the house.

The accumulated haul:
- 2 purchased new, one of these previously read
- 11 purchased used, 9 previously read
- 10 from the nearest library, none previously read
- 12 from a more distant local library, none previously read

The net result of this is that if I want to finish all 20 of the library books remaining unread before they need to be returned (after maximum renewals), I'll need to read 101 pages a day, exclusive of any reading of books I own, or skimming of the one remaining borrowed cookbook.

Only 7 of the remaining books are fiction, which generally goes much faster. And I'm currently a bit more than a third of the way through an excellent non-fiction book that's a heavy tome in both senses of "heavy" - 623 pages, discussing black experiences in the US. Worse, two of the fiction books have bogged down due to being insufficiently light for my mood. So I may have some difficulty finishing them all in the time available.

Of course this is not a bad problem to have ;-)

But it needed to be shared, perhaps as a "humble brag".

20. Briarheart by Mercedes Lackey

This is yet another novel by the prolific and generally reliable Mercedes Lackey, responsible for my #9 for the year, and also my #3 reread. This is one of her retellings of fairy tales - or in this case, retellings inspired by fairy tales, but going far from the template. It's not listed as part of her Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms; perhaps it's intended to be the start of its own mini-series.

The fairy tale is Sleeping Beauty, and the viewpoint character is the older half sister of the fated princess. Only part of the fairy tale period is covered - the fated princess remains an infant throughout; the focus is on her half sister, whose father was the now deceased Champion of the kingdom.

This is a fairy tale universe, so fantastic creatures abound: we have dark fae, light fae, trolls, goblins, talking animals, a dragon, and a unicorn.

The heroine is somewhat over-powered, but does manage a bit of character development - mostly in terms of thinking before she acts. She's young enough for this to have been a coming-of-age novel, but the story doesn't follow that trope.

Read if you enjoy lightweight heroic fantasy, female heroines taking "male" roles, or matter-of-fact people handling a fairy tale universe - or better yet, all three.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, not series, 2021
- Author: female, American, born 1950, novelist
- English, public library, 354 pages, read Mar 20-22, 4 stars

>168 ArlieS: La Lackey continues to please. Reliable reads are beyond price in some reading moods.

>167 ArlieS: 20 library books left?! Wow. Your system is generous with its renewals.

>169 richardderus: "Your system is generous with its renewals."

Yep. 3 weeks per renewal, and 3 renewals after the initial check out, adding up to 12 weeks. And even with that, sometimes I go overboard and can't quite keep up.

>168 ArlieS: A Lackey I haven't read, and I think this one appeals to me! Putting a library hold on it :)

In the past 5 days, I've made progress with 6 new-to-me books, but finished none of them. I've also finished 2 rereads -both by Mercedes Lackey, and almost finished with yet another Instant Pot cookbook.

One of the library books is skirting the edge of the Pearl rule - it has gems of useful information I don't know where else I can find, embedded in tons of unwanted information about the author's feelings and experiences while learning it.

Meanwhile, 2 more of my library holds have matured (i.e. been extracted from the person who had them checked out, and put on the hold shelf for me) and I'll need to collect them on or before April Fool's day - i.e. this coming Friday.

Even without the new books, I'll need to average 99 pages per day (down from 101) to finish all my borrowed books before I can no longer renew them.

Editted to add: and I once again accomplished the minor miracle of catching up on all my starred threads, probably because I'm procrastinating about all the adulting I need to do today.

Adulting is overrated. I skived off my duty of self-care, shouting at the idiot whose ??unknown motivation for?? inaction on paying the facility's bills means I'm reduced to using an elderly, balky smartphone's hotspot.

Reread #4: Intrigues by Mercedes Lackey
Reread #5: Changes by Mercedes Lackey

These fantasy novels are volumes 2 and 3 of the same mini-series as my reread #3. My next reread looks like being volume 5; I still don't own a copy of volume 4.

The young protagonist continues to learn and grow, while dealing with various crises. Rereading the series continues to cheer me up, or at least help me cope, in what has so far been rather a trying month.

---

Today I get to deal as best we can with an aggravating problem - a friend's dumb phone won't have service as of this Friday, or maybe Thursday, as the cellular networks are dropping support for their various mutually incompatible networks, now collectively labelled as "3G". She doesn't want a "smart" phone. I suspect she'd also be much happier without a touch screen. But Boost won't tell us how to go about doing a bring-your-own phone, keeping both her existing phone number and her existing service plan. They've twice promised to call me back, and not bothered to do so. And now it's too close to the deadline.

They will, however, give her a "free" ultra low end smart phone as part of her plan; with only 2 G memory, running anything resembling recent software, it's likely to have all of the smart phone aggravations, but be too sluggish to actually be usable for most smart phone functions. Apparently they won't give her the semi-dumb flip phone they sell for slightly less than the model they *will* give her.

For added delight, they insist that she accomplish this by visiting one of their stores in person. I say "she", but my friend no longer drives, so I'll be driving her there, and coming in to run slightly-more-tech-savvy interference with the staff.

I presume their goal isn't really to increase our risks of catching covid, but if I had to bet, I'd bet that the only masks in sight will be worn by the two of us.

The whole thing is made even more insane by my friend's increasing deafness. She feels she needs to have a phone number, and have it continue the same, because phone numbers currently function as a kind of de facto id. (E.g. she can't pick up her prescriptions without supplying one.) But she's not going to be able to understand what the in store people say to her, especially if they surprise us by actually wearing masks. (She can probably still lip read, even after two years with little practice thanks to masks.)

My friend will predictably be very upset, and I'll be catching the brunt of it. She won't be getting mad at me - she's not that kind - but she'll be venting, and she'll be massively upset, with me feeling terrible because I won't be able to do anything that helps. My head has started hurting just thinking about it.

And when the dust clears, she'll have a lousy smart phone, that's farthermore only 4G, i.e. we'll have it all to do again, next time the PTB decide to increase their sales by switching to another standard/dropping an existing one. She'll have no clue how to use it - I've barely managed to get her to the point of being able to take a picture with my smart phone, if I bring up the camera app and get everything into the right state for her. And I'll probably also wind up trying to teach her how to use the damn thing. At least she's extremely intelligent, and can do things with search engines I can only dream of, so she'll be able to solve some of her learning issues online. (Using a real computer, not the smart phone's web browser!)

All's well that ends better than expected:

Yesterday I drove my friend to the nearest Boost store as planned, and we discovered that while Boost's phone support is crazy making, the store was blessed with competent and helpful staff. The young lady who assisted us was happy to give us the TCL Flip instead of the Samsung Galaxy A02S.

It comes without any manual, but progress has been made with the "guess the controls" game, and they are at least mostly physical buttons. We've verified it can send and receive calls, and that text messages sent to it can be read. The method of hanging up a call was non-obvious, as was the method of changing which text message one was reading - I guessed the latter based on vague similarity to buttons on an old fashioned Kindle; my friend figured out how to hang up a call on her own.

Today's top priority task was to walk to the local library, return the one finished book I had on hand, and collect the three on hold for me. Two others also jumped into my book bag - one being volume four of the series I'm rereading, and the other being another book about US history from a black POV.

Hopefully I haven't overloaded my ability to cope with depressing, upsetting reading. Between books about black and indigenous history in the US, and books about various other down sides of modern life and culture, some of these may wind up back at the library unfinished, through no fault of their own.

Reread #6: Bastion, by Mercedes Lackey. This is volume 5 of the same mini-series as my rereads #3, 4 and 5. (Volume 4 will be reread out of order, because I don't own a copy).

Thanks for stopping by my thread. I posted my reply to your question about Thingaversary hauls there, and I look forward to seeing what you acquire for yours in September!

>178 thornton37814: Thank you.

21. The lady's guide to celestial mechanics by Olivia Waite

I haven't read a romance novel in so long I had to add the category to my list in post #3. I haven't read a queer romance of any kind in even longer. But I added this one to my list after curioussquared wrote about it, and put a hold on it surprisingly soon thereafter, when I was craving lightweight, cheerful fiction.

The romance genre has changed since I last read it. I don't just mean the arrival of non-het romances printed by mainstream publishers, and following the typical upbeat het romance pattern, minus the negative aura of lesbian romances I read in the 1970s. Something else is different now, and I can't quite put my finger on it; there's less conflict, and what conflict there is is somehow packed into the end of the book, where it feels inconsistent with the established personality of the characters.

Maybe that's just this novel, but it feels more like a style change - not the same style change I've commented on in historical fiction, but perhaps equally much a commonality among all romances written in the current decade.

There's also too much detail about the sex for my taste, but that's a complaint I've had pretty much since the first romance I ever read. I'm reading for the relationship, not the sex; if I wanted sex, I'd read e.g. Laurell K. Hamilton. And last I checked, readers differ so much in the amount of sex they want in their romance novels, that authors and publishers produce series catering to specific levels of sexual activity description. So my mismatch here will be someone else's sweet spot.

As I expect from historical romance, the historical context seemed somewhat unresearched. I didn't check for accuracy; generic pseudo-history was part of the historical romance prototype back when I was last reading it, and I doubt it's changed much since then.

Other than that, I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it, but not as anything special. Adequate lesbian romance novel, with British upper class historical trappings. Rated 3.5.

- fiction, romance, series (first), 2019
- Author: female, probably American, birth year unknown, novelist
- English, public library, 322 pages, read Mar 23-30, 3.5 stars

Skimmed book #4: Instant Pot Miracle: From Gourmet to Everyday, 175 Must-Have Recipes

This was the last of the collection of instant pot cookbooks I borrowed, to help me learn how to use my Instant Pot. This one was neither especially good nor especially bad; I won't be purchasing my own copy, but if someone had given me a copy I'd have kept it.

Stopping by to catch up and wish you a lovely weekend, Arlie.

>182 PaulCranswick: Thank you Paul. My condolences on the additional bad news that hit you this weekend.

>183 ArlieS: Thank you. My MIL is quite a stoic person but I had to comfort my SIL yesterday who herself recovered from cancer only a few short years ago (2017), as the strain was getting a bit too much for her.

I'm coming close to finishing two different works of non-fiction. They'll get their own individual reviews; this entry is about their differences and similarities.

Both use the technique of communicating a subject by presenting it via the experience of individuals. One of the books is well on the way to 4.5 or even 5 stars; the other has been on the edge of being Pearl-ruled pretty much since I started it. In both cases, the primary reason for the rating is my reaction to their use of this technique.

Note that this technique usually works badly for me. I'm less social than most people, and generally enjoy abstraction rather than fearing and shunning it. I never want to know what colour shirt the interviewee was wearing while explaining details of the subject to the author, nor for that matter what their office looks like.

In one case, the topic is supposedly termites, which I'd expect to fall in the domain of hard science. Instead, it's a mix of termites, artificial intelligence research, the way research is really done, the implications of technological change, the ethics of military technology, the nature of good governance, and more. These are all presented as things the authour thinks about or realizes in her pursuit of an interest in termites.

To me, the author is uninteresting. They aren't famous. I wouldn't read their autobiography unless I was really hard up for reading matter. I got heartily sick of the word "I".

In the other case, the topic is the Great Migration - black Americans moving out of the US south. The author knows the statistics, and mentions them from time to time. But the main thread follows the lives of three carefully chosen informants - who differ by class, location, personality, and gender. Occassionally the author's own experience intrudes; they are quite clear that their interest in the topic comes in part from their parents having also been participants in this migration.

The meta-topic is, of course, the black experience in the US. The prejudice and ill treatment - both in the south and the north - is never far from the story. Moving north improved things, but didn't completely fix them, and those problems continue today, as we all know, though the author doesn't focus on it.

This worked for me, as a means of learning and understanding more about the black experience in the US, in a way that none of the books currently being recommended for white would-be allies ever has. It is of course an ugly topic, with ever more revelations of despicable behaviour under every rock. I don't enjoy learning about it, but it's something I feel that every thinking person in the US needs to be aware of. But material stuffed full of abstractions just engages my critical thinking/defensiveness in this area. Whereas stories I believe to be accurate communicate with both my head and my heart. (The author's intermittent mention of the statstics also helps.)

>185 ArlieS: Interesting thoughts on these two book. I wonder if the difference is focus. The termite book sounds like it's pretty scattered - the jumping from topic to topic wouldn't work so well for me. On the other hand, by telling the stories of these three individuals, the second author seems to have been able to keep to the message they're communicating.

Looking forward to the individual reviews since I think that second one will be of interest!

22. The silver bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey

This fantasy novel is the 17th in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters Series. It was a good light snack, but lacked a certain something; I wavered between 3 and 3.5 stars.

This series features a common magic system, and novels set in the past two or three hundred years. Because magic users hide their activities from most normal people, history is identical on a macro scale; no change in the history we know is caused by the use of magic.

On the micro scale, of course, things may be quite different. Historical events may have gone somewhat differently, and historical figures may have had extra talents and extra motives.

I like this series best when it features a young person who has the magical talents, learns to use them, and finds a mix of magical and mundane solutions to their life problems, while at the same time we see lots of interesting detail about their life and environment. I like it least when it features an adult, known from actual history, who turns out to have magic on top of whatever other assets made them historically significant. Unfortunately, this book is in the latter category.

In this case, it turns out that Annie Oakley, a famous sharpshooter from real world history, has the talents of an air magician, and doesn't know it. Her husband has the talents of a water magician. (No, these talents are not so common that it's likely that two randomly selected people will both have elemental talents. And both people in the story have more than average levels of talent.)

When she goes on tour in Europe, local people notice her potential, and another air master joins the show to have the opportunity to teach her how to use this talent, lest evil magicians otherwise take advantage of her. She turns out to have had a terrible incident in her childhood that led her to block her awareness of her talents, and stop seeing air spirits etc. spontaneously. And of course by the end of the book she's not only learned how to use her magic; she's defeated her old adversary and resolved to spend the rest of her life policing evil magicians in North America, as her mentor does in Bavaria.

We still get the historical descriptions of the daily routines of the show, and how various mundane tasks were accomplished at the time - when not using magic. We get a lovely vignette of special considerations when raising magic talented children.

But I'd have liked this better if the main character had not been a historical person. Also, if the obligatory denouement (solution of the main problem) hadn't begin on p. 265 of 273, causing me to speculate as the last chapter began that all mention of it beforehand merely meant that this was the start of a mini-series, with nothing being resolved until the next book.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2022
- Author: female, American, born 1950, novelist
- English, public library, 273 pages, read Mar 31-Apr 4, 3.5 stars

I can see have a ton more Mercedes Lackey to get to!

23. The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This is a non-fiction book about the Great Migration - the movement of almost six million American black people from south to north and west, seeking opportunity and an escape from the even worse - and more overt - racism of the south. I was surprised to discover that the author is a journalist; this reads more like a work of anthropology, and the author seems to be at least an order of magnitude better at citing sources than any other journalist I can recall reading.

It is based on a huge number of interviews with migrants and those who knew them. I.e. it's based on a huge work of oral history, performed by the author researching for the book.

The author selected three of these migrants in particular, differing by class, location, personality, and gender, and interviewed them extensively, becoming part of their lives, driving them places, and getting to know others in their social and family circles. She tells the story of the migration primarily as their stories, but with additional information about the broader picture, both from statistics/research, and from newspaper accounts of the relevant time periods.

This worked incredibly well for me. I normally love abstraction, and statistics, and don't want my non-fiction personalized. But not this time.

The treatment of black people in the US is an ugly topic, with ever more revelations of despicable behaviour under every rock. I don't enjoy learning about it, but it's something I feel that every thinking person in the US needs to be aware of. But material stuffed full of abstractions just engages my critical thinking/defensiveness in this area. Whereas stories I believe to be accurate communicate with both my head and my heart.

The author's intermittent mention of the statistics also helps. That and her discussion of her research methodology let me trust that she's not ax-grinding to the point of falsification, and selecting (or even inventing) stories and vignettes primarily to prove a political point.

Yes, she has some specific points she wants to communicate:
- the best way to understand the experience of the participants is to think of it as similar to that of immigrants from outside the US
- the new arrivals didn't lower the northern black average in any meaningful way. Those who moved were better educated on average than those they left behind, though less than the blacks already in the north. They worked harder, on average, and made more money, in spite of being paid less than those already there, never mind than white folks. They were more likely to be and stay married too. (I recognize the popular mythology she's trying to debunk here.)

Problems were caused for everyone by the sheer number of immigrants, and the small geographical areas in which their white neighbours were willing to let them live.They weren't caused by the nature and habits of the migrants. (I've seen this story before, except last time it was about poor white people in Victorian London, with the space where they were able to live constantly being reduced by "slum clearance". Conditions in the remaining slums/affordable areas got more and more frightful, as the population per acre increased.)

She's also clear that while the migration improved conditions for most of those who moved, and eventually helped to bring an end to overt discrimination in the south (Jim Crow), there was plenty of discrimination in the north as well, and much of it was implicit rather than explicit, leading to a constant dangerous guessing game. Better jobs - and better pay - and often union membership - went to white people. Usually. And higher rent for similar conditions went to black people, or rather to anyone in the only areas where blacks were welcome.

She also doesn't hide the ways in which black people harmed other black people, and some of the motives, from attempts at self protection to simple power struggles. They come into the book when they are relevant to the stories, reinforcing my sense that this is a fair and honest account.

Overall, an excellent book. I've learned rather more of the ugly details of black mistreatment in the US, and a lot more about how black people coped. And what I already knew is much better contextualized as to place and time.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2010
- Author: female, American (and black), born 1961, journalist (and professor of journalism)
- English, public library, 623 pages, read Mar 16 - Apr 5, 5 stars

>188 alcottacre: She's incredibly prolific.

Reread #7: Redoubt , by Mercedes Lackey.

This fantasy novel is volume 4 of the same mini-series as my rereads #3, 4, 5 and 6.

I was surprised to discover I'd forgotten an interesting chunk of the plot, that foreshadows developments at least a century later, though it may well have been written after the books in which those developments occur.

Other than that, it worked again as escapist fiction, with a young and overpowered protagonist.

>189 ArlieS: I think yours is the most eloquent review of the book that I've seen yet, Arlie. Kudos!

>192 richardderus: With that encouragement, I posted it as a LibraryThing review, as well as in this thread.

24. Underbug : an obsessive tale of termites and technology by Lisa Margonelli

I'm breaking new ground with this book; this is the lowest rating I've ever given to a book I neither pearl ruled nor deaccessioned. (For historical reasons, my rating system for books I like is very compressed; anything below 3 is a dis-recommend.) Of course the only reason I didn't deaccession it immediately after reading is that I'd borrowed it rather than bought it.

This book is tagged by the publisher as "Science/Nature". What it actually is, though, is a chronologically organized compendium of everything that occurred to the journalist author while pursuing an interest in termites.

Some of that material taught me things about termites I didn't already know. (Not hard, since I knew very little.) Some of it was about the real world conduct of science, and implied (but failed to mention) serious problems with the relationship between research results and truth. Some of it discussed restoration of native lands after strip mining. Some of it discussed politics. Some of it discussed artificial robotics and artificial intelligence research. All of it was about people - the author in particular, who apparently sees herself as incredibly interesting to random non-acquaintances - but also many of the individuals she met in the course of her research.

Quoting a review by Mary Roach: "This book is about termites the way the Bible is about men with beards". Thanks, but no thanks.

It's not a horrible book. If you are very people-oriented, and interested in "deep thoughts" from humble starting points, you might like it. But if you read it to learn about termites, you'll be very disappointed by the signal to noise ratio. And I suspect that there's a far better book available for any of the far too many topics visited here.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2018
- Author: female, American, age unknown, journalist (and editor)
- English, public library, 303 pages, read Mar 23 - Apr 6, 2 stars

>189 ArlieS: That one is already in the BlackHole or I would be adding it again.

>194 ArlieS: I think I can safely skip that one!

25. Operation shield : a Cassandra Kresnov novel by Joel Shepherd

This is volume 5 in the same science fiction series that provided my book #60 for 2021. I've been slowly reading my way through the series, one book ever few months.

The series features artificial humans (GIs), created as super soldiers by one side in a war between two human interstellar polities. The protagonist (Cassie) becomes disillusioned before the series starts, and flees into the other polity, where she attempts to disappear into the general population. That doesn't work out too well, but her presence and activities help reduce the local prejudice against her kind, and she proves to be the first of many defectors. Meanwhile she gets a job working in law enforcement, in particular the SWAT team of a major futuristic city, which also works in counter-intelligence.

The series author has the sense not to make the novels continuous; time passes between books. We see the protagonist grow and develop. Meanwhile, politics keeps happening, and it's usually ugly. Espionage and dirty tricks also happen, and tend to be even uglier. A typical book has a problem of this kind, with its resolution as the main plot. It also has lots of description of a futuristic society, and a major metropolis within it. Also, inevitably, plenty of combat, which mixes old fashioned violence with plenty of network hacking.

This particular installment seemed darker than usual, though mass murder - particularly of GIs - has been a thing in all the books. The mass murder stayed offstage until volume 4, where it provided the problem needing solution. But in volume 5, it starts with the viewpoint character trying desperately - and unsuccessfully - to prevent an ugly incident in the first chapter, which she also witnesses in person. After another incident midway through the book - offstage this time, but involving people the reader had seen as individuals, and sympathized with - the book sat on the shelf for some days before I picked it up again.

On the good side, we have lots of changes in the character's life, and many other characters also changing and growing. The protagonist adopts 3 human children, who she'd met in volume 4. Her human ex-lover finds a new partner, and we get to see Cassie trying to explain to a confused human that she simply isn't wired for jealousy. (GIs are mostly promiscuous, though she'd done monogamy for a while when they had been together.) We also see her navigating motherhood, with each child having their own distinct personality, likes, dislikes, and needs.

Meanwhile, all hell breaks loose, as usual, and she and others (both GI and human) get the dangerous and unpleasant task of solving it. After some uncertainty - whodunit, and why, and who can be trusted - the story slides into the series' usual satisfyingly violent groove, until the bad guys are resoundingly defeated.

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2014
- Author: male, Australian, born 1974, novelist
- English, public library, 463 pages, read Mar 17-Apr 6, 3.5 stars

>136 ArlieS: Thanks for reading this for us, and writing such a comprehensive review. I think people who are strictly apolitical in their younger careers have a hard time knowing how to negotiate political situations.

>139 magicians_nephew: Jim actually tends to fall asleep closer to 10. How did I end up with a morning person?

>140 ArlieS: Thanks for the kind attribution!

>189 ArlieS: The Wilkerson book has been on my reading list for some time, and your review only makes me more interested in it. I like history written in her technique, which is part of the extra encouragement.

I CANNOT keep up with the threads, partly because I tend to star too many at the beginning of the year, and am reluctant to cull people afterwards. As you can see,
I started from a long way back today.

>194 ArlieS: Oh dear.

>193 ArlieS: Duly upgethumbèd.

>197 ffortsa: I sure hear you about difficulty keeping up. I'm doing OK now, but there have been times when I've cut my losses, unstarred all but the most recent thread from everyone I was reading (they had new threads - sometimes more than one - before I caught up on the old one), and hoped I hadn't missed too much.

>199 ArlieS: Oh, yeah, I use that strategy as well. Every once in a while I realize I've missed some singular occurrence and trot back through the unread list, but most of the time we live in the present.

To pearl-rule or not to pearl-rule, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to finish Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, or take up arms immediately against Alec MacGillis, writing a review that may be more than scathing, without getting past p. 200 of 384 or examining its 22 pages of notes to try to determine how much of the contents is at least verifiably true.

This book could be summarized as "Amazon: Bad! Amazon: Bad! Bad! Bad!" One highly personalized anecdote after another, no statistics, and without checking the notes I'm unsure whether the individuals named are e.g. "representative composites" rather than real people, let alone how they were selected or whether they are in fact representative.

According to the introduction, this is a book about increasing inequality, but emphasizing inequality between regions rather than between individuals/classes. It merely uses Amazon as a "frame for understanding the country and what the country was becoming" (p. 11). In particular Amazon "served as the ultimate lens on the country's divides because it was present just about everywhere, in very diffeent forms." (p.11-12)

As of p.200, I'm still waiting for the analysis. Instead, I'm reading what I hope is at least a rehash of news stories in which little people came into conflict with Amazon - some few "David and Goliath" cases, but mostly depressing failure. In one case, the real culprit for the individual's woes isn't Amazon; he merely winds up working at Amazon in his seventies, after the collapse of the pension plan of his previous employer. (That chapter takes a brief digression into "big capitalists: bad!" Mostly the book approves of smaller capitalists, at least if their business is ultimately ruined by competition from Amazon.)

This reads like a hymnal for members of the Church of anti-Amazon, or possibly anti-big-business, full of songs to confirm them in their faith. Opportunities for nuance are missed; many of those contributing to Amazon's success appear to me to be stuck between a rock and a hard place - but the author only notes this if their quandry is whether or not to join the Amazon marketplace - and not always then.

Note for the record that I regard Jeff Bezos as pond scum or worse - and that comparison is probably unfair to innocent algae. The man epitomizes greed, with a large side order of deception. If e.g. I were on the jury for a widow of one of his warehouse workers who shot and killed him, I hope I'd vote not to convict them, or at the least hold out for a reduced charge.

But this book is useless. All it's doing so far is making me angry about things I cannot change.

Bail. And be scathing. No point in wasting more precious time on it.

26. The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff

This fantasy novel takes place in a more-or-less contemporary Canada, mostly in Calgary. Magic is real, but most people don't know about it, in spite of the rather immense abilities possessed by some magic users.

The problem is that the magic system is never explained, and characters don't think or talk about what is or isn't possible, so every new ability displayed comes as a surprise to the reader. The characters are trying to solve serious problems, and we get to watch their efforts without any real clue as to what either they or their opponents can do. At the beginning, the story doesn't even feel coherent, before enough of the system is revealed for some events to begin to make sense.

This caused the book to sit around for a while half finished, before I picked it up again. Fortunately, when I put it down it was almost at the point when things began to make sense, so the remainder of the book was much better at keeping my attention. But I still couldn't describe even the basics of what every magical character knows, and while I plan to read the sequel (I checked the whole trilogy out at the same time), it might just get pearl ruled if it's equally confusing.

That said, the characters are also at least somewhat confused. AFAICT, children, and even young adults, aren't told lots of things about how their magical heritage will develop over time. This leads to the protagonist making decisions based on her incorrect beliefs about some critical matters, in an attempt to protect her brother.

With the confusion unwrapped, this novel can be described as a paranormal romance combined with a mission to save the world from dangerous magic users from another plane. It's also a coming of age of a kind, even though the protagonist is twenty-four years old.

Statistics:
- Fiction, fantasy, first of a series, 2009
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist
- English, public library, 361 pages, read Mar 24-Apr 13, 3 stars

The author is not new to me, but this is the first of her books I've read in 2022.

Pearl rule #3: Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

>201 ArlieS: It's sat 9 days; I still don't find myself wanting to read more, and today I'll be visiting the library it came from to return a book some dastardly fellow patron put on hold.

I've pretty much said all I want to say about it in my post 201 above.

Reread #8: The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey

I'm continuing to reread fantasy novels by Mercedes Lackey from my personal library. The mini-series that starts with The Oathbound is somewhat of a favorite of mine, featuring an all female mage and warrior team, along with enough extra not to make it just a feminized rehash of a tired old trope.

>98 richardderus: >100 ArlieS: I've somewhat belatedly found one of the Mercedes Lackey books that was too dark for me, in among my list of rejected books, when adding another to that list.

Music to My Sorrow by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

This novel featured really nasty things being done to children, with at least one of those children as a viewpoint character before/during the abuse. In particular, we had a youngster's soul/psyche consumed by an evil paranormal entity, and the body reanimated as an obedient if initiative-less "good" son. And this was presented as an example, not a unique occurrence.

Given the series, the evil group is probably resoundingly defeated by the end of the book. It's even possible, though unlikely, that the children's selves can be and are recovered. But I never got that far, abandoning the book unfinished.

>206 ArlieS: That's the deal-breaker to end all deal-breakers for me. Still, you know it sooner than you might have done in days of yore.

27. To end in fire by David Weber and Eric Flint

This is a new installment in David Weber's Honorverse, a well developed science fiction universe that started out as a single series following the career of a space navy officer from captain to admiral, reminiscent of Horatio Hornblower, but then branched out in several directions.

Both the main author and the series are read-on-sight for me; I also like the second author well enough to read most of his work as soon as I notice it.

This installment is huge (696 pages), and mostly features espionage, counter-espionage and related matters, as well as progress in setting up stable polities in conquered star systems. The last 100 pages bring in Honor to handle a major fleet action - conquering what her side believes is the main base of their persistent and security mad opponents. (Actually, it's not - there's still another base surviving, with this one more-or-less sacrificed to keep the true base hidden.)

The novel isn't perfect, and the foreshadowing is somewhat frustrating - we see what the enemy is doing, and know there will be more conflict to come, allowing for additional books.

But I enjoyed it, and may well buy my own copy, along with any other members of its sub-series I don't already own.

Statistics:
- Fiction, science fiction, series, 2021
- Author 1: male, American, born 1952, novelist, already read this year
- Author 2: male, American, born 1947, novelist, first time read this year
- English, public library, 696 pages, read Apr 6-20, 4 stars

28. The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

This present-day fantasy novel is the second in the series I started with my #26 for this year. It was a lot less confusing than the first volume, even though the elder, non-viewpoint characters continue to keep major secrets from the younger viewpoint characters. That may have been because I now have a basic idea of what the Gales can do, from the first novel, and also have a vague idea what to expect from this book's paranormals (primarily selkies) and primary baddie (an oil executive). But it may also be because this book is simply better written than its predecessor. Maybe both.

Plot-wise, it's a coming-of-age for another protagonist well into her twenties, this time minus the romance. (The protagonist has the hots for one of the selkies, but the selkie is irretrievably heterosexual, and instead takes up with someone male.) Instead the protagonist works on saving the world, with some success, and in defiance of at least one or her presumed-to-be more powerful elders. She also comes in to powers she didn't know she had.

A fun read, with lots of nice little touches, like the ambitious black MBA, son of a Canadian fisherman.

Statistics:
- Fiction, fantasy, series, 2012
- Author: female, Canadian, born 1957, novelist, already read this year
- English, public library, 424 pages, read Apr 14-21, 3.5 stars

>208 ArlieS: I read the Honor Harrington books many years ago - at least, all that were written to that time. I've been aware more were written, but never got around to diving into them. Enjoyable series.

>75 ArlieS: Another round of "neurochemical Hiroshima" today; postings about books will be delayed until I'm back on an even keel. Meanwhile, it'll either be comfort reading for me, or chores that annoy me enough that they won't be made notably more unpleasant by having missed a dose of my head meds.

Reread #9: Oathbreakers by Mercedes Lackey

Sequel to my reread #8.

We see the heroines in a mercenary company, then on a detached covert mission, and finally fomenting and organizing a successful rebellion against the king responsible for the murder of their company's leader, who was also that king's sister.

>206 ArlieS: Yeah, I think I will give that one a miss too. Thanks for the heads up, Arlie!

Happy Wednesday!

29. Goliath : The 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy by Matt Stoller

I don't know what it is about this book - the record I loaded from Library of Congress had a different subtitle than the one that's plainly on the title page, and the touchstone shows yet another subtitle, along with an image of the very same book, complete with the sub-title I used above.

This book can be seen as either a work of US political history, or a work of political advocacy. Either way, it's a good one, though not without some flaws.

The author is a strong opponent of monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly, and other business practices that result in a lack of competition, problems for would-be new competitors, and for that matter imbalances between regions. He sometimes seems to be referring to this anti-monopoly position as "populism"; at other times he just seems to be saying that this position is generally only popular with populists, or that various past supporters were populists.

He takes the reader on a tour of the part of US political history concerned with this topic. His heroes frequently have feet of clay - an awful lot of them were US southerners, with all the racism that was normal for their time and place. Some of the earlier ones (among the US Founding Fathers) were also slave owners. He's particularly focussed on Wright Patman.

Ironically, the demise of anti-monopoly measures happened on my watch - I was an undergraduate in 1975 when the Watergate Babies arrived in the US Congress; and this appears to have been the turning point. And I shared the primary concerns of this group of relatively young Democrats - the Vietnam war, personal freedoms, etc. I didn't then have the life experience to be concerned about concentrations of power, particularly power outside of government - and neither did they.

I learned a lot from this book. I am still weak on the history of the first half of the twentieth century, particularly the part that was US-specific. (I grew up elsewhere.) But now I know a lot more about the New Deal, and the people who shaped it. Not just the sound bite version, but the conflict between those who favored a managed economy (with big businesses easier to manage), and those that wanted lots and lots of small independent businesses, both in itself and as a means of improving the lot of the working man. (Precious few of them would have thought about women, except in their capacity as wives.)

While reading this book, many of the ideas looked good to me. As a consumer, I've certainly had more than enough of "choosing" between a small handful of brands, provided by one or two companies, none meeting my needs. As a worker, I'm not impressed by the ever increasing disparity between CEO earnings and those of even their median employees, even as the lowest paid employees are detached by outsourcing and bogus contracting schemes. And as a politically aware person, I'm really sick of a handful of rich people buying politicians, political parties, and the few remaining media companies.

On the other hand, I do judge ideas in part by the kind of people who hold them. Or more correctly, if some innocuous or good seeming idea is held by a lot of people who are otherwise agin' my goals and values, I wonder whether that idea somehow manages to serve their values, and in particular those of their values I do not share. That doesn't make me reject the idea out of hand, but it does make me give it extra scrutiny. And in this case that scrutiny will require a lot more reading, which I haven't yet even started.

Regardless of how I ultimately judge these ideas, this book has made them relevant to me. Probably it would do the same for other readers. And they haven't been relevant to most Americans or Canadians during most of my political life, particularly those with relevant education and/or professions. (Politicians, political theorists, economists etc.)

If you are interested in ideas that might contribute to solving various current political, economic, and social problems, you should consider reading this book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2019
- Author: male, American, age unknown, policy analyst/politician
- English, public library, 588 pages, read Apr 12-27, 4 stars

>206 ArlieS: I know I read at least some of this series back in the day, but I don't think I got past book 4 or 5, so I missed this one. I don't think I'll be seeking it out!

>212 ArlieS: Another one of my favorites :)

>214 ArlieS: This looks like a worthwhile read - I'm terribly concerned by what I see from both political parties.

>216 ChrisG1: I hope you like it.

Reread #10: Oathblood by Mercedes Lackey

This is the third book of Valdemar : Vows and Honor; my rereads 8 and 9 were the first and second. It is not really a sequel; it's a collection of stories about the same two heroines, but they range in time from before the first book to well after the second.

Some of these stories are very good. Some are merely OK. I gave the overall book 4 stars when I first rated it, and see no reason to change this now.

30. The new class war : saving democracy from the managerial elite by Michael Lind

This is an interesting book, with only intermittent annoyances and red flags. I'll start with the good stuff.

Here's a key quote from p. 72

... in the United States and similar Western democracies there are two political spectrums, one for the college-educated managerial-professional overclass minority and one for the non-college-educated working-class majority of all races.

I follow him this far, and don't disagree with his description of the two political spectrums in the United States. I also follow his point that the voters are generally only offered choices from the overclass spectrum. I agree that part of the appeal of extreme politicians is that a lot of people feel like the choices they are offered by the mainstream parties are either irrelevant, or, worse, both equally bad. I've been feeling that way myself for a decade or three, in spite of my college education.

I also agree that this is bad. And this quote from p. 85 really appeals to me, though perhaps more for being about the way I think things ought to be, than about the way they truly are.

Genuine democracy requires never-ending, institutionalized negotiations among many major social groups in politics, the economy, and the culture, each equipped with substantial bargaining power and the ability to defend its interests and values. By this definition, technocratic neoliberalism and demagogic populism are not forms of democracy at all.

But after that, the copy I read starts to sprout literal red flags - which I use to mark things I find both questionable and worthy of note, rather than the blue flags I use for notable passages I basically agree with, or find especially insightful.

To sum up my worries - I smell traces of an apologia for a job lot of "traditional" values, including but in no way limited to forced conformity to religious regulations. He doesn't quite say this. But here's p. 144

Today in the US it would be unthinkable for a civil rights commission to have no African American or Latino members. It should be equally unthinkable for a committee or agency that makes rules for the media, public school curricula, or college accreditation to include no devout Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and members of other major religious or secular creeds.

That's not objectionable per se, particularly given his argument that churches as well as more obvious things like unions are ways in which less powerful groups find power in numbers. But it smells, particularly in association with repeated US conservative attempts to replace any secular social safety net with either religious charities or at best, public moneys administered by "faith based groups".

The other thing I notice is that while the book has footnotes, they are rarely or never found on statements I flagged as problematic. Many tend towards "so-and-so said such-and-such" (which the author dislikes or disagrees with).

And finally, there's an awful lot of forced choice e.g. p. 133, with my emphasis added.

The alternative to both technocratic liberalism and demagogic populism is democratic pluralism.

The alternative? Which one is Russia using at the moment? Which one is China using? And that's just one example - I think there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in this "thinker"'s categories.

But at the same time, it's past time that anyone and everyone wanting to increase unity and confidence in any Western government think about the key insight, that most of the electorate's views simply aren't represented by any politician they could vote for. And this book does the best job of expressing that insight I have read so far.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2020
- Author: male, American, born 1962, academic (public affairs) and writer
- English, public library, 203 pages, read Apr 12-27, 4 stars

>219 ArlieS: I'd like a "Saving Democracy from Pseudolintellectual Aynoles" title, please.

>220 richardderus: You may have to write it.

Someone certainly should.

You know you've been overemphasizing non-fiction likely to educate you about important issues, without being all that much fun, when you select a book about war as the least stressful of the remaining 7 non-fiction books you have checked out from the local library.

Even some of my 3 remaining fiction books are at least somewhat "heavy".

>2232 yeah, I’ve done that….