Ron still dreams of books and things ...

My big hunk of junk Jasper is on patrol in the winter garden.



This will be my 7th year in the 75 books group - before that I hung out with the 50 book crowd. I will have my ten year thingawhatever on Feb 27th. I officially joined LT Feb 27, 2009. In a good year I read about 75 books but never manage to get much higher than that. Which is OK.

This will be another year of no challenges and no commitments. Challenges can be great fun and I have found some great authors with the challenges, so I may drop in now and then. The only slight challenge I have set for myself is to dive into some of the old, sometimes pulpy, DAW series science fiction novels that I enjoyed when I was younger. They still make them too. A few will be re-reads but most will be first reads of books I have collected over the years. I'm not planning on acquiring a lot of books in 2019 - hoping the library will supplement the books on my shelves - except I will be scouting out for some more old DAWs at the library sales.

Like last year I want to read some of these books that live here in my house that are feeling quite ignored. I did well at that goal last year. The last week or two I have been hardly reading books, but I have been looking at my books and I have probably set aside 50 or more that I would really like to get to this year.

Each year I hope to be reading history and mystery, historical fiction, classics and newer things, science fiction and a bit of fantasy, a few favorites from childhood, and a few authors who will be new to me. Looking at the bookshelves I've rearranged to inspire me for the year, here are, in no particular order, some of the authors I hope to spend some time with: Greg Bear, Martin Walker, Thomas Hardy, Iain Banks, E.C. Tubb, Alan Burt Akers, Winston Graham, Robert Silverberg, Frank Delaney, Alan Furst, David Downing, Haurki Murakami, Bernard Cornwell, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nevil Shute, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rumer Godden, several japanese authors (I'm undecided which), and Marilynne Robinson. There are others of course, but that gives you an idea of where my reading will lie. I have not decided on what non-fiction to read, but I do want to explore Irish history via historical fiction. I have a number of books by Irish authors on hand and I hope to include some of those. Each year has unexpected surprises.

Very roughly in order, these are my favorite books from 2018. To keep it to ten, some excellent books don't make the final list. Some books stay in your memory better than others and all of these do for me.

Fiction:
1. The Terror by Dan Simmons
2. TransAtlantic: A Novel by Colum McCann
3. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
4. Love and Summer by William Trevor
5. Ishmael by Barbara Hambly (A very fun and excellent Star Trek novel)
6. Silesian Station by David Downing
7. Potsdam by David Downing
8. Stettin Station by David Downing
9. Shannon by Frank Delaney
10. No One You Know by Michelle Richmond

Favorite anthologies:

1. Modern Classics of Fantasy - various authors, edited by Gardner Dozois
2. The Saturday Evening Post Reader of Fantasy & Science Fiction by various authors
3. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (Year's Best for 2001) various authors, edited by Gardner Dozois

Fiction re-reads:
1. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
2. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
3. The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick

Best fun read:

I think Martha Wells' Murderbot series wins this for me

Non-Fiction
Forbidden City U.S.A. : Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1970 by Arthur Dong
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard

My 2018 thread can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/279392

You can also find me on Facebook as Ron Beffa

I'll keep a list of my books read here. I'm trying to read books from the library or off my shelf or off the nook or kindle app (which has accumulated too many unread books, many of which I haven't even cataloged. sigh). Books are off the shelf unless noted as (L) for library book. I have a new Samsung tablet which I've tied into the library ebook system. This could get dangerous! However, my goals this year are fairly modest. 50-60 books and I'll be very happy.

On deck:
This is a reminder list of some of the books I'd like to get to this year

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Crowded Grave and hopefully more in the Bruno, Chief of Police series by Martin Walker, two done
Lehrter station by David Downing
The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers Series: Charlie Chan (1)
and the Shaman: Penric & Desdemona Book 2 by Lois McMaster Didn't care for the style of this and DNF
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers done
20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne
The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherfurd
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
Natsume Soseki - I Am a Cat
The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Alan Furst - at least one book in the Night Soldiers series
E C Tubb - Dumarest 20 Web of Sand
Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher done
Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream by Neil Young
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
something by Frank Delaney
Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
a Louis L'Amour and/or a Zane Grey western
Downfall by Richard B Frank
Tales of the Fish Patrol by Jack London
Kingfishers Catch Fire by Rumer Godden

The books read list for the year:

January
1. Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan, 3+ stars (L)
2. Transit To Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers 3 1/2 - 4 stars (relative to the genre)
3. The Chosen by Chaim Potok, 2 1/2 - 3 stars
4. Absolutely on music : conversations with by Seiji Ozawa and Haruki Murakami, 3 stars (L)

February
5. The Tenth Man by Graham Greene, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (L)
6. I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land by Connie Willis, 2 stars (L)
7. Wave Without A Shore by C. J. Cherryh, 2 1/2 - 3 stars
8. Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher, 3 stars (re-read)
9. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 4+ stars (re-read)
10. The travelling cat chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, 3 - 3 1/2 stars (L)

March
11. A Castle Full of Cats by Ruth Sanderson, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (children's picture book with rhyming words)
12. The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker, 3 1/2 stars
13. Bruno and the Carol Singers AKA "Bruno and le Père Noel: A Christmas Story" by Martin Walker, 2 1/2 stars
14. The 1986 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A Wolhein and Arthur Saha, 3 - 3 1/2 stars
15. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester, 4 1/2 stars
16. Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, 3+ stars (L)
17. Munich by Robert Harris, 4 stars (L)

April
18. Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946) by various authors, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, 3 1/2 stars
19. Inkling by Kenneth Oppel, 4 stars (L ebook)
20. Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N. McIntyre, 4 1/2 stars (rated for the genre)
21. Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle, 3 1/2 - 4 stars
22. A breath of air by Rumer Godden, 3 1/2 stars

May
23. The Good Son: A Story from the First World War, Told in Miniature by Pierre-Jacques Ober (Author), Jules Ober (Illustrator), Felicity Coonan (Illustrator), 4 stars
24. Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939) by various authors, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, 2 1/2 - 3 stars
25. Bird Box: A Novel by Josh Malerman, 4 + stars (almost 4 1/2) (L ebook)
26. The Germans in Hawaii by Bernhard Lothar Hormann, 4 stars
27. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, 3 stars (L ebook)
28 Star Trek the Magazine: Volume 3, Issue 03, July 2002
29. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (L ebook)

June
30. The Universe Against Her by James H Schmitz, 2 1/2 stars
31. The Exile by Pearl Buck, 3 stars
32. The Mother by Pearl Buck, 4 stars
33. The Stamp Collector: There and Back Again by D. Andrew Brooks, 3 1/2 - 4 stars
34. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, 5 stars

July
35. Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick, 3 1/2 stars
36. GO: A Coming of Age Novel by Kazuki Kaneshiro, 2 1/2 - 3 stars
37. Recursion by Blake Crouch, 3 1/2+ stars
38. Just One More Thing: Stories from My Life by Peter Falk, 3 1/2 - 4 stars
39. West by Carys Davies, finished July 23, 2019, 3 stars

I'll keep the list of favorite books from each year of my life here. These aren't necessarily my favorite books per se, but at least one favorite published in each year I have lived. I'm hoping to do a few re-reads from this list

1953 Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
1954 The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese publication)
1955 The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Darfsteller (novella) by Walter M Miller Jr
1956 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
1957 Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
1958 The Time Traders by Andre Norton
1959 Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
1960 Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
1961 Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
1962 King Rat by James Clavell
R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury
1963 Way Station by Clifford Simak
Judgment on Janus by Andre Norton
1964 A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
1965 Dune by Frank Herbert
All Flesh is Grass by Clifford Simak
1966 Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1967 Dumarest series (Winds of Gath is the first) by E C Tubb
1968 A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Demon Breed by James H Schmitz
Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg
1969 Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
1970 Time and Again by Jack Finney
Ringworld by Larry Niven
1971 Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw
Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
1972 Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1973 Protector by Larry Niven
1974 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
1975 Shogun by James Clavell
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
Doris Day: Her Own Story by Doris Day and A. E. Hotchner
1976 Roots by Alex Haley
Trinity by Leon Uris
The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov
Houston, Houston Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
Dragonsong/Dragonsinger/Dragondrums trilogy by Anne McCaffrey
1977 The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Gameplayers of Zan by M A Foster
1978 The Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
1979 The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Blind Voices by Tom Reamy
Sandkings by George R.R. Martin
1980 The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward
1981 Cujo by Stephen King
1982 Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N. McIntyre
1983 The Burning Mountain: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan by Alfred Coppel
Yesterday's Son by A C Crispin
1984 Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
West of Eden by Harry Harrison
1985 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Ishmael by Barbara Hambly
1986 Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
1987 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
1988 The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
1989 The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks
1990 The Lies of Silence by Brian Moore
The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry
Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang
1991 Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
1992 Brave Companions: Portraits In History by David McCullough
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 The Giver by Lois Lowry
Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry
The Hedge, the Ribbon by Carol Orlock
1994 Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1995
1996 Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
California Fault by Thurston Clarke
1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
1998 Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam
1999 Plainsong by Kent Haruf
2000 The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
2001 On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan
Jackdaws by Ken Follett
Tales from Earthsea Ursula K LeGuin
Wish You Well by David Baldacci
Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst
New Light on the Drake Equation - novella by Ian R. MacLeod
2002 Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson
2003 Pompeii by Robert Harris
2004 March by Geraldine Brooks
2005 A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ordinary Heroes by Scott Thurow
2006 The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik
2007 The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead
Zoo Station by David Downing (US publication)
2008 Dreamers of the Day: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking bk. 1) by Patrick Ness
2009 Homer and Langley by E L Doctorow
Shannon by Robert Delaney
Love and Summer by William Trevor
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking bk 2) by Patrick Ness
2010 Potsdam Station by David Downing
Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking bk 3) by Patrick Ness
2011 Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
The Martian by Andy Weir
2012 Sutton by J.R. Moehringer
Son by Lois Lowry
Coming of Age on Barsoom by Catherynne M. Valente
The Death Song of Dwar Guntha by Jonathan Maberry
2013 Transatlantic by Colum McCann
2014 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Sentinels of Fire by P. T. Deutermann
2015 Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
2016 A Hero of France by Alan Furst
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson
2017 Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami
2018 Munich by Robert Harris

Welcome back!

Happy New Year!

Happy reading in 2019, Ron!

>4 drneutron: >5 Berly: >6 The_Hibernator: >7 FAMeulstee: Thank you for the greetings Jim, Kim, Rachel and Anita. A good new year wish to you all, and good reads ahead for all of us.

Dropping off my star, Ron!

Happy 2019
A year full of books
A year full of friends
A year full of all your wishes realised

I look forward to keeping up with you, Ron, this year.

Hi Ron!

>1 RBeffa: Absolutely gorgeous kitty, your hunk of junk Jasper! The joy of this group is the people, not necessarily hitting 75 books.

>3 RBeffa: Good luck with your books – I’ve read several on your list (The Mayor of Casterbridge, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Darwin’s Radio and Ross Poldark), all good’uns.

I keep saying I'll read a western, either L'Amour or Grey, but so far haven't done so.

Happy Reading Ron.

Thanks for de-lurking on my thread, sorry to hear about Winnie. Xander has adapted well to being a three-legged cat though he still doesn't jump up onto things but putting steps around the house has helped.

>9 ronincats: >10 PaulCranswick: >11 karenmarie: >12 calm: Thank you Roni, Paul, Karen and Calm for dropping by.

Usually I start the new year (and end the old) with a surge of reading but that doesn't seem to be happening this year. I did start my first book last night Boone a Biography by North Carolina writer Robert Morgan (of Gap Creek fame). I read maybe 45 pages including the very long and interesting intro but I must have gotten up and gone to the computer a dozen times to compare what he had written with the history in my wife's family tree. Most of it matched up and I got a few new leads to pursue. The Boone research for our tree was done by my motherinlaw quite a few years ago. My wife and I work on her tree but we have left the Boones alone so far. The big discovery for me in Robert Morgan's book is that the Lincoln family that several Boone's married is the President Abraham Lincoln family. I'll have to spend some time on the details. Daniel Boone is my wife's 7th great uncle (Daniel's father Squire is my wife's 7th great grandfather). We have known that for a long time. Abraham Lincoln won't be a blood relation to us - it will be a marriage relation with something like ten degrees of separation or so, but that will be a fun fact to know once I research and verify the steps.

So, this book will be very interesting but it won't speed up my reading. Plus it is something like 550 pages total.

And it is even more fun to find something like this about the book: https://www.pbs.org/video/nc-bookwatch-robert-morgan-boone-biography/

Happy New Year and new thread Ron! Looking forward to whatever you read in 2019. How interesting in the Boone relation. My mother's grandmother was a Hudson, and it is my understanding that Henry is a very distant Uncle. My aunt is the family genealogist, and has made it a lifetime's hobby to document all of the interesting tangents related to that. My head starts to spin after about three generations.

Thanks for checking in Steve. Boone is really turning into a slow read for me as I am repeatedly going to the computer to read about various events and some of the people. Despite claiming to be a history buff I am having my nose rubbed in the dirt about how little I know about pre revolutionary war history. Old Disney shows do not count at all. Plus I have undoubtedly forgotten some of the things I once knew some of. I can't say that Morgan is a great writer here compared to someone like David McCullough, but he's doing a reasonably good job and despite a very large cast of characters it keeps my interest. If this wasn't a library book I'd take a break from it. I think I'm going to look for a copy of it at the library book sales (we have one next week in fact) and hope I get lucky to find one of my own.

For the DAW's I think I'm going to read several of the World's Best annual collections first. They were some of my favorite books and I've collected all the ones I never read before and will have a go.

First finished book of the year, a non-fiction biography

1. Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan, finished January 8, 2019, 3+ stars



Books like this on American history and historical figures can leave me a little melancholy. This one was no exception. I can easily tell why - Boone loved the wilderness. However, virtually every step he and the other settlers like him took destroyed that wilderness. Trap and kill until there was no more game. He was then restless and moved on to the next wilderness, and others followed and then it was no more, over and over and over. This is as much if not more of a story about early America as it is a history of Daniel Boone.

I learned quite a bit from the book but something about the style of the book let me know, as another reviewer mentioned, it wasn't of the caliber of a biography by David McCollough. A few places I found myself skimming. Morgan does give us a lot of details here and there about pioneer life, things that I would imagine most people in the 21st century have no idea about. He also seems to be trying to not write an idol worship book here, but trying to give a fair and balanced look at Boone and the lives of those around him. There is a lot of interesting material in here. There is also quite a bit of speculation about just about everything, because although there may be various facts, many things are missing or not documented in history. The speculation got to be a little too much for me. The individual reader will have to decide on how the speculations fit. There are extensive footnotes which I appreciated at times, and there is also an extensive bibliography. Perhaps a little odd, I did not leave this book much of a fan of Daniel Boone.

Hello Ron! I hope all is well with you.

>16 RBeffa: I'm sorry this book ended up being a bummer for you, Ron. DB certainly connotes heroism, bravery, and the wild for us as kids, but depending on the individual reader that romanticism may not hold water as adults.

>17 brodiew2: Hi Brodie. Thanks for dropping by. I don't regret reading the Boone biography at all. The author points out at the very start that most everything the average person 'knows" about Boone is not the real Daniel Boone. Fess Parker he was not. There are some specific elements of the book that disappoint me - but there is a LOT of good information in here. I'm going to look for a nice used copy to have for myself as a reference. I suspect this must be one of the most thorough books on the subject available. Near the end of the book the author notes that Daniel Boone towards the end of his life was rather unhappy about the legends and tall tales repeatedly told about him. He certainly did a lot that didn't need to be exaggerated. He was a rare and unique individual.

>1 RBeffa: Adding your 'best of' lists to my list of lists :)

Welcome back, Ron!

>19 alcottacre: Thanks for dropping by Stasia. I was glad to see you enjoyed The Zookeeper's Wife. I've almost picked that one up at the library 3 or 4 times. I suspect I would really find it interesting. I've added it to my list. We have a Friends of the Library sale later this week and i have a short list of books to look for. They are always fun to browse no matter what I do or don't buy.

>16 RBeffa:

Thank you for this review.

Does Morgan's BOONE reference any books about Daniel Boone written by Native Americans?

(can't seem to locate right Touchstone...)

>21 m.belljackson: I think one of Morgan's stated intentions early in the book is to give a fairer treatment/discussion to the role of women and native americans. He cites within the text quite a few prior biographies and authors and relies heavily on several, but I do not recall him mentioning any books by native americans. Natives do get a very fair treatment here and there are several speeches by leaders esp the Cherokee one quoted in here. He does make it clear that Boone was not an "indian fighter" despite how he may have been popularly portrayed. Boone was repeatedly referred in his time as a "white indian" but I wasn't convinced that was a valid shingle to hang on him. The author (and Dan'l himself) note that the indians hunted for food and need. Daniel did that of course, but much moreso he hunted and trapped in such a fashion that he essentially stripped each new valley - he did this to earn his living and allow himself to explore the wilderness, which as I noted he destroyed in the process by opening new areas up to others. He quickly became aware that the game was not limitless. For an intelligent man you would think he could have realized earlier in life what he was doing to the world. There was this thought then that the wilderness was unlimited. So Dan'l would be gone for months ( or years) return with furs (or not, because the native americans of the areas frequently relieved him of his plunder) bonk his wife Rebecca so she would be preggers with yet another child he would need to support and buy more supplies and head off again to trap more. Later in life he didn't do this of course. Rebecca comes across as something of a superwoman of the era.

I dropped by our Friends off the Library preview sale last night and picked up a few books. The main sale is tomorrow which I plan to go to barring overly wet weather. They seem to have received a donation of a lot of science fiction and fantasy so I need to spend some time seeing what I might want. There were quite a few DAW's including half a dozen at least of MZ Bradley's Darkover books. I might pick up a couple of those - it has been decades since I read a few of them. They also had a number of nice older copies of Rumer Godden's books which I passed up for the moment. She's on my list of authors to read this year - it has been a long time since I read one of hers and she never disappointed me.

What I did do is find a trade pb copy of Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann as well as an early trade pb edition of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko who is one of the American Author Challenge picks this year. I've never read her and figured I could give her a try. I also picked up Ready Player One for a future fun read. It was one my daughter wanted so it was a double win. Of the incoming sci/fantasy I grabbed a very nice Ace double of Jack Vance's Dying Earth/The Last Castle. I've read both books but I think this one I will enjoy as a reread. I last read Dying Earth in the summer of 74 while I was house-sitting a condo for a couple weeks before the final year of college started for me.

>22 RBeffa:

BOONE sounds like an incredible tale. I'd be more drawn to it if trapping and hunting weren't featured so strongly.
(Melville and I have our moments.)

A Search for Indigenous Authors writing about Daniel Boone has so far turned up nothing,
but saw that Australia has many new writers dealing with their history.

It will be intriguing to see if BOONE inspires similar writings.

Let the Great World Spin was the best book I read in The Irish Challenge >
I had paid little attention to the cover, so was as completely enthralled as the people when they looked up.

>23 RBeffa: Those Friends of the Library sales are dangerous! I hope you can find a bunch of books that suit!

>24 m.belljackson: I don't think there is any way to avoid the hunting and trapping with Boone. It isn't the focus after being a big part in the beginning third. The story sorta changes at the point that is a strange step in Boone's life. It is apparently still controversial and the author seems to tread a little lightly around it - Boone gets captured around the start of the revolutionary war by the Shawnee - hoping to save men also caught or about to be and to divert a pending attack on his Boonesboro settlement, he surrenders many of the people to the tribe. Boone becomes the adopted son of the chief. A dozen or so of the men also become tribe members (and after a time apparently never wanted to go back to their old life, they so fully embraced the native american way of life). The Shawnee sell the captives that don't join them to the British for a nice reward. The British want Boone but the Shawnee chief won't hand him over, so the British try to woo Boone to the loyalist side. Boone is with the indians for a very long time (and presumed dead I think by wife and others). The author tries to have the reader believe that Boone did what he did to save as many lives as he could but apparently many people of the time considered him a traitor both because of his dealings with the british during the war and his "going native". The book spends a good part about others around Boone, esp his early historians and his children (Nathan and Jemima esp). Lots of discussion about the ways of life of the pioneers. Did you know that there was almost a colony/ new state called Transylvania?!

It isn't a bad book at all. Somewhere in the middle of the book I looked up a December 1985 National geographic on Boone and it was very good. I especially liked that it had one of those huge geographic maps of the Ohio territory with all the places where Boone was and the geographic positions of things. While reading the book it had become increasingly hard for me to place all the events and places in a mental map and I had pretty much given up till I found the nat geo map and article. It was a real plus.

>26 RBeffa:

BOONE will be on my Looking For List, as well as updates from Indigenous Authors and Editors.
You have opened up exciting episodes! I wonder what we would have done with Transylvania...
Emerson and Thoreau would likely have enjoyed approaching it.

Years ago, some smart and kind reader had tucked an old National Geographic map of California into the back cover of my abe.com
copy of John McPhee's ASSEMBLING CALIFORNIA. As welcome as Ohio! ASSEMBLING has no maps!

>27 m.belljackson: Transylvania was roughly what became Kentucky. But Transylvania existed for quite a few years (relatively speaking). I'm probably being a little unfair to Boone in my feelings - it was a very different time in the world and he was truly a unique individual and explorer. What has not changed is simple human greed. That made me as melancholy as anything with the book. Boone, who was apparently a very honest man, was overwhelmed. I think Boone sincerely wanted the Shawnee and others in Kentucky to co-exist peaceably with the colonists. But also, he brought with him and encouraged many people to go with him into the new frontier of Kentucky. Even if he had to move a little farther out each time. But then the deluge hit and even he had not a chance. I seriously doubt Boone wanted slave plantations in Kentucky. He spent much of the second half of his life in a very different manner than his early days.

I have quite a few books on California history and peoples, many of which i am sure i have not cataloged. I am a many times "native" californian. My peeps were here before the goldrush. Those old geographic maps can be invaluable. We have a cache of them. glad you got lucky with your book.

The Boone book sounds fascinating, and it's too bad that it lagged in parts.

I read The Dying Earth for the first time a couple of years ago, and liked it very much. Looking forward to your thoughts on rereading.

>25 alcottacre: The library sales are indeed dangerous Stasia. I mostly restrained myself. Picked up 5 nice jigsaw puzzles (mostly for my wife who was too sick with a cough/cold to come to the sale), 2 new books for my daughter by authors she likes, and a handful of old fantasy and science fiction novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley (they were all DAW paperbacks). I also got a nice book on the history of Ireland. I spent a bit of time hunting for any other books on Daniel Boone without luck. The day turned out to be a lovely day in between storm days so the sale was well attended and lots of books were being picked up by folks.

>29 swynn: The Boone book didn't lag too much Steve. I think the author dwelled on a few things a bit much in order to build his case for certain theories and speculations he had. I'm glad I read the book and at some point in the future I may want to read a bit more about Daniel and his times, something where Daniel is a smaller part of the picture but will still let me know more about him. Judging by the bibliography in the book there is no shortage of books on Boone. I'm am looking forward to revisiting Vance.

ETA: I was wondering what the best place and/or order to revisit Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and wanting to re-read a couple I knew I had read long ago ... I looked around and went to MZB on wikipedia and found some very disturbing stuff about MZB and her husband. Yeah I know everything you read on the internet is not the truth, but I won't be reading any of MZB's books.

Fascinating discussion about the Boone book, Ron. Thanks for bringing this one to my attention. Combining genealogy and broader history is always a great adventure, isn't it?

>31 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, you may recall I remarked on you adding a Boone bio to your LT catalog - the one by John Mack Faragher. That triggered my latent desire to learn more about Boone esp because of my wife's family history in Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky and that Daniel is actually related to her. So I picked this book up from the library and it turned into a real bonus book that I got into much more than a typical book. In this book, the author Robert Morgan references earlier biographies and mentions your book a couple times. Different biographers have had different approaches to Boone's life and I think it was in the introduction chapter to Morgan's book that he does a bit of compare and contrast to let the reader know how he will be approaching it.

>30 RBeffa: Even though your haul was modest, it sounds like you got some good stuff for everyone. I am glad to hear that the sale was successful! Local libraries need all the help and support that they can get.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Boone: a biography! I was left wondering whether we should come away from any biography really admiring the subject. Is any really good biography going to show us all the warts of the subject?

>33 alcottacre: Stasia, a modest haul and my wife loves the puzzles I picked out. I could easily have walked out with another 20 or more books. The Friends earn about $5,000-6,000 per sale monthly and they sponsor many library programs as well as handing over a nice extra check at year's end. I think they raised over $65,000 in 2018. For a smallish single library that seems pretty good to me. The bonus part for me and others, as I remind them periodically, is that the Friends sales really enhance the books available to local readers that the library or nearby libraries don't carry on their shelves, It is just such a huge resource for the community. I even forgot to mention the book I was most happy to buy: Rumer Godden's Kingfishers Catch Fire, a nice 1953 edition with a complete dustjacket.

>34 bas615: Excellent point Brad. I imagine we all have read biographies that are essentially hit pieces, as well as the idol worship types. Those sometimes tell as much about the author as about the subject. Robert Morgan with his Boone bio leans to the positive side, and by my reading he colors things a way he wants, but overall I imagine this must be one of the most complete overall looks at Boone's life. If we didn't see Daniel's failings we would just have another "legend" book here.

>30 RBeffa: Yeah, well unfortunately that's been pretty well substantiated. And it has indeed turned a lot of people off Bradley's work. Sad, as she was quite influential in developing women writers and getting publishers to buy their work. But nasty stuff. Like with Orson Scott Card--where do we draw the line between the person and the works?

>36 ronincats: I think I heard about it several years ago and blocked it out of my mind. Really sad because she was very influential and supportive of new writers. I don't read Card anymore but I don't feel yuck about having read and enjoyed stories like Ender's Game. You do have to draw a line somewhere sometimes.

>30 RBeffa: I totally get your reluctance on MZB. I have conflicting thoughts about this myself. The stories about MZB are indeed pretty horrifying and so especially those about her husband. I have no reason to doubt reports of her or her husband's victims. Since I'm reading her work in the context of the DAW project, I try to respond to the works independently of what has come out about her personal life. I'm not sure I'd recommend that approach to anyone else.

For the most part there is a pretty broad gulf between what comes out in her art and what was happening behind the scenes, but every once in a while there will be a line that rings really awkward in the broader context.

Congrats on the book haul and generating great discussion here about Boone. MZB -- nope.

>38 swynn: Thanks for your thoughts here Steve. I'm going back and forth with myself on this. I know I have enjoyed several of MZB's early works - just now, though, I have no desire to seek her stuff out. I am probably going to re-read one or two of her early novels that I liked, and read them with a critical eye. Just not now. I have stories by her in a number of anthologies to read, including DAW #200 which i had pulled out and set aside as one of my first planned DAW reads this year.

>39 Berly: Thanks for dropping by Kim. The Boone book really got under my skin. Even though I finished it a week ago I have not started another book and I go back and re-read bits each day and type in notes about various people who are in my wife's family tree. Then I go looking for more articles online about various peoples and events. I guess it is really a way to bring history back to life, sorta. This has also resulted in a rethinking already for what I will be reading this year.

I hope to start a fresh book late this afternoon or this evening. Boone will go back to the library. Sigh.

ETA: There are a number of things in the book that I thought about posting, where they seemed to capture something about Boone's life. I've picked this one out from near the end of the book, although there are better comments elsewhere in the book (I should have written them down!) Here you go:

Boone, pg 448: "To the environmentally sensitive, Boone is a reminder of missed opportunities, of a paradise lost, a primary symbol of our conflicted desires, confused destiny, our ideals and ambitions inspiring and undercutting each other."

I like tha quote - quite a lot to mull over. I need to read this one.

>41 drneutron: Have a go at it Jim. I'm curious how others react to it..

I've started my first fun read of the year, digging into an old DAW science fiction novel. I read quite a few of these in the 70's and into the early 80's. I could buy them for 95 cents or a bit later for $1.25 and even better many could be found for half price at the many used book stores that thrived in the 70-80's. For the most part these were candy reads, not books I kept unless I really enjoyed them. When I started cataloging my books on LT I thinned out more of them, like EC Tubb's Century of the Mannikin (a book which I don't recall as being very good but since I loved Tubb's Dumarest series I held on to it.) I still have quite a few, ones like Keith Laumer's Dinosaur Beach. The early ones are increasingly hard to find in recent years. I have some mild regrets about thinning them out, but that is how it goes. Steve (Swynn) has been reading this series for a number of years and i have finally given in to temptation. Two years ago I read DAW #13, a decent collection of horror stories. That didn't jumpstart me but I'll give it a good try this time. I'd like to fit in one a month and I'll read them somewhat at random as the mood hits me. I'll also be reading some much later in the series (they are still published). I have a batch of the Dumarest novels to work on and many misc novels and short story collections. We'll see how long this trip lasts, but first off it is DAW#33, Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

>42 RBeffa: Yay for Dray Prescot! I first discovered it back in college, when I found a handful of random volumes from the series in a local used bookstore. Great stuff for decompressing after exams. I'm looking forward to your thoughts.

A belated Happy New Thread and Happy New Year, Ron!

I like your list of favorites. Ethan Frome was a standout for me when I read it, too. And I love those Murderbot books!

>40 RBeffa:

The BOONE quote sealed it -

(though I'd vowed not to get another new book in 2019 unless someone wanted to send The Overstory as a trade)

- abe.com had a "Like New" illustrated hardcover for just over seven dollars.

It will easily be worked into the NF Challenge,
for which I read MEADOWLAND, both fiction and NF, for January
and have started DRINKING WATER for February.

>43 swynn: Hi Steve. It is pretty lightweight reading but it feels like the author had a lot of fun writing it.

>44 jnwelch: Hey Joe, thanks for dropping by. I need to keep working a few classic oldies that I missed along the way, like Ethan Frome, into my reading each year. Besides Thomas Hardy I have a few others in mind.

>45 m.belljackson: I do hope you like Boone Marianne. It will certainly give you things to think about and maybe some new paths for yourself to explore.

>43 swynn: I must say Steve that this Dray Prescot book is immensely entertaining for what it is. I am a little bothered by some of the writing, and I am guessing that the author is trying to give us the flavor of an 18th century englishman telling this modern tale, but I am getting used to it. On the other hand, for light adventure fiction of the planetary romance type this is a lot of fun and I am certainly going to be reading more in this very long series.

>47 RBeffa: Yes, the prose is stilted and sometimes gets in the way. But if you can get past that it's a hoot -- as you've noticed. Glad you're enjoying it!

2. Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers, finished January 20, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (rated against genre)



I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. This was clearly modeled after Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter novels, but the author added his own touches and clearly had fun imagining this book. Instead of John Carter and Dejah Thoris the princess of mars we have Dray Prescot snd Delia of the Blue Mountains ... who we also learn by the end of the book is herself a princess. There are several story threads and a lot is left hanging at the end of this, which is the first book in a very long series. I will most certainly be reading more in the future.

My one bother is the odd prose style that rises up a little too often.

My enjoyment was enhanced by pen and ink sketches by Tim Kirk scattered through the book.

>49 RBeffa: Hurray for a good book! And more in the series to follow...

>49 RBeffa: Glad you liked that one, Ron! As you say, there's a lot more.

>50 Berly: >51 swynn: Thanks! Now I'm not sure what to read next. My cold is nearly done with me, but head, sinus and neck soreness/aches are not conducive to reading. I just need to get my mojo going again. I had pulled out DAW#200 to read this year. I am pretty sure I read this at least in part long ago. How long? I have the receipt inside the book as it happens. Waldenbooks. Unfortunately the stores are now long gone but once it was one of my favorite bookstores for browsing. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in bookstores. So on Sept 24, 1976 I bought this book for $1.50 plus 10 cents tax. What attracts me at the moment is that it has a Dray Prescott story in it. The intro to "Wizard of Scorpio" says this:

The novels of Alan Burt Akers have become, in the opinion of Edgar Rice Burroughs fans, the best thing of the kind since the Master himself stopped writing. As this book goes to press, there have been eleven novels, all relating to Dray Prescot, formerly an 18th Century British seaman, on the world called Kregen that orbits the double-sun Antares, brightest of the constellation of Scorpio. Prescot has become a hero figure of the stature of John Carter and Tarl Cabot.

These novels run in cycles; the first five compose the Delian cycle and are distinguished by the key word Scorpio in each title. The second cycle, of six novels, is set apart by the key word Antares. A third cycle, the Krozair cycle, is about to appear with the twelfth book titled The Tides of Kregen.

Wizard of Scorpio is the first and only story ever written about Dray Prescot that is not of novel length. It was written specially for this 200th DAW book, and in the epic of Prescot's adventures it falls between the second and third cycle.

So I think I should wait a time to read this collection of stories.

I've nibbled on Chaim Potok's 'The Chosen' but after roughly 100 pages it just is not ringing my bells like it seems to do for everyone else. I read this long ago. I've set it aside and need to find something to capture my attention. There are many books whispering "choose me"

>52 RBeffa:

BOONE arrived yesterday from Chicago - unread! brand new! 7 bucks! perfect for this year's NF Challenge - thank you for reviews and discussion.

>53 m.belljackson: That sounds like a score Marianne!

Glad you are feeling better, Ron. I don't think I ever got into the Dray Prescot books. I don't remember seeing them around. Now the Burroughs originals--someone's estate left a complete collection of Burroughs in hardback to my small town library when I was in 5th grade and, although I didn't read many of the Tarzan books, I read all the rest: Perelandra, Mars, Venus...

>55 ronincats: Still not 100% Roni but so much better than I was. Having a wry neck from this virus for a couple days was a, well, it was a pain in the neck (insert groan) on top of the head cold.

I think I purposely ignored Dray Prescot after being so disappointed with Lin Carter's Burrough's imitation (we've had comments about Lin Carter on Swynn's thread). This first book is by no means great literature but it delivers a fun planetary romance and it doesn't crap out. There's even some social commentary woven in by book's end. I think you mean Burrough's Pellucidar (rather than Perelandra) which were some of my favorites by him.

I was tempted to start something different and I did: Absolutely on music : conversations by Seiji Ozawa and Haruki Murakami. I'm surprised I didn't read it right when it came out but my library had several copies available in the system so i went for it. I haven't read far so don't know if I'll go straight through or take breathers. Ozawa became director of the San Francisco Symphony when I was still in high school. He was here for too few years before Boston stole him away. He was very flashy and brought a lot of life to the symphony at a time when I was just becoming interested in classical music. I only saw him once or twice. It was only a coincidence that my interest in classical really faded about the time he left as other sorts of music were competing for my attention. I never followed his career but after my interest in classical music seriously rebounded about a dozen or so years ago i have acquired a number of his recordings. I suspect with this book I'll be digging into my collection to see if i have pieces he talks about.

That is always a welcome distraction with Murakami's books in general - I frequently go running off to youtube to hear what Murakami is talking about.

Chaim Potok is the January author in the LibraryThing American Author challenge

3. The Chosen by Chaim Potok, finished January 25, 2019, 2 1/2 - 3 stars



Memory is an odd thing. Some books I can remember vividly, and others scarcely at all. I suppose most folks are like that. It is rare for me to forget that I have read a book. Well, this was one of them. I started the book not remembering it but very quickly as each scene unfolded I remembered them. I started and stopped this book several times before deciding I would push on and finish the re-read yesterday and today.

It seems that most readers absolutely love this book. It just doesn't grab me that way. I can recognize it as a good book and I don't regret re-reading it. There are elements to this and the overall arc that just keep me at a distance.

When I read the summary of the first Asher Lev book by this author I also recognized that I had read that book before, and if my failing memory is right I read it a number of years before I read The Chosen in the early 80's.

DNF The Armored Saint (The Sacred Throne) by Myke Cole

This was a recent ebook promo giveaway by TOR books. I didn't get very far - dark fantasy isn't my thing. Deleted from the nook.

Here is another non-fiction book. I've got a small stack of new fiction releases from the library that I need to work on for the next few weeks. I also picked up the Star Trek Discovery season 1 DVD set that I'm going to watch with my daughter.

4. Absolutely on music : conversations with by Seiji Ozawa and Haruki Murakami, finished January 27, 2019, 3 stars



There were times in this non fiction book that I felt like I was reading a Murakami novel - this is because Murakami sounds a LOT like many of his characters in conversation. I think I expected a lot more from this book than what I got ... although I did get some interesting stuff. The book improves from the beginning which felt awkward, where I got a strange vibe, almost like Murakami was either fawning, or trying to impress Ozawa. Or maybe its just me. Murakami repeatedly tells the reader in the introduction how much he and Ozawa are alike. My internal voice says to me: How about show don't tell. I was somewhat unconvinced. What is true is that they both love music. I like and listen to a lot of classical music but many of the fine points under discussion were lost on me especially since I could not listen to the exact parts of specific performances they were discussing in detail - visits to my music collection and youtube helped with some of that, but they were discussing fine points in particular performances that most of us have no knowledge of and no way to compare. At those points I found it best to just read along and realize you are overhearing a detailed conversation by two friends that is out of your realm. Youtube will be your friend if you want to hear and see performances by Ozawa with his Saito Kinen Orchestra project and Mitsuko Uchida for example (pg 20), and other pieces discussed in the book. For those unfamiliar with Ozawa's style I think it would help the reader to get a sense of him early on in the book.

If you use Spotify, Murakami's website has some very specific links to some of the pieces of music discussed in the book. Otherwise youtube is probably your best friend

Read and listen and take away from this what you can. I got a sense that I never had before of how a conductor perceives music. The music under discussion in the book is primarily German music ... Beethoven, Brahms, and especially Mahler, and I much prefer French, Scandinavian (Grieg, Sibelius) and other classical music. That point alone made this a little less interesting to me, although they do have a discussion on the fourth movement of Symphonie fantastique by French romantic composer Berlioz. I perked up a bit for that. However, most of the music discussions become rather tedious and a little repetitive. As I said, I thought I would enjoy this much more than I did.

>56 RBeffa: Yes, you are so correct, Pellucidar rather than Perelandra! That's what I get for typing off the top of my head!

Good comments on Absolutely on Music, Ron. I enjoyed it, and was impressed with Murakami's "layman" knowledge of the music. I did what you suggest - I found the pieces discussed on Youtube, and played them while reading the discussion.

>61 jnwelch: I'm glad you like it also Joe. I do think Murakami was a bit disingenuous with his "layman's" knowledge of music. He clearly knows a lot about music, much more than any typical music fan.
---------

I've been wanting to read and re-read some Graham Greene. Here's one I've wanted to read and I picked up a copy from the library. I'll try and read another novel from the author this year.

5. The Tenth Man by Graham Greene, finished February 2, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars



The book consists of a short novel and two film treatments that Greene wrote that are surprisingly interesting and work as short stories. I found it impressive how in a handful of pages Greene could outline a story arc with enough details to grab a reader. Greene writes an introduction to this book discussing how this came about with the screen treatments and the short novel, The Tenth Man, that is the real meat of the book.

I really enjoyed the opening stories but when I began The Tenth Man I was almost immediately unsure if I was going to like this story. I thought this might be one of the rare Greene novels I didn't care much for. So, rather unexpectedly my opinion changed, and I was grabbed in a visceral way that is quite uncommon for me. The story is told in the first person and when I set the book down to go to bed I found I had taken on the feelings of the main character and was feeling this sense of loss and failure and longing in a way I am very not used to. It took me a bit to shake it off enough to go to sleep, late as it was. The haunting was still with me in the morning, as if there was some great betrayal or deception I had done. I went back to the book and finished it up.

There are some good descriptions on LT and elsewhere to let you know what the story is about, set near Paris during and after the second world war. I had no idea how it all would end ... it gets rather twisty, and that was good. Very close to a 4 star read.

I've started reading a recent Connie Willis book, one of the several books I picked out at the library like the Graham Greene novel above. The library apparently thought it wise to spend $40 for a signed edition of a slim 80 pg novella from Subterranean Press. I'm holding copy #1143 out of 1250 numbered copies. I'll talk about the book a bit more when I finish. For the moment I'm going to rant a bit.

The reviews here on LT are slim - on Goodreads they are many (138 at the moment plus comments. Goodreaders are much better at reviews I'd say, although there are apparently a huge number more participants there than on LT). Anyway, a quick review of reviews and comments will reveal that a fair number of librarians are pissed off and defensive. Connie Willis has apparently hit a nerve.

The librarians will tell you that they don't cull books, they carefully weed out books and they are very careful about it. Connie Willis must have some doubts if the cautionary fantasy tale that I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is tickling nerves.

Here's what I think ... I think some librarians could be doing a much better job. I have seen books purged from a couple local libraries that had no business at all of being purged. I see the purges as discards at the Friends sale or shelved at a local recycling center. Some years ago I began reading Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle at the library. It was a nice trade PB edition and I didn't finish it before it was due back - I don't think I had even read a third of it, or somewhere close to that. I didn't renew it but dropped it off with an intention to get it later when I had time. It is a rather hefty 600 pgs or so. What I ended up doing was pulling it off the shelf and reading a chapter or two on subsequent visits to the library. After perhaps a month of this the book wasn't there. I initially assumed that the book had been checked out - the most logical assumption. I checked the online catalog which at the time covered about 20 libraries in the area and there was no book in the system. I asked at the library desk what had happened as I could see when I looked around that the shelves had been thinned. The attendants couldn't answer my direct question but acknowledged that books had been removed from the shelves because of a space problem. When I wrote to the head librarian I got a response that basically said books get lost and damaged and they get taken off. When I countered that the book had been in excellent shape as i was reading it and that it was clear that quite a few books had been purged from the shelves (a later book in a series I was reading was also gone I had noticed) she gave me an admission that yes books were being heavily thinned but they made sure that another local library had a copy. Somehow I could picture a dozen librarians in local cities simultaneously deleting books because someone else had it. Well, they wanted more open space and they got it. Murakami is not exactly a minor author. The extended library system, now a smaller group of 15 libraries, still does not have a copy of this major work by the author, and here we are 7 or 8 years later.

I note that our local library doesn't have a single copy of Tarzan of the Apes (or any book at all by Edgar Rice Burroughs) but at least you can order a copy from a nearby library.

I am sure a lot of good librarians are out there doing the best they can.

end rant

For me an average read earns 2 1/2 - 3 stars. This one didn't cut it.

6. I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land by Connie Willis, finished February 3, 2019, 2 stars



This short novella originally appeared in an issue of Asimov's science fiction magazine. I think it should have stayed there. The story has a clever/cute idea that is really drawn out and becomes boring. This is basically a plea to save paper books.

>63 RBeffa: It is possible that the signed edition was donated to the library. I asked our acquisitions people once if they ever put a donated book into the library's collection rather than putting it in their sale, and they said it happens, rarely, but if someone catches a donation that is also on the library's wishlist, they will process and shelve it. Certain patrons also specifically donate books TO the library (not for the sales), and it's politic to keep those on the shelf, as you might imagine. I've been led to believe that circulation numbers dictate which books get purged for space reasons. So you should have kept that Murakami checked out!

>66 RBeffa: It is possible it was donated. I put in a suggestion a couple years ago for the Friends to selectively set aside some of the donations esp brand new books to add to the catalog and was more or less told that they used to do that but now they don't. When they did this in the past there would be a sticker placed in the front of the book with the name of the donor when known. I have just started to see some of those stickers again in recent months so I do think they are accepting specific donations to the library again. This was a 2018 limited release from a small press I use to follow closely. The book is now on sale at Amazon for $125 used. Maybe someone bought and donated it but the library does buy books from this small press. I should talk to one of the friends honchos about selecting some for the library. A couple years ago they had a guy listing some on ebay that were in demand but I don't know if they are still doing it.

ETA: I'm sure librarians are like just about everyone who doesn't like someone else telling them how to do their job. I also just noticed that we are now down to 12 linked libraries. It seems that the local junior colleges have pulled out of the system along with some nearby towns. bummer.

>66 RBeffa: Our library website (which serves the whole county) encourages patrons to suggest a book for addition to the library collection if your search reveals that they don't have it. I have had luck twice doing that, but my being on the Board of the library that does most of the ordering and all of the processing for the whole system, may have something to do with that.

>63 RBeffa: I hadn't paid much attention to this novella, but I do have a subscription to Asimov's which I read less regularly than a subscription would call for ... but if it's a story about books and libraries and preservation of print then I must look it up, even if your take was lukewarm. Thanks for the rec!

And because I have a librarian hat I'll wear it a moment re: weeding and libraries. Every library has different policies, but usually criteria for "deselection" include age, circulation, and condition, but local policies vary and every librarian makes exceptions based on their knowledge of the literature. My academic library "deselects" a lot of popular reading after just a few years because we don't expect most bestsellers to have long-term value for an academic collection. Sometimes we're wrong, and we end up buying a new copy of a novel we sent to the booksale just a few years before. We're currently performing a collection review, removing lots of volumes throughout the collection because we've run out of room for new things -- and of course, there are cases where someone asks for a title that hasn't been used in 15 years just after we cart it off. It's going to happen, and pretending that the deselection process is scientific and foolproof won't keep it from happening.

It's unfortunate and frustrating that the Murakami book isn't available anymore. One thing I can suggest is: if you're reshelving the books you read in the library, then don't. Many libraries -- by no means all, but every library I have worked in anyway -- will, as part of its reshelving process, record in its library catalog system that a book (or magazine) has been used. The system may call this data "browses" or "internal use", but every commercial system has a feature to keep track of the number of times a volume has been left out on the tables. We look both at checkouts and at browses, and make decisions based on both. So when you're finished, leave the book on a table, or on shelves designated for reshelving if your library provides them.

(Of course, all of this depends on your local library: maybe they don't browse books; maybe they don't consider that data when weeding; maybe they take so long to reshelve browsed books that it's a nuisance for you.)

>68 swynn: That is a good point about re-shelving Steve. I think our libraries must keep track of that because they have signs on the end of each row asking patrons not to reshelve but to place the book on the shelf rack at the end of the aisle for that purpose. I try to always do that, but I don't and I suspect almost no one does when they pull a book out, look at it and decide no, and put it back while you are in the stacks.

The Connie Willis story is in the last issue of 2017 - Nov/Dec. I let my subscription lapse (after about 35 years) around the end of 2016.

I can think of a number of times when books were deleted at precisely the wrong moment. Pillars of the Earth had been deleted right before the mini series came out as well as the new books. The library ended up buying new copies of course. Until about 5 or 6 years ago they had several large tables and racks in a corner of the main library where purged books were put for sale to the public for $1 each. You'd pick what you wanted and pay the library staff at checkout. They don't do that anymore - they have a small room now where the Friends coordinate all that and take care of them along with general donations. Up until that I could always see what was being purged in my weekly visits - of course I suspect it was only a sample. My biggest laugh came when they were deleting the Game of Thrones books just as the TV series came out. To be fair, they were well used hardbacks but their timing was incredible.

>67 laytonwoman3rd: Our library website does not have a suggestion method. I wonder if the search data for books not found might be used.

I'm continuing my reading of DAW books and I hope to read (at least) one a month throughout the year. I saw an exuberant rec on Roni's thread for this book as I was wondering what DAW to choose next, and since I had this readily at hand, this is it. This is DAW book #444 which I just started: Wave Without A Shore by C. J. Cherryh. I love these older books in the 170-190 page lengths.

My daughter and I watched the dvd of Ready Player One last night and we both liked it. I was hesitant to read the book which I picked up recently but I think the movie has inspired me to tackle it before too long.

I watched a little bit of the new Star Trek Discovery (first season on DVD checked out from the library). I liked it less and less as the episodes progressed so I stopped.

>70 RBeffa: I haven't read that Cherryh, but loved her Chanur series, and have enjoyed a few other random titles-- she has quite an oeuvre! Following the current DAW plan, I could get to her debut novel as early as this fall, and am looking forward to it. Also looking forward to your thoughts on Wave Without a Shore.

Too bad about Star Trek: Discovery -- I mean to get around to it eventually, so I'm disappointed to hear you found it disappointing.

>70 RBeffa: I read that Cherryh WAY before my LT days, but still having it in my library, so I must have liked it. Let me strongly recommend to you, however, DAW #464, and then, quickly, DAW 609, DAW 658 and DAW 695 if you have not read them. Because the last three are all one book, broken up because it exceeded the then expected length of paperbacks. These are what I reread regularly, my favorite Cherryhs; have you read them?

ETA actually, I should probably consider picking up Kindle versions, as my DAWs are getting brittle.

>71 swynn: Steve, that first DAW Cherryh is Brothers of the Earth, the one I bought from the SFBC in 1976. I liked it then but have no memory of the story.

>72 ronincats: and >71 swynn: Roni, I did read the Chanur books, the first 3 or 4 back when they were newish in the 80's and liked them quite a bit - I briefly owned but never read the final one. When I started creating my LT catalog in 2009 (my start date is 2/27/09) I think I entered them but LT caused me to have a great surge in buying more books reading all the discussion and recs and I said to myself - I'm never going to reread these books, or most anything - I have so many new ones - and so they were purged. I have some regrets about my own failure as a home librarian with some of my purges and that is one of them. They were my favorite Cherryhs as well, by quite a bit. I am going to be on the watch to pick up nice copies if/when I find them. Still, I am moving books out the door as I read them now, holding on to only 1 or 2 out of ten I'd guess.

>68 swynn: I did not know that about libraries noting a book was taken off the shelf, and counting that as a factor in whether to keep it around or not. I always thought that "Please do not reshelve books" notice was just because people tend to put books back in the wrong place. My mom volunteers at her public library and all she does is "read shelves" looking for books that aren't where they belong. From now on I will pay more attention to that request (I've always put mine back before, because of course I'm going to put them where they belong!) Yesterday when browsing I found one rather small book hidden behind the row where it belonged, hung opened over the slim rail between two stacks. I wondered if someone had been reading it, and left it that way, open to their last page, so they could come back to it next time they were in, hoping no one would find it and either want to check it out, or just close it and return it to the shelf.

>74 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, on the rare occasions when I see books stuffed behind other books I wonder if someone has purposely hidden it there. Not likely but I still wonder.

I chatted with one of the honchos with our Friends last night and among other things I asked him if they screen out donations and suggest the library put them into circulation. (He does a lot of the initial intake at one branch). He said yes, on occasion, if it is a new book in excellent condition. However it is almost entirely for non-fiction material. He had just done it for a new book in high demand. There are asst librarians in charge of various portions of the collection and trying to track down who might be interested in various books is apparently a lot of trouble. He's happier putting the new fiction for sale at the Friends shop or sales. He says the library copies that are discarded to them are very hard to sell. Most are not purchased. He finds it all frustrating I think with what the library purchases (do we really need so many copies of every book James Patterson puts his name on?). He's been involved with the friends for about 30 years so he has probably seen everything.

They have been getting a lot of donations and the space they have is being reduced somewhat because of library renovations. They have put a sign up and info in the friends newsletter asking that certain types of books not be donated.

>75 RBeffa:

Which type are the library's unwanted books?

>76 m.belljackson: No textbooks over 5 years - they do a huge amount of textbooks that are current. No magazines over a year old (This actually makes me sad as I have been enjoying older issues of literary mags such as Granta, sci fi mags, Nat Geos, history, art etc) No encyclopedia sets (a lot of folks have been bringing in boxes of them and they rarely sell). No more VCR tapes. No torn or moldy books - you might be surprised by some of the stuff people haul in from their garage or something that has been treated unkindly by age and weather. No old travel books. There's more but you get the idea I hope. They are trying to limit the easy stuff because their selling, storage and sorting space is starting to be seriously reduced for a while when the renovation and repairs begin. Old fiction is still encouraged as long as it isn't falling apart.

They have kind of a scary amount of material to go through.

---------------------------

This is DAW book #444

7. Wave Without A Shore by C. J. Cherryh, finished February 8, 2019, 2 1/2 - 3 stars



I read a number of Cherryh's books early in my life, the first being Brothers of Earth a science fiction book club selection in 1976 which I still have. Since I was long overdue to read her again, this turned out to be an interesting if pretty unusual choice to see if I should put her back on my "read more" list. I can't really give this a review. Social science fiction is rarely a favorite of mine. or maaaybe this is Poly Sci fiction?

One of the things that struck me was that something I thought terribly inventive in China Miéville's "The City & the City" where two overlapping cultures and cities had their citizens "not seeing" each other, appears here in a different form but still essentially the same idea, 28 years before. (1981 vs 2009). In any event I think I'd need to be fresh out of a college philosophy class to fully appreciate and try and describe what is going on here. The characters are really annoying to me and a few times I had to scratch my head and wonder what the point of this was as students wrestle to be number one ... or two ... or three. A struggle for who has the strongest will. But, there is a payoff in the latter part of the book as the focus narrows and we see that the world is not what the characters see. I suppose that may be the point of this book. What is real? What we see?

I can only give this an OK rating. Elements of the story made me feel like huge chunks were missing. A highly intelligent rural boy is selected to the University and in a blink he is a Master and world class sculptor? Huh? Early in the story the sculptor's girlfriend Keye is discussed as if she is a male (and no it didn't turn out to be genderbending) making me wonder was the wrong name used for the person under discussion or what?

So this is a shorter length novel from early in Cherryh's career that imo needed a bit more fill and polish. But some peeps love this. If you are into philosophy you might also.

I might raise my rating a little after I think about this some more. The reviews on Amazon are overwhelmingly positive and discuss the book in some detail.

"library copies that are discarded to them are very hard to sell. Most are not purchased. " I don't like to purchase books in mylar covers myself. And for a while, the inventory system our libraries used was a raised plastic magnetic tag on the back. When they removed books from circulation and put them in their sales, they would cut that tag out, leaving a gaping hole with sharp edges in the mylar cover. Not nice at all. Now the inventory label in just pasted on, and they black-marker it when it goes to the sale.

Hi Ron!

I've added Boone: A Biography to my wish list. I really appreciate all the detailed discussions about it.

I'm the Treasurer of our Friends of the Library here in central NC. We have a book sort team who follows many of the same rules as your Friends. We get approximately 18,000 sellable books every 6 months. We have a nice room at the Library to store them, but it gets very full just before a sale and we frequently have to stop accepting large donations (but get them after the sale). We don't accept mass market paperbacks any more. We also don't accept VHS tapes, and I think we're down to 3 years on textbooks, health books (with a few exceptions), and even some cookbooks. We had a special sale recently from a donation of 1,000 foreign language books by the family of a retired college professor.

We send especially valuable books off to a rare books dealer who sells them for us. He just sold a leather first edition of The Silmarillion. Sold it for $110, we got $73.23. Certainly better than $5 that the book sort team would have up-priced it to from our normal hardcover $3. We don't have a members preview sale - a lot of us would like one - and our next sale is March 28-30. I always personally buy way too many books - I'm there all three days all the time and when not needed can wander around, looking, straightening up, and buying.

>79 karenmarie: Hi Karen- Your rules for donations sound pretty similar to ours. Until recently the VHS sales for children went very well. They weren't a moneymaker but the disney titles were quite popular for the younger kids. I'm surprised that you don't take mm paperbacks. We charge $1 for new titles and 50c for all the rest. They are steady sellers. The problem is we are getting fewer and fewer of them as well as the trades. Stopping those would be a dis-service to our community I think esp for people looking for older titles. We only keep the ones in good condition. Mystery, scifi/fantasy and romance do a heavy business in the paperbacks. We also do a brisk business in CD's and dvd's as well as vinyl lps. They are priced very low (except for premium items) and they make a lot of people happy. I need to get more involved with the friends - I've only been a minor help now and then.

We put some of the well used, overstock and stale/slow moving items in a spot near the checkout where you can take anything for 25cents or fill a bag for $2. It gives things a last chance before we get rid of them. It doesn't make much money but it saves hauling them away and some people love it. Another one of those good for the community things.

The 2 hour members preview sales are very popular. A lot of the money comes in for those 2 hours.

eta: I hope you like Boone!

I've revised my original comments I posted on Feb 12th to make this a little more of a review. I also dropped the rating to 3 stars as I reflected on it .... I have a certain sentimental fondness for the overall story but there are elements of the actual storytelling that detract

Michel Legrand died on January 26. His haunting soundtrack to the film "Summer of '42" is one that lingers in memory, as does the film and this book. Up above in post#2 I listed this as a book I wanted to read in 2019 and as one of my favorite books of 1971 in post#3. It seemed best to tackle it now. When I first read this I was a teenager, and 47 years later I am not. And so I opened the pages of my paperback, a first printing of a wildly successful film and novel from September 1971

8. Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher, finished February 12, 2019, 3 stars



This book was written after the screenplay for the film had been sold but before the film was released. It tells a fuller story than the film, which is an autobiographical memoir of the author of a moment in his life. The tagline for the book and film is that "In everyone's life there is a Summer of '42." Is there? I don't know. I suppose most of us experience an event we can identify as a loss of innocence. But I don't think most of us have a summer of '42 like this one.

I think this is my third read of the novel, but the first two times were in the early 70's. That's a long time ago. I still love the book, but part of that is nostalgia. Herman Raucher wrote this as a tribute to his friend Oscar, "Oscy", who died as a medic in Korea on the author's birthday in 1952. He has said that he never celebrated his birthday again. The film and book are irrevocably intertwined in my mind. I can't read the story without picturing the film in my mind. The story is about 3 boys in the Summer of '42 on an Atlantic coast island. Hermie Oscar and Benjie. The narrator of the story is Hermie and we are inside his head through the entire story. Oscy is the other main character and Benjie, the youngest of the group is part of things but mostly sidelined. And of course it is about Hermie and Dorothy. Dorothy is a young woman who Hermie develops an enormous overwhelming crush on. Hermie is about 15 and we don't know Dorothy's age but she is perhaps 20 or a bit older. Hermie never saw Dorothy again after the events in the book.

Reading this now is a little awkward because Hermie is hugely awkward. He's a full generation plus younger then me and of a different simpler time. But not simpler in emotions. A modern reader may be a bit bothered by the things that go on in Hermie's head, but there are quite a few funny moments.

Robert Mulligan directed the film. He was perhaps most famous for making the film "To Kill a Mockingbird". He is also the narrator of the film, a voice that remained in my mind as I read the novel.

I have not seen the movie in a great many years. The Turner classics channel TCM says they will show it March 23rd at 8PM. I'll try to remember ...

Does this deserve 4 stars? I dunno. Probably not now. Let's go with three.

I also find it surprising that mass-market paperbacks don't move at a Friends' sale. I'm sure the decision is based on experience, funny how different experiences can be.

>81 RBeffa: Both the book and the film are new to me. I'll have to check out the film.

>82 swynn: To be honest Steve at least one of my stars is for the nostalgia aspect of the book. It comes from a different time capturing an era long before I was born. Like watching the Waltons you can believe it was like that back then even if it is a bit corny or something. The writing is a bit clunky, clunkier than I remembered, but by the end of the book I had been all sucked in to it despite the faults. I think I always liked the movie better, but I also liked the added information in the book.

>81 RBeffa: I also remember that film extremely well. I saw it with some friends when I was in college; it was part of a double feature (remember THOSE?) with Klute, which starred Jane Fonda, Roy Scheider and Donald Sutherland. We went to see Summer of '42 because it was supposed to be so great, not knowing a thing about Klute, but ended up thinking the latter a much superior movie. I'm afraid we didn't believe Dorothy would ever under any circumstances ...well, y'know. I mean....HERMIE, for cryin' out loud. Not exactly who any of us would have turned to to assuage our grief. We were very discerning young women of course, which might explain why a bunch of us were going to the movies together, instead of with dates.

>84 laytonwoman3rd: As I recall I saw it at a double feature as well. Either Klute or MASH. I remember not liking Klute tho. The end of Summer of '42 is his true story so what can you say ... even if it is improbable. Hermie had such a monstrous crush on Dorothy. I don't think it is exactly explainable altho Dorothy seemed to be fond of Hermie. According to an author interview online Dorothy wrote to Hermie after the movie/film came out - she was living in Canton, OH but gave no return address and he never had further contact. Makes for a deeper mystery.

It isn't easy to get back inside a teenaged head.

eta: Sheesh, everything is on youtube or somewhere. Here's the end of '42 - post Dorothy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB41ENZuoRk

I like the words that end the film better than the words that end the book.

"The end of Summer of '42 is his true story " Sure...no guy would make UP something like that. Sorry, Ron...I do not mean to tromp on your fond memories. It might be the difference between the impressions (or fantasies) of a teenaged boy and those of a teenaged girl... But I do think we all have our own "summer of '42" or something equivalent. There are memories so dear to me that I have never shared them with anyone...nor will I. And I'm very careful about taking them out to examine them at this stage of my life. They might be entirely too fragile to survive it.

>86 laytonwoman3rd: The more that I have thought about "in everyone's life" since I wrote the above, the more I think you are right.

ETA: I've decided to drop my rating down a tad since I think I was giving the nostalgia factor too much credit. Still, I did enjoy the book a lot and going through scenes I had forgotten such as when Hermie carries Dorothy's shopping home and has coffee in the kitchen with her and fails miserably at trying to act grown up and sophisticated are very funny and had me laughing.

Hi Ron!

>80 RBeffa: It’s interesting how different Friends groups manage their sales.

I’m not on the book sort team, and they’re very touchy about ‘outsiders’ poking their noses in. The MM paperbacks used to take up a lot of space and the profit was insignificant compared to other sections – the book sort team is driven by generating revenue, not providing a community service. What has happened is that many people now donate the MM paperbacks directly to the library, and they sell them for $.25 each in a rolling rack right near the doors. For the donations we still get, we let the library look through them and take what they want for the rolling rack, then we let a secondhand dealer take what he wants for $.25 each then the rest go to the thrift shop.

We have a 3-day sale twice a year. First day is full price, second day is ½ price, third day is $5/bag day. The remainders get divvyed up equally by category and sent to the 3 PTA thrift shops and the one Habitat store.

Interesting discussion of The Summer of ‘42. I’ve never seen the movie or read the book.

>88 karenmarie: My casual observation of Friends groups at different libraries is that each has methods of their own.

-------------------
9. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, finished February 14, 2019, 4+ stars



Although I read this two years ago I wanted a comfort read to cheer me up from these days of dreary weather. I adored reading this the last time and I loved it yet again.

This is what I wrote two years ago: "I suppose I was in the mood for this book, but it was a sheer delight and it immediately became a favorite book. My copy has an introduction and afterword, as well as a brief author bio written by Jane Yolen which I really appreciated. We only have a small cast of central characters here, a mole, a water rat, a badger and a toad, 'Mr. Toad'. I adore Mole and Ratty. I found myself loving every one of them, maybe even Mr. Toad. This is a children's book for grown-ups as well as mid aged kids. When I got to chapter 7, titled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" my mouth dropped open. My copy only has a few illustrations in it - lovely black and white drawings, and the artist is not credited, although I think I deciphered the name Zimic. Then I decided that artist Tricia Zimic created the delightful cover illustration as well as the interior pen and ink drawings.

I am much more partial to the early half of the book, the rather nostalgic, pastoral adventures of Mole, Rat and Badger as well as the Piper piece in the middle. As Jane Yolen notes, this is really three sorts of stories in one book."

I'll add a bit more.

The book is made up of 12 loosely connected stories about some animals who live along the banks of the Thames. It was published in 1908 but is rather timeless. This is really a story about friendship, especially that of Mole and Ratty. The Toad stories are surprisingly my least favorites, at least the great big adventure one anyway, despite them being the most famous. I'll confess to loving "Mr Toad's wild ride" on trips to Disneyland as a teen and with my own kids later in life. But it is the quieter stories such as "Wayfarer's All" and "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" which come after we have gotten to know the characters pretty well, that pack the punch of the book for me. I skipped over two of the Toad stories on this re-read.

This book is just a treasure.

I started a mystery book I have wanted to read, but then paused. I've been wondering what else to read next, preferred a non-fiction off my shelf, so I have decided on a book that will fit into the non-fiction challenge for Feb - I suspect it may take me the rest of the month to read it too. The book is A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester. The subtitle is ' America and the great California Earthquake of 1906'. I picked this book up used abut 7 years ago and I should have read it sooner. I think the reason is that although I love the topics that Simon Winchester chooses, I seem to have trouble finishing his books. He meanders off the subject at times and sometimes that is fine, sometimes not. This book looks like it meanders, but also seems to pay a good amount of attention to the San Andreas fault. I've lived on or adjacent to the San Andreas fault for nearly my entire life. I was born in San Francisco as were my parents and grandparents on both sides, the great grandparents were in SF prior to the quake of 1906, and some of the generations before were in California right on top of the fault. So we are connected back to the 1840's anyway. I haven't read this one at all and plan to start it today.

>90 RBeffa: I am really enjoying this book. Winchester meanders but this time I appreciate it. One needs to like geology to really appreciate this book, and it helps that he is giving me history that is relevant to where I live. He talks at length for example about Mt Diablo which towers over our area. Learning some of the geological history of how our landscape was created builds on and expands things I only had light knowledge of and satisfies me. I'm almost halfway and I suppose the book could fail me going forward, but I doubt it. This will certainly be one of my favorite books of the year. I can't wait to shove it on to my wife and kids when I am done.

I'm still reading Winchester's "A Crack in the World". I've had a library hold on this next book for longer than I can remember. It came into the library for me a couple days ago and I got right to it.

10. The travelling cat chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, finished February 26, 2019, 3 - 3 1/2 stars



This recently published Japanese novel has gotten high praise so I had reasonably high expectations. I enjoyed the story but it didn't knock me out. It is a sweet sentimental tale.

I didn't know this until afterwords, but this is classified as a Japanese light novel. I didn't know what that meant, so wikipedia tells me: A light novel is a style of Japanese novel primarily targeting high school and middle school students (young adult demographic). So, that was certainly my impression while reading this, that the target reader was a young teen. Light novels can include manga and heavily illustrated novels, but this one is all text, with only a small attractive illustration on the top of each chapter page.

A message says: LibraryThing has handed out another round of badges and medals, and you got some new ones:

medal Tenner for members who've been on the site for ten years.

Ah, today is my thingawhatever, ten years from 2/27/09. I've enjoyed the ride and the read ever since.

Happy Thingaversary, Ron!!

Happy Thingaversary!

Happy Thingaversary...late though it is. Now what did you buy?

>94 ronincats: >95 drneutron: >96 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks.

I'm taking a raincheck for now on more books. I've had a bad flu-like virus for a week that seems to have morphed into bronchitis. So I'm a misery and not reading. This extra wet winter we are having seems to not suit me.

>97 RBeffa: Oh, that's rotten, Ron. I hope you feel better soon. Bronchitis is not fun.

It is kind of cheaty to count this as a book but since I'm still sick and barely reading I gave myself a pass.

11. A Castle Full of Cats by Ruth Sanderson, finished March 5, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars (for a children's picture book)



I picked this up 2 years ago after Linda (laytonwoman3rd) gave this children's picture book high praise. As a cat lover I found this very charming and my big regret is that it is too short. This is the sort of book to read to a young child (over and over ... ) and enjoy together.

I actually started this a full month ago but set it aside for no fault of the book. Got back to it. I'm still pretty sick and reading is at a sluggish pace.

12. The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker, finished March 7, 2019, 3 1/2 stars



This is the 4th book in the Bruno Chief of Police series and the 4th one I have read. I'd say this is on par with the others. All the elements I've enjoyed in the prior books are here again with new things going on, and we get a little history lesson on the French in the process, as usual. Walker gives us a familiar cast of characters with some new ones. I'll be spoilery and say that an old favorite dies at the end of the book which did not make me happy.

This novel is about 100 pages longer than the other Bruno books.

I DO want to keep reading this series! I'm eager to see how things develop in the next entry in the series. There were a number of overlapping plots in this story with an important archaeology discovery involving Neanderthals and early man, attacks by greens on local fois gras farms and facilities, a new magistrate who is quite at odds with Bruno and the town and a big meeting between French and Spanish ministers about to take place. As always events of the past echo forward in time. Oh, one can learn new things to cook as well.

Sorry to hear you are still feeling lousy, Ron. Get well soon!

Get well soon Ron.

>98 laytonwoman3rd: >101 ronincats: >102 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the good wishes Linda, Roni and Paul. Finally after two weeks of terrible I feel like I am getting better yesterday and today. This may be the absolutely worst flu-like virus I have ever had. Certainly on my 65 year old bones it is. And I even got the flu vaccine this year. sigh. I feel like it will take me a bit of time to put this bug down and get my energy back.

This is a short story available as an ebook. It follows "The Crowded Grave", the 4th book in the series I finished a few days ago, and precedes "The Resistence Man" the 5th novel.

13. Bruno and the Carol Singers AKA "Bruno and le Père Noel: A Christmas Story" by Martin Walker, finished March 14, 2019, 2 1/2 stars



This is a short little tale to keep series fans happy in between books. I think a fourth one of these in between stories is just being published and a new novel in the series is coming soon. I expect to read some or all of them in the supposed proper place in the series order. I can tell after 4 novels that I do not want to skip around with this series of books - there is a definite progression that I don't want to spoil. Bruno has played Father Christmas for the children of the village of St. Denis in a prior story and he does it again. The mystery element in this story is pretty slight, and this reader wondered a little about who was really the "bad guy", but Bruno as usual works to make things mostly right.

I've yet to read a dud story here, but this one is pretty slight and syrupy sweet for those already familiar with the series. The fate of a character or two was left open at the end of the 4th book but I didn't note any resolution of prior events, especially since one who looked to be gone for quite some time appears right off as well as another who may not have returned. However the prior book ended around the beginning of Spring and here we are all the way to Christmas so all kinds of things could have happened or been resolved. There is however a terrible incongruity in the story which makes this story impossible to set in the timeline. I picked this story up a couple years ago so I do hope the error was fixed at some point. I did note that a reader on Amazon had noted the big continuity error in 2013. I knocked a half star off for the glaring error.

A DAW book for March. This is DAW book #675

14. The 1986 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A Wolhein and Arthur Saha, finished March 14, 2019, 3 - 3 1/2 stars



The World's Best for 1986 contains a mix of 10 short stories, novelettes and novellas. Included is:

•vii • Introduction • essay by Donald A. Wollheim
•1 • Earthgate • (1985) • novelette by J. Brian Clarke
•41 • On the Dream Channel Panel • (1985) • shortstory by Ian Watson
•56 • The Gods of Mars • (1985) • novelette by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann and Michael Swanwick
•77 • The Jaguar Hunter • (1985) • novelette by Lucius Shepard
•101 • Sailing to Byzantium • (1985) • novella by Robert Silverberg
•159 • Webrider • (1985) • shortstory by Jayge Carr
•173 • With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole • (1985) • shortstory by Harlan Ellison
•190 • The Curse of Kings • (1985) • novella by Connie Willis
•233 • Fermi and Frost • (1985) • shortstory by Frederik Pohl
•248 • Pots • (1985) • novelette by C. J. Cherryh

A few comments. If you are going to pick only ten stories out of a year I expect each one to be very good to excellent. That didn't happen as there are a couple of weak stories in here, especially in comparison to the better ones. In his concise introduction and overview, editor Wolheim notes that the genre continues to have a strong influx of female readers and authors. However most of them are focused on fantasy. This book includes 3 female authors of the ten total.

The collection has a strong start with "Earthgate", a story about inter-species relationships and the creation of a stargate on Earth. I think this was the first story I have read by this British author who was active primarily in the 80's-early 90's.

The absolute strongest story in the book is Lucius Shepard's "The Jaguar Hunter." I know the editors included it since it is such a powerful story by a then new author on a meteoric rise. But it isn't science fiction and the editors knew it. I'm glad it is here though. Shepard had written several of my favorite stories in the mid 80's and now this is one more of them. A great piece of fiction set in Central America with magical realism elements.

Harlan Ellison's "With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole" is another very good piece. An angry and very bitter man has been exiled to an arctic like island on another world called Penitence Island. We don't know what he has done nor really why he is so angry and bitter. At first he thinks the solitude may help him put his rage issues behind him as he tries to communicate with and understand a native species, the fuxes. Then appears one "Virgil Oddum".

C.J. Cherryh's "Pots" was also rather intriguing as archaeologists in the far distant future who seem to be seeking their origin study the remains of what one soon realizes is probably the Earth.

>104 RBeffa: I need to get back to Bruno...I've only read the first two in the series, but I enjoyed them.

>106 laytonwoman3rd: Bruno has really turned into a comfort read for me. Every book I learn a bit more about French history and culture and food as well as the EU. You may recall that when I read the first one the summer before last I was a bit overwhelmed with the frenchness of it all, but now I dive in joyfully. I know some readers consider Bruno a Mary Sue, saying he's "too perfect" esp with his love life, but the stories are certainly not all buttercream and eclairs and the end of the last one threatens to break one's heart. I'd happily recommend this series to anyone so for you I will encourage you to return. I would really like to read a couple more this year.

I read through the Dr Siri mysteries and they were quite pleasing in a different way, but then I was done with them. Several more have since come out after I read the first ten of them but I felt I was done with the series at that point and had no need to return. I'm very glad to have Bruno for now.

Took me a month to get through this - not the fault of the book. A very solid 4 star book that I'm giving an extra half star because of how much I learned and the personal enjoyment it gave me.

15. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester, finished March 17, 2019, 4 1/2 stars



I suppose I've had a latent interest in geology most of my adult life. I never did much about it though. On vacations my wife and I would be sure to check out interesting serpentine or chert formations we might stumble upon. We had a favorite rock shop in far northern California that we loved to drop in on when we camped up north. My wife spent a summer working at the grand canyon while in college whereas I treked all around Lassen Volcanic national Park. (She too). Then of course there is Yosemite. And the earthquake faults all around us. But still, I didn't really actively pursue my interest as people often do who are really into something. I've always seemed to have too many interests!

So this book ... it will be one of the most enjoyable reads of the year for me. It is a long book. Readers who expected to read all about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 might be sorely disappointed. As I noted on one of the non-fiction threads when I started this, a large part of the book is only nominally about the 1906 earthquake. What this seems to really be about is the birth of modern geology in the late 60's and early 70's as well as a lot more, a sort of condensed overview of aspects and historical figures of the "old" geology and how the geologic world got shaken to a new way of thinking by plate tectonics. I was surprised and pleased to find about a 7 page sequence and a photo on Eldridge Moores. When I was in college at UC Davis in the early 70's I took a geology course on what was then a very new theory, plate tectonics, and it was given by James Valentine and Eldridge Moores. It turned out to be one of the best classes I ever took. I could hardly wait for each lecture. Both men were excellent teachers and it was exciting. Moores has since become a giant in the field. He just died a few months ago and I was saddened when I read that. https://geology.ucdavis.edu/people/inmemoriam/moores

As I noted up above in >90 RBeffa: and >91 RBeffa:, Winchester meanders on subjects as a writer. That can be frustrating if one wants to zero in on a subject. In this case the meandering worked extremely well for me. I recognize that it might not work for others. This book as I said is a history of geology told in an unconventional way, as well as a travelogue by the Author across America and the geology of the country, particularly the West, and it does cover the San Francisco earthquake to reward the patient reader. Oddly for me that became less important as I read and learned about the geologic world immediately around me. The author spends a lot of time on the geology of the area where I live. Three of my grandparents were born in San Francisco in just a very few years after the quake. Three of my four sets of great grandparents lived in San Francisco before the quake and the 4th was nearby. And yet there were never any stories passed down in the family about the quake. That seems a little odd to me now. History gets lost. In a small way this gave me some.

There is a large list of references at the end for further reading.

>108 RBeffa: Okay, you've moved this one onto my wishlist, Ron!

>109 ronincats: Some people seem to absolutely hate Winchester's style. He does get a little carried away. And the book is something other than what the title might lead the reader to expect. I get all that. But this is a great book and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

16. Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, finished March 26, 2019, 3+ stars



This short novel/novella is hot off the press, so to speak, dripping digital ink. Reynolds is an author I have generally liked before, esp with stories done in novella length. I hadn't read him for a while so I jumped right on this new release when the story blurb caught my interest and early reviews were positive.

So ... this is a time travel story and Reynolds manages to come up with a pretty good approach, once one (one being me the reader) figures out what is going on. There's an attempt to show how this time travel idea works. It didn't help me and actually lessened my interest. The author lets the reader stagger into the story, purposefully leaving out details and tossing in stray bits for the sole purpose of keeping the reader off balance. Some people like that ... me not so much. I'm wondering who are these people and why are they killing each other and what's with the Russian twisty on things? If this technique had served a real purpose it might have been cool, but instead it just looked like the author was trying to be clever. I was less enamored then some who seem to like this a lot (and there are some who don't) but as I read I did get caught up in the story. There's a good story buried in the mud here. It just didn't come easy and maybe my expectations were a little too high. Short synopsis, in the year 2080 mankind and the world in general is on the verge of extinction. Scientists have been working for a decade to send a mind, a consciousness, back into the past with a critical mission that just might be able to save some life on earth (how much I had severe doubts because the world is a hugely connected system and fixing one important piece ignores the broken mess everywhere else.)

The shorter length means the world building is less than what I would like and character depth and differentiation was really minimal. It also means it can be read by a determined reader in one long evening without breaking a sweat. I split it over two days. I'm not sure this would have been a better story in a longer length, because the story is very slow going in the beginning and there is clearly a story arc by the end, but I was left a little unsatisfied. Still an interesting read even though I think some of the author's earlier works are a heck of a lot better. The end is sad. So this gets an OK from me.

I've started on another DAW science fiction anthology. This one is DAW #507 from November 1982. It is edited by Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov (I'm thinking primarily Greenberg from comments included) It is #8 in a series of retroactive "Year's Best" collections covering a time when Year's Best science fiction anthologies didn't exist. This one covers the year 1946. I've read the first 5 stories over a couple days morning coffee and the standout story so far is the second published story by Arthur C Clarke called "Rescue Party". It has been anthologized a number of times but I do not recall ever having read it.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I had a surprising good read that I finished up. Once this got going I could scarcely put it down. I am giving this a tentative 4 stars which from me is a pretty high rating.

17. Munich by Robert Harris, finished March 28, 2019, 4 stars



I was a little unsure of the book at the start, but it soon hooked me. I came away from this with a much better picture of Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement. I think history treated him rather unfairly and this behind the scenes fictional novel gave me a very good picture of what it might have been like to be in his place facing Hitler and the threat of war in 1938.

The story covers the last 4 days of September 1938. We have the big picture story that sets the framework - Britain was almost completely unprepared for war in Sept 1938 and did not want to go to war over the Sudetenland. Hitler seems to have wanted war right then (and apparently stated at some point that he should have gone to war in September 1938) and probably would have been nearly unstoppable at that point in time. England had perhaps 20, TWENTY, Spitfires capable of flying at high altitudes to fight bombers. The estimates were that 600,000 civilians would have been killed in London within 2 months. Behind the scenes of the big story we have the smaller story of two former classmates from Oxford, one British, one German and a fictionalized story of some behind the scenes stuff based apparently on true things.

This turned out to be a very satisfying read for me, and the author has yet again not disappointed me with one of his books.

>112 RBeffa: While doing a little more research on the Munich Agreement and Neville Chamberlain I came across this review of the book I just read. It gives a good synopsis. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/17/munich-by-robert-harris-review-spy...

Ron--Delurking to let you know I'm keeping up here. From old favorites to Sci-Fi and geology and hot off the press! Hope you have a great week.

>112 RBeffa: Good review, Ron, I haven't read Munich yet, but it is on the list.
I have read some books by Robert Harris, and also enjoyed them all.

>114 Berly: Thanks for dropping by Kim. I'm pretty much in lurk mode everywhere at the moment. Spending more time with Spring cleaning, pulling weeds and tending the garden than reading at the moment. Wildflowers are spectacular this year with all our rain.

>115 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita - I do hope you enjoy Munich once you get to it. Harris tells the reader in an afterword that he has had this on his mind for 30 years. He helped put together a BBC documentary in 1988 (the 50th anniv of the event) called 'God Bless You Mr Chamberlain'. The short history I learned/heard years ago was that Chamberlain was such a pacifist that he would do anything to avoid war and gave in to Hitler. However at the time of the agreement Chamberlain was feted by the British and had an almost unbelievable amount of support from the German people at large for avoiding another War. The World War wouldn't really start for almost another year when Hitler invaded Poland in Sept 1939. Chamberlain was not an idiot - he knew war was coming and he was also aware of what it would do. I have not investigated why history turned on him so fiercely, although apparently Churchill disliked him pretty intensely. Chamberlain bought the British and others time to prepare for fighting Hitler - the odds are if Hitler had actually started in Sept 1938 things would have been very very bad.

---------------

First quarter summary of favorites. Looking at my 2019 reading so far I am a little underwhelmed. Not so many books, but a few very good ones. My goal for the year is about 60 books and I'm on track with 17.

Fiction:
1. Munich by Robert Harris
2. The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker
3. The Tenth Man by Graham Greene

Non-Fiction
1. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester
2. Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan

Favorite anthologies:

1. The 1986 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A Wolheim and Arthur Saha

Fiction re-reads:

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Best fun read:

1. Transit To Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

A DAW book for April, this is #507

18. Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 8 (1946) by various authors, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, finished April 4, 2019, 3 1/2 stars



A large collection published in late 1982 in which the editors have retroactively chosen what they think were the best stories from 1946. They note that these were the first stories written in the atomic age, following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomics in one way or another is a recurrent element in several stories. One certainly knows these stories are now more than 70 years old. The editors both put notes before each story. There are some almost duds in the collection which shouldn't happen in a Year's Best, but almost always seems to happen. There are however a number of very good stories as well as a couple classics. Notable to me was Arthur C Clarke's first story ever sold (and second published story) "Rescue Party", as well as a true classic of the genre, the novella "Vintage Season" by Lawrence O'Donnell, which was a pseudonym for husband/wife writing team Henry Kuttner and Catherine Moore. Those who may not have read the story might remember the early 90's film adaptation starring Jeff Daniels titled Grand Tour or a Disaster in Time. I think it was originally an HBO or maybe Showtime film that was first out with one title and then got a broader release with the other title. It is a story about tourists from the future who travel back in time to witness great disasters and other significant events in history. The film was an adaptation of this excellent story. I've read this before and enjoyed it just as much on re-reading. Also among the best is "The Million Year Picnic" by Ray Bradbury which was one of the first, if not the first, stories that became part of the Martian Chronicles. Clarke manages to place 3 stories in the collection which is a reflection of this being his breakout year.

There's also an unusual collaboration in the novella "Lorelei of the Red Mist". This is a story with no one named Lorelei which I find pretty funny.There IS someone named Conan, but not the Conan one would think. Leigh Brackett wrote the first half of the story and Ray Bradbury wrote the second half of the story. Maybe Brackett intended to introduce us to Lorelei. Very strange, that. I preferred Brackett's part more than Bradbury but it does go together pretty smoothly. For a planetary romance tale of the era it isn't bad and I enjoyed reading it.

I've increasingly found on reading or re-reading older Asimov stories that he has not aged well with me. I was once a big fan of his work and still hold some in high regard. 'Evidence' is one of his robot stories and a recurring character Susan Calvin is in this one, and the famous three laws of robotics comes into play. It is a pretty good story that I didn't recall having read before (although I probably had as a teen).

The included stories are:

9 • Introduction to The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 8, 1946 by Martin H. Greenberg
13 • A Logic Named Joe • shortstory by Murray Leinster (as by Will F. Jenkins)
30 • Memorial • shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
45 • Loophole • shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
53 • The Nightmare • novelette by Chan Davis
74 • Rescue Party • novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
101 • Placet Is a Crazy Place • shortstory by Fredric Brown
116 • Conqueror's Isle • shortstory by Nelson S. Bond
131 • Lorelei of the Red Mist • novella by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury
189 • The Million Year Picnic • shortstory by Ray Bradbury
199 • The Last Objective • novelette by Paul A. Carter
228 • Meihem in ce Klasrum • essay by Dolton Edwards
232 • Vintage Season • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as by Lawrence O'Donnell)
276 • Evidence • novelette by Isaac Asimov
299 • Absalom • shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as by Henry Kuttner)
315 • Mewhu's Jet • novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
351 • Technical Error shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke

ETA: and my librarything feed tells me that Catherine Moore, co-author of Vintage Season and Absolom in this collection, died today April 4, in 1987. I have two collections of her stories that I have not yet read. I need to step up my game ...

Catching up ...

>105 RBeffa: The only one I recognize is Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium" which I liked a lot when I read it in my early twenties. I wonder how it stands up.

>108 RBeffa: Despite the warning about its length, that one sounds quite appealing.

>112 RBeffa: I've read Harris's Fatherland, which was such a disappointment to me that I've never read any of his others. But I too think that Chamberlain's decision to postpone confrontation was more defensible than his reputation suggests. Harris's fictional treatment sounds intriguing.

>117 RBeffa: I'm not familiar with "Vintage season" (Ought to fix that), but I have read "The Million Year Picnic" multiple times, and agree it's a gem.

>118 swynn: I liked Sailing to Byzantium better the first time. It is still a good story.

If the topic of geology interests you I would read Winchester's book. I just got so much out of it.

I liked Fatherland fairly well when I read it years ago - it was my first Harris novel (My wife has been a fan for a long time and that was one she did not want to read). Fatherland lays it on pretty thick with the Sturmbannführer everykindoffuhrer that the Nazis seemed so fond of, but I did like the story. Munich is different - but the fictional side story that gets us behind the scenes of the real story is a little weak in my opinion, especially on the German side. However, the story does make one feel while reading that you are there in 1938.

For a scifi story from 1946 Vintage Season is a real good one, the best in the book for me. You'll find out one day when you make it up to DAW#507!

>119 RBeffa:

Just thinking about a different Winchester book the other day - The Professor and The Madman
and imagining it as the title of a book about Obama and the current president...

>120 m.belljackson: Someone will surely write it one day

The free SANTA CRUZA WILDLIFE WATCHING GUIDE I requested online awhile back arrived last week and it is wonderful!

Have you been to the featured Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary?

>122 m.belljackson: about 5+ years ago my daughter did an internship with the Monterey Bay Aquarium - she spent a lot of time at Elkhorn Slough on a research project and did a wide variety of things. We got a behind the scenes tour of things one evening. I've loved that area for a very long time. You might be able to see this pic of mine on facebook https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/1412574_770627009619744_182118291...

eta here's another - you might be able to page thru photos from this link https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=770626979619747&set=a.40611147940463...

>123 RBeffa:

Thank you - that is a beautiful and inviting photograph encompassing a full range of visuals!

Without Facebook membership, the second set unfortunately is not visible.

Elkhorn Slough is the first entry on the foldout map showing SOUTHERN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY.

My friends live in San Francisco (retired Suicide Prevention leader),
Berkeley (Handmade Paper and Book Maker and Printer),
and Oakland (Music Professor) - it will be good to hear if they have visited.

>124 m.belljackson: Well you miss more scenes and wildlife pix - pelicans, cormorants, sea lions and otters. My daughters project involved monitoring otters at elkhorn. Here are some pelicans https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/882573_769612153054563_683098914_...

It is a truly beautiful area of the coast. I've been half thinking of moving there. My Calif ancestors lived in the area in the 1840's-50s.

The recent death of Vonda McIntyre prompts me to accelerate the reading of two books of hers I have on my read this year shelf. Last year I read her Star trek novel The Entropy Effect which was an early entry in the long running series of stories by many authors, and I thought it was one of the best Trek novels I have read. I had this to say when I finished it last June: "This was the second novel in the Timescape/Pocket Book series of original Star Trek that continued for a long time. This one is from 1981 and I believe is the first Trek novel published after the novelization of the Star Trek the Motion Picture film which despite its problems gave a brand new and continuing life to the franchise. Vonda McIntyre was a good choice - a well regarded author with several award winning stories. I have not read a lot of Trek novels although I have picked up about 3 dozen of them in recent years (most still unread) and generally enjoy them but have also run across a couple stinkers, especially in some of the badly written early ones prior to this. This one strikes me as one of the better ones. The focus characters here are Sulu, Spock, Kirk and to a slightly lesser extent McCoy. We learn for the first time what Sulu's first name is and get inside of his head and emotions - his part of the story is done well. Kirk as a character sometimes seemed a little "off" to me and Spock and McCoy seemed to be handled fairly well.

Two new strong female characters play large parts in the story and I thought were presented extremely well. The story goes along at a rather leisurely pace for quite a while, setting things up that we wouldn't expect, digging into characters, and then it runs, and it runs hard. I'm not rating this against great novels and literature - rating it for what it is - some well written entertainment that I think any Star Trek fan would enjoy.

About halfway through, maybe sooner, I was getting this deja vu like feeling that this was familiar. I may have read this in the early 80's when it was a newish novel."

So I plan to read the two books I have on hand, as well as another Trek novel "Uhura's Song" by Janet Kagan which I also have on hand (prompted by Roni's read of another Kagan book) so I'm moving this one up the TBR pile.

Before that I have another book I am trying, and struggling a little with, and we'll see how it goes...
------------------------------

This past week I have been reading the following and just finished it this evening:

19. Inkling by Kenneth Oppel, finished April 9, 2019, 4 stars



About 10 years ago I read my first book by Kenneth Oppel ... "Airborn". This was a young adult adventure book that I really enjoyed and shared it with my daughter who enjoyed it even more. I had been trying to jumpstart her reading and it was quite a success and was one of the first books that we had fun reading more or less together as grownups. So Oppel has this new book out which caught my attention at the library and i gave it a try.

For an audience of perhaps 5th-6th graders I think this is a very well done book and I rated it 4 stars for the audience. The story tackles a number of subjects of family dynamics and grief some time past (2 years maybe) the unexoected death of the wife/mother. Her husband is "stuck" and still sinking. The family tries to work as a family but things could be a little better. There is an extremely well done portrayal of the youngest child, a charming girl with Down's syndrome who it is hard not to love. against this background lies a story of young Ethan in middle school with a good friend as well as a nemesis in Art class. Inking is a serious yet charming portrait and how the family works through their problems with a quite unusual helper. An ink blot who comes to life off a sketchpad.

How is it that the film (and book) Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan is 37 years old? It blows my mind. My list of favorite books by the years of my life up near the top of the thread is missing an entry for 1982. Now it will have one.

20. Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N. McIntyre, finished April 11, 2019, 4 1/2 stars (rated for the genre)



This novelization of the second Star Trek film from 1982 is book #7 in the original pocketbook Star Trek series of books that began after the first ST film in 1979. Some of these early novels are very good and some are pretty bad. This is one of the very good ones. McIntyre bases the story on the screenplay but this is not a note for note copy - she clearly wants to give us a good story and puts some meat on the bones of the original. The film story is here and if like me you think it one of the best (and possibly THE BEST) Star Trek films, then you are going to like this novel even more. The original film was rather scary in some places. So is the book. It has an excellent plot that expanded the lives of some of our favorite characters from the original series and introduced new characters. Simply put I really liked this story and think it one of the best Trek stories and I wish the added stuff was in the original film. The expanded story of Saavik is a real plus and the novel, like the film, begins with Saavik. I'll give you two words. Kobayashi Maru. Quite a start.

I have a lovely Science Fiction book club edition of the book. It is a keeper. I'll read the followup novel "The Search for Spock" soon.

ETA: While looking around online about the movie I discovered that some scenes that appear in the book were taken out of the initial commercial release of the movie but added back in when the film was first broadcast on ABC in 1985, then taken back out when the DVD was released. I don't know if the director's cut version has more of the story back in. The cut scenes concern Scottie's nephew Peter Preston - in the film some key info is cut that appears in the book. I can't figure out why unless someone just thought "this is too long". I'm really interested in seeing the film while the book is fresh on my mind.

>127 RBeffa: I picked up the director's cut of the film Star Trek II from the library and watched it last night. It had been quite a few years since I had last watched it but my memory of it was fairly good. Hard to forget the film in which Spock dies, because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, ... or the one. One bit of added material concerning Scotty's nephew was noticeable.

My thoughts time and again while watching it was "what a great job Vonda McIntyre did with the novel." Seriously. She adds backstory to quite a few characters and includes scenes which should have been in the film and either were not or more likely were probably cut. She really turns a good film into an excellent novel which I would highly recommend to any Trek fans. Sulu who was almost always a minor character doesn't have much of a part in either the film or the book. Checkov plays a key part in both but his film performance was rather underwhelming. I'll try to get to Star Trek III soon.

I started a novel last night on the recommendation of a Friends of the Library friend. Not my usual type but I am liking the beginning - I see it has become a series the last couple years. Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle. I hope it holds up.

This book was recommended to me by a friend from our Friends of the Library. He's a big mystery and detective story buff who reads a lot more widely in the genres then I do. I decided to give it a try. Not quite a "page-turner", but I didn't want to put it down and I read it in two days which for me is rather good for me for a 300 page novel. It has nice short chapters which is something I like for reading where I have easy breaks to step away.

21. Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle, finished April 19, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars



This is a first novel by the author in 2013, set in the La Jolla / San Diego area. It became the start of a series. It came to me highly recommended and I was pleasantly surprised. It's a crime story, a mystery, noirish and a bit hard-boiled in style (OK maybe more than a bit, but in the best of that pulpy tradition updated for today) and I liked it. There are a lot of familiar tropes here, even for someone like me who is not widely read in the genre. The author however has put together a good story that caught my interest pretty quick and made me as a reader want to know more about the tarnished ex-cop Rick Cahill. Love gets all tangled up in the makings of the story, but this is clearly crime fiction. If you like twists, this is twisty too. And yesterday does echo and the story gets wrapped up nicely.

It also has a great opening sentence: "The first time I saw her, she made me remember and she made me forget."

I'd recommend this to those who like stories in the detective fiction/police/mystery genre.

ETA: The more I thought about the book, the less pleased I was with the ending. In sum, the good guys are sometimes bad guys, the bad guys are sometimes good guys, and justice was not served. But it IS an exciting finish even if I have real doubts that it could finish the way it did. At least we find out why the main character carries so much self-hate around.

Hello Ron! I hope all is well with you.

>127 RBeffa: Thanks for the excellent review of The Wrath of Khan novelization. I am now encouraged to pick it up. I am heartily of the opinion that TWOK is the best Star Trek film and just plain good cinema besides. I think Spock's death scene is extremely powerful and should not be dismissed simply because it is Science fiction or Star Trek. Thanks again.

>130 brodiew2: You're welcome Brodie. Thanks for dropping by here. I hope you find a copy - the book as I said above makes a good movie even better.

Years and years ago I enjoyed some of Rumer Godden's novels, notably "The River". I have wanted to read more for some time and finally buckled down. When I looked at the number of books the author had written over a very long life I was pretty impressed.

22. A breath of air by Rumer Godden, finished April 23, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars



This book does not have a review on LT and these comments that follow aren't enough of one I feel. I'll think about this book that I finished up this morning and maybe expand my comments in a day or two. Tentative 3 1/2 stars. How to rate this? Tough for me as I try to rate things according to genre or other similarities. I don't read much from this time period, and other than Nevil Shute I'm not that fond of much mid-century post war writing. But there are a few I like and this compares favorably. This novel was published in October 1950 after appearing as a serial in Ladies Home Journal. This is a dated story that is still enjoyable - a reminder how much the world has changed since 1950 but also a reminder of how much people may not have when you look at instincts and needs and desires.

A seaplane has been blown hundreds of miles off course in a storm and the fuel runs out just as the two fliers see what might be an island in the distance. We are somewhere north of Australia towards India. On the island is someone we might call an old colonial, a Scottish Earl who lives there with his daughter having fled the world when she was perhaps 1 year old and she now approaches 21.

The author tells us up front that this story came from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".

I liked the story - it is something of a morality play to me .. an allegory ... I felt like I was watching a film from another era. Quite a few of Godden's novels were made into films. This one seems like it could have been. However Godden does seem to spend a bit too much time spinning around inside character's heads. Parts get a little boring but you have to pay attention for when she might drop something important in. The writing is a little awkward at times, and then it also shines.

ETA 5/4/19: Thinking back on this I realized I found it a very satisfying book. The descriptive writing really was well done most of the time and painted pictures in my mind.

>132 RBeffa: I recognize Rumer Godden only as the author of "Black Narcissus", which I haven't read but years ago enjoyed the film. The premise of this one sounds intriguing.

>133 swynn: It is a good story Steve and I'm glad to have read it. I have decided not to say much more about the story because I don't want to spoil it. The arrival of the lost fliers serves as a catalyst to change and they arrive precisely at the moment when a sort of unrest has come upon several of the main characters. I kept expecting something awful to happen but it doesn't. That isn't this kind of story. This is more of an awakening thing. My mother had Black Narcissus but I don't think I read that one. I did read In This House of Brede.

I was browsing through some of my TBR paperbacks to look for something different and hopefully mid century to compare to Godden's novel. I made my decision because the book came with this cute bookmark.

>135 RBeffa: It's bound to be a good one!

>136 laytonwoman3rd: It was a Pearl Buck one, which seemed very appropriate but I decided to save it for the AAC. Of course I could always read another later ...

Have not started a book since Rumer Godden's nice novel. I've been catching up on magazines and working a lot on genealogy the last ten days. I'm very tempted to read another Rumer Godden book this month.

>137 RBeffa: You should read exactly what you want to read. There are times when Rumer Godden is just the ticket.

Hello Ron! I hope all is well with you.

Have you gotten on the Bird Box trian? I just finished the book and quite enjoyed it. I have yet to see the film.

>139 brodiew2: Hi Brodie. I read your positive comments on the book. I have seen the film on Netflix. I was a little afraid to watch it truthfully but glad I did. One scary movie, but a very good one, and it was well balanced telling the story moving back and forth in the five years time from the beginning to the end. After your positive reaction to the book I may give it a try. I'm glad I saw the film first - I'll have good visuals to compare the book to. My library has an ebook and audio with short waitlists. I should put a hold on one of them.

This was an early reviewer's book that I won. It got a bit beat up, not terribly, in transit and delivery which makes me sad because it is a beautiful book. The package makes me think a small delivery vehicle or cart ran over it or maybe it got caught in some sort of conveyer belt arrangement. I suppose there is more than one way to get treadmarks and rips on a package from UPS but I'll go with the obvious. Sigh.

23. The Good Son: A Story from the First World War, Told in Miniature by Pierre-Jacques Ober (Author), Jules Ober (Illustrator), Felicity Coonan (Illustrator), finished May 9, 2019, 4 stars



This is an unusual book and something of an artpiece. It is the story of a French soldier in the first world war in 1914 who made the mistake of going home for Christmas. The story is very short and simple but it packs quite a punch. This is primarily told through photographs taken of miniature soldiers and others, and the creation of the miniature scenes and the way they were photographed is the true highlight of this book. After the story there are some pages illustrating and explaining part of the process. This is a book I will return to.

Time for another DAW book, this one for May, #329. I picked this up at our last Friends of the Library Sale. My April selection above covered #8 (1946) in this series.

24. Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939) by various authors, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, finished July 10, 2019, 2 1/2 - 3 stars



This is the first of the retroactive year's best collections. Published in 1979 it covers the year 1939. That was 40 years in the book's past and now 80 years from the initial story publications. Publisher Donald A Wollheim (Mr DAW) writes a brief intro and includes this as his final sentence: "This may well be the finest science fiction anthology you will ever read." - D.A.W.

The publishers and editors believe 1939 was a pivotal year for science fiction, taking a leap from pulp fiction to something akin to literature. "...twenty stories by the writers who changed science fiction from quick and easy pulp action to the kind of literature that commanded respect and invited emulation by readers and writers to come." They add that these stories were essentially the creative ideas from which many many things followed. So here I would find where modern science fiction began.

The anthology was published in 1979, 40 years after the stories had first been told. Here I am in 2019, another 40 years later and now 80 years since 1939. Is this still, or was it then, the finest science fiction anthology? Let's look at what's here. At 432 pages this is pretty big for a DAW book of 1979.

8 • Introduction (The Great SF Stories 1 (1939)) • (1979) • essay by Martin H. Greenberg
11 • I, Robot • Adam Link • (1939) • short story by Otto Binder (variant of "I, Robot") as by Eando Binder
25 • The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton • (1939) • short story by Robert Bloch
35 • Trouble with Water • (1939) • short story by H. L. Gold
56 • Cloak of Aesir • Sarn • (1939) • novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. as by Don A. Stuart
103 • The Day Is Done • (1939) • short story by Lester del Rey
118 • The Ultimate Catalyst • (1939) • short story by John Taine
141 • The Gnarly Man • (1939) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
163 • Black Destroyer • Space Beagle • (1939) • novelette by A. E. van Vogt
194 • Greater Than Gods • (1939) • novelette by C. L. Moore
229 • Trends • (1939) • short story by Isaac Asimov
248 • The Blue Giraffe • (1939) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
272 • The Misguided Halo • (1939) • short story by Henry Kuttner
289 • Heavy Planet • (1939) • short story by Milton A. Rothman
299 • Life-Line • (1939) • short story by Robert A. Heinlein
318 • Ether Breather • (1939) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon
332 • Pilgrimage • (1939) • novelette by Nelson S. Bond as by Nelson Bond
353 • Rust • (1939) • short story by Joseph E. Kelleam
363 • The Four-Sided Triangle • (1939) • novelette by William F. Temple (variant of The 4-Sided Triangle)
385 • Star Bright • (1939) • novelette by Jack Williamson
412 • Misfit • (1939) • novelette by Robert A. Heinlein

As it turned out I would certainly not consider this the finest anthology ever. I had to read these stories slowly over time because many were a bit of a slog.

I've read the first story, I, Robot before. I must say that for 1939 it is very good. Asimov states that this story was the inspiration for him writing his own robot stories, with the first being "Robbie" which appeared in 1940. Asimov says he wasn't pleased when the publishers despite his objections called his first robot collection "I, Robot" as he felt the title belonged to the original story not by him.

The second story however was dreck. Asimov said it appeared in the same magazine issue as his own very first story and he thought it was the only story that was better than his. Asimov prided himself on him modesty. Sigh. Well, I'd hate to read that issue. The story certainly has two elements of early science fiction. 1- The build your own rocket ship in your backyard to go to Mars or the Moon, and 2- The twist at the end. There was a twist and it was twisted 2 ways which is what made a naive story ridiculous.

I was surprised to recognize a number of these stories from 1939 including the third one, "The Trouble With Water" by H L Gold. It is a fantasy story that I just read last year in Gardner Dozois's Modern Classics of Fantasy anthology. I wouldn't say this was a great story. After reading a short bit and immediately recognizing it I skipped the rest. It is cute and amusing but it is not a science fiction story - more like a troll, gnome or leprechaun fantasy story and it belonged in the fantasy anthology but not here.

The fourth story finally gets this going again with a novella by the famous John W Campbell and the last written under his pseudonym Don A Stuart. This story certainly has the elements one would expect from Campbell, especially the idea that against all odds man will persevere into the future and will rise against adversity. In this interesting story we are 4,000 years into the future. Mankind has been enslaved by an invading race of aliens (The Sarn) after barely losing the battle for the planet. The aliens were looking for a new homeworld after their planet was destroyed in some manner and lost 3/4 of their people in the attack on Earth. But they became the overlords of the remnants of humanity. Now, 4,000 years later mankind is rising again, led by Aesir who has created a cloak that appears invincible to the weapons of the Sarn. Unfortunately the story relies quite heavily on an old science fiction gimmick, the development of telepathic powers.

Next up was 'Day is Done' a sad short story by Lester del Rey that tells us a prehistoric tale of the last neanderthal. It was OK for a bit of prehistoric fiction.

Of the remaining stories I recognized "The Gnarly Man" as one I had read before and enjoyed the re-read. A living neanderthal is found in a carnival sideshow. He has been alive for 50,000 years. There are several good moments in the story but a few bits detract. Black Destroyer was the first published story by A. E. van Vogt. A novelette, I thought it one of the better stories where an exploration team meets a creature who is one of the few remaining survivors of a civilization that destroyed itself.

Robert Heinlein's first story is also in here, and it is also one I have read long before - "Life-Line" is the story of a man who invents a machine that can very closely determine when you were born and when you will die. He is met with derision and disbelief, and of course the life insurance companies seeing the end of the dream know he needs to be dealt with. Not bad.

1939 again impresses us with the first published story by another great of the genre, Theodore Sturgeon who has written many excellent stories in the fantasy/horror/science fiction genres. 'Ether Breather' however does not impress at all. It is the story of the advent of color television a couple centuries in the future and it is both confusing and rather stupid to say the least. Thankfully Sturgeon improved a lot.

One of the best stories in this collection was from an author unfamiliar to me: Nelson Bond. "Pilgrimage" is a post-war dystopian story set in a far future that seems to be a clear precursor to Sheri Tepper's "Gate To Woman's Country". I enjoyed this one. Another unfamiliar author was Joseph E. Kelleam. His interesting and well done short story "Rust" takes us several hundred years into the future after a great war and all that remains are a few robots who are themselves near the end.

So by the end, was this the finest anthology ever compiled as the editors thought? I can say no, it was not. But there was some interest in visiting these early days.

Bird Box came in to the library this morning for me. My DAW read will be temporarily interrupted.

>143 RBeffa: Looking forward to your impressions, Ron.

>144 brodiew2: First impression is super positive Brodie. By giving me a background already, from the film, my read will be different than yours was. Knowing ahead that the book is different gives me something to look forward to. But I'm very impressed with the start of the book.

Book #24 above is still in progress. My thanks to Brodie for his review of the following book which inspired me. This is better than the typical post-apocalyptic novel and I gave it an extra 1/2 star for exceeding my expectations. Rated for the genre.

25. Bird Box: A Novel by Josh Malerman, finished May 15, 2019, 4 + stars (almost 4 1/2)



I thought the Netflix film of Bird Box which stars Sandra Bullock (who is, honestly, about 25 or 30 years too old for this part but she did an excellent job) was a very good film. The book is even better. I'd say it is quite a bit better. I am certain that my reading of this novel was enhanced by having seen the movie - a fresh reader would be more caught up in the "what the heck is going on" whereas I focused more on the details of the storytelling. The book is so different than the film story, which made some significant changes so that we almost have two completely different stories with a few common elements, but there are bits of this novel that the film captured perfectly. The film begins with an overt display of madness and horror, mass suicides, very different than how the book begins - the book lets the menace be out there menacing and lets the suspense be that much better.

Malorie has 2 children and she has spent 4 1/2 years under the shadow of death. The story moves back and forth in time, done very well to build suspense and keep the reader in the dark about things which become slowly clearer as the story progresses. This is an end of the world novel. There is a lot of suspense and mystery in here. The children as characters are presented much better in the novel. Recommended if you want to read something different and more than a little scary. I guess I would call this a suspense-horror novel. The mystery is not resolved by the end of the book, nor was it in the film, which is pretty much the only unsatisfying thing about this story, for me. I'd call this an excellent read.

>146 RBeffa: Hello Ron! I am so pleased that you enjoyed the book. Malory is a complex character and one that grew on me over the course of the story.

Did you get the answer you wanted regarding the animals?

>147 brodiew2: yes and no on the animals. In the film it seemed that the only birds alive were protected inside the facility at the end of the story as well as the ones in the bird box. In the book there is the scene where Victor apparently goes mad but even that was slightly unclear because perhaps he was only trying to protect Malorie from attack. The Huskies were apparently immune and the wolves on the river. However there was that scene on the river where the birds went nutso. SO in the book there are still animals alive but their susceptibility to the creatures is uncertain. The book also makes it pretty clear by the end that there actually are some sort of creatures about who can actually touch you (the one with Malorie's blindfold at the end of the river voyage) but it remains unclear if they are actually invisible as the undefined menace in the film was. We still don't know what the "creatures" were - visitors from some parallel world? Space aliens (doubtful)? Fallen angels, demons, let loose upon the world? who knows.

True enough. The book seems to say that the madness varies among animals, which is a little inconsistent, if forgivable.

I was a little frustrated by the reveal of actual creatures. I know you wanted more on this, but, for me, revealing them almost diminishes the unidentified menace. I don't necessarily need to know. The story is about Malorie and her survival.

I've heard it suggest that they could be angels/demons - but the suicidal response would then be suspect.

>149 brodiew2: I agree. The bit of reveal of the creatures diminished/spoiled it a bit for me. I would be happier with completely not knowing, or else the eventual delivery of someone figuring it out as a postscript. The film keeps it hidden. I think I may watch it again.

ETA: what bothered me about the creature tugging on her blindfold was that my mind immediately went to thinking, well why didn't the creatures lift blankets when they wanted to or pull off other protection? I think it was a mistake in the book to have that scene.

>150 RBeffa: I agree. The bird madness was suspenseful enough and the general blindness. I was not even sure that the creature intended to remove the blindfold. Why not rip it off? Right? The other element of the 'creatures' was during the climactic event. Malorie 'knows' there is one in the room and Olympia voices that it is 'beautiful'. Suspenseful, in light of everything else going on, sure. But still unnecessary for my satisfaction.

>151 brodiew2: You're right. The creature was almost playing with Malorie's blindfold. One never knows if the creatures are intentionally evil or whether the madness is just some strange side-effect. I think the film influenced me to think they were evil angels and I remember now remembering when I read the scene you mentioned with Olympia wondering if that was the first time in the book the creatures were described as beautiful because I think that was how they were perceived in the film. Part of why I may rewatch the film, out of curiosity.

I haven't hosted a series or an author for a while. I'd like to do so this summer, during a month when the most interested folk have the time to do at least the targeted book, which is only 200 pp. long. I'd like to expose as many people as possible to the works of James H. Schmitz, a science fiction author who wrote from the late '40s through the 1970s. He is best known for The Witches of Karres, but imho has written much better works. Here is my bookshelf.


Many of his works, especially his shorter ones, were very hard to find for quite a while, but in 2000 and 2001, Baen published almost all of his oeuvre in a collection of 6 books, seen to the right of the shelf above. The book I would like to feature is Demon Breed, also found in the Baen collection The Hub: Dangerous Territory. Schmitz is known for his kick-ass female protagonists long before they became the current ubiquitous status quo in his stories about Telzey Amberdon, Trigger Argee, and the hero of Demon Breed, Nile Etland.

See my thread for more info if interested!

>146 RBeffa: You can't read Jesmyn Ward, but you can read post-apocalyptic fiction? See that's where I draw the line...dystopia and apocalypse. Simply cannot. But if I did, it sounds like this would be a good one.

>154 laytonwoman3rd: I know that seems funny, but I have lines that I don't like crossed. I got really pissed with Murakami's Kafka on the Shore when he threw in what seemed to me to be gratuitous cat torture (and he's a cat lover). If I hadn't already read so much good Murakami already I may not have continued. But basically animal cruelty, child abuse in particular and domestic violence in general I don't want to read about. I won't read survivalist post-apoc stuff which is all about guns or similar stuff. I don't recall a gun being mentioned once in Bird Box although maybe it got a passing mention - I think there is one in the film. And I'm not an anti-gun nut, I just get bothered when the gun stuff is like a fetish. Books and films just seem to have gotten a lot darker and I don't think it is a good trend - I see nothing productive about it. I wasn't a big fan of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" for example. I saw no point to it although I did recognize some merit to it. I much preferred Peter Heller's "Dog Stars" which was really about friendship, and living in a post flu pandemic world. I could live in Heller's world. In McCarthy's I'd head straight to the river and drown myself.

and now for something completely different, this is from a book I have slowly been reading. It is history that is personally relevant to me on the immigration experience.

In 1886 my great grandma Ella Kalbe Mitchell was born in Hawaii. How did that happen? Exactly three years before, her parents had left Germany. The 1880's saw a huge immigration of Germans into the United States. Hawaii however was not part of the United States. A bit over 1300 Germans emigrated to Hawaii between 1881 and 1897. The largest group came on a steamer ship for a two month journey in 1883. It was named the Ehrenfels. 826 men, women and children arrived in Hawaii. It was reported that 43 children and three adults died on the journey. Some of the women passengers later reported that they believed they died from a measles epidemic. The Ehrenfels was the ship that my great-great grandparents, Ella's parents, came on with three children.

What follows here are excerpts of an account of one or more of the passengers, unnamed, written in German in 1928 that was included in a thesis by Bernhard Lothar Hormann in 1931:

This is how one man described the way in which he decided to migrate to the Sandwich islands: "On a Saturday morning in the beginning of December, 1882, the writer with several of the men with whom he worked was sitting drinking a glass of beer in a restaurant at Wilhelmshaven and I read in a newspaper the following notice, 'It is desired to find several field laborers, who would have to pledge themselves by contract for four years, for a sugar plantation on the Sandwich Islands, to work for good wages. Cost of the trip and everything is free. For further information ..."

An account of the journey in 1883 was recalled later by another immigrant as follows: "In the middle of February I received a note with the tickets. We were to arrive in Bremen the evening of February 19. In Bremen we were met at the depot and taken to our quarters. On the streets the people yelled at us, "O, you slaves! You have sold yourselves!" We remained in Bremen for a couple of days. We were taken to an office and there the contract was again shown to us and we were asked if we had read, understood, and signed the contract. Then we were given a duplicate. One copy remained in the hands of the company. On February 22 we were sent to Bremerhaven and direct on board the Ehrenfels down into a very Hole of Hell. Everywhere were pillows and other things, so that we could hardly move through. Then we had to go right back to the wharf.

On the 22nd we sailed out to sea and even though we had pretty good weather, we were seasick already on the first day. Because below they had not really cleaned, there was soon a foggy, stale odor. After several days they put the place in order and cleaned it somewhat, so that it was a little more pleasant. According to what I heard then, eight to nine hundred persons were on board: men, women, and children all mixed together.

In spite of the fact that it was not too comfortable on board, we occasionally had pleasant times during the day on deck. Here and there congenial groups had formed. Some played cards; others sang songs, happy and sad ones of their home- for several passengers had become homesick. Often quarrels took place, especially among the women who slapped one another's faces with wet cloths, either towels or diapers which they had dipped in salt water, as fresh water was given only rarely and in measured amounts for drinking purposes.

We had not been long on board when another evil overtook us, namely the very tiny animals which crawl so slowly through one's clothes and also love to crawl over one's bare skin. At first the search for these animals was secret, but soon they had multiplied so greatly that we no longer had to look for them. Instead a person would suddenly violently shake them off his clothes right in public. Often people accused one another, "You brought them along." "No, you!" And in the main it was the women again who could not agree on the question as to who had brought the bugs. Very soon, however, one man had received the title of honor: "King of the Bees," for bee is the genteel name given to the crawling animal. "King of the Bees" was also on Kauai, but I will not name him as he has long been dead. Matters were not very good when near the equator we struck heat. Then the fleas came and the other things decreased.

The food on board might have been better. We always had enough. The most unfortunate situation was in regard to bread. As there was no bakery on board, we had to be satisfied with hard-tack. I was glad whenever we had plum soup and then I always took a second helping in the kitchen. Water often had a bad odor and that probably accounted for the sickness on board, especially among the children. Forth-three children and three adults died on board. When their bodies were sunk into the ocean the captain each time said a prayer.

So the time gradually passed. The one good thing was that almost throughout the trip we had pretty good weather. I was seasick once, near the beginning of the trip. But my wife felt ill at every little puff of wind. Our oldest son also, who at the time was seven months old, for a time was very sick. Fortunately he got well again. In the beginning of April we reached the Straits of Magellan. Just previously, in a little town, we had taken on board some fresh water, vegetables, and also a pilot who took us through the Straits. The trip took almost almost two days and was very interesting. At night we lay quietly at anchor and in the evening frequently the inhabitants of the mountains, named Firelanders, approached our ship, half naked, in their canoes and we threw down much hard-tack and also clothing. They were made happy and we enjoyed it. After traveling in a zigzag we again reached the open sea. We went to Valparaiso, where we dropped the pilot.

Then we steamed on until we saw the Hawaiian Islands before us and on April 27 we cast anchor before the wharf at Honolulu. Everybody was glad to have reached the destination. A few gentlemen and the German consul came on board to straighten out several matters. We were not allowed to leave the ship. A guard ship was even placed next us, because the authorities probably thought we would be warned by other Germans. Just a short time before Germans who had arrived a half year earlier, had risen up against their plantation, Kilauea, because of bad treatment. If these men talked to those on ship, several might attempt to desert from the Ehrenfels. On April 30 a placard with large letters was posted on board. It had the following message: "Today will be transported the people for Kekaha and Koloa Sugar cos." And so we prepared ourselves. In the evening a small steamer of the Inter-Island Steamship Company pulled up alongside the Ehrenfels and we with our possessions (unsreSiebensachen) were transferred on it. On May 1, early in the morning, the steamer cast anchor in Koloa and we were brought to shore in boats."

"after being brought to shore in boats at Koloa, we were taken in oxcarts to headquarters where a row of new houses had been built for the Germans. Of course, rough, unplaned boards were used and there was no smooth floor. We were given to eat and to drink in the boarding house. In the afternoon we were called together and divided into groups. My group was sent to the Koloa Ranch section.There our houses were not yet finished and we had to move into several empty kanaka huts. The next day we were still allowed to rest. We could buy things and put our houses in order. The following day we were expected to begin work."

I have no business getting books from the library to read at the moment since I have several books in progress. However I'd put a hold on Miller's Song of Achilles and it came in Saturday. I started reading it yesterday evening and devoured about 1/4 of the book. My enthusiasm has waned a bit since I was expecting something different and the book has a few odd quirks such as a seeming foot fetish but I was quite caught up in parts of this and so far I am enjoying this. It has a distinct young adult feel to it. I had to mentally calculate how long it had been since reading The Illiad in 1972. Uh, it has been awhile.

Meanwhile ... I have the only copy of this book on LT and there is no copy on Goodreads. I could give this one five stars for me ...

26. The Germans in Hawaii by Bernhard Lothar Hormann, finished May 20, 2019, 4 + stars



This book is a treasure for me personally. It is a master's thesis submitted by the author to the University of Hawaii in 1931. He obtained a Phd from the University of Chicago and later returned to the University of Hawaii in 1939 and retired as a Professor of Sociology in 1972. His thesis was originally going to be published as part of a series but the Great Depression of the 1930's stopped the project. It was finally published in 1989.

The book has some updated information and comments added by the author in 1989. The study is on Germans who came to Hawaii in the 1880s-1890's from primarily peasant backgrounds. As a sociological study the author generally did not use the names of people whose stories he recounted to the reader. I was reading this as a resource for family history information since my great great grandparents were part of the 1300+ people who emigrated from German states to Hawaii between 1881 and 1897, with the majority arriving in 1883. The author conducted interviews in the late 1920's and incorporated historical information.

The native Hawaiian population had been in a long and severe decline and immigration was being encouraged. I found the small details in this sociological and anthropological study very interesting. My primary interest was because of my family history but there is also value in here on several social issues (immigration, indentured servitude, mixing of races and classes, etc) that were just interesting on their own. It also gives a picture of life in Hawaii just before the United States and business interests orchestrated the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom for their own selfish means.

This has put me in the mood to finally think about reading James Michener's 'Hawaii' which stares at me from one of my bookshelves with its colorful lettering.

I can see why Germans in Hawaii would be a treasure for you, Ron. Such accounts bring history to life, and when it's your family's history, so much the better.

>158 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, I think it is the personal connection about something I never expected to find that really surprised me and made me happy.
----------
I've been trying to catch a copy of Circe at the library and hadn't so I placed a hold. Only I placed a hold for Achilles. OK, that was a booboo.

27. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, finished May 23, 2019, 3 stars



So, was this going to be "Troy" without Brad Pitt? (actually I didn't mind Brad Pitt and liked the film well enough. I'm surprised the film is now 15 years old. How did that happen?)

I'm a fan of historical fiction and I started this novel and read with quite a bit of enthusiasm. But... I wondered why Patroclus was being presented as such a wimp. I also didn't like how he was exiled for an accidental death, not murder, and he was defending himself when it happened. Achilles points this out to Patroclus later, but it was obvious from the beginning. There were a few odd quirks like the author has a serious foot fetish, but then I had an aha moment (I thought) - this is Achilles ... his HEEL dumbo - the author is playing with you. But, the end. No heel (did I somehow miss it, skip a page?). Maybe she was playing with me in a way - as a tease - you don't get what you expected.

This isn't a bad read, and parts of it are very good, particularly when she weaves and rewrites myths. I especially liked the segment with Chiron the centaur. Some of it, not so good, despite what gushing reviews might say. There are a few times where we get less skilled weaving and infodumps of mythology.

Overall I liked it, but I think I would have liked it twice as much if the second half of the book had been better than it was and if the author had not tried to make this a romance.

I can't comment on how true to myth and the Illiad this is. It has been a very long time since I read Homer.

Hello Ron! I hope all is well with you.

>159 RBeffa: Madeline Miller keeps jumping in front of my car. I might just have to hit her. LOL. Given your review, I think it will be Circe in instead this one. Plus, I like Odysseus.

In the wake of Bird Box I have picked up Blake Crouch's Pines. I'll keep you posted.

>160 brodiew2: Hi Brodie. The Pines books by Crouch have tempted me. Odysseus shows up quite a bit in Song of Achilles, and unlike many of the characters in the book I did get a feel for him.

I started going to Half Price books a very long time ago. Since retirement I don't go as often as I used to (you would think it would be more, I know) but when I don't drive to work anymore or run errands in the direction of the stores, well, I go there less. I just discovered today that my favorite and closet location closed two weeks ago because a new landlord would not renew the lease. The store has been there since 2001 and I am truly going to miss being able to visit it.

>162 RBeffa: Hello Ron. I worked for HPB for three years leading up to 2000. The location I where I worked closed shortly after I left to pave the way for a larger store a few miles away. I love my HPB.

>163 brodiew2: They plan to open a new store by the end of the year which will actually be closer to me and a lot easier to get to if the rumored location is true. So there's a silver lining. That's great you worked for HPB!

28 Star Trek the Magazine: Volume 3, Issue 03, July 2002 finished May 2019, unrated



I'm going to count this one as a book read. I count digest and literary magazines as they have substantial reading. I think I could count this one as it is a big issue, but it is also a ton of photos and drawings. I browsed this during the month. The issue dates from 2002 and it has articles on each of the Star Trek series and bits on a film or two as well as items about various actors, conventions, props, stages and so on. Star Trek Voyager had finished a seven season run the year before. I had lost interest in that series and only watched about 1 episode of Enterprise which was in its first season when this magazine came out. The feature article was on Anthony Montgomery, the pilot of Enterprise and was thus only of casual interest. There was something for everyone in this issue, although a bit too much Ferengi for my taste. Any Ferengi is too much for me, but this issue had a lot on them and the actors.

This magazine ran for 4 years, 48 issues, between 1999-2003. It is an enjoyable read and is stuffed full of details for Trek fans. Serious Trek fans would like this best I think and reading this reminds me that although I like some Star Trek a lot, I am very much not a serious Star Trek fan. What is extremely nice is that there are very few advertisements in the magazine and it makes for a much better reading experience.

I was also reminded that other than the recent reboot films and my watching of the Wrath of Khan it has been a very long time since I watched any other Trek.

My mixed and less than enthusiastic reaction to The Song of Achilles (which is more the song of Patroclus, truly) encouraged me to look for another book and take on the Trojan War, and there are many. What caught my eye was a new release that deals with Briseis, who caught my eye in Madeline Miller's book and was probably my favorite character. I put a hold on the book at the library and started reading it last night. The focus of this book appears to be much more aligned with the timeline of the Illiad and certainly gives a different perspective of things compared to Miller's book. The descriptions of violence is a tad more than I like and I almost reconsidered, but the author does not go into excess - she lets you know what is happening, and I really like her descriptive writing which gives me a much better imaginary sense of the Greek beachhead at Troy as well as the city of Lyrnessus, where Briseis would be Queen. This new book is The silence of the girls by Pat Barker.

As I mentioned above >166 RBeffa: I wanted another perspective on Achilles and Troy. This book delivered it. Also, I was certain I had old copies of both The Illiad and the Odyssey, but when I dug through a number of boxed paperbacks I found only The Odyssey. I've added it to my library ... somehow it got skipped early on

29. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, finished June 2, 2019, 4 stars



I liked this novel better than "The Song of Achilles". This book has a much narrower scope and I thought it was an excellent companion book and I also think if one were to read one or the other I would recommend this over Song of Achilles. This is a retelling of The Illiad without all the men's glory and with all of the ugly grit, and mostly from the perspective of women, Briseis in particular. The two books don't tell the same story although they have many of the same characters.

A review was just posted on May 31 and another a few days before that, that praises this novel and says it much better than I could.

I must say that the Greeks were rather disgusting despicable people and I don't think there is anything admirable about them.

Now I need to flush my system of the violence of the Trojan War - I think both authors probably dialed it down but Parker made a strong point of the violence in all forms against women. The stuff at the end was especially hard to take and has been haunting me for several days. Yeah, this is fiction but i have no doubt that Barker's portrayal of things was the way it was.

Need to get a start on some Pearl Buck and James Schmitz stories.

Novels like this that ran 180-200 pages were my bread and butter reading for at least a dozen years when I was much younger. When novels began to bloat I read fewer novels and increasingly turned to the magazines for shorter fiction.

30. The Universe Against Her by James H Schmitz, finished June 6, 2019, 2 1/2 stars



Stories about telepaths and psi powers could hardly be avoided in science fiction and fantasy in the 50's and 60's and that topic lost interest with me rather quickly in retrospect. It probably explains why I never read this book from 1964 despite liking the author a lot. This story begins with a 15 year old girl described as a genius who is developing telepathic abilities with her pet "cat", a rather unique creature found as a kitten who has grown into something like a chameleon mountain lion. But Tick-Tock, the "cat", is an intelligent companion to the star of this show Telzey Amberdon. Unfortunately after about the first quarter of the book this part of the story which could have gone in interesting directions is done and we move on to the girl with super psi powers. There's an unclear description of how these telepathic powers come to life. The next thing you know Telzey is modifying her cranky aunt into a nice person and exploring the minds of fellow students, a dog and an ET. It is no surprise to me that we might soon have "the universe against her." However most of the book concerns a plot on the life of a friend and fellow student. Honestly I got bored with it very quickly.

Some editions of this book apparently contain several extra short stories but my older Ace paperback was just the single novel.

Hi Ron. I hope all is well with you. Have you seen the Canadian World War II series called X company? It's really great.

>170 brodiew2: I saw your post Brodie and it did sound very good - but I couldn't find where to watch it. Doesn't seem to be broadcast now and our library system had nothing on it as well. I'll keep watch for it to show up on Netflix. They only have a very brief description of it.

Ron, I have heard that it plays on hulu and on a cable channel called Ovation. I got all 3 seasons on DVD through my library.

>169 RBeffa: Eric Flint writes in one of his editorial bits that he considers Trigger Argee and Nile Etland (but only two works written with latter) much more complete protagonists than Telzey. She is so atypical and very much a loner despite some interactions with Trigger. Here are some Flint's words on the subject:

Trigger Argee is, without a doubt, the most well-rounded character that James H. Schmitz ever produced. Unlike Telzey, she does NOT possess extraordinary psi powers...For the most part, Trigger makes her way by virtue of those basic human characteristics of intelligence, courage, tenacity, and a fierce sense of principle...There is none of the solitary splendor about Trigger that there is about Telzey. She is sometimes hot-tempered, frequently sarcastic and witty, always stubborn--and occasionally childish.

From the "Afterword" to TNT: Telzey and Trigger

Btw, if you post your review in the Schmitz group read thread, I'll also post this there.

>173 ronincats: Thanks for the reminder Roni. And thank you for the comments. I've been spacing out a bit with allergy meds. I know I love Nile and I remember liking Trigger a lot. This first Telzey book wasn't up to the others.

31. The Exile by Pearl Buck, finished June 8, 2019, 3 stars



"The Exile" is one of Pearl Buck's early works, published in 1936 following the completion of her Good Earth trilogy. She wrote biographies of both of her parents. Buck was 44 years old in 1936 and had only left China two years before. This is the biography of Pearl Buck's mother Caroline, "Carie", clearly written as both a family history and tribute with a great deal of love. It begins with Buck's great-grandparents in Holland, their emigration to America in the 1850's including their youngest child who was Buck's grandfather and the young Parisian woman he married and brought to America.

Caroline Stulting was born March 8, 1857 in the part of Virginia that became West Virginia and died October 21, 1921 in China. Her obituary notice is of interest:



There is a heavy dose of patriotism in this book with recurring comments on what it is and was to be "An American", American exceptionalism and religious freedom. Despite all the love poured into this, by book's end I was pretty sad. It is not uncommon to have regrets about life when we near the end. We think of things we should have done when we were younger, different choices we could have or should have made and regret some of the choices we did make. That is the way Carie came to old age and the end of her life in China, unhappy with choices she had made big and small, and things she had never done. She clearly underestimated what she had accomplished, and yet I could not help myself sympathizing with her.

Buck writes with great descriptive flourishes, maybe almost too much, because I tend to think that when one notices the writing too much maybe it IS just a bit too much. Carrie spent the majority of her life in China as a missionary and moreso as a missionary's wife. What that means is that one must watch child after child be born and die from disease.

I've pulled out two more Pearl Buck books to read this month. I had originally intended to read "The Mother" for the American Author challenge but the book disappeared on me. I found it this morning hiding beneath a magazine. Maybe I need to pick things up more often ... I also pulled off my TBR shelf one of Buck's last novels, "The Three Daughters of Madame Liang."

I started reading "The Mother" earlier today and immediately knew I was reading a novel by the author of "The Good Earth". I believe this book was written before The Good Earth trilogy was finished. I've only read the first two books in the trilogy (I should fix that, I know) but "The Mother" immediately took me to the world of The Good Earth. I have no doubt that I am going to enjoy this book very much. I will of course note here in this log whether my hope comes true or not.

"The Exile" above seems like such an aberration among the Buck books I have read over the years. The fanatic-like patriotic portrait slathered over Buck's mother in this book was just incredibly bizarre and seemed so out of place in the book. Buck for some unknown reason had to paint her as "The American Woman". and we are not talking about a song from the Guess Who altho I will confess the song sang in my head. Numerous times.

32. The Mother by Pearl Buck, finished June 12, 2019, 4 stars



This story was apparently written not long after 'The Good Earth'. It is yet another sad story - this one of a young mother abandoned by her husband. You really get a sense of the rural people in early 20th century China which could almost be the way it had been for centuries. The husband leaves in a kind of snit because he wants something more than the day to day bare subsistence life they have as tenant farmers. As you read you wonder if or when the husband will return and your heart hurts for the poor woman left behind to care for three young children and the husband's mother. The years go by and The Mother to save face initially constructs a story that the husband is away working in the city far away. She hates the lies she tells. The mother had been happy wth her life and her husband and then she must make do with a life that is very hard. At the end I tried to think if there were happy moments somewhere in the story - I can think of good people ... but happy things, no, just sad things for The Mother and her family.

For the most part the story is related non-judgmentally, but I had to wonder if Buck really loved the chinese people or not.

33. The Stamp Collector: There and Back Again by D. Andrew Brooks, finished June 20, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars



I was looking for something different and this was suggested in my kindle app as I browsed. It is a new release and i gave it a try. I have an interest in stories set in this time period before and after the first world war. Unfortunately after some initial enthusiasm the story lost some of my interest here and there as I read. I think my bother is that too much information was held back as a storytelling style, so that the reader meets a lot of people who use 4 or 5 names each depending on who they are talking to and where they are and I had little sense of understanding what various people were up to. The multiple names were there because the author was showing how various honorifics could be added and they and the names would also vary by the culture, country and prestige of the interacting people. Nevertheless I found it distracting. Also, and more importantly, because info was held back I was frustrated early on even as I enjoyed many of the people and pieces of the story. Pieces of this puzzle do fit together as the story proceeds

I am also a little tired of the "Secret societies" angle in stories, so all the stuff in this novel about freemasons was a detraction.

I know my comments sound negative. However, the story does reward the patient reader. I think some people will like this a lot. There is a good amount of history (and historical figures) and local color in this story that begins in Persia (Iran) in 1913. The author also provides a nice prologue. Overall this is not a typical story and gets an "above average OK" from me.

I'll note that the ebook has a few grammatical errors and many spelling and typographical errors that jump out at the reader, especially in the second half of the book. Jesus the profit was perhaps the most egregious.

The author tells us that the story, although fiction, is built on true events and people. A sequel is planned which I look forward to.

Good library day - I got a copy of Destiny of the Republic which Brodie and Joe and others have sung the praises of a couple years ago. I've just started it and am totally hooked. I dropped a few donations off at the libe and returned some Dvd's and a book and then I took a look at the Friends nook. I was pleased to see a hardback of the Simon Winchester book I read a few months ago >108 RBeffa:. It had a cool looking cover and when I opened the book I saw that it was a special edition and had been signed by the author. Needless to say the book came home with me. I then discovered that the interesting cover unfolded and unfolded and unfolded into this very large and very cool poster. I'm a happy guy.

>179 RBeffa:

Which Simon Winchester book were you so fortunate to find?!

I'm reading THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and have asked Paul, who's now in Yorkshire,
to look for the Oxfordshire pound stones. Sure hope he sees and lifts one.

William Smith is one fascinating guy.

>180 m.belljackson:. This one Marianne. . My book looks like this except that each of those dark bands is a fold so that if you take the book cover off and lay it out you can start opening the cover like a puzzle and then open the next layer and the next and then completely lay it out into a very large poster sized display. Kind of fun.

I need to read more of Winchester's books and re-read Krakatoa

>177 RBeffa: I'm putting that one on my list, Ron. I'm nearly finished with Imperial Woman, and was a bit surprised at how much I've been enjoying it.

Yay for Destiny of the Republic, Ron! I'm glad it's got you hooked.

I like Simon Wincester's writing. I'll look forward to your comments on A Crack in the Edge of the World when you get to it.

>183 jnwelch: Joe, I reviewed it up at >108 RBeffa:. 4 1/2 stars. Would undoubtedly be my favorite non-fiction read of the year except I am really loving Destiny of the Republic so maybe we will have a tie.

>182 laytonwoman3rd: The Mother is really an excellent book Linda. I'm not sure I'll get to another Buck book this month, but since I did two I won't beat myself up. I have both Madame Liang and Kinfolk sitting on the bookshelf behind my reading chair so they are ready when I am.

>179 RBeffa: That’s a great one! Millard is one heckuva writer.

>185 drneutron: She sure is Jim. I'm going to need a short reading break after this one. Whew.

34. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, finished June 28, 2019, 4 1/2 - 5 stars



This will be one of my top reads of the year. I think you can call this one a "tour de force".

An excellent history lesson woven into a wonderfully knit story of James Garfield and others of his time, including his assassin. The assassin part was pretty creepy. The man was completely delusional. I kept thinking over and over how much our country and people probably lost because of Garfield's unjust death. Millard gives us a lot to think about. One of the most eye opening things is how different Presidential nominations and politics were 140 years ago. One reads about the "spoils system" in school, but it fades from memory and Millard lets us see some of the way it worked in practice. If you think modern politics stinks just take a trip back to 1880.

The botched medical treatment of Garfield which ultimately led to his death takes up a good portion of the book and is very hard to accept from a modern point of view. I mean, we were not on a Civil War battlefield. Wouldn't a wounded president have received the best medical treatment possible? No you get egotistic pompous a**holes. Even if he had been allowed to have better doctors (it is truly unbelievable what went on) it seems the unwashed masses so to speak had doomed Garfield. Millard applies a bit of revisionist history here and there is some online criticism of it if one chooses to hunt. What it boils down to was that germ theory and antiseptic techniques had been publicized and demonstrated by Joseph Lister and others but were not widely accepted in America at the time of Garfield's bullet wound, and were seen by some at the time as a kind of quack theory. What seems so basic to current thinking was not the norm then. So the reader needs to remember this and come to their own conclusion. For me, it is pretty clear that President Garfield was killed by ignorant physicians. This book made me angry and sad and is a book I can heartily recommend.

My non-fiction reads this year have certainly been very good and I need to read more of both Millard and Simon Winchester, this year or next. I have books by both on hand.

>179 RBeffa: Got me with that one.

>187 laytonwoman3rd: Destiny of the Republic is an amazingly good book Linda and an outstanding piece of scholarship. Highly recommended. I am incredibly impressed with it.

--------

Somehow half the year has gone by much too fast. Looking at my 2019 reading so far I am finding myself rather satisfied with most of the books. My goal for the year is about 60 books and I'm on track (a bit ahead actually and maybe something close to 75 might arrive unexpectedly) The top fiction books are all pretty close in how I feel about them.

Fiction:
1. Munich by Robert Harris
2. Bird Box by Josh Malerman
3. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
4. Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N McIntyre
5. A Breath of Air by Rumer Godden
6. The Mother by Pearl Buck
7. The Stamp Collector: There and Back Again by D. Andrew Brooks
8. The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker

Non-Fiction
1. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
2. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester
3. Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan

Favorite anthologies:

1. The 1986 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A Wolheim and Arthur Saha

Fiction re-reads:

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Best fun read:

1. Transit To Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

35. Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick, finished July 6, 2019, 3 1/2 stars



Honestly this is a very interesting, but depressing book.

What a mess the American Revolution was. A battle of egos within each army. It is hard for me to think of Benedict Arnold as a traitor. If that was Philbrick's intention, well he has succeeded. Arnold was indeed a self-interested traitor to the revolution but the congress and other figures had betrayed him first.

There is both too much and too little information in this book. I learned a lot about Benedict Arnold and many other people in the revolutionary war.

This novel loses a whole star for hitting some of my hot buttons - a celebration of violence and worse, domestic violence against a child. This appears at the climax of the story and I will discuss it briefly below. I would have canned the book if I had known it was the climax.

36. GO: A Coming of Age Novel by Kazuki Kaneshiro, finished July 10, 2019, 2 1/2 - 3 stars



I enjoyed this for most of the novel until a disturbing end. This story was first published in Japan in 2000 and seems to be set in the early 1990's. Like one of Haruki Murakami's novels, there are lots of Americanisms in the story, primarily music and film references (although the film references include a broad range of foreign films) and the music refs aren't just classical and jazz, but people like Bruce Springsteen or Lou Reed, or Jimi Hendrix and Gene Kelly singing and dancing in the rain, which is actually very Murakami-like. The story is about a Korean boy, Sugihara, and his family living in Japan, and as the title says, it is a coming of age novel. But it is also the story of 2nd generation Koreans living in Japan and how they were considered a much lower class. I didn't know this but in the 1950's Koreans in Japan, even if born there, had to choose to become citizens of either North or South Korea. This boy's father chose North Korea.

I generally like Japanese novels, and this one has that snarky sense to it that some of Murakami's novels, and other Japanese authors have, and I sort of think of it as a Japanese style of storytelling.

Despite my Murakami comparison, this is told more simply and lacks the nuances that Murakami's writing has. The story is set during jr high school and primarily high school years. And of course a girl comes along. Maybe not of course, but it seemed of course, because love changes the way we see the world and our boy Sugihara is no exception. But Sugihara is Korean and the girl is Japanese. I really liked the first half of the novel but the way the story developed had me liking the latter half less and less.

The story is bothersome because Sugihara makes his way through school by becoming a bad-ass who takes on all comers. The Japanese students hate him because he is Korean and they come to fight him and he repeatedly beats them down (sometimes quite graphically). He keeps score. As we near the end of the novel he is 25-0 he says in his fights. He also strives to have a better life for himself then he has and studies hard for his exams and universty enrollment exams. He also reads voraciously. He has some interesting friends and his relationships with them contribute to the story and our understanding of the world Sugihara lives in.

Now here is my problem, and if spoilers bother you read no more. Sugihara's father was a boxer in his younger days and he has taught his son how to fight. This is basically why Sugihara can beat all comers in middle and high school. There are a couple of mentions in the story about Sugihara having been punished by his father. They appear in such a way that one understands it as part of the environment Sugihara has grown up in and one understands that the father is basically a good man who cares for his family but to be Korean in Japan puts one up against extreme racial prejudice and toughness is one way to survive.

As the story nears the last few pages and Sugihara studies for his exams he gets a call from his father, drunken somewhere and out of money to get home and apparently unable to pay his bar bill. This is not the usual father - he has been losing his business due to corrupt police and prejudice against his ethnicity. Sugihara goes out to find his father and bring him home. He hires a taxi to take him home since he is unsure if he could manage his severely drunken father on the trains and buses. In the taxi Sugihara berates his father and the taxi driver pulls over to the side of the road, angry at the son who is being disrespectful to his father. The father and son get out and the father invites the son to come at him. There ensues a violent fight which ends with the father smashing Sugihara in the mouth breaking a tooth and beating him to the ground. A crowd wildly applauds the father and the taxi driver gives him a free ride home telling the father how inspiring he was. When they arrive home the mother then beats the son 38 times with a broomstick. Sugihara stays home from school 3 days to recover and then is told more than once how adorable he is with his broken mouth. He is maybe 16 years old. Later Sugihara tells a friend he must dedicate himself to toughen up even more so that he can win his next and final fight.

What a great message.

I was hesitant to start a new book because I have 2 library holds that I have been waiting for. One came in and I have read the first 20 pages and I am totally hooked. Blake Crouch's Recursion. I really enjoyed Dark Matter and wanted to read more by him.

I've been looking forward to this novel, just released in June.

37. Recursion by Blake Crouch, finished July 15, 2019, 3 1/2+ stars



It's deja vu all over again.

My short review: Very interesting and promising beginning that began to drift much too soon. And then it warped into several paradoxes that might make your head get twisted keeping things straight. At some point I started thinking about the book this could have been rather than the one it became. Well, this is what it is, a twisty thriller. This is one for fans of PK Dick stories.

If you want a page-turner, a roller coaster techno-thriller beach or cabin read, this one might do.

Hello Ron. I hope all is well with you!

>186 RBeffa: I am so glad that you enjoyed Destiny of the Republic! It is near the top of my nonfiction favorites.

>192 RBeffa: Thanks for this review. I've been waiting for this one from the library. I have a feeling I will like it.

Have you ever read any of Brooks' Shanarra series?

>193 brodiew2: I think you will like Recursion also Brodie. I'm glad I got it from the library fairly quickly. There are 15 holds waiting after me so I turned it right back in after reading it like a madman in 2 days.

ETA: I would suggest you read Recursion as quickly as possible as I think keeping stuff straight in this book would be very difficult with long breaks between reading. I noticed one glaring mistake not very far in and was surprised there weren't more given the complexity of stuff in here. The mistake wasn't material but I can imagine the author and his editors had a real fun time trying to avoid them. Most of what seems odd as you go along makes sense as the book progresses. I hope you have fun on this wild ride of a book.

Destiny of the Republic is also one of the best non-fiction books I have read. I was so impressed by it.

I read the first Shanarra book when it was newish in the late 70's. I can still remember the big display on the scifi/fantasy shelf at the little bookstore I went to all the time. That was 40 years ago and I don't remember a thing about the story. I think I must have been disappointed because I never read any of the following books.

>190 RBeffa: I have similair hot buttons, Ron, but reading a book De tolk van Java (sadly not translated) two years ago it suddenly dawned upon me: sometimes violence is indeed an act of love to harden the children, so they have a better chance later in life. The main character in that book only survives the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, because he can stand pain without any visible emotion, thanks to his violent father and brothers. In violent times being used to violence might turn to be a life saving quality...

>186 RBeffa: I have liked all of Candice Millard's books, but Destiny of the Republic is my favorite. Besides a terrific story, it has that feel of James Burke's Connections series: a hodgepodge of apparently unrelated threads that turn out to be intimately connected. What a great book.

>195 FAMeulstee: Thanks for dropping by Anita. Intellectually I understand the violence can make you stronger - enough to survive - idea. I think for that reason it didn't bother me for most of the book because it was rather pushed off the page and when it was on the page it was in the form of the father giving the son boxing lessons. There was also a positive message in the book hat even though the main character was the toughest guy in the school he never went around beating people up - he took care of them when someone came at him. Also, more importantly, he matured through the story and went from a mostly disinterested student to one who was applying himself strongly to his studies so that he could get into a good university and have a hopefully better lot in life than what it looked like he was stuck with by Japanese society. My big problem with the book was that those positive messages got shoved aside as the book moved towards the end. People cheered and celebrated the father beating his son to the ground and the final message from the son on the last page was that he had to train and get even tougher so that he could finally beat to the ground the only person who had ever beaten him in a fight - his father.

>196 swynn: Hi Steve. Last year I read Millard's book on Winston Churchill, "Hero of the Empire" and thought it good and worthwhile, but not great. "Destiny of the Republic" is great, truly an outstanding work, and you are right about the James Burke Connections feel. I had gotten the very same impression and was thinking about that as I read it and afterwards. I'm going to keep a lookout at library sales for one of those old Connections books. I don't expect to find one but you never know. It was a terrific PBS series. I have Millard's "River of Doubt here on the shelf to read when I am ready for another, although I think I will go after another Winchester book, or possibly re-read his Krakatoa book.

>197 RBeffa: I'm reading Millard's The River of Doubt now and while I'm not too far into it yet it's been excellent so far. I'll have to put Destiny of the Republic on my wishlist.

Hi, Ron.

I've just started Recursion. I am a PKD fan, so I'm optimistic. Our daughter loved it.

Destiny of the Republic is my favorite Millard, too, although I also got a kick out of Hero of the Empire, about Churchill's early years.

>188 RBeffa: Munich is sitting on my desk. Years ago, I read Harris's Fatherland and just last week happened upon a crisp hardcover copy of it at a library book sale. I'm reading Thomas Mallon's Watergate, which prompted some Googling. That turned up a 2011 New Yorker piece that Mallon wrote about alt-hist writing. Fatherland was cited, as was Stephen King's 11/22/63. He devoted attention to Harry Turtledove's oeuvre. The article was provocative in a reading way.

So where am I here? I dunno.

Maybe this: Munich apparently is worth a read, and perhaps a refresher read of Fatherland is in order. Have you ever read anything by Turtledove?

>198 antqueen: I've read so much science fiction in recent years that non-fiction kept getting put off (although I have been reading a fair amount of historical fiction that has an emphasis on history). I'm glad so many people spoke favorably of Candice Millard. I hope you like her as much as I (and many others) do.

>199 jnwelch: Thanks for dropping by Joe. I'm looking forward to your reaction to Recursion!

>200 weird_O: Hey Bill. I recall being a little unsure of Munich at the beginning but I shouldn't have doubted the author. I hope you enjoy and learn from it. I'd like to re-read Fatherland as well. I've read bits of Turtledove over the years but have never taken to him. I should probably give him another try sometime.

38. Just One More Thing: Stories from My Life by Peter Falk, finished July 19, 2019, 3 1/2 - 4 stars



I picked this book up a couple weeks ago - I couldn't resist it. Started reading this in bits and pieces all out of order. Then I stepped back and read it page by page. It is a quick read.

Peter Falk likes to read short stories so he gives us snapshots of his life in short stories. He points out that the book is not an autobiography. He isn't sure what it is. I'd call it a memoir.

Falk passed away in 2011 at age 83, but the book was published in 2006 and Falk clearly still had all his wits about him, as well as pretty detailed memories. Unfortunately he would soon after be hit with dementia and a rapid mental decline with Alzheimer's disease. Falk tells his stories in a purposely entertaining way. This was a very interesting read.

Why did I pick it up? One might think because of Columbo, Falk's trademark character. The true reason is because I adored him in on of my favorite films "Wings of Desire" in the late 1980's, as well as a sequel a few years later and when I saw this book had a chapter on the film it stayed glued to my hand. The behind the scenes detail and notes Falk wrote made me smile. I laughed out loud several times while reading this, something I can assure you I rarely do when reading a book.

Recommended for any Falk/Columbo fan. Quite a few pictures are included to illustrate his stories, including some of Falk's own drawings.

>202 RBeffa: The Falk memoir would not tempt except that you are right about "Wings of Desire". It's brilliant, and the photography inside the Berlin State Library is magic. So, tempted.

>203 swynn: Steve, I would suggest pulling this Falk memoir off the shelf at your local library and reading the chapter, half a dozen pages, about Wings of Desire. I would only recommend this for Falk fans. (I would not call myself one - I only watched a small handful of Columbo movies). However, I knew little about his life other than his public image which was rather questionable. The book surprised me in many ways and I honestly enjoyed most of it. If you know anything about Falk (he was apparently difficult to work with and a serial womanizer among other things) you can read his stories with a slight bit of skepticism about what he is leaving out or emphasizing, but these are his stories and nothing seemed untrue.

I have not re-watched Wings of Desire for several years but plan to pull the dvd out before too long and watch it with my daughter who is also somewhat under the spell of it. She has a funny story about the film - in a college Romantic Literature or similar class 8 or 10 years ago the professor began talking about the film without naming it. My daughter piped up - Are you talking about Wings of Desire? - and then began intelligently discussing it with him. He was apparently bowled over that a 20 year old could do that. She told him "It is my father's favorite film". Is your father a college professor he asks? No, he's a computer programmer for Social Security. He was stunned she says and couldn't believe it. The prof was convinced that my daughter was an English major (I think the class was only supposed to be for English majors) bur she told him no, she was animal science and just needed an upper division English class. It made me wonder what kind of students this professor had normally!

Ha! That's a great story about your daughter and the lot professor. I was introduced to it as a foreign exchange student my senior year of high school, but I didn't really appreciate it until I rewatched it a couple of years after college, when it struck me as an entirely different film, and a brilliant one. I watched it repeatedly for a few years, but haven't watched it since, probably, my early thirties. I should watch it again. And see what Falk has to say about it.

I'm still not in a mood to read my usual helping of science fiction (although Recursion that I just finished is rather science fictiony. This short novel/novella has been on my short list of books to get from the library ever since I read the premise about a year ago. This book happens to tie in nicely (or not so nicely) as a fiction for the years following Daniel Boone's explorations. This is not a long story - I read it in a couple sessions. A Pennsylvanian heads "West".

39. West by Carys Davies, finished July 23, 2019, 3 stars



The publishers blurb is thus: "When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his only daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west. With only a barnyard full of miserable animals and her dead mother's gold ring to call her own, Bess, unprotected and approaching womanhood, fills lonely days tracing her father's route on maps at the subscription library and waiting for his letters to arrive. Bellman, meanwhile, wanders farther and farther from home, across harsh and alien landscapes, in reckless pursuit of the unknown"

I don't recall anywhere in the story where it says exactly when the story is set but it is sometime after the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), maybe 10-12 years after, when the Mammoth Caves and fossil finds in Kentucky were being discovered and publicized. A fur trader that Cy Bellman encounters near the start of his trip tells him that the President's expedition had come through not more than a dozen years before. He tells Bellman he is on a fool's errand. He had been in the area for 29 years and never seen anything larger than a buffalo. But Bellman had become obsessed with a newspaper article, reading it over and over until he more or less loses his sense. "Just thinking about it had given him a kind of vertigo." He was certain he would find giant creatures roaming the west. Don Quixote with a stovepipe hat.

I guess this is what a man with a midlife crisis did in the early 1800's. Nothing admirable about what he does, frankly. This wouldn't be the first story where a man abandons his child. In a broader sense this touches on the American mentality, I should say American male mentality, to go into the wilderness to find what is out there and everyone else be damned.

I was expecting something different than what this was. There are no positives in this story. This story of the American West is written by an Australian living in England. I guess why not. The story is well written in the sense that the prose is beautiful and evocative. There are two stories here and it didn't grab me, never did, and I found the violent ending disturbing. The whole creepiness surrounding the abandoned daughter was also unpleasant to read.

The New York Times Book Review can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/books/review/west-carys-davies.html

The reviewer shares in a much clearer fashion than I could his mixed feelings on the book and compares it to the authors previous writings which I have not read. There are some spoilers of a sort about events mostly at the end of the book but I don't think it spoils it. Other reviewers had more favorable reactions to this. Personally I would suggest avoiding this novel.

Tried the first two episodes of the new Netflix series "Another Life". There is the bones of a good story in there but it is so horribly cast I do not think I can watch more than the two episodes I made it through.

This recent novel was strongly recommended to me by a non-LT friend.

40. Summer Hours at the Robbers Library: A Novel by Sue Halpern, finished July 27, 2019, 3+ stars



If this book had not been strongly recommended to me I would probably have dropped it very early on. (It starts off like bad college chick lit if such a cateory exists). I had a hard time following this at first and getting into the fractured story. I must have gone back and forth over the first part of the book 3 times trying to figure out what I had missed. Frustrating. Eventually it comes together. I warmed to some of the characters and wanted to know what their past and future was. I became invested, sort of. Parts of the story I liked, parts not. Not my kind of book, really, nor the style of storytelling. The end I dinna like much.

Are the characters in the story interesting? Some are. I don't think I'll talk about the story. That would be telling, as Leo McKern would say.

I've fallen behind on my DAW reads so I picked up an anthology to start reading before bed last night. Catfantastic II should be fun. A lot of short stories that I'll probably spread out a little between other books. The first story is about a cat fished out of the Atlantic by a sailor on the Ark Royal. and the cat collar surprisingly says HMS Hood. A short while later news is received that the Bismark sank the Hood in battle in the North Atlantic more than a thousand miles away. The tomcat is more than the usual cat as the sailor soon discovers. Nice story.

>209 RBeffa: Most of the stories in the Catfantastic collections are good, but I ran into a Steven King story in one of them, years and years ago, that still churns my gut. One of the reasons I continue to be wary of short story anthologies.

ETA No, I have to take it back. The King story is in the Magicats! anthology.

>210 ronincats: Roni, I read part of one of these anthologies years ago - probably the first Catfantastic. It did not leave much of an impression whichever it was. This CatII anthology I am really enjoying and I think now I will just read it straight through. The first three stories were great and quite different from each other. I hope the quality continues (although invariably in anthologies there are stories that disappoint).

This is my DAW books read for July, DAW Book Collectors #839 from 1991 with the DAW Fantasy imprint.

41. Catfantastic II anthology with various authors edited by Andre Norton and Martin H. Greenberg, finished July 31, 2019, 4+ stars (rated for the genre)



A collection of 18 stories, most by authors I have neither read nor heard of (I've previously read stories that I can recall by three of them). I like cats and I expected to like this, which is why I picked it up a few years ago. This was the second in a short series of 5 Catfantastic books and I know I read at least part of one of the books many years ago. What I didn't expect was how much I would enjoy these creative stories. They lean heavily to the fantasy/magic side, but the elements don't overpower the stories. They are for the most part just very good stories that involve cats. I would have a hard time picking favorites from these stories, and there were only a few mild disappointments. I liked the stories in the first half of the book better than the later stories. Overall, I found this collection delightful and would recommend it to anyone who thinks they might like some cat tales.

I don't see these books very often but I will look for others in the series. Browsing a few reviews I suspect this might be the best collection in the series. Our library has at least one other of the books.

The included stories are:

Introduction (Catfantastic II) • essay by Martin H. Greenberg and Andre Norton
Bomber and the Bismarck • short story by Clare Bell
A Puma and a Panther • (1991) • short story by Wilanne Schneider Belden
The Last Gift • (1991) • novelette by Elizabeth H. Boyer
Papercut Luck • (1991) • short story by Patricia B. Cirone
Shado • (1991) • short story by Marylois Dunn
In Bastet's Service • (1991) • short fiction by P. M. Griffin
Shadows • (1991) • short fiction by Caralyn Inks
The Execution • (1991) • short story by A. R. Major
Hermione at Moon House • (1991) • short story by Ardath Mayhar
Quest of Souls • (1991) • short fiction by Ann Miller and Karen Elizabeth Rigley
Ede's Earrings • (1991) • short fiction by Sasha Miller
Clara's Cat • (1991) • short fiction by Elizabeth Moon
Hob's Pot • (1991) • short fiction by Andre Norton
The Queen's Cat's Tale • (1991) • short fiction by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
The Keep-Shape Spell • (1991) • short fiction by Mary H. Schaub
Of Age and Wisdom • (1991) • short story by Roger C. Schlobin
Critical Cats • novelette by Susan Shwartz
In Carnation • short story by Nancy Springer

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When my wife and I visited the library last week we enjoyed a funny moment. There is apparently a big black cat in the neighborhood who loves visiting the library - he just strolls in. He apparently also visits the nearby police station. The owner came to retrieve him after a call while we were there. Just scooped him up and out they went. It gave some of us a chuckle.

42. No Cats Allowed (Cat in the Stacks Mystery Book 7) by Miranda James, finished July 31, 2019, 2 1/2 - 3 stars



I read a novel with a library and librarian at the center, and then I read an anthology of cat stories. Why not, then, a mystery with a college librarian and cat?

Our library has a number of these books which have tempted me from time to time. Sometimes one wants a simple cozy mystery to read. This one was available and I gave it a go. It is a very quick read. I was also disappointed. Jumping into the middle of a series is sometimes a problem - one misses a backstory. However I didn't feel that way really - this is no problem being a standalone.

I was hoping that the cat, a Maine Coon named Diesel (after Vin? I dunno) would have a different part to play. Now, maybe, here is where I missed some backstory, but as near as I can tell Diesel is a service cat. He goes virtually everywhere the owner goes in harness with leash. The librarian has permission from the library director and above to have this well behaved cat at work. Then a new director comes who seems to want to make an enemy of everyone on the staff and insists he is allergic to cats and the cat must go. Legal threats are waved about and Human Resources complaints and the story progresses and the new director is found dead. Who dunnit? Everyone? Now if this cat that acts like a service cat was actually a legit service cat, then all the falderol towards the librarian would be nonsense and have no leg to stand on. So, the cat is not a service cat.

There is a bit of glitchiness in the writing. If you were speed reading you probably wouldn't notice. I noticed. And this is my own weirdness I suppose - I was perhaps a quarter of the way through the book before I realized that our main character, Charlie, Diesel the cat's owner, was a man. Even after a son showed up and repeatedly referred to Charlie as Dad, I was awaiting an explanation of why the son called Charlie "Dad".

As a light mystery the story is OK. I may even read another book in the series one day. Most readers rate this much higher than I did.

My wife and I have been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzling this past year and more. She does more than I but I have been working to catch up. We sometimes collaborate on the tough puzzles, but these are smaller sized ones lately, most 500 pieces. She does them and then I do them. This would be an expensive habit but our Friends of the library has been accepting donations of these and reselling for a couple years, and now with a lot of participants there is a huge turnover. Here are the ten puzzles I completed in July: