Reading in 2021 - Jill's Relief Effort & Literary Circle

Welcome to 2021. The relief effort refers to the regular solace and escape to be found in reading and the literary circle encompasses all of you. (Let's hope I get to complete more than one thread this year. What a slacker I've been!)

>1 jillmwo: Best wishes for lots of relief, multiple threads (if time and interest allows), and other good things in 2021. :)

A very happy new year to you! May you encounter many agreeable books, and tell us about them.

Happy new year, Jill!

Happy New Year!

A good new year to you, Jill!

>1 jillmwo: Jill, Happy New Thread(s). I would suggest your not producing more than one thread in 2020 was nothing to do with your being a slacker. I would suggest it was your being very productive in other areas. Of course, I could be wrong. :-)

Happy New Year. May 2021 be a good year for you and bring you good things and great books.

Happy new year Jill! I hope it is a good one for you in every way. I look forward to reading your musings on what you read.

Happy New Year!

I want to share a snippet of text with you from Stephen Fry's Heroes. What's important for folks to remember is that these are classical myths retold for adults. But I think this particular bit is indicative of why Fry's retellings are worth seeking out:

Medea stepped forward. The dragon hissed. Medea threw up a hand and sang out some words that Jason could not quite hear. The dragon lowered its head so that it was level with Medea. She stared deep into the vertical slits of its yellow eyes., the eyes that could never close, chanting her incantations all the while. The dragon froze, its mouth sagged open, and great strands of drool dropped to the ground. The grass and moss below hissed and steamed as the venomous saliva hit them. Medea took dried herbs, roots and flowers from her satchel and rubbed them into a ball in the palms of her hands. The dragon was frozen and immobile, but Jason could hear the slow panting of it's breath.

Now two pages later, Medea beheads her younger brother and Jason begins to question his romantic feelings for this woman so you can see that this is not really intended for the small fry. But the quote above provides you with the flavor of Fry's gift for dramatic story-telling.

Besides, how better to start out the year here in the Pub than with a tale about a particularly dangerous dragon and the witch who exerts control over it in the interest of the man she loves?

>11 jillmwo:

I wonder which character you identify with most.

>11 jillmwo: Reading Robert Graves myths book has been and continues to be very interesting, but Fry's sounds more like stories.

>1 jillmwo: Happy new thread, my friend! May your 2021 be a trillion times better than that clusterfork of a year we just kissed good-bye...

Happy New Year!

I'm finally getting over here to wish you a very happy and relief-filled new year.

>16 Jim53: Thank you for this. I will say that trying to read A Memory Called Empire this week might not have helped my general outlook on life so I'll be visiting the Chalion thread soon. This was not the right week to read about possible coups in government!

Also, I have just been reminded that The Folio Society is holding it's annual sale. I feel sure that some lovely book is calling to me. (Quite possibly more than one...) And my birthday is in less than a week!!! I can do this. (I mean, buying high quality book titles helps in the midst of a global pandemic, right? Like we should ALL be stimulating the economy. Nothing is as enjoyable as a virtuous rationalization.)

>17 jillmwo: ...buying high quality book titles helps in the midst of a global pandemic, right?

All the Mindfulness gurus would say it is essential to your mental health.

...and while on the topic of books and Mindfulness...
I must thank you for the Reynard the Fox BB. I am loving it. I am at the part where he has just talked himself out of being hanged and has convinced Noble that he cannot accompany him and the queen to the buried treasure because he has been excommunicated and must go on pilgrimage to Rome seeking forgiveness lest he sully the king's reputation.

It is a book full of reality and general application regardless of the time in history or the social situation. Beautifully observed and portrayed. I can see its application to recent historical events, like in the past few days, and to events in countries around The World both now and in the past. It will also be applicable in the future.

In one post you said you thought I would like it. How right you are. The political intrigue and the double dealing are of great interest. Thank you!

ETA: Yes, I love the footnotes. They are a great technique for blurring the boundary between reality and the world outside the book. :-)

And having just checked: happy birthday (belatedly)!

Belated happy birthday wishes from me too.

Hippo (belated) Birdie Two Ewe!

Another one! Happy belated birthday :)

Oops! Hope your birthday was wonderful!

>19 haydninvienna:, >20 -pilgrim-:, >21 hfglen:, >22 Narilka:, and >23 MrsLee: Many thanks for the birthday wishes. Life is complex these days so marking the years sometimes gets spread out over several days. My present arrived two weeks before my birthday and I got to see what it WAS (inside a brown packing carton) but it's only just now being assembled. (It's one of those movable "typing desks" on wheels that adjusts in height. My husband isn't swearing angrily or loudly at it so I think the construction is probably progressing adequately, but he really hates to assemble furniture.)

I returned to A Memory Called Empire and finished it off, but I haven't yet fully processed what the book was about. There's a murdered ambassador, a competition for technology, and clones so yes this is definitely space opera. But if there was a theme or a message the author wanted to get across to me, I missed it. I loved the culture introduced in the book but it was a little overwhelming throughout the first half of the story. This made it fairly easy to identify with the ambassador from Lsel who stumbles a bit as she is trying to navigate her surroundings. The action moves along at a clip (the planetside events occur within the space of a week, or maybe ten days at the outside.)

Some of the cultural elements were familiar (the poetry competitions reminded me very much of those in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagan and the impression we were given of the physical spaces and governmental architecture were as impersonal as much of what we see in our own modern buildings. Brute-style cement stuff surrounding wide open plazas. There is a subway that seems fairly advanced. Their information technology is ahead of ours but clearly related to the familiar concepts we might see in commercials from Google or Microsoft about what technology is about to introduce and support.

One minor rant. Personally, I wish sci-fi authors and the publishers who distribute their works would consider putting any useful glossaries and character name listings in the FRONT matter rather than it being relegated to the rear where the reader may not think to look for it. Readers end up muddling through or constructing their own which is kind of I don't know about the rest of you, but I always assume that a novel's pages are given over to telling me the story. If there are 442 pages, then I'm going to assume that the story begins on page 7 or 8 (allowing for front matter) and then continues on until page 440. To find a glossary of 10-15 pages or more at the back of the book only after one has finished the novel tends to throw me off.

And my husband just came down with my new wheelie desk and it works beautifully!!!!

And as a final aside, I added my thoughts re The Curse of Chalion to the group read thread. I've been productive this past week or so.

>24 jillmwo: Enjoy your new typing desk.

Belated happy birthday wishes and great news about your new desk.

>24 jillmwo: The stumbling ambassador sounds maybe a little like Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness.

I hope the desk gives you a lot of improved comfort.

The Forgers
Bradford Morrow
ISBN 978-0802124272

There is an elegance in the construction to this thriller that makes it a fascinating read. The theme (as one might anticipate) is one of authenticity. What is the truth of a signature or a manuscript? What is the truth of one’s character and/or one’s talents? How ought one to think about one’s own character and express that authentic nature to others?

There is a minimal set of characters in this novel. Will is the narrator, definitely a man of flawed character, and Meghan the woman he truly loves. There is Adam (mostly dead) and there is Henry (most unfortunately, not dead). There is the friend, Atticus. There is much about the community of booksellers who focus on rare and collectible volumes. An important aspect of that community is the assumption of honor in transactions. And can one be honorable in one's transactions or relationships if there are secrets that must be hidden from plain sight?

I don’t know how I missed this one when it was originally published in 2014, but it has much to offer a slow and careful reader. You'll want to read the prose slowly and you'll want to be careful in where you place your trust.

My pandemic brain is such that I can’t recall why I picked up Murder in Old Bombay by Nev Marsh. It may have been because I had read a review from the Historical Novel Society or maybe Amazon had recommended it after I purchased The Widows of Malabar HIll by Sujata Massey. I suppose it doesn’t matter. At any rate, I knew little of what to expect when I actually started to read. That said, I *can* recommend it.

The hero is Captain Jim. Of Anglo-Indian heritage, he is an orphan raised in a Catholic mission and who as an adult finds himself at loose ends as an injury has rendered him unfit for his current employment as a soldier. The year is 1892 and the British largely but imperfectly rule the land. Conflict and bloody skirmishes spring up with regularity. Jim lies in a hospital, wondering what to do now.

He is hired to serve as an investigator by a young lawyer, Adi Framji, seeking to know why two young women from this Parsee family are dead. Hampered by his mixed bloodline, Jim has to navigate the complexities of a caste system, tribal conflicts and family secrets. He is protective of his client, respectful of military rank and practice, and at times delightfully flawed as a detective. (He basically operates according to what he’s read of Arthur Conan Doyle, something that might have grown old as a thread in a novel of just under 400 pages. Yet it didn’t.)

Some reviews found the plot “meandered”, a criticism that I can sympathize with. On the other hand, each twist was surprising, catching me off-guard. The book is up for an Edgar Award (see http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html) and I’m kind of hoping it wins in its category of Best First Novel. An enjoyable read that doesn't wander too far from the cultural mindset of the period.

>29 jillmwo: Murder in Old Bombay Sounds interesting, thanks for the review.

>30 Karlstar:, >29 jillmwo: Yes, you have got my interest too.

>29 jillmwo: >30 Karlstar: >31 -pilgrim-:
I am just looking the other way and passing on the far side of the road. No! No! I am not looking.

>32 pgmcc: You and me both!

Passing is primarily about two women -- Clare and Irene. Clare, having experienced poverty and an abusive father, discovers that she can move up in the social strata if she passes as being a white woman. Irene, by way of a contrast, acknowledges her race and the social status to which it relegates her, except when (as a momentary convenience), she crosses the line and passes as a white woman in order to get brief refreshment at a cafe. While Clare wants to re-establish ties to her childhood friends, Irene resists. She sees the danger in which Clare placed herself being married to a bigoted white man, and fears the long-term repercussions to which Clare’s deception exposes others near her. The book is uncomfortable to read, but worthwhile.

There's another title I read last year -- Passing Fancies by Marlowe Benn -- that touches on some similar themes. It too is set in the Harlem Renaissance and addresses thematically some of the artificiality in relationships created by racism and false identity. While the themes are quite close, Larsen's tale written in the 1920s rings more true and communicates more real pain than Benn's novel.

And again, I'm still reading An Illuminated Life about Belle da Costa Greene, a woman who managed to cross the color line in a variety of settings, but at least initially due to her employer's clout (J.P. Morgan).

>31 -pilgrim-: and >32 pgmcc: I suspect you would prefer the writing style found in The Forgers discussed in #28 to that of Murder in Old Bombay. I can't be sure which >30 Karlstar: might prefer. And I'd look at >33 clamairy: and refer her to the biography of da Costa Greene.

I may now move on to either Singing in the Shrouds or to Network Effect as a light quick read. I've got a writing project coming up in the next week or two that will require me delving further back in history. Oh, and a friend dragged me into a group of academics, which is seriously discussing The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin. Lots of note-taking in that one.

>34 jillmwo: Your comments remind me that I must read Passing. The recent bestseller The vanishing half, which is also awaiting me on my kindle, suggests that these issues have not gone away in the 100 years between the two novels.

>34 jillmwo: >35 Sakerfalcon: I was going to mention The Vanishing Half, which I read recently and liked a lot. Now maybe I'd better add Passing to my own list.

One thing struck me this week as I went through some mysteries. The first one was one I'd picked up last year, Murder at the Mena House, which is a nice low-key historical mystery, set in 1920’s Egypt. A young widow, serving as a companion to her aunt, is newly arrived at the upscale Mena House hotel. They’ve only been in place a day or two when Jane Wunderly becomes entangled in the murder of a spoilt, young woman. Anne Stainton is found dead in her room. As obnoxious as Anne was, was she truly worth killing? There is a nicely manageable set of potential suspects -- two young unmarried women focused on their tennis game, a young couple on their honeymoon, a smarmy businessman who makes up to wealthy women in the hotel bar, the mysterious but charming Redvers, and even perhaps the victim’s own father, a retired British colonel who clearly did not know how to handle his daughter. The mystery’s setting is pleasantly exotic and the story includes a nod of recognition to colonial attitudes of the time. I picked this up because it was a debut novel and the publisher (Kensington) had provided a dust jacket that was particularly attractive as a way of attracting buyers to a new name. Chapters were relatively lengthy and scene transitions within the chapter managed via text. The book was a nice comfy read without being too seriously gritty or overly complex. The point of view in use was first person, so it was easy to slip into the action.

But then I pulled from the TBR pile a different historical mystery by Martin Edwards, Mortmain Hall. The approach towards the story-telling was rather more complex than Murder at the Mena House and to my mind somewhat more annoying. The author shifted his narrative across four different character points of view (although the series title is associated with a female sleuth, Rachel Saverlake). Those shifts in POV were primarily indicated by small dingbat lines between scenes (a currently accepted convention). Edwards adopts a story-telling approach from traditional means to one more associated with television. Here’s a snippet that I think exemplifies what I mean:

Jacob ordered a gin and tonic from a cockney bartender half the size of the man on the door and took in his surroundings. The walls were covered in hessian, the decor confined to dried up palms in chipped pots. The other people in the bar sipped their cocktails with a slightly unfocused look in their eyes. Jacob wasn’t sure if they were drug fiends or simply half asleep.

Now that bit of description reads to me like something you’d stick in a screenplay as an instruction to the set designer as to what kind of down-scale bar our investigative reporter has picked to visit. The numerous scene shifts between various POV characters within each chapter strikes me as the way you’d do cuts from location to location to build suspense or tension in a television show. If the real money these days is in getting your book made into television, then Edwards’ technique makes sense to some extent. It could easily be morphed from one format to another with minimal effort by a script writer.

I realize that the style adopted in Murder at the Mena House is less sophisticated in some ways; many might think that the approach adopted in Morttmain Hall is more sophisticated and assumes more intelligence on the part of the reader. I’m not sure if either approach is necessarily better or more literary but, for me as a reader, I think I find the more traditional to be preferable when I’m looking for leisure reading. I don’t want book publishers to foster the television style of writing; if I want to watch television, I can manage that.

Postscript: (I don’t expect much depth from television although I do expect it of text. Except for series like The Queen. I do expect depth in that kind of television story-telling and viewing.)

Second Postscript: I'll be getting ahold of the follow-up book in the Jane Wunderly series, but am not likely to seek out another in the Rachel Saverlake series.

For what it's worth, I referenced Singing in the Shrouds in a n older message there above in #34. I'm still working my way through that one. It's more in the style of Murder at the Mena House but there are a few moments of shock in Marsh's novel from 1960 that transition between the comfortable cozy treatment of murder and the dark psychological modern treatments.

>37 jillmwo: And here's me thinking Jacob had a massive sized gin and tonic unless the man on the door was a borrower of Mary Norton fame.

>39 MrsLee: Maybe someone is about to be drowned in the G&T?

>39 MrsLee: and >40 -pilgrim-: I want you to know that I went back to that clip in the book to see if perhaps I had inadvertently left out some critical punctuation mark that might have clarified the author's meaning. But I didn't. That italicized clip is exactly as it appears in the printed book. so who knows what size the gin and tonic might have been!

>41 jillmwo: proofreader fail!

>41 jillmwo: I know that fashions in punctuation change, and that "good style" definitions vary between different sides of the Atlantic, but to me that whole passage served rather deficient in punctuation.

Maybe that added to your sense the you were reading something that wanted to be a film script?

I just saw a meme asking whether Bingo was the name of the farmer or the dog. Ambiguity all around!

There’s a low-end cargo ship that is taking aboard a set of passengers for a voyage between Portsmouth in the Uk and Las Palmas in Gran Canaria and further on to Durban, South Africa. The ship is not overly posh and neither are the 9 passengers. There is the rubenesque Mrs. Dillington-Blick, the rather more grim Katherine Abbott, ingenue Jemima Carmichael and the rather timid Mrs. Cuddy. Mr Cuddy accompanies her. But there are also the school master, Mr. Merryman, the talk show host Aubyn Dale, stamp collector Mr. McAngus, Anglo-Catholic priest, Father Jouvain, and the newly appointed ship’s doctor, Tim Makepiece. However, there’s a murder on the foggy docks at midnight, just before the ship sails and, as it appears that the murder is part of a pattern, Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn is also required to be onboard. It’s going to be a long time at sea and you can’t hope to escape from the company.

This one -- Singing in the Shrouds is a rather slow build which was a problem for me when trying to read it over a fragmented period of time. I just couldn’t get into it. But fortunately, there was a break this week (well, really just yesterday) and for whatever reason, I was able to give it my full attention. The setting does work; at one point, Alleyn comments that there is nothing more isolated than a ship of people in the middle of the ocean. It takes a while but in the final third of the tale, the action speeds up. The reader suddenly feels that sense of claustrophobia and danger. A sense of theme emerges in Chapter 7 when psychiatrist Dr. Makepiece and priest Jouvain discuss at length the value that both fields of study bring to motivation and criminal behavior. Very late in the text, a comment is made that criminal behavior is brought on by a lack of control as well as a lack of common sense. Written in 1958, Singing in the Shrouds is not particularly well-versed in scientific understanding of human psychological behaviors, but the conversation is interesting. (Note: this particular Marsh title suffers from the attitudes of its time. Whether you see it as cultural prejudice or simple ignorance, the book is occasionally uncomfortable.)

PS: One element about this is that the reader does get a sense of how slowly the boat is moving and thus what travel at the time must have been like. I can't find the source at the moment, but from other things I read during this past month, it appears Marsh wrote this one while she was making the same (possibly dreary) journey.

>45 jillmwo: Union-Castle mailships took 13 days from Southampton to Cape Town, plus 3 or 4 to Durban. The cargo ship would have been slower, but perhaps not by much. there certainly would not have been the entertainment that Union-Castle laid on, on a cargo ship.

>46 hfglen: Thanks for the clue on the timing! Useful.

I have been reading, even if not posting. I hope someone around here will remember my preferred pub beverage of a PGGB and allow me to squeeze into one of the booths so that the Roombas don't shoot lasers at the unfamiliar feet.

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier Some of you may remember that a year or two back, I splurged on a used set of a Folio set of four titles by Du Maurier. It includes Rebecca of course, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek. The last was the only one I hadn’t already read so, having completed a research project this past week, over the weekend I plunged in. I hadn’t realized that this title was more of a romance novel in terms of content. It’s set in 17th century Restoration England and the heroine is an aristocratic wife and mother who has inadvertently discovered how far she has wandered from the person she felt herself to be. Bored, she has strayed from social norms in London and shocked herself by her own uncaring behavior. She escapes from her clod of a spouse and the man who has been trying to lure her into an affair to the country with her children and their nurse. Walking the family’s estate, she meets a french pirate, a man who has taken to piracy and the sea because the occupation is more suited to his personality than his role at birth had been. The parallel in the impulse they each follow in escaping their inauthentic lives is the basis for their relationship. This is a fantasy of a romance, but it’s entirely readable and one can see that it would make a GREAT movie. (It was made into a movie in the early 40s with a young Joan Fontaine as the female lead and someone forgettable as the male lead.

As an adjacent (non-fiction) read, I dipped into Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Houses by Christina Hardyment which includes as one of its twenty, Manderly, the house in the novel Rebecca also by du Maurier. This was published by Oxford’s Bodleian Library so the novels are primarily by British authors. I bought the book purely on the basis of the charm promised by a chapter on Bilbo’s own BagEnd. Of course, it also mentions Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead and Mervyn Peak’s Gormenghast. The tie-in to Frenchman’s Creek is that the chapter on du Maurier mentions that the house in FC is based on a house called Trelowarren which is a lovely country house estate owned by friends of the Du Maurier family.

The Summer Before the War was read over the course of a couple of weeks on a Kindle where I might have been skimming for story more than normal. The novel came out awhile back (2017) and the marketing centered around the idea that fans were missing Downton Abbey and needed something to soothe that itch. Set in England just prior to World War I, this one was also rather lightweight in substance, but written with the intent to elicit tears at the end over all the waste. Please note that I didn’t squeeze out any tears but that was undoubtedly due to the skimming. If properly read in immersive mode, it might have been entirely successful.

The French Powder Mystery by Ellery Queen was a book group selection (yes, we did it on Zoom). What it really prompted among the participants was a discussion of various cultural shifts in retail since its original publication back in 1930. The murder takes place in a New York department store that is pretty clear intended to be either Macy’s or Gimbel’s. (Remember Gimbel’s?) Think of what you know about Macy’s nowadays and consider the following ideas:
-- The owner has a penthouse apartment at the top of the building. The members of his immediate family each have their own gold key to the door of that apartment, engraved with their initials. (No magnetic card keys, not even any heavy curtain tassel as a key fob)
-- The display windows facing the street are large enough to have live models demonstrating products (such as murphy beds) to those who walk past.
-- There is a massive book department (absorbing half of one of the floors) in this department store and that book department sells rare books.
-- The hats that women wore at the time (if they were at all respectable) and how the hats and gloves were treated as a part of one’s wardrobe
-- No coffee or beverages were being offered to those attending a board meeting in the conference room that is a part of this penthouse apartment. Everyone gets coffee and/or tea in a conference room these days (even if it's bad…)

I forgot to note earlier that one of the things about this book that reflects the careful construction of Ellery Queen novels is that Queen manages to hold off the reveal until the name of the murderer appears as the very last words of the novel!

I also revisited all of Kate Charles Psalms mystery series. Those were published back in the ‘90’s and while they also reveal the shifts in cultural attitudes, they were just as enjoyable as the first time I read them. Somewhere in there, I also read Murder in a Cathedral by Ruth Dudley Edwards which was also very light, very nearly farcical. The murder doesn’t happen until nigh on two-thirds of the way thru the book.

There are at least two or three other books I read at some point since the beginning of March, but those might require more brain to summarize and present. I did do a massive binge-buy on books at the end of April (a very expensive binge -- at least, equivalent to the cost of a very high end designer handbag), but as that shipment has to come from overseas, the United States Post Office may not deliver it for another two or three weeks. (I should’ve gone ahead and paid for the more expensive shipping option.)

>48 jillmwo: Nice to see you here! *passes a PGGB, while scooting roomba behind the stool*

It's been ages since I read Frenchman's Creek as in high school, ages ago. I really only remember the atmosphere and that there was a pirate involved. That book on novel houses sounds fun.

>48 jillmwo:
I have not read Frenchman’s Creek yet. You make it sound like The Dread Pirate Roberts is involved.

As MrsLee said, “Nice to see you here.”

I was not a fan of The Summer Before the War when I read it a year or two ago. You did not miss much by skimming.

It's always good to see you here Jill! I agree, Frenchman's creek is a romantic fantasy, but, even not being a romance novel fan, I love it! The Cornish setting is so vivid, and Lady Dona is a good heroine. And I think you have hit me with a book bullet for Novel houses.

>52 Sakerfalcon: I think the thing to remember about Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings is that it isn't a linear read, but rather one where you read an incidental chapter now and again. I still haven't worked my way up to tackling Brideshead Revisited but the author did make it seem more worthwhile than others who have tried to make a case for it.

>51 Marissa_Doyle: I wondered, so I appreciate your assessment.

>50 pgmcc: Quite seriously, I don't think we ever learned his PIRATE name. We only learned the name he had before he ran away from his chateau in France.

>49 MrsLee: Thank you for keeping the roombas at bay!

So would you recommend Frenchman’s Creek, or should I read The Birds instead?

>54 clamairy: I have never read or watched The Birds So I will recommend Frenchman’s Creek without hesitation.

Thanks. I recently read The Scapegoat and was pretty much enthralled once I surrendered to the plot. (Which took a bit of effort.)

>54 clamairy: OH! Read "The Birds." It's a short story, and deliciously spine chilling. Not much at all like the movie, better. Far better.

Bookish Brain Dump - Memorable Moments of the Past Six Months

The Failed Promise: Frederick Douglass and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen
Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana

I’ve spent so many hours reading nineteenth-century American history this year and I am surprised at how much I either never learned in the first place or how much the perceptions of historical figures has shifted. There is something of a gap between what one learned as a student in K-12 and what the experts say now about the same historical figures. As one example, I recently researched P.B.S. Pinchback who was considered somewhat noteworthy, being the first African-American to hold the office of state governor in the United States. Of course, as I was writing my article, research was published saying that technically, it was really Oliver Dunn who should be remembered for holding that honor. (see Monumental). I had to rewrite my draft article so allow for that new insight. Just in passing, let me say as well that Capitol Men by Philip Dray was a really interesting read and it seems odd to me that it’s out of print at the moment.

As another example, way back when, I remember Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, as assigned class reading in school. One of the profiles in that book was Edmund G. Ross who voted against the conviction of Andrew Johnson at the end of Johnson’s impeachment trial. The fall-out from that vote ended Ross’ political career and during the ‘60’s, Kennedy (or Ted Sorenson, JFK’s ghost writer) painted him as a striking figure who did the nation a great service. Fast forward to 2020 when I’m reading The Impeachers and am surprised to learn as an adult that Ross was essentially bribed to vote as he did. That, instead of venerating Ross, one should rather be somewhat suspicious of him. Honestly, that was one of the memorable reading moments for me in 2020 because it made me go pull a copy of Profiles in Courage down off the shelf to review what I thought I “knew”.

The same author praised Thaddeus Stevens; the author of The Impeachers noted that it was Spielberg’s movie, Lincoln, that had actually caused Stevens to be re-considered as a man of great moral character rather than as a curmudgeonly power-broker known for his acerbic verbal attacks on colleagues with whom he served in Congress.

Meanwhile, The Failed Promise (which I picked up thinking I should have more background on Frederick Douglass) introduced me to Frances E.W. Harper, a black woman who was a nineteenth-century poet, novelist and advocate for the abolition of slavery as well as temperance and women’s suffrage. That led me to a book of her collected writings (essays, poetry, etc.) where I discovered the work of a remarkably articulate, self-educated woman. I’m working on a paper about her now for publication in January.

Another brain dump: The Pride of Chanur

This was a reading group selection. Cherryh’s award-winning novel was originally published back in the late ‘70’s. As the group talked about the relatively short novel, it got us on to a different track in thinking about science fiction as we remembered it from our early 20’s or thereabouts.

As a hint, here’s the blurb from the back of the book:

No one at Meetpoint Station had ever seen a creature like the Outsider. Naked hided, blunt-toothed, and blunt fingered, Tully was the sole surviving member of his company — a communicative spacefaring species hitherto unknown — and he was a prisoner of his discoverer/captors the sadistic treacherous kif and his escape into the hani ship, The Pride of Chanur. Little did he know when he threw himself upon the mercy of The Pride, and her crew, that he put the entire hani species in jeopardy and imperiled the peace of the Compact itself. For the information this fugitive held could be the ruin or glory of any of the species at Meetpoint Station.

That is an engaging marketing blurb! The prospective buyer might well pick it up thinking he or she was going to read about Tully as an intrepid spacefaring hero. But of course if you read The Pride of Chanur, the main character is Pyanfar, a female captain of the hani, a species where the females do the hunting. Her entire crew is therefore female. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, as I remember it, this was a relatively novel approach. The primary action throughout the novel is seen through the point of view of the female and the much vaunted Tully of the marketing blurb can’t even communicate very well with his host until about ¾ of the way through. Tully isn’t the hero or the brains of the outfit.

This got us talking about assumptions as to the audience for the book at the time of publication (primarily perceived as being male). It got us talking about the popularity of space opera back in the '70's. It got us talking about some of the challenges women faced in the marketplace. I think Cherryh’s use of her initials at that point in time was a way of diverting attention away from her gender because the assumption was that male science-fiction buffs wouldn’t buy books written by women in the field. The cover art that Penguin uses for marketing this book (even as a Kindle ebook) remains what it was back in 1981 -- you see the male Tully centered in the middle of a pack of belligerent lionesses. It’s certainly a memorable cover of an award-winning novel, but at the same time, why wouldn’t that cover art have been changed to one that more appropriately positions Pyanfar?

Yet another brain dump: My Cousin Rachel (a Re-Read)

One morning during the summer months, I watched Richard Burton chew the scenery in the 1952 film version of this book. As an emotion-driven and inexperienced male of 25 years, Philip Ashley goes back and forth between hatred and passionate love for Rachel, the widow of his much-older brother. Olivia de Haviland plays Rachel, the reserved and somewhat cool woman who may or may not have murdered previous husbands and who may or may not be manipulating Philip into giving up his property and home to her. I reviewed this book back in 2007 here: https://individualtake.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-cousin-rachel-review.html

This must have been the third or fourth time I’ve read this book and I never really considered before the whole question of who was seducing whom? Even knowing how the game plays out, I was hard-pressed to come to a conclusion as to Rachel’s motivations. I want Philip to suffer guilt forever because one wonders if he ever saw Rachel as a real flesh-and-blood individual. He saw her as complex certainly but not as a woman of independent mind and interests and motivations.

More brain dumps will come but I have to remember what it was I was reading. I took notes as I was reading, but I need to review and see how much I retain of the consumption. (And some of it was just mediocre brain candy...)

OH -- a PS added to note that I want pgmcc to know that I am pursuing Melmoth due to his specific recommendation and write up of the conference he attended. Really gothic stuff and enjoyably so. (but long...)

>60 jillmwo: Welcome back!

Oddly, I know I watched the Olivia de Havilland movie, and I have zero memory of Richard Burton being in it. You might want to consider watching the latest version with the talented Rachel Weisz in the title role.

>60 jillmwo:
I am delighted you are looking at Melmoth. I believe I have mentioned before that the length could have been helped by a bit of editing. There are some sections where he felt it worthwhile to make the same point several times. My hypothesis is that he was hoping it would be serialised and the longer the story the more episodes he would be paid for.

I loved the book, My Cousin Rachel.

>58 jillmwo: Glad to see you here again.

I used to think of history as a collection of facts, but the more I age and read, the more I see it as a collection of interpreted memories, which may or may not be factual. :)

Now I want to read My Cousin Rachel again. It has been a long time (30ish years?)

More Brain Dump

At some point earlier this year, I read the first two titles in David Stafford’s series (Skelton’s Guide to…) and found both to be thoroughly enjoyable. The writing in both is light and humorous, but with a certain sting to the ending. Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons and Skelton’s Guide to Suitcase Murders feature a barrister poorly suited to the glare of the spotlight following the successful resolution of a criminal case. Arthur Skelton is tall (six foot 3) “with a face like a horse and round glasses with lenses so thick that his eyes filled them like moons. And he had a limp.” He’s a solicitor with a wife and two children and he’s gloomily convinced that he’s failing them. His clerk, Edgar Hobbes, is useful to him, being able to drum up cases for Skelton to fight in court. To his frequent surprise, Skelton seems to be successful on behalf of his clients.

In the first volume (Domestic Poisons) Skelton is presented with a wife who has poisoned her husband. Ambrose Bierce once wrote that there were four types of homicide -- felonious, excusable, justifiable and praise-worthy. Mary having killed her husband might readily fall into the latter two categories, but this is 1928 and the legal position of the time is that women ought not to kill their spouses. Skelton with an odd roster of helpful minions investigates the related circumstances.

In the second book (Suitcase Murders), there’s a headless body discovered inside of a suitcase. There’s an amusing bit of dialogue between Skelton and Edgar where the two consider the precise dimensions needed in either a suitcase or a trunk if one had to pack up that kind of a corpse. In this instance, it’s the husband who has been accused of doing away with his spouse.

One review I saw said that these are written as a fictional marriage of the short story humor of P.G. Wodehouse and the plot of a traditional Golden Age mystery novel. A witty entertainment sufficient in length to be read in full within the space of a weekend. They are, but do remember the writing may contain stingers as they close.

Oh, and do make a point of reading the author’s notes at the end of each title. In part because the crimes are based on real cases, but also because there are other tidbits of information added for fun.

It's good to see you back again Jill! I love the Chanur books and I'm glad your group had such a good discussion about Pride.

And I need to reread My cousin Rachel.

Okay, some piffling will undoubtedly be needed here, but I am going to try to catch up. First of all, let me share an excellent quote from Earle Stanley Gardner about writing for pulps:

Write so that the reader is sucked into the swirl of the action, build up suspense.

One good rule is to get an attractive hero in the first sentence, get him into trouble in the first paragraph. Have a villain in the second paragraph. Then put in three pages getting the hero in a worse predicament. Have him grasp a solution which gets him out of the frying pan into the fire. Introduce a heroine. Get the hero out of the fire and have him pull the heroine out.

From the very lively and intriguing book, Secrets of the World's Best-Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. I had purchased a used copy of this to give to my husband as a gift and got so caught up in it that I went out and purchased the Kindle edition.

The Rasp and The Noose, both by Philip MacDonald. The first one was very successful when it was originally published back in 1924. It introduced the dashing detective, Anthony Gethryn who really is just too good to be believable. Except that he's an idiot when it comes to the woman he falls in love with (and Lucia is none too swift herself, having an unfortunate tendency to faint when under stress). I can't think why I actively chose to go on to Macdonald's second novel which was published six years later. Fortunately he had spent significant time learning his craft in the intervening time frame, because The Noose was rather fun as a Golden Age crime novel.

The characters are a tad more human with believable behaviors. Although Lucia is still with us and still gazing at Gethryn adoringly and trustingly and passionately, she is less frequently on stage. I kind of guessed the murderer in this one but the journey was not nearly as tedious or painful as in Rasp. The action also moved along quite speedily. There is a not-very-likeable innocent man about to be hung for a murder and Gethryn only has five days to get him released.

Subsequently, MacDonald fell in love with an American and married her in 1931, The two of them went to Hollywood, where he became a successful scriptwriter and wrote television episodes for Perry Mason. (The Case of the Terrified Typist needed a good many adaptations to be made in order to become a watchable TV episode and Macdonald did well by it.)

I won't say I necessary recommend these two titles, but if one or the other falls into your hands when snow-bound in a mountain cabin during a blizzard or confined to bed following a nasty head cold, you might well enjoy such easy reads.

Back in October, I read and formally reviewed the book, Along Came Google, for The Scholarly Kitchen blog. It's all about the impact of the Google Book Project on libraries over the past 25 years. (See https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/10/11/book-review-along-came-google-a-h...

The key quote or take away from that review is as follows:

The authors realize that the impact of the events following Google’s foray into digitizing books may not be properly understood for years to come. They simply document the library community’s story of disruption and adaptation through to the present. Throughout the pandemic, libraries of all sorts have been challenged to maintain service levels in delivering needed materials to students and scholars. We should be cheering those disruptive digital leaders who have reason to expect more and better from providers in assisting them to connect a global community of users to all information everywhere.

Edited to add this note on Dec 29, 2021: However, the most tweeted line from that review was this one: Melding together the wealth of print and digital collections for the public good is an expensive process, and libraries at all levels operate under fluctuating funding commitments. Think about what that might mean.

It's a very readable book but probably of chief interest to those working in academic libraries or in scholarly publishing.

Welcome back! And belated happy Christmas.

And a belated Happy Christmas to you as well, haydninvienna. I might also add a Happy New Year a few days in advance!

>71 jillmwo: Right back at you. Let’s hope at least that 2022 sucks less than 2021.

More brain dump: 3 titles that I encountered and then threw at the wall -- either literally or metaphorically:

Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth -- I cannot fathom why someone thought this was worth of publication. The commentary (IMHO) was incredibly lightweight; even the bibliography at the end of the book seemed somewhat off. (And I'm by no means an expert on Agatha Christie.) I believe I got it for some ridiculously low price on Kindle – something well under $3.00 – and even at that price point, I overpaid.

Mrs Lincoln’s Rival – This was another error in judgment. It’s a fictional retelling of the life of Kate Chase Sprague. Now granted, if you have never heard of KCS, this might be kind of interesting as an introduction, but the writing was really bad. Way more telling rather than showing which is always bad in a novel intended for leisure reading. Upon checking, it appears that when I bought the book, it was because I got this author muddled with a different author whose historical fiction I had read in the past. Since Kate Chase Sprague was actually rather intelligent and one who hung out in the highest of 19th century political circles in Washington DC, I found this to be a real disservice to her memory.

The Murders Near Mapleton – Another Golden Age of Crime Novels that was less charming than one might have hoped for. I read it because it purported to be a Christmas murder mystery and I’m a bit of a sucker for those. It had a particular plot twist that was also used by Gladys Mitchell but I have to say that I thought she did it better than this guy did.

Welcome back! And Happy Everything!

I see we have some work to do in order to beef up your thread...

>67 jillmwo:
I was tidying my shelves today and by coincidence, came across a Perry Mason novel. This happened before I read your post and your mention of Earle Stanley Gardner.

I like his advice, although today it might get the response that the hers should not necessarily be male.

By the way, you have scored a direct hit with that one.

I am happy to help you with some piffling. I have a bit of a piffle party going on over at my thread, but it looks like you need a few more posts that I.

It is a pleasure to see your posts appearing.

>69 jillmwo: I enjoyed your book review. The comments from the lecture on Digital Leaders and having a digital mindset, reminded me of all the points about having a Growth Mindset.

If you require piffling (pifflation? pifflery?), operators are standing by.

Hmm. Or would it be pifflication, since the thread will be acted upon (or piffled upon, more properly?)

>77 Marissa_Doyle: Would that make me a 'pliffoon? "

>77 Marissa_Doyle:
It probably depends on whether the word was derived from Latin or Greek. Let's try Latin:

Pifflare: To piffle

Pifflo - I piffle
Pifflas - You piffle
Pifflat - He/She/It piffles
Pifflamus - We piffle
Pifflatis - You piffle
Pillant - They piffle

Someone else will have to do the Greek.

>78 clamairy:
If could be you are a pifflator if the root is from Latin.

Pifflator sounds good. It has resonance with the idea of a lot of pifflators in a giant arena competing to be the last pifflator standing.

>80 pgmcc: I like this. Pliffoon does not sound gracious enough to my ears...

>81 clamairy: I dunno. "Pifloon" has a certain forthrightness to it...but "piffleur/piffleuse" should also be considered for their elegance.

>79 pgmcc: That assumes it's a first conjugation verb, though...

>82 Marissa_Doyle:
Speaking as someone who attained the lowest possible grade in my O Level Latin state exams, I will agree with yiu.

>81 clamairy: >82 Marissa_Doyle: and >83 pgmcc: I think I prefer the proposed usage of piffleur/piffleuse precisely because of that elegance that Marissa notes. But beyond that, your knowledge of appropriate conjugation is far beyond me.

And I've thought about pgmcc's pifflator but that sounds a tad intimidating. (Quick, folks. Scatter! The pifflators on her way.)

this is exactly the sort of pifflage this thread needed...

>85 Darth-Heather: Airy pifflage?

>86 Marissa_Doyle: Lofty!

>84 jillmwo:
Piffleur/piffleuse has that certain je ne sais pas.

Still, piffloon brings Lord Peter Wimsey immediately to my mind. It takes a special kind of piffler to be known as a piffloon.

>89 MrsLee:
I see what you mean. Lord Peter was a total piffloon. He would probably have been very proud to be known as a total piffloon, what ho!

Makes you wonder why P G Wodehouse didn't't get there first. Surely the archetypal piffloon was Bertie Wooster, and the archetypal piffleur was Psmith. (Wasn't PGW lucky that his typewriter didn't autocorrect. He would never have been able to create Psmith if it did.) I think Lord Peter was a piffleur too (sorry, MrsLee).

I estimate it to be approaching 2pm in jillmwo's time zone. It is Thursday, 30th December, 2021. That leaves Jill with 34 hours to get another 58 posts on this thread to ensure a clean cut-over to a 2022 thread. That is an average of 1.71 posts per hour. I am sure we can do this.

If you idsagree, then please enter your objections in a post below.

I mostly agree.

Though there is a small percentage of my brain that disagrees.

I appreciate the care you take in alerting me to the idea that I only have 34 hours for this, my dear pgmcc. I have taken great thought and am about to embark on a great outpouring of posts entitled Books-I-Have-On-The-TBR-Pile-But-Have-Not-Yet-Read. You will then understand that my income has gone towards acquisition of books but that time has not expanded in quite the way that watching Doctor Who might have suggested that it would.

Explanations as to why this is so?.

First of all, allow me to point to a book that I purchased strictly on the basis of its title, thinking that I would find the author to be a kindred spirit (in that Anne of Green Gables kind of way).

The book is entitled Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader by Vivian Gornick. Having spent 2021 in search of comfort through re-reading writers I could trust, I thought this might be the work of one who would be able to explain to me the value of rereading books. Sadly, I was wrong. I suppose it's my own fault. I hadn't checked out the background of this author (which in hindsight was a mistake), but she is rereading the very elite. Collette, Marguerite Duras and Elizabeth Bowen are all revisited with the assumption that the reader will be equally familiar with their various novels. I am not in the least familiar with any of the three and thus was unable to appreciate anything that the woman had to contribute. Gornick has written for the Village Voice and the New Yorker and I'm too middle-brow.

So that title is going into the recycle box that will end up at the Friends of the Library book sale in the hope that someone else in the Township will have more erudite tastes than I apparently can muster during a pandemic.

However, on the TBR Pile, is a lovely gift from my employer. The organization wanted to let all of its employees know how much it appreciated the on-going efforts during 2021 to ensure the on-going viability of our little non-profit entity. So each of us got a very expensive "thing" that we might not ordinarily buy for ourselves. Mine is a lovely, lovely edition from the Folio Society -- specifically, The Phantom of the Opera. It's gorgeous.

You should know that the only copy of this that I've ever owned was a Signet mass-market paperback purchased way back in the 1990's. The type was excrutiatingly small and the paper had way too much acid in it for me to expect it would survive for any great length of time. I read the book to please a friend who had pressed it on me (the Broadway musical was a hot ticket at the time). However, she wanted me to feel sorry for Erik and I kept looking at her and reminding her that he was a MURDERER and that misery and alienation doesn't justify that kind of crime. I felt that the Persian was the character with whom I as the reader was expected to identify and root for.

Of course, at the time, I was reading the book on a bouncy-jouncy express bus that ran from midtown-Manhattan out to Staten Island and the afore-mentioned production values may have made me impatient with the book. However, now I have this wonderful edition from the Folio Society and at some point in 2022, I will have to reread Phantom and see if I'm more open to Erik's plight than I was way back when.

Is there a bookie here in the Pub? Anyone taking bets on whether I am still the cold-hearted woman I was before or if I have softened in my thinking?

Edited to correct odd and curiously placed typos.

Another book on the TBR-Pile which I began at one point in the final quarter of 2021 is Graham Greene's Orient Express, otherwise entitled in other markets as Stamboul Train. I started this because it purported to be short (conceivably something I could read in a weekend), being less than 200 pages. The writing is remarkable -- very clear and atmospheric. But it became clear that at least one of the characters would succumb to illness before the end of the book and I couldn't bear anything depressing at that point so I put it aside.

However this is not going into the recycle box as the writing suggests to me that at some point, I will be able to appreciate Greene's work. I just haven't gotten there yet. I also considered his Travels with My Aunt but again, wasn't sure I had the mental capacity to enjoy it.

For Christmas, I received two TOMES of such size that I am intimidated. (Had I realized the length, I would have thought twice about adding either to my wish list.)

One is entitled The Library: A Fragile History which has gotten wonderful reviews for the most part although I also read one disgruntled review that complained that it was all dry, dusty FACTS. It's 518 pages. However, I checked and if you leave out the index, the notes, and the bibliography, it's really only 408 pages.

The second very heavy book (again, exceeding 500 pages) was Powers and Thrones and the story behind this request will undoubtedly reveal the pitfalls of Twitter to you all. It's all about the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages.

I had been following one author (David M. Perry on Twitter as he was trying to build interest about his latest book, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe; his co-author is Matthew Gabriele and the touchstone shows Gabriele's name as the lead author, probably because Gabriele is the real historian whereas Perry is more of a journalist or trade press writer. At any rate, people were wrangling on Twitter about this book and I thought I should read either The Bright Ages or Powers and Thrones with the expectation of deepening my knowledge of that historical period. It's not like the 19th century American history I've been reading recently and I thought it would be refreshing. To my surprise, when I opened the present on Christmas Day, this one is 578 pages in length even before you hit the index, notes and bibliography. Not sure when I'll get around to reading this one because it looks like something intended either for those who get paid to live in ivory towers or for those who have retired from non-ivory-towered jobs.

We'll see. Right now, at least, I've managed to get through the first chapter of Bright Ages which tells of Galla Placida and the chapel she paid someone to erect and decorate in Ravenna.

Oh, and for pgmcc's sake, I will note that i continue to read the Gothic novel, Melmoth the Wanderer of which he had done such a fabulous write-up earlier this year. The Spaniard's Tale was as remarkable a description of the process of psychological torture as I have ever encountered. (One could take lessons.) The book is as terrifying to read as it is compelling. I read it in small snatches when I want to give myself the shivers.

>95 jillmwo:
Will 34 hours be sufficient time to cover all the books in your tbr pile that you have not read? 34 years would probably be insufficient time for me to carry out that task for all the books in my tbr mountain that I have not read yet.

>101 pgmcc: I have an excessively tall TBR pile. And numerous other piles crawling up the baseboards. There is the Books-Started-But-From-Which-I-Was-Distracted pile and the Books-That-I-Should-Read-For-Work pile and the ever-growing I-Was-A-History-Major-and-I-Never-Learned-This pile. Not to mention the Pile-of-Books-Needed-For-Freelance-Assignments, chiefly because of the three-volume work on the Civil War by Shelby Foot. About that last, I will say that the opening chapter of Volume One was a discussion of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln and really rather fun to read. Foot was a good writer.

>100 jillmwo: I keep forgetting that I have downloaded Melmoth from Gutenberg.org. I need to make time for it in 2022.

>100 jillmwo:
I have found the book fascinating, especially when looked at in the context of the socio-ploitical situations in Ireland, Britain and Europe of the time, as well as Maturin's personal situation.

>102 jillmwo: I love the titles of your tbr piles.

>103 ScoLgo: Well, let's both work on reading it in 2022. I have reviewed Peter's postings about the conference he attended on the author and this particular work and I am very well aware that my distracted reading means I'm probably overlooking some remarkable aspects. (pgmcc, did I mention that I purchased a hard copy of Melmoth because it slows me down and requires me to really get into it? I had to order/splurge on a Folio edition from Ireland in order to get it and it took awhile to reach me. Prob'ly due to Brexit the supply chain disruption and/or the pandemic.)

>105 pgmcc: & >106 jillmwo: I might join you if the timing is right. Pretty sure I snagged a digital copy as well, but got distracted a couple of pages into it. But I might have this mixed up with some other Gothic read Peter recommended, now that I think of it...

marissa_doyle I have seen from his on-going reading thread that pgmcc gave a rousing recommendation to the book of tales that you edited -- Murmurs in the Dark -- and I've added it to my potential purchases pile. I did want to ask something however. AMZ lists only a paperback version; was there a reason why there isn't an ebook edition?

>107 clamairy: That would be great fun if the timing (as you note) could work out for all of us. I keep swearing to my husband and sons that I am going to retire in 2022, but much depends on external factors -- one of which is the freakin' pandemic.

>105 pgmcc: One quick thing from your thread that I wanted to follow up with you on. The item you mentioned about Sayers' Nine Tailors being a gothic novel? I didn't read it that way at all, so will need to revisit. I take it you agreed with the person who wrote the article positioning it that way?

Edited to note that this afternoon is the longest period of time I've been able to devote to Librarything in months. Four hours!

>106 jillmwo:
A Folio edition sounds nice.

If the book took time coming from Ireland it was nothing to do with Brexit. It would have been more to do with the impact of the pandemic. With a major reduction in the number of planes flying and ships sailing the transport of freight/post/parcels has become a bottleneck. My colleagues have been dealing with this on a daily basis.

I am delighted you have a nice copy to read.

>108 jillmwo: There's a very mundane reason that there's no e-book version of it on AMZ: the one reprinted story we included. The author has the reprint rights, but the original publisher (Baen) retained the right to offer it as a freebie on their website, which they have. The author chose not to ask Baen to take it down, wanting to preserve her cordial relationship with them. AMZ took exception to that, so we weren't able to sell the e-book there. It's available in EPUB format from Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, etc., and can be obtained in MOBI format direct from Book View Cafe's store...or will be soon, as we're in the middle of having a new website and storefront designed, so we're temporarily closed.

And so it goes. I hope you'll enjoy it if you do pick it up.

>95 jillmwo: I'd like to examine the possible uses of TARDISes in the book world. I propose that setting a TARDIS up as one's library and reading space would allow the eventual reading of enormous TBR piles. But do we, deep in our souls, truly want to lose our large TBR piles? There's something almost comforting about knowing there are hundreds of good books waiting for one--not in general. but in specific. Your thoughts?

>106 jillmwo: I plan to dip my toes into the digital editions, (there are four volumes on gutenberg). If it resonates, I will likely do the same as you and pick up a print edition for more attentive reading.

>110 jillmwo:
I was alerted to the Gothic nature of the story by three things:

1. The name of the canon buried in the grounds was that of the canon in M.R. James's story, "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook".

2. Descriptions of the church furniture were very similar to M.R. James's descriptions in his story, "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral".

3. A couple of the quotes at the start of chapters were from works by Joseph Sheirdan Le Fanu.

Having spotted these I resorting to google and found the article about the Gothic nature of the novel. You can find it here.

If you have not read M.R. James's ghost stories I would recommend them. They are not gore and unpleasantness, and many of them have humour sprinkled throughout the tale.

Honestly, one drops off of LT's social network for a period of months and you miss some of the most interesting tidbits of conversation and life experience. Over on Sakerfalcon's 2021 thread, I particularly liked this discussion between pgmcc and busifer about how the telephone system in Ireland's County Donegal operated. Yes it was back in the '70's but it's an entirely different style of communication. (https://www.librarything.com/topic/328197#7493486). hfglen pipes in as well.

I'll be grabbing bits like this all day long as I'm trying to catch up.

I have also just heard of this title, The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily. I am adding it to my list because one needs to read and preserve these types of titles. (Yes, this may qualify as piffling but I am seriously intrigued by the premise.)

Also encountered on Sakerfalcon's thread is the recommendation of a series by Christelle Dabos. Initial title in the series is A Winter's Promise.

NOTE TO SELF: Jemison's book The City We Became has to do with Lovecraft type monsters in NYC. Recommend to spouse but may want to warn Didi away from it.

>115 pgmcc: I have indeed read many of M.R. James' tales. As background television at the moment, I have on a BBC series made back in the 90's (?) that are adaptations of his short stories. I was suckered in to them by a reference to Peter Capaldi having a starring role.

>117 jillmwo: I have The City We Became on my TBR. I have no doubt that Jemison is a better writer than Lovecraft though.

I'm now sifting through hfglen's 4 installment thread and apparently there is a set of questions (4 of them) that I am assuming were drafted up by pgmcc (?). The (admittedly paraphrased) questions are these:

Would I read another by this author?
Would I recommend this book?
If so, to whom?
And what has this author persuaded or inspired me to do or take on?

It's that last one that I haven't ever considered before.

I see that hfglen has been reading Stephen Fry and for the record, Hugh, may I note to you that all three of the volumes of his Mythos trilogy are thoroughly enjoyable. (I got them for my husband to read as he was recovering from surgery and he loved all of them.)

>120 jillmwo:
Credit where credit is due; Hugh came up with the fourth question.

Credit to hfglen then. I'm just now reading about the hyena trap. https://www.librarything.com/topic/335276#7677971
Also your bad joke about asking the time https://www.librarything.com/topic/335276#7679573

>122 jillmwo: My point about "half seven" isn't a joke. I know people who have missed appointments through that misunderstanding, and others, including myself, who have caused infinite confusion by asking for clarification.

Have just added River of Teeth by Sarah Gailley to my Kindle.

>123 hfglen: Actually, adapting to time zones do it to me on a regular basis, every time I'm trying to arrange Zoom meetings.

>118 jillmwo:
Mark Gatiss made a wonderful documentary about M. R. James for BBC television. It was called, M. R. James: Ghost writer.

It is available on the BBC iPlayer, but if you are not in the UK it is difficult to view. I cannot view any of the BBC TV programmes on the iPlayer. I believe the restriction is to do with the UK TV licence and BBC being totally funded by the TV licence.

In that documentary, Gatiss employed Robert Lloyd Perry to play the part of M. R. James. Perry has made a living of reciting the ghost stories of M. R. James. I was introduced to his work by my friend who runs Swan River Press. The introduction took the form attending the performance of two of the stories by Robert in the art centre of a small village in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains. The art centre was a converted courthouse and was very suitable for the telling of ghost stories.

On the evening of the performance, my wife and I picked up our friend from his flat in Dublin. When we picked him up it was still daylight, with a clear blue sky and a full-moon on the rise.

We drove south along the coast road for about an hour and then turned inland towards the mountains. It had become dark at this stage, but the moonlight cast its silver hue across the fields and hedgerows. Two images remain in my mind from that journey.

While climbing out of a valley on a narrow country road, we were presented a view of a church spire sticking up from the hamlet beneath us in the valley. The spire was all that could be seen of the settlement as the valley was filled with a fog that blotted out everything except the protruding spire. The full-moon lit the scene.

The other image is of driving along the narrow country road with high hedges on either side, and moonlight illuminating our path forward.

If that was not a perfect atmosphere and terrain for travelling to the telling of ghost stories, then I do not know what is.

We had a drink with Robert afterwards. He does most of his work in England as it is difficult for a one-man show to organise logistics to Ireland to put on performances. Thankfully I have been able to attend four of his performances here. I think he has only been her six times.

I would strongly recommend viewing his performances if you get the chance. He did a lot of on-line performances during pandemic lock-down, and I watched a few of them. He works under the name of Nunkie Productions, and his website sometimes gives links to Youtube performances.

>122 jillmwo: Not so much a joke as a social commentary. When next in Ireland, try it. Go into a pub and ask the time of any of the old guys sitting at the back nursing a pint. You're sure to get the response, "What do you want to know the time for? Sure why are you rushing off? Sit down there and rest yourself. Sure you'll be ordering pint for yourself and I'll have a Guinness while you're at it. Is it Philadelphia you're from?"

>125 jillmwo:
I remember my mind melting one Tuesday afternoon. I was at home working and was communicating by text message with my boss who was on a beach in Florida on Tuesday morning. I was also communicating with my friend in the Philippines who was happily working way on Wednesday morning.

Damn and blast -- this is the fourth retyping of a response to you >126 pgmcc:. I wonder if either of my two British streaming services would carry the Gatiss documentary. Britbox and (to some extent) Acorn have saved my sanity during the pandemic as overall, British television is much more to my taste than much of what's on U.S. streaming services. Sadly, my only other access to the BBC is BBC America which is entirely given over at the moment to a marathon of Doctor Who.

Some of the aliens in Doctor Who could easily populate a countryside tale written by either Lovecraft or James.

>128 pgmcc: My younger brother was born in Bangkok on Dec 27th back in the sixties. My father sent a telegram announcing the birth to my grandparents, living in Texas. Due to the international date lines and other artificial constructs, my grandparents received the telegram before the actual hour of my brother's birth.

Have now moved over to Marissa_Doyle's thread as she always has good recommendations. I am kind of interested in Three Twins at the Crater School and I'm laughing at the turkeys outside of her window (https://www.librarything.com/topic/328103#7432634)

I've also added Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity and the Women Who Made America Modern as a possibility to my reading list as she says it's very good.

Over on pilgrim 's thread, I found a thorough review of The Fairy of Ku-She (https://www.librarything.com/topic/335884#7641760) which now requires me to find a physical copy of it.

Oh, and I am charmed to discover that pilgrim has a fondness for Kipling's poetry. As do I. The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin.

>130 jillmwo: One of my nieces in New Zealand* had her first baby on 7th August, 2012. I received notification from her on 6th August in Ireland. Having done my research I had found someone in Dublin who made blankets for newborn babies and incorporated the baby's name and date of birth into the blanket. Immediately after getting the news I placed an order for a blanket with the baby's name and date of birth, 7/8/2012.

I give full credit to the woman whose business provided this service. Within two hours I had an e-mail asking me had I made a mistake with the date of birth as today is the 6th and I have asked for tomorrow's date on the blanket. She thought that perhaps I meant the eighth of July rather than the seventh of August.

In my response I congratulated her on her astuteness and explained the situation. We had a good laugh and I was left with a high regard for the service this lady provided.

* I have two nieces in New Zealand.

Jill, have a wonderful 2022. I hope this evening is a pleasant and relaxing step into next year.

You still need another 15 posts after this one. Time to break out another crate of piffle.

>131 jillmwo: Coincidentally, we have a flock of 18 turkeys lounging about in various places on our lawn and in the gardens today, looking very large and handsome.

>79 pgmcc:
Piflo (πιφλω)
Pifleis (πιφλεις)
Piflei (πιφλει)
Piflomen (πιφλομεν)
Piflete (πιφλετε)
Piflousi (πιφλουσι)

Yes. ΠΙΦΛΟΜΕΝ. We piffle!

ETA: again assuming 1st conjugation.

I am late, but wish to show willing. Καλε Χρονια!!

>137 -pilgrim-:
I was betting on you or haydninvienna providing the Greek.

I am blessed by knowing such erudite souls as >137 -pilgrim-: and >138 pgmcc:. It may take me another 24 hours before I reach the requisite 150 postings that allow me to start up the next year's thread, but I am grateful to those of you who've supported such a rapid expansion from the measly 67 messages that hung here just two or three days ago. (Although I seem to remember one year when it took me the first two weeks of January before I could manage to establish a new thread.)

I'll be checking in and out until the dinner hour. (Technically, we have a Zoom New Year's Party to attend.)

Sadly, it appears that Betty White has passed away at the age of 99.
https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-arts-and-entertainment-betty-white-mary...

My Twitter feed is filled with the news.

“Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself keeps you feeling young”
~ Betty White

I remember Betty White as the Golden Girl who always got the straight lines, but she seems to have had the last laugh, since I think she outlived all the others.

>128 pgmcc: I regularly have online meetings with participants in Sydney, Doha (not all in the office) and in Bicester. And it all happens smoothly and usually seamlessly. Video if you choose. I could even be walking around the town with Teams on the phone if I wanted.

>140 jillmwo: I just spotted the news of this a few minutes ago.

The Golden Girls was how I became aware of her.

>142 haydninvienna:
When the first SARS epidemic started in Asia I was working in a retail organisation. The buyers sourced most of their product in Asia and were regularly flying off to Hong Kong and other destinations in Asia. When the epidemic was announced the owner of the chain forbade any buyer trips to Asia.

In those days we did not have Zoom and VOIP was a radical idea.

My boss asked me to investigate video conferencing for the buyers' calls to Asia. I consulted a number of suppliers. We had to identify a room for the VC equipment which, at that time, involved a dedicated telephone line, VC box, a large, standalone TV, microphones and speakers. Video conferencing was a big deal in those days and the suppliers had to survey the room to be able to recommend the correct equipment and configuration.

We got to the day before installation and I questioned my assumptions. I decided to test one of my key assumptions. I called my boss and asked him, "Will the agents in Asia be sitting up late to talk to our buyers, or will the buyers be getting up really early to talk to the agents?"

He told me he would get back to me.

About two hours later I received a call from him telling me to cancel the VC installation as the SARS epidemic was cooling off and the buyers can get back on planes and go to Asia.

Some people have suggested my boss had not thought about the time difference before suggesting video conferencing as a solution. I would never say that.

Well you are still a few posts away from being able to continue this thread. So I am here to help.

Nice bread!

>144 pgmcc: Some people still don’t think of the facts of time zones. I’ve had to get up distressingly early for conferences a few times.

And I got the magic #150!

>146 clamairy: we just had a lovely lemon goat cheese with rosemary crackers, but I'd definitely like to investigate that spread more closely...

I think you are all kind and caring souls to push me over the top. I was inveigled into attending a Zoom cocktail hour in celebration of the New Year and then I was further induced into watching a series of Thin Man movies.

But with pgmcc telling stories, haydninvienna pushed me over the top with clamairy nudging it along with photos of a feast. And now today, it's a dreary rainy first day of 2022. But I get to start my new thread because of you all.

I am sorry I was no help with the pifflefest, I have been mostly offline this past weekend. However, the brave souls here have won the day! Look forward to reading your thread in 2022, jillmwo. :)

>146 clamairy:, >147 clamairy: & >148 clamairy: You do not stint when giving a party!