Weird_O Bill's 2022—Post-Prequel, a.k.a. (weirdly) 2

Ceci est la suite du sujet Weird_O Bill's 2022—The Prequel.

Ce sujet est poursuivi sur Weird_O Bill's 2022—Midquel, a.k.a. (uniquely) 3.

Discussions75 Books Challenge for 2022

Rejoignez LibraryThing pour poster.

Weird_O Bill's 2022—Post-Prequel, a.k.a. (weirdly) 2

1weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 9:33 am



Hired Ernesto here to be my own personal barista. I usually tell people he works cheap, but honestly, he doesn’t work at all.

2weird_O
Modifié : Avr 7, 2022, 10:23 pm

I've got book reports. Overdue book reports. Here are the books, some I read as far back as January.

Macbeth (Usborne Graphic Shakespeare), Russell Punter, illus Massimiliano Longo and Valentino Forlini.
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss.
Freddy and the Dragon, Walter R. Brooks.
Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, Art Spiegelman.
Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman.
Mooncop, Tom Gauld.
Orwell's Roses, Rebecca Solnit.
The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan.
The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan.
The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rich Riordan.
The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan.
Animal Farm, George Orwell.
Moonglow, Michael Chabon.
The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones.
Macbeth (No Fear Shakespeare), Will Shakespeare.
Macbeth, Gareth Hinds.
Freddy Goes Camping, Walter R. Brooks.
Dogs and Cats: Mutts II, Patrick McDonnell.
Instant Lives, Howard Moss. Illus. by Edward Gorey.
Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem.
The King, Donald Barthelme.
Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (Volume One), Yuval Noah Harari.



As for reading, I have Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love to finish (my wild card for February's AAC) and The Fixer to start for March's AAC. I've also consulted the opening chapters in two Rebecca Solnit books (A Field Guide to Getting Lost and River of Shadows), in Jo Nesbo's Macbeth, and in The Writer's Library.

ETA 3/28/22: I've suspended reading both Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Malamud's The Fixer. Both were for the AAC. Just clearing the record.

3weird_O
Modifié : Juin 3, 2022, 1:07 am

January 2022 (13 read)
1. An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good, Helene Tursten. Finished 1/1/22 
2. Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu. Finished 1/4/22 
3. On Tyranny graphic edition, Timothy Snyder, illus. Nora Krug. Finished 1/5/22 
4. Vertigo: A Novel in Woodcuts, Lynd Ward. Finished 1/12/22 
5. Way Station, Clifford Simak. Finished 1/13/22 
6. The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles. Finished 1/16/22 
7. The Paris Apartment, Kelly Bowen. Finished 1/18/22 
8. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Finished 1/21/22 
9. Macbeth (Usborne Graphic Shakespeare), Russell Punter, illus Massimiliano Longo and Valentino Forlini. Finished 1/23/22 
10. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss. Finished 1/24/22 
11. Freddy and the Dragon, Walter R. Brooks. Finished 1/27/22 
12. Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, Art Spiegelman. Finished 1/28/22 
13. Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman. Finished 1/29/22 

February 2022 (6 read)
14. Mooncop, Tom Gauld. Finished 2/3/22 
15. Orwell's Roses, Rebecca Solnit. Finished 2/9/22 
16. The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan. Finished 2/11/22 
17. Animal Farm, George Orwell. Finished 2/14/22 
18. Moonglow, Michael Chabon. Finished 2/20/22 
19. The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones. Finished 2/24/22 

March 2022 (12 read)
20. Macbeth (No Fear Shakespeare), Will Shakespeare. Finished 3/5/22 
21. Macbeth, Gareth Hinds. Finished 3/5/22 
22. The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan. Finished 3/8/22 
23. Freddy Goes Camping, Walter R. Brooks. Finished 3/12/22 
24. Dogs and Cats: Mutts II, Patrick McDonnell. Finished 3/19/22 
25. Instant Lives, Howard Moss. Illus. by Edward Gorey. Finished 3/20/22 
26. Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem. Finished 3/21/22 
27. The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan. Finished 3/23/22 
28. The King, Donald Barthelme. Finished 3/24/22 
29. The Last Olympian, Rich Riordan. Finished 3/27/22 
30. The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Holden, illustrated by Drabos Zak. Finished 3/31/22 
31. Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (volume one), Yuval Noah Harari. Finished 3/31/22 

April 2022 (8 read)
32. The Natural, Bernard Malamud. Finished 4/7/22  
33. The Plague Court Murders, John Dickson Carr. Finished 4/10/22 
34. The Speckled Band, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; illustrations, Dean Morrissey. Finished 4/16/22 
35. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris. Finished 4/19/22 
36. The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton. Finished 4/22/22. 
37. I'm Looking Through You, Jennifer Finney Boylan. Finished 4/26/22. 
38. A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit. Finished 4/27/22. 
39. Welcome to Hard Times, E. L. Doctorow. Finished 4/30/22. 

May 2022 (11 read)
40. Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr. Finished 5/5/22. 
41. In the Fog, Richard Harding Davis. Finished 5/6/22. 
42. The Scarlet Car, Richard Harding Davis. Finished 5/6/22. 
43. Zone One, Colson Whitehead. Finished 5/13/22. 
44. The Notes of a War Correspondent by Richard Harding Davis. Finished 5/15/22. 
45. The Ponder Heart, Eudora Welty. Finished 5/20/22. Reread. 
46. Pietr the Latvian, Georges Simenon. Finished 5/22/22. 
47. Bone: Out from Boneville, Jeff Smith. Finished 5/27/22. 
48. DK Biography: Harry Houdini: A Photographic Story of a Life, Vicki Cobb. Finished 5/28/22. 
49. Polka Dot Parade: A Book about Bill Cunningham, Deborah Blumenthal, illus. Masha D'yans. Finished 5/28/22. 
50. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Rebecca Solnit. Finished 5/29/22. 

June 2022 (1 read)
51. I, Leonardo, Ralph Steadman. Finished 6/2/22.

4weird_O
Modifié : Juin 3, 2022, 1:19 am



5weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 9:37 am



Have some right now! Then have at it. The next post is yours.

6benitastrnad
Mar 11, 2022, 10:05 am

Just sipping my morning coffee.

7weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 10:16 am

Hoping for that "magic", yeah? Me too.

8benitastrnad
Mar 11, 2022, 10:26 am

It is starting out to be a great day. My supervisor wants me to file an "incident report" because a student last night accidently set off a fire alarm and I had to call the police dispatcher to find out how to shut the thing off. We have a stack of shopping baskets next to our front door at the library. Somehow the stack got moved right under the fire alarm box. A student/patron grabbed a basket off the stack and hit the fire alarm. This knocked the cover off and the fire alarm starting going off. I called the police dispatcher to find out how to shut the thing off and I made a mistake and sent an e-mail to my supervisor telling her about it. This morning she wants me to file an "incident report." To me it was a maintenance call. After 4:45 PM we call the police dispatcher for all kinds of maintenance issues and they route the calls to the proper maintenance department from there. The police dispatcher told me how to stop the alarm. I followed her directions and the noise stopped. No fire trucks, no police person came here. The dispatcher said that she would fire a maintenance request for the facilities fire people to come check to see if the cover was broken and needed to be replaced. To me that is the end of the story - but no ...

I know I am being sarcastic and out-of-sorts about it, but I wonder if my supervisor wants me to file and incident report because I also called the police dispatcher on my way home. This time I reported that the elevator in the parking deck wasn't working. I am more aggrieved by that than I am about the fire alarm going off.

9figsfromthistle
Mar 11, 2022, 10:38 am

Happy new thread

10klobrien2
Mar 11, 2022, 12:24 pm

>1 weird_O: Gosh, Ernesto is cute! So clever!

Karen O

11lauralkeet
Mar 11, 2022, 12:50 pm

I love Ernesto. Is he a recent addition to your household staff?

12richardderus
Mar 11, 2022, 1:41 pm

Hi Ernesto, tell Bill I wandered by.

13mahsdad
Mar 11, 2022, 2:15 pm

Happy New Thread! And I like your new coffee monitor, keeps you from drinking too much, or does he remind you to drink more. :)

14quondame
Mar 11, 2022, 2:25 pm

Happy new thread!

>1 weird_O: Ernesto is the man! Coffee, lots and now!

15LovingLit
Mar 11, 2022, 2:28 pm

>5 weird_O: Oh, that reminds me. I NEED MINE ;)
(Ernesto whispered in my ear: It's time, Megan. It's time.)

Happy new thread!

16weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 4:48 pm

Macbeth by William Shakespeare Finished 3/5/22

The Weird Book ReportTM

What in the world can anyone say about one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies? That it is a bloodbath. No poisonings. No smotherings or stranglings. No shootings. Every death brings the killer face to face with his victim. The killer must thrust the knife or swing the sword, feeling the flesh resist then tear, hearing viscera and fluids gush then drip, and heed the shrieks and groans of the injured, the rattle of death from the dying. Few are spared, not women and children, not the elderly. Inevitably, blood flows freely, staining murdered and murderer alike.

And why?

Macbeth, a warrior, is played like a fiddle by three creepy, scuzzy gorgons. First, they tell him of an honor he knows he bears. Then they tell him of an honor he'll soon learn has been settled on him. And finally, they hook him with the notion that he could be king. Here is a warrior, by profession a killer. He can apply his job skills, make the king dead, and assume a new role. Except the King has two healthy sons (also warriors), one of whom could reasonably expect to succeed Dad in the family business. Then too, there are Macbeth's brethren in the warrior fraternity who would rightfully desire to avenge the murder of their king.

In the final scene of Act I, Macbeth has it out with himself, concluding "I have no spur/To prick the sides of my intent, but only/Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself/And falls on the other." In plainer terms, the only motivation for this murder is ambition. To him, it's not enough. "We will proceed no further in this business…" he tells his wife. But she plays that fiddle too, questioning his manhood, accusing him of cowardice. "I have given suck," she says, "and know/How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:/I would, while it was smiling in my face,/Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,/And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you/Have done to this."

Yow! His goose is cooked.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's last works. First performed four hundred years ago, in 1606, it has been performed regularly every year since (probably). Here are some famous lines:

WITCHES: Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
(Act 1 Scene 1)

MACBETH: Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
(Act 2 Scene 1)

MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
(Act 2 Scene 2)

WITCHES: Double, double toil and trouble:
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
(Act 4 Scene 1)

SECOND WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
(Act 4 Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: Out! damned spot! One, two, — why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

LADY MACBETH: What’s done cannot be undone.
(Act 5, Scene 1)

MACBETH: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Act 5 Scene 5)

You ought to read it, methinks. I dodged it for more than a half-century, but now I'm content. I'd suggest reading an edition that pairs Shakespeare's text with a contemporary "translation". The Spark Notes version I read has the original text on the left, a modern text on the facing page. Worked for me.

17Oberon
Mar 11, 2022, 5:10 pm

>16 weird_O: Great review. Have you seen the Macbeth movie with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard from 2015? I know the current filmed version titled the Tragedy of Macbeth has been getting a lot of (deserved) attention but for my money the 2015 film captures the terror of the story better.

18weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 5:22 pm

>17 Oberon: I haven't seen any of the films. I haven't see it performed on stage. Oh, I did scroll through Wiki and IMDb for casting and to scan pix. But viewing a film of Macbeth is still in my future. I'll keep your recommendation in mind. Thanks for "great review".

19weird_O
Mar 11, 2022, 5:49 pm

>9 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita.

>10 klobrien2: :-)

>11 lauralkeet: Christmas. From my daughter Becky. I pay him every cent he earns, Laura

>12 richardderus: I had to read your post the old fashion way, RD, mit eyeblinks. Ernesto said nothing to me. Don't trust him to pass along any messages. (Or to brew you an espresso, for that matter.)

>13 mahsdad: He just hangs around, Jeff. Trying to be cute. Neither helps nor hinters. At least he's quiet.

>14 quondame: He's reveling in the attention, Susan!

>15 LovingLit: Whoa, time zone dysplasia. Too late for coffee here, heh heh. But yes, have some, Megan.

20PaulCranswick
Mar 11, 2022, 6:00 pm

>5 weird_O: Your coffee call was a welcome one, Bill, I needed it so much this morning in Kuala Lumpur.

Happy new thread, dear chap.

21richardderus
Mar 11, 2022, 6:05 pm

>16 weird_O: Lady Macbeth was, I said to my father once, the RA at my mother's college dorm. Unintentionally I came close to committing patricide/suicide, since I said it while he was driving.

22FAMeulstee
Mar 11, 2022, 6:50 pm

Happy new thread, Bill.

>5 weird_O: The coffee has to wait. It is bedtime here, I will keep you in mind when I take my first cup in the morning.

23m.belljackson
Mar 11, 2022, 7:14 pm

>18 weird_O: The haunting opening scene in Roman Polanski's 1971 film of Macbeth is worth the whole movie.

24drneutron
Mar 11, 2022, 9:07 pm

Happy new one! Ernesto’s pretty awesome…

25bell7
Modifié : Mar 11, 2022, 9:15 pm

>16 weird_O: That was the first of Shakespeare's plays that I read, and still one of my favorites. Glad it was a good one for you!

26msf59
Mar 12, 2022, 7:41 am

Happy Saturday, Bill. Happy New Thread! Hooray for Ernesto! I am finishing up Winesburg, Ohio and really enjoying Project Hail Mary.

27weird_O
Mar 12, 2022, 12:03 pm

A new addition to my WANT! List™ 

28weird_O
Modifié : Mar 13, 2022, 12:45 am

The weather knocked me off my game plan for today. No real pressure, so I luxuriated in bed for an extra hour. I did observe that we were having the predicted snowfall, and noticed it wasn't windy. So I brewed my cuppa (Ernesto didn't lift a tine to help, that bugger), sat down with it and a donut to peruse emails and news and LT doin's. Then the internets fizzled. Uh! It was the absence of electricity. Sure was glad for that cuppa.

I listened to the township plow go through periodically. Lo and behold, the plowman who does my driveway came and went. I got a throw for my shoulders. Since I couldn't work on my overdue book reports (they're on Google Docs), I started reading Freddy Goes Camping, the fifth and last of the Freddy books I borrowed from my brother. A 168 pages and a couple of naps later, at about 5:45, the fridge started humming.
------------------

Thanks to Paul, Richard, Anita, Marianne, Mary, and Mark for stopping by for the gala thread opening. Hope you enjoyed the complimentary champagne. Oh wait...I think Ernesto got it all. Sorry.

29weird_O
Mar 12, 2022, 8:24 pm

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones Finished 2/24/22 

The Weird Book ReportTM

When he stood, there was a sea of green eyes staring back at him from right there, where there was just supposed to be frozen grass and distance.

It was a great herd of elk, waiting, blocking him in, and there was a great herd pressing in behind him, too, a herd of men already on the blacktop themselves, their voices rising, hands balled into fists, eyes flashing white.

INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR.

That's one way to say it.

The Indian man was Ricky Boss Ribs, who had left the Blackfeet reservation for work in North Dakota with an oil drilling crew. Ten years before, Ricky and three friends from the rez—Lewis, Cass, and Gabe—made a lot of trouble for themselves hunting in a restricted area. Only teens at the time, they were denied hunting rights thereafter. That in itself eroded their friendship. But the need to find employment, the desire to find girlfriends, to start families, also weakened the bond among them.

Some time after Ricky's death, another of the four, Lewis, stumbled into trouble and made the headlines:

THREE DEAD, ONE INJURED IN MANHUNT

Four Shelby men were attacked last night, following the apprehension of the fugitive Lewis A. Clarke…who had apparently been fleeing back to his tribe's ancestral reservation. Clarke was the main suspect in the brutal murders of both his wife and a federal coworker.

…According to sources at the hospital…the four Shelby men had in the back of their truck both Clarke and the deer or elk calf he had apparently been carrying for reasons unknown.

…[S]omeone stood from the bed of the truck while it was moving. It was a girl of twelve or fourteen. Indian. Presumably she had climbed into the truck earlier, when it was headed west.

When the driver of the vehicle slowed to keep her from falling or blowing out, and alerted his three cab mates to her, the survivor says the girl "rushed forward over the toolbox" and "through the rear window" into the cab, which is where the eyewitness testimony ends.

Lewis, of course, was not a survivor. The young girl…disappeared. Who was she? And why was Lewis carrying a deer or elk calf? While trying to outrun the authorities, don't you know. This doesn't have anything to do with that murky hunting incident of a decade ago, right? With Ricky being killed? (If you were reading the book instead of this pitiful report, you'd know the answers. But you'd still be mystified. Questions remain unasked. So far. It's creepy, yeah?)

Just read it.

30PaulCranswick
Mar 12, 2022, 8:27 pm

>27 weird_O: Hahaha, I just need less of mine!

>29 weird_O: Bought that on Mark's recommendation last year and must get to it soon.

31karenmarie
Mar 13, 2022, 10:36 am

Hi Bill, and happy new thread. Love the title and love the topper. Ernesto needs to become a productive member of the household.

>5 weird_O: Ah, ha! I’m converting coffee right now…

>28 weird_O: The first Freddy, Freddy Goes to Florida is on my Kindle, just waiting for the right time.

32weird_O
Mar 14, 2022, 12:35 pm

>30 PaulCranswick: I picked up The Only Good Indians at a library sale, and Richard jumped on it and urged me to read it right away. It's creepy and, from time to time, outright grizzly, but compelling.

I'm surprised to have not seen any chat about the I Need a New Butt incident. In Mississippi, an assistant principal stepped in at the last minute to read a book via Zoom to 250 second-graders in the school district. The scheduled reader duck out at the last minute, so he grabbed the book, which his own kids loved, and read it to the kids. They loved. The superintendent fired the guy. 'Cause, ya know, butt cracks and farting. *giggle giggle*

>31 karenmarie: I've got some coffee being cracked and distilled and bombarded magically myself just now. So don't stand too close.

I was checking the availability of Freddy books on the weekend, having finished one on Saturday. I see that several are only available for Kindle, but most not available new at all. I got an old print edition of the one you have at a library sale last year. In Scranton, where I meet Linda Laytonwoman3rd.

33richardderus
Mar 14, 2022, 1:25 pm

>29 weird_O: I'm always delighted when new people discover SGJ's books. He has several novellas that will feed your appreciation for his off-kilter personality.

34drneutron
Mar 15, 2022, 3:08 pm

>29 weird_O:, >33 richardderus: I really enjoyed My Heart is a Chainsaw - off-kilter it was!

35weird_O
Mar 16, 2022, 11:33 am

>33 richardderus: >34 drneutron: I've been aware of My Heart Is a Chainsaw and recognized the author's name on The Only Good Indians at a book sale. I have now formally placed the former book on my WANT! List™. I've cited both of you provocateurs in the "Who to Blame" column. :-)

36weird_O
Mar 16, 2022, 11:47 am

In the midst of efforts to purge "troublesome" or "worrisome" books from schools and libraries, it was good to read of a teacher woman who's set herself a goal of giving away 1 million books. Jennifer Williams of Danville, VA, organizes give-aways in school, in which books are laid out on tables in the hallway, and class-by-class, the kids file by and pick a book they want. Williams also stocks about 40 "Little Free Libraries" within 30 miles of her home. She donates books to the country prison.

Read the entire article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/15/book-giveaway-virginia-jenni...

37richardderus
Mar 16, 2022, 4:23 pm

>36 weird_O: Seems to me she should be appointed to the Supreme Court in place of...well, one of the Gang of Six, not specially bothered which.

38weird_O
Mar 16, 2022, 5:15 pm

Yabut...that would divert her from a very worthy mission.

39msf59
Mar 16, 2022, 7:00 pm

Happy Wednesday, Bill. I also really liked The Only Good Indians and have My Heart Is a Chainsaw on my radar. Hopefully, I can bookhorn it in, in the coming months.

40weird_O
Mar 16, 2022, 9:35 pm

Golly Moses, it was a gorgeous day today! Sunny, and temp pushing up there against 70° F. I opened the doors and several windows and enjoyed.

41alcottacre
Mar 16, 2022, 11:41 pm

Checking in on the new thread, Bill, despite it not being very new any more.

>40 weird_O: We got up to almost 70 here today too, although it was overcast. Bracing for more rain tomorrow - better than the 40 degree drop in temperature we had from Thursday to Friday last week, which brought freezing rain and snow.

42weird_O
Mar 17, 2022, 12:00 pm

I have ventured into the pages of Malamud's The Fixer for March's AAC. I'm not sold on the book, but that may be because I've never been drawn to Malamud.

43weird_O
Mar 17, 2022, 2:46 pm

# 11. Freddy and the Dragon by Walter R. Brooks Finished 1/27/22 

The Weird ReportTM

Freddy is the primary suspect when animal hooligans, whose leader is a pig, vandalizes properties in Centerboro and threatens citizens with worse unless those citizens pay. Because Freddy and the black cat, Jinx, are on an extended horseback ride to the west, they don't know anything about the incidents, and they are surprised to be greeted with glares and hostility upon their return through the town.

As the plot thickens, several denizens of the Bean Farm are implicated. Hoof prints on a door implicate Hank, the Beans' horse, for example. But considerable damage is done by a huge bull that's torn up gardens and knocked down fences. And the Beans don't have a bull, only cows. The scariest event is the appearance of a headless horseman to collect money that citizens had been directed to leave at a remote spot if they wanted to avoid future trouble.

Solving the riddle requires teamwork of the animals and a few of their trustworthy friends in the local populace. Birds scour the town for evidence, and eavesdrop on conversations, reporting everything they see or hear. Freddy seeks advice from Mr. Bean's Uncle Ben, who is an inventor with a workshop in the barn loft. Ben builds a large and scary, fire-breathing dragon to give the bad guys a dose of their own medicine.

Yes, as always, it ends well. This book is the last in the Freddy series. Brooks delivered the manuscript to the publisher only weeks before he died.

44benitastrnad
Mar 17, 2022, 3:30 pm

I am a Malamud fan. I like The Assistant very much and I read one other one by him and I can't remember what it was. I would have to look. But the Assistant was a winner. I still remember it and I am sure I read it about 20 years ago. Not any pleasant characters but it was a very good story.

45richardderus
Mar 19, 2022, 6:52 pm

>43 weird_O: I really can't quite believe that there's a Freddy the Pig book I've never even heard of! How terrifically interesting, Bill. I hadn't known it was the last, either.

*gleeful hand-rubs*

46weird_O
Mar 19, 2022, 7:52 pm

>45 richardderus: Wha wha what? I introduced you to a book you didn't know about?

47richardderus
Mar 19, 2022, 8:01 pm

>46 weird_O: Never heard of, had no idea existed, none of it!

48figsfromthistle
Mar 19, 2022, 8:34 pm

>29 weird_O: Excellent review. I have that on my WL already and on a library hold. Can't wait!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the sun!

49msf59
Mar 20, 2022, 8:23 am

Happy Sunday, Bill. I think you showed interest in doing a shared read of Harlem Shuffle. Would you be up for it, in early April? Stop by and let me know.

50weird_O
Mar 21, 2022, 11:22 am

>45 richardderus:, >46 weird_O:, >47 richardderus: For what it is worth: Brooks wrote 26 Freddy books. All are available for Kindle from Amazon. Only two are still in print. Paperbacks. Freddy the Detective and Freddy the Politician.

51weird_O
Mar 21, 2022, 11:34 am

Hey, geez! It's another Monday! Lots to look forward to. I'm pumped. Cleaning to do, a strange novel to finish, bales to lift, barges to tow. Good to be alive!

52mstrust
Mar 21, 2022, 1:15 pm

Stopping in to say hi!
>32 weird_O: I read a little about that incident. Not only does that guy not deserve to be fired for reading it, but now he's forever going to be "The New Butt" guy. I hope he has a good lawyer.

53richardderus
Mar 21, 2022, 1:38 pm

>50 weird_O: Significantly more than I expected...or than my memory tells me I expected. I honestly have no idea if I ever knew this before now as the books don't surface in my memory too often. "Lake Oswego" brings them up, and your thread(s), but apart from that it isn't something I get much call to recall.

54weird_O
Modifié : Mar 21, 2022, 8:52 pm

>52 mstrust: This is the classic "shielding-eyes-with-hands, fingers to the forehead", wagging head side-to-side. I wish the news reports would name the superintendent. But I expect that could put that person in physical danger, and that's not what I want. It appears the popularity of the book has spawned a series of followups. "Educators" seem so prone to unself-conscious, humor-free, authoritarian judgments. News-like stories of teacher disenchantment and of declines in childhood reading are common.

>53 richardderus: Wowie. Good for me. Now you know. Maybe you'll find yourself in a literary trivia contest. MC'ed by...hmmm...Rod Serling?...Or Alex Trebek?

--------------------
News o' the world...

Today I finished a book (!?). Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem. And just what the hell was it? Curiously compelling, and unfortunately less than satisfying. Hmmm.

Yesterday I finished a book. Instant Lives by Howard Moss. Short pieces satirizing famous artistic persons of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Illustrated by Edward Gorey. His sketches were the draw (heh heh, so to speak).

Day before yesterday I finished a collection of comics by Patrick McDonnell. Cats and Dogs: Mutts II. Not up there with Calvin and Hobbs, Pogo, or even Peanuts, but still an hour or so of entertainment. (I have to say that because I picked up two other "Mutts" collections; read the oldest one first.)

Have a good week. Monday's almost over.

55alcottacre
Mar 23, 2022, 12:01 am

>43 weird_O: The Freddy books look like good fun! I will have to check them out.

>54 weird_O: Gorey did the illustrations? I am in!

56LovingLit
Modifié : Mar 23, 2022, 3:16 pm

>16 weird_O: Ah Macbeth.
"Yow! His goose is cooked."- indeed.

I love your synopsis, and the quotes, so many of which are in common usage now. Somewhat bastardised, as usual.

eta: >27 weird_O: My kids had this book when they were younger, and we enjoyed it as much as they did. I heard the Texan(?) teacher on the radio here talking about being fired for reading it to his class!!

57weird_O
Mar 23, 2022, 5:23 pm

Very early this morning, I finished book four in the Percy Jackson quintet. Called The Battle of the Labyrinth. Being on the cusp of the conclusion, I figure I'll forge ahead and polish off book five, The Last Olympian. Then I'll see what strikes my fancy to finish the month.

This is is the second month in a row I defaulted on the AAC. I just can't get into Malamud...at this time. I'm pretty reluctant to completely write off a book, but I have done it. Little Women is one I couldn't read beyond the the second chapter. But The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy and Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry were two books I started and quickly deserted in 1966, then returned to and completed in 2018 and 2015 respectively. So I'm setting aside both The Fixer and Raymond Carver's story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which was intended to be a wild card substitution for something by Tess Gallagher, Carver's wife.

So there's where I am at this moment. Check back in a hour or two. I'll likely be elsewhere by then.

58weird_O
Mar 23, 2022, 9:35 pm

I've had time to catalog some books I got this afternoon as a reward for a visit to the dentist. (I didn't cry out once, nor did I weep. In the bargain, the dentist's office manager called around and set up an appointment to have an oral surgeon use his best judgment to remove a bad tooth; best judgment of appropriate technique—Vise-Grips™, pry bar, dynamite, etc., etc., etc.)

Harlem Shuffle, Colin Whitehead (new!)
Alarms & Diversions, James Thurber (used hc)
Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (volume one), Yuval Noah Harari (used hc)
East, West: Stories, Salman Rushdie (used hc)
The King, Donald Barthelme (used hc)

That last one, The King, knocked my reading plan (>57 weird_O:) awry. I've been looking for a copy for several years, and Shazam! There it was on the dollar cart. So I'm reading that before the last Percy Jackson.

59weird_O
Mar 23, 2022, 11:47 pm

>55 alcottacre: You'll breeze through any of the Freddy books, Stasia. Good luck finding a copy of Instant Lives.

>56 LovingLit: Nice of you to stop by, Megan. I avoided Macbeth, but once I read it, I had to go through it three or four times. I also read two graphic versions of the play.

I'm so baffled by some people's reaction to books for kids.

60weird_O
Mar 25, 2022, 1:08 am

Completed The King by Donald Barthelme. A fun short novel that beats together King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the Nazi's bombardment of London and most of England. From Berlin, Lord Haw Haw needles the British with gossip about who Queen Guinevere is sleeping with (it changes from time to time). Lancelot is still riding his horse hither than thither, looking for a joust.

Anyway, having completed that I will, as I said in >57 weird_O:, forge ahead and polish off book five [in the Percy Jackson quintet], The Last Olympian. I might even have time to read another shortster before tackling Harlem Shuffle with Mark and his other groupies.

61karenmarie
Mar 25, 2022, 8:44 am

Hi Bill!

>54 weird_O: I love Instant Lives. It definitely gets bonus points for being illustrated by Edward Gorey.

>57 weird_O: I agree about Little Women. I have two copies, one an Easton Press edition, the other that Bill’s Mama undoubtedly read when she was a girl. Just can’t get rid of them even though I’ll never read it. I’ve also got Little Men. Ditto about never reading it.

>58 weird_O: Bravo for not weeping at the dentist. Books are always a wonderful reward.

62weird_O
Mar 26, 2022, 12:50 am

9. Macbeth (Usborne Graphic Shakespeare), Russell Punter, illus Massimiliano Longo and Valentino Forlini. Finished 1/23/22 
21. Macbeth, Gareth Hinds. Finished 3/5/22 

The Weird ReportTM

I first became aware of the Usborne Shakespeare graphic adaptation of Macbeth through a post on the Graphic Stories thread. I bought a copy because I was launching a read of Shakespeare's play coupled with a read of Jo Nesbo's novel of the same name, inspired by the play. After reading Usborne's edition, I spotted a graphic version by Gareth Hinds in a library. I signed it out. Comparing the two graphic versions was very interesting.

In my opinion, the Usborne version is a bargain-basement item, intended to fill a blank spot in the publisher's lineup. The adaptation of Shakespeare's text is acceptable, not not anything more than that. Overall, the illustrations are competent but not special; my gut snarks that they were drawn by the low-bidder, who was chosen for the job simply because he was the low-bidder. They are sketchy. The characters convey anger more often than any other emotion.

The Gareth Hinds adaptation is excellent. It benefits from a singular vision. Hinds, who has produced quite a few graphic adaptations of classic literature—King Lear, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Merchant of Venice—is an old hand at such work. His approach is to research his subject, adapt the text, storyboard the presentation, and produce the illustrations. He's in charge; no one else to shoulder blame for shortcomings.

Maria Russo, who reviewed the book for the New York Times in 2015, commented on Hinds' text, lauding his effort to maintain Shakespeare's rhythm, a detail that totally evaded me:

Hinds…has condensed the action of “Macbeth” a bit and in many places maneuvered Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter into prose that fits seamlessly into speech bubbles. Little seems to have been lost in that transition. The major soliloquies are intact and include the original line breaks (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time”), while the lines that serve more expositional functions are sometimes reworked so that they still have an iambic feel, but flow naturally to the modern ear (“Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the future in an instant”).

My contribution here is picking some scenes, showing how they are presented in each book. On the left are the Usborne pages. On the right, the Hinds edition.





                               

                               





                               









                               

63quondame
Mar 26, 2022, 1:04 am

>62 weird_O: The differences and similarities are both interesting. Gareth Hinds certainly gives a stronger punch to the visuals though his (lack of) clothing choices are a bit odd for the Scottish clime, though not gratuitously.

64alcottacre
Mar 26, 2022, 1:24 am

>58 weird_O: I love James Thurber! Nice haul, Bill.

>59 weird_O: I have already located a copy of Instant Lives and it is on its way here. No idea when I will get my hands on it, but hopefully soon.

>60 weird_O: Adding The King to the BlackHole. It sounds fun!

Have a wonderful weekend!

65weird_O
Mar 26, 2022, 10:18 am

>63 quondame: I don't have the book any more. But Hinds did address the clothing question you raise, Susan. In the review I mentioned, Maria Russo commented on appearances. Here's a linky: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/books/review/macbeth-adapted-by-gareth-hinds....
Don't know if it's behind a paywall; the Times has a lot of sometimes surprising checkpoints.

>64 alcottacre: See, it's fun reading.

66msf59
Mar 26, 2022, 10:50 am

Happy Saturday, Bill. I think I will request one of the Macbeth GNs. The Hinds was the better, right? This might be a cool way for me to get back into Shakespeare. We are thinking of starting Harlem Shuffle, the first week is April, if that works for you?

The Rushdie collection sounds interesting. I will watch for your thoughts.

67weird_O
Mar 26, 2022, 1:40 pm

Hi Mark. This Saturday is, so far, happy. I trust yours is too.

Gareth Hinds' Macbeth is the superior graphic adaptation of the two I read. (Wish I had spent my $$ on it and not on the Usborne version.)

I am ready to read Mr. Whitehead. I won't start on April Fool's Day, since my annual eye exam is that day. Heh

68quondame
Modifié : Mar 26, 2022, 2:34 pm

>65 weird_O: The paywall is thick and high. Aren't there any free visits anymore?

69weird_O
Mar 26, 2022, 6:35 pm

Bah. I'm sorry, Susan.

70katiekrug
Mar 26, 2022, 6:43 pm

>69 weird_O: - FYI, you can share 10 articles for free a month from the Times. On the Share icon, there is an option at the bottom that will give you a link you can share without a pay wall.

71weird_O
Modifié : Mar 27, 2022, 6:42 pm

25. Instant Lives by Howard Moss, illustrations by Edward Gorey. Finished 3/20/22 

The Weird Book ReportTM

Instant Lives is an entertainment. It's short, just 84 pages, embellished with 25 pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Gorey. Howard Moss, poetry editor for The New Yorker for nearly forty years, authored these short pieces satirizing famous artistic persons of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many mimic the unmistakable voice of the subject, for example, Henry James:

He took a dim view, if, indeed, a view, in all consciousness, could be considered one, when the very act of its perception was, by definition, barely discernible, of biography, that addiction to "truth-seeking" that so often cloaked, when it did not, more accurately, mask, a predilection for poking into corners best left un-poked, for lifting up stones heavy enough, one would have thought, to crush existence itself out of the low and wriggling forms of life that secreted themselves, ever so hopefully, ever so persistently, in pursuit of a safety indubitably not to be vouchsafed, beneath the mossy sides of their seemingly permanent shelters…That he, the author of What Maisie Knew, should be asked to offer sacrifices at the altar of a God he did not worship, neither as communicant nor convert, to act, doubly the slave, as the servitor of Mammon, a "deal"—as the American traders, ever hot in the pursuit of profit, might say—seemed to him not only to rub salt into an old wound but to be a special form of affront, as insulting as if, laid hands on by the misinformed, a first edition were to be used merely for the swatting of flies. He would not, no…


The Bronte Sisters

Or James Joyce:

Being a broth of a poi, cod-lei but Chile, to whom Doubloom seized to half charm, eggs isle seemed puf-ferable. He Christ the Iris zei, he crossed the Ingres flannel and maid his weigh a broad. Zoo rich! Elps! EEEEEEEEEEk! Them Swiss miss misses me. Watch out, Montaignes, and them Edel (Weiss) Leon? Ted? Price? Ah, my Tyne is come, said the looney.



Marcel Proust

Here is Mary Shelley:

…There was a pounding at the door. My God! Could it be Percy Bysshe? If he found out she'd been "experimenting" again, it would kill him.
"Just one moment, please," she said, trying to shove the monster back into the darkness of the attic.
"Get back into a recess . . . back! . . . back!" Mary whispered hoarsely.
The monster looked at her. "That's easier Sade than Donne . . ."
Even in this intolerable moment of panic, Mary could not resist a tiny rush of pride. Whatever she had created, it was far more literate than she had guessed . . .




72klobrien2
Mar 27, 2022, 5:08 pm

>71 weird_O: I was moving on by, but the illustrations and the quotes you included made that impossible—gotta get this book! Thanks for luring me in!

Karen O

73weird_O
Mar 28, 2022, 11:20 am

A spoiled weekend. My sister's husband died Saturday evening. I'm so glad that his oldest and youngest children were visiting for the weekend, so Marty wasn't alone. Kermit had had bypass surgery long ago, and several stents since then. He had taken some nitro, and agreed an ER visit was necessary. Transferred to a bigger hospital, but the medical team there couldn't keep him alive. He'd have been 88 in June.

74lauralkeet
Mar 28, 2022, 12:54 pm

>73 weird_O: I'm so sorry for your loss, Bill.

75mstrust
Mar 28, 2022, 4:02 pm

Sending my sympathy to you and the family.

76quondame
Mar 28, 2022, 5:02 pm

>73 weird_O: I'm so sorry for your and your sister's loss. Another world gone.

77jessibud2
Mar 28, 2022, 8:55 pm

>73 weird_O: - So sorry for your loss, Bill. Glad, as you say, that your sister wasn't facing this alone.

78alcottacre
Mar 29, 2022, 12:22 am

>71 weird_O: That one sounds like so much fun! I am happy I have a copy on the way.

>73 weird_O: I am sorry to hear that, Bill. I am glad that at least a couple of his kids were there. My sincerest sympathies.

79ffortsa
Mar 30, 2022, 12:49 pm

Sorry for your loss, Bill. And yes, it's good that he had family around him. As my mother once said, after years of aphasia, when told of my uncle's demise, "There's a lot of that going around here."

Your posts are making me reconsider graphic novels. Thanks for all the examples. We go to see 'MacBeth' on Friday with Daniel Craig - really looking forward to it. It was the first Shakespeare I ever saw, on a junior high field trip, and it hooked me forever.

80alcottacre
Mar 31, 2022, 11:16 am

Happy Thursday, Bill!

81msf59
Mar 31, 2022, 11:27 am

Sorry for your loss, Bill. I hope your sister will be fine. It sounds like he was able to enjoy a long life.

82weird_O
Modifié : Avr 10, 2022, 7:36 am

As much as I resisted, I did get driven to a library sale. Low and behold, there were books that only *I* could rescue. I did what I could.



Here's the list:

Fences: A Play, August Wilson (pbk)
The Natural, Bernard Malamud (pbk)
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren, Jonathan Lopez (pbk)
The Plague Court Murders: A Sir Henry Merrivale Mystery, John Dickson Carr (pbk)
A Brief History of the Smile, Angus Trumble (pbk)
My Home Is Far Away: An Autobiographical Novel, Dawn Powell (pbk)
The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie (pbk)
Our Smallest Towns, Dennis Kitchen (pbk, oversize)
Push Paper: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Paper Art, Jaime Zollars (hc)
The Terminal Man, Michael Crichton (hc)
The Man in the Ceiling, Jules Feiffer (hc)
There There, Tommy Orange (hc)
The Topeka School, Ben Lerner (hc)
On Animals, Susan Orlean (hc)
Foregone, Russell Banks (hc)
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, Walter Isaacson (hc)

These three are destined for My Jersey Girls' library:

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Drabos Zak, retold by Robert Holden (hc, oversize)
Dragon Rider, Cornelia Funke (hc)
Inkheart, Cornelia Funke (pbk)

83weird_O
Mar 31, 2022, 3:27 pm

I may return to the sale Saturday. :-)

84weird_O
Modifié : Avr 1, 2022, 9:29 am

Thanks for the sympathy, friends. Laura, Jennifer, Susan, Shelley, Stasia, Judy and Mark. It means a lot. I'll share your condolences with my sister.

85weird_O
Avr 1, 2022, 12:12 am

Completed a couple of books to wind up March. One was a picture book for youngsters, called The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The spare text is by Robert Holden, but the wonderful illustrations by Drabos Zak are the book. I paged through it several times, loving the images. My Jersey Girls will like it, I'm sure.



         

The second book completed is Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (volume one) by Yuval Noah Harari. An excellent NF book. I'll have more to say about it sometime in the next few days.

86jnwelch
Modifié : Avr 1, 2022, 10:02 am

Hiya, Bill. Sorry to hear about the passing of your sister’s husband. I’m glad she had the children there with her.

I enjoyed meeting Ernesto and your Macbeth review. You bb’d me with the Gareth Hinds graphic version and Instant Lives. Among other things, I’m a pushover for Edward Gorey illustrations.

87figsfromthistle
Avr 2, 2022, 6:01 am

>73 weird_O: Sorry to hear about your loss.

>82 weird_O: What a wonderful book haul.

88klobrien2
Avr 2, 2022, 5:29 pm

>71 weird_O: Just picked up Instant Lives at the lib—can’t wait to get into it!

Karen O

89weird_O
Modifié : Avr 2, 2022, 6:43 pm

>86 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I talked to Marty again yesterday, and confirmed my planned week-long visit with her. I had to laugh (at myself) at your reference to "his children." I did say Kermit's "kids" were visiting when he died. But that perhaps misleads. The oldest, Susan, is 69; the youngest is 62, I think.

>87 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita.

I'm pretty quickly stacking a lot of "must read" books. I thought perhaps I'd go back for more, but no. Got an awful lot to do in and around the house.

>88 klobrien2: Read it this "instant", haw haw. It's a quicky read, but fun.

90PaulCranswick
Avr 4, 2022, 2:56 am

>82 weird_O: Nice haul, Bill!

Wishing you a great week ahead dear chap.

91msf59
Avr 4, 2022, 8:09 am

Great book haul, Bill. I loved There, There & The Code Breaker and I have wanted to read The Topeka School.

I am 55 pages into Harlem Shuffle. Off to a good start.

92weird_O
Modifié : Avr 5, 2022, 10:40 pm

I think my mail carrier has it in for me. I pulled up at the mailbox and extracted quite a handful of mail, including bills for township and county property taxes. As well as tax bills for three neighbors. Yikes! I left those in the mailbox and raised the red flag.

I do want to get more reading time, but I've finally gotten a start on a bookcase project and I don't want to stall, crash, and burn. So maybe another chapter in The Natural tonight and polish it off tomorrow. Then Mr. Whitehead. And after that, something really good.

Y'all have a plethora of good days (though it's supposed to rain here. "It's raining, it's pouring. The old man (me) is snoring. He bumped his head against the bed and didn't get up until morning." Or something like that.

93karenmarie
Avr 6, 2022, 11:31 am

Hi Bill!

>71 weird_O: Excellent review of a marvelous little book. I was introduced to Edward Gorey with The Epiplectic Bicycle and have quite a few, including most of the Amphigoreys, too.

>73 weird_O: I’m sorry for your loss, glad that some of their children were there for your sister.

>82 weird_O: Your rescue efforts are to be commended. I started The Code Breaker last year before my heart attack, keep meaning to be disciplined and read a chapter a day, but so far haven’t gotten back to it. Perhaps a chapter a week?

>92 weird_O: Every once in a while, we get mail for 2 or 3 of our neighbors, too. I’ve taken to checking the mail before going home so I don’t have to bring their mail back out.

94mstrust
Avr 6, 2022, 12:28 pm

>92 weird_O: We don't have a permanent regular mail carrier, just about every time I see one on my street it's a different person, which means no one is learning the route. So I've had days when I've received no mail for us but stuff that should have gone to multiple neighbors. Mike has driven a big envelope of bank papers to neighbors and we've delivered stuff on our walks. But sometimes I get fed up, circle the address and put a sticky note on it saying "Please deliver to the correct address". I can't guess how much of our mail is going all over the place.

95weird_O
Avr 6, 2022, 4:35 pm

Since my neighbors' bills were still in the box today, I took them to the post office. A substitute carrier got the blame. (I didn't make the p.o. trip just for the misdirected mail. I filled out a hold card for next week, when I visit my sister. And I had a letter to mail.)

96richardderus
Avr 6, 2022, 5:48 pm

Hi Bill, back to regular (if not normal) service...my Young Gentleman Caller gave me a great tip, and now I'm able to sustain hotspot service! Goddesses please bless the millennials.

97benitastrnad
Avr 6, 2022, 5:51 pm

>95 weird_O:
At least you have a local post office. The post office in my home town is only open from 8 AM to 10 AM. I really wish some politician would get their act together and get something done about the poor state of affairs in the USPS. I can't believe how much permanent damage that orange haired gasbag and his Republican cronies managed to do to our mail system in 3 months in 2020. It aggravates me to no end that my various state and national legislators don't believe it is a serious problem.

98weird_O
Avr 6, 2022, 5:54 pm

That's great, RD. I know what you mean about millennials. My three oldest grands are whizzes with these digital shenanigans. Cheers for the YGC!

99weird_O
Avr 6, 2022, 5:56 pm

     

100weird_O
Avr 6, 2022, 6:35 pm

>93 karenmarie: Hi right back Karen. You accomplished some book rescues of your own. I'm impressed with your stamina. What? Three-four full days on your feet, pushin' books. That's not something I can do anymore.

I'm going to visit my sister for several days next week. We'll surely share some teary moments. I have a feeling she going to offer me books. Who am I to reject such an offer from my one and only sister?

The hitch with the mail was blamed on a substitute. The regular guy is back as of tomorrow. It happens, but on the occasions it has, it's only one family's mail.

>94 mstrust: It doesn't happen often. The karma of getting two tax bills for me as well as two each for three neighbors was unsettling. Hey, maybe I shoulda steamed those bills open to see what their properties are worth. * Ah NO! *

>97 benitastrnad: I hear ya, Benita. I'm in a sufficiently populous area that there are post offices around that have 9 to 5 service weekdays, with a lunchtime closure. And lobbies are open.

101msf59
Avr 6, 2022, 6:39 pm

>92 weird_O: Those darn mail carriers can be pretty frustrating, my friend.

I have 100 pages left in Harlem Shuffle so I will finish it. I can't lie- this is a let-down after his previous two novels but it has been mildly diverting.

102weird_O
Avr 7, 2022, 4:40 pm

I have been blessed. I now can notch a read for April. Although it was for March. The Natural, Bernard Malamud, 2022-04-07. The seventh, a day that will live in infamy..

And now to Whitehead. (Oh, why did I let that ol' postman talk me into this?) Heh heh: :-)

103m.belljackson
Avr 7, 2022, 5:05 pm

>92 weird_O:>101 My last two over-the-tops with Substitute Mailpersons revolved around:

1. Getting a small tree ordered from The Arbor Day Foundation folded totally in half and crammed into rural box,
sticking out into the road.

2. Finding a large cardboard box left out on top of the Garbage Can
(no notice in mailbox)
- in heavy rain - and not seen until the next morning.

104weird_O
Avr 7, 2022, 5:36 pm

Oh, Marianne. We haven't had anything like the first, but quite a few instances of finding soaked packages. UPS is unparalleled for bad deliveries in my experience.

105benitastrnad
Avr 7, 2022, 5:44 pm

Back in the day when the mail service was dependable - Uncle Ernie and Uncle Dewey didn't leave packages when the weather was bad. They knew they weren't going to fit into the mailbox and so would just hold it and deliver it the next day. That seemed to work for everybody. Of course, most of the packages back then came from Sears or from Lands End.

106weird_O
Avr 7, 2022, 5:52 pm

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Those good ol' days. All the package deliveries were above average, and none of the deliverers would cadge for compliments.

107weird_O
Modifié : Avr 9, 2022, 1:50 pm

28. The King by Donald Barthelme Finished 3/24/22 

The Weird Book ReportTM

Donald Barthelme has been a mystery to me. Heard the name, but couldn't connect it to any specific book title. Had an impression he was difficult (like Pynchon or Joyce). But still I filed a mental note of a book titled The King, which was enthusiastically endorsed on some list or other. I found a used copy and read it immediately.

I'm very glad I did. It is excellent.

The King of the title is Arthur, and in Barthelme's novel—his last; it was published after his death in 1989—he still reigns over England, despite it being 1939. Guinevere is still queen, Launcelot is still the knight in shining armor, still cuckolding his king (but he's no longer alone in that). Arthur's longevity is…hmmmm…a mystery.

"Tell me something," Arthur said. "Why have I lived so long!"
"God's grace, Merlin's magic, adroitness in battle, sturdy red and white corpuscles, a great heart—What can I say?"
"You don't think it's been a bit…protracted? My life?"
"It's run on a few centuries beyond the normal span, that's true. But there are exceptional individuals in all periods of history."

Despite his exceptional life span, despite heading a government that travels on horseback, despite leading a fighting force of "knights" wearing armor and armed with swords and lances, Arthur is in command of the 20th century's conflicts and problems. When disgruntled railway workers weld a locomotive to the rails on the line between Ipswich and Stowmarket (so nothing can move on that line), Arthur personally accesses the situation with his advisors.

"How does one unweld a weld?" Arthur asked. "Chip at it with a crowbar?"
"We could have them take up the track," said Sir Lamorak, "fore and aft of the engine. Then that section could be slid to one side and new rails laid. But you'd have to have a mighty powerful something to move it with."
"They could lay track perpendicular to the existing track and bring in another engine on that track," said Sir Kay, "but it would take donkey's years."
"If Merlin were still in business he could mag-ick it away," said the king. " 'Avaunt!' he'd say, and the thing would be done. I'm afraid I never adequately appreciated Merlin." He paused. "Big bastard, isn't it."

      

Further inspection of the quite large locomotive.
"I say we blast," said Sir Helin.
"We could have the sappers tunnel beneath it," said Sir Lamorak, "and when the hole is big enough, cut the rails and the engine would fall into the pit. Then we fill in around it and lay new track. What think you?"
"If we could melt it somehow," replied Sir Kay. "Build a sort of furnace sort of thing around it—"
"Jack it up," said Arthur. "Remove the wheels and attached track. Replace wheels. Replace track. Lower engine, and there you have it."
"What a good idea," said Sir Lamorak. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"A perfect solution," Sir Kay said. "One understands, at moments like this, why you are king, sire. Your idea is fifty times better than any of our ideas."

Arthur is capable of unequivocal stands, making them without doubt or indecision.

Launcelot, Arthur, Sir Kay, the Blue Knight, and Sir Roger de Ibadan in conference.
"These three equations, taken together, will enable us to build a bomb more powerful than any the world has ever known," said Sir Roger. "When Launcelot showed me all three, I recognized instantly that they were either alchemical transmutations of the most important kind or the culmination of some Scandinavian work in atomic fission I've been following."
"Or both," said the Blue Knight.
"Or both," Sir Roger agreed. "Either way, it's the Grail you chaps have been seeking. The big boom."

The discussion turns practical. How long will it take to build? How would it be used? "Perhaps a demonstration…Do Essen or Kiel or one of the smaller cities."

"You understand," said Sir Roger, "that once you let go of this, the city is gone. Totally…everything within ten miles or so of the point of impact goes…"
"Isn't that a bit bloodthirsty?"
"That's the business we're in, at the moment."
Arthur took the three slips of paper and tore them to bits.
"We won't do it," he said. "I cannot allow it. It's not the way we wage war…The essence of our calling is right behavior, and this false Grail is not a knightly weapon. I have spoken."

Read the book. It's short, it's fun. I have spoken.

108weird_O
Avr 8, 2022, 1:02 pm

I shopped at an historic general store the other day (been a regular customer for nearly 50 years, through three owners), going in by the back door. There's been a Little Free Library beside the parking slots for a couple of years, and on this occasion it was well-stocked with prime-looking books. So I helped myself to five titles. The next day, I returned one of the five and added eight dupes I've picked up at library sales (blissfully unaware I already had copies). I have assured myself that eight for four is a decent exchange.

       

Here's what I picked up:

An Untamed State, Roxane Gay (hc)
Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong, Joyce Carol Oates (hc)
Frog Music, Emma Donoghue (hc)
The Hundred-Year House, Rebecca Makkai (hc)

In exchange, I left:

American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon
At Bertram's Hotel, Agatha Christie
Irish Country Doctor episode, Patrick Taylor
Maisie Dobbs' novels (2), Jacqueline Winspear
Saturday, Ian McEwan

109klobrien2
Avr 8, 2022, 1:04 pm

>108 weird_O: Now, that’s a win/win situation if I ever heard of one!

Karen O

110weird_O
Avr 9, 2022, 3:41 pm

32. The Natural by Bernard Malamud Finished 1/24/22  

The Weird Book ReportTM

Communication between Bernard Malamud and me doesn't seem to exist. Oh, he talks, and I hear…well, something. But I don't comprehend him. What exactly does he mean?

The Natural, Malamud's first published novel, is a baseball story. It's about a gifted athlete whose hopes and dreams are derailed. Twice. As a teen from nowhere, being shepherded to a big-league tryout, Roy Hobbs gets a unique opportunity and strikes out—in only three pitches— professional baseball's Top Hitter. That gets him the attention of a seductive seductress, who invites him to her hotel room, accepts his claim that he will be the best player EVER, then shoots him. With a silver bullet. Before killing herself.

Time passes, fifteen years to be exact, apparently without notice. Even a sleazy sportsgossiper, who witnessed Hobbs' three-pitch strikeout of The Whammer, can't place him. But he's been gifted with a contract to play for the sub-basement dwelling New York Knights. Curiously (to me), Roy's first brush with greatness was as a pitcher. Now, he's a hitter exclusively employing a homemade bat. It has a name, Wonderboy, and a home, an old bassoon case. As a hitter, he displaces the Knights' big star, and he goes on, despite a couple of worrying hitting slumps, to carry the Knights into a one-game playoff for the league-championship pennant (and a trip to the World Series).

Throughout, it seems to me, Roy is his own worst enemy. He trusts only Sam Simpson, a baseball outcast and a sneaking drinker, and Sam dies during the awesome three-pitch strike-out of The Whammer. In his second run at greatness, he goes it alone. It reminds me of a line: "I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm just saying you have bad luck when it comes to thinking." He holds virtually everyone at arm's length. Though he wins the hearts of fans, they are fickle. He certainly didn't win the heart of this reader. And so I ask, what exactly does the author mean?

111m.belljackson
Avr 9, 2022, 4:04 pm

>110 weird_O: Not sure of the author's meaning in The Natural except to tell a truly odd story that mostly baseball lovers will trudge through.

^^^^^^

Re: UPS Deliveries > why did they stop knocking on the door when they dropped something off?!?

112mahsdad
Avr 10, 2022, 8:31 pm

>110 weird_O: Loved the movie. It is, I'll admit, a weird premise.

>111 m.belljackson: I agree, none of them do, except maybe Fedex, when they need a signature. They all seem to be running around so fast to keep up their productivity, that they can't take the extra two seconds. Sometimes, I get emails from the sender that the package has delivered, and I think, when? I've been here all day. :)

113weird_O
Avr 10, 2022, 8:46 pm

>111 m.belljackson:, >112 mahsdad: I have a looong driveway, the beginning of which can't be seen from the house. A parcel that won't fit in the mailbox usually is delivered to the house by the carrier. FedEx and Amazon drivers come to the house. UPS drivers' drop whatever the package is in the grass about 10 yards up the drive.

114ursula
Avr 11, 2022, 2:18 am

I was always glad when a delivery driver didn't knock - it would drive my dog INSANE. But even without knocking, while putting it on the porch and taking the picture and whatever, they usually made enough commotion to make her suspicious, just without the frenzied barking.

But we didn't have a long driveway. My mother-in-law lives on a ranch and it's like a scavenger hunt looking for deliveries.

115Berly
Avr 11, 2022, 4:10 pm

Weirdly, I am here! : ) Happy Monday.

116weird_O
Avr 14, 2022, 9:55 pm

That sure IS weird, Kim. I wasn't here, and I am sorry I missed you. But I journeyed south to visit my sister, whose husband died about two weeks ago. We hadn't seen each other since September of 2019, thanks to the pandemic. Since then, my wife died, and now her husband. Oi. It was a wonderful time together, in spite of our sorrows.

117msf59
Avr 16, 2022, 8:24 am



Happy Saturday, Bill. I miss seeing you around.

118weird_O
Avr 16, 2022, 11:02 am

Marko! Interesting commentary. And true.

I'm working myself back onto the tracks, having taken four days to visit my sister. That meant being off line, unexpectedly, because she and I couldn't crack the password to connect my computer to her wi-fi. I'm here to say that I survived. What can go wrong?...can go wrong?...can go wrong?...

There's a "however" to righting my locomotive. Instead of tap-tap-tapping this post, I should be DOING TAXES. I'm sorry. Did I shout? I also am looking forward to several days of oral misery. Two rotten teeth get extracted, so no food or even water for six hours before my 2:30 appointment. I'm envisioning several days of pain and accommodation. So excited.

        

Not.

119karenmarie
Avr 16, 2022, 11:22 am

Hiya, Bill!

>108 weird_O: Eight for four is entirely respectable. We don’t have any Little Free Libraries around here that I know of, alas.

I’ve had Frog Music on my shelves since 9/16/2016. Let me know when you decide to read it, and I might, just might, join in. I’m getting my reading mojo back.

>110 weird_O: I saw the movie and absolutely didn’t get it at all. I don’t think I’d get the book either, so hard pass. Excellent review, though.

>111 m.belljackson: Our UPS, Fed Ex, and USPS folks put plastic bags on packages if it’s raining out. I also have a note on the Sunroom door telling carrier to deliver to this door and ring the bell. If I’m not actually in this room to receive things in person, most carriers actually do ring the bell. I won’t tell them that most of the rest of the country gets poor service.

>118 weird_O: Sorry about your dental woes. And tax woes.

120benitastrnad
Avr 16, 2022, 12:38 pm

I read Summerland several years ago and loved it. I read it over my lunch hour at work while sitting outside, so the atmosphere was conducive to liking the book. The book is a fantasy so be prepared for that. It is also a baseball book - written by a fan of the game. It was great fun to read, so if you need a book to take your mind off of pain and trouble this would be a good one. Since summer is coming up it would also be a good book to put you in the mood.

I put Gentlemen of the Road on my TBR list long ago, but like so many books it got shoved to the back and it isn't screaming at me loud enough to be heard over the noise of other books. I will get to it someday. I do like Chabon's work.

121lauralkeet
Avr 16, 2022, 12:55 pm

Oh dear Bill, so sorry about the dental work, and hearty commiserations on doing taxes. That is no fun at all.

122jessibud2
Avr 16, 2022, 1:06 pm

Crossing fingers for you, Bill, that the dental stuff won't be as painful as you are anticipating!

123m.belljackson
Avr 16, 2022, 4:24 pm

>119 karenmarie: You are certainly getting elite treatment with plastic bags covering boxes in the rain!

I will try your outdoor sign idea and hope they are not moving too fast to see it.
How awful to have your every second monitored.

124quondame
Avr 16, 2022, 4:46 pm

>118 weird_O: May the dental work take less time and be less trouble than you expect.

125richardderus
Avr 16, 2022, 4:48 pm

Taxes and teeth: two of the more painful actions older people need to face up to.

Bleurgh. Solidarity, mon frère.

126ffortsa
Avr 16, 2022, 5:42 pm

So sorry about the teeth. Dentists tend to give out really good meds, though, so by the time the swelling goes down, you might not be in too much pain. I hope.

>119 karenmarie: Every once in a while, a movie comes along that I just don't get. This year it was 'Licorice Pizza'. Jim told me that the title comes from a nickname for LPs back when LPs were the thing, but I didn't understand anything about the movie.

127alcottacre
Avr 16, 2022, 6:23 pm

>107 weird_O: Already in the BlackHole or I would be adding it again!

>110 weird_O: The Natural has the distinction of being one of the two books that my husband has read in our 30+ years of marriage (now you know why I read so much - I have to make up for him!). I have not yet read it.

>118 weird_O: Yikes! Sorry to hear about the dental work - and the taxes.

128LovingLit
Avr 17, 2022, 5:02 pm

>108 weird_O: that is a gorgeous little library! The one near me is always full of crappy dusty old books, and I have secret ambitions of replacing them all with awesome books in good condition.

>118 weird_O: yikes. Dentist AND taxes? This is not your day.

129weird_O
Avr 19, 2022, 11:39 pm

>128 LovingLit: I'm still here, minus a couple of teeth and many dollars. Monday was fairly unpleasant, but now, as Tuesday ends, I'm readying myself for some activity.

That Little Library is indeed sweet. The guys who made it make custom exterior doors, so they know how to construct weatherproof pieces.

>127 alcottacre: Quick, Stasia, get The King out of that hole and read it. On the other hand, you don't need to race into reading The Natural. As for tax-paying, you and I cannot avoid paying them (unless you have way more money than you know what to do with; then the tax-collectors—Oh Good Gracious—wouldn't impose on you.)

>125 richardderus:, >124 quondame:, >122 jessibud2:, >121 lauralkeet:, >120 benitastrnad:, >119 karenmarie: I faced them down. Sorta. Forms filled out, checks written, everything mailed. The oral surgeon did fine. He had Big Nurse posted at the front desk and nary a smile flickered across her lips. The doc and a bevy (5 or 6) of nurses swept into the oral o. r., the doc said "Hi", speaking for the ensemble, knocked me out, and boosted two molars from my skull. Slept in this morning and napped frequently. Great to have it over with.

130quondame
Avr 20, 2022, 12:16 am

>129 weird_O: It's good to have dental work in the past. I hope your meals will soon be more enjoyable.

131weird_O
Avr 21, 2022, 12:06 pm

>130 quondame: It sure is, Susan. It'll be a while until the sutures dissolve. I do have a follow-up in a couple of hours. I started (finally) a bookcase project, then put it on hiatus while I visited my sister and tumbled through taxes and dental hijinx. I breezed through a Sedaris book and a sort of kids book version of Sir A. C. Doyle's short story, The Speckled Band. Now into The Great Train Robbery by Mike Crichton.

132weird_O
Modifié : Avr 22, 2022, 12:29 pm

>131 weird_O: I do have a follow-up in a couple of hours.

I flunked the reading comprehension test. But the penalty was merely lost time. Oh, and some gasoline. I got a text on Tuesday telling me I had an appointment with the oral surgeon (who had extracted teeth the day before). I mentally filed it under "follow-up" to Monday's procedure. Then I got a phone call, asking me to come a bit early to fill out papers. (*?* I thought I had done that.) When I showed up, I was told the doc wasn't in. And that they don't text. *I* realized I don't read well. The text and the phone call were from an oral surgery practice I first made an appointment with. But when I called that practice to confirm the appointment, the telephone-answering person denied I was in their client list and thus DID NOT have an appointment. My regular dentist got me a sooner appointment elsewhere, and the work was done. THEN the first practice stumbled across my "appointment." I just didn't read the full name of the text sender. Bah.

133karenmarie
Modifié : Avr 22, 2022, 12:30 pm

I'm glad that you survived the tax and oral surgery woes, Bill, and that you got to visit your sister.

Lots of good reading going on, too.

edited to add:
>132 weird_O: Well, wasn't that confusing. Glad it's all straightened out.

134alcottacre
Avr 22, 2022, 12:40 pm

>129 weird_O: I have The King on order, Bill, just waiting for it to arrive. As far as taxes go, it is highly unlikely that I have more money than you do - I do not have a job and do not draw SS, disability, or anything else, lol.

>132 weird_O: Reading is overrated, right?

135weird_O
Modifié : Avr 23, 2022, 12:04 am

>133 karenmarie: Glad it's all straightened out. Yahh. Me too. Mouth doesn't feel good, but much better. I don't believe a follow-up is in the mix, unless I have a problem. The sutures are supposed to dissolve.

>134 alcottacre: I'm reasonably comfortable, Stasia. I guess you have a sugar daddy. Eh?

Reading is not overrated. It's my reading comprehension that's embarrassing (if only to me).

And speaking of reading, I've finished The Great Train Robbery. It is every bit as good as Jim (magicians_nephew) said it was.

Going to start I'm Looking Through You, which a number of folks have rated high. I might read another essay or two in Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost. And I'm still making noise and dirt down in the lower level. Something will come of it, I promise.

136m.belljackson
Avr 23, 2022, 3:32 pm

Today's (Saturday, the 23rd) MACANUDO Comic Strip has one for you!

137richardderus
Avr 23, 2022, 3:59 pm

>132 weird_O: ...!...

Thank goodness you were able to escape their clutches.

138weird_O
Avr 24, 2022, 3:06 pm

>136 m.belljackson: THAT is not me, Marianne. I was a Brave Boy...no screaming, weeping, or other displays. The doc knocked me out straightaway.

>137 richardderus: Yes indeed.

----------
I'm Looking Through You isn't bad. The day is gorgeous. But I really ought to make some noise and dirt.

139weird_O
Avr 25, 2022, 11:24 am

Halfway through I'm Looking Through You, and my interest is engaged. It seems the author is very gifted.

140alcottacre
Avr 25, 2022, 11:35 am

>135 weird_O: Adding The Great Train Robbery to the BlackHole. If both you and Jim approve it, I am sure I will like it as well.

Have a wonderful week, Bill!

141Berly
Avr 26, 2022, 12:31 pm

Sorry about the teeth. I am struggling to help my daughter get some work done. Because of her heart condition any dental work involving anesthesia has to be done in a hospital setting. It's not going well....yet.

Wishing you a quick recovery and a Happy Tuesday!

142msf59
Avr 27, 2022, 8:01 am

Happy Wednesday, Bill. I am back home and trying to get back in the swing of things. I just requested a copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land and should get it soon, so I could start it next week, if you are ready to go. Let me know.

143weird_O
Avr 27, 2022, 1:41 pm

>142 msf59: Ha. I never left home, but I'm still trying to get into the swing of things. :-)

Forgot about Cloud Cuckoo Land, but I probably will see a potential lender of said book tomorrow. Then again, I might just buy a copy. (Maybe I can trade Harlem Shuffle for it?!) In a modest way, I've started buying some books of interest without waiting and hoping the title I want will magically appear for me at a library sale. But never mind this rambling. I'm determined to finish by Saturday midnight a couple of books I'm currently reading. And by then, I'll have laid hands on CCL.

>140 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia. So far, the week's been good, but a scant bit shy of wonderful. Just gotta ramp up the effort. Or maybe just lie back and let the good times roll. You'll like the robbery.

>141 Berly: That is so disheartening, Kim. Having to have oral surgery in a hospital. I understand the rationale for it, but the logistics are daunting. You are an experienced hand in that realm, are you not? You can do it!

144msf59
Avr 27, 2022, 6:49 pm

I thought you had already owned Cloud Cuckoo Land, Bill. Just let me know. I can be flexible.

145weird_O
Avr 28, 2022, 12:05 am

Finished A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit. 'Twas very good.

In a weak moment, I ordered used copies of The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester and She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. One's promised for a Friday delivery, the other for next week. Oh my, oh my.

Next: I resume Welcome to Hard Times, E. L. Doctorow's first novel. I started a week or two ago, and the first chapter was so astonishing (in a bad way) that I had to pause and see if I really wanted to continue. Well, I've enjoyed reading at least a half-dozen Doctorow creations. So I'm forging ahead through them there "Hard Times."

Don't want to disappoint the Warbler of Downer's Grove, so I'll get on with Cloud Cuckoo Land thereafter.

146alcottacre
Avr 29, 2022, 12:58 pm

>145 weird_O: I now own A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I really need to get it read!

Happy Friday, Bill!

147benitastrnad
Avr 30, 2022, 11:14 pm

I started listening to Cloud Cuckoo Land today. It has two narrators and both are doing a good job. I also requested the hardcopy of the book from the public library, so I can both listen to and read the book. That should allow me to keep up with you guys. Mark reads much faster than I do, so I needed a bit of a head start. I didn't do much driving around today as I stayed home and planted some of the flowers that I purchased last Saturday and managed to keep alive and thriving over the last week. I didn't get them all planted today because I ran out of potting soil, but I did get many of them into pots. That meant I didn't get as much "listening" done while driving around. That is the problem with staying home - I don't listen to the books as fast.

148weird_O
Mai 1, 2022, 9:12 am

Happy May Day, y'all.

I finished Welcome to Hard Times, a pretty grim story. I've got commitments other than books today, so I won't start Cloud Cuckoo Land. (The fact that I don't have the book is influential in the postponement of the start. But it'll work out in the long run 'til Monday.)

Unless you really do "get lost", Stasia, you'll charge through that book in sprint.

It'd be more better, Benita, to just sit in the stationary car and listen, rather than burning expensive gasoline so you can hear the book. But I've always been a bit perverse.

149richardderus
Mai 1, 2022, 9:47 am

>148 weird_O: Doctorow didn't write any cheery little bagatelles à la Anita Loos but that one *is* grim.

Ragtime remains my favorite. Truly the best thing he wrote.

I hope you enjoy your time in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

150weird_O
Modifié : Mai 1, 2022, 5:54 pm

>149 richardderus: Curiosity overpowered me, and I checked to see if a film had been done. I thought Henry Fonda was a good choice as Blue. One joker opined that Clint Eastwood should have been cast in the role, because he would have settled the hash of the Bad Man from Bodie in the first reel. What an idea!! Would have made for a short feature.

Doctorow did well in his first novel, but it wasn't an altogether pleasant read.

Stopped at Target on the way home from field hockey and equipped myself with Cloud Cuckoo Land. The reading begins...NOW!

151richardderus
Mai 1, 2022, 7:04 pm

>150 weird_O: I guess there's nothing too unusual in the book, sixty-two years later, but it made me feel skeeved out in the 1970s. Molly was such a poisonous sleaze.

152PaulCranswick
Mai 1, 2022, 7:25 pm

>148 weird_O: I have 'enjoyed' almost everything I read by Doctorow, Bill, with the possible exception of City of God which was not really a subject that grabbed me. I thought Welcome to Hard Times a good novel but Ragtime is a classic.

153msf59
Mai 1, 2022, 8:47 pm

>145 weird_O: "Finished A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit. 'Twas very good. That is awesome, Bill. I LOVED that book.

Congrats on scoring a copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land.

154weird_O
Mai 3, 2022, 6:05 pm

Taking a break from Cloud Cuckoo Land to dress a couple of boards for my bookcase and pop by LT, see what's up. I was up at 4 a.m. annoyed by a persistent dream that a spammer/hacker had posted a lengthy list of gobbledegook on my thread here. Thought that if I just looked, I'd find no such post, and my nightbrain would let me get back to sleep. So I did that, but then ill-advisedly peeked at the NYT page. Those F*ckers on the Supreme Court. I read more in CCL and then did fitfully sleep until 9.

I am engaged by CCL. I'm curious, of course, where I'm being taken; I haven't read any reviews, haven't read the flap copy, and somehow confused it with a bit I absorbed about Bewilderment. I was awaiting the appearance of father and son. Zztt!
---------------
>151 richardderus: Yesss. She were a snake.

>152 PaulCranswick: I believe Billy Bathgate was the first Doctorow novel I read, Paul. Then Ragtime, Book of Daniel, and at least three others. I think I have City of God in the Vault of TBR™.

>153 msf59: I still have an Orwell's Roses report to do, Mark. And a couple of her other books and read. I don't quite see buying CCL as a "score." I was confident that Target would have it, discounted more than B&N, so I'd have it in hand. :-) But hey, I'll accept your interpretation. So far, it's great. I hope to be at the midpoint before taking SleepDrops at NoLight.

155msf59
Mai 5, 2022, 8:15 am

Sweet Thursday, Bill. How did your bookcase project go? How is Cloud Cuckoo Land coming along? Yep, I am full of questions, this early AM. I am 140 pages in and enjoying it quite a bit.

156karenmarie
Mai 5, 2022, 9:05 am

Hi Bill!

>145 weird_O: Ooh, that Simon Winchester just made it to my wish list. I lurve Simon Winchester. I read the Boylan in August of 2011 for my RL book club.

>154 weird_O: Yup. Those F*ckers on the Supreme Court.

157benitastrnad
Mai 5, 2022, 11:18 am

I am about 155 pages into Cloud Cuckoo Land and am enjoying all the different story lines. I am wondering how he is going to bring them all together? I think that will be quite a reading ride.

158weird_O
Mai 5, 2022, 1:11 pm

Cloud Cuckoo Land has seized me and muscled control of substantial chunks of the last three days. I have but 50 pages left to read. Have to figure out why the book is so engaging. No doubt at all that I like it and recommend it.
--------------------
>155 msf59: The bookcase project is coming along slowly, Mark. But it's going to be great to have the shelf-space. Honestly though, it isn't going to absorb nearly as many books as my imagination—that bunko artist!—would have me believe.

>156 karenmarie: Hi, Karen. That particular Winchester title has been languishing on various of my wish lists for ages. I was manipulated by Amazon's algorithmics, which made me believe it was going to drift out of my reach. I'm such a mark. Now to wedge it into the reading stream.

Re: The Supremes... A guy named Neil Postman wrote a book titled Amusing Ourselves to Death. I understand that it's desert-dry, but the title is fantastic. That phrase is very much the theme of CCL. And "Those F*ckers on the Supreme Court" will thumb their noses at us—again and again and again—because we can't be distracted from our amusements.

>157 benitastrnad: It is a good ride, Benita. Epic!

159benitastrnad
Mai 5, 2022, 4:19 pm

>158 weird_O:
I have read a couple of Neil Postman books in my day. He was all the rage when I was in various stages of graduate degrees in Education. He wrote mostly about the media and its effect on education and children. I didn't find his work all that dry, but it is academic in nature, so it isn't like reading a Candace Millard book, but compared to some of the journal articles I read, and continue to read, Postman was positively lively! One might even say scintillating. He did some groundbreaking work in the effects of visual media, especially TV, and the power it has to affect change. Some of his theories were put to good use by the Koch organization and their minions in their various anti-environmental and ultra-conservative political agendas.

160benitastrnad
Mai 5, 2022, 4:20 pm

>158 weird_O:
I agree that Cloud Cuckoo Land is epic. I am only at page 175, but it had me in its grip when Constantinople came into the picture.

161weird_O
Mai 5, 2022, 6:30 pm

I'm dunnnnn.

Cuckoo for sure.

162weird_O
Mai 6, 2022, 1:27 pm

Read a first shortish story (longish short story?) for this month's AAC: 19th century authors. I'm drawn to a couple of writers, one at the beginning of the century, one at the end. The former is Washington Irving, the latter is Richard Harding Davis. What I read was In the Fog by Davis; a pretty good yarn.

I do believe this is my first ever e-book, downloaded from Project Gutenberg. More than 50 titles by Davis are listed on the site, but I think quite a few are short stories. I don't have a good handle on Davis's bibliography, so more research is called for. In a related vein, I'm thinking about reading something by Rebecca Harding Davis, RHD's mother.

The Washington Irving book I have in mind to read is The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. It's a collection of stories, including "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

163msf59
Mai 6, 2022, 6:46 pm

Happy Friday, Bill. I am exactly at the halfway point in CC Land. I can't believe you sped through it so fast. I am enjoying it. Some sections more than others. Looking forward to seeing how it all comes together.

164weird_O
Mai 7, 2022, 1:23 pm

Hi all. I'm good, thanks for asking. Rain is the word of the day here. Everything is GREEN. Mowing will be an epic adventure (once the grass dries enough to be trimmed).

>160 benitastrnad: >163 msf59: Are youse done yet? Huh? Huh? I can't believe either how fast I read CCL, Mark. I'd have photos, but my phone ran out of film.

I am at peace with the story. The conclusion troubled me, but I am satisfied that the issues I was focused on are beside the author's point. It is Doerr's story, after all, and it is good.

In other reading adventures, I'm delving into the 19th century, focused on writers on the cusps of that period. Washington Irving was born in 1783. The book I'm reading, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., was published in 1819. As the 19th century was drawing to a close, Richard Harding Davis, born in 1864, was enjoying great success as a war correspondent, journalist, and short story writer. His life and work carried into the 20th century. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1916.

RHD's writings are pretty much out of print, so I'm being goaded into exploring ebooks. Oh my. I may explore the used book marketplace for print editions. Project Gutenberg has more than 50 titles available for free download in four or five formats, but I miss the trappings of a professionally published print book. Old dogs, new tricks, yahda yahda.

165m.belljackson
Mai 7, 2022, 1:32 pm

>162 weird_O: Hi - when you finish The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
you might enjoy my Review from 2021. It was a good old classic.

166benitastrnad
Mai 8, 2022, 2:50 pm

<164
I am enjoying this book. It had such mediocre reviews and I wonder why. It has been a good story so far. It is also full of connections. I am starting to look for any connections I can find between the story lines, and I am surprised at how many of them I am finding.

I spent yesterday at a friends fish camp that is located between Meridian and Laurel, Mississippi, so had two hours of listening time over and two hours back which got me to page 381 in the book. I have particularly enjoyed the storyline involving the oxen. I am learning alot about oxen as domestic beasts of burden. It is very unusual to find novels with this particular kind of story line. Oxen are not something that we see much of in the world today, but I remember reading in Brinker Buck's book on the Oregon Trail that oxen were the preferred pulling animals because of their strength and stamina. I found the descriptions of Omeir's oxen intriguing and very moving. I also like Seymour's story. Well, I guess I am just liking all of it and wondering why the reviews weren't better? Sometimes experts just get it wrong.

167quondame
Modifié : Mai 8, 2022, 4:25 pm

>166 benitastrnad: I enjoyed it, but didn't totally love it. Yes there are lots of connections - orphans and half orphans, uprooted children and young teens, story telling parents, love of nature and of course the love of one particular story.

I found it a lot more enjoyable than that collection of dreary incomplete story attempts that also begins with Cloud.

168benitastrnad
Mai 8, 2022, 5:01 pm

>167 quondame:
That's funny. I was mentally comparing it to Cloud Atlas. I liked Cloud Atlas it was on my personal best books list the year I read it. I think that Cloud Cuckoo Land is just as good.

169quondame
Mai 8, 2022, 5:27 pm

>168 benitastrnad: Whereas to me CA was a collection of incomplete failed mean spirited stories arbitrarily threaded onto re-incarnation.

170weird_O
Mai 8, 2022, 6:11 pm

The Plague Court Murders by John Dickson Carr Finished 4/10/22. 

The Weird Book ReportTM

The Plague Court Murders, first published in 1934, has a high reputation as a "locked-door" mystery. Members of a nutty family want to exorcise an ancestor from London's Plague Years from a decrepit, unoccupied property. The central event is to be a confrontation between an ancestral (meaning long dead) boogieman, Louis Playge, and a controversial psychic, Roger Darworth. Not everyone in the family approves of the plan. Dean Halliday, who owns the property, doesn't believe in ghosts or spirits. His imperious aunt, Lady Benning, is implacable in her belief in the spirits. She consults regularly with Darworth, and she has set this exorcism in motion. Dean invites the narrator, Ken Blake, a former investigator, to "spend the night in a haunted house." Blake in turn invites current Scotland Yard Detective-Inspector Masters.

Darworth proposes to lock himself inside a small stone building in the property's courtyard overnight and have it out with the evil spirit. A kind of a seance. It's a quintessential locked room: masonry walls and floor, ancient oak roof, only the tiniest of windows, sealed behind sturdy grilles. Of course Darworth dies (no story if he doesn't). When the door is rammed open, his lacerated body lies in a pond of blood.

As the plot has it, two policemen are on hand, taking names and statements of those present through the night. Many clues, opinions, statements, and possibilities are collected, but until the entry of Sir Henry Merrivale halfway through the story no one can sort the genuine from the bogus. Sir Henry is another obese, cranky but brilliant observer and thinker that John Dickson Carr created to crack these impossible cases. The book was written in 1934, so the misogynistic attitude of the crime-solver isn't surprising.

The plot is convoluted in the extreme, and the exposition struck me as overlong. I'd rate it on the minus side of .

171weird_O
Mai 8, 2022, 7:19 pm

>165 m.belljackson: Marianne, I looked for your review at the book's page. I agree with you assessment, though I haven't gotten to Sleepy Hollow yet. A lot of it is kinda boring.

>166 benitastrnad: Hmmm. I didn't think the reviews were mediocre, Benita. Ron Charles at WaPo didn't like it, but the reviewer for the NYT liked it a lot. Me too. On the LT book page, the average of the member reviews is higher than 4 stars.

>167 quondame: >168 benitastrnad: >169 quondame: Well, there you have it, readers. :-) Some like it, others don't. I myownself like both of them.

172msf59
Mai 9, 2022, 7:44 am

Howdy, Bill. I did manage to get over the 400-page mark yesterday, which wasn't bad considering how busy I was over the weekend. I am hoping to wrap it up in a few days.

173weird_O
Mai 9, 2022, 9:12 am

Yay for Mark!

174weird_O
Mai 11, 2022, 2:51 pm

I'm reading three different books now. The one I'm focussed on is Colson Whitehead's Zone One, a zombie thing. Mark has cautioned me that it isn't the author's best work. And the back-cover copy warns me "that things start to go terribly wrong." Uh oh. Maybe that will be the emergence of a plot.

On the back burners are a couple of AAC reads. Washington Irving's first published writings appeared in newspapers in 1802, and he congratulated himself to be the first American to earn a living as a writer. I settled on The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. because "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" are in this collection. The former is excellent (I have read it), and Sleep Hollow awaits me. What sandwiches Rip is mostly sleep inducing. Well, you don't know until you taste it. Eh what?

The second back-burner read is by Richard Harding Davis. I've read two of his short fiction pieces—In the Fog and The Scarlet Car—thanks to Project Gutenberg, which has more than 50 RHD pieces available for free download. I'm awaiting the arrival of a collection of RHD books published by Scribner's in 1911.

175msf59
Mai 11, 2022, 7:00 pm

I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land. It took me a bit longer than I thought, although it flowed pretty well. I can't say it blew my head off but I enjoyed the ride.

176weird_O
Modifié : Mai 12, 2022, 7:54 pm

Glad you read it? Hate to admit it, but I can't remember Cloud Atlas very well.

Anyway, I'm glad you still have your head on your shoulders. You'll recall that an awful lot of heads got blown off in Zone One.

177weird_O
Modifié : Mai 14, 2022, 10:59 pm

CARGO!!



I bought a set of books by Richard Harding Davis through eBay. The seller wrapped the books in cellophane in groups of four, and they were packed in a carton with some scrap paper to prevent them from shifting. I looked a little closer at the scrap. A copy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1989 tome The Grand Failure was sacrificed in the interest of protecting works published 78 years earlier (by the same publisher, a nice touch that).



178benitastrnad
Mai 12, 2022, 7:47 pm

I am about 50 pages from the end of Cloud Cuckoo Land and I really liked this book. It made me cry. A book that does that is a good book.

179weird_O
Mai 12, 2022, 9:59 pm

My favorite local used-new book store is in WaPo. Firefly Bookstore, in near-to-me Kutztown, Pa, is a meeting place for a banned-book club for teens. According to the article, Joslyn Diffenbaugh, 14, a middle-schooler, founded the club with the backing of her mother. They asked the store's management if the store would host a meeting every other week

   “It’s really problematic, because books are the only way that you can be in another person’s shoes,” said Joslyn, a self-proclaimed “book nerd,” who lives in the small town of Kutztown, Pa., near Allentown.
   She has read several books that have been banned by school districts across the country, including “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “All American Boys” by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, both of which deal with police brutality.
   “They were really eye-opening,” said Joslyn, an eighth-grader at Kutztown Middle School. “They are books that make you think.”



Club founder Joslyn Diffenbaugh wears the requisite Keith Haring t-shirt. Haring grew up in Kutztown and attended its public school.

Read the entire piece. Here's a gift link to get you past the paywalls: https://wapo.st/3wpiwHj

180jessibud2
Mai 13, 2022, 6:35 am

>179 weird_O:- Wow, excellent! I have always believed - known! - that telling someone (and not just teens) NOT to do or read something, is pretty much an invitation to try to do or read exactly that. It lays down a challenge and most people with an ounce of curiosity are going to try to find out for themselves exactly why not. As they should. As far as I can tell, most banned books are not protecting kids from anything; rather they only serve to prevent minds from growing. There should be a ban on banning books!

181lauralkeet
Mai 13, 2022, 7:18 am

>179 weird_O: that's a fantastic idea, and hurray for Joslyn making it happen.

182ffortsa
Mai 13, 2022, 9:38 am

>179 weird_O: Thanks for the gift article. I'm so glad teens are doing this!

183mstrust
Mai 13, 2022, 12:46 pm

>174 weird_O: I'll be interested to see your review once you've read the Irving stories. I haven't read a whole lot from him other than his most famous stories, yet I have enough affection for him that I hunted down a portrait at the New York 5th Ave. Public Library and his grave in Sleepy Hollow.

184richardderus
Mai 13, 2022, 2:48 pm

>177 weird_O: ...and absolutely nothing was lost...

Read The Lion and the Unicorn last. ::eyeroll::

Happy weekend-ahead's reads!

185alcottacre
Modifié : Mai 13, 2022, 4:31 pm

>148 weird_O: I have yet to read any Doctorow. Is there a good starting point that you can recommend, Bill?

>177 weird_O: Nice!!

Happy Friday, Bill! Have a great weekend!

186benitastrnad
Mai 13, 2022, 5:45 pm

Cloud Cuckoo Land question. Did you notice that when Omeir takes the book to Urbino his donkey is wearing a necklace of spring roses? Take about winding things throughout a novel. A donkey with a necklace of roses inside the book Cloud Cuckoo Land who would have thought? I got a good laugh out of that one. I will finish the book tonight.

187weird_O
Mai 13, 2022, 11:06 pm

>180 jessibud2: >181 lauralkeet: >182 ffortsa: I clicked on the article because I was curious about that "small Pa. town." And lo! It's just down the road. I hope they can keep it going.

>183 mstrust: I'll do what I can. I like the idea of Washington Irving. But I fear most of the pieces collected in the book are not particularly interesting or compelling. We'll see.

>184 richardderus: Ha ha. I'll keep that advice in mind, RD.. No guarantee I'll read all of these. Just bein' acquisitive.

>185 alcottacre: Ragtime. I liked it, and I think everyone agrees with my assessment. (heh heh)

>186 benitastrnad: I admit that strolled right past me. I blinked and missed it.
-----------------------
Finished reading Zone One this evening. Still assessing it's effect on me; I'm withholding judgment for now.

I started RHD's The Notes of a War Correspondent as an eBook, but I'm switching now to the old (but new-to-me) dead tree edition. Probably will dip into Wash Irving's book from time to time.

188benitastrnad
Mai 13, 2022, 11:14 pm

>186 benitastrnad:
Could there be a more fitting way to end this book than with a shepherd on a donkey that has roses around its neck? I thought the ending a bit abrupt but I didn't think it to be an odd ending. I think he and his editors were just trying to end it. At 631 pages they thought it was enough. I think it should have had a bit more about why Konstance ended up where she did. Did you get that Constantinople Konstance connection? I think this novel is going to be a top read for me.

189alcottacre
Mai 14, 2022, 10:59 am

>187 weird_O: Thanks for the recommendation, Bill. I will have to track down a copy of Ragtime.

190weird_O
Modifié : Mai 17, 2022, 8:26 pm

Mixed weekend. After squandering Saturday (just *because*, I guess), I enjoyed a welcome home reunion with The Grand Claire, just back from her semester in Greece. Her twin, The Grand Helen, was just home from her semester in NYC.

I'm working my way through a collection of Wash Irving essays and stories and also a collection of war correspondent yarns by Richard Harding Davis. Both are reads for the May AAC. I'm also dipping into The Writer's Library, a collection of interviews with authors by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager.

The interview I read most recently was with Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach, A Visit from the Goon Squad). Asked when she started thinking about being a writer, she said:

I took a year off between high school and college, and that's when I kind of figured it out. Partly because I'd wanted to be an archaeologist and I gave that a try at the beginning of the gap year: I paid to go on a little dig in Illinois, and I realized, Oh my god, what was I thinking? It was hot. It was boring. What I'd loved about archaeology, metaphorically, was the idea of digging and sort of learning about human life. But the act of digging and finding tiny shards of things meant nothing to me.


I read that to Claire yesterday, because she participated in that Illinois gig. She got a big laugh out of it.

Book sale in Bethlehem Wednesday! (Also Saturday.) Book sale in Pottstown Friday! (Also Saturday). Woot! Also woot!

191klobrien2
Mai 16, 2022, 10:14 am

>190 weird_O: Yay for Writer’s Library! Yay for grand-kids! Yay for terrific author quotes! And double-yay for book sales!

Have a great week!

Karen O

192weird_O
Modifié : Mai 17, 2022, 10:41 am

Nice to read that you were here, Karen.

Now here's the sequel to Sunday. First, the mailman dropped off a small parcel. Why, it was the box of fastnachts I got for Helen. Back in February. And mailed two-day priority to her in NYC. Postage costing more, of course, than the parcel's contents. Of course. So three months later, I, the gift-sender, am in possession once again of the gift. Most assuredly no longer a treat. Damn!

Page two, as Paul Harvey used to say... While I was at the supermarket today, I was obliged to drop into the thrift store just four or five storefronts removed. As I browsed the book titles (yes, yes; in a minute), a lady came in to donate several boxes of books. I overheard her saying that the books were stock left from a library book-sale in a nearby community. The next sale will be in October and there's no place to store them until them. "I put all these new-looking books in boxes, and we dropped them off at Cougle's." At which I blurted, "Ack!!" For Cougle's is the region's biggest recycler. Into the shredder.

A list of book-buys will follow. Soonly.

193weird_O
Modifié : Mai 17, 2022, 8:30 pm


When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris (pbk)
Failed States, Noam Chomsky (pbk)
Brazzaville Beach, William Boyd (pbk)
If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino (pbk)
Uncommon Friends, James Newton (pbk)
Journey to Munich, Jacqueline Winspear (hc)
The Woman in the Window, A. J. Finn (hc)
Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear (hc)
They Whisper, Robert Olen Butler (hc)

194drneutron
Mai 16, 2022, 8:05 pm

Bill to the rescue!

195richardderus
Mai 16, 2022, 8:36 pm

>193 weird_O: Brazzaville Beach! "The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect," oh my goodness yes. Good reading, Weird One. Enjoy.

196figsfromthistle
Mai 17, 2022, 6:00 am

Happy Monday!

>179 weird_O: What a great article!

>193 weird_O: Interesting book buys

197weird_O
Mai 17, 2022, 8:02 pm

>194 drneutron: I do what I can, Jim. I just wish they had called me. I could have met them at Cougle's.

>195 richardderus: I have yet to actually read anything by Boyd. I just think of him as Hopalong Cassidy.

       

>196 figsfromthistle: That article was encouraging. More kids should get out from under their parents' fears. Start their own books clubs. I like the books I got.

198weird_O
Mai 17, 2022, 8:08 pm

Finished The Notes of a War Correspondent by Richard Haring Davis. About halfway through the Washington Irving tome I'm reading. Both Davis and Irving are 19th century authors.

199Berly
Mai 17, 2022, 8:09 pm

I am super excited because Anthony Doerr of Cloud Cuckoo Land thread fame is one of the speakers for next year's Literary Arts program. Now I REALLY have to read the book!!

200weird_O
Mai 17, 2022, 8:32 pm

But you'll enjoy reading it, Kim. It's not a chore. :-)

201weird_O
Mai 18, 2022, 9:31 am

Duty calls. Book sale at the library. Y'all know me: I'll rescue what I can. :-)

202weird_O
Mai 18, 2022, 8:35 pm

I rescued what I could.

203mstrust
Mai 20, 2022, 12:37 pm

Book haul!

204weird_O
Mai 20, 2022, 8:02 pm

And once again today, books have been rescued by me. Quite a few, I would say. The pleasure is all mine.

205weird_O
Mai 21, 2022, 3:34 pm

Here's an interesting column by John McWhorter in Friday's New York Times. The head on it: Walter Mosley Brilliantly Depicted Black English — and Black Thought. The giftie link follows right here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/opinion/walter-mosley.html?unlocked_article_c...

It will take you through the paywall, free for nothing.

Karen (as in https://www.librarything.com/profile/karenmarie) has been warbling about McWhorter's book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. There's a link to her review, too.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/339494#7773451 

I've pretty much glided over it, but now I'm inserting it into my WANT! List. Read the article. It's a solid recommendation of Mosley and his work.

The Socrates Fortlow trilogy comprises:
     Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997)
     Walkin' the Dog (1999)
     The Right Mistake (2008)
It happens that I've got the first and third books in amongst the TBR Wasteland. Adding the second to my WANT! List.

206msf59
Mai 21, 2022, 3:39 pm

Happy Saturday, Bill. Cool and very wet here. Perfect weekend to hang with the books. I am enjoying On a Night of a Thousand Stars, an historical novel about the dark years in Argentina, (1970s). Pretty frightening stuff.

207richardderus
Mai 21, 2022, 4:48 pm

>205 weird_O: "In any case, I’ve been rewarded for letting go of my intransigence, perhaps a microcosmic version of Socrates trying to let go of his guilt and pain, and I would hope that the Library of America will soon get around to canonizing Mosley with his own collection. In the meantime, though, as Socrates says in salute at the story’s end: “I guess we bettah be gettin’ back to the war.”

Guess we bettah had.

Wonderful read, thanks Bill.

208quondame
Mai 21, 2022, 5:07 pm

>205 weird_O: Yay! I was finally able to read an entire NYT article and now want to read The Right Mistake though I'm still not sure about Woke Racism.

209m.belljackson
Mai 22, 2022, 12:17 pm

>205 weird_O: Somewhere I read that THE 1619 PROJECT book are favorites for both Mosley and Obama.

210benitastrnad
Mai 23, 2022, 12:01 am

>206 msf59:
On a Night of a Thousand Stars is on my want list. The reviews of it have been very good. Glad to hear that you like it.

>205 weird_O:
Somtimes I don't agree with McWhorter's politics but his writing is superb.

211weird_O
Mai 23, 2022, 3:05 pm

>207 richardderus:, >208 quondame:, >210 benitastrnad: Glad you enjoyed the NYT column. LT introduced me to Walter Mosley, and I have quite a few of his books on The Infinite Shelf™ still to enjoy. A hat tip to Katie for directing me to the giftie link button so's yous could see the entire article.

>206 msf59: You'll have to review that one when you finish the read. Why does the scum always rise to the top? Darkening life for everyone. (I read this morning that a Russian diplomat in Geneva resigned his post and denounced Putin. A brief flame in a dark time.)

>209 m.belljackson: That's on my mental want list, Marianne. I'll certainly grab it if I see a copy at a sale.

>210 benitastrnad: I should definitely track down his writings. If only his column in the Times.

212weird_O
Mai 25, 2022, 12:29 pm

Help me, help me. I'm falling behind...behind...behind...behind....

I have to go outside and finish the mowing, most of which I did yesterday. Yay for me! Laundry, grunge the kitchen and the dining/library/utility room. Menu planning; awk, never mind.

Finished the Inspector Maigret story I got last Friday. Scanned a couple of pieces in the Wash Irving book (gotta finish it by next week). Fretted about all the book reports I'm failing to write and post. Turned back to Rebecca Solnit's book about Eadweard Muybridge (which is zinging a fusillade of book bullets at me).

So my path is evident. Crawl out from under the bed and get busy.

By by...

213weird_O
Modifié : Mai 26, 2022, 3:12 pm

I painted the wall that'll be mostly hidden by the bookcase I am slowly building. It had shelf standards screwed to it for at least 25 years, standards that embossed the drywall. After putting the job off too long, I spackled the hurts and painted the wall. Modest progress.

Allll...most finished the mowing.

Read more about Muybridge (in Rebecca Solnit's River of Shadows). There's a sharpshooter lurking in the book's pages who squeezes off a bb round every now and then. Few are book-specific, most are fascinating topics for my shallow version of research.

Read the interview of T. C. Boyle in The Writer's Library. Picking some lead from my flesh. A book he wrote that I picked up on a whim, The Women, is "about" Frank Lloyd Wright, I learned, so I may give that a try. Boyle is an entertaining conversationalist, though I've been led to believe he isn't a first-shelf writer. I guess I'll see for myself.

I fetched my copy of Philip Roth's Everyman after reading the first paragraphs of the interview with Susan Choi (in TWL). It's short, seems age appropriate for a geezer to read, and despite Roth's detractors, I liked most of what I've read of his work.

Topping off the workweek (tee hee) tomorrow by dropping by a book sale at a nearby evangelical church. I got some good stuff there last year. Well, I'll see.

214weird_O
Modifié : Mai 26, 2022, 8:35 pm

This was on facebook this morning.

      

A lot of Barry Blitt's work appears in The New Yorker.

215jessibud2
Mai 26, 2022, 8:54 pm

>214 weird_O: - I recognize the 2 men but not the woman, but the message is clear. How do they sleep at night?

216weird_O
Mai 26, 2022, 11:59 pm

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. QAnon loyalist, wackadoodle, loathsome person.

217Berly
Mai 27, 2022, 1:41 am

218jessibud2
Mai 27, 2022, 7:34 am

OIC. No surprise, then. ICK.

219richardderus
Mai 27, 2022, 8:17 pm

220weird_O
Mai 27, 2022, 8:27 pm

Exactly, RD. :-(

221weird_O
Mai 28, 2022, 3:48 pm

I did drop by HOPE Community Church (one of those nondenominational evangelical churches that nearby) to scan through the offerings of a book sale. Last year, I found novels by Faulkner, Gaiman, Kundera, Vidal, and others. This year? Not much. I did get a few kids books, and by golly, I read a couple of them. Just to interrupt Rebecca Solnit's assessment of pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge's contribution to modernity, to which I'll return later today.

I'm kind of devoting myself to reading and musing, eschewing the house elf pursuits. Good for me.

222karenmarie
Mai 29, 2022, 3:06 pm

Hi Bill!

>177 weird_O: Very nice. Beautiful condition, nice touch with the box stuffing.

>190 weird_O: I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was 5, but forgot about it when I was deciding to go to college. Sigh. Good for Claire for realizing that archaeology was good for her, good for Jennifer Egan realizing that archaeology was not good for her.

>193 weird_O: Nice, very nice.

>205 weird_O: Well. I’m flattered that you think my opinion of McWhorter’s review is worth posting about. Truly. Thank you.

>212 weird_O: I can relate to the behind...behind...behind...behind.... although I’m too lazy to figure out the html to match your visual.

>214 weird_O: Yes. Disgusting specimens of humanity.

>221 weird_O: I hope the REAL house elves come out to play while you are reading, musing, and eschewing house elf pursuits.

223quondame
Mai 29, 2022, 5:20 pm

>222 karenmarie: Archaeology/anthropology was very attractive in my second decade - I still have the coffee table gift books that I poured through before I really started reading as an addiction.

224weird_O
Mai 31, 2022, 12:05 pm

>222 karenmarie: I love your visits, Karen. You seem singularly blessed (from my viewpoint) with the patience and fortitude to actually read my posts.

(#177) The RHD books are in great shape, considering each is more than 100 years old. I enjoyed the one I've read so far, and the stories that downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

(#205) I do think well of your opinions, Karen. (Don't always agree with them, but that's part of the essence of sharing opinions.)

(#212) <sub><b>behind</b></sub>...Etcetera

(#221) I loafed most pleasantly yesterday, sitting beside and for a time IN a swimming pool. But when I got home, it seemed that the house elves must have had the same sort of holiday I had. The mess was the same both before and AFTER my holiday absence.

-------------------
I'm passing along about half of Judi's "good" dishes to The Grand Claire, who is moving into an off-campus apartment tomorrow. She's doing a summer research project now and must needs be at school 3 or 4 days of the week, and she'll live in the apartment during her senior year. So I was asked if I have dishes I could give her. Do I have dishes? Good grief. The only reservation I have is that they are "The Good Dishes".

When Judi and I got engaged, 52 years ago, banks were rewarding customers for making deposits with "cargo!" I don't remember the details, but Judi collected place settings. Her parents joined in, also collecting place settings. She acquired everyday dishes and she acquired good dishes. Our daughter has the remnants of the everyday ones, but 16 (7-piece) place settings of the goods are in the cupboard by the stove. Haven't been used since the last family gathering for Christmas or Thanksgiving, probably 3 years ago.

So in a little bit, I'm taking half of them for Claire to use. She may take only 6, but I'm taking 8 along. I also have to make an upgrade on a bookcase I made her a while ago. So lemme go; I got work to do.

225jessibud2
Mai 31, 2022, 12:12 pm

>224 weird_O: - Good for you! The Grand Claire is a good granddaughter so the Good Dishes are meant for her. I am sure Judi would approve. My own grandmother once told me to USE and not SAVE the good dishes she gave me. Sadly, I did not listen to her and they now reside with a now-ex relative somewhere. I kick myself every day for not being smarter. Dishes are meant to be used daily and every time someone tells Claire what nice GOOD dishes she has, Judi will be smiling down with pride.

:-)

226richardderus
Mai 31, 2022, 2:06 pm

>224 weird_O: Excellent idea! It will be so much easier to get rid of only 8 place settings when you decide to use that space for books.

227msf59
Mai 31, 2022, 6:49 pm

>214 weird_O: This really nails it, Bill.

How are those books treating you?

228lauralkeet
Juin 1, 2022, 8:23 am

I love that Claire is getting the good dishes. So much better than allowing them to collect dust for some unforeseen occasion, and they're just really special to have.

229weird_O
Juin 1, 2022, 2:35 pm


The Notes of a War Correspondent by Richard Harding Davis Finished 5/15/22.

The Weird Book ReportTM

Richard Harding Davis was a journeyman writer in the late 19th century and into the 20th; he produced journalism, short stories, novels, and plays. He worked as an editorial executive for several newspapers and magazines. Before he died of a heart attack in 1916, several of his stories were adapted to the silver (but silent) screen. Despite his versatility and productivity, he isn't remembered for any particular outstanding piece. But he is the iconic turn-of-the-century war correspondent, covering the Cuban-Spanish War in 1896, the Greek-Turkish War in 1897, the Spanish-American War (1898), second Boer War of 1899–1902, and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905. The Notes of a War Correspondent includes a miscellany of reports from each of those five wars.

Of the battle of Velestinos during the Greek-Turkish war, Davis reported:

The Turks had made three attacks on Velestinos on three different days, and each time had been repulsed. A week later, on the 4th of May, they came back again, to the number of ten thousand, and brought four batteries with them, and the fighting continued for two more days. This was called the second battle of Velestinos…

He reported on the sounds of battle, of the unpredictability and treacherousness of war in the trenches, and the bravery and stoicism of the combatants:

Then there began a concert which came from just overhead—a concert of jarring sounds and little whispers. The “shrieking shrapnel,” of which one reads in the description of every battle, did not seem so much like a shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some one strikes the pole from which they hang…After a few hours we learned by observation that when a shell sang overhead it had already struck somewhere else, which was comforting…The bullets were much more disturbing; they seemed to be less open in their warfare, and to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only to whisper as they passed. They moved under a cloak of invisibility, and made one feel as though he were the blind man in a game of blind-man’s-buff…
   If a man happened to be standing in the line of a bullet he was killed and passed into eternity, leaving a wife and children, perhaps, to mourn him. “Father died,” these children will say, “doing his duty.” As a matter of fact, father died because he happened to stand up at the wrong moment, or because he turned to ask the man on his right for a match, instead of leaning toward the left, and he projected his bulk of two hundred pounds where a bullet, fired by a man who did not know him and who had not aimed at him, happened to want the right of way. One of the two had to give it, and as the bullet would not, the soldier had his heart torn out…
   Toward mid-day you would see a man leave the trench with a comrade’s arm around him, and start on the long walk to the town where the hospital corps were waiting for him. These men did not wear their wounds with either pride or braggadocio, but regarded the wet sleeves and shapeless arms in a sort of wondering surprise. There was much more of surprise than of pain in their faces, and they seemed to be puzzling as to what they had done in the past to deserve such a punishment.

Davis covered two wars in Cuba, only two years apart. The Cubans fought to free themselves from Spanish rule in 1896. And American forces fought the Spaniards in Cuban (and elsewhere) in 1898. The latter was made famous by Teddy Roosevelt and the troops he commanded, known as the Rough Riders. According to Davis' report, the Battle for San Juan Hill began with a series of military blunders that had "brought seven thousand American soldiers into a chute of death from which there was no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and driving him out and beating him down…"

Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line of the Ninth, and finding its men lying in his way, shouted: “If you don’t wish to go forward, let my men pass.” The junior officers of the Ninth, with their negroes, instantly sprang into line with the Rough Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on the right.
   I speak of Roosevelt first because…he was, without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge…Roosevelt, mounted high on horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made you feel that you would like to cheer…Someone asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty in making his men follow him. “No,” he answered, “I had some difficulty in keeping up with them.”

The entire book is like this. Is it an important read? Nah. But I was entertained by it, and I wouldn't hesitate to say, "Go ahead and read it.

230weird_O
Juin 5, 2022, 10:38 am