Finished The Longmire Defense, by Craig Johnson, which I really enjoyed. It read like a cross between Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels and Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher novels.
Now I’m reading Dear Bob… Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.'s of World War II, written and compiled by Martha Bolton with Linda Hope.
Gave up on it; didn’t meet my 50-page rule. Stuffy and boring.
I’m almost done with Robert Harris’s Fatherland, which is just as good as I remember.
Just began His Majesty’s Airship by S.C. Gwynne, a very interesting look at large airships from after the Wright Brothers through the Thirties. It focuses on the British airship program, which didn’t really take off (ahem) until after WWI, with them playing catchup to the Germans. R101 was intended to be the first of dozens of airships to knit the British Empire closer together, carrying passengers and freight and showing the flag throughout the world, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
Started A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozaki yesterday. It’s not really grabbing me, the Nao part needs to get to the point and Ruth is as colorless and interesting as dishwater. Since it’s for my bookclub, I will gamely plow on and try to finish it…
American Psychosis by David Corn.
Very detailed timeline of how the republican party lost it.
Our Fight by Ronda Rousey.
Heres The Deal by Kellyanne Conway.
Finished Paper Cage by Tom Bargawanath. It’s a story about a series of child abductions in a small New Zealand town. Mostly meh, and not recommended.
Next up: California Bear by Duane Swierczynski. The synopsis looks intriguing, but I’ve been duped before. See above.
Finished Dear Bob… Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.'s of World War II, written and compiled by Martha Bolton with Linda Hope, which was very good.
Now I’m reading Rosa: The Story of the Rose, by Peter E. Kukielski with Charles Phillips.
Finished Rosa: The Story of the Rose, by Peter E. Kukielski with Charles Phillips. The artwork and photos were stunning, but the writing was just okay.
Now I"m reading Bitter Become the Fields: A Horror Anthology, edited by Jes McCutchen, Victoria Moore, and H. V. Patterson.
Having finished Steve Benen’s Ministry of Truth (about the efforts of Trump and his followers to gaslight recent history), I’m now reading The Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain. I love me some Twain, and there are several here I haven’t read.
On audio, I picked up an audiobook from my collection and have been listening to it in my car. It’s The Ring of Thoth and other stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I picked this up years ago cheap at a Used Book Superstore, and was sure I’d read it before. Eviddently I haven’t – the stories are all new to me.
This isn’t necessarily a good thing. This isn’t the Doyle of Sherlock Holmes and The Lost World and Professor Challenger and The White Company. This is the Doyle of The Coming of the Fairies and The Maracot Deep. Some of the stories are interesting enough, but he drags them out to intolerable length. And the tory I just finished deserves special comment.
“John Huxford’s Hiatus” starts out with Doyle reflecting upon how something happening in the world can cause unexpected results elsewhere. A Spanish investor setting up a cotk-cutting factory undercuts the price of British-made corks, this causing several factories to close, including the employing John Huxford, who was planning on getting married. Fortunately, his employer knows of a business situation in Canada. Huxford, after consulting his fiancee, takes him up on this. He goes to Canada, and sends a message that he arrived safely. After this, everything goes tohell. He is attacked by robbers, who fracture his skull, take everything that he has, and they leave him for dead. He is taken by the Watch to the hospital, where he is extraordinarily lucky to recover. But he has lost his memory. He gets employment in Canada under a different name.
There are several ways the story can proceed, especially if you want a happy ending. Doyle chose the most mawkish, overly-sentimental, overblown way for a story, even one from the height of the Victorian era (it was published in 1890), to proceed.
Huxford hears some words that strike a chord, and he recovers his memory. Unfortunately, this happens fifty years after he was set upon. He is in the throes of powerful emotion – does his fiancee remember him? Is she even still alive? What must she think of him. He wraps up his affairs and takes the fastest steamship back to Britain, rushing to his old home town. As with Rip van Winkle, everything has changed with the passage of time. How will he even locate his fiancee, if she lives?
It turns out to be absurdly easy. She’s still living in the same cottage she had been living in, keeping it up so it looks exactly the same. If something broke, she bought an exact replacement. Huxford learns from a passer-by that she has refused all offers to sell her cottage, or even to have it moved elsewhere, because she’s convinced her suitor will one day return. Even after 50 years.
But there’s more. She’s dying – wasting away. Huxford meets her doctor at her front door and learns that she will die shortly unless something turns her mood. He encounters a priest coming to visit her. It turns out that she’s now blind and bedridden. Huxford follows the priest into the house and waits outside the bedroom door, where he can hear everything.
His fiancee, convinced she is about to die, tells the clergyman that she is leaving money for her fiancee, if he should return, so that he will not be destitute.
By this point I’m starting to believe that Doyle didn’t write this as an honest exercise in storytelling, but as an experiment to see how far overboard he could go with mawkish sentimentality before the editor rejected it, or marked it all up with his blue pencil and edemanded changes. But it turned out that, in Victorian England, there was no bottom to the sump of sentimentality. They published the damned thing anyway.
JOhn, hearing all this twaddle, rushes into the room. Even before he says anything or makes a sound, and even though his fiancee is blind, she instantly knows it is him (“Maybe she could smell him,” suggested my wife, cynically.)
Predictably, there is a tearful and happy reunion. Fiancee doesn’t demand a recounting of Where The Hell John’s been all these years. She makes a miraculous recovery (although at least she doesn’t regain her eyesight), and they post the banns and are married, and move to Canada, and live for many years “until they fell asleep, within hours of each other.”
At which point Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
Finished Bitter Become the Fields: A Horror Anthology, edited by Jes McCutchen, Victoria Moore, and H. V. Patterson, of which the best story (I’m not counting mine) is “Consider the Acorns” by Jennifer Lee Rossman.
Now I’m reading Unorthodox Love, by Heidi Shertok.
Just starting what this comedian said will shock you by Bill Maher.
Its good.
Finished The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, by Erik Larson. Centered on the shelling of Fort Sumter and the events surrounding it. Very good. I plan to pass it along to my buddy in Thailand next year who is from South Carolina.
Have started On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, by Anthony Fauci MD.
Finished Unorthodox Love, by Heidi Shertok, which was okay.
Now I’m reading Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, by Brian Merchant.
Saving Michelangelo’s Dome: How Three Mathematicians and a Pope Sparked an Architectural Revolution Wayne Kalayjian
In the 1740’s people began to notice that cracks were appearing in the dome of St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, the most important church in Catholicism
Pope Benedict XIV did something in response that was basically unheard of. He commissioned a scientific study of the issue. Three mathematicians analyzed the problem and outlined a quantitative solution. That worked remarkably well, in that the dome is still there.
Short enjoyable book
I picked this one up based on your recommendation here. I’m about 20% of the way into the book, and I’d agree with your assessment: pretty good so far!
@The_wind_of_my_soul, I hope you like the way it finishes up more than I did!
It took me awhile, but I just finished The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera.
This is the last of the 2024 Hugo Nominees that I read; and while I liked most of the others, this one blew away the rest. The closest analogue I can think of is Andor: it’s a messy story about an insecure protagonist living under and struggling against a bureaucratic fascism.
The prose is surreal and lovely. The characters are complicated. The society is terrible and multifaceted. It does not go where you expect it to go. I will be processing the metaphors and poetry for some time to come.
Chandrasekera has joined my short list of must-read authors.
I finished listening to California Bear by Duane Swierczynski. A highly entertaining detective novel, sorta.
The California Bear is an aging serial killer who stopped his dirty deeds forty years ago. He is now contemplating coming out of retirement to serve as a consultant for a NetFlix series about his exploits. Complicating the matter are several folks who believe they have figured out who the Bear really is, including a 15-year-old girl recently diagnosed with leukemia. The story is told from the viewpoint of four main characters, including the Bear and the Girl Detective.
Recommended.
Next up: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Recommended by several Dopers.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy…
I finished A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozaki. First off I LOATHE when authors literally put themselves in the book, it’s never good and just feel self indulgent.
Secondly, What the actual BLEEP was with that ending? Quantum physics and the multiverse?
I did enjoy many bits of the book, the parts at her grandmother’s temple were lovely, and the insights into the brutality of the Japanese Army were heartbreaking. But the disappearing words and multiple universes at the end came out of the blue; for 14 hours I’d been listening to a young girl’s story of victimization, exploitation and suicidal ideation, interwoven with her great uncle’s story and filtered through the lens of another woman’s perceptions and experiences when a sudden right turn threw it into anime terrritory. Honestly, go watch Shinkai Makoto’s film “Your Name”, it’s a far superior handling of a very similar story.
Finished Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, by Brian Merchant, which was interesting.
Next up: Road Trip by David Keener and Raising Hell Plus… by Norman Spinrad.
I just finished it, and I think what you wrote summarized the ending pretty well. The book was delightfully creepy and entertaining (I’ve been reading it every night right before I go to sleep, so definitely not overly creepy). The ending was similarly creepy and felt appropriate for the book, but I agree that the ending definitely didn’t explain all the events that happened in the book.