Finished Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture, by Samantha Ellis, which was quite interesting if you’re into linguistics; Also finished Eight Dogs Flying, by Karen Ann Wilson. Meh.
Next up: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher; and Platform Decay, the latest in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells.
A word of advice, if Storm Front is the first Harry Dresden book you read you may be tempted to abandon the series, is not bad but a rather meh, I would recommend jumping to Grave Peril where the series starts to get really good.
After a break, I finished Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes. A rather light-hearted yarn about a decidedly morbid subject. The three protagonists all believe they have a legitimate reason to do away with their superiors. They all find themselves at the McMasters Conservatory, where they are taught the fine arts of being able to achieve their goals. Very entertaining and would recommend.
Masterfully read by Neil Patrick Harris.
Extremity Nicholas Binge
A short novel that starts out as a police procedural - old veteran and eager rookie cop investigate the murder of tech tycoon - but then gets into science fiction and some really weird stuff.
Great book, well-crafted and full of twists and wild ideas.
Mr. Binge is now my favorite current fiction writer.
I will keep that in mind.
Just finished
by Laird Hunt. It was very weird and dreamlike, which I already know is a thing some authors do when they have no kind of plot. But once I got halfway through, I felt like I ought to just finish. Now I’m kicking myself for that wasted time.
On the upside Daggerbound releases next week. 
Yay! And I do have plenty of stuff in the TBR pile anyway.
I just finished my third reading of Dorothy Dunnett’s six-volume Lymond Chronicles. As was the case the first two times, I’m experiencing something like mourning. Nothing else appeals much. I’ll get over it but still. Highly recommend if you love historical fiction.
I finished the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel The Land of Hidden Men. I think Ive read it before, but I can’t remember doing so, and I didn’t remember the book as I was reading it. A common experience with ERB. The book has a Frazetta cover with what appears to be Tarzan facing off against a panther, a scene which does not appear in the book (which was originally published as “Jungle Girl”, although serialized as “THe Land of Hidden Men”) I told my wife that the title and cover made me think of Tarzan sneaking up on guy in a tree or something, but just as he gets to him, the guy turns to Tarzan, puts a finger to his lips, and whispers “Sh! I’m Hiding!”
Anyway, the book isn’t bout Hide and Seek n the Jungle or about a Jungle Girl. It’s about Gordon King, a young, well-off physician who decides to go solo into the Cambodian jungle when his guide refuses to go in. It’s a definite change of scenery for ERB, who seems to have done a bit of research for this one. King promptly gets lost and loses just about everything. He’s nursed back to health by a couple of slaves who escaped from a nearby Angkor-Wat-like city whose existence is unknown to the outside world some of the “hidden men”) King learns junglecraft from them, enough to stay alive. He is stalked by a tiger , but kills it with his spear, because he was a champion javelin-thrower in college. This is pretty unbelievable, but in the course of this 200 page novel, King kills two more tigers and a panther the same way. He also discovers a progession of elephants and soldiers going through the jungle. The dancing girl atop the elephant is being taken to the Evil leprous ruler of the city to be his bride, and doesn’t want to go. King rescues her. They fall in love and get captured… There’s a lot of Burroughian back and forth, it turns out that there’s another hidden city in the jungle, and much ensues. King rescues a holy man, he rescues the dancing girl – who turns out to be a princess of the other city – more times. He fights a lot of people, and ultimately cures the Evil ruler of is leprosy, thereby making him a Good Guy.
The book was sort-of adapted as a 1941 movie serial about Nyoka the Jungle Girl. Nyoka wasn’t the name of the princess in the 1932 novel, and she was only a “jungle girl” in that she lived in a city in the jungle – she wasn’t adept at junglecraft. But I guess hey saw the ERB imprint and the title and thought she ought to be a female Tarzan, so that’s what they made her. And switched the locale to Africa, of course. Another serial followed the next year, then a comic book that ran for a decade.
Now it’s on to a collection Sherlock Holmes pastiches.
On audio, I’m finally starting Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which I’ve never read. I once just missed getting a used copy of the annotated edition. I only know the book by reputation, and it’ll be interesting to experience the real thing. (Harriet Beecher Stowe and Markw Twain were literal next-door neighbors in Hartford, Connecticut. You can visit both houses in one day, and easily hit one with a stone thrown from the other, although the keepers frown upon this.)
For my bedside reading, I’ve been re-reading a lot of Molly Ivins, and I just bought and started Dave Barry’s The Greatest Invention in the History of Man is Beer, which appears to be mainly quotations and selections from his earlier books.
The Road Map
By David Icke.
Fascinating take on religion. 540 pages. I finished it in 2 days.
Currently reading
by Evelyn Clarke. Six authors spend the weekend on a private island, in a contest to finish writing the final book of mega-author Arthur Fletch. Then one by one, they begin to die under mysterious circumstances… I never do figure out these kind of mystery stories, but it’s good practice to try.
Finished Storm Front, by Jim Butcher, which I enjoyed enough that I will read the next book (since I have a copy at home) before I read Grave Peril. Also finished Platform Decay, the latest in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells, which I enjoyed even more.
I also read Rabbi Harvey Rides Again: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Folktales Let Loose in the Wild West, by Steve Sheinkin, which I also really liked.
Next up: I Asked for Wonder, by Abraham Joshua Heschel; and Time Traders, by Andre Norton.
Finally took up and read General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman, by Ed Cray. Very good. It is 735 pages of small print but probably still better than slogging through the definitive official four-volume biography that is out there. I think this about covers everything a normal person would need to know, from Marshall’s somewhat humble beginnings in small-town Pennsylvania in the late 19th century and his time as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, through his various postings leading up to his being named General Pershing’s aide-de-camp in World War I, Army Chief of Staff during WWII, Secretary of State and then of Defense post-war, up to recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his Marshall Plan that rebuilt Western Europe after the war. Very good like I said, but there was a bit of sloppiness that proved just a little distracting. Marshall was born in 1880, on New Year’s Eve, so it’s easy to keep track of his age. But I kept reading things like “. . . the 32-year-old Marshall . . .” but it would be 1915. And at the very end of the book, we read, “Shortly after 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 16, 1959, General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, two and one-half months shy of his eightieth birthday, simply stopped breathing.” (Spoiler alert?) But no! That is the correct date of his death, so it was actually two and one-half months shy of his seventy-ninth birthday. This level of sloppiness is inexcusable and makes me wonder what else may have been misreported. Still, very good overall.
It took me so long to get to this book because we were busy with our big move from Bangkok to a small resort town a little ways down the Malay Peninsula on the Gulf of Thailand. The move is now complete, and the wife and I are all settled in. It is very nice here. Not a Christian or an American Nazi Republikan to be seen – this truly is Heaven.
For my next book, I have started Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, by Dan Jones.
I just finished The Iron Garden Sutra: a monk of funeral rites goes to perform these rites on a generation spaceship where all the people are dead. Or Are They??? Starts off very Becky Chambers, halfway through turns into Event Horizon.
On the plus, it’s an interesting protagonist and a very, very creepy setting. However, the story has some major flaws for me. Something weird is going on, and what’s happening seems kind of obvious to me as a reader, but it takes the protagonist far too long to figure it out; and when he does, another character’s skepticism is so phenomenally stupid that it becomes implausible. The antagonist is a lot less interesting in their motives than they could have been. There’s a major relationship between two characters that should be fraught, but doesn’t get enough attention and just becomes confusing to me.
I’ll definitely give the author another chance, because there’s a lot of potential. But I probably won’t give a third chance if the next book doesn’t improve.
Next up: a reread of Mary Dora Russell’s magnificent first-contact SF novel The Sparrow. It’s for a book club, otherwise I probably wouldn’t reread it: I remember it being incredibly good and emotionally devastating.
My copy of Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher has arrived and I am already 50 pages into it. Dervish is not what I expected but Edmund is still a sweetheart.
I finished all of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
I thought this would be good bedtime reading, you know, something vaguely interesting to help me drop off to sleep.
But it turns out these were great, actually. Sir Conan Doyle was an excellent writer and his characterization of Holmes was surprisingly complex. Fantastic secondary characters. I really enjoyed most everything, but I think my favorite was the Hound of the Baskervilles.
I’m sad it’s over.
I’m reading Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac and so far it’s quite good too.
If you want to keep it going, there are four stories by Arthur Conan Doyle that feature an un-named detective. These stories are called “THe Apocrypha” by fans.
There are also several short stories about Holmes that were not collected into the standard volumes or collections – even those claiming to be “complete”. See The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Richard Lancelyn Green
.. or some other collections.
There are also Sherlock Holmes stage plays by Doyle himself. The iconic Sherlock Holmes by Doyle and William Gillette (the most famous stage Holmes) is apparently really by Gillette, taking bits from Doyle’s stories. But Doyle DID write The Speckled Band and The Crown Diamond
And, of course, there’s no end of pastiches, of varying faithfulness and quality. I myself recommend The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr. The presence of Sir Arthur’s son and the way the stories stick close to Doyle’s vision of the character (and the way the cases are extrapolated from references to them in the Canon) recommends this work more than others. Although I’ve heard it derided as “Sherlock Holmes Exploited”, so not everyone was pleased.
Thanks, that sounds really interesting!
Started today on An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (The Carls, #1) by Hank Green | Goodreads
as recommended by @Quimby. The premise is that a lot of metal sculptures suddenly appear in cities all over the world. I don’t know why yet, but I’m dying to find out!