My apologies, I forgot. In my defence, I’ve been busy with real life and fighting a sinus infection. I love plants… until they actively try to kill me via my sinuses.
In other news, Halloween is upon us. And I have hung Clarence, our resident ghoul on the front door. (He is named for a certain overly sappy angel in a certain treacle of a sappy Christmastime movie) (And also cuz he looks like a Clarence)
So whatcha all readin?
I am half way through The Witches of New York by Ami McKay. It’s an easy read but there’s nothing much going on and I’m kinda bored by it.
I’m also “cracking” open my collection of M.R. James once again. A spooky story is just what I need on dark autumn nights waiting at the train station for a fare.
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of SDMB, and he was well-known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
I am currently halfway through two books. The first is one I am already halfway through called War Doctor by David Nott. He is a renowned British surgeon who has volunteered and served on the front lines at multiple conflict zones over almost three decades and has used his experience and expertise to train medical professionals on the ground so they can treat patients better and faster even when these locations and facilities are makeshift. I chose to read this book following the events in Afghanistan and Mr Nott has experience of being there as well as all sorts of different places around the world. Some whose conflicts aren’t anywhere near as known but has its own morose stories and also it is not a book to make him out to be a saviour or hero because there is also quite a bit of self retrospection. That’s what I like about this book a lot so far.
On the side I have a historical fiction thriller called The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor which is the first book of a series set in 17th century England. It has good reviews and is a theme I don’t read enough about. This particular book has the backdrop surrounding The Great Fire of London in 1666.
A little over halfway through The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson. It’s my first Larson, and I’m enjoying it a lot.
I feel like I’m the only person who’s read this book and wasn’t a fan. The chapters on the murderer were interesting in that whole perverse true crime way, but the chapters on organizing the world fair left me feeling panicked and stressed out – not the feeling I’m going for when I settle down with a book.
I read B.A. Paris’s newest release, The Therapist, about a woman who moves into a house where a murder has taken place, and she’s trying to figure out what really happened the night of the murder. I liked the ending, but the middle dragged in places. Paris’s debut novel Behind Closed Doors is one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read, and I get so excited about her subsequent novels, but Behind Closed Doors is definitely her strongest book.
I also read Lost Souls at the Neptune Inn by Betsy Carter, which follows the family dynamics of three generations of women living in the 1920s to 1960s. Carter’s books are unique in that she often will delve into the life story and secrets of a bunch of different characters in a book, rather than just having one central character. It’s a risky technique, but I like it, because it helps you to feel sympathy and connection with all the peripheral characters in her stories.
I am in the middle of The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, which I heard about through one of these threads. The first two chapters are very engaging (chapter one is about odd injuries people have sustained, and chapter two is about strange illnesses people have come down with), but the later chapters about odd remedies and improbable recoveries aren’t quite as fascinating. It’s good enough to keep reading, but I’ve slowed down my pace.
I’m also in the middle of the romance novel Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. It is so good that I’ve stayed up past my bedtime the last two nights reading more of the story. It’s about a woman in her late twenties who runs into her first love from back in middle/high school, and the story takes place both in the present and in the past, when the couple first met.
I read River Views: A History of the Thousand Island in 3D by Tom French. I picked it up while on vacation in the Thousand Island this summer. Although I’ve looked through it and at all the stereo images, I hadn’t actually read it before this weekend. I took some 3D images myself while on vacation and stuck them in the book. The book contains a pair of folding stereo-glasses that ape the function of that thick-lensed Holmes* stereoscope, but without having to cut out the card and place it in a long-armed viewer.
I also picked up and have gone most of the way through Jack M. Sasson’s Jonah
, part of the Anchor Bible Series. I’ve wanted to read some volumes in that series for a long time, but they’re pricey. I found a couple of inexpensive volumes at a used book store over the weekend. The reason that I’m going through such a thick and involved book so rapidly is that I’m mostly skipping the technical sections on Hebrew (which constitute the bulk of the book).
I also got the Anchor Bible book on the Book of Esther.
Otherwise, I’m almost finished with Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (Gideon Marcus et al, eds). The stories are all from 1958-1963. Although I know of a couple of the authors, most are new to me. , most notably Rosel George Brown, who gets two stories in the book.
Next up is Larry Niven’s Scatterbrain, which I also got used.
The familiar 19th century stereoscope – the kind incorrectly called a “stereopticon” – really was invented by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who deliberately did not patent it so that it could be widely used without cost. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. - Wikipedia.
Over the weekend I finished Patrick O’Brian’s The Yellow Admiral, the next in his series of Napoleonic naval adventures. Not his best book, but not bad. It’s early 1815, and Capt. John “Lucky Jack” Aubrey is on blockade duty off the French coast, commanding HMS Bellona but having just made a powerful enemy in Parliament, while his particular friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, at last reconciled with his high-spirited wife Diana, is back aboard as ship’s surgeon. The book ends with word of Napoleon’s escape from Elba.
I’m intermittently reading Monty Python Speaks! by David Morgan, a collection of interviews with the original cast and colleagues, friends and supporters such as Carol Cleveland, Douglas Adams, Ian MacNaughton and others, covering both the troupe’s TV and film years. Not much that’s new to me, but I like it so far.
Hans Hellmut Kirst’s WWII satire Officer Factory, about venality, conflicts and backstabbing among the faculty at a German military academy, is picking up steam. Not as funny as it might be, but interesting.
Just started The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, a well-reviewed account of the first great corporate scandal of the 2000s. So far, so good.
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire William Dalrymple
Everyone knows (or should know) that India was colonized by Great Britain. Not as well known, is that the initial colonization was not done by the British government, but by a private corporation, the East India Company. Starting in Bombay, Madras, and most importantly, Calcutta, the EIC slowly gained control over the Subcontinent. Taking advantage of the strife between various Indian kingdoms and European techniques of warfare based on firearms and artillery, this private corporation gradually came to rule over tens of millions of people.
This remarkable history is retold in great detail in this long, but eminently readable book, which includes numerous wonderful illustrations, mostly Indian miniatures…
Finished Loonshots: Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries , by Safi Bahcall. It had some great historical anecdotes, but the author was operating with 20/20 hindsight, which the people he criticized obviously didn’t have. Still worth reading, if you’re interested in the history of science and engineering.
Now I’m reading The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey.
Finished Rainbow in the Dark by Sean McGinty, and quite liked it. A girl is on a quest in a video game world to find her way home. Along the way, we find out more of her memories and what this is really all about.
Currently, I’m about halfway through Twelve Nights at Rotter House by J.W. Ocker. Two friends stay in a haunted house with the intention of writing a book about the experience. Story’s okay, the references are fun…I’m enjoying it.
I would like to retract my statement above regarding Twelve Nights at Rotter House. I finished it, and now I say it was mostly enjoyable, until the last few pages where it totally shit the bed.
Hah! I wasn’t a fan either, but for exactly the opposite reason. The chapters on the world fair were fascinating to me, well-researched and a glimpse into the historical period that I really enjoyed. The chapters on the murderer were just too speculative. The author was keeping it real and admitting when there was no evidence to back things up, but I remember it being full of passages like, “Mr. Murderer probably smiled when he (I’m guessing here) locked the door behind the guest that he allegedly murdered, and it might have been on Thursday evening.” In contrast to the deeply researched world’s fair bits, the murderer chapters left me unmoved.
I just finished another T. Kingfisher book, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Heartily recommended, not as a triumph of literature, but as an excellent comic fantasy with a lovely wry (rye?) sense of humor. The weird part is that this book, featuring police brutality and a lot of sourdough starter, was written before 2020.
My wife handed me The Empire of Sand, and after a page or two I remembered that I’d read it a couple years back. Fortunately she’d also checked out the sequel, Realm of Ash, so I started that.
Finished The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness At the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson. I very much enjoyed it. Two stories in one – the story of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and how the brilliant architect Daniel Burnham and his colleagues lobbied for it and brought it about; and one of America’s first serial killers, Dr. HH Holmes, the alias of Herman Mudgett, who was a real MD and specialized in preying on young lady visitors to the fair. The chapters on Holmes was indeed the most salacious. There is even a Straight Dope column on him, which you can read here.
But I also loved the chapters on the exposition. I never realized how many things came out of that fair. Everything from the country’s adoption of alternating current for electricity and the Ferris wheel down to spray paint, the Pledge of Allegiance and even Shredded Wheat among others. (Shredded Wheat was predicted to fail, with reports saying it tasted like cardboard, an opinion I strongly agree with.) For six months, the White City stood south of the Dark City of Chicago and offered an enchanted fairyland amid colossal buildings. Walt Disney’s father worked there and reportedly filled his children with tales of that magical time, possibly influencing Walt’s design of his Magic Kingdom. L Frank Baum attended the fair shortly before writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, creating his own enchanted city. I love this sort of minutiae of history. That was my first Larson. I plan to read more.
Having said that, I did pick up on some sloppy calendar errors. An event that happened on February 14 on one page suddenly was said to have happened on February 24 in another. The fair opened on Monday, May 1, but then something supposedly happened on Thursday the 5th. Well, no, that would be Thursday the 4th or Friday the 5th. Not too many though.
Yes, the Expo was called “The White City” , obviously inspiring Oz’s “Emerald City”. But the Emerald City was really white. If you read Baum’s book, you learn that the reason that the city looks green to everyone is that they are required by law to wear green spectacles as long as they’re in the city, this making it look green. There are numerous illustrations showing people, including Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion wearing green glasses.
Because of the popularity of the amusement midway at the Chicago fair, a number of amusement parks opened up around the country with the name “White City”, including one in Chicago.
I could name another book detailing the history of an amusement park from that era, but modesty forbids.
I am reading Star Trek Coda Book 1. The first book of a new trilogy. The last twenty years of Star Trek novels have basically had this long interconnected continuity (with some exceptions) where all the characters you know have changed and grown in their lives and new crews have been added. But now that the shows are exploring those characters they decided to give this Novelverse a grand finale and this is the first book. If you are familiar with Star Trek novels but have lapsed you may want to jump on board for this. It is pretty good so far.
Just for grins, I started reading One For The Money, the first of the many Stephanie Plum mysteries by Janet Evanovich. Two chapters in, and I’m enjoying both the plot and the writing style.
