Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' thread -- February 2017 Edition

Cafe Society
41

Schiff alludes to it in the foreword. If she discusses it in detail, it’ll be later on. You’re referring to the idea that hallucinatory ergotism contributed to the hysteria. This would’ve been caused by fungus growing on the rye. Ergot can produce a substance similar to LSD, and can produce hallucinations.

Before one dismisses the idea out of hand, an incident of hallucinatory ergotism DID take place in France in the 20th century, in 1951

http://www.thepoisonreview.com/2010/12/05/2114/

…so the idea isn’t far-fetched. And people definitely did report witnessing things that certainly weren’t everyday occurrences, and sure as heck sound like hallucinations.

On the other hand, there were plenty of other pressures on the inhabitants of Salen Village, and it’s not clear that they needed an actual hallucinogen to produce such visions. I feel that ergotism alone also can’t explain everything that took place.
so, at most, it was a contributing factor, but not the decisive one.

42

Thanks to you both.

43

I finished Barking by Tom Holt. The book is a rather interesting and unconventional take on werewolves, vampires and unicorns, but the first two-thirds is rather bland and terribly whiny. The last 100-150 pages were the best part of the book.

44

I just finished Lucifer’s Tears by James Thompson, the second in his series about Helsinki murder squad detective Kari Vaara and I thought it was excellent

Having lived for a while in Finland and still retaining a fading grasp of the language, I felt more at home than I have with other “Scandinavian Noir” detectives from Sweden or Norway.

Sadly, Thompson died suddenly in 2014 and left about six books including this one and his first book, **Snow Angels. **

45

I’m doing a Newbery award winners read, which has been a lot of fun so far.
Finished in February:

Raining Cats & Dogs, by Laurien Berenson. Twelfth in a long series of cozies. Definitely not a place to start this series because the mystery is not very compelling, but I enjoy the characters for some reason.

Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson. Not a cheerful book. The protagonist needs slapped.

Cress, by Marissa Meyer. The third book in The Lunar Chronicles, a YA sf series with fairy tale underpinnings. I thought it was the end but it isn’t, and that irritated me.

Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins. Another Newbery winner. I thought this was spectacular.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright. A pleasant YA read, but not much more.

Palace of Spies, by Sarah Zettel. A young woman is sent to the Hanoverian court to spy. This was a profoundly silly book, but I breezed through it and enjoyed it more than I should have. Turn off your brain before venturing here!

Foul Play at the Fair, by Shelley Freydont. First in a cozy series. I’ve been reading another series by Freydont set in Newport in the Gilded Age. Those are better than this one, though Freydont is talented enough that I’ll likely keep reading.

Izzy, Willy-Nilly, Cynthia Voigt. I may have already mentioned this one. Voigt is one of the very best at getting inside the head of teens.

The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy, by James Anderson. A near parody of English country house murder mysteries. Very entertaining.

Fire Logic, by Laurie J Marks. DNF this fantasy with a protagonist that never clicked for me.

Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear. My second attempt at this series. Not good. The Mary Sueiest Mary Sue. Gah.

Resort to Murder, by Carolyn Hart. I love this series. My reread is almost over. Boo.

Fortune Like the Moon, by Alys Clare. I had read another book by Clare that was not good, so this was a nice surprise. A medieval cozy.

46

I ran out of library books this week. Usually what I do in this case is a re-read of something by Stephen King that I didn’t like on the first go-round, so I picked up Lisey’s Story but couldn’t bring myself to actually open it. :slight_smile:

So I amended the rule to be a re-read of something I did like first time round, but haven’t read often. I’m a big fan of Mr. King, but truthfully, I read the early stuff obsessively and most of the later stuff just once. So this time I picked up Full Dark, No Stars and read the first novella, 1922. It was wonderfully written, but so, so gory and sad. All the bad things happen in this story…well, except rape. I can promise you nobody got raped. Anyway, check it out if you’re feeling really happy and stable. It ought to settle your hash. :dubious:

47

I “read” it on audio a couple of months back. Depressing, like all the stories in the collection (there’s rape in one of the others), but very well-written.

48

I just abandonned Carrie Fisher’s Princess Diarist about two thirds of way through. I liked her other books and, had she not recently died, might have finished this one. But in light of her death – and despite her charmng, self depricating humor – this one just struck me as terribly sad.

49

If you enjoy the Melanie Travis books I recommend Susan Conant’s mysteries about Holly Winter and her malamutes.

I recently finished At Home by Bill Bryson and it’s terrific. It’s got lots of great unknown stories about people who’ve influenced our daily lives that I’ve never heard of, or didn’t know how much they did. For example, you know how supposedly the first thing Alexander Graham Bell said on the telephone was “Mr. Watson, come here. I need you”? Well, guess what else Mr. Watson did that was significant? He invented the telephone’s ring.

Right now I’m reading a Newbery winner I tried to finish years ago and couldn’t, called Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi. I don’t like it any better this time. It reads like the author decided to do a mash-up of Johnny Tremain and The Midwife’s Apprentice (both far superior Newbery winners, IMHO) to get a medal himself.

Also reading Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn: A Spenser Novel, by Ace Atkins. It’s fun, and at least as good as Parker’s later Spenser novels.

50

I enjoyed Little Men, although it’s not as good as Little Women. (The author needed money and wrote it in six weeks or less, I read somewhere.) The “baby talk” is only used by one character, Amy’s young daughter, who appears briefly. Meg’s twins who used baby talk in Little Women are older in this book. The book is more episodic, and there are fun parts like the girls learning to cook in a miniature kitchen.

51

I used to read those, but started to find them really preachy. When I went back to try a reread, I found them pretty much unreadable.

52

I liked Full Dark, No Stars very much, but it’s not his best.

My SK favorites:

'Salem’s Lot
Misery
The Stand
11/22/63

53

I started reading Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, it’s about the battle of Iwo Jima.
This is going to be a hard book to read: not because he’s a bad writer, on the contrary, he’s a very good writer, but because, for me, at least, it’s easier to examine the deaths of people who died hundreds or thousands of years ago versus ones who might well have known my own grandfathers. Both Cliff and Jerry were in the Pacific in WWII; Cliff in the Navy and I believe Jerry was Army. I wish Mother was still here to ask…
So this is going to take me some time, several boxes of tissues anda LOT of fluff reading when it gets too emotional. Fortunately I have a lot of fluff here to read.

Speaking of fluff, I also started reading The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch.

54

I finished reading Love in Lower Case, which was OK. In atmosphere, it kind of reminded me of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, in that the protagonist just kind of gets swept along by events driven by people who are a bit crazy. The story wasn’t as compelling, though.

I had a cross-country flight, so I read Here’s to Us by Elin Hillebrand. It was OK - adequate for keeping me from focusing on how uncomfortable I was wedged into a tiny seat for hours on end.

Now I’m on to Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Hochschild is a Berkeley sociologist who spends a lot of time hanging out with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana talking about environmental issues with the goal of understanding why people in one of the most polluted states in the country are so opposed to environmental regulations and government in general. It’s fascinating.

55

Last month Northern Piper mentioned reading a book about the recent Richard III excavation, so I picked up Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King at the library and it was fabulous. The actual story is fairly amazing, because if it was fiction you wouldn’t believe it. The first section provides an extremely brief overview of the War of the Roses, which, as always, I valiantly tried to keep up with, and I’m sure just like every other time I’ll valiantly forget most of the details in a few days, and then the rest of it is mainly focused on the archeological project. It’s a very exciting account.

56

I grabbed a copy as well. I got a little sidetrackedby WWII, but I plan to get to it right after the Bradley book.

57

Well, WWII will do that to a person. :smiley:

58

G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

It has nothing to do with either of the Alfred Hitchcock films. Looks like the maestro bought the rights only to…use the title. Weird.

59

I finished reading “L’Assommoir” by Emil Zola. I had a sinking feeling that it would descend into misery right away, but it actually didn’t get too grim until about halfway through (compared to “Germinal” which was pretty grim from start to finish).

In addition to the descriptions of poverty and alcoholism, the description of the slow failure of a small business struck pretty close to home because I have some close friends whose business has been dying for a while now. It’s a fascinating book, though.

60

Winston Churchill could certainly attest to that.