Meredy's 2024 Reading Journal

Dear Reader,

Welcome, and thank you for checking out my reading journal.

2024 is my thirteenth year of cataloguing my reading on LibraryThing and posting my reflections. Recent years have been a bit rough for me, but I hold out hope for better times. It turns out that (a) I can't control what other people do very much at all, and (b) doing a better job of controlling myself would go far toward improving my life. Letting go of things seems to be the key.

Working on it.

It's great to come here and feel that I'm among friends, friends who read and think and share their thoughts and extend warm camaraderie to one another. Thanks, all, for being a part of that..

Here's to a great reading year for all book people.

In friendship,
Meredy

Current reading: Dreadful Company, by Vivian Shaw.

I'm glad you're here, Meredy. I hope your reading this year brings you solace, entertainment, and food for thought, in whatever order you need.

>1 Meredy: Haha! The juxtaposition of your end remarks about the dragoneers, and the title of the book in >2 Meredy: tickled my funny bone.

May you have a very happy new year of exploring your boundaries and the lack thereof. May you find wonder all around you, as well as in the books you read, and may you be blessed and prosperous in every good way.

>1 Meredy: Happy New Year and New Thread. We will be here for you no matter what state of mind you find yourself in.

>4 MrsLee: Very nice catch. I guffawed when I went back and reread the book title...

>1 Meredy: Lovely message. I've been learning some of those same lessons. Always a work in progress. I hope your new year is better in every respect.

>1 Meredy: Glad to see you're back here with us. In my experience, one foot in front of the other is really about the *only* thing we can control. That and which book it is we pull off of the shelf next.

Woo hoo! Another year, here we go!

>1 Meredy:
Happy New Year and New Thread. I was delighted to see your new thread appear.

Like >4 MrsLee: & >5 clamairy: I found >2 Meredy: very funny in the context of >1 Meredy:. :-)

Wishing you a 2024 that you can be content with. Always here for you.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year! I hope it will bring better things for you.

Happy reading in 2024 :)

Thank you for all the greetings and good wishes, and especially for the words of support and encouragement. They mean a lot to me.

As for dreadful company, of course I have to look elsewhere for that! Thanks for pointing out the humor, which I hadn't even noticed.

I did finish that book and have now begun Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. Usually I have no trouble with the English of 150-200 years ago (Eliot, Scott, et al.), but this translation seems very clumsy, as if a modern translator were trying to mimic the prose of an earlier era. I'll read around it, but I'm not expecting any beautiful language here. I can't seem to find the name or year of the translator.

>12 Meredy: I hope you enjoy the book in spite of the translation. I was surprised at the depth and intrigue of it. Not sure what I expected from it, but I got more.

>13 MrsLee: It was a natural follow-on to the second and just-finished entry in the Dr. Greta Helsing series. Dr. Helsing's medical practice treats supernatural and unnatural beings such as vampires, ghouls, were-beings, and assorted monsters. The author refers to classic monster fiction as if it were historical (and often flawed) record.

I read the first one of those a few years ago, but that was it. I liked it, but got side tracked.

>14 Meredy: That sounds like an interesting premise for a series.

I do have the next (Kindle) book in the Helsing series and will probably get to it sooner rather than later. I like the way the author sounds so authoritative in describing vampire traits and lore as if she weren't making it up.

About Phantom of the Opera, one thing that puzzles me a bit is the use of the term "brats" to refer to children as if it were a normal group term. The author/ translator uses it for little kids and also for a troupe of adolescent ballerinas. I was unable to find a definition that encompassed a generic term for youngsters without the sense of unruly, misbehaving kids. I wonder if we have anyone around here who could look at the French and say what would be the usual contemporary rendition of that term in English.

How old is the translation? Could be the term started as a term for a group of children and was synonymous with kids, but has skewed to describing bad or unruly behavior as well as just age. Like the word obnoxious. It didn't start out meaning what we use it for today.

>17 Meredy:
In my growing up the term "brat" would be used to refer to a cheeky child. I have since seen it used by some people as a term meaning children, as in, for example, "John got married and has two brats now." In this context it is used by someone who does not mean John to hear his comments. It is being used in almost a slang way. Also, someone might refer to a group of younger people as "brats". I could see someone referring to a recent group of young recruits as brats.

Then there was the play on Rat Pack with the young 80s movie stars - Brat Pack.

>19 pgmcc: That is more the way my mom used the term "brat." She would call us brats, but we knew it was an exasperated term of affection. I don't like to hear other people refer to children as brats in a general way. Some certainly can be, but all are not.

>21 MrsLee: I am the same. I never use the word "brat" unless it has been well earned.

Interesting. The other word I have heard for children, with no flavor of approbation, is "sprats."

>17 Meredy: This could be a mistranslation or misspelling - young dancers at the Paris Opera are referred to as petites rats. Here's a quote from their website:
"... “petit rat” has its origins in the noise made by the pointe shoes of the young dancers on the wooden floors of the rehearsal rooms situated in the attics of the Paris Opera. The “little rat” is a young pupil at the School of Dance of the Paris Opera who takes lessons and performs in ballet productions."

Since my last checkin, I've read The Windsor Knot, a BB from around here, which I enjoyed very much even though it's pretty light. As an unabashed and unrepentant Anglophile, I found it irresistible.

I'm now deep into The Three-Body Problem, which so far I have found somewhat stunning.

(Edited to fix touchstones.)

I took a book bullet somewhere in this neighborhood and just downloaded Alphabet of Thorn. Thanks, guys, looks like my kind of book.

I'm still plugging along with The Three-Body Problem, which is not an easy read. It's very sciency SF, and I'm not at the right reading level for that; I don't know enough to tell where the science leaves off and the fiction begins. For all that, I do want to pursue it to the end, but I may not be up to any sequels.

>26 Meredy: Thank you for the reminder to put Alphabet of Thorn on my wish list. I hope all is well with you.

Oh, my, I'm so far behind. My reading pace has been off, but I have read some terrific stuff in these recent months. I'll try to pull a few words together.

Meanwhile, here's a tidbit. A local business is having an open-house event for customers and prospects. In its mailer I read this stunning line: "...Bring in the family to enjoy light refreshments and hors devours, desserts, CANDY,..." and felt a small but genuine surge of delight that I had been privileged to read it.

*thumbs up* good one!!

For the record, we've missed you.

Meredy! I just mentioned you in a comment a day or two ago, wondering what you would think of an excellent book jillmwo recommended and which I am enjoying tremendously titled Edith Holler. I'd love to hear what you've been reading.

>28 Meredy: I'm so glad you found your way back in. Please stay, and tell us what you've been reading.

Meredy! It's great to hear from you again! I hope life has been treating you well.

Thank you so much! I'm touched. I've missed you all too. It's another rough year, and I can't foresee any relief. But I do still read in bed every night, even if only for a short while.

I'll get to my list very shortly. Right now it's time to get the provisions ready for the ghouls and goblins and mini-Trumps coming to frighten my neighborhood.

Can anyone around here explain the ending (behind a spoilers tag) of Amor Towles' short story You Have Arrived at Your Destination?

>34 Meredy:
I haven’t read it. I have only read A Gentleman in Moscow. Which volume is the story in?

>35 pgmcc:
It's one of an anthology of stories published as Amazon originals under the title of Forward: science fiction and speculative fiction. The authors' names I knew were noteworthy. The whole set cost me about $10.

I've just begun reading The Old Curiosity Shop.

>37 Meredy: Nice! I have had it on my Kindle since forever, it's still waiting for its turn :)

>36 Meredy:
I am currently reading You Have Arrived at Your Destination.

>34 Meredy:

I will give you my interpretation of the story, but do not guarantee that I am correct.

There was a lot in the story to think about. In terms of the ending, I think Sam arrived at his last stage of life to paraphrase the terminology used during his meeting in the fertility clinic.

A broader interpretation would be that the technology was giving the military the potential to develop people in the form that they want; possibly producing an army of soldiers through genetic engineering and cloning. They would be using the genetic material provided by customers in their sperm samples. I could see Sam coming to the conclusion that he did not want any of his sperm used for that purpose and therefore went back to the clinic to get his sample back. He broad it back to the bar to demonstrate that he had done the right thing and that he had grown into a purposeful human being with morals and the strength to act on them.

Also, given his reaction to the videos, his actions in going to get drunk, his thoughts about his wife's meaning in picking those three profiles, he has basically burnt his bridges with his life so far, and has not arrived at his destination, in that this is the truest Sam he has been.

Does any of that make sense to you?

I hope this goes part way to giving you some understanding of the story. I think there is loads of material in it about how technology influences and changes the world, and how people can remain human in world of advanced technology. Some of the ideas behind the story would have parallels with the growing use of what is being called Artificial Intelligence. It is all part of a dehumanising process. Take the people out of the system and be ultra-efficient and cheap. Then control the humans.



I would love to see one of your six word reviews for the story.

>40 pgmcc: I just re-read this one and have to say that I think your analysis is spot on.

The main clue about the militarizing of IVF comes when Beezer speaks about how Raytheon suddenly became Vitek.

BTW... the entire Forward Collection is free to Amazon Prime members in the US via their Prime Lending Program.

>41 ScoLgo:
I was able to borrow the one story for free. At least one other story was free to borrow. I do not know about the others.

By the way, Meredy, I have chalked this up as a Book Bullet hit for you.

>38 Alexandra_book_life:
If you're looking at the public domain edition from Kindle, be aware that it has a quantity of typos and minor errors that together are very irritating and distracting. To me they don't have the usual patterns of OCR scanning errors, but it's hard to believe that a person introduced this bumper crop of mistakes. Maybe I should give it up and pay for a better edition.

>44 Meredy: I think I do have a public domain edition! Thanks a lot for the heads-up :)