Jan's 2024 Reading Journal

I am new to the Club Read Group, but have been on LibraryThing since 2006, in fact, I worked in a library when I first joined. I've had a couple of different careers since then and now work as a cyber threat analyst for a large corporation. Librarians are very flexible. I've read through other people's posts to get an idea for how I want to approach this journal. I like the idea of posting about articles and longer reads i read online. I think part of the reason my "official" reading last year was so skimpy is because I read so many things online, and so I'm giving myself permission to keep track of that reading in this journal.

I have a lot of my reading for this year planned out already, which is another new thing for me. Normally, I read whatever I feel like next. I consider books read on my Kindle, and eBooks in general, to be books, as well as audio books. I get a lot of inspiration for what to read next from book reviews and also from other people's list on Medium and Substack.

I've sketched out categories for my reading/attention this year:
- Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
- Online articles and Long Reads
- Visual -- movies, courses, longer videos

Here is what is in my TBR pile so far for this year:

FICTION

1. Duty and Desire* by Pamela Aidan (Completed 5 Feb 24)
2. These Three Remain* by Pamela Aidan (Completed 22 Mar 24)
3. The Lost Cause by Corey Doctorow
4. The Hunt for Red October* by Tom Clancy
5. The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Completed 29 Aug 24)
6. The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov
7. Fahrenheit 451* by Ray Bradbury
8. Dune* by Frank Herbert
9. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
10. Firedrake's Eye by Patricia Finney
11. The Song of Roland - composed in the 10-11th century (Completed 31 Jan 24)
12. Race of Scorpions* by Dorothy Dunnett (Completed 11 Nov 24)
13. Eversion by Alastair Reynolds Audio (Completed 2 Mar 24)
14. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate Audio (Completed 15 Apr 24)
15. Slay Ride by Dick Francis (Completed 30 Jun 24)
16. Dolly and the Singing Bird* by Dorothy Dunnett
17. The Game of Kings* by Dorothy Dunnett
18. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
19. Harvard Has a Homicide by Timothy Fuller
20. Depth of Winter by Craig Johnson (Kindle)
21. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
22. The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton and Marion Mainwaring
23. Flatland by Edwin Abbott
24. Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein
25. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
26. The Mote in God's Eye* by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
27. Trespasser: A Novel by Paul Doiron Completed 27 Jun 2024
29. The Comanche Kid by James Robert Daniels (Kindle)
30. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

NON-FICTION

1. How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco
2. Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions by Eugene Spafford
3. Intelligence-Driven Incident Response by Scott J. Roberts (Completed 8 Mar 2024)
4. The Great Ideas Today 1993 (Completed 1 Apr 24)
5. Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers by Valerie Lawson
6. Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner (Completed 8 Jun 2024)
7. Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller
8. The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan
9. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family by Ron Chernow (Completed 27 Mar 2024)
10. Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems* by Dagobert Soergel (Completed 11 Jun 2024)
11. Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin - Currently reading
12. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
13. William Morris Needlepoint by Beth Russell
14. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels
15. Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis by Randolph Pherson and Richards J. Heuer, Jr
16. Practical Argumentation by George K. Pattee (Everand/Scribd)
17. Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought Our World to the Brink by Richard L. Currier (Kindle Unlimited)
18. On Looking: A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation (Touchstone is to an alternative title) by Alexandra Horowitz (for a Group Read)
19. Consumed: The Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber (Currently reading)
20. Thinking in Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math by Daniel Tammet (Library eBook)

Books with an asterisk are re-reads.

This will be a quick post of books I've already finished this year. I'll start trying to include longer descriptions from here on out:

2023 was an abysmal year for my reading. I started a new job and started too many long, boring books, so I only finished 26 books for the year. I've gotten off to a great start this year though!

Finished:
1/7/24 - Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta, 3 stars, Kindle. I started reading it right after watching the movie. Some relation to the movie, but not much.

1/15/24 - The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith, 4 stars, Kindle. I could not put this down, and consider it the best of her Cormoran Strike novels so far.

1/15/24 - The Library Book by Susan Orlean, 4.5 stars, Personal Library. I started this in 2023. It's a fascinating book about the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire - but also about libraries in general.

1/18/24 - Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella, 3.5 stars, Audible. It would only be three stars if not for the audio book narrators being decent. Overly long, drawn out story about a woman and her sister and the "unfortunate choices" they make in their lives. It's a little funny, but too long.

1/20/24 - An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Novel, 246 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2003 (2006 for this edition)
Series: Fitzwilliam Darcy - Gentleman
Genre: Romance
Format: Trade paperback
Publisher: Touchstone
Reading dates: 10/23/2023 - 1/20/2024
4.5 stars originally, 4.0 stars now

This is the second reading of this book. It's a re-imagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of Fitzwilliam Darcy. When I first read it in around 2008, I gave it 4.5 stars, and this time around I'm downgrading it a little, but it's still an excellent and pleasurable look at Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. There are three in the series and I've already started re-reading the second one.

The reason I began this second reading was because I read Darcy and Fitzwilliam: A Tale of a Gentleman and an Officer last year and thought it was so awful (2.5 stars), I had to re-read a similar fan-fiction I remembered being so good.

In this book, Darcy is introduced to the reader through his visit to Netherfield Hall with his friend Charles Bingley. We see the Hertfordshire countryside and it's inhabitants through Darcy's critical eyes, and he is truly insufferable at times, though always kind to those he likes, including his servants.

Aidan not only imagines what Darcy would have been like, she throws in details about the political and historical details one doesn't get from reading Jane Austen's novels, but she manages to do it without modernizing the book's point of view.

Darcy's feelings for Elizabeth Bennet grow throughout the short novel, but this first of the series never shows him revealing his feelings to anyone. Instead, he keeps his thoughts and musings to himself while he surreptitiously attempts to undermine Bingley's feelings for Jane Bennet.

>5 janoorani24: Pride and Prejudice was the second of my "themes" after Moby Dick. Still collect P&P titles whenever I see a new one. I have had this trilogy on my list, but haven't read them yet. I secretly loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...but yes, there is a lot of really bad fan fiction out there.

Sorry that I posted before you were done setting up. I hate when that happens. Mea culpa.

This is what I had posted:

I'm glad you've joined us here in Club Read and that you decided to create a thread. I look forward to following along. It's an interesting mix of books in your planned reading lists.

Like you I've had a number of different careers, or at least job titles, they almost always had to do with information management and/or academia in some form or other, and I started in libraries. Cyber threat analyst is an interesting one. What exactly do you do on a day to day basis, if you don't mind my asking?

I wish I still lived in the Seattle area, we could meet up at Third Place Books, my favorite bookish hangout.

Wonderful to see your thread. I enjoyed P&P, but I need to read a lot more Austen before i try any fan fiction. Still, i enjoyed your review.

>7 labfs39: Thank you for your kind welcome! For most of my careers, I've been an intelligence analyst of one kind or another. Cyber threat analysis is a little more technical since I need to understand at least a little about networks and the internet. For me, it mostly involves studying the tactics and techniques of various cyber criminals -- how they attack networks, what their motives are, what defenses do we need to keep them out, etc. I like it because it's a different problem everyday and I work with a great team.

I love Third Place Books, especially the one on Lake City Way! I used to belong to a book group there. We called ourselves The Third Place Thingers, since we were all LibraryThing members.

>8 dchaikin: It can take awhile to get through all of Jane Austen, and I'll admit I haven't read them all. Of the ones I have read P&P is my favorite, but I think Emma is her best book.

>9 janoorani24: How interesting, Janiece. It sounds like you have found a good match for your interests and skillset.

Yes, the Bothell TPB was excellent and my favorite. It didn't hurt that there was a chocolate shop downstairs and a Wild Birds Unlimited around the corner. How fun that you connected with so many local LT members. I only knew a few, Deborah/arubabookwoman, whom you met on the introductions thread, Ellen/EBT1002, who is a 75 books member and worked at the U, and Stephanie/DieFledermaus, who hasn't been around much recently and whom I never met in person.

Yes the Lake City Way Third Place Books was my favorite book hangout. I would usually have lunch at the Honey Bear (??) Bakery. (My memory is not what it once was.) Besides Lisa and Ellen I met up with another former LT member who is no longer active, Bonniebooks. And I believe we met a couple of times with an LT member whose name is escaping me at the moment and who is no longer active, but I know she was a member of Third Place Thingers, so you probably know/knew her. She is an older woman who lived in a senior living community in Bellvue in which members have their own homes, and they all look after one another.
I especially have good memories about the time Lisa, Ellen and I drove to Portland for a big LT meetup at Powells!

>12 arubabookwoman: The older woman would have been Maggie (her real name was Karen). She was the one who started the group. She used to be very active on the Green Dragon group. Sadly, I lost touch with her a while back.

>13 janoorani24: Indeed that is who I was remembering. I got together with her several times at TPB, and at one point she asked me to join the book club there, but I was unable to. She used to have a thread on the 75 group, but hasn't participated for a couple of years.

"Book" 6.
1/24/24 - Jokester by Isaac Asimov
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 14 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1956 (unknown for this edition)
Series: Multivac Stories
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: Facsimile - read on Kindle - saved to Kindle from Internet Archive
Publisher: Infinity Science Fiction Magazine
Reading dates: 1/22/24 - 1/24/2024
Rating: 2.5 stars

Interesting concept, but primitive writing. It could even be considered an early version of an artificial intelligence story. The ending seemed dumb, especially given Asimov's disbelief in intelligent alien life.

Pardon my ironic senses, but I’m amused at the primitive writing of future technology. 🙂

I see what you mean -- I do like reading books published earlier in the 20th century. They can be so amusing. In this case though, I was talking about his style. It read more like something he might have written in high school, or even junior high.

>17 janoorani24: ... as did much of his writing, from my point of view. The man desperately needed an assertive editor. Some of his ideas are so good I can get past the writing, but I haven't read him in years now.

BTW, welcome, nice to meet you, I'm Jim, worked for a while in network management, which didn't have as big a security component as it does now.

>18 Jim53: Nice to meet you Jim! I agree with you about Asimov. I enjoyed his books so much when I read them when I was in high school and college. For some reason I set myself a goal to read all of his Foundation novels in the order he intended and not the order in which he'd written them. For me, that meant reading the Robot books and short stories too. I've managed to make it through Second Foundation, but some of the books have been disappointing the second time through and many decades later.

I work in cyber threat intelligence, so I've had to learn about network management, but I'm much better at just warning network managers about what could happen than I am at managing the actual systems.

"Book" 7.
1/31/24 - The Song of Roland translated by Dorothy L. Sayers
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Saga, 55 pages (excerpt in World Masterpieces)
Original Language: Medieval French
Original Publication: Composed sometime between the 9th and early 11th century, possibly by the poet Taillefer
Series: Chansons de geste
Genre: Poetry/Saga
Format: Paper
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973
Reading dates: 1/01/24 - 1/31/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

The actual events of the poem took place 300 years before its composition, but the poem is written as if it were a contemporary event with knights in armor and enormous Saracen armies. I was intrigued to find this version was translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, the creator of the Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mysteries. I don't have another translation to judge it by, and I wish this version had more footnotes. The version in this anthology is an excerpt and only goes up to the death of Roland. For background, the poem tells the story of Roland, one of Charlemagne's warriors and his epic defeat in the battle fought in Spain at Roncesvalles. The battle would make a good, though bloody, movie. I was astonished by the extreme gore of the battle description.

>20 janoorani24: how cool! I’ve wanted to read about Roland (aka Orlando)

>21 dchaikin: I was surprised at the gore, but enjoyed it overall. I might try to find the entire poem and read it sometime. Apparently the Italians fell in love with the story and several versions exist in the Italian language, hence the alternative name Orlando. I think Orlando is a much more romantic name than Roland.

>22 janoorani24: I brought a translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso with me when we took a family trip to Italy last summer. And I read a short bit while there, but quickly felt i was in the wrong state of mind for such a prolonged renaissance epic. So, maybe another (bolder?) time. 🙂

>22 janoorani24: I have read the Barbara Reynolds translation :
https://www.librarything.com/work/1208361/103392378

>24 baswood: Oh that looks good!

A very belated welcome! I like your reading scope, and will come back with something more intelligent to say (I hope) at some point.

>26 lisapeet: Thank you!

Hi, just dropping to say hello, and that I've enjoyed catching up on your thread and reading your reviews.

I read a translation of the Song of Roland a long time. Somewhere around 15 years ago, my wife and I visited the French Pyranees and went through the pass where the battle depicted supposedly took place. I think it's now pretty strongly believed that the actual attackers were Basques. The road, as I remember it these years later, is basically carved out of the mountain. In that region of the Pyrenees there are two-way roads that are only one lane. You have to honk before going around blind curves to be sure you don't have a head-on collision, and there are carefully constructed procedures around who has to back up if cars going in opposite directions meet on the road. At any rate, I would not want to be standing on that road with angry troops shooting arrows down at me.

Book 8:
2/5/24 - Duty and Desire by Pamela Aidan
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Book, 280 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Wytherngate Press, 2004
Series: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentle an
Genre: Romance, Fan Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 2006
Reading dates: 1/20/24 - 2/5/2024
Rating: 4 stars

I finished Duty and Desire by Pamela Aidan a few days ago, and immediately began the last book in the trilogy, These Three Remain. Duty and Desire, while officially a Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice fan fiction, only features Elizabeth Bennet as a day dream in Darcy's mind. He attempts to fulfill his duty by traveling to a country house gathering to find a wife suitable for his station, and overcome his desire for Elizabeth. The novel contains gothic elements and new characters outside the Jane Austen universe. I enjoyed it a lot and give it four stars.

'Book' 9:
2/9/24 - The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 9 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Flowering Judas and Other Stories, 1935
As read publication: Fiction: A Pocket Anthology, Fourth Edition, 2005
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Story
Format: Paper
Publisher: Penguin Academics, Pearson Education, Inc.
Reading dates: 2/9/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

Uses the 'stream of consciousness' technique to describe the thoughts of an elderly woman on her death bed.

A couple of phrases that I liked, "...a person could spread out the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly," and, "While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind..." Her last thought brings tears to my eyes, "Oh no, there's nothing more cruel than this--I'll never forgive it," as she thinks back on the man who jilted her, or possibly, that she receives no sign from God.

So much sorrow in nine short pages.

Book 10:
2/23/24 - Black Plumes by Margery Allingham
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 180 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Double Day edition, 1940
As read publication: Bantam, 1983
Series: N/A
Genre: Mystery
Format: Paper
Publisher: Bantam Books
Reading dates: 2/14/2024 - 2/23/2024
Rating: 4.5 stars

I've read this book multiple times. I was thinking of Margery Allingham for some reason last week and picked this book off the shelf and started browsing through it, and then couldn't stop. For some reason, this is my favorite Allingham mystery -- maybe because it's the first one I read. I bought it new when I was living in Alaska in the early 80's. Now my copy is quite worn and the binding is falling apart.

The plot isn't why I like this book so much, it's the way Allingham writes about the wind in the book. The wind is almost a character. Here's one example, "The October wind, which had promised rain all day, hesitated in its reckless flight down the moist pavements to hurl a handful of fine drops at the windows of the drawing room...The sound was sharp and spiteful, so that the silence between the two women within became momentarily shocked, as if it had received some gratuitous if trivial insult."

>32 janoorani24: Almost like prose poetry

>33 labfs39: Agree! Obviously, after reading it so many times, I know the ending, but I love reading the words over again.

'Book' 11:
2/24/24 - Obasute by Yasushi Inoue
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 23 pages
Original Language: Japanese
Translator: Leon Picon
Original Publication: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1965
As read publication: Included in the collection The Izu Dancer and Other Stories published by Tuttle, 1974
Series: N/A
Re-read
Genre: Short Story
Format: Paper
Publisher: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan
Reading dates: 2/23-24/2024
Rating: 2 stars

I read one of the stories, Obasute, by Yasushi Inoue on 24 Feb 24. The writing is spare, stripped of excessive description. I suppose it could be a story about people who want out of their lives, and includes a couple of examples from the narrator's family who have left what would be considered successful lives for new lives that aren't really successful, but where they have more freedom to be themselves. On the surface, it's about a man's obsession with an ancient Japanese legend where people who reach the age of 70 are taken to a mountain, Obasute, and abandoned. Overall, the story evokes a feeling of loneliness and abandonment.

I would have originally read this story in 1974. I was living in Japan, spoke barely any Japanese, and read even less. I devoured anything written in English, but I have no memory of reading this story. I know I did, because there is a hair from my head stuck in one of the pages, from back when it was brown and not white.

'Book' 12:
3/1/24 - Mama, Rimma, and Alla by Isaac Babel
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 9 pages
Original Language: Russian
Translator: Peter Constantine
Original Publication: Letopis, 1916
As read publication: Included in the collection The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Story
Format: Paper
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York
Reading dates: 3/1/2024
Rating: 3 stars

A day in the life of a mother and her two daughters in Moscow. It's hard to be precise as to the time of the story, but it was first published in a Russian literary journal in 1916, and three of the characters are students, and no mention of the war is made, so I think it may be set sometime shortly before the start of the World War One. Hardly anything happens in this one short day, but there is still a lot of detail. The maid "had begun putting on airs and walked out." The electric bill came...two of three student borders announce they are leaving and want their rent money returned, the father is a magistrate in faraway Kamchatka and powerless to assist. The two daughters have their own difficulties, the youngest is seventeen and loves someone who doesn't love her, and the oldest wants her freedom from her mother.

Book 13:
3/2/24 - Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 10 hrs, 3 mins (352 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Harry Myers
Language: English
Original Publication: Gollancz, May 2022
As read publication: Audible, 2022
Series: N/A
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: Digital
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Reading dates: 1/19/2024 - 3/2/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

The narration was excellent - great voices for all the characters. The story is an interesting concept -- on the surface it's a sequence of scenes on different types of ships, from sailing through air through space. All the sequences feature the same characters -- the main character is Dr. Silas Coade, and other primary characters are the security person (a Mexican with various backgrounds such as a member of Santa Ana's army at the Alamo, a fighter in the Mexican revolution, etc), the ships captain, a Russian with ulterior motives for financing the expeditions, a mysterious woman passenger, and a young mathematician. Other crew members feature in all the sequences. All the stories center around an expedition to find and explore an 'edifice' previously discovered during an expedition only the Russian financier knows about. As each sequence ends, a little more is known about the true nature not only of the expedition, but of Dr. Coade himself.

>36 janoorani24: Babel is an author I haven't read, but feel I should. Have you read anything else by him?

Hi Lisa, No I hadn't read anything else by Babel. The collected volume of his short stories came up in my random sort of a short story for reading last week. I'm trying to read more short works this year, and so far, it's really broadened my reading and moved me out of my comfort zones. I feel I need to pay more attention when I read a shorter work, and that most of the stories I have read so far this year are such a small slice of the life of the characters, I need to fill in the blanks myself.

According to the introduction to the collection, this was one of Babel's earlier works. Also, Babel was from Odessa, which I find interesting, since it means he was Ukrainian, although that is my modern interpretation. I'm sure he considered himself Russian.

Book 14:
3/8/24 - Intelligence-Driven Incident Response: Outwitting the Adversary by Scott J. Roberts
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback 260 pages
Language: English
Original Publication: N/A
As read publication: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2017, First edition.
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction, Technical
Format: Paper
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Reading dates: 7/6/2023 - 3/8/2024
Rating: 4 stars

This is the first book I've read dedicated solely to cyber threat intelligence. What makes this so valuable to me is that it covers how analysts assist the cyber incident response teams in responding to a cyber incident such as a hack or ransomware attack. The book is organized into sections covering the fundamentals of intelligence, the fundamentals of incident response and how they work together. Then the book covers the analytical process in some detail, to include the writing and dissemination of reports. There are a lot of references to check out, and I filled a small notebook with notes. This will be a constant reference for me going forward.

'Book' 15:
3/8/24 & 3/22/24 - On Being an American from Prejudices, Fourth (sic) Series by H. L. Mencken
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Excerpt, 4 pages (64 pages in read version on the Internet Archive)
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: Prejudices, Third Series, Alfred A. Knopf, 1922
As read publication: Included in A Patriot's Handbook edited by Caroline Kennedy
Series: N/A
Genre: Essay
Format: Paper & Digital
Publisher: Hyperion, New York
Reading dates: 3/8/2024
Rating: 2 stars

This was a satirical look about being an American. I did a little research, the author, H. L. Mencken was a journalist, and this is an excerpt from a longer work he wrote for a series of essays he compiled in 1922, which were published by Alfred A. Knopf. I found the complete text in the Internet Archive, and am going to read that and edit this entry then.

I read this today as part of my goal to read more selections from my collection of short stories and other collections, such as this volume of writings, which was "selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy." First of all, I don't know why she selected this excerpt to put in the book's section on Portraits of Americans. Mencken was born and raised in the U.S., but he was very German in his attitudes, greatly admired Nietzche, and disliked the idea of representative democracy.

Two quibbles: First of all, Kennedy starts the excerpt in the middle of a thought. "...it is my contention that, if this definition be accepted," -- there is no indication of what the definition is that he is talking about. Here is the prelude to the thought (from the Internet Archive's version), "To be happy (reducing things to its elementals) I must be:
a. Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion.
b. Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of my fellow-men.
c. Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste."
Mencken then goes on later in the excerpt about the stupidity of the vast majority of Americans, "all of which may be boiled down to this: that the United States is essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men -- that distinction is easy here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and judgment, or ordinary competence is so low." I don't have a problem with reading satire like this, but I don't understand why Kennedy included this excerpt in a book celebrating patriotism -- it's not at all flattering to Americans.

The second quibble is that Kennedy cites this excerpt being from Mencken's Prejudices, Fourth Series, when it is from his Prejudices, Third Series.

Update on 22 March:

I found the entire book on the Internet Archive and read the essay there. It's the first essay in a longer work called Prejudices, Third Series and is 64 pages long. The essay is very hard on the United States, saying it, "to my eye, is incomparably the greatest show on earth. It is a show which avoids diligently all the kinds of clowning which tire me most quickly—for example, royal ceremonials, the tedious hocus-pocus of haut politique, the taking of politics seriously—and lays chief stress upon the kinds which delight me unceasingly—for example, the ribald combats of demagogues, the exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues, the pursuit of witches and heretics, the desperate struggles of inferior men to claw their way into Heaven."

The essay reminds me of our political climate today and some of the commentary. Amusing how little has changed in 100 years.

>41 janoorani24: well, I’m entertained by the opening sentence.

ETA : Richard Wright raved about Mencken as an inspiration on how to fight with words.

>42 dchaikin: Agree with Richard Wright - he punches with his words.

Book 16:
3/22/24 - These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 437 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Wytherngate Press, 2005
As read publication: Touchstone, 2007
Series: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman
Genre: Historical Romance
Format: Paper
Publisher: Touchstone (imprint of Simon & Schuster)
Reading dates: 2/05/2024 - 3/22/2024
Rating: 4.5 stars

This is the final volume of the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series by Pamela Aidan. It is a re-read, but I read it for the first time around 2008, so it felt fresh. Since it is a Pride and Prejudice fan fiction, the ending is known, but the story is told from Darcy's point of view, and I think it's very well done. One thing that adds to the story is Aidan's use of other characters not in the original Austen novels, and her fleshing out of some of the characters who are; all without detracting from or modifying the original masterpiece. This series is my favorite example of Jane Austen fan fiction -- if you at all enjoy Pride and Prejudice, this is the alternative viewpoint/story I recommend.

I'm going to begin keeping a record of the books I've acquired in 2024.

January 2024:
1. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. The Haters by Jesse Andrews
3. Benet's Readers Encyclopedia, 5th edition
4. Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov
5. Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta - Digital - Completed 1/7/2024)
6. Mary Poppins, She Wrote by Valerie Lawson - Digital
7. The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook - Digital
8. Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper - Audio

Books Acquired in February 2024:
1. Matilda by Roald Dahl
2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
3. A Boy at the Hogarth Press by Richard Kennedy
4. The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner
5. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
6. Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
7. Stories of Books and Libraries by Jane Holloway
8. The Tragic Mind by Robert Kaplan

Books Acquired in March 2024:
1. Six Men: Charles Chaplin: The One and Only; Edward III: The Golden Boy; H. L. Mencken: The Public and the Private Face; Humphrey Bogart: Epitaph for a Saint; Bertrand Russell: The Lord of Reason by Alistair Cooke
2. Prejudices: Third Series by H. L. Mencken
3. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
4. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
5. Mapping America by Neal Asbury and Jean-Pierre Isbouts
6. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, and Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams by Adam Lazarus
7. Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2024
8. The Original Peter Rabbit Presentation Box by Beatrix Potter
9. The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Library Book)

Book 17:
3/27/24 - The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family by Ron Chernow
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: eBook, 880 pages
Language: English
Original Publication: Chatto and Windus, 1993
As read publication: Penguin Random House, Apple eBook, 2012
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction, Biography
Format: Digital
Publisher: Apple eBook, 2012
Reading dates: unknown - 3/27/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars
World War One reading challenge book

This is a detailed and well written history of the German Warburg banking family. It follows their evolution from a small German Jewish banking enterprise in the late 1700s into major banking firms by the 1990s -- affecting US, British and German politics and financial policy.

I have no idea when I began this, but it was several years ago. I finally began making a concerted effort to finish it in February when I was only about 30% done with it. It was good enough that I didn't want to abandon it, but reading very long books on an e-reader is a slog -- Apple books more so than Kindle for some reason.

I also have no idea why I bought the book to begin with. I like biographies, but this isn't the type I usually choose. It is heavy on banking history in general, and extremely detailed about each member of the family. My favorite parts were the sections covering World War One and it's aftermath. For that reason, even though I began it before my personal challenge to read all of the books I have about World War One, I added it to my World War One reading history.

The 3.5 stars are only because the book isn't really my style, but Chernow did a fantastic job with this family biography.

>46 janoorani24: Great review, though probably not a book I'll pick up anytime soon.

>47 labfs39: I don't blame you. I'm so glad to be done with it. I dislike abandoning books, and this one came very, very close to being dropped and never picked up again. It won awards and a lot of people liked it, but it was dry and boring for most of the journey. It probably would only truly appeal to people who like banking history.

'Book' 18:
3/29/24 - The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Abridged
Type: Abridged, 24 pages, pp. 224-248 (15 pages in original Strand Magazine story)
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: The Strand Magazine, No. 8. August 1891.
As read publication: Included in Challenges, Book 8. 1967.
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Story
Format: Paper
Publisher: Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview, IL
Reading date: 3/29/2024
Rating: 3 stars (2.5 stars for the abridgement, 3 stars for the original in The Strand Magazine (as found on the Internet Archive - mostly because of the illustrations by Sidney Paget)

I have only read a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories many years ago (in my copy of the Folio Society Crime Stories from the Strand, and don't really care for them, but this came up through my convoluted and impossible to explain system of choosing a short work to read on Fridays. My pleasure in Sherlock Holmes comes from the character's portrayal by different actors (especially Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey, Jr.). The particular book I chose to read from today is in an old textbook I've had since I was in the 6th grade at Capistrano Intermediate School in San Juan Capistrano, CA in 1969. The school only existed for a couple of years. It was opened in 1969 in an old administration building for the Capistrano Unified School District to accommodate the overabundance of sixth graders the district had as a result of the end of the Baby Boom years (children born in 1958-59). The abridged version was dumbed down for 6th grade readers, and is a little boring. It is contained in the section of the book called 'Imagination.'

The story tells the tale of a red-headed man who comes to Holmes for help finding the reason he was employed for a couple of months as a member of the League of Red-Headed men. The man (Jabez Wilson) had been hired after he answered a newspaper ad a few months before for a red-headed man to fill a vacancy in the Red-Headed League - his job was to copy out the Encyclopedia Britannica for 4 pounds a week for four hours a day. He'd been happily employed doing this when he showed up for work one morning to find that the League had been dissolved without notice. When Wilson tried to find out what had happened, he discovered that the forwarding address for the League did not exist. So, naturally he went to Sherlock Holmes (sarcasm). Anyway, through his powers of deduction, Holmes figures out in less than a day that this employment of Mr Wilson was set up as a cover up to get Wilson out of the way (he owns a pawn shop in London) so his shop can be used to conduct a crime.

For me, the best part of reading this story was tracking down the original source on the Internet Archive and discovering the amazing Strand, No 8 (https://archive.org/details/StrandMagazine8/page/n45/mode/2up). I can hardly wait to read the rest of the issue -- there is an article with illustrations of 'celebrities' from when they were younger, an article of bird songs with musical notation, etc.

>49 janoorani24: The Strand magazine sounds fascinating! I downloaded it. And while on archive.org I came across this extremely intriguing book, which I also downloaded: The Man of Pleasure’s Illustrated Pocketbook for 1850.

>49 janoorani24: I read my first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet shortly after becoming enamored with Cumberbatch's portrayal. It was one of the few times when I preferred the adaptation to the original.

>50 FlorenceArt: Your discovery on the archive looks so interesting!

>51 labfs39: The screen writers for Sherlock Holmes movies are much better writers than Doyle for the most part, I think, and of course having superior actors play the part helps!

'Book' 19:
4/1/24 - Space and Dimensionality by Thomas K. Simpson
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Essay, 48 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: The Great Ideas Today 1993, Part One: Current Developments in the Arts and Sciences, pp. 2-49
As read publication: N/A
Series: The Great Ideas Today
Genre: Philosophy
Format: Paper
Publisher: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago
Reading dates: 1/1/24 - 4/1/24
Rating: 5 stars

This is a philosophical essay about space and its dimensions in both philosophical and mathematical terms. While only covering 49 pages, the essay is dense with ideas and took me a long time to absorb, and I'm still far from being able to completely understand it. According to Simpson, nothing in principle prevents consistent intuitions of non-Euclidean geometry, including thoughts that there are more than three dimensions. There is nothing in the nature of our minds that requires there to be only three dimensions, or makes us incapable of perceiving that it isn't so. Why can't our sense of reality be enlarged to conceive of four dimensions, or even more than that? He uses Euclid's theories, a detailed discussion of Edwin Abbot's Flatland, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Platos's Parmenides, Maxwell's color theories and experiments, and a brief discussion of DNA to make the point that the Many and the One are connected, the same, and yet separate. "He writes, "...I believe in the ultimate coherence of all things, a single source of all possibilities. One might say that this is to take the term "space" primarily in its sense as "cosmos," even if that cosmos seems at times to be nothing more than the arbitrary construction of the purest of formal mathematicians."

I seldom give five stars to anything, since to get five stars, a work has to move me to somehow change how I look at the world. Even though this work was short, it did effect a change in my perceptions.

>54 janoorani24: This sounds very interesting. I'll have to figure out how to scare up a copy.

This is a VERY interesting subject, which does sound like an original concept which could broaden one's thinking.

>55 Jim53: Jim, I searched the Internet Archive, and that particular year isn't there. I inherited all of the original set of the Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World volumes, and then found the Great Ideas Today on eBay, so I have all of those too (I had to buy two bookcases to hold all of them). I don't think Simpson was that well known outside of his academic circle since he doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, but his son maintains a fairly good web page with a few of his articles: https://www.thomasksimpson.com/ Perhaps you will have more luck than I did finding the 1993 volume. Here is the WorldCat link so you can see if it's available in a library near you: https://search.worldcat.org/title/30382395

I began re-reading a very old textbook from my University of Maryland Library Science program, Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems by Dagobert Soergel. One way you can tell it's old is the fact that database is two words, sort of like Internet used to be capitalized. I've been needing to study databases so much lately as part of my work in cybersecurity, that I felt I needed to get back to some more basic concepts. I used to tell analysts I worked with that if they didn't put their reports in a storage system without a plan for finding it again, they might as well not have written it. In library science terms, this would be an Information Storage and Retrieval System or ISAR. Nowadays, everything is just called a database and for the more complicated ones, you need to know a particular language such as SQL or Splunk to use them. But all information storage systems rely on the system used to put entities there to begin with. If something is misfiled in a filing cabinet or mis-shelved in a library, the best retrieval system in the world won't help you find it. You may find it with luck, but the case may be that you won't find it, and then, you might as well not have created it at all. At least with digital databases, you should be able to find what you are looking for with full-text searches, but that won't help you discover relationships like you can with a good relational database. Just rambling here -- trying to pound into my head what I'm reading to justify reading what is essentially a dry tome, but which I think is important to my job. Maybe I should just retire so I can read nothing but scintillating, unnecessary books.

Book Talley for First Quarter 2024:

Book Talley for January:

Real Books Acquired: 4 (0 read)
Real Books Read: 3 (Pages: 618)
Digital Books Acquired: 2 (1 read)
Digital Books Read: 3 (Pages: 1376)
Audio Books Acquired: 1 (0 heard)
Audio Books Heard: 1 (13 1/4 hours)

Total Read:
4 books, 2 short stories (1994 pages) and 1 audio book = 7 books
6 fiction; 1 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction:
History: 1

Fiction:
Short Story - Science Fiction: 1
Short Story - Epic Poem: 1
Mystery: 2
Romance: 2

Best in January:

Fiction: The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
Nonfiction: The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Short Work: The Song of Roland

Book Talley for February:

Real Books Acquired: 7 (0 read)
Real Books Read: 4 (Pages: 492)
Digital Books Acquired: 1 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Audio Books Acquired: 0
Audio Books Heard: 0 (0 hours)

Total:
2 books, 2 short stories, 492 pages = 4 books
4 fiction; 0 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 0

Fiction:
Short Story - Japanese: 1
Short Story - American Classic: 1
Mystery: 1
Romance: 1

Best in February:

Fiction: Black Plumes by Margery Allingham
Nonfiction: N/A
Short Work: The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter

Book Talley for March:

Real Books Acquired: 9 (0 read)
Real Books Read: 6 (Pages: 843)
Digital Books Acquired: 1 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 1 (Pages: 880)
Audio Acquired: 1 (0 heard)
Audio Books Heard: 1 (10 hours)

Total:
3 books, 4 short works (1723 pages), and 1 audio book = 8
4 fiction; 4 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction:
Technical: 1
Essay: 2
History/Biography: 1

Fiction:
Short Story - Russian: 1
Short Story - British Mystery: 1
Science Fiction: 1
Romance: 1

Best in March:

Fiction: These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan
Nonfiction: Intelligence-Driven Incident Response by Scott J Roberts
Short Work: Space and Dimensionality by Thomas K. Simpson

Best for Quarter:

Fiction: The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
Non-Fiction: The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Short Work: Space and Dimensionality by Thomas K. Simpson

>58 janoorani24: Reminds me of the days when I used to read things like Text information retrieval systems and Database management systems. Fun times!

>58 janoorani24: >60 labfs39: Reminds me of when I used to write things such as IBM Websphere Transcoding Publisher V1.1: Extending Web Applications to the Pervasive World, which unsurprisingly is in my you-and-nobody-else list.

4/6/24 - The Tea-Leaf by Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 13 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: The Strand Magazine, October 1925, pp.409-418
As read publication: Crime Stories from the 'Strand'
Series: N/A
Genre: Mystery
Format: Paper
Publisher: The Folio Society, 1991
Reading dates: 4/1/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is a short story contained within an anthology of crime stories published in The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1942. It's a classic 'locked-room' mystery where the story revolves around the fact that a man has apparently been murdered in a Turkish Bath and the supposed murder weapon is never found, but the suspected murderer could only be the man who was in the 'hot room' with the victim just previous to his death. It's simplistic by today's standards, but I'm sure it was of great interest to readers in 1925. The story itself is mentioned in several other anthologies and crime story histories.

Below are two short paragraphs from Wikipedia about the two authors:

Edgar Alfred Jepson (28 November 1863 – 12 April 1938) was an English author. He largely wrote mainstream adventure and detective fiction, but also supernatural and fantasy stories. He sometimes used the pseudonym R. Edison Page.

Robert Eustace was the pen name of Eustace Robert Barton (1869–1943), an English doctor and author of mystery and crime fiction with a theme of scientific innovation. He also wrote as Eustace Robert Rawlings. Eustace often collaborated with other writers, producing a number of works with the author L. T. Meade and others. He is credited as co-author with Dorothy L. Sayers of the novel The Documents in the Case, for which he supplied the main plot idea and supporting medical and scientific details.

>60 labfs39: >61 Jim53: When I began my program in Library and Information Science at the University of Maryland in 1998, Dr. Soergel's class was the first class students had to take. It was mandatory to finish with a grade of B or better in order to get the Master's Degree. A lot of students in the class had failed before, and were re-taking it. Dr. Soergel had a heavy German accent and his tests were difficult. I thought my best chance of passing was to concentrate on the book, and write down everything he wrote on the board, and ignore what he said. I have several other books about databases and organizing information, but I still think this is one of the best.

Jim, I'm so impressed that you wrote that book!

Book 21:
4/15/24 - Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 14 hrs, 29 mins (352 pages equivalent)
Narrators: Emily Rankin & Catherine Taber
Language: English
Original Publication: Ballantine, June 2017
As read publication: Audible, 2017
Series: N/A
Genre: Historical Fiction
Format: Digital
Publisher: Random House Audio
Reading dates: 3/15/24 - 4/15/2024
Rating: 4 stars

This was a heartbreaking book, even though some things are resolved in the end.

The story is read by two narrators who each voice a character telling the tale of the real-life Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, which notoriously used kidnapping and lies to steal poor children from their parents and essentially sell them to wealthy parents from the 1920's to 1950.

The earlier timeline relates the story of fictional twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings who live aboard their family’s Mississippi River shanty boat. In 1939, their father must rush their mother to the hospital, and Rill is left in charge. The next morning, Memphis police (the director of the orphanage paid police to round up children for her) arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are told they will soon be returned to their parents, but it doesn't take long for the two older children, Rill and ten-year-old Camellia, to realize the awful truth -- there is no getting out of what is essentially a prison. The children are slowly broken apart and given up for adoption to wealthy families in other parts of the country.

The later story tells the tale of Avery Stafford, a successful prosecutor who has recently returned to Aiken, SC to help out her ill father and his Senate campaign. While visiting a nursing home with her father, she stumbles upon a mystery involving a woman who claims to know her grandmother. Avery's story isn't as interesting and her part of the narration drags in places. But it serves to bring the story of the Foss children up to the present day, while also telling the dark history of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

The narrator who voiced Rill was fantastic -- I felt the story was greatly improved by her narration. Avery's narrator wasn't as good, but she told Avery's story well. I sometimes wished I could have read those parts, since I read faster to myself than she could narrate, and I wanted to get back to Rill's story as fast as I could.

All in all, a good book and I give it 4 stars in LibraryThing, though I gave it 5 stars on Audible.

>64 janoorani24: A terrific review on a subject that certainly hits one of my real regrets about the way children are mistreated. It reminds me very much about the book This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. A similar story and one of my all-time favorites.

>58 janoorani24: I’ve not popped in to your thread before; don’t know how I missed it. But I noticed this database post. My area. Used to teach it at university in Australia. It’s not “dry” to me, but you do need to interact and set up databases to maintain interest.

I’ll check your whole thread. Thanks and I don’t know how come I didn’t find you before.

>65 JoeB1934: Thanks for the comment Joe, and I'll check out the book by Krueger. Thank you for the suggestion.

>66 kjuliff: Welcome, Kate! I've only become active again on LT since January. I used to be very active about ten years ago, but then spent many years just adding books and curating my catalog. I've really enjoyed the Club Reads group, and have made some friends here.

My interest in databases goes back a long way. I love the idea of storing information so it can be found again in the future. Dr. Soergel's book about organizing information is a treasure trove, and I'm actually enjoying re-reading it at a leisurely pace and not having to rush through it for his class.

I discovered something interesting, and not at all related to databases - he cites an example of an entry in a brief description of analyzing reference tools from Chamber's Biographical Dictionary for HANSOM, Joseph Aloysius who invented the 'Patent Safety (Hansom) Cab' in 1834. This intrigued me since I read a lot of Georgette Heyer and other similar historical romance novelists, whose stories are set in a slightly earlier era, and I'm sure I've seen the term Hansom cab in those stories. I may be wrong, but I know going forward, I'll notice the term 'Hansom cab' in novels when I read them and it will annoy me if it's in a book set earlier than about 1830.

All of this led me down the rabbit hole of checking out the biographical dictionary on the Internet Archive (an amazingly rich database), and discovering a mystery published in 1886, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume, which is called Australia's original blockbuster. Now I have yet another book to add to my bottomless TBR pile.

>68 janoorani24: What do you and kjuliff mean by a "database"? I use the term a lot but usually it is a database that I maintain that no one else knows exists. You and Kate seem to talk about a different database than a personal one.

>69 JoeB1934: We are talking about large scale databases used in information technology. These hold very large amount of information in digital form that can be accessed in many ways. For example, LT’s library database of books and users. You can look up books by title, member usernames, date entered, keyword etc.

Database were usually structured in hierarchical fashion. In the 1980’s the movement was toward the relational model, though human thought tends to be hierarchical in nature.

Now with the advent of AI knowledge is stored and accessed in a different way. Even the people developing AI are unsure of how it works and therein lies the problems. The computers are now writing their own programs and using their own databases - if that is even an applicable concept in its earlier meaning.

Peter Juliff’s Program Design is a good start to see how conventional computer programmming started accessing data, though it is of course now outdated.

>70 kjuliff: How do I get directly to the LT library database?

>71 JoeB1934: You are using it all the time already when you make queries, add books, use touchstones. You used it when you saved your last message. Only programmers can access it directly as it holds sensitive information about members, and there have given us tools to access it, which are sufficient.

>72 kjuliff: That is what I have assumed was true, but the way you mentioned discovering janoorani24 in a database I became confused.

>73 JoeB1934: I didn’t notice her in a database. I discovered her in her database post. I saw her post about databases >58 janoorani24: and I replied I noticed this database post.. - >66 kjuliff:

Interesting discussion about databases. I come at the study of databases from an organization-of information-background, and information systems used for organization whether digital or non-digital.

When I began my career as an intelligence analyst in the 1980s, I was intrigued by the problem of losing older intelligence information because of not storing it in a way in which it could be found again. Organizations (including the military) used to have file clerks and records managers, and an excellent file clerk once showed me how to build a file system to keep track of the intelligence reports and supporting documentation I created. This was essentially a database - files (records) were stored in file cabinets and cross-referenced to other records so relationships were maintained and retrievable.

When I began my career transition to librarianship as a second career after I retired from the Air Force, I discovered that library catalogs are also databases. I started my career at the cusp of the transition of card catalogs transitioning to digital library catalogs.

Librarians used to call databases Information Storage and Retrieval Systems (ISARs) and perhaps some still do, but these days everything that stores information seems to be called a database. Information systems deal with many types of information entities -- events, persons, documents, business transactions, research projects etc. Among the purposes they serve are to inform the public, support managers, researchers, and engineers, and to provide a knowledge base for an artificial intelligence program.

I could go on and on... I love this stuff.

>75 janoorani24: To date all information is stored digitally in binary form.

>76 kjuliff: What an interesting comment. I don't believe all information is stored digitally yet, unless you mean that all digitized information is stored in binary form? That's true, however, not all information has been digitized. And I don't believe that should be the goal. I worked at the National Archives in the early 2000s, and at time, the Archives were trying to come to terms with digitizing all of their records. The argument for it to all be digitized was countered by the argument against, which was that digitized records are ephemeral, and paper lasts longer. The problem was, paper took up a lot of room. Of course, this was twenty years ago, and I'm sure things have changed, and the internet has changed the problem of digitized information being available across multiple platforms and devices, but as I frequently remind the people who come to me to find things or people online, not everything is online. Sometimes you must get up and go find the physical record or entity.

>77 janoorani24: But it’s a fact. All information stored in computers is digital - binary. Until there’s a development in quantum physics, everything is either on, 1 - or 0 off. We do not have an in between.

Book 22:
4/20/24 - The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: eBook, 315 pages
Language: English
Original Publication: Minotaur Books, Reprint 2010
As read publication: N/A
Series: Mike Bowditch Series
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Format: Digital
Publisher: Kindle, 2010
Reading dates: 04/10/2024 - 04/20/2024
Rating: 3 stars

I've had this book on my Kindle Unlimited list for a couple of years, and needed to read it so I could add something else. I'm sure the only reason I selected this book to begin with is because of fond memories of my sixth grade teacher reading us the book, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham back in 1970. I absolutely loved that story, but it bears no resemblance at all to this book's Mr. (or should I say Warden) Bowditch. This Bowditch is Mike Bowditch, a new Game Warden in Maine who makes a bunch of mistakes trying to clear his father of suspicion of murdering a developer and his police bodyguard. The problem is that Mike's father has fled the scene (after beating up another law officer), and no one else believes in his innocence. Mike does his best to tank his career, dump his girlfriend and alienate everyone around him except for an old retired game warden, who seems to believe in Mike, even if he doesn't believe Mike's father is innocent. This is the first of a 15 book series, and I did actually buy the second book, but I doubt I'll read all 15. Life is short, and I'm not that interested so far.

>79 janoorani24: I used to read those books, but generally speaking lost interest in them in 2023. 3 Stars is about right. It being about a game warden had certain inherent interest to me, having been around some of those early in my life.

>80 JoeB1934: Yes, Mike wasn't someone I particularly liked. Not liking the main character makes my decision to buy the second book a bit strange. Oh well. I was looking for Nathaniel Bowditch, brilliant self-taught mathematician and got my (fictional) next door neighbor's kid.

Books Acquired in April 2024:
1. Match for a Murderer by Dorothy Dunnett
2. Murder in Focus by Dorothy Dunnett
3. Dolly and the Bird of Paradise by Dorothy Dunnett
4. Three Thirds of a Ghost by Timothy Fuller
5. Harvard Has a Homicide by Timothy Fuller
6. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (audio)
7. The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron (Kindle)
8. The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks by Bruce Bartlett
9. A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett
10. Camino Island by John Grisham
11. This is Murder, Mr. Jones by Timothy Fuller
12. The Phantom CISO: Time to Step Out of the Shadow by Mishaal Khan
13. Trespasser by Paul Doiron (Kindle)

>82 janoorani24: I hope you enjoy those Jupiter Jones books. I've been finding them good fun.

>83 rocketjk: I began reading the first one on the Internet Archive, but then found a copy on AbeBooks, and it didn't arrive until the middle of April. It must have been well-liked when it came out; the edition I have is the third printing from the year it was published. I am enjoying it, and thank you for writing good reviews and piquing my interest.

'Book' 23
4/26/24 - The Three Strangers by Thomas Hardy
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 21 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: March, 1883 in Longman's Magazine, Collected in Wessex Tales: Strange, Lively, and Commonplace, published in 1888 by Macmillan
As read publication: Within short story collection The Withered Arm and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy, pp.140-161
Series: N/A
Genre: Mystery
Format: Paper
Publisher: Penguin Books, 1999
Reading dates: 4/19/24 - 4/26/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

This strange tale of three strangers who arrive at the cottage of a shepherd during a celebration of the shepherd's first child's christening was written by Thomas Hardy in 1883, after he had already gained fame for novels such as Far From the Madding Crowd. The strangers arrive separately during a storm, interrupt the ongoing party and disturb those in attendance in various ways, especially the second stranger who dismays the guests when they deduce his grim occupation through a song he sings about what he does. Unknown to the party guests and to each other, the strangers are all related by a circumstance that had occurred at an earlier date, and tied to Hardy's predilection for writing about rural England and its poverty and decline. I've classified it as a mystery, because of the mystery of the first stranger's identity, but it is more of a strange interlude in the lives of the people at the party -- "the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever" long after the adults at the party are in their graves.

>82 janoorani24: A good reminder that I need to jump back into Dorothy Dunnett. I've read the first in both the Lymond and Niccolò series, neither of them very recently, but they were so good that I want to keep going—especially now that I can read them on my iPad and look up words and locations and facts, which I did a lot of with Lymond and couldn't do with my print, pre-e-reader copy of Niccolò. I have the full run of Lymond except for the first, which was a library book, so I guess I'd start there. Maybe a quick reread of The Game of Kings would be in order too, to start. Which is all so aspirational, given my amount of reading time, but I think worth it.

>85 janoorani24: Dunnett is always worth a re-read -- in fact, I have the Game of Kings on my reading list for this year (you probably noticed that). I prefer the Lymond Chronicles to the House of Niccolo, but would take both series plus her mysteries and King Hereafter with me to a desert island or Mars and happily re-read them for the rest of my life. There is a companion guide to The Game of Kings called The Ultimate Guide to Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings by Laura Caine Ramsey and also two earlier guides to both series by Elspeth Morrison.

A long time ago (around 2010), I used to keep track of recipes I tried from my collection of cookbooks. I think I'll start doing this again. On Friday, I decided to try a cocktail recipe from a new cookbook I acquired this year, Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2024 called The Lovesick Crocodile on page 335. This required finding a bottle of Ancho Reyes Original Ancho Chile Liqueur, which is fortunately available here in Washington at larger liquor stores. Besides vodka, the other key ingredient is dill pickle juice.

I made up a batch for my family (all over age 21) and can't say that everyone enjoyed, most thought it too strong. But it is refreshing and I liked it and will make again. If I was rating it like a book, I'd give it 3.5 stars; rating it as a cocktail, I'd give it 4.

What a great name for a drink, or title for a book. Nice photo too.

>89 labfs39: Thank you! I love the idea of it being the title of a book! I'll have to cogitate on that.

'Book' 24
5/3/24 - The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 21 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: 1922 in The Cosmopolitan Magazine (The International Magazine Company).
As read publication: Within short story collection The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories, Volume Four: Love 1927, pp. 136-157.
Series: N/A
Genre: Humor, General Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls Company
Reading date: 5/3/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

A satirical tale of a couple from Trenton celebrating their 50th anniversary by traveling to St. Petersburg, FL for a 'Golden Honeymoon'. I thought it was extremely entertaining, even though nothing really happens. A couple in their 70's travel to St. Petersburg, Fl. in a sleeper car and stay in a boarding house there for two weeks -- but the use of vernacular language and the dialogue between the different characters is exceptional. The couple happen to meet up with the wife's ex-fiancee and his wife and the humor of the exchanges between the narrator (the entire story is narrated in the first person by the husband, Charley, who calls his wife Mother) and the ex-fiancee is delightful.

One of the things I'm enjoying about my decision to read more short stories contained in my numerous short story collections and anthologies is discovering new authors I'd never have read otherwise. I had heard of Ring Lardner, but never read anything by him. This collection belonged to my grandmother, and I have all ten volumes of The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories.

This is what Wikipedia has to say: "Ringgold Wilmer Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries—Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—all professed strong admiration for his writing, and author John O'Hara directly attributed his understanding of dialogue to him."

>91 janoorani24: Great review of this short story, Jan. At the beginning of the year I had set a goal of reading more short stories, but have fallen off that particular bandwagon. Must get back on.

Book 25:
5/9/24/24 - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 8 hrs, 6 mins (240 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Pearl Mackie
Language: English
Original Publication: Longmans, Green and CO. LTD, 1933
As read publication: Audible, 2020
Series: N/A
Genre: Classic Fiction, Humor
Format: Digital
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Reading dates: 4/15/24 - 5/9/2024
Rating: 4.5 stars

The wonderful thing about audio books with a fantastic narrator is how much is added to the book itself by being read by someone with a wonderful voice and the ability to make it seem as though you are watching a film in your head. No doubt I would have enjoyed reading this book, but listening to this edition from Penguin Audio elevated it to a marvelous experience.

Flora Poste is orphaned with little money at the age of nineteen, although she had been raised by seemingly well-to-do parents. She determines to make her way in the world by applying for shelter to distant cousins who run a farm in a remote part of Sussex, England. The story evolves into a delightfully subtle satire of all the gloomy stories about rural life in England -- from Wuthering Heights to D. H. Lawrence, with bits of Thomas Hardy, and even some Jane Austen. There were certainly bits of Emma in there as well as some "fine eyes" from Pride and Prejudice, with a little Cinderella thrown in for good measure.

Flora organizes her ramshackle relations and has a hilarious time of it. I highly recommend the audio version of this story, although I liked it so well, I went ahead and bought a paperback copy from AbeBooks to add to my collection.

'Book' 26
5/22/24 - The Death Chair from Crime Stories from 'The Strand' by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 22 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: 1899 in The Strand Magazine, July 1, Vol. XVIII, as part of an issue with 'Stories of the Sanctuary Club', pages 3-17.
As read publication: Crime Stories from 'The Strand', pages 61-83.
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Stories, Crime
Format: Paper
Publisher: The Folio Society, 1999
Reading date: 5/22/2024
Rating: 3 stars

This is a story related by the fictional Dr. Cato, who came into a large fortune when he was about 40, and decided to put his inheritance into opening a medical facility called The Sanctuary Club and run it with a friend, Dr. Chetwynd. Dr. Cato tells the story of three patients who come for treatment and how one of the patients, a Spanish art collector befriends two other patients, a young man and a lady, and of how Dr. Chetwynd suspects the Spanish gentleman's motives and sanity. It comes to pass after the patients return to their homes that one of them, a young man, is found brutally murdered about 300 yards from the Spanish gentleman's home/art museum, and the mystery of how he died and who his murderer was remained unsolved for over a year. The case is solved when the two remaining patients come back to the sanctuary for a second stay, and Dr. Cato is called upon to assist the lady patient with selling a valuable art object to the Spanish gentleman. In introducing the story of the death chair, Dr. Cato writes, "Strange cases came to my knowledge, stories of the most thrilling and absorbing interest fell to my lot to listen to and sympathise with...From time to time my brother doctor and I had to face adventures of the most thrilling and dangers of the most hair-breadth a character, that even now my pulse quickens when I think of them." This gives me the sense that other issues of The Strand may have had more stories from The Sanctuary Club.

I read a story in the same short story collection last month, and posted this short bio of one of the authors, Robert Eustace from Wikipedia:

Robert Eustace was the pen name of Eustace Robert Barton (1869–1943), an English doctor and author of mystery and crime fiction with a theme of scientific innovation. He also wrote as Eustace Robert Rawlings. Eustace often collaborated with other writers, producing a number of works with the author L. T. Meade and others. He is credited as co-author with Dorothy L. Sayers of the novel The Documents in the Case, for which he supplied the main plot idea and supporting medical and scientific details.

This brief bio of L. T. Meade is also from Wikipedia:

Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), writing under the pseudonym L. T. Meade, was a prolific writer of girls' stories. She began writing at 17 and produced over 280 books in her lifetime, being so prolific that no fewer than eleven new titles under her byline appeared in the first few years after her death. Although known primarily for her writings for girls, she also wrote "sentimental" and "sensational" stories, religious stories, historical novels, adventure, romances, and mysteries, including several with male co-authors. The first of these was Dr. Clifford Halifax, with whom she first collaborated in 1893 and wrote six books. A year later she first teamed with Robert Eustace, and turned out eleven volumes with him.

>75 janoorani24: ff: I was enjoying this conversation about databases. >78 kjuliff: That's (one of) the holy grail(s) of computing these days, isn't it, a bit with more than two states?

>95 Jim53: Jim, I'm still working my way through Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems -- I've made it to page 142. As I read along, I take notes, and I've been trying to relate what Dr. Soergel wrote to my current job as a cyber threat intelligence analyst. For Dr. Soergel, a data base did not have to be digital - any type of information system that stored data was a data base.

I did have to take classes in digital database design and understand well the concept of 1s and 0s, since I was a computer science major as an undergraduate, but have trouble with the concept of quantum computing, though I find the idea of it fascinating.

Books Acquired in May 2024:

1. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
2. The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, 3 Volume Set edited by Avron Barr and others
3. Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg
4. Cyber Threat Intelligence: The No-Nonsense Guide for CISOs and Security Managers by Aaron Roberts
5. How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk by Douglas W. Hubbard
6. The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, Volume IV by Avron Barr
7. Chamber's Biographical Dictionary, Ninth Edition, by Magnus Magnusson
8. On Looking: The Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation by Alexandra Horowitz
9. Mend!: A Refashioning Manual and Manifesto by Kate Sekules
10. The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial by David Lipsky (Audio)
11. Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy by Ian Kelly (Audio)
12. The River We Remember by William Kent Kreuger (Audio)

Book Talley for April:

Physical Books Acquired: 10 (0 read)
Physical Books Read: 2 (Pages: 83) (all short stories/works in physical books)
Digital Books Acquired: 2 (1 read)
Digital Books Read: 1 (Pages: 315)
Audio Books Acquired: 1 (0 heard)
Audio Books Heard: 1 (14.5 hours) 352 equivalent pages

Total Read:
1 book, 2 short stories/works (349 pages) and 1 audio book = 4 books
4 fiction; 0 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: N/A

Fiction:
Short Story - Mystery: 2
Mystery: 1
Historical Fiction: 1

Best in April:

Fiction: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Nonfiction: N/A
Short Work: The Three Strangers by Thomas Hardy

Book Talley for May:

Physical Books Acquired: 11 (0 read)
Physical Books Read: 2 (Pages: 492)
Digital Books Acquired: 0 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Audio Books Acquired: 3
Audio Books Heard: 1 (8 hours) 240 equivalent pages

Total:
0 books, 2 short stories (43 pages) and 1 audio book = 3 books
3 fiction; 0 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 0

Fiction:
Short Story - Mystery: 1
Short Story - American Humor: 1
British Classic Literature: 1

Best in May:

Fiction: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Nonfiction: N/A
Short Work: The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner

>97 janoorani24: Wow. That first half dozen look rather intimidating. But the Horowitz looks very interesting. I've only read two of Krueger's, and I keep thinking about going back for more, but I haven't gotten there yet, even though I liked Ordinary Grace a lot.

>99 Jim53: I have to admit, I don't know when I'll get around to reading the cyber stuff - I haven't added any to my reading list for the year. The only ones I've added are the Unsworth, Horowitz, and Sekules books -- the rest are someday...

I'm about to go spend a few hours at my favorite brew pub to finish up my current non-fiction book, Spice: The History of a Temptation.

Book 27:
6/8/24 - Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 384 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
As read publication: Vintage Books, 2005
Series: N/A
Genre: History
Sub-genres: Spices--History; Cookery (Spices)--History; Spice trade--History
Format: Paper
Publisher: Vintage Books (imprint of Random House, Inc.)
Reading dates: 1/1/2022 - 6/8/2024
Rating: 4 stars

I enjoy these type of histories on a single in-depth topic, although this book took me over two years to complete. At times, Turner's details got me a bit bogged down with numerous medieval monk's various condemnations of spice and too many examples of spice's supposed uses for sexual arousal, but for the most part I enjoyed learning about spices (covers particularly, pepper, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg) and their history as it relates to the history of culinary tastes, geopolitics, trade, colonization, and economics.

The book is broken down by topic rather than chronologically: starting with the early voyages of discovery and their search for a shorter route to the Indies and the Spice Islands. Part two of the book discusses spices and the palate, beginning in ancient European and North African civilizations, moving on to Medieval Europe. Part three discusses spice's and the body, both medicinal and sexual. Part four talks about spice and the spirit -- this section bogged down with detailed discussions about ancient and medieval religious attitudes toward spices.

I felt the final section about the end of the spice age was too short. I would have liked to know more about the effect of new flavors in the decline of spices importance (peppers in particular), and about the effect on the indigenous populations of the spice islands and the ravaging of their way of life by the European colonists. This destruction of civilizations is covered, but not thoroughly.

Some favorite quotes/facts:

from page 181: "The spice trade might conceivably have played a still more direct role in the great outbreak of the Black Death of 1348. From a very early date, the advent of the plague was attributed to galleys returning to Italy from the Black Sea, where they went to acquire Eastern luxuries at the terminus of the trans-Asian caravan routes." (for a much more thorough discussion of this aspect of the Black Death, I recommend The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time).

from page 306: "Outside the Essex town of Saffron Walden, few would guess that in medieval times England was long Europe's greatest producer of saffron." (something I didn't know). Also from page 306, "In the 1660s, the English physician Thomas Sydenham, once hailed as "the Shakespeare of medicine," claimed to have found a wonder drug. His laudanum, he boasted, was an unrivaled "cordial." Made from a pint of sherry or Canary wine, its chief added ingredients were saffron, cinnamon, and cloves, beefed up with a two-ounce slug of opium."

Spice includes an excellent bibliography and index.

Edited to fix some grammar mistakes.

>101 janoorani24: I've never read any of these histories (spice, salt, etc), but you make this one sound interesting. Nice review!

>102 labfs39: I really enjoy them. I've read a book about the chocolate wars between Mars and Hershey, one about hot peppers, and several by Simon Winchester on things like the Krakatoa eruption, and the last British possessions like St Helena and the Falklands. They're great -- the Simon Winchester ones fly by.

Book 28:
6/11/24 - Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems by Dagobert Soergel
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 450 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Academic Press, Inc., 1985
As read publication: Same
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction
Sub-genres: Library and Information Science; Information storage and retrieval systems
Format: Paper
Publisher: Academic Press, Inc. (An imprint of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers)
Reading dates: 3/10/24 - 6/11/2024
Rating: 4 stars

I first read this book in 1998 as part of the first course toward earning a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. The course was taught by the author, and was intended to weed out people not suited for the study of the discipline. Other than the course I took on Knowledge Representation, it was the most difficult course I took in the program, and not at all what I expected librarians needed to learn.

I decided to re-read this book as part of my current job and the need to understand databases better. Interestingly, Soergel states in the preface that the book gives, "a theoretical base and perspective for the analyis, design, and operation of information systems, particularly their information storage and retrieval (ISAR) component, whether mechanized or manual. Information systems deal with many types of entities: events, persons, documents, business transactions, museum objects, research projects, and technical parts, to name a few. Among the purposes they serve are to inform the public, to support managers, researchers, and engineers, and to provide a knowledge base for an artificial intelligence program." I was surprised to see artificial intelligence mentioned, since it seems like nowadays it's looked at as being such a new concept, at least by the general public. I ended up ordering four books on artificial intelligence mentioned in the bibliography, purely for their historical interest and to add to my collection -- probably will not read them from cover to cover.

I took several pages of notes and plan to incorporate some of the ideas into the mission statement and strategy I am writing for a new work unit. I must admit, I skimmed through the parts on index language structure and data base organization, since they don't apply to what I'm trying to do.

This isn't a book I would recommend to the average reader, and many of the techniques are out-of-date, but the basic concepts and theories are still relevant today.

There is an excellent annotated bibliography and index.

>101 janoorani24: Spice sounds interesting, I wishlisted it. Salt also sounds like a fascinating topic! I have Or noir (Oil, Power and War in English) but somehow never got around to finish it.

>105 FlorenceArt: Another similar book that I would like to read someday is Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kuriansky

>104 janoorani24: I took courses like that for my MLIS too. My texts were Text Information Retrieval Systems and Database Management Systems. Where did you get yours? I started at Indiana University where I was working as a Slavic serials cataloger and finished at the University of Washington where I managed the Center for Demography and Ecology library.

>103 janoorani24: I have the Krakatoa book by Winchester, but haven't read it yet. I've heard good things about it and really should get to it.

>107 labfs39: I got my MLIS at the University of Maryland. I went straight from earning the degree to a job with a government agency, so I've never worked in a traditional public library. I've always wanted to though.

I have eight books by Winchester, of which I've read four: Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories and Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire are my favorites so far. Krakatoa was good, but a little dry in places.

>108 janoorani24: I've only read Winchester's Professor and the Madman, but enjoyed it quite a bit. I own both Krakatoa and The Man Who Loved China.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Daniel Tammet's book, or how you found out about it.

'Book' 29
6/14/24 - The Last Lesson by Alphonse Daudet
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 6 pages
Original Language: French
Translator: Unknown
Original English Publication: 1900 in The Novels, Romances and Memoirs of Alphonse Daudet, Provençal Edition: Monday Tales. Publisher: Society of English and French Literature, New York. 8 pages
Original French Publication: 1873 in Contes du Lundi as La Dernière Classe - Récit D'un Petit Alsacien, by Alphonse Daudet (may have appeared in Le Figaro prior to publication in book form) 8 pages
As read publication: Within short story collection The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories, Volume Five: Drama, 1927, pp. 133-138.
Series: The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories (In Ten Volumes)
Genre: General Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls Company
Reading date: 6/14/24
Rating: 3 stars

I spent far more time researching this short piece than I did reading it.

First, a little about the story itself -- it's told from the point of view of a young student, Franz, who is running late to school, and what happens once he arrives. One needs a tiny bit of knowledge about French history, particularly of Alsace-Lorraine to understand the significance of the last lesson - it's the last lesson taught in French, since the 'Prussians' have ordered that, starting the next day, lessons are only to be taught in German in the schools. I only know a little about this part of French history, but this part of France was lost to Germany (Prussia) at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in around 1870.

From the story: Then, from one thing to another, M. Hamel went on to talk of the French language, saying it was the most beautiful language in the world -- the clearest, the most logical; that we must guard it among us and never forget it, because when a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison."

I always like to find the original publication source when I read a story from a collection of stories, so when I searched the Internet Archive, I found what I think was the first publication of the story in English, which was by the Society of English and French Literature in multi-volume collection of Daudet's work published in 1900. The full book is available in the Internet Archive, and The Last Lesson is the first piece. When comparing the two, I noticed a difference in the translation of a line (from the Funk and Wagnell's 1927 publication), "I started for school very late that morning and was in great dread of a scolding, especially because M. Hamel had said that he would question us on participles, and I did not know the first word about them." I underlined 'word' because it is translated as 'thing' in the earlier (1900) translation I found on the Internet Archive. Neither publication indicates the name of the translator. I don't actually speak any French, but I decided to look up the original French story (also available in total on the Internet Archive), and the word there is 'mot', which even I know is 'word'. Why the difference, I wonder? Anyway, at this point I decided I'd probably spent enough time on an 8 page short story, but a final word -- according to a review on the Internet Archive's notes to the 1900 edition of the story, Daudet "was probably the most famous author in the world between 1877-1882"!

Book 30:
6/27/24 - Trespasser by Paul Doiron
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: eBook, 320 pages
Language: English
Original Publication: Minotaur Books, 2011
As read publication: Kindle edition
Series: Mike Bowditch Series
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Format: Digital
Publisher: Kindle, 2011
Reading dates: 04/21/2024 - 6/27/2024
Rating: 2.5 stars

This is book two of the series featuring the Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch. I finished the first in the series in April. Basic formula of murder, find out who did it, mostly through luck, and the hero suffering various grievous bodily harm and relationship issues. Nothing special, and since the author's descriptions of Maine in both this and the first book don't appeal to me (depressing people, depressing weather), I doubt I will read another.

Book 31:
6/28/24 - The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 12 hrs, 4 mins (368 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Jayne Entwistle
Language: English
Original Publication: Ace, 2021
As read publication: Audible, 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Magical Realism Fiction
Format: Digital
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Reading dates: 5/10/24 - 6/28/2024
Rating: 4 stars

An excellent retelling of Norse mythologies, combining several stories into one long narrative with the witch, Angrboda as the main character. Angrboda is harassed and persecuted throughout the tale by Odin and other Asgaardian gods and goddesses for her secret of foretelling the future. She bears three children to Loki, who in this telling is Odin's adopted brother, not his son. There are many memorable characters in addition to Angrboda and Loki, such as Scardi the female giant warrior, the giant she-wolf who is one of Angrboda's best friends, and Angrboda's daughter Hel. I enjoyed the naration as well, though sometimes it was difficult to distinguish who was talking, because Entwistle's voices blended together in dialogue.

Book 32:
6/30/24 - Slay Ride by Dick Francis
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 206 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Michael Joseph Ltd, 1973
As read publication: Pan Books Ltd, 1974
Series: N/A
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Format: Paper
Publisher: Pan Books Ltd
Reading dates: 4/16/24 - 6/30/2024
Rating: 4 stars

I am a huge fan of Dick Francis and have 51 of his books. I was looking over my shelves a couple of months ago and discovered a book by him that I hadn't read. I received it as a Bookmooch in 2012, and just stuck it on my shelf unread. Dick Francis was an author of mystery/thrillers with a connection of some sort to horse racing throughout all of his many books. Prior to beginning life as a successful author, he was a champion steeplechase jockey and rode horses for the Queen Mother in the 1950s. Slay Ride is set primarily in Norway and centers around the mysterious disappearance of a British jockey (and the day's track proceeds) who rode in Norwegian races as a way to make extra money. The main character is the chief investigator for the British Jockey Club who is asked to come to Norway to help solve the crime. Through a process of elimination, it's discovered the jockey was murdered and the cash remains missing. That isn't all that is missing -- the jockey's wife is seriously injured back in England by thugs who are trying to find some missing papers the jockey supposedly had in his possession. The Jockey Club investigator is treated to several harrowing narrow escapes of his own by characters trying to keep him from finding the truth. Francis always has a subplot going on that's unrelated to horse racing and he provides details about a topic I seldom know anything about. In this case, it was learning about the reading of core samples for mining exploration. Engaging story -- tight, clean ending.

>112 janoorani24: My ears pricked up at "Maine Game Warden" (I trained to be a Junior Maine Guide as a teen), but I'll pass on this one. Thanks for warning me off.

>115 labfs39: I did think of you while I was reading both books, since I know you live in Maine. These seem to be the author's attempt to be the Tony Hillerman or Craig Johnson of Maine, but they fall flat. Perhaps they get better as he goes along -- I thinks he's up to book 15, and he gets high marks from other readers.

>114 janoorani24: Thanks for bringing this to my attention as Dick Francis was one of my favorite authors in my early days. I need to get back to that time, as I do with Tony Hillerman. Not exactly literary mysteries, but I really loved them.

>112 janoorani24: I have read a couple of his books because being a forester, or game warden was one of my childhood's fantasies. However, after the last one I decided I wouldn't do any more for precisely the reasons you designate.

>117 JoeB1934: I re-read Dick Francis books all the time, the way I do Georgette Heyer. Sometimes my brain needs a break and they are nice to fall back on - well written formula books, and there are so many, I seldom remember the ending, so it's almost like reading them for the first time.

Thanks for posting your reaction to my latest thread. I appreciate it when others react to the same statement I reacted to. As you can see that book is really registering with me.

Book Talley for June:

Physical Books Acquired: 7 (1 read)
Physical Books Read: 4 (Pages: 1,059)
Digital Books Acquired: 3 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 1 (Pages: 320)
Audio Books Acquired: 2
Audio Books Heard: 1 (12 hours) 368 equivalent pages

Total:
4 books, 1 short story (8 pages) and 1 audio book = 6 books
4 fiction; 2 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 2
History: 1
Information Science:1

Fiction:
Short Story - French Literature: 1
Mystery/Thriller: 2
Fantasy: 1

Best in June:

Fiction: The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Nonfiction: Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
Short Work: The Last Lesson by Alphonse Daudet

Books Acquired in June 2024:

1. Bridgerton Box Set by Julia Quinn
2. The Lost Bookshop by Susan Wiggs
3. Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly
4. Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World by Eric Jay Dolin
5. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
6. Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism by Aja Barber
7. Loved Clothes Last: How the Joy of Rewearing and Repairing Your Clothes Can Be a Revolutionary Act by Orsola de Castro

2nd Quarter 2024 and Semi-Annual Round-up

Completed 32 books, short works, or audio books so far, and read 7,756 pages (or equivalent)

Best Books Read in 2nd Quarter:

Fiction: Cold Comfort Farm
Non-fiction: Spice: The History of a Temptation
Short Work: The Three Strangers

Best Books Read So Far This Year:

Fiction: Cold Comfort Farm
Non-fiction: The Library Book
Best Short Work: Space and Dimensionality by Thomas K. Simpson

Book 33:
7/18/24 - That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 11 hrs (352 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Marc Randolph
Language: English
Original Publication: Little, Brown and Company, 2019
As read publication: Audible, 2019
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction
Sub-genre: Business, Memoir
Format: Digital
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Reading dates: 6/29/24 - 7/18/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

I've been a big Netflix fan ever since they began back in the late 1990s, and was saddened when they completely quit sending out DVDs in the mail a couple of years ago -- I was one of the last hold-outs of people who still received them in the mail. Now I still subscribe to the streaming service, but it isn't the same for me, since I had a ritual of watching a DVD every Sunday while I ironed clothes. I have a little TV that only plays DVDs in my bedroom -- it isn't hooked up to cable or the internet.

Anyway, I was interested to hear about the history of Netflix, and this memoir by one of the co-founders was pretty good. The author made a good narrator, and the book flowed nicely. I recommend it to those who like this sort of memoir/business book.

'Books' 34 & 35
7/19/24 - The Drummer Boy on Independence Day by E. L. Doctorow & Kaho by Haruki Murakami
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Stories, 8 pages total
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publication: The New Yorker Magazine, July 8 & 15, 2024
Genre: General Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: The New Yorker Magazine
Reading date: 7/19/24
Rating: 3.5 stars for The Drummer Boy, and 4 stars for Kaho

The Drummer Boy, according to a note on the text, was written by Doctorow sometime in the 1950s and was recently found in his papers at the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. To my knowledge, this is the only work by Doctorow I've read, so I can't compare it to his later works, but it was okay. It's about the appearance of a Civil War veteran in a 4th of July parade in a small southern town. "No one could tell the clock by him; no one could quote and epigram of his; no one could ever remember his being a friend of their daddy--or even their granddaddy." The veteran had never agreed to march in any other celebration, and for this one, he insisted he walk at the very front of the parade, and he gives a memorable speech at the end that brings disquiet to the town's celebration.

Kaho is a short story about a young woman who goes on a blind date, and her experience after her date tells her she's the ugliest woman he's ever seen. "Instead of feeling shock at his words, she was, quite simply, unsettled and bewildered." Kaho takes six months to think about it and eventually writes a children's book to "bring emotional healing". I don't want to say more, but I recommend this story -- it moved me in a good way.

I subscribe to The New Yorker, I don't know if the links above will work for non-subscribers.

>124 janoorani24: Hello, fellow Netflix DVD holdout! I was subscribed until the very end, too, long after I started getting funny looks for mentioning the fact. I still sort of miss it, just because it was a great way of organizing my viewing and narrowing down the choices at any given time. Now I sometimes get so paralyzed trying to figure out what I'm going to watch next that sometimes I end up not watching anything at all.

Not sure if I'd be interested in a book about the company or not, but I might consider giving it a look.

>126 bragan: Hello bragan! Nice to meet someone else who misses the DVD subscription. The book does delve into how they came up with that model, and how well it worked for them, and why it set them apart (and ultimately helped lead to the demise) or Blockbuster. Being able to set up a list of what you wanted to watch next, and serendipitously discover other things to watch through their recommendation algorithm, was fairly revolutionary. And then having the next disc automatically mailed to you as soon as you turned one in! Fantastic.

Book 36:
8/9/24 - The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Hardback, 304 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Hanover Square Press, 2023
As read publication: Same
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction
Sub-genre: Science, Space
Format: Paper
Publisher: Hanover Square Press, Toronto, Canada
Reading dates: 7/1/24 - 8/9/2024
Rating: 5 stars

Green has written a fascinating exploration about the possibility of discovering alien life, and how our search for life elsewhere in the cosmos informs our understanding of our own life here on Earth. The fascinating parts are how she uses fiction and film to discuss our explorations -- anything from Star Trek to A Wrinkle in Time. The bibliography is a treasure trove of knowledge all by itself.

I read this for a book club I recently joined. I haven't joined a book club in many years -- ever since the old Seattle-area Third Place Thingers sort of dissolved in around 2013. This book club meets monthly in my favorite brew pub and combines three of my favorite things -- beer, books, and talking about books. This choice was for July's meeting, and I hadn't yet finished it, but was so interested in the book that I pushed through to the end. This book club usually combines a fiction book with the non-fiction book, and July's fiction book was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I also haven't finished (and can't believe I never read before).

Some quotes from the book,

On singularity (Page 195): "Shostak is hardly alone in thinking the singularity is looming. It seems to be looming wherever you are. In 1993, Vinge wrote, "We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth." At that time, he predicted that superhuman intelligence would be created in 30 years;...In 1970, computer scientist and AI pioneer Marvin Minsky thought we were three to eight years from a human-intelligence computer. Elon Musk said in 2020 he thought AI could overtake us by 2025. Futurist and singularity promoter Ray Kurzweil thinks a computer with human intelligence will be here by 2029 and the singularity in 2045."

She provides a description of Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep (Page 201) -- one of my favorite science fiction novels -- that helped me to understand some of the ideas in a book I like a lot, don't really understand.

On language (Page 226): "Our math may be just one language among many for making sense of the universe. Concepts like prime numbers or infinity or counting may be neither universal nor fundamental -- if not arbitrary, then intrinsically derived from human physiology or culture."

I worked on a project for NASA about a decade ago trying to identify experts in the field of exoplanetary life, so I know a tiny bit about the topic. Green's book explores it in an insightful and unique way and helps clarify some of my understanding.

>128 janoorani24: A really good find as this topic is also very interesting to me. I spend too much time trying to find literary mysteries and neglect my non-fiction interests. I will definitely get a copy of this book.

>129 JoeB1934: Great to hear you are intrigued. My short review doesn't adequately express how much I enjoyed reading it. I hope you like it as well.

'Book' 37:
8/9/24 - On the Motion of Animals by Aristotle
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Treatise/Essay, 7 pages
Original Language: Ancient Greek
Translator: A. S. L. Farquharson
Original Publication: Around 2,350 years ago, Biological Treatises, On the Motion of Animals
As read publication: Great Books of the Western World, Volume 9. Aristotle II, The Works of Aristotle: Volume II - Encyclopedia Britannica and The University of Chicago, 1952, pp. 233-239. Text and annotations reprinted from The Works of Aristotle, translated into English under the editorship of W. D. Ross, by arrangement with Oxford University Press.
Series: Great Books of the Western World
Genre: Philosophy
Sub-genre: Natural History
Format: Paper
Publisher: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago
Reading dates: 8/9/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

This treatise explores the principles behind the movement of animals (including humans). It examines the causes and effects of animal motion, and talks about the interplay between the soul, the body, and the environment. Aristotle says movement originates from the soul's desire or intention, which leads to physiological responses leading to motion. He implies that all animals have souls with this assertion. He introduces the concept of "unmoved ground" to explain the foundational principles of animal movement. By "unmoved ground," Aristotle is referring to a stable point or a part of the body that remains stationary while other parts move, for example, the elbow joint remains stationary when the forearm moves, or a leg pushing against a stable ground is able to move. He argues that for any motion to happen, there must be something that doesn't move. This unmoved part provides a stable base that allows other parts of the body to move effectively. There is a section about how this applies to the motion of the Earth in a sphere, but this was over my head, either because the translation wasn't great, or I'm tired, or a combination of both. There is also sort of an explanation of "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Aristotle wrote this treatise as part of his exploration into biology around 2,350 years ago, and it seems like there are some pretty advanced ideas for that time. I wish I had a better translation because it was a little hard to understand. The text refers to several diagrams, which, sadly, have been lost to time.

>128 janoorani24: OK, I think both this one and the Netflix book are going on my wishlist! I did wonder for a moment if I really need another book on SETI and the possibility of alien life, as I've read several of them already, but the SF angle has me interested.

>132 bragan: Like I said, the bibliography alone is worth reading. I learned a lot about all the science fiction writing and film that explores the topic of alien intelligence, but i learned even more about the definition of intelligence and it's evolution here on Earth. Our next book club read, which I'm reading now, is The Soul of an Octopus -- about the extremely smart octopus, but also delves into other intelligent beings, including humans.

>133 janoorani24: The Soul of an Octopus is one I have, but haven't gotten around to reading yet. Hoping it's a good one!

Book 38:
8/25/24 - The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 262 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2015
As read publication: Atria Paperback
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction
Sub-genre: Science, Ocean, Sea Creatures,
Format: Paper
Publisher: Atria Paperback
Reading dates: 8/9/24 - 8/25/2024
Rating: 3.5 stars

An interesting account of the intelligence of octopuses, but overall, a little disappointing.

The author includes a lot of facts which I found interesting, such as, the scientifically correct plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi (it turns out you can't put a Latin ending --i-- on a word derived from Greek). Also, "A giant Pacific octopus--the largest of the world's 250 or so octopus species--can easily overpower a person. Just one of a big male's three-inch-diameter suckers can lift 30 pounds, and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 of them. An octopus bite can inject a neurotoxic venom as well as saliva that has the ability to dissolve flesh." Octopus blood is blue, because copper, not iron, carries its oxygen.

Montgomery includes many examples of what she calls proof of octopus intelligence - they use tools, disguise themselves based on who their prey is (or who may be preying on them), can escape their environment, exhibit curiosity about the humans studying them, etc. But is this just humans placing what we believe is intelligent behavior onto an animal whose thoughts and motives we can never really decipher or understand?

The first half of the book was very good and I enjoyed learning about such an alien creature, but as the the book went further into the author's interactions with the octopuses at the Boston Aquarium, I felt she inserted her reactions too much into the narrative, and the book lost its sparkle, moving what would have been a possible 4.5 star book back to only three and a half stars.

>135 janoorani24: Great review, and I didn't know that the plural of 'octopus' was 'octopuses' either!

Book 39:
8/29/24 - The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Hardback, 805 pages
Original Language: Spanish (translated by Lucia Graves)
Original Publication: El Laberinto de los Espíritus in 2016 by Planeta
As read publication: Translation in 2017 by Harper Collins
Series: Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Format: Paper
Publisher: Harper Collins
Reading dates: 3/23/24 - 8/29/2024
Rating: 5 stars

I lost myself in this book. I haven't read the first three books in the series, and only occasionally felt I should have, so I don't think it's necessary to read the other books in order to enjoy this final book. This is from Wikipedia, "Publishers Weekly called it a" gripping and moving thriller," adding that "fans of complex and literate mysteries featuring detectives with integrity working under oppressive and corrupt regimes will be well satisfied." The Irish Times opined that "this is a novel to lose oneself in, and it promotes the sort of reading experience we remember from childhood – of complete absorption into a fantasy world – but rarely attain in later life.""

I read this book slowly, mesmerized by the language, and dragging the experience out as long as I could. My copy is a library book (renewed many times over the months), and I'm going to buy my own copy now, so I can re-read it even more slowly and mark up the pages to my heart's content.

The book begins with Daniel Sempere wondering whether he can ever become a good enough writer to tell the story his family's history, particularly during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, and especially the story of his mother and her death. Then it moves to the mystery of the Spanish Minister of Culture's disappearance in 1959, and the assignment of an investigative pair of detectives to find the Minister. Alicia Gris is the lead detective, and the story goes backwards into part of her life story and then returns to 1959 and ties her background in with Daniel Sempere, his son Julián, and a lifelong friend of the Sempere family, Fermín. It sounds complicated, but the author manages to tie all the many threads together into a wonderful tapestry of stories within stories. It's been a very long time since I've read such a good book.

>137 janoorani24: I agree, it is a fabulous 5-star book!

'Book' 40:
9/7/24 - The Haunts of the Black Sea Bass by Charles Frederick Holder
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Sport/Essay, 5 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: 1891, July, Scribner's Magazine
As read publication: Bound Volume, Scribner's Magazine: Volume X, July-December, 1891
Series: Semi-annual Bindings of Magazine
Genre: Periodical
Sub-genre: Natural History
Format: Paper
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891
Reading date: 9/7/24
Rating: 3 stars

This article about catching a Black Sea Bass (named thus by the author of the article; it's actually a Giant sea bass (stereolepsis gigas)) is contained in the bound edition of Scribner's Magazine for July-December 1891. I purchased this volume at the Back of Beyond Books bookstore in Moab, Utah several years ago. I was able to narrow down the actual issue the article appeared in to July 1891.

Although short, the article provided information about the history of Catalina Island (off the southern coast of California) and the surrounding waters. "The water here was so clear, objects forty feet below could be distinctly seen, glances into the depths showing an almost tropical condition of things. Bright-hued fishes, yellow and orange, darted by, while patches of wiry sea-weed gleamed with blue and iridescent tints."

The author describes catching a 342.5 lb giant sea bass with a hand-line and the hours it took to bring it in, "I was unprepared for the deep-water tactics of this king of the bass." Sadly, since 1891, this huge fish has become critically endangered and is seldom seen in the waters around Catalina Island.

According to Wikipedia, Holder was a passionate naturalist throughout his life, he was known for his books on marine zoology and the first books on big-game fishing, a sport Holder pioneered in 1869. His books were noted for their combination of accurate scientific detail with exciting narratives.

I read this article as part of my goal to read more from the two shelves of books I own that are either short story collections, anthologies or other works of that sort.

>137 janoorani24: I have yet to read anything by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, despite his having been on my wish list for years. Sounds like this is a good one.

>139 janoorani24: "The author describes catching a 342.5 lb giant sea bass with a hand-line"

My goodness! I can't imagine. It's unfortunate that the species is now critically endangered.

'Book' 41:
9/13/24 - Medusa's Ankles by A. S. Byatt
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts, Essays
Type: Short Story, 24 pages
Original Language: English
Translator: N/A
Original Publication: 1993, Chatto & Windus, Limited
As read publication: 1996, Vintage International
Series: The Matisse Stories
Genre: Short Stories
Sub-genre: Literary
Format: Paper
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Reading date: 9/13/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is the first of three short stories with a work of Matisse as inspiration for the story. The setting for Medusa's Ankles is a hair salon somewhere in London. A middle-aged woman chooses to have her hair done because she can see Matisse's Rosy Nude through the window. She becomes a regular customer of the owner of the upscale salon, and listens to him tell her about his wife, and eventually, over the years, of his wife and his mistress. After several years, the hairdresser takes an extended vacation with his mistress and closes the salon for a month for remodeling. When the shop reopens, the woman returns to get her hair done for a special occasion, and the salon's interior is completely different and the Matisse painting is gone. The owner pushes her off to an assistant halfway through her cut and styling, after telling her he is leaving his wife for good to marry his mistress. It all proves too much for the woman and she snaps.

Sadly, my description can't compare to the writing itself. A. S. Byatt is a gifted author -- the only other story I've read by her was Possession, which won the Booker Prize. The volume of short stories is only 128 pages long, and I look forward to eventually reading the other two stories.

'Book' 42:
9/20/24 - The Izu Dancer(Izu no Odoriko by Yasunari Kawabata
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 29 pages
Original Language: Japanese
Translator: Edward Seidensticker
Original Publication: The Atlantic Monthly, December 1954, for Intercultural Publications, Inc.
As read publication: Included in the collection The Izu Dancer and Other Stories published by Charles E. Tuttle, 1974
Series: N/A
Re-read
Genre: Short Story
Format: Paper
Publisher: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan
Reading date: 9/20/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

I have had this copy of short stories by Japanese authors translated into English since 1974. I was an exchange student and attended a Japanese high school in a small village in the prefecture of Akita, which is in northern Japan. The translation in this volume is an abridged version of the original story published in 1926, and I think that may explain why I've never understood why Kawabata won a Nobel Prize for literature, since it's so simple and uninteresting, and this is his most famous story according to Wikipedia. This translation was the first English translation and it was originally published in 1955 in The Atlantic Monthly. Wikipedia speculates the parts that were left out were possibly because of Cold War sensibilities. I found out there is a newer, complete translation by a different translator, and I have it on order at my library. I'll update this review after I have read the full version.

>143 janoorani24: I like Kawabata, and a quick internet search shows an abridged form in The Atlantic, or the complete translation on archive.org. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

>143 janoorani24: Great review, and thanks >144 labfs39: for mentioning the online translation on archive.org. I'm looking forward to reading this.

>144 labfs39: My apologies for not posting a review with my post. I had to leave for work and I didn't want to have what I'd already written disappear. I'll write a short review first, but do want to acknowledge that I think this version is not a great translation. I didn't realize it was abridged when I read it, and found the full version by a different translator while I was doing my research for the book I have. I have it on hold at my library. I'm glad you like Kawabata!

>146 janoorani24: I'll skip the abridged version then and will look for another translation.

Book 43:
9/27/24 - Timeline by Michael Crichton
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Novel, 512 pages
Library Book
Original Publication: 1999, Alfred A. Knopf
As read publication: Ballantine Books, 2003
Series: N/A
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Reading dates: 8/15/24-9/27/24
Rating: 3 stars

I watched the movie adaptation and thought it was both a mediocre science fiction/time travel and a mediocre historical fiction movie. I thought the book would be better. It wasn't. I love both genres, especially when they are done well; but Crichton doesn't manage to do either well in this story. The characters are really flat, the history isn't well presented, and the science fiction part is interesting, but not the way Crichton presented it. The best part of the book is the bibliography, which shows he did great research for both the science and the history. Too bad his writing is so awful in the book. He also left a gaping hole at the end by not doing a better job of tying characters at the beginning of the novel into the ending somehow. They just disappear from the narrative. I wouldn't waste time reading this unless you are a huge Crichton fan.

Book 44:
10/18/24 - Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Novel, 195 pages
Library Book
Original Publication: 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
As read publication: Same
Series: N/A
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Science Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Reading dates: 9/24/24-10/18/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

I read this for a book club. Sometime in the future an area exists that has seen many expeditions to study it. It seems to exist somewhere in the southeast of the U.S., but it's never really identified. A mystery surrounds the landscape, and the suspenseful prose kept me on the edge of my seat, but I don't really enjoy books like this that keep me guessing and don't answer all the questions. Apparently, there are two more books set in the same location, but I don't plan to read them.

Update: After discussion with the book club last evening, I've added half a star to my rating. The writing is very good, but it's still not the type of science fiction I enjoy, so I probably won't read the other two books in the series.

I'm behind on my reading logs. Here's one for July 2024:

Book Talley for July:

Physical Books Acquired: 9 (1 read in August)
Physical Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Digital Books Acquired: 1 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Audio Books Acquired: 2
Audio Books Heard: 1 (11 hours) 352 equivalent pages

Total:
0 books, 2 short stories (8 pages) and 1 audio book = 3 books
2 fiction; 1 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 1
History: 1

Fiction:
Short Story - Japanese literature: 1
Short Story - American literature: 1

Best in July:

Fiction: None
Nonfiction: That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph - 3.5 stars
Short Work: Kaho by Haruki Murakami - 4.0 stars

"Book" 45
10/27/24 - Greek Lyric Poetry translated by Richmond Lattimore
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Poetry, 8 pages (excerpt in World Masterpieces)
Original Language: Various dialects of Ancient Greek
Original Publication: Composed sometime from the seventh into the fifth centuries B.C., by various poets, including Sappho and Solon
As read: Excerpts in World Masterpieces, Third Edition, Volume 1, 1973 and Greek Lyrics, Second Edition, 1960 (reprint)
Genre: Poetry
Format: Paper
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973
Reading dates: 10/1/24 - 10/27/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

As usual, when I've read an excerpt or short story this year, especially in an anthology, I've done a lot of background research to get an understanding of the context. For this short eight-page excerpt of Greek Lyric Poets, I bought a copy of the full volume of translated Greek Lyric Poets translated by Richmond Lattimore, and compared the two versions. The translations in both editions are the same, and I only read the ones in the larger volume that were reprinted on the pages of the World Masterpieces edition.

The Lyrics chosen for inclusion in the World Masterpieces represent the era of the Greek City-States, and many of them tell stories of the Trojan Wars, which actually took place much earlier. The poems were written at the time of the final settlement of the Greek peoples, and the poets are from far flung parts of the Greek settlements, for example, I hadn't known Sappho was from Mytiléne on the island of Lesbos, off the Turkish mainland. It was in these cities founded in Asia that the Greeks adapted to their own language the Phoenician system of writing, which eventually led to evolution in the purposes of writing from simple record-keeping to literature. At this time all literature was verse (literary prose was a later development), and encompassed everything from political writings to love poems, and was the first time the individual writer -- the appearance of "I" -- in literature occurred.

From Wikipedia: "Only a small sampling of lyric poetry from Archaic Greece, the period when it first flourished, survives. For example, the poems of Sappho are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the Library of Alexandria, with the first book alone containing more than 1,300 lines of verse. Today, only one of Sappho's poems exists intact, with fragments from other sources."

From Sappho, "the bright air trembling at the heart to the pulse of countless fluttering wings." (Speaking of Aphrodite's descent to Earth drawn in a chariot pulled by sparrows.)

From Archilochus of Paros, "I don't like the towering captain with the spraddly length of leg, one who swaggers in his lovelocks and cleanshaves beneath the chin. Give me a man short and squarely set upon his legs, a man full of heart, not to be shaken from the place he sets his feet."

As a selection from the anthology, I give this 3.5 stars, but for the experience of the research and the larger book of translated verse, I would give it 4.0 stars.

'Book' 46:
11/8/24 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 11 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: The New-England Magazine, 1835
As read publication: Fiction: A Pocket Anthology, Fourth Edition, 2005
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Story
Sub-genre: Historical Fiction
Format: Paper
Publisher: Penguin Academics, Pearson Education, Inc.
Reading dates: 11/8/2024
Rating: 3 stars

According to the introduction to the story in the anthology, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, and one of his forebears was a magistrate who participated in the Salem witch trials. Most of Hawthorne's books and stories are set in Salem, which is where Young Goodman Brown is set several years before the witch trials occurred. Two of the characters mentioned in the short story were, in fact, sentenced by the court.

The story, according to Wikipedia, "addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of depravity, but that God has destined some to unconditional election through unmerited grace. Hawthorne frequently focuses on the tensions within Puritan culture, yet steeps his stories in the Puritan sense of sin. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny, which results in his loss of virtue and belief."

Goodman Brown, a kind young man and adoring husband, sets off in the evening one day for some mysterious journey into the forest. His wife, Faith, begs him to put off his journey until the next day. He sets off anyway, and we learn he has an appointment in the woods with a mysterious character (presumably Satan), and although he attempts to change his mind, he continues on his journey with the frightening personage, and subsequent strange and horrifying adventures occur.

There is a chance that his journey is a dream, but equally the case that what he experiences is real. At any rate, Goodman Brown returns the next morning a changed man -- no longer pleasant to his neighbors or loving to his wife, he ends his days in misery.

I can't say I've read anything else by Hawthorne, but I've absorbed at least a sense of his long works through long ago English classes. This story was read as part of my attempt to read some of the stories in my collection of short stories and anthologies this year.

Book 47:
11/8/24/24 - Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 342 pages
Library Book
Original Publication: 1991, Victor Gollancz
As read publication: 2013, Harper Collins
Series: 12th Pratchett novel, 3rd Witches story
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Fantasy
Format: Paper
Publisher: Harper, and imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Reading dates: 8/29/24-11/8/24
Rating: 4 stars

This is the third or fourth Pratchett novel I've read, and I've loved them all. I delight in the way he used language and puns and humor in his novels of Discworld.

The story begins when Death comes to take the witch Desiderata Hollow, who is also a fairy godmother, away before she had quite finished training her successor, Magrat Garlick. Magrat inherits Desiderata's wand, but doesn't know how to use it (everything she attempts to use it on turns into a pumpkin), and she also inherits some unfinished fairy godmothering of a young maiden named Emberella in faraway Genua.

Two busy-body older witches, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, decide to accompany Magrat to Genua to save Emberella from having to marry the prince (who is actually a frog). Lots and lots of adventures ensue, with everything from a brief encounter with Golum in an underground lake to saving Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother from the wolf. There's even a bit of the Wizard of Oz thrown in. I love this kind of book, with all the humor and tongue-in-cheek fun, and a good story to boot.

Book 48:
11/10/24 - State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Hardback, 494 pages
Library Book
As read publication: 2021, jointly published by Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press
Series: N/A
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Political Thriller
Format: Paper
Publisher: Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press
Reading dates: 11/9/24 - 11/10/24
Rating: 3.5

This was a page-turner -- I couldn't put it down. I began reading on the morning of 9 November and finished about 3 a.m. on the 10th. I'm torn about the stars I've given it but I've noticed lately that my stars have been getting inflated a bit. Normally I only give 4 stars or above for a book I know I would read again, and if it was a library book, it would be one I would probably purchase, like I did with The Labyrinth of the Spirits. This was a good book and I highly recommend it, but I doubt I'd ever take the time to re-read it.

From the fly leaf, "After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and, to everyone's surprise, the President of the United States chooses a political enemy for the vital position of Secretary of State." Within weeks of the appointment, terrorists conduct two horrific strikes against targets in London and Paris, and a low-level State Department analyst figures out the code in a message she had received a few days earlier in time to try to warn the Secretary and the National Security Council when the next attack would occur, but not in time for the attack to be averted. Next comes a series of frantic trips to Europe and Central Asia to stop further attacks and a denouement back home in the White House that has a nice twist at the end.

Great book, like I said. I highly recommend it for those who like a fast-paced, fairly believable thriller.

Book 49:
11/12/24 - Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 28 hrs 43 mins (534 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Christopher Kay
Language: English
Original Publication: Michael Joseph, Ltd., London, 1989
As read publication: 2003 - Clipper Audio (A mystery! The audio version I bought from Audible has completely disappeared from Audible and my Amazon account has no record of my purchase. It's strange -- a lot of people complained about the narrator in the reviews, and I was happy to see that Blackstone Audio republished the audio books in 2023 with a new narrator (John Banks, who narrated Niccolo Rising), but still...)
Series: House of Niccolo
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genre: Historical Fiction
Format: Digital
Publisher: Clipper Audio
Reading dates: 7/19/2024 - 11/12/2024
Rating: 5 stars for the book, 2 stars for the narrator

Dorothy Dunnett’s historical novels are my all-time favorite books, although The House of Niccolo series can be a little slow in places. This story takes place primarily on the island of Cyprus in the mid-15th century during the war for succession between Queen Carlotta and her half-brother James. Niccolo’s army has been contracted to fight for James’s side. I started out disliking the narrator of this novel so much that I set it aside for a long time, but once I got past wishing he was better and began listening again, I became used to him. I imagine anyone who can narrate a Dorothy Dunnett book deserves credit for perseverance, if nothing else, but his accents for the characters got on my nerves immensely.

While trying to see when I purchased this audio book from Audible, I found that the purchase history for all of the books I have that were narrated by Christopher Kay have disappeared from my order history, though they are still in my Audible library. I think I purchased it in 2009, since that is when I cataloged it in LibraryThing

Scales of Gold is the next book in the series, and I'm adding it to my reading list for 2025.

Book 50:
11/29/24 - The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Paperback, 435 pages
Series: N/A
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genres: Fantastical
Format: Paper
Publisher: Harper Collins, 2024
Reading dates: 11/9/24 - 11/29/24
Rating: 2.5 stars

From the back cover: "On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found..." I bought this at Costco sometime earlier this year because I normally enjoy books about bookshops and books and the people who work in bookshops and love books, BUT... This book could be sooo much better than it is. I think the author didn't know what book she wanted to write. Is it a mystery, a love story, a fantasy? Did an AI write it? Anyway, I stuck with it because it isn't really bad, just confused.

I read this for a book club, but even so I probably would have gotten around to reading it someday, since I already own it, but I won't waste my time reading it again, so onto the give-away pile it goes.

Book 51:
11/29/24 - Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Hardback, 205 pages
Series: N/A
Genre: Nonfiction
Sub-genres: Biography, History, Science, Art
Format: Paper
Publisher: Harper Collins, 2011
Reading dates: 11/3/24 - 12/9/24
Rating: 4 stars

A dazzling book about Marie and Pierre Curie and the science of radiation. It is large format, so a little hard to carry with me to read on the road, but that is my only complaint. The author has invented a unique style with the art and the story and the scientific explanations and history. But the heart of the book is Marie and Pierre Curie and their love for each other. I highly recommend it.

I am seriously behind on my reading logs. I need to get caught up so I can do my year-end review and plan my reading for 2025.

Book Talley for August:

Physical Books Acquired: 7 (Two Library Books)
Physical Books Read: 4 (Pages: 1458)
Digital Books Acquired: 2 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Audio Books Acquired: 0
Audio Books Heard: 0 (0 hours) 0 equivalent pages

Total:
3 books, 1 short work (7 pages) and 0 audio book = 4 books
1 fiction; 3 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 2 books; 1 Treatise
Science: 3

Fiction:
Literary Historical Fiction - 1
Short Story - 0

Best in August 2024:

Fiction: The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - 5 stars
Nonfiction: The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green 4.5 stars
Short Work: On the Motion of Animals by Aristotle - 3.5 stars

September 2024:

Book Talley for September:

Physical Books Acquired: 11 (One Library Book)
Physical Books Read: 1 Library Book (Pages: 496)
Digital Books Acquired: 1 (0 read)
Digital Books Read: 0 (Pages: 0)
Audio Books Acquired: 1
Audio Books Heard: 0 (0 hours) 0 equivalent pages

Total:
1 books, 0 short work (0 pages) and 0 audio book = 1 books
1 fiction; 0 nonfiction

Genre Summary:

Nonfiction: 0 books

Fiction:
Science Fiction - 1
Short Story - 0

Best in September 2024:

Fiction: Timeline by Michael Crichton - 3 stars
Nonfiction:
Short Work:

3rd Quarter 2024

Completed 37 books, short works, or audio books so far, and read 10,048 pages (or equivalent)

Best Books Read in 3nd Quarter:

Fiction: The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Non-fiction: The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green
Short Work: Kaho by Haruki Murakami

Best Books Read So Far This Year:

Fiction: The Labyrinth of the Spirits
Non-fiction: The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
Best Short Work: Space and Dimensionality by Thomas K. Simpson

The Labyrinth of the Spirits is definitely one of my favorites. Anything by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is hard to put down. I must get to Dorothy Dunnett but haven't found an audio yet. Not that I have been reading much anyhow.

I am getting very close to finishing a module with all of my professional jobs. Including the one you share with me.

I love Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout too. Did the cover of your edition glow in the dark? It was a nice touch.

>162 labfs39: Yes, the cover glowed. I did enjoy the book a lot. I read it for a book group, and it was interesting to hear what others thought of it. Most didn't like it because of the format, but I thought that made it even better.

>161 JoeB1934: Joe, I picked up The Labyrinth of the Spirits on a whim at the library because I like the title. I'm so glad I did. I plan to read his other books in the series this coming year.

'Book' 52:
12/13/24 - The Sea Change by Ernest Hemingway
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Short Story, 8 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Winner Take Nothing, 1933
As read publication: Winner Take Nothing, 1961
Series: N/A
Genre: Short Story
Sub-genre: N/A
Format: Paper
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, Scribner Library Books
Reading dates: 12/13/2024
Rating: 3 stars

Short story about a couple who are breaking up in a Parisian bar. Hemingway, as usual, is terse, and it isn't clear if the couple are married, but it's apparent the woman is leaving the man for another woman. Here's a bit of the first page:

"All right, " said the man. "What about it?"
"No," said the girl, "I can't."
"You mean you won't."
"I can't said the girl. "That's all that I mean."
"You mean that you won't."

And so on... It reminds me of the First Grade readers we had in the early sixties.

Book 53:
12/19/24 - Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
Category: Books, Magazines, Short Stories, Excerpts
Type: Audio, 8 hrs 19 mins (336 pages equivalent)
Narrator: Anderson Cooper
Language: English
Original Publication: Harper, 2023
As read publication: HarperAudio 2023, Includes 29 pages of notes and a family tree that can be downloaded
Series: N/A
Genre: Non-fiction
Sub-genres: History, Biography
Format: Digital
Publisher: HarperAudio
Reading dates: 11/13/24 - 12/19/24
Rating: 3.5 stars

Well-narrated history by the author, Anderson Cooper. I thought the way the Astor's made their original fortune in the beaver fur trade was interesting, and also was surprised to learn that Astoria, OR was founded by the original John Jacob Astor, who wanted to create his own empire in the western half of North America.

Over the ensuing generations, the family ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

>165 janoorani24: It reminds me of the First Grade readers we had in the early sixties.

Lol, that's an apt description of Hemingway's style. The dialogue you quoted could have been in a book practicing contractions.

>128 janoorani24: I'm catching up after being away for a bit, and this one caught my eye. I've added it to my list for 1Q25, which currently has enough books for at least a year. I remember liking the Vinge novel too, but I can't recall much of it. Maybe I'll take another look at that too.

>168 Jim53: I hope you like it if you have time to read it. It was one of my favorite books of the year, and one of my rare five star reads.

I've started a tentative list of books for 2025, but if it's like 2024's list, I doubt I'll get to them all.