richardderus's ninth 2024 thread

Reviews 001 through 008 are linked here.
Reviews 009 on thru 017 are linked here.
Reviews 018 to 026 are linked there.
Reviews 027 to 033 are linked there.
Reviews 034 through 040 are linked here.
Reviews 041 to 045 are linked here.
Reviews 046 unto 050 are linked here.
Reviews 051 to 059 are linked there.

THIS THREAD'S REVIEWS

060 UR in post #57.
061 Providence: A Novel in post #242.
062 In Universes: A Novel in post #245.
063 Saint Elspeth in post #254.
064 1795: The Order of the Furies in post #263.

All my threads in the 75ers linked somewhere here
My Last Thread of 2009 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2010 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2011 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2012 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2013 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2014 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2015 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2016 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2017 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2018 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2019 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2020 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2021 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2022 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.
My Last Thread of 2023 Is Here:
Reviews are back-linked there.

All previous Burgoine reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S BURGOINE REVIEWS:

#019 Cut and Thirst in post #170.
#020 Poetics of Work in post #207.

All previous Pearl Rule reviews linked here.

THIS THREAD'S PEARL RULE REVIEWS:

#009 (20%) The Snatch Racket: The Kidnapping Epidemic That Terrorized 1930s America in post #214.

Seriously...not a great venue for normies here.
My 2023 goals are here, for reference.
2024 GOALS
If I reviewed 222 books in 2023, why not go for at least 250 in 2024?

So I will.

All but 36 of 2023's reviews were from NetGalley and Edelweiss+, the DRC aggregators I use to get my biblioholism fixes. That's 16% of the total actually read and reviewed. In 2024, I think that percentage is just fine to maintain, so I'll settle on 41 reads not from those two sources as my soft goal...I don't much care if I hit it exactly, but I do need to leave room to read and review books I've been gifted over the years!

2023's #Booksgiving review blast resulted in my blog views for the month being 177% of November's total. So that worked. I only used Twitter for all of November, then for #Booksgiving, added Bluesky and Tumblr. That worked, too. The sadness of my #PrideMonth limp, flaccid performanceless unblast made me realize that, if I'm going to get a big project done, I need to break it down into steps. This is new for me, and a result of the actual limitations that the strokes have imposed on me. Like no longer being able to read handwriting or decode graphics like Wordle, this acquired dyslexia is a limitation I need to acknowledge. Not to say I won't keep pushing against it...but it's real, and planning needs to be based in reality.
***
End of Q1 thoughts on goals
I've had to drop Tumblr from my review-posting because the owner/president/head jerkoff posted transphobic maunderings, then the trans employees said "y'all CTFD he didn't mean it" which well totally relate to needing the gig, but no. THEN announced Tumblr would sell to AI scrapers everything users have posted there...so that, plus their porn ban, means they get axed from me creating anything there, posting or boosting things there. And they don't care, or notice, but I get to keep my own moral high ground.

I don't see, or feel, any reason to adjust any of my annual goals. I've posted 51 blog posts in 2024, or on track for 200 annual posts; but that does not account for the heavy months of June and #Booksgiving to come, and there are already eleven reviews banked for those two.

See >5 richardderus: for 2023 achievements & 2024 goals.
My January 2024 summary is here.
My February 2024 summary is here.
My March 2024 summary is here.
My April 2024 summary is here..

Your time has come at last. Speak freely.

>1 richardderus: I think I might wish you were invisible. That looks ... dangerous.

Happy new thread Richard! (And please slow down and give the rest of us a chance to catch up.)

I LOVE Jello salads. However, that one looks really funky - but so retro. If I had more room in my refrigerator I would make them often. Especially in the summer. They are so cool and refreshing. The hardest thing about them is getting them out of the mold. The new silicone molds make that much easier. Jell-o usually pops right out of them.

Ninth thread this year? While I'm still only on my first? I'll just have to award you a virtual jello salad.

Happy New Thread,

Wow, my does time fly, it must be October already because that topper image is sooooo scary. LOL

Is that olives AND cheese? In jello? Boy the 60's/70's were a weird time.

>8 humouress: I ought to break tradition and just not give you a crown, you blackhearted supervillainess you, but instead:

The crown of hot dogs that doubtless went with that Jell-O...thing on Life's picnic table. I have no idea what the sludge in the middle might be composed of.

>9 benitastrnad: You DO?!? For real?!?

I'm not a fan of the artificial sweetener, sucralose, they put in all flavors of the stuff. It tastes the way wet metal shavings smell, and overwhelms the flavor of the Jell-O.

>10 ArlieS: *gaaak* nonono a thousand times no!

It is a little weird how fast I'm racking up threads, isn't it?

>11 mahsdad: Jell-O knows no decade in weirdness terms, my good sir. Eternally odd...though I confess that in the early days of my life I enjoyed the Mexican flavors like guava and mango.

>12 richardderus:
That looks like it is a ring of Fairbury Hot Dogs! That is truly exciting. Those hot dogs are famous in Nebraska and are served at all Husker's football games. They were locally made at Fairbury, Nebraska by a German immigrant's son. When I was growing up they were THE hot dog. Nobody could afford the expensive name brands, but the Fairbury Hot Dog, with its famous red color, was indeed the HOT DOG that everybody ate. Then they started serving them at the Nebraska football games and once they became famous - they got expensive. I think that demand outstripped supply.

I bet that dip would be gone in seconds at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, NE on game day.

>12 richardderus: I just knew you were going to do something like that to me. (Does it taste nice?)

Look, let's get one thing straight right now. Supervillainy Supervillainessy is my branch.

>16 benitastrnad: Hmm; jello salad and Fairbury hot dogs. Nebraska must be an ... interesting place :0)

>1 richardderus: Brings back childhood memories of family reunions in the Midwest in summer. And funeral dinners. At one of these (of my Marysville, IN second cousin Joan), I sat next to my Great-Uncle Art. I was upset because the runny macaroni salad on my plate was touching the jello salad. Uncle Art told me it didn’t matter; that all food gets mixed up in your stomach after you eat it. That was traumatizing.

Happy new 🧵!

Happy New Thread, Richard.

Glad to say I am young enough to have escaped the scourge of Jell-o salads :)

Happy new thread.

>16 benitastrnad: Oh. Oookaaay then. I've never heard of them, or the tradition. I have no idea why anyone would put dip into a ring of hot dogs.

>17 humouress: *chuckle*

Your primacy among supervillain/ess/dom is assured!

>18 Storeetllr: Not having had Midwestern family and being raised by a mother who detested Jell-O, this stuff was utterly foreign to me.

>19 msf59: Thanks, Birddude.

>20 katiekrug: I did, too, and I'm not younger than anyone except gawd. Mama did a few things really well, and that awful stuff was something I never ran into.

Literature is real; categories are false.—Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket
Did you ever get exactly what you want and find out it's not what you wanted at all?―Kit Reed, Thinner Than Thou

How true.

>1 richardderus: I liked Jello Salad growing up but the only thing in it was fruit cocktail.

>13 richardderus: Do NOT tell me that. Tell me it's not true! *whines*

With my cough, sore throat, and nasty headache going on forEHver, I thought some Jello, which I haven't had in decades would be soothing.

But ever since I got meningitis, 7 or 8 years ago, I've had a headache. (Yep, ALL the time - it's called New Daily Persistent Headache. )

And guess what I can't have unless I want to make it 10x worse. Artificial sweetners!

Happy new one!

>1 richardderus: My mom was a chef so I can't say that I ever had the pleasure of being served a jello salad ;)

Happy new thread, RD.

Is now the time to admit that we had a mould in the shape of a rabbit as kids and thought that a white blancmange rabbit on a bed of mushed up green jelly was the height of sophistication.
And traffic light jelly, with layers of green, orange & red was really cool.
Ah me, those were the days.

I have never, for the avoidance of doubt, had what looks like celery & olives in a jelly.

>27 Morphidae: YIKES on your headaches. Enjoy your Jell-O! Maybe you won't taste the sucralose. What I don't like is the way they call it "natural flavor" because it's inverted sugar molecules. It tastes fake to me, but might not to you.

Fruit cocktail? Ew.

*smooch*

>28 figsfromthistle: It was something I found out about, like canned spinach, when I went to school the first time. *shudder*

>29 Helenliz: I think those sound adorable for kids! Blancmange/panna cotta was something that caused my mother acute revulsion, so I grew up without them entirely and now will eat them only if manners make it unavoidable.

Happy new thread, RD!

As to the jello discussion, I like some variations on the jello salad, but that one in your topper looks awful. I've made my share of them, though nothing recently. And don't they still sell the packets of jello that have sugar in them, not artificial sweetener? Of course, it's been so long since I bought any, maybe they've discontinued the ones with sugar.

>9 benitastrnad: I had never thought of silicone molds for them. I'll have to keep that in mind.

>33 atozgrl: Hi Irene! The sucralose reduces calories but is actually chemically manipulated sugar so they aren't *technically* using artificial flavors or sweetners. It just tastes like the sewage pipes from a chemical factory smell.

That "salad" is unusally ugly, isn't it. When I was a kid there was a celery flavored Jell-O that I remember as less awful than the nuclear colored lime one everyone but me likes. It was a little less intensely green.

Happy new thread, Richard. I honestly can't remember the title of the book but I once read a book of such *salads* as your topper, food of the 50s and 60s. So revolting to even look at, that it's a miracle we aren't all skinny, just from refusing to touch them. ;-)

I found it (the title, not the book): Retro Food Fiascos. I'm sure there is a jello salad in there somewhere....

>35 jessibud2: Not just a (very aptly named) Jell-O mold but a TUNA Jell-O mold! The publisher says:

Banana meatloaf, tuna Jell-O salad, and Spam smoothies—borderline tummy-turners to downright doubtful, RETRO FOOD FIASCOS is a showcase of culinary curiosities from some of America’s favorite magazines, cookbooks, and food companies. In the name of nutrition and creative cooking, the marketing and recipe writers of the 1950s cooked up some very suspicious combinations. Innovations in food processing and new products tempted everyone to play with their food—from the amateur cook to the professional chef. And the results? We’ll let you be the judge. The pages are filled with actual recipes and images of some of the most daring dishes to ever leave the kitchen. So get out your Jell-O mold, canned meat, and best casserole dish—it’s time to get funky and answer the question "What were they thinking?"

>36 richardderus: - Where's the barf bag?

>36 richardderus: I came here to say EW to the jello mold, but Shelley said it better

I was never a fan of jello, it was one of those weird things that my mom would make as easy on our stomach when we were sick and ALSO somehow doubled as dessert? Meh. I can eat an ambrosia salad with jello, but that's it (and it's better without).

>37 jessibud2: Have some Norset:

The antidepressant side effect will help thinking about that tuna mold.

>38 bell7: Ambrosia is the one with *shudder* marshmallows, right? Vile things, marshmallows.

>40 richardderus: Yeah, it's one of two acceptable ways to eat marshmallows, imo. S'mores are better, of course. Otherwise, I completely agree with you.

Not sure I am up for A Jello Salad but I am certainly up for a new RD thread!

Salutations on the same, dear fellow.

>33 atozgrl:
The silicone molds are easier to bend to get jello out of than the copper or tin ones. Very seldom do I have to dip them in hot water to get cakes or jello out of them. I a really pretty rose mold made of silicone and have a delectable recipe from Martha Stewart for rose flavored cake that is so amazing when used in conjunction with the rose mold. I also have a bundt pan in the shape of a magnolia flower. I wonder how that would look with jello in it?

RD - since molded jello salad isn't your thing how does a molded salmon mousse take your fancy?

>34 richardderus: I do not remember ever seeing celery flavored Jell-O. I think that's just as well.

I doubt I've ever had Jell-O per se. We used to get jelly (I forget the brand; maybe Bird's, as in custard?) as a solid block of concentrated, flavoured jelly which you dissolved in boiling water, let cool and then set in the 'fridge.

I will admit to (back in the 70s/ 80s) having fruits set in jelly (usually red or orange; presumably labelled 'strawberry' or 'orange') - which usually sank to the bottom, which then became the top if you bothered to unmould it - which wasn't bad.

ETA: I forgot, you USAers call 'jam' 'jelly'. It's all very confusing.

I hope all this jelly discussion is moving your thread fast enough for you Richard? Maybe we can speed past that green thing at the top soonest.

I see your plan, you of the wobbly lip and moist eye of Thread 8...... Make the topper so disgusting that people will post 4 or 5 times more than usual so that you will move on to Thread 10 in short order.

Nevertheless, Happy New Thread! *smooch*

Happy Thursday, Richard dear, and happy new thread!

After reading the comments about the topper, I am very grateful I completely missed Jelly-O in my life.

>41 bell7: As there are zero acceptable ways to eat marshmallows, I'll accept that you make these exceptions and offer sacrifices on your behalf to bribe the goddesses to overlook this character flaw.

>42 PaulCranswick: Here you go, PC:

Broken glass salad with Fluff and Miracle Whip to make it white!

Eat up...your fast is over!

*eville laughter*

>43 benitastrnad: The silicone molds work with Jell-O best if they have fewest little-bitty details. I've seen the rose mold used with bright veggies in the petal bits. It looked very pretty.

>44 benitastrnad: Gag me with an upright bass! *shudder*

>45 atozgrl: It was a product of the early 1960s, and might well have been target-marketed at my area of Northern California because the sizable Asian population boomed about then. Grass Jelly is popular in South Chinese/Vietnamese cooking, and Jell-O probably saw an opportunity. *I* liked it but no one else in my family did.

>46 humouress: Jam has lumps, a sort of extra-set confit, and jelly doesn't. Preserves have whole fruits. Jell-O couldn't be spread on bread unless you used brute force and awkwardness; jelly spreads easily. Very simple. I believe Bird's is owned by the same company that owns Jell-O and our version of custard powder is instant pudding. Which is set custard, not baked or boiled afters like you lot use it.

>47 LizzieD: Moi? Plan something so deeply nefarious? Innocent, pure-hearted moi? Why Madame Peggy, such cold-hearted unkindness is simply beyond my emotional range!

(Isn't that shade of green just *extra* loathsome? Shines like the Creature from the Black Lagoon's hiney, don't it?)

>48 FAMeulstee: Thank you, Anita! *smooch*

060 UR by Stephen King

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Reeling from a painful break-up, English instructor and avid book lover Wesley Smith is haunted by his ex-girlfriend's parting shot: "Why can't you just read off the computer like everyone else?" He buys an e-book reader out of spite, but soon finds he can use the device to glimpse realities he had never before imagined, discovering literary riches beyond his wildest dreams...and all-too-human tragedies that surpass his most terrible nightmares.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: Whether or not there's a unitary entity like the one monotheists and Abrahamic-religionists call "God," there is a certain universality to the reality that you will lose everything you love, often all at once, and that smacks of horrible vicious intentional cruelty. You might not know what the price you pay for any tiniest fleck of good luck/happiness will be, but there will be one.

King's Dark Tower Universe operates on this principle. This short work makes the cost of this nobody-special of a main character getting access to a multiverse-spanning Kindle...and what I would not give for this device to come into my possession!...sharp and immediate. What I found especially fun was the archaeology of the Kindle. The modern Kindles do not work the way the one in this story does, there are no longer buttons but touchscreens and a lot of functionality has changed. This story is from 2008 (written)/2009 (published), so it predates 11/22/63 and Under the Dome, which explore in greater depth some of the themes that preoccupy King and that form the basis of this novella.

What are those themes? Look at my first sentence. Going into detail makes a sixty-page read pretty useless and this is a story I think y'all will like. In common with most of King's work, it feels very Manichaean to me. That is, he follows developments in his stories that seem to me to like the summation of that religion's tenets:

A key belief in Manichaeism is that the powerful, though not omnipotent good power (God), was opposed by the eternal evil power (devil). Humanity, the world, and the soul are seen as the by-product of the battle between God's proxy, Primal Man, and the devil.

That quickie is from Wikipedia.

It makes for good fiction. I'd call it fan fiction since religion is all fiction, but that's a discussion for a different venue.

There are over fifteen hundred Goodreads reviews of this story. This one won't make any difference. The reason I write it is to say to those few remaining dismissive snobs who would never read anything by King, That is an absurd stance. You might like or dislike his work according to taste but he is as influential and as generation-defining a writer as Tolkien or Dickens.

Point your nose down at the work, not up in disdain, and learn something.

Hiya, RDear, and happy new thread. Happy Thursday, too.

>1 richardderus: Dry heaves. If you haven’t looked at any of the shorts by B. Dylan Hollis on YouTube, I suggest you visit. He makes recipes from old cookbooks – some good, some awful. The ones with gelatin or Jello are always awful, of course.

>50 richardderus: No. Just no.

>57 richardderus: I’ll read this one tomorrow morning, but need to leave soon to have lunch with friend Jan.

*smooch*

>54 richardderus: Custard is for pouring over (cake-y type) puddings. Or jelly.

>55 richardderus: Mmhmm. I'm keeping an eye on you.

>57 richardderus: Well, actually I wouldn't read King because he writes horror which I avoid. I may have unintentionally caught one or two of the film adaptations though.

>46 humouress: As RD points out, we don't call jam jelly---they are two different things. Our jelly is much like Jello, though, in appearance and consistency---solid, just barely, and wiggly, and light passes through unless it's made with very dark fruit. Celery Jello (and related horrors) was once a real thing...haven't seen it lately (not that I've looked).



I have a half dozen church lady recipe collections, if anyone needs more suggestions for this kind of thing...

>45 atozgrl: The idea of celery flavored jello is scary.

I'm fine with aspic, and have been known to buy unflavored gelatine to combine with vegetable juice (generally tomato) to make aspic. But it's not "jello" unless it's crazy-sweet; also, I find celery flavor is best combined with other tastes.

>58 karenmarie: C'mon Horrible, you know you've made Fluff and Miracle Whip gelatine salads for Jenna and Bill since forever...with pickled watermelon rind and maraschino cherries suspended in them for some crunch. Don't front, Nawth Cahlaaahnah gal!

*smooch*

>59 humouress: That's crême anglaise, smoochling, not custard.

Horror is not the only genre he writes in, like tedious moralizing twaddle wasn't Dickens's only genre.

Oh wait....

>60 laytonwoman3rd: I liked celery Jell-O. Just sayin'

>61 ArlieS: Tomato aspic on top of hearts of palm with capers, pecans, and chopped green olives was a luxury food in my kidhood. Haven't had it in decades.

Happy new thread!

>47 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy, this gave me a belly laugh, always a good thing.

>55 richardderus: Yes, that shade of green is particularly revolting.

>63 richardderus: here, Creme Anglais and custard are (give or take) the same thing, the difference is the pretentiousness of the establishment serving it.

So there used to be savoury flavours of jelly? Struggling to get my head around that idea.

>67 The_Hibernator: Thank you, Rachel.

>68 atozgrl: Particularly. *shudder*

>69 Helenliz: ...but...but...GBBO calls it crême anglaise unless Paul is being extra Geordie.

You've had tomato aspic...same diff. US jelly comes in bell pepper/hot pepper variants, too, as cracker spreads.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Good review of the King novel. I completely missed the release of this one. I have been a fan for 5 decades. Boo to the snobs.

I am getting read to start Clear. Thanks to you. 😁

>1 richardderus: That just makes me shudder. I cannot believe that people actually ate that stuff.

Happy new thread, RD! ((Hugs)) and **smooches**

Hiya Richard!

>63 richardderus: 🤗

>73 msf59: Well, Mark, snobbery comes from all sides. In King's case, he's popular among people who read one or two books a year. That means they aren't very good to some people who have not read one, and to some who have read one but didn't like the one they read and so dismissed the whole œuvre.

>74 alcottacre: It's always a surprise to me, too, Stasia. Why? What in you says "yum" at that sight? And no answer ever forthcomes.

*smooch*

>75 Owltherian: Morning, Lily.

>76 humouress: *smooch*

>79 richardderus: Good morning!

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Friday.

>58 karenmarie: Short and sweet review. I love the concept. 11/22/63 and Under the Dome are two of my favorites by King. Added to my wish list.

>62 richardderus: Never! No Jello salads using anything white. (MiL’s cranberry salad used Raspberry-flavored jello, and I admit to making it for T-Day after she couldn’t any more). I used to make pickled watermelon rind when I grew watermelons. FiL and Aunt Ann loved it. A huge effort to make, and harder now that commercially-grown watermelons have much less rind than garden-grown ones.

>66 richardderus: Clever. I especially appreciate 'protective layer of wood pulp' and 'home decoration' features.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

Happy new thread! Have to admit - all the Jello salads almost made me run for the hills...

>81 Owltherian: :-)

>82 karenmarie: But Horrible! Blancmange/panna cotta is alwaysby definition, white; they form a huge part of your diet, don't they.

I'm not sure I could eat jellied cranberries anymore...they're just off to me. I like the texture. Pickled watermelon rind is, indeed, a gargantuan effort to make, and then the failed batches are *ghastly*.

I love >66 richardderus: too. Such a cute little exegesis.

>66 richardderus: Oh, Richard, I am so happy to see your thread return to books! That makes me happy on more than one level.

If you will just please, please not post any more jello pictures, I will stop trying to be funny.

Now. I am a Stephen King fan from the time when I had to wash my hands every time after reading a couple of chapters of Salem's Lot to this very day. I like his old horror. I like Dean Koontz's old horror. Sometimes nothing else will do. You also made me realize that I missed Under the Dome when it came out although I knew the title, so I have just ordered a used copy to remedy that. Summer is coming, and I'll need the chills.

As always, *smooch*

>86 LizzieD: No more veggies in plain gelatin?

No more stripey Jell-O bowls of glop?

No more lime-green goop with Cool Whip on top?

Well, if you insist....

Under the Dome isn't quite the same as the old horror...there's a strong element of SF. Be prepared!

*smooch*

>65 richardderus: Sounds tasty.

>87 richardderus: I just have to mention the friends who somehow managed to produce jello made with alcohol, that didn't lose the alcohol content from the heat. Jello shots. But is that FTW or FTL? ("For the win" or "for the lose")

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD! Have a wonderful weekend!

>88 ArlieS: Boil the gelatine first, after it's sloppy-set but not firm, stir in a shot, let it set, then serve it to teenagers.

That was a really good salad once a year or so. Mama always said the hearts of palm were such a horribly wasteful thing to eat that she just couldn't bring herself to serve it more often.

>89 alcottacre: You do the same, Stasia me lurve!

I used to like red coloured jello when I was a kid, Richard. I certainly recall jello with canned Fruit cocktail in it. My great grandma made a not very good , in my opinion, Ambrosia Salad. I'm not entirely sure what went into it, but jello, whipped cream, canned fruit and marshmallows. Yuck! Happy New Thread and Happy Weekend ahead. Celery Jello? Ugh! That's a new one to me.

Jello was a treat when I was a kid. Later I associated with being sick. I've eaten more than my share of congealed salads. Someone always brought them to church dinners when I was a kid. I didn't always eat one then, but sometimes I'd get a little if there wasn't something better.

>92 vancouverdeb: I'm guessing the fondness for Jell-O in kidhood is close to universal, smoochling. Synonymous with being pampered while ill, I'm guessing.

"Ambrosia" *shudder* is horrifying! My mother made it with orange slices, dried coconut, canned peach slices, canned pears sliced up, chopped toosted pecans, and Grand Marnier. It didn't suck as bad as the Cool-Whippy version.

>93 thornton37814: Yeah, that is the way I think most people think of it. Unsurprisingly I went to very few church events. One time I did, I won a cake walk...and a kid's mom insisted I give her son the cake because it was wrong that a dirty little jewboy get a christian's cake.

I do not like christians because the loudest ones I've met have mostly been crappy people.

>95 richardderus: I'm sad you dislike Christians and that a few have given you a bad taste for all. I can assure you that not all Christians are like that. However, Jesus warned in His Sermon on the Mount that many who call themselves His people will hear the words, "Depart from me; I never knew you." I have a great respect for the Jewish people.

>96 thornton37814: I lack respect for all religions; they exist to exclude some and reward others who promote their particular line of guff. My dislike of christians in particular comes from decades of watching their revolting, highly public antics. Deciding how best to exclude the poor QUILTBAG people who keep trying to get approval for their simple right to existence exactly and precisely as they are is a completely appalling spectacle on any moral or empathetic level.

It is impossible for those words to be "quoted" as coming from the mouth of a nonexistent entity. If there was a person named Jesus, he was a millenarian cult leader who spread the gospel that gawd was coming to destroy the sinful world in his, Jesus', lifetime.

Here we are two millennia later. If, in the meantime, the self-proclaimed followers of this end-of-days cultist had made the world a better place I could find some respect for the religion...millennia of religious wars against Others, all unopposed by that invisible, silent gawd; famines engineered by christians against other christians (Constantinople, 1204) and yet more silence from this "savior;" the list is endless and my hand hurts from typing...say otherwise. Very good and kind people claim they are christian and that is why they are good and kind.

No.

You are good and kind because you have empathy. You don't need to be threatened and bullied and hectored into being good and kind. There's no gawd in any of that, just a good soul with a kind heart.

Here endeth the lesson.

Well, your thread is proceeding apace with lots of discussion on Jell-o desserts - but not much by way of reviews, cobwebbed or otherwise ;0)

>97 richardderus: Personally, I'm agnostic and not a fan of religion in general. I haven't got around to telling my parents but I suspect that their views are fairly close to mine anyway.

>87 richardderus: NOOOOoooooooo! Have mercy!

‘Morning, RDear. Saturday already, my oh my. I hope yours is a good’un.

>87 richardderus: You just had to keep posting those ghastly pics, didn’t you? Urp.

>88 ArlieS: I was promised Jello shots in … 2019?... by a friend but they never happened. I feel deprived.

>93 thornton37814: That’s what I heard Jello salads called when I moved to NC in 1991, Lori – congealed salads.

>95 richardderus: and >97 richardderus: Most, not all, IMO, Christians give Christianity a bad name.

*smooch*

>98 humouress: Morning (here) Nina. I expect that, if they aren't bringing up the subject, they know what time it is and don't feel any need to bring the dirty laundry into the lounge.

I have read very little. Old Stuff's broken collarbone has led to me making a lot of adjustments in how I use my time. *sigh*

>99 LizzieD: *chuckle* well, okay. But only because I love you.

>100 karenmarie: It's certainly not my favorite comestible but it *is* visually striking. I had a Jell-O shot once and felt very cheap afterwards to my then-boyfriend's huge amusement. Once, a philosopher; twice, a pervert.

It is far from only christians who give religion its well-deserved bad name. All flavors of religious nut are fairly revolting with their mealymouthing about being saved or chosen or whichever flavor of hateful, exclusionary us-v-them hostility they choose. Daniel Dennett, who died yesterday, took the system apart in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

I do love the English language! This YouTube video on greetings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxUBOUnRLM&ab_channel=WordsUnravelledwithRo...
...is really fun and fascinating.

>104 richardderus: Fascinating! Thank you, Richard! MUCH better than Jell-O. (Congealed salads, btw, to my native southern mind are a bit classier than the norm with fruit cocktail. They would involve cottage cheese and fresh vegetables maybe, but not Kool Whip or Reddi Wip. I'm not saying "better," just "higher quality, fresh ingredients.") Anyway, thank you for your restraint!

Courage, my friend, for your day. I hope you get to isolate and read some. *smooch*

>105 LizzieD: ...like that first clear-gelatin salad in >87 richardderus:? That's what I think of as a congealed salad, which honestly sounds so revolting that I just don't see how anyone thought it was a good name for a food. Like "spotted dick" in England. Don't care if it doesn't mean the same thing, it just sounds bad.

I was helping Old Stuff with his jacket just now and he said "thank you".

I about passed out.

>103 richardderus: I'm currently reading a book that tries hard to verbally redeem all religions, by pointing out the statements of religious idealists, and implying that only religion ever produced anyone who questioned the pervasive violence and exploitation in human societies, particularly agrarian empires. The author also points out many instances where the religious excuses for violence were fairly obvious fig leafs, or even invented well after the violence was over. (If a warlord who happens to be Catholic fights a war lord who happens to be Protestant, is it a "religious war" or just warlords doing their usual thing?)

She has a point, in that it's pretty obvious humans don't need religion to inspire them to persecute and exploit those less powerful than them in their own society, and attack, rob, and enslave those from outside. Whatever religion they have is usually invoked to explain why these actions are desirable, sometimes with a few prophetic types objecting on religious grounds, and being ignored or executed for their trouble. But they rarely start with religion when deciding who to abuse, other than the basic "not our religion", which can be taken as yet another way to say "not our tribe".

OTOH, I'm getting tired of her completely excusing religion from culpability in cases where the violent explicitly cited religion to motivate their behaviour, just because some fellow member of their religion disagreed.

Jello shots *shudder*
Tried 'em once, just about blocked the experience out.

Sorry to hear you're having to deal with Old Stuff with a broken bone, and hope the weekend is nice enough you're able to get out some.

Jelly shot failure - too much vodka, they refused to set, we drank them from the teapot.

>107 ArlieS: It's way more than a fig-leaf. Excusing religion from its central role in making those us-v-them hateful choices is inexcusable and indefensible. But that's what one can expect from the god-ridden culture. Ick.

Enjoy the read...then read the Dennett book in >103 richardderus:.

>108 bell7: Probably all to the good, Mary. Awful things!

>109 Helenliz: That sounds, if possible, worse than the shots themselves! *gag*

My trip to the library yesterday resulted in me checking out Jell-o Girls. I remember reading the review of this one and adding it to my LT reading list, but given the discussion here about the joys of jello, I just couldn't pass it up. It isn't that long so it won't take that much time to listen to.

>113 benitastrnad: Brave of her to admit to her ancestral part in the criminally gross stuff! I hope it's a great read, Benita.

I'm late to this new thread and got to trawl through all the Jello glory in one go. *shudder*

Not sure where the inspiration to share the glory came from, Richard, but hopefully it goes away soon.

>113 benitastrnad: Oh - that flicked a switch on. It wasn't Bird's that made jelly in the UK. It was Rowntree.

>97 richardderus: Amen

And I had a new idea for a hat design:

Red hat
Black shirt
White hood

Waving at RD. Made a quick gallop through to catchup. Grrr re pain, hope that is improving.

>57 richardderus: Ages since I read Stephen King. My sister is a big fan. Will see what she has to hand.

Happy Sunday, Richard. I hope you are having a nice pain-free weekend. I am enjoying Clear: A Novel. I love her lean style. Have you read The Mission House?

>115 Familyhistorian: I am glad to see you here, Meg...and the Jell-O-ness of this thread's genesis isn't destined to continue, I promise.

>116 humouress: ew

I thought Rowntree made fruit gums, and those were more akin to jelly beans.

>117 ReneeMarie: ...and a fat person giving the Roman salute. A "pretty" picture, no? One I fear is becoming normal, and I very much do not want it to be.

Enjoy your Sunday, Renee.

>118 Caroline_McElwee: No improvements to report, Caro, but all the yay for you picking up UR!

*smooch*

>119 msf59: Hiya Mark...no, not one of those mystical magical pain-free times. I did read The Mission House, though without much pleasure:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/359787#8498038
Be well!

>122 richardderus: No images, just the words. To try to make people *think.* The news reported that 71% of Brits disapprove of Trump, and frankly I'm surprised it's not higher. Except Brexit.

You enjoy yours, as well.

>125 ReneeMarie: Brexit/austerity is proof the Little Englanders are just as stupid as the MAGAts. They got sold a line of crap and gave the banksters immunity from the EU's strict anti-secrecy regs that they wanted so they can continue to service Putin's account (among other dictators' wealth).

‘Morning, RD. Happy Sunday.

>103 richardderus: Got it. Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.

I was chatting with friend Karen last night about all the crap in the world, and bemoaned the fact that most religions, not all but most, do things their religion expressly prohibits. Don’t get it except in the context of control, power, wealth.

>104 richardderus: Will watch later on my cell phone, subscribed to the channel. Thanks!

>106 richardderus: Wow. Getting a thank you. Huge.

*smooch*

>121 richardderus: And yet a lot better than the lurid ... treats ... you've been offering us.

>127 karenmarie: Horrible! *smooch*

I was very surprised by his thank-you, but I honestly don't expect it to become the new normal. Enjoy the video, and branch out to RobWords! He's got a fun sense of the absurd and comes up with great new alphabets. Which we very badly need.

Religions are made by people and so have all our flaws. Most notably hypocrisy and a powerful, easily aggrieved ego.

>128 humouress: "Lurid" is, indeed, le mot juste for those...treats. *shudder*

>127 karenmarie: I'm inclined to suspect that this is evidence that they don't really "believe".

Except that humans are really good at double think; your "atrocities" are our "unavoidable collateral damage" when they aren't "necessary lest our nation/people be utterly exterminated".

So I'm not violating that religious prohibition, whatever it looks like to some atheist cynic. It simply doesn't apply to whatever I'm doing. (This reminds me of pregnant underage mormons who said they'd never had "sex"; they'd had "marital relations", which presumably isn't the same thing in their argot.)

>116 humouress: I remember Rowntree fruit gums which were candy. I suppose it only makes sense that they were the purveyors of jelly in the UK.

Hope you are having a wonderful Sunday, Richard.

>131 ArlieS: A very succinct summation of hypocrisy. Makes me itch just to read it.

The Mormon doublethink around sex is some of the squirreliest in christendom. Breathtakingly dishonest, destructive, and hilariously goofy.

>132 Familyhistorian: *smooch*
***
Helen Garner is coming to wide attention at last. I'm glad. I think y'all should invest some eyeblinks in this interview with her because her work is well presaged in the topics she's discussing in it.

'Morning, RD. Happy Monday to you.

*smooch*

>135 karenmarie: Monday *smooch* Horrible! Have a good time in Raliegh!

I'm glad that you got one "thank you" anyway.

Top of the morning ----------- oh. It's 11:24. Rest of the day to you! *smooch*

>132 Familyhistorian: I'm not really a fan of fruit gums (or jelly beans). I prefer fruit pastilles, which are softer.

If we're moving from jelly to sweets, many years ago, Dad's workplace got picked to taste test the new Opal fruits. I can't remember what it was (Grapefruit, maybe - I'm a fan of citrus sweets), but I do remember my favourite didn't make it into the packs.
Hope Monday isn't being moanday to you.

>137 LizzieD: It was deeply surprising, and honestly I'd completely freak out if it became his habit.

Splendid Monday to us both, sweetiedarling.

>138 humouress:, >132 Familyhistorian: They're not my go-to goodies. Ice cream, or a heavily frosted sponge, or donuts with filling...not many candies or glops (solids that stick to teeth or bowls) on my wishlist.

>139 Helenliz: Opal fruits? What're those when they're at home?

Moanday is, at present, absent.

Just can't be arsed to write anything since last Thursday. It's very, very rare that I don't write something daily. This must be what they call writer's block? Just...do not care? As this weird unfeeling happens to me next to never, I don't know what to call it. I'm the same about insomnia, it just doesn't happen often enough for me to figure out what it is until it's over. Tried a nap, got up well-rested and indifferent. Tried watching the news about 45, got incoherent with rage...and indifferent to writing about it.

So deeply strange, so murkily unfamiliar, and I really hope it goes right the hell away soonest!

>143 richardderus:
Sounds like good old-fashioned ennui as set in for a spell. I'm not worried. You will get over it. Perhaps the penguin pants would help. They should make you smile. They do me whenever I think of them.

>144 benitastrnad: They might have...had they not vanished with a bunch of other laundry. *sigh* I'll get over the current mood.

>145 richardderus:
That is enough to make anybody have a case of ennui.

I spent yesterday packing two boxes of books in preparation for the move later this fall. I hope to get another two boxes of books packed today. But it is a hard and slow job because I keep pulling books out of the boxes because I want to read them. That might be why I purchased them in the first place. I keep telling myself the boxes will be there when I get into the house, so just put them away. You won't run out of reading material.

>146 benitastrnad: Thanks, Benita. I'm mostly just so *bored* and that is something I do not have a model for in my life.
***

I need a perspective check.

I LOLed... As did The Wayne 🙂

>147 richardderus: *snerk*

Good thing I wasn’t sipping the good scotch just then…

>149 drneutron:, >148 katiekrug: It made me laugh hard enough to scare Old Stuff. Even he laughed after he thought about it.

>147 richardderus: It pretty much made my day! Thanks, Richard, and good night. May you wake with some zest for the day!

*smooch*

>147 richardderus: Love that, RD.

Thanks for making me smile and guffaw at my desk this morning.

>147 richardderus: *snort*

>151 LizzieD: Zestless *smooch* back. Glad you got some fun out of >147 richardderus:.

>152 PaulCranswick: Cheers, PC!

>153 Helenliz: *snort*

>147 richardderus: LOL! Perfect!

I hope you snap out of "indifference" mode. Richard. Sending warm, healing waves in your direction...

>157 msf59: Gorgeous oriole, Birddude. They really are spring on the wing to my South Texas heart.

Checking in on you, RD. ((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a terrific Tuesday!

‘Hiya, RDear. Happy Tuesday to you!!

>136 richardderus: Everything went well, and I rewarded myself with Taco Bell. Today’s Arsenal v. Chelsea at 3 p.m

>143 richardderus: Aack. Writer’s block? Ennui? Angst? Sorry about it, hope as I read further down your thread it’s changed.

>144 benitastrnad: I swear, Benita, I wrote ennui even before I saw your post since I write to a Word document for longer threads and scroll down. Great minds.

>145 richardderus: Sorry about the penguin pajama pants. … went down a rabbit hole… check your PMs.

*smoochiesmooch*

>160 karenmarie: Hey Horrible! *smooch* Thanks for everything. I'll repeat here what I said on the PM response:
I'm surprised it didn't occur to me until now: I started a new drug, and had a sudden change in my long-established patterns...dots, connect thyselves!...go look at side effects.

Gabapentin has a fatigue and somnolence side effect that's well known (as well as weight gain, blech), and increased suicidal ideation...not happening for me, thank GOODNESS!, but this foggy grayness makes me think a similar pathway is being followed. I'll be bringing this up with my doctor next visit. I can wait because nothing dire/life-threatening is happening.

Hoofbeats, horses...absent a change in overall health, a change this sudden and this notable in my worldly affect is probably down to a medication's side effects.

Whew! It's bad enough that what helps you also hurts in other ways, but at least knowing what's going on is a relief. It is to me. I don't think that a call to the doc would be amiss, but that's just me.

*smooch*

Oh! Can we blame the Jell-O on Gabapentin??????

>162 LizzieD: heh...well, let's put it down to that Peggy. I've got the taste for it now so I can see that there will be congealed glop in my future threads.

*smooch*

>147 richardderus: Thanks for making me laugh, Richard. I hope your ennui lifted a bit now that you figured out the probably cause.

>164 Familyhistorian: It hasn't lifted but it isn't scary anymore...that is plenty enough.

I'm glad you got the laugh!

>161 richardderus: Ugh. I hope this goes away as your body gets used to the drug. (No idea if that's even a possibility with gabapentine, but it happens sometimes.)

'Morning, Rdear.

You're very welcome.

I don't remember Gabapentin's side effects, but I was in SO MUCH PAIN that they would have been easy to overlook when I started taking it.

I don't know why I'm up so early. I did get 5.5 hours of sleep, not half bad.

Grumble and *smooch*

>166 ArlieS: I hope so too, Arlie. I'll be presenting Horrible's idea of timing tweaks, and permaybehaps dosage tweaks. Letting my body accustom itself is always the first step if there's nothing ghastly happening. Knowledge, though, is my personal first line of defense: Go read up on it, see what might be going on. It took me a few days but I got there. And that should tell anyone looking on how serious the problem was! My first response took DAYS to occur to me!

>167 karenmarie: You might not have had those side effects, Horrible, since your body was using every single erg of energy trying to shut down the terrible pain of joint replacement. Like I take fentanyl and don't experience opioid highs because it's combating the pain I'm in. Morphine is the only thing I've ever experienced that has no modulation: Once it hits, I'm utterly gone and can not form ideas, words, or really breaths. Horrifying. Necessary at times, but so awful for me that I hate it.

Nappage later on? It can elevate one's mood....

BURGOINE #019

Cut and Thirst by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Three women scheme to avenge an old friend in a darkly witty short story about loyalty, ambition, and delicious retribution by Margaret Atwood, the #1 bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta. All they need is a plan with suitably Shakespearean drama. But as sweet and satisfying as revenge can be, it’s not always so cut and dried.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: Revenge fantasies are having A Moment, aren't they? When the cautionary-tale-teller par excellence feels called to speak nasty vengeful thoughts, you know critical mass...even a tipping point...has arrived.

May I ask of the hive mind what it is with Thursdays and old people? I'm old, and I have no special thoughts or feelings about Thursdays in regards to socializing with my peers. Did y'all pick it because it alliterates with good, violent words like "thuggery" or something? Nothing about this iteration of the current fantastical storytelling fad stands out...humor's blah, plot's as incredible as any of the others out there...either pro or con. Fills some time, and Atwood's bank account. That's fine. But I won't do it again.

Happy Wednesday, Richard! Sorry to hear about the ennui, but I'm glad you've found the likely cause and hope that means you & the doctor can find an effective way to combat it soon.

*smooch*

>170 richardderus: Yeah, I was only slightly more generous with it, I gave it 3.5. It was decent, I guess. A whole lot different than what I would say is Atwood's usual fare.

>171 bell7: Wednesday orisons, Mary! I'm thinking the best result is that I am just not going to be anxious about the issue as I have a grasp of what the problem is.

*smooch*

>172 mahsdad: It's just...um...adequate. Modestly entertaining. Like any short story in the mystery sphere, it's inadequately detailed. Atwood can do mystery, see Alias: Grace, so it's not systemic; it's just that it feels like a trend chasing jeu d'esprit.

Anyway, it passed time without challenging me. I needed that.

>174 richardderus: Passing the time without challenge is sometimes the best kind of book there is. :)

>175 mahsdad: Seldom, but when it is, it's life-saving.

I wasn't there.

>1 richardderus: Happy new thread!

Hello Richard, I'm sorry to hear about your recent round of blahs but glad to know you've identified the probable cause, which I'm sure is a real relief. The surgeon put my DH on gabapentin following his knee replacement. It was fine for a while, but he recently started to experience some side effects. When he had his follow-up visit last week, the doctor suggested weaning himself off, which he has done, and took his last dose Sunday. He seems to be doing OK without it. I hope you'll be able to work out a dosage or schedule that will make it work better for you.

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

Glad you found a probable cause of your recent feelings, helps to ease the mind. Drugs can have unwelcome side effects, I have had years I could not read at all because of Paxil. Took many years before I realised it was Paxil, so you get it way faster ;-)

>178 atozgrl: That's a good result: Helped when needed, d/c without trouble when it stopped. I'd love to get to a place the dosage matched the need exactly, but bodies being dynamic systems I know that's impossible really.

Cheers, Irene!

>179 FAMeulstee: That Paxil crash was very worrying-sounding. I think the fact that "AI" exists now might actually make drug discovery far less risky for patients. Its forte is in connecting dots humans can't see, so let's get it working on things we don't do that well like predict extremely complex pattern interactions.

I have learned to question everything after taking an aspirin-derived drug for ages. Aspirin makes gout flare up...and it was given by my rheumatologist!

>158 richardderus: That is an American goldfinch. Our orioles are also beautiful but they are orange and black.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. Today officially kicks off camping season. The camper is in our drive and mostly loaded. The only downside is that rain is in the forecast for the weekend but this group is a hardy bunch.

>182 msf59: A what now? I see it and think oriole because I love them...camping season already? Is RuPaul's Drag Race back *already*?! They just...
...
...oh, you mean "sleeping on the dirt" season. Well, you enjoy!

‘Morning, RichardDear! Happy Thursday to you.

>168 richardderus: Glad you’re working on timing and/or dosage tweaks. I don't remember any special effects when I started Gabapentin, or anything from when I upped the dose under doctor's advise. I’ve had morphine during surgeries and after, of course, but my two favorite times of morphine were with kidney stones, when Dilaudid just didn’t cut it even though it’s a morphinan opioid. I begged the ER nurse for something stronger the first time and Joy! The second time I specifically asked for morphine, and as soon as the warmth started coursing through my veins from the IV, me curled on my side with my eyes closed, begging for relief and asking “Is that morphine?” and getting the nurse’s “Yes.”, I said a very heartfelt thank you. The times I’ve needed morphine I haven’t needed to form ideas or words, although breaths help with the living portion of existence.

And, first rabbit hole of the day, remembering that I was/am a redhead: Redheads and Pain Thresholds

>170 richardderus: I love books that activate my schadenfreude, but will pass. I have a love-hate relationship with Atwood.

*smooch*

Good morning at last, Richard. I thought I had spoken yesterday, but I guess not. I was irritated when I dropped by last night and didn't find my post that I guess I hadn't done but too sleepy to nod at you even.
I'm wishing you a day when you can read something good and organize your inspiration to write about it so that we can take another BB. Also wish that the injured one may be somewhere else for a good portion of your day.
*smooch*

Hi Richard, a belated Happy New Thread mate.

>184 karenmarie: Hi Horrible! Morphine for kidney stones is a minimal effort to control pain, I'd've thought. Thank goodness it was long enough ago that they just did it.

Your rabbitholing is like mine..."I remember something like that from somewhere..." and three hours are gone!

Pass on >170 richardderus: with a peaceful mind. *smooch*

>185 LizzieD: Hola Peggy! I'm pretty sure I've done that very thing every thread I visit at one time or another. Sometimes it just is like that.

I'll search up something to smack your biblioarmor with soon enough....

*smooch*

>170 richardderus: How does one get access to the Prime Lending Service, RD? I have never heard of it.

Wishing the blahs begone and giving ((hugs)) and **smooches** for today

>186 johnsimpson: Welcome, John!

>189 alcottacre: When you're Kindleshopping, there's a message on some titles that says "included with Prime"...but there's no central source you can shop for titles that I know of.

*smooch*

Dropping in to say hello. Sorry you are not feeling your normal self!

Hope the weekend is full of fantastic reading!

>192 figsfromthistle: Thank you, Anita...I hope the same thing! *smooch*

Awomen.

Had some of these yesterday and you came to my mind, RD. That liquid sweetness that bursts inside your mouth with onde onde is an experience we all should have on a regular basis.

>195 PaulCranswick: OOOO!! It's been ages since I discovered these scrummy delights. I really like pandan, and coconut makes 'em even better. Hoping you're about to post your vicarious book-haul for us unhaul sadsacks.

I'm glad you discovered the cause of your ennui, or the blahs. That should be easily remedied. Dave tried gabapentin for neuropathic pain, but he found after 8 or so months that he didn't want to take it any more. It helped the pain, but he felt it made him a bit drowsy and he felt that mentally , he had lost his edge , but which I think he meant he felt a bit foggy brained. He then tried Lyrica, but I noticed he was kind of " high" and after a few weeks I suggested he might want to discontinue it, which he did. Luckily , the neuropathic pain seemed to subside on it's own eventually.

>197 vancouverdeb: That's it exactly, there's no edge, no acuity, of any sort. Yech!

The thing about pain that people who do not have it chronicly don't get is that one builds it in to one's life. The experience of being constantly in pain breeds a kind of wilful amnesia. Forget it, body, not gonna do that anymore, says the brain. Then some tiny little tap will cause an all out of proportion wave of it to drown out all other sensation.

Hiya, RDear. Happy Friday to you.

>194 richardderus: Got that one right. Men trying to control women’s decisions on their own bodies, morals, ethics, and health makes me absolutely crazy.

*smooch*

>199 karenmarie: What a crock that is. How and why women have decided to tolerate it for literal millennia, I have no idea.

Weekend *smooch*

>200 richardderus:
Probably because they know they will be beaten in submission. (literally beaten - just look at the statistics on violence against women.)

>201 benitastrnad: Hmmm

You're pretty much guaranteed to be right...people only fear what they would do themselves.

>7 richardderus: I am late!!! But speak freely I will ;)

>87 richardderus: My mum once suggested I set tinned beetroot (beets to you?) in raspberry jelly to stem the flow of beetroot juice on the plate. I was *aghast* at the suggestion that I go to that much trouble to ensure that my mashed potatoes do not get purpled. Now it has become a family joke...that anything ought to be set into jelly so that it doesn't contaminate other food items on a plate.

Anyway, off to weekending I go...which will involve a rare book review. I read a whole book on my recent 2 nights away!

Happy Saturday, RD.
I read Thunder Bay which I think must have been a bullet from you. Good one.

>203 LovingLit: Megan! *smooch* Happy that you came by and even happier that the unmom days meant that you got some reading finished.

Beets in Jell-O? Ick

I like beets and don't like Jell-O. I wouldn't put the two together, but then again it's less repulsive than olives and cheese in lime Jell-O, like >1 richardderus:

I'll come visit soon to see what got read.

>204 Helenliz: Oh yay, Helen! I like that series. Skelton's a talented evoker of atmosphere, no? Weekend-ahead *smooch*

BURGOINE #020

Poetics of Work by Noémi Lefebvre (tr. Sophie Lewis)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: As Lyon is consumed by protests, a darkly comic exploration of the push to be employed and the pull to write.

A state of emergency is declared in "the good city of Lyon" and protesters and police clash in the streets. At the unemployment office, there are few job opportunities for poets going around. So the poet reads accounts of life under the Third Reich and in Nazi language, smokes cannabis, walks through the streets, and eats bananas, drawn by an overbearing father into a hilarious and often cynical exploration of the push to be employed and the pull to write. In this Oulipean experiment written without gender markers for its narrator, Noémi Lefebvre presents us with a comic and irreverent reckoning with the rise of nationalism and the hegemony capitalism has on our language, actions, and identities.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: One of those ever-so-French récits that I like, but often don't love. This one is, to be honest, untranslatable. In French everything has a gender. This story does not gender its narrator, and like all récits this one takes place entirely in its PoV character's head; unless actively thinking about sex, we don't gender our own thoughts. So this genderless tale of a slice of the life of a nameless genderless soul at a crucial moment in recent French history is far more trenchant when ungendered in a highly gendered language...a lot of the impact is lost in neuter-English.

Perfect for the moment when a story is too short, a novel is too long, and one wants to think in the worldview of an aspiring-to-success poet. And is in the mood for sly, leftist humor. And does not care a fig for conventional, plodding storytelling but still craves a story.

A purchase direct from Transit Books supports a literary press, and only sets you back $15.95, a price I call cheap for the fun you could have.

Happy weekend *smooch*

>191 richardderus: Ah, OK. Thanks, RD.

>197 vancouverdeb: I took gabapentin for a couple of years and really hated it. I finally decided that since the pain in my arm was not going to go away despite the two surgeries, I would rather just not take pills that were not helping anyway.

>198 richardderus: The thing about pain that people who do not have it chronicly don't get is that one builds it in to one's life. The experience of being constantly in pain breeds a kind of wilful amnesia. Forget it, body, not gonna do that anymore, says the brain. Then some tiny little tap will cause an all out of proportion wave of it to drown out all other sensation.

THIS! I have had chronic pain in my joints since childhood (I was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease when I was 12, so 50 years ago now) so I can empathize with anyone suffering from chronic pain although I know that my pain is small in comparison to that of others. The chronic pain from my ulnar neuropathy is only about 5 years old now.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes for a wonderful weekend, Richard!

>208 bell7: Thanks, Mary! *smooch*

>209 alcottacre: Mais certainement, ma amie.

I'm glad you recognize yourself in my description for my ego's sake, I said it well, but damn good and mad that you have to at all.

Gabapentin is helping my pain levels enough that I wouldn't want to just stop it. I'd honestly rather not up my opioid dosage, small though it is, because they never ends...it can only lead to the need for higher and higher dosages over time. So something else that does the pain-relief job by a different pathway is worthwhile to me. I just don't want these side effects that decrease my QoL when that's what I want pain relief to INcrease.

*smooch*

>211 richardderus: I just don't want these side effects that decrease my QoL when that's what I want pain relief to INcrease.

Very understandable - and I hope it happens for you.

>198 richardderus: >211 richardderus: I guess a lot of life is about choosing trade-offs. I particularly wish that you and our other friends with appalling constant pain didn't have to make this particular choice. Go, medical research for something that is simply good! That would be profound.

*smooch* for your day.

PEARL RULE #009 (20%)

The Snatch Racket: The Kidnapping Epidemic That Terrorized 1930s America by Carolyn Cox

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Although the 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was a worldwide sensation, it was only one of an estimated three thousand ransom kidnappings that occurred in the United States that year. The epidemic hit America during the Great Depression and the last days of Prohibition as criminal gangs turned kidnapping into the highly lucrative “snatch racket.”

Wealthy families and celebrities purchased kidnap insurance, hired armed chauffeurs and bodyguards, and carried loaded handguns. Some sent their children to school or summer camp in Europe to get them out of harm’s way. “Recent Kidnappings in America” was a regular feature in the New York Times, while Time magazine included kidnappings in its weekly list of notable births, deaths, and other milestones.

The Snatch Racket is the story of a crime epidemic that so frightened families that it undermined confidence in law enforcement and government in general. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt waged a three-year War against Kidnappers with J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men (newly empowered to carry weapons and make arrests) on the front lines. This first U.S. war against terrorism revolutionized and modernized law enforcement in the United States, dramatically expanding the powers of the federal government in the fight against not only kidnapping but many new types of interstate crime.

At the heart of the narrative are some of the most iconic names of the twentieth Rockefeller, Ford, Lindbergh, Roosevelt, Hoover, Capone, Schwarzkopf, and Hearst, all caught up in the kidnapping frenzy. The Snatch Racket is a spellbinding account of terrifying abductions of prominent citizens, gangsters invading homes with machine guns, the struggles of law enforcement, and the courage of families doing whatever it took to bring home the ransomed.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Copaganda. I am appalled at how completely the FBI's most horrific excesses of past and present owe to this manufactured crisis, flames fanned by that vile scum J. Edgar Hoover. The USA-PATRIOT act and its modern kin have a deep set of roots in US authoritarian trends.

Not boring, if a bit dry in its presentation; and if one is not a convinced leftist, and not utterly repulsed by the cynical manipulations of the "law enforcement" parts of the establishment, permaybehaps a good read. Be prepared to Do Your Homework, though. This isn't my jam but I am not everyone.

NB the blogged review has links to informational sources

>212 alcottacre: *smooch*

>213 LizzieD: It would be life-changing for millions, Peggy, so cross your crossables and sacrifice some kittens to the goddesses that it occurs.

*smooch*

Good afternoon, RD. Happy Saturday to you.

Furniture moved from Louise's house to ours, our old stuff taken away, chocolate pound cake in the oven, steaks out defrosting.

I'm gonna read for a while.

*smooch*

>217 karenmarie: Horrible me lurve! Happy to see you, despite the miasma of chocolate you wafted in with you.

Read something good. I've broken the spell, as you see above, by focusing on short reads and admitting to myself I'll *never* finish a book that makes me so angry I could spit. Rob listened to me ranting about the gorram USA-PATRIOT Act for a while and said, with admirable simplicity, "Pearl-Rule the fucking thing."

My Idaho-dwelling sister is FINALLY taking her fifty-years-postponed trip to Italy! There's a Smithsonian tour group going to Naples then ending up in Venice. I'm so glad for her. A big bonus is she might even get to reconnect with one of her girlhood pals while she's there, as the woman has a home in the Veneto. I hope so.

*smooch*

Hiyah, Richard! Hope you’re having a good weekend.

>219 drneutron: Greetings, Jim. I am a lot, lot better than before...I've self-adjusted a troublesome medication, and lifted the crushing blahness that kept me from focusing on things. So yay!

I think your field's got to be hoppin' like a billion bunnies these days with the Europa Clipper planning that's got to be going on. Enjoying it? It will of course come post-retirement, but heck...what a fabulous way to link your work to the future.

Yeah, we’re excited to see Clipper launch. We had a big piece of that one - propulsion module, solar arrays, radar, several other instruments. Working with JPL is always… interesting. But it’s a heckuva spacecraft.

>221 drneutron: "Interesting" pretty much always characterizes giant bureaucracies interacting, no? And then add on budgets that beggar the imagination of ordinary humans, used to push entire fields of Humanity's methods of thinking beyond their current boundaries...well.

>218 richardderus: Right on. If a book is causing major emotional distress, it's unlikely to be worth the stress of finishing it. (I have made exceptions for some material about the black experience in the US, particularly during the George Floyd protests, but stopped once it became more-of-the-same, differing mainly in details.)

>223 ArlieS: I'm always wary of just putting down things that say stuff I disagree with, or find incredible. In this case I found the author's uncritical absorption of the copaganda surrounding the "rash" of kidnappings more than my blood pressure could support.

>224 richardderus: Yeah; I (or you) could always be wrong.

What I avoid the most are recitations of atrocities, presumably intended to motivate supporters to action. Becoming angry isn't pleasant, and if the situation is bad enough, and I already knew about it, my inaction is most likely due to not having anything useful I could actually do. I can do without reading a book that focusses my attention on things about which I already to feel angry *and* helpless.

When it comes to things I find incredible - well, it depends why I find them incredible. I don't need to read anything proselytizing for a belief system that's impossible due to self contradiction, or even merely contradicted by evidence I find sufficiently strong.

>225 ArlieS: I'm pretty sure that all supernatural systems, and most philosophical ones, are unprovable are best and calculatedly obfuscatory as a matter of course; but I really feel the need to get why people are investing themselves into them. Why do smart people profess religious belief? I don't want to be proselytized, but I do want to get some idea of why the beliefs appeal.

The psychology of religious belief beggars my imagination. I keep trying.

>226 richardderus: Yeah, the psychology of belief remains interesting.

>227 ArlieS: I just got, today, a DRC of Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum from NYU Press. That's the kind of stuff I like to know about.

Also got a big raft of social-science goodies, too, including We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe by Curtis Boyd MD and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd PhD RN, which I got turned down for a couple months ago and now, it just showed up! Guess they changed their minds. Also intrigued by Desirable Belief: A Theology of Eros by Margaret D. Kamitsuka, since christian sex negativity has had such a huge impact on my own life.

Got a bunch of kiddie-books again, so I guess last year's illustrated-book review blast didn't go entirely unnoticed.

Reading through your thread, Richard, I’m glad to see your spirits are rising. Chronic pain is no joke (my husband has had chronic back pain for years). Hope you are able to balance your physical well-being with your mental health. Cheers to you and happy reading!

>228 richardderus: Hi Joanne! Happy to see you here...I'm sure that chronic pain is a springboard for many social issues. I know from my own life that it's a good percentage of depression's origins and suicidal ideation in its sufferers. I hope your husband's got good control for his pain.

Very late to the jelly/jam conversation but I noticed this:

Is now the time to admit that we had a mould in the shape of a rabbit as kids and thought that a white blancmange rabbit on a bed of mushed up green jelly was the height of sophistication. The exact same thing was the highlight of my birthday parties when I was five or six, except the blancmange was pink. And we have made a jellied dessert once or twice, made with sparkling Rose wine full of red summer fruits, which was very nice. The fruit couldn't sink to the bottom though, as there was too much fruit.

https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/collections/soft-fruits/a-terrine-of-summer-...

>231 SandDune: Good gracious, Rhian! What a dark memory from your childhood. Imagine turning out to be normal when you were forced to eat a pink blancmange shaped like a bunny when only six! I congratulate your team of therapists for getting you so close to normalcy given that disfiguring beginning. *shudder*

>231 SandDune: Off to walk with a chuckle. Rhian will at least smile, I think.

*smooch*

>231 SandDune: phew! Not just me then. >:-)

Hiya, RDear, and happy afternoon.

I abandon books with glee. Too many books, too little time.

Rob is right - "Pearl-Rule the fucking thing."

*smooch*

>233 LizzieD: I hope so, Peggy! *smooch*

>234 Helenliz: One wonders what the devil possessed the mothers of 1900s England...after all, back then they had to boil down the horses' hooves themselves to make the gelatine, didn't they. Was that a difficult process in your childhood memories?

>235 karenmarie: Perzackly, Horrible, just no sense using one's one wild and precious life unpleasantly when it's optional. *smooch*

>237 richardderus: Pretty sure no horses came into it. Fairly sure our version of blancmange was jelly made up with milk (maybe evaporated or condensed milk rather than semi skimmed).

Richard, I just saw a promo on tv for a new film (streaming on something, I'm sure) about octopuses (i?) It's a new National Geographic documentary and is getting a lot of positive buzz. Thought of you and how you'd probably love it.

>240 jessibud2: I'm glad to see you, Shelley! Secrets of the Octopus is a limited series on National Geographic itself. I'll be hunting it down after it finishes up. I do love my Tentacled Americans, so thanks for thinking of me me deario!

061 Providence by Craig Willse

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An introverted English professor falls for an enigmatic sophomore and is lured into a web of chaos and deceit.

Mark Lausson, a professor stuck in the middle of Ohio, is smart enough to get a job at an elite liberal arts college but not smart enough to know better when he meets charismatic sophomore Tyler Cunningham. In Tyler, Mark sees another way of being in the world—he finds Tyler’s self-possession both compelling and unsettling. Caught in the rush of sex and secrets, Mark ignores the increasing evidence that Tyler can’t be trusted. But by the time Mark comes to his senses, the irreparable damage is done. Providence shows how feeling trapped in our own lives can lead us to make choices we otherwise would not and the ways in which sexual desire can distort our senses of self and other, right and wrong.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A slow, suspenseful read that takes on gay intergenerational relationships. It does it in a very squicky way, as the power dynamic between teachers and students is (even when inverted as here) very, very fraught. There is a lot of pornography in the gay-male pornosphere that centers on incest...a thing that causes me no little discomfort for obvious reasons...and then, one step lower on the transgression ladder, a fair bit of teacher/student porn.

I'm not going to label this read as a one-handed reading story, but a few judicious pacing changes and a bit more descriptive instead of allusive language et voilà!

Mark gets tangled up in his history...not fully explored or explained...and Tyler uses his youthful beauty to make that history come alive; the results are predictable. The story isn't groundbreaking, the pacing isn't thrilling, so it sounds like my hatchet's about to come out, doesn't it? Nope. No hatchet job, this.

I'd label this a psychological suspense novel not a mystery or a thriller. The crime doesn't need solving; the pace is not thrilling. There is a lot of suspense, however, in the psychology of the developing relationship between Mark and Tyler; what is this kid after, and why did he target Mark, for starters. Had Author Willse and/or his editors developed Tyler and his motivations more, I'd be five-star hollerin' about this book. Tyler is the weakest part of the narrative: A kind of ambulatory "why, how come". Tyler's calculating nature is seen solely in its results and that leaves me thinking only about the nasty results of his manipulations for those he doesn't notice or even care about. Mark's perfectly nice, if boring, life gets upended and ruined from the outside. His boyfriend, whose name utterly escapes me, gets his world crashed by the narrative equivalent of a rock from space...for what? I'm not advocating for an excuse for Tyler's actions. Just a reason.

That said, this is a first novel and so gets most of a pass on some structural issues. I recommend the read to fellow old gay men who have much younger men in their lives; to those seeking a weekend's immersion into the consequences of a disastrous affair; and psychological suspense readers needing a fresh angle on their preferred genre.

Morning, Richard. We are back from our camping adventures. It was nice to spend time with Bree and my niece Sami, without the pressure of the kids. I got a busy week ahead but I hope to squeeze in some reading. I miss those darn books.

I hope all is well with you.

>243 msf59: Morning, Mark! Welcome home. I think spring's officially here because it will be 70° and sunny today. So pretty. I'm okay...I'm in a good, gruntled state of mind having got my drug intake ever so slightly adjusted. Of course now I need to discuss the way I did it with the doc and get The Lecture About Doing It Myself. I'll live over it.

Read well when you can!

062 In Universes: A Novel by Emet North

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every chance they get, they escape to see Britt, a queer sculptor who fascinates them for reasons they also don’t—or won’t—understand. As Raffi’s carefully constructed life begins to collapse, they become increasingly fixated on the multiverse and the idea that somewhere, there might be a universe where they mean as much to Britt as she does to them…and just like that, Raffi and Britt are thirteen years old, best friends and maybe something more.

In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to the question of what life would be like if events had played out just a little differently. The universes grow increasingly strange: women fracture into hordes of animals, alien-infested bears prowl apocalyptic landscapes. But across them all, Raffi—alongside their sometimes-friends, sometimes-lovers Britt, Kay, and Graham—reaches for a life that feels authentically their own.

Blending realism with science fiction, In Universes explores the thirst for genius, the fluidity of gender and identity, and the pull of the past against the desire to lead a meaningful life. Part Ted Chiang, part Carmen Maria Machado, part , In Universes insists on the transgressive power of hope even in the darkest of times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A blast of a read, in all the usual meanings of that word: Loud, trumpet-like; maximally fun; shattering and sudden; destructive.

Emotionally shattering because there is a great deal of grief and grieving inherent in exploration of self in relation to others, among other reasons. Raffi is protean, contains multitudes, and will not be nailed down to one meager choice when the entire multiverse is spread before them. A more adventurous take, then, on the idea of Everything Everywhere All At Once as it includes greater intentionality. Destruction, demolition blasts are very much here; Raffi, in some universes, rivals Kali as a destroyer of worlds, for self as well as, particularly, for others. There is no relationship in this story that is not utterly destroyed. They just don't get destroyed at the same time, by the same person, method, or for the same reasons. As you read along, wondering where the HELL Emet is taking you, you'll be suddenly shattered by the complete inversion of your expectations multiple times.

The fun of this read, and it is indeed fun to read, is the take-no-prisoners verve with which the story's told. Leave your pearls at home when you embark on this trip. Like Henry Miller, Emet North has no time for, interest in, or fear of you pearl-clutching linear, polite, unadventurous souls. Getting down into the baseness, the base, the bases of reality is the project and that simply cannot be done with clean white cotton gloves turning the pages.

I will say that, as a resolutely gay male, I was somewhat battered by the sheer preponderance of vaginas. I still read it; look at those four stars. That's a loud statement of my level of investment. A boon to me, in this overwhelmed-by-labia state, came from the fact that this is not a Beckett or Joyce-flavored excursion into vaggieland. Back to the Henry Miller comparison: The point of view doesn't really change, just the angle of the sightline...no one's holding your head in place like Joyce or Beckett both of whom want you all the way down until you have no air and start to gag on the overload. Miller's eternally shuffling around, foul fair foul fair all the same sight but never still long enough to be sure exactly what sight that is; this is closest to Emet North's method of shaking the kaleidoscope to fracture the multiverse as well.

What you should know is, this read doesn't want you to love it, like a shirley temple. This read wants you to live in it, to get into its unmarked white delivery van, to be fully present as you're shaken (and stirred) before being poured out in a thin stream of pungent, colorless, powerfully mixed sophistication. If that sounds unappealing, horseman, pass by. If you're in the mood to be renewed or renovated after some pleasant undemaning reads, this story will give you more than you expected.

This raving ramble accompanies four, not five, stars because the entire edifice is built on a largely ignored foundation of cosmology. I think, if one's calling something science fiction, and making the protagonist a cosmologist, that should figure in the story fairly prominently. I think my pleasure in the read also took a hit because there was often so little of a narrative strand to follow...this makes the setting down of the book very, very easy, and can make the picking up of it less so.

I recommend it to those weary of predictable plods. I recommend it to QUILTBAG readers. I do, above all, recommend it.

>214 richardderus: I might like that one more than you did, RD, given the differences in our reading tastes, but I am not going to break a leg to seek it out. Thanks for the review!

>245 richardderus: the entire edifice is built on a largely ignored foundation of cosmology. I think, if one's calling something science fiction, and making the protagonist a cosmologist, that should figure in the story fairly prominently. I think my pleasure in the read also took a hit because there was often so little of a narrative strand to follow

That makes me not want to read it at all. I am trying to read more sci-fi these days which means I want my sci-fi to really be sci-fi, not just 'classified' in that genre.

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and hopes that you have a marvelous Monday!

>246 alcottacre: Morning, Stasia! I think >214 richardderus: might very well hit you different indeed. The topic's one I had high hopes for. As for >245 richardderus:, don't even. You'd hate it!

*smooch*

>247 richardderus: Thanks for the advice, Richard! I will not even try for >245 richardderus:!

Hiya, RDear, and happy Monday to you.

>242 richardderus: I’ve added this to my wish list. I won’t pay $9.99 for Kindle and it’s not Kindle Unlimited, but I think I’d like it.

>245 richardderus: Also added to my wish list. Your paragraph that begins with I will say that, as a resolutely gay male, is astute in addition to cracking me up.

*smooch*

>249 karenmarie: Morning, Horrible! Sterling, his publisher, mostly publishes non-fiction about crafting so they likely don't think of KU as a thing. I'll mention it to their publicity dude.

I'm glad you could get a chuckle from my suffering. *smooch*

Good morning, Richard. If I were even ten years younger, I'd likely look at >245 richardderus: as a challenge I'd gleefully accept. As it is, I'll just shuffle on through my mountains and mountains of unreads that I truly want to read before I shuffle off.

*smooch* Enjoy your spring!

>251 LizzieD: I am 100% with you, Peggy. I say "no" to pitches for books I'd've said yes to five years ago, because strokes and mortality, and SOMEhow my TBR is still inflating because SOME people have biblio-AR15s and a deep-seated need to spray me with book bullets. *glare*

I can't help complaining about the food today. Brisket so chewy I gave up, spat it out, and threw it away; a bald boiled potato so cold it felt like it just came out of the fridge that joined the brisket; some mushy cabbage, a little piece of dry ginger sponge no icing still less frosting; some planks of matzo, likewise thrown away; a cup of lukewarm broth without flavor but with salt.

All of it in the trash. Passover food is always grim, indeed kosher food is always grim, but this was unusually horrifying. Religious nuts should keep their stupid dietary laws off my plate.

I want them to make me a bacon cheeseburger, a decent carrot cake with gobs of cream cheese frosting, and a bottle of prosecco.

063 Saint Elspeth by Wick Welker

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Why did they come?

When they appeared across the sky, speculation wheeled around the world—the aliens were from heaven, the invaders were from hell… or they were proof that neither existed. But when they landed, curiosity gave way to suspicion and the nations reacted with nuclear force, setting off a chain reaction that left the world in ruins.

Twenty years later, instead of nearing her retirement, Dr. Elspeth Darrow struggles to forget the loss of her child and husband by plunging herself into the work of operating the last remaining hospital in San Francisco. With medical supplies running out and working herself to exhaustion, Elspeth must embark on a risky salvage mission into the heart of the Neo California danger zone. Here, she discovers the disturbing truth: the aliens have returned.

As the mystery of the aliens' purpose on Earth unravels before her, Elspeth must hide what she discovers from reactionary despots, all vying to bring Neo California under their control. Aided by a band of pre-war scientists and new-world medical students, Elspeth races against astronomical odds to reveal the terrifying truth that might save the world—or finally destroy it for good.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM PRIME BECAUSE OF THAT BASTARD BRYCE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: End-of-the-world stories don't work because the author just uses them as a backdrop, instead of setting a story that really can't be told another way in that milieu. That was what happened between me and The Road. This always gives me the eyeroll disease, the one where I see my brain from rolling them away from Mad Max-level violence and artificially amped fridging stakes.

Saint Elspeth doesn't do that. Elspeth's character doesn't change...she was always basically a good (if cynical) person, always motivated to do the right thing...and the world around her does change though not the ways one would wish them to. So, a lot like Life, I'm sure you'll agree.

Setting the story at a time of great change and making Elspeth the solid referent not Humanity's scumbaggery shifts this from "how many End-of-Everything stories do we really need?" to "we really need more people like this to shine their light" without making the entire enterprise cloyingly sweet. It's down to the way the story is made: the setting doesn't alter her; she unfolds into the new world, becoming more herself and offering more and more of the genuine help and healing she's always given instead of being forced to find them in the awful new world.

I'm making this sound terrible. It isn't. I give it almost five stars because I was involved and excited by the action, and invested in the main character, all the way through. I finished the book about an hour ago and am contemplating a re-read already. I even followed the author. I never follow authors.

It's really good stuff. Read it soon...2024 is pretty damn dystopian, one needs an antidote. Here's one that takes you into the dark corners, pulls your heartstrings, and then allows you to believe that a decent if flawed person with a good heart *can* make a positive difference.

Oh, fine. *trudges off to TBR pile*

No promises when I'll get to it, though. *smooch*

>255 bell7: *giggle* I got her, I got her!

#sorrynotsorry You really will like the read, Mary. It's proof that indie authors can and do much better work than expected.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Tuesday.

>249 karenmarie: As always, I'm impressed that you know people in high places… yes, do mention KU to him. I didn’t chuckle about your suffering. (BTW, I actively dislike the word chuckle in the same way as you hate the w* word.) I would never take amusement or pleasure in ANY suffering you have ever experienced, and what made me crack up were the three ways you referred to the V word.

>252 richardderus: Glad I’m not the only one who sprays you with a biblio-AR15. Brava, Peggy.

>253 richardderus: Ugh. Just… ugh. I hope you have stashes of things in your room to alleviate your hunger pangs. And so much salt? Don’t they worry about their clients with high blood pressure?

>254 richardderus: Just checked out Mr. Welker, and love his Amazon bio: I write sci fi, medicine and zombies. I'm also an ICU doctor. I have an amazing wife and baby girl and an adorable cat that keeps it all together. Message me any time and thank you in advance for reading! @wickwelker I also just checked out his book Needle Work using KU.

*smooch*

>257 karenmarie: *chuckles evilly* You DO?! How ever could I have forgotten that? *further chuckling evilness*

I literally had to go look at the review to figure out that "vagina" was "the V word". Why on Earth be coy about that? After all, you have one, and must need to talk about it at least sometimes....

I drank more Ensures than usual. It was okay, it's just one day's irritation. Sometimes it's two or three days' bad menu choices and that can get dicey.

Welker is someone I found via social contagion on TwitTube...my YouTuber friend Bryce LOVES his stuff, so I gave it a whirl. Turns out I agree with Bryce wholeheartedly: Welker's got That Certain Something. I hope Needle Work works for you. I'll be waiting for your comments before I try it...no hurry, I've got a book or two to read in the interval.

APRIL IN REVIEW

Fourteen blog posts, twenty books reviewed. Solid. I'm pleased with that result. The challenge presented by gabapentin's side effects looked like it might derail my quest to fulfill my goals but I solved that temporarily...now I need to see the doc and get a permanent one. My favorite read of the month was Saint Elspeth. An indie author, a postapocalyptic story, a California setting...literally everything militating against my reading, still less liking, the book, and it got the most stars of anything I read!

I will not discuss my least favorite read. Poetry is boring at best, horrifyingly bad normally. Nothing has happened in the past fiftyish years to change my mind about this incontrovertible fact.

The month of May is short-story month, well this year they're calling it "Share A Story month" but whatevs, so I'm going to make an effort to review some collections, maybe an anthology or two....

>254 richardderus: OK, dammit. I now have Saint Elspeth on my Kindle. I paid for it because I can tell from reading the sample that I'm going to want to keep it for a reread. TOO MANY BOOKS!!!! I thought I was a fairly fast reader in my day, but I can't keep up with myself. Oh, and thank you.

*smooch*

>260 LizzieD: *gleeful victory dance* I'mma tell Author Welker he owes me money.

>252 richardderus: You can thank me now for writing about books like my #47 (the one with the extensive trigger warning at the start of my review) and its sequels, which would never ever inflate your TBR ;-)

OTOH, maybe I'll get you with some nice biology book eventually.

>253 richardderus: Ugh. Ugh. Ugh!

064 1795: The Order of the Furies (The Wolf and the Watchman #3) by Niklas Natt och Dag

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The spellbinding and eerie finale to the #1 internationally bestselling “cerebral, immersive” (The Washington Post) historical trilogy follows two unlikely allies as they struggle to end the reign of a powerful cabal of depraved hedonists in 18th-century Stockholm.

For more than a year, brilliant lawyer Emil Winge has dedicated himself to capturing the diabolical Tycho Ceton, with the invaluable assistance of one-armed army veteran and watchman Jean Michael Cardell. Their mission is made more difficult by the ever-increasing paranoia gripping Sweden’s royal family, who fear that a bloody revolution is brewing. A letter with the names of the revolutionary conspirators is said to be in the possession of Anna Stina Knapp, a good friend to Cardell. Now, Anna is missing and Cardell is determined to find her before the secret police take her into custody.

While Winge and Cardell fight for justice and for life, they find themselves caught between powerful enemies—those who will do anything to maintain the status quo, and those who will only be satisfied with its total destruction. Niklas Natt och Dag brilliantly concludes his immersion into the dark and turbulent waters of 18th-century Stockholm.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Dark, turbulent story finishes the arc of this series with the finality of an amputation saw. We met Cecil Winge and Mickel Cardell in 1793 as a truly appalling series of crimes come to light. These men, one in the terminal stages of the Great White Plague (tuberculosis) that ravaged the cities of the time, refuse to just accept that human beings can be treated in the vile ways they've seen without any consequences. Solid Enlightenment values on display, then. A human being has innate worth and dignity, and the kind of killing being perpetrated by someone(s) is an affront to that dignity.

It is hard for us to get into that mindset today. The privilege baked into the world we live in is now centered on money as worth and virtue; then it was god-given by birth. Whose vagina you were shoved out of was, forver and ever, the Place you occupied in this world and the next. Is it, I often wonder, better to base stuff on money? I mean, just look at the scum who hoard huge piles of money and get immense privilege! Unlike the old aristocracy, no one prepared them in any way for the responsibility of "high" social position so they waddle about, dribbling crudeness and outgassing idiocy like this wasn't a disgusting display of vulgarity.

Ahem.

Back to the book: The "high-born" people committing the crimes Mickel and the Winge brothers (Emil takes Cecil's place in the last two books of the series) are sufficiently enraged by to pursue them clearly don't have any noblesse oblige in them either. They behave disgustingly, but in private. The results of their disgusting behavior are simply dumped and there's no absolutely clear-cut way to pin it on the perpetrator(s) or to hold them accountable.

It's in the book! That's not me being political!

What happens in this last volume is the culmination of honest, honorable men pursuing justice across a corrupt landscape of privilege and abuse of power. It's a landscape that is absolute in its wins and losses. That is what suits the PTB, after all, since it's their thumbs on the scales of justice. The disgusting crimes, ones that repulse all honorable people of every station, in this book are less...meaty...but just as awful. The essential crime in the entire series, the one thing that unites the books and makes the reader invest in the characters and stories, is the abuse of power by the powerful. The lives of ordinary people are ruined at a whim, are altered for the worse by someone who has no consequences for that alteration. The team who set out to change that are doing so, bit by bit, in the teeth of a gale blown directly at them by men who do not want any precedents to be set that challenge their control.

The fierceness and appalling cruelty of the fight shows that they know the stakes are existential. Lose this one battle against two little nobodies and lose, once and for all, the Absolute Rights they presently enjoy. The force applied to Mickel and the Winges only makes sense when you look at it from the position of those whose power is at stake. The power that the little guys are fighting to take, the justice that they seek for victims cruelly used, is not out of proportion, that is overtly revolutionary, so why is it being resisted so fiercely?

Because once limited, absolute power dissolves. If held accountable for *this* crime, there is no longer immunity, no longer a usable reason to quash future and further reckonings. Why do you think there's something called a "consent decree"? The entire apparatus of Sweden's absolute monarchy topples if these two little men win Justice for the victims they're fighting for!

Do they, in the end, win? Read the book(s), dark and violent as they are, because I'm scared of the Spoiler Stasi. Those women take no prisoners.

>252 richardderus: SOME people have biblio-AR15s and a deep-seated need to spray me with book bullets. *glare* Well, I know you are not glaring at me!

>254 richardderus: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation! Now, I get to glare at you!

((Hugs)) and **smooches** for today, RD. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

>262 ArlieS: "Ugh" is, indeed, le mot juste.

You keep aiming, I'll keep dodging. My interest in non-fiction is seldom powerful enough to overcome the flatness of my wallet. Things that go on cheapie-sale are often the second-rate or the debunked trendy twaddle, though on occasion I indulge my curiosity and usually end up Pearl-Ruling the book early on.

‘Morning, RDear. Happy Wednesday to you.

>257 karenmarie: I am a marvelous contradiction of prudery and hedonism. The V word works for me. Ensures are a healthy alternative to crappy kosher shit.

>259 richardderus: Congrats on your April’s reading and blogging/reviewing efforts. Hmm. Short stories aren’t my standard fare, but I did read 4 pieces of fiction that can be considered short stories in April.

>263 richardderus: I’m happy to report that you did not get me with a BB. It didn’t even make it to my wish list as the first book in the series. This should not surprise you.

*smooch* from your own Horrible

>264 alcottacre: Morning, Stasia! You are far from innocent in the book-bulleting realms but have shown some restraint here lately, reading lots of stuff I've already read. I expect that you'll really resonate with Dr. Welker's work...he's a realistic optimist, much like you are. This book's got a lot of good stuff packed into it. Now, >263 richardderus: and its brethren should ne'er darken your bookshelf. Far, far too grisly.

*smooch*

>266 karenmarie: "The Hedonistic Prude: The True-Life Adventures of a Nutsy Redhead"...I finally have a title for your biography! Now to sign the contract....

Valerie gets all the credit for making the Ensures part of the furniture around here, the subscribe-and-save deliveries are hugely welcome! I think you'd blench early on at the sheer appalling violence of 1793, let alone the others. It worries me a little bit that the author has children....

Hi, Richard. Happy May Day!

>254 richardderus: Sounds good! Put a hold on it.

>265 richardderus: Except when the non-fiction is wonderful (thinking of that one about sand from last year).

>267 richardderus: I have never considered myself an optimist of any stripe, 'realistic' or otherwise, RD. I am definitely interested in Welker's work though.

Thanks for the heads up about >263 richardderus:, which did not tempt me anyway.

>269 Storeetllr: Oh yay! I finally winged Mary with a book-bullet. I think you'll enjoy Saint Elspeth, or I'd try to discourage you...there's such an emphasis on her being a force for good, though not some drippy, dreary do-gooder, and that sounds like your kinda story to me.

Vince Beiser's book was such a surprise, wasn't it? Sand! The guy made SAND interesting!

>270 alcottacre: Ha! I mean, I mean, you should of course have your own self-image, and stuff, but no one who's ever been around your book-reading habit could ever mistake you for a me-level curmudgeon now could they.

>253 richardderus: That is horrible food, Richard. Brisket! A cold boiled potato, mushy cabbage and ginger sponge. Ugh. I don't mind Matzo planks, though I have not had any in a long time. I'm glad you are feeling so much better without the gabapentin. Happy May Day and *smooch*

>273 vancouverdeb: Matzo fails to appeal to me, but is not the devil's own like rubbery brisket and cold boiled potato...fatless sponge is fine if it's absolutely *buried* under buttercream, but on its own is terrible.

The pain levels are back in the stratosphere. But I'm awake to know it!

May Day was a beautiful one, nicely enough, though no one did any marching. Depressing.

*smooch*

Happy Thursday, Richard dear!

>263 richardderus: Good review. I think this series was the darkest I have ever read. I was surprised I could cope with the story, probably because it is historicfiction, I get trouble if it is is someting this dark set in present day.

Sweet Thursday, Richard. You get those days straightened out? My part-time gig keeps me up on the days of the week. You mentioned an oriole the other day- Sue saw a Baltimore oriole at our feeder yesterday. They sure like grape jelly.

>275 FAMeulstee: The psychology of distancing...it's a very successful technique. It is very, very dark indeed, and brutal as anything can possibly be.

>276 msf59: Thursday orisons, Birddude. I'm still pretty sure, internally, that it's Friday the 13th.

Good afternoon, Richard. I hope you get a nap or something that will let you wake up feeling better. While I'm hoping, I'll hope for some decent food and a good book. I'm not reading much of *StE*, but I'm glad I have it. The condition of her hospital is resonating a little too strongly with the situation in Gaza, but that's not Welker's fault.

*smooch* for the day

((Hugs)) and **smooches** and a note that I can be as curmudgeonly as you on occasion

>279 LizzieD: You did something good, Peggy...tpday's lunch was veggie lasagna, which I like.

You're doing fine, the book will be there when the mood is right. It dpesn't pay to force yourself into a read. *smooch*

>280 alcottacre: mmm hmm your sweet tempered smooth-acting niceness is, of course, an anomaly.

suuuure

*smooch*

Join me in thread ten:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360505

>282 richardderus: I cannot understand why you do not believe me. I am not sweet. Lol

>284 alcottacre: ...because I've met you...?

>143 richardderus: Sorry to read you had a slump RD, but glad it seems to be behind you now. I hope it is rarely repeated.

>147 richardderus: Snort.

>286 Caroline_McElwee: Medication issues are a bear.

Isn't that meme priceless?