tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73765212024-03-14T03:31:12.087-07:00Undulant FeverBrucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.comBlogger731125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-41671774878281522952023-04-23T22:28:00.000-07:002023-04-23T22:28:53.571-07:00Fort Lee --->>> Fort Gregg-Adams: A Trip Thru History and Memory<i>[note: This piece by me first appeared, in slightly different form, as a reply to a comment in Mike Glyer's fannish newszine <a href="https://file770.com/">File 770</a> mentioning the US military was changing the names of installations that had been named for Confederate officers.]</i><br /><div><br /></div><div><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fort Lee, VA, where I spent most of my Army enlistment, is, on April 27th, being renamed Fort Gregg-Adams after two notable Black officers, Lieutenant-General Arthur Gregg and LtCol Charity Adams.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/0VTmD0rwE5a5079trXUuhg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD0xMjA4/https://media.zenfs.com/en/the-progress-index/b5f611b0256de8172439cca6db15c3bc" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="795" height="200" src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/0VTmD0rwE5a5079trXUuhg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD0xMjA4/https://media.zenfs.com/en/the-progress-index/b5f611b0256de8172439cca6db15c3bc" width="199" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gregg’s early military career, starting shortly after WW2, veered toward the Quartermaster Corps and logistical achievements when, trained as a medical lab technician, he was assigned to a post where there were no lab technician slots for Black soldiers (the Army was still segregated at that point) and ended up as supply sergeant for a Transportation company (read: truck-drivers); he remained with the Quartermaster Corps for the rest of his career.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Charity Adams was the first Black woman officer in the WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, later WAC) in WW2. She commanded the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-woman battalion sent overseas during wartime, first to England and, after V-E Day, to France, responsible for sorting and processing mail for millions of soldiers and civilian workers, as well as resolving horrendous backlogs of undelivered mail, some several years old.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I note this much about them because aspects of their careers resonate with my own military service.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gregg because I was trained as a photo lab tech and sent to Fort Lee (Quartermaster Corps HQ), where it turned out while there was a slot in the TO for a PLT, there wasn’t any actual photo lab work to be done. I ended up spending most of my Army career as a company clerk in the truck-driving company down the street from the Signal company I was originally assigned to. (Turned out to be a much better fit for me too.)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And Adams because one of the other clerks in that truck-driving company talked me into taking the Postal Exam shortly before my enlistment ended, eventually resulting in a permanent job and 30-year career with USPS with concomitant medical insurance and eventual pension. (Thanks, dude whose name I can’t goddam remember!)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://api.army.mil/e2/c/images/2023/02/09/28ac261e/original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="800" height="102" src="https://api.army.mil/e2/c/images/2023/02/09/28ac261e/original.jpg" width="152" /></a></div><p></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Just kinda bemused at the serendipitous commonalities.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #373737; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">[Final note, because it's pretty damn cool : </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333335;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Gregg, 94, will become the only living person in modern Army history to have a base named after him]<br /></span></span></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333335;"><span style="font-family: arial;">BONUS: Below is a picture of what I'm fairly sure is the barracks I lived in during most of my service at Fort Lee fifty years ago. If it is, my room (Company clerk got a semi-private room, but the other guy assigned to it lived off-post and only kept spare uniforms in the room. Nice for me) would have been on the first floor's closest corner. One time I accidentally locked myself out and had to remove the window screen and climb in like a burglar. Did I mention this was right across the street from Fort Lee's Military Police HQ? Amazingly, none of them noticed.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333335; font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333335;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6up4HMuKqer7KrgkC_KVXlFeZBiJGJWMPm0hOEmY_GX3YJFi2MM8gdR-MlYi91gHV-GG2vJ7u-mzCmWYFfn1UVyNjfkJH_Kw9zvh6LhsUC5ZmbNRFfKRXMkA5rIyt9dlMDJKj5PDi1axdsFYaMrn2I6fAni2zwUPvVSv6FOS8P_Wpw5PQ8M0/s500/Fort%20Lee%20Barracks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="500" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6up4HMuKqer7KrgkC_KVXlFeZBiJGJWMPm0hOEmY_GX3YJFi2MM8gdR-MlYi91gHV-GG2vJ7u-mzCmWYFfn1UVyNjfkJH_Kw9zvh6LhsUC5ZmbNRFfKRXMkA5rIyt9dlMDJKj5PDi1axdsFYaMrn2I6fAni2zwUPvVSv6FOS8P_Wpw5PQ8M0/w200-h128/Fort%20Lee%20Barracks.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p></div>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-8722535586204290292022-12-18T22:57:00.001-07:002022-12-18T23:19:33.117-07:00Where Else You Can Find Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSAtdme_lvNF62aziy_dACEooOC9xASmOkgPGj3UwjMGrO0DtvIBtO8B3jk2P1smAERuqhxisyOneuid_rH_ajctWqRtECFW24oc2ClOQt7FHtAomKn8aEZR4md7oP2fvZH9YfWX88fstc2KJoQXlwHTvrEGWkpYQvzjKKbpVIYyHyToF08r4/s1109/RiouEdouard-LesLacsDeLAfriqueEquatoriale1890-cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1109" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSAtdme_lvNF62aziy_dACEooOC9xASmOkgPGj3UwjMGrO0DtvIBtO8B3jk2P1smAERuqhxisyOneuid_rH_ajctWqRtECFW24oc2ClOQt7FHtAomKn8aEZR4md7oP2fvZH9YfWX88fstc2KJoQXlwHTvrEGWkpYQvzjKKbpVIYyHyToF08r4/s320/RiouEdouard-LesLacsDeLAfriqueEquatoriale1890-cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>The recent trashfires at Twitter have gotten me off my sluggish ass to set up a new social media account at Mastodon earlier tonight. Here's a link to the paint's-still-wet page:<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="https://mstdn.plus/@BruceArthursAZ">https://mstdn.plus/@BruceArthursAZ</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have a second account on Twitter, <i>GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations</i>, which presents (mostly) 19th-century book illustrations found (mostly) on the British National Library's huge image archive on Flickr, with some cleanup & adjustments in Paintshop Pro. Haven't set up a Mastodon account for it yet; will edit this post as soon as I have a URL available.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">No one knows if Twitter will last at all, or in what form and ambience if it does. I'll continue to post and comment on Twitter for now, but every day it feels like the Weeping Angels are getting closer and closer. For the moment, I'll try to post at both Mastodon and Twitter, where suitable. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here are Twitter links to my accounts there, at least as long as they continue to exist:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My general account: <a href="https://twitter.com/BruceArthursAZ"><b>https://twitter.com/BruceArthursAZ</b></a> </div><div style="text-align: left;">And the "<i>GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations" </i>account: <a href="https://twitter.com/BruceArthurs4"><b>https://twitter.com/BruceArthurs4</b></a> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-60423620499560418472022-04-12T09:35:00.000-07:002022-04-12T09:35:06.796-07:00REVIEW: MICHAEL'S CRAG, by Grant Allen, 1893<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GTi8Z7A4mpAIeUc2C04pDjSzVJnaRfx1NjhdK2_b7VTqFPInGVOCSdOL-oaJDMD_UiwDvCA592pk42lrEkTsdr0ffCSAvjCV1aNJqSRpj4R0WhDCwRS9lzlm5UPuX0soqutbryOr2iSbTbJgIE9wCkdi_Ht93G39N8mpvvXPWDQH8bdBBes/s688/MichaelsCrag1-CarruthersGould-1893.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="431" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GTi8Z7A4mpAIeUc2C04pDjSzVJnaRfx1NjhdK2_b7VTqFPInGVOCSdOL-oaJDMD_UiwDvCA592pk42lrEkTsdr0ffCSAvjCV1aNJqSRpj4R0WhDCwRS9lzlm5UPuX0soqutbryOr2iSbTbJgIE9wCkdi_Ht93G39N8mpvvXPWDQH8bdBBes/w200-h320/MichaelsCrag1-CarruthersGould-1893.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span><div style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in; text-transform: uppercase;"><br /></div></span><p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><u><span style="font-size: medium;">MICHAEL'S CRAG</span></u></b> is an 1893 novella by Grant Allen, a popular Victorian writer of fiction and non-fiction alike. I came across it via my "GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations" account on Twitter, where I featured several of the 350 silhouette-styled illustrations by father-son artists Francis Carruthers Gould and Alec Carruthers Gould that originally appeared in the book's margins. The fine mustachioed gentleman at right is one of the illustrations.</p><p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">I found the novella both intriguing and confounding. Set in the
Cornwall coast of England, a very big “Chekhov’s Gun” is
revealed early on; one of the main characters, Trevennack, an
important figure in the Admiralty, is actually the Archangel Michael…
or so he believes himself to be. He is, of course, utterly
delusional.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
So my expectation was that at some point Trevennack’s delusion
would be revealed to more than just his long-suffering and horrified
wife, that the Chekhov’s Gun would be fired, and various dramatic
or comedic consequences would result. (The film THE RULING CLASS was
in the back of my mind.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
But… <i>that never happens.</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
When Trevennack’s delusion finally take full occupancy of his mind,
it’s when he is alone in the countryside, where he sees a large
aggressive black ram as Satan, leading to a struggle that ends in a
fatal fall over a cliff. Only his wife, and the doctor whose autopsy
discovers a large blood clot in Trevennack’s brain, know the truth.
None of the other characters, Trevennack’s daughter or friends or
acquaintances, ever know more than that he sometimes said strange
things or acted oddly.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">My initial reaction was “Well,
this Grant Allen fellow didn’t know how to structure or plot a
story very well.” But then I thought about it some more, and
realized that </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>the entire
purpose</b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"> of the novella
was to serve as a paean to British reticence and propriety.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Because insanity wasn’t just a
shameful thing to have </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>in</b></span><span style="font-style: normal;">
your family, it was a blight </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>on</b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
your family, as madness was still largely believed to be an
inheritable trait, and if there was even a possibility that
Trevennack’s daughter Cleer might ever inherit her father’s
madness, her marriage prospects would be ruined, along with the
family’s social standing.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So
a good part of the story, the sections where we see Trevennack’s
inner mind, is about his inner struggle to maintain a normal
appearance and behavior. Because, up until his final end, there’s
still a small portion of Trevennack’s mind that realizes his
angelic nature can only be a delusion, even though he also knows, is
also certain, that he is in deed and in fact the Archangel Michael.
So, for propriety and for the sake of his family, Trevennack manages
to keep that British “stiff upper lip” and proper behavior almost
until the very last.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Looked
at from that perspective, Trevennack’s death, and the solitude of
its circumstance, </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is
the happy ending of the story</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
He maintained propriety. He maintained appearances. He ensured the
continued fortune and fates of his family. </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">He
maintained the status quo</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of upper-class British society.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
The paean to propriety is further reinforced by the secondary plot
narrative. The daughter, Cleer, mis-times a walk out to a rugged,
rocky tidal island (where a pathway is revealed at low tide) and is
stranded when the evening high tide comes in. A prospective suitor,
Eustace, tries to swim the gap in a dimwitted attempt to rescue
Cleer, only to barely reach the island, badly battered and bruised
from being tossed among the rocks. So both Cleer and Eustace are
stranded overnight on the epynomous crag until low tide returns.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Well!
An unmarried couple spending the night together?! Alone?! That’s a
scandal, sir, a scandal! (Even if the night was spent cold, wet,
rained upon, and with Eustace barely able to move.) So </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">of
course</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
the two of them must be married now! No acceptable alternative
exists! </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ha-rumph!</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
So once again the rigid rules of society follow their inevitable,
respectable path.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
So, if you want a peek at British societal customs and attitudes
circa the 1890s, MICHAEL’S CRAG is actually a pretty good choice, I
think. The book also features some very effective descriptions of the
Cornwall countryside and coast, making it seem both bleak and
beautiful.</p><p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="western" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>(first appeared, in slightly different form, in Last Stage For Silverworld, March 2022)</i></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br />
<br />
</p><br /><br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-54189429791886338962022-04-12T09:29:00.000-07:002022-04-12T09:29:06.613-07:00Blowing the Dust Off This Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0JcDUHreri4WRpDVJmayUml0rsBMBTvmROEA3t6Au296Z8Io8mqHQclNMOHo3UK_ESoHYOXkGWd6kBuPsFD0WOUt0tDak26WmjBtoJ8Jirju9w5PIGPVumipRbWSPBbDpeLTX7uI0NmeiLbpZUHGpFjODaelYRotz2nUg-78ZbBoqqT1-sA/s1312/ChristianaHammond-OneDaysCourtship-FromWhose%20Bourne-RobertBarr-1893.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1312" data-original-width="1145" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0JcDUHreri4WRpDVJmayUml0rsBMBTvmROEA3t6Au296Z8Io8mqHQclNMOHo3UK_ESoHYOXkGWd6kBuPsFD0WOUt0tDak26WmjBtoJ8Jirju9w5PIGPVumipRbWSPBbDpeLTX7uI0NmeiLbpZUHGpFjODaelYRotz2nUg-78ZbBoqqT1-sA/w558-h640/ChristianaHammond-OneDaysCourtship-FromWhose%20Bourne-RobertBarr-1893.jpg" width="558" /></a></div><br /><div>Most of my social media has been via Twitter for... a while. But occasionally I still feel the need for a longer format. And, somewhat less occasionally, I actually find the time to write those longer pieces.</div><div>So, cranking up the good intentions (oh, that's a dangerous phrase), I'm going to try and start posting stuff on Undulant Fever more often. (A fair deal of material, like the review of a vintage book I'll be putting into a separate post, may be reprinted from <i>Last Stage For Silverworld</i>, a print-only apazine I've been doing since 1979.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Checking the "Statistics" page for this blog, I'm somewhat amazed to find that a handful of people are still looking at (or at least having it pop up in Google results) UF every day. Guess I'll find out if having new material drives those numbers up.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>(illustration by Christiana Mary Demain Hammond, 1893)</i></div>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-33379811356260053452021-06-23T11:39:00.000-07:002021-06-23T11:39:42.670-07:00Some Words Sparked By My High School's Upcoming Reunion<span id="PQ8" style="background-color: black; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;"><div class="rowBio" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border-top: 1px solid rgb(215, 217, 218); clear: both; padding: 20px 10px; position: relative;"><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo"><p style="margin: 5px 0px;">My old high school's 50-Year Reunion (delayed a year by the pandemic) is upcoming in October. Received an email about it, with a link to a website that helps reunion committees organize the things. Posted a few things on my profile there, which I though I'd share here (where, honestly, it's more likely to be read).</p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;">First was a synopsis of my life since high school:</p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"></p><blockquote>After high school, I went to ASU for several years, served in the US Army for three years, went back to college for a while, worked as a legal secretary, spent thirty years with the US Postal Service, then another dozen years working in the security field. Finally took full retirement in March 2020, which was pretty good timing to start spending most of my days at home.<br /><br />Also in there, I somehow ended up with a wife and stepson. Hilde and I have been together for 45 years. I don't believe in miracles as a general rule, but that comes as close as anything can. I'd always expected to probably end up one of those wild-eyed hermits who live in a shack in the deep woods.<br /><br />And... my interest in science fiction (which was a source of distress and disapproval from teachers and family alike, back in those days before every blockbuster movie was sci-fi; my Twitter profile reads "Mom always said reading science fiction would rot my mind, ruin my morals, and lead to hanging out with disreputable characters. Thank God, she was right.") lead to occasional success with writing the stuff. I've had about twenty short stories published over the years (including several in the mystery/crime fiction genre), edited two anthologies, and...<br /><br />...wrote an episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. ("Clues", 4th Season, 1991). That moment when the writer credits roll by is what I call "My one-point-five seconds of fame."<br /><br />After managing to sell that script, I spent several years trying to sell movie scripts; some got expressions of interest from and meetings with production companies, but no one ever put money or a contract on the table.<br /><br />(Scriptwriting is tremendously difficult to break into, and almost as hard to stay in. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of giving it another shot.)<br /><br />There you go; fifty years in just over three hundred words.</blockquote><p></p><div class="rowComment-bio-holder" style="margin-left: 45px; width: 595px;"><div class="row comments-block ref_comment loaded-comment-block" id="comments_block_8972645_comment" style="border: 0px; clear: both; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="comment-btn" style="background: url("../images/icon-FB-comment-sm.png") left center no-repeat; padding-left: 19px;"><br /></div></div><div class="clr" style="clear: both !important; float: none !important;"></div></div><div class="clearfloat" style="clear: both; font-size: 1px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px;"></div></div></div></span><span style="background-color: black; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;"></span><span id="PQ9" style="background-color: black; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px;"><div class="rowBio" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border-top: 1px solid rgb(215, 217, 218); clear: both; padding: 20px 10px; position: relative;"><div class="lineBreak"></div><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo">The reunion site also asked for my <b>"Favorite School Story"</b>. Wel-l-l-l-l, "favorite" isn't a word I've ever applied to my high school experiences. And after fifty years, my fucks-to-give supply has grown low enough to not whitewash what was mostly an unhappy time:</div><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo"><br /></div><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo"></div><blockquote><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo">What I most remember about high school is that a good day was being just numb, instead of miserable. I remember feeling disassociated from the school, the teachers, and the other students. Not so much ostracized (though there were definite moments of that) as irrelevant and invisible to almost everyone else.</div><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo"><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"><br />I had "acquaintances" with other students; some were even "friendly acquaintances". But there were only a very scant handful of people I considered actual "friends".<br /><br />Remember Richard S. Cantor, the journalism teacher? He let the journalism room he oversaw be a refuge for outsiders and weirdos like me. Not sure I would have survived high school without that safe space to occasionally retreat to.<br /><br />(When I first got onto the Internet, my first "find people you knew" search was for Mr. Cantor. It led me to his obituary; he'd died of cancer a few years before, still in his early 50's. I'm sorry I was never able to let him know how much his empathy meant, to me and others.)<br /><br />Sorry if you were expecting to read a feel-good story. For some of us, high school wasn't the wonderful experience a lot of people like to pretend it was.</p></div></blockquote><div class="rowBio-secondaryinfo"><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"></p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;">Out of a graduating class of over 700, only a few dozen have registered on the reunion page so far, and only a handful have bought tickets to the reunion dinner. And (as with previous reunion years), almost everyone that I might be interested in seeing or talking with again is on the "Missing" list. So I'm not likely to attend.</p><p style="margin: 5px 0px;"><br /></p></div></div></span>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-74204282215271580972021-04-17T10:19:00.000-07:002021-04-17T10:19:20.540-07:00A Few Thots On Some Old Tarzan Movies<p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hilde and I have been watching old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies from the 1930s & '40s, via DVDs from Netflix. Not all were available, but we’ve watched TARZAN AND HIS MATE, TARZAN FINDS A SON, TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE, and TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">TARZAN AND HIS MATE was filmed before the prudishness of the Hays Code began in 1934, but released into theaters as the Code was starting to be put into effect. Maureen O'Sullivan's very skimpy outfit (see below) came in for some side-eye from Code censors, but the biggie was the nude swimming scene with O'Sullivan (actually her stunt double) and Weismuller (who kept his loincloth on). Only early theater audiences saw the original swim; a more modest version was substituted for later showings. The Netflix DVD we watched included the original version.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/f5/9d/e9f59d72bb2c6de24b7195486ad30a78.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="478" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/f5/9d/e9f59d72bb2c6de24b7195486ad30a78.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These…are not great movies. There’s a nostalgia factor in re-watching them. (I saw a lot as part of Saturday morning tv-watching growing up; it was cartoons in the early morning, then adventure and monster movies on the local channel in later morning.) With modern eyes, I can’t help noticing the many faults. Even overlooking the “of their time” ethnic stereotypes, the writing, acting, direction, etc. are, for the most part, pretty damn stiff and unimpressive. And there are a lot of plot elements recycled from movie to movie.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some takeaways:</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The greatest dangers in the jungle are from stock footage</li><li>Never trust a man with a thin mustache.</li><li>If you’re an old man with a sense of decency, make sure your life insurance is paid up.</li><li>Pretty sure Boy grew up to become The Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, where he recreated many of the devices in Tarzan’s treehouse.</li><li>Where the hell did Tumbo go?</li><li>Cheeta is an asshole.</li></ul><p></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>(a somewhat shorter version of this piece first appeared as a comment at File 770)</i></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-80147302431129752522021-04-07T23:03:00.000-07:002021-04-07T23:03:22.755-07:00Is The... *A* Future Finally Imminent?<p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hilde and I were able to get Covid-19 vaccine shots recently. After spending the last year of our lives in mostly a holding pattern, we may finally be able to slowly begin resuming a more normal pattern of life.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">April 8th will be two weeks after my second Pfizer shot, and I’ll feel (somewhat) more secure about adding more errands out to more locations more frequently. (Keeping trips outside the house to 1 or 2 a week for the last year has sometimes been a hassle.)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the first things to do is make an appointment for a new eye exam and new glasses. On Twitter and elsewhere, I've posted various eyepos I’ve made trying to read small print on my phone. From a few says ago: Misread someone tweeting “my bed covered with dice” as “my bed covered with lice”. Just a bit startling until I took a second, closer look.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(I actually had “new exam & glasses” on the post-retirement to-do list last March, but then the country began locking down just before I retired, and any non-essential appointments were pushed back. For a few months, he said, laughing weakly. I needed new glasses a year ago, and need them more now.)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Also going to try going to the gym every day if I can. And by “going to the gym” I mean walking to the EOS Fitness place that took over the old Safeway grocery's space last year, and walking back home again. (Nope, still not going to go inside any gym yet.) That’s about a 3-mile walk altogether, which maybe will help shed the ten pounds or so I’ve gained in the last year for some inexplicable reason.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(I felt kind of sorry for that EOS location. Their “grand opening” was in the middle of rising alarm about Covid-19, when people began avoiding gyms and fitness centers in droves. They were only open for in-person attendance for about a week before they had to close their doors and try to transition to online video classes for customers, for the duration of the lockdown. One of their ads during that increasingly dire week proclaimed “WE HAVE TOILET PAPER!”)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The local libraries have served as a good indicator of whether it’s safe to ease up on social restrictions. They were locked down for several months, with only curbside pickup. My local branch currently has a “mini-library” set up in one of their meeting rooms, with a smaller selection of the most popular books and DVDs on its shelves (you can request a hold for a title from the full inventory; patrons just can’t go browsing in the full public spaces yet).and with mask and social distancing guidelines enforced. Local politicians (rom city-level up to Arizona's dumbass governor Doug Ducey) are pushing for full re-opening, but librarians have been pushing back successfully so far.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve only been back to the local library branch once in the past year, instead using Overdrive to borrow works (mostly audiobooks, and an occasional ebook) to sate my library jones instead. Miss being able to drop in and browse the shelves when I want, and especially the monthly meetings for the local writers workshop.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(After a few months off, the writers workshop moved to Zoom when it became clear the library meeting rooms we used wouldn’t be available again for a long… long… time. But it’s not quite the same as meeting in person.)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And of course my outside trips will still be masked and distanced. If Arizona gets down to zero Covid deaths for a week, I might (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">might</em>) start thinking about the possibility of bare-faced gallivanting. Zero Covid hospitalizations, even better. Zero cases, best scenario of all.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But it looks like there's slow and mostly steady progress toward a post-Covid future. It would be even steadier if there was less masking-resistance, consistent social distancing, and end to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and fewer politicians trying to wish a post-Covid economy into being by lifting restrictions too early and too fully.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>(a slightly different version of this piece first appeared as a comment on File 770)</i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbEEoJsKdBc1uFrszahvKhvOL2m2AxXJnKuqfLU5cRx1MLkoq7z6k2_SeLCuxmE8ZWYEt_CxZmEozLNlcpNd_lW5nIfr37zTDkA7hbnYLAtcq7UiG1KxLp3D-VfyeKib-RajPaA/s1075/IMG_20200908_160723.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1075" data-original-width="1074" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbEEoJsKdBc1uFrszahvKhvOL2m2AxXJnKuqfLU5cRx1MLkoq7z6k2_SeLCuxmE8ZWYEt_CxZmEozLNlcpNd_lW5nIfr37zTDkA7hbnYLAtcq7UiG1KxLp3D-VfyeKib-RajPaA/s320/IMG_20200908_160723.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From September 2020, when my <br />"Crazy Old Homeless Guy" quarantine-look <br />was at its peak.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-88187020819794571992020-12-23T23:49:00.000-07:002020-12-23T23:49:26.825-07:00My Writing 2020: Award Eligibility PostSo one of the things writers are supposed to do is publicize their work, and one of the ways to do that is to put a year-end roundup of published work on their website or blog.<div><br /></div><div>I had two pieces of work published in 2020. The first, in January, appeared in online UK horror magazine <a href="https://www.dreamofshadows.co.uk/">DREAM OF SHADOWS</a>. "Voices, In A Cedar-Scented Darkness" (short story, 1030 words) was available online for six months. DoS takes a year of stories published online between June and May and makes them available in a printed/ebook collection. The <b>Dream of Shadows Monthly Stories</b> for 2019-2020, including "Voices, In A Cedar-Scented Darkness", is available on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Shadows-Monthly-Stories/dp/B08GVJLKZ2/">Amazon</a>; 99¢ for ebook, $3.99 for print.</div><div><br /></div><div>My second published work for 2020 was "<a href="http://www.liminalitypoetry.com/issue-26-winter-2020-21/the-child-eating-forest-speaks-its-mind/">The Child-Eating Forest Speaks Its Mind</a>", a long poem published in <a href="http://www.liminalitypoetry.com/issue-26-winter-2020-21/">Liminality Magazine, Issue #26, Winter 2020-2021</a>, just out a few days ago. I rarely take a stab at poetry, but this one worked out pretty well, I felt. I'm curious to see what kind of reaction it gets, so go ahead and take a look. (I've liked a good deal of the other poetry Liminality has published, too.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Are either of these award quality? I'm prejudiced, but editors thought enough of them to purchase and publish them. Anything further depends on how many people actually read the story and poem, and what they think of them. (There usually isn't much feedback on short fiction or poetry, and even less when it gets published in small press venues. Good thing the main motivation for my writing is to satisfy myself.)</div><div><br /></div>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-42736064298679125092020-10-19T10:52:00.000-07:002020-10-19T10:52:06.622-07:00Review in Brief: MURDER IN THE NAVY by Ed McBain<span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just finished reading an early (1955) Ed McBain novel (written as Richard Marsten), MURDER IN THE NAVY. Some nice noir elements (the naval officer hero drinks too much, has a cynical worldview, and has his quest complicated by superiors who want to sweep a murder under the rug). </span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the main female character continuously places herself into risky or dangerous situations with a combination of naivete, foolishness, and just plain outright stupidity. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Add in the stereotype of Navy sailors who not only blatantly troll for sex, but succeed more often than not, and I was left rolling my eyes and feeling more than a little uncomfortable for reading the book.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sadly (since I've enjoyed a number of McBain's 87th Precinct books), not recommended.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #241e12; font-family: aktiv-grotesk, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FuD3Od0AO0Qzsj8Cod4osLm7nAfBcOY9o3YptGaob9IQOmizlEbBRf0MReOwefy7CkgZmXCOjHFIbu6J-J1-ECnUtgN4c7G_5-QW6e2SU6Tw__F2AtIcM6voReGi3_y-LOaCrg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FuD3Od0AO0Qzsj8Cod4osLm7nAfBcOY9o3YptGaob9IQOmizlEbBRf0MReOwefy7CkgZmXCOjHFIbu6J-J1-ECnUtgN4c7G_5-QW6e2SU6Tw__F2AtIcM6voReGi3_y-LOaCrg/" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-16658878306511151622020-09-23T13:47:00.000-07:002020-09-23T13:47:19.409-07:00The "Hollywood" Ending, and a profound uneasiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWsuXiL7Rdtwkpsu8NADOVVyrVNwKUn1Jtd9OmJCsYoe6ejfj6uocM2d7BEV4W7FRK-29ks_vNDWuUznKSU2la6mN1E3lZveadAR3U2xafxAYVpGzuCVhUORW7tG1-JXF90arQBg/s800/hollywood-NetFlix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWsuXiL7Rdtwkpsu8NADOVVyrVNwKUn1Jtd9OmJCsYoe6ejfj6uocM2d7BEV4W7FRK-29ks_vNDWuUznKSU2la6mN1E3lZveadAR3U2xafxAYVpGzuCVhUORW7tG1-JXF90arQBg/s320/hollywood-NetFlix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Having
watched the "Hollywood" mini-series from Netflix, I came
away being both very impressed by many aspects, but uncomfortable
--very uncomfortable-- with how the series was concluded.</p><p class="western" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">[MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I
watched "Hollywood" without having heard much about it.
Caught a trailer, looked good, and How-Hollywood-Sausage-Gets-Made is
one of my own interests, so went into it fairly cold, almost like
catching a sneak preview of a film.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">"Hollywood"
is set in Post-WW2 Hollywood...but not quite. My first impression was
that it was a story overlaying fictional characters, set in a
fictional studio, onto actual Hollywood history. But then real people
from Hollywood history (Rock Hudson and his agent Henry Wilson, in
particular) entered the story line as prominent characters...</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">...and
the story became an alternate history of Hollywood, rather than a
fictional overlay. Or an uncomfortable mashup of both. (In real life,
Hudson was first signed as a contract player by Universal, not the
fictional Ace Studios depicted here.) Or something. I wasn't certain
where the plot was heading.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">[AGAIN,
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. SPECIFIC PLOT POINTS! DETAILS! YOU'VE BEEN
WARNED!]</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The
overall plot revolves around a screenplay titled <i>Peg</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
based on the true story of Peg Entwhistle, young promising actress
most famous now for her suicide by leaping from the "H" of
the "Hollywoodland" sign in 1932. The screenplay's writer
is Archie Coleman, a gay black man who blind-submits his screenplay
to prevent an automatic rejection. Overlapping stories involve actors
struggling to break in (Jack Costello, Claire Wood, the
aforementioned Rock Hudson), other performers minimized or past their
prime and struggling to stay relevant (aging-out actress Jeanne
Crandall, and real-life characters Anna May Wong and Hattie
McDaniel). directors, studio executives, agent Henry Wilson, and a
slew of others. Dylan McDermott gives an especially standout
performance as Ernie West, a former actor whose career petered out,
now running a gas station as a front for a prostitution ring of
handsome men servicing the Hollywood elite (both male and female);
Jack and Archie both end up working for Ernie to make ends meet
before their big breakthroughs. Ernie's a charismatic mix of charm,
buried regrets, and a mercenary attitude. (McDermott has described
the character's personality as a mix of Clark Gable and famed
Hollywood pimp Scottie Bowers.)</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">A lot of these plot elements --the struggle to "make it" in
Hollywood-- are standard in Hollywood-set films. For the most part,
they're handled well, if unevenly. The performances here are good to
great across the cast, and the sets and costumes are gorgeous.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">But
my willing suspension of disbelief was strained at a number of points
as the mini-series progressed. When it's suggested that the script
for <i>Peg</i> be changed to
one where Peg Entwhistle <i>doesn't</i>
jump off the Hollywood sign, Archie...agrees to do it. Peg
Enthwhistle is cut from the screenplay and replaced by a fictional
character, Meg Ennis. (Peg Entwhistle supposedly jumped to her death
after her first big screen role was cut; the change from <i>Peg</i>
to <i>Meg</i> felt like the
same thing was being done to the poor woman yet again.) It becomes a
counter-factual story, tragedy turned into a happy-ending fantasy,
much as "Hollywood"'s own story veers further and further
from realistic scenarios.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">But the script change opens an opportunity to go beyond casting a
young white blonde woman in the lead role. Camille Washington, a young
black actress struggling to break out of minor roles as maids and
servants, pressures the movie's director Raymond Ainsley
(half-Filipino, passing for white, and oh yeah, Camille's boyfriend
and lover) to let her take a screen test. She's so impressive in the
screen test that acting studio head Avis Amberg --husband Ace
Amsberg, not so open-minded, has been incapacitated by a heart
attack-- decides to greenlight the first major studio picture to star
a black actress.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And...there's
blowback. Big blowback: Theaters in the South begin to boycott Ace
Studios films; the studio's own lawyers forecast financial doom if
<i>Meg</i>'s filming
proceeds. The studio is picketed by angry racist mobs. And burning
crosses appear in front of Archie's and other principals' homes in
the midst of the night.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">But
tough broad Avis Amberg isn't willing to give in. Filming proceeds.
And then Ace Amberg, who'd been adamantly against greenlighting a
script written by a black man, recovers from his hear t attack,
returns to the studio, thanks Avis for her work...and sends her home
to make dinner. <i>Meg</i>,
final reel still fresh in the can, appears doomed.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Until Ace watches that finished print, and is so impressed by what
everyone had done, he decides to press on with its release. His
near-death experience has made him a different man; he reconciles
with Avis and offers to make her co-chair of Ace Studios.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And then has a second heart attack and dies the next morning before
his decision can be put into effect.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And
<i>then</i> the studio's head
lawyer, always opposed to the film, uses the ensuing disruption to
seize the only print of <i>Meg</i>
and throw it into a burning furnace. That's where Episode 6 (of 7)
ends, and it looks like there's no way back, no way to recover the
film. Everyone's efforts have gone for naught.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">But
then...and I gotta admit, I really liked how they pulled this
off...at the beginning of the final episode, at Ace's funeral, it's
revealed there was a <i>second</i>
print of <i>Meg</i> made. And
the reason that other print exists is because Henry Wilson, Rock
Hudson's agent, is an evil, selfish piece of shit.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">(Jim Parsons oozes slime in his portrayal of Henry Wilson. Cruel,
heartless, emotionally sadistic, Henry is a character you only want
to drop into a dumpster. From the top of a tall building. And then
set the dumpster on fire.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Earlier
in the previous episode, after Henry's more or less extorted his way
into a producer's position on <i>Meg</i>,
at a showing of the completed film with the director Ray Ainsley and
the film's editor, he wants the film to be re-cut to reflect his own
creative choices. Ainsley says "No", and the editor --an
old pro who's been editing films since the early silents-- tells
Henry off. Henry then goes behind Ainsley's back and try to have the
film re-cut in secret by an inexperienced young editor, but is
discovered and stopped in time.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">But
that old pro editor knows Henry can't be trusted, so he takes the
film, copies it in secret, and hides the copy in his own home. At
Ace's funeral, he reveals and turns the second print over to Ainsley.
<i>Meg</i> has been rescued
from the dead. And only because despicable Henry Wilson's own selfish
actions inadvertently sabotaged the lawyer's attempt to destroy the
film.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And...unfortunately,
that was about the last scene in <i>Hollywood</i>
where I was able to exercise any kind of willing suspension of
disbelief.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Meg</i>
is released...and is a hit. A big hit. A stupendous hit. Even some of
the big-city Southern theaters relent and start showing it.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">(My suspension of disbelief is getting creaky.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And the film and its creators are nominated for numerous Oscars. And
sweep almost all of them.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">(Really, really creaky.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">And
then...<i>Meg</i> changes
America. The protests against a black lead actress fade away. And
when Archie and Rock come out at the Oscars, holding hands, out and
proud...that's mostly accepted with little blowback beyond Rock
having trouble getting more than minor parts...a year after the
film's premiere. (In real-life, Hudson's early roles, even presenting
as straight, <i>were</i>
minor for a number of years, slowly growing meatier until his big
break in <i>Magnificent Obsession.</i>)
In the late 1940's. America begins to accept blacks, accept
interracial romances, accept homosexuals.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Sorry, but that's not a happy ending, it's sheer wish fulfillment.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I
grew up in the 1950's & 60's, a straight white kid among other
straight white kids.. I remember how "othered" homosexuals
were. They were regarded as..."things". Not real people.
Not human. The object of jokes and derision and disgust. One of the
things I heard growing up, when someone was short of pocket money,
was "Hey, let's go down to the bus station and roll some
queers." Now, I never knew anyone to actually <i>do</i>
that...but they could have. You could beat and rob a homosexual, and
the police wouldn't stop you. The most they might do is stop the
beating if it was going too far...and then arrest the person who'd
been beaten, maybe with a few baton licks of their own for good
measure.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">So,
no. No way I could have any measure of suspended disbelief in that
final episode. (And even beyond that paradigm shift, the finale also
presents Henry Wilson having a road-to-Damascus turn of heart
--offscreen! we only see the result!-- and trying to make amends for
his dogshit behavior up until then. Nope, that's just as
unbelievable.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Even
more, I came away feeling that <i>Hollywood</i>
did a disservice to gays' and blacks' actual struggle to achieve
acceptance and equality. In reality, the struggle for that has been
going on for almost all of America's history, with thousands of
activists facing persecution, beatings, murder. That struggle is
still ongoing. But in <i>Hollywood</i>'s
world, this one film, this one Magic Movie, achieves a paradigm shift
in America that <i>still</i>
hasn't been fully achieved in reality.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">(And
really, when Peg Entwhistle's true story is abandoned and <i>Meg</i>
is given a happy ending, it turns from something that might have been
an insightful biopic into a standard Hollywood cookie-cutter plot
distinguished only by controversial casting. <i>Meg</i>
never comes across as anything more than a B-movie to me.)</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">In
the end, it was the most disappointing ending to a tv series I've
seen since that enraging end to Ron Moore's version of <i>Battlestar
Galactica</i>. That's a hella low
bar to try and limbo under.</p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p><br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-29044068388459633342019-10-14T10:42:00.000-07:002019-10-14T10:42:52.117-07:00Curt and the Green Penis<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><a href="http://file770.com/curt-stubbs-1948-2019/">CurtStubbs</a> passed away September 14, 2019. He’d been a friend to many,
and to Hilde and me for over forty years. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">We didn’t see Curt as
often after he moved to Tucson in the mid-1980s, but we always tried
to have dinner with him at TusCon, the annual SF convention there.
Curt struggled with a lot of health and financial issues through most
of his life, but he seemed to have found a satisfying social niche in
poetry, both his own and acting as a docent for the Poetry Center at
the University of Arizona; he was also active in Tucson’s gay
community. And he still enjoyed reading science fiction and attending
an occasional convention. For years, he was the cook for the
traditional Dead Dog Chile served on the last day of each year’s
TusCon; there have been a lot of good bowls of chile served there
over the years, but Curt’s (sorry, you later chile chefs) was the
best.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">When
he was younger, and before some of his health issues surfaced, Curt
tended to party hard. This led to some memorable anecdotes, and
Curt’s fannish nickname of Captain Coors.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">This
is one of the stories from those early years:</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">---------</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">One
morning, after a particularly hard night of partying and drinking,
Curt woke up on the floor of the party apartment. He quickly realized
two things:</span></span></span></div>
<ul>
<li>
<div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">He
wasn’t wearing any clothes, and,</span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">Sometime
during the night, while Curt was unconscious, someone had decided to
paint Curt’s penis green.</span></span></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">And
then Curt looked at a clock, and realized a third thing:</span></span></span></div>
<ul>
<li>
<div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background: transparent;">He
had an important job interview scheduled for that morning, and there
were less than twenty minutes before it was supposed to take place.</span></span></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">A
moment of wild mental panic ensued: </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;">“</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">My
penis is green! Job interview! Green penis! Job interview!”</span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">Curt
had to make a choice. He found his scattered clothing, pulled pants
on over his engreened penis, added shirt and shoes and a quick brush
through his hair, and rushed out to make the job interview on time.
Every minute on the way, the thoughts “</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">I
have a green penis. Someone painted my penis green. I have a green
penis,</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;">”
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">looped
through his head.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">Curt
arrived to the interview on time, barely, still thinking “</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">My
penis is green. I have a green penis,</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;">”
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">in
the back of his mind</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">Somehow,
he’s able to give coherent answers to the job interviewer. Things
seem to be going well. But Curt’s mind is still repeating, “</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">I
have a green penis. I have a green penis. Oh, God-d-d-d-d-d, I have a
green penis.</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;">”</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-variant: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: transparent;">“<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Well,
that’s the end of the formal questions,” the interviewer finally
says. He looks Curt straight in the eye, and asks:</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-variant: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-variant: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: transparent;">“<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Is
there anything else about yourself you’d like to tell us, Mr.
Stubbs?”</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-variant: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 138%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">Curt
did </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="background: transparent;">not</span></i></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background: transparent;">
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: transparent;">get
the job.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-90522462067636351172019-09-18T11:28:00.001-07:002019-09-18T11:28:19.547-07:00ONE-BUCK BOOK REVIEW: This Strange Engine, by Philip LigonIn the same vein as my occasional "The Brave Free Books", I'm hoping "One-Buck Book Review" will turn into an ongoing series reviewing books that I've bought for a dollar or less. A lot of these tend to be ebooks offered at 99 cents as a promotional sale, frequently for the first book in a series; I'll note the regular price when needed.<br />
<br />
Fair warning: I try not to be overly negative, but when a book has flaws that lessen my reading experience, I'll point them out. (A lot of the 99-cent sales are from indie/self-published writers who tend to be at an early point in their writing careers. Sometimes this means their craft skills don't match up with their ambition or goals. Occupational hazard of writing.)<br />
<br />
So, the first offering: THIS STRANGE ENGINE, by Philip Ligon. Ebook, regular price 3.99, I bought it on sale for 99 cents. Published by Silver Empire, 419 pages. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/This-Strange-Engine-Book-ebook/dp/B07NC569RN/">Amazon link.</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj9slejHlmlbJu-6p3Op7xW7WEEPd3zi4Bb7pu8AwofqLaYPTFrUBm6W9GYEqOkmv-uleBI9lR6NKulaGyDpbYnxlmjsn6MHLqp5S4GcXQyrqu8e8ir01VtPLRarteL3o1fTBBhw/s1600/This-Strange-Engine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj9slejHlmlbJu-6p3Op7xW7WEEPd3zi4Bb7pu8AwofqLaYPTFrUBm6W9GYEqOkmv-uleBI9lR6NKulaGyDpbYnxlmjsn6MHLqp5S4GcXQyrqu8e8ir01VtPLRarteL3o1fTBBhw/s320/This-Strange-Engine.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
Steampunk fantasy mix. A portal to a fantasy world has introduced magic and magical creatures (elves, gnomes, cyclops, dragons, etc.) into Victorian England. Inevitably, some humans use the new resources and abilities to gather power and wealth for themselves. Ash, a disgraced cleric, is trapped under the thumb of the mysterious Misters, who coerce him into stealing magical objects. Aided by fellow friends in the criminal world (an invisible thief, a techno-gnome, and a barmaid with a hidden past). One of their opponents is Ash's ex-wife, who betrayed and tried to murder him, the start of the cascade failure that lead to his current dilemma and situation.<br />
<br />
Adventures and disasters ensue. First in a series, this volume leaves many questions open, particularly regarding that portal to a fantasy world. I'll hazard a guess that in a later book, the portal will be traveled thru and adventures take place in the fae world.<br />
<br />
All this is a good set-up, with a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately, two things kept me from enjoying the book as much as I had expected and hoped.<br />
<br />
1) Ostensibly set in Victorian England, it felt very much set in the generic pseudo-England common to so very, very many fantasy novels. Steampunk, in my experience, usually offers stronger references to the history and culture of actual Victorian times. The "Victorian" details seemed scant and tacked onto the narrative.<br />
<br />
2) My biggest problem, though, was Ash. He is one of the most whiny, self-pitying "Woe is me, my life sucks" characters I've ever encountered. Spending 400+ pages with the guy felt like a long slog through sad, depressed mud. I wanted to smack him upside the head and and say, "Your ex-wife has tried to KILL you. REPEATEDLY. Get a CLUE, you DUMBSHIT." (Note: Other characters give basically that same advice, over and over again, to Ash in the course of the book. To no avail.). It's only near the very end of the book that Ash finally gets a glimmer of self-realization and hope for himself.<br />
<br />
The other characters were a lot more enjoyable. If the thief, the gnome, and the barmaid were to ditch loser Ash and go off on their own adventures, I'd probably read *that* book. They're kinda fun, aside from their inexplicable decisions to repeatedly stick by Ash.. But I'm reluctant to spend more time with Ash.<br />
<br />
Overall impression: Interesting setup, but I felt the "Victorian" setting should have either been stronger, or simply go with the Standard Fantasy Setting it seemed to mostly be. Action scenes are well done. I felt making Ash such a completely miserable, self-loathing character was a poor choice.<br />
<br />
Three out of five stars. I can see Philip Ligon set himself some ambitious goals for the story, but I came away feeling he didn't fully succeed.<br />
<br />
<br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-69547818737406555802019-05-16T07:53:00.001-07:002019-05-16T07:53:50.077-07:00Blast From The Past: 102 Great Novels, as of 1962-63<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/__KbMza7MXHsEL5r1I12FAakAeBAHPMLKSRrE4j0L56rOag7sk3WY6soDJVxaywT7Y9VyYWd8Za1VLzR5RYgfH9ycv171njxUw4wV93sZWfx--Cb0fNMhB1EnEkjNBk2OicAOWGPRKdikzd_Srh8R6wZwLThWBwOS6d4z3Zp-xZLUTItuUe6k2ykaCu1a36uSHzskcG8mEvEijzMZxS2mtNoo5oI3r3TRJHNPuCjLcEGlSAVPuQjXtim9ULSypS7cxJL96tUdxlrM1-yzvVteNTlcXgb9kVSXnYviLamNHuzi-Rekg9SxGS1JqsdDe88e4ckyyum7TDETqIj_KbIX8ol_qJSw4PoD7ooHzrvAoPJHlyONADTSOxThi79eV4y90TU_nN13kihghbknH1ZiXr2mMwObpX_WTCpj8SAtmxeWdeWO-x9fmiaeucBf5MvCSx39R3q4_Po77Y55myE5VVwMlxIR3w8gFbCohKQkQEjlps8wLtVNixxl_JOu8AE9xy_EZ1ymxYj7CgqLeK0rEWBqviSyhHciS_4rQGu5P7tvbzrfkSPbr_TMOIIVVA01_j2blPPWO7a-RAW1fizBOGSlVikZ1hktxzjaiyteOjKCpJnuhBhZzE0HrjoOBuIW7bBueqsr9Dqs1ciubSV3UqKnxGtvko=w532-h708-no" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/__KbMza7MXHsEL5r1I12FAakAeBAHPMLKSRrE4j0L56rOag7sk3WY6soDJVxaywT7Y9VyYWd8Za1VLzR5RYgfH9ycv171njxUw4wV93sZWfx--Cb0fNMhB1EnEkjNBk2OicAOWGPRKdikzd_Srh8R6wZwLThWBwOS6d4z3Zp-xZLUTItuUe6k2ykaCu1a36uSHzskcG8mEvEijzMZxS2mtNoo5oI3r3TRJHNPuCjLcEGlSAVPuQjXtim9ULSypS7cxJL96tUdxlrM1-yzvVteNTlcXgb9kVSXnYviLamNHuzi-Rekg9SxGS1JqsdDe88e4ckyyum7TDETqIj_KbIX8ol_qJSw4PoD7ooHzrvAoPJHlyONADTSOxThi79eV4y90TU_nN13kihghbknH1ZiXr2mMwObpX_WTCpj8SAtmxeWdeWO-x9fmiaeucBf5MvCSx39R3q4_Po77Y55myE5VVwMlxIR3w8gFbCohKQkQEjlps8wLtVNixxl_JOu8AE9xy_EZ1ymxYj7CgqLeK0rEWBqviSyhHciS_4rQGu5P7tvbzrfkSPbr_TMOIIVVA01_j2blPPWO7a-RAW1fizBOGSlVikZ1hktxzjaiyteOjKCpJnuhBhZzE0HrjoOBuIW7bBueqsr9Dqs1ciubSV3UqKnxGtvko=w532-h708-no" width="150" /></a>Among the papers of
our friend Anne Braude, who passed away in 2009, I found a small
pamphlet, a single folded sheet yellowed and brittle with age, that
listed “102 Great Novels”. The pamphlet was distributed by the
Scottsdale Public Library, and its list “COMPILED BY NELLENE SMITH,
DIRECTOR”. Ms. Smith’s name dates the list to 1962 or 63 (thanks,
Google!).</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, nearly sixty
years ago, <b>these</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> were the
books thought listing as “Great”. I thought it might be
interesting to see how many still might be recognized as Great, or
recognized at all after sixty years.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
list:</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<ul>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">A
Death In The Family, Agee</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Moses,
Asch</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Sense
and Sensibility, Austen</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Pere
Goriot, Balzac</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Old Wives’ Tale, Bennett</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Death of the Heart, Bowen</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Jane
Eyre, Bronte</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Wuthering
Heights, Bronte</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Good Earth, Buck</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Way of All Flesh, Butler</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Plague,
Camus</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Death
Comes For The Archbishop, Cather</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Horse’s Mouth, Cary</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Don
Quixote, Cervantes</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Greenwillow,
Chute</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Lord
Jim, Conrad</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Just and the Unjust, Cozzens</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Red Badge of Courage, Crane</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">David
Copperfield, Dickens</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">U.
S. A., Dos Passos</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">An
American Tragedy, Dreiser</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Advise
and Consent, Drury</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Three Musketeers, Dumas</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Rebecca,
du Maurier</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Justine,
Durrell</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Middlemarch,
Eliot</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Light
In August, Faulkner</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Madame
Bovary, Flaubert</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">A
Passage To India, Forster</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Forsythe Saga, Galsworthy</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Cypresses Believe In God, Gironella</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Vein
of Iron, Glasgow</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Dead
Souls, Gogol</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">I,
Claudius, Graves</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Tess
of the </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">d</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">’Urbervilles,
Hardy</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Old Man of the Sea, Hemingway</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Wall, Hershey</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Green
Mansions, Hudson</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Fox In the Attic, Hughes</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Les
Miserables, Hugo</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Brave
New World, Huxley</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Wings of the Dove, James</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Ulysses,
Joyce</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Trial,
Kafka</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Zorba
the Greek, Kazantzakis</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Darkness
At Noon, Koestler</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Leopard, Lampedusa</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Main
Street, Lewis</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Call of the Wild, London</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Epitaph
For the Small Winner, Machado de Assis</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Ballad of the Sad Cafe, McCullers</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Watch That Ends the Night, McLennan</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Magic Mountain, Mann</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Nectar
In A Sieve, Markandaya</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Point
of No Return, Marquand</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Of
Human Bondage, Maugham</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Therese,
Mauriac</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Moby
Dick, Melville</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Gone
With the Wind, Mitchell</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Cruel Sea, Montsarrat</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Two
Women, Moravia</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Tale of the Genji, Murasaki</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Nineteen
Eighty Four, Orwell</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Dr.
Zhivago, Paternak</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Cry,
The Beloved Country, Paton</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Ship
of Fools, Porter</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Man On A Donkey, Prescott</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Remembrance
of Things Past, Proust</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">All
Quiet On the Western Front, Remarque</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
King Must Die, Renault</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Trees, Richter</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Jean
Christophe, Rolland</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Giants
In the Earth, Rolvaag</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Catcher In the Rye, Salinger</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Human Comedy, Saroyan</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Ivanhoe,
Scott</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Fontamara,
Silone</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Strangers
and Brothers, Snow</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Red and the Black, Stendahl</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Treasure
Island, Stevenson</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Taylor</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Vanity
Fair, Thanckeray</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">War
and Peace, Tolstoy</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Barchester
Towers, Trollope</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Dream
of the Red Chamber, Tsao-Hsueh-Chin</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Torrents
of Spring, Turgenev</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Kristin
Lavransdatter, Undset</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Candide,
Voltaire</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Egyptian, Waltari</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">All
The King’s Men, Warren</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Ethan
Frome, Wharton</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Once and Future King, White</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Look
Homeward, Angel, Wolfe</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Memories
of Hadrian, Yourcenar</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
small pamphlet concludes with this statement from Nellene Smith:
“</span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">There are so many fine
novels </span></i><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">that they all
couldn’t be placed on a small list. However, I have presented a
variety of classics and some works of contemporary authors whose
writing is exceptional. –Nellene Smith”</span></i></div>
<br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-33686329963174170812019-01-10T22:31:00.001-07:002019-01-10T22:44:17.492-07:00MY READING/LISTENING, 2018<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">2018 READING</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-ecaa9513-7fff-0003-dfe0-c4abd2423631" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><i>(For some reason, the first line of each paragraph is longer than the rest. Looks okay on a desktop monitor, but on mobile that first line continues off-screen to the right. Attempts to correct it haven't succeeded. Other formatting glitches and idiosyncrasies have been cleaned up, I'm pretty sure.)</i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">My reading in 2018 was as usual a mixed bag, mostly</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> fiction and some non-fiction, ranging from </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">works published in the last few years to work from decades ago. Some I read in printed editions, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">others in digital format on my smartphone. A fairly large number were listened to as audiobooks.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(My workplace allows listening to music or </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">audiobooks so long as one ear is left unobstructed; so a </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bluetooth earpiece lets me add an extra book to my “reading” about every one to two weeks.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I also listen to a pretty large number of fiction </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">podcasts, but that adds up to somewhere around 400-</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">500 short stories a year, and read probably around half a dozen or so short story anthologies above </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">and beyond that. I haven’t kept lists of those like I have longer works. If I manage to somehow get </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">myself super-organized in the coming year, I might maintain a list of podcasts and stories I </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">particularly enjoy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Podcasts I listen to:</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Toasted Cake and (under the Escape Artists umbrella) EscapePod, PodCastle,and PseudoPod. 2018 also saw the return of Norm Sherman’s Drabblecast (“Strange stories by strange authors for strange listeners”), which I’ve found highly enjoyable. Outside the dedicated SF/F/H podcasts, I also listen to the mystery podcasts from Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines, the New Yorker’s The Writer’s Voice, the BBC’s Drama of the Week, and Levar Burton Reads. (Burton chooses a fairly large share of SF/F stories to read, but not exclusively.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A complete reading list for 2018 will be below, but the</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;"> following were books I particularly enjoyed:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">DAUGHTER OF MYSTERY</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> by Heather Rose Jones </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">was probably my favorite of 2018. Some books </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and writers get buzz and reputation by emphasizing one particular aspect of storytelling; plot, setting, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">characters, worldbuilding. What particularly struck me about DOM was how well balanced </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> those </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">aspects were. Every page of this swords-and-manners (with Fantasy Lite aspects) story ran </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">smoothly; it allowed me to fall fully into the story, to not be aware there was a writer pulling strings</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> behind everything. Excellently done, and I have several more of Jones’ books in my TBR pile now.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A pair of outstanding novellas, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">THE ARMORED SAINT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">THE QUEEN OF CROWS</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, came from </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Myke Cole in 2018, the first two parts of a trilogy. Medieval-style setting with a brutal theocracy that </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will straight up murder individuals or entire towns suspected of being tainted with deviltry. A young</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> woman, Heloise, comes into possession of a suit of powered (via a steam-engine-like technology) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">armor and is reluctantly forced into revolt against the theocracy. Cole pulls no punches about the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">costs involved in such a revolt; lives are upended, homes destroyed, friendships betrayed, loved </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ones lost, even many who survive still suffer injury and maiming. The mental and emotional toll on </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heloise and others is also brought out. One aspect of Heloise’s world that Cole hasn’t focused on so</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> far is that the “devils” are </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, ripping into our world (literally, through the bodies of the possessed) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and wreaking murderous havoc; so the theocracy, despite its brutality and corruption, actually </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">protecting the world from chaos. If Heloise’ revolt is successful, what would replace the theocracy </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">and its protection? Perhaps that question will be one of the complications in the forthcoming final </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">part of the trilogy.</span></div>
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<li>Some other books I read with notably grim, violent settings and situations included:<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TRAIL OF LIGHTNING</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Rebecca Roanhorse. In an altered America where gods and magic have returned to Native American lands, monsters have returned as well. A young woman raised by a demigod to hunt and kill monsters has to deal with outsider and abandonment issues, plus past trauma. She serves the People, but is not fully one of them.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE STARS ARE LEGION</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Kameron Hurley. I will confess, I found the cosmology of Hurley’s universe in TSAL difficult to grasp. But it seems in the far, far future when much of the natural universe has gone cold and dark, there are enclaves of created systems and planets, with almost continuous war between planets for scarce and dwindling resources. Life is struggle on both larger and smaller scales, and ruthlessness is a virtue and a necessity. I found the book engrossing regardless, in part because the society and background were so mysterious and disturbing.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Jeanette Ng was another book where the background and</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> society were uncertain, but in this case that uncertainty is an integral and deliberate part of the</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> book. The lands of Fae are real, reachable by ships that have found themselves lost upon the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">sea. Ways to become deliberately lost enable a measure of trade and commerce with the Fae.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In addition to such commercial interests, missionaries travel to the Faelands to try to convert </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">the heathen Fae to Christianity, with exceedingly rare success. The sister of one such </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">missionary follows him to Fae, where she finds the “reality” of Fae lands is very flexible </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">indeed, an uncertainty matched only by the (malicious?) fickleness and mystery of the Fae </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">themselves. This is a grimness of the mind, and both brother and sister find their own </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">weaknesses, exacerbated by the strange and uncertain land and beings around them, lead </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">them into unwise actions and decisions.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another work of psychological grimness is </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FORTRESS AT THE END OF TIME</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by J.M. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">McDermott. “Travel” between stars is accomplished by sending data to duplicates a person’s</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> body and mind at the receiving end; from the original’s viewpoint nothing has happened but </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the duplicate will spend the rest of its life at the destination point. FATEOT takes place in a </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">military space station orbiting a harsh planet at the ass-end of nowhere, listening for signs of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an alien enemy that may never come. I caught notes of Dostoevsky, Kafka and Joseph </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conrad in the style and narrative, though McDermott cites </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE TARTAR STEPPE by Dino </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Buzzati and THE OPPOSING SHORE by Julian Graq as the major influences.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">If you haven’t guessed by now, I don’t mind grim in my reading. (Though I don’t really like the term </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">“grimdark”; somehow, for me, the term seems just a bit coy and… twee?)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Less grim, but with plenty of more traditional action and political maneuvering:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MEDUSA UPLOADED</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Emily Devenport</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by K. Arsenault Rivera</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">BEHIND THE THRONE</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by K.B. Wagers</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by V.E. Schwab</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">BINTI</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Nnedi Okorafor</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE ACCIDENTAL WAR</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by Walter Jon Williams</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In a lighter tone, I enjoyed Marshall Ryan Maresca’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">LADY HENTERMAN’S WARDROBE</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, second in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his “Streets of Maradaine” series. Think the tv series LEVERAGE set in a well-developed fantasy</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> world and city. (Maresca has several other series, with different characters and premises, set in</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Maradaine.) When their neighborhood is burned out by arson (in the first volume, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE HOVER </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ALLEY CREW</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), a group of criminals and former criminals join together to try and find out the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">reasons and perpetrators behind the devastating fire. Break-ins, chases, disguises and deceptions</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ensue. As is common for breakneck caper stories, the clever plans only work until Something Goes </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wrong, with a mad scramble to improvise their way out of disaster quickly following. Very enjoyable </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">and well-written.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Among the stories in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, a collection by Nick Mamatas, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I particularly enjoyed the short novel “Under My Roof”. wherein a suburban father builds a DIY</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> nuclear bomb, then declares his house and the lot it stands on a separate country. The absurdity is </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">further heightened by the family’s young son, secretly a powerful mind-reader whose wry sardonic </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">commentary on the real thoughts and motives of other characters adds much to the comedy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Among the older books I read or re-read in 2018 was Walter M. Miller Jr.’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A CANTICLE FOR </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LEIBOWITZ</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There’ve been a number of online discussion and essays the last decade or so over </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">how many of the “Classic” SF or fantasy works are still exemplary or at least satisfying, and how</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> many have been visited by the Suck Fairy upon reading in the present day. (Heinlein’s name and </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">works tends to be mentioned a lot in those discussions.) Re-reading CANTICLE after about fifty</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years, I found it held up very well. Basic premise, for any I’d-lose-at-Jeopardy people reading this:</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Three linked novellas, roughly 600, 1200 and 1800 years after a nuclear war (the “Flame Deluge”) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">devastates Earth, followed by social upheaval among survivors that destroys most remaining </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">knowledge and technology. Each story centers around the monastery of the Blessed (later Saint) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leibowitz, where a relative few salvaged shreds of knowledge, documents and books have been </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">preserved and copied and re-copied for centuries. Each section deals with how the monastery, and</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the beliefs and faith of the monks doing its work, react to game-changing developments: a trove of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">pre-nuclear documents, some relating directly to the life of Leibowitz, is discovered; six centuries </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">later, science and technology are making a comeback, but threatened by the return of large nation-</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">states and large-scale war; and, in the final section, science has advanced past the level existing </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">before the Flame Deluge, making space travel a possibility, but also enabling the return of nuclear </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">weapons which may destroy the Earth a second and final time before generation ships can establish</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> new human footholds on other planets. Miller’s characters deal with doubt and uncertainty about </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">their choices and beliefs in a dangerous and risky world. No Suck Fairy here.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Most of my reading is in the SF or Fantasy genres, but I also read occasionally in other genres, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">particularly mysteries and suspense. An older mystery I enjoyed was Philip Kerr’s 1989 </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MARCH </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">VIOLETS</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Set in 1930’s Germany when the Nazi party was consolidating its hold over German </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">society, a private detective has to navigate corrupt bureaucracies and police, and the criminal</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> underworld, in the course of investigating a murder and theft. Reading about the gradual </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">normalization and acceptance of Nazi programs and atrocities was disturbing, not least because the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">events and history portrayed in Kerr’s novel parallel in many ways the actions of America’s own </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump administration.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Jordan Harper’s debut suspense novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">SHE RIDES SHOTGUN</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> was a thrill ride of a story. A </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">somewhat ambivalent member of a white power prison gang, days before his scheduled release, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">has to kill one of the other members in self-defense. (Harper doesn’t go deeply how much his </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">protagonist really buys into the white supremacist mindset -- in large part because for most of the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">book simple survival is the top and only priority -- but it seems he signed on primarily because in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">prison you either belong to a gang or you’re prey.) In result, a “kill order” is issued (including to</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> members outside the prison) not only on him, but also on his entire family, the ex-wife and daughter </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">left behind when he entered prison. He walks out of prison barely in time to avoid dying there, isn’t</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> able to save his ex-wife but swoops up his pre-teen daughter just as she gets out of school. It’s a </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">race to stay ahead of an entire gang focused on murdering them. When it becomes clear the pursuit</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> will not stop until he and his daughter are dead, the decision is made to stop running away and fight </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">back. To do that, he had to teach his daughter how to fight, how to shoot, how to kill. The bond </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">between father and daughter, negligible at first, grows throughout the process and training. But what </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">is that training doing to the girl’s bonds and relationship with society at large?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Two non-fiction books I particularly enjoyed:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">ASSASSINATION VACATION</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> by Sarah Vowell. I actually listened to the audiobook by mistake, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">having borrowed it from Overdrive having somehow thought it was a theme anthology of crime </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">stories. No, actually it’s Vowell’s travelogue of sites relating to Presidential assassinations, with lots </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">of interesting history and trivia along the way. But it’s also at times hilariously funny, because of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vowell’s self-deprecating humor. (She recognizes being obsessed with assassinations is a Pretty </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Freaking Weird hobby.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">UNDER THE RED SEA SUN</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> by Edward Ellsberg. In 1942, the essential port of Massawa in Eritrea </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">on the Red Sea was taken from the Italian forces that had occupied it, but not before the Italians </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">blocked the port’s use by scuttling and booby-trapping numerous ships and the on-shore shops and </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">facilities. Ellsberg, a maritime salvage expert was given the “impossible” task of reclaiming the port </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">for use by the Allies, but with virtually no men, no equipment and no money, further complicated by </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">corruption and incompetence in the military and civilian bureaucracies. A fascinating memoir of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">resourcefulness and ingenuity in the face of nearly overwhelming obstacles.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Full list for 2018:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">JANUARY</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Company of Lies, Karen Maitland</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Great West Detective Agency, Jackson Lowry (Robert Vardeman)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Jane Steele, Lindsay Faye</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">FEBRUARY</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Artemis, Andy Weir</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Fortress At the End of Time, J.M. McDermott</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">MARCH</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Moving Target, Ross MacDonald</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Lady Henterman's Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Altered America, Cat Rambo</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Quillifer, Walter Jon Williams</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">APRIL</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Starlit Wood, Ed. Wolfe & ???</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">MAY</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beneath the Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Hunger Makes The Wolf, Alex Wells</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Aegypt, John Crowley</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Alternate Routes, Tim Powers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Matchup, ed. Lee Child</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">She Rides Shotgun, Jordan Harper</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Armored Saint, Myke Cole</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">JUNE</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dogs Don't Lie, Clea Simon</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">March Violets, Philip Kerr</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Medusa Uploaded, Emily Devenport</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Hall of Heroes, ed. Fellowship of Fantasy</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">JULY</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Tiger's Daughter, K Arsenault Rivera</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Last Hope Island, Lynne Olson</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">AUGUST</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Behind the Throne, K.B. Wagers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Binti, Nnedi Okorafor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">SPQR, Mary Beard</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The City Stained Red, Sam Sykes</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Stone Mad, Elizabeth Bear</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">SEPTEMBER</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Cornell Woolrich</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Accidental War, Walter Jon Williams</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">OCTOBER</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Selections from Dreamsongs, Vol. 1 (audio), George RR Martin</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Cobbler's Boy, Elizabeth Bear & Katherine Addison</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Lucky Stiff, Craig Rice</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Under the Red Sea Sun, Edward Ellsberg</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Queen of Crows, Myke Cole</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">NOVEMBER</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Space Opera, Cat Valente</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Wayward Saint, J.S. Morning</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Penric's Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The People's Republic of Everything, Nick Mamatas</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">How To Stop Time, Matt Haig</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Gallows View, Peter Dickinson</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">DECEMBER</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dreadnought, Cherie Priest</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Forty Thieves, Thomas Perry</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And by author:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Cobbler's Boy, Elizabeth Bear & Katherine Addison</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Stone Mad, Elizabeth Bear</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">SPQR, Mary Beard</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Penric's Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Matchup, ed. Lee Child</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Armored Saint, Myke Cole</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Queen of Crows, Myke Cole</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Aegypt, John Crowley</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Medusa Uploaded, Emily Devenport</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Gallows View, Peter Dickinson</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Under the Red Sea Sun, Edward Ellsberg</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Jane Steele, Lindsay Faye</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Hall of Heroes, ed. Fellowship of Fantasy</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">How To Stop Time, Matt Haig</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">She Rides Shotgun, Jordan Harper</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">March Violets, Philip Kerr</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Great West Detective Agency, Jackson Lowry (Robert Vardeman)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Moving Target, Ross MacDonald</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Company of Lies, Karen Maitland</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The People's Republic of Everything, Nick Mamatas</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Lady Henterman's Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Selections from Dreamsongs, Vol. 1 (audio), George RR Martin</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Fortress At the End of Time, J.M. McDermott</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beneath the Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Wayward Saint, J.S. Morning</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Binti, Nnedi Okorafor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Last Hope Island, Lynne Olson</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Starlit Wood, ed. Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Forty Thieves, Thomas Perry</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Alternate Routes, Tim Powers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dreadnought, Cherie Priest</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Altered America, Cat Rambo</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Lucky Stiff, Craig Rice</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Tiger's Daughter, K Arsenault Rivera</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dogs Don't Lie, Clea Simon</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The City Stained Red, Sam Sykes</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Space Opera, Cat Valente</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Behind the Throne, K.B. Wagers</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Artemis, Andy Weir</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Hunger Makes The Wolf, Alex Wells</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Accidental War, Walter Jon Williams</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Quillifer, Walter Jon Williams</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Cornell Woolrich</span></div>
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Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-91525150279714074012018-08-29T05:21:00.000-07:002018-08-29T05:21:44.599-07:00Update to "The New Normal: Living Under the Sword of Damocles"Back in May, I wrote a post, "<a href="http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-new-normal-living-under-sword-of.html">The New Normal: Living Under the Sword of Damocles</a>", detailing medical issues that posed a potentially fatal danger for my wife Hilde. At that time, we were postponing surgery until further developments made the situation even more critical. (Failing sections of cervical reconstruction hardware from a 2001 surgery had shifted to where there was a large lump and a pinhole-sized tear on the back of her neck, creating a potential entry point for spinal cord or brain infection.)<br />
<br />
That "further development" happened in June, when further shifting enlarged the tear and allowed actual metal to come out through Hilde's neck skin.<br />
<br />
(I have photos I took to let Hilde see what was happening back there, but they're kind of alarming -- <i>"Oh shit, your wife is a Terminator! Run, Bruce, run!" </i>-- so I won't post any. The full piece of hardware was several inches long and about the width and thickness of a popsicle stick, but only about 3mm of the tip projected outside her skin. That was plenty alarming, though, he understated.)<br />
<br />
So... more x-rays, tests, consultations with her doctors at Mayo, etc. While those were going on, we kept the wound slathered with antibiotic ointment and covered with a dressing; super-stretchy surgical tubing, worn like a headband, kept the gauze pad in location on the awkward spot.<br />
<br />
We also used the weeks while a surgical plan was developed to try to prepare for the worst possible outcomes. We had our wills updated, set up a living trust for our property and possessions, and had Durable Power of Attorney and Advanced Medical Directives drawn up so decisions could be made and documents signed in the event of our incapacitation. (This was all stuff we should have gotten done much sooner, but I guess it took a medical crisis to build our motivation to critical mass. Don't wait 'til the last moment yourself, folks!)<br />
<br />
The Plan B for surgery that eventually developed was less drastic than originally envisioned. The original plan intended to remove most or all the failing hardware, but this would also leave Hilde's neck and spinal column in a precarious condition, likely to eventually fail and result in quadriplegia and/or death.<br />
<br />
Plan B was to leave most of the hardware "<a href="https://unmpress.com/books/abandoned-place/9780826356253">Abandoned In Place</a>". The actual projecting piece of metal (and its matching piece on the right side of Hilde's neck, which was close to coming through the skin there) would be trimmed back as far as was safe, a plastic surgeon would take a thin flap from the trapezius muscle and place it over the surgical area (this increases blood flow and promotes healing; it was expected that Hilde's normal wound recovery ability would be compromised by years of steroid medications), and the wound closed.<br />
<br />
Plan B would mean a shorter time in surgery, less trauma to her body, and <i>*some*</i> reduction in risks and complications. Less chance of the neck destabilizing post-surgery, for one. But the neurosurgeon's primary concern was over the stenosis in Hilde's cervical spine (the "dog-leg turn" I mentioned in the May post) that was already putting pressure on her spinal cord in several places; her fear was that anesthesia might cause Hilde's blood pressure to crash, reducing blood flow to the already restricted parts of the spinal cord and starving it of oxygen, which might still result in quadriplegia or death. So... <i>less</i> risky, but still a high-risk surgery.<br />
<br />
The Plan B surgery took place, yesterday, August 28th. Let's skip any more suspense: the surgery was successful; Hilde came out of it awake and aware and without losing the rest of mobility and movement she has left after fifty years of rheumatoid arthritis.<br />
<br />
Not without a few moments of drama, though. When Hilde was turned over for the surgery, the crash in blood pressure the neurosurgeon had feared began to occur. But they were able to reposition her and get the BP back up to acceptable levels before any permanent damage occurred, and the rest of the operation went smoothly. The trapezius-flap procedure was left undone; Hilde's skin and muscle tone looked better than expected and skipping the procedure shortened the time in surgery and reduced the possibility of further blood pressure problems.<br />
<br />
So... it looks like we'll end up with a reset to the end of last year, before the skin tear developed. This is, to put it very lightly, a relief. But the months of anxiety and dread (at least on my part; Hilde was stoic, I was terrified) came with a few lessons:<br />
<br />
Most importantly, get your affairs and papers in order <i>now</i>. Even though this was a slowly building crisis, one that gave us months to try and prepare for the worst, there's always things you'll forget or not get done. Spending part of last weekend drawing up a list of people to notify if Hilde died in surgery was not a fun activity, but one that had to be done. If this had developed as a sudden emergency, we'd have been much more unprepared.<br />
<br />
I'd probably have been more efficient at preparing for the worst if I hadn't resisted taking anti-anxiety medication. There were <b>so</b> many times I felt close to panic; it's hard to focus when your mind keeps going "<i>What if...? What if...? What if...?</i>" and it feels like a pile of rocks is sitting on your chest.<br />
<br />
Thanks to everyone who gave us their best wishes and hopes during this time.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-9548295016617229282018-05-08T21:57:00.000-07:002018-05-08T21:57:52.778-07:00The New Normal: Living Under the Sword of Damocles<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83ll-jo5MJ8oblvkrQSH1GjqwqfuM-mjjZRMYDtkW6urxlWvGhTq2zYYTFnVUaLPDmuWy9l3-fnESCiCVrdHEogx4VXrC2fSpFHDgkFM8YeHj1ytiCEfGM_E2QYOdOctMvhSBcw/s1600/Damocles-1896book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj83ll-jo5MJ8oblvkrQSH1GjqwqfuM-mjjZRMYDtkW6urxlWvGhTq2zYYTFnVUaLPDmuWy9l3-fnESCiCVrdHEogx4VXrC2fSpFHDgkFM8YeHj1ytiCEfGM_E2QYOdOctMvhSBcw/s400/Damocles-1896book.jpg" width="262" /></a>Over on Twitter during the last several months, I've made several vague allusions to "medical issues" Hilde and I have been dealing with. Those issues have reached a point of (current) stability that I finally feel able to write about.<br />
<br />
Hilde's had severe Rheumatoid Arthritis for fifty years, since she was 22. The RA has worn at and worn down her body and ability to use it ever since, and has made her become progressively more and more disabled and dependent.<br />
<br />
Back in 2001, the RA looked like it might literally kill her. Her C-1 vertebrae, at the top of the spine, had degraded to the point it was beginning to break apart, allowing her skull and brain to begin moving downwards. In the neurosurgeon's memorable phrase, her brain would be "<i>pithed like a laboratory frog</i>". Without reconstructive surgery, he estimated her life expectancy as two weeks to six months (but most of that six months would be as a brain-damaged quadriplegic). The surgery itself was not without risk, with a 1-in-7 chance of dying on the operating table.<br />
<br />
That surgery was done, Hilde survived, and for seventeen years her neck has been held together with wires and rods and screws. Her neurosurgeon has said most people who have that type of operation gain another 2-5 years of life, so she's beaten those odds several times over. (When we've seen the neurosurgeon every few years for follow-ups, we get the impression he'd like to put Hilde in a big glass box and take her to medical conferences to show off to other doctors.)<br />
<br />
BUT... when hardware's been in a body that long, things happen. It degrades. It shifts. It breaks.<br />
<br />
About 7-8 years ago, Hilde began to get a couple of small lumps on the back of her neck. X-rays revealed some of the surgical screws were slowly working their way loose and trying to back out of their holes. We were advised that it was something to keep an eye on, but not anything critical or dangerous at that point. We had another follow-up in 2015, when the lumps had gotten slightly larger. At that appointment, we were told that a second reconstructive surgery would be much more dangerous, with only 50/50 odds of surviving the operation. We were advised that unless the shifting hardware got to the point where it punctured the skin and provided a potential entry point for spinal cord or brain infections, surgery probably shouldn't be considered an option.<br />
<br />
That point was reached in late January of this year; one of the lumps on Hilde's neck had increased in size dramatically over the previous month or so, stretching the skin to the point that a small tear, about pinhead size, opened up.<br />
<br />
So, since then, we've been doing our best to keep that opening clean and free of infection, treating it daily with antibiotic ointment, while we've been consulting the neurosurgery department at the Phoenix branch of the Mayo Clinic. (Hilde wants any future surgeries done at Mayo because the quality of care is much higher than other hospitals -- like, a lot -- she's been in over the years.)<br />
<br />
The findings from x-rays, cat scans, MRIs, bone density scans, etcetera, have been... not good.<br />
<br />
Essentially, by this point, <b>all</b> the hardware in Hilde's neck has failed, coming loose or broken, and what's probably continuing to hold Hilde's neck together is the scar tissue from the 2001 surgery. To go in to remove the failed hardware would entail cutting through that scar tissue, probably resulting in further destabilization of the neck and spine, leading to further complications ranging from chronic neck pain to quadriplegia to death.<br />
<br />
Further, Hilde's bone density (after fifty years of RA and steroid meds) is officially osteoporotic, and the Mayo surgeon feels attempting to install fresh hardware would either fail quickly or possibly be unable to do at all.<br />
<br />
Plus... the MRI showed that Hilde's upper spine, rather than being a smooth curve, has a slight dog-leg bend (something like the <a href="http://woodcarvingillustrated.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/4.jpg">dog-leg chisel</a> shown at this link) that's already putting compression on her spinal cord in two places. Dealing with that would be a further complication and increased risk for surgery.<br />
<br />
So... the recommendation has been to <i>not</i> attempt surgery at this point, but to continue treating the skin break on Hilde's neck and avoid infection. Which is what we're doing.<br />
<br />
But at some point, Something Will Happen. A germ might get lucky and start an infection despite our efforts. More of Hilde's internal hardware will move and shift and create a critical situation. That compression on Hilde's spinal cord might increase and create its own crisis. At that point, assuming Hilde survives whatever critical failure occurs, postponing surgery may not be an option. And, if she survives that surgery, it's very uncertain what quality or how long a life she might have afterwards.<br />
<br />
So that's our New Normal.<br />
<br />
(Added: This has been the Biggest Bad in our lives since January. Hilde's also had a slew of other, unrelated issues since November, including two hospital stays, hearing problems, and losing the remaining functionality in her left arm, which last has left her unable to hold or read printed books anymore. She also can't use touchscreens or a mouse to use an ereader, so she's currently feeding her book jones with audiobooks that I or Tabbi start or stop for her. There's a new control-with-head-movements program that looks like it might make it feasible for her to use a tablet, but it's been difficult and frustrating for her to try and learn.)<br />
<br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-25874140105520453602018-04-04T19:09:00.000-07:002018-04-04T19:09:21.688-07:002017 readingI've been keeping lists of books I've read (or listened to on audiobook) for a few years. Here's gthe list from 2017, both by month read and by author. Some comments/mini-reviews for ones I particularly liked are after the lists.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>JANUARY</b><br />
In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker<br />
Three Bags Full, Leonie Swann (murder mystery from the PoV of a herd of sheep; surprisingly, it works)<br />
Bellwether, Connie Willis<br />
In Sunlight or In Shadow, Lawrence Block (ed.)<br />
Monstress, Marjorie Liu (graphic novel)<br />
Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling<br />
Slayground (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)<br />
Impersonations, Walter Jon Williams<br />
<br />
<b>FEBRUARY</b><br />
Martians Abroad, Carrie Vaughn<br />
Plunder Squad (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)<br />
Dreadnought, April Daniels<br />
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: I Kissed A Squirrel and I Liked It, Ryan North & Erica Henderson (and others)<br />
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe, Ryan North & Erica Henderson<br />
Valentine Pontifex, Robert Silverberg<br />
Butcher's Moon (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)<br />
Crooked Heart, Lissa Evans<br />
The Hipster From Outer Space, Luke Kondor<br />
<br />
<b>MARCH</b><br />
Faceoff, ed. David Baldacci (teamup stories between popular thriller characters)<br />
Caliban's War (The Expanse #2), James S.A. Corey<br />
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler<br />
I Shudder At Your Touch, ed. Ellen Datlow (abridged audiobook)<br />
<br />
<b>APRIL</b><br />
Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse #3), James S.A. Corey<br />
Get In Trouble, Kelly Link<br />
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein<br />
Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff<br />
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George RR Martin<br />
<br />
<b>MAY</b><br />
Jamrach's Menagerie, Carol Birch<br />
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 5: Like I'm the Only Squirrel In the World, Ryan North & Erica Henderson (and others)<br />
Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris<br />
Angst, David J. Pedersen<br />
A Hundred Thousand Possible Worlds, Bob Proehl<br />
The Holver Alley Crew, Marshall Ryan Maresca<br />
<br />
<b>JUNE</b><br />
The Plague Dogs, Richard Adams<br />
The Service of the Dead, Candace Robb<br />
The Outsider, Fredrick Forsyth<br />
Tropic of Serpents, Marie Brennan<br />
<br />
<b>JULY</b><br />
A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers<br />
Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovich<br />
Forever and A Death, Donald Westlake<br />
All Systems Red, Martha Wells<br />
The Drop, Dennis Lehane<br />
Indigo, Charlaine Harris, et al.<br />
<br />
<b>AUGUST</b><br />
Comeback (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)<br />
Arsenic With Austen, Katherine Bolger Hyde<br />
Gwendy's Button Box, Stephen King & Richard Chizmar<br />
Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty<br />
Sovereign, April Daniels<br />
Northhanger Abbey, Jane Austen<br />
Backflash, (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)<br />
<br />
<b>SEPTEMBER</b><br />
Tremontaine, Ellen Kushner, et al.<br />
Duma Key, Stephen King<br />
<br />
<b>OCTOBER</b><br />
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, Theodora Goss<br />
Flashfire (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)<br />
Firebreak (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)<br />
The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Vol 1), Lemony Snicket<br />
Strange Beasties, ed. Juliana Rew<br />
<br />
<b>NOVEMBER</b><br />
Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero<br />
Buffalo Soldier, Maurice Broaddus<br />
The Reapers Are The Angels, Alden Bell<br />
The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson<br />
<br />
<b>DECEMBER</b><br />
Nightmare At 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories of Richard Matheson, Richard Matheson<br />
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie<br />
The Wall of Storms, Ken Liu<br />
The Book of Swords, ed. Gardner Dozois<br />
The Adventure of the Incognita Countess, Cynthia Ward<br />
The Bookseller, Cynthia Swanson<br />
Final Girls, Mira Grant<br />
<br />
- - - - -<br />
<br />
<b>SORTED BY AUTHOR:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovich</li>
<li>The Plague Dogs, Richard Adams</li>
<li>The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson</li>
<li>Northhanger Abbey, Jane Austen</li>
<li>In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker</li>
<li>Faceoff, ed. David Baldacci (teamup stories between popular thriller characters)</li>
<li>The Reapers Are The Angels, Alden Bell</li>
<li>Jamrach's Menagerie, Carol Birch</li>
<li>In Sunlight or In Shadow, Lawrence Block (ed.)</li>
<li>Tropic of Serpents, Marie Brennan</li>
<li>Buffalo Soldier, Maurice Broaddus</li>
<li>Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero</li>
<li>A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers</li>
<li>Caliban's War (The Expanse #2), James S.A. Corey</li>
<li>Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse #3), James S.A. Corey</li>
<li>Dreadnought, April Daniels</li>
<li>Sovereign, April Daniels</li>
<li>I Shudder At Your Touch, ed. Ellen Datlow (abridged audiobook)</li>
<li>The Book of Swords, ed. Gardner Dozois</li>
<li>Crooked Heart, Lissa Evans</li>
<li>The Outsider, Fredrick Forsyth</li>
<li>We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler</li>
<li>The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, Theodora Goss</li>
<li>Final Girls, Mira Grant</li>
<li>Indigo, Charlaine Harris, et al.</li>
<li>Arsenic With Austen, Katherine Bolger Hyde</li>
<li>Duma Key, Stephen King</li>
<li>Gwendy's Button Box, Stephen King & Richard Chizmar</li>
<li>The Hipster From Outer Space, Luke Kondor</li>
<li>Tremontaine, Ellen Kushner, et al.</li>
<li>Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty</li>
<li>Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie</li>
<li>The Drop, Dennis Lehane</li>
<li>Get In Trouble, Kelly Link</li>
<li>The Wall of Storms, Ken Liu</li>
<li>Monstress, Marjorie Liu (graphic novel)</li>
<li>The Holver Alley Crew, Marshall Ryan Maresca</li>
<li>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George RR Martin</li>
<li>Nightmare At 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories of Richard Matheson, Richard Matheson</li>
<li>Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris</li>
<li>The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: I Kissed A Squirrel and I Liked It, Ryan North & Erica Henderson (and others)</li>
<li>The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe, Ryan North & Erica Henderson</li>
<li>The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 5: Like I'm the Only Squirrel In the World, Ryan North & Erica Henderson (and others)</li>
<li>Angst, David J. Pedersen</li>
<li>A Hundred Thousand Possible Worlds, Bob Proehl</li>
<li>Strange Beasties, ed. Juliana Rew</li>
<li>The Service of the Dead, Candace Robb</li>
<li>Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff</li>
<li>Valentine Pontifex, Robert Silverberg</li>
<li>The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Vol 1), Lemony Snicket</li>
<li>Slayground (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Plunder Squad (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Butcher's Moon (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Comeback (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Backflash, (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Flashfire (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Firebreak (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)</li>
<li>Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling</li>
<li>Three Bags Full, Leonie Swann (murder mystery from the PoV of a herd of sheep; surprisnigly, it works)</li>
<li>The Bookseller, Cynthia Swanson</li>
<li>Martians Abroad, Carrie Vaughn</li>
<li>The Adventure of the Incognita Countess, Cynthia Ward</li>
<li>Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein</li>
<li>All Systems Red, Martha Wells</li>
<li>Forever and A Death, Donald Westlake</li>
<li>Impersonations, Walter Jon Williams</li>
<li>Bellwether, Connie Willis</li>
</ul>
<div>
- - - - -</div>
<br />
<b>SOME OF MY FAVORITES OF THE YEAR'S READING:</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Broken Sword,</b> Poul Anderson -- I first read this about fifty years ago, listened to the audiobook (narrated, very nicely, by Bronson Pinchot) recently. I had forgotten how well Anderson could evoke the rhythm, style and atmosphere of classic Norse saga.</li>
<li><b>The Reapers Are The Angels</b>, Alden Bell -- You might think "Another furshlugginer zombie novel," but this is a particularly well-done example of the genre. YA protagonist, the story deals with the idea that to survive in a world largely devastated by monsters, people might themselves have to become monsters. And, when enclaves of normalcy begin to slowly reestablish, what place will there be for the monsters in human skin?</li>
<li><b>A Closed and Common Orbit</b>, Becky Chambers -- I read Chambers' first book, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, but was not as bowled over by it as a lot of people; enjoyed that first book, but considered it "good" rather than great. I found this sequel kept my attention and interest to a much greater degree. An artificial intelligence meant to run a spaceship is implanted in a (highly illegal) human body; the story deals with her slow and sometimes rocky adjustment -- and how much it's possible for her <b>to</b> adjust -- to life in a new body and environment. The tighter focus on a smaller cast -- two main characters here, as opposed to the ensemble cast of The Long Way -- works to great advantage here, I thought.</li>
<li><b>The Outsider</b>, Fredrick Forsyth -- I'm not sure I've ever read any of Forsyth's fiction beyond a collection of short stories. Nope, not even Day of the Jackal. But The Outsider, Forsyth's memoir of his life and surprising adventures, got such an enthusiastic reception I gave it a try. Good decision. Turns out Forsyth used some of his own experiences and wide-faring travels as springboards for many of his novels. Combined with the authorial voice of a great raconteur, the pages just keep turning on this one. I especially liked how Forsyth tied the ending, set in his 70's, back to his experience as a young boy.</li>
<li><b>We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves</b>, Karen Joy Fowler -- This novel has a major revelation, a Big Surprise Twist that by the time I read the book was one I was already aware of. But that wasn't a spoiler for me, because that was only the plot element around which the story's themes revolved. Themes of perception, of how the stories we write in our heads are not always the true stories, of how what we want to be real is not always reality. The narrative reversals in the later parts of WAACBS left me going "Whoa-a-a...." Very impressive story, very impressive writing.</li>
<li><b>The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter</b>, Theodora Goss -- I like a lot of books that revisit old classics and put a new twist on them. Sometimes by writing a "Next Generation" sequel dealing with the children of the original work's characters. Sometimes by doing a "mashup", putting characters from several classic works by several authors together in a new story. Theodora Goss does both in Alchemist's Daughter, with the daughters of Jekyll and Hyde, the Bride of Frankenstein, Rappaccini's Daughter, and panther-woman Catherine Moreau coming together for mutual support and to investigate and fight a common enemy. (Sherlock Holmes and company also play important parts in the story.) I especially liked the interactions between straight-laced Mary Jekyll and street-tough Diana Hyde; I was reminded of the odd-couple cop-pairings of Lethal Weapon and other movies. (I'd love to see the BBC make this as a movie or mini-series.)</li>
<li><b>Tremontaine</b>, Ellen Kushner, et al. Set in the swords-and-manners world of Kushner's novel Swordspoint (though several decades earlier), this is one of the collaborative novels being published by Serial Box. (Multiple authors contributing sections of a novel--length story arc; very similar to the "braided novels" in the Wild Cards series.) Politics, romance, diplomacy, trade issues and, yep, swordfights mix in the telling. On occasion, stylistic differences between contributors are a bit jarring, but overall this was an engrossing tale, and I'm hoping to see more Tremontaine books.</li>
<li><b>Six Wakes</b>, Mur Lafferty -- Murder mystery in space. The characters are travelers on a slower-than-light interstellar ship who only intermittently awake from suspended animation during the decades-long voyage. A side-effect of suspension is memory loss, but brain recordings can be reloaded on awakening. Problem: The woken find one of the crew very messily dead, and their memory downloads are from the earliest days of the voyage, with later recordings deleted. What happened during those missing years, and does the killer even <b>know</b> they're a murderer?</li>
<li><b>Ancillary Mercy</b>, Ann Leckie -- Concluding volume of the "Imperial Radch" trilogy. Grand space opera. Breq, formerly part of the multi-bodied group mind that controlled and manned an Imperial warship, has been reduced to a single soldier who has to learn to survive as an isolated individual in a milieu of complicated politics and societies. The trilogy won numerous awards, and rightly so.</li>
<li><b>Lovecraft Country,</b> Matt Ruff -- When it comes to Lovecraftian fiction, I can usually leave it or leave it. I read enough of HPL and his imitators when I was younger to know very little of it appealed to me. But Ruff's homage/rebuttal of Lovecraftian traditions was an exception. Lovecraft's casual/neurotic racism is countered by making the main characters black in 1950's America and having to deal with actual racism, segregation and human-sourced danger along with the supernatural elements. They also feel like very <b>real</b> characters; I particularly liked Letitia; if LC were a movie (it's being developed as a TV series), Letitia would be the action-hero character.</li>
<li><b>Butcher's Moon</b> (a "Parker" novel), Richard Stark (ps. Donald Westlake) -- I've been a fan of the Parker novels (gritty crime stories about a career criminal and heist artist whose "professionalism" may be sourced in sociopathy) for a long time, and have been catching up on volumes I hadn't read back in the day. For a long time, 1974's Butcher's Moon was the last Parker adventure (Westlake revived the character in 1997 for eight additional books before his death in 2008) and could be considered the grand finale of the series. Much longer than earlier volumes, the story hearkens back to plot elements of earlier books and eventually draws in numerous secondary characters from those books for a grand Magnificent Seven/Ocean's Eleven type of resolution. Great work by Westlake, balancing numerous plot elements and complications as well as a a large cast.</li>
<li><b>The Adventure of the Incognita Countess</b>, Cynthia Ward -- like the Theodora Goss book mentioned above, this is a mashup of characters and ideas from a number of classic works. In 1912, Lucy Harker, half-vampire daughter of Mina Harker and Dracula, is a new government agent tasked with hunting and killing full-blooded vampires and "dhampirs". The British Empire is also in the midst of reverse-engineering and adapting the captured technology of the failed Martian invasion of some years previous. The adaptations include the powerful engines on the newly built, just launched Titanic (uh-oh), where Lucy encounters Carmilla, the pre-Dracula vampire from Le Fanu's novel of the same name. Complication: There is intense and mutual attraction between sexually-repressed Lucy and sensuous Carmilla. It all works itself out in a breakneck pulp-style romp that's a lot of fun. (And, once again Sherlock Holmes is present in a major supporting role. I'm starting to think his middle name may be "Ubiquitous". This phenomenon has been especially notable since much of the Holmes canon was finally declared part of the public domain awhile back, with a virtual tidal wave of new Holmes mysteries in the classic style -- some well-done, some *koff* not -- from both traditional and indie publishers, or using Holmes as a secondary character as Goss and Ward have done. But at least Holmes homageurs no longer have to file off the serial numbers and give their look-and-feel imitations ridiculous names like, oh, Solar.)</li>
</ul>
<br />
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Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-2162845580901345652017-10-13T18:34:00.000-07:002017-10-13T18:34:14.938-07:00My Best True Cat Story<div style="background-color: #f6f6f6; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.625em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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I’ve told this story in a few other places, but don’t think I’ve told it here:</div>
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Back in the early 80’s, our alpha cat was a big grey fluffy male who had been a stray around our first house. (Walked up and introduced himself: “Hey, you! Wanna house and feed the World’s Best Cat? Here I am.”) We usually try to keep our cats as indoor-only, but having lived on the street for a while, he insisted on occasional outdoor strolls.</div>
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We’d had him a few years, and had moved to a different neighborhood and house. One Sunday morning, as I was driving Hilde and our young son Chris to church, about a block away Hilde and I saw… a large grey fluffy cat, lying dead in the street with his head badly crushed.</div>
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Hilde and I exchanged looks as we drove slowly by, but didn’t want to upset Chris before church. So I drove them to church, then came back, retrieved the body, took it home, and buried it in the back yard, with a lot of tears. (He may not have been THE World’s Best Cat, but he was a contender.)</div>
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After Hilde and Chris got back home, we broke the news to Chris. More tears, more sadness.</div>
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We felt down all day, but had some out-of-town friends scheduled to visit that evening, so we bucked up and tried to put a good face for the visit, not mentioning the loss.</div>
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After dinner and chat, we took our visitors out on the back porch to see the hot tub we’d recently purchased. After a few moments, one of the visitors looked down into the shadows by the hot tub and said, “Oh, did one of your cats slip out with us?”</div>
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We looked down and saw… a large grey fluffy male cat. The same one we’d believed dead all day. The cat looked back up and meowed. (“Where’s my food?”)</div>
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We, of course, were overjoyed to see him so unexpectedly alive. Hugs and pets ensued. (Cat: “Whatever. Food?”) Then I realized…</div>
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…I had buried someone else’s cat.</div>
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Never found out where the dead lookalike cat had come from. Even now, decades later, I feel a bit guilty that somewhere a family’s cat disappeared and never came back, and they never found out what had happened to it.</div>
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But the punchline to our cat returning from the dead?</div>
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Our cat was named Aslan.</div>
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<i>(Copied this from a recent comment I left on File 770. Aslan lived to be nearly 20 before he passed away for real. The pic above is from a free-image site; not the original Aslan, but pretty similar.)</i></div>
Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-40456571934673827462017-06-22T05:06:00.003-07:002017-06-22T05:06:55.602-07:00Book Review: THE SERVICE OF THE DEAD, Candace Robb<br />
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<b>The Service of the Dead</b>, Candace Robb (Pegasus Books, 2016)<br />
<br />
Historical mystery, first in a new series set at the end of the 14th Century, during the struggle over whether the rightful king should be Richard II or Henry Bolingbroke.<br />
<br />
Protagonist is Kate Clifford, a young widow in York struggling to continue her late husband's business and also renting several properties as guesthouses. An unexpected part of her husband's estate turns out to be two children by a secret French mistress, orphaned after their mother's own death; Marie and Philippe are left almost literally at Kate's doorstep. Kate also has to deal with servants, retainers, and various relatives, some trustworthy, some not. And some taking part in the political turmoil between Richard II and Bolingbroke, though choosing any side at all was a dangerous choice.<br />
<br />
When a murdered man is discovered in one of Kate's guesthouses, a deadly game begins, as Kate tries to determine the man's turn identity and loyalties, and in how much danger that truth will place her. More murders will occur before that truth is found.<br />
<br />
Kate, as a character, grew slowly for me, and early chapters felt slow as a result. As more of Kate's own backstory is revealed -- she was sent south into an English marriage to protect her from a Hatfields/McCoys-type feud on the Scottish borders where she was raised, even though she is herself skilled with knife and bow and axe -- she became more interesting, and the book more enjoyable.<br />
<br />
In some ways, this book feels almost like a prequel, introducing and setting up the gameboard and pieces that will be played in future volumes. (The second book in the series, <b>A Twisted Vengeance</b>, is out.) That setting-up process felt slow in the beginning, but sped up satisfactorily by the end. I'll give it four stars out of five.<br />
<br />
(Won in a Goodreads Giveaway.)Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-55897769113459063212017-02-28T08:24:00.001-07:002017-02-28T08:24:28.406-07:00Pantsing A Story<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #292f33; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">"Of all the demons in hell, there is none I dread more than Revision." -- A. Everett Beek</span></b></span></blockquote>
<br />
So, been working on a new story. Usually, when I'm writing fiction, I've got a moderately good plot-line planned out in my head. Not quite an outline, but at least a cocktail-napkin style sketch of how a story will progress.<br />
<br />
This time, though, I started out with a particular scene, with no clear idea of backstory, present story, or where the story was going. This sort of thing is usually described as a "discovery" story, or as "writing by the seat of your pants" (aka "pantsing"). With that technique, you just start writing and free associating and see where the story takes you.<br />
<br />
Sometimes that works out well. And sometimes....<br />
<br />
I'm about five thousand words into the story, and what I'm discovering is that the story seems to be developing more and more problems the further I go with it. As in:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>When I started, I wanted this story to be <b>done</b> by the 5000 word mark. It's <b>maybe</b> half-done. Maybe.</li>
<li>The central character is a naive fool, and the other characters are liars, crooks, and a religious fanatic. The more I write, the less I like them. The only really appealing character so far is a very minor one.</li>
<li>One of the most important characters isn't in the story at all. He died before the starting point of the story, but what he did effects what everyone else does.</li>
<li>Too much time is spent by characters either explaining things, or avoiding explaining things.</li>
<li>Characterization is inconsistent, with how characters act shifting as the world and society and backstory gets slowly filled in.</li>
<li>The world-building (this is a secondary world story) is rough and shaky and untrustworthy. I don't feel like it's strong enough to support the narrative.</li>
<li>None of the several possible endings the story seems to be heading for feels like a <i>good</i> ending.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In short, I'm not happy with the work I've put into the story so far.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I'm wrestling with the question of whether I should try and continue to move forward on this particular story, or just abandon it*, or go back to the beginning and try to revise and rescue what I've written so far.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Conventional Wisdom says "Finish what you've started." But if you've made a wrong turn, why keep going in the same direction?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Writing is a manic-depressive activity. When it goes well, it's exciting and fun. When it doesn't, it's a bummer. <i>B-U-M-M-E-R</i>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I can see some things I could do and change to get a better direction going for the story, but that would entail just about starting over. Plus all those changes would make the story even longer. (I ran about the first fifteen pages through the local writer's workshop, and one of the more astute members commented that it felt like the beginning of a novel to her. For a story I wanted to keep under five thousand words. <i>Ai-e-e-e....</i>)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The wrestling with what to do continues. But I needed to vent my frustration a little.</div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>*I never fully "abandon" a story. I've got what I call the Wonder Box, which is filled with notes, fragments and unsuccessful stories from years past. One good thing that came from pondering the problems with the current story is that it led to a realization on how I might fix an old, old story from back in my teenage years. Yeah, <u>that</u> old a story. Never throw anything away, kids.</i></div>
Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-74504076761782641982016-12-31T00:54:00.000-07:002016-12-31T00:54:06.512-07:00My Reading & Listening: 2016<b>Early in 2016,</b> I wrote <a href="http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/2016/02/recent-reading-listening-jan-2016.html">this post</a> reviewing books I'd read in January 2016, with the good intention of continuing subsequent monthly reviews of books I'd read or listened to on audiobook.<br />
<br />
So much for good intentions. I managed to keep a list of books read in 2016, but aside from that post for January reading, never continued the monthly reviews. (There were a few books individually reviewed.)<br />
<br />
In lieu of that, and because a list worth keeping may be a list worth posting, here's my reading for 2016. (I also read some of the sf/f magazines, and listened to a lot of short story podcasts from Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and other audio or dual print/audio producers, but this list is for actual novels or short story collections published as books. Sorry about that, podcasters.)<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">January:</span> </b><br />
(these were reviewed in the post linked in the 1st paragraph above)<br />
<b>Don't You Know There's A War On?</b>, Richard R. Lingerman,<br />
<b>The Fifth Heart</b>, Dan Simmons<br />
<b>Maplecroft</b>, Cherie Priest<br />
<b>Captain Blood</b>, Rafael Sabatini<br />
<b>The Traitor Baru Cormorant</b>, Seth Dickinson<br />
<b>Mr. Churchill's Secretary</b>, Susan Elia MacNeal<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">February:</span></b><br />
(Februarywas a Headless Chicken Month, so not much reading completed)<br />
<b>The Secret History of Wonder Woman</b>, Jill Lepore<br />
<b>Planetfall</b>, Emma Newman<br />
<b>The Raven Boys</b>, Maggie Steifvater<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">March:</span></b><br />
<b>The Golem of Hollywood</b>, Jonathan Kellerman & Jesse Kellerman<br />
<b>Zoe's Tale</b>, John Scalzi<br />
<b>Authority</b>, Jeff Vandermeer<br />
<b>Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore</b>, Robin Sloan<br />
<b>Leviathan's Wake</b>, James S.A. Corey<br />
<b>The Goblin Emperor</b>, Katherine Addison (pseud. Sarah Monette)<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">April:</span></b><br />
<b>Operation Arcana</b>, ed. John Joseph Adams<br />
<b>Redemption Road</b>, John Hart<br />
<b>Beasts of Burden</b>, Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson<br />
<b>The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1: Squirrel Power</b>, Ryan North & Erica Henderson<br />
<b>The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It's True</b>, Ryan North, Dan Slott, Erica Henderson, Matt Haley, Kieron Dwyer, Ty Templton<br />
<b>The Ocean At The End Of The Lane</b>, Neil Gaiman<br />
<div>
and a bunch of "Parker" Novels by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)</div>
<ul>
<li><b>The Hunter</b></li>
<li><b>The Man With The Getaway Face</b></li>
<li><b>The Outfit</b></li>
<li><b>The Mourner</b></li>
<li><b>The Score</b></li>
<li><b>The Jugger</b></li>
</ul>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">May:</span></b><br />
<b> (</b>much of May was spent dealing with the aftermath of April 27th's involuntary participation in Some Asshole's home-grown version of Demolition Derby on a public street, which totaled our car. So, another light reading month)<br />
<b>Aurora</b>, Kim Stanley Robinson<br />
<b>Speakers Of The Dead (Walt Whitman Mystery #1)</b>, J. Aaron Sanders<br />
<b>It's Up To Charlie Hardin</b>, Dean Ing<br />
<b>Princess Elizabeth's Spy</b>, Susan Elia MacNeal<br />
and more "Parker" novels by "Richard Stark" (Donald Westlake):<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Seventh</b></li>
<li><b>The Handle</b></li>
<li><b>The Rare Coin Score</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">June:</span></b></div>
<div>
<b>Uprooted</b>, Naomi Novik</div>
<div>
<b>The Intern's Handbook</b>, Shane Kuhn</div>
<div>
<b>Through the Bamboo</b>, Mack Green<br />
and still more "Stark"/Westlake "Parker" novels<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Green Eagle Score</b></li>
<li><b>The Black Ice Score</b></li>
<li><b>The Sour Lemon Score</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">July:</span></b></div>
<div>
<b>Ancillary Sword</b>, Ann Leckie</div>
<div>
<b>The Library at Mount Char</b>, Scott Hawkins</div>
<div>
<b>Blood Engines</b>, Tim Pratt<br />
<b>We Are All Completely Fine</b>, Daryl Gregory<br />
<b>Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen</b>, Lois McMaster Bujold<br />
<b>The Burn Palace</b>, Stephen Dobyns<br />
<b>Drive</b>, James Sallis<br />
<b>Driven</b>, James Sallis<br />
and one more "Parker" novel<br />
<b>Deadly Edge</b>, Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">August:</span></b><br />
<b>The End Is Now</b>, ed. John Joseph Adams<br />
<b>The End Has Come</b>, ed. John Joseph Adams<br />
<b>Girl At The End Of The World</b>, Richard Levesque (reviewed <a href="http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/2016/08/review-girl-at-end-of-world.html">here</a>)<br />
<b>Scouting For The Reaper</b>, Jacob M. Appel<br />
<b>Gifts For The One Who Comes After</b>, Helen Marshall<br />
<b>North American Lake Monsters: Stories</b>, Nathan Ballingrud<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">September:</span></b><br />
<b>Forgotten Suns</b>, Judith Tarr<br />
<b>Black Hat Jack</b>, Joe Lansdale<br />
<b>A Book Without Dragons</b>, Olivia Berrier<br />
<b>Tutt and Mr. Tutt</b>, Arthur Cheney Train (reviewed <a href="http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/2016/08/review-tutt-and-mr-tutt-by-arthur-train.html">here</a>)<br />
<b>In Silent Graves</b>, Gary Braunbeck<br />
<b>The Bread We Eat In Dreams</b>, Cat Valente<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">October:</span></b><br />
<b>The Last Weekend</b>, Nick Mamatas<br />
<b>Comfort Me With Apples</b>, Peter De Vries<br />
<b>The Wrong Box</b>, Robert Louis Stevenson<br />
<b>H. G. Wells, Secret Agent</b>, Alex Shvartsman<br />
<b>Million Dollar Outlines</b>, David Farland<br />
<b>Just One Damned Thing After Another</b>, Jodi Taylor<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">November:</span></b><br />
(I spent November catching up on short story podcasts from CLARKESWORLD, LIGHTSPEED, and other sources. I usually listen to those while at work -- I'm allowed to do that, huzzah -- and found it difficult to do at home while off-work for three months after July's shoulder surgery. At 8-10 stories per week, times twelve, not many actual books read or listened to in November or December. And I think there was some news item or other that month that threw me off-kilter for weeks.):<br />
<b>A Head Full of Knives</b>, Luke Smitherd<br />
<b>The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet</b>, Becky Chambers<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">December:</span></b><br />
<b>The Body Reader</b>, Anne Frasier<br />
<b>There and Back Again</b>, Pat Murphy<br />
<b>Women Up To No Good</b>, Pat Murphy<br />
<br />
<br />
Among all the books on the list, the one I was most impressed by was <b>Through The Bamboo</b> by Mack Green. It's a Vietnam War novel, with ghosts and spirits added into the mix. The writing is extraordinarily vivid and compelling. One of the best war novels I've ever read, and definitely the best Vietnam novel. I'll try to get a longer review written when I can, but for right now, if you're going to read one book from this list, read that one.<br />
<br />
Other books I especially enjoyed this year:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Traitor Baru Cormorant</b></li>
<li><b>Leviathan's Wake</b></li>
<li><b>The Goblin Emperor</b></li>
<li><b>It's Up To Charlie Hardin</b></li>
<li><b>Uprooted</b></li>
<li><b>Ancillary Sword</b></li>
<li><b>The Library At Mount Char</b></li>
<li><b>We Are All Completely Fine</b></li>
<li><b>Girl At the End of the World</b></li>
<li><b>Just One Damned Thing After Another</b></li>
<li><b>Women Up To No Good</b></li>
<li>and starting a re-read of Westlake's "Parker" novels was a lot of fun. Caught up with the ones I read years ago,and started on ones I didn't get to back then. Still have a half-dozen or so to complete the series.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Olivia Berrier's <b>A Book Without Dragons</b> was an interesting and ambitious, if not completely successful, story written in five different tenses for five different characters. (There's a reason for it.) I look forward to further work from her.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
I'll see if I can get more than just a list up in 2017.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-19347254860360628922016-12-31T00:53:00.000-07:002016-12-31T00:53:15.823-07:00Back To Blogging, MaybeI seem to finally be getting out of the funk the November elections tossed me into. So I'll be trying to resume at least semi-occasional posts here.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-85427108487566480662016-11-09T18:48:00.002-07:002016-11-09T18:48:44.670-07:00Well. That Happened.One day after the election, I'm still stunned.<br />
<br />
The future is looking pretty damn dark and murky right now.<br />
<br />
This is what I know for certain.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The garbage still needs to be put out for pickup.</li>
<li>Laundry still needs to be done.</li>
<li>There are bills I still need to get paid.</li>
<li>The litter boxes still need cleaning.</li>
<li>Some prescriptions still have to be refilled.</li>
<li>Groceries still have to be bought.</li>
<li>The planters & yard still need watering.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That's all I can say right now.</div>
Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-56881978458726134802016-10-09T18:08:00.000-07:002016-10-09T18:08:25.695-07:00"Hey, Arthurs, I Grabbed Alice's Crotch"In 1972 I enlisted in the US Army and, that summer, was going thru AIT (Advanced Individual Training) courses to become a Photographic Laboratory Technician at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.<br />
<br />
This was long before digital cameras became common or ubiquitous. (The concept was first proposed in 1961, but the first practical version wasn't until 1975.) Photographic film, and film processing, were the obligatory method to take and make photos. Film processing took place in darkrooms, where exposed film or photo-paper was swashed in trays of chemicals for a set number of minutes.<br />
<br />
There were about a dozen people in the course, and the darkroom held six; three active at the developing stations, the other three standing about a yard behind waiting their turn. (The doubling-up was to minimize any light leakage from people entering or leaving the darkroom.) The other half-dozen students would wait their turn outside, either taking a break or being told to police the streets and lawns. ("police", in this context, meant picking up cigarette butts from the ground; thank a veteran someday for your not having to wade through hip-deep drifts of cigarette butts stretching from horizon to horizon; sometimes it seemed like the military's major purpose.)<br />
<br />
The senior member of the group was nicknamed "Nick", an E-5 (Sergeant-level) about five or six years older than the rest of us. He had a wife and kid. Nick had reenlisted after an earlier tour to gain the additional training. He was a joker, tending towards the crude and lewd side.<br />
<br />
One of the other people in the course was a WAC (Womens Army Corps) member, Alice.<br />
<br />
<i>(names have been changed, blah blah blah)</i><br />
<br />
One day, I was in the second group, waiting outside. The first group, which included Nick and Alice, exited the training building. Nick had a big grin on his face. Alice had a frozen expression on her own.<br />
<br />
Nick walked up to me and said, in a low voice: "Hey, Arthurs, I grabbed Alice's crotch in the darkroom." Then he chuckled.<br />
<br />
My mind kind of froze. My face kinda froze. It wasn't that uncommon to occasionally hear guys bragging or lying about copping a tit feel from women they dated or socialized with. But... grabbing a <u>crotch</u>? Doing it in a <u>classroom</u>? With <u>four other people present</u>, even if in total darkness? That... that was so far over the line I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Decent people didn't <u>do</u> things like that.<br />
<br />
Here's what <u>should</u> have happened then:<br />
<br />
I should have called Nick out on his behavior. I should have said, "What the hell is wrong with you? What would you think of someone who did that to your wife or daughter?" I should have shamed him, or at least tried to shame him.<br />
<br />
I should have gone to Alice. I should have said to her, "Nick told me he grabbed your crotch in the darkroom. <u>If you want to report this, I will back you up.</u>"<br />
<br />
I should have reported what Nick told me to the officer in charge of the training class. What would have happened to Nick then? Most likely, in that time and in that social environment, Nick would have been called into his CO's office, given a verbal reaming and warned to never try anything like that again. Possibly he would have been taken out of that group of students and made to start over with the next group. At worst, he might have been expelled from the class and sent back to Infantry, which in 1972 still held a good chance of being sent to Vietnam. An Article 15 (the Army's version of a misdemeanor charge) or court-martial were <u>extremely</u> unlikely.<br />
<br />
I did <u>none</u> of that.<br />
<br />
I just stared at Nick. I didn't smile, or frown, or show any expression at all. After a few seconds, he chuckled again, then moved on. I don't know if he told any of the others what he'd done. I don't know why he picked me to tell first; I already had kind of a reputation for being a stick-up-my-ass, no-fun kinda guy who'd rather read a book than drink a beer or watch a sports game. Maybe I was just the closest person when he left the training building.<br />
<br />
The instructor called the second group to go into the darkroom. I got in line and went in. I didn't look towards Alice.<br />
<br />
That where the incident ended. I don't know if Alice ever said anything about it to anyone. Nick never mentioned it again, at least in my presence.<br />
<br />
That's not where the shame and regret ended. Because this wasn't something where I looked back on it in later years and thought "I should have acted differently back then."<br />
<br />
I knew <u>at the time</u> that I should take some kind of action about it, what needed to be done. I didn't do any of it.<br />
<br />
I knew <u>at the time</u> that I was being a chickenshit by trying to ignore it, by trying to avoid any involvement. I ignored it anyway.<br />
<br />
I knew <u>at the time</u> that this was one of those moments that show a man what kind of man he is. And I turned out to be a coward. I passed the Photo Lab Tech course, but failed the Decent Person test.<br />
<br />
Over the years, I've said or written or done things I've regretted or felt ashamed for. This is one of the biggest. Even after forty-plus years, thinking about it leaves a hollow, sick feeling in my chest.<br />
<br />
And now, forty-four years later, the entire freaking country has heard a Presidential candidate brag about how he can grab a woman's pussy and get away with it.<br />
<br />
This is a moment when every voter has to decide: "<b><i>What's the right thing to do?</i></b>"<br />
<br />
Don't be Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
Don't be Billy Bush.<br />
<br />
And for God's sake, don't be <u>me</u>.<br />
<br />
And, Alice, I'm sorry I failed you forty-four years ago.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7376521.post-3007340770714600022016-09-22T09:43:00.000-07:002016-09-22T09:43:40.055-07:00My First Reprint: "The Rest of the Story" at Great Jones Street<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZXE-LLF7xrHWlssM2MiswP1idVUZglJBwnGji15y-1RP4dk8VD9LTvGeusYifkCLRklunRVfmdbExtevqi-0-rWotGqyRQh3fMpCRO0Mw9u4dC-m81FTDBukJWr0qXX3So9TC_g/s1600/IMG_20160922_092846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZXE-LLF7xrHWlssM2MiswP1idVUZglJBwnGji15y-1RP4dk8VD9LTvGeusYifkCLRklunRVfmdbExtevqi-0-rWotGqyRQh3fMpCRO0Mw9u4dC-m81FTDBukJWr0qXX3So9TC_g/s400/IMG_20160922_092846.jpg" width="235" /></a>"The Rest of the Story", my short story that originally appeared in the 1997 anthology HIGHWAYMEN; ROBBERS & ROGUES (edited by Jennifer Roberson, DAW Books), is being reprinted as one of the selections for the new readers' app <b>Great Jones Street</b>.<br />
<br />
"The Rest of the Story" was my 1997 retelling of the Good Samaritan Parable as a mystery/detective story set in 1st-Century Judea. (Who was the man rescued by the Samaritan? Why was he <b>really</b> beaten and robbed on the road?) It's a story I'm especially pleased with, and I'm glad to announce it's finally being reprinted.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.greatjonesstreet.press/"><b>Great Jones Street</b></a> is a new smartphone app that wants to be "the Spotify of short fiction", with access to hundreds of short stories by a plethora of writers across multiple genres, for busy people who want to be able to read a complete piece of fiction on a lunch break or in a waiting room or standing in line at the airport, etc. The iOS version is currently available at iTunes; an Android version is forthcoming.<br />
<br />
<i>[Image: Liz Danforth's illustration for the story's original appearance.]</i><br />
<br />
<br />Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293116210969876175noreply@blogger.com0