Sunday Morning Book Thread 09-29-2019

Augustinian Reading Room, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules), bullheads, catheads, chowderheads, chuckleheads, and assorted cheeseheads. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which the only good thing about them is that they'll go great with your 3-wolf moon T-shirt.

Pic Note

Muldoon always complains that my library pics never actually show any one reading or otherwise using library resources. OK, fine. Here's a photo of this week's library/reading room that has people in it.

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

Word of the Day: ICARIAN (adj.) ambitious but eventually ruinous; describing an act of pride or overconfidence that ends in disaster

— Haggard Hawks 📚🦅 (@HaggardHawks) September 25, 2019

How Dare He?

Lefties everywhere: Being properly worshipful of Greta Thunberg is now mandatory.
Dan Simmons: lolgf

Yes, author Dan Simmons is getting cranky in his old age, as this recent Facebook post makes plain. He does not suffer fools gladly, no matter how old they are. Of course, this brought out swarms of lefties who belittled, cursed, and spat at Simmons all over social media.

Simmons, who is probably best known for the 4-volume Hyperion Cantos series. He also writes myateries, thrillers, and horror novels. He's got so many books published, he has to be writing approximately 33 hours each day in order to get that kind of output. Lots of books. Big, beautiful books. Best books in the world, and I should know, because I've read a lot of books.

Anyway, lefties are now boo-hooing all over social media about what a big meanie Simmons is for "attacking a child", which is a weird sort of double-standard, considering that if Thunberg's handlers hadn't insisted on placing her squarely in the public eye, she wouldn't have been attacked. And they're going on and on about how bad his books are, and how they hate them because they're right-wing, and I don't need to tell you how hilarious it is to hear a bunch of sad-sack progs complaining about books that have a right-wing bias. Which is, like, 0.001% of all books published in the United States. Specifically, they complained about Simmon's dystopian novel Flashback, which I think mentioned on the book thread a few years ago:

The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.

What's wrong with that? Well, one prog clown called it "an endless anti-Obama screed." So maybe it's worth reading, just for the sheer novelty.

Another Simmons novel held up for left-wing scorn was Olympos, the second installment of his Illium series.

Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative. But that was before twenty-first-century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve.

This book gets singled out for "Islamophobia", which usually means being insufficiently deferential to Islam, and I'm not sure how that could be, given the above blurb, but in a novel of 900+ pages, I suppose he could find a way to work it in. Although Simmons was already in the left's doghouse for his legendary 'time-traveler' blog post from 2006. They're probably they're just itching to cancel him, but Dan is 71 years old, most of the books he ever will write have already been written, so the best they could do is to dig up his body after he dies, and set it on fire in front of the Trump Tower, and then pee on it. That'll show 'em.

Larry Correia did a write-up on this a couple of days ago, and as you might guess, his take his way better than mine. You should stop letting me waste your time and go read the whole thing. It's better written, funnier, and more informative. Correia points out that all of the caterwauling over Dan Simmons has actually helped his book sales. Hyperion, a 30-year old book, is suddenly a #1 best seller on Amazon. His point is that the power of the traditional publishing gatekeepers is failing:

So conservative, libertarian, or hell, anybody to the right of Mao basically had to keep their mouths shut because they were scared of getting articles written about they by wretched shitheels like China Mike, Cameldung Frapington, or Frau Butthurt, proclaiming Author X is a Bad Person And Should Be Shunned. Then the authors would see the internet lynch mob of wokescolds sharing those articles getting out their torches and pitchforks, get scared, and then debase themselves by apologizing even though they’d done nothing wrong.

Thankfully those days are coming to an end. Rather than being a career threatening bludgeon like they used to be, the wokescolds are so annoying and obnoxious that fans actually go out of their way to thwart them. If a wokescold starts screaming than an author is guilty of badthink, the fans take that as a sign it is probably pretty good, and go check it out.

When Correia gets a full head of steam, he makes Kurt Schlichter look like a pansy soy boy. Also, I learned a new word from him, 'wokescold', whcih I am incorporating into my vocabulary, right next to 'crybully'.

They Don't Publish Stuff Like This Any More:

Moron Recommendations

Received the following recommendation via e-mail:

My book is My Life in the North Woods by Robert Smith...Its a coming of age fiction book about a young man who spent a winter in a Maine logging camp during those two evils - the depression and prohibition.

He provides a couple of excerpts to give you a flavor of this memoir:

"Some twenty yards above the bunkhouse, out of sight behind a clump of alders, a pit had been dug, and a lean-to shelter rigged over it, open at the sides, with a long pole stretched across the pit at just the right angle for a man, standing on a narrow strip of planking on the edge of the pit, to lean back and hook his arms over. There was room for three or four men at a time.This was the spot provided for defecation. It stunk to the skies".

One of the heroes of the book is Jim Kidder, who relates this interaction with one of the villians of the book, Wallace McCormic, a co-owner of the logging camp:

"He had once, while guiding a bateau along the lakeshore to rescue castaway lengths of pulpwood that had escaped from the boom, found occasion to beat the ass off Wallace, who was given to talking himself up as a man ready to 'intertain' with his fists anywho dared to cross him. This time, Wallace had mistaken Jim Kidder for one of those thoroughly subdued Nova Scocians who came down here every winter to grub for scanty wages. And when Jim did not respond to the hail and bring the bateau in to ferry Wallace across to the storehouse, Wallace had suggested that Jim needed to go back to Nova Sciotia and get his ears cleaned out, Or perhaps, Wallace might clean them out himself.

Jim Kidder's temper, as I soon learned, lay balanced on the very narrowest ege of his nature. At Wallace's challenge, he changed cource with a surge that very nearly dumped the two men, with pickpoles, into the lake. Jim climbed out before the bateau had grounded and waded up to where Wallace stood among the rocks.

'You hairy-assed herring choker, ' Jim greeted Wallace (or at last this is descriptive Jim remembered offering). 'I'll break your ass in seven places'.

I would think that this would be an old book, but it came out in 1986. Too bad it is OOP. Used copies of My Life in the North Woods are available on Amazon and also AbeBooks. Hardcover prices start at about $5.

___________

I think I mentioned last time - read and enjoyed Frank Fleming's SideQuest and Hellbenders dud not realize that he is @IMAO who writes for Babylon Bee

as you might expect, his books are very funny

Posted by: vmom happy to have read a good book! at September 22, 2019 09:49 AM (G546)

I think Frank's gig at the Bee is relatively recent. And he doesn't so much writing for his IMAO site any more, so he's probably got his hands full writing for his paid gigs. He's married with 4 kids, so he's got to work or else sell the lot for scientific experiments, which is he probably doesn't want to do.

The HellBender novel sounds pretty wild:

Doug wasn’t sure whether he should trust Satan.

The red flag was that he said he was Satan. But the deal was good: Listen to Satan’s story in exchange for some donuts. And Doug only half-fulfilled his part of the bargain.

But maybe he should have listened better, because during his friend Bryce’s next scheme (theft with light to moderate treason—the usual), Doug and the rest of his friends—Lulu (the fun one) and Charlene (the not fun one)—end up with a powerful artifact, a small metal cube with world-ending power that Lulu decorated with bunnies. And now everyone wants the bunny cube, which means Doug, Bryce, Lulu, and Charlene are being pursued by an insane supermodel general, an army of sadists, a vast criminal organization, a smaller, more-in-startup-mode criminal organization, and an unstoppable killing machine—the worst kind of killing machine.

I remember when Fleming's first book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything, came out. Some of the reviews by dimwitted progs who couldn't figure out from the title that he was being ironic are pretty amusing.

___________

___________

Finished _We Have No Idea_, which is a fun book about areas of science (physics, mostly) which are still complete blanks on the map. How does gravity work? How big is the Universe? What is dark energy? Etc. I enjoyed it -- it's written for a lay readership and is very jokey, but manages to not talk down to the reader.

Posted by: Trimegistus at September 22, 2019 10:11 AM (G02Y7)

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know" is a quote attributed to Aristotle. But it's true we don't know lots of stuff about a whole lot of stuff:

Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists...It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can.

The Kindle price for We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe is a not unreasonable $8.99.

___________

Currently reading #5 in David Black's Harry Gilmour series, the adventures of a young RNVR submarine skipper in early WWII. Very good action, believable characters, humor, and a suave villain who is out to scuttle the young captain both literally and figuratively. Free on Kindle unlimited.

Posted by: That Deplorable SOB Van Owen at September 22, 2019 10:15 AM (wZ9cV)

Hadn't heard of this series before, but it looks interesting. The first installment is Gone to Sea in a Bucket:

Like all young men of a certain age, Harry Gilmour had his own notion of how a naval battle should be. This wasn’t it.

Norway, 1940: Sub Lieutenant Harry Gilmour’s first encounter with battleship action is not the adventure he had hoped for. Faced with a thankless task and ill equipped to handle it, Gilmour’s inexperience leads to a damning allegation. His future hangs in the balance.

But then Lieutenant Peter Dumaresq steps in to offer him a lifeline—an advanced navigation course that will take him aboard a crack submarine, HMS Pelorus, under the command of a Royal Navy hero. Faced with a possible court martial, Harry chooses life underwater. Once aboard, however, Harry is confronted for the first time by the full horror of submarine warfare. If he can just overcome his fears, it will be the making of him.

The best part is that the price of the Kindle edition is only $3.99. And this is not one of those deals where they sell the first one really cheap and then soak you for all of the others. Every one in the 5-book series is < 4.50. Or you can plunk down $21 for the lot.

___________

Who Dis:

Books By Morons

'Ette right wing yankee has been busy writing:

Last week, I released a regency romance novel called A Small and Inconvenient Disaster. It's short, sweet, and not at all to the usual Moron taste. Some of the 'ettes might like it, though.

Posted by: right wing yankee at September 22, 2019 09:45 AM (zlzYb)

Here is the Amazon blurb:

Everywhere she goes, Maria Mason is plagued by little catastrophes. Getting caught in the rain, running from the friendliness of a muddy dog, tripping over her own feet at the worst possible moment- she has been subject to all manner of accidents, and to fend off the worst of them, she has learned to be silent and still.

Until she accompanies her friend Miss Gordon to London for a season of gaiety and pleasure. Life in Town is full of wonder, and soon Maria has new clothes, new friends, and the attention of the amusing and clever Mr. James Callahan. She begins to wonder if she has outgrown her propensity for falling into disaster, only to find herself embroiled in the worst sort of catastrophe when she is obliged to mediate between her feuding friends. One wrong word, one false step, and she might lose the regard of her friends- or worse, the love of a good man.

A Small and Inconvenient Disaster, available on Kindle for $3.99, is actually the second book in the Markam Series. The first is The Secret of Seavale, also for $3.99.

___________

Couple three years ago, I mentioned Joseph Courtemanche's debut novel Assault on Saint Agnes. He was kind enough to send me an advance copy and it was quite a thrilling page-turner. I just found out that he published another one last year, Nicholas of Haiti:

Nick Bacon is a life interrupted. When his commercial airline flight explodes over Utah, killing everyone on board but Nick, his miraculous survival draws unwanted attention. The press can't get enough of his story while the FBI is convinced he planted the bomb that took down his plane. All he wants is a place to heal and time to let the world forget him. Unable to return home, Nick accepts an offer to join a missionary medical team and flees to Haiti.

But Nick's new life in Haiti is haunted by visions. He's forced to examine his sanity and faith in a world of turmoil and chaos among a people he's never met before. Aided by Andre, his Haitian translator and protector, Nick confronts the dark forces battling for his soul, and the soul of the abused little girl he's only seen in his dreams.

Joe's first novel is a political thriller. This one sounds more like an urban fantasy. The Kindle edition is $4.99.

___________

Conservative author Jon Del Arroz has published the first novel of his military sci-fi series, The Saga of the Nano Templar, entitled Justified

After years of fighting for justice with his deadly nanotech, Templar Drin abandons his post, crash landing on a desert world controlled by a tyrannical alien empire. Its inhabitants are forced into slavery, broken where a once-proud race cultivated its lands.

For the first time in Drin's life, he has no backup, no support, none of his brothers.

He stands alone against evil.

Drin must face overwhelming odds to liberate millions of slaves from their captors and bring faith to a downtrodden world. But in his way stands the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy.

Can Drin use his Templar training to survive?

The blurb says fans of Star Wars and Warhammer 40K will especially appreciate this book. Christians, too, I expect, since it starts out "To save a world...he must rely on God."

So, Justified is out now, the sequel Sanctified will be released next week followed by Glorified in November.

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

posted by OregonMuse at 09:00 AM

| Access Comments