Sunday Morning Book Thread 09-06-2020

Reading Room, British Museum

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules). 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 are only suitable for men raised on soy milk.

Pic Note:

Lots of history here:

The room [has] a diameter of 42.6m (140ft) and was inspired by the domed Pantheon in Rome. However, it isn't a free-standing dome in the technical sense...Many bookstacks were built surrounding the new Reading Room. They were made of iron to take the weight of the books and protect them against fire. In all, they contained three miles (4.8km) of bookcases and 25 miles (40km) of shelves.

The Reading Room opened on 2 May 1857. Between 8–16 May, the Library was opened up for a special one-off public viewing. More than 62,000 visitors came to marvel at the new building. Those wanting to use it had to apply in writing and were issued a reader's ticket by the Principal Librarian. Among those granted tickets were: Karl Marx, Lenin (who signed in under the name Jacob Richter) and novelists such as Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

Old Reading Room, British Museum

The Amazing Labor Day $0.99 Book Sale:

More details, including the titles of the books in this sale, can be found here.

Who Dis:

Moron Recommendations

In last week's discussion about children's books, I received some recommendations for the classic Tales From Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, first published in 1807, and reprinted jillions of times since then. The link ua to the Penguin Classic Kindle version, but there are a number of $0.99 and $1.99 ebook versions available as well as several free versions on gutenberg.org.

As children, Charles and Mary Lamb took great delight in exploring their benefactor’s extensive library; as adults they began writing children’s books together that also appealed to all generations. In Tales of Shakespeare they wished to bring their favourite plays to life for children too young to read and appreciate Shakespeare’s work. This collection of twenty of Shakespeare’s stories begins with The Tempest, which explores themes of magic, power and reconciliation, and ends with Pericles, Prince of Tyre, an exotic play of love, loss and family ties. Between these two tales are twelve romances and comedies, all written by Mary, and six tragedies, all written by Charles. Each tale is told chronologically and retains much of Shakespeare’s lyricism, phrasing and rhythm. Together, they form a captivating and accessible introduction to the Bard’s work.

'Ette Marica sent me some sample excerpts:

From the preface:

I'm very curious about this. Shakespeare is full of blood, mayhem, murder, and ribaldry. I wonder how they got around the R-rated parts?

So what you get are the plays rewritten as stories. Like this:

So this is almost a commentary on Shakespeare. Or, if you will, the Cliff's Notes version. I think I might pick up a cheap copy and check it out for myself.

Mary Lamb was not a well person. According to her wiki page, in 1796 she had a mental breakdown, killed her mom, and spent most of the rest of her life in mental institutions. You can read about it in the book Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London:

After killing her mother with a carving knife, Mary Lamb spent the rest of her life in and out of madhouses; yet the crime and its aftermath opened up a new life. Freed to read extensively, she discovered her talent for writing and, with her brother, the essayist Charles Lamb, collaborated on the famous Tales from Shakespeare. This narrative of a nearly forgotten woman is a tapestry of insights into creativity and madness, the changing lives of women, and the redemptive power of the written word.

Wow. I guess Anne Perry wasn't the first author to use homicide as a career starter.

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I have been reading True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951, this is a very perceptive examination of the roots of "mass movements" and the motivations of those people that join them. Hoffer makes the interesting observation that both the lowest and highest socio-economic strata are most susceptible to mass movements. Also, those among the "artistic" class that are "frustrated" are prime revolutionary material. He predicts revolutionary movements will make members reject the past/present and their own families. This is such an important book that it should be more widely known. Rating = 5.0/5.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at August 23, 2020 09:31 AM (pJWtt)

I really need to read this book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. It's been sitting on my Kindle for 4 years now, just haven't gotten around to it.

But the intro part of the Amazon blurb is really stupid:

A part of Harper Perennial’s special “Resistance Library” highlighting classic works that illuminate the “Age of Trump”: A boldly packaged reissue of the classic examination of dangerous nationalist political movements.

Actually, it does nothing of the sort. It's not a "classic examination of dangerous nationalist political movements." The preface makes it clear that he's talking about what's common about *all* mass movements, whether Nazi, Christian, Islamic, whatever. Whoever wrote that paragraph really ought to be fired.

It's like Sun Tzu's Art of War. You can apply it to all sorts of situations. If the idiot editors at Penguin are thinking 'hurr hurr durr hurr Trump', I think it can easily be applied to the rage-stroking, foaming-at-the-mouth NeverTrumpers. Sauce for the goose and all that.

PULP!

Welcome to the Gardner Francis Fox Library:

We are here to bring back the writing of a man that dedicated himself to crafting an adventurous stories. All of his stories are quick reads to help you escape the monotony of your day, He wrote for all sorts of genres. He wrote historical fiction, science fiction, sword and sorcery, love stories, Gothic romance, super-spy thrillers and vintage sleaze. You can read the original vintage paperbacks, download eBooks versions, or purchase second edition printings.

What isn't stated here is that Fox was a major contributor to DC Comics:

During the course of his career, Fox can be definitely credited with about 1500 stories for DC Comics, making him the second most prolific DC creator...by a considerable margin over his nearest rival. In July 1971, Fox estimated he had written "[f]ifty million words" over the course of his career to date.

Fox was nothing if not prolific. He wrote over 100 novels in the science fiction, espionage, crime, fantasy, romance, western, and historical fiction genres.

The man was a writing machine.

And you can read all of his novels online at that site. Paperbacks are also for sale as are eBook (mobi) versions for $1.99.

Also included are scans of the cover art, some of which are NSFW.

Books By Morons

Author Laura Fleming has written a devotional/commentary on the Book of Job, The Passion of Job: Meditations for when you hate your life:

The great challenge for each human being is to find meaning in suffering. We wonder, why would God allow suffering at all? Vague Christian affirmations fall flat during times of trial. This is why we need the book of Job. Raw and unsettling, Job busts through our platitudes. Along with the man who hated his life, we learn to walk the path of affliction -- until, mysteriously, we meet the heart of God.

The Kindle edition is on sale for 99 cents. That price is good through Monday, 9/7.

Laura also has written a devotional on Psalm 119, I Will Meditate on Your Precepts: 22 Studies in Psalm 119. This is a long psalm with a very interesting "acrostic" structure:

...each verse of each stanza begin[s] with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is designed to get into our heads, to force a repeated meditation on God's word. In the process, we are invited to unfold the mysteries of the Christian life.

Imagine a long poem in English wherein the first word of every line of the first stanza starts with the letter 'A', the first word of every line in the second stanza starts with 'B', etc. It would be quite challenging to translate Psalm 119 into English while maintaining that structure. I wonder if anyone has ever done it?

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Lurking moron author Holly LeRoy has just published a dystopian YA novel, Hostile Earth:

Terra Vonn is fighting to survive in a destroyed world, surrounded by unspeakable horror . . . and things are about to get much worse. After witnessing the vicious murder of her mother, Terra has a singular focus—exacting revenge on the killers. But before she can complete her plans, savagery intervenes and she is cast alone into a brutal post-apocalyptic world. As she trails the men south through a land filled with cannibalistic criminals, slave traders, and lunatics, the hunter becomes the hunted. Terra quickly learns that she is neither as tough nor as brave as she thinks she is. Worse, she may be the only one who stands between what little remains of civilization and destruction.

This book, too, is on sale for 99 cents. Meaning the Kindle version.

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If you like, you can follow me on Twitter, where I make the occasional snarky comment.

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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

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