Sunday Morning Book Thread 10-17-2021

Dog Eared Books, San Francisco, CA

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, from that live action version of that anime thing that didn't do so well at the box office.

Pic Note:

Here's what DEB says about itself on its 'About' page:

If you're looking for a pleasant place to peruse a lot of books, seek no further! Since 1992, Dog Eared Books has been supplying a book-hungry San Francisco with new, used, and remaindered books as well as cards, magazines, calendars, and blank notebooks. We're a general interest store, so we have a little of everything, but we do specialize in off-beat, small press, and local literature. Our staff of is happy to help you locate specific titles or you can roam around discovering wondrous obscurities you never knew you couldn't live without.

Yeah, looks pretty woke.

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

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A Progessive Book Exchange?

Last week, on the AoSHQ Sunday Morning Book Thread:

412 late to the thread. dammit.
got lectured by my buddy last night for two hours about my white supremacy that i apparently have. he is half black, half hispanic. he and i work together and are very good friends.

he is totally blue pilled.

he challenged me to read white fragility by robin diangelo. i looked on amazon and was floored to see 37K reviews and its five star.
well, not floored. anyone actually read it and can give me the cliffs notes?

Posted by: Jack Burton, who says brandon, let's go. at October 10, 2021 11:15 AM (NlREX)

I would never do this. It seems awfully one-sided, like you're accepting his assumption that you need to be educated or enlightened. I would insist on a book exchange: I'll read the book he gives me if and only if he reads a book I give him. If we're going to have a conversation about race or whatever, I'm just not going to sit there and let him set the terms of the discussion. I'm not going to assent to his hidden assumption that his way of seeing things, his narrative, is true by default.

No, we're going to have a real conversation. He might not like that, which is why I think the most likely outcome is that he'll bail. But let's assume that you're holding a winning lottery ticket and he agrees to the book exchange. What book would you give him? I guess it depends on what prompted the discussion, but in a subsequent comment, naturalfake suggested The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 by Hugh Thomas. He says:

He'll bail almost instantly on that idea.
And if he doesn't then he'll bail as soon as he finds his historically ignorant progtard assumptions challenged. And believe me, they will be.

Progtard Fragility as it were.

Posted by: naturalfake at October 10, 2021 11:25 AM (5NkmN)

Let's see why:

Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history.

Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts.

Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated.

In other words, it's a sober, objective attempt to write an historical account of slavery as it actually existed over and above anything we might happen to feel or believe about it. You can plainly see how this would be very antithetic to the prog mindset. It's very much like sprinkling holy water on a vampire.

But the question is still open: what book would *you* give a prog friend that you think has the best chance of red-pilling him? That is, if he would actually read it.

Who Dis:

Moron Recommendations

A lurking moron e-mailed to recommend two science fiction series by David and Leigh Eddings:

The series are fantasy fiction containing all the necessary ingredients; young hero (Garion), a powerful family ('Aunt' Polgara, her father Belgarath (both thousands of years old, but still very much alive)), brave and capable companions, and enough Gods (good and evil), villians, sacred objects (good and evil), wizardry and sorcery to satisfy the jaded.

Things I like are the story line, which I think puts Tolkien to a distant second, and especially the personal interplay among the characters.

The first is The Belgariad series, 5 parts, and the first book, first published in 1982, is Pawn of Prophecy:

A fierce dispute among the Gods and the theft of a powerful Orb leaves the World divided into five kingdoms. Young Garion, with his "Aunt Pol" and an elderly man calling himself Wolf --a father and daughter granted near-immortality by one of the Gods -- set out on a complex mission. In the process, as Garion grows into his early teens, he learns to defend himself, grapples with a wild boar, uncovers spies at a king's palace, learns about sorceryand starts to gain a sense of what his own destiny may be.

The Kindle edition is only $2.99.

The second series is The Mallorean, which continues the characters in further adventures.

Apparently, there are no Kindle editions, but you can purchasse paperback collection sets.

Or you could try your local library.

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Bill Pronzini, who's written a gajillion mysteries, thrillers, and westerns. His most famous creation is "The Nameless Detective".

However, it was one of his standalone thriller novels, which made me an instant fan-

"Nothing but the Night"

Available on Kindle for : $.1.99.

Posted by: naturalfake at October

Here is the Amazon blurb:

Successful Northern California vintner Cameron Gallagher suffers from alcoholism, depression, and persistent nightmares. Truck driver Nick Hendryx lost everything when a hit-and-run accident put his wife in a coma. They are two men with seemingly little in common, but their disparate paths are about to intertwine in startling and dangerous ways. As Nick’s determined search for the man who wrecked his wife and his lives pulls him deeper into Cameron’s orbit, the wealthy wine executive struggles to hold on to a rapidly disintegrating personal life. And when there’s nothing but the night separating them, their entangled worlds and secrets will explode in ways neither man could ever have anticipated.

And, like the man said, the Kindle edition is $1.99.

The Kindle edition of many of Pronzini's gazillion mystery novels are priced to sell at $2 to $10. There are something like 40 'Nameless Detective' novels.

___________

Speaking of which, the beginning of John Bellair's The House with a Clock in Its Walls is great.

Posted by: NaughtyPine at October 10, 2021 08:18 AM (/+bwe)

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a YA urban fantasy novel, and a "Teacher's Pick" so designated by Amazon:

When Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan. comes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. But he is wrong. Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, are both magicians! Lewis is thrilled. At first, watchng magic is enough. Then Lewis experiments with magic himself and unknowingly resurrects the former owner of the house: a woman named Selenna Izard. It seems that Selenna and her husband built a timepiece into the walls--a clock that could obliterate humankind. And only the Barnavelts can stop it!

The movie adaptation (starring Jack Black) was released back in 2018.

The Kindle edition is $7.99.

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25 I read the latest work of one of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield. The work, A Man At Arms, is about a retired Roman legionnaire hired by the Romans in Jerusalem to stop a man and a girl carrying a letter from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Cornith, Greece. Many others are trying to stop the letter, and it's a cat and mouse game across the Sanai desert and into Egypt. During the journey the legionnaire, Telemon of Arcadia, has a conversion in his world view. Action packed and great character development.

Posted by: Zoltan at October 03, 2021 08:11 AM (av5VM)

A Man at Arms came out earlier this year, and the price of the Kindle edition is quite high, almost as much as the paperback.

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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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