Sunday Morning Book Thread 01-30-2022 [All Hail Eris]

Picture of "Atlas P/11 - Northeast Atlantic Ireland to Cape Verdem c. 1660" located in the Caird Maritime Library

Visit the Caird Library and Archive in Greenwich, England:

As long as you're there, visit the National Maritime Museum, too.

Good morning to you all from the stately Dungeon of Discord. Welcome once again to the classy and luxurious Sunday Morning Book Thread, that plushly appointed mosh pit of opinion, snark, choler, jest and japery, and our continuing conversation on books, reading, writing, and the culture at large. While I wait for my cybernetic implants to fully integrate with my robotic exoskeleton, making me a nigh-invincible blogging machine/Moron hybrid, I will toss together this placesetter Book Thread with my usual louche languor. And please feel free to lounge poolside in your Ace o' Spades terry caftan. I don't impose harsh moral strictures or expect my readers to obey outmoded notions of decency. If you want to peruse Plato in a barely-there chiton, who am I to judge? Your natural right to cavort pantsless Shall. Not. Be. Infringed! Nor will I judge you for bowing to convention and wearing pants. Even if it's these pants, that are extra roomy -- the Master will be pleased! So join us in Ace's Grotto for some light refreshment and convivial conversation, and tell us what you've been reading!

Who dis:

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

ABSQUATULATE - To depart suddenly; to abscond.

SLANTINDICULAR - Oblique.

KATZENJAMMER ("The Cat's Misery) - A hangover.

SLUMGULLION - Meat stew; also "the mixed blood, oil, and salt water that collect on the decks of a ship while the valuable parts of a whale are being handled". Yecch.

Yesterday I went down to my local Barnes & Noble, after a couple of weeks of being bombarded with emails promoting their BIG SALE! I walked around the store, looked at the sections for the stuff I like best . . . got a coffee and left. No books.

There's just nothing being published that I want to read. Paranoid Leftist fantasies, victimhood masturbation novels, and crap churned out by people who are published because of their skin tone and perversions.

B&N seems to sense it, too. Half the store is devoted to other stuff: toys, games, videos, greeting cards, Starbux. I'm guessing that floor space is a rough measure of what brings in the sales.
Posted by: Trimegistus at January 23, 2022 09:28 AM (QZxDR)

I've been patronizing indie and used bookstores during the Recent Unpleasantness, or buying online, because that's where I find my pulp classics. It's been donkey's ears since I've been in a big box book barn like Barnes and Noble, so I visited ours as if on safari. I was pleasantly surprised! First, there is that "B&N" bookstore smell that is subtle but intoxicating. Second, in an era where the magazine is supposedly dead, they have an amazing assortment of fringe/weirdly specific magazines, like PROG, MAGGOT BRAIN (rock), Nordic Living (Iceback style), Catster (for the hipster cat), HI*FRUCTOSE (weirdo art), and all kinds of literary monthlies (I bought Fantasy & Science Fiction and Analog). And Third, my two favorite haunts, the SF/Fantasy and History sections, are stuffed to the gills. I was delighted to note that the Science Fiction stacks had new printings of the old masters (I snapped up C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy). I missed the serendipity of perusing the shelves with no objective.

But Trimegistus is right about the lefty agenda, at least the spotlighted YA fiction. It's kale all the way down, man.

Those are known as "said-isms," and the clue is that the verb is impossible to perform while actually speaking. "Ellery laughed, 'You old fraud!'" Ever try speaking while actually laughing? Or chuckling? You can have a tag, "Ellery laughed. 'You old fraud!'" But its a tag, not an actual alternative to "said." Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at January 23, 2022 09:58 AM (c6xtn)

"The Book Thread is up!", Eris squeeed.

Contact Eris at your risk! ErisEnthroned at sign protonmail dot cee oh emm

Well that's it for this week. What cool stuff are you reading?

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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