Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-12-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (finally, a book for True Morons! And it's available for free online!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material, even if it's nothing more than the directions on my cat's medication bottle. As always, pants are required, especially if you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, enjoy some beef teriyaki ("It's not just for breakfast anymore." -- Duncanthrax), and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

Finding a good pic for the Sunday Morning Book Thread is always a challenge. Fortunately, a simple search for "unique library" can turn up interesting results. Today's pic is from the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Greene State University. It's been around for over 50 years at this point. From what I can tell, it's an extensive collection of pop culture memorabilia. While it's open to the public, you are not permitted to wander through the stacks. Instead you have to request materials from the library staff. So it's not quite as cool as it could be if you could just browse on your own. On the upside, there are lots of materials that you won't find in other libraries, such as junk mail, Sears catalogs, and the largest collection of materials related to romance novels. For pop culture scholars, it's probably a gold mine of cool information and relics.

PUBLIC DOMAIN CHARACTERS

OrangeEnt recently asked a question about public domain characters, where he wanted to know how they are treated when someone wants to write a story using them. It's a good question to explore.

As far as I can tell, there are NO restrictions on how you use public domain characters in your stories. You want to write steamy romance stories about Captain Ahab (before he became obsessed with a certain whale)? Knock yourself out! You want to throw Robin Hood into a Lovecraftian horror story? Sounds exciting! Want to gender swap all the characters in Peter Pan? Well, might want to hold off on that one...

I think aspiring writers can learn a lot by trying to incorporate a public domain character into a story. First of all, you don't have to come up with your own character, which is always a plus. Saves you a lot of work in development if you are using a character that is already known to your audience. The downside is that you really should be VERY familiar with that character. I don't know all that much about Quasimodo, other than that he's the Hunchback of Notre Dame, so I'd have to read the story numerous times to get a solid feel for how he looks, acts, and behaves if I wanted to include him in a story. You should also be familiar with the genre in which the character appears. Again, I'd be terrible at writing about characters in a Jane Austen novel because I'm only vaguely familiar with her works, though I did enjoy Mansfield Park when I read it in college many moons ago. It's not a genre that I normally read. If you want to do a mashup of characters from different genres, you should be intimately familiar with both the characters and the genres so that you can construct a compelling story.

Established authors often have a lot of fun with public domain characters, using them in unusual and interesting ways, though I've also seen at least one instance where it didn't work for me. For instance, Lois H. Gresh attempted to mashup Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft in Sherlock Holmes v. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions. She failed to capture the spirit of either author and I was quickly thrown out of the experience because she didn't fully understand the material. On the other hand, Neil Gaiman's short story, "A Study in Emerald" is a delightful subversion of both Doyle and Lovecraft with a cool twist at the end. He knows his subject matter and he understands the characters. This is the same reason I thoroughly enjoyed Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. He takes a familiar story (the murders of Jack the Ripper), throws in a layer of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and turns everything inside out so that "Jack" becomes a sympathetic protagonist/antagonist.

So, what public domain characters do you like to see in stories? What makes them compelling? What kind of weird mashups can you envision? What's the most bizarre or unusual instance of a public domain character you've ever seen?

(As a sidenote, there's a related trope called Public Domain Artifacts, where famous objects from history/mythology show up in stories. For example, Excalibur, the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear of Destiny, the Shroud of Turin, the Holy Grail, etc. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series uses most of them in some fashion or another.)

(Because I'm a sucker for cute cat pictures...)

ATTENTION MORON AUTHORS!

Anna Puma posted a comment in an earlier thread that Baen Books is holding its annual Fantasy Adventure Award contest. This is an opportunity for aspiring Moron Authors of fantasy literature to gain some notoriety and money by writing a unique story in the fantasy genre.

Details can be found at their website: baen.com/contest-faa

PRO-TIP: Pay *very* close attention to their manuscript submission guidelines to ensure your submission will be looked at. Considering how many submissions they no doubt get, failure to follow submission guidelines is an easy way to cull submissions. (NOTE: The rules of the contest are a bit different than their standard submission guidelines, but they do give you information about font, spacing, allowable characters, and most important, the preferred file format!)

Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2023!

IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER

Although the fantasy series I've been reading these past couple of weeks is only moderately good, I will give Wells credit for using a lot of archaic and unusual words in his prose. It does enrich the text considerably, and most of the words can be understood in context even if I don't know the full definition when I'm reading.

megrim - n - 1. depression or low spirits 2. a whim or fancy.

Comment: I first encountered this word in Magic: The Gathering, as it's the name of a fun little card (2B, Enchantment, Whenever an opponent discards a card, Megrim deals 2 damage to that player.). I had no idea it had an actual meaning until this past week.

pneuma - n - the vital spirit, soul, or creative force of a person.

Comment: This is another word I've encountered in the past in a different context. If I remember correctly (it's been many years), Clive Barker used this term in his story Imajica to describe a way of casting magic by using pneuma via a fancy breathing technique. Angus Wells uses the term more closely related to the definition given above to describe the spiritual force of the characters when they are accessing the aethyreal (or spiritual) plane.

BONUS WORD:

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I read Rise of the Fourth Reich: Confronting COVID Fascism With A New Nuremberg Trial So This Never Happens Again by Steve Deace and Daniel Horowitz. Deace was one of the earliest to warn against the COVID jabs, and his book, Faucian Bargain, explained why he was against them and made his case against Dr. Fauci. Now after the craziness of mandatory jabs and mask wearing, an economic shutdown, school closures, and increased governmental control over our lives, Deace and Horowitz are calling for a new Nuremberg trial patterned after the Nuremberg medical trials which held Nazi doctors and nurses responsible for their actions.

Without people being held responsible for their lies and deceptions, which led to great hard and deaths for too many of our citizens, they will do this to us again and again. They are already talking about and planning for another once-in-a-century pandemic to hit us in the next few years.

Posted by: Zoltan at March 05, 2023 09:18 AM (Eo7K+)

Comment: Zoltan is correct in that The Powers That Be will continue to abuse their power over us until they are stopped somehow. In a just world, we all know what should happen. But we don't live in that world. It'll be interesting to see how many folks go "HELL, NO!" the next time a pandemic rears its ugly head and they try to control us again.

Just finished the first book of Burton's First Footsteps in East Africa, about his journey to Harar in Somalia in the 1850s. This was a big deal because Somalia (plus ca change) was hostile to foreigners in general and "Nazrani" (Christians) in particular. Burton went in disguise (sort of) and at least went through the motions of acting Muslim. According to some bios I've seen he was a sincere convert, but I think he had no patience for any formal religion.

Great stuff. Lots of utterly problematic commentary on the Somalis, Arabs, Abyssinians -- with plenty of bile left over for the British. Also practical details of travel in hostile Muslim lands untouched by modern civilization.

Great last line, too: on his first night in the Forbidden City of Harar he settles down to sleep:

"I was under the roof of a bigoted prince whose least word was death; amongst a people who detest foreigners; the only European that had ever passed over their inhospitable threshold, and the fated instrument of their future downfall."

Posted by: Trimegistus at March 05, 2023 10:11 AM (QZxDR)

Comment: When traveling in hostile territory, there's a lot to be said for "going native." Doing everything you can to blend in and not cause offense to your hosts will go a long way to earn their trust, when they are rightfully suspicious of outsiders who may try to impose their own values on the local culture. This is especially true if you are traveling alone. We've all heard stories of idiot backpackers traveling in Iran or Afghanistan who are never heard from again. Most likely because they didn't understand the culture and didn't try to blend in.

I've been having a grand time with the second volume of the collected adventures of Seabury Quinn's paranormal investigator Dr. Jules de Grandin. The stories ran in Weird Tales magazine in the '20s and 30s, and of course contain all the usual stereotypes that render old pulp fiction unprintable these days, but generally leavened by a core of basic decency. Of course there's always a beautiful damsel in distress and an appalling Force of Eee-vil from which to rescue her...but the greatest pleasure is the character of de Grandin himself, with his endless variety of unique oaths (beginning with "Name of a little green man!" and getting weirder from there, alternating English and French), his legitimately earned Trumpian ego, his unabashed love of fine living, and his complete unacceptance of fear. (You can get 3 notable ones for only 99 cents in the Wildside Press Occult Detective Megapack, and the 5 big volumes with the complete reprints are available on the Hoopla library app.)

Posted by: werewife, princess of Delray Beach at March 05, 2023 10:38 AM (SPNTN)

Comment: Much of the old pulp fiction tales are available online these days (e.g., The Pulp Magazine Archive). Lots of great stories to be had, though as werewife points out, they do tend portray unfortunate stereotypes. Not sure if the "sensitivity readers" will ever start editing those tales. One volume of pulp fiction probably contains enough "problematic content" to give a sensitivity reader a fatal stroke. Hmmmm...now that gives me an idea...

I just restarted The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God by Louis Profeta. When I bought this book I was expecting crazy ER stories. After reading a few pages, I realized it was more about finding God in our day to day lives and I set it aside. I noticed it on my bookshelf last night and decided it might be the right time to actually settle down and read this one. Maybe it's normal, but I'm always surprised how much my reading preferences vary depending on mood, energy, circumstances, and who knows what else.

Posted by: KatieFloyd at March 05, 2023 11:02 AM (ob77J)

Comment: KatieFloyd makes an excellent point of being "in the mood" to read certain stories. I know that I have to be in a certain mood to start reading nonfiction most of the time. Even fiction requires me to be in the mood. For instance, starting a lengthy series requires me to be in the right frame of mind. Right now I'm mostly in the mood for "fluff" that doesn't take too much of my brain to process, mainly because I have projects at work that demand most of my brainpower.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (672 Moron-recommended books so far!)

WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED IN THE PAST WEEK

I stopped by a local bookstore/comic book shop/game store this past week. I pop in periodically because I know the owner somewhat and it's just neat to look at game books. It used to be a full-fledged bookstore but when the previous owner sold it, the current owner turned it mostly into a gaming/comic book store. Anyway, he does have some "clearance bins" of old books, so I picked up a few:

• Guardians of the Flame 1 - The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg -- One of my college roommates recommended this series and I never took him up on the offer to read these...
• Guardians of the Flame 2 - The Sword and the Chain by Joel Rosenberg
• Guardians of the Flame 4 - The Heir Apparent by Joel Rosenberg
• Guardians of the Flame 6 - The Road to Ehvenor by Joel Rosenberg
• Guardians of the Flame 7 - The Road Home by Joel Rosenberg
• Gloriana by Michael Moorcock -- I'm generally a sucker for Moorcock, though there are a few books I have not enjoyed...
• The Morgaine Saga by C.J. Cherryh -- Has a very interesting premise...
• Homecoming 1 - Archmage by R.A. Salvatore -- I have this series on Kindle so figured I'd just go ahead and buy the physical copies.
• Homecoming 2 - Maestro by R.A. Salvatore
• Homecoming 3 - Hero by R.A. Salvatore

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

• Godwars Book 3 - Wild Magic by Angus Wells -- The thrilling conclusion to the Godwars saga. It's actually pretty decent fantasy and a good way to pass the time. Also a good way to improve one's vocabulary as Wells likes to sprinkle in obscure words in his prose.
• Forgotten Realms - Harpers 4 - The Night Parade by Scott Ciencin -- Myrmeen Lahl, ruler of the city of Arabel, discovers that the daughter she thought she had lost 14 years ago was sold to the mysterious and evil Night Parade and is still alive. She goes an on epic quest to retrieve her daughter from their evil clutches and end the Night Parade once and for all.
• Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra by Alan Vanneman -- This is based on an "untold story" first referenced in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire." Numerous authors have attempted to fill in this gap in Sherlockiana.

That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding the Sunday Morning Book Thread. This is a very special place. You are very special people (in all the best ways!). The kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the Moron Horde knows no bounds. Let's keep reading!

If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or discussion topics that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of OUR library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. Since I added sections for AoSHQ, I now consider it OUR library, rather than my own personal fiefdom...

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