Sunday Morning Book Thread - 08-06-2023 ["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. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless 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, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

Just because it's cute. I get a kick out of animals posing as if they are reading a book. I caught a great pic of my own cat Penny doing something like that. She was featured as a Moron Pet some time ago.

SERIES WITH MULTIPLE AUTHORS

In this final installment about books in a series, let's talk about completed series that are written by multiple authors. I don't mean a series where each book it cowritten by a duo (or trio, in rare cases). Instead, each book is written by a different author and the series as a whole still makes narrative sense. Although it's possible that one or more authors may write multiple books in the series, such as the one discussed below.

(NOTE: The image of Clive Folliot on the cover dressed in a billowing cloak and wielding a sword is very reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion. This is not a coincidence.)

I first encountered this style of writing in a rather obscure fantasy/science-fiction series called Philip Jose Farmer's The Dungeon, which contains six novels written by four different authors: Richard A. Lupoff, Bruce Coville, Charles de Lint, and Robin Wayne Bailey. Lupoff and de Lint each wrote two books in the series. Lupoff wrote Book 1, The Dark Tower and Book 6, The Final Battle. Farmer served as the editor and overseer of the production of this series. He also wrote the forward in each volume.

Based on Farmer's forwards, it seems as though each author was given a lot of latitude in how he approached the story. Each author had to keep characters consistent from book to book, but they could introduce new characters and take the story in new and unexpected directions. Farmer himself didn't know what would happen in the later books as they were written. Richard Lupoff, as the author who both started and finished the series had to take all of the threads created by previous authors and try to tie them into a coherent and satisfying conclusion for the reader. This was a very tall task considering just how *weird* the story is. Seriously. It's one of the weirdest stories I've ever read, and I'm a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft.

The story follows the adventures of Clive Folliot, a reimagined pulp hero who is not too keen on the idea. His task is to find his brother Neville so that he can tell their father, Baron Tewkesbury if Neville is alive or dead. Clive's inheritance depends on the answer. He follows Neville's trail to the wilds of Tanzania, Africa, where he is sucked into a doorway that leads...somewhere else. The Dungeon is a multilayered alternate reality created by beings for reasons that are never fully explained. During Clive's journey through this bizarre landscape, he encounters many strange and unusual creatures from all over time and space, including his own multiple-times-granddaughter, a direct descendant of the lover he left behind in England in 1868. Other companions include a loyal and friendly dog-ape, the mysterious Indian Sidi Bombay who serves as a guide from time to time, a shape-shifting cyborg, an eight-foot-tall telepathic spider that throws poisonous spikes and who is in love with Clive, and Horace Hamilton Smythe who is Clive's former Quartermaster Sergeant from Clive's regiment. And that's just from the first book.

The only way to escape the confines of the Dungeon is to go forward, plunging deeper and deeper into a world that refuses to yield up its mysteries without a fight. All Clive wants to do is to return to England in 1868 so he can marry the woman he loves, write his memoirs of his adventures, and retire in peace. Fate, it seems, does not share his idealism.

Each author was encouraged NOT to try to emulate Farmer's style, but to bring their own unique voice to the tale, while attempting to capture the *spirit* of Farmer's worlds. On the whole, I think the authors did an admirable job of telling a weird tale, drawing upon not only the pulp fiction writers of the early twentieth century, but also upon authors such as Lewis Carroll, Frank L. Baum, and Dante Alighieri, as there are numerous allusions and references to Wonderland, Oz, and, of course, Dante's Inferno. In fact, the fourth layer of the Dungeon is directly taken from Inferno.

I have a few other series in my library that are written by multiple authors, but The Dungeon has left a firm impression on my mind, even though I haven't read it for decades. Now that I'm re-reading it, I can appreciate the allusions and references to other literary sources because of the knowledge and wisdom I've accumulated over the years. I can even use Google maps to trace Clive's journey through Africa, which would have been more difficult in the pre-internet days when this was written (late 1980s).

Anyway, this concludes the series of posts about series of books. We'll move onto another topic next week...I'm thinking nonfiction...

(HT: nurse ratched)

READING "INCONSEQUENTIAL" BOOKS

grammie winger made an interesting comment last week:

I feel inadequate reading the Book Thread. So many people reading so many consequential books. Books that teach things. Books that enlighten. Me? I read junk for pleasure. I don't learn anything. For example, this week I read 2 Lincoln Lawyer books by Michael Connelly. They were fun. The end.

Posted by: grammie winger - I don't belong here at July 30, 2023 10:47 AM (45fpk)

Because the Moron Horde is awesome, numerous folks sent encouragement to grammie winger, but I think Jim Sunk New Dawn's reply is the best:

On the lowbrow side of things (what else would you expect from the likes of me?), Louis L'Amour's series on the Sackett family constitutes an entire library of a Series within a Series by that author.

Taking L'Amour seriously though, I think he was a giant in the field of Life's Moral Lessons as told through plot, character, action and design. Added a LOT to how I came to form the who and what of I became of a man, given the absence of a father in the home, from the 4th grade, on.

Plus, I learned how to actively observe and SEE the world around me, in granular detail, situational awareness, and much outdoorsmanship, even before m first backpacking forays into the forests and trails.

Don't discount the "lightweight" or the pulp as universal tripe. Yeah, L'Amour did wax formulaic, as any bookish yoot would soon suss out. But still, he was wordsmith enough to hold one's attention. You could see the worlds as he described them, quite clearly, indeed.

Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX

Comment: From my own perspective, I find that you can learn amazing lessons from most books if you are willing to open yourself up to that possibility. Granted, there are books that are kind of worthless, but considering the sheer volume of books out there, that's only to be expected. I find that "pulp" authors have suprising depths to them, no doubt due to their own extensive reading habits. They wrote lots of stories published in cheap magazines, but they were also highly educated writers, having consumed a vast quantity of classical literature in their schooling, as well as diving into their local libraries for more reading material. Remember, back in those days libraries were NOT the bastions of "wokeness" that we have today. Consider the series I'm currently reading. Philip Jose Farmer writes an introduction to each book of the series where he talks about his own reading habits, which include works by authors such as Jonathan Swift, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Homer, John Milton, and much, much more. He then took all of these ideas from previous generations and mixed them up in his head to craft his unique blend of stories. Farmer seems to have been enamored of Sir Richard Burton, as he features as a prominent character in the Riverworld saga and is referred to numerous times in The Dungeon series.

Never think that your reading material is "inconsequential." If it's consequential to YOU, that matters. If you feel like reading Mary Sue fan fiction while listening to Yoko Ono albums and eating French toast slathered in syrup, go for it!

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Working my way through: The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. J. Nalebuff. Game theory is a fancy word for interactive decision making between multiple participants. The book has academic flavor in places but only where needed to illustrate different decisions and outcomes. My theory that good decision-making is a broadly applicable mental muscle skill.

Posted by: TRex at July 30, 2023 09:30 AM (IQ6Gq)

Comment: One of the faculty I've worked with in the past is an expert in game theory. It's one of his primary research areas in computer science. "The Prisoner's Dilemma" is probably one of the more famous game theory scenarios. There's a lot of psychology involved in human-to-human interactions so that you come out ahead in any scenario. For example, that classic scene in The Princess Bride where Vezzini and The Man in Black play a game for the freedom of Princess Buttercup shows game theory in action as Vezzini attempts to divine the location of the poison among two cups.

Good morning, bibliophiles! This week I'm reading Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media by Darrell Hartman. I'm only a third of the way in, but it's a fascinating history of the rise of the dailies and the personalities behind them, and how they bankrolled explorers (f'rinstance I didn't know Stanley was backed by the Herald -- no geographical society was willing to help find Livingstone).

It blows my mind, in this era of instantaneous communications, that explorers like Cook and Perry might not be heard from in two years while trekking.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at July 30, 2023 09:35 AM (Z/H3L)

Comment: We take modern communications for granted, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was A LOT harder to get messages from point A to point B. Especially if you were traveling in unexplored regions of the world. I can imagine a newspaper sponsoring trips to far off exotic lands so that they can sell those stories to the locals. In Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series, the protagonist's fictional expedition to darkest Africa was partly funded by an obscure London newspaper that would receive updates from the expedition. The weirdest part was that once Clive Folliot disappeared from Earth, captured by the mysterious rulers of the Dungeon, the newspaper continued to receive dispatches with sketches from Clive's journal. No explanation is given as to how that happens--only a mysterious note in Clive's handwriting accompanies the packet of sketches.

I just finished reading The Killing of Karen Silkwood by Richard Rashke. It was published in '81 following the court case that ended in '79 vindicating Karen Silkwood's involvement in her own contamination of plutonium while am employee of the powerful Kerr-McGee. Most people are familiar with the story of Karen Silkwood from the movie, and the book does have parallels that are pretty accurately portrayed in the movie with some exceptions. The book focused less on Karen's personal life and instead shined a light on the court matters surrounding her posthumous lawsuit (brought by her family). What I truly found most shocking was the coordinated coverup (insinuated, but there is strong evidence to support it, imo) between Kerr-McGee, the Oklahoma PD, the FBI and the CIA. Since the Federal Gov't had a huge stake in the nuclear industry, all avenues were utilized to thwart her exposing one of the top US plants processing plutonium for reckless and highly dangerous practices. Her death still remains unsolved, but I fully believe she was run off the road and killed. Damning docs in her car were never found, though others saw them in her possession prior to her accident.

Posted by: Lady in Black at July 30, 2023 09:36 AM (mupln)

Comment: I'd say at this point it's highly likely that the U.S. Government was involved in Silkwood's death in some way. We already know, thanks to the shenanigans of the Clintons and the Bidens, just how far organs of the government will go to protect themselves. The nuclear power industry seems tailor-made for the government going to extreme lengths to cover up shady events, even as politicians sell nuclear secrets to the highest bidder.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (907 Moron-recommended books so far!)

WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

• Gideon Crew Book 2 - Gideon's Corpse by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Gideon Crew Book 3 - The Lost Island by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Gideon Crew Book 4 - Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Nora Kelly Book 1 - Old Bones by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Nora Kelly Book 2 - The Scorpion's Tail by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Nora Kelly Book 3 - Diablo Mesa by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

• Reliquary by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child -- A wealthy socialite is murdered under mysterious circumstances, along with numerous homeless among NYC's underground mole people.
• Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child -- The first book in the Gideon Crew series finds Gideon enmeshed in a race to find a Chinese defector's secrets before the Chinese operative does. And there's a duel with backhoes. Seriously. It's as awesome as it sounds
• The Dungeon Book 1 - The Black Tower by Richard A. Lupoff -- Clive Folliot, second son of the Baron of Tewkesbury, is sent off to find his slightly older twin brother Neville, who disappeared in Africa while searching for the headwaters of the Nile River. Clive is sucked into a strange world ruled by even stranger beings and powers. He must now escape the enigmatic Dungeon even as he continues to follow his brother Neville's trail...
• Gideon's Corpse by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child -- Gideon Crew must stop Islamic terrorists from detonating a nuclear weapon in the next ten days...

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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