Sunday Morning Book Thread - 01-28-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

(HT: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion)

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

Vmom sent me the pic above with the following:

This bookshelf photo has been floating around - check out the corner. Creative solution to the two shelves corner problem or just too disturbing?

Anyone who has enough books will run into the problem of bookshelves and corners. I applaud the creativity on display here, though you do have to make sure that the books are just the right height, which may interfere with your preferred book organization.

Vmom also asked the following question (unrelated to the pic above):

I am usually late to the book thread, so I was wondering if perhaps you could ask the book nerds this for me? I am looking for recommendations for an ebook (kindle) study bible I can take with me while traveling. Preferably Catholic or Orthodox friendly, and even better if with Apocrypha.

Thanks,
vmom

"INDESTRUCIBLE" LIBRARY BOOKS?

Until I watched the video above, I never gave much thought about how library books are bound. It turns out there are very good reasons for why library books--especially bound journals--are bound the way they are. Libraries are dedicated to preserving the knowledge of the past (or so they like to tell themselves) and therefore seek out ways of ensuring that books will last over time. I did go wander around the stacks of the library in which I work (but do not work for) just looking at the different styles of bindings. You can clearly see how bindings have evolved over time for periodicals that have been around for many decades. It's kind of neat seeing how well preserved a journal bound in 1962 is compared to the same journal bound in 2020. They really do hold up very well. I did scan through the standards document referenced in the video. It's a pretty detailed description of the materials and their properties used in binding books to that specification.

WRITING CONTEST!

OrangeEnt sent me a link to Sarah Hoyt's website, where she's announced she's sponsoring a writing contest:

Galactic Enquirer Submission Call!

This is also a good time to remind you folks that OrangeEnt has sponsored a writing group: "A-Literary-Horde" Anyone can join by sending OrangeEnt an email (maildrop62 at proton dot me) with their real name, AoS nic (if they have one), how they want to be listed, and if they are a writer (please include preferred genre) or editor/reader. You may run into someone famous!

NOTE: The AoS Writers Group is also linked on the left-hand sidebar of the main page...

STORY SEED

Here's a little something that might inspire a short story appropriate for Sarah Hoyt's writing contest. What is happening in the video below? I can't figure it out...

BACKGROUND: A friend of mine from church recorded this video with his Ring doorbell camera on Christmas evening at around 8 p.m. *Something* triggered the camera and it caught the images in the video above. I took the raw video and imported it into Adobe Premier Pro so that I could look at it frame by frame, but I could not make out what that *thing* is that's moving around. It appears to be an independent light source that can separate into multiple sources and even change shape. In one still frame, you can see a vague outline of a shape that appears to be a woman holding a child, but I think that's just an optical illusion. As far as I know, my friend's property is not on an ancient Indian burial ground. Any ideas?

THE HARDEST WORD PUZZLE EVER CREATED?

Cain's Jawbone is a story that is supposedly the most challenging word puzzle ever created. Only four people have been confirmed to have found the correct solution. The title comes from the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Abel, possibly with the jawbone of an animal. Ironically, this may be the easiest murder mystery in history. There are only three possible suspects (Cain, Adam, or Eve) and two of them (Adam and Eve) may have had ironclad alibis. Also, the "detective" in the case is an omnipotent and omniscient being. You don't need Encyclopedia Brown or Miss Marple to solve this case...

The book Cain's Jawbone involves sorting the pages in the correct order and then determining whodunnit, as that alone doesn't guarantee success. You also have to unravel quite a few cryptic word puzzles, many of which will be very, very obscure to modern readers who would not be familiar with the language used at the time the book was written in 1934. The Moron Horde is awesome for crowd-sourcing knowledge, but this may be beyond even our powers...Good luck!

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I finished 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami. It's magical realism, which I don't read much anymore, but this was recommended to me by a relative. The book is actually 3 books, and clocks in at a whopping 1157 pages.

It's very difficult to explain the plot, but it's a group of people who experience a transition to an alternate timeline, and have to deal with a cult, various "little people", and two moons, all while everyone else continues in the world as we know it. It combines elements of mystery, fantasy, murder, and, well, everything. Like I said, it's really tough to pigeonhole this one.

I'm the kind of person who likes a clear denouement, but this book doesn't have one. The pleasure of this book is simply in the reading. The prose is very well done, even though it's a translation. There is graphic sex in it, but it's not overly lurid.

Recommended.

Posted by: Archimedes at January 21, 2024 09:16 AM (CsUN+)

Comment: I see this book show up frequently in recommended reading on Goodreads and other sources. I've always been a bit curious about it, but haven't bothered to check it out. I might do so, as it sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, the library in which I work doesn't have it. It's a bit surprising, as it sounds like a book our students would enjoy. One of our sister campuses does have it in their collection, but it's currently checked out...

This week's review: Long Tall Stranger by LR Smith (Western genre). This is an Amazon Kindle-only title, no print copy available. Rated 8+ which I didn't notice when I first purchased it, but I'm a father so I decided to read/review in the mindset of "Would other parents of young children be interested in this as a story for their own kids?"

Well turns out that's a yes, and in fact this might make a great young-man's adventure for a father and son to read together at bedtime. Has themes of good guys vs. bad guys, cowboys, cattle management, gambling, cheating, swindling, some post civil war politics, gun fights, and death (no gore though.) No sex scenes.

The main character is a 14 year old man whose dad went off to fight with the Confederate army, whose mom has since left him to fend for himself, and he's alone with a farm/ranch and a bunch of problems that force him to become a man right quick due to the weight of the world bearing down on him.

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at January 21, 2024 09:35 AM (qPw5n)

Comment: I like a good "coming of age" story and the Western genre is great for delivering those.

In Kate Hope Day's If, Then, four neighbors in Oregon who live at the base of a long-dormant volcano begin to experience baffling visions of themselves in parallel realities. When the earth trembles, it triggers brief glimpses of this other life. A wildlife scientist sees a vision of impending disaster and begins feverishly building a shelter in his backyard. His wife sees herself in the arms of someone else. A grieving daughter sees her recently deceased mother bustling around the kitchen. A new mother struggling to finish her thesis sees herself pregnant again.

I liked how the different versions of a character would catch sight of their doppelgänger when the tissue between realities was thinning, and wonder about how their lives in this alternate reality. The visions start out benign but get more and more disturbing.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at January 21, 2024 10:38 AM (+RQPJ)

Comment: Stories that involve alternate realities or the "multiverse" are very, very difficult to do well because when multiverses are involved, the stakes have to be incredibly personal or they have no meaning. As Critical Drinker has pointed out in a recent video on the subject, Marvel has completely destroyed itself by overly relying on multiversal storytelling that removes any and all stakes for the characters in the MCU. If one of them dies, they just bring in a duplicate from an alternate reality. When it's done well, you can end up with a very compelling or disturbing story about the nature of *possibilities* that never were, but could have been. Since it's unlikely any of us will ever interact with our alternate selves, all we can do is deal with the real world in the here and now.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Malazan Book of the Fallen 5 - Midnight Tides by Steven Erickson

This has definitely been a change of pace for the Malazan series, though it kind of follows the same formula with a massive battle or two between warring empires as they struggle for dominance. In the meantime, hidden powers behind the scenes are also struggling with each other to win a much larger prize--all of reality itself. Because this book involves a completely different set of characters than the first four novels, it's almost its own standalone book in the series with little to tie into the larger narrative. That makes it a bit of a weak point as we approach the middle of the entire series. It's not a bad read and parts of it are laugh out loud funny. Tehol Beddict like to portray himself as a ridiculous figure living in poverty in a corrupt city. Turns out he's probably the wealthiest man on the continent with more power than anyone guesses at. Most people underestimate him to their regret later.

Malazan Book of the Fallen 6 - The Bonehunters by Steven Erickson

The last book, Midnight Tides, was a 932-page interlude to the main storyline, though some of the events in that book will have more impact later on in the series. The cover blurbs on these books do offer a few "spoilers" though they are vague enough that you want to know how we reached that point in the story. Now we return to characters from the first four books in the series, as we experience the aftermath of the death of one of the major characters from Book 4. The Malazans have reconquered the Seven Cities, but there is still one more stronghold of resistance that needs to be dealt with. The gods are waking up and becoming much more involved in mortal affairs...

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Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Forget any disinformation that Ace's Shelving Company, LLC, was involved in the creation of those shelves up top.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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