Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-24-2024 ["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...(Does it really make less disturbing if the heads are Lego instead of human? Think about it...)

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

Today's pic comes from a Lego display at the Welsh Hills School. This is the Ewok village from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Not much to say about it other than it's a pretty neat Lego set, along with the other Lego sets that were on display.

DISTURBING BOOKS

"Disturbing" books usually involve elements of horror in some way, even if it's purely psychological horror. I'm no stranger reading disturbing books, though I haven't read any of these. I generally try to avoid those books that are going to make me extremely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, because I've read quite a bit of horrific stuff in my day, I suppose I'm somewhat desensitized to horror. There were parts of Malazan Books of the Fallen by Steven Erickson that would have absolutely horrified me 20 or 30 years ago, but now I just read them and move on, though I do still find those parts quite disturbing, if only because of the implications involved. Many authors known for their science fiction stories are also quite good at writing disturbing short fiction. Ray Bradbury, for instance, wrote a number of short stories that still haunt me because of how disturbing they are. "The Veldt," for example, is about a couple of children who have access to a holodeck that is entirely too real. They decide that they don't like their parents and lure them into a trap to be devoured by virtual lions. Harlan Ellison, of course, is well known for not only writing disturbing stories such as "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," but also for commissioning disturbing stories for his Dangerous Visions anthologies.

Here are a few books from my own collection that I find disturbing (in no particular order):

• Blood Music by Greg Bear -- A sentient nanovirus takes over the Earth, transforming it into "grey goo."
• American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett -- A woman inherits a house in a small, New Mexico town, only to discover the inhabitants are NOT what they seem...This book prompted to buy everything else Bennett has written because it was just that disturbing.
• Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp -- A man becomes trapped in a small American town that seems to have abandoned the normal rules of reality...
• That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis -- A remarkably prescient book on our present day situation. I read this during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and it was just a freaky reading experience.
• The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer -- The normal rules of reality are altered and twisted in an ever-expanding section of Earth and we are helpless to prevent it.
• Nightworld by F. Paul Wilson -- This is the end of his Repairman Jack / Adversary Cycle series (they run parallel to each other). Earth is slowly taken over by the "Otherness" that seeks to replace our reality with own better suited to its nature.

You may notice a common theme among some of the stories listed above. I enjoy those stories where our reality is threatened by an alien entity or force that seeks to replace the laws of physics as we know them with a completely different set. I don't know why I like those stories, but I do.

HOW TO END A STORY

Reading, as we all know, is an emotionally charged experience. We like to be taken on an emotional roller-coaster throughout a story, experiencing vicariously the same emotions as those felt by the characters in a story. When we get to the end, we like to feel a sense of emotional fulfillment. A good author will give us a decent payoff at the end. The best endings will make you want even more stories from that same author.

In the video above, Jerry B. Jenkins, who has written over 200 books and surely knows a thing or two about endings, says that there are around six basic endings to stories, though there may be a few more out there:

1. The Closed or Resolved Ending -- Best used for standalone stories where ALL loose ends (or at least the majority of them) are tied up nice and neatly. The reader doesn't have to wonder what happens to any of the side plots because they are resolved at the end.
2. The Open or Unresolved Ending -- Typically found in stories where the author wants to give themselves a little wriggle room for extra stories set in the same universe or they are deliberately giving the reader a story hook for the next exciting adventure in the series. In Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series, for example, he had ONE SINGLE LINE at the end of The Magic Labyrinth that he used to expand into another novel (Gods of Riverworld) several years later.
3. The Ambiguous Ending -- The ending is deliberately vague so that readers have to form their own conclusions about how the story ends. Was there a resolution to the main plot? Was it all just a fever dream of the main character?
4. The Surprise or Twist Ending -- The author gives the reader an unexpected twist at the end that in some ways changes how the story should be read. A great example of this is Robert Bloch's short story, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper." It's really hard to discuss these stories sometimes because you don't want to give away the ending....
5. The Closed Circle -- This is an interesting variation where the beginning and the end are so intimately tied together that they may become one and the same. Sometimes an author will begin a story at the very end and then describe how the characters arrived at that point throughout the rest of the book.
6. The Expanded Ending (or Epilogue) -- Jerry's not a fan of this type of ending, but I think it can be used effectively. Long series, for instance, may use an epilogue to give characters a "happily ever after" chapter. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has one so that we get to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all grown up with children of their own. J.R.R. Tolkien has TWO epilogues in Lord of the Rings. The first is the final chapter of The Return of the King, where Frodo and Bilbo travel to the Gray Havens and from there sail across the sea to Valinor. Only there can they be healed from their long exposure to the One Ring. The second is in the appendices, where Tolkien gives us a chronology of events that occurred after the main story, culminating with Gimli and Legolas traveling to the mouth of the river Anduin and from there passing over the seas, "and an end was come in the Middle-Earth of the Fellowship of the Ring."

Which is your favorite type of ending to read? Or write about?

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

There weren't too many Moron recommendations from last week. The discussion went in a variety of other interesting directions...

On the Kindle, I read Balancing On Blue: A Thru-Hiking Adventure on the Appalachian Trail by Keith Foskett. This is an Englishman's tale of hiking from Georgia to Maine along the AT in 2012 and about the characters he meets along the way. Reading this brought back memories of many backpacking hikes when my son and I were very active in a very active Boy Scout troop in California. The highlight of each year was a 5-7 day hike in the High Sierras. Saw some beautiful country and made many fond, lasting memories.

Posted by: Zoltan at March 17, 2024 09:16 AM (cfQ/i)

Comment: The Appalachian Trail is a very, very long trail, extending all the way from northern Georgia to northern Maine. Here's an interactive map that gives you a sense of just how long this trail is. About six years ago, one of my old college buddies was hiking along it (alone) and somehow fell off the trail, taking a disastrous tumble. He very nearly died from exposure as it took a couple of days before he was found and he was unconscious the entire time. Suffered a host of injuries including head trauma with some mild brain damage. Moral of the story: Never, ever, go hiking alone like that.

Twenty five years ago, two English boys met aboard the Titanic, and both ended up surviving, and living in America. Now they meet again in England, both claiming to be Sir John Farleigh, and claiming to be heir to an English estate. The mystery only deepens when one of them dies while they wait for the proof of who is the real John Farleigh. John Dickson Carr presents us with this scenario in The Crooked Hinge. The dead man has three slashes across his throat, but witnesses say nobody was near him when he died in the garden - could it possibly be suicide? There are many false clues and theories for Gideon Fell to analyze, and the twists and turns in this tale are remarkable. Was the real John Farleigh killed, or the impostor? Was it murder or suicide? The plot is complicated by a padlocked room In the manor full of arcane books and objects as well as an automaton with arms of steel. So many clues lead in the wrong direction, and when the resolution comes, it is an astounding twist. Often the reader is convinced the trail leads to one suspect when it dead ends, and a new clue leads elsewhere. This is a clever mystery well worth reading.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at March 17, 2024 09:16 AM (bBPVf)

Comment: Based on recent comments in the Sunday Morning Book Thread by Thomas Paine, it sounds like he's working his way through all of John Dickson Carr's mysteries, which actually sound quite intriguing. If this were a Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child mystery, I'd suspect that there is an almost plausible actual science fiction resolution. Clones? Alternate reality duplicates? Androids? Taking all bets!

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.

The Books of Earthsea - The Complete Illustrated Edition by Ursula K. LeGuin

I decided to stop after Book 4, Tehanu, and take a break for a bit. Book 5, Tales of Earthsea, is a collection of short stories that take place in the same world and provide deeper worldbuilding. I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually.

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

I've seen a couple of YouTube videos that haven't ranked this Sanderson story very highly. I get it. It's not for everyone and the ending was a bit "meh." However, I did enjoy the tongue-in-cheek "advertisements" and "FAQs" scattered throughout the text. Clearly, Sanderson was having fun with this story of a man who is trapped in an alternate past, one of an infinite possible pasts, where he could set himself up as a god-king if he so desired. Instead, the main protagonist is tracking another criminal from his own world/time in order to bring him to justice. Except the "hero" has forgotten most of his past life and doesn't know *why* he's so intent on capturing the villain....True to Sanderson's world-building skills, he is able to anticipate many of my questions with clever answers when I started thinking about the ethical and moral quandaries surrounding travel to an alternate dimension for the sole purpose of ruling it as a god-king...

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Asimov's Foundation series explores the collapse of the Galactic Empire and is inspired by Edward Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire but applied to a much, much larger scale (an entire galaxy with 25 millions worlds). Protagonist Hari Seldon is a mathematical/psychology prodigy and conceives of a science he calls "psychohistory" where he is able to predict the future to some degree based on some initial conditions of humanity. In Prelude, which is a prequel to his original novel, Seldon spends most of the story dodging Imperial agents who want to use his psychohistory for their own purposes, even though Seldon readily admits there's no practical application of it--until the end of the novel when his experiences interacting with other cultures on Trantor, the Imperial Capital planet, unlocks the secret of the power of psychohistory.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Written in 1951, this is a collection of loosely connected stories that document the fall of the Galactic Empire and rise of the Second Empire. Hari Seldon, the greatest psychohistorian who ever lived, predicts that the collapse will lead to sociopolitical anarchy for 30,000 years, but the Seldon Plan is designed to reduce this to a mere 1,000 years of chaos, and then a new Empire will arise. The Foundation, based on a remote world at the edge of the galactic rim, creates a technological priesthood to preserve knowledge and manage the collapse and transition to the new society. Also, because this was written in the 1950s, EVERYONE smokes like a chimney--except for one character that is noted as being a nonsmoker.

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

The Foundation has survived the first few "Seldon Crises" that he predicted using his psychohistory. After 300 years, the Foundation now faces its most dire challenge--a direct confrontation with a weakened, but still powerful Imperial remnant that seeks to reclaim its lost territories. The Foundation is also threatened by The Mule, a strange entity that Seldon's psychohistory failed to predict. This wild card may completely unravel the Seldon Plan for restoring the Second Empire...

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

In his wisdom Hari Seldon set up a second Foundation world at the opposite end of the Galaxy from the first, and more publicized, Foundation on Terminus. The Second Foundation is just a rumor, but the Mule *knows* it exists and will stop at nothing to eliminate the Second Foundation, which is the only thing stopping the Mule from achieving true Galactic domination...

WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

• Arcanum Unleashed by Brandon Sanderson -- Sanderson wrote a number of short stories that also take place within his larger "Cosmere" universe connecting his longer novels. Most of them are explorations of different world-building projects.
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Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Pscyhohistory predicts the collapse of the Moron Horde approximately 25,000 years from now...

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