Sunday Morning Book Thread - 07-28-2024 ["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...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, get ready for the County Fair next weekend, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

I found today's pic as the header image on this article: The Strange Affliction of 'Library Anxiety' and What Librarians Do to Help

I'm not a librarian, but I do work in a library at a university. I wonder if the librarians upstairs have ever encountered library anxiety among students...I know I will be teaching freshman in a few weeks and I do want them to become comfortable with using the library resources available to them on campus. They will need them to do serious research in their engineering fields. Large universities may have multiple libraries for different disciplines, making it even more confusing for students to find what they need.

7 SIGNS YOUR CHARACTER IS A MARY SUE

"Mary Sues" are among the most reviled characters in literature, though they keep cropping up again and again. I suspect they mostly occur in fan-fiction where the author wants to insert themselves into a story but doesn't quite know how to make it believable. The term "Mary Sue" comes from a character in a Star Trek fan-fiction story where she's an impossibly talented, charismatic, awesome young woman that everyone loves aboard the starship Enterprise. She uses her improbably skills and abilities to save the ship when the main Power Trio fails. It was written as a parody, but it was based on material that the author kept seeing in other Star Trek fan fiction at the time.

(HT: Both pookysgirl and CBD sent me this pic shamelessly stolen from Powerline's Week in Pictures. Hordemind is real--and it's spectacular!)

ORIGINS OF CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

Why do we have chapters in books? For some reason, this question crossed my mind recently. Fortunately, we live in an age where almost any question can be answered by typing it into a search engine. It didn't take long to find an article that gave me at least a partial answer.

It turns out chapters in books have a very long, distinguished history. Even the earliest authors liked to break up their writings into sections.

For nonfiction books, chapters--along with sections and subsections--help the reader to navigate the text to find *exactly* the right information they need. For instance, the Horde-authored book The Deplorable Gourmet breaks down the contents into different categories of recipes, such as desserts, breads, sides, main courses, etc. Each of those chapters is further sub-divided into smaller subsections, such as cakes, pies, cookies & brownies, ice cream, and other in the "Desserts" chapter. Because of this organization, it's really easy to find a particular type of recipe when planning a meal.

In fiction, chapters can serve an organizational purpose, but they also serve to break up the narrative into manageable "chunks" for the reader. They also signal that the POV character may be changing, or there will be a significant change of scene for the main POV. Or an important transition in the plot is occurring. It can be a bit jarring when reading a novel that doesn't have chapters because we are so conditioned to expect them. For instance, Richard Kadrey does not use chapters in his Sandman Slim series, though he does have section breaks. Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are also lacking chapters for the most part, though there are a few that do have chapters, such as Going Postal, which introduces a new main character to the series.

Chapters can be long or short, depending on the author. Dean Koontz tends to have fairly short chapters in his books, as he likes to have rapidly shifting points of view in the story so that the reader can see the story play out from the POV of the heroes and villains simultaneously. The longest chapter that I ever encountered is found in Robert Jordan's A Memory of Light, the last book in the Wheel of Time series. "The Last Battle" is fully 190 pages long in the hardcover edition, probably longer in the paperback editions. This makes sense, though, as it's the culmination of the events of the first thirteen books in the series. And while it's a long chapter, the extraordinary pacing makes it feel much shorter. Once you reach that chapter, you just strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.

Personally, I love chapters in books because of how I read. I tend to read in spurts, so a few chapters here, a few chapters there. Chapters are great break points for me and I can close the book and walk a way for a bit before coming back to the book and continuing the story.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

As Paris looked forward to hosting the 1889 world's fair, her citizens were horrified at the ungainly metal structure slowly materializing near the Champs Elyeeses. Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes captures an event that marks the birth of the modern world. Gustave Eiffel, the man who designed and built the structure that supported the statue of liberty, was building a monument for the fair, but it insulted the sensibilities of Parisians. It was designed as a temporary structure, but with the advent of radio, it was the world's best antenna, and so it stayed, and eventually became a beloved landmark. The fair itself was the coming out party for modern technology and history as entertainment, with Edison introducing the phonograph, and Buffalo Bill bringing the American west to Europe. Jonnes captures the era of the fair quite well, describing the spectacle, as well as the engineering and aesthetic challenge that Eiffel's tower had to overcome. If you enjoyed Devil in the White City, you will like this one as well.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at July 21, 2024 09:13 AM (7+jIt)

Comment: There's no question that the Eiffel Tower is THE icon that represents Paris today, regardless of what Parisians think of it. Though smaller versions of it have been erected elsewhere, such as in Paris, Texas. I had the opportunity to walk around the Eiffel Tower when I was just a wee squirrel. It's BIG. It's also a fascinating engineering marvel, a giant erector set.

This week I read The Ocean and the Stars, by the magnificent Mark Helprin, who is easily my favorite fiction writer. You may know him from A Soldier of the Great War, Winter's Tale, and Memoir from Antproof Case, amongst other excellent novels.

It is the story of a small Patrol Coastal ship, the USS Athena, and its Captain, who is an old school Naval officer with integrity and bravery who does the right thing, always, and ends up suffering greatly for it.

To say that Helprin writes beautifully is a colossal understatement. I felt true joy reading this novel, just enjoying the prose, though it is a tough, sometime bloody story.

First paragraph:

"Snow falling upon water makes a sound so close to silence that no heart exists it cannot calm. It fell across the Chesapeake and in the harbors and inlets and far out to sea, surrendering to the waters with the slightest exhalation and a muffled hiss. Though few are there to see it, in winter this happens often."

Just wonderful. Highly recommend.

Posted by: Sharkman at July 21, 2024 09:28 AM (/RHNq)

Comment: Great prose never goes out of style. That's one reason why the classics *become* classics--terrific prose. The Captain sounds like a man of honor who is serious about adhering to his own particular code, regardless of what others may think. I love stories with these types of characters because they often find themselves faced with moral dilemmas that put their personal code to the test. How they respond marks them as a hero to be admired and respected, worthy of being a leader.

When I was 15, I read Red Storm Rising, and to this day I consider that the best novel I have ever read, bar none. No, it is not objectively better than the world's great literature, but that one book to me showed me what a great novel could be. So it blew open the doors of fiction for me and I began reading novels left right and center to the detriment of grades. My HS grades were atrocious but I read, all the time. Just nothing that was required for school. Yes, to open the book, Tom Clancy tips his hat to Larry Bond. Not exact, but he states that his name does not appear on the cover but it is his book as much as it is mine.

Oh, and Larry Bond's Red Phoenix and Vortex are awesome reads as well.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at July 21, 2024 10:51 AM (8sMut)

Comment: I think all of us have a book in our past that serves as the doorway to great literature, even if that book may not be itself considered "great." Much of literature appreciation is going to be subjective and what one reader absolutely LOVES, another reader is going to LOATHE. I read a number of epic fantasy stories when I was that age and I consider them to be among my top-tier picks for best fantasy literature ever written, though your mileage may vary. We all bring our own biases and prejudices into our reading experiences.

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 Forgotten Realms - The Harpers Book 14 - Stormlight by Ed Greenwood

Ed Greenwood is the creator of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. He's written several novels in the series, exploring the lives and histories of some of the non-player characters he's created for that setting. This one deals with Storm Silverhand, one of the legendary Seven Sisters who are among the Chosen of Mystra, goddess of magic. Storm is tasked with investigating a series of bizarre mysteries in a remote fortress in the kingdom of Cormyr, which isn't too keen on having her there. In the process, the story goes from a police procedural into a full-on cosmic horror story as the entity behind the murders goes on a killing spree that threatens the entire kingdom. Here we get to see just *why* most people are terrified of the power wielded by a Chosen of Mystra, as Storm engages in an epic spell-slinging battle against a foe that may be beyond her abilities. I'm not a huge fan of Greenwood's writing style, but I admit I was not bored at all. It's action-packed, fast-paced, and engaging fluff.

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Book 4 - Lost Souls by Dean Koontz

At the end of the third book in the series, Victor Frankenstein is defeated and all members of the New Race he created were destroyed. Unfortunately, he planned for this contingency and unleashed Victor Immaculate, a clone of his original self that seeks to improve upon Victor's original plan. At it's core, this book is Frankenstein meets The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The heroes of the first three books are now called back into action to stop Victor 2.0 before he can finalize his insane plan. They travel to a small Montana town to find out it's been taken over by the New Race along with a group of otherworldly horrors... As is typical of Koontz, there is at least one dog and also a mentally disabled man who struggles to do the right thing. It's also pretty clear that this is a story that was cut into two pieces so it could be published as two different books.

The Forgotten Realms - The Harpers Book 15 - Finder's Bane by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb

Novak & Grubb wrote Azure Bonds, a novelization of the classic computer game Curse of the Azure Bonds. One of the characters in that story, Finder Wyvernspur, ascended to godhead and now one of his priests must go on a quest to save the god before he can be destroyed by Bane reborn, the re-incarnated god of strife and tyranny. Unlike Stormlight, which featured a very high-level protagonist who was a one-woman army of mass destruction, this story features low-level characters off on their first grand adventure. Naturally, they encounter a host of problems, such as being kidnapped and nearly sacrificed to Iyachtu Xvim, Bane's godson (in the literal sense). Along the way, they meet up with a bird-winged woman who is also a Spelljammer, and they end up in Sigil, City of Doors. This story is a bit unusual in that it features at least three different Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings: Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and Planescape (my personal favorite just for its *weirdness*).

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Book 5 - The Dead Town by Dean Koontz

This is it--the final battle for humanity takes place in a small town in semi-rural Montana. One side, we have small bands of heroes who must struggle to survive against a horde of strange monsters that threaten to consume them. On the other side, a New New Race of beings created by Victor Immaculate (or Victor 2.0) whose plans for humanity are far, far darker than mere eradication.

I don't know what Koontz's politics are nowadays as it's possible that Trump broke him just like Trump broke Stephen King. However, back in 2011, Koontz was clearly not a Leftist. The plot for the villains is the most extremist Leftist position imaginable. He also seems quite sympathetic towards the lifestyle of an average semi-rural Montanan.

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