Sunday Morning Book Thread - 12-08-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

(HT: TRex)

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 (whale song not included). 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...(now with more whale song!)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, splash a shot of Fireball into your eggnog, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

Today's picture comes to me by way of TRex, who sent me a link to this article: "Here I Gather All the Friends" - Machiavelli and the Emergence of a Private Study. It's an interesting examination of the role the study has played in life.

JUMPSTARTING INSPIRATION

Jerry Jengkins is back with some tips on how to keep your inspiration going when you seem to be in a writing slump. He talks about "writer's block" but reframes it as "writer's fear" instead, pointing out that our insecurities in our own writing ability can inhibit our process. I've noticed this among the students I teach. I invariably have at least one student that will reveal at some point that they don't have confidence in their own writing ability, so they struggle in my class. By the end of the semester, some of them have made progress in overcoming that limitation, which is always nice to see.

His tips all make perfect sense, which is no surprise, since he's been a writer for over 50 years and has written well over 100 novels. He's seen and done it all in his day, when it comes to writing, and he perseveres despite all obstacles because he always finds his passion again. And that, I think, may be the greatest key--maintaining one's desire to write, regardless of what anyone thinks and just because you feel you have something to say. In today's world of interconnected social media, you can almost certainly find an audience.

(And Huggy Squirrel was never seen again...HT: Pete Zah)

NO BOOKS FOR MEN?

It's pretty well established that the traditional publishing world has been taken over by women. That is one industry where women totally dominate, determining WHO and WHAT gets published through traditional publishing channels. That being said, there is still room for male authors, I think, though they may have to go independent or find smaller publishers that are willing to still take a chance on male authors. As CriminOlly points out in his video above, in the genres he likes to read (crime and horror), he does not see the gender disparity that readers of fantasy & science fiction are seeing these days.

CriminOlly also says that there are differences in the reasons WHY men and women read: women are more likely to read for pleasure, and men are more likely to read with a purpose in mind. This affects the marketplace in which books are published. The romantasy genre is HUGE right now, but non-fiction books are also still being published at a rapid pace in all sorts of fields. We see that here at AoSHQ with the books that you recommend every week. I can't even begin to categorize all of the books that are recommended because there is such a huge variety of tastes and interests.

Are women now over-represented in publishing? Maybe in some genres. Goodreads sent me their list of "best books of 2024" after the votes had been counted and sure enough, nearly all of the finalists were written by women (about 75% among the categories). Not sure if this means anything in the long run, though, as there are still plenty of books by men, for men, in circulation that have been around for decades. So us guys will always be able to find something to read.

A QUESTION FROM THE HORDE

The following question popped up last week and I didn't see a response, so I thought I'd try to answer it:

So, as a question for the day, since the ultimate minority is the individual, is Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat a cyberpunk genre book?

Posted by: Kindltot at December 01, 2024 10:46 AM (D7oie)

I enjoyed reading the The Stainless Steel Rat series as a teenager. They really appealed to my inner non-conformist. They are NOT cyberpunk novels in any way, shape or form. They take place in a bog-standard science fiction setting (faster-than-light spaceships, advanced computers, robots, etc.), but the characters are unique and colorful, so they series has its own distinctive style.

They are told from the first-person viewpoint of James "Slippery Jim" DiGriz, a criminal mastermind who is recruited by the Galactic Special Corps to track down and apprehend the *real* criminals in the galaxy--dictators, mass-murderers, alien warlords, psychopaths bent on warping the fabric of time and space, and so forth. Accompanied by his beautiful wife Angelina and his equally felonious sons James and Bolivar, Jim DiGriz tackles a wild and weird array of evil threats to galactic civilization.

A strong theme running throughout the series is indeed the importance of the individual. Jim DiGriz considers himself to be a "stainless steel rat" in the chrome and concrete wainscotting of society, able to run around and cause mischief because he doesn't fit in with the rest of society. I identified pretty strongly with this ethic when I was a teenager, though I did outgrow some of my more larcenous ideals...

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Last week I read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster with Jules Feiffer illustrations. It is a delight. The finest word play and thought puzzles since Lewis Carroll. Juster takes so much of the language and has fun with it. And Feiffer's illustrations remind me, happily, of Thurber's line drawings. So simple and so expressive. It's impossible to read the book without constant smiles.

Posted by: JTB at December 01, 2024 09:27 AM (yTvNw)

Comment: This is one of my childhood favorites. I need to revisit this book again. Recently, as I've surpassed the ripe old age of 29, I've felt compelled to re-read some of these classics. I should add this to my list, because I loved reading it when I was younger.<

Most people have a passing familiarity with conquistadors like Francisco Pizarro from western civilization class, but the full story of his long fought and bloody conquest of Peru is less known. Kim MacQuarrie spent five years in country and has compiled a complete account in The Last Days of the Incas.

Pizarro brought 167 men to conquer the millions of Incas. Once his ships landed, he burned the vessels to indicate to his men there was no turning back. Armed with horses, armor, and modern weapons, Pizarro and his men took the capital and captured their king. His ransom was a room full of gold, which was delivered, but Pizarro had him killed anyway. The king's brother escaped into the Amazon and began a 36 year guerrilla war, but ultimately failed to dislodge the Spanish.

MacQuarrie used both Spanish and native accounts to comprehensively document the Inca empire and their downfall at the hands of Pizarro and the Spanish.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at December 01, 2024 09:14 AM (atKHw)

Comment: I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that the Incans were not noble savages living in perfect harmony with nature. Of course, Pizarro doesn't exactly sound like a nice guy, either. Burning one's ships as a political statement is hardcore, especially when all you have is 167 men against millions of indigenous people, most of whom will be rather annoyed when you try to conquer them. The numbers game alone should have seen Pizarro slaughtered in short order.

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

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

• The Stormlight Archive Book 5 - Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson -- This is the conclusion of the first story arc of The Stormlight Archive. Assuming Sanderson isn't distracted too much by other projects, it will take another decade or so to read the remaining five books in this series. It's quite a doorstopper, at 1300+ pages for a single novel. I'm going to wait until Christmas Week to read it, as it will make a fine bookend to 2024, which began with an awesome epic story--Steven Erickson's Malazan Books of the Fallen.

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.

All of the books below were scavenged from the library book sale I went to right before Thanksgiving Week. It's tough trying to plough through my TBR pile sometimes...

Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston

Apparently, the world of of fossil hunting is as cutthroat as any semi-shady business. Fakes and forgeries abound, while the real deal can command tens of millions of dollars from the right collector. The king of fossils, appropriately enough, is a complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, as only a handful of them have ever been found. The newest find carries within its mummified remains an ancient passenger that is just now waking up from a long, long hibernation. Meanwhile, various factions are attempting to track it down, each with their own agenda.

Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz

Odd Thomas is a certified Weirdness Magnet. In Deeply Odd he finds out that he attracts other weirdness magnets, thanks in part to his own psychic gifts. He also discovers that parts of the world are thin in some way. He can crossover at those points into Elsewhere, a shadowy borderland adjacent to another realm that may or may not be Hell.

The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

An insane AI that controls a colony spaceship has dropped off its human cargo on the death world Pandora so that humanity can get a fresh start. It also insists humanity worship it as a god. The humans are just as crazy, with different factions engaged in mad power schemes, some of which will benefit Ship and others may lead to its destruction.

Most people have heard of Frank Herbert's Dune, but he also wrote an entirely different series of books that explores the same themes of religion and power in the hands of those who are not worthy to wield either. It would not surprise me to find out this series is set in the same timeline as Dune, but perhaps in the distant past, before the Butlerian Jihad wiped out all thinking machines...

Saint Odd by Dean Koontz

This is the last entry in the Odd Thomas series. Odd Thomas returns to his hometown of Pico Mundo only to stop the mad cultists intent on wreaking even more carnage than they did in the first book. Odd has stopped them more than once in recent books and now they want vengeance in the worst possible way. It will take all of Odd's wits, courage, and ruthlessness to stop them from murdering tens of thousands of innocent people. Like the first novel, the ending is bittersweet, but Odd does earn his reward and the promise he was given back at the beginning has been kept.

This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams

There are eerie similarities between the plot of this book and Neal Stephenson's REAMDE. A young woman who works for a rich game developer is trapped in Jakarta, Indonesia when the government collapses, leaving her stranded. Now she's using online resources to try and find an escape route by tapping into crowd-sourcing in a discussion forum. Her job is to create realistic game scenarios, so the online forum is half-convinced that this is all part of some game simulation instead of the real deal. It's interesting reading the commentors' feedback because half of them sound like you guys. It's a weird feeling.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 12-01-2024 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. The Sunday Morning Book Thread is an essential part of a balanced breakfast.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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