Sunday Morning Book Thread - 3-30-2025 ["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 (HT: Dash my lace wigs). 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...(includes 3 replacement anvil zippers)

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?

Congratulations to Wolfus Aurelius on his impending official retirement from the drudgery of WORK. More time for reading!

Congratulations to Madame Mayhem (uppity wench) for Leveling Up and becoming an official grandmother! Now with 25% more uppitiness!

PIC NOTE

Working at a university means I get to encounter a lot of weird artifacts while wandering around the hallways. From time to time, professors will put out tables or shelves of stuff labeled "FREE!" Most of the time, it's just junk, but sometimes you find an interesting item or two. The pic above is from a rather large volume of monographs from the United States Geological Survey, printed in 1904. Just imagine the amount of effort that was put into creating such a massive tome at that time. It did not weather the decades very well, though, as the spine is held together with packing tape and most of the contents have separated from the binding. You do have to have a delicate touch to turn the pages in this book, or many of them are likely to fall out.

MILESTONE - 1,500+ MORON RECOMMENDATIONS!

I have not been keeping track of the Moron recommendations for the past several months, but I had some time at work and I was bored, so I decided to catch up and add Moron Recommendations to the Libib catalog. Lo and behold, I discovered that we had surpassed a significant milestone, as the repository now contains over 1,500 books! Congratulations to all of you who have contributed to this repository. It gives all Morons--lurkers and commenters alike--a way to find new books to read that might suit their tastes. It's also a demonstration of the sheer breadth and depth of our reading habits, as virtually every genre imaginable is represented in some fashion. Here are the top contributors:

1. Thomas Paine - 92 recommendations
2. All Hail Eris - 87
3. Zoltan - 85
4. Wolfus Aurelius - 67
5. JTB - 51
6. Trimegistus - 47
7. Dash my lace wigs - 45
8. Ace-endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd - 37
9. Nacly Dog - 33
10. TIED: Kindltot and Weak Geek - 31 each

Honorable Mention: Sharkman (30)

For any Morons out there who are looking for something to read, try the AoSHQ - Book Thread Moron Recommendations! If you can't find something there, you ain't trying hard enough!

COMFORT READING

I would like to offer a suggestion for an upcoming book thread, Perfesser Squirrel/

Books that we have read before and return to again because they're like the book version of a comfort food and we enjoyed them so much, but maybe men don't return to books over again?

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at March 28, 2025 06:44 AM (Edj++)

We've discussed "comfort reading" before but it's a topic worth revisiting from time to time. When times are tough, it can be helpful to turn to books that scratch a particular itch, where we feel most comforted. I have quite a few books and series that I will read again and again and again. Not necessarily because they are great literature--some of them can be quite trashy--but because I just like them. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is one I can reread endlessly. It's a very long series and it has sufficient complexity and depth to keep me entertained for many, many hours. P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath is another such series, as is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I also enjoy rereading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Since there is only a loose chronology connecting them, I can dive in at any point and enjoy those books without feeling I need to read them in any particular order.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I took The Inimitable Jeeves (original title: Jeeves) with me on vacation but didn't open it until after we got home, and even then didn't get into it until yesterday.

It's the usual early 1920s mixture of Bertie Wooster struggling to deal with foolish friends, flighty females, and domineering dames, led by irascible Aunt Agatha. Good thing he has Jeeves to bail him out -- except during this imbroglio, Jeeves has gone on vacation ...

I enjoy Wodehouse, particularly Bertie's then-contemporary slang, but I can't comprehend some of it. When context doesn't help, I say that life is too short to let those instances pause me, and charge on through. Doesn't dim my pleasure a bit.

Posted by: Weak Geek at March 23, 2025 09:09 AM (p/isN)

Comment: As I've been reading older literature recently (e.g., Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Conan Doyle), I've noticed that I sometimes have to look up terms and phrases to be sure I understand them correctly. In the case of Holmes and Christie, their stories are very, very British, so I'm sure that as an American I'm missing out on a lot of context that would be immediately recognizable to their contemporary British readers.

Re: F. Paul Wilson. The first book I read by him was The Keep; essentially Nazis vs. Dracula in a medieval fortress. Great book, made into a mediocre (although sometimes interesting) movie. The next book I read was The Tomb, first of the Repairman Jack series. Great book, although it wasn't clearly going to lead to a series, since it wasn't obvious that Jack was going to survive the book. Highly recommended.

Posted by: Disillusionist at March 23, 2025 11:23 AM (rsMc/)

Comment: The Repairman Jack series is another one of those "comfort reads" even though the stories are decidedly bleak. As the series progresses, Jack's "fixes" grow increasingly bizarre and more challenging, especially when his path is set for him at the end of the series. "No coincidences" becomes his mantra at that point. There is a noticeable shift in Jack's character between The Tomb and the next book in the series, Legacies. Jack does carry the scars from The Tomb throughout his subsequent adventures, and it becomes a plot point here and there, as the physical scars he carries from that adventure react in the presence of the "Otherness."

To cleanse my palate and get me back to a more normal place, I turned to one of my endlessly-re-readable standbys, Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark, which I love.

Posted by: Splunge at March 23, 2025 11:26 AM (ju/6W)

Comment: One of my college buddies recommended The Drawing of the Dark to me many, many years ago. I have read it a couple of times and liked it. Who knew that beer had such mystical properties?

MORE MORON RECOMMENDATIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE: AoSHQ - Book Thread Recommendations

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 Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

I've continued to work my way through this doorstopper of a book (1,077 pages). I just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles and am now in The Valley of Fear. Only two more short story collections--His Last Bow and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes--and I will be finished!

UPDATE: I finished The Valley of Fear this morning...

The Dark Descent edited by David G. Hartwell

As with Sherlock Holmes, I'm slowly working my way through this doorstopper as well (1,011 pages). I'm nearly finished with the middle section, which includes such classic stories as H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls," William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I'd read that last one may years ago in high school. I had forgotten how weird it gets at the end. Good stuff. This book was recommended by multiple Morons last week, so if you are looking for a great anthology of horror stories, this is one you might want to pick up!

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 3-23-2025 (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. To help you remain tranquil in the face of almost certain death, smooth jazz will be deployed, in three...two...one...

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