Sunday Morning Book Thread - 6-29-2025 ["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: sharon (willow's apprentice)). 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...(Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?)

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 VIDEO NOTE

OrangeEnt sent me the link to this video. It's a look at several beautiful private libraries. Some have a classical aesthetic, while other display a contemporary, modern design. All of them look cozy and comfy.

MID-YEAR REVIEW

Wow. It's the end of June already. I guess it's time for a brief look back at the past few months and explore notable reading experiences.

• Watership Down by Richard Adams -- Numerous Morons have recommended this book and now I know why. It took a bit for me to get into it, but once I read past the first couple chapters, it was difficult to put down. All events take place within just a few square miles of English countryside, but it feels epic in scope. Just an amazing story about rabbits seeking a better life for themselves.
• Hercule Poirot's Casebook by Dame Agatha Christie -- This was my first introduction to Agatha Christie's writing, which I enjoyed very much. Of course, having watched dozens of detective shows, I was already familiar with her storytelling style, as it's one of the most imitated styles in Hollywood.
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton -- I just love his style of writing. Everyone in this book (except for the main protagonists) is an asshole and gets what they deserve.
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- Like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories, these were a joy to read. It's obvious why both Doyle and Christie are among the most beloved mystery writers of all time.
• Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe -- Yet another great classic. He influenced the detective fiction genre as well as the eldritch horror genre. Truly a man who was unappreciated in his own time, but whose legend has grown over time.
• Star Wars - New Jedi Order -- 375+ trillion dead. 19 books. 12 authors. 1 epic galactic invasion. Great literature? Nope. Awesome space opera? You betcha!
• Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams -- The epic story of a young cat who leaves the comfort of his own surroundings to track down his best friend. He finds adventures beyond his imagining. Like Watership Down, just an incredible story. Highly recommended.

RESPONDING TO MORON COMMENTS

My duties at church sometimes prevent me from participating in the Sunday Morning Book Thread. But I do want to respond to a few comments from last week. BTW, last week I asked you folks to hold off on politics on the Sunday Morning Book Thread. We were all still reeling from President Trump's daring strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. You guys are the best commenters ever!

Greatly amused to see you feature the Pogo Peek a Book - my dad left behind a collection of those from the 50's. Funny, and some amazingly sharp political satire right in the heart of the Cold War. Too bad he's mostly forgotten now. Posted by: Tom Servo at June 22, 2025 09:18 AM (EVFZ5)

My own dad had Pogo Peek-A-Book, which I read numerous times when I was a child. I loved it! I think it still holds up fine today. If anything, thanks to gaining knowledge and experience, I can enjoy the humor even more. Just a wonderfully entertaining book.

Probably the weirdest book story I have is that I came upon a book of strange mystery stories as a child. One of the stories was about a man who kidnapped a group of school children, and held them for ransom in a school bus that he had buried on his property to avoid their discovery.

A few years later, the Chowchilla kidnapping took place, and it was the biggest deja vu of my life.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 22, 2025 10:37 AM (Vfq+S)

There was an episode of Millennium where a man kidnaps a school bus driver and seventeen children. He's not holding them for ransom, though. He believes that a nuclear war is coming and wants to save the children from the apocalypse. Turns out that he *does* save the children from a natural disaster (tornado) that hits their school. Or something like that. I haven't watched that episode in many years.

The only thing I didn't like about dramatis personae was that it was easy to spoil surprises in a book. Just the existence of a particular entry could be a spoiler.

Posted by: Farquad at June 22, 2025 11:44 AM (YkGND)

I meant to point this out last week. I, too, have noticed that a Dramatis Personae can be a *spoiler* sometimes. This is especially true for a series of books, since you KNOW which characters will survive from book to book. That doesn't mean there can't be surprises though. You do have to be careful when constructing a Dramatis Personae page to make sure your readers don't find out anything you don't want them to know (such as a character revealed to be a traitor.

WHY GREAT STORIES NEED GREAT VILLAINS

Greg Owens breaks villains down into the following categories:

1. Brick Wall Villains -- Those villains that are a near insurmountable challenge to the heroes. Straight brute force seldom works, so the protagonists have to use alternate methods to overcome the challenge. Man v. Nature stories often fall into this category.
2. Philosophical / Thematic Villains -- Here we have competing ideologies, both of which may be true or have validity from a certain point of view. Again, the protagonist will seldom overcome the villain through brute strength, but must establish that their ideology is correct in some way that defeats the villain.
3. Hateable Underlings -- Perhaps the villain is simply an underling of a greater power, but they are the main challenge for the heroes. Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter is cited as one of these. Someone the audience loves to hate and we cheer when she gets her just desserts.
4. Mirror Villains -- These can come in a couple of different varieties: Personal mirror villains and Societal mirror villains. A good example of the first type is Professor Moriarty, the criminal mastermind that's a foil for Sherlock Holmes' detective brilliance. A societal mirror villain shines a light on society or culture in general, being portrayed as the natural end of society's decay. Perhaps Roy Batty from Blade Runner is an example of this.

BOOKS BY MORONS

We have a couple of new releases from Moron Authors this week:

It's that time of year for another new release: INTERSTELLAR MEDIC: THE LONG WAY HOME will be released July 1st and is available for preorder now.

I first pitched this story to Toni Weisskopf at Baen three years ago. She loved the idea, but said it was actually two books. Which is what you want to hear from your publisher, but at the same time you're thinking "GAH! THAT'S ANOTHER 100,000 WORDS!"

Of course she was right. I had to establish Melanie Mooney's character and do some serious worldbuilding, which included inventing alien species and their physiology to give Mel a chance to do her medic thing. I also took full advantage of the chance to poke fun at the usual alien-abduction tropes.

THE LONG WAY HOME brings Mel's story full circle. She's figured out that all of her warp-speed EMS runs around the galaxy means Earth is now a good twenty years ahead of when she left, even though it's been barely five for her. Getting home before Earth becomes unrecognizable is going to be dangerous, and she has to rely on unproven technology and some unsavory characters to do it.

Hope you'll give it a plug on the AoS book thread next weekend. Here's the Amazon link: Amazon.com: The Long Way Home (2) (Interstellar Medic): 9781668072745: Chiles, Patrick: Books

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Everything is relative. Einstein said so.

After years of crisscrossing the galaxy as an emergency medic, Melanie Mooney is learning this in a personal way. Each run to a far-flung star system takes Melanie ever farther from her former life, and the incomprehensible distances are the least of her problems.

The penalty for zipping through space at light speed means time is moving slower for her than it is back home. If Melanie ever hopes to return, she must do so before the Earth she knew becomes as unrecognizable as the alien worlds of the Galactic Union.

Interstellar travel is far beyond anything she can afford on Medical Corps pay, and finding a ride home that avoids the merciless effects of relativity is risky. Melanie will have to place her trust in unproven technology and some unsavory characters, one of whom happens to be the last person in the galaxy she wants to be caught dead with.

The trick will be not getting hopelessly lost in dimensions of the universe where no human or alien belongs. That's a lot for someone who just wants to get back home.

--Pat Chiles

Comment: I've been looking forward to this one for a while, since I first saw a brief blurb for it somewhere (Amazon?). I really enjoy Patrick Chiles' worldbuilding and attention to detail. Frozen Orbit and Escape Orbit are both very good hard science fiction stories. Well worth your time.

We also have the following submission from The RedBalloon Labor Lawyer:

The League of Displaced Magical Individuals

By Zeppy Cheng

Sunflower Adams becomes a displaced magical individual, an individual with magical powers in a non-magical world. When the government--the Galactic Empire--is apathetic to the plight of Earth, only Sunflower is able to save it, through paperwork and a mission that only she and June, otherwise known as the hero Aquamarine, can complete.

Throughout their mission, there is a darkness brewing in the background, a darkness known as a man called Flash. When everything comes out in the open, a conflict ensues, one that will suck Sunflower into a world of power against power, of magic against magic, and of wit against training--in other words, the world of displaced magical individuals.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

After discussing one of Wilkie Collins' novels a few weeks back, it is probably apropos to discuss his magnum opus, The Moonstone. This is widely considered to be the prototype of the modern mystery novel, though it was published several years after Edgar Allan Poe had introduced his inspector Dupin.

The story is epistolary, told in sequence by three of the characters involved, a style Collins called multi-narration, which also adds to the depth (and length) of the novel. Interestingly, Collins wrote much of the novel while bedridden with gout, and under the influence of laudanum.

The moonstone is a highly valuable diamond which was stolen from an Indian temple many years previously, and Franklin Blake, as executor upon the death of his father, must give it to his cousin. Meanwhile, three Indian priests are dedicated to getting the stone back and returning it to its rightful place. When the stone disappears, both the location of the stone and the identity of the thief are in question. As the story progresses, more and more clues are revealed, and twists and turns abound. It is quite the story, although being written in the Victorian parlance, is not a fast read.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 22, 2025 09:13 AM (Vfq+S)

Comment: After reading both Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, it's obvious that mysteries about stolen jewelry have become a cliche of detective fiction. Doesn't mean they are bad stories, though. Sometimes the stones are ascribed to have mystical powers, adding to their mystique. Or they may have some unique attributes such as extraordinary brilliance or size. Or they have a tragic history, which adds to their reputation for being "cursed."

I read, probably what is PKD's best novel, The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer last week.

What a fun read! It's a wild amalgam of PKD's big themes--what is reality, what does it mean to be human, love, life, what is God, all neatly wrapped up into an oddball mystery/thriller type construct that proceeds logically (within its world to the end).

The story concerns a competition between two drugs. One, Can-D allows people to live an alternate life for a short time. It's used by pioneers on Mars and elsewhere to relieve the boredom and smallness of their lives. The other drug, Chew-Z, allows you to "create your own world" for a short time, and was brought back from another planet by billionaire, Eldritch Palmer but seems to have side-effects.

One thing that PKD does that I love, and that I totally agree with as a writer, is that he wraps his ideas into the story. That is the philosophizing is wrapped into the action, characters, and story and never stated directly to the reader as a message as a lesser writer might do. To read the story is to see the ideas at play in "reality".

Definitely check it out.

Posted by: naturalfake at June 22, 2025 10:05 AM (iJfKG)

Comment: I looked on my own shelves to see if I had this novel buried in there somewhere. Alas, it was not to be. Off to Amazon! Fun fact, "Eldritch Palmer" is also the name of the billionaire villain in The Strain by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro. (Recommended! - better than the television series, which is also pretty good.)

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.

Night's Dawn Trilogy Book 2 - The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton

The dead have returned from beyond to reclaim human bodies. Now known as the possessed, they wreak havoc across the Confederacy, terrorizing the Adamist humans who have few defenses against the godlike powers of the possessed, who can warp reality to their demented desires. Killing the possessed just means TWO souls will return from beyond, both of whom are hellbent on inflicting vengeance on humanity. Turns out beyond is basically hell. However, not all of the possessed are murderous psychopaths, as a rare few individuals display genuine sympathy for humanity and strive to help us. Al Capone's Organization is waging interstellar war across the Confederacy, something the Confederacy considered impossible due to the logistical challenges involved (humanity hasn't invented faster-than-light communications yet). Meanwhile, Dr. Alkad Mzu has escaped her gilded cage on the Tranquility habitat and is searching for her Alchemist, the doomsday weapons that will change everything.

Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke

This is a collection of very short stories where the narrative framing device is that a local pub in London--the titular White Hart--has an eclectic mix of regulars. Perhaps the most eccentric patron is Harry Purvis, a scientist with an unusual background who spins equally unusual yarns about his experiences. It's a fun, fast read.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 6-22-2025 (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. When minutes count, the Galactic Union Medical Corps is just lightyears away!

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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