Sunday Morning Book Thread - 7-13-2025 ["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 (crunchy slaad 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...(are pants a sandwich?)

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

Last week I showed a pic of my cat Allie resting on one of my books while I was trying to read it. Well, she's not the only kitty who serves as a book critic in my household. My cat Penny seen above also likes to rest her weary head on my books from time to time. I don't know if they like the smell or the feel of books, but they seem to enjoy books as much as I do in their own way. I have had a few issues with my cats trying to scratch my books like a scratching post.

THE DEATH OF SHORT FICTION MAGAZINES

This is a fairly depressing video for any aspiring author seeking to break out into the short fiction market. Although Jon del Arroz focuses on fantasy and science fiction, I can't imagine that any other short fiction genre is doing any better, as fantasy and science fiction have always been among the most popular genres for short fiction. I grew up reading science fiction anthologies. Now they are mostly dead, though you will see anthologies of republished stories from the greats of science fiction such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, etc. I probably have a dozen copies of some of those stories buried among my anthologies.

I suspect the publishing market is so oversaturated with content due to the rise of independent publishing that it's very, very difficult for aspiring writers to find a significant following. Far too much competition. Social media has also been as much of a bane as it is a blessing. Although you can reach out to like-minded readers on social media, you are also likely to attract those who would tear you down simply because they disagree with you at some level. This is especially true of authors who write stories with a conservative bent.

And now we have AI thrown into the mix, making it possible for people to request mediocre stories on demand. Stories that will keep the masses entertained, but don't have much in the way of substance to provoke deeper contemplation and reflection about the human condition.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS + MILESTONE

Before we get to some Moron Recommendations below, I thought I'd point out that we've reached a milestone of sorts when it comes to Moron Recommendations. When I first took over this scruffy little corner of a smart military blog, I thought I'd start collecting Moron Recommendations and posting them on a Libib website so that Morons can search for Recommendations that may be of interest to them. Much easier than trying to scour past threads. Well, I can officially announce that I've collected enough Moron Recommendations to surpass my own collection of fiction within my Libib website.

1,681 Moron Recommendations compared to 1,678 books in my own fiction section.

You all have read A LOT OF BOOKS over the past 3.5 years or so! Seriously, if you can't find a book that interests you among the Moron Recommendations, you simply are not trying. I've found a few authors new to me thanks to you guys, so it does work!

Now back to our usual Moron Recommendations below....KEEP READING!

Read Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom this week (again). It is non-fiction. Much of it would be intuitive to the Horde, but good to fully develop the different philosophies on regulation and the corresponding trade-offs.

One key take away is that true innovation that looks forward typically challenges existing regulation that can only look backwards and is primarily concerned about downside risk. Lots of variations on the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" theme, but that line of logic only goes so far.

Good book read through the lens of AI and digital assets/tokenization.

Posted by: TRex at July 06, 2025 09:43 AM (IQ6Gq)

Comment: I know it's been mentioned around here that the EU seems to have completely lost the spark of innovation that made the Enlightenment possible. The Industrial Revolution was born out of constant innovation. The Digital Revolution also required constant innovation to achieve the technology level we enjoy today. I do wonder sometimes if we are reaching the limits of what is possible under our current understanding of physics. What could possibly be the next incredible breakthrough that will allow humanity to progress to the next level? What human-created barriers are standing in the way? Yeah, governments and regulation are in that mix.

Last week's discussion about books where we did not like the characters recalls to mind Night Over Water by Ken Follett. A Pan Am clipper seaplane departs England in 1939 just as war is declared, headed for the US. Aboard are a fascist and his family, a runaway wife, a brother and sister fighting for control of dad's company, and a flight engineer whose wife has been kidnapped and will be killed if the plane lands on schedule.

The story is tense and engaging, even though you may hope that several of the passengers don't survive. When the plane makes a fuel stop in Ireland, who should join the passenger list but the husband of the cheating wife, to confront her and her American lover. To make matters worse, the plane then has to fly across the Atlantic through storms, while the engineer is fudging the fuel numbers to comply with the kidnappers.

What this motley group doesn't know is that there is also a German scientist aboard that the Nazis want to hold onto, as well as a mob boss. Everyone is hiding something, or running from it, and the odds are decreasing that anyone will survive. This novel shows that a story can be entertaining even if you dislike every character.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at July 06, 2025 09:11 AM (uU/gw)

Comment: That's a neat trick about writing an entertaining story where all of the characters are unlikable in some way. Though it's often used for comedic effect on television shows like Seinfeld or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In the story described above, it sounds like everyone involved has secrets within secrets, so the reader wants to see how those are revealed over the course of the adventure even if we don't like the characters. Perhaps knowing the secrets helps us understand how and why the characters developed into the current personas.

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 3 - The Naked God by Peter F. Hamilton

I finally finished the third book of Hamilton's epic space opera saga. Humanity is saved! Yay! The possessed who troubled us for so long have been removed from their host bodies and translated into alternate realities or moved beyond the beyond. It was a wild ride while it lasted.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Where do I even start with this book? For the uninitiated, it's the retelling of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur plus a little extra background material about King Arthur's childhood. The edition I have is the omnibus version released in 1958, which compiles four separate books into a single volume: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind.

"The Sword in the Stone" shows us young Arthur ("the Wart") growing up as Sir Kay's foster-brother under the protection of Sir Ector, Kay's father. His primary tutor is Merlyn, the famous wizard. Here, Merlyn is portrayed as a crazy loon, as he's experiencing events backwards in time. Merlyn transforms Arthur into dozens of animals so that Arthur can see the world through their eyes and gain perspective, which helps shape Arthur's approach to leadership when he gains his throne. It's a light-hearted adventure story about growing up in medieval England (or "Gramarye" as White calls the land). Merlyn really is quite mad in this book. If anything the Disney version of the book toned Merlyn's oddities down instead of exaggerating them for comedic effect. He's a bit like the Genie from Aladdin, always spouting anachronisms because of his cosmic power (that's not confined to an itty-bitty bottle). Fun read.

Things get quite a bit darker in the second part, "The Queen of Air and Darkness." Here we see Arthur begin to gather his Knights of the Round Table. His goal is to become the overlord of Gramarye, but he will need to convince the other petty kings of his right to rule, or conquer them outright. He has deep conversations with Merlyn about Might v. Right when it comes to rulership. The purpose of the Knights of the Round Table to is to use Might in service of Right, i.e., turn strength towards the defeat of those who are unjust, cruel, and evil, rather than inflicting cruelties on those who are too weak to defend themselves. Meanwhile, Queen Morgause is conspiring to use her own cruel magics (she's a witch) to cause Arthur to fall in love with her. She basically rapes Arthur through magic, and from their union will spring Mordred, Arthur's eventual bane.

The third part, "The Ill-Made Knight" focuses on the relationship between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever. Anyone familiar with the Arthurian legends recalls that Queen Guenever cheated on King Arthur by falling in love with Sir Lancelot. They both loved Arthur in their own way, though, and never wanted to do him harm. But their passion for each other tended to overcome propriety and they cause a great deal of trouble for King Arthur. Much of this story takes place well into Arthur's reign, and a general peace has settled on most of the kingdom, which poses a new problem for Arthur. What should he do with all of these knights who *need* action or they will fall into their old ways? They see battle and war as a sport, rather than as a deadly contest, because their armor offers incredible protection against injury or death. This is where the Quest for the Holy Grail is born, as Arthur sends his knights out to find the holy relic. Lancelot is among them, but due to his own human failings, he is not permitted to reach the Grail. He is given a glimpse of it, however, and it changes his life forever.

Finally, we come to the fourth tale, "The Candle in the Wind." Here we are nearing the end of Arthur's reign. Mordred has grown up a bitter, vindictive man who hates King Arthur with every fiber of his being. Arthur, you see, once tried to kill Mordred when he was a baby, and ended up inadvertently killing many other babies instead. It's one of Arthur's greatest crimes. Mordred schemes with his half-brother Agravaine to undo Arthur's kingdom by using Arthur's own laws against him. Arthur spent his entire adult life attempting to rule through a civilized code of law instead of through Might makes Right. And now the affair between Lancelot and Guenever will be revealed to the king, forcing Arthur to kill his own wife. Adultery is punishable by death. It's quite a tragic tale. Poor Arthur is trapped by his own desire to change the world.

There are a number of commentaries on political theory between Arthur and Merlyn in this story. Arthur doesn't quite go as far as advocating for democracy (he is the King, after all), but he comes pretty close with his Knights of the Round Table, as he wanted a Round Table so that no one knight (or King) would be elevated above any other knight. He also saw the people he ruled as worthy of individual dignity and respect. He tried to instill this attitude among his knights, who were sworn to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. Mordred and Agravaine have an interesting conversation about the merits of communism towards the end of the book. Considering when these books were written (late 1930s and early 1940s), it seems clear that White was trying to work through his own ideas about a benevolent monarchy versus communism.

After reading The Once and Future King, I can now see how much it has affected the fantasy epic landscape. Tad Williams in particular clearly drew heavily from this book for Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, as the backstory of several characters mirrors characters in this book. In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, he liberally draws upon names of characters from The Once and Future King to inspire the names of many characters in his own epic series.

Also, this book could be subtitled It Pays to Increase Your Word Power: The Novel as White uses a lot of terms from medieval hawking, hunting, and heraldry to describe characters in the story. You will learn new words whether you want to or not.

Bobby Dollar Trilogy Book 1 - The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

Moving on from T. H. White, I decided to go back to urban fantasy. Tad Williams' The Dirty Streets of Heaven tells the story of Doloriel (a.k.a. "Bobby Dollar"), an angelic advocate whose job is to argue for the souls of the recently dead that they should go to heaven instead of hell. He is assigned to the San Francisco region. During one of his "calls" he discovers that the soul of the deceased is nowhere to be found. It just vanished. Both heaven and hell are freaking out about this because this should *never* happen. Now Bobby Dollar is trapped between agents of hell that want to tear him to pieces because they think he knows more than he does and the forces of heaven that may have their own agenda. It's quite short for a Tad Williams book (only 400 pages).

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 7-6-2025 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

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

Sadly, Huggy Squirrel's The Needle in the Nut never found a publisher.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Which is a better foundation for government? A young lad drawing a sword from a stone? Or a watery tart lobbing a scimitar at you?

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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