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Welcome BACK 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, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Moron fd sent me this picture. He said it's from the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship. At least, I think that's what he said. From what I can find, Cunard cruise lines have extensive libraries and book shops on board. Honestly, if I ever went on a cruise, I admit I'd spend a lot of time on deck just reading a book. Assuming I don't get seasick, but I hear there are pills for that.

I didn't get a chance to participate in last week's Reading Thread because I was traveling through OK at the time. But I did read through the comments on the Reading Thread after I arrived at home. As usual, you took the conversation wherever you felt like it. I was particularly amused by the discussion thread on swearing/cussing in stories.

Here's my opinion, for whatever it's worth: I'm generally not too fond of it, especially when I feel like it distracts from the story. I'd prefer swearing in euphemisms or describing that it's taking place. In much of the literature I read (fantasy & science fiction), swearing using English terms can feel a bit "off" because we readers *expect* swearing to be a bit different. In a science fiction story, maybe the aliens have unique or interesting swear words. Or maybe human language has advanced so that we use different swear words now. For instance, in Red Dwarf, the most common swear word is "smeg." In Farscape, most of the characters use "frell." Although you'd think the translation microbes would translate this to a language John Crichton (a human) understands, swear words don't translate this. Who knew that translation microbes had network censors?

In fantasy, again we often see unique or unusual swear words crop up from time to time. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series tended to use common words as swear words such as "blood and ashes." "Burn me," "blasted," "bloody," and "flaming" are also quite common. A minor character, Uno, who is a Shienaran soldier, is portrayed as never being able to speak a single sentence without swearing at least once. When he tries *not* to swear because he's trying to show respect to an Aes Sedai (sorceress), he sweats from the strain of holding his tongue.

Terry Pratchett, being Terry Pratchett, has his own unique take on swearing. In The Truth, Mr. Tulip, the muscle of Tulip and Pin, doesn't swear, but does use "-ing" a lot whenever a swear word would be appropriate. Note that the dash indicates a silence before "ing." In another little quirk, on the Discworld, swear words have actual power, especially when uttered by wizards or witches, so they tend to come up with creative alternatives to swearing to avoid turning someone inside out by accident.

I get that characters in books are going to swear, and sometimes do it a lot. It can take you out of the story a bit when it shows up and you don't expect it. In Star Trek: Final Frontier, George Kirk says, "Shit" when something really bad happens in the story, but it comes out of nowhere as the swearing before this point has been nearly nonexistent except for mild cursing like "hell" and "damn." The Star Trek novels in general are very light on swearing. At most they go to a PG-level of swearing.

Comment: I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Thomas Paine at the TXMOMEX. I had the opportunity to tell him how much I enjoyed reading his reviews of books. They always feel like a story about a story. He currently has the most recommendations on the AoSHQ Book Thread Recommendations (104). I also blame him for convincing me to read the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child books, starting with the Agent Pendergast series. I have over thirty of their books at this point...*sigh*

Comment: Funny how what's old is new again. We still seem to have a bunch of socialist New Dealers hellbent on creating a "centrally planned economy." For our own good, of course. They WILL. NOT. STOP. EVER.

Comment: This utter dependency on the Democrat largesse is probably part of the reason why the cities are such a mess. The Democrats have a ready pool of serfs who will vote for them. Or "vote" for them as I'm convinced most of them don't vote at all--The Machine takes care of that so long as there are enough warm bodies in the district to cover up the fraud. Instead of harvesting crops and doling them back out to their serfs, the Democrats harvest votes they turn into goodies that they can dispense as they please upon their grateful constituents. And we the taxpayer pay for it all.

Just because I've been absent from the Sunday Morning Book Thread in recent months doesn't mean I've stopped acquiring books, though I have slowed down a bit. Some of the following acquisitions were directly inspired by you guys, though a few others were tangential:

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. Here are a few selections of what I've been reading recently:

Dark Dance by Tanith Lee

Since it's Halloween season, I suppose I should read some horror fiction. Dark Dance is one part Mervyn Peake, one part Edgar Allan Poe, one part Anne Rice, and 100% Tanith Lee (please don't check my math). It tells the tale of Rachaela, who is drawn to the remote country home of the Scarabae, her ancestral family. Their only purpose in life is to prolong their lives and continue through the countless ages, occasionally mingling with humans to ensure the continuation of their bloodline. Now Rachaela is entwined in their dark designs and even darker desires. Classic gothic horror tale, with a creepy house, an even creepier family, and one of the creepiest children in fiction.

Star Trek: Final Frontier by Diane Carey

I have a fairly large collection of Star Trek novels. Most of them are episodic stories told in novel form--the adventures of the Enterprise crew when they aren't gallivanting around the galaxy on the small screen. This one is a prequel novel of sorts, as it relates the tale of the very first mission of the starship Enterprise under the command of Captain Robert April and his executive officer George Kirk, father of the most famous starship captain in history, James Tiberius Kirk. During a rescue mission, the Enterprise is diverted off course during warp speed and ends up deep in Romulan space. At this point, the Federation fought a war against he Romulans several decades ago, but still don't know what they look like. Now George Kirk and Captain April need to repair the damaged Enterprise and escape Romulan space before another interstellar war breaks out.

Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime - Volume 1 - Breaking Strain by Paul Preuss

This series of books is loosely based on short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke many decades prior. With Clarke's blessing, Preuss has woven together a few different storylines into a space mystery. Clarke himself was skeptical it could be done well, but acknowledged that Asimov had done it already with his Caves of Steel mysteries involving a human cop and his robot partner.

The best way to describe this series is Black Widow is thrown into the world of The Expanse and must solve an overarching mystery across time and space involving Prometheus. That's the gist of the series. The first book is mostly a conventional heist plot set on a space station.

Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime - Volume 5 - The Diamond Moon by Paul Preuss

For reasons lost to the mists of time, I don't have the middle three books of the series, but I do have the concluding book, which does a pretty good job of explaining the middle books and wrapping up the series as a whole. An ancient conspiracy has been plotting for centuries to find out what's going on around Jupiter, but only recently has humanity developed the technology to go there in person and investigate. The lesser-known moon of Amalthea has been emitting more energy than it absorbs from Jupiter or the sun, which should be impossible. This is actually based on real-world observations of Amalthea, though as far as we know it's a natural--if not fully understood--phenomenon. Within the context of the story, it's clearly NOT a natural phenomenon, as other signs indicate it's most likely extra-terrestrial of some sort. Now Agent Sparta must discover what's going on, what's at stake, and who's trying to benefit from or sabotage her mission.

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

Disclaimer: This Sunday Morning Book Thread is dedicated to Weasel, for keeping the torch lit for all of us. Torches should remain 10 feet away from books at all times.

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-26-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]