Trafficked Girl, Zoe Patterson

   I don't know what I was expecting when I picked up this book. You can buy it on Amazon.com. The book is not very professional. It reads like an amateur wrote it. Maybe someone reading what I just wrote might jump to the conclusion that I'm putting it down or degrading it somehow. Maybe in most cases if I said the same words that would an accurate assessment. But this is the exception to the rule. The somewhat disorganized method of narration of inter-lapping flashbacks gives it an authentic weight that would be absent in a more professionally polished narration.
   I had no problem with reading this book. I never thought at any point that it was boring or had any significant problems with grammar or spelling which often goes hand-in-hand with amateurish books.
   This is the true story of a horribly abused girl. Sexually abused by her grandfather. Beaten, mentally abused, isolated from her family by her mother, she tries to escape. But when social services finally decides to act on her behalf, they make her life much worse.
   Zoe is put into a group home where she is targeted by two young women in their teens for sexual exploitation. They bully and force her into selling her body to men for sex. She never consents to any of this. Nor does she receive money for any of it. Alcohol becomes her escape.
   As she gets older, she is given welfare support, but she has no idea how to take care of herself. Instead of using her welfare payments for things like heating and other necessities, she uses all of it to buy alcohol.
   Eventually there is a light at the end of this tunnel. She makes a good friend who becomes her first true friend. She finds an attorney who helps Zoe get compensation for their terrible negligence. The book ends in an optimistic note. Maybe she'll live happily ever after. But of course that's not really how life works.
   My sister and I both went through the foster care system. It's safer to say that my sister's experience is closer to that of Zoe's than my own. When I was very young, I also asked adults for help to escape from my mother. An aunt who told me about it said that I screamed and cried after I had stayed with her for awhile, at the point when she tried to give me back. I would have been five. My mother exposed us to sexual and physical abuse. She and my older sister both subjected me to sexual abuse and bondage. My sister was exploited by my mother's frequently changed boyfriends. My mother was hooked on hard drugs.
  I had been told by my mother all the bad things about foster care. So, when all those bad things she talked about happened to me, I figured that they were normal. I only once had some sexual issues. But there was some violence. I was exploited for hard and heavy farm labor and never compensated for my time. So, I do have a personal inkling as to how awful government care can be. But in no way am I trying to say that that was as bad as being raped all the time.
   I do know what it's like to be constantly told that I cannot do anything with my life. Well, piss on all those people. I got my degree. Now I teach English at a middle sized university. What are those people doing? Some of them are probably dead. Others are probably still stuck in their trailers. Now who's laughing?

Bearers of the Black Staff, Terry Brooks

   When I was much much younger, I ate up Terry Brooks books like they were on fire. I devoured them. They were among my favorites. I read The Sword of Shannara years before I got around to reading The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit in my late teens. I probably read everything he wrote up to a certain date at around that time. Then, when everything had been read, I stopped paying attention to what he was publishing. Bearers of the Black Staff is the first book of his that I've read since that period in my life.
   What can I say? What expectations did I have when I picked it up. I know myself well enough that I did not have great expectations. My tastes have changed a lot. I did not want to have great expectations and then be let down.
  I will say that the book was good. Not very good. Maybe even closer to OK than good. The story is set 500 years after a series I haven't read, and is supposed to take place before The Sword of Shannara. I got this from reading reviews.
  The story is post apocalyptic. Mankind has had its big war. Everything was destroyed in the big war. There is nothing left except for a massive wasteland and a sheltered valley protected by a magical barrier. That magical barrier's best before date has expired. People can now leave the valley. More importantly, a large troll army can invade the valley. The people within the valley have their petty conflicts and cannot focus on protecting their own interests. Even worse, there are powerful-ish leaders of the Hawk religion who are actively inhibiting their ability to respond to the existential threat.
   It took me awhile to get into the book. I liked it well enough, but I don't feel motivated enough to pick up the next book in the series. Brooks is legendary, and I have tons of respect for him. But I think the days of fantasy novel reading obsession are behind me.

The Reckoning, John Grisham

  The Reckoning, was on the NYT best sellers' list. I decided to give it a go. A Google Books review reads, "#1 bestselling author John Grisham's The Reckoning is his most powerful, surprising, and suspenseful thriller yet." If this is his most powerful, most surprising and suspenseful thriller yet, then this may very well be the last of anything he wrote I will ever read. It's fine. He's rich. He doesn't need my stamp of approval. I did not read the entire book. Life is too short. There are too many other books that I want to read. I made it to the end of part one. I felt a great deal of closure when the main character was executed and I decided to leave it at that. There were a number of reasons for that.
So, John Grisham is an extremely successful author. His book,
   I thought that this book was dull. It did give me a look into the world of privilege. He built up the main character, Pete Banning, only to have him executed for the crime of murdering a pastor. Pete Banning was a war hero and a fairly wealthy farmer. He had slaves who loved him. By the end of part one of the novel, it's made evident that in all likelihood, he got revenge for something the pastor had done to his wife: maybe a rape or something along those lines.
   In this day and age of Trump, where everyone feels emboldened to be openly racist, I did not really like the tones used for black people. I didn't really like the throwback language. It's one thing to use these kinds of terms in times when people didn't know any better. But this is 2019. Grisham should know better. What kind of man is he? It almost strikes me as he might have been the kind of guy to say, 'Hey, some black people liked being slaves,' or something to that effect. That was a huge turn off for me. If that's not what he meant to do, he should have been a lot more careful.
   I definitely feel like I wasted time reading this book. Folks in Bookaholics mentioned that I ought not to judge Grisham by this one book of his and that they didn't care for it. Well, maybe one day. But I have so many hundreds of other books to read before I crack open another of his.

Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

  Ayn Rand is a very famous name. Over and over, she is connected to conservatism. I am a liberal. Therefore, I expected not to like this book. Due to it's length of over 900 pages, I thought it would be a particularly painful book to slog through. This first thought, that of being a very long book and therefore a long torture, proved to be false. For the most part, it was not a torture. In fact, I found it to be a real page turner. In many ways, it really is the antithesis of who I am politically. This becomes increasingly clear as I neared the ending. I have even seen the video where that idiot, Jordan Peterson, tears her down. Jordan Peterson is famous today. But I would be surprised if people continue to talk about him 40 years after his death. Jordan Peterson is a kind of joke played on gullible people. Ayn Rand is an excellent writer, regardless of where I lay my viewpoints on this book.
   A computer virus or trojan is an interesting thing. It is like a thought or an idea that a computer shares with another computer. As a result, the computer becomes damaged. Perhaps the information of the user becomes compromised. Regardless, what if this sort of virus was possible for a human being? A human being can cough on another, have sex with another, touch another, or even prick one's skin on some innocuous looking thorn, and pass all kinds of viruses and bacteria into the system which may go on to damage and possibly even kill the victim. But is it possible for a human being to be reprogrammed by a book and become damaged?
   So, for instance, certain books have had their major effects on me. One of these is a poem by Emily Jane Brontë called "Remembrance.""Remembrance" is a poem written to honor the death of someone Brontë loved. The key lines for me are as follows:

 

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,

And even Despair was powerless to destroy,

Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,

Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

In a time when I suffered from severe depression, reading this poem over and over again somehow brought some healing to me and a great deal of thought: what if life could be enjoyed without joy? Or another way to look at it: life can be worth living without happiness. This line of thought eventually lead me to believe that the pursuit of happiness is a kind of blind ambition. It is not that I am unhappy. It's just that I can move on from this idea and not worry too much about it. It had a great deal to do with who I became, and who I am today. In some ways, it was an inoculant against many of the ideas present in this book.
   With all that I have said, there are a number of absurd ideas in this book that are worth discussing. The first is the idea of the ideal woman. Who is she? We are really only presented with three female characters throughout these 900+ pages: Dominique, Catherine, and Mrs. Keating. Dominique is a haughty female. Her first encounter with sex is a rape. It is a rape that ultimately forces her to fall in love with the books main character; its hero, Howard Roark. After falling in love with him, she tries to punish him and to make herself suffer by marrying the wrong kind of inferior men. The first was Peter Keating. The second was Gail Wynand. In both cases, her body was theirs. With Peter Keating, she allows him sexual interaction with her anytime he wants, or never if he wants. She is merely a kind of doll for him. A doll cannot say yes or no. It can only lie on the bed and allow itself to be used. It has no feeling or ability to say no. Of course, for her, it is her choice to be like that. She refuses to allow her personality into Keating's house. She does everything for him professionally: she lines up the customers, hosts dinner parties, makes the right kind of friends. But she herself she denies. It is a kind of punishment. But for what? Perhaps she is some kind of masochist. But she is not the only one. Both Mrs. Keating (the mother) and Catherine both show similar signs of simply being support for the men they are connected to. Feminist critic, Susan Miller, wrote in the 70s that Rand was a traitor to her own gender. Apparently, there are some other ideas, that Dominique had essentially invited Roark to rape her, and therefore it was not a true rape. But Dominique even states later that Roark had raped her, and she becomes self destructive.
   The main antagonist in The Fountainhead is Ellsworth Toohey. He is essentially considered an inferior man. He is inferior physically. He is not strong. He barely survived childhood. But he is intelligent. He is a sponge. Rand says of him that he has nothing original to give. Due to his inferiority, he wants to bring the whole of civilization down to his level. He uses his power and intellect to put the average person with no real abilities at the top and destroy those, like Roark, who are individualists and essentially better than everyone else.
   For me, the most interesting character is Peter Keating. Peter Keating is the foil in this story. He has no real talent of his own, according to Rand. Yet, he manages to get to the top of the heap for years. He is the most celebrated and successful architect of the novel. Yet, his best work is that which has been heavily influenced by Roark's designs. He hates Roark throughout most of the book for being able to live and enjoy life without the approval of others. He is the first to marry Dominique. In the end, though, he loses Dominique and his popularity.
   Most of the characters do not go through any kind of real change. The exception is probably Toohey's niece, whose ego is ultimately destroyed by Toohey. However, while her essence is essentially destroyed, The Fountainhead leaves off when Keating is going through a kind of personal renaissance. He has gone back to his original love for painting. Roark looks at those paintings and declares that it is too late for Keating. But what is too late? Keating, though not as wealthy as before, is still quite rich. He does not need his artwork to sell in order to succeed. He only needs to paint for himself. In fact, when he paints, it's the only time he can really escape his unhappiness. Further, when he goes to trial to speak about Roark, he no longer cares what other people think of him. He is his own man and still evolving.
   Roark is a caricature. He has all the depth of a cardboard figure. He does not change. He does not evolve. He is already basically perfect, from Rand's perspective. But he is fundamentally wrong about the individual being better alone than working together with others. It is true that sometimes when there are too many cooks, the broth is spoiled. But it is also true that a single bad cook can spoil the broth. He has an artistic integrity which he refuses to subordinate to the wants of others. The others end up wanting his work. Society changes, not him.
   He ends up destroying an installation of government housing projects because he did not like what others had done to his original design. The jury ends up letting him go because of a very long speech about how the individual is more important than the collective. It is the perfect anti-communist speech. But his idea that true leaders do not need others is absurd. Roark has to follow the laws of physics. He is a follower of material sciences. He does not learn how to make plastic in order to evolve as an architect. He watches the work of others and creates from the new inspiration. That is as it should be. He depends on the work of engineers before him, and physicists, to let him use the science of structure to make sure that they do not fall down for a lack of strength. He must stand on their shoulders. Rand often makes mention of him shunning the work of the previous architects: where the form and facades of columns become unnecessary to the structure, but still employed for the sake of art. Yet he is as dependent on the laws of nature as any of them, and he is a follower in this regard and has nothing of his own to add.  He is a designer who follows the same laws as everyone else. He is not a scientist who is discovering the laws of the universe.
   Ironically, I can see parts of myself in Roark's character. Perhaps they are flaws, or maybe they're strengths. Perhaps there is a little Roark in everyone, and this is the reason for the appeal. Perhaps it exists as a sort of "I'm the oddball rejected by my society because I'm actually better than everyone else and that's why they hate me." It's a kind of sour grapes approach to one's ego. A way of saying it's the fault of everyone else. I have learned one thing: it is easier to change myself than it is to change the world. Not changing and not adapting is in fact the sign of an absence of intelligence. It is saying "I don't have to change because I'm better than everyone else" rather than "How can I maintain myself, be who I am, and still fit into the culture and expectations of my society?" I wrote to my friend about the concept of common sense that it is 'usually inaccurate and unimaginative.'
   Rand is a great writer. The Fountainhead is a great book. It is fun to read. The philosophy which Rand extols, and to which the book is a vehicle for its oration, is well illustrated even if it is short sighted and foolish. Roark is not the hero. Keating is the hero. But she ends the book before we get to see the rebirth of his character as an independent man who finds his love in art. He is on the verge of becoming his own man. If there is a real hero, it is Peter Keating. But Rand kills the book before that can happen. I can't help but wonder if Rand knew it.

The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories

The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories has an impressive amount of reading matter for the low low price of just 99 cents. I am currently reading story 7 of 26. Already I have forgotten some of them. So, I thought I'd build out my blog post from here with what I remember of what I've already read. What's in The Steampunk MEGAPACK: 26 Modern and Classic Steampunk Stories? It is a mixture of classic and modern. At least thus far, the longer pieces are classic and in the public domain (for instance, the novella "The Whisperer in the Darkness" by H. P. Lovecraft) while the modern pieces, thus far, are short stories.

I will skip "Midnight at Valdosta's" and "The Case of the Peculiar Safe." I do remember a few things about "Midnight at Valdosta's." But I didn't really get the sense of a story out of it. It was more of an impression of something. Like it's a piece of a story or just the beginning of one.

The Acquisition of Mandrakes and Assistants, Jillian Venters

"The Acquisition of Mandrakes and Assistants" by Jillian Venters was the first remarkable story that I ran into.

The assistant is tired of the tiresome professor, and decides to try on a different occupation: taking care of a child. That child happens to belong to a twisted many who enjoys tormenting children. She rescues the boy, burns down the house with everyone locked inside, and goes back to work as an assistant. I really enjoyed this story.

The Whisperer in Darkness, H. P. Lovecraft

"The Whisperer in Darkness" is, as already mentioned, a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. H. P. Lovecraft is a writer whom I've always wanted to like ever since I heard his name mentioned by one of my favorite pulp fiction writers, Robert E. Howard, famous for his Conan stories. Even when I was younger, I found my eyes very nearly bleeding with effort to maintain attention to his books. I am no different now. I am perhaps more disciplined. But I really had to prop open my eyes to keep going. I have since discovered he was a horrible person as a racist. So, I'm not as motivated as before to like his work. What I like about his work is the mythology that he creates. The ideas about extra terrestrials and old dark magic and science from the cold planet, Pluto, are pretty great. There have been many who have brought to life his ideas through their artwork. But the writing itself is onerous.

Most of the story centers around a character, Albert N. Wilmarth, an assistant professor of English at a university. He's made a penpal of Henry Akeley, who lives in a house on the edge of an area haunted by creatures from this planet of advanced and sinister aliens. He has recordings, photographs, and anecdotes about the creatures sent to him. The sinister aliens repress knowledge of their presence through terror and alliances with humans who assist them. At last, Henry Akeley is compromised. He invites Wilmarth to his abode, but also to bring all of the material he had sent including the audio recording, the photos, and even the letters that had been sent. Clearly, at this point, there is a problem. But Wilmarth follows the instructions and all the materials are lost when he flees the house the first night of his visit. I guess it's not a bad story. But I just cannot get into H. P. Lovecraft's method of telling his tale. It is boring. He is entirely too much 'tell' and not enough 'show' when it comes to storytelling.

Wikipedia writes, "In addition to being a textbook example of Lovecraft's characteristically non-occult brand of horror, in an age when the genre consisted almost entirely of ghosts, vampires, goblins, and similar traditional tales, "Whisperer" is one of the earliest literary appearances of the now-cliché concept of an isolated brain (although the alien brain case is not transparent as with later cinematic examples of this trope).

"The story retains some seemingly supernatural elements, such as its claim that the alien fungi, although visible to the naked eye and physically tangible, do not register on photographic plates and instead produce an image of the background absent the creature (an impossibility by any known laws of optics, though a trait commonly attributed to vampires), although the story does mention that this is possibly due to the creatures' fungoid and alien structure which works differently from any known physical organism. It is stated that the electrons of these fungoid aliens possess a different vibrational frequency that would require the development of a novel technique by a chemist in order to record their image."

So, that's the issue with Lovecraft. His work is of a pioneering nature. So, it is important. The ideas are in fact very good. But as a storyteller, I just have a horrible time with the style of the stories. I ought to point out that the style does seem cliche with his period. But who sets the cliche? Was it really his fault? That story construction of, "Here's an unbelievable story. I'm very smart and educated. I didn't believe it at first. But then..." is so tired and uninteresting. And constantly, "on the verge of terror from ..." isn't much better.

The Brass Goggle Factory Worker, John Leavitt

"The Brass Goggle Factory Worker" by John Leavitt was quite interesting. It is flawed due to some poor editing and proofreading. There are many grammar, spelling, and wrong word errors to this tale throughout. At times it is distracting and outright annoying. But inside the story itself is quite interesting.

This story could have taken place somewhere inside the universe of George Orwell's legendary dystopian masterpiece, 1984. It doesn't have that depth. There isn't quite the cold chill horror or brilliance of Orwell's masterpiece. But it's just a short story.

The Tailed Men, Arthur O Friel

"The Tailed Men" is set in the Amazon Forest. A white man is tortured before being returned to his friends. His friends decide to go back into the forest to get revenge against the race. Quite beyond belief, they are able to find the very tribe responsible for his death and the enact their revenge by dressing up as a monster and slaughtering the men and women and setting the village to fire. In their murderous frenzy, they discover that the tribe possibly mates with the local monkeys, resulting in these crossbreeds of half men half monkeys from which the men with tails are concocted.

I have a hard time understanding the connection between steampunk and this particular story.

The Impossible Mister Lapin, Peter Wordworth

I have no idea who Peter Wordworth is. And, for at least the first few page results from Google, nor does Google. I enjoyed this story.

A man pursues mad science in an effort to learn how to turn himself into a rabbit. By doing his research, he is able to discover the secret. In so doing, learning the secret language of the magical universe, he becomes half rabbit and half man. Why not?

With his newfound expertise in the occult, he becomes a kind of investigator into weird happenings. For awhile, this means uncovering silly attempts or deceptions, until another less successful than himself accidentally transforms himself into a gold statue and brings to life a gold statue into a boar which terrorizes locals. He is able to solve the mystery and stop the boar using symbols.

It was a fun short story. I don't know anything else about Wordworth.

The War Effort, Austin H. Williams

Austin H. Williams gets results on Google. He has a number of stories in these types of anthologies and some kind of fiction magazine called Steampunk Tales. So, he's gotten his work around a bit.

A great warrior, Timo Malthusset, falls in love with a woman in a religious order. He dedicates himself to her and follows her, completely ignorant about the religious order, called the Messengers, to which he is devoting himself.

She leads him to an underground world where he is promptly knocked unconscious and turned into a half man half machine under the control of some kind of crystal embedded in his skull. He discovers that his beloved lady is a cannibal and that the religion is some kind of super advanced super sadistic culture which eats the bodies of the dead and has a small army of half men half machine slaves. He is able to wiggle himself into falling to the ground, smashing the crystals on his head on impact(I guess that no helmet or some kind of protective casing design never occurred to the designer). Now he is a super powerful half man half machine who goes about killing the engineer, Garum, and the woman whom he had dedicated himself before running away.

Ok, it wasn't so bad. But Williams could have done more with the story. Perhaps he is.

Herbert West: Reanimator, H. P. Lovecraft

For the first time, I have found a story by Lovecraft that I enjoyed. It was fairly well written. It's the story of a mad scientist and his sidekick who are on a mission to reanimate a corpse. It isn't terribly unlike Shelley's Frankenstein. Though, instead of reanimating the dead with electricity, a freshly made corpse without too much decay is chemically reanimated.

The mad scientist sub genre is one of endless amusement. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Jekyll, are all very interesting characters. Dr. West is nowhere near as famous as those others, but he is definitely within their ranks, albeit less infamous.

Dr. West succeeds in his quest. For the most part, he is able to destroy what he creates. But in the end, those whom he failed to destroy end up forming a small troop who literally tear him to pieces. There really isn't much to this story. But it is enjoyable. As I read the story late at night, I felt entertained from the first to the last page. Finally, a Lovecraft story I enjoyed.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain

Mark Twain is definitely among my favorite American writers of that century. I have read at least four of his novels as well as a collection of short stories.

I don't think I would have ever read this novel if not for the fact that it was in this compilation of so called 'steampunk' books. I keep having to go back to the definition of steampunk to see how it fits in. Well, it's a book about late 19th century technology and philosophy going back to around 6th century England. Fortunately, everyone speaks modern English in this story.

Mark Twain's description of the time is a bit of a mix between the impossible and reality. Magic does not exist, though people believe in it. Superstition is ever more powerful in his rendition of the 6th century. People believe in absurd stories quite easily.

The main character, Hank, mysteriously gets whisked to King Arthur's period and is quickly captured by a knight. His knowledge of an imminent total eclipse is enough so that he makes people believe that he has caused the eclipse, and that it is not just a natural phenomenon.

He is also fairly rational, which gives him advantages over the local population. When he has to face off with the magical Merlin, it becomes apparent that Merlin is a fraud. He has no power at all. He only pretends about magic. So, it is easy for Hank, a man of some science and engineering, to make people believe that he is powerful in a magical sense. What is magic but an appearance of the impossible?

Eventually, he manages to manufacture a number of technologies. Everything from gunpowder to laying down some telecommunications. He is able to set up quite a bit. Much of his criticism of Arthur's day I find is relevant today. He talks about how classes are treated differently. While the punitive punishments are certainly not the same today as they were in his America, let alone 6th Century 'England'. For instance, he talks about how a rich or titled lord can basically kill a man or woman without any issue, a poor person so much as scratching a rich man is risking a quick death or a slow lingering death in a horrible prison. These extremes don't exist today, but there are similarities. For instance, scratch a Ferrari on the road, and the cost of the repair will be greater than a  poor person's car. If the man in the Ferrari kills someone and it's their fault, the insurance will pay for it and life will go on for the most part.

There is an interesting tug of war between reason and superstition. Eventually, superstition wins. While Hank is away in France, the whole of England falls apart due to war, and the Dark Ages church takes over. There is a war where many knights die, but it is a war between tens of thousands of knights vs a small band of boys. The battle is largely won, but when Hank goes out to see if he can help some of the dead, he is injured. Further, the sickness which comes with war, of all the decomposing bodies, eventually overwhelms his resistance. The Dark Ages take over the Age of Enlightenment which he tries to ushur in. Surely, there is some similarity between my contemporary society. In these days, there is a huge growth in strength among those who don't believe in science and those who do. Hank believes that once people are educated, it will overwhelm those who cling to ignorance. At some point in our current, recent history, surely we have felt the same way. But the tide is shifting to that of ignorance once again: people don't believe in 5+/- earth, or the round earth, or climate change, or any of these things which are well established by experts. They would rather believe an old book.Will we ever change? Or will this tug of war between reason and superstition always exist?

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal, by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Raven" and a few other of Poe's poems are some of my favorite pieces of writing. While I like some of his short stories, there's nothing to equal "The Raven" in my opinion. Of the stories of his that I've read, this was among my least favorite. I am not even sure if he wrote it. In fact, it seems like someone else wrote it and he's commenting on it. However, it's possible that he wrote it to be a hoax and then treated it as a hoax itself. It's something of an ironic approach.

This isn't the first story of its kind that I've read, nor is it the best. I much preferred Cyrano de Bergerac's story, "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon," which is similar in many ways.

The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It's funny, to look at the cover of this book because in the story, the only white woman is the girlfriend of the narrator, Edward Malone, before he goes off on his adventure to the lost world. Also, there is no T-Rex. The worst creatures they run into are giant toads which hop on their victims with their larger than elephant sized asses, squishing them to death. Way to go book cover illustrator with your horribly inaccurate portrayal!

Edward Malone is in love with a woman who wants a hero for a husband. So, he goes off on this adventure with some professors and an adventurer to see if Professor Challenger's description of this lost world was true and accurate.

The geography is a bit of a puzzle to me. There seems to be a rather significant land barrier between this lost world and the rest of the world. First, they manage to get across due to a tree being close to a rift. Once that tree is gone, they don't know how to build a tree to get back across. Of course, that's quite amazing considering that there are supposed to be two very intelligent academics, one adventurer, and the reporter/narrator. I suppose that they have no engineering ideas among them to help them escape.

Over a period of time, they discover the pterodactyls, a stegosaurus, a gigantic toad, Iguanodon, Allosaurus, and Megalosaurus, and some other prehistoric animals. They get attacked by a tribe of missing link human-like apes, but manage to escape with some red skinned Indians (Native Americans).

Racism: as is often the case, this book has a few moments. The one black character is a 'black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent.' I do believe that he's paying the character compliments in his mind. But it's certainly not at all a compliment.

There are two 'half breeds' which are described. One of whom is said to have 'the vice of curiosity.' However, later on, that same vice is described as 'the bravery of the scientific mind... It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.' That is to say, the curiosity of the 'half breed' is a vice, but in the white men, it's celebrated and makes them brave. Oddly enough, there are not many pages to separate the seemingly obvious contradiction. Later on, the 'red Indians' are also poorly described. Fortunately, the racism in these  descriptions is limited to a few pages only.

I did enjoy the book, despite the silliness and racism.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton

I had wanted to enjoy this story. Surely it is meant to be a comedy. It is about a bunch of policemen who are recruited to infiltrate an anarchists' group. Ironically, the man who recruits all of them is the leader of the group, and all of the members of the anarchists' group are policemen.

I think that the story is meant to be a comedy. Perhaps I did laugh. But I'm not really sure. I was disappointed with the story. 

A Kingdom Strange--The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, James Horn

   As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm doing research into the beginning of the English colonies in America. I came up with A Kingdom Strange--The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. I found this book to be pretty useful and easy to read. You can find it on Amazon.com.

A lot of the other literature on these events made it difficult for me to make a clear timeline. Fortunately, Horn does include a fairly straight forward timeline towards the end of the book. I would have liked it if he had included months and days when those details were known. But he didn't. Again, it's better than the other sources I have found.

Oddly enough, in the beginning I believe Horn spells Sir Raleigh's name right, and then starts to call him Ralegh. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he always spelt the name wrong. What a goof, though. Did he not have an editor or proofreader?

The Birth of the Nation, Mrs. Roger A. Pryor

The Birth of the Nation is certainly not the type of book I would normally read: a history about the beginning of the English colonization of Virginia and the United States. However, I have a project to write a shortened version of the establishment of the United States. Gutenberg.org had this volume and so I read it as speedily as I could.

Inside there is a tale of drama and death. Topics like Pocahontas and her romance with Captain John Smith are explained.

The book is not written in a clearly chronological order. Some dates are given. But they are not always clear when the story shifts, which has made using it for research something of a challenge. But there are some nice descriptions within which definitely give the reader an idea of how hard life was, and how hard the people trying to settle Jamestown were.

Pryor writes, "After Lord Delaware landed with his accessions to the colony, 900 persons had been sent from England to Virginia, of whom 700 had perished.(292) In 1619 it was estimated that 2540 immigrants had landed at Jamestown, of whom 1640 had died." That is the hell of a mortality rate.

The men who were sent were greedy, violent, and lazy, to name just a few of their attributes. If not for Pocahontas, I find it somewhat likely that the precarious hold onto this piece of land might have been lost. Although, no doubt England would have established posts with or without Jamestown. She wasn't about to give up.

The Fall of Gondolin, J.R.R. Tolkien

The two novels, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, are among the most memorable and loved reads I've had in my lifetime. They are simply magical. I imagine this is the same experience for many millions of his fans over the decades since he published his amazing tale. There have been a few other of his stories that I have read and tried to read. "Smith of Wootton Major" and "Leaf by Niggle" are a few that come to mind that have that similar magic, but not the epic majesty. The Silmarillion I tried to read years ago, but ultimately grew too weary of.

This book is said to be the last of Christopher Tolkien's efforts to publish his father's unpublished work. Some might say that he simply took advantage of his father's fame. But I got a sense of his real devotion, love, and respect for his father. He seems lost not in establishing his own legacy, but preserving as much of his father's as he could have. So, I have a lot of respect for that. He also gives some insight into the character of his father and his passion for his own work; and even the frustration of getting his work published due to the high cost of paper shortly after the conclusion of WWII.

The Fall of Gondolin is not one of the works that I would call magical. In fact, it is missing much. It is not a complete tale, but rather some fragments. What gave The Lord of the Rings and The Hobit so much magic was the fact that the main characters were so common. They could have been the runts of the classroom or the little guys that no one could take notice of. Yet, they do what the most noble and awesome of warrior and wizard could not: defeat the mightiest villain and avoid corruption.

The Fall of Gondolin is well written. The first fragment reminds me of something that might have come out of Arthurian legend. The second has some magical descriptions in it. But in the end, the main character throughout, Tuor, is an extra ordinary super macho alpha male type character that was so popular with characters like Tarzan and Conan and their like. It's good. But it's just not really what I look for in what I read. There's also a lot of superfluous stuff in the last 1/3 of the book: character lists, for example.

I came very close to putting The Fall of Gondolin down to remain unread a number of times. I probably would not have read it if not for the high ratings I found online for it. There is some serious quality to it. But I will probably not recommend it to anyone.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for some of the plot elements: in some ways, it's the story of what happens to a culture that builds too great of a wall between itself and the world as the world is consumed by an all too powerful force. When Tuor discovers the city, hidden in part by magic, he tells the king to participate in the fight against evil. But the king does not want it, and ignores the problem. Eventually, once the other cities have fallen to the evil Morgoth, Morgoth spares no pain to discover the hidden city.

I'm no longer a huge fan of the type of story where there is this caricature of good vs evil with no real insight as to the motivation that burns in the evil adversary. I wonder if I would be as spell bound by The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit as I once was.

Dark Carnival, Ray Bradbury

   I can't recall where I picked up a copy of Ray Bradbury's collection of short weird fiction, Dark Carnival. In any case, I must say that I don't recall ever having read any of his fiction. This, despite his name being legendary in the golden age of science fiction. Despite my associating him with science fiction, here are a few lines from Wikipedia that describe his fiction:

Bradbury was once described as a "Midwest surrealist" and is often labeled a science-fiction writer, which he described as "the art of the possible." Bradbury resisted that categorization, however:

First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time -- because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.^[35]

Certainly, there is nothing of science fiction in this collection of short stories. I would classify it as weird fiction. I am not an authority on anything except my opinion, of course.

   I'm not going to go over each of the short stories. I'm only going to mention the few that stood out for me.
   Death and the undead often come up as subjects or characters throughout many of the stories. There is a vampire who doesn't like to be a monster like the rest of his relatives. There is a story, "Uncle Einar", about psychic possession where a girl, to prove how awful she is, possesses a relative hated by the family until he kills himself. All the time he is looking for her to help him, completely unaware that it is she who has haunted him, leading him to his own extinction. There's another story, "There Was an Old Woman", of a woman who refuses to die. When death comes to her and separates her from her body, she manages to retake it from the funeral home which has already gutted and embalmed her. She has her blood replaced in her veins. She then goes home and from then on refuses to answer the door (perhaps to make sure that Death does not trick her again).
   The final story which stood out for me is "The Next in Line", which is about a couple who go to Mexico for a holiday. The woman is haunted by the tour of the unburied: the poor rent plots for a year but cannot afford a second year. So, the bodies are exhumed and left in a kind of cavern, standing. There is a series of macabre descriptions of the dead: one woman who is buried alive. Another who dies giving birth along with the baby. All of them held together and stiff with wire. She begs her husband to not leave her there. But, he refuses. On his way back to Texas, he seems quite happy that she is no longer beside her.
   If you're looking for a series of good horror tales, this is not a bad choice at all.

The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani

   This book was among many from a pile of books that were international NY Times Bestsellers for 2018. It's also a winner of a Prix Goncourt prize, whatever that is. I do believe it's a translation. So, it's another effort to get into contemporary literature. "Insanely good," is stamped at the top of the cover from Kate Hamer. I guess so. Insane is perhaps a good word, but the word good and insane in this case do not go together.

   I almost wish I hadn't read this book. I don't know what I was expecting. The perfect nanny is perfect except for the fact that she kills the children in her care. This is shown in the beginning. Slowly, we're shown the severe issues that built up Louise, the main character. A bad childhood, a bad marriage, a bad child, a bad set of debts and debtors, and a bad job, all somehow end in a wasted woman doing something terrible.

   When I say I wish I hadn't read the book, it's for this reason: I just felt queasy, uneasy, and very uncomfortable from beginning to end. Almost like I was going to take a bath in someone else's cold bathwater. That feeling never goes away. The tension doesn't snap at the end as it seems to lose its elasticity.

   Imagine Mary Poppins: the perfect nanny. Then, she falls apart and kills the Banks' kids. But, you see that in the opening scene of the movie. You know that after all the magic and the fun and dancing and singing and walks in magical places and pigeons, that Mary Poppins has already been seen killing these kids and you know that you will get to revisit the killing in gorier details at the end. That's what this book is like. Enjoy.

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

   I have heard the title of this book from time to time over the last year. I didn't hear many opinions on it. I just heard someone ask others' opinion of it. One of the things I want to do this year is read a few more very recent tales. Mostly I love to let time act as a literary filter. But, I have decided to change this very old habit of mine this year. I don't know if anyone actually reads my blog: but if someone does, let it be known that spoilers will exist.

   The story covers the life of a girl, nicknamed Kya. The girl lives alone and is intensely lonely. She's been abandoned by everyone: her parents, her siblings. She is all alone. A few times people try to capture her as a child in order to take better care of her, but she manages to evade them all. She meets a few men, falls in love with one who leaves her, and falls in love with the idea of life with another before he chooses another woman for his wife.

   Owens' timeline shifts back and forth between Kya's life growing up, and the mystery surrounding a young man's death. The mystery is not entirely resolved until the very end when it is shown that Kya was in fact the person responsible for the death of the young man. The motive is established: he attempts to rape her and beats her badly enough that it takes her more than a month before she is fully physically recovered. But she constantly lives with the fear of him coming upon her and further visiting violence on her.

   During the trial, it seems quite absurd that she is suspected at all for the murder of the young man. This was no accidental murder: it was coldly calculated. She had an established alibi and witnesses. Timing was a major issue. It would seem nearly impossible for her to have done it at all. But it is not until the last chapter, when she has died and her partner has discovered a hidden trap door with her secrets hiding underneath, that it is revealed that she indeed was the author of the murder.

   I cannot imagine a sheriff or any decent investigator taking the whole affair to a court. Considering the witnesses and the alibi in favor of her not having done it vs. the witnesses of her having been in the area at the time would have made it difficult for a reasonable prosecutor to make the decision of taking on such a case.

   Color: for almost the entire book, I thought Kya was black. That is, until Owens described her as a white girl. I guess I don't know southern accents very well, so maybe that had something to do with me seeing her as black when she wasn't. I thought she came from a poor black family. Also, she associated with a black family better than any of the white families. But then, suddenly, she's white. I wonder if Owens did all of this intentionally: did she try to make me think that she was black and then suddenly, near to the end, revealed that she was white? If so, why? What's the point? If she hadn't meant to deceive me, why mention the color of the girl so suddenly and concretely?

   Another thing that jumped out at me was the character of Kya. She's been alone for so long, yet seems to have a better comprehension of human behavior than someone having lived in isolation ought to have had. Further, she goes from being barely literate to an academic superstar. She has been gifted with paints and canvas and becomes an expert in them, all by herself. Becoming an expert in anything in such isolation seems almost an absurd proposition.

   I guess, in a book which does not really exist within the framework of science fiction, or horror, and attempts a semblance of realism, ends up being scrutinized for realism in a way that I don't apply to works of the other genres.

   All of that said, I think that this novel is quite a remarkable achievement for a debut novel. It was very easy to read and enjoyable.

A Case of Two Cities, Qiu Xiaolong

This is the fourth book from Qiu Xiaolong involving his star character, Chief Inspector Chen Cao. I have greatly enjoyed the series. There are a few things that bothered me about this volume. In perhaps the first 1/3-1/2 of the novel, I was bothered by bad grammar and bad grammar choices. By bad grammar, I mean run on sentences and sentence fragments. Bad grammar choices involved far too many commas creating a jerky narrative. Together, these two issues almost made me hit the delete on my Kindle. One of the style choices I didn't like in the first three books was the inclusion of poetry lines jammed together like prose, separated by the forward slash /. I suppose he might have saved a few pages and a few trees by doing so. But in an electronic copy, what's the point? In any case, that was improved upon perhaps 50%+ of the time. That is to say, in volume four, maybe greater than 50% of the time the lines of poetry were on their own lines as poetry ought to be displayed.

The story itself is otherwise fairly well told. But, while not really an issue I guess, I didn't get a very good look into China. Most of the story takes place in the US. There was the issue of corrupt people stealing Chinese public funds or taking advantage of Chinese laws meant to stimulate the economy to give themselves leverage they needed to create vast sums of personal wealth, in order to build luxurious lives for themselves in the US before their corruption caught up with them.

Chen is given 'the emperor's sword' to deal with going after Xiao. But he doesn't get far, and there is a great deal of risk to him. One detective who may have been assigned to the same file was killed. The first person he questions has information about Chen before Chen has had a chance to question him. The target becomes too dangerous for him, so the next person he goes after for questioning he gets the leverage of some pornographic photos with another official, Jiang. She ends up dead in short order. Then, Chen is sent to the US to get him out of the way or to make it possible to get a roundabout inroad towards the defecting Xiao. But he goes not for the investigation, but as a special envoy. Perhaps a kind of undercover operation where everyone knows who he is, but not exactly why he is there. This includes himself. Someone tries to kill him, but gets someone else instead.

In the end, he attempts to thwart Jiang's escape to Canada, but the outcome is left out. The end of the narrative has many loose strings. I don't object to that entirely. But I suspect many readers might. Loose strings are easier to pick up later than a narrative which is carefully and surgically sutured to have no loose ends.

I'm sure I'll get into book 5. My theory is that this book had a different editor than the first four. I tried to find out by looking up the book on Amazon and Goodreads. But getting that information isn't so easy. I'm sure if I spent more time I could eventually figure it out. But how important is it? I'll just leave my guess here.

Goodreads first three or four reviews had similar experiences to my own: enjoyed the first three novels. This novel is of inferior quality.

Cheyanne wrote, "But this case has two many murders, with victims and killers we barely get to know. We also get barely a glimpse of several recurring characters."Shabbeer Hassan wrote, "A rather disappointing book in the Inspector Chen series, with a weak story (as usual) but much weaker character motivations and horrid pastiche of Inspector Morse by Colin Dexter.

I don't know who Inspector Morse or Colin Dexter are. 

Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) wrote, "Golly I hate to say this, but I was disappointed. Four novels into the Chen Cao chronicles, I guess it's normal that the author should lose a bit of headway. The case looked promising: an older, respected cop is found dead in a fancy brothel, and Internal Security gets a "confession" from the terrified young prostitute far too quickly. What's up? Well, you won't find out here."

There were some positive reviews. Follow the links and I'm sure you'll find them at Goodreads.  

Cruelty, Roald Dahl

For modern readers of English literature, Roald Dahl has probably been at one point a favorite author. Adolescent boys and girls almost universally love his stories. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, are just two stories I read as a very young person, and still remember the stories to this day. How many books stick to the brain that effectively? Very, very few I would wager. In any case, so, I saw this title and it piqued my curiosity. Cruelty.

Cruelty was copyrighted in 1986, but it appears that it was only released in 2016. Spoilers abound. So, there's no point in complaining since you've been warned.

Cruelty consists of 10 short stories:

"The Butler"

 Some 'nouveau riche' types have just come into a fortune. They want to buy their way into the good graces of the bourgeois. But of course, it takes a lifetime, I'm sure, to learn how to behave as the bourgeois do. Without much concern for money, they purchase all sorts of expensive things. They invite everyone to dinners. They buy the most expensive wines under the advisement of the expensive butler.

But, the joke is on them! The butler had replaced all the expensive wine with cheap wine. But that does not stop them from bragging to their 'friends' about how expensive this and that wine was, and the vintage, despite it being all the same.

The butler, no longer able to tolerate his employer, confesses that he had replaced the expensive wine with the cheap, and drank it himself.


"The Great Automatic Grammatizator"

This story is a bit of interesting science fiction. A man invents a story and book writing machine. Just pull on a set of levers, and the machine will write a mediocre short story. With an upgrade, it produces novels. Within a short while, it is used to take over the creative industry. How far away from just such a reality in the form of an AI powered writer? 

"Royal Jelly"

 "Royal Jelly" is a bit funny. It's about a man who is born with a natural connection to bees. Later on, he has a baby. The baby is dying. So, he feeds it some royal jelly. At the end, the wife discovers that both her baby and her husband look part bee-part human. It's like a B-grade horror story. 

"Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat"

This is a comedy. A woman gets a parting gift of an expensive mink coat. But she wants to make up a silly story as to how she gets it. She takes it to a pawn shop and gets $50 for it. Then, the husband goes to get it. When he brings it home, it's a cheap mink wrap while his secretary gets the original. I didn't see that coming. I knew something was coming, and I guess that was the most obvious in hind sight.

"The Swan"

Some very bad boys do some bad things to a poor boy.

"Poison"

A funny story about someone who believes he has a venomous snake on his stomach. Eventually, it's discovered that there is no snake. 

"Skin"

I enjoyed this one. A man gets a young boy, destined for greatness, to give him a large tattoo on his back of his wife. The young boy is in love with the wife. Later on, the young boy becomes a famous artist. The man shows off his tattoo at a gallery. A multimillion dollar canvas stuck to his back. One of the men offers to take care of the old man in exchange for his customers to see the great artwork on his back on the beach. Not too long after, the artwork reappears, minus the old man. Pretty cruel.

"The Princess and the Poacher"

This one was a cute story, a fairy tale really. A very ugly boy, but talented and powerful, is shunned by all. He's a great hunter, however, and manages to poach birds and other animals for his family's dinner table.

One day, he decides to take a chance and try to poach around the castle. While he's there, he sees the princess in danger of a boar heading straight for her. Already in love with her, he takes on the giant boar head on, and breaks its neck.

As a reward, the king proclaims that the poacher can rape and ravish any woman he chooses. The poacher chooses not to. Eventually, the princess falls in love with him because he chooses not to ravish the maidens. He is the only one not to chase her and has respect for her.

Certainly, not a story for children. Perhaps a good story for all the incels idiots out there in the world today.

"Genesis and Catastrophe"

A young woman has lost three children. She's afraid to lose the fourth. The reader is invited to worry about her, and hope that she doesn't lose her fourth child. That is, until you realize that her newborn son is Adolph Hitler.

"Claud's Dog"

A big con: a man finds an identical dog. One dog is fast, the other slow. They're both greyhounds. He tries to conjure a great con by running first one, against whom the odds are calculated he cannot win, and then running the much faster dog with the big odds. The con works. Except all the bookies refuse to honour the bets that they made. In the end, they lose out.

-------------------

In the end, it was an enjoyable book. "The Princess and the Poacher" tickles the romantic side of me and would have to be my favorite of the lot.

Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie

   Murder on the Links was published at around 1923. At the time, Agatha Christie was an up-and-comer. Wikipedia writes that a review of the time compared Agatha Christie's Poirot to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
   Poirot is asked by Paul Renauld to save him from some kind of plot. But ultimately, it is too late. When he arrives, Renauld is already the victim of a murder. Renauld is a rich man. Surely if he was worried about being murdered, why wouldn't he hire some security? I guess then we wouldn't have a murder mystery novel then, would we?
   Christie creates another detective to act as a kind of foil to Poirot. He is comically illustrated as being arrogant. Sometimes, at the scene of a crime, he is on his hands and knees looking for evidence. While doing so, he discovers an unburnt match and a cigarette butt. They are of South American origin. All of this plays along the idea of some foreign interests being behind Renauld's murder. Meanwhile, he ignores a pipe which Poirot finds to be noteworthy. Poirot mentions that any evidence, big or small, is important. They jostle with each other, but in reality, Detective Geraud is quite dedicated to doing his detective work. Later on, he is discovered disguised as a bush so that he can overhear conversations.
   Ultimately, he identifies Jack Renauld, Paul's son, as the murderer. Certainly, it seems likely. Jack even confesses to the crime. But while all of this is enough for Geraud, it is not enough for Poirot who sees that the confession is false. Jack wants to cover up for the person whom he loves and believes to be responsible for the death.
   Ultimately, it is his other love interest who murders his father in a case of mistaken identity. The intended target was Jack, who was losing interest in the beautiful French girl, Marthe.
   I enjoyed this book.

When Red is Black, Qiu Xiaolong

   This is the third novel in a series about Chief Police Inspector Chen. Chen is on holiday for most of this book, and only marginally involved with it as he's on a holiday. He leaves the case mostly to his sidekick, Sergeant Yu.
   The takeaway for me from this book is the fact that Mao had a way of betraying his most ardent followers. The Red Guard which is created by him becomes politically incorrect. So, all those people that the Red Guard identified as being anti-Mao, or something to that effect, themselves become persecuted.
   Another issue that becomes apparent is that an honest policeman in the 90s quickly got left behind the economic boom which came after the government, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, decided to open up the country to capitalism. He was a victim of that Reagonomics trickle down theory whereby if people are allowed to become very rich, the money that they make will trickle down to the poor and everyone gets richer. I think that's BS now. Clearly that's not what's happening today. But, millions of people were able to live themselves above poverty. But I think that this is the result of opportunity rather than trickle down effects.
   What I really like about Qiu Xiaolong's books is reading a lot of the backstories that build up the present who-dun-nit. The meeting of the murdered woman and a poet in a reeducation facility makes these politically black people into greater astigmatism. For refusing to end the relationship, half of her head is shaved, and she has to wear an old shoe around her neck. While he is forced to wear a tiny chalkboard around his neck.
   Publisher's Weekly writes, "Only a banal solution to the mystery spoils an otherwise engrossing read." I agree that the ending is a bit banal. But I don't think that's a problem. The ending is a bit simplistic and a bit of an oddball, nothing fancy. But I don't think that that's really a problem with my reading of the novel. The more important story is how major historical events which become little more than notes on timelines create an endless tapestry of events which lead to an unfortunate end for an unfortunate victim.
   I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the next in the series.