Arlie Reads Some More in 2024 (Thread 1)

I'm Arlie, a retired software engineer, about to start my fourth year of the 75 books challenge. I'm Canadian, but live in California, USA, where I moved in pursuit of career opportunity in 1997. My household consists of two retired adults and one aging dog. We also feed an ever changing menagerie of stray and feral cats.

I read about 60:40 fiction and non-fiction; the former mostly SF/Fantasy, and the latter mostly science and history, with sprinklings of biography, economics, politics, and whatever else catches my fancy.

I wish everyone a happy year of reading.

Goals and Structure

1. Participate in the War Room Challenge (January thread at https://www.librarything.com/topic/356820)
2. Dip into the Nonfiction Challenge from time to time: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356227
3. Make progress with unread books I already own, as well as reading new discoveries and books from my virtual TBR list.
4. Get most books from libraries, rather than purchasing them. If I must purchase books, try to buy them second hand.
5. Actually read something in French this year, or in German. Even a reread of a graphic novel would be better than nothing.

My rules

The whole book must have been read, part of the reading must have happened in 2024, and I can't count the same read for multiple years - it's either 2024 or 2025, not both, unless I read it twice.

When rereading a book that has a large excerpt from some other book at the end, as a teaser for something else by the same author or publisher, I don't have to reread the teaser to count as having reread the book, even if the page count includes the teaser.

My Rating System

5. Excellent. Read this now!
4.5. Very Good. If fiction, well worth rereading; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
4. Very good, but not quite 4.5. If fiction, likely reread; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
3. Decent read, but not special in any way.
2.5 Why did I bother finishing this?
2. Did not finish.
1. Ran screaming, and you should too.

Links

My 2021 thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/328797
My 2022 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337717
My 2022 thread, part 2: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341510
My 2023 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346763
My 2023 thread, part 2: https://www.librarything.com/topic/350549
My 2023 thread, part 3: https://www.librarything.com/topic/353373

2023 Statistics 1

Total books: 147

Fiction: 87
Non-fiction: 60

First Time: 121
Reread: 26 (imprecise; there were books I wasn't sure about)

Male author: 114
Female author: 58 (one transwoman)
(Total > 147 because some books have multiple authors)

Total pages read: 49,219
Average pages per book: 334.8

Library Books: 97 (18 inter-library loan)
Owned Books: 50 (13 recent purchases)

2023 Statistics 2

Fiction Genres:
alternate history: 2
fantasy: 22
historical fiction: 5
historical mystery: 1
mystery: 26
science fiction: 29
thriller: 2

Non-fiction Genres:
biography: 3
bridge: 2
built environment: 1
economics: 3
foreign affairs: 1
geopolitics: 1
history: 15
philosophy: 2
politics: 7
popular social science: 1
practical self help: 1
predicted future: 1
science: 17
social science: 3
technology: 2

Author Nationality:
Canada: 11
Czechoslovakia: 2
France: 1
Germany: 1
New Zealand: 1
South Korea: 1
United Kingdom: 51
United States: 103

Any author who wrote more than one of the books I read this year is counted once per book. (The same is true for author gender statistics in the prior post.)

Copyright Decade:
1950-1959: 8
1960-1969: 14
1970-1979: 6
1980-1989: 6
1990-1999: 16
2000-2009: 22
2010-2019: 25
2020-2023: 47

Books Completed Jan 2024

1. In the Heart of Darkness by Eric Flint and David Drake (reread)
2. Ancient sea reptiles : plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and more by Darren Naish
3. The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy by Myke Cole
4. Destiny's Shield by Eric Flint and David Drake (reread)
5. Enough : the phony leaders, dead-end movements, and culture of failure that are undermining Black America-- and what we can do about it by Juan Williams
6. Fortune's Stroke by Eric Flint and David Drake (reread)
7. The cat's meow : how cats evolved from the Savanna to your sofa by Jonathan B. Losos
8. Organizing for the rest of us : 100 realistic strategies to keep any house under control by Dana K. White
9. Persian fire : the first world empire and the battle for the West by Tom Holland
10. The Tide of Victory by Eric Flint and David Drake (reread)
11. Moon of the crusted snow : a novel by Waubgeshig Rice
12. Eve : how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Cat Bohannon
13. Defensive Signaling at Bridge by David Lyster Bird
14. 151935::The Dance of Time by Eric Flint and David Drake (reread)
15. Roman warfare by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy
16. Astérix et les Normands by R. Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

Books Completed Feb 2024

17. Pax romana : war, peace and conquest in the roman world by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy
18. To serve them all my days by Ronald Frederick Delderfield (reread)
19. A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (reread)
20. The revolution of American conservatism; the Federalist Party in the era of Jeffersonian democracy by David Hackett Fischer
21. Salvage Right by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
22. Carthage must be destroyed : the rise and fall of an ancient civilization by Richard Miles
23. The Amazons : lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world by Adrienne Mayor
24. Different : gender through the eyes of a primatologist by Frans B. M. de Waal
25. System collapse by Martha Wells
26. Washington and Caesar by Christian Cameron

Books Completed Mar 2024

27. Le fils d'Astérix by Albert Uderzo
28. Portrait of a priestess : women and ritual in ancient Greece by Joan Breton Connelly
29. Neogenesis by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
30. Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey
31. Sex on six legs : lessons on life, love, and language from the insect world by Marlene Zuk
32. Accepting the lance by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
33. From the Forest by L. E. Modesitt, Jr
34. The glorious cause : the American Revolution 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff
35. Fatal colours : Towton 1461--England's most brutal battle by George Goodwin
36. The military campaigns of the Wars of the Roses by Philip A. Haigh

Books Completed Apr 2024

37. Radical by nature : the revolutionary life of Alfred Russel Wallace by James T. Costa
38. A Troubling Along the Border by Donald Aamodt (reread)
39. Catching fire : how cooking made us human by Richard W. Wrangham
40. Edward IV by Charles Derek Ross
41. The Guardians by Lynn Abbey (reread)
42. The Wars of the Roses : the fall of the Plantagenets and the rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
43. The Forge of Virtue by Lynn Abbey (reread)
44. The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars: Cheating and Deception in the Living World by Lixing Sun
45. Fields of blood : religion and the history of violence by Karen Armstrong
46. The Temper of Wisdom by Lynn Abbey (reread)
47. The Coming of the Horseclans by Robert Adams (reread)

Books Pearl Ruled in 2024

1. Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2. American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis by Adam Hochschild

Come on in; the kettle is boiling and the books are great!

Hi Arlie!

Wishing you a great one!

Welcome back, Arlie!

Good luck with your 2024 reading!

Happy reading in 2024, Arlie!

Merry 2024, Arlie. May it present us all with the gift of being surprisingly dull.

And Happy New Year!!

>14 quondame: >15 drneutron: >16 Tess_W: >17 FAMeulstee: >18 richardderus: >19 Berly: Thank you all, and happy new year.

>18 richardderus: Dull sounds good.

1. In the Heart of Darkness by Eric Flint and David Drake

My first book completed this year was a reread of the second volume of the Belisarius alternate history series which I started rereading in December.

I like to have something lightweight and entertaining to read when I'm still waking up or otherwise not up for anything challenging. I'm fond of stories of great generals, admirals etc. and their successful wars. Historical fiction is especially attractive, if the context is more or less accurate - alternate history works similarly, at least for stories near the point where the histories diverge. So this series hits the spot for me.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 1998
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author and/or editor of my #3, #34 and #145 for 2023
- Author 2 (David Drake): male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author and/or editor of my #5, #7, #9 and #145 for 2023
- English, own shelves, 463 pages, 3 stars
- read Dec 28 2023-Jan 2, 2024, book previously read

Happy new year, Arlie.

Star dropped. xx

>21 ArlieS: I bought a bunch of the Belisarius books, but waited until the series was complete to start them...so they disappeared, and now I need to reacquire or borrow them. Sitll undecided....

Wednesday orisons, Arlie.

Hi Arlie and happy new year to you!

>2 ArlieS: Love your goals. Good luck with them.

>3 ArlieS: Excellent rules. About the only thing I do differently is to only count the actual pages I’ve read. If it includes a preface or introduction or preface or afterward or whatever then I include that, otherwise I literally look at the last page of a book or last page + the other stuff. I don’t count teasers.

Happy New Year, Arlie!

>22 PaulCranswick: >24 karenmarie: >25 ronincats: Welcome to my thread.

>23 richardderus: They are worth tracking down, if you like that sort of thing.

2. Ancient sea reptiles : plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and more by Darren Naish

This is a book about the marine reptiles of the Mesozoic Era: Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. It's an example of a type of science book I've only recently noticed: somewhat of a catalog of creatures, arranged by scientific grouping, with lots of illustrations. Another example of this type of book would be Bees of the World A Guide to Every Family by Laurence Packer, which I read last year.

They tend fairly dry - lots of details on scientific names, and minutiae like precise details of skull shape. Reading them often feels like trying to drink from a firehose. But I learn a lot, even if it's only a very small proportion of the information on offer.

This is a fairly good example of the genre, regularly rising above dryness, and without succumbing to trying to make science interesting by talking instead about scientists, especially in the non-professional parts of their life.

I read it because of a recommendation from LibraryThing's new recommendation system - not AFAIK one of their top 2000 for me, just one of the once-a-week batches of additions, probably the one from Oct 25, 2023.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, British, born 1975, scientist (research associate at University of Southampton) and science communicator, author not previously read
- English, public library, 191 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Dec 28 2023-Jan 4 2024, book not previously read

3. The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy by Myke Cole

I read this book for the War Room challenge, January edition.

This book is devoted to demonstrating that the Spartans were not super-warriors, and were also not especially prone to self-abnegation, prioritizing the interests of their polis ahead of their own personal interests. Instead, they were more or less ordinary on both of these dimensions, losing more battles than they won, fleeing and surrendering as readily as any other group, accepting bribes as readily as their neighbours, and often putting internal competition ahead of the needs of their polis. They were, perhaps, somewhat better than average at hoplite combat - phalanx vs phalanx, on nice open level ground - but made up for this by weaknesses in cavalry and ships.

The purpose of this exercise is not scoring academic points and perhaps gaining tenure, as I'd expected. Nope, it's to combat an ongoing myth seen as still motivating American political factions in modern times.

To me, this felt rather like tilting at windmills. Sure there's a Spartan myth, giving rise to names of sports teams, not to mention other trademarks. But there are lots of myths out there; few are seriously believed even by random well-read individuals, never mind by serious students of the relevant subjects. And if some right-wing Americans who currently express their desired improvements to US society in terms of Spartans were to cease to believe Spartans lived up to their myth, they'd just find or invent a new expression of their ideal society.

The book progresses through Spartan history, describing battles, and also every kind of dishonorable behaviour going. Wins and losses are tabulated, along with surrenders, routs, and more controlled retreats. Spartan behaviour is compared with their expressed ideals, and usually falls short. The result, unfortunately, is just a bit boring; the "laundry list" approach to history generally is.

The author also fails to account for Sparta's power, relative to large numbers of other polis. They spent a large part of their history as the head of a league with other polis as subordinate allies, mostly rather than the other way round. How did they manage that, if they were merely ordinarily capable? I can imagine explanations not rooted in military capability, let alone in selflessness - but the author essentially fails to address this criticism at all, while glorying in the later period when Sparta was forced to be a subordinate ally in someone else's league.

He also describes hoplite combat in ways seriously inconsistent with some of my other reading. I don't know who's correct, but he appears not to have heard of the alternate opinion.

That said, it's a decent book. The author uses footnotes and bibliography. He routinely points out "we aren't sure what happened here, and may never know", followed by "but her's the explanation that makes most sense to me".

It's just not a great book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2021
- Author: male, American, age unknown, novelist (per wikipedia; bio in book is more interesting), author not previously read
- English, inter-library loan, 464 pages, 3 stars
- read Dec 21 2023-Jan 4 2024, book not previously read

Hello, Arlie, and happy new year to you. I'm dropping a star. Here's to a great year of reading!

>29 atozgrl: Welcome aboard, and same wishes to you.

4. Destiny's Shield by Eric Flint and David Drake

This is volume 3 of the Belisarius alternate history series, which I'm rereading when stressed or not entirely awake.

I can't think of much to say about this volume that isn't a spoiler, that I haven't already said in about earlier volumes in 75-er threads.

Read it if you like stories of successful war and intrigue, with lots of characters who are much smarter and/or better at their trade than average, but not quite into the superhuman range. Read it if you like stories set in an at least somewhat plausible past in times and places not commonly written about in English, particularly not in fiction.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 1998
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author of my #1 for this year
- Author 2 (David Drake): male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #1 for this year
- English, own shelves, 568 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 2-8, 2024, book previously read

5. Enough : the phony leaders, dead-end movements, and culture of failure that are undermining Black America-- and what we can do about it by Juan Williams

I once again read an older political book, for the perspective it could give on current events. This is a critique of the priorities of black American activists of 2006, and of the behaviour of some black people. The author is Hispanic, rather than black, but presents himself as basically echoing a critique from Bill Cosby, who is black.

Cosby - and Williams - want black people, particularly the poorest, to work hard to improve their situation, rather than either giving up and living in the present, or focussing entirely on a 100% solution for structural and other racism. Their message is something like "you face fewer hurdles than black Americans before you; you betray those who fought for those improvements if you simply give up and/or wait to be rescued."

The specifics are bog-standard conservative. Get the best possible education, and see that your children do the same. Don't have children young; don't get married too young; don't have children out of wedlock; do get married. In local politics, push for better schools in neighborhoods where you live. If you have children, strengthen your relationship to them, whether or not you are married to their other parent. Learn to speak standard English, and make sure your kids do too. Prioritize improved education for your children ahead of consumer goods for them.

And on the negative side: glorifying gangsters is bad. Referring to women as sex objects (whores etc.) or treating them that way is bad. Rap has gone from reasonable protest songs to something that glorifies everything young black kids should not be doing. It's not "white" to study or to stay in school; in fact you owe it to those who came before to take advantage of the liberties they won.

There's no attention to the question of whether a desperately poor black boy has any real chance of bettering himself, rather than winding up either dead or in jail. It's just presumed that his chances are good enough to be worth the effort, not to mention better than the chances his ancestors might have had as slaves. (There's some research suggesting the odds of success are very bad, whatever the effort; I don't know how reliable it is. My point is that this possibility is never mentioned.)

I'm sympathetic to parts of this critique. Why wait for perfection, if you can do something to help yourself and your children before perfection arrives? Why see yourself as in need of rescuing from outside, rather than capable of doing at least something for yourself? And why have all one's leaders singing from the same hymnal - in this case, combatting systemic racism - rather than having some trying to improve schools, others working on self-help groups, and others trying to e.g. help the casualties of the current system (e.g. employment for ex-convicts)?

But OTOH - 18 years later, "it's hopeless" appears to be the theme song of most youth, black, white, or purple. Climate change will get us all. And even if it doesn't, well, if you aren't in the 1% - and can't get into the elite schools that might give you a path to the 1% - you can expect a life of precarious underemployment, lousy health care, and an early death - with your children most likely having it even worse than you do. And that's true even if you stay in school, get a college degree or even a graduate degree - that may give you better prospects than the dropout, but also far more debt - and your prospects still won't be good, just a bit less bad.

I can't say that I know for sure that they are wrong. I suspect I'm in the last American generation where some non-one-percenters will be able to afford to retire. (In my parents' generation, even the (unionized?) working class could expect a livable pension. But my generation got told "let them eat 401Ks", and the results were not good. Also, of course, unions got basically broken.)

People will adapt, and develop new ideas of what is normal, and what is adequate, just as they always have. But the prospects of those currently young look pretty dismal to me, or to anyone raised with the expectations of their grandparents or even their parents.

Are (some of them) wrong to "eat, drink, and be merry" rather than trying to invest for the future, whether their own or that of their children? We criticize people who buy lottery tickets, which are extremely unlikely to pay off for them. How unlikely does it have to be for education to pay off, before we stop criticizing people who don't invest in it?

But of course I'm saying that as a retiree with a degree from an elite university, who went from "eligible for welfare" as child to "made too much to get covid relief money" as a working adult. So what I'm really saying is that I'm not going to blame people who pick a strategy different from mine, even though mine happened to work well in the specific conditions where I used it. Maybe they are right. But OTOH, maybe they aren't, and I'd rather see both viewpoints presented, particularly to those at the point of deciding what they personally will do.

And on the third hand: I'm white. I don't get to have an opinion about anything involving black people. It's foolish (or worse) of me to think my experience of poverty, or of oppression (e.g. as a woman) gives me any insight into the experiences of black people min the United States. Or so I've been told a lot recently, and believe to be part of the current "received wisdom" of most black spokespeople.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to read opinions from a black person (Cosby, via Williams) singing from a different hymnal.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, politics, series: n/a, 2006
- Author: male, American, born 1954, journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 243 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Jan 5-10, 2024, book not previously read

Nice review, interesting thoughts. I resonate with pretty much everything you’ve said. And don’t have any answers.

>28 ArlieS: Myke Cole, while not a guy I can like as a man, knows his stuff about ancient wars. His writing is above average, and that is not nothin' in this area of discussion so dominated by droning voices and stunted imaginations.

>32 ArlieS: I'm white. I don't get to have an opinion about anything involving black people. It's foolish (or worse) of me to think my experience of poverty, or of oppression (e.g. as a woman) gives me any insight into the experiences of black people min the United States. Or so I've been told a lot recently, and believe to be part of the current "received wisdom" of most black spokespeople.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to read opinions from a black person (Cosby, via Williams) singing from a different hymnal.

This is an issue I run into a lot as a man...no ideas about women are allowed...a white man...no ideas about those not white are allowed...and a gay man...you are too old to know what it feels like today. This is a very nasty form of thought control made dominant in discourse by the reactionaries encouraging the who owns what paradigm that keeps us all squabbling while the looters make off with their pilf.

Frustratingly I do not know what the effective response to it is, but it is making the conversations we need to have damn near impossible to start, still less develop productively.

>35 richardderus: Two answers here, one more cynical than the other.

A) The first step is not trying to converse with those enforcing those rules. They are clearly true Believers (TM), unlikely to communicate anything you can't already get by reading their particular version of the Wholely Babble, probably a relatively recent book you can find in a library section devoted variously to feminist, anti-racist, or queer political theorizing.

Unfortunately, many of these enforcers also butt in on conversations conducted among those who don't subscribe to their particular theology. Sometimes you are better off not discussing such matters on the internet, let alone in a workplace.

B) It's worth checking, in any particular case, whether your own lack of relevant lived experience is in fact showing, particularly if the person making this claim is someone generally reasonable, and not a rando or (worse) someone who makes their living teaching e.g. ally-ship seminars. Sometimes you really are falling over an unknown (to you) unknown, or misjudging an issue's importance to particular individuals.

>33 drneutron: Questions are so much easier than answers.

>36 ArlieS: The habit of checking for prejudice and, or, privilege is an excellent one to instill. No one gets it right all the time. It is really the ones who butt in that give me the most online trouble, but that comes with speaking in public and really always has.

The issue of self censorship is then the vexatious corollary. Not opining upon the passing scene is more and more the only path to a quiet online life. I just do not inteact with the people I live among...they tend toward MAGAtry.

6. Fortune's Stroke by Eric Flint and David Drake

This is volume 4 of the Belisarius alternate history series, which I'm rereading when stressed or not entirely awake. It continues to be fun, and funny, and if it's implausible in all kinds of ways, I guess I'll forgive it.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 2000
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author of my #1 and #4 for this year
- Author 2 (David Drake): male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #1 and #4 for this year
- English, own shelves, 503 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Jan 8-15, 2024, book previously read

7. The cat's meow : how cats evolved from the Savanna to your sofa by Jonathan B. Losos

This is an excellent book about domestic cats and their nearest relatives, written by an evolutionary biologist who works with lizards, but happens to love cats.

It covers the sort of topics you'd expect such an author to be interested in. When were cats domesticated? From which species? Did this happen more than once? How different are they, genetically, from their wild relatives? How much have they interbred with those relatives, producing a modern wild form different from the ancestral form?

Where did the many different cat colours come from? How do pet cats behave when allowed outside? What about unowned domestic cats? What about related species? Do they need outside access to have a truly good life? If so, can one reduce one's pets' predation of other species? How?

There's some fairly lengthy discussion of cat breeding, some simply trying for a changed appearance (e.g. the "toyger") and some breeding other small cats (servals, leopard cats) into the domestic cat line (producing the "savannah" and the "bengal"). Also various breeds deriving from genetic accidents that someone decided should be preserved and made into a breed (the American Curl, the Sphynx, the Munchkin, and more).

It continues with discussion of feline behaviour, distinguishing between pets allowed outdoors, unowned cats, and species related to domestic cats, complete with lots of information on how this can be studied.

Overall, a lovely book for someone who loves cats and also loves science.

I'll be looking out for anything else this author produces.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: male, American, born 1961, academic (evolutionary biology, herpetology), author previously read
- English, public library, 390 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 4-15, 2024, book not previously read

This book was recommended to me by LibraryThing's new recommendation system.

8. Organizing for the rest of us : 100 realistic strategies to keep any house under control by Dana K. White

This is a decluttering and housekeeping book, by an author I'd already read. I happened to see it on the new books shelf at a local library, recognized the author, and decided to borrow it in the hopes it might work as a bit of a pep talk, to restart my somewhat stalled decluttering project.

There wasn't much new to me in the book, but I didn't expect any, having already read the author's Decluttering at the Speed of Life. It was however, enjoyable light reading, funny in places, and got me restarted, though only to the point of continuing my decades long effort to catalog all my books. (That effort has morphed over time; it started as "what a wonderful huge library I have; let's display it," with a side order of "and not accidentally repurchase books I already own." Now I'm much more likely to ask myself "will I ever want to read that book again", and deaccession it if the answer is clearly "Hell, No".)

It's a decent book, but if you can read only one of this author's books, and if your primary problem is too much stuff, not inadequate housekeeping, you should probably read Decluttering at the Speed of Life instead.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, practical self help, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: female, American , age unknown (has kids at home), blogger, author of my #29 for 2023
- English, public library, 215 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 6-17, 2024, book not previously read

>41 ArlieS: I have this book home from the library! I've only read a few pages, but I think it will be a good fit for me. And I'll also look into obtaining a copy of "Decluttering," too!

Karen O.

9. Persian fire : the first world empire and the battle for the West by Tom Holland

This is a non-fiction retelling of the history of Persian invasion of Ancient Greece, with some lead-up describing earlier Persian history. I'd hoped it would be a bit more Persian focussed than it turned out to be; books retelling that bit of classical history are common, and I've already read some.

I selected it from new Library Things recommendations in the history genre, which had received the tag "war" - the best formula I could find for finding books suitable for the War Room challenge that I had a decent chance of liking. (90% of everything is drek; reading random books that matched the challenge constraints seemed likely to result in more DNFs than enjoyment.)

As it happens, the book won the Runciman Award, so it also qualifies for the Non-Fiction challenge for January.

I found this book "ok" but not great. I knew that hard data is scarce this early in history, with many authors long after the events they claim to report; historians disagree about just about everything. Yet this book just described what happened; any mention of disagreement was relegated to the footnotes.

Worse, perhaps, I read it shortly after another book with overlapping coverage: The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy, which was my #3 for the year. There were significant divergences between the two accounts, noticeable even with my elderly person's weakened memory for details; I imagine I'd have noticed a lot more if I'd read these two back to back as a 20 year old. And to put the icing on the inconsistency cake, I'm also regularly reading a blog called "A collection of mitigated pedantry," focussed on ancient era warfare, with emphasis on practical details.

The other thing I noticed, was that the author wrote as if he knew how lots of people actually felt. Much of the time, they felt what I presume the author would have felt, in like circumstances, given his modern upbringing. I'm not so sure Spartan youth really would have had the same feelings about the prospect of a relationship with an older man. (Other cases where he describes feelings, he may be getting them from ancient sources - which of course may themselves have been more inventive than accurate. I can't tell without more research than I want to do.)

On the other hand, I learned things I didn't previously know. I was particularly struck by the shortness of the period of Athenian democracy, particularly democracy in combination with significant power. And I'd like to know more about whether there were indeed _relatively recent_ changes in the treatment of respectable Athenian women, in the generation or two before and including these events.

Bottom line: you could do worse. But I would probably have done better to read any of the relevant ancient authors, even though I'd have to read them in translation.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2005
- Author: male, British, born 1968, author and popular historian, author previously read
- English, public library, 418 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 6-19, 2024, book not previously read

>43 ArlieS: I've enjoyed a couple of Holland's other books, but yours is not the first luke-warm review of this one, so I expect I'll pass on it.

Popping in to say Hi! and praise your excellent reviews and enjoy the conversations they provoke. And the reminder that I want to clean out and organize my laundry room closet. Maybe tomorrow....Happy weekend!

>42 klobrien2: Enjoy!

>44 ChrisG1: I've read some good reviews of it too, so probably a matter of taste as much as anything.

>45 Berly: Hi Berly. Thank you for the compliment; FWIW I really like writing them.

Good luck with the cleaning and organizing. I've let myself get sucked into an online game, and my decluttering has really suffered. But games always eventually get boring, so I'll be back to decluttering eventually.

10. The Tide of Victory by Eric Flint and David Drake

This is volume 5 of the Belisarius alternate history series, which I am happily rereading. It continues to provide a nice fix of justified heroic violence, complete with an astonishingly brilliant (and lucky) hero, whom readers can imagine themselves being, however implausibly.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 2001
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author of my #1, #4, and #6 for this year
- Author 2 (David Drake): male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #1, #4, and #6 for this year
- English, own shelves, 561 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 15-20, 2024, book previously read

11. Moon of the crusted snow : a novel by Waubgeshig Rice

What do you do when over a period of a few days at the beginning of winter, first cell phone service, then power lines, and then land and satellite phones all go dark, with no explanation? Sure, such things are fragile, and outages are not uncommon, on a native reservation in northern Ontario, but they don't normally all go out at once. Is this an unusually bad glitch, or has something happened to the technological infrastructure?

This is a post-apocalyptic novel, set on a native reservation in Northern Ontario. This is not just a setting; the story is very much about Anishinaabe, not generic Canadians. This matters; without that specificity, it would just be yet another apocalypse story. The story covers only a few months, ending the winter it began, except for an epilogue set about 2 years later. We never find out what happened, though we do learn that the nearest large community - neither very large nor very near - had the same experience.

The reservation is far better placed to handle this situation than less remote communities. Their connection with the electric grid is new; they still have their old generators in case of problems, and enough oil on hand to run them for several months, if people conserve electricity. Homes are heated with wood, which is plentiful locally, not expensive fuels which would need to be shipped in. It's normal for the one road into the community to be impassable in the winter, so supplies are stockpiled. And many of the locals get a lot of their meat by hunting; farmed meat from the south is expensive.

This is not a typical post-apocalyptic novel. We don't have a heroic and brilliant leader taking charge. We don't have massive conflicts with refugees bent on looting or conquest. And no one's trying to reestablish or preserve technological civilization. (Instead, people mostly figure that the best way to survive is to substitute older ways for those no longer available.)

Also, essentially everyone agrees that they are all in it together. Band leadership takes for granted that its job is to help everyone survive this crisis. (Our viewpoint character is one of their employees, whose responsibilities in winter include running a snow plough. He also spends time visiting those needing assistance, e.g. tending one old lady's wood furnace. And this winter, he also finds himself distributing band supplies to those who don't have adequate stock piles.)

Problems are, I suspect, those you'd expect in this sort of community. Alcohol has been banned for years, but still gets brought in. The chief doesn't like disappointing people, let alone being a heavy. There are lots of people making a career of living on welfare, without much in the way of useful skills, native or western; one is the viewpoint character's younger brother.

Native customs are lovingly described. We see individual efforts to preserve their language, and teach their children to speak it better than their parents. Lots of Anishinaabe words are used in the text; by the end of the novel the reader will have learned a few of them.

A certain absence of macho is notable - what macho we encounter comes from outsiders, who ultimately become problems requiring violent solutions. The locals - especially the viewpoint character - deal with such people by working against them as a team, rather than by individual challenges. One might say that the viewpoint character offers a far better model of manhood than we see from problematic white outsiders. (And we see him carefully presented as quite manly, in a series of little details.)

Overall, a good story, that benefits a lot from getting out of the usual post-apocalyptic groove rut. Some aspects of plot and pacing could be improved, but not if that would be at the expense of the overall flavor, which it might have to be. And it would have been nice to follow the situation all the way to spring or beyond.

Statistics:
- fiction, post-apocalyptic, first of a series, 2018
- Author: male, Canadian (Anishinaabe), age unknown (graduated from university in 2002), author and journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 218 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 21-22, 2024, book not previously read

I'm pretty sure I read this book because someone in the 2023 incarnation of this group read either this book or its sequel, and described it in ways that caused me to look for it. (I.e. a book bullet.) But I don't remember who it was.

12. Eve : how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Cat Bohannon

It appears that an evolutionary view of human female biology was a popular topic with publishers in 2023. This is the second such book I've read in the past two months, both published in 2023. The first one, A Brief History of the Female Body: An Evolutionary Look at How and Why the Female Form Came to Be was somewhat disappointing; I'd hoped this one would be better; instead, both are flawed but in different ways.

This book is structured based on a series of human biological attributes, some uniquely female, and others simply differing statistically between the sexes. Each one is associated with a key stage - either when the feature first appeared, or when it reached some particular human-like stage. For each of these, there is an example species, ideally the one first showing the feature, if we know which that was, that's referred to as the "Eve" of that feature. Presentation of that Eve is somewhat fictionalized, with little vignettes of relevant parts of the life of a female member of that species. These are arranged in temporal order.

There's lots of good information, particularly for the early changes, such as lactation. The book has footnotes, unlike A Brief History of the Female Body. (Both have lengthy bibliographies.)

The emphasis between the two books differ; thus for example A Brief History discusses many details of human and other primate placentas, while Eve stays at such a high level that I might have missed the point without having read A Brief History. (Human placentas are especially invasive, leading to a whole slew of potential medical problems that other primates mostly lack. Other species with similarly invasive placentas aren't especially near us on the evolutionary tree.)

Bohannon spends some time complaining about insufficient scientific attention to females, including doing most drug trials with only male subjects, unless of course the medication in question is for a uniquely female problem. This goes a lot farther than "we don't know the answer to this question because it hasn't been researched". She also spends a lot of time trying to explain that human females get a raw deal from evolution, as do many other females. She tries to combat various popular myths of evolution-based male-female differences, while at the same time producing other myth candidates. This got old. I don't want a side order of politics with my biology.

By the end of the book, the author advances a theory for the origin of patriarchy. Reading this, I found myself wishing she'd drop the politics and go back to talking about science. I don't need a feminist reworking of The Naked Ape, or anything remotely like it. Just so stories belong in the fiction section, and the more politics you mix into your science, the more the actual science gets crowded out.

The actual science appears to be reliable, though I'm surprised by the age of some of the works in the bibliography. She brought in things I'd never heard of.

But the final chapter, somewhat mis-titled "Love", would have been a lot better titled something like "Sex Roles and Other Bad Things", subtitled "with arguments for why they were once evolutionary valuable but now work in reverse". Better still it could have been omitted, or rewritten to be shorter, more research based, and more tightly focussed on relationships of sex/parenting.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: female, American(?), age unknown (undergrad degree 2009), writer, author not previously read
- English, public library, 612 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 12-24, 2024, book not previously read

>49 ArlieS: My sister set up a political action committee which got a law enacted to require women's inclusion in medical studies. As she worked the US-HHS coordinating funding for fertility research it all had to be very indirect, but she'd be very quick to affirm that biology is a deeply politicized field.

>50 quondame: Sad but true: politics gets into everything, even when there's an ideology of objectivity, neutrality, or just-the-facts.

Of course there are multiple types of politics, which I'll divide into "office politics" ("fund MY proposal", "put ME in charge"), basic partisan politics ("vote for Joe Schmoo; he's a local boy and will get resources for his supporters/local needs"), and ideological conflict.

I personally stayed out of science knowing that my talents did not run to "soft skills" of any kind, but particularly those needed for office/partisan politics; it was obvious to me even as a STEM undergraduate in the late 1970s that being good at research was insufficient for a career as a scientist.

But it's the ideological politics that really makes me mad - and I don't read for the purpose of becoming angry and upset. Political ideologies are full of beliefs about biology, which they require "science" to support - or failing that, to avoid investigating. I'm interested in truth, not "facts" supporting any ideology. (Obviously, I have my own biases, but this is something I want less of, not more.)

None of this implies that your sister was wrong to work to have medical research actually produce information directly applicable to populations other than adult males, rather than simply presuming there are no gender interactions, contra-indications, etc. etc. - or that women's health basically doesn't matter.

I just don't want to devote much of my time to thinking about those battles. I'm misanthropic enough already ;-(

>51 ArlieS: I agree on the sad but true business of the pervasiveness of politics into every facet of our existence, Arlie. Many of the values I previously thought were universal have been denuded over the last generation and I am not making a party political point because I think all parts of the spectrum take a share of blame in this.

13. Defensive Signaling at Bridge by David Lyster Bird

This is a book for intermediate bridge players, teaching - or at least describing - techniques for handling a particular aspect of playing duplicate bridge - in this case, communication with one's partner while on defense. My partner and I don't use most of these techniques, rather to the detriment of our play, so sometime last year this book got onto out list of things to read and discus soon. We picked this book on the topic primarily because I already owned it.

That didn't work out too well. My records tell me I started the book on July 27 last year, and made it only through page 40. My partner preferred other topics, which gave me an excuse to distract myself from a book that's still mostly over my head. In particular, while I can understand and memorize the techniques, the examples go farther than rote application - mostly sailing over my head considering details I hadn't even noticed. The quizzes are similar - lots of considerations discussed in the answer key, many of which I didn't notice.

That said, this is a good book. We can implement the basics now, and revisit the book in a year or five, when we've got the experience to understand more of the exceptions and extra considerations. (It wouldn't be the first book we've found useful to reread as our play improved.)

The author is not quite as good at explaining the reasons for things as my all time favorite bridge authors, Barbara Seagram and Audrey Grant. He expects the reader to do a bit more of the work than I can currently manage, on this particular subject. But he's better than most bridge authors.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, bridge game, series: n/a, 2011
- Author: male, British, born in 1948, writer, author previously read
- English, own shelves, 249 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 6-25, 2024, book not previously read

I have reached a milestone of sorts - if I can average 13 books per month, I can reach 2 * 75 books for the year. I've reached that target for January with 5 days to go, and 6 books in flight.

Several of those books were acquired for the January war room challenge, and I still haven't acquired any books for the February war room challenge. That thread's not up yet, but the 2023 planning thread at https://www.librarything.com/topic/355667 says the topic will be the American War of Independence.

I expect to have some difficulty finding much that I care about - it's a much smaller topic than the Ancients (Greeks, Romans, etc.), and less inherently interesting to me. I know the basic outline - it's hard to get through grade school without learning that, even in Canada, and have read other relevant material since then, so yet another narrative history would probably bore me.
I doubt there's much room for a new take on any part of it. I wonder if I can find anything about the French contribution to the American success, or some other side issue.

Of course I could simply skip February, and head straight to March with the Wars of the Roses. Given how late I am selecting books, I might in any case not have newly selected ones on hand until it's almost March.

List of American Revolution books recommended to me by the *new* LibraryThing recommendation system, selecting "all time", history genre, and the tag "war".

1776 by David McCullough
The British are Coming by Rich Atkinson
Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A. J. Langguth
Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth by Holger Hoock
Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff
American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 by Alan Taylor

I've made no attempt at filtering these, given that the list is short, and it's likely that not all are available from local libraries.

14. The Dance of Time by Eric Flint and David Drake

This is the 6th and final volume of the Belisarius alternate history series. Like the earlier volumes, it provided a nice fix of justified heroic violence. The plausibility seems to me to decrease as the series progressed - even peripheral characters now seem to me to have superhuman abilities and luck, but this is, after all, a tradition in stories of this kind. Nonetheless, the 13 year old boy's martial abilities were, shall we say, "a bit much".

On the other hand, at least one of the other books I have in flight is prone to much the same thing, though played as humor, and it's not interfering with my enjoyment there either.

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 2007
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author of my #1, #4, #6 and #10 for this year
- Author 2 (David Drake): male, American, born in 1945, novelist , author of my #1, #4, #6 and #10 for this year
- English, own shelves, 655 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 20-27, 2024, book previously read

I've added one more to my list of books to possibly read for the February installment of the War Room challenge: Washington and Caesar by Christian Cameron. This is a novel set in the American revolutionary war, written by someone my sister knows, who is an avid war re-enactor. One of the viewpoint characters is a slave who enlists on the anti-revolutionary side, presumably after escaping his master. With the author being a re-enactor, I imagine many technical details will be correct.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading several books suitable for the January installment, and not really expecting to finish any of them in the next 3 days. These include:
- Pax Romana by Adrian Goldsworthy
- Roman Warfare by Adrian Goldsworthy
- The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Also on hand:

- Carthage must be destroyed by Richard Miles

Finally, if I'm willing to really stretch a point. These bandes dessinées are set in Gaul during the Roman empire. I borrowed them primarily to practice my French, but one could argue they qualify as fiction featuring war (or at least small scale combat) in the Ancient world.

- Astérix et les Normands by René Goscinny
- Le fils d'Astérix by Albert Uderzo

15. Roman warfare by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy

This is a decent book by a historian, about exactly what the title says: Roman warfare and the Roman military, as they developed and changed over time. It's part of a series about warfare in different times and places. I read it for the January installment of the War Room challenge.

I didn't like it as much as I liked the same author's How Rome fell: death of a superpower, which I read last May, or as much as I like his Pax Romana, which I'm two thirds of the way through. That's pretty much because this book is just conveying the generally agreed upon facts, not expressing somewhat original - or at least contested - ideas. That fits with it being part of a series; it's not written for someone who's spent the past month reading several books with overlapping material, with others over the past decade(s). But for what it does, it's good.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2000
- Author: male, British , born 1969, historian and novelist (no university affiliation; looks like he dropped out of academia after 10 years), author of my #41 for 2023
- English, public library, 240 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 25-31, 2024, book not previously read

16. Astérix et les Normands by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

This is one of a series of French bandes dessinées (graphic novels/comics) written for children. They have been translated into many languages, complete with new puns replacing those that only work in French. (Many characters have names that are essentially punny.) I read (possibly reread) this one in French to practice my French skills, which were at one time quite good.

I first encountered this series in childhood, in both English and French. They were funny enough - and simple enough - that I could make out the French I was then trying to learn, or failing that, read the French original and the English translation side by side. Later, while learning German, I tried reading Astérix comics in that language.

These stories are funny, and much can be understood from the illustrations, making them great for language learners. They are especially suitable for children, being full of comic violence, and also having a fair amount of repetition. But they are still funny even to a retired adult, and much less work to read than a Real Novel (TM).

The series is set during the Roman period, with Gaul (i.e. France) being a Roman province. One village remains unconquered, thanks to the magic potion brewed by its Druid, which gives the tribal warriors superhuman strength. The Romans aren't particularly trying to conquer it, so the tribesmen, particularly the two main characters, have time for all kinds of adventures.

In this episode, another tribal chieftain sends his son to stay in the village, in the hopes they'll "make a man of him". At the same time, a group of Normans, who have no personal knowledge of fear, decide they want to learn, and take ship to the same local area. The visiting young man is music mad, in the way of a rebellious youth, particularly one of the decade in which the book was published - nothing the adults appreciate, and very loud. He's also a complete coward, which makes the Normans decide to capture him and demand that he teach them about/how to fear.

The local chief sends Astérix and his sidekick Obélix to rescue the youngster and "persuade" the Normans to depart. Plenty of slapstick comic violence ensues, but doesn't solve either problem. Then Astérix has a bright idea, and arranges for another tribesman to terrify the Normans in a totally non-violent way. He has the village bard - a notoriously tuneless incompetent - perform at the Norman camp. They are soon terrified that he will continue to sing.

Statistics:
- fiction, graphic novel, juvenile, series (not first), 1967
- Author (Réne Goscinny): male, French, born 1926, comic editor and writer, author previously read
- Illustrator (Albert Uderzo): male, French, born in 1927, comic book artist and scriptwriter , illustrator previously read
- English, public library, 48 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 23-31, 2024, book may have been previously read (presuming not)

>59 ArlieS: Great review of the Asterix! I read the series (in English translation, of course) at least twice (I really liked it). Very funny comics, for both kids and adults, I think.

Have a great weekend!

Karen O

>60 klobrien2: I owned a few of them as a child, but they disappeared somewhere along the way - most likely left at my family home, and gotten rid of when my mother eventually down-sized. I'm sometimes tempted to replace them, but I too should be downsizing in my current life phase, not acquiring ever more stuff.

17. Pax romana : war, peace and conquest in the roman world by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy

This book discusses the experience of being absorbed into the Roman sphere of influence, and continuing within it, with emphasis on differences as well as similarities. The focus is on coercion and violence, as experienced by free people, outside of Rome itself. This includes both "allies" - always subordinate to Rome - and residents of Roman provinces. Topics includes conquest, rebellions, brigandage, government, and more.

It is a good book, but one I'm finding very hard to summarize. Roman administration changed over time. In general, local customs were maintained, including local elites being in charge of just about everything. They could be overruled by governors, who themselves could be overruled by emperors. And a few decisions were kept outside the scope of local leaders - for example, justice involving Roman citizens. But mostly things went on as they always had.

Roman conquest could be vicious and bloodthirsty, but they were also often willing to accept those who surrendered and treat them well. And many tribes, towns, etc., eagerly sought out the status of allies of Rome. Often - perhaps usually - this was in response to their own ambitions - if we join Rome, and out local rival does not, Rome might just crush them for us. If I push for joining Rome, and other candidates for chieftain do not, perhaps the Romans will help me take over as chieftain.

From the point of view of middling sorts, life might be better without constant intertribal raiding, not to mention wars for the succession within the tribe. Rome might even help deal with brigands, if the local leaders couldn't manage it on their own. The actual conquest might be bad - if it was a conquest, rather than a case of the elites eagerly signing up as allies. But after that, life might be safer.

On the other hand, there was no way to stop all raiding and brigandage. The best that could be managed might be to catch up to retreating raiders, slowed by loot. Their subsequent defeat might prevent that particular lot from coming back, and discourage others for a time, but wouldn't do anything for civilians killed during the raid. (Goods and captives were, however, sometimes recaptured and returned to their owners and families.)

And the Romans had their own civil wars, which drew off troops who'd otherwise be defending the borders, or hunting down brigands.

What I liked about this book was that it focussed on a theme, rather than simply being a narrative history. It brought a lot of material together in one place. It left me feeling that I had some idea of the actual role of a Roman governor and the problems he faced ... complete with changes to this in different eras.

I read this book for the January installment of the War Room challenge, focussed on the wars of the Ancients - Romans, Greeks, etc.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2016
- Author: male, British , born 1969, historian and novelist (no university affiliation; looks like he dropped out of academia after 10 years), author of my #15 for this year
- English, public library, 513 pages, 4 stars
- read Jan 21-Feb 5, 2024, book not previously read

18. To serve them all my days by Ronald Frederick Delderfield

This is the latest book of fiction I've reread as comfort reading when half awake or otherwise under par.

This one's an old friend, chronicling the story of a schoolmaster at a British boarding school from late in World War I to well into World War II.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, non-series, 1972
- Author (Ronald Frederick Delderfield): male, British, born 1912, novelist, author previously read (this book)
- English, own shelves, 572 pages, 5 stars
- read Jan 28-Feb 6, 2024, book previously read

Hi, I'm Owl, i dont think we have met yet!

>64 Owltherian: I don't think we have either. Welcome to my thread. May your 2024 be filled with excellent reading.

>65 ArlieS: Your always welcome in my thread as well, not many people have visited but people are always welcome. May your 2024 be filled with plentiful reads and fun.

>59 ArlieS: I am a fan of Asterix and have copies on both French and English. My kids read them in French immersion school when they were little. Always fun. : )

>67 Berly: I've got another one waiting for me, from the same library run.

I think I've overdone the book borrowing. I'd have to read 146 pages per day for the next 2 or 3 months to read everything I've borrowed on time before it's due back at its library, and that doesn't account for the possibility of someone putting a hold on something, preventing me from renewing it again.

One result of this is that I'm miles behind on everyone's threads; another is that I've finished two books but not yet written about them here.

Meanwhile, life keeps interfering with my reading plans.

>69 ArlieS: Good morning! I hear you about feeling swamped with borrowed books. It doesn’t help when the library seems to fill a lot of requests at the same time. I suppose they do have a lot of new books come in to them at once, but it throws off any reading plans. Oh, well, maybe our motto should be, “Keep calm and keep reading!”

Have a lovely day!

Karen O

19. A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt

This is the latest in my morning comfort rereads, but with a slight twist. Before my borrowed book heap exploded, I'd thought it would be a great idea to read through all my fiction, alphabetically by author, in part to decide whether there are any I shouldn't have bothered keeping. This is the first book of that reading cycle.

This book is in the fantasy sub-genre where a present-day, modern human is transported to a fantasy world, find that they have new abilities in that world, often unusually powerful ones, and proceed to have adventures. (Can anyone think of a good name for that sub-genre? I'd like to classify my reading a bit more clearly than just "fantasy".) Thanks quondame, for giving me the name "portal fantasy".

This particular book works as an adventure of this type. The quest is successful, but not at what the organizer intended. Instead of simply robbing the villain, the team manages to expel the villain from the universe entirely, as the goddess working behind the scenes had intended. Since the villain is an evil deity that delights in torture and murder, this is an excellent heroic result, if perhaps a bit cliched.

Unfortunately, there's an extra feature to the story, which I rather dislike. The goddess who manipulated the adventurers is rather a selfish bitch. She has no scruples about coercing and deceiving people who are not her enemies, and particularly hates the idea of any limitation on her power. Everyone in the universe should obey her without question, not to mention worshipping her; given that level of dominance, she's rather benevolent, except when her own purposes make it useful to harm an underling. She's far better than the god she banished, who only helps people in the rare cases where that suits his greater purpose. But that doesn't make her good.

Unfortunately the magic that resolves the conflict and banishes the (more) evil deity, also links this goddess with the visitor from earth, giving them essentially equal power, and most likely making them ineffective unless they cooperate. She refuses to accept this, and does her best to convince/force her unwanted partner to become yet another obsequious worshipper. This provides a plot source for farther volumes, but her abusive behaviour is not something I want in my fantasy.

Statistics:
- fiction, portal fantasy (modern human with special powers in fantasy world), first of a series, 1989
- Author (Donald Aamodt): male, American, born 1935, novelist, author previously read (this book and another)
- English, own shelves, 265 pages, 3 stars
- read Feb 8-11, 2024, book previously read

>71 ArlieS: It sounds like what is called a portal fantasy.

>72 quondame: Thanks. I'd hoped there was a name, since it seems like a recognizable genre.

20. The revolution of American conservatism; the Federalist Party in the era of Jeffersonian democracy by David Hackett Fischer

This is an early book by one of my favorite academic historians. It's a history of a small part of the development of politics in the United States; in particular, the transition from "the hoi polloi should vote for me, because I'm the right sort of (elite) person" to actual politicking, soliciting the votes of ordinary folk with perhaps somewhat better reasons than being their landlord, their employer, the richest person in the electoral district, or similar).

I should say first, that we're talking about the right wing side of the politics of the time - more elitist and more excited about public order than their rivals.

At the beginning of the period covered (or perhaps just before), they expect - and receive - so much deference from the non-elite that they tend to receive votes just for being important/elite/from the right family. They express a duty to do what's good for the country, which is likely presumed good for their voters - but have no idea whatsoever they should do what the voters explicitly want. After all, they understand themselves as being far more likely to make good decisions than the little folk. Any political arguments they make are addressed to their own peers.

On the good side, it doesn't generally occur to them to deceive the voters. Voters are supposed to respect elite opinions more than their own. And they mostly don't pretend to be "common people" themselves. Some of them moreover have a real sense of noblesse oblige.

At the end of the period, they are doing their best to emulate their rivals, with claimed respect for the electorate, loads of "news" sheets often full of lies, and all the rest of it, but chronically playing catch up with those rivals.

Overall, a good read, and another brick in my mental edifice that basically says "current dishonorable and asinine behaviour in US politics is anything other than unprecedented". But not as good as this author's later books; this one seems to be written for people a bit more specialized than I'd expect outside of a history or perhaps political science department. A wee bit of initial context would have been a great help.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 1965
- Author: male, American, born 1935, academic (history), author of my #140 for 2023
- English, public library, 455 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 2-13, 2024, book not previously read

>74 ArlieS: That does look an interesting read, Arlie.

Have a great weekend.

There! Now you should feel better. Two book reviews done (nice job!) and you can get back to reading your 146 pages/day. LOL. Happy Friday!

Nice review - it may be a tough one to find, but I’ll keep it in mind.

>75 PaulCranswick: >77 drneutron: Enjoy!

>76 Berly: I've been slipping on that goal somewhat, after an initial solid start - and the library now has two more ready for me to pick up.

But OTOH, I've finished two more books.

21. Salvage Right by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

This is a science fiction novel with fantasy elements from the Liaden Universe Novels series. That series is "read on sight" for me, but the books range from "I loved it" down to "OK, and nice to get more of the story".

I think the difference has to do with my taste more than their quality. Series members range from comedies of manners and coming of age novels to stories of betrayal, failure and sacrifice, complete with foreshadowed doom. Plot development also ranges from clear and simple; through two groups seeing things very differently; to somewhat chaotic with too many characters with too little explanation of their relationships and history. I prefer the happy successful stories, and the ones where I know who is who within the first quarter of the book.

This book had a mostly positive outcome, but too much in the way of negative expectations and history. And it desperately needed a prologue recapping a bit of the relevant history; I thought I'd read everything previously published, yet basically did not remember the relevant set up.

Because of this, the first half of the book dragged, until I finally understood who was who, who was working for what organization, and which organizations were Big Baddies (TM). After that it got better, and there were many of the lighter plot elements common to the series, as well as the heavier themes. OTOH, I do remember the backstory of most of the characters other than the two central ones, as well as knowing much about the universe history associated with the series. I'm not sure the book would be readable for someone with no prior exposure to the series.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2023
- Author 1: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #45, #48, and #82 for 2023
- Author 2: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #45, #48, and #82 for 2023
- English, public library, 504 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Jan 25-Feb 15, 2024, book not previously read

>80 ArlieS: I also have the Lee & Miller Liaden books on my "read on sight" list, but as the story lines add more relevant characters, it can be confusing. Salvage Right basically wraps up a number of dangling threads from Neogenesis, and I was able to recall that. However, when Trader's Leap came out, I started reading backwards to find the precursor, and it was a whole 4 novels back in Alliance of Equals! At least I got to do a lot of good rereading.

ETA the eARC of Ribbon Dance will be available March 15, hardback on June 4, That's the sequel to Trader's Leap.

>81 ronincats: Aha. That explains it. I remember approximately nothing from Neogenesis, and LibraryThing thinks I haven't read it. (I read a couple of Liaden novels in omnibus books, and LT doesn't seem to know the contains/contained by relationships. This might be such a case, or I might simply never have read it.)

--edit to add: after checking contents of omnibus editions, I don't think I've actually read Neogenesis

>82 ArlieS: I checked. LibraryThings has the contains/contained by relationships correct, but doesn't use the data to show e.g. what members of the series I've read - if I read (or own) it in an omnibus, it doesn't show as read/owned on the series page.

I filed a suggestion for site improvements.

I also mentally designed a script that would add all the contents of all my omnibus editions to one or more special collections of "phantom books". Fortunately I'm probably not motivated enough to write it; it would probably create notable load on the server. And of course I'd make any such script available to anyone else who wanted to run it.

Well, that certainly explains why you found Salvage Rights confusing, since it is almost entirely based on events in Neogenesis.

>84 ronincats: The good news is that I should be able to get Neogenesis from the local library.

22. Carthage must be destroyed : the rise and fall of an ancient civilization by Richard Miles

This is a history of Carthage, consulting archaeology as well as ancient writings, and starting before Carthage's founding, not merely focussed on its doomed conflict with Rome. I borrowed it to read for the war room challenge in January, didn't get to it that month, and was thinking of returning it to the library unread. But when I picked it up to see what I would be missing, I liked it enough to decide to read it late.

From my point of view - already fairly familiar with ancient writings - the parts of the book informed by archaeology were the high points. The parts informed by ancient writings had less that was new to me. I also very much appreciated the combined approach.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2011
- Author: male, British, born 1969, academic (history, archaeology), author not previously read
- English, public library, 521 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 7-19, 2024, book not previously read

23. The Amazons : lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world by Adrienne Mayor

This is a book about women warriors in antiquity, in history, archaeology and myth. I borrowed it for the War Room challenge, January installment, but decided it doesn't really qualify.

The big problem with this book is that the author appears to be uncritically collecting and relating absolutely anything she can find that supports her basic thesis: women warriors really existed, and may have been as much as 30% of the fighting force of their societies. She compounds the appearance of uncritical collection by referring to all such warriors as Amazons, and assuring us that the societies which produced them were gender-egalitarian and allowed sexual freedom to everyone - women in particular. Moreover, a careless reader might conclude from the book that horse nomad societies always have women warriors, gender equality, and sexual freedom.

The good part of this book is that it provides pointers to suggestive evidence of all kinds, and a fair amount of detail about artistic representation of Amazons in Greek and Hellenistic sites. I imagine it's right to claim that some steppe peoples known to the Greeks included women skilled in horse archery, and were, by Ancient Greek standards, unimaginably gender egalitarian. (It's not hard to be a lot more gender egalitarian than ancient Athens, while still being quite sexist by modern or unbiased standards.) It's probably also right to claim that the ancient Chinese encountered at least travelers' tales of similar cultures, perhaps the same ones.

Beyond that, I fear this book is a rather sophisticated version of the bad kind of "feminist history", credulous if not imaginative. I can't prove that without developing expertise in relevant areas; there are other potential reasons for the elements that made me suspicious. The author's biography on Wikipedia suggests she's not just a flake with an axe to grind - she's got real academic qualifications and a position at a reputable university; moreover it's not in Women's Studies.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2014
- Author: female, American, born 1946, academic (history, folklore), author not previously read
- English, public library, 519 pages, 3 stars
- read Jan 23-Feb 20, 2024, book not previously read

24. Different : gender through the eyes of a primatologist by Frans B. M. de Waal

In this book, a Dutch-born, cis-male self-described feminist addresses human sex difference through the lens of primatology. He managed to teach me many things I didn't know, particularly about chimpanzees and bonobos, while omitting most of the routine errors I feared. This was a huge improvement from similar books current when I was in college in the 1970s, which had a tendency to use dubious science to support an extremely violent macho version of human nature.

Most amazing of all, the author frequently remembered, between generalizations about males and females, to mention that those generalizations were about "typical", "average" or "most common", not "all" or "only". He even described a gender-non-conforming female chimpanzee, and how she interacted with her troop. This pleased me a lot, because I'm a gender non-conforming female myself.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, science (biology), series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, Dutch (naturalized American), born 1948, academic (primatology, ethology), author not previously read
- English, public library, 394 pages, 4 stars
- read Feb 22-28, 2024, book not previously read

25. System collapse by Martha Wells

This is the 7th novel in the Murderbot series. It's a great series, but this wasn't an especially great installment. It starts out confusing enough that I wondered whether I'd missed a volume in the series. (I had not.)

I fear that the Murderbot premise may have worn itself out - there's been enough psychological growth to change the style of the stories, but that takes away the character who's been my primary draw to the series. The new Murderbot is different in ways that make their first person narrative less fun for me to read, even if that may be evidence of them having become a better person. Or maybe that's just the way this episode is written.

At any rate, this book was still worth reading, but I may be slow about reading the next volume, whenever it comes out.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2023
- Author: female, American, born 1964, novelist, author of my #134 from 2023
- English, public library, 245 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 22-28, 2024, book not previously read

26. Washington and Caesar by Christian Cameron

This is a historical novel set in the American Revolutionary War, featuring a slave owned by George Washington, who escaped and became a Loyalist soldier. (The British had promised freedom to slaves of rebels who joined them to work against the rebellion.) It also features his ex-master, and other characters on both sides of the war. I read it for the February installment of the War Room challenge.

It's a decent book. The author is a historical re-enactor trained as a historian. He's also got significant experience in the United States Navy. I therefore expected his portrayal to be much more accurate than is usual with historical novels. The book also includes a historical note and a selected bibliography; the latter described as being in part for readers who feel their knowledge of history has been challenged.

For the record, he's also acquainted with my sister, who is mentioned in the book's acknowledgements section. I therefore know a bit about him that isn't mentioned in either the book itself or the author's wikipedia article.

This story contains a lot about the experience of being black in that time and place. There's a slave taker turned rebel soldier turned intelligence officer who functions as an ongoing adversary, until finally killed near the end of the story.. Several free blacks are enslaved or re-enslaved, and one is intentionally shot while trying to surrender. White people vary a lot in their attitude to black people; black loyalists are often treated worse than white ones, even of equivalent social class - but not always. (Sometimes they are only limited by class.)

I don't know how accurate this is, whether it was on toned down from what's on record to avoid shocked incredulity, or for that matter enhanced to provide an ongoing adversary other than the Rebel forces. But I'm inclined to trust this author to be fairly accurate within the limits of writing a story.

I think this was the author's first solo novel. There are some slightly rough edges, which kept me from rating it 4, but I'm inclined to try some of the author's later works, with hopes they'll be even better.

Statistics:
- fiction, historical fiction, non-series, 2004
- Author: male, Canadian (born in the US, so presumably naturalized), born 1962, novelist, author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 580 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 15-28, 2024, book not previously read

It's time for me to acquire books relevant to the Wars of the Roses, if I'm going to participate in the War Room challenge for March. Unfortunately, recommended books are in short supply.

From the original planning thread:
- The Wars of the Roses: The Bloody Struggle for England's Throne by Hugh Bicheno (non-fiction)
- The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson (fiction; I probably read it in childhood)

From LT's new-style recommendations, all-time, history, tagged war:
- The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
by Dan Jones (non-fiction)

From the War Room list, not already listed above:
- The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman (fiction)
- Sun of York by Ronald Welch (juvenile fiction, on my own shelves but read many times)

Mentioned in Paul's current thread, not already listed above:

- Grisly Grisell by Charlotte Mary Yonge
- some novel by Phillippa Gregory
- Stormbird by Conn Iggulden (probably fiction, appears to be part of a 4 book series all concerned with the Wars of the Roses, or at least set in that period)
- The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey fiction - doesn't sound interesting

That's not much choice, and who knows what any local libraries have.

I'd prefer a non-fiction book that teaches me things I don't already know. Fortunately I've read much less about this period than about the American Revolution, so don't have the same level of problem with same-old-story as I did there.

Edited to add:
- Fatal Colours: Towton, 1461 - England's Most Brutal Battle by George Goodwin
- The Brothers York: An English Tragedy by Thomas Penn

>91 ArlieS: The Dan Jones one is likely available, since its Kindle edition is only $5.99.

Off to whet my blades...

Pearl Rule 1. Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This science fiction novel has 3 more or less separate threads, and bounces between them for at least the first 200 pages. I liked only one of those threads; the others were too dark for me. I also dislike the technique of jumping from thread to thread, just when the one I'd been reading gets especially interesting, and tend to put the book down on a thread switch.

I started this on January 25. I was only 213 pages in, of 629, by Feb 29. It's due back at the library on March 8, having run out of renewals. It's time to call it quits, even though the various groups from its three threads are finally meeting. The thread I liked has developed its own dark content now, though they seem to have averted their impending doom, at least for the immediate present.

It's time to give up on this book, and not bother reclaiming it from the library at some future time, let alone reading its two sequels.

>93 ArlieS: I liked this book more than you, but agree the separate threads try one's patience. As you might expect, they all came together eventually.

>94 ChrisG1: I think my biggest problem with the book was the sense of doom from the very beginning. I very much enjoyed the vignettes of spider development, and didn't mind their general bloodthirstiness. But the humans and their behaviour pretty much ranged from bad to worse, with a few that were merely victims thrown in to complete the scene. I read fiction for escapism, not to confirm or increase my misanthropy. (Following the news makes me more misanthropic than I want to be.)

I'm amazed to report that I'm somehow still on track for 2 * 75 books in 2024. I'm not quite sure how that happened. ;-)

27. Le fils d'Astérix by Albert Uderzo

This is a hilarious bande dessinée (graphic novel/comic) featuring Astérix and Obelix, the (male) heroes of a series known for puns and slap-stick violence, left in charge of an infant of unknown origin. It was created in 1983, so having a pair of male bachelors in charge of a child was funny in itself, with ample opportunity for amusing displays of incompetence.

Caring for this infant is extremely challenging, particularly after he's accidentally fed a super-strength potion instead of cow's milk. The baby first decides that a cow is a toy, and swings it around by its tail. Then it tries treating human beings in a similar way. The adult heroes wind up quarreling, presumably due to the intense stress.

In the time available while caring for the child, the adult heroes' efforts are devoted to finding its parents, or, failing that, finding an extremely tough - and brave - nursemaid. Meanwhile, just about every time they leave the baby peacefully sleeping (at last!) it wakes up and crawls away, followed only by Obelix' tiny dog. There's also a new Roman in the area, eager to capture this child for reasons at first unknown to the reader; he repeatedly sends covert agents to infiltrate the village and household. Unfortunately the baby uses them as playthings, causing them to flee back to their Roman camp, preferring whatever punishment awaits to one more second of that infant's attention.

All ends well, when the infant's parents turn up, separately. We are not told how they manage to deal with an infant of magically enhanced strength; they don't discover the problem till after the end of the book.

Statistics:
- fiction, graphic novel, juvenile, series (not first), 1983
- Author and illustrator (Albert Uderzo): male, French, born in 1927, comic book artist and scriptwriter, illustrator of my #16 for this year
- English, public library, 48 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 1, 2024, book may have been previously read (presuming not)

>95 ArlieS: I think you'd like Tchaikovsky's The Final Architecture trilogy better - more of a classic space opera with "good guys" to root for.

>97 ArlieS: I like the sound of that one, Arlie.

Have a great weekend.

28. Portrait of a priestess : women and ritual in ancient Greece by Joan Breton Connelly

What do we know about the role(s) of women in religion in ancient Greece and its diaspora? What do we know about women priestesses in particular? Were respectable and elite women really as secluded and out of the public eye as one might gather from surviving Greek literature, particularly literature from Athens?

Professor Connelly wrote this book to address these topics. The picture she paints is one that allowed some women considerable public presence, not to mention power and personal status. These would be elite women, with lots of family money and status, even compared to other women of citizen status. (Remember, this culture had lots of slaves and resident aliens; many were not citizens at all.)

It was an interesting book, and I learned many things I wasn't previously aware of. I also learned how much simply isn't known. While we have more remaining from those cultures than from many others, it still isn't all that much, and many things are ambiguous. How can you tell whether an image represents a Goddess, a mythical women, a priestess, or a random worshipper? There may well have been artistic conventions that would have been understood by contemporaries - but no one wrote them down. Greeks did sometimes label individuals in their art work, and we have some educated guesses about conventions: e.g. a man with a sacrificial knife, or a woman with a temple key, is a priestess - not deity nor random worshipper. But mostly we don't know for sure.

This book is worth reading, but only if you care about the topic. It's too detailed and specifically focussed for someone just interested in general history of classical Greece. On the other hand, if you happen to be participating in the modern recreation of Greek religion, it might just be a must-buy.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2007
- Author: female, American, born in 1954, academic (classical archaeologist), author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 415 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Feb 17-Mar 3, 2024, book not previously read

(Edit to add: I read this book after reading a review on the blogging site Dreamwidth, in their community named books.)

>88 ArlieS: Glad to see you read the Frans de Waal book, Arlie, and that it was a positive experience.
His other books are also worth reading.

>97 ArlieS: Forty years on, things hit very different. Yuck.

>101 FAMeulstee: With a little luck, the local libraries will have more of them.

>102 richardderus: Unless they are picking on people-like-me, I can generally get into the obsolete headspace, at least for fiction.

Why shouldn't a book be set in an alternate universe where a continent called "Africa" is populated by savages, head hunters, and other irredeemably-evil plot devices; how does that really differ from "zombies", "orcs", "trolls", "Nazis" or "Stalinists"? Why shouldn't it involve a semi-sentient species called "humans," with females all biologically programmed to be semi-intelligent servants to the far more intelligent males of their species? (Think Kzin from Larry Niven's works, except labelled "human" because the author takes their viewpoint.)

This sort of thing is not good for impressionable youth who don't realize the "humans", "Africans" etc. have only a name in common with the real thing, and build the fantasy into their model of the real world. But I'm no longer young enough to do that.

29. Neogenesis by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

This novel is the immediate predecessor to Salvage Right, my #21 for this year, and is itself subsequent to other novels I'd already read. It's part of the large and tangled Liaden Universe series. I found this one far less confusing than I found Salvage Right, doubtless because I wasn't missing such a large chunk of context; if anything, I had too much context, knowing how parts of this would turn out.

I enjoyed it, but can see how reading it without its predecessors would be confusing; the authors seem to be limiting their target audience to those already familiar with their series, perhaps unconsciously.

As usual, it's a decent bit of fiction, light in spite of the major end-of-the-world scale threat. I can't call it great, but I'll continue to read books in this series as they appear, or at least when I notice them. (It's hard to learn about new books in a series these days; any source of notifications I might sign up for would find it necessary to send me half a ton of "recommendations" for things I don't care about, and many don't seem to bother with recommending new releases from series they know you read religiously.)

I recommend this book to anyone who likes this series. But if you are unfamiliar with the series, don't start here.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2018
- Author 1: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #21 for 2024
- Author 2: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #21 for 2024
- English, public library, 435 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 1-5, 2024, book not previously read

>104 ArlieS: ...because, by 1983, we knew better. That kind of stuff, in 1933, well I do not love it but I understand the concept of autres temps, autres mœurs and do find imposing 2024 onto it. But I was alive in 1983, and remember the backlash/retro ideation aimed at me and my community as the AIDS disaster unfolded. That same attitude is present in this kind of story and is very much intentionally made to be this offensive way.

I never read much Niven, even back in the day, because I was inoculated by a teenaged awakening to Heinleins right-wingery. After that I was on the lookout for regressiveness.

30. Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

This is the third book in a sub-series of the huge Valdemar series, giving an account of the founding of the kingdom of Valdemar. I've been following this series for a long time, but not all books in the series are created equal.

In this case, the author falls into a fairly common trap: when writing the back story of a popular series, it's easy to wind up short on plot. This book is mostly a demonstration of how well the exiles have been doing, and how various features of the series' ancient history came to be. There is a threatening plot arc, but it starts some time after the middle of the book, and seems to be solved almost casually - plenty of sound and fury, but the series reader knows from the start that it will all work out.

I also found myself incredulous at the way social rank was preserved among the exiles. Nobles are described as tending to do little work, compared to everyone else - yet they are given manors in the new territory, and many of their servants stay with them. They are given better than normal lodgings in the initial settlement, and other random privileges. Meanwhile everyone else who wants e.g. a farm has to personally settle the land, clear it, build their home, etc. etc. They may team up with others to do some of this work, but they don't get special consideration from the system. Those nobles who e.g. learn to do plain (useful) sewing rather than embroidery or otherwise personally contribute are described favorably - but they don't appear to be a majority. Some of the worst of the non-contributory nobles take themselves off to an alternate settlement, with many of their servants and retainers, but plenty still remain, unwilling to do work that's "beneath them".

The book's a nice light read, and it's satisfying to see the early days described, given how much of the series I've read. But that's all the book has going for it. Read it only if you are a completionist with regard to its series.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), stories, 2023
- Author: Mercedes Lackey: female, American, born 1950, novelist, author of several books I read in 2023
- English, public library, 455 pages, 3 stars
- read Mar 5-8, 2024; book not previously read

>107 ArlieS: The retained status of the nobles is an aspect that I've dislike in all three books. Who is forcing servants and retainers to stay with these people? It doesn't make a great deal of sense since the role of noble who does nothing was a development of centuries and didn't last, though rich jerks who do nothing is evergreen.

>108 quondame: Too many of the plots in earlier-written books in the series depend on nobles who are useless or worse, with the average noble being a cross between a spoiled brat and an overprivileged unenlightened asshole.

It would perhaps have been better for Lackey to come up with a plot device where nobles start good, and mostly degrade over time, in contrast to royalty, because royalty - but not nobility - have the Companions to keep them idealistic, non-abusive, etc.

In fact, if I'd been writing the book, the nobility in the new kingdom would have grown up organically, starting with effective organizers and heroes. Those who'd been rich and/or noble before the move might have an advantage in the new world - they may have brought more material goods with them, and had better training, and even had people personally loyal to them as leader. But it wouldn't be automatic. This would be much like Baron/King Valdemar himself.

They could then beget the usual proportion of useless offspring, reverting to the mean - or worse - over the generations without losing their titles - producing all the assholes required for the plots of the earlier books.

Pearl Rule 2. American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis by Adam Hochschild

This is a book about repression in the United States, during and after World War One (then known as the "Great War"). I was learning a lot of very ugly specifics, though the picture painted is pretty close to what my left-leaning Canadian parents seemed to expect from patriotic Americans and their government(s) as of the early 1960s. (The biggest difference perhaps is that the violence shown in this book had a broader range of targets than my parents might have expected.)

It's also a book about resistance to that repression, but at least in the early part it's very much a doomed resistance: look what so-and-so did before they stuck him/her in jail, or sometimes murdered him/her.

The level of ugly behaviour depicted was too much for me, particularly when it's depicted as more or less official policy, not the excesses of a few aberrant individuals. Reading the book was upsetting me a lot more than I cared to deal with.

It didn't help that while my expectations of American behaviour have mellowed somewhat, compared to those of my parents, perhaps due to living here (as a person *not* of colour), they've been un-mellowing significantly over approximately the last decade. I regularly go past the intersection where some Christian zealot ran his car at an Indian family returning home from the public library, crippling the daughter; their crime, in the zealot's eyes, was appearing to be Muslim. (The news portrayed him as crazy, and even I don't think of him as a typical American Christian. But lesser violence seems a lot more normal to me in this country, and it's too often politically motivated.)

So this book was too ugly, and too real for me.

>109 ArlieS: Sometimes Lackey's plotting laziness pretty much overcomes whatever else she's stuffed into a book. When she really has a couple of ideas that plug in well to one of her series she's so much fun to read.

>110 ArlieS: Completely understandable. I think reads being just too much is the leading cause of my calling it quits.

I am with your left-leaning Canadian parents.

I am attempting to learn a new and difficult skill: if I borrow half a dozen books on a topic, because I'm not sure which one or two would be the most satisfying to read, I don't need to read the ones deemed less satisfying. I don't even need to keep renewing the less satisfying candidates until they run out of renewals. I can, in principle, take them right back to the library they came from.

It's amazing how difficult I'm finding it to teach myself the skill of actually doing so, rather than keeping them and stressing myself about needing to read an impossible number of pages per day in order to get everything read before it can no longer be renewed.

In other news, yesterday I got the last of my reading candidates for the March War Room topics: the Wars of the Roses. Naturally, this last one is the one I was most interested in. Yes, March is more than a third completed.

Most of these should go back to the library unread, along with several un-started books about the American Revolutionary War:

- Edward IV by Charles Ross (my preferred choice, sight unseen)
- Fatal Colours by George Goodwin
- The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses by Philip A. Haigh
- The Wars of the Roses by Michael A. Hicks
- The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
- The Rise of the Tudors by Charles Skidmore

>113 ArlieS: I love this - OCD much? But there's something about going to the trouble of borrowing the book...

>114 ArlieS: How are you doing with the Wars of the Roses, Arlie?

I finished Fatal Colours and found it quite easy to read. The Brothers York has more scholarly depth perhaps but it a bit more difficult to get through. Very good though.

>114 ArlieS: I have a strong fondness for Dan Jones and his work...stuffy history guy he is *not* with his tattoos and his lower-class accent, and his very sharp eye for the hidden detail.

>115 ChrisG1: Probably quite a bit of OCD, in the colloquial sense.

>116 PaulCranswick: I've started Edward IV, but not gotten very far yet. I have too many other books either already in flight, or due back at their libraries sooner. But I finished two of those in the past 2 days, so Edward should soon be getting more attention.

>117 richardderus: So many choices! It may be that Edward was the wrong one to start first.

31. Sex on six legs : lessons on life, love, and language from the insect world by Marlene Zuk

This non-fiction book was a nice light snack. The title is a bit misleading - it's much more about insect biology and insect behaviour in general than about insect sex per se. It's also somewhat of a sampler of insect factoids, organized by broad topic areas, than a straightforward study of either insects in general or any particular sub-topic. I normally don't like factoid collections as much as straightforward studies, but this one had an engaging writing style, and enough structure to keep me happy. Still, it rates 3.5 - better than average rather than 4 or more.

The author makes an interesting case for studying insects in particular. There's a huge variety, many of them are social, and by mammalian standards they have tiny brains, making their behavioral complexity relatively surprising. That may have been the high point of the book for me.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2011
- Author: female, American, born 1956, academic (evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology), author of my #116 for 2023
- English, public library, 262 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 10-14, 2024, book not previously read

32. Accepting the lance by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

This is another in the rambling series of Liaden Universe novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Neither of my local libraries acquired it, and my usual sources of recommendations didn't make me aware of its existence, so I only got to it this year, 5 years after it was published.

Fortunately I read it after Neogenesis, my #29 for this year, as parts of it would not make sense without the prior novel.

I enjoyed it a lot. Various plot loose ends are tied up satisfactorily, and we see progress in lots of characters' development.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction, series (not first), 2019
- Author 1: female, American, born 1952, novelist, joint author of my #21 and #29 for 2024
- Author 2: male, American, born 1950, novelist, joint author of my #21 and #29 for 2024
- English, public library, 432 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 8-15, 2024, book not previously read

April's War Room topic is Wars of Religion. I should be deciding what to read and placing holds this week, to have books early in April.

I suspect Paul was thinking about the European wars between Protestants and Catholics when he selected this topic, but there have been plenty of other wars of religion.

The earliest one I can think of would be the Hebrew conquest of Canaan. At least in retrospect, the conquerors were motivated by their god's commands and promises. There were doubtless many more in between, but the next that comes to mind would be the wars of Charlemagne, since he forced baptism on those he conquered.

Another obvious area to read about would be the Arabic/Muslim wars of expansion. Likewise, the Crusades, both those in the "Holy Land" and those in Eastern Europe. Also the crusade against the Albigensian heretics.

There are also religious war aspects to much of the conflict in the Middle East since at least the end of World War II.

I'm doing my usual thing with looking at all-time, history-genre LT recommendations tagged "war", and selecting those that seem relevant.

Here's what came out of that search; some may not be a good fit for the topic, some doubtless won't suit me, and a fair number won't be available from local libraries, even with inter-library loan.

Thirty Years War

- The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood
- The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson

Early Islamic Expansion

- The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread Of Islam Changed The World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy
- The Sasanian Empire at War: Persia, Rome, and the Rise of Islam, 224–651 by Michael J. Decker

Crusades, Holy Land

- The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge
- Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands by Dan Jones
- Chronicles of the Crusades by Jean de Joinville, Geoffroi de Villehardouin
- The Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades by Roger Crowley
- The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones

Crusades, outside the Middle East

- The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen

Islam vs Christianity

- Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World by Roger Crowley

Recent Middle East

- The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi
- Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

Misc

- War and religion : Europe and the Mediterranean from the first through the twenty-first century by Arnaud Blin
- Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong

>121 ArlieS: Lots of good choices there - not sure what angle I'm going to take yet.

>122 ChrisG1: I got email this morning that the library had successfully gathered some of them, and put them on their hold shelf for me. (This library has a bazillion branches, so I use holds to get books I want sent to the branch I intend to visit, rather than driving all over town collecting books. This time I think most already had copies at the intended branch, since they were gathered so fast, but I've got out of the habit of checking.)

33. From the Forest by L. E. Modesitt, Jr

This is the 23rd novel published in the Recluce series. Like many of these novels, it features a young, over-powered protagonist. This novel is less a coming of age story than a Horatio Hornblower novel, following a military officer from boyhood through training and early career, ending with his promotion to his first more or less independent command. (Is there a generally agreed term for that style of novel, generally part of a long series? The Honor Harrington series would be another of the same type.)

It was a decent offering, and now that I've finished it, I'm eager to read the next installment, apparently due out early in 2025. I was pleased to learn from the author's web site that there will be 4 books in this sub-series, and all of them are already in the hands of the publishers.

My one complaint about this book was that I kept having a feeling I'd read it before. The main character is mentioned in earlier-written books as an historical figure, but that's not likely to account for my sense of deja vu. It could be that an extract was included in another book by the same author, but then this sense would only have applied to a chapter or two. My guess is that this is the second time this author has addressed the life of a military officer in this particular nation, and the two are a bit too much alike - similar non-standard talents, which they both conceal, and somewhat similar love interest. The two are centuries apart in the reality of the novels, but that doesn't feel like quite enough to separate them.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy, series (not first), 2024
- Author: male, American, born 1943, novelist, author of my #36, #38, #63, #86, and #128 for 2023
- English, public library, 454 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 18-22, 2024; book not previously read

>124 ArlieS: Modesitt repeats a lot in terms of strategies for dealing with a talent, and love interests, and his menu is pretty basic as well. I've generally enjoyed the first book of a series, sometimes the first two, much more than later ones. Isolate wasn't involving enough to read further.

>124 ArlieS: the touchstone is for the wrong book.

I reread all of the Recluce novels last year and the year before and I am excited to read this latest installment.

From the Forest

I really need to get back to Recluce. At this point, I may as well just start from the beginning again. 😀

>126 elorin: Thank you. I've fixed the touchstone.

"I reread all of the Recluce novels last year and the year before and I am excited to read this latest installment."

I wish I'd had more of them in my collection, rather than having to rely on libraries, but at the same time I'm trying to reduce the far too many objects in my house.

>127 drneutron: Restarting sounds like a great plan.

>127 drneutron: >128 ArlieS: I went with publication order for this last reread, purchasing any I was missing as I went along, ended with Fairhaven Rising. If I go with another Recluce reread it will be chronological order I think.

34. The glorious cause : the American Revolution 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff

I borrowed this book for the February round of the War Room challenge, and read it in March. It took me a while, at 736 pages. I consider it a decent and fairly comprehensive description of the events of the American Revolution, starting before the trouble began, and ending with the replacement constitution of 1787.

I'd intended to just glance at it before returning it to the library, since I'd already satisfied the February challenge, and it was time to move on to the Wars of the Roses. I was sucked in by the description of British opinion about the American colonies, and the British political situation, shortly before the trouble began. So this book didn't go back to the library with all the others I'd borrowed for the February challenge but had not yet started.

It's basically a text book, in that it covers everything an American college student ought to know about the topic, and never explicitly violates American orthodoxy. (The Revolution is "glorious"; those participating are "patriots", etc. etc.) On the other hand, it describes enough bad and questionable behaviour from those patriots that I wasn't too sure the author personally subscribed to those orthodox beliefs, and even suspected him of possibly being British rather than American himself. (He turned out to have been American.) Perhaps no one can fully subscribe to a simplistic mythology in an area where they have in depth knowledge.

I like that this book shows a lot about how the sausage was made, not just glorious stages in its preparation. I like that it starts by setting the scene, particularly the scene in Britain, rather than diving straight into the action. But I now know more about this revolution than I really care about, and I personally would probably have preferred a book with some kind of non mainstream theme.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2005 (1st edition was 1982)
- Author: male, American, born 1929, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, inter-library loan, 736 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 2-24, 2024, book not previously read

35. Fatal colours : Towton 1461--England's most brutal battle by George Goodwin

This is a relatively short book about the battle of Towton, set in its context during the Wars of the Roses. Unsurprisingly, I read it for the War Room challenge, March edition.

It was a good book, and did a somewhat better job of giving me overall context for the Wars of the Roses than I'd gotten from a biography of one of the participants (Edward IV).

The section on the battle itself doesn't start until halfway through the book, and basically consists of one very meaty chapter. I'm fine with that, but another reader with better knowledge of the context might have been disappointed.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2012
- Author: male, British, age unknown, amateur historian, author not previously read
- English, public library, 250 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 18-25, 2024, book not previously read

> 121 I have borrowed several of the recommended books for the April War Room challenge from two local libraries, this time without resorting to inter-library loan. I expect to read only a subset of these - perhaps 2 or 3 - depending on time availability and how they look on a closer examination.

Here's my complete haul:

- Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong
- The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread Of Islam Changed The World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy
- Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands by Dan Jones
- Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World by Roger Crowley
- The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson
- The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi
- Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

I'm tempted to see whether I can get a couple of others by inter-library loan, but am currently exercising a wee bit of self control. In particular:

- The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen
- The Sasanian Empire at War: Persia, Rome, and the Rise of Islam, 224–651 by Michael J. Decker
- War and religion : Europe and the Mediterranean from the first through the twenty-first century by Arnaud Blin

36. The military campaigns of the Wars of the Roses by Philip A. Haigh

This book contains a chapter on each of the battles of the Wars of the Roses. Each chapter begins with a bit of context, continues with the lead up to the battle, describes the battle itself in detail, then gives a bit about its aftermath.

I enjoyed it a lot, and found it easier to absorb even non-military information about the Wars of the Roses than some other books I've tried. I didn't absorb all the details of the battles, but I wasn't really trying to do so. Recommended.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 1995
- Author: male, British, born 1964, IT professional and amateur historian, author not previously read
- English, public library, 206 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 15-31, 2024, book not previously read

read for the March War Room challenge.

37. Radical by nature : the revolutionary life of Alfred Russel Wallace by James T. Costa

This is a very sympathetic biography of a co-discoverer of evolution, by an author who understands the science involved, as well as the history. I enjoyed it and learned a lot.

I learned about this book by reading a review in The Inquisitive Biologist.

I recommend both the review blog and the book.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history/biography, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: male, American, age unknown, academic (biology), author not previously read
- English, public library, 515 pages, 4 stars
- read Mar 9-Apr 2, 2024, book not previously read

>134 ArlieS: Æons ago I read a novel about Alfred Russel Wallace, liked it, and can not recall one thing about it...author, title, not even the publisher! I really hate aging. May the reads to come delight you.

>135 richardderus: Some days, I need to keep reminding myself that the aging I have is still better than the only real alternative.

38. A Troubling Along the Border by Donald Aamodt

I got my compulsive non-fiction reading back under control - I'm no longer trying to read all the prospects I'd borrowed for any particular month of the War Room challenge. I also ran out of borrowed fiction. So I'm back to my project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author, with the extra goal of de-acquisitioning anything I find myself not wanting to reread.

This book is the sequel to my #19 for this year. Like the first one, it's OK, but I'd have been unlikely to purchase it any time in the past decade, when I'd become more selective about what I chose to occupy my now scarce shelf space.

There should perhaps be a genre for "portal fantasy sequel". In this book, the lead character is fully adapted to his new world. He still resents the circumstances - and people - who brought him there - but that shows up only as comments made in passing. He might just as well have been a local warrior with the same personality, talents, and peculiar relationship with a local deity.

At any rate, it's an OK fantasy adventure story, but not much more. I rated it 4 the first time I read it, however long ago that was, but this year it's only worth a 3.

Statistics:
- fiction, portal fantasy (modern human with special powers in fantasy world), series (not first), 1991
- Author (Donald Aamodt): male, American, born 1935, novelist, author of my #19 for this year
- English, own shelves, 275 pages, 3 stars
- read Mar 27-Apr 5, 2024, book previously read

39. Catching fire : how cooking made us human by Richard W. Wrangham

This book is popularization by an actual academic biologist, trying to demonstrate that cooking both allowed hominids to grow bigger brains and endowed them with a gender-based division of labor.

These are interesting ideas.

This isn't the first time I've read the idea that proto-humans were able to increase their brain size only by decreasing their gut size - but the last time I read that, the story was that reduced gut size was enabled by meat eating. In that version, the control of fire is implied to come much later, consequence rather than cause of increased intelligence. I rate Wranham's theory as plausible but unproven, and look forward to checking back in a decade or two.

I'm a lot less convinced by his idea that cooking was the original and most archetypal "women's work," outside of the bearing and raising of infants. Moreover, he also suggests that cooking is the reason that proto-humans (and thus humans themselves) developed pair bonds. He tells a couple of "just so" stories to explain or at least motivate these ideas, but his stories left me unconvinced, seeming to me to presume parts of their conclusions, as well as lacking adequate evidence.

The book is also written in a style that screamed to me of an attempt to convince laypeople, as if the author had failed to convince most scientists in the relevant field, and taken his argument to the less educated masses. I was somewhat surprised to find that the author is in fact a reputable scientist, and a professor of biological anthropology at a top tier university. (My first guess from the style was that I was reading a more-or-less autodidact ignored or scoffed at by specialists.)

There are footnotes and a 32 page bibliography.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, human evolution, series: n/a, 2009
- Author: male, British, born 1948, academic (biology), author previously read
- English, public library, 309 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 1-8, 2024, book not previously read

40. Edward IV by Charles Derek Ross

I read this biography of Edward IV of England for the March edition of the War Room challenge. It took me a while, in part because the beginning of the book was very confusing, with nobles referred to by their titles, which changed over time - with old titles simultaneously going to new people. The early chapter(s) were especially bad, with much turning back several pages to see who "York" or "Somerset" referred to in the current paragraph. It didn't help that there were generally several people with the same name (e.g. "Edward" or "Richard") associated with the changing titles. I switched to reading other books I'd borrowed for the same challenge.

Eventually I came back to this book, which became a lot easier to follow after (a) reading better written accounts of some of the same events and people and/or (b) chapters of this book became more substantial, so there were fewer title changes per chapter. (I'm not sure which mattered more.)

The book is OK, except for that confusing early section, and did what I wanted to - gave me real life context for a famous person who'd been portrayed in a memorable and positive way when he appeared in a novel I'd once read. I can't call it great, but it did the job.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history/biography, series: n/a, 1997
- Author: male, British, born in 1924, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, inter-library loan, 479 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 13-Apr 8, 2024, book not previously read

41. The Guardians by Lynn Abbey

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is the 6th one in shelving order, but only the 3rd I reread - the missing three are now in a box destined for a local little free library.

To my tastes, Lynn Abbey's works are highly variable; some I love, and some I dislike. The Guardians was one of the ones I loved. But she also wrote all 3 of the above-mentioned discards.

The Guardians is a fantasy novel set in what was the present day when it was written, a bit more than 40 years ago. The main change from the real world is that Wicca is more than just a religion; its beliefs accurately describe the real world. We have covens dating back before the invention of writing, and their ritual work is vital to maintaining the world as experienced by non-members. In particular (not part of standard Wicca) there is a terrible dimension which would leak out into the normal world, causing death and destruction, if Wiccans and others didn't perform their cycle of rituals.

Given this setting, the plot is obvious. Something interferes with one of these guardian covens' rituals, a rift connecting to this dangerous dimension is left unstable, things begin to leak out, and our viewpoint characters need to fix this to SaveTheWorld (TM).

The book kind of presumes Wicca, without explaining details. I'm not sure how it would read to someone who didn't know anything about those details. I do know those details, having spent some years as a Wiccan myself, and that was probably some of the charm of the book for me.

Other than that, it's a basic save-the-world adventure. It violates tropes of its time by featuring mostly female viewpoint characters, and neither of the heroine's two potential romances work out - she ends the book as single as she started, with both boyfriends dead.

But it's a good save-the-world adventure, and also a story of people becoming Wiccan, with one in particular also growing in leadership and self confidence. I enjoyed it a lot.

Statistics:
- fiction, present day fantasy (wiccan), non-series, 1982
- Author (Lynn Abbey): female, American, born 1948, novelist (fantasy), author previously read
- English, own shelves, 380 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 9-11, 2024, book previously read

p.s. this novel pwns the Bechdel test.

>140 ArlieS: I don't think I've read The Guardians. I have trouble remembering much about Abbey's books, and probably confuse some with works by other authors like Elizabeth Bear, but then I haven't read any since 2007, so maybe I'm due.

>139 ArlieS: Well done for getting through that one, Arlie. Undone by wine and women and overindulgence. That is a pretty universal story isn't it?!

>141 quondame: I hadn't thought about it before, but Abbey and Bear are kind of similar. (And both are "like sometimes" for me, neither all good nor all bad.)

>142 PaulCranswick: It was interesting, once I got all the similarly named people straight.

I've been having a "fun" week.

It's my peak period for allergies, so I either take many precautions or have many headaches; I'm currently on Claritin.

Monday is the income tax deadline for the US where I live, and as always, there are surprises that take hours to sort out. I finally finished them about an hour ago.

And yesterday we discovered that our fridge had died. Unplanned defrosting had progressed significantly; we found a puddle on the kitchen floor, figured someone had been clumsy and cleaned it up, and only thought to check the fridge when a new puddle appeared in the same place. And of course this happened the day after we'd brought home a large grocery order.

The new fridge is supposed to be delivered on Tuesday, and the dead one removed. Unfortunately, they gave us a 12 hour window, starting at 7 AM, which is when I normally decide to ignore my alarm. Blessedly we have a free-standing freezer, which is not dead, so we didn't lose all or even most of the frozen food, though what was in the fridge's freezer section is thawed and needs to be eaten ASAP. We're using the fridge itself as a really big cooler - buying ice to keep the contents cool enough that they'll probably keep until the new fridge arrives.

I have, however, managed to finish two more books in the cracks between dealing with all this, in part because the headaches meant I needed to stay off the computer. (Using the comp seems to be an effective way for me convert a small sinus headache into a lie-in-a-dark-room headache monster.)

I wish you luck with the fridge - I replaced mine 2 years ago and it was an ordeal.

Over a decade ago an ENT doctor recommended that I take Claritin as a prophylactic (preventative) so it's in my nightly regimen. That's the only way I survive what they call mountain cedar and the rest of San Antonio's allergens without perpetual sinus infections.

Congratulations on getting your taxes in!

>145 elorin: Thanks for dropping by.

Fridge replacement *shouldn't* be an ordeal, beyond problems resulting from waiting for the fridge to die before replacing it. But that's in an ideal world....

I'm not looking forward to figuring out a path from outdoors to the kitchen, and clearing space. My housemate is convinced it'll be able to come in through the side door; I fear that she's wrong. But on the good side, the ice-and-cold-pack routine is still working; the fridge contents are still chilly, and nothing is known to have gone off. and with luck, the deliver-and-install folks will have been and gone by this time tomorrow. (They gave me a 12 hour window, so maybe not.)

42. The Wars of the Roses : the fall of the Plantagenets and the rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (Daniel Gwynne Jones)

This is a decent history of the Wars of the Roses, the last of the books I read for the March installment of the War Room challenge. I almost rated it 4; it was kind of on the cusp between that and 3.5.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2014
- Author: male, British, born in 1981, popular historian and journalist, author not previously read
- English, public library, 392 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 26-Apr 12, 2024, book not previously read

43. The Forge of Virtue by Lynn Abbey

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is the 7th one in shelving order, and the 4th one I actually reread, rather than discarding.

This is a fairly bog-standard adventure - callow youth(s) take on a quest, displaying ignorance and pettiness, but also some really good skills. They've grown up a bit by the time the quest ends successfully.

Complexities come mostly from the world building. There's a somewhat unusual social and political system, complete with an official system that doesn't accurately describe reality. I suspect this system, and some of the non-central characters, come from the Ultima series of role playing games, since the book plainly declares that it uses elements from that work.

Unsurprisingly, there's something fishy in the state of ... Britannia, with magical, moral, and political aspects; perhaps the hypocrisy is coming home to roust. At any rate, Lord British has disappeared, and the Companion he left in charge, Lord Blackthorn, is setting up a repressive dictatorship, proscribing magicians as a class when certain of their leaders refuse to give him information he demands. Our heroes set out to rescue the brother of one of them, who is a mage in the service of a mage leader reputed to have been abducted and tortured by Blackthorn's minions.

Adventures ensue.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (role playing game universe), start of series, 1991
- Author (Lynn Abbey): female, American, born 1948, novelist (fantasy), author previously read
- English, own shelves, 312 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 12-13, 2024, book previously read

44. The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars: Cheating and Deception in the Living World by Lixing Sun

This book attempts to address "cheating" and "lying", both in the natural (non-human) world and among humans. Lixing Sun describes two types of cheating: (1) falsifying information in communication and (2) exploiting cognitive loopholes. Both are present among animals as well as humans; the early chapters of the book explore non-human variants.The book then moves on to human behaviour.

According to this book, lies are vital to human society; the only ethical question is about the type of lie. Moreover economic interaction is impossible without dishonesty. I find the former unfortunate - humans *will* lie, so if I'm going to be involved with them I need to tolerate and sometimes commit socially acceptable lying ("white" lies, resume exaggerations, advertisements and political speech), translate the standard lies in my mind, and protect myself from the more unpredictable (and socially less acceptable) kind. But the latter claim seems to me to be just plain wrong; if anything, it's an example of (socially acceptable?) lying itself.

A thought experiment is given to motivate this second point, where a vendor tells a potential purchaser of his true costs, which are much much lower than the standard price; the purchaser refuses to pay less than the standard price such an honest vendor deserves, and the vendor refuses to take so much more than his actual costs. This is not a problem with honesty - it's a problem with something I'd call pathological generosity. (Both would be better off if they split the difference...) This argument rather put me off the book and its author.

Another problem comes with his idea that it is "cheating" to dress-for-success, showing up in clothes culturally appropriate to the intended event, let alone tuned to make one appear like a better grade of prospect to random strangers. Wearing appropriate costume is a PITA. Sometimes it's actively painful (women's dress shoes hurt!). It also tends to exclude people lacking financial or cultural capital - they can't afford the tailored suits, or don't know the formula for looking appropriate in contexts foreign to their upbringing. But IMO it's only "cheating" to the extent that it perpetuates inherited class injustice.

Perhaps the problem lies with the author's cultural background, and the otherwise almost unnoticeable fact that he's not writing in his native language. More likely, he's a thoughtful neurotypical, and I'm on the autistic spectrum. What tends to improve social interaction for him, at least after his childhood calibration period, tends to dis-improve it for me. (Learning how to produce appropriate lies myself was much much easier than learning to translate other people's lies; often I just presume their statements have little or no evidentiary value - e.g. they are saying things "to make me feel good" or "to get me to like them", and truth or falsity never enters into their mind.)

I think this might be a better book for someone less familiar with the animal models, and neurotypical enough not to habitually notice routine human deception.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2023
- Author: male, Chinese (lives in USA, perhaps naturalized), born in 1964, academic (biology, behaviour), author not previously read
- English, public library, 269 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 9-18, 2024, book not previously read

Interesting comments! Do you think it's worth reading?

>150 drneutron: Good question. I think that very much depends on where the reader is coming from.

A book like this will be a source of new ideas for people who haven't been reading lots of research on animal behaviour and/or human evolution. It might be a bit of a counter to those taking the (fallacious) position that humans should behave just like they did in the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness", aka whatever period the believer has determined that human evolution stopped. (The Paleolithic is popular, hence a certain well known diet....) And I haven't yet encountered anything that tries to combine non-human and human in quite this way.

But on the other hand, if the ideas aren't new to the reader, the book is probably redundant. And I don't recall the extent to which you've been reading about this research.

In ten days it will be May, time for the next installment of the War Room challenge. The theme for May is the Napoleonic Wars.

Building my list of candidates in my usual way, I found very few books recommended by the "new" system that appeared to be related to the Napoleonic wars.

- The Black Count: Napoleon's Rival and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas by Tom Reiss
- Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
- The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History by Alexander Mikaberidze

The only one of these that seems to match my goals is the third, and I'd prefer a deeper study of a smaller part of the wars. I also haven't yet checked whether local libraries have any of these books. So alternate suggestions would be very welcome (non-fiction only).

I did find a couple more books relevant to the March challenge (wars of religion); I'm not sure why they got added to my recommendations (or tagged as "war" between Mar 21 and Apr 20 of this year. Possibly they are simply newly published; the first of these is only in 14 LT members' collections.

- War and religion : Europe and the Mediterranean from the first through the twenty-first century by Arnaud Blin
- Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

More interestingly, I selected a number of other books as potentially interesting. Some are very far off topic, e.g.

- The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C Winegard

I very much need a better source of recommendations.

Progress (or otherwise) on April War Room

The books I actually intend to read for "wars of religion":

- Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong. Doesn't really suit the theme, but it's interesting. I'm a bit more than 3/4 finished.
- The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson. This fits the theme perfectly, and is quite interesting, but it's almost 1000 pages long. I'm more than 40% of the way.
- Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World by Roger Crowley. This one is comparatively short, and I'd like to learn more about the topic. Not yet started.

I have three others checked out, and *might* read them, but if I do, it'll most likely be in May, June, or even early July.

>152 ArlieS: I've read a great number of historical fiction novels with the Napoleonic wars as the setting - Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin series, the Hornblower series, Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series, Winston Graham's Poldark series. Note, they're all from the British perspective. I've never read War & Peace, so perhaps this is my time to try it!

>154 ChrisG1: I love the genre that the Hornblower series may have founded - where we follow a person's career across a series of books. Usually the person is military, and each book brings a new promotion. Whether or not the Hornblower series was the first, it's often used to identify the genre.

I recall not being as impressed as I expected when I picked up one of the Hornblower books, probably some decades ago, but perhaps it's time to give them another chance.

>155 ArlieS: I read the Hornblower series last year, having already read O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin series. While I enjoyed it, I think O'Brian surpassed Forester. Have you ever read the Honor Harrington books by David Weber? Some call it "Hornblower in Space..."

45. Fields of blood : religion and the history of violence by Karen Armstrong

This book looks at violence and its relationship to religion, mostly major world religions. The author's thesis is that first of all, religion is not the unique or even main cause of human violence, and secondly that religions often spawn critiques of violence and aspirations to a better way of life.

This is unobjectionable, in spite of some fairly hyperbolic and/or ignorant claims to the contrary. It's also good that the author admits that religion is regularly complicit in violence of all kinds, and religious authorities are often strong supporters of particular acts of violence, sometimes being primary warmongers themselves. I'm also pleased that she doesn't confine herself to the Judeo-Christian traditions, or even entirely to Christianity.

On the other hand, I'm not happy that the only anti-violence advocacy Armstrong acknowledges is religious. I question her insistence that at the relevant tech levels (agrarian, particularly 'agrarian empire') state supported violence is inevitable - and not even ameliorable. And while she appears to be better informed than most authors on the history, she makes errors in prehistory, making claims that had been debunked before she wrote this book.

She's also respectful of Christianity, in particular, in ways that set my teeth on edge. Religious claims about Jesus are treated as factual. This is primarily a matter of phrasing, not substance, and to an extent she does the same for other religious leaders. But "Jesus said" based on material written down after all the witnesses were dead, simply because that material presents the text as quoted - at a time when even historians routinely made up speeches to put into their subjects mouths? I smell a blind spot.

My biggest problem with this book, however, was that I didn't know where it was going. It somehow manages to say only "not the main cause of violence" while implying "overall great influence, and any complicity in violence was 100% excusable". I spent the whole book expecting it to get around to explicitly endorsing the implicit thesis, giving me text I could use in my review/refutation - but the author never quite stepped over the edge. Still, I'd expect pro-religion readers to come away "knowing" this book had "proven" both the implicit and explicit theses.

I started this book for the War Room challenge for April - Wars of Religion. It doesn't properly fit the challenge, but it was interesting enough that I kept on reading.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2014
- Author: female, British, born in 1944, writer, author not previously read
- English, public library, 512 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Mar 30-Apr 22, 2024, book not previously read

46. The Temper of Wisdom by Lynn Abbey

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is the 8th one in shelving order, and the 5th one I actually reread, rather than discarding. Note for the record that I currently own 1455 books I've categorized as fiction; this is an extremely long term project.

This book is the immediate sequel to my #43 for this year. A third volume was obviously planned, but LibraryThing knows of no other books in the series. I guess the planned next volume never appeared.

Like the first volume, it's a bog-standard adventure novel. This one's a sequel, so we have slightly less callow adventurers; one of them makes up for this by going into a major funk at the end of the last book, making him rather less likable. This installment is somewhat more typical in its treatment of women - the one female member of the original team spends most of this novel as a victim in need of rescue. (In the prior novel, she had basically caused the quest to happen, inspiring others to help her to find and rescue her brother - so male victim, and woman with real agency.) On the good side, she at least avoids becoming the hero's prize for success and valor; instead she choses to marry a different member of the original team at the end of this book, with both dropping out of the planned continuation.

I wouldn't buy this book today, but it's an OK (re)read, and will be OK again once I've mostly forgotten the plot.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (role playing game universe), series (not first), 1992
- Author (Lynn Abbey): female, American, born 1948, novelist (fantasy), author previously read
- English, own shelves, 312 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 12-13, 2024, book previously read

>158 ArlieS: Did the Ultima game universe fail commercially? or wait...they sold the rights the year this book came out, so they probably just decided to skip the extra expense and no one finished it up.

>159 richardderus: Good question. I never played in that universe, so don't remember much except a name: "Ultima online". I think there was also at least one single player game with the same name.

I played Ultimate III and IV back in the day. Might be fun to see if there’s an emulator somewhere that would allow me to dip back in.

47. The Coming of the Horseclans by Robert Adams

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is the 9th one in shelving order, with the 8th currently stuck with 112 of 196 pages completed. (It's at the start of one of those chapters where you know the heroine is about to do something really stupid, and don't want to read about it.) The Coming of the Horseclans is the 6th book I've completed during this reread.

This series rates some kind of trigger warning. The main virtues on display are macho - combat skills, courage, and similar. Lack of these virtues invites contempt. This is true even for female characters, though less so than for males. Many of the opponents are portrayed as over-the-top evil. Even the "good" guys commit both torture and rape, and it's not portrayed as morally ambiguous, or even bad. They also keep slaves. Even worse perhaps to modern sensibilities, part of the over-the-top-evil of one of the main groups of opponents is a cultural propensity to adult men raping male children - but even consensual homosexuality between adults is (usually) portrayed as demonstrating the effeminacy of both participants.

I find it easy to put aside this context, and identify with the heroic - or at least very macho - characters. Then we get a mix of battles, raids, duels, all heroic, along with vignettes of life in a number of invented cultures, with some extra abilities not present in the real world. I very much enjoy this kind of thing, at least in stories, though I certainly wouldn't want it happening in real life. In this series, I particularly enjoy the intelligent horses and large cats, who participate in tribal life as essentially equals to the humans; the author has quite a way with words when speaking for his feline characters, or describing their behaviour.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), first of a series, 1975
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author previously read
- English, own shelves, 199 pages, 3.5 stars
- read Apr 25-29, 2024, book previously read

>162 ArlieS: Fewer than 200pp and he packed in that much offensive prejudiced nonsense. Impressive, in a horrible way.

>162 ArlieS: & >163 richardderus: Doesn't quite look like my cup of tea.

Another

prod

towards

a

new

thread

>163 richardderus: Indeed. And I forgot to include the cannibals who appear in a later volume - another example of over-the-top evil opponents.

>165 PaulCranswick: >169 PaulCranswick: ;-)

Thanks for the encouragement.

And who knows, I *might* finish another book in the next 2 days; that stalled novel has only 84 pages left to go.

>170 ArlieS: More than enough for a new thread already, Arlie.

>170 ArlieS: Were the cannibals the same ones that suddenly emerged to taste Joe Biden's uncle?

>171 PaulCranswick: *rofl* I hadn't noticed that now week-old news story.

No, the series features a fair number of fairly crazy tribes/villages/cultures. The idea is that cultists and other wackaloons often form enclaves in the middle of nowhere (think Waco, Texas or Jim Jones), and isolated small groups tended to survive the apocalypse better than people in mainstream areas.

The cannibals are otherwise entirely vegetarian, with a confused and confusing religion that appears to be derived from 20th century environmentalism.

We also see at least two separate perversions of Christianity.

>172 ArlieS: Vegan Cannibals?! The mind boggles, Arlie.