{"id":1119,"date":"2020-05-31T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T12:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2023-10-21T10:10:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T14:10:37","slug":"may-2020-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/05\/may-2020-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2020 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Something That May Shock and Discredit You<\/em> &#8211; Daniel Lavery (as Daniel Mallory Ortberg), 2020. Kind of a weird mish-mosh &#8211; I enjoyed parts of it very much but wished there was more straight-ahead memoir. But what sticks in my mind the most is the analysis of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shatnerchatner.com\/p\/cis-men-as-far-as-we-like-know-with\">transmasc energy<\/a>&#8221; as originally exemplified by William Shatner&#8217;s Kirk &#8211; partly because I&#8217;m re-watching the original Star Trek, but also because I love windows into subcultures I&#8217;m not part of. <\/li><li> <em>Cost Price<\/em> &#8211; Dornford Yates, 1949. Sequel to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/04\/april-2020-books-read\/\">Safe Custody<\/a> with a lot more detail about the carved jewels, but burdened with tiresome late-Yates tropes, especially &#8220;woman who&#8217;s lower than hero&#8217;s social level but he magnanimously treats her well and so she&#8217;s head over heels for him.&#8221; The earlier book wasn&#8217;t in the Richard Chandos series, but this one features him and he drags that trope along &#8211; as well as too much focus on how ridiculously strong and naive he is. Ugh.<\/li><li><em>The Bront\u00ebs Went to Woolworths<\/em> &#8211; Rachel Ferguson, 1931. Jonathan borrowed this through ILL and it sounded so bonkers that I read it as well before returning. What a strange, sometimes-delightful, sometimes infuriating book &#8211; it takes a long time to figure out what the heck is going on with this crazy family, and then once I did, actual ghosts turned up and broke the genre I thought it was in. Plus the protagonist ends up being quite mean. But it was fascinating and if I had a copy I might read it again &#8211; I think its strangeness would be a bracing shock all over again in a few years. I&#8217;ve certainly never read anything at all like it.<\/li><li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/05\/sense-and-sensibility-jane-austen-1811\/\">Sense and Sensibility<\/a><\/em> &#8211; Jane Austen, 1811<\/li><li><em>My First Summer in the Sierra<\/em> &#8211; John Muir, 1911 &#8211; quotes pulled, tbd<\/li><li><em>Hungry Hill: A Memoir<\/em> &#8211; Carol O&#8217;Malley Gaunt, 2007 &#8211; Irish Writers book group selection, but I didn&#8217;t pull any quotes. I hadn&#8217;t finished it when we discussed it in April, and I went back to it out of sheer stubbornness, but I regret it. One of the worst books I&#8217;ve ever read and not even in an interesting way &#8211; sentence by sentence the writing is competent, and the topic could have been fascinating, but there&#8217;s no there there.<\/li><li><em>A Child&#8217;s Delight<\/em> &#8211; Noel Perrin, 1997. I&#8217;m a fan of Perrin, of books-about-books, and of children&#8217;s literature, so naturally I loved it. I&#8217;ve added a few titles to my to-read-someday list (<em>The Planet of Junior Brown, I Go By Sea I Go By Land, Dogsbody<\/em>, the stories of Laurence Housman) and loved all the essays about my already-favorites. My only minor disagreement is about the Magic Schoolbus books, which I think were over-hyped &#8211; but maybe I should give them another chance.<\/li><li><em>Juno and the Paycock<\/em> (1924) and <em>The Plough and the Stars<\/em> (1926) &#8211; Sean O&#8217;Casey, for Irish Writers book group. Not enough quotes to do a separate post; J&amp;P was amusing, P&amp;S hard to follow, but we agreed we&#8217;d really need to see them performed to get them. I knew these plays by title but didn&#8217;t know they were about the Irish revolution &#8211; I thought J&amp;P was related to Leda and the swan&#8230; Words learned: &#8220;fistic&#8221;  (related to boxing); &#8220;glad neck&#8221; blouse (deep V collar); &#8220;Shan Van Vok&#8221; &#8211; reference to &#8220;The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Sean-Bhean_bhocht\">Sean-Bhean bhocht<\/a>,&#8221; a traditional song which also personifies Ireland.<\/li><li><em>The Shining<\/em> &#8211; Stephen King, 1977. Not my favorite King but I was drawn back to it by thinking about Jack Torrance&#8217;s writing. The description of his play sounds pretty terrible, and the idea that it&#8217;s going to make him his fortune seems rather quaint even in the 70s&#8230; Might not read this one again ever &#8211; in fact, I&#8217;m 55 (1\/2!) and that&#8217;s probably a good resolution to start making about books I&#8217;m not compelled by. Unless there&#8217;s some essay or idea I want to work out!<\/li><li><em>Magic, Inc.<\/em> &#8211; Robert Heinlein, 1940. I was remembering the delightful Heinlein short about the dust devil (&#8220;Our Fair City&#8221;) and revisited this novella. It&#8217;s a weird mixture of small-business story in a world where magic can be harnessed for capitalism, which segues into an interminable watching-the-sausage-get-made political yarn. (The very detailed <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magic,_Inc.\">Wikipedia summary<\/a> deals with the politics in one sentence, but it feels like a third of the book). There&#8217;s lovely chemistry between the narrator, Archie Fraser, and the old witch Mrs. Jennings, one of my favorite ultra-calm-and-competent Heinlein women.<\/li><li><em>Doctor Sleep<\/em> &#8211; Stephen King, 2013. The sequel to <em>The Shining<\/em> which I thought I had never read until I started it again and I totally did try it already, presumably in 2013 or 2014. To my taste quite a bit better than the first, but a couple of plot holes: a not-very-sensical measles-immunity McGuffin, and a miniature train which goes on infrequent excursions to distant points up big grades (granted, there is at least one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.roadsideamerica.com\/tip\/6903#:~:text=Train%20Mountain%20Railroad%20Museum&amp;text=Southwest%20of%20town%20on%20S,Hwy%2097%2FDalles%20California%20Hwy.&amp;text=The%20%22World's%20Longest%20Hobby%20Miniature,over%2022%20miles%20in%20length.\">very long miniature railway<\/a> &#8211; thank you King for making me research this &#8211; but nonetheless there is something so weird about the way this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lookpark.org\/activities\/steamer-train\/\">Look Park scale thing<\/a> is described and then they&#8217;re heading off to like, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mass.gov\/locations\/mount-sugarloaf-state-reservation\">Mount Sugarloaf<\/a> for picnics &#8211; who maintains the track? how does this make sense logistically?) I might try <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Doctor_Sleep_(2019_film)\">the movie<\/a> at some point.<\/li><li><em>The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life<\/em> &#8211; Thomas M. Sterner, 2005 (early self-published edition). I thought this would be a fairly easy purge\/low-hanging fruit from the shelves of self-help books I&#8217;m trying to purge &#8211; I&#8217;m a sucker for them! &#8211; but it&#8217;s actually quite good. Apparently Sterner went on to found a <a href=\"https:\/\/tomsterner.com\/\">self-help empire<\/a>, critiqued for promising the moon and the stars, but this original version is modest in its aims, and reaches them.<\/li><li><em>Red Dragon<\/em> &#8211; Thomas Harris, 1981. I kept hearing how great this series was and finally checked it out. People are not exaggerating. I loved the sequel even more, but this first Hannibal book is remarkable &#8211; compelling, readable, and thought-provoking too. Thriller is not my favorite genre but yeah, this was a great read.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something That May Shock and Discredit You &#8211; Daniel Lavery (as Daniel Mallory Ortberg), 2020. Kind of a weird mish-mosh &#8211; I enjoyed parts of it very much but wished there was more straight-ahead memoir. But what sticks in my mind the most is the analysis of &#8220;transmasc energy&#8221; as originally exemplified by William Shatner&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}