Marion: I read a few things this week since we went to a secluded inn on the coast for a couple of nights. I re-read The Hourglass Throne, third book in THE TAROT SEQUENCE by K.D. Edwards because I remembered that I hadn’t ever reviewed it! A review will follow soon. I also meandered through an anthology of weird and spooky stories compiled by Melissa Edmundson, Women’s Weird Two; More Strange Stories by Women. The tales span a publication period from 1891-1937 featuring ghosts, curses, ghoulies and strange occurrences. I finished off with Dial A for Aunties, by Jesse Q. Sutanto, a chick-lit dead-body romantic comedy–think The Trouble with Harry, or more recently Weekend at Bernie’s, only with an American-Asian MC, her mother and her three immigrant aunts trying to hide a body, salvage the million-dollar wedding they are catering and (in the MC’s case) reconnect with a soulmate. Not my usual thing, but great fun.
Bill: This week I read
- The Killing God by Stephen R. Donaldson, the closing book in his GREAT GODS WAR trilogy, which was worlds better than expected based on the first two
- The Nightland Express by J.M. Lee, a solid YA fantasy with some issues
- The Way of the Earth, a poetry collection by Matthew Shenoda that rewards attentive reading
- The Best American Essays 2022 edited by Alexander Chee and Robert Atwan, a generally strong collection with several standout pieces
Sandy: Moi? After having read and loved the Ramble House release The Tongueless Horror and Other Stories: The Weird Tales of Wyatt Blassingame, Volume 1, where else could I possibly go next but on to the next collection by this renowned master of the “weird-menace” tale? Thus, I am currently in the middle of Lady of the Yellow Death and Other Stories: The Weird Tales of Wyatt Blassingame, Volume 2. And I look forward to reporting back to you on this marvelous collection very shortly….
Terry: I read The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken, a combination of memoir, tribute and fiction, an interesting mix about the death of the author’s mother. It hit home! I’m also reading Divided: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, one of the many, many, many books about Trump coming onto the market lately. And I’m still reading The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield, a historical novel with magic.
I read three increasingly difficult books (in order of difficulty): A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (author of the Time Machine novel A Scientific Romance), which is well-argued and readable; Technology as Magic by Richard Stivers, a neo-Luddite tract with lots of good information (heavily footnoted), but one that bludgeons you with assertion after assertion after assertion; and Philosophy of Existence by Karl Jaspers, which like many philosophy books relies on redefining terms to have the author’s idiosyncratic sense rather than their common meaning (still worth reading though).
After breaking my brain with those three, I had to go back to Edith Nesbit to decompress. Finished her Book of Dragons and now reading House of Arden.
Technology as Magic sounds worth the work, especially with your warning in mind.
It’s a good update of some of the ideas of earlier works (Jerry Mander, Neil Postman, et al.), fitted into the “milieu” framework from Jacques Ellul (which I’m not sure I totally buy). Just don’t expect any discussion of alternate interpretations or counter-arguments, it’s all full throttle argumentation for his thesis.