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Book List: 1400 Books

On the last day of February this year I finished book #1400, Hank Janson’s Kill Her With Passion, a “very silly, throwaway book” as I called it when I told you I’d completed another century of books. And yet I haven’t thrown it away. I have a special fondness for books that aren’t great, but are bad enough to be interesting. I recently tried to order a mystery that the great connoisseur of bad called the worst mystery book ever written, but that failed due to … well, I’m planning on writing about that experience in these blog pages, so I’ll update this paragraph with the link if and when I ever really post that whiny plaint. This book was not the worst, far from it, though it certainly had its moments. If you want to learn more about what I thought of this ‘Hank Janson’ book (and why would you?), go to that hyperlink above and you can read about it there.

And I also talk in the same place about the first book of this now not-the-most-recent century of books, Book #1301 in my great (and silly) book tracking project, the 28th book in the staggeringly epic (and more than epic, considering that I’m just hardly halfway through the series) series of fantasy novels concerning the magnificent deeds of the heroic Dray Prescot on the faraway planet of wonder Kregen circling the stars of Antares (or is it the other way round?). This particular book, Delia Of Vallia, as I noted before, is a change of pace from the usual first-person narratives of Prescot, being told from the perspective of his beloved Delia … which is both interesting and problematic. Perhaps Kenneth Bulmer (the real author behind the Alan Burt Akers pseudonym penning the series) was getting tired of the lengthy set of tales, though he seems just as creative and interested as ever in the next book in the series, Book Read #1317, Fires Of Scorpio.

Here’s one I hadn’t read in, oh, I don’t know, maybe since the 90s … maybe even earlier. And this re-read brought home just how freakin’ amazing Harvey Wasserman was when he pulled all this together and published Harvey Wasserman’s History Of The United States. Besides the best opening line of any history bar none (“The Civil War made a few businessmen very rich”), the book manages in a few hundred pages to cover the vast sweep of the promise of America and the shattering of that promise by the vested and monied interests. It is still masterful, and pulls together so many threads I didn’t even notice my first reading, such as Smedley Butler and most everything (well, not everything; not by a long shot) in Against The Day. Hard to believe it was published in 1972! The work is not revisionist history, but rather visionist history, a clearer vision with which to hold up a mirror to our country and ourselves. Sad to see that a half-century later we’re no closer to the end of this particular Yuga than we were then.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1301 10/9/24 Alan Burt Akers Delia Of Vallia SF & Fantasy
1302 10/10/24 Philip K. Dick Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) SF & Fantasy
1303 10/13/24 Harvey Wasserman Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States History
1304 10/18/24 Rudyard Kipling Stalky & Co. Fiction
1305 10/20/24 Stephen King Simetierre Foreign Language
1306 10/21/24 Adrian Roberts Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City s Alternative Newspaper Other
1307 10/21/24 Greg B. Smith Nothing But Money: How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street True Crime
1308 10/22/24 Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard: The Almanacks for the Years 1733-1758 Essays
1309 10/25/24 Ayn Rand The Fountainhead Fiction
1310 10/25/24 August Derleth Mr. Fairlie’s Final Journey Mystery & Thrillers

 

The Stephen Dain series of thrillers by Robert Sheckley are one of my favorite kind of action novels: quick reads from a more and more distant past that evoke the zeitgeist of a world now almost wholly forgot. He makes the reader believe in all the exotic and mysterious locales of Live Gold, which I thought was going to be a potboiler about fighting over oil in the Middle East, and instead turned out to be … well, let me tell you. In this entry in Dain shockers, the story is actually set in the near past, in 1952 (if memory serves), a decade before this paperback original was published. The reason for this story told in flashback (all the others I’ve read in the series have been contemporary tales) is that the major plot point of the novel is the fact that slavery was legal in Saudi Arabia up until … (checks notes) … 1962. Which was quite a shock to me; I had no idea. The basic plot revolves around a poor pilgrim given a miraculous chance to make the Hajj and travel to Mecca, only to find once he reaches Saudi Arabian soil that without the proper paperwork he is now sold into slavery—which is apparently one of the major ways in which new slaves were created in Saudi Arabia. As I say, I had no idea. The unfolding of the plot is a real blast; Sheckley is firing on all 12 cylinders here.

Steven Saylor’s historical mysteries, though they feature the anachronistic shamus Gordianus the Finder, may be the best way to learn Roman history from the time of Catiline on. In this retelling of the events surrounding the clash between Milo and Claudius—two would-be power brokers cum paramilitary leaders in the 50s BC—Saylor manages to breathe life into dead as dust Roman history, while making that historical record play to his tune just as Ellroy made magic from the Black Dahlia story. In A Murder On The Appian Way, I am struck, as I always am, by the essential humaneness of Gordianus’s character; this is perhaps his most un-Roman quality, but it is very endearing, and gives a modern window into what is truly a very foreign (though maybe all-too-familiar, given the collapse of our own republic) world.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1311 11/26/24 Robert Sheckley Live Gold Mystery & Thrillers
1312 11/27/24 Stephen King Cell Horror
1313 10/29/24 Peter Tremayne Smoke in the Wind Mystery & Thrillers
1314 10/31/24 Edmund Crispin Holy Disorders Mystery & Thrillers
250* 11/1/24 Agatha Christie Hickory Dickory Death Mystery & Thrillers
1315 11/2/24 Samuel Eliot Morison History of United States Naval Operations in World War II – I: The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939–May 1943 Militaria
11/2/24 Mike Baron Badger #20 Comics
1316 11/3/24 John Dickson Carr The Crooked Hinge Mystery & Thrillers
11/3/24 Mike Baron Badger #21 Comics
1317 11/4/24 Alan Burt Akers Fires Of Scorpio SF & Fantasy
11/4/24 Mike Baron Badger #22 Comics
1318 11/6/24 Steven Saylor A Murder on the Appian Way Mystery & Thrillers
1319 11/6/24 Robert Sheckley White Death Mystery & Thrillers
1320 11/7/24 Donna Leon Fatal Remedies Mystery & Thrillers

* Re-read this Poirot book ’cause we’re getting into the BBC series, but … well, it’s still a bit of a mess, the characters of the students and all. Not one of Christie’s outstanding examples

 

It seems silly to write about a book wherein the poems themselves are (mostly) shorter than this short paragraph will be. But Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems From The Japanese is well worth reading, and not just because of or in spite of the fact that these poems are preciously small perfect works of just a few lines. Rexroth seems to be an honest translator, giving literal transcriptions in the notes when he gets a little … ‘poetic’. (Give a guy a Poetic License and he’ll fish for compliments his entire life.) Published originally in 1955, these poems bring to life a faraway and long ago place and time. But then … so is 1955 nowadays, if you think about it.

Close readers of these occasional Book Lists will have noticed that I’m a huge fan of Erle Stanley Gardner—and with good reason!—, though I’ve only highlighted before his books in non-Perry Mason series (specifically the Cool & Lam books, as well as one of the (two) Terry Clane novels). But I just had to give a nod to the amazing early books in the Mason series, and this exemplar, The Case Of The Perjured Parrot, is one of the great ones. As you can see from the cover, it was #14 in the series, and originally published in 1939. I dinged it slightly for the sense that I saw the sappy finale coming from a ways off … but it’s just possible I am remembering not predicting, as this is one of the plots reworked for the TV series. The intricate plot, however, is amazing and very satisfying, with Perry pulling more than one rabbit out of the hat in this one. Gardner is a whiz at this sort of thing, as Chandler always said, and this one sees Perry at the top of his form. Truly, as Perry himself says at the end, “I never had a more satisfactory case, or a more satisfactory client.”

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1321 11/9/24 Kenneth Rexroth One Hundred Poems from the Japanese Poetry
1322 11/9/24 Tim Hitchcock Pathfinder Adventure Path: Giantslayer Part 3 – Forge of the Giant God D&D
1323 11/9/24 Matt Davids & Erin Davids Dungeons: 51 Dungeons for Fantasy Tabletop Role-Playing Games D&D
1324 11/10/24 Piers Anthony Castle Roogna SF & Fantasy
11/11/24 Dave Morice More Poetry Comics Comics
1325 11/11/24 C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce Religion & Spirituality
1326 11/13/24 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case of the Perjured Parrot Mystery & Thrillers
1327 11/16/24 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Smoking Chimney Mystery & Thrillers
1328 11/17/24 Magaret Allingham More Work for the Undertaker Mystery & Thrillers
1329 11/17/24 Atlanta Science Fiction Club Deep South Con 18 Program – ASFiCon 1980 SF & Fantasy
1330 11/18/24 Isaac Asimov The Caves of Steel SF & Fantasy

 

Next on the hit parade (and there were several winners in this tranche of ten books, including one of my habitual re-reads of Lewis Carroll’s worthy books) is the So-Bad-It’s-OMG-I-Can’t-Believe-What-I’m-Reading! The Eye Of Argon, by Jim Theis, which has apparently been a famous ‘mostly lost’ story much beloved among the cognoscenti at Science Fiction conventions since it first appeared in a fanzine in 1970. Of course, I’ve never been hip and the cognoscenti won’t even return my calls, but my brother turned me on to this work of terrible dark (in the sense of opaque) fantasy. Besides the fact that this is just supremely awful, a truly staggering masterpiece of bad, it includes excellent afternotes detailing the tangled history of this work which has been read at cons for decades apparently, but only heretofore in partial versions before this publication found the original source material and presented the complete entirety of the … well, it’s really bad. You’ll find yourself reading it out loud yourself, either to annoy your neighbors or your own self.

A very long time ago, Eugene Ionesco wrote four children’s stories. (Or, at least, he wrote four that I know of.) And, only slightly less long ago, the odd and arty Harlin Quist published a series of odd and arty children’s books, of which this is one. Story Number 1 tells the story of Jacqueline and Jacqueline’s parents, the latter of whom seem to have had a little too much of something the night before. Illustrated by Joel Naprstek, the book turns out to be very Jacqueline. Highly recommended.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1331 11/19/24 Isaac Asimov The Naked Sun SF & Fantasy
1332 11/20/24 Mary Roberts Rinehart Miss Pinkerton Mystery & Thrillers
1333 11/23/24 Isaac Asimov The Robots of Dawn SF & Fantasy
1334 11/26/24 John Dickson Carr The Case of the Constant Suicides Mystery & Thrillers
1335 11/27/24 Donna Leon Death and Judgment (aka A Venetian Reckoning) Mystery & Thrillers
1336 11/28/24 Jim Theis The Eye Of Argon SF & Fantasy
1337 11/29/24 Ilya Ilf & Eugene Petrov; Charles Malamuth, trans. The Little Golden Calf Fiction
1338 11/30/24 Maureen Jennings Vices of My Blood Mystery & Thrillers
1339 11/30/24 Lewis Carroll; Martin Gardner, ed. The Annotated Snark Children’s
1340 12/1/24 Eugene Ionesco Story Number 1 Children’s

 

Norbert Jacques created an anti-hero for his time when he penned the first book about Dr. Mabuse in 1921. (Originally it was Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (the Gambler).) And the bizarre and intriguing novel shows why the life given to Jacques’s monster did not die but lived on through many movies throughout the strange and savage 20th Century. (See David Kalat’s book, The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse: A Study of the Twelve Films and Five Novels, also read in this slice of ten, for more and fascinating details.) The book is even moreso than the movie: crazy, vibrant, compulsive, moving. This scream from the depths of 1922 Germany sometimes makes sense, sometimes not, but always is informed with a depth of feeling that seems lost nowadays. Sort of like an Ayn Rand with talent (and a lot less wordiness—things happen!) Not everyone’s cup of tea, I expect, and its flaws are (or should be) obvious. However … a great book, in its odd, anti-Futurist, passionate (as it might call it) way.

Another book that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but which is excellent in a much more modern way than Mabuse, is Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm. The novel is truly a stunning work, worth all the superlatives you can throw at it. A noir tale of the ‘60s, a strangely compelling portrait of a criminal, a depraved journey into a callous psychopathic man, told through the eyes of those closest to him who will never, ever know him—if there’s something to be known. Makes me want to read up about the Krays … and I really don’t think I want to do that.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1341 12/3/24 Norbert Jacques Dr. Mabuse Mystery & Thrillers
1342 12/4/24 Basil Copper The Dossier Of Solar Pons Mystery & Thrillers
1343 12/5/24 D. de Quelus The Natural History of Chocolate Cooking
1344 12/6/24 Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play Health
1345 12/7/24 Jake Arnott The Long Firm Mystery & Thrillers
1346 12/8/24 Chuang Tsu; Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, trans. Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters Religion & Spirituality
1347 12/10/24 Ian Fleming You Only Live Twice Mystery & Thrillers
1348 12/11/24 David Kalat The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse: A Study of the Twelve Films and Five Novels Entertainment
1349 12/17/24 Stephen R. Donaldson Lord Foul’s Bane SF & Fantasy
1350 12/18/24 Kenneth Bulmer / John Rackham The Chariots of Ra / Earthstrings [Ace Double 10293] SF & Fantasy

 

Raymond Chandler was one of the best writers of mystery fiction in the mid-20th Century, whether you call the style noir, hard-boiled, or what-have-you. All of his books are worth reading—all the mystery books, that is. Some of his early poetry is pretty rough going. But he was also an inveterate letter writer, and his private musings are well worth reading as … well, well. In Raymond Chandler Speaking some of the highlights of his voluminous correspondence are given us under several subject headings (e.g., Hollywood, writing, cats), and the Mr. Chandler that emerges turns out to be one of the most wonderful men ever. Sort of like a childless Atticus Finch in his sensitive humane approach to life and life’s problems. And his devotion to his wife is both cheering and heart-wrenching after her demise. Check it out.

Another one of my re-readings, James Robert Baker’s wannabe roman à clef Fuel-Injected Dreams presents several obvious stories of music industry excess disguised enough to make them publishable. Baker spins a crazy yet engaging romp through a fantasy Los Angeles and the accreted plaque of pop music dreams of the 60s. The story becomes more and more twisted, eventually implausibly so, but you only notice once it’s gone. Flawed in fairly serious ways, still, the novel provides a whole lot of fun.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1351 12/19/24 Kurt Vonnegut Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction Fiction
1352 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chandler Speaking Literature
1353 12/21/24 John Weber, ed. An Illustrated Guide to The Lost Symbol Conspiracy
1354 12/23/24 J. H. Elliott Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 (Pelican) History
1355 12/31/24 Doris Flexner & Stuart Berg Flexner The Pessimist’s Guide to History: An Irresistible Compendium of Catastrophes, Barbarities, Massacres, and Mayhem—from 14 Billion Years Ago to 2007 History
1356 1/3/25 James Robert Baker Fuel-injected Dreams Fiction
1357 1/8/25 D. T. Suzuki; William Barrett, ed. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki Religion & Spirituality
1358 1/10/25 Isaac Asimov Robots and Empire SF & Fantasy
1359 1/12/25 Margaret Frazer The Squire’s Tale Mystery & Thrillers
1360 1/15/25 Steven Saylor The House of the Vestals: The Investigations of Gordianus the Finder Mystery & Thrillers

 

Iain Pears magisterial novel of intrigue and philosophy in 17th-Century England, An Instance Of The Fingerpost, is lauded justifiably for its nuanced narrators and its complex plot, counterplot, and other plots. I found it not always an easy read (and it is very long), but then again one of my many failings is my sheer laziness as a reader. Thus, I was not always able to recall the earlier version of events in this book where subtle differences in the 4 narrators’ tales are important. And I was most impressed by how this turned out to be a completely different novel than I expected right there at the end … well, a hundred pages or so before the end. But comparing what I learned about the 2nd narrator may make that doubtful as well. Still, worth reading and pondering over, though the actual scientific philosophy so deeply imbued in this book and that time have always left me a bit cold, though I suppose you have to leave scholasticism in some fashion, and this one is not the worst. (For an alternate view of the same century’s English philosophical ideas, try The Subtle Knot by Margaret Wiley.)

Usually, of course, I use these interstitial paragraphs to laud books in the next set of ten that I found great pleasure in reading. But this particular decade of books was mostly ‘meh’ (with an exception for the Stephen Dain book Time Limit, though even that made a mistake by putting Dain front and center in the narrative, unlike the others in the series), and so maybe you can consider it a warning when I say that 100 Battles: Decisive Conflicts That Shaped the World is not a good book. The main problem in this work supposedly edited by Martin J. Dougherty (‘constructed’ may be a more accurate term) is that there are too many ‘battles’, too little insight. A formulaic template may work for Wikipedia, but here it is just a distraction from real military history. The tiny inset maps accompanying each entry are next to useless, and the battle maps are … clunky, at best. The text is sometimes interesting, but usually misses the mark, or just parrots the press releases. I learned a few things, but mostly that this sort of thing likely won’t be worse when our overlords institute the AI-only history books.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1361 1/18/25 Caroline Tiger The UFO Hunter’s Handbook Children’s
1362 1/19/25 Iain Pears An Instance of the Fingerpost Fiction
1363 1/21/25 Robert Sheckley Time Limit Mystery & Thrillers
1364 1/21/25 Frances & Richard Lockridge Hanged For A Sheep Mystery & Thrillers
1365 1/23/25 Charlotte Armstrong The Girl With A Secret Mystery & Thrillers
1366 1/23/25 Tom Broadman, ed. Bloodhound Detective Story Magazine April 1962 [feat. Find A Victim by Ross Macdonald Mystery & Thrillers
1367 1/24/25 Martin J. Dougherty, ed. 100 Battles: Decisive Conflicts That Shaped the World Militaria
1368 1/27/25 Charlotte Armstrong The Mark Of The Hand / The Dream Walker [Ace Double G-526] Mystery & Thrillers
1369 1/28/25 Todd Pruzan & Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer The Clumsiest People in Europe, Or: Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World Humor
1370 1/29/25 Charlotte Armstrong The One-Faced Girl / The Black-Eyed Stranger [Ace Double G-533] Mystery & Thrillers

 

I went into Atlantis: The Antediluvian World with low expectations, to say the least, but I was pleased to find instead that this was a prime example of Wacko Done Right. Written by Ignatius Donnelly, one of the stranger figures in U.S. history, the book makes actually the best case for the existence of Atlantis that I’ve seen—including any new TV shows with the ‘latest findings’ slickly produced for Discovery or whatever. Compared to most of these ‘new’ investigators that pollute cable TV and YouTube and podcasts and whatnot, Donnelly is at least intellectually honest, mostly: though he doesn’t even glance at the evidence contrary to his hoped-for conclusions, he does assemble facts and expert opinion which represent the best of the state of knowledge current at the time he’s writing. In 1880, when this book was first published (he’d been working on it for years whilst serving in Congress as a Minnesota representative), Donnelly and his contemporaries had no idea of tectonic plates, nor many other facts we take for granted to day. And yeah, maybe he sells his ideas a little hard, but … well, he makes a pretty good case, fallacious as it is.

The first collection of Zippy the Pinhead comic strips from the mind and pen of Bill Griffith has the zippy title of Zippy Stories. And the words of that wise weirdo were a blessed balm during the 3rd week of the current nightmare. Talking (or writing) about the nonsensical sine qua non of non sequiturs would be silly, and trying to talk like Zippy would be impossible: I’m surprised even Bill Griffith is able to do it. Trust me. Go out and find a little Zippy this week. It’ll improve your life, materially or immaterially, one of those two.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1371 1/31/25 Ignatius Donnelly Atlantis: The Antediluvian World Wacko
1372 2/1/25 Gavin Black The Cold Jungle Mystery & Thrillers
1373 2/2/25 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine February 2024 Music
1374 2/3/25 Sergei Lukyanenko Twilight Watch SF & Fantasy
1375 2/3/25 Raymond Chandler The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler & English Summer: A Gothic Romance Mystery & Thrillers
1376 2/5/25 Sax Rohmer The Mask of Fu Manchu Mystery & Thrillers
1377 2/5/25 Grace Sloan Overton Living With Teeners Parenting
1378 2/5/25 Roger Zelazny The Guns of Avalon SF & Fantasy
2/6/25 Bill Griffith Zippy Stories Comics
1379 2/7/25 John Fowles The Collector Fiction
1380 2/8/25 Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö Roseanna Mystery & Thrillers

 

Of course, Philip K. Dick cannot hold a candle to someone like Jimi Hendrix for postmortem releases, but among authors, there are few so prolific after death. Maybe Wittgenstein or Kafka, but those guys hardly published all that much while they were alive. Unlike all these non-living artists, however, the quality of PKD’s posthumous work is somewhat ragged, good ideas wrapped in stories that showed why these remained unpublished. But this children’s story from the master of mind-bending Science Fiction, Nick And The Glimmung, is a fine example of a book that should have seen the light of day when it was first written, back in 1966, instead of being buried for over two decades, disinterred only after Dick had been dead and buried himself for a half dozen years. The story may seem a slight one, and the ideas are not new (for Philip K. Dick), but he crafts the tale with a fairly deft hand and a real appreciation for how children’s stories should be written. True, the ending has some problems, and I still wish the cat Horace’s plaintive search for meaning had more resolution, but it seems to me that Dick had the potential to have been a fine addition to kids’ bookshelves alongside Daniel Pinkwater.

I’ve written about Margery Allingham’s self-effacing detective Mr. Albert Campion before, but the fact is: I just love this non-detective detective. This late entry, the 17th book in the series, published in 1952, shows Ms. Allingham at the top of her form. The story is perfect from start to finish. Sure, the original coincidences seem contrived, but become less so as the (frankly ridiculous) backstory is revealed. My only complaint would be that Campion has little to do with the unfolding of the plot. Instead, we’re given a bracing and gripping tale of good vs. evil, a brilliant bit of tension which is more compelling and plausible than anything Chesterton ever wrote. (Pace Chesterton. He’s fine at what he does best, and that’s rarely fiction.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1381 2/11/25 Richard Matheson I Am Legend SF & Fantasy
1382 2/12/25 James Gairdner Henry the Seventh History
2/12/25 Dave Morice Poetry Comics #2 Aug ’79 Comics
1383 2/12/25 Michael Gilbert After The Fine Weather History
2/12/25 Swapna Dutta & Subba Rao The Rainbow Prince: Two Folk Tales from Bengal Comics
2/13/25 Kamala Chandrakant Ram Shastri: The Maratha Judge – A Model of Integrity Comics
1384 2/13/25 Ed McBain The Frumious Bandersnatch Mystery & Thrillers
2/14/25 Gayatri Madan Dutt Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his tales [Sri Ramakrishna / The Learned Pandit / The Pandit & The Milkmaid] Comics
1385 2/14/25 Ed McBain There Was a Little Girl Mystery & Thrillers
2/15/25 Anant Pai, ed. Rama Comics
1386 2/16/25 Philip K. Dick Nick and the Glimmung SF & Fantasy
1387 2/17/25 Michael Crichton Jurassic Park Mystery & Thrillers
1388 2/17/25 Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö The Man on the Balcony Mystery & Thrillers
1389 2/19/25 Margery Allingham The Tiger In The Smoke Mystery & Thrillers
2/19/25 Greg Irons Underground Classics #9 (Greg Irons early work vol. 2) Comics
1390 2/19/25 Joshua Cohen The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family Fiction

 

Astute readers of the table above detailing the penultimate slice of Books Read in this full set of 100 (if readers there be; writing this stupid blog is an exercise in solipsism), will have noted the heavier than usual appearance of comic books. And there’s a reason for that. The reason is I acquired a whole bunch of great books at the beginning of February, and was trying to achieve parity between books bought and books read. In other words, I cheated. Counted comic books towards my totals so that I could claim to have balanced my book budget. And anyway, in this last set of ten (Books Read, that is; I ended up adding so many comics into the mix that the total number of books including comics (or ‘comix’, as the case may be) came to 16), all the very best books were comic books (with the exception noted below). So the image given here, of Ted Richards fantastic creation The Forty Year Old Hippie, will have to stand in for all the great reading I got to enjoy from the best age of underground comics, but don’t pass up an opportunity to read some Wonder Wart-Hog either.

I cheated a bit when I said the other great book in this last tranche wasn’t a comic book, because it’s a graphic novel. Sort of. Of course, the justly famous stories of Tintin by that incomparable Belgian artiste Hergé were originally promulgated on a weekly basis in the children’s supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Interestingly enough, this particular Adventure of Tintin was interrupted in its weekly release by of all things the Nazi invasion of Belgium. Go figure, right? Anyway, the Land Of Black Gold was eventually completed in 1950 and we can now enjoy in stunning color one of the best stories in the canon. It’s a fun tale that somehow manages not to be ruined by the presence of a pesky brat. And the pseudo-hallucinogenic effects of Formula Fourteen on the Thompsons are a lot of fun.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1391 2/20/25 Richard S. Prather Dead Heat Mystery & Thrillers
2/20/25 Ted Richards Underground Classics #8 (The Forty Year Old Hippie Vol. 1) Comics
1392 2/20/25 Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö The Laughing Policeman Mystery & Thrillers
2/21/25 Gilbert Shelton, Tony Bell, & Joe E. Brown, Jr. Underground Classics #5 (Wonder Wart-Hog #1) Comics
2/22/25 Gilbert Shelton, Tony Bell, & Joe E. Brown, Jr. Underground Classics #7 (Wonder Wart-Hog #2) Comics
1393 2/22/25 Trevanian The Eiger Sanction Mystery & Thrillers
1394 2/23/25 Margery Allingham Tether’s End Mystery & Thrillers
1395 2/24/25 Richard Osborne & Borin Van Loon Ancient Eastern Philosophy For Beginners Philosophy
1396 2/25/25 Jeff Wilser The Maxims of Manhood: 100 Rules Every Real Man Must Live By Humor
2/26/25 Mike Baron Badger #23 Comics
2/26/25 Hergé Land of Black Gold Comics
1397 2/26/25 K. T. Berger Zen Driving Religion & Spirituality
1398 2/26/25 Margery Allingham Deadly Duo Mystery & Thrillers
2/27/25 Mike Baron Badger #24 Comics
1399 2/27/25 Joseph Glenmullen The Pornographer’s Grief: And Other Tales of Human Sexuality Psychology
1400 2/28/25 Hank Janson Kill Her With Passion/em> Mystery & Thrillers

 

And I already owe you another 100 books, and I’ll try to get right on that, before I get even further behind! Hope you have lots of good books in your life!

 

The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:

Friday Vocabulary

1. rising — [informal] nearly, almost

It was rising two in the morning before we were all prepared, with Vince insisting on carrying his ridiculous stiletto unsheathed in his left hand.

 

2. bulla — [biology] blister, vesicle; [biology] hollow spaces within bone structures; [historical] clay balls or containers, often with external writing detailing contents; papal letters

As fascinating as these votive bullae seemed to be, the real prize turned out to be a bulla found in Chamber 32 which turned out to contain a papyrus inventory of the entire garrison from the period just before the war with Anarkoreg.

 

3. pay — to coat, cover, or caulk with tar or pitch

While the ship was beached as the search parties went looking for trees for a new foremast, Higgins made sure the bottom was well paid with the pitch he had found in the ship’s stores.

 

4. umbra — shadow; fully dark shadow cast by object intervening between the surface and the light source; dark center of sunspot

Longton will not be beneath the full umbra, and so will only experience a partial eclipse.

 

5. lacquer tree — tree producing resin used in making of coating for wood and other craft items

A poisonous component is found within the sap of all three of these lacquer trees found in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

 

6. gozzle — throat, gullet

Little Benji ate a honey candy so greedily that he didn’t take off the wrapper and it got stuck in his gozzle and he liked to have died!

 

7. orthogonal — [mathematics] perpendicular to, at right angles; of functions whose product has an integral equal to zero; irrelevant

Not to get too far down this orthogonal cul-de-sac in our conversation, but have you seen Ed’s new Alfa Romeo?

 

8. grate — [obsolete] agreeable, pleasant, gratifying

Though the chamber is small, the old feather bed heaped high with blankets and quilts is commodious enough and grate to any traveler unless he be an inveterate ingrate.

 

9. asker — [Welsh & English idiom] newt

You will no longer find these great crested newts within the Vale, but the askers are still widespread throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, as well as most of northern Europe.

 

10. brach — [archaic] female hound; disgusting woman

Laird Staines had left his favorite brach behind for she’d just finished whelping the next generation of fine hunting hounds.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(church stuff)

vicar — lesser or substitute priest (details vary between the various denominations; usu. a vicar does not receive the full stipend of a priest per se)

The vicar came round to tea as usual, but failed to take a lemon square, so I knew that he was greatly troubled by the incident with Springer and the electric tractor.

 

1500 Books

Well, I’ve gotten out over my skis a bit, I’m afraid. In my increasingly silly book tracking project I began after receiving book database software from my wife oh many years ago now, I have reached the milestone of having read, officially (which means here that I entered the date I finished the book in the database and can affirm I actually finished it, as opposed to the many books I know I’ve read but which reading happened before I started the aforementioned silly tracking of such things), 1500 Books. Yay! The overreach here occurs because back in March I notified y’all that I’d hit the milestone of 1400 books. Also … yay? I guess. But I promised then a complete listing of all those hundred books, and … I didn’t give you that.

So now I owe you two complete lists of a hundred books, as I’ve given you often before. I’ll get right on that.

The actual Book #1500 read was an entry from the interesting series of Pocket Canons published back in 1998, where the idea occurred to publish the books of the Bible, or some of them, as standalone books, as they would have been known back in the day. So my 1500th book read was The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus in The Pocket Canons Bible Series. It was a mixed bag. Some of the most exciting incidents in the entire Bible are here, but also are here the deadly dull recitation of the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant and the portable temple, which are really not all that worth re-reading all that often. The issues around the historicity of Exodus are not investigated by David Grossman, who provides the introduction to this book. (Each of the Pocket Canons has a modern literary figure giving the heads-up about what you’re gonna read.)

I’m still trying to read as quickly as possible to keep my ‘Books Read’ figure greater than my ‘Books Bought’ figure. And thus my average page count for this last set of books is only 168 pages per. This goes up to ~196 if we exclude comic books, which I do and I don’t, though I’m not gonna get too much into those weeds just now, especially as I need to focus on getting those book lists out the door.

The first book of this past century was a pocket-sized version of Stephen Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching, read both because it was a quick read (it was not) and it is a great book (which it is). Sometimes Mitchell takes liberties, and he does here, but he is always interesting in his approaches to these old old oh so old works, and he at least does explain some of his more, shall we say, ‘interesting’ choices.

Mysteries were once again the preponderant genre of books read, with 34 out of the one hundred. I read 21 items from the ‘Comics & Graphic Novels’ category, though those don’t count towards the 100 book read total. Because of all those individual books of the Bible, as well as a few other exemplars, I read 16 Christian books. Rounding out the totals were 11 books of History, 10 Literature & Fiction (12 if you count a couple of poetry books I read), and—the Tail End Charlie of the bunch—Science Fiction & Fantasy with only 7 books read. More details to follow. I hope.

The pace was a ridiculously speedy 91 days to read these 100 books, though this is in fact 23% slower than the pace set in the last century of books. If we include the comics , the pace was just north of 3/4 days per book read. Of course we don’t, so … moving on.

   1 Book per .91 Days   

See you soon with Book List(s), I hope!

Friday Vocabulary

1. defecate — [obsolete] made pure, clarified; spiritually or morally purified

Thus may defecate reason attain an even greater appreciation of more universal truth in forging with faith an antinomy stronger than mere material science.

 

2. anorak — [UK slang] obsessive fan, esp. of trains

He’s a total anorak about 2000 AD and especially Starlord, so don’t you dare bring up Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

3. epoche (also epoché) — suspended judgment; cessation of action

But when the calm ataraxia of the Pyrrohnists becomes only the epoche which surrenders all action whatsoever, one may well question the value of this extreme Skepticism.

 

4. cordyceps (often capitalized) — [biology] parasitic fungus attacking arthropods

But like a fruiting cordyceps taking over a colony of spiders, these AI-generated visions absorbed all the energy, time, and devotions of these new devotees, who became merely agents for the further spread of this technological parasitic excrescence.

 

5. blim — [UK slang] small piece of hashish

Somehow during all this I managed to get a blim hole in Tony’s jacket, which of course I didn’t notice when I returned it the next day, but of course he spotted it right away.

 

6. sarnie — [UK informal] sandwich

“You can’t live upon sarnies all week, and even if you can, I can’t and I insist you take me to a proper restaurant this very minute!”

 

7. seethe — [obsolete] to boil

The best cuts of the ram were well seethed with some local roots that the young Geoffrey found behind the abandoned monastery.

 

8. planticrub — [Shetland dialect] circular stone planter for cabbage or kale

Half the planticrubs were still in use while the other half lay wasted, torn asunder for building materials.

 

9. cockalorum — small-minded boaster, self-important person of little merit; boasting speech

But now the cockalorums call the tune and the rest of us are forced to dance and dance and dance until we drop dead from despair at their illimitable despoliations.

 

10. irreprehensible — blameless, innocent

Though his life before the wreck was not a model for youth, after the disaster his actions and his conduct were entirely irreprehensible.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(50s & 60s fashion by way of uncertain etymology from the meat sandwich)

Sloppy Joe — loose-fitting comfortable jumper or sweatshirt

I thought we were painting the gym so I’d dressed in my old dungarees and a gray Sloppy Joe that my big sister Lou had gifted me when she left for college.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. dingle — wooded valley

Below the prominence lay a dark dingle which formed a precipitous barrier to any invading force, a steep ditch formed by the stream that even when fordable during the dry days of summer, still had treacherous rocks aplenty to turn the hooves of cavalry and men.

 

2. dingle — [Antarctic slang] clement, having nice weather

It was a real dingle day and hopes were high, though Thomas at the weather desk told us sternly that another storm was in the offing.

 

3. assertoric — of a proposition which states fact neither self-evident nor merely possible

When AI makes assertoric descriptions of movies or books or legal cases which later we learn do not actually exist, we call these ‘hallucinations’; when human beings make the same claims, we call those ‘lies’.

 

4. frivol — to act in a silly manner

After the Lord Deacon and his daughter have departed, then you may frivol to your heart’s content, but until then I’ll thank you to behave like a gentleman of serious mien.

 

5. scalawag — scoundrel; Southerner who collaborated with Reconstruction forces after the Civil War

The locals think a scalawag to be a much worse person than a carpetbagger, because the former should know better, having had the fortune to be raised in God’s own country … though I should point out that many of His countrymen seem to be ignorant, irascible, impious idiots.

 

6. Klaberjass — two-handed trick-taking card game using a piquet deck with the Jack and nine of trumps as highest cards

Artie and the silent Dutchman settled down for a game of Klaberjass while I pretended to read while my mind kept racing and thinking of the thousand things that could go wrong with Bill’s plan.

 

7. winsome — charming, innocently inspiring and engaging

But now we come to the part where the old bosses adopted the tools of social media and ‘influencers’ to once more charm the masses, this time with a more winsome and winning fascism.

 

8. buttle — to act as a butler

Everyone knew he came from borstal rather than manor homes even though Jericho butled with the best of them for his master Lord Lairdly.

 

9. tussar (also tussah) — deep gold silk

The best saris are traditionally made from tussar, and are available in many rich colorful dyes.

 

10. trammel — to constrain, to hinder; to entangle, to snare

As Churchill points out, when sloth and fear trammel virtue, high-minded men are only prey for active and uncaring evildoers.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(supposed economic thing)

Kondratiev wave — long cycles in technological advancement that greatly affect the world economy

Even taking the period of the latest Kondratiev wave at the longest proposed span, the most strident advocates of the theory have to admit that the information technology cycle is likely to have passed its peak.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. hinky — behaving in a nervous manner; suspicious

Say what you want about interdepartmental lines of communication and all that, but the way the Secret Service acted makes the whole thing seem hinky to me.

 

2. gisant — [French] recumbent statue atop a grave representing the deceased

For decades after his death in fin de siècle Paris his manly vigor was so renowned that the bronze gisant over his tomb had a pelvic region shiny from the touch of desperate ones rubbing his likeness in hopes of gaining the potency of the deceased.

 

3. vaticinate — to prophesy, to predict the future

When all our profits and cultural gains are only promises of stockjobbers vaticinating the future of the latest ‘hot’ technology, one can only heed Carlyle’s advice to focus on the present day and its problems and opportunities.

 

4. break-bulk — of or related to non-containerized cargo, that is, cargo designated for multiple consignees which must be offloaded piecemeal at each port

It wasn’t a huge operation, nor a glamorous one, but my shipping line did have four small cargo boats running break-bulk loads into and out of ports all around the Java, Celebes, and Banda Seas.

 

5. chasuble — outer sleeveless garment worn over other priestly garments by the celebrant

We found three beautiful chasubles in the antique store, though no one could explain how they’d made their way to the resale market.

 

6. crossruff — to take tricks alternately in bridge, each winning partner leading a suit which the other trumps and so forth

Instead of good cop, bad cop, these two clowns tried to crossruff admissions from me by throwing out hypotheticals which the other shot down, so I figured they didn’t really need me there in the interrogation room for their routine, though they got offended when I told them so.

 

7. educt — to extract

At this point the slurry is driven through a dewatering screw press to educt the material for the final drying in the kiln.

 

8. ostension — demonstration, presentation; showing of the sacrament for adoration

Although ostension is one of the obvious theories for language acquistion—it seems obvious to learn the word ‘bird’ by having examples pointed out—it does not explain how blind children learn to talk almost as rapidly as their sighted peers.

 

9. shuttlewitted — scatterbrained, flighty

Quite frankly I’ve never heard before of such a responsible position being offered to such a callow shuttlewitted youth.

 

10. bandeau — headband; narrow strapless bra

Small though it was, even her tight bandeau no longer fit after her protracted illness.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(archaic British slang)

quod — to be imprisoned

Petey was a fine lad when he stuck to ale but when he got gin in him he always got quodded for fighting.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. withal — in addition, besides; nevertheless

He exhibited an irascible mien, yet Nicholas withal was a gentle soul at heart, ever ready to help the weak and downtrodden.

 

2. stadial — of or related to geological ages; of or related to stages of society, civilization, etc.

The 100-year anniversary of The Glorious Revolution saw both Tories and Whigs portraying the freedom of the press acquired almost by accident in 1695 as part of a grand stadial progression in the development of liberty from feudal times.

 

3. oblong — neither square nor circular, having length in one dimension greater than in another; elongated

Hidden in the barn’s shadow lying oblong across the paddock at day’s end was the injured fox.

 

4. bargee — worker on a barge

The naval board of enquiry found that the bargees should have dropped anchor without further instructions from the tug, given the quite visible (and audible) nature of the accident, as well as the long delay between the explosion and the collision.

 

5. amirial — of or related to an amir or emir

We are fortunate that photographs of several amirial households are still extant, so that Nelson’s hypothesis can be definitively disproven, and the original pen box theory sustained.

 

6. vlei — [South Africa] lowland marsh or flat lake, often appearing only seasonally

The bull nosed hopefully through the parched earth of the vlei, but at this time of year not even moist dirt could be found.

 

7. stylobate — [architecture] top platform (usu. of three) of the crepidoma, foundation upon which main structure is built; course of masonry upon which columns are placed

In the Classical Period dilithic stylobates became the norm, however, being both more economical and easier to build with in difficult terrain, which of course was often the case atop the hills of Greece where most of these temples were sited.

 

8. attrit — to wear down or erode (usu. by physical action); [military] to lose troops by engagement with larger forces or firepower

The many marble steps have been attritted by continual use going back to the 10th Century, so the modern visitor must be careful not to stumble on the now uneven stairs.

 

9. buckshee — [UK slang] extra, free

The rajah didn’t know that Reggie’s gone all Buddhist and vegetarian so there’s a buckshee steak we can split if you come by tonight after dark.

 

10. forcemeat — ground or sieved meat mixed with fat and sometimes flavoring or vegetables for use in various recipes

The delicate texture of the Mousseline forcemeat derives from the cream and eggs used in its preparation.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(geography)

Macaronesia — the four island groupings west of Gibraltar, consisting of the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde

Malvasia was originally grown in the Mediterranean and Macaronesia, but nowadays only Madeira wine acquires the ‘Malmsey’ label.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. taximeter — device for calculating cab fare by measuring distance traveled

We were fortunate to find a taximeter cab in that area and so were able to speed to the station before Bertram’s Daimler arrived.

 

2. hogget — not yet shorn sheep under one year old

Reilly was caught red-handed with two of Widow Janet’s hoggets in the back of his wagon.

 

3. punkin — pumpkin

Cy’s horse got in the punkins and there weren’t nary a one left.

 

4. lumber room — storeroom in domicile used for oddments and unused furniture

Whitby had last seen the trunk in the lumber room, but that was years ago, and he wasn’t even sure the map was still in that trunk anyway.

 

5. agrestal — of or related to plants wildly growing in cultivated fields

After the verdict, of course, the water dried up and now all that you see are a few agrestal weeds growing where there used to be rows of verdant crops.

 

6. chirographically — as related to penmanship

He tried new pens and new pencils and even bought a book on improving handwriting, but in the end Joel decided that he was just chirographically challenged.

 

7. thesicle — subthesis

These diversions and divagations may seem entertaining to you, but all these thesicles do not add up to even one single cogent argument about your supposed subject.

 

8. cruive — [archaic Scots] weir for catching salmon

We’ll just head down to the beck and check the cruive before going home.

 

9. drongo — [Australian slang] fool, dummy

He’s the sort of drongo who carries a penknife in case he has to write a sharp note.

 

10. fichu — triangular woman’s scarf

But it was the plummeting necklines which made the fichu an essential fashion accessory in the era of Marie Antoinette.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(military)

corporal’s guard — small detachment of soldiers; any small group

The incident began during the Christmas party, so there was only a corporal’s guard at the monitoring desk the first catastrophic failures.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. mim — [Scots & British] demure, primly reticent, pretentiously shy

Alice sat there hands folded in her lap, mim as can be, though now I know that even then she was scheming to foil all our plans and triumph by our ruin.

 

2. compossible — not inconsistent with some other assertion

As we feel our way towards the truth of things, I will only notice now that Danica’s claim was compossible with the officer’s testimony, if we allow for their different situations, the lighting and the fact that she saw the incident through the leaves of the beech trees.

 

3. mangel-wurzel (also mangelwurzel) — fodder beet

“I’d make a terrible yeoman farmer; I don’t know a mangel-wurzel from a mangonel.”

 

4. cellarage — area or space of a cellar; rent for use of cellar space

Prices were astronomical at that time, and he could afford not an apartment, but the merest cellarage, paying hundreds of dollars a month for space not twenty-five square feet, with a sloping dirt floor which was damp in the winter and bug-ridden in the summer.

 

5. argand — argand lamp, improved oil lamp developed in 18th Century by Aimé Argand

The introduction of the argand to U.S. lighthouses had the unfortunate consequence of delaying the adoption of the Fresnel lens.

 

6. stravaig — [Scots] to stroll, to walk about with no particular purpose

Willie was stravaiging along the path leading to the fen when he spied the parson up on the rise.

 

7. gilver — [Manx] gillyflower

The path was bordered by gilvers and fuchsias.

 

8. laloplegia — paralysis of speech organs

Without the botox treatment, the throat becomes more and more constricted and talking becomes increasingly difficult until finally complete laloplegia ensues.

 

9. steatorrhea — abnormal presence of fat in stool

Any steatorrhea will obviously raise questions of pancreatic function, though of course many other causes are possible.

 

10. carious — having cavities; rotten

The very bones of democracy are carious and just as foul a stench arises from the courts as from the legislature.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK slang)

wooden-top (also woodentop) — police officer in uniform

“Well that’s done it, then,” he said, getting up from the floor. “Let’s have a couple of wooden-tops in to keep out the crowd and I’ll call the SOCO.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. plonker — [UK slang] fool; penis; [outdated] item of unusually large size or girth

“He’s nice enough to his friends, I suppose, but he’s a right plonker with the ladies.”

 

2. Dannert wire — concertina wire, coiled barbed or razor wire

The village had shown their preparedness by removing all the street and road signs, and by the long coils of Dannert wire some alert alderman had had strewn all about the beach, which surprisingly made that destination no less inviting.

 

3. parp — [UK informal] horn sound; fart sound

This quiet interlude is suddenly interrupted by a trombone parp that hearkens back to the band’s beginnings as a novelty act.

 

4. didact — pedant, person inclined to teach others

Jones was a natural didact, meaning that you could hardly teach him a damn thing as he knew it all already.

 

5. introit — psalm read or sung at beginning of the Mass (particularly as the celebrant approaches the Eucharist); introduction

The choir took up the solemn introit specified for this holy day and I was moved in spite of myself.

 

6. antihelminthic (also anthelminthic) — of or related to destruction or expulsion of parasitic intestinal worms

In this region it is possible that the antihelminthic properties of ayahuasca are not among its least important.

 

7. barmkin — [Scots] protective wall built around castles, towers, and fortified farmhouses

But there was a weak point in the barmkin near the mill race where stones had been taken for needed repairs, the hope being that the narrow water might be enough should the reivers return.

 

8. lalochezia — using vulgar words to palliate stress or pain

At times my neighbor would go out to his car in street and merely sit in it, not going anywhere, and he would scream f-bombs and other curse words for several minutes, perhaps not realizing that the closed doors and windows couldn’t keep us neighbors from hearing his angry imprecations, and then, hopefully with this lalochezia providing some relief, he would quietly exit the vehicle, and just as silently re-enter his house to attend to whatever unknown incident had been the impetus for this bizarre ritual.

 

9. czardas — Hungarian dance with slow start and frenetic finish

At Kis-Körös we were entertained (if that is the word) by solemn men in red fezzes dancing a czardas while the train engineers attended to some mechanical issue which was never satisfactorily explained.

 

10. cantref — land division in medieval Wales

Each of these cantrefi had their own independent court, although in the case of Powys some of the commotes took on this role.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(US slang 1930s)

strictly from hunger (sometimes simply from hunger) — terrible, really bad, of poor quality; only acceptable faute de mieux, of a poor choice driven by imperious necessity

The little blonde singer was strictly from hunger, and I supposed that either Bill was tone deaf or he was getting a little something on the side. Maybe both, I don’t know.