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Friday Vocabulary

1. finca — large estate in Spain or Hispano-America

The Labor Law of 1894 established the right of any worker in Guatemala to seek employment outside his finca on days when the owner was not using his labor.

 

2. trichiliocosm — [Buddhism] third order world of thousands of thousands of worlds, conception of universe of universes, higher power universe of billions of universes

Whatever construction one makes of the Buddhist idea of chiliocosm and trichiliocosm, the one thing that we can be sure of is that it is really, really big. But these billion worlds are also simply one.

 

3. gun-founder (also gun founder) — manufacturer of cannon and other armaments

The most sought after gun-founders were from the Low Countries, until England’s development of reliable cast iron cannon changed the industry forever.

 

4. indefectible — perfect; resisting decay, permanent

I supposed that my reception of God’s grace on that dark night on the ramparts was indefectible, so I was taken aback by my obvious backsliding and I redoubled my prayers … but in vain.

 

5. dixie — [British military] large cooking pot

But the upshot of this little fracas wasn’t too bad, as our punishment was getting water for the kitchen, which meant three trips with two dixies each to the well on the farm over the hill—though we cursed under their weight on the way back.

 

6. ebullition — boiling; temperamental outburst

We were used, by this time, to Nessie’s little ebullitions whenever the weather turned gray, and so we ignored her fretful monologue and instead tried to remain focused on our cards.

 

7. dandiprat — [obsolete] hateworthy person or person of no consequence

Do not be swayed by this mob of dandiprats who wouldn’t know real culture if it took them across its knee.

 

8. cocksparrer (from cock-sparrow) — cocky youngster

He won’t be humbled for long, that one; he’s a real cocksparrer for getting into trouble time and time again.

 

9. Pliofilm — plastic wrapping material used instead of cellulose-based substances

The medallion is in Near Mint condition, still wrapped in its original Pliofilm packaging.

 

10. inamorata — female lover

Bradford resolved to end it all until, while penning a farewell poem to his unknowing inamorata, he was stumped in finding a rhyme for ‘Letitia’, and his frustration kept him alive through the night until he found himself facing yet another dawn.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Australian informal)

come the raw prawn — to try to trick or pretend

“I saw it with my own eyes, so don’t come the raw prawn with me and try to convince me otherwise.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. dapperling — dwarf or child, esp. one neatly dressed; mushroom of the Agaricaceae family

Face to face finally with my tormentor, I found him to be a smartly turned out dapperling with the missing monocle suspended like a mayoral chain beneath his chic imperial beard, and confess I did not know whether to bow or to pat him upon the head.

 

2. smoker — [informal] casual get-together for men at which cigars or other tobacco products are smoked

It was one of those smokers at which ribald songs would be sung by the former military men after the brandy, and which always devolve further into the mournful singing of nostalgic drivel about home and mother.

 

3. orlop — [nautical] fourth or lowest deck of a sailing ship

The gunpowder and lanterns were each stored at opposite ends of the orlop, for obvious reasons.

 

4. snaffle — large ringed horse bit

Damon and Alex began to argue about the relative advantages and disadvantages of curb bits versus snaffles in horse training, and I tried to look interested in spite of my yawning apathy.

 

5. tenon — projecting part formed by cutting wood away

But closer examination revealed that the classic mortise and tenon construction was clever fakery, with modern glues used instead in all the joins.

 

6. dropsical — affected by swelling

These hypertrophied fringes will cause and often sustain dropsical knee joints, and with their removal relief will come to the patient.

 

7. tonga — [India] light two-wheeled horse cart used for passenger transportation

Rickshaws are used in the city proper, but the smart set make their homes in the hills, and so tongas are de rigeur for attendees at the most popular parties.

 

8. porphyry — reddish or purple-red crystal-containing rock

His sarcophagus was entirely of porphyry, befitting his imperial status.

 

9. gollop — [UK colloquial] to gulp down, to greedily eat

Not to be outdone, the tiny homunculus golloped the entire roast and twelve potatoes, pausing only to drink two flagons of ale.

 

10. perennity — quality of long duration, state of lasting throughout the year, everlastingness

There was an awakening, yes, an awareness of that golden warmth surrounding and infusing all life, but many more months yea years of meditation were needful before that consciousness became a perennity in my daily life.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Edwardian women’s hairstyling)

hair rat — shaped pillow of loose hair (often collected from brushing) used as base for elevating women’s hairstyles

The victim was identified by comparing a hair rat found near the scene with those in the boudoir of the suspect’s missing wife.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. crocodile — line of walking persons, esp. when composed of children

Like some strange Pied Piper I led the crocodile through the rubble and broken walls, hoping the older children would encourage the younger and prevent those toddlers from falling aside before we had reached some semblance of safety.

 

2. gramercy — [archaic] expression of thanks

“Gramercy, sire!” he said, going to his knees. “That you should bestow such grace upon one as mean as I, who am not fit to carry your linen.”

 

3. cruet — small container of condiment or seasoning for use at table; small container for Eucharistic wine

Not like some publicans, he was never ungenerous with his cruets of mustard or vinegar, and he always gave full measure in his tankards.

 

4. proprioceptive — of or related to the sensing of body parts and their relative position one from the other

The fog began to lift from my mind, though I was still having some proprioceptive difficulties from whatever drug my wine had been doped with, and my right shoulder seemed to be missing while my left foot somehow became detached and floated up towards the ceiling whenever I turned my head sharply.

 

5. rogation — profound prayer

The church began observance of Rogation Days in the 5th Century, but we moderns eschew the very idea of rogation, which recognizes our subservience before God’s power to provide everything we need to live our daily lives.

 

6. dysthymia — long-term low-grade depression

Alan realized quite well that he suffered continually from dysthymia, with occasional severe episodes usually centering upon his birthday, but he felt that the medication he’d been offered was like getting rid of a fly in the house with a bazooka.

 

7. instanter — immediately, right away

The sheriff is therefore directed to seize instanter all properties, chattels, and appurtenances of the defendant, saving only the attire he now wears and the sum of £20.

 

8. motivic — [music] of or related to a motif, used as a motif

These descending fifths serve as a motivic connection to the closing theme of the act, which is reprised by the horns as the finale begins.

 

9. griffonage — terrible handwriting, illegible scrawl

I am including a typed fair copy of my griffonage because, although I do believe that personal letters should be handwritten, I also wish you to be able to read the words I write.

 

10. soilure — act of soiling; staining, dirtiness

Though I feared at first to track mud into his rooms, one look at the soilure filling his apartment convinced me that I could hardly add to the mess within.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(tools)

head race pliers — pliers with curved notched grip, designed for loosening or tightening lock rings on a bicycle’s headset

That bearing was just rolling in its slot as I tried to remove the pulley, and I wished I had some head race pliers to hold it while I turned the pulley, but I ended up having to use the sawzall instead.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. ogee — [architecture] double curve with S-shaped cross-section

Looking like a bubble or onion atop the larger main chamber of the still, the ogee before the neck allows the distillate to cool and condense, dropping some of the heavier products back into the pot and creating a purer, more satisfying, product.

 

2. Hierosolymite — Jerusalemite

The commission studied the situation of the Hierosolymite poor, with especial interest in reducing the number of those dependent upon alms for their daily bread.

 

3. propaedeutic (also propedeutic or propadeutic) — introductory, preparative

Some students, of course, will be cognizant of the material covered in this first propaedeutic year, but most will find some new things, and all will benefit from the opportunity for review.

 

4. subnivean — occurring beneath a layer of snow, subnival

The fox will search for the meagre signs of subnivean tunnels to these nests, in order to catch these birds unawares.

 

5. apodosis — [rhetoric] consequent in a conditional sentence

By using ‘Inshallah’ in this way, he transforms every promise into an apodosis which becomes very doubtful indeed, implying that if and only if the Deity forcibly lifts and transports him to your dinner party will he attend.

 

6. viviparous — [biology] born alive, as opposed to hatching from an egg or germinating from a seed

Audubon was nearing the end of his life as he completed his studies of the viviparous fauna, and his son is believed to have finished several of the pieces.

 

7. refoulement — [law] forced repatriation or relocation of refugees to a country inimical to them

The UNHCR stated quite clearly that refugees should not be subject to refoulement, but, like many principles founded on merely human rights, this was found to be unprofitable and so had to be abandoned.

 

8. battels — [UK slang] small allowance of money for schoolboys; expense money for students; bills from colleges to students for miscellaneous expenses

Since the death of Queen Victoria (though obviously not post hoc ergo propter hoc), expenses previously paid to local tradesmen are now found in the college battels submitted at end of term, with ever increasing sums.

 

9. gallivant — to wander about purely for pleasure, to gad

Having the day free and with Mr. Simmons’s approval I gallivanted into town for a little fun, but somehow having permission took away all my enjoyment, and I ended up heading to the library to bone up on biological hierarchies.

 

10. roundelay — poem or song with repeated phrase, round; circle dance

Though I do love a fine minstrel’s roundelay, a bad one makes me regret music were ever invented.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(rhetoric, not logic, with ‘fallacy’ = falsehood)

pathetic fallacy — literary conceit wherein human attributes are accorded to inanimate things

Kenneth Burke famously investigated the ambiguity in literature between motion and action, finding this tension at the heart of the concept of pathetic fallacy.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. pasquinade — lampoon, satire

The plywood boards over the old store windows were covered with rude (and crude) pasquinades of The Leader’s dalliance with the Princess of Earl, which some soul had tried to counter rudely (and crudely) by smearing the word ‘NO!’ over the broadsheets in black house paint.

 

2. circumjacent — surrounding, in the area around

The combine had acquired ownership or control over all the circumjacent land, and only this disgusting pig farm stood in the way of their plans for a new real estate park.

 

3. incomer — person moving into a tight-knit community from outside that group or location

Somehow this incomer to the insular ambient punk scene in Maryland has managed to forge deep bonds rather quickly with some of the godfathers and doyennes of this peculiar subculture.

 

4. preceptor — teacher

Of such fortuity are fortunes made, and it was rare chance indeed that allowed our dear Jane to have had both the Junkyard Boss Man and Senator Ellsworth as childhood preceptors.

 

5. cautelous — cautious; treacherous and artful, insidious

By such cautelous wiles had Sir Robert inveigled the lady to place the gem among the jewelry of the duchess.

 

6. epidiascope — projector capable of casting images of both transparent and opaque objects

Bethany had acquired an old epidiascope that had once formed part of a traveling lecture act, hoping it would help her drawing studies.

 

7. guipure — heavy plaited or barred lace

She was working on a truly remarkable guipure d’art which seemed to represent some fantastic flowering plant, though nothing of the sort was ever seen by any botanist outside of an opium den.

 

8. astride — with legs on either side

Josie rode astride in Jodhpurs just as the menfolk, and I confess a moment of disappointment for this evidence (as I thought then) of failed femininity.

 

9. battue — hunting by driving game towards hunters by beaters

Mr. Kinsley seemed to be having no little trouble with the chase, so I resolved upon a battue for the morrow, as I wanted the city lawyer in a good mood before I broached my proposal.

 

10. missioner — missionary

With such a large number of villages to care for, one missioner can hardly be expected to do the same work of moral regeneration as your thrice-blessed parson.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK idiom, from going up wooden stairs to bed)

climb the wooden hill to Bedfordshire (also up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire) — to go to bed, to sleep

He had been shot at four times, stabbed once, had forded a freezing stream carrying that piglet upon his shoulders, broken into two houses and that blasted post office, and all Harry wanted to do was climb the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, but he knew he couldn’t do that until he’d taken care of this crusty pensioner, one way or another.

 

Book List: 1500 Books

In fulfillment of a promise I made you a little while back, allow me to present the last 100 books I read in my silly, silly little book tracking project, wherein I’ve been cataloguing all my books since the summer of 2013, and have been recording each book I complete since July of 2015. This is all my wife’s fault, as she gave me a barcode scanner and database software back in 2013, and now I’ve become kind of a nut about this stuff. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I still love to read. A lot. But of course there’s a difference when you start tracking anything. (And no, this has nothing to do with Schrödinger—Cut that out!) Indeed, it is only this week that I’ve admitted to myself that I have to let go of some of my books without reading them. Heretofore, I’d thought that if I entered them in my database well I had to read them before I could get rid of them. However, I’ve realized that I have to let some of these things go … whether I love them or not. Also for any of y’all reading about my own self-imposed stupid rules for the first time (and likely I’d have given up reading this page by now, so … moving on), I should note that I count as a ‘Book Read’ only those non-comics (& graphic novels, and that ilk) I complete. Thus the first book of this ‘century’ of books, Book #1401, is pictured here. Though I do keep track of the comic books as well, as we shall see.

Also I like to highlight some of the better reads in each tranche of ‘Books Read’ in this book listing. (Generally 10 at a time, plus any comics I read during that set.) And boy oh boy was Book #1402 a winner! I read this seemingly throwaway novel about Abercrombie Fox, forced to endure service in the English navy at His Majesty’s pleasure, while looking out for the real prize: Mr. Fox. I jumped in out of order because … well, look at it! Obviously a tossed off book for a quick buck. But no! Because behind the pen name of Adam Hardy lies the actual pen (or, more likely, typewriter) of one of my favorite writers of action, Kenneth Bulmer. He is in fine form here, combining his love of military tactics with a great eye for plotting and dialogue and action. Now I have to find the first book in the series so I can give it the attention it deserves.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1401 2/28/25 Stephen Mitchell Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Religion & Spirituality
1402 2/28/25 Adam Hardy [Kenneth Bulmer] Fox: Treasure Map Fiction
1403 2/28/25 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine March 2024 Music
2/28/25 Mike Baron Badger #25 Comics
2/28/25 Mike Baron Badger #26 Comics
1404 3/1/25 Ron Goulart Too Sweet To Die Mystery
3/1/25 Mike Baron Badger #27 Comics
1405 3/1/25 Agatha Christie Appointment With Death Mystery
3/2/25 Subba Rao Raman: The Matchless Wit Comics
3/2/25 Yagya Sharma Rana Pratap: The Heroic Struggle of a Rajput King Against the Might of an Empire Comics
Subba Rao Rani Abbakka: The Queen of Ullal Who Stood Up to the Might of the Portuguese Comics
1406 3/3/25 Margery Allingham No Love Lost Mystery
1407 3/4/25 Ken Smith Junk English Reference
1408 3/4/25 Will Self, intro. Revelation (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1409 3/4/25 Michael Barson Better Dead Than Red: Nostalgic Look at Russiaphobia Red-Baiting, and Other Commie Madness History
3/4/25 Russ Cochran, ed. Two-Fisted Tales #20 Comics
1410 3/5/25 Fay Weldon, intro. The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles

 

Russ Cochran saved so much of our cultural heritage by making available reprints of the old EC comic books in many different guises and under so many different publishers. Often imitated but never bettered, the original pre-code comic books from genius William Gaines might be known only through a handful of pages and panels in historical works on the comic publishing trade were it not for Mr. Cochran’s monomaniacal pursuit of promulgating these classic comics to new readers. (It certainly wasn’t the cash.) So we’ll let this reprint of Tales From The Crypt stand in for all those wonderful reissues of those old EC Comics. After all, who are we kidding? It was the horror comics that made that publisher’s reputation. So reputed, in fact, that the reaction, led by Herr Wertham, destroyed all those great books, leaving behind only MAD magazine to keep the American kids salivating for great art and societal insight each month. The particular issue pictured here reprints a 1952 issue, full of great stories—especially that cover tale!—from start to finish.

In 1998 the folks at Canongate Books had the bright idea of publishing individual books of The Holy Bible as individual volumes, calling these the Pocket Canons. Each volume was to be (and was) introduced by some literary light or like that, and the text was the good ol’ King James Version (still under crown copyright in the United Kingdom). The theory was that this was the way these books were originally read, as each book would have been a single scroll passed from one literate hand to another, to be read in contemplative reflection. This gospel, that of John (no relation to The Revelator), proves the worth of this ideal. The introduction by Blake Morrison is both useful and moving, and (re-)reading the words of John in this format gave them a very different impact. I also learned (or realized for the first time) that Judas was Jesus’ bagman.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1411 3/5/25 Constantine Cavarnos Byzantine Thought and Art History
3/5/25 Russ Cochran, ed. Tales From The Crypt #18 Comics
1412 3/6/25 Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö The Fire Engine That Disappeared Mystery & Thrillers
3/6/25 Russ Cochran, ed. Tales From The Crypt #14 Comics
1413 3/6/25 André Gide The Immoralist Fiction
1414 3/7/25 John Mortimer Rumpole and the Golden Thread Mystery & Thrillers
1415 3/7/25 Katherine Fischer Drew The Burgundian Code: Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad, Additional Enactments History
1416 3/8/25 Blake Morrison, intro. The Gospel According to John (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
3/8/25 Russ Cochran, ed. Tales From The Crypt #13 Comics
1417 3/8/25 Robert Barnard Death of an Old Goat Mystery & Thrillers
1418 3/9/25 Royal Armouries Staff Torture and Punishment History
1419 3/10/25 Lawrence A. Yates Power Pack: U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 (Leavenworth Papers No. 15) Militaria
1420 3/10/25 J.S. Richardson & Marguerite Wood Edinburgh Castle Militaria

 

I’ve talked before about the pithy sayings and stories of the so-called ‘Desert Fathers’ (Book #1041 in my list of books read #s 1001–1100), the strange cenobites and hermits who left the world behind (this would be the Roman world) in 3rd Century Roman Egypt. These recluses sought a deeper Christian faith by renouncing possessions and spending their days and nights in contemplation and solitude. The Waddell book referenced above gives a nice bit of background, but it is primarily concerned as is this book by Thomas Merton, The Wisdom Of The Desert, with the spiritual insights of this small but influential group of men (and a few women!) which had such influence upon the path taken by the Christian church. Merton is a good person to retell these stories and sayings, coming as he does from a modern contemplative monastic life. And he offers beautiful little versions of these gnomic utterances and tales of love, and more love.

Since we’re already doing the ‘Christian Thang’, I may as well give honorable mention to this little throwaway pamphlet from 1932, The Catholic Mind, which reprinted essays of interest to good Catholics, mostly about social issues. I of course picked this up because of the Chesterton essay, but both of the articles are surprisingly good. That of G. K. Chesterton, unsurprisingly, is just a bit precious. However, his comments on smoking and the nanny state are both prescient and laughable. Interesting to read these tracts written while Father Coughlin was just beginning to promulgate his Radio League to more and more listeners. Also interesting to comtemplate the fact that thousands of Americans were expected to read with attention and enjoyment these fairly erudite (or at least they’d seem so in our AI-darkened Age) essays.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1421 3/10/25 Thomas Merton The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century Religion & Spirituality
1422 3/10/25 Lewis Watt & G. K. Chesterton The Catholic Mind, Vol. XXX, No. 6 – “Economic Principles and Social Practice” & “A Sermon” Religion & Spirituality
1423 3/10/25 Claude Lévi-Strauss Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture Anthropology
1424 3/11/25 Godfrey Holloway The Empress Of Victoria Travel
1425 3/11/25 Anthony de Mello The Song of the Bird Religion & Spirituality
1426 3/12/25 Hilda Lawrence Blood Upon The Snow Mystery & Thrillers
1427 3/12/25 Richard Holloway, intro. The Gospel According to Luke (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1428 3/12/25 Rius & Friends Mao for Beginners History
1429 3/12/25 Sylvia Angus Dead to Rites Mystery & Thrillers
1430 3/13/25 Georges Simenon; Geoffrey Sainsbury, trans. Maigret’s War of Nerves [La Tête d’un homme] Mystery & Thrillers

 

It’s the second book in the series, but One Corpse Too Many is really where my love for Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael begins. This is the book where we first meet Hugh Beringar, who will play the foil in so many future adventures with our favorite crime-solving Benedictine monk. All of the things we love, well, that I love, about Cadfael are here: his human and humane insight, his knowledge of plants and love, his own legalisms and duty-shaving in pursuit of what he sees as higher ideals. Plus in this one we get some crazy fun hiding this and that from not-yet-sheriff Beringar. Of course, some of the unrolling of the mystery is barely plausible, and coincidences will as ever come to the aid of Cadfael, but then again, why wouldn’t he find favor from on high in pursuit of both the truth and the Truth?

Since I talked to you about Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis book in my last Book List (Book #1371), I may as well mention another book harping on the same theme, though it’s as terrible as the Donnelly book was great. And the Donnelly book was very great, if wrong-headed. (Hey, plate tectonics was proposed over a decade after his demise, and was laughed at as much as Brother Ignatius’s theories, possibly mores.) But this piece of trash, The Second Atlantis by Robert Moore Williams, is worth reading solely for the awfulness of its prose. You wonder if Mr. Williams had ever experienced an earthquake, but that takes second place to the crazy techno-boosterism which perhaps Steinbeck could have pulled off, but … well, why would he want to? The story itself is piffle, the sort of ‘human drama’ which the movie Earthquake did so much better (and it was a terrible movie), but somehow manages to become worse as it slides into a “To Infinity … and Beyond!” claptrap ending that manages to disappoint our already extremely low expectations. At least it’s short.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1431 3/13/25 Margery Allingham The Allingham Case-Book Mystery & Thrillers
1432 3/14/25 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Horrified Heirs Mystery & Thrillers
1433 3/14/25 Hyman Shapiro Scotland in the days of James VI History
1434 3/15/25 Ellis Peters The Rose Rent Mystery & Thrillers
3/15/25 Mala Singh Rani of Jhansi: One of the Bravest Leaders of the 1857 War of Independence Comics
1435 3/15/25 Ellis Peters A Morbid Taste for Bones Mystery & Thrillers
1436 3/16/25 Nick Cave, intro. The Gospel According to Mark (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
3/17/25 Satyavrata Ghosh & Luis M. Fernandes Rash Behari Bose: Story of a Revolutionary Comics
1437 3/18/25 Ellis Peters One Corpse Too Many Mystery & Thrillers
3/18/25 A. Saraswati Ravana Humbled: Three Tales About the Lord of Lanka Comics
1438 3/18/25 Robert Moore Williams The Second Atlantis [Ace F-335] SF & Fantasy
1439 3/19/25 Frances & Richard Lockridge Murder Comes First Mystery & Thrillers
1440 3/20/25 Jack Vance The Pnume SF & Fantasy
3/20/25 Kamala Chandrakant Sati and Shiva Comics

 

This book, J. J. Pollitt’s Art and Experience in Classical Greece, was one of my textbooks from a survey course I took in freshman year at college, and I see highlighting through the first two-thirds of the tome. The highlighting itself has aged, and in places one cannot be sure if the yellow marker’s marks are present or not. I, too, have aged, but haven’t yet reached the level of ‘classic’, which is the subject of Pollitt’s work. The book repays well its reading, clearly delineating the Archaic, Ancient, Classical, and post-Classical movements in the art (primarily statuary, natch, but with pottery as well and just a soupçon of surviving painting) of that small rocky world which gets much of the blame for Western Civilization. The author provides much insight in this slim (220 pages) volume, especially for one as ignorant of art as I. Pollitt maps the changes in artistic display to the substantial changes in the Greek polity (or polities) during the crucial years of the rise and fall of the Athenian dream.

Almost a hundred books after I read the classic Dr. Mabuse, I found myself reading Thea von Harbou’s novelization of the movie she wrote that you all know so well, Metropolis. However the movie is, the book is even moreso. The words are whack—crazy in some way that seems defined by 1920s Germany, hard to explain and not all that comprehensible even on its own terms, but it’s genius. There is even more matter in the book than the film, and I would give a lot to see a modern movie of the Von Harbou novel. (It would likely just get a Marvel/Michael Bay treatment, however, and that would be a tragedy.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1441 3/24/25 J. J. Pollitt Art and Experience in Classical Greece Art
1442 3/25/25 Thea von Harbou Metropolis Fiction
1443 3/25/25 David Goodis The Wounded and the Slain Mystery & Thrillers
1444 3/26/25 Kenzaburo Oë A Personal Matter Fiction
1445 3/28/25 Francis L. Wellman The Art Of Cross-Examination Law
1446 3/28/25 John Kenneth Galbraith How To Control The Military Politics & Social Sciences
1447 3/29/25 Youngman Carter Mr. Campion’s Quarry Mystery & Thrillers
1448 4/1/25 Penelope Hunting Royal Westminster: History of Westminster Through Its Royal Connections History
1449 4/1/25 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Secrecy: The American Experience Politics & Social Sciences
1450 4/2/25 Joshua L. Golding Rationality and Religious Theism Religion & Spirituality

 

Perhaps this particular exemplar of 1940s noir has a few thin spots at the end, but Leigh Brackett’s novel No Good From A Corpse crackles with fantastic dialogue and its brilliant depiction of a seedy, seamy World War II Los Angeles. This tale of detective Ed Clive and his search for a beauty’s killer is worthy of reading on its own terms, so I won’t mention all the other panoply of interest around this book, and I recommend you read the story before the introduction (my edition had Anthony Boucher’s informative essay) or anything online. You won’t. I didn’t, and I still liked the story very much.

Yet another blast from the past, a re-reading of a book beloved in what passes for my youth … and yet another disappointment. Oh, don’t get me wrong, A Child’s Garden Of Grass (which is strangely subtitled The Official Handbook For Marijuana Users, but I guess officialdom was more loosey-goosey back in the day) is still an interesting document of its time, and we should remember and honor those who got a twenty-year sentence for a couple of seeds found on the floor of their car. But authors Jack S. Margolis and Richard Clorfene turned out to be not as funny as I remember them, which is weird when you consider that the marijuana of their time was sooooo very much less potent than the brain splatter they sell nowadays. (Their first instruction after you buy a lid? Remove all the seeds and stems, especially those seeds! Ah, good times!) Of course, the fact that I remember it being funnier may say something which we shan’t look into too closely. There are a few good bits, true, but it’s mainly of historical interest.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1451 4/3/25 Bob Woodward The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat History
1452 4/3/25 Timothy Harris Wild at Heart: Discovering The Secret of a Man’s Soul Christian & Bibles
1453 4/4/25 John Weber, ed. Kyd for Hire Mystery & Thrillers
1454 4/4/25 Leigh Brackett No Good From A Corpse Mystery & Thrillers
1455 4/5/25 Harvey Cox The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay On Festivity And Fantasy Religion & Spirituality
1456 4/5/25 Jack S. Margolis & Richard Clorfene A Child’s Garden of Grass: The Official Handbook For Marijuana Users Drugs
1457 4/7/25 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine April 2024 Music
1458 4/9/25 Lewis E. Birdseye Vastation Fiction
1459 4/9/25 Charles G. Finney The Circus of Dr. Lao Fiction
1460 4/10/25 Honoré de Balzac The Girl With The Golden Eyes Fiction

 

I knew Georges Simenon as the wildly prolific and possibly profligate author of the Maigret series, which to be honest has been an on-again off-again reading pleasure—the books seem to me to be all about mood, and I’m moody enough already. But The Premier was a revelation, a deft portrait of an aging politico in decline that leaves no doubt about Simenon’s vast powers. I believe my comment after finishing this slim volume (All of his books are slim volumes.) was “Wow. Just wow.” In these 159 pages of dense prose, we live the thoughts, the overwhelming, powerful, lucid dreaming of a political animal at the end of his long run. The novel is amazingly well-written (translated by Daphne Woodward in this edition), and gives no little insight into French politics of a certain age. (The book came out in 1958, the year that saw the collapse of the 4th Republic and DeGaulle’s creation of the current, 5th, French Republic.)

And I guess since I finally got around to reading Naked Lunch I should say something about that. I guess. I guess my main take is that William S. Burrough’s arguably most famous book has brilliance indeed, but only in spurts. (Heh heh.) There is a lot of good stuff here, and don’t get me wrong I liked it, but some parts of the book are merely indulgent, kinda like some of Ginsberg’s poetry. Likely, however, I’m just not the right audience for the work, being a very boring bourgeois fearful middle class ecch who wouldn’t know Art if it hit him in the face. That said, it was also humorous to read Ginsberg’s oh so erudite interpretation of the homosexual elements in this book. Indeed, I’m not sure I recognized the book discussed in the trial extracts printed at the front with the ‘novel’ as printed in these pages.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1461 4/10/25 Ellis Peters Monk’s Hood Mystery & Thrillers
1462 4/11/25 Georges Simenon The Premier Fiction
1463 4/12/25 H. John Poole Militant Tricks: Battlefield Ruses of the Islamic Insurgent Militaria
1464 4/13/25 Ellery Queen The Chinese Orange Mystery Mystery & Thrillers
1465 4/14/25 John D. MacDonald The Damned Mystery & Thrillers
1466 4/15/25 A. N. Wilson, intro. The Gospel According to Matthew (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1467 4/16/25 Colin Dexter The Daughters of Cain Mystery & Thrillers
1468 4/17/25 A. S. Byatt, intro. The Song of Solomon (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1469 4/17/25 William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch Fiction
1470 4/18/25 Caleb Carr The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians History

 

This appears to be my first Graham Greene novel, … or at least the first I’ve read since commencing this silly book tracking project. And The Ministry Of Fear is a fine book, even if it has a fatal flaw. Of course, I don’t meant harmatia in the classic sense; I mean the fact that the book is wonderful as long as you don’t think too hard about the premise. Like many British novels of this ilk—I just read The Great Impersonation yesterday—it only seems silly if you think about it too long. And that ending disturbs me a little—though it may have been necessary in terms of the characters and like that. But this is an excellent revisioning of the Buchan-like thrillers that kicked off the genre, and the main conceit of the murderer’s narrative is brilliant.

Geisha In Rivalry was one of those surprises that confirms me in my decision to try almost anything once. Thinking of it now, it reminds me of my world-weary doubts before reading the books of Jon Hassler. Certainly, reading this hundred year old novel (it was published originally in 1910) about a Tokyo lifestyle that was almost gone even when this realistic fiction was written isn’t exactly something I’d expect to enjoy, or even condone. But Kafu Nagai penned a simply brilliant novel of the Japanese demimonde at the beginning of the 20th Century, deftly capturing the intricate and involved lives of these men and women—and capturing my interest as well. Truly a masterwork, and full of revelation.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1471 4/19/25 M. Wiesenthal The Belle Époque Of The Orient-Express History
1472 4/19/25 Helen MacInnes I And My True Love Mystery & Thrillers
1473 4/20/25 Doris Lessing, intro. Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1474 4/21/25 L. A. Mayer Saracenic Heraldry Reference
1475 4/22/25 Tanith Lee Sung in Shadow SF & Fantasy
1476 4/23/25 Graham Greene The Ministry Of Fear Mystery & Thrillers
1477 4/24/25 Kafu Nagai Geisha in Rivalry Fiction
1478 4/25/25 P. G. Wodehouse Psmith in the City Fiction
1479 4/26/25 Norman Daniels Operation S-L Mystery & Thrillers
1480 4/27/25 William W. Johnstone War of the Mountain Man Western

 

If you crave mindless action have I got a book for you! Even if Martin Wulff, the titular ‘Lone Wolf’ of The Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit, spends most of this novel in his own head brooding on his upcoming death which can’t come soon enough unless maybe just maybe he can claw his way to the bastards who murdered his … well, there’s a whole host of people murdered by ‘The Network’ (as the criminal gang pushing smack on the street will be called here) who were near and dear to Mr. Wulff. Anyway, the plot is ludicrous, from the opening hijacking to the titular Havana to the strange and laughable and unrecognizable communist Cuba of Mike Barry’s imagination. The author (actually the workmanlike Barry Malzberg, just trying to make a living here) seems to hate commies almost (almost!) as much as he hates the crooks that would peddle drugs to kids on the street. Anyway, it’s mindless fun of the best type, an object lesson in headlong rush pacing to get to a writer’s needed word count.

I’ve spoken to you about John Le Carré before, but I cannot help it, I have to underscore again just how incredible this author is at what he does. In Smiley’s People he shows once again that he is simply the best at what he does—perhaps he’s the only one who can do it. How he manages to craft such interesting tension out of what are basically a set of extended—usually very extended—interviews is a marvel to me. Possibly only the Kevin Costner movie No Way Out can come close to his ‘thing’. This book is as good as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which was perfect.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1481 4/29/25 Julian Symons The Broken Penny Mystery & Thrillers
1482 5/9/25 J. R. Jones, ed. Liberty Secured?: Britain Before and After 1688 History
1483 5/10/25 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine May 2024 Music
1484 5/11/25 Charles Johnson, intro. Proverbs (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
1485 5/12/25 Ross Macdonald The Barbarous Coast Mystery & Thrillers
1486 5/13/25 Bruce Sterling Holy Fire SF & Fantasy
1487 5/14/25 Robert Wilder Fruit Of The Poppy Mystery & Thrillers
1488 5/15/25 Robert Bloch Lori Horror
1489 5/16/25 Mike Barry [Barry Malzberg] The Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit Mystery & Thrillers
1490 5/18/25 John Le Carré Smiley’s People Mystery & Thrillers

 

I just talked about Philip K. Dick in my last 100 books, but here I go again. (And I’ve talked about him before, the last time I read his best book … well, one of the three.) This time I was revisiting The 3 Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, which I admit I didn’t even remember very well, which I suppose made the story even more arresting. As I enter deeper unto my oldening age, I found the re-reading very affecting. PKD’s flaws as a writer are here his strengths, his dissociative and fractured plotting shown as real insights by the damaged minds that inhabit his universe. He does dumb down (literally) a loved woman in the tale, but … ah, well, what do we expect for nothing?

I can hardly speak to half of this book of Pablo Neruda’s book of revolutionary erotic poetry, The Captain’s Verses (Los versos del Capitan), because I cannot read Spanish. But I still loved its rhythm and force, and the English versions (here in translations from Donald D. Walsh) were beautiful and seemed fairly literal—but what would I know? Neruda’s words are more powerful than any I might have, and the other poetry book in this tranche of ten books finishing off this last set of 100 books was also great. Penguin Modern Poets 9: Levertov Rexroth Williams has a great sampling from three of the best poets of the mid-20th Century (as I suppose you could argue each volume in the series does), and I also learned that William Carlos Williams is even better than Bukowski at writing about the boozers and sluts of the drunken world. Good stuff.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
5/19/25 Dolat H. Doongaji & A.K. Lavangia Shakuntala: An Adaptation of Kalidasa’s Famous Sanskrit Play Comics
1491 5/19/25 Louis de Bernières, intro. The Book of Job (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles
5/20/25 Kamala Chandrakant Shiva Parvati Comics
5/20/25 B.R. Bhagwat Shivaji: The Story of the Founder of the Maratha Empire Comics
1492 5/21/25 Georges Simenon The Third Simenon Omnibus: Maigret Has Doubts / Maigret & The Minister / The Old Man Dies Mystery & Thrillers
5/22/25 Kamala Chandrakant; Pradip Bhattacharya & Meera Ugra; Shyamala Mahadevan The Sons of Shiva: Ganesha, Karttikeya, Ayyappan Comics
1493 5/23/25 Tanith Lee Anackire SF & Fantasy
1494 5/25/25 Philip K. Dick The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch SF & Fantasy
5/25/25 Mike Baron Badger #28 Comics
5/25/25 Mike Baron Badger #29 Comics
1495 5/26/25 Alistair MacLean Seawitch Mystery & Thrillers
5/28/25 Mike Baron Badger #30 Comics
1496 5/28/25 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case of the Haunted Husband / The Case of the Careless Kitten Mystery & Thrillers
1497 5/29/25 Margaret L. Wiley The Subtle Knot: Creative Scepticism in Seventeenth-Century England Philosophy
1498 5/30/25 Pablo Neruda The Captain’s Verses (Los versos del Capitan) Poetry
1499 5/30/25 Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, & William Carlos Williams Penguin Modern Poets 9: Levertov Rexroth Williams Poetry
1500 5/30/25 David Grossman, intro. The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus (The Pocket Canons Bible Series) Christian & Bibles

 

And now I’m finally caught up with my book list, having lost a whole century during my last pell-mell reading spree. Even better, I have a little while left before the next set will be due, as I’m only a third of the way through the next set of one hundred. I hope all your books are great ones!

 
 
 

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

Friday Vocabulary

1. ragout — highly seasoned meat dish

I despise mutton in all its forms, and no amount of spices will make this ragout palatable to me.

 

2. connubial — of or related to wedlock or the state of marriage

If it was not in the eyes of law and society exactly connubial it was at least bliss itself, bliss indeed, and I shall never regret those weeks of joy and rapture before the inevitable fall and ruin of all our plans.

 

3. hull down — [nautical] of a ship seen so near the horizon that its hull is invisible and only its masts and superstructure may be discerned

The Pride of Jericho had the wind and soon she stretched her lead and by nightfall was hull down and seemed likely to escape our longed-for vengeance.

 

4. hebdomally — weekly, occurring every seven days

Her nephew visited hebdomally our strange little ‘Place For Mom’ with its tiny common room and our monk-like cells, but he came always on Wednesdays instead of the usual Saturday or Sunday, so I had named him (to myself, of course) Hump Day Herbert.

 

5. oroide — gold-colored alloy of tin or zinc with copper

Like a naive prospector fooled by pyrite, Skinny had taken her oroide jewelry for the real McCoy, and when the pawn broker told him the whole haul had not a bit of gold in it, Skinny realized he done the foul deed for nothing.

 

6. yashmak — veil worn by Muslim women when in public

Behind her yashmak I pretended to myself I could make out a pair of dark and sultry eyes, but in truth I could only guess where her mouth was by a fold in the cloth I took to be created by her chin.

 

7. whyfor — [informal] for what reason

“If he really wanted to know about those night visitors, whyfor didn’t he just come to me and ask, like a real neighbor?”

 

8. turps — [Australian slang] alcoholic drink; turpentine

The boys were having a big night out on the turps and none of them was a reliable witness when the police arrived in the morning.

 

9. mantuamaker — dressmaker

Females who found it difficult to become apprentice tailors were more readily apprenticed to mantuamakers, whose positions were seen as subservient to full tailors.

 

10. hygeian — sanitary; healthy

The aqueducts brought to the city clean mountain water to the hygeian fountains and basins which were free for all the citizens to use.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

in statu nascendi — not yet fully formed, nascent

But the feudal system at this time was in statu nascendi and could not wholly usurp the old tribal ties, and so Charlemagne was forced to send a Breton to rule over Armorica.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. perissodactyl — ungulate with an odd number of toes, such as equids, tapirs, and rhinos

I slunk back into the bushes and retreated across the wash to avoid the perissodactyl and allowed a wide margin before returning to the path, hoping I’d left the rhino far behind.

 

2. quadragesimal — of or related to Lent; of or related to a forty day period

I was in the second week of my quadragesimal fast from cheese when I noticed the odd discoloration upon my neck.

 

3. menstruum — [obsolete] menstrual discharge; solvent

If the menstruum has not enough alcohol its efficacy may be less and it may in fact not be strong enough to extract the alkaloids desired.

 

4. skive — [UK informal] to blow off, to shirk

Bonager was a real prig, and had never skived a single day at uni, and suddenly he was showing up late or not at all to the office, and then Skelton said he saw him in Soho in a flash car with a trull half his age.

 

5. skivvy — scullion; tight-fitting long-sleeve T-shirt

I looked at the kitchen skivvy again, and though she’d always seemed an absolute dunce before, now that I knew that she was actually a journalist I pretended to myself that I could detect the hidden signs of a feral intelligence I had heretofore overlooked.

 

6. skivvies — men’s underpants

We stood there in the pouring rain dressed only in our skivvies being screamed at by that Louisiana yokel and I wondered once again what fatal flaw in my character had ever allowed me to think this was a good idea.

 

7. lovelock — long lock of hair, often braided, left apart from bulk of hair to lie over the heart, fashionable in 16th & 17th Centuries

Of course the wild popularity of lovelocks engendered the usual moral panic on the part of the church, especially as it was presumed to originate with hairstyles of the savage Indians of the New World.

 

8. shail — to shuffle, to walk in an irregular stumbling manner; to drag the feet while walking

Though fashionably dressed, the seeming gentleman was shailing in the street like the worst drunken reprobate.

 

9. stringhalt — sudden equine lameness in rear legs of various causes

Fortunately the tenectomy completely resolved the residual stringhalt remaining after the new diet had alleviated most of the symptoms observed in the gelding.

 

10. postdictable — of or related to counterintuitive thing which makes sense after seen or experienced

Thus this new economics holds that the postdictable analysis of the Great Depression is merely a rebranding of the same nonsense which is operative in these rarified circles of financial religion before every great money crisis.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK slang, orig. WWII)

go for a burton — to die; to be ruined or lost

I gave him my word and a year later I learned he’d gone for a burton and I asked for leave and packed my bags to take the train up to Scotland to see what could be done for my godson.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. borborygmus — stomach noise made by internal gas movement; wamble

I desperately hoped the girl was asleep on her side of my California king size bed, though the rude borborygmi I was plagued with seemed loud enough to wake the dead.

 

2. conservatory — preserving from loss or damage

These methods are not the only ones conservatory of that mental vigor which alone can prepare the soul for union with the higher spirit, but they are those with which I am most fully acquainted.

 

3. gasometer — device to measure volume or flow of gas

Rarely, printhead problems may be caused by insufficient airflow through the fluids mixer; a gasometer must be used to determine deficiencies in the ergodic flow.

 

4. chela — pincer claw of crustacean or scorpion

The monstrous beast was furnished with fearsome chelae that seemed large enough and strong enough to cut a man’s body entirely in half.

 

5. swing shift — work shift between day shift and night shift; system wherein workers alternate between day and night tours of duty

Since I’ve always been a late riser, the swing shift turned out to be perfect for my natural schedule.

 

6. pinion — small gear or toothed bar engaging with larger gear or rack

Power to the wheel is delivered through a pinion on the shaft.

 

7. pinion — [biology] wing; outermost wing joint; feather of outermost wing

With the merest twitch of its pinions, the hawk fell into a murderous dive.

 

8. pinion — to restrain from flying by severing or binding the outermost portion of a bird’s wing; to bind a person’s arms

With an axe handle and rope we pinoined the spy to prevent him from sending any further signals to the ship moored of the craggy coast.

 

9. asininity (also assininity) — stupid obstinacy, extreme foolishness; stupid remark

I won’t even deign to comment on such an asininity; one response would only garner more stupidity from that quarter.

 

10. thrips — teeny tiny insect which flies using the ‘clap and fling’ method

Not only do onion thrips damage the crops which they infest, they are a major vector for other devastating agricultural threats such as the tomato spotted wilt virus.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

a tergo — from behind

Depictions of the cranes attacking the Pygmies a tergo with their beaks in later Roman depictions of Homer’s allusion make clear both the anxiety as well as the superiority these citizens of the republic felt when confronting other people and races.

 

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 12/20/24 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 Mystery & Thrillers
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 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: