Friday Vocabulary

1. gallipot — small glazed jar used by an apothecary

Between the two of them they left hardly one gallipot of the sweet German wine given us by the count.

 

2. galipot — unrefined turpentine found on some European pines

Though the galipot is of better quality than the dried barras more often found, neither are suitable for distillation, at least not using the DeSalvo method.

 

3. garabance (also garavance) — chickpea similar to (if not identical with) garbanzo beans

Though some natives make a paste from the garabance which they appear to enjoy with their habitual spices, the majority of these peas are used as fodder for swine.

 

4. confirmand — candidate for confirmation or baptism

In the case of an adult confirmand, of course, this issue does not arise, and deeper theological questions may be broached if the priest so deems.

 

5. onomastic — of or related to personal or geographical names

The derivation of ‘Whitehill’ from ‘Whip Hell’ seemed a bit of onomastic legerdemain to our young scholar, a philologist of the old school.

 

6. deixis — use of context-dependent words, referring to something by use of such words

Is Gödel’s encoding some sort of magical deixis smuggled into the heart of mathematics which destroys the foundations of logic by shifting the ‘meaning’ of a number, say, to some farflung proposition which may or may not be true, may or may not be provable?

 

7. inspissated — thickened, congealed, dried by evaporation; condensed

Thus Gandhi started upon his fateful confrontation with the British Empire by presenting the powers-that-were the material fact of this inspissated salt.

 

8. ounce — snow lepoard; lynx or cougar

Sir Billibotham’s expedition was the first to explicitly hunt for the breeding grounds of the ounce, though of course the tragedy of the jeweled puttees stopped the search almost before it began.

 

9. scullion — menial kitchen servant; base person

Theresa was hardly fit to be even the lowest scullion in the main kitchen, so vile were her manners and language after her years in the Levant.

 

10. crambo — guessing game involving rhyming words; word that rhymes with another

You can play at crambo all you want, but all that jive went out with blank verse.

 

11. quaternion — four double-folded sheets of paper gathered together for binding; group of four things; hypercomplex number with one real and four imaginary components

One of the legendary Tales of the Desert Fathers speaks of a monk so obedient that though he had just began to write the first letter of a work he was copying onto a new quaternion, he came so quickly at his master’s call that he did not hesitate even long enough to complete the full circle of the initial letter ‘O’.

 

12. continent — having or displaying restraint in bodily functions or appetites

T. E. Lawrence spoke of how lack of opportunity can make a man, a people, continent in their actions and passion, but even in the desert the lieutenant could not find it in himself to bridle his fierce urges.

 

13. tergiversate — to hem and haw, to equivocate; to change one’s mind, to be apostate

Though pressed upon by both sides, Hanquin managed to tergiversate so long that the question became moot when the hordes of angry monks broke into the chamber.

 

14. jakes — [idiom] outhouse

And so they caught him, as the saying goes, with his pants down in the jakes, and as tragic as his death was, it was the comic elements that were repeated and retold in The Lay of The Last Sit.

 

15. ayah — nanny or nurse (usu. native) working for Europeans in Southeast Asia

“We couldn’t even trust Billy’s ayah,” said the colonel, “who—though she’d seen my older child Jenny from diapers to gowns—turned out to be a communist.”

 

16. pseudopod — temporary protoplasmic protrusion of cells or unicellular organisms

From the maddened protesters there now struck a frenzied mass of the angry mob through the line of police and directly into the marble building, as if a pseudopod of hate had wrenched itself from the heart of dark rage to strike at the machine that had caused its ire.

 

17. schnorrer — [slang, fr. Yiddish] one who sponges off of others, moocher

“No more of this ‘He promised to pay the rest next week’ crap; he’s a schnorrer who’s outstayed his welcome in my life.”

 

18. accumb — to recline while dining as did the ancient Romans

Due to the consequences of this horrific accident, Petrov was forced to accumb at table in order for digestion to proceed, so we all tried to make light of the situation and pretend we were all ancient philosophers or something.

 

19. spikenard — aromatic ointment derived from plant of the valerian family; such a plant

Keeping his eyes averted the young page presented the golden chalice of spikenard to the lady, almost stumbling over the stairs and spilling the precious balm of the east.

 

20. goetic — of or related to dark magic or necromancy

Most Wednesdays Roger could be found practicing goetic conjurations or, if in straitened circumstances, performing tarot readings for paying customers at the local coffee shop.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(colloquial)

natter — to prate

Do you two have to natter on about batting runs earned and stolen averages while we’re waiting for the doctor’s verdict?

 

(informal British)

bumph — useless papers or documents

I hardly see the point in reading through all this bumph when we still don’t even know if Leslie has found the missing skillet.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. lamella — gill of a mushroom; plate or scale of bone or other tissue

The secondary lamellae arise within the spaces between the primary or earlier gills as those latter grow away from the stem.

 

2. syntagma (also syntagm [linguistics]) — syntactic component; arrangement of components producing meaning or a greater whole; phalanx of Macedonian spearmen

But of course he was known best for the three syntagmata detailing all that was known at his era of the vagaries and nuances of Akkadian law and custom.

 

3. thrombus — blood clot formed within an organism’s blood vessels

If the antidote is not received quickly, thrombi will appear in the lungs with the consequent fatal effects.

 

4. keimelia (more commonly cimelia) — stored up or hidden treasure

Thorsten permitted me to peruse this rare volume, opening up his keimelia of rare books to me in an extremely generous gesture.

 

5. whipster — know-it-all, smart aleck

And then your cousin, that blithe whipster, had the audacity to lecture my father on the proper way to harvest our melons.

 

6. Kufic (also Cufic) — of or related to the Iraqi city of Kufa; of or related to Arabic characters used in originally writing the Koran

Though the Kufic characters were used in manuscripts for only three hundred years, they may be seen in inscriptions for far longer, well into the Fifteenth Century of the Common Era, and indeed the takbir on the present-day Iraqi flag uses the Kufic script.

 

7. hidalgo — gentleman or lesser nobility in Spain or Hispanophone regions

He dropped the reins into the hands of the shoeless peasant with all the foolish pride of the landless hidalgo.

 

8. pensile — hanging down

The Red-wing Oriole generally builds its pensile nest from long meadow grasses if these are available.

 

9. manciple — steward in charge of supplies for a college, monastery, or law offices

Our table was always excellent, for we had that best of all manciples, not looking askance at sharp dealing, but never to the detriment of the house.

 

10. palinode — ode or other poem retracting views of an earlier poem; recantation

Once upon a time, changing one’s view necessitated at least the artistic endeavor of a palinode, whilst today one merely screams “reverse ferret” and goes on as if nothing had ever been said differently.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK newspaper term)

reverse ferret — sudden change of editorial position, esp. with no recognition of previous view

While Orwell’s 1984 posited a severe system of psychological shocks to induce one to give up previously held tenets, nowadays merely searching for more clicks is enough to induce a reverse ferret.

Friday Vocabulary

1. gubbins — [British informal] odds and ends; thing of no value

“You don’t have time to worry about that gubbins,” Sheila said, “our packs are full enough already.”

 

2. nomothetic — based upon law; of or related to universal laws

Dr. Hardwithe’s success stemmed ultimately from his misapprehension of the fundamental divide in clinical psychology, in which he contrasted the nomothetic position with the idiopathic, instead of the usual idiographic.

 

3. alexithymia — inability or deficiency in experiencing or grasping emotions

As is often the case with patients such as these, Mr. A suffered from severe alexithymia, which was both a defense from and a progenitor of much of the social difficulties that had brought him to our clinic.

 

4. subduction — movement of tectonic plate below and aside under the force of another crustal plate

Though the connection of boninite with subduction is certain, the mechanism by which the mineral is produced is a matter of some debate.

 

5. illation — conclusion, inference, deduction

But Safire’s eccentric illation went much farther than this, positing (correctly, as it turned out, but—as Wittens noted—with insufficient evidence) the existence of at least three men behind the attempt, all from this selfsame button and broken shoestring.

 

6. frore — [archaic] frozen, extremely cold

My painful breath seemed the only sound in the frore and murky wood.

 

7. overmantel — panel or decoration above a mantel

The famous overmantel was designed by Fleming himself, though it is believed that much of the carving was the product of Locksley, who also constructed most of the furniture in this room.

 

8. fenugreek — legume native to western Asia; seeds of this plant which are used in cooking and medicine

For this curry, the perfume of the fenugreek leaves contrasts with the gaminess of the meat, so you’ll want to use fresh rather than dried fenugreek.

 

9. hemiplegia — paralysis of one side of the body

But he ignored his own moral hemiplegia, saving his charity only for the weaker sex.

 

10. muddlehead — stupid person

Discussing the ‘ideas’ of this muddlehead is like discussing the mountain climbing ability of freshwater fish.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. azote — nitrogen

Azote is necessary for most plants, though the form in which it can be absorbed varies; beets, for example, require nitrates for an abundant crop.

 

2. phlegm — sticky mucus from throat and lungs; one of the four humors of medieval medical theory, causing sluggish temperament; composure, calmness, apathy

Funds are allotted in the latest state budget for removal of stains from the assembly floor carpet, caused by the habit of certain members to display insouciance towards respiratory health, usually in the form of hawking phlegm at the opposite side of chambers when discomfited.

 

3. tenebrescence — reversible change in color upon exposure to sunlight

Most sodalite will exhibit tenebrescence, especially under strong ultraviolet light.

 

4. argosy — large merchant ship; merchant fleet; large supply

Word reached the pirates in their hidden cove of an argosy returning heavy-laden through the nearby strait.

 

5. helve — handle of a tool, esp. of an axe or hammer

Though my strange companion wielded only an old helve against our armored foes, he tore into them like an iceberg through the Titanic.

 

6. obsequy — funeral rite

Once more we found ourselves foregathered at the bar for the obsequy of his political career.

 

7. mCi — [abbreviation] millicurie

Federal regulations restrict the amount of tritium used in wristwatches to 25 mCi.

 

8. cate — food delicacy

From the locker beneath his bed he pulled a selection of cates and even a small bottle of wine, surprising us with his unwonted generosity.

 

9. exegesis — critical or interpretative explanation of a text, esp. of The Bible

As important as the faculties for vigorous exegesis are, they mean nothing without a dedication to live a truly Christian life.

 

10. fauteuil — wooden armchair with open sides

The vast hall was almost empty save for those dark nacreous pillars, but as we walked down the long aisle, we spied a lone figure sitting at the far end in a gold and white fauteuil before what appeared to be a black or navy curtain.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(outdated nomenclature abandoned during World War I)

German Ocean — North Sea

Keeping the route open between the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea was of critical importance to Lord Utherson’s plan.

Friday Vocabulary

1. raptus — seizure; ravishing, rape; medieval form of marriage by abduction

Of course the most famous person accused of raptus is last week’s featured poet, Geoffrey Chaucer.

 

2. posture chair — office chair designed to support and conform to natural human form

Ryback leaned back in the dark wooden posture chair which was as emblematic of his new rank as the words “Editor In Chief” upon his frosted glass door.

 

3. scotophilic — of or related to that which thrives in darkness

Renny turned his back upon family, friends, church, in fact all society he had heretofore known, and allowed himself to fall prey to his most vile scotophilic impulses towards perversion, fascism, and narcissistic misanthropy.

 

4. bund — causeway, embankment; secondary retaining wall surrounding tank for fluid

Though the bund was well-constructed and of an evening one could see locals promenading along it in the cooling air, still the judge observed that the structure had caused hardship to several towns downstream, and he ordered it cut or opened.

 

5. flash spoon — spoon-shaped metal fishing lure designed to attract through visual action

I prefer a trusty flash spoon to a rattle spoon in most cases, especially in clear water.

 

6. azan (also adhan) — Muslim call to prayer

We reached the abandoned pavilion just as the azan sounded from a distant minaret.

 

7. whoozit (also whosit) — thing, whatchamacallit; person

“Hand me that whoozit over there, that’s right, the one with the weird gray tendrils still dangling from the blade.”

 

8. prepotent — superior in power or authority; possessing genetic material more likely to predominate

Here in this stuffy chamber, finally before the prepotent minister, I found my anxiety and paralyzing abasement replaced by a firm conviction in the rightness of the action I proposed.

 

9. proctalgia — rectal pain

The third morning I almost hesitated before the troop when getting in the saddle, so vivid were my memories of my proctalgia from yesterday’s ride.

 

10. tarmac — Tarmacadam; asphalt; airport runway

The petrol gave out just as we cleared the last obstruction and we hit the tarmac with a bone-crunching bang.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(US slang, from Fr. for mackerel = pimp)

mack daddy — successful pimp; playa with the ladies

“You wouldn’t think it to look at him now,” Tony said, pointing to the shuffling janitor, “but he was a real mack daddy back in the day.”

Book List: 1000 Books

As I’m trying not to procrastinate quite as much as I did last time I finished a tranche of one hundred books, let’s get right down to the listing of all those last books read, from #901 through my thousandth (!) book read since beginning this silly little book tracking project back in the two-thousand-teens. Whereas last time I only completed the listing of books #801 – #900 well after I’d already read another two-thirds of the next century, this time I hope to give you the full listing of the last hundred read before I get out of the low teens in the next hundred. (I just finished #1009 yesterday, so we’ll see where I’m at when I finish writing this out.) I hope to get around to fleshing out this barebones listing with some data—after all, one thousand books seems like there ought to be some ‘statistically significant’ stuff to blather on about—but … well, first things first.

I began the final hundred books of my first thousand with another of the delightful crazy kids’ books by Daniel Pinkwater. Ned Feldman, Space Pirate is another one of Pinkwater’s paeans to creativity, accompanied by his usual barely sketched-out drawings, which is part of his charm. The drawings inspire the reader to think “I could do that!”, which (I think) is exactly what the mischievous author wants us to think, wants us to do. I read a fair number of Pinkwater books in the last 100, such as the fantastic I Was A Second Grade Werewolf, also in this first ten books of the last century—one of the reasons my average page count dropped by about forty pages per book.

One thing to note about this last century of books is that I resolved after reaching Book Read #900 to lay off the mysteries for a while, specifically deciding to forego books in that genre (including so-called ‘thrillers’) for the next hundred books. They had made up almost half of all books read in both of the preceding sets of a hundred, so … well, we can always use a break, see what happens when we mix things up. And what happened was that I read more science fiction and fantasy books, beginning with the truly exceptional fantasy anthology Flashing Swords #5: Demons and Daggers, edited by Lin Carter. Now my taste may not be your taste (like as not you are nowhere near so pitifully bourgeois and arrière-garde as I), but I found these stories simply marvellous, with the possible exception of Tanith Lee’s contribution. But then, I have had my troubles with Lee in the past. But the stories by Zelazny, Cherryh, Craig Shaw Gardner were all excellent, and I found myself weeping at the close of Diane Duane’s contribution, “Parting Gifts”, which was a fantastical vision of old age, a better shorter version of what No Country For Old Men had hoped to be.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
901 2/26/23 Daniel Pinkwater Ned Feldman, Space Pirate Children’s
902 2/28/23 A. W. Moore The Infinite Philosophy
903 3/1/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Werewolf Club #2: The Lunchroom of Doom Children’s
904 3/3/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Werewolf Club #3: The Werewolf Club Meets Dorkula Children’s
905 3/5/23 Kurt Vonnegut Jailbird Fiction
906 3/6/23 Brad Warner Don’t Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master Spirituality
907 3/6/23 Daniel Pinkwater I Was a Second Grade Werewolf Children’s
908 3/8/23 Daniel Pinkwater Fat Men From Space Children’s
909 3/12/23 Lin Carter, ed. Flashing Swords #5: Demons and Daggers SF & Fantasy
910 3/17/23 Barbara Ras One Hidden Stuff Poetry

 

I see that in my haste to get right into the actual book listing, I’ve forgotten to give you my usual caveats and explanations about books read and numbers and all that, so I’ll just get rid of that here. First off, when I say I’ve read a thousand books, I mean since beginning to track my actual books completely finished, which I started doing away back in June of 2015. I’d been gifted book tracking software by my wife for my birthday two years prior, so that now I’ve had a database of all of my many (many) volumes for nigh on a full decade now. Also, back in 2015, I decided not to count comic books and graphic novels against my total number of books read, so they are exempted from the ‘thousand’ books I’ve completed. (If we add them in, The Lord Of The Rings was Book Read* #1131 … with the asterisk.) Okay, with that business taken care of, back to the book listing.

The first book read of the next ten books was a return to the delights of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the reading of which inspired me to finally finish The Silmarillion and to dive once more into the wonderful Lord Of The Rings. Some books of youth you turn back to with a hint of trepidation, lest your memory play you false and you realize just how juvenile your taste and how misremembered the actual text and how apparent the failings of the work are now to your more mature, wiser eye. The Hobbit is not one of those books. Those who loved it in youth will I daresay always love it, and those who do not love it ever are entitled to their entirely wrong-headed opinion. Re-reading this lyrical work of pastoral fantasy brings home just how far from the tree the apple of Peter Jackson’s film fell. This is a truly wonderful book. The movie makes no sense to me at all.

The first work of the comic arts that I read in that last hundred books was another delightful adventure of that ace boy reporter Tintin, Red Rackham’s Treasure. The story itself is a fairly thin tale, true … and little is made of the escape of the arch-criminal from the prequel. But the lush drawings of underwater exploration more than make up for the bare bones of the plot, and that skeleton is hung with all the ebullience and incident we love from the books of Hergé.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
911 3/18/23 J. R. R. Tolkien The Hobbit SF & Fantasy
912 3/18/23 John Daishin Buksbazen Zen Meditation In Plain English Spirituality
913 3/21/23 Florence King With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look At Misanthropy Essays
914 3/24/23 Sergei Lukyanenko Night Watch SF & Fantasy
915 3/25/23 Daniel Pinkwater Spaceburger: A Kevin Spoon and Mason Mintz Story Children’s
3/26/23 Hergé Red Rackham’s Treasure Comics
916 3/27/23 Neil Patrick Harris Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography Biography
917 3/27/23 Joey Green, Tony Dierckins, & Tim Nyberg The Warning Label Book: Warning: Reading This Book May Cause Spontaneous, Uncontrollable Laughter Humor
918 3/28/23 André Maurois Disraeli Biography
919 3/29/23 Barbara Ras Bite Every Sorrow Poetry
920 3/30/23 Richard Armour The Medical Muse, or What to Do … Until the Patient Comes Humor

 

Okay, you know how I said I wasn’t reading any mysteries in this set of a hundred books? Well, I made an exception for this, The Big Book of the Continental Op, because I was in the midst of reading it when I hit Book Read #900. This volume, edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, brings together all of the stories of the corporate private eye working for the nationwide Continental Detective Agency, just as they were published originally in Black Mask (and a few other locales). And how do these stories hold up, after nearly a hundred years? They are amazing, fantastic, and all those other superlatives. Sure, not every story is a smash hit winner—The Dain Curse isn’t all that, though it has a great tête-à-tête between the Op and the dame—but for sheer brilliance over the long haul you won’t find many competitors to the Op stories. The charm of ‘20s San Francisco is nothing to sneeze at either, as the current ‘20s seem like to put paid to that old City by the Bay. The footnotes range from mildly interesting to pointless, but Dashiell Hammett’s taut prose obviates that and other design defects of this collection.

I find myself sneaking up to Robert E. Howard’s best-known fantasy hero, having long ago pledged my allegience to Solomon Kane and puzzling whether any figure could ever oust that strange battling puritan from his position as my favorite. So I have yet to read any of the Conan tales, saving that for a future pleasure or disappointment. But I did condescend to read Bran Mak Morn, this paperback collection of tales about the eponymous last king of the Picts. I use the word ‘about’ in double sense here, as Bran Mak Morn is often only a peripheral figure in these tales, not quite a bit player, but only rarely the primary protagonist. But Howard’s prose is vivid and bracing, though we so very enlightened moderns may find issues with some of the racial material intrinsic to these tales (along with so much fantasy and science fiction of the ’20s and ’30s of the last century). The doom of being the last of a once mighty race among the degraded remnants of humanity, however, conjures up resonances with a much more modern champion—though admittedly aging now—, that of Moorcock’s albino prince Elric of Melniboné.

(Special shoutout to Too Long A Sacrifice by Mildred Downey Broxon, a fairly mediocre tale of Irish fantasy superimposed upon ‘The Troubles’ in that country. But it’s not the story I wish to call to your attention, but the truly awful cover art, at least on this the book club edition. The dust jacket art wraps entirely around the back of the book, and the back is ten times worse than the front, shown here. And that front cover drawing is terrible. Truly terrible.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
921 3/30/23 Mildred Downey Broxon Too Long A Sacrifice SF & Fantasy
922 3/31/23 Daniel Pinkwater Uncle Melvin Children’s
923 4/2/23 Dashiell Hammett The Big Book of the Continental Op Mystery
924 4/6/23 Tony Hillerman Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir Biography
925 4/7/23 Sigmund Freud Beyond The Pleasure Principle Psychology
926 4/10/23 Robert E. Howard Bran Mak Morn SF & Fantasy
927 4/12/23 Whodini The Information Inferno Computers & Internet
928 4/12/23 Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Essays
929 4/20/23 Frank X. Gaspar A Field Guide to the Heavens Poetry
4/20/23 Carl Barks The Best Of Walt Disney Comics: From the Year 1947 Comics
930 4/20/23 Richard W. De Haan Look Up! Christ Is Coming Spirituality

 

I’m sure other people can tell you better than I about Pogo, Walt Kelly’s masterful possum and his long-running comic strip. Heck, a friend of mine even wrote a whole book on the subject. And I have to confess I didn’t care for the cartoons when I was a kid, looking over my grandfather’s shoulder as he read them avidly. Even now, some of the contemporary allusions would probably need footnotes for me to understand the intricacies of Kelly’s plots and kookiness. But Pogo’s Double Sundae—which republishes two collections of Pogo sunday strips—is a delight, no critical apparatus needed. I’m not entirely enamored of the ‘poetry’, but the comics themselves are very surreal, and very funny.

Speaking of poetry: I’ve been trying to dip my toe into the waters of current poetry, under the gentle guidance of my aunt, who is sort of an expert at this sort of thing, but I have to admit that I’ve yet to find any poetry of the past forty years that moved me as much as these strange little verses from a quasi-anonymous poet of long ago China, Han-shan. The translations by Burton Watson are spare (and I’m guessing fairly literal, given a Watson translation of Chuang Tzu I’ve read), but a poignant aloneness of the aging poet comes through in Cold Mountain, this tiny little collection of some of this perhaps fictional poet’s best work. Any pretence to enlightened wisdom is undercut by the plaintive all-too-human cries in other poems, and it is this very humanity that makes the verse work so well and so hard.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
4/20/23 Walt Kelly Pogo’s Double Sundae Comics
931 4/21/23 Daniel Pinkwater Aunt Lulu Children’s
932 4/21/23 Richard Moyer, Lucy Daniel, Jay Hackett, H. Prentice Baptiste, Pamela Stryker, & JoAnne Vasquez McGraw-Hill Science Grade 1 Student Edition Children’s
933 4/22/23 Omori Sogen An Introduction to Zen Training: A Translation of Sanzen Nyumon Spirituality
4/22/23 Subba Rao The Pandavas In Hiding: Retold from The Mahabharata Comics
934 4/22/23 Bhagat Singh Krishna Children’s
935 4/23/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Hoboken Chicken Emergency Children’s
936 4/23/23 Edward Gorey The Utter Zoo Humor
937 5/1/23 Truman Smith; Robert Hessen, ed. & intro. Berlin Alert: The Memoirs and Reports of Truman Smith History
938 5/2/23 Gerald Speedy The Den Mother’s Den-Book Outdoors & Nature
939 5/4/23 Han-shan; Burton Watson, trans. Cold Mountain Poetry
940 5/8/23 Will Carleton City Ballads Poetry

 

Reading Thomas Pynchon reminded me why I love this most mysterious of American authors (putting aside for the moment the assertion that B. Traven was born in Chicago): imaginative reworking of immensely broad stretches of history as seen through the kaleidoscope of coexistent countercultures and just hinted at overarching dark forces behind the overt facts printed in the newspapers and textbooks. It also reminded me why Pynchon can be so frustrating. Against The Day has so many many many themes and characters and events and parallel plots and counterplots and fictions and facts that you feel you need to take a hit of meth just to keep pace. (Don’t try it, kids. Speed kills.) But I was hooked by the opening pages as surely as a swordfish on the line of Anthony Quinn. If you don’t get the reference, then you know how it feels to read Pynchon without a guide; sometimes the allusions are almost entirely personal, too idiosyncratic. Reading the various online helps was as frustrating as it was helpful, sort of like the annotations to Grateful Dead lyrics I was reading a while back. And so, just as with Ulysses, the reader begins to wonder if the candle is worth the prize, or something like that. But I read it, and I loved it, and I wished that there’d been some sort of tying up of all the loose ends, or something. But then, what did I expect? Too much, I’m sure.

I really did not like all that very much most of the books I read in this particular set of ten, I must confess. Except for the Fletcher Pratt and this comic from Amar Chitra Katha, Panna and Handi Rani: Two Tales of Self-Sacrifice, in fact, not one other volume got better than three stars on my 5-star scale, and more than half of this set of ten found their way into boxes heading out the door for donation or sale. Otherwise, I might not have called out this work from the best publisher of comic books devoted to Indian subjects, because …. Well, let’s just put it this way: The tales presented here turned out to be two of the most fucked up stories I’ve read outside of the Bible.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
941 5/8/23 Thomas Pynchon Against The Day Fiction
942 5/10/23 Marion Nestle Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism Politics
943 5/12/23 George Sarton Galen of Peramon Medicine
944 5/12/23 Fletcher Pratt Alien Planet SF & Fantasy
945 5/14/23 Will Carleton City Legends Poetry
946 5/14/23 James William Coleman The Criminal Elite: Understanding White Collar Crime True Crime
947 5/15/23 Robert Silverberg / William F. Temple The Silent Invaders / Battle On Venus [Ace Double F-195] SF & Fantasy
948 5/16/23 Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi; James Cowan, intro. & versions Rumi’s Divan of Shems of Tabriz: Selected Odes Spirituality
5/17/23 Meera Ugra & Dinanath Dube Panna and Hadi Rani: Two Tales of Self-Sacrifice Comics
949 5/22/23 Richard Dawkins The God Delusion Spirituality
950 5/23/23 Robert Saffron Is The United States Ready for Self-Government Fiction

 

Doubtless you already know the fine work of H. R. Ellis Davidson, and you’ve probably already read Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. But this book, one of the fine Pelican Originals published by Penguin during one of those infrequent attacks that afflict the print industry of the strange idea that the ‘masses’ might be interested in something besides bomb threats and bodice rippers. I am grateful, so very grateful. This very well written book of Norse and adjacent mythologies turned out to live up to its reputation, which is very high. Davidson’s work was excellent, not only for its clear elucidation of what we know (and what we don’t) about the original Scandinavian beliefs, nor just its deep understanding of the whole gamut of German etc. mythology, but also for the fine glossary of names and sources at the rear of the book. Of course, the book is nearly sixty years old now, so caveat lector and all that.

It is always a delight to find the sophomore effort in a series as good as the first, and even moreso when the author is Jack Vance. The second book in his rightly vaunted Demon Princes series, The Killing Machine, lives up to the high expectations created by the excellent series opener, Star King. In this brilliant space opera tale of breath-taking revenge, the excitement builds and the action accelerates as …. Well, I reallly do not want to say anything that might give away the surprises in store for a first time reader of this teriffic tale.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
5/24/23 Russ Cochran, ed. Weird Fantasy No. 9 Comics
951 5/27/23 Eihei Dogen; Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed. Moon In a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen Spirituality
952 5/27/23 Niels Mulder Mysticism in Java: Ideology in Indonesia Sociology
5/27/23 Subba Rao Paurava and Alexander: The Story of the Encounter Between a Great Conqueror from the West and a Brave King from the East Comics
953 5/28/23 Knock Knock In My Humble Opinion Humor
954 5/31/23 Malcolm Green Book of Lies Humor
955 6/1/23 Frank X. Gaspar Late Rapturous Poetry
956 6/1/23 M. Vassiliev Sputnik Into Space Science
957 6/6/23 R. B. Thieme, Jr. Demonism Spirituality
958 6/7/23 H. R. Ellis Davidson Gods and Myths of Northern Europe Mythology
959 6/9/23 Jack Vance The Brave Free Men SF & Fantasy
960 6/12/23 Jack Vance The Killing Machine SF & Fantasy

 

Another wonderful set of tales of the best barbarian & thief pair extant, Swords Against Wizardry glues together a couple of longer stories with some newer writing (this was published in 1968) to make a chronological narrative out of what were originally just standalone adventures written by Fritz Leiber for the digests, as is usual in the book editions of these short stories. The two primary tales—“Stardock” and “The Lords Of Quarmall”—show Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in finest form. The first demonstrates the wide scope of fantasy, as it’s basically The Eiger Sanction without the boring bits (apologies to Trevannian; I speak only of the movie), while the Quarmall tale is redolent with the chill musty air of ancient stone inhabited by dark sorceries and the memories of the eldest, evil gods.

Perhaps my favorite Daniel Pinkwater story of all—and that’s really saying something, when you think of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency or Lizard Music—is this slim volume that I used to read over and over to my own daughter, The Big Orange Splot. Though the story is quickly told of a happenstance (the titular Splot) which becomes the impetus for real creativity and self-expression, any words I might offer cannot compare with the words and (especially) the crude drawings of Mr. Pinkwater, whose childish pictures are the perfect way to tell this tale. Any person who has been subject to an HOA will truly appreciate this little fable.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
6/12/23 Amamt Pai, ed. Paramahansa Yogananda: A Saint for East and West Comics
961 6/14/23 Theodore Sturgeon The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon SF & Fantasy
962 6/15/23 Emmet Fox The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life & The Lord’s Prayer: An Interpretation Christian
963 6/15/23 R. B. Thieme, Jr. Satanic Plot Christian
964 6/17/23 Pamela Paul Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families Pornography
6/17/23 Mike Baron Badger [First] #6 Comics
965 6/18/23 Randy Petersen Beliefs to Beware Of: Straight Answers about Cults Christian
966 6/20/23 J. R. R. Tolkien The Silmarillion SF & Fantasy
967 6/22/23 Frank L. Britton Behind Communism Wacko
968 6/22/23 Ed Strosser & Michael Prince Stupid Wars: A Citizen’s Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions Militaria
969 6/25/23 Fritz Leiber Swrods Against Wizardry SF & Fantasy
6/26/23 Russ Cochran, ed. Weird Fantasy No. 4 Comics
970 6/26/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Big Orange Splot Children’s

 

I think Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is my favorite Philip K. Dick novel, though it is not perfect: he never wrote perfect. (Did the snitch leave Kathy’s lair on p. 27 or not? I guess not, but it sure seems like he did.) But for a few hours, I’m transported to a place where thoughts and words have power both beyond and of everyday life, with internal monologues and dialogues that are both impossibly unlike actual human thinking and speaking and also exactly like that. Dick’s neuroses and failings are right there on the page, and there’s a reason for Jason Taverner’s ultimate fate, but perhaps psychological failings are a small price to pay for even a small grasp upon reality and identity. You can make a case for other novels; heck, I may plump for Confessions or Scanner or even the High Castle when next I read them. But in Flow My Tears PKD does what he does best: take a staggeringly simple and yet potent conceit—What if one of the elites had to live like the rest of us schlubs for just one day?—and turns it into a deceptively simple rumination on the flaws of society and psychology, a catalog of moral failings where transcendence is only another way to get over it and back to work.

To be fair, I didn’t have high hopes for The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose, edited by Lawrence Rainey. I mostly wanted to reacquaint myself with T. S. Eliot’s deathless poem, which I’d not really immersed myself in since long ago days in college. I am certainly no critic, no person capable of scintillating insights into literature; no, I’m a rather pedestrian example of the worst sort of bourgeoisie poser, garnering all his comments on prose or poetry from others. So I’d hoped at best to get some bon mots from the material surrounding Eliot’s groundbreaking poem. But, in this case, the literary apparatus drags down the poem, rather than raising it in our consciousness. Oh, it’s good enough, and helpful at many points. And the literary articles Eliot penned at this time show off his erudite, snobbish, insightful intellect. But Rainey doesn’t add all that much to the main feature, which is as always “The Waste Land”, which is still great, but a bit bogged down among all this churned up detritus.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
971 6/27/23 Daniel Pinkwater Roger’s Umbrella Children’s
972 6/28/23 Daniel Pinkwater Blue Moose Children’s
973 7/1/23 Fritjof Capra The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism Bad Science
974 7/3/23 Philip K. Dick Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said SF & Fantasy
975 7/3/23 Richard Brautigan The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster Poetry
976 7/4/23 Louise V. Gore & Marcy Heathman Meet the Pug: For Years of Happiness Outdoors & Nature
977 7/5/23 Kurt Vonnegut Timequake Fiction
978 7/6/23 T. S. Eliot; Lawrence Rainey, ed. The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose Poetry
7/6/23 Russ Cochran, ed. Weird Fantasy No. 1 Comics
979 7/7/23 Kenneth Bulmer / Poul Anderson The Wizard Of Starship Poseidon / Let The Spacemen Beware! [Ace Double F-209] SF & Fantasy
980 7/8/23 Daniel Pinkwater Guys From Space Children’s

 

My first time reading B. Traven ensures that it won’t be my last. What a voice! Though I told myself during the middle section of The Cotton Pickers that the book was beginning to drag, I should have known, even at that time, after that simply perfect first opening section, that my mysterious author was simply setting things up for the simply perfect ending. Wow. For all the hype about who and whether B. Traven really was, it all boils down to the writing, which is inimitable. (Though perhaps I should be careful saying that: I would have though Jack Black’s You Just Can’t Win was inimitable, too, and we all know how that turned out.) Besides the engaging reality of Traven’s story, there is a singular lack of bitterness to the bitter taste left in the narrator’s mouth, and that last page perhaps sums up how the author himself felt about all the tales that others wanted to tell about him. On the other hand, this is his first book, so I may be full of it.

Roger Zelazny uses the tried and true hook of the amnesiac protagonist to build slowly to the final confrontation in Nine Princes In Amber, only to fake us out as the story keeps unspinning after the putative hero lies blinded and hopeless in a forgotten dungeon. But of course the tale’s not over, not even at the end of this, the first in the pentalogy. I was pleased by Zelazny’s ability to keep me on tenterhooks until the very end, after that grabber of an opening. Now I’ve read these books before, some of Zelazny’s best work (well, we all have a soft spot for Jack Of Shadows, don’t we?), but am agreeably unsurprised to find this premier novel in the series as good as I remember.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
981 7/11/23 B. Traven The Cotton Pickers Fiction
982 7/11/23 E.C. Tubb / Alex Dain Kalin / The Bane Of Kanthos SF & Fantasy
983 7/15/23 Immanuel Velikovsky Worlds In Collision Bad Science
984 7/17/23 Jordan Spencer Small Town You/SA Other
7/17/23 Russ Cochran, ed. Tales From The Crypt Presents The Vault Of Horror No. 4 Comics
985 7/17/23 Martin Olson The Adventure Time Encyclopædia: Inhabitants, Lore, Spells, and Ancient Crypt Warnings of the Land of Ooo Circa 19.56 B.G.E. – 501 A.G.E. Humor
986 7/18/23 Lewis F. Presnall Search For Serenity Spirituality
987 7/19/23 Roger Zelazny Nine Princes In Amber SF & Fantasy
7/24/23 Harvey Kurtzman The Nostalgic Mad #3 Comics
988 7/25/23 David Edmonds & John Eidinow Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers Philosophy
989 7/28/23 Constance Cumbey The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism Wacko
990 7/29/23 Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems Poetry

 

After reading the sparse straight translation of Nagarjuna’s classic Buddhist treatise, The Fundamental Wisdom Of The Middle Way, I feared that the expanded notated and commented treatment of that text that followed was going to suffer from a pedantic know-it-all-ness of the admittedly Western philosophically focused translator. I was wrong to worry. Though the notes of Jay L. Garfield are certainly very academic at times, and may put off readers not used to that formal style of writing, he is an honest academic, being sure to bring out contrary interpretations even as he makes his strongest case for his own interpretation. His particular focus upon the four-fold logic of Nagarjuna (‘not this, nor not-this, neither both, nor neither neither’) hammers home the skillful means with which the powerful teaching of this sage from the 2nd Century of the Common Era eludicates the inner teachings of Buddhism. And Garfield’s background in regular old Western philosophy enables him to bring up the important parallels and contrasts in that canon, from Kant to Wittgenstein. Definitely worth deep study.

Since we’re already had a shoutout to Lord of the Rings, let me take a moment to speak of the incomparable French prose of Jules Michelet. I’m not sure where I picked up this slim volume of extracts from the historian’s works, Pages Choisies II, and I have to confess that I mainly wanted to test whether I remembered even a smidgen of my French language skills, but I was staggered to read the words of this author, one of the most powerful voices in French historical writing. Certainly his vignettes from the French Revolution truly bring those days to life, and of course when he was writing he could still speak to eyewitnesses to some of those earth-shaking events. But even his other work, his odd asides about the Renaissance, for example, have verve and power—even if perhaps some of his conclusions are a bit, let’s just say, wrong. But Michelet sees always the poetry in history and personages, and much more besides. The pieces pulled from his natural history of the sea, or his bizarre but affecting anthropomorphising of moutains and weather, these words show an author who is able to do that most impossible thing: make us see the world in a wholly new light.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
991 7/29/23 John Scalzi The Android’s Dream SF & Fantasy
992 7/30/23 Nagarjuna; Jay L. Garfield, trans. & commentary The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Spirituality
993 8/4/23 Bob Shaccochis The Immaculate Invasion Militaria
994 8/8/23 Sergei Lukyanenko Day Watch SF & Fantasy
995 8/8/23 Mike Capozzola Self Defense For Time Travelers Humor
996 8/9/23 Martin Amis Time’s Arrow Fiction
997 8/10/23 Jules Michelet Pages Choisies II Foreign Language
998 8/11/23 A. Merritt Seven Footprints To Satan SF & Fantasy
999 8/12/23 Karen Wynn Fonstad The Atlas of Middle-Earth SF & Fantasy
1000 8/12/23 J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord Of The Rings SF & Fantasy

 

One last apologia here at the end. I’ve told you that I resolved not to read any mysteries in this last set of one hundred books (save for the Continental Op volume we’ve already discussed, but some of you purists may question the presence of Seven Footprints To Satan in that last set of ten books. True, the even-more-pure may reasonably say that it’s not exactly a mystery, more of an adventure story. And I confess that I’m not entirely sure just where to put A. Merritt’s books, nor am I entirely consistent in my own classification into this or that genre. For example, I put the Fu Manchu books into my mystery shelves, and Doc Savage within the Science Fiction & Fantasy—though both series have attributes associated with the other genre; as I say, I struggle for no petty consistency. And certainly in the case of Seven Footprints the fantastical elements are at a minimum, more trappings than actuality. And though I can plead that it’s merely an old-fashioned adventure yarn, those I usually place within the Mystery domain (hence the full title of the genre in my own classification system, ‘Mystery & Thriller’). But … well, let’s just let it be, shall we? I’m happy to have finally reached one thousand books no matter what petty and silly foibles I’ve inserted into the process, and look forward to reading more mysteries, of whatever stripe, in the next set of one hundred books. (Though, truth be told, I have reached Book Read #1016 as I finish this listing, and only two of those are in the ‘Mystery & Thriller’ genre, and the only pure mystery is actually a re-read of Book Read #95!) Ah, me. More will be revealed, I’m sure. Until then, ciao, and good reading.

 

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

Friday Vocabulary

1. williwaw (also williwau) — savage squall off cragged coasts in near-polar waters

Never have I viewed a sudden storm with such joy as I did when I saw the dark clouds rage behind us in what had been clear waters as the williwaw arose suddenly to confound our pursuers.

 

2. sere — dry, dried out; barren

Carefully Tom cleared a large circle around the campfire, knowing that the sere grass could catch instantly ablaze from even the merest spark.

 

3. mythopoesis — myth creation

In the epics, of course, nothing would be said of terrible headache Arthur had that morning from the moment he awoke, nor of the midges that pestered friend and foe alike in that swampy morass, but mythopoesis of course has its own laws of poetry and artistic license.

 

4. commissure — joint between bones; tissue of nerve fiber joining right and left sides of spinal cord or brain; point where lips or eyelids join

Painful vesicles appeared at the right commissure of the lips five days after the first symptoms were noted.

 

5. overprocrastination — overindulgence in putting things off

And this morning we suffered the consequences of my neurotic overprocrastination, as the front porch slid off the foundations down the hill to rest upon my neighbor’s gazebo.

 

boscage (also boskage) — thicket or grove of trees or shrubs

The morning haze lay heavy upon the dark boscage at the foot of the hill, though we could hear rustling amidst the bushes.

 

6. seel — to sew a hawk’s eyes shut for training purposes

And now like a seeled falcon this young warrior is blinded by love.

 

7. theomachy — fight against or among gods

Nor was Ajax spared in this terrible theomachy, though Athena’s illusion kept him from destroying his fellows before he destroyed himself.

 

8. analphabetic — not alphabetic; illiterate

At the estate sale I found the books sold in an analphabetic manner, prices being based solely upon the material in which the volumes were bound, so that a (faux) leather hardback reprint of Louis L’Amour cost ten times what they charged for a vintage paperback.

 

9. serac (also sérac) — irregular towers of glacial ice

Carefully we picked our way past the rocks and seracs which cluttered this saddle of the glacier, nearly tumbling into a hidden crevasse in spite of our caution.

 

10. fylfot — swastika

The spines of the complete edition of Kipling were decorated with the fylfots typical of so many early versions of his works.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Northern dialect)

cat’s ice — very thin ice, layer of ice formed over puddles from which water has receded

Suddenly I was a child again, delighting in each step upon the cat’s ice and the satisfying crunch beneath my warm weather boots.

Friday Vocabulary

1. corybantic — crazed, wild, frenzied, orgiastic

We have no need for corybantic preaching and unbridled emotional appeal, for our program is a sane and reasoned approach of proven value.

 

2. spencer — short tight jacket of 19th century, often trimmed with fur when worn by women and children

Not even taking time to button my spencer, I flew out the door and into the waiting coach.

 

3. decrepitate — (of minerals) to crackle when heated

The hunchback left the pan over the fire until the salts had completely decrepitated, sluicing the remaining slurry through a fine sieve.

 

4. slate — [British informal] to criticize severely

But no previous work of the Cambridge playwright had been slated so unanimously by the critics; indeed, the naysayers had been almost silent heretofore.

 

5. deturgescence — relative dehydration by which the cornea is maintained in a transparent condition

The results of our study of the effects of temperature upon corneal deturgescence were ambivalent, at best.

 

6. oneirophrenia — hallucinatory state of dreamlike perception, often caused by severe sleep deprivation

Often an episode of oneirophrenia will be mistaken for schizophrenia, due to observation of obvious hallucinatory episodes.

 

7. homogamy — inbreeding

Though the weak chins and drooping eyes we saw in all the villagers proved the deleterious effects of the homogamy that held this remote valley in its vile grip, hidden from view was the loathsome effects of this horrid inbreeding upon this group’s moral sense, which suffered a deficiency far greater than the receding lower jaws.

 

8. parsec — unit of astronomical distance equal to about 3.26 light-years, the distance to a star which has an apparent heliocentric parallax of one second when viewed from earth

Antares—the supposed locale of Dray Prescot’s adventures—lies some 170 parsecs distant from Earth.

 

9. futurity — horse competition in which contestant horses must be nominated to the event long before it is held

He couldn’t attend the reunion as he had a two-year-old in the weekend’s futurity in Lansdowne, but Figgers promised to get in touch the week after.

 

10. imbricate — to overlap, as in roof tiles

But Dr. Whelan had imbricated the damaged tissues with such care that there was never any weakness along that side of the leg, although the scar was plainly visible.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British derogatory slang)

slapper — prostitute; woman of bad morals, woman with many sexual partners

I got out of bed where the slapper still slept, lit a cigarette, and looked out the window to the street where I saw the same blue Lancia I’d noticed following me the day before.

Friday Vocabulary

1. loathe — to detest, to feel disgust for or towards

I simply loathe the new branding, and don’t even get me started on what they’ve done to the mascot.

 

2. loath — unwilling, averse, reluctant

Loath as I was to bring the bad news to Elsa, I realized that it was, after all, my painful duty.

 

3. tomnoddy — fool, dunce; puffin

Now Kelvin may have convinced all the other tomnoddies at the pub with his fancy talk and bold assertions, but he’d have to go a spell further to convince me.

 

4. ululate — to howl or wail, esp. by alternating loud high-pitched sounds

But at the outskirts of town we were beset by a crowd of ululating termagants who stopped our progress and beset our carriage like a flock of maddened crows attacking a wounded falcon.

 

5. cumulet — white domesticated pigeon

But Bertha found that he had no love to give her, for his devotions were all to his racing pigeons, and one pretty cumulet in particular, which he had named Laurie.

 

6. limen — threshold of perception or response

By constant application of this method it was believed that the limen of physical sensitivity to small changes in temperature could be sharpened to mere tenths of a degree, but modern instrument readings of actual nerve responses have cast doubt upon these self-reported successes.

 

7. milt — fish semen; spleen of a breeding animal

As we flew north along the coastline I could just make out in the sun’s last rays a yellow cloud of milt a mile or so offshore, evidence of the spawning herring our fishing fleet was searching for.

 

8. belomancy — divination using arrows

Just as the ancient Persian was paralyzed at each crossroads by his bizarre belomancy, trying to scry the future by the fall of arrows, so Lievenpatten became transfixed in his attempts to use the Chinese art of the I Ching, casting his yarrow stalks time after time in some misguided belief that that ancient text would reveal the next correct action, the next choice he must make.

 

9. commonplace book — personal notebook into which quotes and memoranda were written

But as fascinating as these nostalgic items from fifty years ago were, I was much more interested in what had been written upon the two pages of my uncle’s commonplace book which he’d torn out roughly leaving a jagged remnant upon which I convinced myself I could just make out a few stray letters, suggestive of … well, I wasn’t sure what they were suggestive of.

 

10. jiggery-pokery — [British] trickery; manipulation

Though nothing was proven, many on The Street believed that Rosen had achieved his immense success through some sort of jiggery-pokery or sharp dealing—though as I say, nothing was ever proven and no person ever came forward to accuse him of any particular act.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(San Francisco Bay Area slang)

bip — to steal from a car by smashing a window and taking items left on the seats

Hell, they were just cruising down the avenue, bold as brass, one of ’em hopping out of the Lexus (a Lexus!), checking the window of each parked car, and bipping any that had anything inside.

1000 Books! (!)

It gives me very great pleasure to announce that late last night (that is to say, early this morning) I finished reading my 1000th book since I began tracking my reading, way back in 2015.

My wife actually gave me as a birthday gift ten years ago the book database software (along with a barcode scanner) that I use, and she has always been happy to have found such a perfect gift for my continued enjoyment. As stated above, I only began tracking my reading through the database in 2015, and so it’s taken slightly over eight years to read these thousand books.

Now, when I say that I’ve read a thousand books … well, of course I’ve read many more. But these are just the ones for which I can affirm positively that, yep, I read that sucker, read it from cover to cover. I have many books in my collection which I know that I’ve read—that Frances Yates book on memory, or all those PKD short story collections—but which I have not ‘officially’ read since beginning this silly project. Also, as long-time readers of this blog might know (which population approaches zero if we discount myself), I resolved long ago not to include in this ‘official’ book count any comic books or graphic novels, fearing that they might stretch the curve in weird directions. However, since I never have decided just what to do with children’s books or such works as Edward Gorey or those Far Side collections, perhaps my concerns were misplaced or just plain wrong. But that’s the way it is. If we include those discounted comic works, my total runs up to 1131, but who’s counting?

My 1000th book was a single-volume edition of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, which really is the only way to read the book, having at hand all of the appendices and maps and the index. After all, as everyone knows, J. R. R. Tolkien’s great ‘trilogy’ is really no trilogy at all, but simply a very long book divided into three parts for ease of reading. (And that’s the counterargument to my assertion just above; having the whole work in a single tome does tend to press down upon the chest when reading in bed, which is where most of my reading of this epic was done.) And I confess that I manipulated my reading to enable this fantasy masterwork to be book #1000; it’s not hard to read it fast or slow as one desires. But we should never underestimate Tolkien’s achievement, and it is salutary to compare and contrast the original with the films which threaten to overtake the written fiction in our collective memory. (I do not speak of the films purportedly made of The Hobbit, save to mention that I started this Tolkien kick about ninety books ago just to remind myself of how wonderful that endearing work of pastoral fiction was, and how utterly Peter Jackson missed its point.) But, though I found myself time and again rediscovering the differences, significant or minor, between the book and the films, the biggest revelation (‘re-revelation’?) was the sheer power of Tolkien’s prose. I had recently read (and finally completed) The Silmarillion [Book #966] and, truth be told, found some of that background book ponderous and, dare I say it, dull. But in The Lord Of The Rings, the kindly looking Oxford professor scales once more and surpasses the heights he reached in The Hobbit. Many other words, much better than any I might offer, have been written on Tolkien’s magnum opus, so I will merely advise you to turn once again to the scene at Orthanc when Saruman makes his last stand against the assembled forces of good. The delicate handling of dialogue there, as the quondam White Wizard attempts once more to cast his spell upon the host below him, the nuanced words and the sheer skill with which Tolkien gives letter perfect language to Saruman shows a writer at the top of his game, a man who has the ability to summon the discourse of silky evil, of cultured pleading, of imperious mastery, and then shows us the rough speech of Gandalf dispersing the miasma of doubt engendered by such language. True, nobody ever speaks like that—at least not in these latter days of the world—, but nobody spoke as Philip K. Dick wrote dialogue either, which makes neither author’s works any less compelling and truthsome.

Well, I’ve gone on at greater length than is my wont when giving you these summary announcements of my putative reading progress. But I should get back to the parts where I assure you that I’ll write up the data for this last set of books, or at least promise you a complete listing of the books read. In addition to those not-quite-made promises, I will mention that in this last ‘century’ of books, I resolved not to read any mysteries (save for on collection of the Continental Op stories that I was in the middle of when I finished Book #900), so I’m curious to see what difference that made to my reading patterns. I had found that nearly half the books I was reading were mysteries—mostly because I need some light reading to peruse while taking my lunch break at work, and those fit the bill. But while I did read a good bit of science fiction and fantasy (about 20% of the last hundred books), there doesn’t seem to be any other genre which had any such preponderance in the last tranche of reading.

My reading pace was much faster than the hundred books before, as I took only 167 days to read this century of books, as opposed to 258 days for Books # 801 – 900. This is because—despite a few massive tomes such as The Lord Of The Rings—the average book length was down significantly. (In other words, I read a bunch of shorter books.) I really should do a full analysis of both this last set of a hundred books as well as the whole set of one thousand … but whether I do or not only time will tell. (I’ve learned not to make rash (or any) promises.) I do promise, however, to (eventually) get around to giving you a full listing of the last set of books read. So you can’t ask for fairer than that, can you?

With the thousand books per eight years pace (very roughly), I now can contemplate reading every book I own … assuming I live to be 140 years old! … and that I cease acquiring more books. Neither of which is going to happen.

   1 Book per 1.67 Days   

Hoping to hit you soon with some real data, some real book lists….