Friday Vocabulary

1. tropopause — atmospheric boundary layer between troposphere and stratosphere

The air temperature will be at a minimum, ceteris paribus, at the tropopause, rising as the descent is made through the troposphere to the ground.

 

2. ovinity — the state of sheep, sheep-like nature

Hengval believed that most humans lived always in a wretched mire of ovinity, their potential for active resistance or even awareness of their oppressive surroundings abandoned from their earliest youth.

 

3. deracinate — uproot

The disbelieving officer then grabbed viciously at my beard, thinking it false, and deracinated a large portion of the facial hair I’d devoted entirely too much attention to in my effort to win the heart of Miss Kinsey.

 

4. famulus — servant or assistant, esp. of magician or scholar of the occult

Whether he was a charismatic con man or another in the long line of the self-deluded is not always clear, but certainly Edward Kelley was no mere famulus to Doctor Dee.

 

5. sockdolager — knockout blow, decisive argument or reply; unusually heavy or large thing

Finally tiring of our pointless sparring, I grabbed my shotgun from the wall and, when he seemed all-fired to have me shoot him, I gave him a real sockdoloager with the gun butt across his skull.

 

6. narghile — hookah

I smiled with happy expectation as I caught sight of the fine narghile in the corner, but was disappointed to learn that Henry displayed the hookah only as decoration, a nod to his time in the fusileers.

 

7. crannog — artificial island used as fortification or dwelling in ancient Ireland and Scotland

Draining the lake revealed the remnants of a drowned crannog that once protected the rude inhabitants of this green land from foes also long disappeared from history.

 

8. Corfiot — of or related to Corfu or a native of Corfu

Her magisterial debunking of Professor Plangeton’s standard history of the Corfiot Jews brought her great renown.

 

9. campanile — bell tower, often freestanding

The campanile of Pisa Cathedral, of course, is more commonly known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

 

10. grizzle — to make or become gray

But I found that whatever answers he’d found in that lonely town on the moors had grizzled my former school roommate, who had seemed so young and enthusiastic as he left to take up his duties as parish priest.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(history)

Nansen passport — passports issued under the auspices of the League of Nations for stateless persons after World War I

But after the Second World War there was not the same impetus to issue a new version of the Nansen passport, which had primarily been necessitated by Bolshevik Russia’s rescission of citizenship for all Russians living abroad.

Friday Vocabulary

1. casern — garrison lodging, barracks

I tied my horse to one of the pillars holding up a sort of porch roof before the unimpressive casern of the Trebitsch regiment, for I saw no stables.

 

2. gangrel — [Scots] tramp, vagabond; gangling person

“Don’t try to cheer me with your gangrel wisdom, for I’ve known house and home and—aye—family too, a loving wife and two children who would weep to see their father reduced to this state.”

 

3. Glagolitic — now unused alphabet used for certain old Slavic languages

The words in the painting, however, were written in Glagolitic characters, and though I could puzzle out some of the letters which had similarity to the Cyrillic, I could make no guess at what sounds many of the strange curvy shapes might represent.

 

4. leaguer — siege; one who besieges

Preparations for the leaguer of Stuymesand continued apace, and everywhere I saw men felling the tall trees of the peninsula, shaping them into fell engines of war.

 

5. scalene — [mathematics] having sides of unequal length

The production of a six-sided scalene pyramid from the rhomboid is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

6. laund — glade, grassy pasture amidst woods

There among the saplings bordering the laund of sedge, they spied their quarry, the sly fox standing alert yet apparently unconcerned.

 

7. must — new wine, not yet fermented fruit juice

Only a few handfuls of must remained now at the bottom of the damaged vats.

 

8. semiosic — of or related to semiotics

Though we had been told very clearly to fix firmly the semiosic plane before moving on to the mimetic plane, Hodges was sick of the whole thing and punched a hole right through the physical plane of the painting.

 

9. furlong — 220 yards, 1/8 of a mile

And then the two great armies stopped still, with perhaps only a single furlong separating the vanguards of the mighty horsemen.

 

10. abaft — aft of, behind; towards the rear

Abaft the cargo hold was the single barrel of fresh water aboard, filled with slimy grossnesses of which it was best not to think as you swallowed.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. parallax — apparent difference in position due to change in location of observation point

Before adjusting for parallax in your rifle scope, make sure that your reticle is properly focused.

 

2. bursary — [British] college scholarship; institutional treasure, esp. for ecclesiastical institutions

Some say that Lord Peter only funded the bursary to make up for the harm he’d done to the seamstress, but more cynical wags opined that the great lord wouldn’t give a fig for any problems the ‘lowers’ had in any event.

 

3. vacuously — emptily

The argument hinged upon whether the statement “Abraham Lincoln’s psychic powers could have stopped Booth’s bullet” was only vacuously true, or whether some actual positive meaning could be found for the contrapositive sentence.

 

4. stithy — anvil; forge

He learned all his horselore at the stithy of Master Brummond, and could tell you stories for hours, though he couldn’t sit in the saddle for as long as it’d take to say his name.

 

5. avidin — protein in white of eggs which prevents action of vitamin B

Cooking eggs neutralizes the avidin within, which otherwise can make biotin unusable by the digestive system.

 

6. gnomon — part of sundial which casts the shadow by which time is determined

But the gnomon of the garden sundial had been stolen, probably for its copper, and we had no means of solving the next puzzle left behind by the eccentric millionaire.

 

7. cairn — mound of rough stones heaped up as a grave marker or landmark

Though many clever explanations have been given, no one is certain just what purpose the cairns now called the Nine Standards originally served, though some believe them to have been constructed in the Pennine Hills over 800 years ago.

 

8. rescript — formal response to legal question written by monarch, pope, etc.; clarification of law, esp. canon law; rewritten document; act of rewriting

The fawning toadies of the press have claimed that the Emperor’s rescript demonstrates once more the kindly attention of the throne to the problems of the common people.

 

9. delectation — pleasure, delight

And now for your rapturous delectation, our three lads will perform a pantomime of King Lear, with Tony taking on all of the female parts.

 

10. ambigram — representation of a word in calligraphy or type which, when rotated or inverted, displays either the same or a different coherent word

Only some palindromes, and only in specific typefaces or styles, are also ambigrams, as when ‘NOON’ is rotated about its center (though it’s clear that if normal casing is used this is no longer true).

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

Buggins’s turn (also Buggins’ turn) — possession of office by rotation or seniority rather than merit

“I’m not sure why I happened to be secretary when the brouhaha broke out, just Buggins’s turn, I suppose.”

Book List: 900 Books

After finally getting around to giving you the listing for books #701 – #800, I managed to place my brain into a state of suspended animation, going through the motions and going to work, and completely neglecting the fact that I’d also promised to give you the Book List for #801 – #900. So here we are, more than three months after I’d finished reading book #900 (pictured just to the left), and only now am getting around to promulgating the full book list for that last century of reading. In fact, I’ve taken so long that we’re more than halfway through the next 100 books at this point. Ah, life … or whatever it is I’m living while waiting for life to arrive.

I began the last hundred of books with an investigation into the Varieties Of Unbelief by a noted American scholar of Christianity, Martin Marty. Though he makes a few interesting points—especially his comments about medieval accidie—most of what he says of interest is actually something somebody else says; quotations from others express more insight than any Marty shows. Plus, I didn’t like his framing of the whole question (or is it multiple questions?), and the book is more boring than not. But then again, what should I expect, looking to a religious author for judgment of disbelief? (His nomenclature of ‘unbelief’ is only one of the unhelpful quirks he displays in this work.) One might as well look at the works of major atheists for discernment about Christianity.

In this first set of ten (10) books from the past hundred, I read two standout volumes, two of the fantastic Charlie Chan mystery stories by the oddly named Earl Derr Biggers. Both The Chinese Parrot and Behind That Curtain are well worth a read, even nowadays (perhaps especially now) almost a century after they were first published. Besides a view of a Hawaii and a San Francisco that is so lost to time as to be mearly purest fantasy, the characterization of the plump and plodding Chinese detective is almost as distant from the portrayal in the various movies that have made the name of Charlie Chan synonymous with the worst anti-Asian prejudice. Though the actual mysteries may be fairly easy to guess (especially The Chinese Parrot), the lyrical unfolding of these tales of a time when travel to Hawaii meant an ocean voyage will leave you wanting more.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
801 6/11/22 Martin E. Marty Varieties Of Unbelief Philosophy
802 6/13/22 Earl Derr Biggers The Chinese Parrot Mystery
803 6/14/22 Richard S. Prather The Kubla Khan Caper Mystery
804 6/17/22 Jack Vance City of the Chasch SF & Fantasy
805 6/19/22 Earl Derr Biggers Behind That Curtain Mystery
806 6/21/22 Jack Vance Servants of the Wankh SF & Fantasy
807 6/23/22 Jack Vance The Dirdir SF & Fantasy
808 6/24/22 William Watson The Last of the Templars Fiction
809 6/25/22 John R. Pierce An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise Mathematics
810 6/26/22 Kenneth Bulmer / Mack Reynolds The Key To Venudine / Mercenary From Tomorrow [Ace Double H-65] SF & Fantasy

 

To kick off the next ten books, I was lucky enough to enjoy the wonderful Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others by the interesting writer Daniel P. Mannix. This wonderful edition from the masters of the outre at RE/Search Publications includes many fascinating photographs (for which I admit a voyeuristic, not to say prurient, fascination) of the aforementioned freaks, many from the author’s personal collection. Mannix writes with humane insight into these outsiders most outside our ‘normal’ society, having spent many obviously happy days with and among them in the various freak shows and carnivals which used to be a staple of the American scene. I knew Mannix from his other, more historical, works upon subjects such as the Hell-Fire Club, gladiators, and (always a favorite) torture. In Freaks, the author is, as ever, an engaging raconteur with a flare for the perfect detail. His intimate knowledge of this now long-gone subculture shines through the book, plus the odd insights into Anton LaVey are an added bonus.

I usually try to stay clear of negative mentions of books read (so we won’t speak of what utter garbage The Soft Edge is), and I already told you to check out the Charlie Chan mysteries, but I also try to highlight the actual books as opposed to the comics (and graphic novels et al. blah blah blah) that I’ve read. But really, there are some graphic works which pack as emotional a punch as any ‘great’ literature. The interconnected and disturbing stories by Marc Hempel in Gregory are some of the sweetest, most brutal gutpunches in the black-and-white world of comic art. These tales center about a very difficult child, the titular character, who can only communicate (if that is what he does) by screaming at the top of his lungs, “I, Gregory!” Which he does. I’d read this when it first came out in the late 80s, and it was even better, more poignant, more heartbreaking than I remembered.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
811 6/29/22 Daniel P. Mannix Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others Sociology
812 7/2/22 Boris Akunin Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog Mystery
813 7/6/22 Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe Science
814 7/7/22 Earl Derr Biggers The Black Camel Mystery
815 7/9/22 Earl Derr Biggers Charlie Chan Carries On Mystery
7/12/22 Goscinny & Uderzo Asterix In Corsica Comics
816 7/14/22 Otis Adelbert Kline The Port Of Peril [Ace F-294] SF & Fantasy
7/15/22 Ray Willner & Reed Crandall The Adventures Of Robin Hood Book No. 2 Comics
7/16/22 Luis M. Fernandes Hanuman to the Rescue: Retold from the Krittivasa Ramayana Comics
817 7/17/22 Paul Levinson The Soft Edge: a Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution Computers & Internet
7/19/22 Marc Hempel Gregory Comics
818 7/20/22 Åke Edwardson Death Angels Mystery
7/22/22 Russ Cochran, ed. Tales From The Crypt Presents The Haunt Of Fear No. 5 Comics
7/23/22 David Gerstein, ed. Disney Masters: Donald Duck & Co. (Free Comic Book Day 2022 Special Edition) Comics
7/26/22 Roger Slifer, ed. World’s Finest Comics No. 295 Comics
819 7/29/22 John D. MacDonald The Deep Blue Good-By Mystery
8/2/22 Neil Gaiman; Leslie S. Klinger, ed. The Annotated Sandman Vol. 1 Comics
820 8/7/22 Jonathan Eisen Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries Bad Science

 

Note to self (and everyone else who reads this page (so … Note to self)): The Calculus really is drop-dead easy. And Quick Calculus: A Self-Teaching Guide by Daniel Kleppner & Norman Ramsey is the easiest, best guide for quickly learning the basics of the most powerful mathematical tool invented after Pythagoras and Euclid started messing about with plane figures. Sure this self-guided book is short on theory and proofs, but if you just want to learn to really use your basic derivatives and integrals—or just remind yourself what those words mean—you cannot find a better, nor quicker, course anywhere. This is the book I learned calculus from my first time around, later supplementing with the also excellent Schaum’s Outline. Of course, you can go on from here to almost infinite levels of complexity, but the mere fact that this subject can be so simply codified shows its potency in a very persuasive way … as opposed to, say, *shudder* Set Theory.

Among the many excellent books in this third decade of the last hundred (Who knew that L. Frank Baum made gender bending central to an Oz book written in 1904? But there you are.), I feel I really have to give a shout-out to Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, a half dozen mystery vignettes from the pseudonymous H. Bustos Domecq—a fig leaf author behind which are hiding Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy-Casares. The conceit is a fascinating one, an idea I’m surprised has not been copied extensively: the detective Don Isidro Parodi is an inmate imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, who solves mysteries while incarcerated, merely from information given him by visitors to his cell. In fact, Parodi sees beyond the specious ‘facts’ given him by his various interlocutors to easily uncover the ‘real’ tales which usually are unrolling before the very eyes of his visitors, though they often are quite clueless as to the actual happenings until and unless Don Parodi deigns to reveal the truth. The language is difficult, though the translation by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni was excellent (to my untutored and un-Spanish-speaking eyes). I came to these tales after reading an essay by Eco praising them, and am very grateful to the Italian academic for his recommendation.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
821 8/8/22 Michael Innes Death at the President’s Lodging Mystery
8/8/22 Cary Bates DC Comics Presents No. 11 Comics
822 8/14/22 Daniel Kleppner & Norman Ramsey Quick Calculus: A Self-Teaching Guide (2nd Edition) Mathematics
823 8/14/22 Earl Derr Biggers Keeper Of The Keys Mystery
824 8/22/22 Jorge Luis Borges & Adolfo Bioy-Casares [as H. Bustos Domecq] Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi Fiction
825 8/22/22 Louis Relin A Doctor Discusses Narcotics and Drug Addiction Drugs
826 8/25/22 Åke Edwardson The Shadow Woman Mystery
827 8/27/22 Umberto Eco The Limits of Interpretation Linguistics
828 9/1/22 Boris Akunin Murder on the Leviathan Mystery
829 9/1/22 L. Frank Baum The Land Of Oz Children’s
830 9/9/22 E. Kamke Theory of Sets Mathematics

 

Too often, it seems, one finally gets around to reading a series that rabid fans have been promoting ad nauseum to such an extent that perhaps one is bound to be disappointed, for nothing could possibly live up to the hype of an army of hype-men and -women. I often disdain almost all book recommendations, in fact, because I have odd tastes (if taste it can be called) and also because I just never know …. How happy I was, then, to discover the ribald wonder of George MacDonald’s Flashman, the first volume of the putative “Flashman Papers”. Somehow this historical fiction of an unrepentant coward and rapist manages to be quite engaging and entirely believable. (Which is perhaps merely an anachronistic view of our more ‘modern’ age gazing at the British disaster that was the retreat from Kabul.) My view of military biography and history will never be the same.

Here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean in the last paragraph. I know that many many people love Inspector Morse, both on the telly and in his original incarnation in the Colin Dexter novels. But … well, he’s always left me a bit cold. I get it that he’s ridiculously smart, that he has had abysmal luck in his love affairs, that he desperately wants to not be non-U and all that, but …. I mean, after all, you don’t actually have to have a reason to be a harsh-talking heavy drinker, so I suppose that’ll do as well as any other. But I persevere, especially if I’ve already stocked up on the books, and so I was happy to find that with The Wench Is Dead I finally found a Morse mystery that I enjoyed thoroughly from start to finish. This is the eight in the series. Caveat lector.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
831 9/10/22 George MacDonald Flashman Fiction
832 9/13/22 Isaac Asimov Tales Of The Black Widowers Mystery
833 9/21/22 Chris Abani The Secret History Of Las Vegas Mystery
834 9/22/22 Willard Van Orman Quine Elementary Logic Philosophy
835 9/24/22 Colin Dexter The Wench Is Dead Mystery
94* 9/28/22 Tony Hillerman Listening Woman Mystery
836 10/2/22 David Dodd, annotator The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics Music
837 10/3/22 Will Cuppy How to Be a Hermit, or a Bachelor Keeps House Humor
838 10/8/22 Manning Coles Drink To Yesterday Mystery
839 10/12/22 Philip Kerr Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem Mystery
840 10/13/22 Georg Cantor Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers Mathematics

* I re-read this book to refresh my memory and persuade myself that the novel was unencumbered by the many problems which plague the AMC miniseries based upon it, Dark Winds.

 

For some time now I’ve been telling you how incredibly good Gavin Black (pseudonym for Oswald Wynd) is. I’m not going to stop now. In The Eyes Around Me, his fourth thriller featuring Paul Harris, the anti-communist businessman who seems to attract trouble just as his boat engines attract customers and competition, Black evokes a long-gone Southeast Asia where mysterious motives hide behind every glance and no one is quite what they seem to be. Once again Mr. Harris finds himself accused of a crime he didn’t commit (I’m beginning to sense a theme here), and has to find the actual killer while avoiding the legal consequences of that other evildoer’s actions. It’s a fun, quick read, and proves once again Joan Kahn’s ability to pick great writers and nurture them. Top marks.

Like me, you probably know Ron Goulart most for his science fiction stories, especially those great (if overly pun-filled) tales in the DAW paperback series. Heck, I think After Things Fell Apart is definitely among the top 10—maybe Top 5—post-apocalyptic California SciFi novels. (Do not confuse with Achebe’s book of almost the same name.) But Goulart also writes mysteries (seems to be what he mostly writes nowadays, when he’s not ghosting for Shatner et al.), and wrote them even back in the wild crazy days of the ’70s. In the case of If Dying Was All, the cover does really tell you most of what you need to know (at least the cover of my version; it’s not all that often that you see a man and a woman modeling the same pants). It’s a perfect little quick read with almost no pretensions save the strange mise en scène of 1972 Los Angeles. Oh, yes, and those puns. Goulart just can’t help himself, I suppose.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
841 10/14/22 Gavin Black The Eyes Around Me Mystery
842 10/15/22 Ron Goulart If Dying Was All Mystery
843 10/17/22 August Derleth The Return Of Solar Pons Mystery
844 10/19/22 R. T. Campbell [Ruthven Todd] Unholy Dying Mystery
845 10/23/22 Robert Barnard A Little Local Murder Mystery
846 10/23/22 Leslie Charteris Enter The Saint Mystery
847 10/24/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Sulky Girl Mystery
848 10/27/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Stuttering Bishop Mystery
849 10/29/22 Josephine Tey The Man In The Queue Mystery
850 10/30/22 Jack Vance Son Of The Tree / The Houses Of Iszm [Ace Double 77525] SF & Fantasy

 

You probably noticed in that last set of ten books that I’ve been heavily reading mysteries (9 out of the last ten), and I didn’t stop in this second half of the hundred books. But one of these still sticks and sticks in my mind, and perhaps the mystery is whether it’s a mystery at all. I’m speaking, of course, of Gertrude Stein’s posthumously published Blood On The Dining Room Floor, which is … something. I originally bought it because I was filling out some of the Black Lizard titles I was missing, and I read it because it claimed to be a mystery, and was short, and …. Do I like Gertrude Stein now? Not exactly. But this little set of words is one of the most intriguing befuddling and deep artifacts I’ve immersed myself in in quite some time. She really is a genius, and like many geniuses, I have a hard time understanding her without a guide to dumb it down for my plebian brain and taste. (The afterword by John Herbert Gill is a big help.) I know that I must read this one again, preferably aloud this next time. And so I invite all y’all (ha!) to read this as well, so that you can join me in rereading it some time in the future.

Possibly one of the most fascinating books in the entire last hundred is Confessions Of A Trivialist, by Samuel Rosenberg. Originally published as The Come As You Are Masquerade Party, which terrible name is explained but not expiated in the book itself, this volume is a beguiling and original set of essays by a strange polymath who takes a subject and runs with it to all sorts of interesting places, just as Greil Marcus took punk and delved deep into Dada in his Lipstick Traces. I can do little better to describe the scope of this book than to quote the blurb on the cover, that it consists of “Investigations of Santa Claus, Frankenstein’s monster, Herman Melville, Lot’s wife, Albert Schweitzer, and the world’s greatest peridromphile”. Rosenberg’s ‘investigation’ of Frankenstein is one of the most original pieces I’ve read on Mary Shelley’s creation, save the original itself. And the “peridromophile” essay is one of the most heartbreaking insights into the world of true genius that I’ve ever stumbled upon. Even the weakest essay, that on Schweitzer, manages to bring a fresh perspective to what was once an overdone subject, and all of the other essays are excellent excellent excellent.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
10/30/22 Bob Haney Worlds Finest Comics No. 241 Comics
11/3/22 Edmund Hamilton, Bill Finger, & Dave Wood World’s Finest Comics: Archives Vol. 2 (DC Archives Edition) Comics
851 11/4/22 C. R. Wylie, Jr. 101 Puzzles in Thought and Logic Mathematics
852 11/7/22 Freeman Wills Crofts The Pit-Prop Syndicate Mystery
853 11/9/22 Robert Baden-Powell Rovering To Success Nature
854 11/13/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Roving Bones Mystery
855 11/17/22 Gertrude Stein Blood On The Dining Room Floor Mystery
856 11/18/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Dangerous Dowager Mystery
857 11/20/22 Paul Anthony Jones The Accidental Dictionary: The Remarkable Twists and Turns of English Words Language
858 11/25/22 Stephen King [as Richard Bachman] The Running Man SF & Fantasy
859 11/26/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Lame Canary Mystery
860 12/3/22 Samuel Rosenberg The Confessions Of A Trivialist Essays

 

Though I often say (seriously; it’s exactly the sort of thing that I often say) that I re-read the Alice books every hundred books or so, I recently did the math and realized that in fact I’ve been returning to those most delightful pastoral dreams of youth only every 200 books or thereabouts. All the same, I once again found much joy returning to Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. I suppose if you don’t ‘get’ these books … well, nothing I can say can ever change that. But for those of us who love this best creation of the sorta weird math professor at Oxford, I can only say that I’m already looking forward to reading these books again!

Moving from the sublime to the not quite ridiculous, Doctor No is almost the perfect James Bond book, or as perfect as Fleming’s strange hero is ever likely to be. Although the classic first film in the eternal string of movies replicates much if not quite almost all of the book’s plot and action, I found myself wishing that we had a film of just this version, straight from these pages. The strangely tender chauvinism, the sado-masochist bent, the casual racism (“Chigroes” for Chinese negroes? Seriously?), it’s all here, along with a story devoid of explosions, a pacing that includes two lengthy ocean journeys in a canoe—though one only happens in [spoilers] flashback. Both thumbs up.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
861 12/6/22 Chu Hsi Learning To Be A Sage Philosophy
862 12/8/22 James McNeill Whistler The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies Essays
863 12/11/22 Lawrence Block The Girl With The Long Green Heart Mystery
12/11/22 Bob Kahn, ed. Silver Age Classics Detective Comics 225 Comics
864 12/14/22 Brad Warner Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma Religion & Spirituality
865 12/14/22 Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Fiction
866 12/17/22 Lewis Carroll Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There Fiction
867 12/18/22 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Substitute Face Mystery
868 12/27/22 Ian Fleming From Russia With Love Mystery
869 12/31/22 Ian Fleming Doctor No Mystery
870 12/31/22 Karen McCosker & Nicholas Albery, eds. A Poem A Day Poetry

 

After the sublimity (if that’s what it has) of Doctor No, a book like Goldfinger makes us realize that Ian Fleming had very little idea of what an actual secret agent actually does. The whole plot bounces from happenstance to coincidence and so on to improbable blind luck. Does the trope of having the villain explain the otherwise inexplicable machinations to our hero originate here? (Dr. No does detail his nefarious scheme, but reluctantly and much more plausibly.) In this story, Bond survives merely because Goldfinger has no trustworthy henchmen with rudimentary secretarial skills. And of course the evil plot is ludicrous, as Sean Connery points out in the movie. (Not to mention that the counterplot, involving wholesale acting by a cast of thousands with even the slightest mistake revealing all to our criminals, is even more implausible, if such a thing can be imagined.) However, Bond is Bond, and the moments of conceited foodie snobbery, or nostalgically quaint sexual fantasizing, or his ‘insights’ into the issue of gays and lesbians, not to mention the mostly interesting golf and card games, make it still worth reading, get it over the middle-of-the-road hump to just barely achieve (for this reader) real likability.

Also during this stretch of reading I finally finished Robert Aitken’s wonderful Taking The Path Of Zen, which to my mind (assuming I have one) is one of the best introductory books on the nuts and bolts of Zen practice, which is to say stupid sitting. I had read the first few chapters many many years ago, when first I attempted to sit stupid for a few minutes each day, only to stop cold once I hit the chapter on sangha. (My current sangha consists of one guy I’ve seen twice, plus the two people on the video call introduction to … ah, sorry to digress.) Aitken’s real mastery is to make simple what is at its core very simple indeed, which sounds so simple as to be tautological, but …. Well, I’ve read quite a few books on Zen, and Buddhism, and some other stuff, and I can say that the lucidity Mr. Aitken brings to the printed page is a very rare commodity indeed.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
871 1/8/23 Ian Fleming Goldfinger Mystery
872 1/12/23 Robert Aitken Taking The Path Of Zen Religion & Spirituality
144* 1/13/23 Camden Benares Zen Without Zen Masters Religion & Spirituality
873 1/13/23 Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club Fiction
874 1/15/23 Chuck Palahniuk Invisible Monsters Fiction
875 1/15/23 Jorge Luis Borges Ficciones Fiction
1/15/23 Mike Baron & Steve Rude Nexus: Two Comics
1/16/23 Mike Baron Badger #5 [First] Comics
1/17/23 Hergé The Shooting Star Comics
876 1/17/23 Chuck Palahniuk Diary Fiction
1/18/23 Hergé The Secret Of The Unicorn Comics
877 1/19/23 Chuck Palahniuk Choke Fiction
878 1/20/23 Sharon Wegscheider Another Chance: Hope & Health for the Alcoholic Family Alcoholism
879 1/21/23 R. T. Campbell [Ruthven Todd] Death For Madame Mystery
880 1/22/23 The Research Department of the White Power Movement China, The Jews, and WWIII Wacko

* I re-read this book not realizing I’d already read it as part of my stupid book-tracking project, and am glad I did, because re-reading it allowed me to part with it forevermore.

 

One of my last year’s projects was to read the Holy Bible from start to finish, mostly so I could say I had done it, but also because the King James Version is not only one of the fundamental sources of our shared literary heritage in English, but also because so much of it is breathtakingly beautiful in its own right. I highly recommend the project for anyone who has even the slightest inclination, though I have to confess that it took me more than a year, reading a few pages each day and then some. As well, I’ll admit that there are long stretches where beauty is in short supply, but I do have a full notebook now of quotes I grabbed along the way. (My favorite Bible quote remains, however, Job 6:6, to wit, “Is there any taste in the white of an egg?” Truly a question for the ages.) What strikes me most about the King James Bible, though, is that it must be the most beautiful work in any language which is the product of a large committee. Something must have been magic in the air of early 17th Century England to permit such wonderful language to flow so easily from the pens of earnest academics.

Why is it that sociologists (with some rare exceptions who go on to become giants (viz. Durkheim, Mauss, etc.)) as a group are some of the worst writers ever? Why is there no sociological study of this? Alas, this sociological study of drunk driving sucks in many of the usual ways, though also in some ways of its own. Take, for example, the neologism Joseph R. Gusfield coins to cover the act his book is about with a veneer of objectivity, seen in the title (or is it the subtitle?), Drinking-Driving And The Symbolic Order. Gusfield then spends hours of our time telling us about the ‘themes’ of the work, and also has pretensions to being ‘literary’. The entire last section claims to be homage to Kenneth Burke (may his name be ever blessed), but instead is a very defensive attempt to define ‘irony’. Oh, the irony. Certainly the idea of … well, whatever is meant by ‘drinking-driving’ … has changed since this book was released in 1984, and a study could certainly be made of how we as a society have made the idea of driving even after just ‘one for the road’ strictly taboo. That study, however, is not this book.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
881 1/22/23 Joseph R. Gusfield The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order Sociology
882 1/25/23 Åke Edwardson Sun And Shadow Mystery
883 1/26/23 August Derleth The Reminiscenses of Solar Pons Mystery
884 1/26/23 The Holy Bible in Giant Print – King James Version, Red Letter Edition Bibles
885 1/27/23 Chuck Palahniuk Lullaby Fiction
886 1/29/23 Chuck Palahniuk Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread Fiction
887 1/30/23 Hodding Carter Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor Children’s
888 1/31/23 Raymond Chandler Marlowe [The Little Sister] Mystery
2/1/23 Andrew Galitzer Torah Comics: Comic Strips Summariaing the Weekly Parsha Comics
889 2/2/23 Åke Edwardson Never End Mystery
890 2/3/23 Elizabeth Linington Greenmask! Mystery

 

Well, I’ve already recommended a James Bond book in this listing, though For Your Eyes Only, one of Ian Fleming’s collections of short stories, was more literate and literary than most other Bond tales. And I’ve also mentioned the Gavin Black thrillers about Paul Harris, the businessman in southeast Asia who keeps getting into trouble. So I won’t go on about the 898th book in this list, A Wind Of Death, which sees my favorite anti-communist in another excellent adventure. So once again I find myself breaking my rule of calling out only the ‘good’ books I’ve read, and will instead implore you not to read Starship Orpheus #1: Return from the Dead, by the pseudonymous Symon Jade [Michael Eckstrom]. I would love to give you some delicious cutting remarks about its many (I’m sure) failings, but all I find in my notes is the following comment: “Just not very good.”

Terrible in quite a different way is Changed, a self-published (and distributed) tract about how one Jewish man found escape from degradation through his encounter with a good Christian woman. To call it a Christian tract may be bending the language a bit far, because I’m not so sure how doctrinally sound some of his musings are. But then again, the great tragedy in his life is that his wife-to-be was assaulted before they met. The book was mailed anonymously to me, and … well, I can’t pass up reading something like this, and … it exceeded my (extremely low) expectations immeasurably. If you get a copy (you can actually read the whole thing online, though it seems as if somebody with some skills in using English as an actual language has cleaned up and edited some of the most egregious errors in syntax et cetera), you might want to read it alone, else you’ll find yourself importuning your friends with this or that terrible extract, and likely end up just reading almost the whole thing out loud. It belongs in that “So Bad It Almosts Becomes Good” category. I laughed very hard and very often, especially at the end—though likely that’s just me—which end I totally did not see coming.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
891 2/3/23 Symon Jade Starship Orpheus #1: Return from the Dead SF & Fantasy
892 2/5/23 Dick Francis Smokescreen Mystery
893 2/8/23 Dick Francis Knockdown Mystery
894 2/8/23 Ian Fleming For Your Eyes Only Mystery
895 2/10/23 Chaung Tzu; Burton Watson, trans. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings Religion & Spirituality
896 2/12/23 Tom Cantor Changed Christian
897 2/15/23 Michael Crichton The Venom Business Mystery
898 2/17/23 Gavin Black A Wind Of Death Mystery
899 2/18/23 Robin Williams The PC Is Not A Typewriter Computers
2/18/23 Sergio Cariello, illus. The Action Bible: God’s Redemptive Story Christian
900 2/24/23 A. E. Stallings Hapax: Poems Poetry

 


One last book before I go, a favorite, A Doctor Discusses Narcotics And Drug Addiction, a work I’ve carried with me close to my heart since I was first given it by my father in the early ’70s. Reading this over-the-top work as a pre-teen sparked a lifelong interest in the world of dangerous drugs. So to speak. My favorite part of the book is the Glossary at the back of common drug slang. Keep an eye out for the B-dacs until my next listing when I finally finish my next hundred books—which won’t be that long now, as I only have sixteen books left to go!

 

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

Friday Vocabulary

1. ailurophile — lover of cats, cat fancier

She was also prone to lapse into a simpering baby talk when feeding her pets which is one of the warning signs of the worst type of ailurophile.

 

2. sloe — astringent fruit of the blackthorn

The only variety we had in our diet that long winter were some sour sloes Tina had gathered, but they only made our lips dry out, and we never figured out how to use them in cooking our dull goulash.

 

3. decrescent — waning; decreasing

It was only that fall and winter, living as I did miles from town, that I developed any sense of changing seasons and skies, noticing for the first time the crescent and decrescent moon, seeing for the first time the Milky Way in all its glory.

 

4. theophany — appearance or manifestation of god to someone

He can claim to have experienced a theophany among the Berbers out there in the desert all he wants; I still maintain that he was as high as a catapulted rat!

 

5. bathykolpian — having large bosoms

When the starlet bowed and made her deep curtsey before the prince, some members of the court feared that her bathykolpian charms would not be contained by her strapless gown.

 

6. perspicuous — clearly expressed, lucid

If you must go on at such length about your subject, you owe us at least the favor of making a perspicuous presentation.

 

7. perspicacious — insightful, having clear understanding

Though Saunders has a very perspicacious knowledge of the Balkan troubles and the various powers struggling there, do not ask him to tell you anything about the theatre, unless you wish to be bombarded with the most useless opinions imaginable.

 

8. aerolite — rocky meteorite (as opposed to one composed of iron and nickel)

Fleming argued that the barely discernible pattern had been formed by an ancient aerolite that had been reduced to powder upon impact, thus leaving no trace besides the vague shaping of the terrain.

 

9. lido — [British] public outdoor swimming pool; beach allocated for swimmers

Every day he could be seen strolling along the lido, spotlessly attired in a black suit with a black Homburg upon his head, a mahogany cane in his hand, and upon his black shoes the whitest of spats.

 

10. connatural — innate, inborn; having similar nature

We respond to these evidences of God’s great mercy because of His gift to us of connatural knowledge deep within of His power throughout and within all the universe.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(US idiom)

shanks’ mare (also shanks’ nag in Scotland, shanks’ pony in the UK) — one’s own legs used in walking in contradistinction from other modes of transport

And then his bike got stolen, and he was back to using shanks’ mare to get to and fro, which bothered him not at all, though Alice was a bit put out.

Friday Vocabulary

1. mob-handed — [British] as a mob or in a group, esp. with violent designs

So there we were, breathing heavy after the chase and all of us ready to start swinging mob-handed at the boys, when this tiny dark-haired woman—Joanne it turned out to be—steps out from the alley next to the store, and just stares, long and hard, just stares at each of us, never saying a word.

 

2. gasping — [British slang] extremely thirsty

“How ’bout some service over here? We’re positively gasping.”

 

3. scanger — [Dublin slang] petty crook, usu. associated with specific brand name clothes etc. used by same

And I suppose you afford your scanger threads on your copy shop salary, do you now?

 

4. tippex — [British] trademarked correction fluid similar to Wite-Out; to erase using such fluid

All you’ve got to do is tippex out the company’s name here, photocopy the receipt and fill out the copies, and you’ve got all you need for the revenue man.

 

5. osoji — [Japanese] massive cleaning before the new year

Certainly there is much to be admired in the Japanese tradition of osoji, but there’s no reason to go all Marie Kondo on my man cave.

 

6. pawky — [Scots] sly; shrewd

He’s got you all believing in nightmares about UFOs and little undead green men while he sits there behind his pawky smile, drinking his ale, all the while daring you to call him a liar to his face.

 

7. peerie — [Scots] small

He wouldn’t lift a peerie finger for you, now that you need some help, after all we’ve done for him and his.

 

8. bivvy — [slang] shelter, small tent

At that time he was sleeping in a bivvy made from parachute pants thrown in the rubbish by some fool who’d only now realized that disco was over.

 

9. coup de grâce — [French] death blow

It only remained for Annabelle to administer the coup de grâce by introducing Jeremy Fonagal to him as her fiancé.

 

10. sotto voce — in an undertone, in a quiet voice, quietly

“He’s always like this,” Parkes said to me sotto voce as Topham thundered down the steps to greet us, buttons almost bursting, “he can’t stand to be left on his own for even an hour nowadays, ever since the accident.”

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels)

Brobdingnagian — stupendously huge

The Deadhead then pulled out a Brobdingnagian bong, so large that at its top it had the oxygen mask from a ’60s fighter pilot’s helmet, as the circumference of the main cylinder was too wide for a person’s mouth to span.

Friday Vocabulary

1. stifle — joint between tibia and femur in rear legs of some four-legged animals, corresponding to human knee

Pugs are, of course, subject to patellar luxation (also known as slipped stifles) so you want to be sure your dog shows strength and free action through the hocks and stifles.

 

2. heterochromia — having different colored eyes

In one of the most horrifying experiments, especially in its use of children as test subjects, Magnussen and Mengele attempted through chemical means to ‘cure’ heterochromia.

 

3. wittol — knowing cuckold

“Hie back to your so-called home, you weak wittol! Your wife may need you to make her breakfast when she returns from her lover’s arms.”

 

4. rutch — to scootch, to slide

I rutched my chair closer to the deal table so that I wouldn’t miss a word of Heather’s whispered confidences.

 

5. demihour — half hour

And now I waited the longest demihour of my existence, the time it took Papa to get dressed, hop in the family wagon, and speed down to the police station.

 

6. prisiadka — Slavic dance step in which from a squatting position the dancer kicks out first one and then the other leg

But after the fifth vodka Gregor became convinced that he could still perform the prisiadka of his Cossack youth, and there was nothing for it but that the tables and chairs would have to be pushed back to the walls so that he would have ample room to make his embarrassing experiment.

 

7. intrant — [archaic] one who enters, entrant

If the intrant to the School of Law has not graduated in the above described manner, he shall be examined by a board of faculty members to determine his level of general scholarship, including proficiency in Latin as well as either Greek or two modern languages.

 

8. quaternary — fourth; of something with four parts; [initial capitalized] of the most recent age of geologic history

While it is quite facile to say that the Quaternary Age begins at the end of the Pliocene, in practice it can be quite difficult—especially when dealing with mammalian fossils—to distinguish between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene.

 

9. renitent — unyielding, resistant to pressure; recalcitrant

But as an unhappy result of his stalwart efforts fighting the Nazi regime, Haushausen found himself frozen out of the new regime, apparently considered too renitent to make his participation or even association worthwhile.

 

10. smalt — powdered glass admixed with cobalt oxide, used to add color to glass products

Neuman dates the first use of smalt to 1443, when Venetian craftsmen produced delicate blue glassworks by the process, but he does not provide sources for this assertion.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

contradictio in adjecto — contradiction in terms; legal principle whereby any ambiguous terms in a contract are to be interpreted to the detriment of the party who insisted on the introduction of such terms into the document

But, contra Rousseau, he argued that the very phrase ‘natural rights’ involves a contradictio in adjecto, since the state of nature is such that it is illogical to refer to such entities as ‘rights’ at all.

Friday Vocabulary

1. pen — female swan

We tried a stealthy approach to the swans, but the pen spotted us and let out a warning cry, whereupon the cob rushed at us, forcing our ignominious retreat.

 

2. iceblink — brightness in sky caused by light reflection off of sea ice or glaciers

But the yellowish glow of the iceblink beneath the distant clouds told more clearly than any other sign that the seas before us were still filled with treacherous ice floes we would have to traverse if we were to reach the lost party’s last known location.

 

3. clabber — to curdle

He nearly became blind after trying to wash out the pepper spray with milk that had clabbered after a long day in the hot sun.

 

4. koine — lingua franca; amalgam of Greek dialects that replaced Classical Greek in the Hellenistic Age

Usage of the Tang koine, not only in government and commerce, but also in Buddhist and Taoist temples, spread so widely to literary circles that reading pronunciation of Chinese characters to this day still descends from this standard.

 

5. vitiate — to spoil; to invalidate; to pervert, to debase

It is not the so-called ‘violent criminal’, but the supposedly non-violent ‘white collar’ criminal, now an executive or perhaps a government agent or even a elected official, it is these who vitiate the very fabric of society itself, by repeatedly stealing untold millions from the public weal, and often yes causing as many no many more deaths than are ascribed to supposed ‘street criminals’.

 

6. strigoi — undead spirits risen from the grave in Romanian folklore

Obviously Bram Stoker based many details of his Dracula upon the Balkan mythology of the evil strigoi.

 

7. organoleptic — of or related to perception by sensory organs

Your mathematical analysis of the nutritional content of the meal is all very well and good, but my organoleptic analysis is that it still tastes bad.

 

8. antrum — cavity in a bone or other part of the anatomy; esp. the nasal cavity

Drainage of the antrum was performed by removal of the carious tooth and perforation of its socket.

 

9. backdate — to antedate, to mark with date earlier than actual date

The British governor was happy to backdate a request for U.S. aid, giving the Grenada invasion at least the sheen of legitimacy, if not operational success.

 

10. egolatry — constant credence in one’s own potential and ability to the point of pathological self-worship

With the removal of narcissism from the DSM, the triumph of egolatry seems complete, with the inability of selfish people to suffer any consequence for their actions, up and until the inevitable result of the Dunning-Kruger effect crushes them and the rest of us beneath the weight of unintended consequences.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(outdated medical)

hypochondria — upper region of the abdomen, including the organs of the liver and the spleen

Indeed, Burton speaks in his Anatomy of Melancholy of the belief that the seat of melancholy was in the hypochondria, the location of the liver.

Friday Vocabulary

1. gnomic — aphoristic

Here we see the poetic power of The Beatitudes, their gnomic wisdom shining forth in a manner not seen, for example, in the Decalogue.

 

2. frontlet — decorative ornament worn on forehead; phylactery

Depending from her frontlet, the wooden body of which depicted one of the many gods and powers tormenting the mental lives of the Wamiweri people, the princess had several beaded silver wires hanging down with an enormous rough emerald at the bottom of each.

 

3. dicrotic — of a pulse having two beats for every heartbeat

I wished that I had the ancient Chinese art of pulse diagnosis as I felt the odd, skipping, dicrotic beating of Sir Richard’s pulse beneath my thumb, until I came to my senses and realized that, yes, I was stupidly taking his pulse with my thumb.

 

4. euchre — to trick, to outwit

Well, I guess I got euchred out of my horse fair and square, so to speak, but that don’t mean I have to like it.

 

5. flounce — to move in exaggeratedly impatient or angry manner; to make overdramatic movements; to decorate with pleated trimming

“Well! I never!” she said as she flounced out of the dining room, audibly sniffing with her nose in the air, which provoked Bill to say sotto voce “I’ll just bet she has.”

 

6. succory — chicory

White succory makes a beautiful change in daily salads, its thin red lines making a colorful contrast to the blanched leaves.

 

7. Brummagem (or brummagem) — gaudy and cheap; fake, counterfeit

Once again, Grandmama had given him some brummagem toy instead of what he’d asked for, so Wilton (or ‘Wiltie’, as she called him) found himself pretending to thank her profusely for the knock-off Tickle Me Malmo, its hideous blue and yellow head leering at him in an alarming manner.

 

8. obliquity — state or condition of being neither parallel nor perpendicular, quality of being oblique; mental perverseness

He approached the overheating problem with his usual obliquity, announcing that he was going to the beach “for research” for the rest of the afternoon.

 

9. eidolon — phantom, ghost; ideal, representation of idealized thing

Jane Harrison speaks of the destructive process whereby human beings take their gods, so forceful and potent in original conception, and overthink them and intellectualize them until they become mere eidolons that can no longer perform any of the purposes for which they were originally besought.

 

10. teratological — monstrous, of or related to congenital malformations

After retiring from active practice, Dr. Wells devoted himself to his teratological collection, perhaps becoming over-devoted to his private museum of the bizarre and grotesque.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. howe (also how) — barrow, tumulus

The aged king was laid in a great howe near the source of the river for which he was named.

 

2. riband — [archaic] ribbon, esp. a decorative one

But Jane’s new bright red riband couldn’t entirely hide the thin patches on her most festive headwear, and once more she wished so much they could afford a new hat—or hats, of course, since Mother’s was even more worn.

 

3. heteronym — identically spelled words with different meanings; different words naming the same thing; imaginary character used by author to write in different style, pseudonym

By showing the tangled consequences which follow the decision of the protagonist to hide his male identity behind a female heteronym, the author—behind his (or her) own pretentious nom de plume Reinhard de St. ffaulkes—wishes to delineate the intersecting and radiating spheres of modern identity, but, in the end, just leaves us all a bit confused, as I suspect the author himself (or herself) may have been by the time he (or she) arrived at the macabre courtroom scene, with its strange interplay of light and shadow and facts from documents opposed to facts from eyewitnesses, not all of whom seem to be precisely differentiated or even characterized.

 

4. boor — rude person; yokel; peasant

Yes, I quite understand why you had to invite him, the big boor, but I don’t see why you had to seat him next to Agatha, who is probably my most sophisticated friend.

 

5. tattersall — squares formed by crossed color lines over another, usually light, solid color; fabric in this pattern

He wore his habitual yellow tattersall waistcoat with its red and green lines beneath his green corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches, and thought himself quite dashing.

 

6. impendent — impending, imminent

The whole house was suffused with an air of impendent disaster, though it was an open question whether the legal cataclysm would strike before the final collapse of the leaking water pipes.

 

7. quale — subjective perceptible quality considered as independent entity

I found it impossible to assemble the various qualia arriving fuzzily at my mind into any coherent picture of the real world objects associated with them, though whether this was due to my illness or to the very strong drugs they had given me, I cannot say.

 

8. misericord — room in monastery where some relaxation of monastic rules was permitted; small ledge on folding church seat providing support for people standing; small dagger or pike designed for making a killing ‘mercy’ stroke against a wounded enemy

Besides this effulgence of talented artistic depiction, it remains as well to investigate why so many of these intricate English misericord carvings depict sin and sinful acts.

 

9. palanquin — small boxlike litter for carrying a reclining passenger by several men holding poles attached to the conveyance

In Eastern Bengal at this time regulations were drawn up for the regulation of palanquins, generally following those already extant for hackney carriages.

 

10. yoctosecond — 10−24 seconds, one septillion of a second, one trillionth of a trillionth of a second

So far, scientists have little to say about the time during the Planck Epoch, a ten-trillionth of a yoctosecond in duration, or 10-43 seconds.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British slang)

camp as a row of tents — flamboyantly effeminate

Now Uncle Howard, he was camp as a row of tents, but we was all surprised when Reggie came out that summer and then ran off with that scrawny professor, the one with the torn ear and the daft glasses.