Friday Vocabulary

1. geas — magically inflicted obligation

I must leave you now, for my bowels have cast a geas upon me, and I must away to the bathroom to fulfill its terrible duty.

 

2. precentor — one who leads choir or congregation in singing

Everyone has noticed the much-diminished vigor of the choir since Simon Tapwell became precentor, and his own mumbling and stumbling solos do little to inspire or even maintain the faith.

 

3. bougie — thin flexible instrument for insertion or dilation of bodily passages

As I now understand it they intend to insert a bougie in order to relieve the pressure inside the bladder, though if this fails it may become necessary to perform a very dangerous operation.

 

4. charpoy — Indian bedstead using rope or tape netting

Chandler laid the documents carefully upon the blue weave of the charpoy beneath the wall lantern, so that we could all see the damning evidence of Major Deveril’s treasonous perfidy.

 

5. nipperkin — liquid measure amounting from a third to a half pint

Solemnly he poured Rodney a nipperkin of the rich port, and together they toasted the king.

 

6. subfusc — dusky, somber

Barely any light seemed to escape from the subfusc mining town, and even the children at play were singularly sullen.

 

7. demirep — demimondaine, woman of doubtful chastity

Behind the army came the usual hangers-on of a pillaging force, the sharpers and ‘shiners, the panderers and demireps, the purchasers of stolen gold and purveyors of stolen virtue.

 

8. diaphoretic — inducing perspiration

McCarthy’s aversion to communists often had a diaphoretic effect upon the senator, especially in the face of any criticism.

 

9. poniard — small dagger

His hand went instinctively to his left hip, but Sir Lowell grasped only an empty sheath, as he had left his poniard with the Master of the Outer Chamber before his audience with the king.

 

10. forritsome — [Scots] impudent, forward

She’s a forritsome lass with red hair and a temper to match.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiomatic, from delay in old firearms between triggering and ignition)

hanging fire — delayed, undecided

The final decisions of the Mice Commission are still hanging fire, and it is greatly feared that once again the cat will get away scot free.

Friday Vocabulary

1. recruit — to refresh, to reinvigorate, to restore the health of

Perry has gone with Aunt Emily to the island estate, where the beautiful grounds and pleasant clime will, D.V., recruit his mind and spirit, so addled by the frights he saw in the late unpleasantness.

 

2. biotope — region of ecological uniformity supporting specific grouping of plants and animals

The 1970s saw a movement to purchase and protect less traditionally ‘beautiful’ biotopes, which is one reason these tide pools and swamps are still preserved today.

 

3. jack-pudding — buffoon, merry-andrew

I am weary of all these jugglers and jack-puddings who attend every mountebank with the most outlandish poses and postures, and yet you would have me make obeisance to these knaves as if they were true men.

 

4. idiolect — the peculiar speech patterns of an individual

He affected—or perhaps it had become ingrained by the time I met him—an idiolect which married near obsolete phrasings of the long ago with a faux scientific mien, and he was the only gentleman whom I ever heard actually say the word “Harrumph!” in everyday speech.

 

5. asperse — to bespatter with false accusations; to slander, to traduce

That one of such vile reputation and sordid history should attempt to asperse my own actions and motivations with these base canards is a double affront.

 

6. ecod — mild oath (variant of ‘egad’)

“Ecod, man, would you rather I left you to the mercies of the Duke’s men?”

 

7. volary — large bird cage, aviary

Where you see a beautiful manor, I see a gilded volary where you and I and all such free spirits would be confined and imprisoned forevermore.

 

8. glad eye — friendly or flirtatious glance

Though she spoke only to my client, I noticed her giving me the glad eye whenever she looked my way.

 

9. hypertrophy — excessive growth or development

Samuel’s addiction to texting has resulted in severe hypertrophy of the thumb and first two fingers on his right hand.

 

10. mephitic — foul-smelling; noxious

From the darkened room wafted a repulsive mephitic wave of almost visible odor, as if all the dampest gym socks in the world had strangled each other in a sordid suicide pact upon a mound of rotting boiled cabbage.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British informal)

dosser — homeless person

He walked with that servile shuffle you see in many dossers, an attempt to avoid the pains and sores caused by wearing the same pair of shoes twenty-four hours a day, every day.

Book List: 600 Books

As I mentioned just over a month ago, I recently finished book #600—the 600th book, that is, since I began tracking my reading back in June of 2015. When I announced this milestone at the very cusp of the new year, I had only barely finished my analysis of the 5th hundred books read. I will (I hope) get around to such an analysis for this 6th hundred set of books, but here and now I merely want to present you with the listing of all the books which make up this latest set, Books #501 through #600. As is usual, I do not include comics and graphic novels as ‘books’ in my count, though they are listed below.

The 600th book I’ve read is the history of the early medieval era depicted at the top of this post, about which I wrote some brief notes in the original announcement of reaching the reading milestone. The first book in this last set of a hundred books—Book #501 read—is another delightful entry of The Month, notes upon noteworthy acquisitions by the wonderful (and long defunct, alas) Boston bookstore, Goodspeed’s. The particular issue which started off this last century of books was that of September 1931, whose cover is depicted at right. I should also note that I shall have very few links to make to my sometimes ‘book reports’ on this or that volume which come to my hand, as I read at such a ridiculous pace that (with a single exception, covering two books) I did not write at all about any of the books I read. I have to confess that I was endeavoring to read as fast as I possibly could, and thus read quick studies, short books or pamphlets, children’s books, and—especially—mysteries. I still managed to read a few comics, as you shall see in this first slice of ten books. (The renditions of The Mahabharata labeled as ‘Children’s books’ were originally thought by me to be comics as well, but when I read them I realized that they were just (incredibly poorly written and even more poorly proofread) text with a picture for each page, and thus were not comics after all.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
501 9/13/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop September 1931, Vol. III No. 1 Books
9/14/20 Walt Disney Le Journal de Mickey No. 1398 bis – Mickey Parade: Tout va bien Donald! Comics
502 9/14/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop July 1930, Vol. I No. 10 Books
503 9/15/20 Curtis F. Brown Star-Spangled Kitsch Art
504 9/16/20 Erle Stanley Gardner (as A. A. Fair) Spill The Jackpot Mystery
505 9/16/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop October 1930, Vol. II No. 2 Books
506 9/17/20 Agatha Christie The Labors Of Hercules Mystery
9/17/20 B. R. Bhagwat, trans. Mahabharata Comics
9/17/20 Kamala Chandrakant Mahabharata – 13: The Pandavas Recalled to Hastinapura Comics
9/17/20 Milami Mahabharata – 20: Arjuna’s Quest for Weapons Comics
9/17/20 Sumona Roy Mahabharata – 22: The Reunion Comics
9/17/20 Sumona Roy Mahabharata – 26: Panic in the Kaurava Camp Comics
9/17/20 Sumona Roy Mahabharata – 27: Sanjay’s Mission Comics
507 9/18/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 1 Children’s
508 9/18/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 2 Children’s
509 9/26/20 Jonathan Gash The Tartan Sell Mystery
510 9/27/20 Military Medical Operations Office AFRRI’s Medical Management of Radiological Casualties Handbook Militaria

 

I read only a couple of good books in the next set of ten books, including this slim volume of Do’s and Don’t’s from one of the masters of linguistic precision. Write It Right was likely a bit dated in its imprecations even when first published, and now some of Ambrose Bierce’s dicta seem like the ravings of a fussbudget grammarian. There are many scintillating jewels of wit, however, and many of the subjective (as Bierce himself admits) rules seem only common sense, hearkening back to an Edenic time when writers sought to communicate rather than obfuscate, and when readers sought understanding rather than confirmation of their prior prejudice.

The other treasure among this next tranche—setting aside for the nonce the always delightful Beatrix Potter, whose illustrations are beautiful in every language—is the Ray Bradbury collection R Is For Rocket, which uses the rocket theme to good effect to present some old favorites and some more unfamiliar masterpieces. I find myself liking Bradbury more as I get older, which may have more to do with the power of nostalgia on the aging mind of mine than on the intrinsic worth of one of America’s premier short story writers. This particular collection was targeted for children—sorry, young readers—and I found somehow the focus on the dreams of the young (an everpresent theme for Bradbury) made reading these poignant stories from the recent century almost painful at times. I cried for my loss, for our loss.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
511 9/27/20 Ambrose Bierce Write It Right Reference
512 9/27/20 Paul Nettl Mozart and Masonry Secret Societies
513 9/27/20 Beatrix Potter; Victorine Ballon & Julienne Profichet, trans. Historie de Pierre Lapin Foreign Language
514 9/28/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 3 Children’s
515 9/29/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 4 Children’s
516 9/30/20 E. E. “Doc” Smith First Lensman SF & Fantasy
517 9/30/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 5 Children’s
518 10/1/20 Vinay Krishan Saxena Mahabharata Part 6 Children’s
519 10/2/20 Ray Bradbury R Is For Rocket SF & Fantasy
520 10/2/20 N.K. Vikram Shri Krishna Leela Part 1 Children’s

 

More feeble books awaited my displeasure in the next set of ten, enlivened however by a few choice morsels of what makes reading fun. Fun is the word for the Dray Prescot series, which deserves to be read more widely, though taking it too seriously would entirely miss the point. Krozair of Kregen wraps up the ‘Krozair Cycle’ of the books by the pseudonymous Alan Burt Akers (penance of Kenneth Bulmer when crafting Dray Prescot books), and while it is not my favorite (due in part to Bulmer’s need to pull all the threads of his far-flung narrative back together in the end), it does have one of the best covers, which you can see here. I’ve just finished the Jikaida Cycle, which may be my favorite of the entire series, which is saying something after twenty-two books read.

I actually kept The DAW Science Fiction Reader for the Dray Prescot short story, but almost all of the contributions here (the exceptions are the Stableford and the Tanith Lee stories) are brilliant. The ‘kids’ novella Fur Magic by Andre Norton is a staggering and inventive remix of fantasy and what we nowadays call Native American mythology. Taking up half the book, it is worth the price of admission on its ownsome. (You can also find the story in a standalone edition.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
521 10/3/20 Isaac Asimov Nightfall and Other Stories SF & Fantasy
522 10/3/20 N.K. Vikram Shri Krishna Leela Part 2 Children’s
523 10/4/20 Agatha Christie Passenger To Frankfurt Mystery
524 10/4/20 N.K. Vikram Shri Krishna Leela Part 4 Children’s
525 10/5/20 Richard Rohr Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life Feeble
526 10/6/20 Alan Burt Akers Krozair of Kregen (Dray Prescot #14) SF & Fantasy
527 10/6/20 Harry Graham Ruthless Rhymes For Heartless Homes Humor
10/10/20 Craig Yoe, ed. Voting Is Your Super Power Comics
528 10/10/20 Donald A. Wollheim, ed. The DAW Science Fiction Reader SF & Fantasy
529 10/11/20 Jacob Needleman Money and the Meaning of Life Philosophy
530 10/12/20 Francis Leary Fire And Morning Fiction

 

The quality of the books read rose significantly over the next set of ten, as did quite naturally my enjoyment of the same. One of several highlights was this engaging and inspiring retelling of the Smedley Butler story, which every American should know and take to heart. Devil Dog may only go over previously known history, but the breezy retelling by David Talbot accompanied with historical photographs and the art by the fantastic underground comic anarchist artist Spain is a worthy biography for the Marine general who wrote War Is A Racket and who saved America.

The stunning, brilliant, and engrossing Spy Who Came In From The Cold was only one of the several excellent mysteries and thrillers read in this next slice of ten books. Much has been made before about the revelatory insights of this seminal Cold War novel by the British writer John le Carré, another spy whose assumed name became almost more a reality than the original man. What still staggers after all these years is just how perfectly le Carré hit the mark in this intricate and delicate tale of lies and lying, especially after the perfectly serviceable but somewhat more traditional two novels which came before this addition to the ‘Smiley’ oeuvre. The other spy books read in this set were fun, with Moonraker providing another fantastic high-stakes gambling set piece (taking up fully one third of the book!), but (as usual) Michael Gilbert was the next best read in this set. Average rating for the entire set of ten was a whopping 4.5!

 

# Read Author Title Genre
531 10/12/20 Ken Krippene Life Among The Amazon Nature
532 10/12/20 Daniel Pinkwater Wingman Children’s
533 10/13/20 William Faulkner Barn Burning Fiction
534 10/15/20 Ian Fleming Moonraker Mystery
535 10/17/20 John le Carré The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Mystery
536 10/18/20 Donna Leon A Venetian Reckoning Mystery
537 10/18/20 David Talbot; Spain Rodriguez, illus. Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America History
538 10/20/20 Ian Fleming Diamonds Are Forever Mystery
539 10/23/20 Melville Davisson Post The Sleuth of St. James’s Square Mystery
540 10/24/20 Michael Gilbert The Night Of The Twelfth Mystery

 

Michael Gilbert continued to thrill in Trouble, an engaging story of community anger and … something more. Perhaps a trifle naïve in its views of race problems, but who am I to judge? The story never lags, however, and Gilbert’s usual deft plotting and characterization keep you guessing right up to the very end. The realistic portrayal of the difficulties in community policing are shown with some sympathy.

I believe this is the first time I’ve read the ‘original’ version of the Alice story. I am still so impressed by Carroll’s ability to cast his line and hook this best and brightest piece of nonsense from the aether, and even more so upon seeing just how much was there almost right from its inception. Reading Sylvie and Bruno can seem like a chore (because it is), but reading this early version of the classic tale—cringe-inducing postscript aside—is as delightful as the one we all know and love, especially with Lewis Carroll’s earnest illustrations.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
541 10/25/20 Alexander Sprunt, Jr. Wildlife Refuges Nature
542 10/25/20 James Thurber The 13 Clocks Fiction
543 10/26/20 Margaret Frazer The Boy’s Tale Mystery
544 10/28/20 Hafiz; Gertrude Bell, trans. The Garden of Heaven: Poems of Hafiz Poetry
545 10/29/20 Michael Gilbert Trouble Mystery
546 11/1/20 Meg Bogin The Women Troubadours History
547 11/1/20 Lester W. Grau Rebirth of the Cossack Brotherhood: A Political/Military Force in a Disintegrating Russia Militaria
548 11/2/20 Mikhail Chernenok Losing Bet Mystery
549 11/4/20 Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Children’s
550 11/4/20 James Hadley Chase The World In My Pocket Mystery

 

The true highlight of the next set of ten books read was Thor Heyerdahl’s sequel to Kon-Tiki, the Norse explorer’s now discredited account of eastern migration to the Polynesian islands of the Pacific Ocean. The book, Aku-Aku, is an account of a season spent mostly on Easter Island, investigating how the mysterious statues of that remote outpost may have been constructed. How much truth he may have excavated along with the artifacts he definitely revealed, the book is a breathless account of a people whose ways were already disappearing under the grinding pressure of so-called ‘civilization’.

With Uncle Boris In The Yukon I have the opposite problem of classification. Purporting to be memoir, I am mesmerized by Daniel Pinkwater’s storytelling ability to the extent that I cannot care to speculate upon how much—if any—of his tales are actually true. What is obviously true is Pinkwater’s deep love for dogs of all kinds, though especially for the fearsome and fearless dogs of the Arctic. Any dog lover will love this book.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
551 11/5/20 Donna Leon Acqua Alta Mystery
552 11/9/20 Cornell Woolrich The Black Path Of Fear Mystery
553 11/10/20 Margaret Frazier The Murderer’s Tale Mystery
554 11/11/20 Mary Roberts Rinehart The Window At The White Cat Mystery
555 11/12/20 Thich Nhat Hanh The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra Spirituality
556 11/12/20 Thor Heyerdahl Aku-Aku Antrhopology
557 11/15/20 U.S. Army Medical Research Institute USAMRICD’s Medical Management of Chemical Casualties Handbook Militaria
558 11/15/20 Daniel Pinkwater Uncle Boris in the Yukon: and Other Shaggy Dog Stories ?
559 11/15/20 Lester Dent Honey In His Mouth Mystery
560 11/16/20 Alexander B. Klots In The Arctic Nature
11/19/20 Del Close, John Ostrander Wasteland #10 Comics

 

The next set of ten books was to bring several disappointments, including the kickoff, the once highly touted Freakonomics which once was supposed to be so insightful and revelatory, but which merely seems of a piece with all the ‘life hack’ shit we read on clickbait posts around the Web nowadays. More hurtful to my own psyche was the dreary finale of Mostly Harmless, the fifth and final book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy. Though it is just as much a downer as everyone says it is, still there are flashes of élan, though Adams is obviously just going through the motions. How hard it is to recapture that first brilliant rapture. It is skippable, if you are so inclined. Listen to the original radio show for the true wonder of our age.

I raved so much just previously about The Spy Who Came In From The Cold that it behooves me to backtrack just a little bit. Not to take away any of the praise I bestowed on that novel, but to proclaim that the first novel of the Smiley series, Call For The Dead, is every bit as excellent, if more of a typical mystery tale. In this our first meeting with George Smiley, the unpresuming bureaucratic spy is more a protagonist, even as the spywork is less central to the novel. All thumbs up!

 

# Read Author Title Genre
561 11/22/20 Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Business
562 11/22/20 Margaret Frazer A Play Of Isaac Mystery
11/22/20 Luis M. Fernandes The Golden Mongoose and other tales from The Mahabharata Comics
563 11/28/20 Edward Topsell Elizabethan Zoo: Book of Beasts Both Fabulous and Authentic History
564 11/29/20 Peter Dickinson The Old English Peep Show Mystery
565 11/29/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop October 1931, Vol. III No. 2 Books
566 11/30/20 Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sarah Durkee, & Sean Kelly The Book Of Sequels Humor
567 12/1/20 John Le Carré Call For The Dead Mystery
568 12/3/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop December 1931, Vol. III No. 4 Books
569 12/5/20 Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless SF & Fantasy
570 12/6/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop January 1932, Vol. III No. 5 Books

 

The best of the next ten books includes Madeline (which I had never read before, somehow), along with the Donna Leon and the always wonderful Month at Goodspeed’s. Though the first and last of these are very short reads, they each punch well above their length, and I am quite happy to have perused them.

The worst of this set of ten—and perhaps the worst of the full set of one hundred—was the execrable little pamphlet of pseudo-bullshit from the ’70s, How To Be Your Own Best Friend. I was given this as a present for my eleventh or twelfth birthday, and the message I got was “… because you’re not going to have any other friends.” After reading it now, I don’t think there is an actual message within this book, except perhaps that people will buy anything I guess. It has aged terribly (vide, its references to homosexuality), but it was very terrible to begin with.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
571 12/6/20 Mildred Newman & Bernard Berkowitz How To Be Your Own Best Friend Self-Help
572 12/6/20 Ludwig Bemelmans Madeline Children’s
573 12/7/20 Donna Leon Quietly In Their Sleep Mystery
574 12/7/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop September 1932, Vol. IV No. 1 Books
575 12/8/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop June 1932, Vol. III No. 10 Books
576 12/9/20 Ludwig Bemelmans Madeline’s Rescue Children’s
577 12/10/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop October 1932, Vol. IV No. 2 Books
578 12/11/20 Alan Burt Akers Secret Scorpio (Dray Prescot #15) SF & Fantasy
579 12/12/20 Pascal Garnier Gallic Noir: Volume 3 [The Eskimo Solution / Low Heights / Too Close to the Edge] Mystery
580 12/12/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop November 1932, Vol. IV No. 3 Mystery

 

One of the standouts of this penultimate set of ten books is John Ashton’s History of Bread. My copy is a reprint of the book originally published well over a hundred years ago, in 1904. The book is a delightful and breezy read, if a bit Anglo-centric. And along the way the reader will learn lots of facts and lost knowledge about wheat (and its analogues), bread, and bread-making. Accompanied with contemporary illustrations. Recommended.

About the best thing I can say about Black Helicopters Over America is that I kept it, though only for the quasi-meticulous timeline of sightings during the two phases of this odd mania. The first may be related to cattle rustling in the 1970s; the second to the usual whack-a-doodles which seem everywhere nowadays. All I can say is that Jim Keith really phones it in in this little volume. It’s like he wasn’t even trying anymore. That, or he drank so much Kool-Aid that his earlier penchant for quasi-critical thinking was drowned in sugary true believer’s tomfoolery, though anyone who give credence to Alternative 3 can’t truly be said to be all that critical of a thinker.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
581 12/15/20 Alan Burt Akers Savage Scorpio (Dray Prescot #16) SF & Fantasy
582 12/16/20 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Rupert Hughes, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Anthony Abbot, Rita Weiman, S. S. Van Dine, John Erskine, & Erle Stanley Gardner The President’s Mystery Plot Mystery
583 12/17/20 Jim Keith Black Helicopters Over America: Strikeforce for the New World Order Wacko
584 12/17/20 Ivan T. Sanderson Safari In East Africa Nature
585 12/18/20 Roald Dahl George’s Marvelous Medicine Children’s
586 12/19/20 John Ashton The History of Bread: From Pre-Historic to Modern Times History
587 12/19/20 Lois Austen-Leigh The Incredible Crime Mystery
588 12/19/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop December 1932, Vol. IV No. 4 Books
589 12/20/20 Kenneth Bulmer / Alan Schwartz The Key To Irunium / The Wandering Tellurian [Ace Double H-20] SF & Fantasy
590 12/20/20 Kehlog Albran The Profit Humor

 

While I hesitate to promote yet another book in the Dray Prescot series, especially as I have already mentioned another of these already in this brief survey of my last hundred books, I have already made some mention before on these blog pages of the other best works in this last set of ten books: My Opinions: Incest and Illegitimacy and The Barbarian West. So I will say that Golden Scorpio is a worthy finale to the Vallian Cycle of the Dray Prescot books, with a swaggering set piece battle as our hero once again assumes a new mantle to raise an army to defend all that is good and true. The book is full of thrilling incident and new characters destined to play their part in the new world Dray Prescot is involved in making.

As a final note, I’ll simply say that this parody of the classic by the mystical Lebanese poet turned out to be pretty damn funny. For what is obviously a throwaway publication to lick up some of the pennies dropped by people who were tired of seeing the original on every bookshelf (it was published by Price/Stern/Sloan, which should give you that clue), The Profit turns out to have some real jokes, some real insights, and a real appreciation both of the source material and the readers of Gibran’s apparently immortal words.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
591 12/22/20 Alan Burt Akers Captive Scorpio (Dray Prescot #17) SF & Fantasy
592 12/23/20 Alan Burt Akers Golden Scorpio (Dray Prescot #18) SF & Fantasy
593 12/24/20 Rod L. Evans The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez Poetry
594 12/24/20 David Baldacci Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge: The Book of Mnemonic Devices Reference
595 12/24/20 Kenneth Robeson [Lester Dent] The Squeaking Goblin SF & Fantasy
596 12/26/20 Alfred Jordan My Opinions: Incest and illegitimacy Wacko
597 12/27/20 Charles Lee Magne The Negro and the World Crisis Wacko
598 12/29/20 Rose Estes Return to Brookmere (Endless Quest book #4) D&D
599 12/31/20 Colin Dexter Service Of All The Dead / The Dead Of Jericho Mystery
600 1/2/21 J. M. Wallace-Hadrill The Barbarian West: The Early Middle Ages, A. D. 400-1000 History

 

Once again, these last hundred books saw me turning most often to mysteries (approx. one quarter of the books read). A puzzlingly good one is this arch work by Peter Dickinson, The Old English Peep Show. It kept me guessing, even as I was certain I had it all figured out in my head. I’ll be back sometime this month (I hope), to give you the further statistical breakdown on all these books, now that it seems the world isn’t ending.

 

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

Friday Vocabulary

1. tittuppy — unsteady, with an exaggeratedly prancing manner

I’m not about to be intimidated by some tittuppy old biddy who thinks to threaten me with lawyers and letters; I know my rights.

 

2. quiz — [British] odd person; odd thing

In his burgundy stovepipe hat he looks such a quiz, doesn’t he?

 

3. chaffer — to haggle, to bargain

As I am the only purveyor of these fine goods I see no reason to chaffer over the price.

 

4. monody — ode or song in a single voice, dirge, threnody

When Artoborn came out with his deep-voiced and heartfelt monody upon the loss of the lady’s favorite scarf, I confess I felt a trifle nonplussed.

 

5. shatter-brained — thoughtless, addlepated, giddy

In her usual shatter-brained way Emilie had managed to mix up the soup with the salad, offering us soggy lettuce in beef stock.

 

6. remuda — group of saddle horses for common use

Clem and I were watching over the remuda when we heard gunshots from the direction of the cook’s wagon.

 

7. galligaskins — loose breeches or hose

Now take you that coin and buy yourself some new hose instanter, for it will go hard for you to march into battle having to hold up your tattered galligaskins with one hand that should either be holding your shield or your spear.

 

8. camber — slight arching

Now of course every ship’s deck will have some camber, else water would pool upon it.

 

9. mobcap — soft cloth cap with gathered brim for women’s indoor wear

The widow Versey say rocking and knitting in the corner by the fire, saying not a word, but her small keen eyes perceiving everything from beneath the mobcap she habitually wore.

 

10. milter — male fish during spawning time

You can see the milter hie off as soon as he has discharged his duty towards the species.

 

One Hundred and Seventeen Songs (117,000)

More than two hundred days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 117,000th unique iTunes track, a somewhat mediocre though I suppose historically interesting rendition of the Wilson Pickett classic “In The Midnight Hour” by a group of rock legends jamming at a Taj Mahal concert in Hollywood in 1987. Although Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and John Fogerty are on stage, you hear mostly Taj Mahal singing in this cut. The mix is bad, but I’ve heard worse.

The Stats

117,000 unique tracks takes up 773.26 GB (↑ 6.65 GB), which would take 510 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, and 31 seconds to listen to altogether (↑ 3 days and 4-1/4 hours). Remaining unplayed in my iTunes library of files are 77,246 tracks, 1,463 more than my last report (meaning almost 2,500 tracks have been added to my library since I hit 116,000 songs heard—which I suppose is what happens when you get a lot of CDs for Xmas). The unplayed files occupy 527.93 GB of data space (↑ 16.75 GB) and 264 days, 6 hours, 55 minutes and 14 seconds of time (↑ 3 days & 21 hours). This last thousand songs saw fall even further the decline in total time ‘consumed’ by my tracks heard, as the significant change in my consumptive habits continues; put simply, I now listen to my iTunes almost exclusively on the way to and from work, and only occasionally am listening to the radio shows which a year ago made up at least a plurality of the tracks I heard. (Part of the difference, however, is due as well to the fact that I made several mix CDs for some persons last year, which—in the backassward way in which I construct them—necessitates listening over and over to the same tracks in varying order.)

To reach the 117,000th unique track, I listened to 1,556 songs since track #116,000, starting this latest tranche with an unreleased Hank Williams song from his radio days, “Cherokee Boogie”. These 1,556 songs occupy 9.67 GB of data, and 4 days, 14 hours, and 37 minutes of time. Thus over a third of the songs listened to had been heard previously, due as I’ve alluded to before to the change in my listening habits caused by my new work situation starting in May of 2020.

It took 209 days to listen to the last thousand songs, meaning just under 4.8 new songs per day were heard.

4.8 New Tracks Heard per Day

If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 7.4 tracks per day, a drastic drop of about six songs fewer per day than the last set of one thousand songs, which itself was an even greater drop from the previous thousand to that. This is due to the aforementioned change in my job situation, and the CD making, the latter of which means that I listened to some of those previously heard songs many, many times during this last nine months. I expect both these numbers to go up in the next report.

7.4 Tracks Heard per Day

I make no promise this time of further analysis of these songs, and may just attempt to wait until I have hit a nice even number, if I can do that before new technology renders this whole exercise pointless and irretrievable. (I append here my previous note on the same.)

 

(Previous note)

I am also beginning to wonder if my analysis of my listened-to songs will survive the transition to a new MacOS and its ‘updated’ Music software (or are we supposed to call it an ‘app’ now?). Usually I would go into an Apple store and poke around in it, but I guess I’ll just have to write a blog post about it, though I fear the inevitable responses about going to Windows (or Linux, from the weirdos)—which I suppose would be better than the actual response, which is to say, none at all. Besides, I have to write up my history of why it took me five days to set up my wife’s new iPhone, and before that I really do owe Bill an explanation of why I asked for a handful of Lego pieces for Christmas a few years back. *Sigh* Maybe next time I have to do taxes I’ll procrastinate in such a way. Until then …

… that’s all folks. See you next time!

Friday Vocabulary

1. targe — [archaic] buckler, small shield

Any doubts I had about the value of Kenwyth’s targe were erased when I saw the bowman knock two skirmishers to the ground with the small shield, with hardly a pause in his shooting.

 

2. heriot — feudal tribute of equipment or chattel

The young knight, to replace the steed lost through his own poor judgment, boldly claimed as heriot the best horse of William’s herd.

 

3. dooly — rude litter used in India

We rigged up a dooly from the bedclothes and some broomsticks and carried the colonel out the back window of the cabin upon it.

 

4. endore — to make a bright golden color in cooking

A mixture of egg yolks and butter is spread over the outer pastry to endore it just before placing it into the oven.

 

5. nathemore — [archaic] nevermore

But Sir Patrick will return from across that darksome sea nathemore.

 

6. tufa — limestone formed from calcareous deposits from springs or lakes

Many fossils have been found in porous tufa, which is generally so friable as to make excavation of the relics quite easy.

 

7. soutane — cassock of Roman Catholic clergy

Father Xavier shut the aumbry and began to unbutton his soutane, his thoughts still upon what the friar had told him the evening before.

 

8. wattle — fleshy lobe hanging down from neck or head of certain fowl

Even though he had been warned, even though he had been strictly forbidden, Preston could not keep his eyes of the matron’s infamous wattle, which shook and shuddered all the more as she realized that he was focusing upon her least favorite feature.

 

9. deodand — item or animal that caused a human death and that was then forfeited to the Crown for pious use; sum of money in lieu of such item or animal

The second time she painfully stubbed her toe upon my old war souvenir (this time causing a fracture, as the doctor informed us later), I offered to rid our home of the heavy brass trophy, donating it to Goodwill as a deodand, but she wouldn’t hear of it, saying that anything I had managed to carry across country not once but three times must have some value, at least to me.

 

10. minimus — creature of the smallest size; fifth digit, little finger or toe

The toe that was broken, as we learned later, was the minimus.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Scots)

gillie — guide for hunting or fishing

You may chafe under the strict instructions of the gillie, but remember that he knows the fish of these lakes—and their favorite lures—a fair sight better than you ever will.

Monday Book Report: The Real Middle Earth

I Read It So You Don’t Have To Dept.

The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages, by Brian Bates

Though this book is a muddled cornucopia of flaccid ideas masquerading as history, anthropology, mythology, psychology, and spirituality, I am not going to spend much time outlining just why this book is incompetent and just what are the many mistakes its author makes; that task has been done much better than I ever could have done by a user named Jan-Maat on the Goodreads site, and you can find his review here. I wanted instead to only quickly eviscerate this tome by quoting a few passages and by bemoaning the academic standards of a world in which the University of Brighton gives the author of The Real Middle Earth a professorship and a world where such a man can teach “an award-winning course in Shamanic Consciousness”. Mr. Bates’s predilection for finding a fictive enchantment in an imagined past is only compounded by his penchant for a double mis-naming/mis-interpretation as he tries to rebrand the Medieval period as “the real Middle Earth” and as he tries to shoehorn Tolkien into every aspect of Celtic/Norse/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon/Pagan life as seen though eyes which insist on magic at the expense of toe-stubbing reality. About a quarter of the book are passages wherein he seeks to wax rhapsodic over places he visited in preparation for this book—reconstructed houses at West Stow, mounds where the Sutton Hoo treasure was found, an ancient (perhaps the ancient) yew tree near Runnymede—but his gift for poetry is no better than his poor camera work featured in a color section in the center of the book. The Real Middle Earth is a frustrating bungle of a book, but—and it is a big ‘but’—it has a very interesting bibliography.

All around me elder and sweetbriar shrubs flaunted petals in colors softened by the filtered sunlight. I breathe their sweet fragrance warmed and wafted by the summer breeze. Chaffinches flitted nervously from bush to bush, chattering to each other in harsh warning notes as I passed. When today we glimpse the breathtaking beauty of a woodland setting, it is hardly surprising to us that the people of the historical Middle-earth imbued nature with a spiritual presence. But, of course, for them it was far more than a matter of aesthetic beauty. Landscapes are taken in by the eye but actually perceived with the brain. That is where interpretation and meaning make sense of the signals from our sensory receptors. And they saw more than we would, gazing at the same scene. They thought of nature not only as an objective world, external to themselves, but as also reaching internally, with magical powers and imbued with the full richness of their imagination. Features of nature had many layers of meaning, levels of significance, allusions and messages. The forest was alive with the chatter of another world.

Oh! To be in England!
Well, maybe…
Bates gives no more evidence for the conclusions he draws in this paragraph than his bald assertion. So … maybe so … maybe not

As I say, if you have this book in your library, I highly recommend that you read the books in his bibliography—most of them, at least—and skip his nearly random musings altogether. Mr. Bates uses the sources sparingly, without footnotes and with only the lightest of citing in text, but has little hesitation in using another author’s book as a reason for the most speculative conclusions about a culture and a place and a time far divorced from the source he pleads to. Thus he will cite Tacitus on the German tribes to make assertions about practices in Britain over half a millennium later, references studies of Siberian and South American shamans of the current day to draw conclusions about magic beliefs in his ‘Middle-earth’, and never uses a footnote so that you can check up on his intellectual honesty. In the case of those cited sources which I had already read, I saw that the conclusion of Mr. Bates were often quite a long way distant from those of the original book, and in some cases seem to be almost diametrically opposed. In all cases, the Celts, the Norse, the Germans, the Goths, all the pre-Christian and non-Roman peoples are all good, and the Romans, and the rising Christian polities which followed them, are bad. Mostly.

The Romans are counterpointed elsewhere in this book as lacking some of the imaginative sensitivities of Middle-earth culture. However, they also honored wells.

At least there’s that, then

“Middle-earth culture” becomes a catch-all for all the good stuff, and Rome and Christians become the bad guys, trying to destroy those wonderful, primitive people with their closer attunement to the true wonder of nature. And maybe it’s so, but this book doesn’t make a case for this assertion; it only makes the case that the author would like very much for this to be so. Mr. Bates plays fast and loose with everything he says or mentions, as when he speaks of the “more intimate perspective on animals” of the “indigenous people of Middle-earth”—which completely ignores the fact that the ‘people’ he is discussing (though we cannot quite pin him down) were engaged in pushing out the previous occupants in almost every land, and certainly in the British Isles this is so, where the Picts, Irish, Scots, Angles, Danes, and who-knows-who-else were all violently taking over and kicking out each other in a continual struggle all through the first millennium of the Common Era.

One of the rides on [Odin’s eight-legged horse] Sleipnir was taken by the god Hermothr, whom some scholars think to be an alter ego of Odin. I shall therefore refer to Sleipnir’s rider here directly as Odin.

Whereupon Bates then relates the account of the ride to the Underworld by Hermothr. Who was Odin’s son. The sources mentioned in the notes to the chapter where this passage is found do not, unsurprisingly, have anything to say about this Hermothr/Odin confusion.

Some of the works, particularly the more recent books, which he cites are a little bit credulous, I think, but they seem to play fair with their readers, unlike The Real Middle Earth. Not content to cite text from 1st Century Romans to bolster accounts of British practices from the latter half of the first millennium, Bates has no compunction against stating such breathtaking absurdities as “an account from thirteenth-century Denmark provides a glimpse of what probably went on in similar form all over Middle-earth”, then citing an erotic dance with an Ox as evidence for the power of women in his imagined British world. This isn’t evidence, it is wishful thinking. One can forgive some simple mistakes in a work such as this—as, for example, when he cites The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic by R. Merrifield as “…of Religion and Magic“—but those are honest mistakes. However, as the annoying insistence on speaking of “Middle-earth” when talking about Medieval Britain shows, Mr. Bates is not a historian, nor an anthropologist, not even close. The level of insight into this long ago time never rises above that one might expect from an episode of What’s New, Scooby-Doo? At least the latter would be brief and to the point.

Friday Vocabulary

1. perfuse — to besprinkle, to overspread (as with moisture or color); to pour through or over, to diffuse through; [medicine] to circulate through blood vessels or lymphatic system

Cunegonde’s cheeks were perfused with a rosy glow, though whether from joy or from our strenuous exertions I could not tell.

 

2. volplane — to fly downward in an airplane with the motor off

Just before we crested the hill, Jerome cut off the engine and we volplaned down just above tree level in a sudden rushing silence towards the compound where the lovely Clarissa was being held.

 

3. hobby — [archaic] small horse or pony

He rode upon an Irish hobby as short and stout as himself, and rider and beast made an amusing spectacle for the village children as the two wobbled up to the abbey’s gates.

 

4. scutage — fees paid in lieu of military service to a feudal lord

King John’s unilateral increase of scutage by fifty percent was among the ‘insults’ to the barons which led to the imposition of the Magna Carta.

 

5. fadge — [obsolete] to fit, to be suitable; to put up with

The miller’s absence did so fadge with Hiram’s nefarious purpose that he immediately began to importune the miller’s daughter.

 

6. scathe — harm, injury

“You do me great scathe to ask me once more if I shall fulfill my promises.”

 

7. isogonic — having equal angles; esp., of lines demarcating points having equal magnetic declination

Pilots habituated to GPS may have difficulty adjusting to flying by compass, as they often have forgotten just what those isogonic lines on the navigation maps mean.

 

8. trichotomy — division into three

The most famous trichotomy is that of Gaul in Caesar’s immortal opening lines of De Bello Gallico.

 

9. anastomosis — opening between spaces not usually connected

Many nosebleeds originate in Kiesselbach’s plexus, an anastomosis of five arteries in the nasal septum.

 

10. buhl (or Buhl) — brass, pewter, tortoiseshell, etc. inlaid as decoration

Not being a fan of rococo I had initially disdained as overwrought the decorated bed but, as I looked more closely at the buhl work upon the headboard I could not help but be impressed by the sumptuousness of the intricate marquetry.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(legal Latin)

sub judice — under judicial consideration

In England contempt of court rules include strict prohibitions against reporting by journalists on many sub judice matters.

Friday Vocabulary

1. po-faced — [British] humorless, over-serious, disapproving

Alain’s attempts at defusing the tense standoff between the two culinary students only elicited a po-faced shake of the head from Chef Arnie.

 

2. auscultation — diagnosis through listening to bodily sounds, usually with a stethoscope

Though the pulse diagnosis of Chinese medicine has been compared with the Western practice of auscultation, due in part to the significant training required to acquire either skill, the fact remains that pulse assessment remains unreliable and highly subjective in contradistinction to use of the stethoscope.

 

3. rede — counsel, advice

I thank you sincerely for your rede, even though I shall now proceed to ignore it.

 

4. lipophilic — having strong affinity for fats or lipids

The lipophilic nature of cannabinoids was doubtless the reason this doctor wished to cut out a chunk of my ass.

 

5. miniver — white fur lining or trim

But her straitened situation was betrayed by the miniver lining the long sleeves of her best velvet surcote, which an observant eye could note had become worn from many repairs and washings.

 

6. drag hunt — equestrian hunting in which hounds follow an artificial scent lain along a predetermined trail

Jemma is still puzzled as to why these activists are protesting so vociferously against drag hunts.

 

7. piscina — basin with drain used for ablutions, particularly for washing communion vessels

After quickly though reverently rinsing the vessels in the piscina Father Xavier placed them back in the aumbry.

 

8. yarak — (of a hawk) in prime condition for hunting

It will take some not so little work of imping before your favorite is returned to yarak, milord.

 

9. transude — to ooze through

The Deadheads transuded past security like sweat through a tie-dye bandana.

 

10. cittern — wire-string instrument similar to guitar, having a flat pear-shaped soundbox and asymmetric neck

Like some jongleurs in the Tyrol he played his cittern using a plectrum.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British or Pennsylvanian dialect)

nebby — meddlesome, nosy

“You’re not listening to every tale that nebby old broad has been telling you, have you?”