Friday Vocabulary

1. indite — to compose, to create a literary composition; (obsolete) to dictate

A review of the cuneiform records reveals that the governor of the far-flung province continued to indite missives imploring the High King to send aid long after the military disaster.

 

2. epistemology — science of the origin and method of knowledge

Epicurus dethroned Reason as the arbiter of truth, giving that role to Nature in his epistemology.

 

3. arrogate — to claim without right, to take without justification

We should not arrogate a complete understanding of the universe, but should recognize that our vision and comprehension may be only partial and perhaps misguided at times.

 

4. view-halloo — hunter’s cry upon spying the fox break cover

“There it is!” he shouted as a prosaic view-halloo when he saw his suitcase land on the baggage carousel.

 

5. cremocarp — type of fruit development in which two one-seeded mericarps hang from a central axis

Carrot ‘seeds’ are found in a cremocarp covered by coarse hairy growth which will bind them together.

 

6. bashaw — pasha; imperious man

“The Bashaw of Tripoli shall deliver up to the American squadron now off Tripoli, all the Americans in his possession.” (from the peace treaty ending the First Barbary War, 1805)

 

7. pavane — solemn and stately dance

On the warehouse floor the robots and the humans who served them once more entered into their colorless pavane of commerce.

 

8. hoodwink — to blindfold, to cover eyes with a hood; to deceive, to trick

Josiah realized his own prejudices had hoodwinked him, and now the real culprits were far away while he had arrested this innocent in his unreasoning fury.

 

9. tergiversation — apostasy, abandonment of a cause; turning dishonorably from straightforward action or principles, equivocation

My opponent’s change of heart regarding ice cream parlor licenses is an example of his flip-flop politics, if not outright tergiversation from his supposed ideals.

 

10. artful — wily, deceitful

We may support Odysseus, but then we have never been the victim of his artful schemes.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. purl — to flow with whirling motion; to flow and burble

They sat together on a small blanket spread out upon the grassy bank, watching the gentle brook as it purled through the mossy rocks on its lazy way to the lake.

 

2. coppice — copse, thicket or underwood grown for intermittent cutting

The dogs ran off at once into the tangled coppice to our left and we tried to follow, cursing and tearing our clothes in the process.

 

3. skewbald — marked with patches of white and brown

Jerome’s skewbald pony stood hobbled near the oak, and the embers in the fire still produced a thin trail of smoke, but no other sign of the preacher did we see.

 

4. behoovely — necessary, fitting [appears to be a hapax legomenon used only by Julian of Norwich]

The rough parts of the road are behoovely though this may be clear to us only at our final destination.

 

5. cotta — surplice, often with box pleats

The mass of seminarians, stern yet joyful in their cassocks and cottas, strode across the greensward before the assembled parents and other well-wishers.

 

6. farthingale — hooped petticoat or frame worn beneath a woman’s skirts to extend them

Although there is no evidence that Henry IV of France hid beneath the farthingale of Marguerite de Valois, the wife of another Henry IV—Joan of Portugal, wife of Henry IV of Castile—is credited with originating the bizarre fashion trend, perhaps to hide embarrassing pregnancies.

 

7. surrebuttal — (Law) plaintiff’s response to a defendant’s rebuttal

In any true debate there should be provision made for (at the very least) argument, rebuttal, and surrebuttal.

 

8. instauration — renewal, restoration; [obsolete] the establishing or instituting (of something)

After the devilish depredations of money upon science and education, a true instauration of those once hallowed institutions will take decades, if such is even possible at all.

 

9. batture — alluvial land raised from sea-bed or river-bed; specifically, land between Mississippi River and the levees

The major’s plan was to move his troops across the batture at low tide and surprise the enemy from the rear, but he reckoned without the difficulty of slogging through the mud and muck.

 

10. farctate — absolutely full

And into this farctate container he sought to insert just one more book, just a single slim volume of poetry, at which point the cardboard gave way and the entire box split apart.

 

Book List: 500 Books

As I told you over a month ago, I recently reading book #500 in my reading records since I began tracking back in June of 2015. When I announced this milestone, I promised both an analysis for the last hundred books read and a listing of the books themselves. This post is in fulfillment of the latter half of that promise. (As usual, I do not include comics and graphic novels as ‘books’ in my count, though they are listed below.)

I have already mentioned the circumstances (see above link) under which I acquired The Poor Pay More, a study of buying habits of the lower class in New York City’s ‘projects’. This book capped off the last hundred books I have read (not counting those read since September 12, when I finished the David Caplovitz sociology book), a century of books which began with the wonderful Philip K. Dick non-genre fiction book, Confessions of a Crap Artist, which I read back in January. (Which month seems so very, very long ago.) I wrote about it on this blog at the time Also of note in the first ten books of the last hundred read was the Tim Powers’s fiction (I find it hard to classify), On Stranger Tides, which I finally got around to reading. It turns out to be much, much better than I was expecting after viewing the transmogrified story in the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
401 1/19/20 Philip K. Dick Confessions of a Crap Artist Fiction
402 1/21/20 Poul Anderson Agent of the Terran Empire SF & Fantasy
403 1/22/20 James O. Causey Frenzy Mystery
404 1/23/20 Tim Powers On Stranger Tides SF & Fantasy
405 1/28/20 Marjorie Kelly The Divine Right of Capital Business
406 1/28/20 Stephen Vincent Benét The Devil And Daniel Webster Fiction
407 1/30/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s April 1930, Vol. I No. 7 Books
408 1/30/20 Daniel Manus Pinkwater The Magic Moscow Children’s
409 1/31/20 Vance Randolph & Nancy Clemens The Camp-Meeting Murders Mystery
410 2/2/20 Judith Moffett The Ragged World SF & Fantasy

 

Besides the two Wilkie Collins books, which I have already written about, the highlight of the next ten books in this listing is The Modern Story Book, a children’s book for the modern child, featuring as protagonists the new machines of transportation that this crazy 20th Century has (had) engendered. Besides the obvious stories about cars, planes, and trains, we see the anthropomorphic musings and wanderings of a brave dirigible, a bored elevator car, and an old piece of farm machinery. Illustrated with the same clear lines and bright colors that made the My Book House series such a delight, the texts are fables for the wondrous machine age, sparkling futurism without (much) fascism. (Though the elevator does learn the perils of stepping too far outside his appointed role.)

Another wonderful children’s book was The Tale of Two Bad Mice, fifth in Beatrix Potter’s delightful illustrated stories. There seems to be an especial moral in this humorous adventure of two mice who find a perfectly sized house which is filled with fake food and other unrealities; unfortunately, I am now too old to comprehend morals. I was heartened in this past century of books to have access once more to the shelves upon which rest my children’s books.

This second decade of books also saw me get back to my comic books, including my penultimate guilty pleasure, the Badger. (My guiltiest reading pleasure, of course, being the Dray Prescot books of Alan Burt Akers.)
I’ve also been perusing some of my Amar Chitra Katha collection, but I should note that the actual content of Dasharatha includes nothing like the William Tell story shown on the cover of the comic.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
411 2/2/20 Pentagram Cryptography Spies
412 2/3/20 Wilkie Collins Miss or Mrs? Fiction
413 2/5/20 Wallace Wadsworth; Ruth Eger, illustrator The Modern Story Book Mystery
414 2/5/20 Thomas Campbell II Bad Girls Of Pulp Fiction Books
415 2/9/20 Nicolas Freeling Gun Before Butter Mystery
416 2/10/20 Georges Simenon Enigmes Foreign Language
417 2/12/20 R. T. Campbell Bodies in a Bookshop Mystery
418 2/13/20 Wilkie Collins The Guilty River Fiction
419 2/13/20 Beatrix Potter The Tale of Two Bad Mice Children’s
2/15/20 Lopamudra Chandralalat: The Prince With A Moon On His Forehead Comics
420 2/16/20 Margaret Frazer The Outlaw’s Tale Mystery
2/16/20 Anant Pai, ed. Dasharatha: The Story Of Rama’s Father Comics
2/16/20 Mike Baron Badger #1 [Capital] Comics

 

I’ve already written about almost half of the next ten books on my reading list, including the small but punchy Penguin paperback pictured here, Hazell and the Menacing Jester. That one impressed me so much I even culled together a list of the rhyming and other cockney slang found therein, to which I hope to add when I read the first in this all-too-short trilogy of books. The P. B. Yuill mystery was only one of the many excellent books that made up this third decade of my fifth hundred.

One terrific book I haven’t reported upon is The Blue Lotus, the 5th volume in the Tintin bande desinée series by Hergé. Not only does this sequel to Cigars of the Pharaoh demonstrate the clear lines and detail-packed frames one associates with the Belgian cartoonist, but the insights into Chinese society on the cusp of communism are fascinating. The Japanese invaders come off poorly in this book, but no more poorly than they deserve.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
421 2/17/20 Erle Stanley Gardner (as A. A. Fair) Turn On The Heat Mystery
422 2/19/20 A. Bertram Chandler The Inheritors / The Gateway To Never SF & Fantasy
423 2/21/20 Rex Stout Too Many Clients Mystery
424 2/5/20 P. B. Yuill Hazell and the Menacing Jester Mystery
3/2/20 Hergé The Blue Lotus Comics
3/2/20 Goscinny & Uderzo Asterix in Belgium Comics
425 3/7/20 Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning Feeble
426 3/9/20 Friar Tuck’s Christmas Series Puppy Dog’s ABC Children’s
427 3/9/20 Bill Fawcett, ed. Cats in Space and Other Places SF & Fantasy
428 3/12/20 Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey SF & Fantasy
429 3/13/20 Beatrix Potter The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle Children’s
430 3/16/20 Anita Brenner The Wind that Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1942 History

 

More good books in the next set of ten, though I never did get back to report on the other stories in Candide, Zadig and selected stories. (If you read “Zadig” and “Ingenuous” you’ll have read the best of the lot, though admittedly that best is very, very good.) Another thing I have yet to get back to is reading the French original of The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Many reviewers have been dissatisfied by this tiny mystery by Gaston Leroux, but I found it to be a surprising and satisfying solution to a locked room puzzle, which is really all one can ask from that particular subgenre. The English translation, however, seemed to me to flawed at places, so I want to read the original to determine if either the dryness and flawed language is an artifact of translation or a feature of the original. The third possibility, of course, is that my grasp of the French language will be so abysmal as to leave me forever in doubt.

During this slice I also continued my comic book reading—which, as I’ve pointed out before and will continue to mention, do not count towards the official “Books Read” tally—with the two-part Marvel adaptation of the Buckaroo Banzai movie, which was … meh, I guess. The artists managed to make Peter Weller’s character look like Weller, but try to recognize Jeff Goldblum on the cover of issue #1 shown here. He’s the tall one. The resemblance isn’t present on the inside, either. (Not that I don’t keep count of the comic books and graphic novels, though. For example, the next-to-last entry in this slice of ten (official) Books Read is the Lego … ahem, brick-based Catechism of the Seven Sacraments, which was #499 of all books and comics read since starting this meaningless tracking project.)

 

# Read Author Title Genre
431 3/18/20 Arthur C. Clarke Prelude to Space SF & Fantasy
432 3/23/20 R. W. Morgan Saint Paul in Britain Wacko
433 3/26/20 Rudy Rucker The Hollow Earth SF & Fantasy
434 3/26/20 R. Austin Freeman Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes Mystery
435 3/28/20 Andre Norton The Crossroads Of Time SF & Fantasy
436 4/1/20 Gaston Leroux The Mystery of the Yellow Room Mystery
437 4/4/20 William J. Locke Simon The Jester Fiction
4/9/20 Bill Mantio, pencils by Mark Texeira, inks by Armando Gil Buckaroo Banzai #1 Comics
4/11/20 Bill Mantio, pencils by Mark Texeira, inks by Armando Gil Buckaroo Banzai #2 Comics
438 4/14/20 Voltaire Candide, Zadig and selected stories Fiction
439 4/14/20 Texe Marrs Project L. U. C. I. D.: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System Wacko
4/19/20 Mary O’Neill & Kevin O’Neill Catechism of the Seven Sacraments Comics
440 4/21/20 Ellery Queen The Scarlet Letters / The Glass Village Mystery

 

The next tranche of books leading up to the half-century mark held many solid and highly readable volumes, including Book #441 in my reading, Three Of Us. This very basic primer from the California state textbooks program of the 1950s (and perhaps the ’40s; I only know that my copy was printed in 1954) deserves to stand alongside Dick and Jane for its blithely happy-go-lucky white kids learning and having fun. Sorry, having fun! This one came to me as a gift from a longtime educator who was cleaning out the closets. (It’s true: I will read almost anything.) You’ll note that it has too many authors.

I began The Saga of Gisli the Outlaw because I was watching the second season of Trapped, though I finished the Icelandic TV series long before I completed the Icelandic saga. The sagas of Iceland are great, and this one is no exception, though I found keeping track of the Who’s Who even more difficult than usual (my usual being Njal’s Saga). The penurious bonds of outlawry reminded me of the exile of the Pandava brothers, though the tragic workings of ineluctable fate pulled my heartstrings more for Gisli—doubtless only because of my Western bias.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
441 4/21/20 Guy L. Bond, Grace A. Dorsey, Marie C. Cuddy, & Kathleen Wise Three Of Us Children’s
442 4/25/20 Steven Brust Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille SF & Fantasy
4/28/20 Hergé The Broken Ear Comics
443 4/29/20 Terry Deary The Groovy Greeks History
444 5/1/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s May 1930, Vol. I No. 8 Books
445 5/2/20 Norman Dodge The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop June 1930, Vol. I No. 9 Books
446 5/4/20 George Johnston, trans.; Peter Foote, notes & essay The Saga of Gisli the Outlaw History
447 5/5/20 Isaac Asimov Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection SF & Fantasy
448 5/5/20 Lawrence Block Burglars Can’t Be Choosers Mystery
449 5/7/20 Lloyd Alexander Taran Wanderer SF & Fantasy
450 5/10/20 Conrad Richter The Sea of Grass Western

 

I wrote not a word about the good books in the next ten on my list—only taking a moment to write about what may be the worst book I have ever read—partly because I started to read some of the dregs of my collection (looking at you, supposed self-help books), and partly because of my life circumstances, which changed in May of this year in a fairly minor way, but which necessitated a drastic modification of my sleeping (and thus my typing) schedule. This decade of books started off with a real winner, however, The Day The World Ended, an engrossing account of the surprisingly forgotten volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique in 1902. The two British authors, Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, went on to write similar tomes about disastrous events ranging from the San Francisco earthquake to the Crash of 1929. They are in top form in this tale of bureaucratic inertia and buck-passing that made a natural disaster into a much worse human tragedy.

I hope some day to read the ebook of the new translation of Solaris by Bill Johnston, to compare it with the English translation that has been available since 1970. The latter version, which Lem disliked, was a translation of a translation, being rendered into English not from the Polish original, but from a French translation of the supposedly seminal 1961 Science Fiction novel. Thus my wish to read the new version since learning of Johnston’s direct translation. But, as they say, if wishes were horses we’d be up to our shoulders in horseshit. Strangely enough, the new version is available only as an ebook or as an audiobook due to bizarre copyright restrictions hovering around the original English version. But I acquired a copy with some Amazon credits, and read the earlier version—which I’d read before—in preparation for the comparison. Still haven’t read the ‘electronic’ version yet; I dislike electronic ‘books’.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
451 5/17/20 Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witts The Day The World Ended History
452 5/18/20 Lawrence Block Random Walk: A Novel For The New Age Fiction
453 5/19/20 Norman Lewis How To Become A Better Reader Books
454 5/23/20 M. Scott Peck Abounding Grace: An Anthology Of Wisdom Spirituality
455 5/23/20 Stanislaw Lem Solaris SF & Fantasy
456 5/24/20 Donna Leon Death at La Fenice Mystery
457 5/25/20 Scott Jeffrey Journey to the Impossible: Designing an Extraordinary Life Self-Help
458 5/25/20 Ian Livingstone, ed. White Dwarf No 34 D&D
459 5/26/20 More Soviet Science Fiction SF & Fantasy
460 5/30/20 Phoebe Atwood Taylor Deathblow Hill Mystery

 

Happily the next ten books contained more wonderful reading than the previous ten, though once again I only managed to write about one of those books (and not the best, and I actually wrote nothing, only quoted the book itself). Among the great reads were a couple from my guiltiest pleasure, the Dray Prescot series by the pseudonymous Alan Burt Akers. In this ‘cycle’—the Krozair Cycle—Prescot is flung into the great battle between the Red and the Green along the shores and on the waters of the Eye Of The World, that great inland sea which also was the scene of one of Dray’s first adventures on the distant planet of Kregen. Anyway …. Seriously, you should check it out. Kenneth Bulmer (the real author behind the nom de plume) is in love with language and adventure, and it shows.

I also worked my way through some religious tracts to see if they might be gotten rid of, but the slightly off works of Mr. Thieme turn out to be of interest. His strange proselytizing for the peculiar views he espouses might be off-putting to most, but he manages to back up most of his weird claims fairly with the usual bible quotes, though he obviously knows little about other religions than Christianity save that they are bad. All in all, a fun read.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
461 6/2/20 Beatrix Potter The Pie and the Patty-Pan Children’s
462 6/3/20 Alan Burt Akers The Tides of Kregen SF & Fantasy
463 6/5/20 Fiona Buckley The Doublet Affair History
464 6/9/20 Alan Burt Akers Renegade of Kregen SF & Fantasy
465 6/9/20 Donna Leon Death in a Strange Country Mystery
466 6/10/20 R. B. Thieme, Jr. Heathenism Religion
467 6/13/20 Peter Lovesey The Circle Mystery
468 6/17/20 Fiona Buckley Queen’s Ransom Mystery
6/20/20 The Shazam! Family Archives Volume 1 Comics
469 6/20/20 William P. Strube, Jr. The Star Over The Kremlin Wacko
470 6/22/20 Alex Berenson The Faithful Spy Mystery

 

Whatever may be your feelings and thoughts about Harold Bloom, he is very well acquainted with The Canon of Western Literature, and in How To Read and Why he makes a strenuous case for the importance of not only reading, but of reading the good stuff. Naturally he has strong opinions about just what the good stuff is, but most of us who did not major in Literature are bound to find some new suggestions or just some old authors we always meant to return to. I personally have at least a dozen books I obtained after turning through Bloom’s paean to the best of the written word. He also recommends some translations for works not originally in English.

I was disappointed in The Italian Comedy, a Dover reprint of a translation of Pierre Louis Ducharte’s overview of the Commedia dell’arte. Doubtless the flaws I found in the book are flaws within my own reading skills and knowledge, but I had hoped for better insight into the jaunty escapades of Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot. Unfortunately (for me at least), the author assumes so much prior knowledge, and presents his facts in an almost tabular form, that I had difficulty pulling together the various threads. More literate and cognizant folk will likely find this volume more informative.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
471 6/24/20 Harold Bloom How To Read and Why Literary Criticism
472 6/24/20 Daniel Pinkwater The Magic Goose Children’s
473 6/27/20 Colin Dexter Last Bus to Woodstock Mystery
474 6/29/20 Colin Dexter Last Seen Wearing Mystery
475 6/30/20 John T. Watson, M.D., ed. Book Of Elegant Poetical Extracts Poetry
476 6/30/20 Pierre Louis Duchartre The Italian Comedy Drama
477 7/2/20 Horacio Quiroga The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories Fiction
478 7/5/20 Eden Phillpotts The Red Redmaynes Mystery
479 7/12/20 James Swain Grift Sense Mystery
480 7/14/20 Agatha Christie Five Complete Hercule Poirot Novels: Thirteen at Dinner / Murder on the Orient Express / The ABC Murders / Cards on the Table / Death on the Nile Mystery

 

With the final twenty books of the last hundred, we descend into the slough of despond, or at least the Slough of Meh. I’ve been reading—among other things—books I suspected I might just as well be shed of. One of these, which I’ve meant to write about ever since finishing its uninspiring pages, is the preening Peter L. Bernstein’s book on probabilities and money, Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk. In truth, there is little remarkable about the book, which ends up being a sort of rambling affair about odds and how to set them, framed by the capitalist idea of economics being the only way to look upon the world and its vagaries. If only, Bernstein laments at one point early in the book, if only the Greeks had taken the next steps in mathematics and had discovered how to analyze risk! Bernstein is also a sloppy explainer of mathematical principles, which makes it all the more surprising that Wiley is the publisher of this trivial tome.

Not entirely satisfying in a completely different way is Lewis Carroll’s The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch. This book collects most of the handmade journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s youth (allowing that term to extend into his early years at college), and shows his remarkable creative talent for nonsense. The scintillating flashes of brilliant ridiculousness, however, only show that some special spark was given to the mediocre math professor when he arrived at the wonderful tales of Alice. Worth reading only for Carroll aficionados (read: nutjobs), of which I aspire to become one.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
481 7/14/20 Michael Moore Stupid White Men …And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! Current Events
482 7/18/20 Max Brand The Overland Kid Western
483 7/23/20 Margaret Frazer The Bishop’s Tale Mystery
484 7/24/20 Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch Fiction
485 7/31/20 Patrizia Rinaldi Three, Imperfect Number Mystery
486 7/31/20 Peter L. Bernstein Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk Business
487 8/4/20 Colin Dexter The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn Mystery
488 8/5/20 Arianna Huffington How To Overthrow The Government Current Events
489 8/10/20 Emile Zola Trois Nouvelles Foreign Language
490 8/12/20 Donna Leon Dressed For Death Mystery

 

The final ten books leading up to #500 were not very good, on average. In fact, my average rating for those last ten was 3.0—which is worse than it sounds, given that I have only given a one-star rating a single time in all 500 books. (See the worst book I’ve ever read, mentioned above.) One book that did not drag down the average, however, was Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War, a collection of both non-fiction and stories written by the American master on the topic of the Civil War. The narratives in both sections have the resonance of truth, and some of his revelations about the realities of war are usually unspoken by those who have the actual experience of battle. Well worth your time.

On the other hand, The Gift, Book #497 Read, purporting to be by the Sufi poet Hafiz, was both a disappointment and a travesty. As those who wish to delve into the story on the Interwebs can quickly discover, the ‘poems’ are not actually the work of Hafiz, but are verses not quite worthy of Rod McKuen or Richard Bach written (not translated) by one David Landinsky, who used the inspiration of the Persian poet to create these … ahem, verses (as he says) … and uses the name of the same poet to rack up sales of his own work (as he does not say). I’m now going deep into the Gertrude Bell translation of the actual Persian poems from the Divan of Hafiz (sometimes also Hafez), and can see no similarities between the latter and the platitudinous ‘Hang in there, baby’ lines from The Gift. Perhaps the German word was intended.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
491 8/15/20 Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush Current Events
492 8/16/20 Kate Carlisle The Lies That Bind Mystery
493 8/17/20 Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Fiction
8/17/20 Mike Baron Badger #2 [Capital] Comics
8/17/20 Kamala Chandrakant Garuda: The Legend about the Vehicle of Lord Vishnu Comics
494 8/24/20 David Baldacci The Guilty Mystery
495 8/26/20 Ian Fleming Live And Let Die Mystery
8/31/20 Keith Giffen, Andrew Cosby, John Rogers, Johanna Stokes, Joe Casey, & Kevin Church What Were They Thinking?! Comics
496 9/1/20 Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner When to Rob a Bank: And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-intended Rants Business
497 9/1/20 Hafiz [actually David Landinsky] The Gift Poesy
498 9/11/20 Barbara Hambly A Free Man of Color Mystery
499 9/12/20 Noel Botham The Amazing Book of Useless Information: More Things You Didn’t Need to Know But Are About to Find Out Reference
500 9/12/20 David Caplovitz The Poor Pay More Sociology

 

 

The last hundred books seem to have been predominated by Mysteries, and A Free Man Of Color was a surprisingly good one. The actual ratios of the various genres read will come out in my deeper analysis, which I hope to get to by the week after the election, assuming that the world does not end.

 

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

Friday Vocabulary

1. losel — wastrel, scoundrel, profligate

You say you pity him, that sad losel in his cups, but you would not give him a pfennig of concern if you knew the families he has ruined, the wealth he has squandered, and the love he has scorned.

 

2. patten — overshoe of wood or metal once worn to elevate normal footwear above mud etc.

I do hope the council will ban the wearing of pattens within the church, as the sound of the metal footsteps upon the stone is not conducive to thoughts of the holy.

 

3. runagate — runaway, fugitive, deserter; vagabond

While pursuing the runagate my horse shied from a snake, throwing me off and allowing the desperado to make his escape once again.

 

4. shellback — experienced sailor

The old shellback looked out of place in this waterless expanse, still affecting a rolling gait as if to counter the motion of waves which he would never again feel.

 

5. gonfanon — gonfalon suspended from the head of a lance

The saint’s banner was fastened to the top of Sir Michael’s lance in the manner of a gonfanon, and we all knelt down to pray before it, asking for victory in the forthcoming battle.

 

6. grangerize — to add illustrations to a book from other sources

One can look upon grangerized volumes as early examples of scrapbooking, if sticking pictures snipped from other sources into another book can be thus labeled.

 

7. antiscorbutic — agent useful against scurvy

Citrus fruit was known as a powerful antiscorbutic even as early as the first decades of the Age of Exploration in the 16th Century.

 

8. diminuendo — gradually decreasing in loudness

The colonel’s voice now came diminuendo from the speaker, though whether from his movement away from the microphone or from some interference with the radio signal we did not know.

 

9. chapfallen — dejected, dispirited

Smuts looked the chapfallen youth in the eye and said, “You’ve got to go right back in there and face them, and get through the next hour, and then the hour after that.”

 

10. bibliopole — bookseller

Prinnie was a most sagacious bibliopole, knowing better than to express either interest or disdain at first sight of a newly presented tome.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

give gyp — to cause pain

You need better shoes, now that you’re working and standing on your feet all day; that’s why your back has been giving you gyp, but a good pair of shoes would fix you right up.

Monday Book Report: Wingman

Wingman, by Manus Pinkwater

The 3rd book I’ve read in the past week to make me cry.

Too short to write too much about, save to say that Daniel Pinkwater (yes, he used his middle name as his first on this book) is an author who can tell a heartwarming tale I can believe in, even after I’ve lived through the Age of Irony and the Age of After and even in the midst of the Age of Whatever-This-Is-Now. Mr. Pinkwater is a genius, or he has a daemon like that of Socrates. This story of a poor Chinese-American kid exiled to the New York Public School system is wonderful. I only hope that the kid kept his comic book collection afterwards.

600 Books (not really)

This book made me cry for democracy. In both the transitive and intransitive senses.

Since I first began tracking my reading after getting all of my books catalogued in a database a little over five years ago, I have treated comics and graphic novels almost as bastard stepchildren, not counting them fully in my ‘Books Read’ statistics. I did, however, note whenever I read such ‘books’, and indeed they are sometimes weighty tomes in their own right, whether we’re discussing Watchmen or the lamentable Kingdom Come. As well, as I said the last time I passed the sur-fictive milestone of 500 Books (not really), I have read plenty of short and very short non-comic books that may tend to inflate the book count. But: No matter. I continue to distinguish my ‘Books Read’ by giving precedence to the non-comics I complete, both because I feel it important to maintain the same statistical methodologies I started with (in which regard, see the problems I had to face when changing underlying data slicing for music listened to), and also because I like it this way. I also have begun tracking total pages read, though I rarely (if ever) report this statistic—one reason being that I do not have the data for the earliest books read, thus causing the very type of data distortion I seek to avoid by changing methodologies now.

Ahem. All this is mere prologue to announcing that the 600th book I’ve read of all types since beginning the count back in June of 2015 is Voting Is Your Super Power!, a truly wonderful compilation from that fantastic comics compiler, Craig Yoe. In this small volume (just over a hundred pages) are found reprints of several ‘citizenship’ comics made for one purpose or another, all with the same message: Voting is important! Along with some wrenching panels from cartoonists as different as Herblock and Winsor McCay, and an introduction by Julie Newmar [!], this book left this reader with tears of pride for the best parts of patriotism. Plus, the comics are great.

I have not forgotten that I owe y’all an analysis and a list of the last hundred books I read up to #500 (using the non-comics counting method, the EBITA—that is, Everything But Illustrated Tomes Analysis). And I’m getting to that just as soon as I finish a little side project. Of course, the comic book collection I just read doesn’t have an official ‘Book Read’ number, but the next book I finished (and the most recent) was The DAW Science Fiction Reader, which was book #528 read—meaning I’m on a blistering pace and better get that analysis finished, eh? See you soon!

Friday Vocabulary

1. sannyasi — Hindu religious mendicant

Although one might have seen young sannyasis and sannyasinis wandering the streets of San Francisco during the so-called Summer of Love, in most views of Hindu philosophy, that path of near total renunciation was reserved for those Brahmans who had entered their twilight years and were approaching their final days of life.

 

2. fustian — bombast, inappropriately lofty language

I sat on my folding chair on the dais listening to the mayor’s turgid speech, appreciating for the first time the unironic virtues and high ideals of our national holiday, which even the overlenghty fustian of an interminable program of local politicos could neither dim nor diminish.

 

3. syllabub — dessert of beaten and sweetened cream flavored with wine; drink of milk or cream mixed with wine or cider

All his talk amounted to nothing more than a verbal syllabub: enjoyable enough at the end of an evening, but leaving no trace of satiety in its wake.

 

4. effluent — flowing out

The younger children paid her no mind, but the teenagers and some of the parents found her effluent enthusiasm quite cloying.

 

5. effluent — treated sewage; sewage or waste flowing into water

Several miles below the city we saw the oily green-black stains in the water, and before long we could smell the effluent of Saint Louis as our barge continued northwards on the river.

 

6. lote — [archaic] lotus

Pliny the Elder saw with his own eyes the lote tree planted before the temple of Vulcan by Romulus himself, still alive after 700 years.

 

7. menarche — first onset of menstruation

Though a sign of incipient womanhood, the arrival of menarche does not, in fact, mean the concomitant occurrence of ovulation.

 

8. yonks — [British informal] a very long time

Oh, it’s been yonks since I listened to their music.

 

9. stereotype — single metal plate of type made from mold of a forme of composed type

Quick distribution of her latest novel was aided by the shipment of duplicate stereotype plates to our country direct from London.

 

10. nidus — site of origin; place where insects deposit their eggs

For the child who listens to this talk, surrounded by his elders speaking of other men and women in terms of such inhumanity and hatred, the dining table becomes a nidus of vicious bigotry.

 

Monday Book Report: R Is For Rocket

R Is For Rocket, by Ray Bradbury

The short story collection R Is For Rocket is designed to appeal to young adults (our current nomenclature for children who read), especially young boys growing up in the dawn of the Space Age. Reading it now made this once-young man cry several times, both for the limpid understanding inherent in Ray Bradbury’s prose, and also for the wistful nostalgia—some intentional, some caused by subsequent events—of these tales which mostly concern the fierce optimism of humans determined to face the future with heads held high.

Thus it was that the title story, “R Is for Rocket”, is the first fiction I have read in quite a while which made me begin to cry, even though I was reading on my lunch break at work, with co-workers around me. Somehow, the deceptive simplicity of Bradbury’s writing triggered an almost autonomous sadness for the lost dreams of youth, which in this case are compounded by the loss of the hopefulness that once seemed integral to the American Dream. The story relates in first person the powerful dream of a teenager who thinks constantly of becoming an astronaut, who dreams of it, who broods about it, who feels the pull of space travel almost as physically as the apple felt the attraction of gravity that urged it onto Newton’s pate. The young narrator and his best buddy share this urge to the stars, always have, even though their other childhood friends seem to have outgrown this dream.

Part of the power of Bradbury’s prose is his uncanny ability to capture, or to recapture, the tidal moods and overwhelming thoughts of a young man. To be frank, the likeness to Gertrude Stein’s writing and stream-of-consciousness and lack of punctuation or separation between one thought and another used to annoy me no end. Strangely enough, what would fascinate me when reading William S. Burroughs seemed cloying when reading Ray Bradbury. Yet Bradbury always knows just what he is doing, and knows just how much streaming run-on sentence first-person consciousness is enough, and when to return to the plot and the story—which is another thing Bradbury always has. And in this case, the lucid dreaming of a young boy is shown by the author in all its heartbreaking agony and soaring aspiration, and we are truly allowed to watch a young boy becoming a young man right before our eyes. This short story is magic.

Many—most—of the stories in this collection have the same preternatural power, and though you may have read them before (most of these tales were collected previously in other Bradbury anthologies, including The Illustrated Man which you’ve doubtless already read), they are well worth reading again. Two other stories made me cry, and only one story made me check the page count to see how long until it would be over. (This was “Frost and Fire”, which is still interesting, and needs its length to tell itself.)

But the power of that first eponymous story of this paperback anthology lingered quite a while, and I had to compose myself somewhat before putting away the detritus of my lunch and returning to work. But not only because of the persuasiveness of Bradbury’s prose. I sat there after reading that opening tale quite bereft and sad, sad for the lost dream of the 20th Century, a dream of progress and hope for humanity which has turned to dissolving starch under our gluttonous tongues. Though we taste sweetness from our apps and our MyPhones and FlexBoxes and the TweeterSlams and the InterWebby tubes and all, we have lost a staunch fierceness which once sent a dozen men to step upon the moon. Twelve humans, all white men in their thirties or forties, trod upon that not-so-distant planet (a mere quarter of a million miles away) and now … no more. Two score and eight years separate us from the last steps on another world, and it seems as if much more than a century has passed since those halcyon days. We have lost so much. And it is that loss I mourned there in the small break room with its linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting, with each person socially distanced around me looking at phones which held computers thousands and thousands of times more powerful that the machines which enabled those dozen souls to trod upon the distant Moon. I was promised flying cars, and instead have been given Dark Mode. Reading Bradbury’s stories returned to me, at least, the powerful dreams of an earlier age, even if I have had to learn to live without dreaming.

Friday Vocabulary

1. conduce — to lead, to bring about

Far from seeing this as a setback, I believe it will conduce to his eventual success if he learns from the experience.

 

2. crypt — depression or sinkage surrounding a villus in the intestinal epithelium

Each villus may be surrounded by many crypts, and within these—among other functions—are generated the stem cells from which many varieties of intestinal cells come to replenish the depleted intestinal membrane.

 

3. expectorate — to expel from the chest or lungs (by hawking or spitting or coughing)

One may expectorate sputum or phlegm, but, as Ambrose Bierce noted, one cannot expectorate tobacco juice, unless you are chewing it all wrong.

 

4. obnoxious — [archaic] exposed to danger

Thus small acts of malfeasance are followed by greater crimes which leave you obnoxious to incarceration and other punishments of the state.

 

5. delope — to purposely shoot off target during a duel

Just because I deloped when Pudgy Randall and I dueled does not mean I apologized for any thing at all; I merely wished to avoid removing his mother’s last child from this earth.

 

6. lenity — mildness, mercifulness; instance of mercifulness or gentleness

Though Roman’s actions since have made others question my lenity on that fateful day, I have never doubted for one moment that mercy is always the better policy.

 

7. carboy — large glass container covered with basketwork protection, used for storing corrosive liquids

The observation balloon was filled and ready for release, and the support team were storing the carboys of vitriol safely back in the wagons.

 

8. laager — camp, especially one formed by a protective circle of wagons

The turkey was protected within a laager of gravy boats and other condiments in crystal bowls.

 

9. cassock — long, coat-like garment worn by priests and other religious in Catholic and certain Protestant denominations

You can easily distinguish a Catholic from an Anglican priest by counting the buttons on his cassock, as the former will have thirty-three buttons while the latter has thirty-nine.

 

10. superinfection — infection occurring during or after an earlier infection, especially after the use of antibiotics

By discontinuing the use of most broad-spectrum antibiotics in favor of more targeted drugs, the risk of superinfection has been reduced dramatically, although MRSA is still a concern at every hospital.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. tarlatan — thin, open-mesh muslin, used frequently for ballroom gowns

We could discern Jason’s sisters only with difficulty, hidden as they were within a cloud of tarlatan finery of pink and green.

 

2. scratty — (colloquial) unkempt, scruffy; scrawny

By this time, Peele was living in a scratty little SRO by the bus station, bathrooms down the hall, and I found him there, trying to wash the blood out of his socks in the corner sink, but the taps had springs and wouldn’t stay open so every time he went to scrub out the stains the trickle of rusty water shut off.

 

3. fellwalker — (British) person who walks over hills or high moors

If they caught him here they could just toss him over the cliffs onto the rocks below, and the police would assume he was just one more fellwalker who had gotten caught out too late and taken a wrong turn in the dark.

 

4. grig — unrestrainedly lively person; dwarf; cricket, grasshopper; small eel

For all I knew, the parson’s wife was merry as a grig in her own kitchen, but her presence had a deadening effect at my own tea party.

 

5. bamboula — drum made from a rum barrel; dance using such a drum

Even today the old bamboula rhythm can be heard behind much of the most vibrant New Orleans music.

 

6. sericulture — production of silk through farming of silkworms

Emperor Justinian was the first European potentate to have the secret of sericulture within his grasp, according to apocryphal stories of missionary monks from the Eastern Roman Empire who (it is said) managed to smuggle silkworm eggs out from China within hollow canes especially constructed for the purpose.

 

7. ectopic — out of place, anomalously situated

Next to the entrance to the restrooms, right atop the bar, sat the ectopic toddler.

 

8. amanuensis — one who writes from dictation, copyist, secretary

“I apologize for using an amanuensis,” the letter concluded, “but my writing hand is still swollen and useless due to the affray I told you about in the previous paragraph.”

 

9. nerk — (British) fool, dolt

So there he was, the poor nerk, opening the door for the tax man while on the phone with his bookie, with no money for either.

 

10. Kletterschuh — light boot with cloth or felt sole made especially for climbing

This weekend was all about hiking not hunting, so he left his Gamsbart behind, but made sure to pack his Kletterschuhe.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

mutatis mutandis — with the necessary changes

Yet all knew that if we attempted to put forth the argument he had used when the opposition party held sway, mutatis mutandis, he would blithely maintain that the situation was entirely different now, though the only difference to us seemed to be that now his party was in the catbird seat.