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It's the good grief, it's October reading thread!

Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven


Sep 29 2020, 2:51pm

Post #1 of 10 (714 views)
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It's the good grief, it's October reading thread! Can't Post

It's so chilly here this morning I had to put on sweatpants and a flannel shirt. I don't know whether we're having an early autumn or whether the summer has simply flicked by in the wink of an eye.

I finished both the Copperman book, Edited Out, and the Horowitz book, The Word is Murder. The former may be a very light mystery taking place in New Jersey, and the latter may be a grimmer story taking place in London, but both have first-person writer-narrators who deal with an Aspergerish detective. I saw no reason for Horowitz to write himself into the story, unless he just wanted to name-drop (Peter Jackson, among many others), but it was well-written and VERY nicely plotted. I have the sequel on my stack and will read it later on this fall. Even though I was highly entertained by the voice of Copperman's narrator, I doubt I'll read any more in the series.

I’m now listening to The Hound of the Baskervilles. Heaven knows I’ve read that enough times, but hearing it brings a new dimension to the story, especially when an actor the quality of Derek Jacoby is the reader. His delivery of the iconic, “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a giant hound!” is pitch-perfect.

On my Kindle I'm reading another in Ben Rehder's series of Texas game warden mysteries, Hog Heaven. That it's set in Blanco County adds to my pleasure in them, since I'm passingly (as in, I pass through) familiar with the area and with the character types. While these books are brisk, funny, and rather broad, still they deal with serious topics. This one is based on the spread of feral pigs throughout the state. These aren't your cute little pink Porky Pigs but vicious predators who damage the countryside and people too.

I say this with authority. A feral pig once ran my younger son's car off the road and into a fire plug, not two blocks from his home in the Houston suburbs. He was all right, as was his passenger---airbags!---but the car eventually turned out to be irreparable.

So what have you been reading as you stay safe?

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....


(This post was edited by Lily Fairbairn on Sep 29 2020, 2:53pm)


Na Vedui
Rohan


Sep 29 2020, 3:46pm

Post #2 of 10 (690 views)
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Reading my first purchase... [In reply to] Can't Post

... in a real live bookshop (as opposed to online) since Covid hit - and thoroughly enjoying it. "This Golden Fleece" by Esther Rutter. It's all about knitting, and is a fascinating geographical and social-history tour around Britain, from Fair Isle and Shetland down to Jersey and Guernsey. The author travelled around herself as well as doing the background research, and had a valiant go at knitting the various local items she encountered - everything from a fisherman's gansey to Viking socks (yes, really, Viking socks). She came across as a nice person, too, which always adds something to a book.


CuriousG
Half-elven


Sep 29 2020, 5:56pm

Post #3 of 10 (681 views)
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Feral pigs [In reply to] Can't Post

So I learn something new everyday. I've known quite a few people who are native Texans or moved there, and they readily mention armadillos, but no one's ever brought up feral pigs. Smithsonian had a good article on them that I just read, though the explanation for the sudden explosion in population since the 1980s remains unsatisfactory to me. Maybe no one really knows why.

If only the coyotes (and their hybrids) that are spreading across the US would eat wild pigs!


Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven


Sep 29 2020, 6:45pm

Post #4 of 10 (679 views)
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Rehder says... [In reply to] Can't Post

...a sow will have 8 piglets and 10 of them survive.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....


Ataahua
Forum Admin / Moderator


Sep 29 2020, 7:45pm

Post #5 of 10 (671 views)
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Ha! Sounds like rabbits. [In reply to] Can't Post

Thankfully our feral pigs are tucked away in rough, unpopulated hill country - you have to hunt them out to come across them.

Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."

"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.


Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo

My LOTR fan-fiction


CuriousG
Half-elven


Sep 30 2020, 3:26am

Post #6 of 10 (660 views)
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Invasive species and the Colombian Exchange [In reply to] Can't Post

That pig issue did get me thinking about all the things that were exchanged around the world that *did not* become invasive. Did potatoes crowd out all the natural vegetation in Europe? Was Rome abandoned due to tomato vines overgrowing the city? Did chickens and apple trees go feral and take over North America? I'm guessing in my amateur way that invasive species are the exception, not the rule.

And I'm still waiting for Killer Bees to drive everyone in America to live in bunkers after cutting the population in half, as the scare stories said in the 1970s (though I always wondered why they hadn't killed everyone from Brazil to Mexico; no one could ever answer that for me). I think nature adapts more often than not.


Annael
Immortal


Sep 30 2020, 4:43pm

Post #7 of 10 (634 views)
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Battle Ground by Jim Butcher [In reply to] Can't Post

the latest in the Harry Dresden series. So far stock Butcher: Harry goes up against something way beyond his weight class, with his posse and a secret way to outwit the bad guys. I'm guessing he'll win. A little jaded as you might infer; I much preferred the recent books where Butcher was focusing more on what happens to people who get given a lot of power, how one might resist the temptation to abuse it . . . certainly topics relevant to our times, instead of on a lot of bangs and explosions. Not that he ever did without the bangs and explosions and long dragged-out fights, but there was more character development.

I'm also getting tired of Butcher's brand of chauvinism. Yes, he peoples his books with lots of women who are powerful and smart and fight and so on. But every single one is beautiful and usually wears scanty clothing (or loses most of it in fights) and even when Harry is fighting for his life, he always notices - and tells us about it - the various body parts on view. Maybe this is Butcher's explanation of why Harry is so easily and routinely manipulated by women, but after all these years I wish he would just GROW UP. (He's also still as snarky and snotty to people he thinks are "above" him in some way, which given his own increased power and status in his world, seems annoyingly adolescent.)

So, hrmph. I'm also resenting the $30 I got charged for the book.

Someone has just recommended the Binti Trilogy to me. Anyone here read it?

I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard

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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967

My Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/...id=1590637780&sr=8-1



N.E. Brigand
Half-elven


Oct 2 2020, 3:47am

Post #8 of 10 (593 views)
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"Well here comes Christmas! That astonishing thing that no 'commercialism' can in fact defile -- unless you let it." [In reply to] Can't Post

Tiny Tims roast hot, like a chestnut ought.

I've been browsing Tolkien's letters again, and with cooler autumn weather having finally arrived, thinking ahead to the holidays, and wondering what they will be like in this strange year. According to the index, Christmas is mentioned four times. One is just a passing reference, two others are Tolkien noting that the first Christmas he can recall was "a blazing hot day" in Africa, and the final instance is the passage quoted in my subject line. I remembered the quote (I used it once in a quiz here) but not that it came in a fairly late letter: December 1962. When did concerns about the commercialization of Christmas become widespread? I think most of Stan Freberg's 1958 comedy record, "Green Christmas" and with the animated Charlie Brown Christmas TV movie of 1965.

Five tubeless tires, four quarts of gin, three cigars, two cigarettes, and some hair tonic on a pear tree!


Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature.

But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.


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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven


Oct 2 2020, 4:04am

Post #9 of 10 (586 views)
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Oh, that sounds like a possible Christmas gift. [In reply to] Can't Post

For my youngest sister or my stepmother, or both. They both are heavily into knitting. I'm glad I read this thread!


Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature.

But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.


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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven


Oct 2 2020, 4:17am

Post #10 of 10 (589 views)
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The most dangerous invasive species are probably the smallest ones. [In reply to] Can't Post

The American Chestnut and American Elm, both formerly widespread and abundant species, are now endangered due to the introduction of fungi from the Old World, with several billion trees having succombed in the past 100 years. Now various American ash species are being similarly destroyed by a beetle accidentally imported to the U.S. in shipping crates.


Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature.

But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.


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<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room!
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How to find old Reading Room discussions.

 
 

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