I have missed seeing what others are reading and getting recommendations, so I thought I would revive this feature.  We now have a topic in the forum, so if you’d like to be included, please post them there, or send me a direct message through the forum.

 

Zwak: Kafka on the Shore  – A tale of two men, one a 15-year-old runaway avoiding an Oedipal fate, or simply searching for a lost mother and sister, and the other a simple man, who lost his smarts in a childhood accident during the war, but gained the ability to talk to cats. Or, he might have lost half his shadow, thus only seeming to be slow.

Haruki Murakami is a hard author to describe. He works, sometimes, on the edge of magical realism a la Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but does it in such a low-key, matter-of-fact manner that it seems commonplace in the worlds he creates. But, even with all the seeming modern western-isms his Japan contains and operates around, he is the only author I know of who will reflect on the darker moments of that country’s past; works of his have reflected on Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria and dealt with issues surrounding the Sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system.

At this point, I have read probably 10 or 12 of his novels, and have never been disappointed. I may not fully understand where he is going with the story at the start, nor be able to describe it afterward, but I trust him as an author and know I will enjoy the endpoint. He is very accessible, yet will draw you into a very deep and profound place.

 

DEG: A Collectors View: The SMLE: Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield 1903-1989 by Lance Lysiuk – This is a good reference for collectors of Lee-Enfield rifles.  It covers only the SMLE (Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield) series.  It starts with the SMLE Mk I and goes until the end of production in India in the 1980s.  It has information on all variations of the SMLE except for .22 training rifle conversions.  It does not cover any other Lee-Enfield such as the No. 4 rifle.  It includes some information on bayonets and ammunition.  The book is well organized. It has lots of pictures to help a collector identify rifles.  The author self-published this book.  He should have had an editor go through it.  There are typos and grammar mistakes.  The book is only available from the author, who posts on milsurps.com and gunboards.com, unless you find a used copy floating around.

Amazons! edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson – A collection of fantasy short stories where women characters are the main characters and most are written by women.  The editor’s blurbs introducing each story are annoying.  Despite my not liking her writing, she picked some good authors.  The collection opens with a story from C. J. Cherryh which I think is an excellent story.  Unfortunately, there are several stories in the collection that are not good stories and are poorly written.

A Plague Upon Our House:  My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID From Destroying America by Scott Atlas – I thought about writing a longer article about this book but I never had the time.  Atlas shows the inner working of the White House during his time there.  He ends the book with a summary of science about masking and lockdowns.

 

Slumbrew: I was burning through the Neal Asher books – just polished off The Rise of the Jain trilogy.  The man can write. That said, I needed a break from SF, so:

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. I think some other Glibs had mentioned it but, man, what a great book.  I had some knowledge of The Troubles but this really brought it to life.  Enjoyable to read despite the somewhat heavy subject matter.  Highly recommended.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. Say Nothing was so good that I decided to keep going with non-fiction;  I actually bought this years ago (2016!?) but just started it in the last couple of days.  It’s already compelling and, given current events, enraging.

From the introduction alone:”Yet Washington was doing all the wrong things. Officials in the capital seemed arrogant, obsessed with numbers, and oblivious to the pain the nation was suffering.” All too familiar.

 

Fourscore: The Adventures of the Mountain Men Edited by Stephan Brennan. True Tales of Hunting, Trapping, Fighting, Adventure and Survival.

 

Hayeksplosives: I’m reading Mossad by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissan Michel. Well-written; looks at both the great successes and the colossal blunders of the Mossad. The details of the Syrians’ pursuit of nukes with help from North Korea in 2007 were new to me.

 

Pistoffnick: Cache Lake Country: Or, Life in the North Woods by John J. Rowlands. I downloaded Drop City by T.C. Boyle (thanks to Tonio for the recommendation) and Freehold Resistance by Michael Z. Williamson (I can’t remember which Glib recommended that, but, also, thank you).

 

Tulip: The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair.  This book covers fabric from Egyptian linen to the Apollo program space suits.  Fascinating.

 

Riven: The Fermatata by Nicholson Baker. Another SugarFree recommendation in my life. I haven’t finished it yet, but I will say that it delights and astonishes. Not my usual but nice; some segments are worth a reread.

 

Old Man With Candy: Geek alert! I’ve had some reading time in the past weeks while splitting shifts with WebDom watching over SP. So actually, you know, read a few books. Now some might think that an undergrad-level textbook on quantum mechanics would be a boring way to while away the hours when not leering at the nurses, but that’s because they haven’t read David Griffiths’s delightful Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. I so wish this text had been around when I took that course, and even more, wish it had been around when I taught it. This is the clearest and most well-written text on the subject I’ve ever encountered, and by a large margin. The math level is not very onerous (basic calculus and linear algebra), but Griffiths does what nearly no other textbook author has done: really explains the physics, keeps sight of the goals in every derivation, and puts both personality and humor into the writing.

 

Tonio: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. I’m coming late in life to the economics. It’s a dry read, but a worthwhile one, for anyone who has not yet dipped a toe into the economic underpinnings of libertarian thought. The Secession series by Joe Nobody and P A Troit. Written in 2014 and set in a contemporary, newly-seceded Republic of Texas. I’m reading this as research into how other writers have handled the topic. This is one of those works that you don’t like a lot, but you like well enough to keep reading – kind of like the perfunctory sex had by some old married couples. If nothing else the hilarious typos (editing, what editing?) will keep you going. Apparently there is a Jewish holiday called “Yom Kipper,” which isn’t that far off given (((their))) the near-ritual consumption of smoked fish on a bagel with a nice schmear.