Thinking about …

I’m starting to think of my ‘best of 2024’ reads, but meanwhile, here are the books on the table now:

NEW on the table

Furta Sacra: by Patrick J. Geary I picked up the 1990 revision because I always thought Geary’s ‘Before France and Germany’, about the Merovingians was terrific. Great sentences, great thought. What I had forgotten (perhaps) was that I had to look up terms (mostly Latin and – I think – Greek) all the time.

The funny thing about this one – the theft of religous relics – is that it’s not really about historical events ‘per se’ (‘per se’ being a Latin term which means ‘intrinsically’ ), but that it calls up Baudolino, one of the slowest-reading novels I’ve read, which was about the sack of Istanbul (the Fourth Crusade) and the ideas of Baudolino et al (‘et al’ being a latin abbreviation for ‘and others’) that what they really needed was a relic of St. John the Baptist, possibly a finger, which they could get somewhere in the lands to the East of Jerusalem. And in the most essential ‘Handlist of Relic Thefts’ appendix which accompanies ‘Furta Sacra’, we find this: >>“John the Baptist. The archdeacon of Archbishop Rufus of Turin attempts to steal the finger of John the Baptist from Maurienne and is struck dead. Early ninth century?”<<

The great thing about Baudolino (Umberto Eco), the novel, is that you can read a page, and then put it down for day – or even more – and then when you pick it up again, there you are! Total continuity!

On the table!

The Washington book : how to read politics and politicians (2024): By Lozada, Carlos. The author has read 150 ‘Washington Books’ so that you won’t have to. I was skeptical, but just opened up and started reading.
1. : by Kamala Harris. Picked this one up because Lozada talks about the final chapter, ‘What I have learned’.
In too deep (2024): By Child, Lee – The latest Reacher. A bit peculiar and things just don’t add up. Reacher doesn’t remember anything after a car crash & has had a concussion but doesn’t seem to have all that many of the symptoms. Unreliable narrators abound. The voice seems off, too. I returned it before I got in too deep.

About to be on the table!

The verge : Reformation, Renaissance, and forty years that shook the world (2021) By Wyman, Patrick
The myth of nations : the medieval origins of Europe (2002) by Patrick J. Geary
The wisdom of plagues : lessons from 25 years of covering pandemics (2024): by Donald G. McNeil, Jr
Crusader: By Horse to Jerusalem: by Tim Severin (2001).

Severin and one companion ride horseback from Chateau Bouillon (in Belgium) to Jerusalem, following the route of the First Crusade. Through the sheerest chance I had read Severin’s re-creation of The Brendan Voyage, wherein he and a hardy band sail across the North Atlantic in a ship of leather ox hides. So … this ought to be good too.

Read, and sent back

The three-body problem (2024): By Cai, Jin. – A graphic-novel version of the first of Cixin Liu’s trilogy. Authorized by Cixin Liu for a particular reason: to capture the emotional feeling of the first part of the novel, where all this really weird shit is happening, and no one can even detect it. Largely successful I would say, so read this one first and then pick up the actual novel itself (if of course you have not already done so)

Ngaio Marsh project

(** == now reading)

A Man Lay Dead - murder at a house party in the countryside (introducing Inspector Alleyn)
Enter a Murderer - unusually for a Ngaio Marsh detective story, the murder occurs early
** The Nursing Home Murder(s?)

Ngaio Marsh books in order

A tragedy

The Yom Kippur War: Abraham Rabinovich

A well-researched play by play account of the two-front 1973 war, in which Egypt and Syria simultaneously launched a suprise two-pronged armor assault on an unready Israel from the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal, covered by Russia-supplied SAMS (Surface to Air Missiles) and loads of anti-tank weapons also supplied by Russia. Rabinovich interviewed nearly 150 people for this 500-page banger.

Wit

Wit’s End: James Geary – Never really using his own voice, Geary adopts other voices, exploring the propounded question ‘what is the end of wit’. Funny! Also … contains a jive dictionary.

sad it was a tragedy

Kitchens of the Great Midwest: J. Ryan Stradal

While this book has by far the best hot-chili-pepper chapter ever written, and is probably worth getting out of the library for that alone (I got the large print edition, very relaxing), I found it a bit tragic, and it did not really have much description of the upper midwest, which is part of what I was looking for.

In the first chapter (there are recipes in each chapter) the mother of the protagonist Eva unconvincingly decamps to New Zealand never to be seen again, at least until the very last chapter, and Eva’s father Lars conveniently dies of a heart attack shortly thereafter, implausibly young. A tragic beginning .. but why?

Yet the book, a NY Times bestseller, is as imaginative as a Pynchon novel (while largely remaining within normal limits) except .. not being written by Pynchon. So, unfortunately, I was not able to read this one out loud to anyone.

Something I did like, though, was the occasional identifications of music ‘en scene’, which made it possible for me to say “Hey Siri play ‘Super Bon Bon’ by Soul Coughing”, or “Hey Siri play In the Airplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel”, and these turned out to be real songs, and Siri played them for me whilst I was reading that part of the book. So … pretty good success there, J. Ryan!

This is a good review of the book and it’s background – it notes that the author grows chili peppers in his backyard garden and hopes to grow heirloom tomatoes one day.

just finished, but still thinking about

Salinger’s Soul: : His Personal & Religious Odyssey Paperback – 2024 - Stephen B. Shepard

My friend gave me Stephen B Shepard’s book “Salinger’s Soul”, about the life and writing of J.D. Salinger, especially from the religious perspective – an important part of Salinger’s life.

I did not expect to like it as much as I did: the only Salinger story I had read was “A perfect Day for Bananafish”, which ought to have had a trigger warning. I never did read any other Salinger after that, not even the still-to-this-day-bestselling “Catcher in the Rye”.

I read “Salinger’s Soul” straight through in a day or two. Among other things, it’s a good look into the publishing scene of postwar NYC, especially the New Yorker magazine. I learned a lot about Salinger too, including his WW2 and pre-WW2 experiences.

J.D., born in 1919, was on the beach in training for D-Day – a lot of good men were killed by misdirected ‘friendly fire’ during training – and then was in the battle of Hurtgen Forest, where thousands of troops lost their lives for every mile gained, and also the Battle of the Bulge. After that, Salinger’s unit liberated one of the prison camps that was part of the extended Dachau death camp network in Bavaria. But, as Shepard notes, Salinger never wrote about this – at least in his published writings to date.

read this one straight through

Kamala’s Way: An American Life Hardcover – January 12, 2021 - Dan Morain

Dan Morain covered Kamala Harris for the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. This ‘unauthorized’ biography gives you a good look at many of the challenges she faced during her time as California attorney general and before. The book concludes with Joe Biden asking her to be his vice presidential candidate. I checked this book out of the library before VP Harris became the Democratic candidate for 2024. My main conclusion from reading it is that Kamala Harris has a tendency to go for the underlying causes of a problem. This is a good book, and I would consider buying it.

earlier this summer

Big Swiss - Jen Beagin

Hilarious and unconventional. As a onetime court transcriber I enjoyed the portrayal of Hudson valley life through the eyes of a transcriber (albeit like really non-court). The author’s rendition of the Boston accent of one of the characters is alone worth the trip to the library (In Los Angeles nearly all of the library’s 30 copies are checked out. This book must be banned in a lot of places, due to possibly every adult theme imaginable. There’s a huge amount of dramatic tension around the perpetrator of violence against one of the characters getting out of prison and returning to Hudson, so if you can’t take that level of dramatic tension, probably best to avoid. One thing I did wonder about, was, is it true that in the upper Hudson River valley there is a new fad with people having mini-donkeys?

Waves in an Impossible Sea- Matt Strassler

An explanation of physics in plain English, including the Higgs field and everything. Electrons were never what you thought, not to mention photons. Written by a wavicle physicist (formerly known as a particle physicist)
Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker

the new science of sleep
Story of French.

The history of the language

A really great book I just read

The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible

This has the scariest story I have ever read, but aside from that, very readable and inspiring, but also you’ll cry.
The Moth’s first book: Fifty True Stories

Ok, this cannot possibly have been true. A preacher is traveling in the desert and his car breaks down on Saturday night, or maybe it runs out of gas, and he starts walking. After a couple of hours he sees a light and gets closer and closer, and it is … a biker bar! They are playing pool and, from a misspent youth he has the ability to run the table. Which he does! “What are you, a pool shark?” “No, I’m a preacher, I have to tell the story of Jesus tomorrow morning.” “What story is that, we have never heard that story.” So, he tells them, in a very different way than he had planned to preach from the pulpit, and they think it is amazing. Then, to the preacher’s great surprise, dressed in their biker leathers, they all come to church the next morning.

re-reading list for 2024 – now looking like 2025

The Struggle for Sea Power by Sam Willis. Really great audio book. How a little country without an army or a navy was able to manage.
The Perfectionists – Simon Winchester : how precision machining created the modern world

:   A classic enjoyable read about engineering. The block and tackle, the super flat surface, the jet engine & more!

Under A White Sky – Elizabeth Kolbert : A series of essays loosely connected by the idea of human-engineered intervention in the natural world. (Perfect companion reading for #InOurRealmOfNature)

earlier this year

I feel Earthquakes more often than they happen (2006) – Amy Wilentz

A Los Angeles memoir I liked a lot. Found out the truth about Fiji water.
We of Little Faith (2023) – Kate Cohen

:   Surprisingly engaging account of the author's personal journey in favor of expressing one's atheism.

Returning to from time to time

```
 \*\*\* Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics - Rebecca Solnit
```
: Solnit’s essay in this volume on Eliot Porter started me on a different way of thinking about urban photography

Still on the list

Probably Overthinking It

new stats book from Allen Downey. Various paradoxes (paradice)?

You Can’t be Serious!

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Sutanto

The aunties are formidable. Both volumes have a lot of slapstick wedding action, with a high level of suspense tension page to page. Accidental murder, wedding suspense, altered states, and last but not least Tai Chi humor and of course combat, with more than a sprinkle of Singapore/Indonesia/Oxford mixed-language argot. It is to die for!

You REALLY Can’t be Serious!

(Chihuahua lowbrow humor. As opposed to Chihuahua highbrow humor?)

The Silence of the Chihuahuas by Waverly Curtis (another ‘barking dog mystery’)
The Chihuahua Alway Sniffs Twice by Waverly Curtis
Dial C for Chihuahua by Waverly Curtis (not as good as the sequels)

Set in Seattle, these are jaunty!

Exercise books

Built from Broken – Scott Hogan A science-based guide to healing painful joints, preventing injuries, and healing your body. : By a certified personal trainer (CPT). Solid posture improvement in just 3 days of only one (1) exercise. Spoiler alert: you have to do the exercise

You are your own Gym – Mark Lauren : A covid quarantine classic!!!

--- title: "Books on the Table 2024" image: bookstacksm.webp about: template: trestles --- Thinking about ... I'm starting to think of my '[best of 2024](BestOf2024.html "My best reads of 2024")' reads, but meanwhile, here are the books on the table now: ## NEW on the table - Furta Sacra: by Patrick J. Geary I picked up the 1990 revision because I always thought Geary's 'Before France and Germany', about the Merovingians was terrific. Great sentences, great thought. What I had forgotten (perhaps) was that I had to look up terms (mostly Latin and -- I think -- Greek) all the time. The funny thing about this one -- the theft of religous relics -- is that it's not really about historical events 'per se' ('per se' being a Latin term which means 'intrinsically' ), but that it calls up Baudolino, one of the slowest-reading novels I've read, which was about the sack of Istanbul (the Fourth Crusade) and the ideas of Baudolino et al ('et al' being a latin abbreviation for 'and others') that what they *really* needed was a relic of St. John the Baptist, possibly a finger, which they could get somewhere in the lands to the East of Jerusalem. And in the most essential 'Handlist of Relic Thefts' appendix which accompanies 'Furta Sacra', we find this: \>\>"John the Baptist. The archdeacon of Archbishop Rufus of Turin attempts to steal the finger of John the Baptist from Maurienne and is struck dead. Early ninth century?"\<\< The great thing about [Baudolino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudolino) (Umberto Eco), the novel, is that you can read a page, and then put it down for day -- or even more -- and then when you pick it up again, there you are! Total continuity! ## On the table! - The Washington book : how to read politics and politicians (2024): By Lozada, Carlos. The author has read 150 'Washington Books' so that you won't have to. I was skeptical, but just opened up and started reading. - (2020) : by Kamala Harris. Picked this one up because Lozada talks about the final chapter, 'What I have learned'. - In too deep (2024): By Child, Lee -- The latest Reacher. A bit peculiar and things just don't add up. Reacher doesn't remember anything after a car crash & has had a concussion but doesn't seem to have all that many of the symptoms. Unreliable narrators abound. The voice seems off, too. I returned it before I got in too deep. ## About to be on the table! - The verge : Reformation, Renaissance, and forty years that shook the world (2021) By Wyman, Patrick - The myth of nations : the medieval origins of Europe (2002) by Patrick J. Geary - The wisdom of plagues : lessons from 25 years of covering pandemics (2024): by Donald G. McNeil, Jr - Crusader: By Horse to Jerusalem: by Tim Severin (2001). Severin and one companion ride horseback from Chateau Bouillon (in Belgium) to Jerusalem, following the route of the First Crusade. Through the sheerest chance I had read Severin's re-creation of The Brendan Voyage, wherein he and a hardy band sail across the North Atlantic in a ship of leather ox hides. So ... this ought to be good too. ## Read, and sent back - The three-body problem (2024): By Cai, Jin. -- A graphic-novel version of the first of Cixin Liu's trilogy. Authorized by Cixin Liu for a particular reason: to capture the emotional feeling of the first part of the novel, where all this really weird shit is happening, and no one can even detect it. Largely successful I would say, so read this one first and then pick up the actual novel itself (if of course you have not already done so) ## Ngaio Marsh project (\*\* == now reading) 1. A Man Lay Dead - murder at a house party in the countryside (introducing Inspector Alleyn) 2. Enter a Murderer - unusually for a Ngaio Marsh detective story, the murder occurs early 3. \*\* The Nursing Home Murder(s?) [Ngaio Marsh books in order](https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/ngaio-marsh/) ## A tragedy - The Yom Kippur War: Abraham Rabinovich A well-researched play by play account of the two-front 1973 war, in which Egypt and Syria simultaneously launched a suprise two-pronged armor assault on an unready Israel from the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal, covered by Russia-supplied SAMS (Surface to Air Missiles) and loads of anti-tank weapons also supplied by Russia. Rabinovich interviewed nearly 150 people for this 500-page banger. ## Wit - Wit's End: James Geary -- Never really using his own voice, Geary adopts other voices, exploring the propounded question 'what is the end of wit'. Funny! Also ... contains a jive dictionary. ## sad it was a tragedy - Kitchens of the Great Midwest: J. Ryan Stradal While this book has by far the best hot-chili-pepper chapter ever written, and is probably worth getting out of the library for that alone (I got the large print edition, very relaxing), I found it a bit tragic, and it did not really have much description of the upper midwest, which is part of what I was looking for. In the first chapter (there are recipes in each chapter) the mother of the protagonist Eva unconvincingly decamps to New Zealand never to be seen again, at least until the very last chapter, and Eva's father Lars conveniently dies of a heart attack shortly thereafter, implausibly young. A tragic beginning .. but why? Yet the book, a NY Times bestseller, is as imaginative as a Pynchon novel (while largely remaining within normal limits) except .. not being written by Pynchon. So, unfortunately, I was not able to read this one out loud to anyone. Something I did like, though, was the occasional identifications of music 'en scene', which made it possible for me to say "Hey Siri play 'Super Bon Bon' by Soul Coughing", or "Hey Siri play In the Airplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel", and these turned out to be real songs, and Siri played them for me whilst I was reading that part of the book. So ... pretty good success there, J. Ryan! This is a [good review of the book and it's background](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/j-ryan-stradal-novelist-and-parttime-pepper-farmer-tells-of-life-on-the-prairie-10430892.html "Explains how J Ryan Stradal wrote this book for his mother: great read") – it notes that the author grows chili peppers in his backyard garden and hopes to grow heirloom tomatoes one day. ## just finished, but still thinking about - Salinger's Soul: : His Personal & Religious Odyssey Paperback – 2024 - Stephen B. Shepard My friend gave me Stephen B Shepard's book "Salinger's Soul", about the life and writing of J.D. Salinger, especially from the religious perspective -- an important part of Salinger's life. I did not expect to like it as much as I did: the only Salinger story I had read was "A perfect Day for Bananafish", which ought to have had a trigger warning. I never did read any other Salinger after that, not even the still-to-this-day-bestselling "Catcher in the Rye". I read "Salinger's Soul" straight through in a day or two. Among other things, it's a good look into the publishing scene of postwar NYC, especially the New Yorker magazine. I learned a lot about Salinger too, including his WW2 and pre-WW2 experiences. J.D., born in 1919, was on the beach in training for D-Day -- a lot of good men were killed by misdirected 'friendly fire' during training -- and then was in the battle of [Hurtgen Forest](https://www.eifel.info/en/a-museum-huertgenwald-1944 "Hurtgen Forest Museum website"), where thousands of troops lost their lives for every mile gained, and also the Battle of the Bulge. After that, Salinger's unit liberated one of the prison camps that was part of the extended Dachau death camp network in Bavaria. But, as Shepard notes, Salinger never wrote about this -- at least in his published writings to date. ## read this one straight through - Kamala's Way: An American Life Hardcover – January 12, 2021 - Dan Morain Dan Morain covered Kamala Harris for the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. This 'unauthorized' biography gives you a good look at many of the challenges she faced during her time as California attorney general and before. The book concludes with Joe Biden asking her to be his vice presidential candidate. I checked this book out of the library before VP Harris became the Democratic candidate for 2024. My main conclusion from reading it is that Kamala Harris has a tendency to go for the underlying causes of a problem. This is a good book, and I would consider buying it. # earlier this summer - Big Swiss - Jen Beagin Hilarious and unconventional. As a onetime court transcriber I enjoyed the portrayal of Hudson valley life through the eyes of a transcriber (albeit like *really* non-court). The author's rendition of the Boston accent of one of the characters is alone worth the trip to the library (In Los Angeles nearly all of the library's 30 copies are checked out. This book must be banned in a lot of places, due to possibly every adult theme imaginable. There's a huge amount of dramatic tension around the perpetrator of violence against one of the characters getting out of prison and returning to Hudson, so if you can't take that level of dramatic tension, probably best to avoid. One thing I did wonder about, was, is it true that in the upper Hudson River valley there is a new fad with people having mini-donkeys? - Waves in an Impossible Sea- Matt Strassler : An explanation of physics in plain English, including the Higgs field and everything. Electrons were never what you thought, not to mention photons. Written by a wavicle physicist (formerly known as a particle physicist) - Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker : the new science of sleep - Story of French. : The history of the language ### A really great book I just read - The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible : This has the scariest story I have ever read, but aside from that, very readable and inspiring, but also you'll cry. - The Moth's first book: Fifty True Stories Ok, this cannot possibly have been true. A preacher is traveling in the desert and his car breaks down on Saturday night, or maybe it runs out of gas, and he starts walking. After a couple of hours he sees a light and gets closer and closer, and it is ... a biker bar! They are playing pool and, from a misspent youth he has the ability to run the table. Which he does! "What are you, a pool shark?" "No, I'm a preacher, I have to tell the story of Jesus tomorrow morning." "What story is that, we have never heard that story." So, he tells them, in a very different way than he had planned to preach from the pulpit, and they think it is amazing. Then, to the preacher's great surprise, dressed in their biker leathers, they all come to church the next morning. ### re-reading list for 2024 -- now looking like 2025 - The Struggle for Sea Power by Sam Willis. Really great audio book. How a little country without an army or a navy was able to manage. - The Perfectionists -- Simon Winchester : how precision machining created the modern world ``` : A classic enjoyable read about engineering. The block and tackle, the super flat surface, the jet engine & more! ``` - Under A White Sky -- Elizabeth Kolbert : A series of essays loosely connected by the idea of human-engineered intervention in the natural world. (Perfect companion reading for #InOurRealmOfNature) ### earlier this year - I feel Earthquakes more often than they happen (2006) -- Amy Wilentz : A Los Angeles memoir I liked a lot. Found out the truth about Fiji water. - We of Little Faith (2023) -- Kate Cohen ``` : Surprisingly engaging account of the author's personal journey in favor of expressing one's atheism. ``` ### Returning to from time to time - ``` \*\*\* Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics - Rebecca Solnit ``` : Solnit's essay in this volume on Eliot Porter started me on a different way of thinking about urban photography ### Still on the list - Probably Overthinking It : new stats book from Allen Downey. Various paradoxes (paradice)? ### You Can't be Serious! - Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto - Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Sutanto The aunties are formidable. Both volumes have a lot of slapstick wedding action, with a high level of suspense tension page to page. Accidental murder, wedding suspense, altered states, and last but not least Tai Chi humor and of course combat, with more than a sprinkle of Singapore/Indonesia/Oxford mixed-language argot. It is to die for! ### You REALLY Can't be Serious! (Chihuahua lowbrow humor. As opposed to Chihuahua highbrow humor?) - The Silence of the Chihuahuas by Waverly Curtis (another 'barking dog mystery') - The Chihuahua Alway Sniffs Twice by Waverly Curtis - Dial C for Chihuahua by Waverly Curtis (not as good as the sequels) Set in Seattle, these are jaunty! ### Finished these awhile back -- still recommend & would read them again - A Matter of Trust -- Meenakshi Ahamed. India's relations with the US from Truman to Trump. Clear exposition of India history of the last 75 years - \*\*\* We Shall be Masters -- Chris Miller About Russia and the Far East The most interesting chapter has been on the railroad through Manchuria - \*\*\* Lords of Finance -- Liaquat Ahamed. Following Montagu Norman, Benjamin Strong, Hjalmar Schacht & Emile Moreau: the 4 central bankers leading up to the 1929 crash. A good one. - Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) (2028) -- Sam Wineburg (one review says Chapter 7 -- "Why Google Can't Save Us" -- knocked my socks off with its stories. Very glad I got new socks for Christmas) ### Exercise books [Built from Broken -- Scott Hogan](https://saltwrap.com/pages/built-from-broken) A science-based guide to healing painful joints, preventing injuries, and healing your body. : By a certified personal trainer (CPT). Solid posture improvement in just 3 days of only one (1) exercise. Spoiler alert: you have to do the exercise You are your own Gym -- Mark Lauren : A covid quarantine classic!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------