Quite a Lot of Books

 It's been a while since I did a book post, but then I was reading some rather long books and then they kept interacting with each other in my head and I wanted to get them to settle down a bit before I reviewed them. 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: This was in my childhood re-read slot. People do ask about its suitability for children a lot. Well, there's obviously murders but things are pretty tamely described for nowadays. Yes, Holmes does do cocaine occasionally between cases to keep his brain busy and Watson lectures him about it. It's an interesting glimpse into a pre-prohibition world and I don't know of any cases of children becoming drug users because of the example of Sherlock Holmes. 

I've also seen charges of racism, which I think is unfair. There are some terms that are no longer polite, but not used intentionally to be demeaning. And there are characters who express contemporary attitudes, but not once does a stereotype prove to be the solution to the problem. Indeed, that would be antithetical to the whole nature of Sherlock Holmes to accept a prejudice instead of probing to the facts. His attitude toward women is also surprisingly even-handed. He'll take facts wherever he can find them. 

In spite of all that's come down since they're still quite readable. Holmes is definitely not the detective you'd want to have over for dinner (that would be Father Brown if I'm cooking, Precious Ramotswe if she's cooking, or Lord Peter if he--or rather Bunter--is acquiring the comestibles elsewhere). But he's fun to watch. Which is probably because, despite his emphasis on logic and reason, he's not a dispassionate emotionally repressed person (even if he and Watson both believe he is). His passions are just entirely focused on problem-solving. 

Radium Girls by Kate Moore. This was our previous book club read and it was grim but fascinating. It might help to have a little more charity towards skeptics of the latest greatest new thing to recall that over the last two hundred years there have been quite a few new things that we didn't know, or didn't fully grasp, all the downsides of. Science can only tell us the answers to questions we have thought to ask; experience tells us answers to questions we don't even know about. 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I usually do *not* like books that are currently popular, but I gave this one a try and to my surprise I loved it. It was a little fast-paced for my taste but so well done and it had one of my favorite sci-fi themes of figuring out communication and what things are essential and what things are variable for sapient life and just fun nerdy buddies. I liked it so much I talked my book club into doing it for our next selection, it was time for something lighter after Radium Girls. I also read The Martian and then DOB and I watched the movie, both were fun. 

The Resilience Myth by Soraya Chemaly and The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate. I'm putting these together not just because of the title overlap because they have a lot of common themes and I think the same glaring blind spot. Resilience's main point that treating resilience as a sort of internal mental toughness that people need to just have all by themselves is false and often actively destructive; sometimes we need to avoid harmful situations, lots of bad things *don't* make us stronger, and all of us need the care and support of others. Normal expands on Mate's common theme of the role of trauma in addictive behavior to look at physical and mental health and all sorts of social toxicity. Resilience I felt like was much longer than it needed to be and the author got bogged down fitting everything in the world into her hypothesis which somehow exactly matched up with well-drawn political lines which rather detracted from the usefulness or uniqueness of what she had to say. Mate at least has the humility to see some of society's problems in his own mirror. 

The starting point for both of them seems to be an assumption that modern society is unusually bad/stressful/toxic in various ways. And I always wonder about that. Not that we don't have plenty of problems. But are they genuinely *worse* than other humans have dealt with through time? Do we really suffer more than others in the past? That seems hard to swallow with almost any reading of history. Or perhaps we are not suffering more, but dealing with it worse--in which case we should probably be looking not just to the things that have always been there (war, poverty, prejudice, violence), but to things that have actually changed, including the changes that we like. Or again perhaps we're not suffering more *or* dealing with it worse we are just more often surviving things that would have killed past humans and needing coping skills to deal with the fallout.

And one thing I think they both brush on but don't genuinely appreciate is that the things they want to see more of are inherently in conflict. Mate expounds on this the most; he talks about the deep human needs for attachment and authenticity. He almost brushes against the potential tension between these two values but then scurries away from it and spends his entire final section devoted to advising people on how to deepen authenticity in their life without really delving in to how much in conflict this value is with the level of human support and connection that would be needed to provide people the support he advocates for in the beginning of the book. Whenever I hear someone declaiming on their journey to authenticity and self-care I always listen to the undertones because you can almost always detect quite a lot of people who were cut off or abandoned along the way. And then what became of *those* people's journey to authenticity? The same, probably, and the end result is a lot of very authentic but very lonely people. 

If there's one thing modern (American, at least, but from what I can tell it's pretty far spread by now) humans, of every political persuasion, are in agreement on it is that they should be absolutely free from constraint and judgment in their personal lifestyle choices. (Indeed, if authenticity is really what we're missing how is it the past seventy years of devotion to authenticity have not improved matters?) We don't have a lot of first-hand accounts from hunter-gatherers but we have quite a lot of information from small closely-knit agricultural communities and they are unanimous that the kind of village that provides comfort and support through the ups and downs of life is also insular, judgmental, intrusive, rife with gossip, and harsh on nonconformists. There have also been quite a few attempts to live a simpler, communal life closer to nature since the Industrial Revolution and the ones that didn't turn into sex or death cults mostly seem to have just fizzled out as staying alive is hard on those terms and the comforts of industrialization, even for the poor, are quite alluring.

Humans are social creatures, but like most social creatures, a lot of that socialization is squabbling. We can't be close without stepping on each other's toes. One person's allergy is another person's emotional support animal. To have the benefits of a group, we all have to give up some perfectly valid and good parts of ourselves, like trees in a forest losing their lower branches. To take an example Mate trips all over without noticing, he speaks vigorously of the need for greater support for parents and young children so that children can have the emotional and physical safety they need to thrive. Well and good. But he never openly acknowledges that to do that we would have to, as a society, assert that parenthood was a lifestyle choice that is deserving of an extra degree of social support--thus implying that it is in some ways *better* than not being a parent. Sure, that'll go over well.

Both authors spend plenty of time critiquing the downsides of capitalism, everyone's favorite whipping boy, without really proposing a viable alternative. The world not being made up of pure distillation of 19th-century economic theories, the reality is that we don't have competing systems in the modern world. Every major modernized country has a capitalized private sector that is then taxed and regulated to various degrees to support various kinds of public programs. Differences are in the details but the common unquestioned basis is money, which allows us to get the benefit of the labor of other people (which we could not survive without) without needing any kind of personal relationship with them. It is a system designed for individual authenticity--and solitude. And that is probably why neither author can point to a place where more generous social programs than the US are making that much of a dent in the essential modern problems. The impersonal transactions of modern life (mediated by the government or not) cannot provide a community. As someone who works around the edges of public systems, both getting people in, keeping people on, and kicking people out, I can attest that the world of public benefits is still a terribly lonely one. 

Anyway, while I think Mate is right in bringing light to the role trauma plays in both physical health and addictive behaviors, he does tend to overstate his case. If you define trauma so broadly that everyone has it, and addiction so broadly that everyone suffers from it, then you're definitely going to land at 100% correlation but still not have shown causation. We could certainly do with looking at more than the merely physical and finding connection and support for the struggling instead of relying on, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled." But looking solely inward doesn't seem quite the right direction.

I thought this article had some interesting counterpoints to the assertions in both these books. I have done plenty of therapy and found it helpful but it is at best a tool, not a goal. And tools can be easily misused, as I was reminded of meeting with a young man who was facing a much-deserved protective order from his ex-girlfriend. As I was advising him of what he could tell the court to hopefully get an order that would minimize its impact on his future career, I suggested he could promise to go to therapy. "Oh I've been in therapy for years," he proudly asserted, "I've got a great therapist." In many ways therapy is a commercialized lopsided substitute for genuine human connection. We are about equal parts matter and story. Sometimes therapy can help us tell ourselves better stories. But we still have to choose which stories we allow to shape us. 

Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen by Garth Nix. This was a fun re-read. I got these books for Dame for Christmas because I know she will love them when she actually reads them but being 16 she is always in doubt about anything I recommend. But she has been gone since New Years' (Bookworm has taken over her schooling and with our house being currently in turmoil while we put on an addition for Bookworm and Rocketboy to move in, it just made more sense for her to stay with them until we are all ready for the move), I decided *I* might as well re-read them. They're one of the few depictions of necromancy that I find intriguing (bells--so lovely and mysterious) with intriguing characters and worldbuilding. (Like the series below, they're not actually a trilogy as such--they're a stand-alone followed by a duology.) 

The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. I did a search and it appears I've never really reviewed these on here which is wild because they are undoubtedly at the top of my list of books I've found as an adult. They are fantasy, but the only real fantasy element is the quintarian religious system which manages to be both natural and transcendent, organized and organic. The main characters are mostly failures, usually middle aged, traumatized and cursed. And therefore in a position to be used by the gods. They certainly have much that is grim but they are also profoundly hopeful and real.

Intimations of Mortality

Our new year began with the sad news of DOB's Uncle Dan's sudden passing. This, in turn, spurred an unplanned trip to Ohio for the first time in 15 years, along with Duchess, Mr. Duchess, and Dash.  DOB wound up spending about ten hours on the phone straightening out the tickets. Duchess coordinated entertainment and snacks, Dash navigated, and Mr. Duchess pushed the wheelchair (DOB does not trust his power chair to the tender mercies of the airlines). I showed up and didn't lose anything I was carrying (except my lunch, once) and was very much reminded why we never tried to do this with four small children. 

The bittersweet thing about funerals that starts coming home in midlife is that they are often the only time you get together and see all the rest of the people. We were able to stay parceled out amongst DOB's two youngest brothers and their families, meet the baby neiphlings, see DOB's parents and other aunt and uncle, visit our old church and show Duchess and Dash our early houses and the parks we always played at. (Everything being covered with a foot of snow, we mostly viewed things from inside the cars.) 

We also caught the norovirus, which delayed Duchess and Mr. Duchess traveling back with us. This may have contributed to the unwise moment when Dash and DOB decided to try traversing the moving sidewalk with the wheelchair. The first one went uneventfully, even with DOB dragging a wheeled carryon alongside him and Dash having a massive backpack on. So we got on another, me trailing behind carrying a large carryon, my purse, two coats, a water bottle, and a badly wrapped sandwich. And then at the end of the second moving sidewalk, the front wheels jammed and Dash and I were stuck behind walking briskly in place to keep from being crushed into the back of the wheelchair with no room to get around the extra wheeled carry on. I realized something needed to be done to change the situation and the best thing I could think of was to fling myself--bags, coats and snacks entire--over the top of DOB to get to the other side of the sidewalk and then tug the wheels loose from that side. Somehow I did this and then did indeed manage to drag the chair off the sidewalk, although by this time the back wheel tire had also come off. We were flung about in the debris of this encounter and trying to wedge the tire back on when a flight attendant strolled by and remarked blandly, "You're not supposed to do that." No kidding. (Yes, there was an emergency kill switch, but no, I did not notice it in time to use it.)

After we returned home I went to the eye doctor's to pick up my very first pair of driving glasses. This is probably not a big deal to those who have worn glasses their entire lives, but for me it is a big step, and not just the physical adaptation to having something on my face (hopefully at some point without triggering a headache). Every other sign of aging one could probably address in some way with more yoga or less fat or eating three pumpkin seeds by the light of the crescent moon, but this just is: your eyes are old. They are getting older. It will not get better. It will just get worse, and worse, until you die. I did the math today and realized that Uncle Dan was just about the age DOB and I are now when I joined the family. Those 22 years went quickly and I do not know if I have another 10, like my mother, or 22, like Uncle Dan, or even 46 like some of my grandparents. But I very likely have less ahead of me than behind of me. 

The Ends of the Earth

 I have somewhat mixed feelings about keeping track of my reading . . . or, well, anything I'm not required to . . . but it was rather nice to be able to come up with some titles when everyone else starts posting year in reviews of their books. Like my newfound ability to sort laundry, it may be concrete evidence that the neurofeedback I've been doing really is helping with the ADHD. Nonetheless I'm sure I'm missing some here.

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. This was actually back in the summer but I keep forgetting to list it. Chesterton once observed that the stereotype of the "stiff upper lip" British man does not appear in history--back when men were men they were always falling in each other's arms and weeping. Nor does he appear much in literature--Shakespeare's men are not emotionally repressed, not even Dickens'. However, here he is at last. His name is Phileas Fogg. Wow, is he boring. He can travel around the world without disrupting his whist game. His assertion that this feat can be done by mathematics is wrong; it is done by spending a ridiculous amount of money at every obstacle, which, unsurprisingly, can accomplish quite a lot. This is an unapologetically imperialist book. At the same time, it is impossible not to be infected with wonder at the possibilities of a whole world opened up. But Phileas Fogg is the exception. He does not care. He will go back to playing whist. Aouda should have run off with Passepartout. 

 Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World by William Alexander. As recommended by Ordinary and Oblique, this was a fun read and definitely the one to do if you want to regale your helpless family with obscure tomato facts. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Emily Dickinson once described poetry as feeling as if the top of one's head has come off, and that's how I felt throughout this book. Intense, vivid word pictures and dialogues. "Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun. So Janie had another day." "Janie, Ah done watched it time and time again; each and every white man think he know all de GOOD darkies already. He don't need tuh know no mo'. So far as he's concerned, all dem he don't know oughta be tried and sentenced tuh six months behind de United States privy house at hard smellin'." Janie herself is a kindred spirit to Dorothea from Middlemarch--a woman who wants not to be an ornament to some man's grand plan for life, but a fully loved and seen partner. Someone who is willing to throw away (relative) wealth in pursuit of that but must deal with the (not inconsiderable) risk that she will throw it away and get nothing in return. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune. This was a book club pick which I only finished because I felt guilty about not finishing the previous selection. It is not really fair to criticize a book that is trying to be predictable and cozy for being trite and cloying, so I will just rant about a modern myth that I find particularly insidious: the myth of "finding your tribe." Somewhere out there, this runs, there is a group of people who will love and accept you just as they are; this tribe, of course, is the exact opposite of any historic concept of tribe--your existing family, neighbors, co-workers are all ineligible, they are all, if not actually terrible people, at least unworthy of notice because they don't "get" you. (You must not, under any circumstance, pause to ask if you have exerted any effort to "get" them.) What this myth fails to mention is that as soon as you change in some small degree from what fits this new "tribe" you will be summarily dismissed from it. It is as transitory as its basis, which is a current blend of stage of life and philosophical alignment, all of which are not only likely, but virtually guaranteed, to change.

What I fear is that the modern pressures of society and technology against community are so immense that it is nearly impossible to form any community for any length of time without an unhealthy element of control or hostility to outsiders. I do what I can by talking to the neighbors but it hardly seems sufficient.

 South by Ernest Shackleton: On the other hand, what's always been really good at forming community is shared struggle. Humans are perhaps at their best when struggling against the elements together. But even a century ago people had to travel to Antarctica to get much of a struggle in that regard. Anyway, this has been quite engrossing and it's nice to get it straight from the original instead of retellings--there are a lot more longitude and latitude readings and a lot less second-guessing. We forgot the worming medicine for the dogs. Whoops. Carry on. Mistakes are inevitable but we will get through today and keep trying. 

What Monstrous Gods by Rosamund Hodge. This was a fun read with some intriguing philosophical elements. Theological horror, you might call it.  I would throw in another Chesterton quote here but one is probably enough per post. 

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. OK now I am finally tackling some serious Sanderson and I've got to admit, it's quite good. Huge world-building and deep character development at the same time. But I've really got to start these closer to when I get them from the library if they are ever to be back on time. 

Curated Pairings

This is probably of interest only to me, but while I know nothing about and don't intend to learn about wine and food pairings (I like food but don't care much for wine and figure a good hard cider goes with everything), I really enjoy appropriate book and video game pairings. 

For instance, Life Between the Tides, which broadened its scope from the tidepool to the hardships of historical Scottish life inspired another visit to the game Clanfolk, in which you help a fledgling Scottish clan get itself established and on good terms with the neighbors. (I've seen it criticized as basically being a simplified Rimworld. This I concur is true but not a criticism from me. I tend to enjoy simpler games with fewer options and a more focused scope. I do enjoy Rimworld as well, though.) Life is hard in survival games, but not nearly as hard as real life surviving has been for most people in most times.  

Then polar exploration in general such as In the Kingdom of Ice of course pairs well with Frostpunk and the recently released Frostpunk 2, in which you are trying to manage a Victorian-era city coping with a new Ice Age. They're gritty (though not as gritty as the over-18 rating would lead you to believe) and require careful planning and hard choices but it's very satisfying to stay alive in the cold. 

This is less of a book pairing but Stardew Valley, which the descendants have not entirely outgrown and we sometimes still co-op, always inspires me to get out gardening. Rocketboy set us up with potatoes in individual pots with individual sprinklers this year which was both highly manageable with my limited time and energy for gardening and felt exactly like Stardew Valley.  Brother Cadfael mysteries also always make me want to garden and that reminds me that I should hunt up A Morbid Taste for Bones for Dame who is (semi-permanently) on a medieval kick. 

The ultimate game for book lovers in general, though, has got to be Book of Hours in which you are a librarian of esoteric knowledge refurbishing the ancient halls, reading arcane books, learning new languages and cultivating strange acquaintances. It's particularly inspiring for language study, as the librarian is, of course, already fluent in several real (mostly dead) languages and learns several imaginary ones as the game progresses. 

Narnia and the North

I reread all but one of the Narnia series on our weekend getaway we did for our anniversary in early September. In publication order, of course. It was and remains a delightful journey. Some of Lewis's adult women in his other books are a bit dubious, but his children, boys and girls, are uniformly real. (One of my favorite lines, ever since I *was* a child, was the exclamation "We can pretend we are Arctic explorers!" upon entering an entirely alternate world unphased. To be a child is to live in a world where everything is both wonderful and possible.) 

There seems to be some controversy these days about ethnic diversity in fantastical fiction, though whether there is any real controversy or just a few trolls and bots is always impossible to say. (We will soon reach the point where social media is entirely taken over by AI talking to itself and then we can all go play outside again.) This seems wrong-headed to me on either end of the spectrum. 

On the one hand, there is nothing at all wrong with people telling their own stories, even if they happen to be white people, and any fantasy rooted in folktales is going to reflect its place of origin and also humanity's intrinsic ethnocentricity. There is nothing offensive about all the characters in *Monkey King* being Asian and let's remember that Westerners tend to cast Aladdin as Middle Eastern but the Middle Eastern tale sets it in China, and how they tell it in China I don't know but I bet it's somewhere far away from there. If we want more diversity the thing to do is encourage and read stories by all different kinds of people. 

 On the other hand, anyone who really loves a story should think it a great compliment if it can work in different times and places or with people of different origins. That's a testament to its power and universality as a story. A prime example of this is Shakespeare. While quasi-Elizabethan performances are common, so is every possible kind of racial swapping, gender swapping, setting swapping, and while not every production is great there is no doubt that Shakespeare works in so many settings that Shakespeare himself could never have visualized, and very few people get huffy about it. 

 Anyway, supposedly Calormen is one of those areas that is problematic in Narnia and why *The Horse and His Boy* has never been cinematized even though it is a perfectly cinematic story. But on re-read I don't see *The Horse and His Boy* version of Calormen to be offensive. Lewis did not put much effort into worldbuilding, it's true, but then nobody at all did that I can think of before Tolkien. He simply mashes together a bunch of fairy-tale settings and Calormen is simply an Arabian Nights setting. Sure, it's a dictatorial society but then let's not forget the worst tyrant of all in Narnia is the *White* Witch so there is hardly a racial monopoly on such behavior. It's also a far more civilized place than Narnia and nobody looks askance at intermarriage. (It's actually *The Last Battle* that has far more offensive references to Calormen, but at that point Narnia is an occupied country and that does tend to make even the best people testy.) 

 But in contrast to that, I would like to point out something that nobody, not even Lewis particularly, seems to remember, which is that canonically, the Telmarines are at least 50% Pacific Islander in origin, and the rest of their heritage could and should be a pretty fair racial mix because it was a crew of pirates, who were not fussy about such things. And as far as I can tell all of the human population of Narnia is Telmarine from Caspian forward. I suggest someone cast The Rock as Lord Berne, the reclaiming of the Lone Islands could be a great little action episode. 

I think my favorite of the series is *The Silver Chair*, partly because it's simply a great straightforward quest story about holding on to hope in the dark and the cold, partly because of all the children I identify most with Jill's mix of down-to-earth grit and occasionally being a show off or breaking down, and partly because Puddleglum is just the absolute best. 

 Other books I read or didn't as the case may be: 

*I Cheerfully Refuse!* by Leif Enger: Enger is one of the very few current authors I make an effort to read new books more or less as they come out (I'm still slow). This is set in a not-so-distant dystopia and built on a tragic loss, and yet it's full of light and joy and laughter and the joyful defiance of friendship. love, and literature in the teeth of cruelty and ignorance. 

 *Elder Race* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I enjoyed *Children of Time* so much I decided to check out some more, and this one was also great. It's a very quick read but it still manages to delve into the "science as magic" theme with great depth and also a thought-provoking exploration of the power and limits of dissociation as a coping method. 

 *In the Kingdom of Ice* by Hampton Sides. I have not finished this yet, but I intend to even though it is quite overdue. I still seem to be on a high seas adventure kick, and this one, about an unsuccessful attempt to find the "Open Polar Sea" has got perils, hubris, scientific advancement and follies, and the danger of taking a crewmember who is addicted to puns. After this I will probably need a Shackleton book. 

 And some I did not finish: 

*In the Kingdom of the Sick*. Despite the promising title, this was not nearly as interesting, being about how being chronically ill sucks and nobody gets it, especially doctors and insurance (public or private). While that is a valid point, I already could write several books on the topic so I don't see a point in finishing. 

 *The Dutch Wife* This was the current book club selection which I usually try to finish even if it's not my cup of tea (which realistic historical fiction seldom is) but I just couldn't do back to back chapters of rape, torture, and then more rape. For me anyway the graphic physical descriptions diminished rather than increased empathy so I called it quits.

A Wedding

 This does feel like a full circle moment, as this blog was started shortly after our own wedding and also very shortly before we found out Duchess was on the way, and now here we are. 

Professional shot

Coming out for pictures

Dinner

 

I did manage to make it on time and all siblings were present and suitably, if somewhat eccentrically, attired. (Though I realized two-thirds of the way through the day that I was wearing a mismatched set of boots. I did bring a more wedding-ish pair of heels for the ceremony but I changed back out as soon as it was over because we were getting pretty deep in mud and also I hate heels.)
 

Between Duchess and DOB they managed to orchestrate a beautiful and well-organized wedding on four weeks' notice based on Mr. Duchess's ever-shifting departure date for the Air Force. (We have been racking our brains to come up with a good blog name, but Mr. Duchess will have to do for now.) 

Our family has a long-standing joke about our surprisingly good luck with outdoor wedding weather in our very uncertain climate as over the past twenty-some years we, Their Majesties, Toolboy and his wife and a couple of years ago the oldest girl cousin all have had outdoor weddings in either September or May and the weather has uniformly been delightful. While September weather around here is a transition from the desert dry of July and August to the rainforest rest of the year, heavy rain is quite unusual and there are many beautiful days or at least beautiful hours. So we were hopeful when the weather forecast a few scattered showers with clearing.  

That is not what happened. What happened was it rained buckets, starting during the rehearsal the night before, when we scrambled to cover the tables before the decor got soaked (though Duchess had already prepared for that contingency with plastic tarps). Continuing through the rehearsal dinner, which we were supposed to have on the deck of a local restaurant but by great luck their indoor group canceled and we got the event room. And then the following day it drizzled throughout getting ready and set up, poured during the pictures, let up to a light drizzle for the ceremony in the woods, poured again for the reception, and only finally ended in time for dancing and send-off after dark. We had a few canopies to cover the meal tables but mostly everyone just got soaked. And had a marvelous time doing it. 

An Accomplishment

I have at last, for the first time ever, completed my coloring in page and obtained the library's 100-hour reader t-shirt for the summer reading program. While keeping track of time, or even the tracker, has been a barrier, I have to admit that even for me 100 hours in three months is quite a lot of reading. (DOB opines that reading for work should count but I never do count it, it's too fragmentary.) I don't listen to books in the car or while doing chores usually--I need a lot of auditory silence to function the rest of the time--so it essentially means I must eschew nearly all other leisure activities in favor of reading. It was fun to do but I'm also quite relieved to be done. I don't really need a lot of extra challenge in my life. 

My latest childhood re-read was Huckleberry Finn, which I picked up when James by Percival Everett came in at the library. It was a compelling pairing. The tone is understandably vastly different--Huck is a boy having the adventure of a lifetime, James is an adult in constant mortal peril. I didn't try to do a point-by-point comparison of the plot or timeline--most of major characters and events carry over and James has his own encounters during the portions where they are separated. The ending is completely different, but Tom's "rescue" is so absurd I don't see any way it could have fit in the more serious book. On the whole it gave a compelling perspective of what it is to live a life of oppression in a world superficially pleasant. There were a few places where James felt more like an idealized 21st century character than a genuine person in the past. For instance, while I can accept James as a skeptic, especially after sneaking Enlightenment authors out of Judge Thatcher's library, he comes across as a 21st century skeptic for whom the lack of the spiritual is a simple given not as a 19th century one always looking over his shoulder. More than that, the portrayal that all the enslaved people were feigning any religious fervor solely to pacify the white folks seemed disrespectful to the history and contribution of the African-American church. 

The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson was just plain fun. 

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope. I needed one more long public domain audiobook to get me through and this was just the ticket. Except there are some events that did not happen in this one so clearly I'm going to need to finish the Barchester Chronicles. Trollope is particular vicious in his satire of the Victorian gentry posing over birth and money in this one. Also I had to laugh at the lawyer who complained of needing to work until 9 every night and then wasting hours of time just chit-chatting. I've seen those billable records. I'm still working on getting myself to stop at 5, though. 

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline. OK, I really have been spoiled by my recent ancient history readings. This one was, despite the inspiring title, quite dull and academic and full of hedged answers and cited quotations from specialists in Mycenean pottery, which caused me to lose interest and start speculating on how one becomes a specialist in Mycenean pottery and what their lives looked like. I guess it was interesting enough for me to finish, though. 

I almost forgot because I finished it awhile ago but wanted to wait to add it to my list until after book club discussion: A Warrior of the People by Joe Starita. I read this first about a year ago and thought my book club would enjoy it, which they did. Susan LaFlesche (the first Native American to become a doctor with Western medicine) was an amazing person and the way she and her siblings threaded the balance as advocates for their people and simultaneously helping their people adapt to the changing world was thought-provoking. It definitely held up to a re-read. 

And now Duchess is getting married in two weeks so who knows what reading will occur, although I'm not really trying to contribute anything more than showing up and making sure siblings are decently attired.