I got Woody Allen's memoir on kindle and was enjoying it but just have lost my ability to read whole books much of the time so I think I read 1/4 of it.

Isn't there a thing in the beginning of We Have Always Lived in the Castle where she's talking about how, if she had known the library books she was choosing were the library books she'd have forever, she might have chosen differently? I had just checked out a couple of Irvin Yalom books and am not crazy excited to read them/have them forever. I also got a memoir by a woman who worked on the Rikers floor of Bellevue but she kind of annoys me and I read half of it. It was funny to read about stuff I knew from my old job, back when there was some point to my professional life.

Do you need to read "What Color is my Parachute?"?

I have just a little bit left on The Power. It's good and a fast read, but for some reason after reading it for a little while I just need to put it down and not read it.

That's it. Fight The Power.

of Grayskull

The third part of Hilary Mantel's Cromwelliad, which is very long, but marvellously well written, so it doesn't matter that you know what happens in the end; interspersed with The Smart Neanderthals, by Clive Finlayson, a Gibraltarian archaeologist, who discusses evidence for late Neanderthal interaction with birds driven south by the glaciers; and, for light relief, Ben Aaronovich, Rivers of London, a fantasy which is a sort of lightweight version of the early Laundry novels; and a short novel by Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark, mentioned in the other place by a former FOTB, which I cannot recommend too highly.

I thought I was sentimental about NYC, but maybe that's dwindled (and I never actually lived there). Does the book get less on-the-nose-ly allegorical as it progresses, or is it just a gusty bus you have to be okay with?

I just finished a reread of the three books so far of Terra Ignota and can't wait for the final installment (checks) 13 months later rg.

7. I believe Palmer has been ill, give her a break.

And once I finish slogging through Frank's Listen, Liberal for my book club (some interesting points but overbroad) I am eager to get back to Alexis Coe's You Never Forget Your First about George Washington.

7: Are you calling it on-the-nosey-allegorical because of what I said about it, or because you started reading it? Either way, I'd say the tone is pretty consistent throughout. I wouldn't call it allegorical, exactly? I mean, there are characters who are avatars of various cities, but that seems like a kind of fantasy that's separable from allegory.

Just finished Ben Lerner's The Topeka School. First-rate.

6: I also read and liked Enter the Aardvark. Sort of John Barth-y, at a much much shorter length.

I should try the Cromwell books. I was meh about Wolf Hall when I read it ages back, and I'm guessing I was just in the wrong mood for it. I might try it again and then read the follow ups.

if she had known the library books she was choosing were the library books she'd have forever, she might have chosen differently?

This, exactly. My roommates for the foreseeable future are The Mercies, Midnight in Chernobyl, and Ali Wong's terrible memoir.

I bought a copy of The Mirror and the Light, but I've forgotten most of Wolf Hall and the ButB, and I don't really have the attention span necessary to reread those books anymore. I just finished Long Bright River by Liz Moore, and I *think* it was very good, but it deserved a better reader than I am capable of being at the moment. I kind of wish I had saved it for when I am better able to focus.

I'm reading Lace by Shirley Conran right now (a friend wanted to "book club" it, by which she means that we text each other about it while we get drunk in the evenings), and wow is it bonkers, but this is about the level of trash I have the capacity for these days.

Oh I forgot! I just read My Dark Vanessa. Relentlessly unpleasant, but actually kind of great.

Samanta Schweblin's latest, just about to come out in English as Little Eyes; one of the best conceits I've seen from a contemporary writer trying to figure out how to talk about the internet. John Crowley's Ka: strong crow content. For nineteenth-century escapism, Wilhelm Meister, which I never got to before.

I haven't read a single thing except Calvin and Hobbes because my brain is pudding. I have a copy of the Jemisin that I bought to support the local bookshop and I'm going to try to get some traction on it today.

The last thing I tried to read was Lattimore's Iliad (after reading Madeline Miller and feeling self-conscious about putting the revisionist version ahead of the source material) and I got very bogged down in the middle books of who speared whom in which major organ with the support of which minor deity.

MINOR? I'LL SEE YOUR VOLUMETRIC FLOW RATE IN A PISSING CONTEST ANYTIME, MORTAL.

Now I half heartedly want to read the book in the OP to see if I catch the geography/transit gaffe but genre-wise I doubt it'd be for me.

I'm reading a lot of romance (typical of my post-2016 reading diet), listening to several things (among them, as I too have forgotten most of the particulars of the first 2 Cromwell books, the complete three-book audio, and also the really excellent so far space thriller The Last Astronaut by David Wellington), and have cued up quite a few books for this month that I'm hoping I have the energy to read - Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher (the coziest of fantasy writers), Network Effect by Martha Wells, Goldilocks by Laura Lam, and some series instalments that I may or may not get to.

I loved the Murderbot stories. What novels do you recommend by Wells?

19: You couldn't miss it -- it's a scene in my neighborhood/your old neighborhood and it's glaring. Bad enough that it's almost more forgivable, because it couldn't possibly be real confusion about the mass transit, it had to have been an editing screwup.

If you are into space opera, the third book in John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy recently came out, so now you can read them all without having to wait for the next one. Its about the collapse of a civilization so, you know, timely.

The funny thing about it though is in the acknowledgement section of the third book, where he blames his lateness in delivering the last manuscript on how much of a turd the year 2019 was. I guess last year must have felt like a turd, but, at this point, I don't even remember.

21: I've only read the Murderbot ones really - looking forward to Network Effect so much as I can't get enough of Murderbot. I do have the Clouds of Raksura to read....but haven't gotten around to it. (Story of my reading life.)

23: That's one of the series instalments I am hoping to get to this month....they're fun.

I've started reading them to my son, who is delighted by the number of f-bombs.

I'm spending an unhealthy amount of time doing nonograms.

Not really unhealthy.

If you've never read any Scalzi, is Old Man's War where to start? If you have a 13-year-old boy who read Old Man's War, is there a recommended next book?

I started with The Collapsing Empire, which is the first of the above-mentioned trilogy. I'm reading Old Man's War now. I don't know whats next.

The next one is The Ghost Brigades.

10: No, I commented on this in another thread - I like Jemisin but couldn't even get to the halfway point of this book. I thought it all a muchness, things like the avatars of each borough realizing they could wreak magic by taking actions evocative of the city. And the Staten Island avatar seemed an extremely one-dimensional portrait of a racially reactionary white person, although I only got to the first scene with her.

I've really enjoyed the Rivers of London series. I typically like Jemisin, too, so I'll have to pick up this new one.

That was sort of what I was wondering. It's well done to appeal to my sentimentality (and, yeah, Staten Island was a little one-note, but I don't know much about Staten Island) -- it's good, solid, detailed localism (I'm not putting my finger on the right word for it. Like nostalgia, but for here and now), but I wasn't sure there was much to the book for someone who didn't have that string to yank on. I do, and I liked it, but I'm not really surprised by your reaction.

28: Redshirts and Lock In are a lot of fun. I think in a fairly different vein from Old Man's War.

I might have to give the Jemisin a try. I really liked the Broken Earth trilogy. I've had a very hard time enjoying fiction lately. I'm really not sure why and I'm putting it down to mental overload, but I'm finding everything that I'm trying to read to be very irritating to the point of not finishing it.

It turns out my son read Orson Scott Card. Which seems different.

I actually have a connection to Inwood too; my family lived on a street right across from the park itself until I was 3, and we went back a lot in the summers. So there could have been hooks for me, but I guess not.

"Bad Blood" was interesting

37: Really? What block?

Payson, just north of Dyckman.

How is that second street pronounced?

Dike as in levee, man like man.

It turns out my son read Orson Scott Card. Which seems different.

I recently read Magic Street. I have mixed feelings about it. It's wrapped up in my uncle who passed away and I was really rooting for it to be really good, and, but, argh.

I was going to read the kids From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler next.

BTW if you want to support local bookstores rather than Jeff Bezos I recommend Bookshop.

44: My sisters and I loved that book.

Eh, maybe I should be rereading some childhood classics, even though I don't have any children available with/to whom to read them? I currently have three unfinished novels on the go, but just cannot focus enough to finish any one of them. Maybe children's lit is the answer!...

Mantel's Cromwell series has been on my 'must-read' list for the longest time, but I highly doubt I have the attention span to read the series during COVID-19 lockdown.

Oh I wasn't counting the books I'm reading my kids. I guess my brain is only half pudding. Like a chocolate cream pie.

i highly recommend the audio version of the first two mantel-cromwell books, very well read aloud. i have the third volume as a physical book, but am only now finishing out my usual series of recuperation reading, happens every single time i get really sick. so maybe i'll start it in the next week or so? have been spending the last couple of months re-reading proust, expect that to last more months.

For anyone who's discovering Martha Wells, I highly highly recommend Wheel.of the Infinite (a stand alone) and the Wizards of Ile Rien trilogy. I reread them at least once a year. Strong female characters and excellent world building, more fantasy than sf but not precious.

And as a late comment on Heebie's earlier post on starter (hope it's ok to cross threads), the King Arthur Flour website has an article on maintaining a smaller starter. Might be worth checking out but I don't have direct experience so take it for what.it's worth.

For anyone who's discovering Martha Wells, I highly highly recommend Wheel.of the Infinite (a stand alone) and the Wizards of Ile Rien trilogy. I reread them at least once a year. Strong female characters and excellent world building, more fantasy than sf but not precious.

And as a late comment on Heebie's earlier post on starter (hope it's ok to cross threads), the King Arthur Flour website has an article on maintaining a smaller starter. Might be worth checking out but I don't have direct experience so take it for what.it's worth.

Sorry about the double post, I should have known better than to try and comment from my phone. But since I'm here again I'll put in a plug for Kate Griffin's Midnight Mayor series, especially for anyone who enjoys The Rivers of London - the first one is A Madness of Angels- and Ruth Reichl's latest memoir Save Me the Plums, about her stint as editor of Gourmet.

Bread.

Brad.

Murder Hornets.

I read the murderbot novellas based on the prior recommendations here. Will look for eke's recommendations as well.

I went to a reading where Jemisin read the short story that became that book, I think before it was published. I didn't really like the conceit, and it did feel NYC pandery, but that isn't such a big deal because tons of stuff panders to NYC.

I've heard mixed about Rivers of London, but maybe I'll give it a try now that the New River forms part of the boundaries of my world and I'm already starting to personify it.

On the Cromwell books: Mentioned this elsewhere, but still slogging through Wolf Hall again. Slogging isn't the right word. I'm spending too much time focusing on the beauty of sentences and paragraphs and not making any progress.

(London must be the only place that can challenge NYC in pandering. Maybe Paris.)

On Moby's questions about Scalzi: As LB said, Ghost Brigades to continue the series. I think there were declining returns and I'm not sure if I ever read the fourth. I second Redshirts, which is a standalone that's light and sweet. And not worth its Hugo, but take it as a life-time achievement award for Scalzi's consistently high quality but not groundbreaking writing. The Interdependency trilogy that Spike mentions, and which just wrapped up, might be my favorite Scalzi, but I haven't read the last one yet.

Murderbot books are fun.

Moby, has your son read the Magic 2.0 series? Its delightfully stupid. My kid ate it up.

I haven't heard of it. I'll look into both that and Scalzi listed above. Thanks.

Oh, also I quite enjoyed the latest John le Carré book, Agent Running in the Field. It turns out that the Trump era actually makes a good background setting for spy novels because it brings the Russians back in play.

Maybe not for a 13 year old, though, unless they are particularly old a heart.

The Cold War was a different millennium.

Not locked down. Not reading. Not baking. Not in possession of grounds for complaining.

Oh, look at me, Mr. "Lives in a society that can respond competently to a crisis."

So mean, Spike. I'm feeling all left out.

Why don't you go down to a bar or other public place and cry about it?

[sob]

The Overstory is very good.

Scalzi is enjoyable fluff. Redshirts highly recommended. Old Man's War blurs in my mind with Haldeman's Forever War, but the series of linked short stories that Scalzi wrote about diplomatic misfits was very enjoyable. The style of relentless teenage wisecracking worked much better there than I thought it did in the interdependency.

59: I hugely enjoyed all le Carre's stuff up to The Russia House and none of it since; will I enjoy the latest?

Non-fiction: Christopher Andrew's "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" has been sitting on my shelf for a while and I have now got into it. Really rather good and much more readable than I expected. Up to the Congress of Vienna now and frankly amazed at the amount of crucial top-level shagging that was going on. Flashman, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Adam Tooze's "Crashed" is as good as his two previous ones, and (perhaps because it's about current events) has a lot more of the author's voice in it, particularly his irritation at various idiots in charge. The trilogy of Wages of Destruction/Deluge/Crashed could probably be called the Chimps Are Flying This Plane Trilogy.

For fluff, Scalzi, definitely, and also the John Sandford thrillers which I've recommended before, and Don Winslow's excellent Mexico trilogy.

Also playing a LOT of "Scythe" and various RPGs*, and rewatching "The Wire", which the Selkie completely missed first time around. We've started season 2. Forgotten quite how grim the opening is.

*Marcus Rowland's "Forgotten Futures" is a good setting and rules are nice and simple to learn. Set in the science fiction worlds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; so Conan Doyle, HG Wells, Edward Hope Hodgson etc.

the series of linked short stories that Scalzi wrote about diplomatic misfits was very enjoyable

"After the Coup" in particular is one of my favourite comic SF stories. "What can you tell me about my opponent?" "My assessment is that he will be short."

it brings the Russians back in play.

You can always tell when someone's just finished reading a le Carre novel because they start saying lines that belong in the cultured and languid voice of a world-weary Bernard Hepton or possibly Ian Richardson.

Ajay, have you come across the Slough House series by Mick Herron? A gloriously dreadful anti-hero and a view of the security service quite a lot more jaundiced than Le Carre on his own mob, or possibly no more jaundiced but in an up to date way.

and rewatching "The Wire"

I've been doing the same. Now a few episodes into season 5. Such a great show.

71: I have! On, I think, ttaM's recommendation. They're good, and almost very good, but after reading the first one I noticed that Herron is way too fond of cliffhangers, and in particular cliffhangers that are ambiguously described so you think something awful has happened but then it turns out to be something less awful. He puts about 7 or 8 into each book and once I noticed them I stopped being able to not notice them. Also the plot of "Spook Street" was utterly ludicrous, a real departure from the earlier ones, and a real letdown.

So they're in my "borrow, don't buy" category.

For anyone who's discovering Martha Wells, I highly highly recommend Wheel.of the Infinite (a stand alone) and the Wizards of Ile Rien trilogy. I reread them at least once a year. Strong female characters and excellent world building, more fantasy than sf but not precious.

Thanks for this! Based on your next comment, I suspect that our reading tastes overlap a great deal, so will have to look. Pretty sure I own at least some of these...

I've been playing so much Animal Crossing lately, and at least I finally realised I can do that and listen to an audio book so maybe I can pretend like it's enriching.

I mentioned to my ex-step-father that I wished I was more musical (I grew up in a house full of instruments and live music) and he immediately volunteered to buy me a guitar and have his professional guitar teacher new partner give me all the materials I could want to distance learn. (I think Zoom classes were even mentioned.) I love his enthusiasm for this but also know my complete lack of talent (I used to be able to read music and thus could kinda get by when playing the flute in school, but I sincerely have zero ability to keep a rhythm on my own...) plus not huge amounts of spare time (see aforementioned Animal Crossing addiction) might mean I take him up on a generous offer and then don't see it through. Conflicted! TL;DR - should I try and learn the guitar? I have no ambition of ever being great, just like, able to play around a campfire. I'd be happy if I could play Cat Steven's Moonshadow.

I agree about the silly ambiguous cliffhangers.

Fernand Braudel's Out of Italy.

[I should probably just accept that I'm taking over the McManus niche.]

74: Being mildly addicted to Animal Crossing has been really helpful to me this past week. If you're at all interested in not-necessarily-synchronous multiplayer stuff, I'm up for it. This is an open invitation to everyone here.

Yeah, you should learn to play a guitar. If it seems like too big a commitment of cost/space/seriousness, consider a uke as a starter (which is also worthwhile on its own).

77: Definitely. We're even in the same time zone. Are we connected at the other place? I don't think so? (But am terrible at remembering who is who.) I've put my pseudonymous email here.

I won't be paying, and have enough space, so fuck it, maybe I will go for it! It would be a good way to remain connected to that part of my family, too.

74: I am just as unmusical as you are, probably more, but I did spend a while messing around with learning guitar a while back because my ex had a bunch, and I enjoyed it -- it's a soothing thing to do even if you are terrible and stay terrible.

Probably goes over better with the neighbors than teaching yourself the kettle drums.

78: Sent!

Seconding 79. I like to pretend I'm musical but I'm not really. But a guitar is extremely therapeutic. And especially if you're getting an electric guitar (admittedly not really a Cat Stevens thing), it can be very quiet.

I don't actually know what Animal Crossing is, except that it involves a raccoon working as a slumlord and Elijah Wood.

Thirding. I've sucked at playing guitar, lo, these many years now, and enjoy it greatly, mainly as something to something to sing along to. My family, less so. Never had a lesson, just YouTube tutorials. You too can annoy your loved ones!

re guitar, i have been loaned a guitar, via a socially distanced hand off, and cannot wait to get into the shop in berkeley that is the place locally to buy them as the one i've been loaned is super fun but unambiguously too big for me, so it is fun to figure out some of the basics but wow too big. also need to get more super duper beginner materials. would v much appreciate it parenthetical if you passed along the recs for most beginnery of beginner materials! will combine with ttam's recs and make a purchase.

11: I read Leaving the Atocha Station a little while ago, and was kind of surprised to find that I really enjoyed it. I thought I might not have the capacity to enjoy literary metafiction anymore, but it was entertaining and funny. Is The Topeka School kind of a sequel?

It's worth mentioning that I cannot sing at all. I mean, I know people say that's not true and everyone can be taught, but really. I don't think it's possible. But y'all have inspired me! I'm gonna do it! It will have the added bonus that it'll make my step-dad really happy, and that if I do sing along, I can really, really annoy my husband. And the cats.

81: Fantastic re: Animal Crossing email, have just seen it. Regarding the guitar, it'll be an acoustic, but I like the idea of it being therapeutic.

I don't actually know what Animal Crossing is, except that it involves a raccoon working as a slumlord and Elijah Wood.

All you need to know, really.

I bet you sing much better once you get in the habit of doing it a lot. Not necessarily objectively well, but much better than you do now.

I remember a concert review that went something like:

"L/iz Ph/air can't sing. I said it. Yeah, I know, 'B/ob D/ylan can't sing', 'L/ou R/eed can't sing'...But L/iz P/hair really can't sing."

Still didn't stop her making one of the best albums of the 90s.

The 90s were a different time.

I had more hair, for one thing.

The trick when you can't sing is to write all your own songs so you don't have to have more than a 5-note range. Lou Reed and Liz Phair did this but Bob Dylan was trying to also write songs other singers could sing.

Anyway, what does "fucks like a volcano" even mean? Once every several decades?

Well, more hair in some places, less in others.

Well, when a mommy volcano and a daddy volcano love each other very much...

Well, well, well...

84: I think I know the shop you mean in Berkeley and yeah, that's probably a good spot for favorable price/value ratios. I don't know if there's any way currently to get guitars out of Guitar Solo; you can definitely get Gryphon in Palo Alto to ship you something. Not too many bargains currently, although this might not be too bad for the price, and it's one of these shops that in normal times sets everything up to perfection and will file individual frets down for you gratis if you complain. Since we can't have nice things anymore, everything is probably different.

I've had the sad thought that recessions must be good for guitar bargains. (The actual thought was wondering if I could pay someone to lend me their nice jazz manouche guitar for as long as they could stand to be away from it. At the end of the loan period, I would have despaired of my ability to play gypsy jazz, and the guitarist would have new shoes.)

There is cannot sing, and then there is cannot sing. I love that you guys are so encouraging. I grew up in a very musical family, was in band for years, spent all my university years living with vocal performance majors, and enthusiastically sing along to everything. I don't think it's so much my voice as my complete and utter lack of rhythm, which I suspect will also be the issue with the guitar. Actually, scratch that, I also cannot sing in key, so it's both. I would record myself but even I have a small amount of dignity.

I'd been toying about picking up the guitar again (and buying a new one) before all this, it'd be great to play while I'm in lock down.

Dignity and singing are both really overrated.

jazz manouche

I know who Django Reinhardt is, but had never heard this term. Presumably there are others in my position. I would like to announce an Unfogged amnesty where you can confess if your first thought was "Jazz manouche, jazz manouche, can you do the fandango?"

We love your SG, Barry, but you can totally have it back if you want it back. Just saying.

My vocal abilities have taken an alarming dive in the last year. Are there risk factors for loss of singing ability? I haven't been screaming at people or smoking. Indoor air quality? Not being in shape? Sunspots? Turning 40?

Dignity and singing are both really overrated.

Don't listen to him! Dignity is overrated but singing is not. I really believe that, but have to too, because of certain choices I have made...

103 was me.

96: oh god so much delicious fantasizing about when we can get out and about and go into shops and play instruments and talk to strangers ... have started making an extra loaf so i can bike it to a friend, make a socially-distanced hand off and chat from a generous 6-10' away for a bit and it is sooooo wonderful.

am also working on a mom rock playlist for a close-family-and-friends, including a collage of pictures of mom-with-young-one(s) as cover art, involves collecting pictures from partners and children and let me tell you it is a wonderful thing, highly recommend. not much better than getting wonderful photos in your inbox.

101 I know and maybe one day I will ask but for now I'm happy it's in very good hands and getting lots of love.

"Jazz Manouche" would be a great pseud.

Jasmine Ouche

I have to agree with the whole "stuck with THIS library book?" resentment. It wasn't bad, but I've been committed to using the library for the last decade since books were taking over our house, and now I wish I had some of them around.

That said, it's not like I lack for books. I decided to read the Vimes Discworld novels, since my wife enjoyed them so much (and I remember the same for a few of you here too). I've chomped through most of the watch novels, and am currently reading Thud, which seems to be near the end of the watch timeline. They've been exactly the lightweight read that's perfect for now, since deep focus isn't easy these days.

I should finally go back to reading "Mort".

If anyone wants to listen to someone who can sing, I've been cruising through the Dolly Parton's America podcasts, and Dolly really is every bit as wonderful as I always thought she was.

I'm not disagreeing, but she's a little intense if you say "hello" to her friend.

I'm still slowly making my way through What Hath God Wrought, Europe and the People without History, and Josephus. They're all quite good.

I also recently learned that my undergrad alma mater provides JSTOR access to alumni, which is a relatively new thing (it was definitely not the case when I graduated) and kind of a game-changer in terms of access to scholarship for purposes of blogging and so forth. I've been thinking about doing a blog post about the effects of Old World epidemics on Native American populations, which seems topical these days, so I've been going through the articles I already have that are relevant and downloading additional ones.

113 -- ++

Any blog posting will have to wait until we're done with the deck project, but that should only take another week or so.

Anyway, what does "fucks like a volcano" even mean? Once every several decades?

Volcanos exhibit a high degree of diversity in whatever the relevant analogous properties are. We must sadly accept that Liz Phair, although accomplished, is probably not a recognized expert in geology.

Re: Animal Crossing, there's two ways I've found useful to understand it. First, it's The Sims but cutesy and Japanese. Second, it presents an absolutely wonderful idea of what a child thinks being an adult is like. Yeah, you gotta pay off some kinda shady character for your house. But he doesn't shake you down, there's no interest, and no deadline. Just pay it off whenever. The only thing not paying it means is that you can't get a bigger house. You spend most of your days socializing with friends, going fishing, and collecting bugs. I guess the third understanding is that it's an idealization of what a worker thinks retirement is. Always one stage of life ahead...

97: I'm not quite tone-deaf but I am certainly tone-challenged. Fretted string instruments make that pretty much a non-issue, besides tuning, and you can work around that by getting a guitar tuner. Nowadays, there are phone apps that do that for free. I have been considering buying a cheap guitar here, or possibly trying something more adventurous (for me) like a violin. It really is a great time to learn a new skill.

112: What Hath God Wrought is *really* good. Sadly WHGW and BCoF are vastly superior to the other books in the series, at least in terms of writing quality. I'd be interested in hearing more about the experience of reading Josephus.

113: Uh...hrm...my wife is an alumna, so I might have to take advantage of that. I had tried looking into things here that did so, and they're all awfully expensive. Pghers, the library system there is giving off-site JSTOR access at least until the end of June, but not sure if this is different from what JSTOR is opening up on its own.

Europe and the People Without History is great!

Seconding the rec of _Wheel of the Infinite_. It's one of my favorites of SFF one-volume novels: all that good stuff and likeable characters but it's a story and that's where it ends. Bracing. See also McKinley's Sunshine, my favorite vampire novel, and Spinning Silver.

112, 116. I liked Jewish War a lot, I heven't read Antiquities

The Romans didn't like it one bit.

I'm still in the part of Antiquities where's he's basically just paraphrasing the Bible, so it's not all that interesting content-wise but it is interesting to see the difference in style. It's definitely written in the style of Greco-Roman historical writing rather than the Biblical style. He has these occasional digressions where he expounds on the moral virtues displayed by one of the characters and so forth.

Josephus is the central character in Lion Feuchtwanger's fictionalized triptych biography. The books revolve around the personal and practical disfficulties of assimilation. F wrote the novels in exile in the thirties. I liked them a lot.

DQ, I didn't miss your request for resources, just forgot to respond to it. I will pass on anything I can!

Teo, please write that post, I'd love to read it.

What Hath God Wrought was really useful for teaching - a good synthesis. I am still buying history books all the time, even though I find actually reading them a little painful. Once upon a time that was my job, and now it's not, and I just realise how out of touch I am now. So instead I buy them and read the introductions and then abandon them.

116: I can hear when things are off key, I just can't make my voice do what it should. So hopefully that will make the guitar experimentation less weird.

Oh, Clew, I love Sunshine so much! I just checked and I do own Wheel of the Infinite so I'll try moving it up the TBR!

2nd 123.2.

Teo has the best cannibalism blog.

Thanks, guys. I hadn't been feeling a lot of inspiration lately, in addition to being busy and not having much time, but this idea came to me recently and I think it has a lot of potential.

125: And potentially newly relevant.

Let's face it, guys, we'll the cannibalized, not the cannibals.

Someone can wait 500 years and write about the poop made from us.

The Poop We Became: worst sequel ever.

The Once and Future Poop.

116: We must sadly accept that Liz Phair, although accomplished, is probably not a recognized expert in geology.

One of the library books on my shelf waiting to be read is her memoirs so I'll find out if she is.

Am reading long sweeping histories of of stuff because I'm all about hand-wavy generalist. Mixed. Am enjoying Grayling's The History of Philosophy well enough (but can see some of what led to a dismissive review in the Guardian), as well as Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. A history of maps (Garfield) was serviceable but not that well-organized or written. Just starting Sapiens and finding it thought-provoking in a Jared Diamondesque way, but he is rather breezy and I think prone to over-generalization (but what you sign up for with this kind of thing I guess). Scholarly reviews are exactly as you might expect: "...whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously. I see where heenbie was listening to it on a roadtrip per a blog post, but only reported halfway through and I think someone else mentioned it here recently.

I'm reading (a newish translation of) War and Peace. It's (still) about Russia.

I'm rewatching Foyle's War, because everything else on my tv is pure shite, and just a steaming pile of poop.

If I were a better person, I would be diligently reading Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy, of course.

On the TV machine have been watching The Wire (first time for me, a re-watch for my wife) and the gorgeously shot My Brilliant Friend, Ozark, and War of the Worlds. But I am curious about any Schitt's Creek fans out there. We like to intersperse with short , light comedies and I suggested Schitt's, but its stupidity repelled my wife before the end of the first episode. I have kept it up through the first season because I kind of like stupid (and it has been really, really stupid so far) and have also had it recommended by people who aren't generally into that sort of thing so am curious what appeals to them (and I also usually like Levy and O'Hara). I will probably stick with it, but it's no Trailer Park Boys. (I do see that later seasons got generally more positive reviews.)

We're halfway through the first season of Schitt's Creek. Yes, it's stupid. But it's fun observing the peculiarities of the Roses. As they get more fleshed out they're interesting characters, while remaining the rich people you want to hate. It's also interesting while watching it to consider what the family dynamics must have been, in terms of being a Levy family project. In addition to the father and son, their daughter/sister plays the waitress.

If that's not working for you, just go with Brooklyn 99. It has a lot of heart, it's fast, and most episodes have a good mix of very smart and very dumb comedy.

SP, I finished The Power finally, so now I'm curious what you were going to say.

Also, did you see the thing where a number of kids are developing Kawasaki syndrome from covid-19? Isn't that the same thing that your youngest had, during the last Unfoggedecon?

I am totally in love with Derry Girls, and many thanks to all of you here who recommended it. I'm in Season 2.

People are telling me to try Unorthodox. But is it good?

Loved unorthodox. Yes watch.

consider what the family dynamics must have been, in terms of being a Levy family project.
Some of that discussed here. (I've seen some of the later seasons, and like it. Healthy comfort food.)

the gorgeously shot My Brilliant Friend

Is it wrong to feel annoyed because people you know irl can act familiar with books you liked when they haven't read them but only watched the TV adaptation, and when you can't watch the adaptation because you haven't read the other books in the series yet and don't want spoilers? Is it so wrong? Asking for a friend.

137: I got curious and read it a couple of days ago. A really unpleasant book to read, and I'm not sure there was enough to it to be worth the unpleasantness.

142 Such small portions?

I mean informational or artistic or polemical value, not that it wasn't long enough.

God you guys read fast.

I enjoyed the first half, which felt like fun. Then it wasn't as much fun.

What made it so unpleasant to you? Just the relentless symmetry of women acting out all the violent counterparts of what men do?

It definitely got more unpleasant as it went on. I mean, increasing levels of vividly described torture, terror, and rape until the civilization-ending apocalypse is sort of unfun.

Yeah. It wasn't a great second half.

That said, once she set up the premise, there was only two ways for it to go: "Women are fundamentally the same as men, once you flip the physical advantage, and will be as savage" or "Women are fundamentally different from men, and once you flip the physical advantage, there will be meaningful differences that speak to essential gender differences." The first is probably the better way to go, unless you're super insightful and really have a fascinating, grounded, essential nuanced difference you want to illustrate.

137 et seq- (Spoilers)

I felt like there was a big gap between "women have more power now" and suddenly "women are raping men by giving them electric boners." I know the pacing was set up on a year by year basis to allow the narrative to jump forward, but in doing so it just kind of took for granted the premise that all humans are shit and will abuse their power without really investigating how it got to that level.
As I said above I did think the last line, once they were back to correspondence in the indeterminate far-future, was clever.

147: Well, even the "women are as bad as men" angle seemed slightly overstated. The candidate who wins an election by shocking her opponent during a debate doesn't find an immediate parallel in men who have punched female political opponents on camera; I can think of a couple of instances of looming, but no actual violence. And the Moldovan gynocracy wasn't really a gender-flipped portrait of what things are like right now anyplace, it was floridly over the top fantasy sadism. I mean, it's hard to be modestly restrained writing polemical fiction, but I don't like reading the fantasy sadism and I don't think it worked as argument.

But I'm conflating two reactions -- that I thought it was imperfectly written, and that I didn't like reading it. The latter reaction was heavily driven by vivid descriptions of splinters of glass through tongues and eyeballs cooked to the point of being milky and opaque. I get unpleasantly grossed out pretty easily, but I don't mean to claim that being over my grossout threshold makes a book a bad book.

The candidate who wins an election by shocking her opponent during a debate doesn't find an immediate parallel in men who have punched female political opponents on camera; I can think of a couple of instances of looming, but no actual violence.

Seems like the situation in the book should be one where men don't even run for office because they are so subjugated. Why make it a parallel to now instead of to 100 or 200 years ago?

eyeballs cooked to the point of being milky and opaque.

That's how you know they're done.

This is why I always avoided invitations on the second day of Eid Al-Adha when I lived in Morocco and they served the head of the sheep. Eyeballs were a delicacy and were always offered to the guests first. It would be an insult to refuse.

150: okay, I am definitely too squeamish to want to read that.

151: Because it's written as an event that happens to our society now -- women (teenage girls first) suddenly get this power.

I am usually very squeamish, but I was disengaged and skimming fast enough that it didn't gross me out too much. OTOH I kept putting it down after 15-20 minutes.

Yeah, I tend to power through, but I can completely see a reaction where I just didn't want to know what was going to happen on the next page until I'd had a break first.

Cleanse your palate! The chapter of the Overstory I read at breakfast this morning (about a forest biologist) was an almost perfect piece of sustained writing. A life story in a chapter, enfolded in a vision of the world. I now so want to get to the forests of the Pacific North West and probably never will.

Honestly, I'm down to brushing my teeth once a day.

My library system didn't have Wheel of the Infinite available as ebook, but Amazon has it for Kindle for $3 so I bought it.

93: volcanoes have hair. Pele's hair.

"women are as bad as men"

To the tune of "One is the Loneliest Number."

Fuck yes.

157: There was a nonfiction book about those forest biologists, "The Wild Trees" by Richard Preston. Will make you want to visit even more.

We're going to finish the second series of Blood tonight. It's on Acorn.

I'd watch Black Sails again, because I like listening to Jessica Parker Kennedy talk, but that one's a no from the wife.

When I was looking for that picture from Rancho Deluxe yesterday, I ran into a Rolling Stone article that ranked Bridges' films -- I haven't seen all of the ranked films, so maybe I should be doing that.

To be clear, I'm not thinking of hunting down anything rated worse that 27th . . .

I am no longer able to read anything serious, difficult or set in the present. (For the first month or so, I "read" a lot of Town and Country photo galleries of various royals' best fashions, for instance, and I have also read a lot of press coverage of Enya's Victorian "castle" and hermit lifestyle.)

Perhaps you were not aware that Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations and I Capture The Castle, also wrote a number of other books for grown-ups. They have a slight melancholy but are all extremely vivid and memorable, in affect unlike anything else I've read. I'd say that I liked "The Town In Bloom and The New Moon With The Old best. They're hard to describe - the plots sound a bit standard "girl tries to make it as an actress", "children go out into the world", etc, but the texture of the stories and their emphasis are unexpected.

Noel Streatfeild, author of Ballet Shoes (there are a lot of Shoes books!) also wrote memoirs (A Vicarage Family, etc) and some very odd non-Shoes childrens' books - The Magic Summer is pretty weird. Dancing Shoes is the funniest Shoes book, Skating Shoes the one with the most detailed attempt at a realistic milieu and plot. Streatfeild also wrote a bunch of grown-up novels but the one I started had too many unhappy people in it and I had to bail. They look good, though.

I've also read a bunch of Nancy Mitford - Don't Tell Alfred and The Blessing are less good than The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate but much more episodic and cheerful. Don't Tell Alfred, in particular, is almost all froth.

I've read five Georgette Heyer novels - she is the font of Regency romance novels. I assume they all take place in different universes because they each feature a different Richest Man In London. If you enjoyed Sorcery and Cecilia, Or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, these might be interesting because they're obviously a primary influence. Arabella is the best, even though the plot is pretty predictable. After that I'd recommend The Grand Sophy or Sylvester, Or The Wicked Uncle. They get a bit repetitive but they're full of interesting bits about food and clothes.

I've also read ALL of the Rumpole of the Bailey books, and there are far more than you think, even if you count the omnibuses as one each. Those are repetitive if you like, but very good for sort of hypnotizing yourself into sleep.

I also recommend Carnacki, The Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgeson. Several of the stories are genuinely scary, but in a remote way that is soothing.

Honestly, the Dodie Smith ones are much the best - I'm actually thinking of re-reading them even though I've virtually just finished them.

I am no longer able to read anything serious, difficult or set in the present. (For the first month or so, I "read" a lot of Town and Country photo galleries of various royals' best fashions, for instance, and I have also read a lot of press coverage of Enya's Victorian "castle" and hermit lifestyle.)

Perhaps you were not aware that Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations and I Capture The Castle, also wrote a number of other books for grown-ups. They have a slight melancholy but are all extremely vivid and memorable, in affect unlike anything else I've read. I'd say that I liked "The Town In Bloom and The New Moon With The Old best. They're hard to describe - the plots sound a bit standard "girl tries to make it as an actress", "children go out into the world", etc, but the texture of the stories and their emphasis are unexpected.

Noel Streatfeild, author of Ballet Shoes (there are a lot of Shoes books!) also wrote memoirs (A Vicarage Family, etc) and some very odd non-Shoes childrens' books - The Magic Summer is pretty weird. Dancing Shoes is the funniest Shoes book, Skating Shoes the one with the most detailed attempt at a realistic milieu and plot. Streatfeild also wrote a bunch of grown-up novels but the one I started had too many unhappy people in it and I had to bail. They look good, though.

I've also read a bunch of Nancy Mitford - Don't Tell Alfred and The Blessing are less good than The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate but much more episodic and cheerful. Don't Tell Alfred, in particular, is almost all froth.

I've read five Georgette Heyer novels - she is the font of Regency romance novels. I assume they all take place in different universes because they each feature a different Richest Man In London. If you enjoyed Sorcery and Cecilia, Or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, these might be interesting because they're obviously a primary influence. Arabella is the best, even though the plot is pretty predictable. After that I'd recommend The Grand Sophy or Sylvester, Or The Wicked Uncle. They get a bit repetitive but they're full of interesting bits about food and clothes.

I've also read ALL of the Rumpole of the Bailey books, and there are far more than you think, even if you count the omnibuses as one each. Those are repetitive if you like, but very good for sort of hypnotizing yourself into sleep.

I also recommend Carnacki, The Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgeson. Several of the stories are genuinely scary, but in a remote way that is soothing.

Honestly, the Dodie Smith ones are much the best - I'm actually thinking of re-reading them even though I've virtually just finished them.

Recently read Georgette Heyer "An Infamous Army". Really very good!

I don't know there were Rumple of the Bailey books.

168: I was really pleasantly surprised - it's not that I expected them to be awful but they're pretty funny and she does do her research.They didn't convert me to a fan of romance novels in general - I still feel that romance is the most constrained type of genre fiction - but they did give me a better idea of what people study when they study the genre.

169. There are so many. I read them all based on the Wikipedia listing. The last few actually have more character development and a gloomier outlook and so are a bit better, quality-wise.

I've realized that my ideal novel is set in the UK some time between 1800 and 1960 (maaaybe through 1970), semi-realistic, has a little ironic distance and a relatively large cast, does a lot with setting (a provincial city or large town is best) and doesn't really involve death or very sad events. It's also nice if it describes parties, theater, clothes and food - particularly if it takes place during the sixties, there seem to be a lot of sixties post-war novels of this type that are sort of "hooray, it's not the war or the fifties, everything is colorful and there's fancy cooking, let's set a big chunk of the novel at a party!". Early Margaret Drabble would be good except I've read all of those. The novel can be melancholy but should not be sad per se, and anything sort of sad that happens should be along the lines of "we can never truly escape our formative experiences but must come to terms with them" rather than "and then my brother and his friends died in the Troubles, plus I was abused by a priest". Ghost and vampire stories are also good as long as they're pre-1930 and not actually gory.

170.3 is too broad for me. It's maybe 1880 to 1939 that I have enjoyed.

I've read five Georgette Heyer novels - she is the font of Regency romance novels.

I love all the ones you mention (aside from the grotesquelly anti-semitic section that stains The Grand Sophy), though The Talisman Ring has become one of my favorites because it's really funny, though far more so in the audio version. The Masqueraders is fascinating. BTW, I have most of them in audio form -- and the woman who reads The Talisman Ring is extraordinary -- and am happy to share them with you (or anyone else).

172: Ooh, I'd only just started TGS, maybe I won't finish it.

Yeah, it really sucks because it's otherwise delightful. The anti-semitic part is discrete and irrelevant to the plot (it's a description of a moneylender; the moneylender is relevant but the caricature isn't) so still worthwhile on balance, I think.

I would put in a vote for Cotillion as one of her most fun, and A Civil Contract as slightly less goofy fluff than the rest.

And same about TGS. The anti-Semitic bit is short and unsurprising by contemporary standards -- on the level of Dorothy Sayers' low points.

In her defense, the murderers are gentiles in all the books.

Maybe I'll reread Rumpole, which I read most or all of thirty years ago because Dad had them. His firm moral stance that he doesn't care who's guilty of what, locking people in prison is Wrong regardless, is kind of terrific.

Forgot. SPOILER ALERT.

My dad loved the Rumple TV show.

Does that rhyme with "butthole"?

Yes.

Excellent.

Go for it, guitar players of Unfogged!

I've not been playing that much. I do get 20 - 30 minutes playing each day, though. Which is super important to me as a brain clearing activity.

In her defense, the murderers are gentiles in all the books.

Not a lot of murders in the Regency novels, but true of her non-Regency detective stories, which I also like. Death in the Stocks and The Unfinished Clue are probably my favorites of those. (Also fantastic narrators in the audio versions. I hardly ever listen to fiction, but her books work for me.)

Emma shot a guy, but I don't remember if he died.

Hawaii and I were asked if we wanted to join a book club of 6th graders and their parents, in our immediate friend circle. We said sure. (Hawaii is in 5th grade and often gets left out of these things.)

The first pick is Emma. I was a little surprised - I read it in high school - but thought maybe it was more accessible than I remembered.

Nope, it is in no way accessible to Hawaii, and we're kind of planning on reading it together, but I bet she bails on the whole thing. It seems a really weird first-choice to me - can the rest of these kids really be sufficiently gifted readers that they can enjoy Emma in 6th grade?!

They can probably see the trailer where Gwyneth Paltrow shoots a guy with an arrow.

"Dirtbag Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is one of the best things I have ever read. I don't know if the real novel is good.

For sixth graders, that seems nuts to me. The occasional kid might like it, but they'll mostly be lost. You could rent Clueless, though, and explain your thoughts about nineties fashion.

Good, that's validating.

I've found that the grades given on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are reliable. I don't think I've read anything that got any kind of A that wasn't worth my time.

Totally seconding 189. Pride & Prejudice could maaaaybe work for precocious 6th graders because at least it has a more recognizable story line, but it's still a stretch for them to follow it, never mind get pleasure from it.

I was a very, very precocious reader (and I love Emma) but there was no way I'd have read it as a 6th grader. I think I read the first part of Jane Eyre when I was about that age, but everything after she flees from Mr. Rochester was totally wasted on me, and I really liked the childhood parts best. I don't even think Pride and Prejudice would be an especially good pick unless your group was already fairly familiar with gender roles and class during that period.

When I was in 6th grade, I remember reading the CS Lewis space trilogy but not really getting into the last book. I read a bunch of non-teen fantasy novels, a lot of pop memoir, a lot of science fiction short stories and a bunch of fifties/sixties comedy (Please Don't Eat The Daisies, etc.) Even in honors English we didn't read anything more difficult than Animal Farm.

I have bright friends, but they honestly don't hold a candle to the smarts here. I just texted my friend to see how her daughter is doing with it, and she said that her daughter liked the abridged version and wanted to try the real thing, so I get the impression that they originated the idea.

I thought abridged versions left the writing intact and just omitted big chunks, so you'd still be wrestling with the sentence structure? Abridged versions don't rewrite the sentences, do they?

Moral order is dead. They can do what they want.

Ditching Jane Eyre once the Adult Themes show up must be common. I'm pretty sure I took a stab at "Vanity Fair" when I was 8 and thought I was supposed to be reading Victorian novels. I got about ten pages in.

Currently bogged down in three separate books which I rotate depending on mood. I should be reading much more in order to scrub the Twitter off my brain, but at least one of the books is in Italian, which provides good interference and is strangely joyful. (It's Christ Stopped at Eboli. I'm now thinking I can probably do Ferrante without much trouble, except the trouble of obtaining the books.)

Samesies with Frowner on Jane Eyre, down to having experienced it mainly as a book about Jane's childhood with some stuff that happened after she grew up.

Honestly, I'm thinking ill of your friend. I think she hasn't read it, or at least not recently, and/or she's very confused about what her daughter can read. I would buy a sixth grader who could read and enjoy Emma. But I don't buy that that kids' parents wouldn't know their kid was doing something unusual enough that it'd be weird to expect kids that age to do the same thing generally. What do you think the odds are that she's showing off and overshot into implausibility?

One of those sentences got really convoluted, but I think you can figure out what I mean.

Not sure what to think about the abridged version. I can't really picture what it'd be like.

197.last: I was wondering the same thing. It's hard to imagine they started from, "What book would both kids and parents enjoy reading and talking about?" instead of something more like, "What should we be reading?"

when I was 8 and thought I was supposed to be reading Victorian novels

Wow, was your childhood different from mine.

196: Was this because of Little Women? I asked my dad to read me Pickwick Papers because of Little Women. I dimly remember enjoying parts of it and falling asleep during parts of it. And I do remember that the Little Woman have read Vanity Fair. I didn't read Vanity Fair until I was 21.

I used to flip through Vanity Fair if my mom dragged me to the hair salon because nobody was there too watch me.

One of the fun things about Heyer that's so different from what I usually read is that many of her main characters are just not that bright, and the author treats that as perfectly fine. Some of them have specific talents, but overall it's just a bunch of people bumbling around and acting foolishly. I think that would drive me crazy in a different genre, but I'm perfectly fine with it in a regency romance.

201: that seems likely. I think early exposure to Dickens villains must have made me pause on that threshold.

Wow, was your childhood different from mine.

I have some very bitter things to say about being "precocious," but even at a young age I would have recognized that they're all pretty unoriginal.

Also, Heebie: was the edition of Emma something like the one by Baker Street Readers?

No edition was specified. I wasn't part of the group conversation when it was proposed, but all I can guess is that the daughter suggested it, and all the adults thought, "It's been a hundred years, if ever...I'll let one if the other adults bat this one down if it's too hard" and no one did?

Are the editions meaningfully different translations from the original English?

Wait. You have sixth-graders reading Austen in Spanish?

Maybe they're all listening to an audiobook? And it has different actors reading the different parts?

No, I was just trying to make a joke.

Remember when they made a really stupid parody of the The Godfather and called it Mafia.? The trailers for the movie originally called it "Jane Austen's Mafia, but I guess she sued them from beyond the grave or they decided that the number of people who got the joke and who were willing to see a movie starring Jay Mohr was very small. Anyway, they dropped her name before it hit the theater and the movie tanked.

Anyway, there's a new Emma movie out and I'm probably going to have to watch it soon.

Or read here while others watch it.

I saw it a little while ago. It's quite good.

Apparently, it still costs $15 to see at home, so we're waiting.

Starman: ++

I first tried to crack Pride and Prejudice in the seventh grade, and though I was a plenty precocious reader I totally foundered on it. It wasn't language or sentence structure, it was just having no insight into what the stakes were. No talking animals, no pirates, no submarines.

re: 186 seems pretty nuts.

I was a very precocious reader -- entirety of Lord of the Rings at 7, which is the age xelA is now -- so I don't think I'd have had any problem with the prose at age 11. But I'd definitely have struggled to give a shit about it, or to understand what was good about it.

Pretty much exactly as Lourdes says in 217.

Right. Lots of bright kids can handle anything in terms of sentence structure and prose style by ten or eleven, the problem with something like Emma is all the background you need to have any idea what's going on or why you care.

Fay Weldon wrote an odd little book called something like "Letters to [some name] about Emma," which is just a correspondence where she explains what you need to know to understand Emma to a college-aged woman, and there's still a lot.

This is it: Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen.

When you put it so clearly, you got to wonder why she didn't just include some pirates. I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Now I'm starting to think that I'm not old enough to really get Emma.

That's why I'm waiting.

I got you covered, "heebie-geebie"!

And "Moby Hick"!

I feel vaguely lazy every time I see the spine of Chernow's biography of Hamilton. I didn't even open it, let alone think it could be made into a musical.

Read Gore Vidal's Burr. It's more fun.

Great. Now I'm even more behind in my reading.

Vidal's Burr is great. I don't think any of the rest of the series match it.

I agree with that. Lincoln wasn't bad.

Are these comedy books or actual biographies?

They're novels. So, more true than biographies.

I've been reading a couple books by historical novelist Alfred Duggan that honestly seem more true than biographies. I don't think there is a single person in any of these books who isn't a documented historical figure, except the narrator (usually a servant who knows all because he's silently in the room where it happens).

226: I read that last year. It was pretty good, and an interesting companion to his Washington since you'd get to see so many events from a different perspective. He's good at capturing their flaws in a way that makes them more human.

One of the reasons I think Arya's sojourn in the Riverlands is the best part of GoT.

235>233.

In big city pandering, we just watched the latest episode of Killing Eve and were shocked to see a cake made by our local, single-location bakery clearly featured. It was of a sort that sells for about £100. London and NYC must be the most provincial places in the world.

I don't understand. What about that made you think London and NY are provincial?

Not that we aren't, I'm sure we are. But I don't understand how the cake story works.

I haven't been to either in over a decade, so they must be at least a little isolated.

I should make a cake today.

We have a lot of flour.

Oh, just that they're two places so up their own asses, creatives familiar with them fill their works unnecessarily with local details that would only be meaningful to people who have local knowledge. (It would have been extremely easy to just have the cake be in a generic box instead of a branded one.) To a degree, this is worn as a badge of pride. There's an asymmetry between when the cultural center does this and when somewhere podunk does so.

I do feel bad for the bakery--they probably would've gotten a lot more business from this, if it wasn't for the pandemic. So I don't think this is necessarily the best example of metropole provinciality partially because there are economic incentives to have done it this particular way, it just struck me because it was so local to my experience.

That sounded more negative than I meant it. I don't mind at all, it's fun to be in a central place. It just felt very much like that view-from-5th-avenue New Yorker cover.

Man, do I not understand why that annoys you (I recognize that it's a common reaction, but I find it irrational and I wish people wouldn't thinking it obviously well-justified.)

New York and London are real places where real people live. You do, for one. Media is set there (I completely get that too much media is set there -- that's a complaint I'd call reasonable.) Why on earth is it irksome to you that the media set there includes accurate local detail rather than bland generics? If the show was set in Pittsburgh, would there be anything wrong with a Prantl's burnt almond torte (I've heard of them, but had to google for the bakery name) showing up?

Now I want one and they are closed.

Crossed with your second post, which walked back your first. But seriously, I get objecting to provincialism when it consists of wrongfully ignoring or denigrating other places. I don't get why people get snippy at people who live in places like London for enjoying and attending to the specific things that make London what it is. Lots of people live there, it's their home, and they're not doing it as a stunt or to show off or to put the rest of the world down.

We can still denigrate Ohio for no reason, right?

It seems worth pointing out that a burnt almond torte is like $20.

Wow. How much if they don't burn it?

Only the almonds are burned. I should have used a hyphen.

Burnt attornies general.

They need to be refrigerated, but they taste better if you let them come to room temperature before serving.

The chocolate sour cream cake is better.

It doesn't really annoy me exactly, and I apologize for sounding so negative--I think I came on too hard because, c'mon, they're NY and London, they're the centers of their universes, they can take the smallest of hits. To the extent that it's a phenomenon, it's basically just the asymmetry: I know, admittedly highly imperfectly, so much more about specific New York (/London/LA to a lesser degree) things than I do about any other place I don't have a specific connection to. I think it's useful, to this country mouse, to occasionally keep in mind that the metropole (or cultural center or whatever you want to call it) is as provincial as anywhere else, but in a way that doesn't read as provincial because it has it's own cultural gravity and establishes the conversation. Apologies for saying something that's obvious that, I realize in retrospect, could be hurtful if you've been hearing it all your life. There's that asymmetry again.

There is a strong tradition of yinzer fanservice, and it can be a little distasteful sometimes. Not that I don't engage in it.

As to why this particular thing pinged something in me, probably just the combination of hyperlocality plus in this particular show the characters go all over Europe (and clearly there's a real travel budget, setting aside interiors; they're rarely just filming in the UK with fake street signs); everything outside London, including elsewhere in England, is usually hazier. I didn't have this issue with Fleabag, which is even more hyperlocal but a few neighborhoods over, but "up its own ass" is kind of Fleabag's thing.

Realistically, how expansive can a flea's bag possibly be?

I get what dalriata is talking about, the creative types insisting on getting everything right about the place where they live, and then being like "Buffalo? OK we'll do the exterior shots in Pittsburgh, and use a street in Louisville, and for the local references in the script we will drive around Buffalo a couple days and find some funny and provincial things".

But all my life I've been seeing people say "You can't get from this part of L.A. to that part of L.A. in 10 minutes, it takes 2 hours! This scene is supposed to be right by the beach and they're on Figueroa Street!" so I didn't think any type of accuracy was considered more important than convenience.

could be hurtful if you've been hearing it all your life.

I'm a little thin-skinned about NYC at the moment, for obvious pandemic reasons. But, yeah, having been told my entire life that loving my home makes me an aggressive jerk (this, much stronger than what you said) is sort of grindingly unpleasant. If that sort of thing could be focused on Londoners/New Yorkers being actively shitty, rather than on our enjoying local things, it'd make me happier.

And there's lots of active shittiness out there to bitch about if you want to. Lots of New Yorkers are terrible, and I'm sure Londoners too.

No doubt!

255: Tolerance is a form of bigotry. Stupidity is a kind of wisdom. Cosmopolitianism is a type of provincialism.

Nah, not really. Surely we can admit here, on this blog in this enclave of liberal privilege, that New York is an amazing city, and objectively better than other places, specifically because of its genuinely cosmopolitan nature.

I mean sure, it's a disease-ridden hellhole, but that's the price of being a world-class city!

Sorry. I should've been more considerate of your perspective. I don't think you're an aggressive jerk. As you've heard me say elsewhere, in particular I was astounded by how unfailing polite and almost gentle New York drivers were in my very brief experience of them, which goes against my general observation that at that latitude drivers get a bit better but a lot more aggressive as you head east. (caveats: outer boroughs, not rush hour, crappy weather.)

I do think New York is an amazing city. I like what I know about it. It contains multitudes.

If you want something to be authentic Buffalo you just need to reference tire fires.

I don't even want to claim it's better than other places! I like it better, but I grew up here and I'm attached. All sorts of other places are terrific too when I visit them.

I just like the celebration of local specificity wherever it exists, and I'm sensitive to people who get disapproving about it.

261: Absolutely no harm done or offense taken, I'm just thin-skinned these days.

That's totally fair. Especially given how the rest of the US has used the tri-state's epidemic to learn...largely, not much. ('though honestly every place has learned not enough from the previous place to get hit.)

We could change the subject to shitting on some place that truly and objectively sucks, like Delaware.

259 to 200

New Yorkers are really nice. Go there as a tourist and ask someone for directions and they are always eager to help you out. New Yorkers are also very humble. Living in a world-class city, as they do, they find themselves compelled to denigrate their town, especially around outsiders.

Now can I have my Slate column?

I still remember my first time on the subway in NYC. Mom, dad, four kids from six to thirteen. My dad asked somebody to confirm we were waiting for the right train. Two other people started arguing about the best way to get where we were going. Helpful, but alarming.

268 last needs to be the slogan for a business.

268: My blackened little New York heart is warmed.

Obviously, someone else shot us later in the day. The early 80s were the prime age for leaded gasoline.

Speaking of, Black Monday is fun.

Speaking of shooting, that thing in Oklahoma where the woman wasn't allowed to dine in at a McDonald's so she shoot the place up is really weird. Women don't usually do the stranger shooting spree. Also, the staff who kicked her out were all teenagers. I can't imagine having the guts to kick out an adult woman when I was a teenager working at McDonald's.

I guess the shooting in Flint was also don't by a woman.

I'm very thin skinned about NYC at this moment and this conversation is annoying me. In addition to the many thousands of NYers who died this past week has seen the permanent closing of several iconic places, some of them very important to me. The Paris Cafe which had been in business for what, 150 years or so? The passing of the legendary proprietor of NYCs best dive bar, Jimmy's Corner, and the fucking Gem Spa in the East Village, the best egg creams and hangout for generations of beats, yippies, punks, on the back cover of the New York Dolls first album, in Desperately Seeking Susan and many other great films, etc. So call me provincial, I'm ready to throw down.

Done.

Sorry, I thought it was super clear that I identify as an insufficiently-pandered-to provincial.

Clear as the Ohio.

I think it should be called the Monongahela all the way to the Gulf of Mexico or at least St. Louis.

275: While I am with you in general, remember that no one said a bad thing about NY. Dalriata was very mildly irritated about London and I blew it up into a whole Thing on behalf of metropolises generally.

279: It should be called the Ohio all the way up to Coudersport.

281: I don't understand, but I laughed.

280 I hear you, I'm just really sore at the moment and I'm not really looking to fight. I actually cried uncontrollably when I heard about Jimmy Glenn. And the Gem Spa crushed me.

Yeah, that one was bad. It's funny, I don't have occasion to walk around the East Village much, so it's a little frozen in the 80's/90's for me. So there's a whole lot I think of as in that neighborhood that's gone already, but this is going to sweep away so much more.

Couder is Pennsylvania's only legal, native sport.

280: Sorry Barry. It's totally fair of you. Sorry, we're all provincials, everything sucks, NYC seems really cool and I'm sad I haven't spent more time there (when my wife was getting sick of Pittsburgh I tried to gently nudge her to consider moving there for a bunch of reasons, but she wasn't excited, and anyway everything changed), I love London, and I miss experiencing more than a trivial amount of it.

282: Get ready for some river nomenclature opinions. The Haudenosaunee name for the river is the original form of "Ohio." That picture is from a bridge crossing the river in the Seneca reservation in western NY state. They use it both for what settlers call the Allegheny and for the Ohio (which solves the problem that it's called "Three Rivers" but clearly it isn't really three rivers, at least not in the sense that Trois-Rivières is). "Allegheny" is the Lenape name; the Lenape are not native to the area, but were forced out by the colonists in Lenapehoking (eastern PA/NJ/southern NY). So if we wanted to use the native name, we should use something like "Ohio." I think "Monongahela" is Lenape, too, but that area was depopulated of its aboriginal population before anybody could write down their names. Anyway, the Allegheny has more flow than then Mon so it should be considered the principal river and the Mon the tributary. If that logic's applied consistently, then you'd get the situation Moby described--the Ohio has much greater flow than the upper Mississip, so in a convoluted sense the "real" source of the Mississippi should be in upstate PA. (Or if you absolutely must go by longest length, it's in Montana or wherever the source of the Missouri is. Naming is hard.)

286.1 Not really necessary, you did nothing wrong. The conversation just hit a particularly fresh wound.

Huh. I thought the Monongahela was bigger.

For purposes of elegance in mapmaking I regret I must side with the Greater-Lengthists.

Though I must now slay you, it shall be more in sadness than in anger.

Comity, still I'd rather not hurt good people over dumb inconsequential opinions. Excepting river nomenclature opinions, that's serious business.

Speaking of metropoles, the internews is saying up to a million Mossbergers may be in need of urgent food aid. While, to be clear, Mossberg is in my opinion as close to a literal hellmouth as a secular universe can get, it does not for all its shittiness routinely have famines. I'm starting to get pissed off.

292: Can't you get Elon Musk to deliver 250 Beyond Beef burgers to, like, Mauritania and then have the delivery robo-Tesla explode into flames driving them aimlessly across the Sahara? I bet Beyond Beef chars pretty well.

Speaking NYC, and love for it, Spike Lee made a really great short film (shot on Super 8) about NYC. Highly recommended.

Is food generally cheap there or is food aid something the government was able to do right before Covid?

Technically, cannibalism is Beyond Beef.

Food is cheap for the rich, expensive for the poor. The state is always already doing a shitload of aid, mostly cash not kind. Materially, the state should in principle be able to feed those people, and I expect it will. The point is, it usually doesn't come to this.

Thanks.

How much of that is due to recent corruption/incompetence versus so many in Mossheimat being in precarious situations, perhaps due to historic corruption/incompetence/racism?

297 last to 299.

286.2: pre-glaciation the Mon was the "primary" river here in Pittsburgh (see Fig. 14 in this nice overview article on Pittsburgh geology). Only a small lower portion of the Allegheny flowed into Pittsburgh (central and northern sections flowed northeast into the St. Lawrence). Past The Point the Mon flowed along the course of the Ohio and then headed near the Ohio border where the Beaver River joins it, and up that valley through to the St. Lawrence. A portion of the lower Ohio flowed northward into it but did not extend that far south. South of there the main water course was the Teays River which was basically the current New and Kanawha rivers and tributaries which then flowed WNW until it turned south in Illinois. The glaciers played havoc with all the north-ish flowing rivers, damning them up, forming various lakes which eventually drained by cuttiing through the watershed boundaries to the south to form the current configuration. And why you get somewhat odd things such as the St.Lawrence/Ohio divide sometimes being within just a few miles of Lake Erie.

265: I was going to say something in defense of Delaware, but it's hard to muster the enthusiasm. Honestly, I'd rather be here than a lot of other states, so it's got that going for it.

301: Your points are valid, but get with the times, man, it's the Holocene now. Seriously, thanks for the link!

302: I just have a completely irrational hatred of it because of just barely avoiding a horrendous car accident there thirteen years ago. And because it clearly should be part of Greater Pennsylvania. And yeah I guess there's that whole race-to-the-bottom corporate law thing. But it doesn't seem like a bad place to live, especially if you're near the beach.

Alfred Duggan is fantastic; and bracingly anti-progressive in a catholic reactionary way. He just takes for granted that in this world the shits will always get ahead. My favourite, I think, is the Conscience of the King, whose narrator is a sociopath. But the one where the narrator ends up in the Sea of Grass --- Winter Quarters --- is also great; and Lord Geoffrey's Fancy: the throwaway bit where the narrator's entire family is massacred when he's twelve. There are cheerful parts, of course. But the stoicism he takes for granted is very noticeable.