THE GHOST THEATRE, power to the alt-Elizabethan London lovers!

THE GHOST THEATRE
MAT OSMAN
The Overlook Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A wild and hallucinatory reimagining of Elizabethan London, with its bird worshippers, famed child actors, and the Queen herself; a dazzling historical novel about theatre, magic, and the dangers of all-consuming love

London, 1601—a golden city soon to erupt in flames. Shay is a messenger-girl, falconer, and fortune teller who sees the future in the patterns of birds. Nonesuch is the dark star of the city’s fabled Blackfriars Theatre, where a cast of press-ganged boys perform for London’s gentry. When the pair meet, Shay falls in love with the performances—and with Nonesuch himself. As their bond deepens, they create the Ghost Theatre, an underground troupe that performs fantastical plays in the city’s hidden corners. As their fame grows the troupe fans the flames of rebellion among the city’s outcasts, and the lovers are drawn into the dark web of the Elizabethan court. Embattled, with the plague on the rise throughout the country, the Queen seeks a reading from Shay, a moment which unleashes chaos not only in Shay’s life, but across the whole of England too.

A fever-dream full of prophecy and anarchy, gutter rats and bird gods, Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre is a wild ride from the rooftops of Elizabethan London to its dark underbelly, and a luminous meditation on double lives and fluid identities and the bewitching, transformative nature of art and power, with a bittersweet love affair at its heart. Set amid the vividly rendered England of Osman’s imagination and written in rich, seductive prose, The Ghost Theatre will have readers under its spell from the very first page.

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My Review: Mat Osman, brother of Richard, tries his hand at fantasy noveling...outta the park, buddy, what a genre debut! Co-founder of Suede, a quintessential 90s Brit-emo-boy band, decides to write something not centered in the music culture. Great decision! Tackling the end of Elizabethan London, adding a layer of fantastical performance art to it, made this a book I approached with some trepidation. His earlier novel, The Ruins, was a powerful read set in a modern world heightened but still mudane. It was imperfect in its characters' grapplings with desire, the desire to be one's self, the desire to be valued and still free, but it was a fine read.

Here we get the thing I missed in The Ruins. Shay is a cross-dressing woman (it's safer in this world to present as a man) who falls in with young actor Nonesuch (recalling as you do that female roles in Elizabethan theaters were played by crossdressing boys) after her bird-worshipping cult is disrupted by violence. Violence, societal down to interpersonal, is the refrain of this operatic tale of escape, concealment, and ultimately discovery. Violence rules this novel. Shay, rescued from violence, and Nonesuch, accustomed to its sexual expression, decide to become performers of stories that aren't about the great and good. They tell stories like the one they've just shared in which they stave off rage and hate, but pay a price in the process. They know not to try to compete for center stage with those stories of the great and good. They take to the corners, they lurk in the shadows among those like themselves who, stunned, see themselves in the stories the Ghost Theatre duo are telling.

The power of seeing yourself in a story is hard to overstate.

Soon the pair, intimately connecting to the hoi polloi of their class, are attracting crowds. That means they're also attracting notice. The great and good, the primacy, inescapability, of whose stories drove the pair to rebel, are suddenly attentive and making them very much in fashion. They're getting noticed by the elite who never knew they were alive before.

Ask a gay person outed in heteroland, a Black person in whiteworld, a trans person anywhere, how that feels.

Passionately pursuing Truth is, I think, only safe for the young and powerless. They have little to lose. They have no kind of perspective, but this irresistible draw to honesty and truth and self-realization is the road traveled to acquire a lifetime's supply of that missing perspective. This is a subtractive, even divisive process. Shay and Nonesuch ignite passion and create magic with their Ghost Theatre. Fire metaphors for growing up, for attaining wisdom, are apt: annealed in flames of their own ignition, the entire troupe burn in the brightness of fame's flames.

When the bill comes due, the prices (plural) are high; the perspective, one is left to hope in the ending that gives no closure, they've earned will keep them safer than they are during the story.

I can't get to a fifth star because the way we move, bob, and weave in this narrative is sufficiently non-linear as to make the journey circular in affect. Has anything fundamental, or even just more than cosmetic, changed?

I'm not sure; I'm only sure I love the Aviscultans, and the Ghost Theatre, and the honest portrayal of the power of Love among the powerlessness of Others to make a life of struggle feel as though it's a Quest, a magical, important affirmation of Life.

Sadly it never really is, or not for long. That knowlege, though, is mine, not the characters'. Beautiful-sounding, complicated, and still the story's in the end slighter than it feels while you are within it.

SISTER DEBORAH, latest fiction from literary treasure Scholastique Mukasonga...Rwanda's most treasured export/expat

SISTER DEBORAH
SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA (tr. Mark Polizzotti)
Archipelago Books
$19.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When time-worn ancestral remedies fail to heal young Ikirezi’s maladies, she is rushed to the Rwandan hillsides. From her termite perch under the coral tree, health blooms under Sister Deborah’s hands. Women bare their breasts to the rising sun as men under thatched roofs stand, “stunned and impotent before this female fury.”

Now grown, Ikirezi unearths the truth of Sister Deborah’s passage from America to 1930s Rwanda, and the mystery surrounding her sudden departure. In colonial records, Sister Deborah is a “pathogen,” an “incident.” Who is the keeper of truth, Ikirezi impels us to ask, Who stands at the threshold of memory? Did we dance? Did she heal? Did we look to the sky with wonder? Ikirezi writes on, pulling Sister Deborah out from the archive, inscribing her with breath.

A beautiful novel that works in the slippages of history, Sister Deborah at its core is a story of what happens when women—black women and girls—seek the truth by any means.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Patriarchy putting words in women's mouths. Colonial masters defining reality for the colonized. Big-god-industry fans denigrating anyone they can't control. Nothing new here.

Until Author Scholastique got hold of the reins. Then this buggy got movin' fast (under 150pp) and furious (women under patriarchal colonialist control got some rage). The action is, unsurprisingly for émigré Mukasonga, split between a Rwandan émigré before and after immigation to the US, and an unusual American woman healer. Ikirezi, whose encounters with African-American missionary and faith healer (of a sort) change her inside and out, leaves the suddenly-too-small world she was born into under the influence of Sister Deborah's...unconventional...take on religion. The meditation practice, the acceptance of the Divine's presence in the beliefs and actions of (especially female) Rwandans, all make Sister Deborah no sister to The Authorities.

Ikirezi maintains a deep connection to Sister Deborah's teachings even as she consumes a Western education and takes on an academic view of this experience in her past. She decides to return to Rwanda to determine the fate of the much-maligned Sister Deborah.

We then hear from that lady directly, learning about her painful, blighted past in the lead-up to an immense awakening experience: The protestant Savior is, indeed, coming back to judge the quick and the dead.

And she's a Black African.

Cat, meet pigeons. Sister Deborah is a profoundly disturbed person, in my view, claiming that a divine avatar is speaking to her; there's meds for schizophrenia now, and she really needs 'em. The one reason I'm not eviscerating this book is that Author Scholastique doesn't take sides, she simply evokes the experience (most powerfully of baptism) that Sister Deborah undergoes as well as provides for the downtrodden women she ministers to. I'm not so constituted as to feel religious awe, nor do I have a clawing need for "community" among believers. In fact, the modern religion-equivalent called "fandom" is too much for me most of the time. The story, then, wastes its lovely magical-realist prose flights on me. They're nice and all, but no gooseflesh over here.

I offer four stars to a story I'm sympathetic to, but not much moved by, because like Kibogo, my guide is a deeply knowledgable person whose experiences allow her to communicate to me both a sense of consensus reality's view of the action, and the lived experience of people deeply Other to me. I'll never not appreciate, value, and celebrate that gift when I'm offered it.

It doesn't hurt that I find all of her writing I've read so far fully worth my eyeblinks.

THE HUNGER OF WOMEN, do not read if you're hungry and have no food available...that way madness lies

THE HUNGER OF WOMEN
MAROSIA CASTALDI (tr. Jamie Richards)
And Other Stories
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Winner of the 2023 National Translation Award in Prose!

The Publisher Says: Rosa, midway through life, is alone. Her husband passed away long ago, and her cosmopolitan daughter is already out the door, keen to marry and move to the city. At loose ends, Rosa decides to transplant herself to the flat, foggy Lombardy provinces from her native Naples and there finds a way to renew herself—by opening a restaurant, and in the process coming to a new appreciation of the myriad relationships possible between women, from friendship to caregiving to collaboration to emotional and physical love.

Unconventional in style and yet rivetingly accessible, The Hunger of Women is a novel infused with the pleasures of the body and the little shocks of daily life. Made up of Rosa’s observations, reflections, and recipes, it tracks her mental journey back to reconnect with her own embattled mother’s age-old wisdom, forward to her daughter’s inconceivable future, and laterally to the world of Rosa's new community of lovers and customers. A tribute not only to the tradition of women's writing on hearth and home but to the legacy of such boundary-breaking feminist writers as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Helene Cixous, The Hunger of Women is nothing less than a literary feast.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A chest-pokey second-person punctuationless stream-of-consciousness narrative of a woman's awakening to the body's hungers? Where she addresses me directly as "Reader" throughout?! Four stars?!

I have not been kidnapped, am not being threatened with grievous bodily harm, and have not lost (more of) my mind. This is a work that, like Ducks, Newburyport and Milkman, uses what could feel like a gimmick in less talented hands to drag you willy-nilly into the head of a woman who, in middle life, determines she is not living, but existing, so sets out to use her woman-ness to its fullest capacity. She's Neapolitan, living in Milan, the mother of an adult daughter whose life has (as they must) diverged from her mother's despite their living together. Her marriage ended when her husband was killed in a car accident...very believable for anyone who's driven in Italy...so there's a huge space in her life as yet unfilled.

So you know, US readers: Neapolitans are the Southern Black folk of Italy, and Milan is the mothership of Italian racism and fascism. AND Rosa's a woman in a misogynist society. These are facts that color the way one sees the narrator that might not be obvious.

Rosa addressing us as "Reader" is my least-favorite thing in this largely plotless inner journey of an adult into the selfhood denied for so long simply by doing the rote, expected things. Rosa decides to open a restaurant...she knows about food, so it makes sense...and thus opens the floodgates of her body's hunger for womanly touch. This is pretty much it as to plot.

A lot of the prose, then, is dedicated to telling us the story of a woman's world as circumscribed by her agreement to be repressed. As that agreement wanes, and as she regales us with...recipes is not the word, with ingredients and techniques for making them sing together, much as one does when talking to a friend who shares one's experience level and cultural referents. These are poetic prose evocations of the cuisine of Naples in all its seafoody glory.

I wanted it all. All the time I read the book I was FAMISHED for the flavors she so intensely evokes in her passages of passata and disfruitings of frutti di mare (seaborne creatures). Then to trudge upstairs to gob a blob of kosher "food"...well, it was its own special torture.

I think I might've withheld a fifth star simply out of enraged anguish....

Is this a read for everyone...well, honestly not. The narrative has no drive for the plot-driven reader. The story is richer with some background that many simply won't care to acquire. The narrator's food-driven hunger is not going to do good things to dieters' willpower. People experiencing sexual deprivation or skin-hunger are not going to feel soothed. I don't imagine the eww-ick homophobes will have too much to shudder over unless they're insanely sensitive to sensuality shared by others. Those sorts aren't likely to be reading my stuff, fortunately.

So I'll clutch my fifth star to my deprived-of-cuisine chest but urge most of y'all to get the beautiful, poetic, seamless translation of a vibrant, intense woman's coming alive for your pre-Thanksgiving (US) or pre-Yule pleasure.

The feast before the feast, let's call it.

BLUE LIGHT HOURS, first novel by established literary luminary of translation

BLUE LIGHT HOURS
BRUNA DANTAS LOBATO
Grove Press/Black Cat
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: of a young Brazilian woman’s first year in America, a continent away from her lonely mother, and the relationship they build over Skype calls across borders

In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother she left behind in northeastern Brazil. Four thousand miles apart and bound by the angular confines of a Skype window, they ask each other a simple question: what’s the news?

Offscreen, little about their lives seems newsworthy. The daughter writes her papers in the library at midnight, eats in the dining hall with the other international students, and raises her hand in class to speak in a language the mother cannot understand. The mother meanwhile preoccupies herself with natural disasters, her increasingly poor health, and the heartbreaking possibility that her daughter might not return to the apartment where they have always lived together. Yet in the blue glow of their computers, the two women develop new rituals of intimacy and caretaking, from drinking whiskey together in the middle of the night to keeping watch as one slides into sleep. As the warm colors of New England autumn fade into an endless winter snow, each realizes that the promise of spring might mean difficult endings rather than hopeful beginnings.

Expanded from a story originally published in The New Yorker, and in elegant prose that recalls the work of Sigrid Nunez, Katie Kitamura, and Rachel Khong, Bruna Dantas Lobato paints a powerful portrait of a mother and a daughter coming of age together and apart and explores the profound sacrifices and freedoms that come with leaving a home to make a new one somewhere else.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A tight, compact barely-more-than-novella based on the author's fiction debut story. She's translated work from Brazilian that I've loved (The Words That Remain) and liked a lot (Moldy Strawberries), so I was primed for a good experience. I got that indeed.

Loneliness and that indescribable parent-feeling compounded of intense longing for the child you've had every day of their life as your primary focus mixed with huge dollops of pride in their accomplisment that's led them away from you, and the freezing fear of what you know can and will happen to hurt them where you just can't be. And, of course, resentment that this stellar being needs to be so far away to feel grown up. I was pleased that the author's stand-in was so dutiful and so genuinely, if sometimes impatiently, loving toward her mother in their long-distance relationship.

If you have, or were, a child, it's going to speak to you. It's told mostly from the author-placeholder's PoV, but we do hear directly from her mother at the end. It will sound, and feel, familiar to older folks. It will offer some insights to younger ones. It will do all this without leaving you feeling Taught. I am morally certain Author Lobato has been in this exact skin, it fits the reader so well.

Why I recommend it to you now is the fall has fallen, there's chill in our Northern Hemisphere air, trees are coloring up, and that's the time for a hot steaming mug for sipping and a long sleeve for sniffling into. You'll do a lot of both of 'em.

I'd offer a fifth star had the ending not felt like it was given a mildly short shrift. It's not bad, it's organic to the story, it's just not quite enough for a full, complete experience of her mother's part of their life.

A first novel made from Life, and grown from a short story could not hope for a better apotheosis. This will not, I hope, be the last work of her own long fiction Author Lobato publishes. Those will feel even more accomplished.

October 2024's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: When an heiress goes missing, her best friend races to unravel the secrets behind her disappearance using clues left behind in an explosive manuscript…

Gia and Abby have been best friends since they were girls, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. In the aftermath, bookish Abby threw herself into her studies while heiress Gia chronicled the events of that fateful summer in a salacious memoir.

Twelve years later, Gia is back in Greece for the summer with her shiny new husband and a motley crew of glamorous guests, preparing to sell the family estate in the wake of her father’s death. When Abby receives an invitation from Gia to celebrate her birthday in September beneath the Northern Lights, she’s thrilled to be granted the time off from her high-pressure job. But the day of her flight, she receives a mysterious, threatening email in her inbox, and when she and Gia’s brother Benny arrive at the Swedish resort, Gia isn’t there. After days of cryptic messages and unanswered calls, Abby and Benny are worried enough to fly to Greece to check on her.

Only, when they arrive, they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts a manuscript she wrote detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. The pages reveal the dark truth about Gia’s provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of the guests they entertained with fizzy champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun. As tensions rise, Gia feels less and less safe in her own home. But the pages end abruptly, leaving Abby and Benny with more questions than answers.

Where is Gia now? And, more importantly, will they find her before it’s too late?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, what can one say? The publisher sets up a Sabrina retelling with added Gone Girl tropes. I'm no more than lukewarm to either story. I'm lukewarm about this one.

I think the author's gift is for pacing. Once launched, it's easier to keep going than quit...no matter that it's a well-trodden path.

Come for the concept, stay for the execution. If the author can make my cynical, seen-it-all self read the whole book, she can do even more for you.

Bantam Books wants $13.99 for a Kindle edition.

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The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.

To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.

But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.

After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Amusing idea for a horror story, one I was really looking forward to; I love Hitchcock's films even as I grow ever more disillusioned with his living persona. I was very entertained by the film references, especially to his lesser-known masterwork Rope.

So I was ready for some fun. I got less of that than expected...why were these people friends? how did Alfred get the money to set up this elaborate haunted house?...as I pondered the practical problems inherent in the set-up. Like any horror-tinged read, I can't stop myself from asking these questions unless I'm utterly ensorceled.

I wasn't.

Berkley Books asks $14.99 for the ebook editions.

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House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce—and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What Maisie Knew, with added (and unnecessary) murder, from a lawyer's PoV. It's not much of an improvement TBH. A lot easier to read than James's prose; less intensely compelling, too.

Tendentiously moralizing tale of a child's nightmarish loss of innocence. Judge less, understand more.

St. Martin's Press thinks $29.00 is fair for a hardcover.

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The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories—dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I ignored the warning signs...the c-a-t on the cover, the call-out to Before the Coffee Gets Cold which is a dreadful, condescending farrago...and paid the price: I just do not like "international bestsellers" because if they appeal to that many people they'll make me queasy with insulin poisoning.

I hated it. But I read it. I wanted the lingering possibility of evoking my 1964 birthday cake, a caramel doberge cake my mother bought to make up for forgetting to make one herself.

Fail. I was annoyed and irked by turns...but y'all'll eat it up (!), I bet, hence the two stars.

If I'd spent Putnam's $25 for a hardcover I'd be frothing bloodily at the mouth and nose.

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A Legend in the Baking (Fake It Till You Bake It #2) by Jamie Wesley

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After accidentally going viral on social media, a cupcake-baking football player gets assistance from a social media maven—and his best friend's little sister—to help promote his new bakery.

August Hodges was supposed to be the silent partner in Sugar Blitz Cupcakes. Emphasis on silent. That is until his impromptu feminist rant about how women bakers are the backbone of the industry and baking cupcakes isn’t a threat to masculinity goes viral, making him the hottest bachelor in town. With a new location in the works, August and his partners decide to capitalize on this perfect opportunity to help cement their place in the community. But the hiring of his best friend’s younger sister, the woman who has haunted some of his best dreams for years, was as much of a shock as his new-found fame.

Social media manager Sloane Dell fell hard for her brother’s best friend the moment she met him more than a decade ago, but that teenage infatuation cost her dearly. Still, she accepts her brother’s request to revamp the bakery’s social media presence to take advantage of August’s newfound popularity, knowing it’s the big break her fledgling career needs. She’ll just ignore the fact that August is still August, i.e. sexier and sweeter than any man has a right to be. And that he drives her crazy with his resistance to all her ideas.

They vow to leave the past in the past. But when an explosive make-out session makes it clear their attraction burns hotter than ever, Sloane and August are forced to reconsider what it means to take a risk and chase your dreams.

As they’re both about to find out, all’s fair in love and cupcakes.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It worked before...do it again. People love formulas because they're very soothing. Jamie Wesley's on a winner here because it hits the beats, makes the current landscape...the social-media and baking-as-entertainment landscape that is...her own, and does it in readable prose that gets out of the story's way.

Yay!

Coming November 19th from St. Martin's Griffin. Preorder now.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Body Phobia: The Western Roots of Our Fear of Difference (33%) by Dex E. Anderson

Rating: 5*? can't fault the book for my rage

The Publisher Says: Your body is who you are.

We will only build a just society by rejecting fear of our bodies. American culture hates the fact that we have bodies—from evangelical culture, which insists "you are a soul and have a body," to wellness culture that turns your control over your body into a moral test, to transphobic activism that insists any step taken to change one's body is an immoral act, to the treatment of disabled bodies in a profoundly ableist culture.

Fear has led cisgender, white, and able-bodied Americans to deprioritize the physical experience and prioritize the mind alone, contributing to our alienation from one another, the marginalization of certain kinds of bodies, and harm to us all. Body Phobia is an examination of the American fear of the body, how it permeates all parts of culture, who gets to be perceived as more than their body, and who does not.

By becoming self-aware of how our bodies interact with the world and what it means to have a body, we can begin to overcome the harm done in divorcing the American body and the American mind for centuries. Through cutting analysis and candid storytelling, Dianna E. Anderson exposes our fear-based politics and shows us a way to approach bodies that is neither positive nor negative but neutral. Our bodies are. And that's enough.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can not keep reading.

This short book is deeply tendentious and absolutely infuriating. I am confronted with thoughtless homophobia/heterosexism, invisible to the perps; with explicit transphobia everywher I look in our culture; with idiots bloviating about disability in ways that boggle*my*mind* and are impervious to anything like education.

How much more awful for Author Dex Anderson to confont these things, and then courageously set out to analyze and explain them clearly and persuasively...to people who won't listen. I suppose that includes me, since I'm absolutely unable to endure the stress of feeling so infuriated at the way things are one more page without having another stroke.

Broadleaf Books says, "$24.99 please," for the hardcover, which seems inexpensive to me. You should, though, get the information in here.

WHITE CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America, even-handed study of a divisive reality

WHITE CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America
KHYATI Y. JOSHI
NYU Press
$23.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Exposes the invisible ways in which white Christian privilege disadvantages racial and religious minorities in America

The United States is recognized as the most religiously diverse country in the world, and yet its laws and customs, which many have come to see as normal features of American life, actually keep the Constitutional ideal of “religious freedom for all” from becoming a reality. Christian beliefs, norms, and practices infuse our society; they are embedded in our institutions, creating the structures and expectations that define the idea of “Americanness.” Religious minorities still struggle for recognition and for the opportunity to be treated as fully and equally legitimate members of American society. From the courtroom to the classroom, their scriptures and practices are viewed with suspicion, and bias embedded in centuries of Supreme Court rulings create structural disadvantages that endure today.

In White Christian Privilege, Khyati Y. Joshi traces Christianity’s influence on the American experiment from before the founding of the Republic to the social movements of today. Mapping the way through centuries of slavery, westward expansion, immigration, and citizenship laws, she also reveals the ways Christian privilege in the United States has always been entangled with notions of White supremacy.

Through the voices of Christians and religious minorities, Joshi explores how Christian privilege and White racial norms affect the lives of all Americans, often in subtle ways that society overlooks. By shining a light on the inequalities these privileges create, Joshi points the way forward, urging readers to help remake America as a diverse democracy with a commitment to true religious freedom.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm an atheist of long standing. Religion is evil, makes everything worse, and hides the worst impulses in people behind the idiotic fig leaf of "sin and redemption."

The author's not of my persuasion. She studies and teaches Race and Religion at the Fairleigh Dickinson University School of Education. Her take, then, is not as dogmatic as mine, or as dismissive. The subject she's presenting here is christian identity as a lens through which racism is magnified and spotlit.

This means she's focused on the results of the problem of religious organization of US society, ie the kinder one of enforcing a kind of cultural blindness on the country, to the ugliest of them all, white nationalism. It is simply unquestioned in the US that christian religious holidays will be generally celebrated, wher other religions' holy days are, if acknowledged at all, presented as curious customs observed by Others. That's mildly insulting on a social level, Othering people in their own home country, but has far broader implications when it's the unquestioned basis for legal issues and governmental policy. The 1954 moral panic that added "under god" to the already creepy "Pledge of Allegiance" very plainly meant the christian one when accompanied by the enshrinement of christian privilege in the laws of the land. This is also the reason a book like this exists: christians feel they're under attack because their privilege is, at long last, being challenged. Privilege is, by definition, invisible to the privileged, at least until it is challenged. It is painful to be made aware, however gently, that one has been both insensitive and exclusionary toward others, without ever meaning any harm. The harm is caused; the privilege itself causes it, and one's own benefit from that privilege is part of that harm caused. That concept, studied here, causes some made aware of it to double down on it. White nationalism is very appealing to those whose belief is that their privilege is natural not intentionally designed and enforced. It's often the case that one sense of entitlement leads to the development of the other as they mutually reinforce the existence and primacy of the social norms that are changing.

The book is, I'm aware, going to make those most in need of its message feel very defensive and attacked. I'd've offered a fifth star to my rating had the author taken a self-help kind of approach to initiating or having conversations about the subject...despite that not being the reason for the book's existence, it felt like something that should have organically come to be from the way the book presents the information about the development of the issue. I'm responding mostly to her utter, unsparing honesty in defining US institutions' earliest designs as optical illusions meant to conceal the central role of christian social norms; it felt to me as though this rigor should lead to some proposal for at least some interpersonal solution.

As a work, as an artifact of thought and analysis, this is a very good book. As a complete train of thought, I found its lack of a proposal for a social solution an unexpected letdown. It is a very good explication of how white christians came by their experience of themselves as Masters of the Universe. As such I can heartily recommend it to the curious.

THE SOUL OF CIVILITY: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, a concept that works to call forth better behavior

THE SOUL OF CIVILITY: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
ALEXANDRA HUDSON
St. Martin's Press
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Alexandra Hudson, daughter of the "Manners Lady," was raised to respect others. But as she grew up, Hudson discovered a difference between politeness―a superficial appearance of good manners―and true civility. In this timely book, Hudson sheds light on how civility can help bridge our political divide.

From classical philosophers like Epictetus, to great twentieth-century thinkers like Martin Luther King Jr., to her own experience working in the federal government during one of the most politically fraught eras in our nation's history, Hudson examines how civility―a respect for the personhood and dignity of others―transcends political disagreements. Respecting someone means valuing them enough to tell them when you think they are wrong.

It’s easy to look at the divided state of the world and blame our leaders, the media, or our education system. Instead, we should focus on what we can accomplish ourselves. The Soul of Civility empowers readers to live tolerantly with others despite deep differences, and to rigorously protest wrongs and debate issues rather than silencing disagreements. A robust public discourse is essential to a truly civil society, and respecting others means telling hard truths. If enough of us decide to change ourselves, we might be able to change the world we live in, too.

Provocative, personal, and acutely relevant, The Soul of Civility is an essential book for our era.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A definition and an etymology:

civility /sĭ-vĭl′ĭ-tē/, noun.

1. Courteous behavior; politeness.
2. A courteous act or utterance.
3. The state of society in which the relations and duties of a citizen are recognized and obeyed; a state of civilization.

•
civility (n.) late 14c., "status of a citizen," from Old French civilite (14c.), from Latin civilis "relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen; popular, affable, courteous" (see civil). Later especially "good citizenship" (1530s). Also "state of being civilized" (1540s); "behavior proper to civilized persons" (1560s).

The source of civility, then, is the same as the source of citizenship and civilization. All of these are concepts for the state of living together; the implication is, in harmony or at least not at daggers drawn. These concepts then give rise to the precepts that make the concepts concrete...from adjective to noun.

The ideas in this book are very much attempts to concretize the concept of being civil, being a citizen among citizens, to allow and encourage a general state of civility to flourish in wider society. The very best way, in centuries of study on the subject, to effect this change is to begin in one's own self. Applying the principles of civility feels impossible when one sees so little evidence for it outside one's orbit...often enough inside it. The idea of this book is to afford the reader some evidence that this internal work is, in fact, a worthwhile use of time and effort.

I'll tell my own story: I live (involuntarily if you're wondering as well as inalterably for complicated reasons I cannot control) with someone I deeply dislike and look down on, an active alcoholic who possesses no sense of his own affect on others whether drunk or sober. I'm never going to think of someone like that as worthy of respect. However, he is. And applying Auther Hudson's definition of forgiveness as regards his behaviors' effects on me:

Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean allowing the same people or types of people to repeatedly harm us. Nor does forgiveness mean sweeping grievances under the rug, failing to confront the hurt in our own souls or confronting others with the hurt they’ve done to us. Forgiveness requires accountability, personal responsibility. It means respecting ourselves and others enough to be honest with them about the harm they may have caused.

...has made a huge difference in how my day-to-day life feels to me. I take accountability for the harms my judgment and anger cause; I offer myself forgiveness; and resolve to do better. Every single time I have applied this principle, I have experienced a positive change in his behavior. It is a process; it has fits and starts; I fail, he fails...but the point remains that, after seven years of angry resentment and much blaming and shaming from me to him, differences are stark and plain when they occur.

I think the fact that they *can* occur in this fraught a situation is proof that the author's point...being civil calls forth better from not only one's self but the others in our civilized orbit...is correct, and her instructional writing is very helpful.

Will it work in all situations? It has in all the situations where I have applied it, from angry, unhappy service providers to rude drunks. I'm pretty sure that's a testimonial to the conscious application of the learning I derived from this read.

It's a pleasant task to follow this erudite woman as she offers her learning to us. The fact is her beginnings in a world governed by manners is an enviably high platform from which to jump into the long, long history of writing on the subject of civility and its applications. I encourage even the most mannerly to engage with this expansion of the need for, and reasons behind, the practice of them in the society we live within.

KLAXON READS: "ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?": Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change, & YOU BELONG HERE: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms

"ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?": Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change
SARITA SRIVASTA
NYU Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$26.59 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Shows why diversity workshops fail and offers concrete solutions for a path forward

Despite decades of anti-racism workshops and diversity policies in corporations, schools, and nonprofit organizations, racial conflict has only increased in recent years. “Are You Calling Me a Racist?” reveals why these efforts have failed to effectively challenge racism and offers a new way forward.

Drawing from her own experience as an educator and activist, as well as extensive interviews and analyses of contemporary events, Sarita Srivastava shows that racial encounters among well-meaning people are ironically hindered by the emotional investment they have in being seen as good people. Diversity workshops devote energy to defending, recuperating, educating, and inwardly reflecting, with limited results, and these exercises often make things worse. These “Feel-Good politics of race,” Srivastava explains, train our focus on the therapeutic and educational, rather than on concrete practices that could move us towards true racial equity.

In this type of approach to diversity training, people are more concerned about being called a racist than they are about changing racist behavior.

“Are You Calling Me a Racist?” is a much-needed challenge to the status quo of diversity training, and will serve as a valuable resource for anyone dedicated to dismantling racism in their communities, educational institutions, public or private organizations, and social movements.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Read this:

Is the assignment for November 5th, 2024, clear now? Choosing to stay rooted in the conflict over "race" as we so wrongly call differences in skin color and/or ethnicity is choosing to feel good about being Right over making substantive progress. Harris, imperfect and politically impure as she is (and must be in order to get a shot at the US President's chair) will not drag the country back into a dead, disgusting past of unchallenged racism, sexism, homophobia, and unchecked capitalism.

Will everything be perfect? No. When has it ever been? It *will* be better than a Vance presidency that will usher in the Nerd Reich of unchecked, surveillance-happy corporate fake people to then unfetter their squads of tech scum to set about further enshittifying our lives at an increasing rate. That hegemony already makes tech work more poorly for non-whites, and limits the benefits of tech to a very elite group.

These are the stakes. Understand the assignment. Vote for the lesser of the evils because you have no options but the ones we're given. Stop whining about the way the world is and do something to make it better.

A Harris presidency won't magically do anything at all. It might, depending on her actions, renew the DEI conversation, and refocus it on reparative justice instead of on how we, white people, "feel" when racism is brought up; on the enforced sharing of Black and other non-white people's lived experience in some mystical communion of getting to know "the other side;" on burying and distracting attention from action in the real world, not the therapy arena of workshops.

I'm big on therapy, y'all, don't come at me! It's just that therapy is mental masturbation if it doesn't turn into actual behavioral change. If you as an individual need therapy, go find it. It's never been easier with the multiple online sources readily available at a big variety of out-of-pocket costs. We as a society, however, need action to build back better. (Biden's woefully underused and succinct catchphrase; especially useful when "race" is the subject) The world is on literal fire. No woman, of any skin color or native tongue, can be wasted on a stunted uneducated life of sexual and social servitude. We need literally every single person alive today to take this challenge to change as an instruction not an invitation that can be declined.

This book is a great way to change the prescription in your social glasses.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


YOU BELONG HERE: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms
KIM DABBS
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.88 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a world overcrowded with labels, don’t allow your identity to be defined by other people. Learn how to take back your power, choose to feed the aspects of your identity that serve you, and let go of those that don’t.

Everyone feels like an outsider at some point in their life—when we walk into a room and think to ourselves, “I don’t belong here.” To avoid these feelings of exclusion, many of us hide our authentic selves and allow others to define our identity.

You Belong Here offers a new framework that allows each of us to define how we want to be seen, heard, and valued on our own terms so we feel a sense of belonging in any situation. Further, it serves as a launchpad for organizational leaders and culture builders to create safe spaces for individuals to show up as their authentic selves.

Readers will explore our four identities:

Our Lived Identity is made up of the aspects of our identity we inherit when we are born into the world.

Our Learned Identity includes the parts of our identity that we’ve chosen or claimed as we make our way through the world.

Our Lingering Identity is the identity we default to when we feel like an outsider and fall back into as a survival mechanism.

Our Loved Identity is where we find our authentic selves and see ourselves through a lens of empowerment.

In the journey to understand our past experiences and how society has established barriers to entry, we can design our own future, rooted in our Loved Identity. We learn to rewrite the stories that aren’t serving us and embrace the ones that do. Rather than look for a seat at someone else’s table, we find the tools to build our own.

When we fully leverage this and live with authenticity and purpose, we can be seen, heard, and valued in a way that gives us a sense of belonging at home, at work, and in society. Belonging is realized when we understand everyone is an outsider and it’s the power to create space for those differences that unite us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: See? I really am pro-therapy!

This succinct self-help book is a quality read for anyone who needs to sharpen their sense of themself as a worthy and worthwhile contributor in order to become an effective leader. The trick here is to use these carefully thought-out "Identities" to lead others into a stronger commitment to their own identities being expressed in the world.

The present pass has multiple axes of crisis. Why and how they came to be is, at this moment, less urgent a topic of discussion than what the hell we need to do about it all. No one has every answer. No one individual is going to Fix the World. The usefulness of every person's contribution to society isn't a helpful focus of attention, ever really but certainly not now.

We need to use techniques like these simply delineated ones to instill the sense of strength, of personal power, of ability to effect change and affect others in the world in positive ways, in the greatest number of people. All hands are needed at the pump to keep the boat afloat. Learning how best to support a sense of urgency in one's self, and effectively communicate it into action that's both personal and group-based will be a lot easier when one has a sense of one's value to every situation. Learning the technique Author Dabbs supplies here will provide some very useful tools to achieve this goal.

Don't ignore the value of a strong sense of your own power and ability and right to use it. If you're feeling helpless and useless in the face of the world's problems, read this book to start topping up your emotional fuel tanks.

DARD NOIR: CRUSH; BIRD IN A CAGE; THE WICKED GO TO HELL; all 4-plus star Pushkin Vertigo French thriller translations

THE WICKED GO TO HELL
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An undercover cop and a prison inmate play a tense game of cat and mouse in this brilliantly original thriller by the master of French noir

At one of France’s toughest prisons, an undercover cop is attempting to trap an enemy spy by posing as a fellow inmate. So Frank and Hal find themselves holed up together in a grimy, rat-infested cell, each warily eyeing the other. As they plan a daring escape, an unexpected friendship ensues—but which is the cop and which is the spy?

Gritty and hard-hitting, The Wicked Go to Hell is a tense, paranoid 1950s thriller about duty and conscience, deception and loyalty, and about what it means to be human—whether you’re the good guy or not.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you finished your Simenon shelf(s)? Are you tired of searching out Pascal Garnier books you haven't read? Pick up the scent of Frédéric Dard, the perpetrator of similar romans durs and noir-themed explorations of the human condition.

In this Jim Thompsonesque tale of convicted murderers who escape incarceration and, while on the run, develop a deeper regard for each other than they have for themselves. It's too short for me to say too much more, but the men are very much of a type that noir readers love to read about: Down on their luck men, violent and angry, who act out their lifelong received abuse all around them. They're very much victims of a system that cares nothing for or about them until they step out of line. Like Genet's homosexual versions, they're perpetrators of crime who see no wrong in getting what they need by any means necessary because absolutely no one anywhere will give it to them.

The twist ending is...foreshadowed a wee bit too strongly in the prologue. Maybe read that after you've finished the book. It won't take you much more than a long, cold Sunday afternoon to read, and it is as perfect a #Deathtober seasonal read as any I've found.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


CRUSH
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A slow-burning intelligent thriller with a wicked twist in the tail from one of the giants of French noir fiction

Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The Roolands' home is an island of colour, good humour and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville, and soon Louise is working there as a maid. But once she is under her new employers' roof their model life starts to fall apart—painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear and a dark obsession begins to grow, which will end in murder...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Another long-afternoon read that feels so very French, and not the glamourous edge of Frenchness. We as foreigners probably don't think much about the huge bulk of France, a country that's close to the Netherlands on the north all the way to the Mediterranean in the south. It's about the size of Texas, for US readers, so very, very big and diverse.

This story takes place in the cold, rainy north, in a town of working-class folk...think Rust Belt/Great Lakes, US readers...being "invaded" by people who work for NATO, so are both foreign and educated. It's culture shock all around. This is always a chance for the chancers to move their station up...Louise, our narrator, is one who sees her chance to leave the boring beautyless trudge of her preordained life behind.

As always, the plan goes to hell once it connects with reality.

Louise is an unreliable narrator...you'll figure that out before page ten...and very much the manipulative minx. Her life was never going to be easy, but whose is? Does the twist at the end mean what its surface says it does?

You know by now Dard doesn't do wrapping-paper-and-bow endings. Go with him, pay attention to every word, and enjoy the places you'll go.

After all, you have the luxury of leaving them.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


BIRD IN A CAGE
FRÉDÉRIC DARD
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It felt like the slipknot on a rope round my chest was being tightened without pity

Trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Travelling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother’s death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable… Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted.

Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he’s in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment.

Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Stupid decisions go hand-in-hand with horniness. Women want me, thinks the little head; men want me, thinks the woman's head, and they'll do whatever I want in hopes I'll deliver the goodies. Spoiler alert: fat chance she'll live up to her side of the bargain.

When did you last see Double Indemity? This is a careful take on that story in a French accent. I think of that statement as a compliment...if you decide to emulate something, do it carefully and well, so it raises the same admiring attention as the emulated thing. The "reasoning" behind Albert, the man in question, doing what he did is...poor. Suffice to say the crime he's involved in wouldn't've challenged Maigret, or any flic in 1961 France, too awfully much.

That said, even a good copy is a copy. So I stalled out at four stars.

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS, charming queer love story in a magical fantasy world

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS
MAIGA DOOCY (The Wildersongs Trilogy #1)
Orbit Books
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Desperate to undo the curse binding them to each other, an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell—only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together.

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics.

He can summon butterflies with a song, or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic.

That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. But Grimm casts spells, he doesn’t undo them, and Leo doesn’t mess with powerful magic.

Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To dissolve the curse, they’ll have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and—much to their horror—work together.

Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Forced proximity/mismatched temperaments/social class disparity stories are almost always going to frustrate me. No exception here.

The young men are in that magic bubble of time where all the world's new, fresh, and exciting, the education you're receiving in class is only part of what you're learning, and everything is still possible. Great start, then. Add onto the plus side being queer isn't any kind of issue in this milieu. I'm going to say the quiet part out loud: Magic curses are as good an explanation as any for the reality of human desire. (Which, incidentally, is not consummated...a lot like Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunners series, you're not getting a HEA or even HFN in this story.)

If that's a dealbreaker for you, this isn't your best investment of eyeblinks. I was on the bubble about that aspect of the story, but I'm willing to go with it because I like these boys. Carping, whiny brats that they are, they're also tentatively figuring out the limits of their magical powers (a stand-in for real-life capabilities and drive for success, with the same drawbacks and problems we all face) as they each need the other's innate skill to complete any magical aim. If there's a better metaphor for a successful love relationship, I don't know of it.

Leo, our PoV character, is privileged and gifted beyond his comfort zone in his branch of magic. He's a chatterbox and uses words beautifully. It's a great way for him to distract others from the huge depths of his talent. Grimm is aptly named, as he's learned from a hardscrabble beginning that resolute focus on results is The Way To Succeed. They're excellent complements for each other's strengths.

Why, then, was I frustrated by the story I'm clearly enjoying? I don't like the implications of forced proximity. "Forced" is always going to trouble me. The feelings developed in forced proximity are, well, forced. Like forcing a plant, the result is at best an attenuated version of the unforced thing. I mistrust the trope because life has taught me not to trust forced feelings for long.

I'm sure, though, that others feel differently. I'm also sure that the book's ending is not placed where it is for no reason or simply by chance. Author Doocy understands the material she's working with. Her skills are very much congruent with the material's focus on the communication these young men are learning to give and receive. So I will set aside my unease in the face of my trust in her storytelling skill.

Again I remind romance readers that this is fantasy first, romantic fantasy to be sure, but romance-novel endings are not included. Much to be praised, and much to enjoy, so recommended reading.

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU by COLBY WILKENS

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU
COLBY WILKENS
St. Martin's Griffin Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An enemies to lovers romance with a spooky twist where two feuding writers end up on a writers retreat together at a haunted castle in Scotland

It's been months since horror author Penelope Skinner threw a book at Neil Storm. But he was so infuriating, with his sparkling green eyes and his bestselling horror novels that claimed to break Native stereotypes. And now she’s a publishing pariah and hasn’t been able to write a word since. So when her friend invites her on a too-good-to-be-true writers retreat in a supposedly haunted Scottish castle, she seizes the opportunity. Of course, some things really are too good to be true.

Neil wants nothing less than to be trapped in a castle with the frustratingly adorable woman who threw a book at him. She drew blood! Worse still, she unleashed a serious case of self-doubt! Neil is terrified to write another bestselling “book without a soul,” as Pen called it. All Neil wants is to find inspiration, while completely avoiding her.

But as the retreat begins, Pen and Neil are stunned to find themselves trapped in a real-life ghost story. Even more horrifying, they’re stuck together and a truly shocking (extremely hot) almost-kiss has left them rethinking their feelings, and… maybe they shouldn’t have been enemies at all? But if they can’t stop the ghosts pursuing them, they may never have the chance to find out.

Full of spooky chills and even more sexy thrills, If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens is the funny, fast-paced romp romance readers have been waiting for!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Spooky castle...enemies forced into proximity...sparks flying left and right...bingo! #Deathtober read card filled.

One star off for heterosexualizing a perfectly good plot.

Author Wilkens does a fine job of entertaining her readers with a ghost story inside Gothic-novel trappings. Her domestic-violence opening...the woman throws a book at the man hard enough for the injury to bleed, and to leave a scar, and it's...somehow okay...? Like, a woman injuring a man isn't a problem but if he'd done the same to her the howling banshees would be all over it!


I was not thrilled by this.

I just barely got to a three-star rating because Author Wilkens made me chuckle many times *in*spite*of* my existing irritation. That is some serious talent! Causing an irked old curmudgeon to chuckle is a feat!

I really don't know what to tell you about the violence. You know your own tolerance for the abuse passed off as humor trope.

KLAXON READS: THE BIG CON: Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America, & LIMITARIANISM: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

LIMITARIANISM: The Case Against Extreme Wealth
INGRID ROBEYNS
Astra House
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "A powerful case for limitarianism – the idea that we should set a maximum on how much resources one individual can appropriate. A must-read!" —Thomas Piketty, bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

An original, bold, and convincing argument for a cap on wealth by the philosopher who coined the term "limitarianism."

How much money is too much? Is it ethical, and democratic, for an individual to amass a limitless amount of wealth, and then spend it however they choose? Many of us feel that the answer to that is no—but what can we do about it?

Ingrid Robeyns has long written and argued for the principle she calls "limitarianism"—or the need to limit extreme wealth. This idea is gaining momentum in the mainstream – with calls to "tax the rich" and slogans like "every billionaire is a policy failure"—but what does it mean in practice?

Robeyns explains the key reasons to support the case against extreme wealth:

It keeps the poor poor and inequalities growing

It’s often dirty money

It undermines democracy

It’s one of the leading causes of climate change

Nobody actually deserves to be a millionaire

There are better things to do with excess money

The rich will benefit, too

This will be the first authoritative trade book to unpack the concept of a cap on wealth, where to draw the line, how to collect the excess and what to do with the money. In the process, Robeyns will ignite an urgent debate about wealth, one that calls into question the very forces we live by (capitalism and neoliberalism) and invites us to a radical reimagining of our world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Using moral arguments against massive wealth accumulation is like using moral arguments against porn: You could be right, probably aren't, and the target audience for your suasions could not possibly care less about them.

All the bullet list items above? The very wealthy know those to be true and could not possibly care less about them. "Every billionaire a policy failure" is way more effective because it simply states the people's case against the perpetrators of the crimes (moral and/or legal) that must be committed to become a billionaire.

What to do with the proceeds of the confiscation of excessive wealth is always going to be the weak point of any scheme to disempower the richest. The current Congress, like all its predecessors, is made up of people beholden to the moneymen. They will not confiscate and redistribute more than those who pay them...the people offer a token salary, the real money is in the campaign warchests they pay no tax on and use as they please...will allow.

Author Robeyns is firing an opening salvo in the next campaign against greed. It will persuade a few groundlings to talk it up and try to get it onto the agenda of more meetings.

Absolutely no billionaire will acquiesce to her suggestions. Therefore nothing will change as radically as she proposes.

That is not, in my view, the purpose of this read, any more than Marx or Mao delivered revolutions in human social or economic organization with their books. In fact both delivered fig leaves for the vilest and most destructive totalitarians to operate on their ostensible behalf while in fact defrauding their true believers and, often as not, killing the ones who said "stop" because the inconveniently moral could be labeled "counterrevolutionary" therefore beyond the social pale to the supporting masses.

What Author Robeyns offers here is a chance for you to examine your beliefs and your conscience. She doesn't have a prayer of impacting the lowlife, amoral Nerd-Reichers and the humanoid wallets enabling them. She *does* have a chance to elucidate some ugly facts about the accumulation of great wealth. A philosopher who has read, studied, and thought very deeply about human nature, she comes to conclusions you and I would do well to evaluate for ourselves. The only way I know of to do that is to read her words, and decide how much you resonate with them. The work this book represents is impressive. No one gets to these stages of argument absent a long, intense program of study.

Do you feel in your water that someone possessing a billion currency units is also possessed of a character flaw? You'll find some comfort in knowing that you're not first to reach, or alone in reaching, this conviction. Is the spectacle of inconceivably rich foreigners using their hoards to manipulate the US electorate and thus the outcome of our elections very angering to your patriot's soul? You'll resonate to the ways and means of removing that power from them.

Thomas Piketty praises this book as a "must-read" on its central argument of limitarianism. As he has done more than anyone else to yank the horribly uncomfortable, thick wool of "neoliberalism" from the world's eyes, I'd say heed him and get this book into your head before casting your 2024 votes up and down the ticket.

Why have I given it a surprisingly limitarian four stars, if I set out to warble my fool lungs out about its virtues? Because, by the tendentious nature of books setting forth cases for action, it's a bit repetitive. It's not academic in purpose so it's not footnoted to a fare-thee-well. It is, in short, a beast with two faces: one faces the congregation and lectures for change; one faces the choir and seeks approval for its message.

Speaking from the choir, I approve.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


THE BIG CON: Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America
JONATHAN CHAIT
Mariner Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The scam of supply-side economics is clearly and convincingly explained in “a classic of political journalism” (Michael Lewis).

Jonathan Chait has written for a range of publications, from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, and considers himself a moderate. But he’s convinced that American politics has been hijacked.

Over the past three decades, a fringe group of economic hucksters has corrupted and perverted our nation’s policies, Chait argues, revealing in The Big Con how these canny zealots first took over the Republican Party, and then gamed the political system and the media so that once-unthinkable policies—without a shred of academic, expert, or even popular support—now drive the political agenda, regardless of which party is in power. The principle is supposedly “small government”—but as he demonstrates, the government is no smaller than it was in the days of Ronald Reagan; it’s simply more debt-ridden and beholden to wealthy elites.

Why have these ideas succeeded in Washington even as the majority of the country recognizes them for the nonsense they are? How did a clique of extremists gain control of American economic policy and sell short the country’s future? And why do their outlandish ideas still determine policy despite repeated electoral setbacks? Explaining just how things work in Washington, DC, and distinguishing between short-term volatility in the “political weather” and the long-term, radical shift in the “political climate,” Chait presents a riveting drama of greed and deceit that should be read by every concerned citizen.

“Chait is both very serious and seriously funny as he traces the rise of conservatism over the past thirty years.” —Michael Kinsley

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT. THANKS!

My Review: We knew the 1980 election was stolen. We knew why, too. Milton Friedman told us why it had to be in Free to Choose, book and TV show. He operated in the libertarian/laissez-faire world of F.A. Hayek. The men behind Reagan were supply-side radicals who wanted more than anything to cripple the Federal government's ability to act against the businesses polluting out planet, and "taking their money." Instead the Federal government would need to borrow money...at interest...from the banks; enriching the bankers and hobbling the politicians who could enforce change on the reactionary elite.

What tendentious Author Chait does in this seventeen-year-old book is detail the ways this brazen theft (my words, not his) has resonated down the decades to the present moment of radicalized fascist terrorism meeting economic royalism in an ongoing enshittification of the world's social fabric. And it's being done to us all under the name "supply-side economics."

Call it whatever you like. We're forty-four years into the world's first experiment in this snake-oil system of not taxing the rich and not acting to protect the poor and the needy, after seeing the huge economic and societal gains of the Keynesian interventionist years. The promises of economic growth and technological innovation, of booming investment by those untaxed billionaires, etc etc ad nauseam, have not materialized. There's never been a glimmer of benefit to anyone except the untaxed wealthy.

Yet the entire conversation about the economy is still framed in terms that comport with this failed-in-practice theory.

The essence of insanity is doing the same thing repetitively and expecting different results to come of it.

Author Chait isn't kidding around with this takedown of the naked emperors of the economic establishment. It is refreshing to see a commonsensical moderate-to-conservative poloitical thinker confront orthodoxy, hold it to the test of results-versus-promises, and report honestly on his findings. Reading this book before the 2024 election would be wise. Reading it, and considering deeply its message and its implications, is something I'd call a civic duty.

TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN, first Vandy Myrick mystery from Delia Pitts via Minotaur Books

TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN
DELIA PITTS
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: With Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

Evander “Vandy” Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It's a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in "Q-Town," and worth guarding.

For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They’re nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.

At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there’s trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy’s sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She’s a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn’t her strong suit. Vandy won’t back off.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Middle-aged female protagonist with a dementia-addled parent needing care and an aversion to the snares of monogamy plus a healthy libido? Sign me up.

Smart judge of character, possessed of real, professionally gained investigative chops? Intelligent woman who suffers no fools and has a bit too much freedom of tongue? Head of the line.

We Ma'at followers don't get gifts like Vandy all that often. I was delighted by her, by her casually-but-effectively drawn world, and the challenges she faces. They're not tied to her Blackness, they're not tied to her womanness, they're informed by those facts of her life of course but they don't arise from them. Her father in a memory-care facility? Happens to ever more of us as living longer expands the chances of developing some kind of dementia. Coming home to care for her dad is another increasingly common life-event. Needing to find a way to support oneself with the skills of a lifetime yet being inescapably tied to one's family's past is another very common experience to those of us at a certain age (or well past it, but still able to remember the weird double expectations).

The book doesn't pull any punches or give any unrealistic takes on Vandy's relationships with Queenstown's police. They're not orcs out to club her into a pulp; they're not sensitivity-trained good boys, either. They're bog-standard misogynists and racists who do their jobs without much reflection, or much actual malice. They have to solve cases, so they do; that sometimes means corners get cut. That's not okay with Vandy. Her role isn't to teach the cops; it's to catch the guilty and make sure the cops can't ignore her findings.

Why then isn't there a higher star rating? Because some tropes are deployed as shortcuts in the identification of the guilty party that were, shall we say, unsubtly foreshadowed. Klieg lights and klaxons aren't subtle hints. Now, I have read a lot of mysteries and a lot of puzzle-solving ones in that mass. I'm not going to demand authors surprise me to get good marks, because next-to-no one would meet the standard. Not to mention other people don't have my ideas about what counts as a clue, or a trope. So in the case of this story, I rate it four stars because I feel sure y'all will enjoy meeting Vandy, spending time in Queenstown, and seeing how the town works when its social fabric is ripped by the gross insult of murder.

I'm in for the next one. Soon, please, thank you please.

BARRY LANCET'S PAGE: JAPANTOWN & TOKYO KILL, first two of his Jim Brodie series

JAPANTOWN
BARRY LANCET (Jim Brodie #1)
Simon & Schuster
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this “sophisticated international thriller” (The New York Times Book Review), an American antiques-dealer-turned-reluctant-private-eye must use his knowledge of Japanese culture to unravel a major murder in San Francisco—before he and his daughter become targets themselves.

San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie receives a call one night from a friend at the SFPD: an entire family has been senselessly gunned down in the Japantown neighborhood of the bustling city. As an American born and raised in Japan and part-owner of his father’s Tokyo private investigation firm, Brodie has advised the local police in the past, but the near-perfect murders in Japantown are like nothing he’s ever encountered.

With his array of Asian contacts and fluency in Japanese, Brodie follows leads gathered from a shadow powerbroker, a renegade Japanese detective, and the elusive tycoon at the center of the Japantown murders along a trail that takes him from the crime scene in California to terrorized citizens and informants in Japan. Step by step, he unravels a web of intrigue stretching back centuries and unearths a deadly secret that threatens not only his life but also the lives of his entire circle of family and friends.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh dear. I'm really Over the "Asians are naturally master assassins" trope. It's a whole star off. The parts about being trained and the family inheritance of the skills...well, I'm gonna say it: "1984 wants its tropes back." I could hear "Mr. Roboto" playing in the background.

Then I realized the book is ten years old, and it makes more sense. 2014 is culturally closer to the 1980s than the 2020s are. And please can we retire forever the "grieving for dead wife fuels badassery" trope? It's called fridging nowadays and it plays poorly in 2024. I myownself never liked it because women aren't solely victims which is the message this trope sends.

So, well, since you hated it why'd you review it? is forming on your mental lips. I didn't hate it. I was very intrigued by Brodie's multicultural upbringing and his proficient code-switching from sleuth to art-world wheeler-dealer; from US to Japanese norms; from loving dad to vengeful rageball. Author Lancet manages all these transitions without making me, a skeptic towards the majority of Brodie's identities, feel like I've got whiplash. An excellent talent, that. A man whose self contains such a wide latitude is a hard creation.

Layers of connection within the story, threads of identities intertwining among the threads of action aren't quite so convincing. Why are we hopping between first-person cinematic view and limited third person? An omniscient narrator doesn't blend well in between first and third person narration, true; but when we're moving between limited PoVs we need to know eventually who the third person is, or it feels like the writer took the easy way out. That diminishes the real impact of the first-person narrator's effortfully built solidity in the reader's imagination.

I'm not honestly able, then, to get past three and a half stars in what would ordinarily have been a more than four-star read. I'll go on to the next on slightly wary but willing to be there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



TOKYO KILL
BARRY LANCET (Jim Brodie #2)
Simon & Schuster
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In the second thriller of this new series from “a fresh voice in crime fiction” (Kirkus Reviews), antiques dealer-turned-P.I. Jim Brodie matches wits with an elusive group of killers chasing a long-lost treasure that has a dangerous history.

When an elderly World War II veteran shows up unannounced at Brodie Security begging for protection, the staff thinks he’s just a paranoid old man. He offers up a story connected to the war and to Chinese Triads operating in present-day Tokyo, insisting that he and his few surviving army buddies are in danger.

Fresh off his involvement in solving San Francisco’s Japantown murders, antiques dealer Jim Brodie had returned to Tokyo for some R&R, and to hunt down a rare ink painting by the legendary Japanese Zen master Sengai for one of his clients—not to take on another case with his late father’s P.I. firm. But out of respect for the old soldier, Brodie agrees to provide a security detail, thinking it’ll be an easy job and end when the man comes to his senses.

Instead, an unexpected, brutal murder rocks Brodie and his crew, sending them deep into the realm of the Triads, Chinese spies, kendo warriors, and an elusive group of killers whose treachery spans centuries—and who will stop at nothing to complete their mission.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh great...Japanese assassin dynasty first, now Chinese triads.

Not my favorite transition. Nor is the grafting on of the seemingly inescapable "love interest," a woman (natch) to help Our Hero forget the wife he lost before book one began. I'm not as forgiving the second time out. The same "Asian assassin dynasty is invincible until white guy raised in their culture comes along to show 'em how it's done because because they killed his wumman" stuff that turned me off of James Bond happens here.

Do better. This crud's tired and so am I. Though I admit the artistic bit of the series interests me, it felt totally unintegrated into the story this time; permaybehaps the miasma of heterosexuality, always disagreeable to me, got in my way.

Wharever; I'm out.