My First Books of Nature: DO SHEEP COUNT SHEEP?: How Animals Sleep & DO FISH GO FISHING?: How Animals Eat, lap-reads for curious kidlets

DO FISH GO FISHING?: How Animals Eat
PETRA BARTIKOVÁ (My First Books of Nature series; illus. Katarina Macurova)
Albatros Media
$15.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Explore the fascinating world of animal eating habits and other fun facts in this illustrated non-fiction book, featuring diverse creatures and whimsical illustrations.

This non-fiction gem introduces eleven fascinating animals, from the peculiar platypus to the voracious elephant. Readers will discover the unique habitats of these animals and explore the whimsical ways they consume their meals. Dive into the underwater realm of the platypus, witness the colossal appetite of the elephant, and marvel at the varied dining techniques of creatures like fleas, chimpanzees, and hummingbirds.

Through vibrant visuals and engaging storytelling, this book offers an immersive and educational exploration of the captivating world of animal eaters. It also ensures a delightful reading experience that sparks curiosity, making it an ideal addition to any young reader's collection.

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

My Review: Aimed at the young lap-reader, this 28-page delight has busy, detailed illustrations that should keep your audience busy finding new things to focus on, and give you a chance to engage them in learning the well-selected, carefully calibrated information about the feeding habits of the charismatic critters Author Bartíková has chosen to introduce kidlets to the world of science.


Your kid/grand/nibling might just get the spark of science love from this sort of fun and informative presentation, and it's a great hour's down-for-a-nap laptime read.

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DO SHEEP COUNT SHEEP?: How Animals Sleep
PETRA BARTIKOVÁ (My First Books of Nature series; illus. Katarina Macurova)
Albatros Media
$15.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Explore the fascinating world of animal sleeping habits and other fun facts in this illustrated non-fiction book, featuring diverse creatures and whimsical illustrations.

Discover the captivating world of animal sleep in Do Sheep Count Sheep?: How Animals Sleep, the next installment in the My First Books of Nature series, tailored for children aged 3-6. Illustrated by award-winning artist Katarina Macurova, this non-fiction gem introduces eleven diverse animals, from the industrious ant to the serene koala, each showcasing unique sleeping habits and habitats. Through vibrant illustrations, young readers explore how animals rest in burrows, treetops, underwater, and even in-flight, offering an enchanting journey into the animal kingdom's slumber realms. Delve into the peculiar sleeping patterns of the giraffe, the nocturnal bat, and the laid-back albatross, discovering fascinating details about positions and durations that set animal sleep apart from our human routines.

This book stands as a delightful addition to the My First Books of Nature series, offering an educational and entertaining exploration of the intriguing world of animal slumber. With vibrant showcases of diverse sleeping habitats and positions, this book engages young minds, making learning about sleep variations both fun and informative. It ensures an immersive experience that sparks curiosity and fosters an early appreciation for the wonders of nature. A must-have for parents, caregivers, and educators seeking to introduce young readers to the fascinating realm of animal sleep, blending the magic of storytelling with educational value.

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

My Review: *I* learned stuff from this adorable little book! It had never once, in almost seventy years of living among them, occurred to me to wonder if, still less how, ants slept! I might use this little overview as a naptime not bedtime read...too many questions and ideas to get the mind working on for that longer downtime transition to work smoothly.


Inexpensive enough for both together to make a terrific holiday gift to parents, enough fun to withstand multiple readings when the small mind latches on to the facts and starts to want more.

A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL, a book you might misunderstand as bleak...it's hopeful

A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL
T. KINGFISHER
Tor Books
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's "Goose Girl", rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.

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

My Review: Dark it is. A dark retelling of a fairy tale I myownself think is entirely too dark anyway. A deeply unhappy story that centers on the evil deeds and wicked heart of Evangeline (follow the link for the roots of this name) as a sorceress, "one who influences fate or fortune," in its original meaning; the sense is always pejorative. It certainly needs to be in this case, as Evangeline (I don't trust y'all to go look it up: the mother's name Evangeline is a diminutive of Latin "evangelium" ("gospel", itself from Greek Ευαγγέλιο "gospel", meaning "good news"...the christian gospels, in other words, those horrifying fonts of millennia of misogyny and detrimental social control, applied to an appalling, cruel, controlling mother) is following the Grimm plot closely in her actions.

I don't know what to think of the inspiration of the story. I'm positive Author Vernon (real name) did not know the results of the 2024 US election as a matter of fact before this book came out in that August. I am a bir chilled by its timeliness, a story of an evil old sorcerous person manipulating a good, innocent girl to her detriment. I wish I was writing this in a spirit of "how did she know we'd defeat the evil old sorcerous party" instead of "if only we'd defeated the evil old sorcerous party" but here we are.

It felt to me, all the way through the read, as though I was being Entertained, that the trademark Vernon wittiness was deployed not organic to the story. It isn't a story where wit, comedy, humor in general, sit naturally. I was abused by a mother much like Evangeline: cold, manipulative, withholding, but always hiding behind a good god-fearing front. For me the read was a return to the times of my life where my anxiety issues were installed. It's a testament to how very effective Author Vernon's skill at storytelling is that I finished and rated the read almost five stars! It's a deeply anxious story, a mother who is not a nurturer or a caregiver in the good sense but rather one who gives her child victim cares that will last a lifetime of therapy. (Why has no fantasy novelist given their MC a therapist?)

My anxiety attacks aside, the story is true to its source material in its claustrophobia, its sense of physical as well as emotional deprivation of freedom. Cordelia's enforced motionlessness probably triggered more awful memories for me than anything else, and made me long for my Falada: The 1968 Bonneville belonging to my mother that I used to escape the misery of my "life" with her. I'm glad I don't have to re-read the book!

It sounds like I should be zero-stars-do-not-recommending it, doesn't it? So look at those almost-five stars and ask what the hell happened here.

Stories are the way people make sense of Life with the big "L" so they are good at their job when experiencing them is a powerful, bone-rattling experience. I think you can see this read rattled me! It shook my angry absorption in the horrendous return to 2016 into a new shape. It reminded me, by evoking feelings from the childhood I endured, that all things end. That even after they end, the consequences carry on...for good or ill, as we ourownselves choose to use them. That even in the midst of misery, someone we do not expect it of is aware of our problems and willing to help.

Rays of hope like this story represents are never more welcome than they are right now.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, role model for anti-fascism this #Booksgiving

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
MARIA ISABEL SÁNCHEZ VEGARA (Little People, BIG DREAMS series; illus. Martin Le Lapin)
Frances Lincoln Children's Books
$15.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy bestselling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the talented pilot and writer. Little Antoine grew up in Lyon, France. Ever since his first flight as a young boy, he dreamt of becoming a pilot. When he joined the French army during WWI, he finally got his chance. He spent a short time in the Air Force before leaving to become a mail pilot, all the while writing about his adventures.

However, in 1935, he crashed in the desert during a flight from Paris to Saigon. With little food and water to hand, he became very ill. Fortunately, after four days, he was found by a passerby and nursed back to health. This experience influenced much of Antoine's future writing. In WWII, he moved to the United States where he campaigned for France's freedom from Nazism. During this period, he wrote The Little Prince, a captivating story of love and loss, which went on to become one of the bestselling children's books of all time.

This powerful book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the writer’s life. Little People, BIG DREAMS is a bestselling biography series for kids that explores the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

This empowering series of books offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardback versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. With rewritten text for older children, the treasuries each bring together a multitude of dreamers in a single volume. You can also collect a selection of the books by theme in boxed gift sets. Activity books and a journal provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.

Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

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

My Review: Start 'em young. Dreams are formed in earlier life. We need kids to form dreams now more than ever, so make this a bookish Yule of stories that inspire #ReadingIsResistance in younger minds.

Give them the start they deserve. A true story abut a man who always found a way to make a positive difference won't hurt any kid to learn. And learn from.

The kids who get this start have a great shot at becoming people with empathy. The Little Prince will likely teach these young readers about love and loss and how to make sense of them.

It's #Booksgiving again...a version of the Jólabókaflóð Iceland loves!

As we slide into another Turkey Day, I'm supposed to feel thankful for things by US custom. 2024 hasn't showered me with news or events or trends I feel at all accepting of, still less thankful for, and has taken away from me some comforting illusions about how resistant to manipulation, and how vigilant against lies and incitements of base urges, people are. Apparently all y'all gotta learn the hardest way there is to believe Them when They tell you what the plan is.



Apparently 2024 is going to be a year where, in my struggle to find some hope if not happiness, it's going to be in pursuing a program based around #ReadingIsResistance...again. So I'm grateful for the beauty and the abundance and the variety of experience that lives in the books we have such a smorgasbord of available to us. (If we vigilantly protect our right to access it, of course.) The year had so many top-flight reads for me, in so many categories, that I didn't think I'd be able to squeeze them all into the few weeks between Turkey Day and Yule.



Jólabókaflóðið is, this year, a more important holiday tradition to start than usual. I'm very distressed at how little books mean to modern kids. The best way I know to make books meaningful to these impressionable minds is to show them your own interest in the art of reading. Share books with kids every way you can. Buy them for your own kids and grands and niblings. Don't have the means, or the kids? Donate what you can afford to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library! In this era of crowdfunding, I really shouldn't need to explain the multiplicative effect of small donations.



The Icelandic tradition began as a response to privation, as Lauren Oster wrote in Smithsonian Magazine:

The Jólabókaflóð traces back to Iceland’s transformation in World War II. In 1944, Iceland was a newly independent nation with a beleaguered wartime economy and 15,000 occupying Allied troops. {Per Heiðar Ingi Svansson,the president of the Icelandic Publishers Association:} “Because of the bad economy and depression, there were quotas or very strict restrictions on many things you could import...that limited very much the selection of commodity goods that you could choose as Christmas gifts. But paper was one of the few commodities not rationed during the war—so paper was imported to produce books that were written and then printed in Iceland.” That fortuitous supply—and an infusion of occupation-related money—dovetailed beautifully with Icelanders’ literary leanings.

Their tradition of reading together on long winter nights without any other entertainment is, of course, very much not the media landscape we in the West now inhabit. There's no denying, however, that the looming economic threats presented by the incoming administration's stated goal of raising tariffs on consumer goods bids fair to make books a vastly more appealing and affordable gift for all your giftees, of all ages.



I'll focus #Booksgiving, as has been my habit, on books as gifts in the first part of the lead-up to Yule. I hope the books I'm excited about will excite you, too, and suggest themselves as gifts for your circle of loved ones.

As the delivery times begin to bite, though, I'll shift to those things you can gift yourself as supplies to hoard against what my old friend Stasia contends is the imminent "Worldwide Book Famine" that looms over every librocubicularist's nightmares. My very first suggestion, and my 2024 pick for the six-stars-of-five peak reading experience, can't be anything other than the unforgettable, thrilling GLORIOUS EXPLOITS by the Irish debut novelist FERDIA LENNON. He took the absolutely grim fate of defeated Athenian soldiers in the quarries of Syracuse, infused it with hope and a kind of energy not usually found in Classical stories retold, and made it fresh thereby. I have thought about this story, in its oddly fitting Irish intonations, as the year has unfolded very, very much against my preferences and needs. I felt ever-greater kinship with these beleaguered, even doomed men as they sought respite from their hopeless circumstances. Even among the victors their belief in the power of creative storytelling to alleviate misery and offer what comfort there can be in the darkest of times found resonances.

There is always hope for our shared humanity to come through, and come together.


Still missing my dear, departed Dutch friend Anita.

This #Booksgiving, then, is unusually relevant to the need we as readers should all feel to make a positive difference in our world. The best way, bar none, to do this is to model values that are crucial to the mental health of the world: tolerance, kindness, communication, and acceptance. I'll say to the inevitable complainer that tolerance does NOT include the intolerant in its circumference. This is called the paradox of tolerance, and it is a refutation in fact of "both-sides"ism. During this Holiday-rich season, you're going to face someone (quite possibly someone you love) who will trot out this long-disproven fallacy with the triumphant air of one who has struck a killer blow. This is the moment where #ReadingIsResistance shows its worth. Read up in advance; the list of books I've reviewed includes stuff from the technocratic through the popularized to the expanded listicle, all replete with rejoinders to that entrenched bunkerized ignorance.


This #Booksgiving review blast being a standing tradition on my blog, I'll suggest that you browse your way through past reviews, looking at the books I've included under the tag since 2017. The list is self-updating, and can be accessed here.


An author book reading in December at Gunnarshús, the home of the Writers’ Union of Iceland.

In a world of Lady Bracknells, strive instead to be Cecily Cardew.

November 2024's Burgoine Reviews & 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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Death by Demo (A Home Renovation Mystery #1) by Callie Carpenter

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Jaime and Henry were the perfect couple with the perfect life; together, they ran one of the most successful construction and interior design companies in all of Charlotte, North Carolina. But when Jaime catches her charismatic husband in an affair, she realizes her husband is not the man she thought she married. The divorce is equally gutting—due to an ironclad prenuptial agreement, Jaime receives only one thing: a historical house in disrepair. Knowing that any renovation she attempts will be tedious and costly, Jaime starts to believe that things can’t get much worse—until she finds a dead body in the house.

The body is found behind a recently renovated wall—and this leaves Jaime with more questions than answers. Who killed this person and why? Could it have been the previous owners, someone who snuck in while nobody was looking, or could it have been Henry? Furious that the house is now a crime scene, which further delays all renovations, Jaime decides to investigate the murder herself, DIY-style. Together with the new resident cat she calls Demo, and the handsome and friendly hardware store owner who happens to be her neighbor, Jaime is ready to use all the tools in her toolbox to catch the killer.

Jaime needs to renovate this house if she wants to move forward with her life, but will this murder investigation leave her in ruins—or worse?

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

My Review: I use books like this in the same way most people use TV watching...engaging me enough to get an addiction-soothing hit of story, not complicated enough to make my neurons seek new connections. I'm not much of a fan of the cheating-husband trope...no woman ever cheats?...yet very interested in the home-improvement focus. I was also interested by the fact that the body she discovers in her house is unknown to her, but also everyone else. That makes a better, if still relatively unchallenging, puzzle.

I don't know how many of y'all are going to prefer this to watching the Hallmark Channel, but it's a good example if one that's like their mountain of mystery series, and they should snap this author up.

Crooked Lane Books asks for $14.99 in ebook formats.

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The Invisible Hand: A Pareto Sisters Mystery by P.E. Klein

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Welcome to the quaint neighborhood of Menlo Park, where nothing is as ordinary as it seems. Meet Charlie and Clarke Pareto, two sisters with an extraordinary knack for solving mysteries that baffle others.

Their father, Fenton Pareto, may be renowned as the Bay Area's sharpest private investigator, but when a spate of peculiar happenings – vanishing jewels, distressed pets, and enigmatic cellphone malfunctions – start to disturb the peace, it's up to the Pareto sisters to step in.

The sisters find themselves in a labyrinth of clues, matching wits with an unseen adversary pulling strings from the shadows. And just as the plot thickens, a Charlie and Clarke are wrongfully accused of a crime, sending them on a thrilling race against time to clear their names.

Outsmarting booby traps and cryptic puzzles, they rely on their greatest their brilliant minds, seasoned with courage and a touch of stubbornness. Their journey is not just about unmasking the villain but also discovering the strength within themselves.

The Invisible Hand is the first book in a captivating trilogy that blends the charm of a cozy mystery with the thrill of amateur sleuthing.

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

My Review: I'm originally from the Bay Area, so the Menlo Park setting intrigued me. Then we got these sisters being daughters of a man named "Fenton" and, well, I lost disbelief. Was their Mom Nancy Drew Pareto? Trixie Belden Pareto?

I was never able to shake that niggle despite enjoying the story well enough to finish the read. You need something to have on your Kindle/phone app to wile away time in holiday shopping lines? This is perfect.

Story Merchant (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants 99¢ for a Kindle edition.

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The Key to Kells: A Key Murphy Ancestral Memory Thriller by Kevin Barry O'Connor

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: DISCOVERY UPENDS EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT MEMORY AND GENETICS. IT MIGHT COST KEY MURPHY HIS LIFE.

Key Murphy is a freak, a prodigy. He has visions so real he’s diagnosed with PTSD. Key learns that his visions might be caused by a mutated gene which allows him to experience the memories of an ancestor. Key also has a family link to The Book of Kells. Pages from the book were stolen in Ireland in the distant past. Those pages are believed to contain a fundamental secret of Christendom.

Padraig Collins is one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He was an undercover operative for the IRA. He amassed a fortune. He wants those pages. His soul depends on them. He will do whatever it takes to possess them.

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

My Review: Irish take on The DaVinci Code, plus psychometry. The pace is good, the story's as believable as any thriller is, the visions tormenting the MC are suitably weird so we empathize with his PTSD. The hetero romance was easy enough to ignore.

It's got the OTTness of thrillers, the religious tinge of a bad man's desire for redemption is (intentionally?) a piss-take, and I'm not mad that I read it.

W.I.N. Inc. (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $4.99 for a Kindle edition.

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A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook by Robert Parker

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: How one father, determined to reclaim his daughter's memory, brought down Alex Jones.

On December 14, 2012, Robbie Parker's daughter Emilie was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, a tragedy that changed Robbie's life and our country forever. By the next day, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was on air claiming the shooting was a hoax.

So begins Parker's "David and Goliath" story, a tale of hope and resilience amid hatred and division. While Robbie and his family spent the next decade attempting to grieve, Jones's fans harassed them, calling them crisis actors. The hatred pushed Robbie inward, disconnecting him from the world and his family. Four years after Sandy Hook, an Infowars listener accosted Robbie three thousand miles away from Newtown, Connecticut, repeating the same lies Alex Jones had spread for years.

Soon after, seventeen students were murdered at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Robbie and his wife spoke with one of the victims' parents and learned they were also being bombarded with hateful messages. He realized he could no longer avoid this terrifying reality, and with the help of Sandy Hook parents, lawyers, and supporters, Robbie stood up to Alex Jones in court to heal and reclaim his daughter's memory.

A Father's Fight is more than a memoir; it's a stirring portrait of an unbreakable human spirit. It's a testament to a father's love and perseverance in the face of insurmountable grief.

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

My Review: The Onion bought InfoWars. A part of the funding comes from the Sandy Hook families. The scumerati are in panic mode trying to stop the sale, have gone all the way to Muskrat's door to get help.

Think that's funny? It is. The scumerati know very well the value of the brand name, and are scared witless at having it turned on them, exposing their lies.

Diversion Books asks $32.50 for a hardcover. Think of it as supporting the family in their quest to ruin the lying scum who callously and calculatedly profited off immiserating them further in their hour of grief.

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Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ 楊双子 (tr. Lin King)

WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE!

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

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

My Review: What it says on the tin: travelogue, heartbreakingly period-appropriate lesbian-longing story told in marvelously evocative prose. I can add nothing except to quote literary lion Bruna Dantas Lobato: "There isn't a single sentence in this powerful metafictional journey through food, language, relationships, and translation that doesn't carry the weight of history."

I'm not four-starring it because it felt very mannered in a way I did not enjoy, as a matter of my own literary tastes, in that same way Han Kang's or Paulo Coelho's work feels. Always respectfully translated and worthy stories; something stands in the way of my loving them.

Graywolf Press asks $18.00 for a trade paper copy.

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Tokyo Swindlers by Ko Shinjo (tr. Charles De Wolf)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A contemporary Japanese crime thriller unravels an intricate web of deception and greed, inspired by recent land-fraud scandals.

Takumi, grieving the tragic loss of his family, is drawn into a real-estate swindle masterminded by fabled land scammer Harrison Yamanaka. The target is an unprecedented $70-million property. During his pursuit, Detective Tatsu, upright as ever but nearing retirement, discovers Harrison's strange connection to Takumi's past. As the high-stakes fraud unfolds, the convergence of motives leads to a shocking outcome in this intense game of deception versus truth.

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

My Review: I liked this nasty little exposé of the vilest kind of greed inherent in late-stage capitalism. Netflix thought this was a good story, too. (That's the YouTube trailer.)

I can't get to a fourth star because I have no clue if this is a mystery that's a complete failure, or a handily fictionalized true-crime story so there can be dialogue in place of infodumps. There's drama, but there's no narrative frame to speak of. The "detective" is negligible in word count. The story is, however, as gripping as Of Saints and Miracles.

Stone Bridge Press charges $9.95 for an ebook. Seems like good value, if your expectations are set properly, to me.


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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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NOTHING TO REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 2004...Be amazed!

THE SOCIALIST MANIFESTO: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, never more trenchant than today

THE SOCIALIST MANIFESTO: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
BHASKAR SUNKARA
Basic Books
$15.00 trade paper, purchased from the author's magazine website

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A "razor-sharp" introduction to this political and economic ideology makes a galvanizing argument for modern socialism (Naomi Klein)—and explains how its core tenets could effect positive change in America and worldwide.

In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like?

The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.

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

My Review: William M. Tweed said this about the way the US does politics:

I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating. As quoted in Understanding American Government (2003) by Susan Welch, p. 224

No good came from trying to talk sense into the Democratic Party; their loss on 5 November 2024 was catastrophic. It was not the resounding mandate the Nerd Reich and its tech scum boosters portray it as. The margin was not huge, but the impact will be *immense*, far-reaching, and vastly immiserating for millions.

It did not need to happen, even in the teeth of forty years of the carefully disguised radical coup orchestrated by the wealthy and powerful against the rest of us. The way to beat the radicals is not to appease or identify with them; it is to present an alternative to them.

This will never happen in the two-party system.

I wanted this not to be true, but this idiotic result has driven the last nail in the coffin of my faith in humanity, my trust in the US institutions of politics, and my desire to support the least-worst politicians in hopes they'll do some of the Right Thing. They won't.

Now what?

Now this, and before someone says "But socialism!" or even stupider "that's Communist!" I'll remind all y'all that the monster you've been Pavlovianly conditioned to fear and hate is totalitarianism relabeled to scare you away from realizing the socialist demands the owners hate were already met...to a degree...and they're the exact things your newly elected scum were put in place to destroy. When the way you live gets worse, do not open your yap. You either voted for, or decided not to vote against, this exact result.

It is your fault.

Now let's figure out what we can begin to do to make a few gains. Start by reading Bhaskar Sunkara's clear, cogent, carefully reasoned manifesto. If you're still reeling from the evidence of how immensely successful the scumbags' propaganda, misinformation, and misdirection were, here's a shred of hope to cling to. Here's a possibility that you already know works...you who receive "benefits" aka your own tax money returned to you (not some gift as the radical right wants you to believe) better than anyone...so lean into it.

Don't feel like you can do anything, don't want to think about it, are just too drained to give it your attention? That's their system for making you passive at work. If you won't do the work, spend your money to support those who will, and that shit-sure ain't the Democrats.

Support a real change for the better. Read this book to learn what that can mean.

PONY CONFIDENTIAL, urban-fantasy talking animal story meets cozy mystery

PONY CONFIDENTIAL
CHRISTINA LYNCH
Berkley Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this one-of-a-kind mystery with heart and humor, a hilariously grumpy pony must save the only human he’s ever loved after discovering she stands accused of a murder he knows she didn’t commit.

Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with the only little girl he ever loved, Penny, who he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.

Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder and whisked back to the place she grew up. Her only comfort when the past comes back to haunt her are the memories of her precious, rebellious pony.

Hearing of Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny is no murderer. So, as smart and devious as he is cute, the pony must use his hard-won knowledge of human weakness and cruelty to try to clear Penny’s name and find the real killer.

This acutely observant feel-good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and beastliness of humans in a rollicking escapade of epic proportions.

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

My Review: You know that Swede who writes about cutesy old people? Of course you do, y'all luuuv him as much as Richard Osman! (Only Osman's old people are cool, unlike that Swede's faux-feisty feebs.) Now imagine that Swede decided to take over Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie series.

Yeah. That, and Remarkably Bright Creatures chucked in for good measure. So what's it doing as a regular review, not a Burgoine? "When you like a book, but don't love it, it's a Burgoine," someone is even now saying to their screen.

Penny and fluent English-hearer Pony the pony, separately and together, do some very good mental health work, that's why it's a regular review, and thanks for noticing. Penny's never quite gotten a grip on Life; as a result she is always on the back foot with the people and situations in her life. Being a kindergatren teacher does not make this easier. Being a single mom to a cute kid with a really bad relationship to the father, well...gettin' the drift here? She has a life-altering nightmare hit her square in the chops, and here we come to the first-ever in my reviews spoiler. (Stop laughing! And pointing is rude.)

This para has the spoiler: When Penny was twelve, a terrible, fatal accident occurred and her family has to run away. Pony got left behind, and is still bitter about it. Penny's now being accused of murder, twenty years later, and is hauled off to jail. A mother with a child is hauled off to jail for suspicion of involvement in a twenty-year-old crime.

This is really, really unbelievable to me.

Howsomever, the plot needs driving so drive we shall. Grouchy, misanthropic Pony hears and understands this, decides he's off to save Penny (the one human he's ever loved) and has so many cool adventures...all of 'em opportunitites to shine a light onto how truly unfair and sadistically convoluted late-stage capitalism is. I agree with this and find the looneyness of the animal characters' various voices great fun. They banter together, discuss how rotten humans are. They still say home truths about each other that will get past the guard of all but the most cynical. I'll go with it.

I want to note that suicide and depression are more than minor plot points without being foregrounded.

As a puzzle, the villains are very two-dimensional thus easy to spot. I read a lot of mysteries, though, so ma'at leads my eyes (as the Egyptians said) and I figured it out; honestly, that's not the point here. Read this for feel-good cuteness. Read this for affirmation the world *can* be good. Read this, in short, for fun.

I did. It was. Everybody's happy. (Even Pony.)

YOKE OF STARS, another concentrated dose of Lemberg's amazing Birdverse

YOKE OF STARS
R. B. LEMBERG
Tachyon Publications
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In the School of Assassins, Stone Orphan waits for a first assignment. After their first kill, they will graduate, and attain the coveted cloth of bone. But instead of a commission, Stone Orphan gets an inquisitive linguist, Ulín. By turns, Stone Orphan and Ulín narrate tales of love, suffering, exile, and self-determination, and two wounded souls try to find hope in each other through the radical act of listening.

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My Review: A storyverse like Lemberg's is not going to be for everyone. A person who can write this is not from the US and not on the gender binary and not wired like the usual drudge/drone in that they aren't very interested in the Overculture and its concerns. No one who was could've written this: "A story moves back and forth in translation, and it is remade every time. Each of us is a story translated to a language vastly different from its first. You can try to translate yourself back, but it won't be the same story."

This is not the thought, the distilled realization, of a person who lives in one language, or one who simply waits to talk again. There's a radical act of vulnerability in listening to what is actually said to you, not simply responding to how whatever is heard makes you feel. Life is not therapy. Author Lemberg lives in that reality.

The Birdverse is multiple tales old now. In accordance with my long-standing policy of not reviewing books I've spent my own United States dollars on, I have not reviewed earlier ones. I'm pretty sure that you can pick this book up and derive a delicious reading experience from its lush, limpid prose with no further background than is provided in the book. That is not to say it will be a doddle. You're wise not to think visually *first* in the Birdverse. There's a reason one main character here is a linguist.... I loved reading it because I am comforted by the Birdverse and its unremarked queerness and prevalence of spectrums. I think those things are background at this point but I also think someone whose first foray into it is this book might disagree with me (this explains the absence of the fifth star). I'm sad to say that is really not very important to me. I think the point of reading is to broaden horizons, to shape and sculpt and prune the thoughts in one's head. Books like the Birdverse ones are going to make themselves at home in spaces you yourself did not realize were there, or fit themselves onto and around ideas you are growing.

Not always comfortable but almost always very healthy for your worldview. I'm sure this book, light on the more troubling things I've heard others describe in Author Lemberg's œuvre as negatives in their reads, is short enough to make your reading pleasant as well as mind-expanding. These people are struggling through barriers we all recognize between ourselves and others. The overcoming of traumas, or not, is a constant. The manner these obstacles are illuminated in the story is enough to cause me to urge the read on you as soon as you can get it.

I don't imagine a lot of cishet people really think about gender othering. It's not asked of you very often. Try it here: Whenever an assumption made in the story brings you up short, don't dismiss it or snort past it; think, "how is my world this frustrating or confusing or nonsensical to another person?" It can open broad vistas. That can only be a good thing for you, and those around you.

At the end of the day, a read gives you what you reach for within it. I got the certainty that I'm not insane, I'm trying to translate from my own inner worldtongue into a different one, spoken by people who care very little for the nuances I love and live for.

And you?

ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND TREACHERY, Regency-era mystery twofer with satisfying conclusions

ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND TREACHERY
CELESTE CONNALLY
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Bridgerton meets Agatha Christie in this dazzling next installment in a captivating Regency-era mystery series with a feminist spin.

21 June, 1815. London may be cheering the news of Napoleon’s surrender at Waterloo, but Lady Petra Forsyth has little to celebrate after discovering that the death of her viscount fiancé three years earlier was no accident. Instead, it was murder, and the man responsible is her handsome, half-Scottish secret paramour Duncan Shawcross—yet the scoundrel has disappeared, leaving only a confusing riddle about long-forgotten memories in his wake.

So what’s a lady to do when she can’t hunt down her traitorous lover? She concentrates on a royal assignment instead. Queen Charlotte has tasked Petra with attending an event at the Asylum for Female Orphans and making inquiries surrounding the death of the orphanage’s matron. What’s more, there may be a link between the matron’s death and a group of radicals with ties to the aristocracy, as evidenced by an intercepted letter. Then, Petra overhears a nefarious conversation with two other men about a plot to topple the monarchy, set to take place during three days of celebrations currently gripping London. As the clock counts down and London’s streets teem with revelers, Petra’s nerves are fraying as her past and present collide. Yet while all’s fair in love and war, she can never surrender, especially when more orphaned girls may be in trouble. And to save their lives, the monarchy itself, and even her own heart, Lady Petra must face her fears with the strength of an army of soldiers and fight with the heart of a queen.

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My Review: Heavy hitters, those comps. Aim high, editors and marketers, we can all use some top-flight relief from reality.

If you, like me, haven't read book one (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord), I think you'll be okay starting here. Lady Petra is a solid character whose relationship to the world she inhabits is established; none of the frequent, and to me off-putting, Regency trope of "marriage or bust" that all the Bridgerton books reinforce so very fully. It's been a long time since the best Regency writer of all time, Georgette Heyer, poured her champagne prose into the flutes that served my readerly soul. Author Connally does not sit that high in my writers' tier list. To be fair, there are almost no other writers that high in my estimation, in genre or out. This unpleasant trope is present in Heyer's writing but is borne up from the yeasty sludge of my twenty-first centurion's disapproval by the prose it's crafted in.

The comparison to Dame Agatha is apt. The puzzle to be solved here had faint echoes of Death in the Clouds, one of her strange 1930s Poirots. If you've read it, you know what the thrust of this book will be. The preservation and/or restoration of Ma'at is the matter of all mysteries, so the ultimate resolution of the story is a foregone conclusion. Which mystery requiring Lady Petra's attention, personal or "professional," will be the one that knits a rent in the social fabric?

The accustomed repurposing of class-based access and modern storytelling's need for a female character to have agency unthinkable in the time period of the story is done deftly here. In part this is due to Lady Petra's age and status as a not-quite widow, but still suitably linked to a male authority figure that it needn't be discussed or thought about...a dead-in-the-war fiancé is a useful device in this world. Her current love interest can be elided from public suspicion because he knew her in childhood, so their connection can be acceptably explained away without the need to resort to scandal. As he is both absent in flesh and central in fact to the submystery in the book, this is a fact much traded on.

Any book set in historical times has a hurdle to leap in the way it handles the realities of its time period versus the narrative needs of a twenty-first century novel. Lady Petra lusts after Duncan, who's hunkiness is permaybehaps over-established, but in private, as would be the case for women of the era who are not Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Petra's freedom to act due to her distant connection to Queen Charlotte feels a bit overly modern but needs must when the plot-devils drive.

They drive hard in here, with a lot of characters doing a lot of things they oughtn't to do. The ideas of the story are complex, possibly convoluted, and center on the way the world is changing due to the recently-completed Napoleonic wars that have organized English society for decades. At war's end, there is little appetite for going back to the way things were for anyone disadvantaged in that earlier day. The cork's out of the bottle. Now how does society change?

Lady Petra and her fellows are figuring it out. There is a lot of upheaval to come, as history tells us, but this book is set when the shapes of the upheavers are still shadowy. The change that is inevitable in any highly unequal society is as yet unformed but its energy is very much present in every detail Lady Petra uncovers on the Queen's errand. It was fun piecing together the next few years from what happens in the story's present...a big reason I enjoy the historical-mystery genrw when it's well done. Plus: doggos!

I needed this kind of escape now. If you're in need of a series that makes story-sense, and is in hailing distance of historical sense, here's you a choice worthy of your time and treasure.

THE VILLAIN'S DANCE, apt title for this cautionary tale of the societal chaos of civil war

THE VILLAIN'S DANCE
FISTON MWANZA MUJILA (tr. Roland Glasser)
Deep Vellum (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Following the international success of his debut novel Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujila is back with his highly anticipated second novel, which follows a remarkable series of characters during the Mobutu regime.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as Congo-Kinshasa or DRCongo, has had a series of names since its founding. The name of Zaire best corresponds to the experience of the novel’s characters. The years of Mobutu’s regime were filled with utopias, dreams, fantasies and other uncontrolled desires for social redemption, the quest for easy enrichment and the desecration of places of power.

Among these Zairians’ immigration to Angola during the civil war boycotting the borders inherited from colonization, as if the country did not have its own diamonds, and the occupation of public places by children from outside. The author creates the atmosphere of the time through a roundup of the diviner Tshiamuena, also known as Madonna of the Cafunfo mines, prides herself of being God with whoever is willing to listen to her. Franz Baumgartner, an apprentice writer originally from Austria and rumba lover, goes around the bars in search of material for his novel. Sanza, Le Blanc and other street children share information to the intelligence services when they are not living off begging and robbery. Djibril, taxi driver, only lives for reggae music.

As soon as night falls, each character dances and plays his own role in a country mined by dictatorship.

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My Review: Want to know how much I appreciate Author Fiston Mwanza Mujila's talents?

I didn't pan, belittle, or insult his poetry. All y'all know how I feel about poetry. And I gave it more than three stars! Be amazed, be impressed...I hope you'll be inspired to go get one. Tram 83 worked for me, as well; I know a lot of folks were't fans but it felt like a breeze from Africa to me, hot, wet, heavily freighted. This impression left me for dead in the first instance; I was less enrapt with its story and atmosphere then than I am in retrospect. In part that's down to my subsequent experience of reading The Villain's Dance.

In common with my earlier reads of the author's books, I began this one with an awareness of atmosphere. He is always, or so it feels to me, careful to begin as he means to go on. I'm reasonably sure the huge majority of my readers are unaware of Mobutu's identity, and are more or less uninformed about tthe name "Zaire" and its history...many in my generation will have known the name Zaire vaguely applies to a huge place near the Congo River but be blissfully unaware that the name is no longer used, or why that happened.

I think that gives the novel almost an SFnal appeal. There's little sense of geography encompassing the story in US readers, so why not just go all the way and market it as taking place on a different planet entirely? *I* can do this, I'm a book reviewer, the publisher can't. The level of outrage engendered would be epic. However, let me propose this to you: If you're willing to learn the names of made-up places like Middle Earth, Arrakis, Pern, Atlantis, Downbelow Station, and their different inhabitants, conflicts, social norms, what's the hold up on Zaire and Brazzaville?

Maybe the tiniest taint of racism? Worth some energy to think about.

Assuming you're in the already-overcame-it or the overcoming-it-now group, this story's got great conflicts between dark-grey, pitch-black, and palest shades of violet people trying their best to make it in a world where up and down just switched places...like being on a space station whose spin just changed speeds dramatically.

Maybe my increased appreciation for this read makes more sense than I thought it did at first.

The people in this book aren't just as well-realized as the setting, for the most part; see below. The pace of the story is provided by history, as it's based on the realities then prevailing. The entire enterprise of nation-building collapsing into civil war (by definition a chaotic break in the life of a society) honestly needs little of that tarting up to make it compelling, even riveting, reading. What Author Fiston does very well here is to fragment the locations of the chaos to give different people reason to speak their truth without losing the core purpose of telling us this story. Like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, we are taken into realms of deep desperation and left there long enough to get it; then we're offered a peek into the purpose of the extraction and the exploitation that requires...we're not left to wallow, the way The Octopus, f/ex, does with us in service of the same sharp criticism of the cutting edge of capitalism. Poe said it very succinctly in the nineteenth century:  "{C}orporations, it is very well known, have neither posteriors to be kicked, nor souls to be damned." (Thanks for showing me the accurate quote again, P-E!)

Edges, as noted above, cut; in this story we're in the path of the blade so see both the wielding and cutting inherent in its very existence. People fail. It is inevitable. Challenges go unmet still less mastered. As often as not that is a design feature of the challenge. It engenders judgment and contempt for failure, but leaves the challenge, well, unchallenged. I suspect the true-to-life experience of people showing up for a minute then vanishing will affront a lot of complacently smug story-structure addicts. It's not by accident, y'all; it's a feature not a bug. Like life in an unstable place at a volatile time, different people will come, only to go without fanfare, or even explanation. Most of the characters trying to make it any old how they can haven't got the wherewithal to care, often enough to notice, who is who except at the precise flash of the camera that "now" represents.

I am trying as best I can to explain away the most common issues I've seen raised in others's assessments of the book. I'm not sure it matters. I hope y'all will attend to my 4.5* rating more closely than to my blandishments. A book of this trenchance is not to be dismissed. I'm hopeful that a few will take this moment of US culture shock to see what has happened in other places at this kind of inflection point.

Forewarned is forearmed.

SLEEPING WORLDS HAVE NO MEMORY, thought-provoking story with a hopeful twist

SLEEPING WORLDS HAVE NO MEMORY
YAROSLAV BARSUKOV
CAEZIK SF & Fantasy (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: When lies become truths and two kingdoms head to a bloody war, a man is exiled for his conscience

Refusing the queen’s order to gas a crowd of protesters, Minister Shea Ashcroft is banished to the border to oversee construction of the biggest defensive tower in history. However, the use of advanced technology taken from refugees makes the tower volatile and dangerous, becoming a threat to local interests. Shea has no choice but to fight the local hierarchy to ensure the construction succeeds—and to reclaim his own life.

Surviving an assassination attempt, Shea confronts his inner demons, encounters an ancient legend, and discovers a portal to a dead world—all the while struggling to stay true to his own principles and maintain his sanity. Fighting memories and hallucinations, he starts to question everything...

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory is a thought-provoking meditation on the fragility of the human condition, our beliefs, the manipulation of propaganda for political gains, and our ability to distinguish the real from the unreal and willingness to accept convenient “truths.” The novel is a compelling exploration of memory, its fragile nature, and its profound impact on our perception of identity, relationships, and facts themselves.

A unique blend of science fiction, fantasy and noir, with zeitgeist and prophetic qualities (the original novella anticipated the Russo-Ukrainian War), this is a must for fans of China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series, Ted Chiang’s Tower of Babylon, and Robert Silverberg’s Tower of Glass.

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

My Review: We can use some entertainment. We can use a bit of moral instruction, it seems. Author Barsukov said these things to himself, at least in my reconstruction of the thought process that led to this book, and decided that he'd make a world and a man to resist its slide into darkness.

I found this book very inspiring. I'm inspired to bring it to y'all's attention because of this piece from The Guardian, "'It will renew your faith in humanity': books to bring comfort in dark times":

A surprising number of readers believe a happy ending should mean automatic disqualification from any serious literary award. Good luck to them: I wish them joy in their wallowing. In my turn, I’ve come to believe the opposite. To reach only for novels that reaffirm our darkest fears is merely to make an escape of a different sort, not the escapism of brooding heroes and wedding finales, but the security blanket of an equally foregone conclusion: the safety of imagining the worst. I would argue that to live only in that place is simply cowardice in better camouflage. The truth is that it’s far riskier to remain in uncertainty. Far braver, far more radical to keep hoping.

The truth of this is in Shea's dogged determination to do what's Right; it's in his determination's effect on engineer Brielle, whose expertise is central in what their shared need to do what's Right creates.

There's a lot of the epic fantasy ethos in this urban-fantasy story, sans the usual military glorification; but there is a very welcome leavening of SF in the story that prevents me from the usual somnolent, glazed-eyed scanning to get to the ending. I was alert and involved as Brielle's skills were deployed to create the tower that Shea's tasked with defending, to little avail:

The tower took the length of the world—only it was an alien world, replicating itself over and over as it climbed to a distant, ghostly gap into the clouds. Or did he stare down a well? Shea's head spun again as up and down flip-flopped like axes on a gyroscope.

Does this dimensionally daft structure need defending? Does this technology need help, or resistance to its implications? Can anyone, still less a proven-murderous tyrant, be trusted with a tool/weapon of this magnitude? Are the Others, the aliens, to be trusted, or are they there to treat Shea and his people as the Others...with the usual result?

Ethical questions, existential ones, that resonate clearly with our post-November 6th world. They aren't easy, or easily solved ones; Author Barsukov doesn't pretend his ending is a solution to them all. There aren't any escape routes from the consequences of greed and lust for power provided. There are stern meditations on what we try to use, though:

What makes guilt so grotesque is the fact that it adorns itself with whatever remains of our righteousness.

And so the sadness of life as a moral actor, as a being with agency and puissance outreaching the lessons of their past, is revealed and refined. The story, an expansion of his 2021 novella Tower of Mud and Straw, reminded me more and more of THE DEEP SEA DIVER'S SYNDROME (qv) which French translation also delves into the intersection between dreamlike states and meatspace with equal care. Does anyone really know what the Tower is/can do? Do their...reveries, memories, dreamlike experiences...come without cost yet replete with warning signs?

An ending that addresses these queries of reality yet doesn't wrap them in a tight, constricting little bow gave me both inspiration and information to examine this moment in which I am deeply unhappy, afraid, and emotionally bereft, with a dose of hope. There is a reason Author Barsukov chose this particular stream-of-consciousness style, and this superposed urban-fantasy/SF genre mashup, to tell you this story. Intrinsic to the story, the way everything meshes...and the things that don't...are all made to present a frame for a very intensely resonant meditation.

There is not a lot more valuable for a story to give as its gift than that.

THE TRUTH ABOUT IMMIGRATION: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, careful, honest, trenchant and tendentious

THE TRUTH ABOUT IMMIGRATION: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
ZEKE HERNANDEZ
St. Martin's Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The go-to book on immigration: fact-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan.

Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants as either villains or victims. The villain narrative is that immigrants pose a threat—to our economy because they steal our jobs; our way of life because they change our culture; and to our safety and laws because of their criminality. The victim argument tells us that immigrants are needy outsiders—the poor, huddled masses whom we must help at our own cost if necessary. But the data clearly debunks both narratives. From jobs, investment, and innovation to cultural vitality and national security, more immigration has an overwhelmingly positive impact on everything that makes a society successful.

In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez draws from nearly 20 years of research to answer all the big questions about immigration. He combines moving personal stories with rigorous research to offer an accessible, apolitical, and evidence-based look at how newcomers affect our local communities and our nation. You'll learn about the overlooked impact of immigrants on investment and job creation; realize how much we take for granted the novel technologies, products, and businesses newcomers create; get the facts straight about perennial concerns like jobs, crime, and undocumented immigrants; and gain new perspectives on misunderstood issues such as the border, taxes, and assimilation.

Most books making a case for immigration tell you that immigration is good for immigrants. This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Skeptics fear that newcomers compete economically with locals because of their similarities and fail to socially assimilate because of their differences. You'll see that it's exactly the opposite: newcomers bring enduring economic benefits because of their differences and contribute positively to society because of their similarities. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations.

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

My Review: Do you like to eat? Thank an immigrant, an economic migrant, as you chow down on those tomatoes and cucumbers.

*You* sure didn't go pick 'em.

Do you use Google, chat on Twitter, watch TikTok every day? Thank an immigrant. In this case, you're thanking said immigrant with your data being harvested to fatten his (they're all men, at least so far) coffers.

But that law'n'order fetish you got goin' on...surely that's the real reason to oppose immigration, to keep 'em out and chuck 'em out when they come anyway, right? The president-elect has more felonies on his record than a random immigrant. But they cost us money! Take money from needy Murrikinz! You're thinking of the GOP in the various legislatures. Immigrants pay taxes through their (upright & honest, or shady) employers. They're barred by law from getting any of those taxes back.

The author, unlike me, is apolitical. He has done the research and these are the facts he found. If you support immigration, read this book for talking points. There's a lot of 'em. If you don't support immigration, why the hell are you reading my reviews? If someone you care for is anti-immigrant, maybe this non-partisan voice will reach them. It sure can't hurt to try.

I'm not calm enough to care to engage with people like that. They're wrong. I needn't fuss about it because that kind of wrong loves a fight. Got nothin' left for that uselessness. If you do, great! And here's you a swiss army knife of evidence-backed facts to use in your noble work of Enlightenment.

THE RULEBREAKER: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, clarion call to women everywhere: get out of your own way, we need you

THE RULEBREAKER: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
SUSAN PAGE
Simon & Schuster
$30.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time—Barbara Walters—a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page.

Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Then at sixty-seven, past the age many female broadcasters found themselves involuntarily retired, she pioneered a new form of talk TV called The View. She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture, male or female. So, who was the woman behind the legacy?

In The Rulebreaker, Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny.

Page breaks news on every front—from the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview to the secrets she kept until her death. This is the eye-opening account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know.

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

My Review: Fighting misogyny, antisemitism, and the apathy of the public was one helluva training ground for becoming a powerful presence on the US cultural map. Her drive, and her zeal for journalism as a contact sport, were unprecedented in the pop culture of the 1960s. Her success was fueled by huge ambition...she would not fail in her duty to her chosen calling, like her father had done, and she would use every ounce of her will to make things happen her way.

These qualities are, annoyingly, still considered male. She out-manned the majority of men, then, and did it in a skirt and heels. It seems to me it's time to put down the bludgeon this kind of thinking represents to knock women back into antique roles that make "men" (boys, really) feel comfortable. Walters was a power in politics, a power in entertainment, and used her power to influence people to think. Even her celebrity interviews were impactful, raising or restoring some to new or renewed influence. She didn't lie to the people, she asked honest questions, and she never showed up unprepared.

The main thing I think made her a legend was her careful control...of herself, of her material, of her image. She didn't love Gilda Radner's SNL character "Baba Wawa" yet, when sending a condolence note to Radner's widower, she signed it "Baba Wawa"...and made sure this fact was known. Careful image curation is not the sole province of today's influencers. Her clarity of thought when she was at her peak was unrivaled. Even in later years her ability to present questions her audience would really like the answers to made her a popular figure on the cultural landscape.

Like all driven people, she left damage in her wake. She was rubbish as a mother, shouldn't've adopted a child; she was not a good wife, or a good partner, but there's no one to blame for that except societal expectations. No one ever whinges about the failings and failures of famous men in those regards. She was a force of nature. Those people are hurricanes, tornados, epic tsunamis. They aren't domesticated or domesticatable.

I suspect I'd've disliked the woman had I ever met her. She comes across in these interviews and the author's analysis as the kind of self-absorbed person who ignores you unless you're immediately useful. I dislike and mistrust those people. I can admire what she did without having warm personal feelings for her. Trailblazers and groundbreakers burn and break; it's in the epithets. Comfortable friends? Not likely. Powerful allies? Yes indeed, and that's enough! Adjusting expectations to match what's really there, what's on actual offer, is a key skill in the life of a person who sees a need for change and sets out to effect it.

Read this careful, honest, thorough story of one remarkable woman's life to feel inspired yourself. Gift it to your girlchild who is nosy, noisy, and obstreperous, that she may channel her talents into service. We need women to ask questions and require answers to them just like Barbara Walters did. We need women to confront idiots and show them up as idiots just like Barbara Walters did. Showing your girlchildren that it's been done, and done well, is a great way to get them to do the same.

Who knows who they'll end up photographed next to, or whose highlight reel they'll be responsible for, or whose foolishness they'll expose to end it? Barbara Walters had pages and pages and pages of evidence she had made a difference before she died. An ambition to be like her isn't a bad thing to ignite in young women.

THE SPRING BEFORE OBERGEFELL, hope in dark times...aimed directly at older gay men

THE SPRING BEFORE OBERGEFELL
BENJAMIN S. GROSSBERG
University of Nebraska Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$20.85 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s not easy for anyone to find love, let alone a middle-aged gay man in small-town America. Mike Breck works multiple part-time jobs and bickers constantly with his father, an angry conservative who moved in after Mike’s mother died. When he’s not working or avoiding his father, Mike burns time on hookup apps, not looking for anything more. Then he meets a local guy, Dave, just as lonely as he is, and starts to think that maybe he doesn’t have to be alone. Mike falls hard, and in a moment of intimacy, his pent-up hopes for a relationship rush out, leading him to look more honestly at himself and his future.

Winner of the James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, Ben Grossberg’s The Spring Before Obergefell is about real guys who have real problems, yet still manage to find connection. Funny, serious, meditative, and hopeful, The Spring Before Obergefell is a romance—but not a fairytale.

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

My Review: I so relate to Matteo, Mike's first RL shot at Love. Catalyzes something good and big; doesn't get to participate, too acerbic and just Too Much.

It's a curse, unless of course it's not. It felt very very good to read Dave and Mike's borning relationship.

A story set ten years ago about the challenges of forming relationships as gay men in homophobic Murrika. There has never been a moment where this subject, treated with hope, has been more welcome. We're now looking into the maw of Project 2025. *horripilation*

Nothing in this book leads me to believe the author was predicting the future as he wrote it. It's still a welcome moment of hope in a bleak landscape. Part of keeping hope alive is to feed it. The Spring Before Obergefell offers readers, gay men in particular, and older gay men for sure, a story that deals with the reality of family in this new age of darkness. There is always hope. It feels like there is not sometimes. Mike and his world...well...hope is what he found. That message trumps all the noise and chaos of the world.

BEING KIND: How to Add More Meaning to Your Moments, a clarion call to act

BEING KIND: How to Add More Meaning to Your Moments
KOBI YAMADA (illus. Charles Santoso)
Compendium (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Why does kindness matter? Because there's no such thing as a small act of kindness—each one nourishes and enriches. This heartwarming book is a celebration of the part we each can play in creating a more compassionate world.

Written by New York Times bestselling author Kobi Yamada and illustrated by Charles Santoso, the creators behind the beloved Finding Muchness, this enchanting book illuminates how a simple deed can have extraordinary impact. Captivating artwork of a loveable sloth pairs with bite-sized wisdom to remind readers of the power we each have to uplift one another. It's a heartwarming invitation to be kind to someone—and to remember that you are someone too!

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

My Review: I haven't got the words to explain why kindness matters in a horrifying, cruel world that is getting rapidly crueler. Be kind to yourselves, and to each other.

We need to take care of each other. It is, now more than ever, clear we're the only ones who will.

NIGHTMARE.

Resist. Start here. This list is political books reviewed. This list is economics books reviewed. Both are updated when a new review comes out.