Missive #226 Published 24 February 2024

Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes— both natural and human— happen.
Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature and its footprints are virtually everywhere— in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art.

Missive #224 Published 22 February 2024

The quietly repressed tension in the opening chapters here—a dead-eyed young stranger appears in the black section of St. Adrienne, Louisiana—seems to be revving up a subtly gripping and artfully shaped narrative. What Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman) actually delivers turns out to be neither subtle nor shapely, nor especially original, but on every page there's an authentic moment, or a dead-right knot of conversation, or a truer-than-true turn of phrase—enough of them to carry you through to the overly theatrical finale.

Missive #223 Published 20 February 2024

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, he feels no real calling—despite his lively faith—and he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris, and then hanging his sign in Oxford.

Soon after, a local lord asks Hugh de Singleton to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspool.

Missive #220 Published 14 February 2024

"In this semi-autobiographical novel, an American named Roland Lancaster has a doomed affair with a younger woman, Elsa, in Cuba during World War II. The love story, in its happiest moments, parallels the idyllic life that author John Dos Passos had with his first wife, Katy."
I didn't dislike this book but think that Dos Passo's nonfiction is better than his fiction. A semi-autobiographical book is only half way between.

Missive #219 Published 12 February 2024

Child of God established McCarthy's interest in using extreme isolation, perversity, and violence to represent human experience. McCarthy ignores literary conventions – for example, he does not use quotation marks – and switches between several styles of writing such as matter-of-fact descriptions, almost poetic prose, and colloquial first-person narration (with the speaker remaining unidentified). — Wikipedia
The book is all of that and may not be to everyone's taste.

Missive #217 Published 10 February 2024

This completes the Videssos Cycle of books which I read out of order. They were good reads; although reading them in story line order would probably be best publication order is probably the simplest.