Missive #477 Published 11 April 2025
82. An Unexpected Visit from Nasruddin …
This is a short book that I read online as a PDF from the author's Unqualified Reservations blog. I think other of his books are also available in PDF on his blog. Much of this one was also included as quotes in Nick Land's The Dark Enlightenment.
Missive #476 Published 9 April 2025
It was almost a decade ago that Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways ) followed the trail of Lewis and Clark in River Horse ; in the first section of his latest peripatetic writings, he and his wife, Q, trace the lesser-known Dunbar-Hunter Expedition of 1804 through the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, searching out the head of the Ouachita River in Arkansas. Least Heat-Moon's fans will find this territory, and that covered in the five other “journeys to places a goodly portion of the American populace would call 'nowhere,' ” instantly familiar, as he and various companions take digressive paths from one small opolis (“where anything metro was clearly missing”) to the next in search of “quoz” (an 18th-century word meaning “anything out of the ordinary”).
Missive #473 Published 3 April 2025
A loving mother. A notorious murderer. They both have reasons to hide their secrets in a novel of escalating shock and suspense by New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre. Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection.This is another good suspense book, not as good as The Wronged Sons or The Patient’s Secret. I’ll be adding the author to my To Read list and see what some of her other books might be like. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.
Missive #472 Published 1 April 2025
What would you do if the person you loved suddenly vanished into thin air? Catherine’s cosy life as a housewife and mum-of-three is quickly thrown into disarray when husband Simon disappears without explanation. She is convinced he hasn’t left by choice as confusion and spiraling debts threaten to tear her family apart.
Missive #470 Published 29 March 2025
Neoreaction is not your grandfather's conservatism, but the web 2.0 era marriage between modern engineering principles and classical anti-democratic thought. Its central tenet is that the Enlightenment was a mistake, and in The Dark Enlightenment, Nick Land burns progressivism to the ground, salts the earth around its ashes, and raises an altar to anti-humanism in its place.
Missive #468 Published 25 March 2025
The ordeals faced by a group of pioneers journeying from Illinois to California in 1846. Jacob and George Donner knew that the trip from Illinois to California would be long and difficult, but they had read a bout a newly discovered shortcut that would make the trip somewhat easier. Even so, the going was rough.
This is a short book that tells the story of the Donner Party which as been told at great length by other authors. A good quick read. .
Missive #467 Published 24 March 2025
A long out-of-print classic, Lower Piedmont Country is set in northeastern Alabama, although the narrative encompasses the region form the Mississippi Delta to the Virginia Tidewater. The book surveys the history, politics, religion, economy (both rural and industrial), and folkways of the hill-country people as the author knew them during the Depression and war years.
Missive #464 Published 20 March 2025
This was the first in a series of romantic suspense books (2006) that is not nearly as good as The Patient's Secret (2022). I'll continue reading the series and subsequent ones just to see how the author improved her writing over the years. It is not a bad book but is somewhat a bodice ripper published by Harlequin Romantic Suspense.
Missive #463 Published 18 March 2025
As the war which consumes Dervelai drags on, the reserves of Algarve are ever more stretched. King Mezentio's armies become sucked into the huge landmass of Unkerlant. As more and more of the hated Kaunians are sacrificed for blood magic, conquered races are indected into the Algarvian army, and their fighting edge becomes blunted. While at home, both men and women come to doubt the war and its purposes. Harry Turtledove's blending of World War Two with fantasyhas already gained enormous praise. As a myriad of characters deal with reality, this is a tapestry of the finest writing the genre can create.
Missive #460 Published 11 March 2025
Tells the stories of explorers, mountain men, missionaries, thieves, settlers, naturalists, and writers associated with the Sierra Nevada Mountains and discusses the history of the region.
This is the ninth in the American Folkways Series and like most of them it has almost nothing on the web about it. It also has almost no readers at Amazon or goodreads.com.