Missive #196 Published 6 January 2024
This is the second book in the Tale of Krispos trilogy and the sixth in the Videssos Cycle. A continuation of a good story by Turtledove with only one more book remaining to be read in this Series and the Cycle.
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Missive #194 Published 4 January 2024
This is the first book in a tetralogy with the fourth one just published in 2023. I plan on reading them all if I can find them free (I can wait). It is a good book but I have a warning; it is one of the very few books that has had me tear up.
Missive #193 Published 3 January 2024
The author is known more for his poetry that his prose but this book was a joy to read. He is also criticized for his focus on death but I did not find that be be so in this book. He has a couple of others that I will read when I get to them.
Missive #192 Published 2 January 2024
This book is the first in the series of 18. I'll read some more and see if they continue to interest me. The series has been classed as SiFi, Plulp SiFi, Alternative History and Fantasy perhaps others. I don't know if there is genre for speculative future fantasy but that is what I think this is. It does not get very good customer reviews at goodreads.com; mostly because of some VERY poor reviews by 'woke' readers. If you are not woke you might like it.
Missive #188 Published 28 December 2023
I don't know that this book is the nightmare that it has been cracked up to be but I do agree that it is wacky. I may give Chesterton's books another try and see if he writes in the same style.
Missive #187 Published 27 December 2023
This is the fourth volume of There Will Be War which is a compilation of short stories and essays that have mostly been published elsewhere. The exception in this volume is No Truce With Kings which is a novella that can be found as a stand alone book. As I have done in the past I show the Contents.
Missive #186 Published 26 December 2023
In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it.
Missive #185 Published 25 December 2023
MERRY CHRISTMAS
"Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. Long before Whole Foods organic produce was available at your local supermarket, Berry was farming with the purity of food in mind. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection.
Missive #182 Published 21 December 2023
The readers that give this book a high rating must enjoy the author's philosophizing. It may be called a novel but take out all of Huxley's philosophy and it would be a short story. I think this was another of his attempts to 'arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay'.
Missive #181 Published 20 December 2023
In the mid-1990s, news headlines featured political gridlock, antigovernment fanaticism, political assaults on environmental regulations, local demands to turn over federal land to the states, 'patriotic' armed militia groups, courtroom brawls between activists and rural residents over endangered species, finger-pointing and trash-talking generally. Sound familiar?It's said that history doesn't repeat itself, but rhymes instead. Fortunately, if problems are cyclical so are solutions. I'd like to share one that we came up with back then. It's called the radical center. This is the story of its rise.