Books and literature recommendations

[Gob]

I don't visit this page much but Rube, you are turning into rather a turd in your old age.

You haven't been here long have you?

[ex-khobar Andy]

Well no: but I recall Rube from some prior BBS (LCH for one, and IIRC Car Talk) and he usually had a reasoned and reasonable opinion. I am a little worried about the guy.

[rubato]

Stick around.

It will all make sense in time.


But as to Dawkins vs Trivers; Dawkins, Wilson and others have acknowledged that it was Trivers who had the ideas which changed things. But Trivers is a difficult person. A PITA. He has had long periods which are unproductive possibly because of his (probable) bipolar disorder. It could be his pot smoking. He is not a good publicist for his own work and they are. Rawls needed Dworkin (not Andrea) and Kant and Hegel needed others to digest and promote their work so Trivers is one of those.

Trivers is something new under the sun. Spiky but brilliant. Dawkins is smooth.


yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

Well no: but I recall Rube from some prior BBS (LCH for one, and IIRC Car Talk) and he usually had a reasoned and reasonable opinion. I am a little worried about the guy.

Side affects of his drug habit, perhaps?

[rubato]

See? That took hardly any time at all.

And so many conform to type.

yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

Liz turned me on to Rysa Walker's CHRONOS Files books...I'm kind of hooked.

Also: Doug Preston & Lincoln Child's latest Pendergast book just came out!

[Gob]

Resurrecting this thread, as I've had a few crackers recently..

[RayThom]

Gob, did you see this CBS 60" interview last week? I doubt if you could separate Cornwell from le Carré at this point in his life... nor would he want to. "They" are very interesting fellows.

https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/le-carre/

[Gob]

Missed that, many thanks for the tip off.

[Burning Petard]

I just finished "Y is for Yesterday" by Sue Grafton. I have stuck with it and read every one of the alphabetic saga of Kinsey Millhone. When it started, Sue Grafton was unusual, just for being a female author of a big selling main-stream detective novel. Not many who-dunits by women made it to the NY Times best seller list back then. How times have changed. The new mystery section in my local library (first shelves you come to, on the right just beyond the entrance) look to have a majority of women writers now. After 25 installments, Grafton seems ready to step away after the final dutiful conclusion.

Kinsey Millhone has changed too. She seems to be bored and just a bit tired of it all. She avoids the Polish offal soup at the local watering hole now. She still goes there, but hates to eat there. Once, back in the front of the alphabet, she thought it was quirky and interesting. Now she prefers a peanut butter and pickle sandwich.

I am looking forward to the Z volume when I can say goodby to Kinsey and her landlord baker. But this penultimate volume ended with an artful concluding sentence:

"I'm not saying justice is for sale, but sometimes, if you have enough money, it is available for short term rental."

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

I dislike reaching the last book in a series I have enjoyed. I got hooked on Patrick O'Brian's saga about the Napoleonic naval wars - Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin (for those of you not familiar with the series of 20 or so books, a couple of them were concatenated into Master and Commander, with Russell Crowe) so much that when O'Brian died while I was ten books into it, I could not bring myself to read the last one. I wanted to keep the anticipation of knowing there was still one to read. Eventually I broke down and bought it; but the pleasure was greatly diluted.

[BoSoxGal]

A fellow Kinsey Millhone fan! WOOT!

I checked them all out from the library when I was living in Yuma 12 years ago, so I only got as far as Vengeance - then I kind of forgot about them, so I’ll have to put her on my current library list. She’s one of my favorite heroines - it will be interesting to read her from the perspective of having slogged in the criminal injustice system, which I hadn’t done so much when I was last reading her. I suspect I’ll very much identify with her disillusionment.

Another heroine I discovered during that period of reading was Nina Reilly, written by two sisters who go by the pseudonym Perri O’Shaughnessy; Nina’s a struggling young attorney and single mother living on Lake Tahoe and the books are very good legal thriller/crime/mystery stories, I recommend checking them out if you haven’t and you like the genre.

[Burning Petard]

BSG, the only one my local library has is 'Dreams of the 'Dead'. is it a good place to start?

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

I would read them in order, if they can get them for you through inter library loan - they should be able to. Nina’s story progresses over time and is a fair bit of the books beyond each individual mystery - and that last one focuses a lot on Nina’s personal story intertwined with others, so it would kind of ruin the earlier development to read it first, I think.

[Jarlaxle]

A fellow Kinsey Millhone fan! WOOT!

I checked them all out from the library when I was living in Yuma 12 years ago, so I only got as far as Vengeance - then I kind of forgot about them, so I’ll have to put her on my current library list. She’s one of my favorite heroines - it will be interesting to read her from the perspective of having slogged in the criminal injustice system, which I hadn’t done so much when I was last reading her. I suspect I’ll very much identify with her disillusionment.

Another heroine I discovered during that period of reading was Nina Reilly, written by two sisters who go by the pseudonym Perri O’Shaughnessy; Nina’s a struggling young attorney and single mother living on Lake Tahoe and the books are very good legal thriller/crime/mystery stories, I recommend checking them out if you haven’t and you like the genre.

I thought Grafton was pretty good, and have read most of the Nina Reilly books.

Suggestions: the same author's Keeper of the Keys. Also, Marcia Clark's Samantha Brinkman booms (first is Blood Defense) are excellent.

Local flavor: Elaine Cunningham's Changeling Detective series, set in Rhode Island.

[BoSoxGal]

I didn’t know Marcia Clark was writing fiction, I’ll definitely check those out, as well as the Cunningham novels set in RI - thanks for the recommendations!

Keeper of the Keys was very good, I agree!

[Jarlaxle]

The books are Shadows in the Darkness and Shadows in the Starlight.

I knew about Cunningham due to her fantasy novels (she wrote about a dozen Forgotten Realms books in three different series), but her Changeling books are excellent. If you like fantasy (with a dash of humor, romance, and a couple of truly vicious villains), I highly recommend Elfshadow and Elfsong.

I am just posting cover images because I think they are cool...

[Gob]

Jim, I think you would LOVE this one....

One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train a course of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and certainly the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, from any spy before or since: he was dead.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Operation-Minc ... 1408809214

[Econoline]

One of the agents who planned and carried out Mincemeat, Ewen Montagu, wrote a book about it titled The Man Who Never Was (published in 1953), which was made into a movie with the same title in 1956.

[Gob]

yep, the one above draws on that, but also uses recently released forces security information and MI5 files...