Friday Open Thread ~ "What are you reading?" edition. Volume 2

Submitted by phillybluesfan on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 7:00am

Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths is a relatively new addition to the archaeological mystery genre, with the first released book called The Crossing Places published in 2009.

ruth gallway_0.jpg

Currently, with 12 books in the series, Elly Griffiths started the book series inspired by her husband who switched from a city job to become an archaeologist. Book #12, The Lantern Men was published earlier this year.

I'm slowly enjoying my way through the series ... currently reading this one:

Set in Norfolk, England, once again, our brainy heroine becomes embroiled in a crime tinged by occult forces.

The Smith Museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event -- the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop.

But when forensic archaelogist Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the curator, Neil Topham, dead beside the coffin. Topham's death seems to be related to other uncanny incidents, including the arcane and suspect methods of a group called the Elginists, which aims to repatriate the museum's extensive collection of Aborigine skulls; the untimely demise of the museum's owner, Lord Smith; and the sudden illness of DCI Harry Nelson, who Ruth's friend Cathbad believes is lost in The Dreaming -- a hallucinogenic state central to some Indigenous Australian beliefs. Tensions build as Nelson's life hangs in the balance. Something must be done to set matters right and lift Nelson out of the clutches of death, but will Ruth be able to muster herself out of a state of guilt and foreboding in order to do what she does best?

It is Halloween night in King’s Lynn, and Dr Ruth Galloway is attending a strange event at the local history museum – the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But what Ruth finds is the body of the museum’s curator lying beside the coffin.

Soon the museum’s wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too. These two deaths could be from natural causes but when he is called in to investigate, DCI Harry Nelson isn’t convinced, and it is only a matter of time before Ruth and Nelson cross paths once more.

When threatening letters come to light, events take an even more sinister turn. But as Ruth’s friends become involved, where will her loyalties lie? As her convictions are tested, she and Nelson must discover how Aboriginal skulls, drug smuggling and the mystery of The Dreaming may hold the answer to these deaths, and their own survival.

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Publishing This Week

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

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Submitted by enhydra lutris on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 10:08am

Good mornig philly. Thanks. The genre "archaeological

mystery" is a bit of a kick, or at least the fact that it exists. Archaeology is, of course already a sort of mystery or puzzle solving relying heavily upon Sherlock's favorite activities of observation and deduction. Thanks for the OT and for the reminder of the existence of the genre.

be well and have a good one.

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by CS in AZ on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 11:12am

Thank you phillybluesfan, this is a great topic

I was never much of a mystery reader, but I have started to get into a few mystery series in different genres. I’m intentionally trying to read more genre fiction these days, mainly because I have taken on a side job of editing a book for/with a friend of mine who has a story idea she loves and wants to write a book, but she has no writing experience. So she asked me if I would edit the draft for her and give her some tips. I blithely said sure, no problem! Ha.

The first draft was incredibly rough, so the ‘editing’ job turned into a long-term project to nurture her and this book along, into something readable at least, and hopefully enjoyable. We are in no hurry, but it is ongoing. The book is an urban fantasy/mystery. Not a genre I typically read! I have no idea if it will ever really get anywhere, but it’s been an interesting project and the manuscript has improved greatly over the past year as we sent files back and forth, revised and fleshed out the story, and I taught her about things like chapters, story arcs, paragraph breaks, and a little thing called dialog!

In truth I am learning as much as she is. My job is writing and editing technical documents, fact-based information, white papers, some marketing collateral, but for the most part the goals are to make sure it is correct, and make the information as accessible, concise, and clear as possible. Fiction is of course something else entirely! I can put my basic grammar and organizational skills to work on a fiction manuscript, but I do not write fiction and never imagined I would be working on a genre fiction novel.

But I find I like it, and so I’ve been reading books and studying fiction writing and editing. One of the prime directives is to read a lot of different types of fiction books, and pay attention to what is good and not-so-good about them, what works and what does not.

This has pushed me to read a lot of new types of books, mostly genre fiction that people can and do self-publish and sell online (shockingly low quality in many cases), but also good older fiction books, best sellers in new fiction, and re-reading some of my old favorites.

I love this new OT topic but if I shared some of what I’ve been reading, people would laugh and definitely get the wrong idea.

More in keeping with my typical reading habits, I did just finish ‘reading’ (listening to the audiobook) of Mary Trump’s new book about her family and her uncle Donald. I know what people will likely think of that! Haha. But it was an interesting book and I found it quite helpful in understanding D. Trump’s bizarre personality and mental illnesses, which explains his behaviors and imparts the understanding that he literally cannot function as a normal person. Expecting him to do so, under any circumstances, will be a mistake. Anyway, I enjoyed it.

Thanks again for bringing this idea to the OTs. I love books and reading, so this is my new favorite Friday Morning thing to do.

Submitted by gjohnsit on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 11:33am

DNC convention lineup

Submitted by earthling1 on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 12:13pm

Am reading

"The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs" by Andrei Martyanov.
He takes a cold hard look at Russia's new advanced weapons vs America's growingly obsolete navy.
The "New Silk Road" will be the coupe de gras of the U.S. Navy as it will be unable to reach that far inland of the Heartland to effect any kind of control or blockade of trade between nations on two continents.
He explains the growing chasm between the American Military professionals and a know-nothing civilian elite class of policy-makers who are ignorant of modern weapons systems and their capabilities, or lack thereof.

—

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by jakkalbessie on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 1:24pm

Just finished reading

The Feather Thief, beauty obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson. It was described as "a rollicking true-crime journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers.

The book takes you back to when the early explorers on their scientific journey's collected hundreds of birds, etc. to be brought back to be studied and saved. It then goes through the plume fashion craze in women's hat to the salmon fly-tiers world. Very interesting read and the book group had lots of divergent questions raised.

One question raised that would love an answer if anyone here knows, how did these early explorers (Darwin) etc. kill the hundreds of birds they would bring back on a single voyage?

—

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 4:40pm

Hola JB I have two answers for 2 different interpretations

@jakkalbessie

of your questions. 1) Everything from weapons of the day to snares and nets, rifles and shotguns, for example. Box snares, cast and mist nets, etc.

If you mean the whole "stalking the wild emu" type thing, remember that they were explorers, game was much more plentiful and in many cases, far less skittish, especially at distances that the average bird would consider to be safe but fairly close for a rifle or shotgun toting human.

Be well and have a good one.

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by jakkalbessie on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 5:09pm

@enhydra lutris Thanks for that info.

@enhydra lutris Thanks for that info. Some of us had suggested mist nets and nets like for catching butterflies. Will pass this info on

—

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 2:39pm

I just abandoned a book.

I hate doing that, but I knew going into it, that outcome was likely. The book? "White Fragility". Lol.

Yes, I know. I picked it up because the criticism resonated so strongly with me, I felt it was only fair to read it and make up my own mind. Well, it's up there with Pelosi wearing kente cloth and Chase Bank tweeting their execs taking a knee. Misguided and performative, subtly racist and really poorly written to boot. It's pretty much everything the critics claim.

—

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Submitted by CS in AZ on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 3:17pm

Matt Taibbi did a masterful takedown of that book

@Dr. John Carpenter

After reading his excellent article that completely dismantles it, I knew I would not be reading it.

On “White Fragility” A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to egghead racialism

The entire article is well worth a read, if you haven’t already seen it. A few snips:

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.

If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”

DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.

My personal favorite quote:

DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. “When there is disequilibrium in the habitus — when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital — we use strategies to regain our balance,” she says (“People taken out of their comfort zones find ways to deal,” according to Google Translate).

LOL! I love that paragraph.

This article was so enjoyable that I did start reading more from Matt Taibbi again, and I’m thinking his new book will be next on my reading list.

Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Fri, 07/24/2020 - 3:45pm

That was the impetus for me reading it!

@CS in AZ or trying to. Do not recommend. Lol

#6 After reading his excellent article that completely dismantles it, I knew I would not be reading it. On “White Fragility” A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to egghead racialism The entire article is well worth a read, if you haven’t already seen it. A few snips: DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category. If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.” DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia. My personal favorite quote: DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. “When there is disequilibrium in the habitus — when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital — we use strategies to regain our balance,” she says (“People taken out of their comfort zones find ways to deal,” according to Google Translate). LOL! I love that paragraph. This article was so enjoyable that I did start reading more from Matt Taibbi again, and I’m thinking his new book will be next on my reading list.

—

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.