Delicious in Dungeon vols 2-4

 Delicious in Dungeon vols 2-4 by Ryoko Kui, 576 pages.

(I wrote about the first leg of the adventure here)

The Touden party continues their adventure deeper into the dungeon to find the red dragon and save Falin! As they go they get both a greater understanding of the ecosystems that exist in the dungeon and of each other. They do in fact find the dragon in this leg of the series, but killing it and resurrecting Laios' sister may yet prove more complicated than they had hoped.

I'm very much still enjoying this series! The characters are very compelling, and Kui puts a really exceptional amount of thought into her worldbuilding. I'm very excited to see where this series is going now that we're off of the clearly defined journey of the premise.

The Fireborne Blade

 The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond, 176 pages.

Maddileh, Knight of the Stairs, has been cast out of the king's favor and the knighthood unless she can do something truly impressive to win back her place. So she decides to pursue the legendary Fireborne Blade in the lair of an equally legendary dragon. Only dragon's lairs are full of strange magic, and things may not be what they seem. 

This novella is told alternating between Maddileh's story, both in the past and the present, and in primary source documents about other dragonslayers. This book felt like everything I would love, but somehow it didn't come together for me. Despite being less than 200 pages long, it felt like it dragged, and while it felt like there were a whole lot of elements that felt like they could be really interesting if they were further explored, overall I couldn't point to anything that I found particularly compelling. I'm afraid I have to mark this one down as a disappointment.

Without Lying Down

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp (1997) 475 pages

Years ago I read the historical fiction book The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin. Fans of that would like this non-fiction book about Frances Marion's full life and career. Also, back in 2017, I borrowed a Mary Pickford movie and the DVD had a documentary with this same title, Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp died late last year, so this cinema history book moved up in my list of priorities. The title comes from a quote that Frances, as a highly paid writer in the early days of filmmaking, said, "I've spent my life searching for a man to look up to without lying down." 

I loved the behind the scenes stories of the filmmaking process the most. Frances was mentored by Lois Weber. Befriended Marie Dressler and helped to bring her from the stages of New York to the sets of Hollywood. Her friendship and working relationship with Mary Pickford fills a large section of the book. The cover photo is of the two of them. She also was friends with fellow writers Hedda Hopper and Adela Roger St. Johns. She worked closely with managing producer Irving Thalberg at MGM. Frances often worked on films for W.R. Hearst's company to star Marion Davies. The great love of her life was Fred Thomson, a now forgotten Western star, who died too young. Her hobbies of playing piano and sculpting as well as being a founding member of the Academy and then the Writer's Guild was fascinating too.

Summer Reading

Summer Reading by Jenn McKinlay (2023) 435 pages

Sam, 28, is a chef who quit her job because she was passed over for a promotion to head chef after seven years of experience, including several great write-ups in the media. She hasn't yet told anyone about quitting her job, but she's going to Martha's Vineyard where her father's family has had a small home for several generations. She's going to keep an eye on her 14 year-old half brother, Tyler, while her father and his wife travel for 4 weeks.

She meets Ben, a man she's attracted to, on the ferry to the island. Later, when she discovers he's a librarian, she tries to keep quiet that she's dyslexic and that reading is quite difficult for her. It turns out that Ben is just on the island for a limited time anyway, filling in for the director of the library, a place that Sam's best friend works at, and also the place where she ends up spending time because her half brother goes to a summer program there.

Sam and Tyler spar while they get to know each other. Sam's relationship with Ben goes through transitions as Ben learns about her dyslexia and they begin to share other information about themselves. Sam tries to figure out if she can bring in some income while she's out of work for the summer. And of course there's always a crisis to weather. 

Basically, this book is a fun summer read, but the added dyslexia content, including Sam's numerous coping strategies, gives it extra interest.

Quanta and fields

 

Quanta and fields: the biggest ideas in the universe by Sean Carrol (2024) 289pp

Part of the “biggest ideas” series, this look at the basic physics intrinsic to quantum mechanics attempts to put a complex topic within reach of curious readers who are not cosmologists or theoretical physicists. Much more math here than in many popular physics books, actually loaded with equations and formulas. I was able to follow the narrative in spite of barely passing my last math class – college algebra. Carrol explains his aim, not ginning up “Big Bang Theory” fantastic cosmic scenarios, but making the current state of quanta and fields’ research comprehensible to the layperson. Readers with a solid grasp of the calculus and advanced math will follow along and nod their heads; duffers like me can do five pages and then nap, a bit of a slog. Kudos to the author for showing that much of the cutting-edge mathematical underpinnings of this esoteric subject are rooted in mathematics developed over hundreds of years – simply (well, not too simply) taking tools developed for use in classical Newtonian physics and adapting and modifying them to explain and predict observations and experimental data. If you read and enjoyed any of the hundreds of books popularizing math, science and physics, but don’t need any more pseudo-science analogies and are sated on the entertaining personalities that litter the history of science and technology, you will be rewarded with a new understanding of this complex topic. However, I wouldn’t bring it up at a dinner party.

Around the World in 80 Books

 

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch 412 pp.

Created as a kind of antidote to the Covid lockdown, the chair of Harvard's Comparative Literature Department evokes the travels of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by selecting 80 books by a wide variety of authors. The books have settings that roughly follow Fogg's itinerary. Damrosch also pairs books with similar themes, settings, or authors. I read 13 of the 80, some for pleasure, others as school assignments. A couple have been summer Big Book Challenge titles including last summer's Tale of Genji and this summer's Things Fall Apart. While most of the titles can be classified as "great literature", I was excited to find a Donna Leon title from one of my favorite series in the list. While I don't expect to read the entire list, there are a number that are already in my TBR books and I will be adding a few of Damrosch's suggested titles. If you can get past the often dry, professorial tone to the book, it's an interesting read. The audiobook was read by the author.

The Maid

The Maid by Nita Prose (2022) 289 pages

The Maid is narrated by our protagonist, Molly Gray. She's a maid at the top-tier Regency Grand Hotel. She is very particular about cleaning, and derives much satisfaction from a job well-done. She is also apparently "somewhere on the spectrum": She takes words literally and realizes that she misses certain social cues that others understand much better than she does. She knows that others often make fun of her because she is different.

Molly is mourning the recent death of her grandmother who had raised her and who had given feedback on Molly's experiences. Molly tries to find comfort in remembering her grandmother's supportive comments.

A rich hotel guest who often patronizes the hotel with his wife, is dead in his bed, discovered by Molly. When she finds herself arrested for his murder, her first thought is that it didn't feel right to be arrested in her pajamas. But she is also well-versed in watching TV detective shows, and knows that she needs help to get out from under the charges. Who's in her corner now that her grandmother is gone?

Such a fast read; the author did well in convincing me of Molly's unusual way of seeing the world.

June Totals

It's for your own safety

 Byron: 2 books, 784 pages

Hammy: 2 books, 672 pages

Jan: 7 books, 2259 pages

John: 2 books, 507 pages

Kara: 22 books, 7825 pages

Karen: 4 books, 1572 pages

Kevin: 2 books, 902 pages

Regan: 6 books, 2107 pages

Total: 47 books, 16628 pages

Nuclear War

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen (2024) 373pp.

Drop what you are doing and web surf to FEMA.GOV and read “Nuclear Detonation Response Guidance Planning for the First 72 Hours” the 105 page guide on what to do in the situation described in Jacobson’s book. You probably won’t survive, but you will be among those who know what to expect when the bombs fall. This is a bleak read, but I couldn’t put it down (until it was ripped from my hands by the 300 mph blast winds!). Tales of dystopia based on nuclear conflagration are rife, but this takes a bit of a different tack, a second-by-second, play-by-play of the end of the world. The book takes the reader from the moment of launch of a nuclear missile, the impact and the retaliation. Is it possible to get grimmer? Yes, not only do cities get annihilated, every country with a nuke sees a rationale to launch them. Not a win-win, unless you are a cockroach. No spoilers here – the usual suspects are involved – and there is a macabre beginning, middle and end. Jacobsen uses her journalism skills, including extensive notes and a generous bibliography to bolster her “Scenario” and she includes highlighted “History Lessons” sidebars to help the reader with putting the unthinkable in context. Jacobsen has written a graphic novel without graphics – speeding along like a Grisham novel, but again, with no happy ending.

Things Fall Apart

 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 209 pages.

Okonkwo is a man's man, wildly successful by the metrics of his Igbo village in late 19th century Nigeria. After a tragic accident Okonkwo is forced to flee his home, and when he returns seven years later the forces of colonization are in full force, and his place in the world becomes deeply uncertain.

As an ethnography I found this book extremely successful. I also felt that it was very effective at meeting Achebe's goal of changing Western views of Africa, and especially precolonial Africa. As a novel, I'm afraid I found it less successful. It was slow and meandering, and aside from Okonkwo himself I found few of the characters very compelling. That being said, I would still consider this a valuable book, and at only 200 pages I would definitely consider it worth the time put in.