stoutfellow

A quote from the Latin Anthology, a collection of poems and epigrams from the first millennium:

"In dreams, Apollo ordered me not to drink wine, and I obey him: now I just drink while I’m awake."

(h/t to Ursula Vernon)

One of the books I'm currently reading is Michael Collins' _Carrying the Fire_, an autobiographical work on his career as a pilot and astronaut. It's not badly written, a good mix of human interest and technical detail.

The passage I just read told of the beginning of the Apollo 11 flight, including a description of the Command Module as the three of them climbed in. He spent a couple of pages on Velcro: what it is, how it works, and what it's good for. Of course, this was written in the early '70s, before the stuff became so widely used; it just struck me as interesting that he felt the need to explain this.

The recent foofaraw about the phrase "King of Israel" summons up a vague memory, of Prime Minister Menachem Begin being referred to by that title - hyperbolically, I assume, by fringe elements of his faction. This would have been, um, somewhere between 1978 and 1990. Does anyone else remember this?

Sooo, I went shopping today. I hadn't planned an Amazon run until I officially am back on the payroll, but LMB had to put out a new Penric story...

E-books: LMB, "The Orphans of Raspay"; Michael Collins, "Carrying the Fire (50th Anniversary Edition)"; Ben Aaronovitch, "Broken Homes"; Genevieve Cogman, "The Invisible Library"; Elizabeth Peters, "Crocodile on the Sandbank" (yes, I'm finally starting on the Amelia Peabody series); James A. Corey, "Abaddon's Gate".

Dead trees: Alice R. Gaby, "A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre" (my semi-annual dose of linguistics); Brian Vaughan, "Saga, Vol. 3"; Bill Willingham, "Rose Red (Fables Vol. 15)".

Music: Neil Diamond, "The Bang Years 1966-1968", Londonbeat, "Greatest Hits"

Should be fun.

An article in the Journal of Economic History suggests that the Sicilian Mafia arose in response to a sudden increase in the demand for lemons and oranges, which was triggered by the discovery that citrus fruits cured scurvy.

Unintended Consequences...

George R. Stewart wrote one of the finest post-apocalyptic novels, Earth Abides. It was his only work of science fiction, and it holds up very well, even after seventy-plus years. (Stephen King identifies it as one of the inspirations for his The Stand.) He also wrote a number of other works, fiction and nonfiction. One of the former was Storm, which had as protagonist a giant hurricane, which he dubbed Maria.

I did not know this: it was that novel which prompted the National Weather Service to begin naming hurricanes, and it also inspired the Lerner and Loewe song "They Call the Wind Maria", from Paint Your Wagon.

I've had Earth Abides in my library for a long time, but I think I'm going to scout around for some of his other works.

On Thursday, I got a new pair of glasses. They're a bit stronger than my old pair, I think, and they're shaped slightly differently; I'm probably going to take a while getting used to them. But I'm back in action.

Yesterday, I did my taxes. For the first time in some years, I wound up taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing, but will get small to medium refunds, if all goes well.

Today, to reward myself for Achieving Things, I paid a visit to Amazon. I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for a group of writers I enjoyed back in the '70s, so I ordered one book from each of them: Fletcher Knebel's "Night of Camp David" ("Seven Days in May" doesn't seem to be available on Kindle); Morris West's "Shoes of the Fisherman" (I read the Reader's Digest version; the rest of the Vatican Trilogy is also available on Kindle); Irving Wallace's "The Man" (about the first black U.S. President); Arthur Hailey's "Hotel" (not as well known as "Airport", but there was a movie and a short-lived TV series); Leon Uris' "QB VII" (the first book of his I read); Allen Drury's "Advise and Consent" (the series got very polemical by the end, but I recall the first two or three as being pretty good); and James Michener's "Centennial". Wallace and Hailey basically wrote potboilers, and, if the Suck Fairy has struck any of these, those two are the most likely.

I also bought further volumes (hardcopy) of Girl Genius, Schlock Mercenary, and Fables, and the first volume of Saga. A later volume of Saga was a Hugo nominee at the Reno WorldCon, I think, (nope, it was Spokane 2015) and I liked it quite a bit - I think it was my number one choice in its category - but I haven't gotten around to starting the series yet.

Finally, I ordered a couple of nonfiction works: "Censors at Work", by Robert Darnton (recommended by Jo Walton) and "Freedom and Responsibility" by Hilary Bok, aka hilzoy, who was my favorite poster at Obsidian Wings until she retired from blogging. I still have her Twitter feed bookmarked. (OW hasn't been the same since Andy Olmstead died and she and katharine retired, alas.)

So, things to do in my spare time...

ETA: Gaah, I forgot to mention two more e-books: Marc Morris' "The Norman Conquest" and Miles Cameron's "Cold Iron". I don't remember who recommended them, but I put them on the list, so they must have sounded interesting.

A few months back, I went onto Project Gutenberg to look for P. M. A. Linebarger's book, "Psychological Warfare". (Linebarger is better known to SF fans under the name of Cordwainer Smith. His Instrumentality stories - "Scanners Live in Vain", "The Dead Lady of Clown Town", "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", and "Norstrilia", among others - are very unusual, and many of them are very good. I like "The Dead Lady" most, but that seems to be a minority opinion.)

Linebarger was a U.S. Intelligence officer during WWII and Korea, and his book on psychological warfare was The Book for quite a while. I'm finding it interesting, mostly for the way it organizes the fundamental concepts and techniques of the subject, but the historical review at the beginning is particularly interesting. His critique of John Milton's ineptitude as a Cromwellite propagandist is rather amusing; he also covers other practitioners, ranging from Gideon and Themistocles to Genghis Khan and other, more modern figures. I'm enjoying the book so far.

About a month ago, I posted a bit of speculation, stemming from David Reich's Who We Are and How We Got Here, in connection with the expansion of the Yamnaya people into Europe five thousand years ago.

In the introduction, Reich makes it clear that the field of ancient DNA studies is in rapid flux, and that any claims in the book are subject to change.

Well, the very item that I talked about has been voided; plague hit Europe before the Yamnaya got there.

I just finished reading Tom Holland's Dynasty, a history of the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero). I'd previously read his Persian Fire, about the Greco-Persian wars, and Rubicon, about the last years of the Roman Republic. Like the other two, it was interesting, but I didn't find it quite as riveting. The main problem, for me, was a somewhat sensationalistic tone - e.g., referring to the young Octavian as a terrorist. Still, his discussions of Tiberius (sympathetic, up until his old age, when he became somewhat paranoid), Claudius (viewed as more calculating than other treatments I've read), and Nero (as a consummate politician) were pretty interesting. I will continue to look out for his books.