The Book Count 2022

[Greg]

Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut during the Gold Rush Years by Jean-Nicola Perlot

This book holds one of the few first person accounts written by a foreigner during the Gold Rush years. Particularly important for me was that he worked in the Mariposa area from 1851-1857,  the formative years of the birth of Yosemite. He even joined one of the first party of visitors to venture into Yosemite. Unfortunately for me, in a 450 page book, only about five pages concern Yosemite and it's discovery. He did follow the Mariposa Battalion up the mountain during one hunt for gold, but that was about it. He did dig for gold with a bunch of Yosemite Indians on a tributary of the Merced River and helped those Indians fend off an attack of Tuolumne Indians. But that was about it.

The book is a tale in two halves. The first half is Perlot coming to the US from Belgium and searching for Gold in the Mariposa area. It's quite the adventure of sailing around the horn, walking across the state from Monterey and then spending seven years digging. The second half is about relocating to Portland, Oregon when gold was discovered up there and becoming a gardener. He barely manages to survive as a gold digger but does manage to earn a living for seven years hunting for gold. It's a vivid description of that life. Lots of hunting for creeks and waiting for just the right time when there is an appropriate amount of water for digging.

The second half in Portland is kind of monotonous. Lots of buying plots to turn into gardens to grow vegetables which are then sold around town. This goes on for another 13 years before he returns to Belgium.

It was good book, just not what I needed. And the book does give a lot of page space to finding the right creek.

[Greg]

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

A straight up horror novel with a dash of science fiction thrown in for seasoning. Nate, Maddie, and Oliver move to upstate Pennsylvania into Nate's family home after Nate's father dies. Nate is against the move but they really don't have anywhere else to go after son Olly needs to move to different school. Nate's father was abusive. Maddie might have some powers. Olly definitely has some powers. They move into an area where a serial killer used to kill. Nate's dead worked death row when the prisoner vanished from the electric chair. Then there are the strange Ramble Rocks where bad things happen. Everything seemed very familiar like it was just a step off from stories that had been written before. And I'm might be losing my taste for horror novels. The blood and gore and murder and mayhem is just off putting now rather than scary.

It is well written but it seems very derivative except for the slight science fiction aspect at it's heart and that still wasn't too much of a change with all the talk of multiverses these days. And there were enough loose threads at the end to set up for more books in this world.

[Greg]

The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull

You don't get a lot of science fiction stories set on the Virgin Islands, but here we are. Aliens land over a small island off VI and start handing out tech. They also are a law unto themselves. If you cross them you will be punished permanently. The book starts just before the invasion and centers on two families sharing  the same duplex. All of them are in turmoil. It's a very quiet book full of small problems until the big problem occurs. Then the book deals quietly with the aftermath of the big problem.

It's well written. Not flashy. A good read. A different perspective than the cis white male narrative.

[Greg]

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull

There is an allegory or parable in the heart of this story that I don't think I quite got. I think it's about societies coming awareness of Trans individuals but I think there might be more to it than that and I didn't quite parse the story out.

Liana learns that her addict brother has been shot and killed. Only he was killed when he was in the guise of a werewolf. This leads to society learning about monsters/magic-use in the world. The time is called the fracture. But the book mostly deals with Liana and her friends and lovers and husband and how they all interact, gay and straight. It's a big exploration of dynamics in the LGBTQ+ world. But there are also two secret societies that are at war with each other. Plus, there is a man from a different space in the multiverse narrating the whole story. It's a very inventive story with plenty of new ideas but I don't know if I quite got it. Plus, not a lot happens in the book. It feels like a set up for a sequel.

[Greg]

The Battle over Hetch Hetchy by Robert W. Righter

The subtitle for the book is "America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism"

This is the definitive book about how the damming of Hetch Hetchy came about. It's a very in-depth look and very entertaining. I learned more than I needed and it was a bit tiresome towards the end, but I did enjoy the story and I'm glad I read it. I learned some fascinating things about the fight and the people involved. Righter does a good job of not positioning people as villains. Everybody thinks they are doing what is right from their point of view. I was already to hate SF Mayor Phelan for starting the project to dam the valley but he had his reasons. It's amazing some of the things that went on. My favorite is that Phelan lost the water rights to the valley because he didn't keep them up (maintaining rights is a big theme) and somebody came in and basically took the claim. The city then had to pay this person millions for the claim. The other big story was they rushed to build the dam and then didn't take any water from it for another ten years. Basically they used the water to produce electricity. One of the arguments for the dam was that a nice lake would be much more scenic than that swamp full of mosquitos.

[Greg]

The Boys by Clint Howard and Ron Howard

Things are going to get confusing when I search for 'The Boys' from now on. Well, this version of The Boys is the Hollywood story of Ron and Clint Howard. The book alternates between Clint and Ron writing about growing up as actors. The book isn't super in depth because there is a lot of ground to cover, but they hit all the high points. From Ron being on the Andy Griffith show and Clint being on Gentle Ben all the way up until Ron breaks through as a director and Clint wins his MTV lifetime achievement award. Both of them had more struggles than I realized but I had a pretty good idea of the story beats.

At the heart of the story is The Boys devotion to their father Rance and mother Jean and how much they sacrificed to let their boys succeed. Rance was the child whisperer to get them to be actors while Jean took care of everything at home. Oddest of all except for a 5% manager's fee, the majority of the money the Boys earned went into savings accounts until their maturity. Rance and Jean supported the family.

Ron and Clint are very good writers and the book had a really nice flow to it. There is plenty of room for a sequel for Ron because his Hollywood stories end after his film with Corman and he has a big career after that. I did enjoy hearing him talk about his Corman days but he was on a different level than I. Since the Howards all lived in Burbank, there were plenty of stories about Burbank in there. They frequented many restaurants that I also visited.

A good Hollywood memoir with a happy ending.

[cranefly]

The Boys by Clint Howard and Ron Howard
...There is plenty of room for a sequel for Ron because his Hollywood stories end after his film with Corman...

That wouldn't happen to have been Eat My Dust!  I remember laughing out loud when I first saw that trailer.  What a lame excuse of a movie.  Poor Ron Howard trying to extend his career in Hollywood past The Andy Griffith Show.

Never saw that movie, BTW.  But there's a slight possibility I've seen something Ron Howardish since then.

[Greg]

Au contrair. Ron had to be in Eat My Dust in order to have the chance to direct Grand Theft Auto, which his father Rance helped write. Eat My Dust was directed by Charles Griffith who also directed my first Corman film, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II.

[Greg]

Silverview by John LeCarre

The last book from John Le Carre. It feels kind of short but it has the usual Le Carre elements. The writing was really good but it seemed like pieces we had seen before. There's a spy who is selling secrets to the enemy. There is the weary case officer trying to track him down. There is the couple stuck in the middle of all the machinations. A lot of the story is vague because Le Carre likes to hint at the story without really telling the story. He also uses the code name and the characters name interchangeably without really saying the character has a code name. For the longest time I thought they were two different characters.

I've read a lot of Le Carre over the years. Some has been really good. Some has been okay. But there was always a great sense of style in his use of language.

[Greg]

The Past is Red by Catherine Valente

More novella than novel, but I really enjoy. Tetley is a young woman living on giant floating pile of garbage, the detritus of the world that came before. Garbagetown is all that is left of Earth's civilization. Much like in Waterworld there is a constant quest for land. Tetley has the audacity to say there is no land and is punished for her opinion. But the language is all very entertaining. Valente describes the different areas of garbage town with great imagination. It's a morality tale, of course, but very enjoyable. A very different look at a possible upcoming dystopian future.

[cranefly]

The Past is Red by Catherine Valente

More novella than novel, but I really enjoy...

I'm virtually certain I read "The Future Is Blue," the seed story that this grew out of.  I must have read it in a Best of the Year collection, likely The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Straham.

That was a good and memorable story, and I've heard that The Past Is Red (4 times as long) is even better -- reinforced by you.

Right now I'm reading The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 35 (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois -- nearly 700 pages, and Gardner's last editing fling before dying.

I don't read Nebula or Hugo Award collections anymore.  They used to be reliable, and no doubt still contain some good stuff, but the awards have too often succumbed to popularity contests and the collections are now riddled with stinkers.

[Greg]

You are correct about The Future is Blue and this book.

[Greg]

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

The Wayward Children series of books continues. The series focuses on children that go through magical doorways to different lands and what happens to them once they come back. It's a loosely connected series. Some of the characters recur. Some times the books are stand alone with only thematic elements being the same. One of the big recurring themes is the fact there is a school where the children who have gone on adventures and returned can go and recover surrounded by people who understand them.

In Drowned Girls, Cora has returned from her journey as a mermaid in the Trenches world and keeps hearing the voices of the Dead Gods calling her. She wants to forget. She wants the opposite of the Wayward school. So she goes to the school that helps the magic kids forget the magic worlds. Cora immediately regrets this decision and works to solve the problem.

Like most McGuire books, McGuire is dealing with her own personal issues in the story and things she suffers . And unlike her other books where there is a lot recounting of the back story to start a book, that doesn't happen in the Wayward Children stories. It's up to the reader to remember what has gone before. I can't usually remember what has gone before. But it's okay. McGuire continues to be a good writer. The book are engaging if short at almost Novella length.

[Greg]

Gabriel Sovulewski: The Life and Letters of Yosemite's Master Trail Builder by Fernando Penalosa

Mr. Sovulewski was a long time Yosemite Park employee working there from 1906 to 1936. He also worked there as US Cavalry Member in the late 1890s. It's a very short book with not a great amount of details and a only a few interesting anecdotes which include his impressions of Galen Clark and John Muir. He liked Clark, thought Muir was a bum. His main claim to fame was as a trail builder but not much is talked about what trails he actually built.

I came across Sovulewski's name in a FB Yosemite group. They referenced a story told by his granddaughter that his nickname was barbwire Sovulewski. At one point people living in the valley had cut up all the meadows into fields for their livestock. That was outlawed and Sovulewski was given the order to go and remove all the fencing one night and bury it. He did. I was hoping I could get more information on that story.

[thatguy]

Goddam livestock



--tg