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George C. Chesbro: Shadow of a Broken Man (Paperback, Apache Beach Publications) No rating

Immediately I'm grabbed by Chesbro's excellent description of Mongo's potential client Mike Foster. The authorial intent is to quickly establish that Mongo is a very observant person which servers him well as a detective. A layer back it indicates that Chesbro himself was a very observant person. I'm already sold that this re-read is going to be worth the time. But I'm likely going to spread the books out some to avoid rushing. (And I have a long TBR of living, working authors to read as well that I didn't want to ignore.) #Bookstodon

George C. Chesbro: Shadow of a Broken Man (Paperback, Apache Beach Publications) No rating

I'm re-reading George C. Chesbro's books about Mongo the Magnificent several decades after originally reading them. From what I recall and given Mr. Chesbro's profession as a counselor for troubled teens I'm expecting pretty much everything in the stories to hold up very well despite the passage of time.

If you are interested in learning more about Mr. Chesbro's life I highly recommend reading Prism: A Memoir as Fiction. As the title implies, it is a fictionalized memoir. I didn't know how true to his life it is, but it is definitely informative and moving. He doesn't shy from covering his failures as a parent, spouse and counselor,. After reading it I consider him a good, but flawed person (like the rest of us) who did see his flaws and at least attempt to improve (also hopefully like the rest of us). #Bookstodon

commented on The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (Old Man‘s War, #7)

John Scalzi: The Shattering Peace (EBook, Tor) No rating

For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartite agreement between the Colonial …

5 out of 5 stars Kudos to Mr. Scalzi on an excellent addition to the Old Man's War series. The main characters Gretchen and Ran (minor characters from The Last Colony) are very compelling and the story is engaging with many unexpected twists. #Bookstodon

Bob the Drag Queen: Harriet Tubman : Live in Concert (2025, Gallery Books)

Intentional, and entertaining

This was well written and well read by the author. It defines its characters well. And makes them rise out of the page. It knows what it wants to do, it gets to the business of doing it, but doesnt get to heavy on the way of getting there.

A really affecting story of race, queerness, history, and freeing one's self.

CW: US-South slavery, queer outing, alcoholism

#Books #Bookstodon

Otto Penzler: Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022, Penzler Publishers)

Very good collection of mysteries

An interesting set of locked door mysteries from the Golden Age of detective fiction (roughly the 1920s and 1930s). Fourteen interesting and ingenious tales with unexpected twists and turns along the way. I particularly enjoyed the Ellery Queen's The House of Haunts and C. Daly King’s The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem.

Warning that some of the stories do have dated attitudes, especially towards women (thus dropping the rating to four stars). #Bookstodon

David Maughan: Vanished from Budapest (2022, Hulyeseg Inc)

Not very realistic crime mystery

Content warning Spoiler alert...

quoted Golden Road by William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple: Golden Road (2024, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) No rating

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, …

The first Buddhist art is strikingly different from the pure and philosophically abstracted Buddhism admired around the world today, with its familiar image of the Buddha lost in meditation. Instead, early Buddhist art is aniconic, yet every bit as vibrant, crowded and cacophonous as so much later Buddhist art is still, silent and quietly meditative.

One reason for this is that the art of the first Buddhist monasteries is shot through with the cosmology of ancient animist cults that existed before the arrival of the new teachings. The first Buddhist monks believed that they lived in a spiritually charged landscape, alive with powerful local godlings and spirits - called yakshas when male and yakshis when female - who took up residence in the trees and stones and streams around monasteries.These spirits personified the forces of nature and revealed themselves at will.…

In all this early art, you feel strongly the Buddhist intuition that the natural and animal worlds are closely related to humankind through great cycles of reincarnation: a neglected Elephant Queen in the earliest murals of the Ajanta Caves may be reborn as the Queen of Varanasi, yet she remains the same essence. Animals are therefore depicted with the same love and respect as humans. After all, in a world where trees could be spirits and the waters are alive with sentient beings, ethical living requires treading softly on this earth, guarding the purity of water and preserving the life of both trees and animals.

Golden Road by 

This is really fascinating. One thing that struck me from my studies of #Buddhism is just how rich the cosmology is. It makes sense that a faith rooted in reincarnation would have a different relationship with the natural world.

#India #Books #Bookstodon #ReadingNow #AncientHistory #VisualArt #Art #Religion @histodon@a.gup.pe @antiquidons@a.gup.pe

Neil Gaiman, Genzaburō Yoshino, Bruno Navasky: How Do You Live? (2021, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in …

That is why I think the first, most basic step in these matters is to start with the moments of real feeling in your life, when your heart is truly moved, and to think about the meaning of those. The things that you feel most deeply, from the very bottom of your heart, will never deceive you in the slightest. And so at all times, in all things, whatever feelings you may have, consider these carefully.

If you do this, then someday, somewhere, a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience will leave a deep impression on you, and you will come to understand something that has a meaning that is not just limited to that one moment. That thought will be an idea that is truly your own.

To put it a slightly more difficult way, you must make a habit of thinking honestly, with your own experience as a foundation, and-Copper, this is very important!—if some one fakes this part, no matter what kind of great-sounding things they think or say, they are all lies in the end.

How Do You Live? by , ,

Moving passage. I think we sometimes forget how much our intuitions and deepest feelings can guide us well if we only listen.

#books #bookstodon #Japan #yanovel