Sorry puzzle people no glibcrostic this week, I could make excuses and tell you a bunch of stories about death and work and taxes but we all know that it was the alcohol and procrastination.
This weeks book related subject – Woman authors and why there are way to many of them. With out doing any research I’m going to say that 90% of all new novels are written by woman and as someone who wont read books written by women this is an issue. I, because I don’t care about whom I give money to, am an Amazon Prime member and each month I am allowed to download two free books and often there are no books I can download because they are all written by women. And at the library as I peruse the new books it’s one woman author after another and they are mostly romance and family drama crap and coming of age bullshit.
I’m sure there are exceptions but woman authors focus on relationships and feelings, and ain’t no one got time for that shit. So Glibs prove me wrong, what woman authors would you suggest?
Just off the top of my head
Amity Schlaes
Lucy Kellaway
Perri O’Shaughnessy- I’m sorry they stopped writing, but kind of painted the series into a corner
I liked Anne Mccaffrey when I was younger but haven’t revisited any of her books in years
(Thank you Moje for posting Hype’s error ridden jeremiad)
The temptation to forget I ever saw it was strong.
lol
Deirdre McCloskey [snickers]
Insert “oh shit” gif here
It is amusing ( but not surprising) that he isnt more popular amongst the left.
Also liked Patricia Cornwell for a while until the whole thing soured me. Elizabeth George was ok for a few books, same with Sue Grafton.
Giants: Daphne DeMaurier, Elizabeth Gaskell, Rebecca West, Barbara Tuchman, PD James, etc, etc.
I liked her, too, but she got too dark, which in itself wouldn’t be a problem, but it started to feel like she was getting off on “murdering” people in increasingly sick ways, instead of getting off on having the bad guys get caught and punished.
That’s probably part of it. I vaguely recall it felt less like she was a ME in a system and more like there was a isolated band of her crew made up of super cops and supersleuths. It’s probably been close to twenty years since I threw down the books.
I honestly don’t mind Scooby gangs.
I Looked up Pat Cornwell – 27 books in one series, likewise Elizabeth George -21, that’s far to many books about one person. Not only do women in general write to many books each one writes too many by themselves. I won’t go so far as Adrian Mckinty who claims 3 is the max for a good series (he’s now on the seventh of his Sean Duffy Novels) but I’d say ten is a good place to stop.
Like the Federal Reserve & Edward Stratemeyer, why quit when you’re printing money? Those granite countertops and Bora Bora vacations aren’t going to pay for themselves.
Michael Connelly. He has said he wants to stop Bosch, but the fans keep clamoring for more. So he phones them in.
He could always kill Bosch off. He’d just have to worry about Annie Wilkes.
Have you met our lord and savior, James Patterson?
I meant Janet Evanovich. Sorry.
Has Sue Grafton run out of ideas?
ALOL
Heh. I liked the eight or so I read. Moved on to something else.
Ms Grafton shuffled off before having to figure out that one.
No, she released just “X” in 2016
But “Z” is missing. 🙁
Y?
Agree about Amity Schlaes and I would add Margaret MacMillan.
Octavia Butler
Ursula K. LeGuin
Probably my favorite lady genre writers. Yes I had to reach back decades because I haven’t encountered many recent examples. I did find Nancy Kress recently and she was pretty good.
James Tiptree Jr. ← did not know that was a woman when I first read him
Beggars in Spain (Kress) was great! Not sure how many of the sequels I read, but I doubt it was more than 1. I, too, was unaware of Tiptree being a woman until it all blew up in the SF community. It’s been decades since I’ve read any of her stuff. Octavia Butler just left me cold. Competently written, but very much not to my taste, and less so as she went on. I’d go so far as to say she foreshadowed certain elements of ‘woke’.
“Dawn” knocked my socks off when I picked it off a dive hotel bookshelf on a whim in the late 90s. She did have a “cold” style of writing that I find appealing.
The novella was very good, not sure how she expanded it to a novel. Not well is my guess.
Ayn Rand
Mari Sandoz.
*Raises glass
“To alcohol and procrastination!”
“Hear, hear!”
It’s a lifestyle.
I’ll drink to that, whenever I get around to it.
I’m not going to address the blatant bait post.
However, it did lead me to realize that stories that would be considered “fluff” is still a good time if it’s well written (and sometimes even if it’s not). The point of fiction is to be told an entertaining story. It’s why, in my ratings of books, I’ve started to give out more 4 stars. It was good! means it did its job well. 5 stars I reserve for ones that keep me thinking about them long after I’ve tossed it back into the Kindle Unlimited pool.
“stories that would be considered “fluff” is still a good time if it’s well written (and sometimes even if it’s not)”
That’s about 80%, minimum, of my reading.
Fiction should entertain before it does anything else.
Agreed. Probably 95% of what I read is fluff. (I read very little non-fiction.)
That’s the approach Ebert took to movies, which led to peculiarities like Mulholland Drive, Iron Man, The Big Lebowski, Cool Hand Luke and Knowing all sharing a 4 star rating.
Historians Barbara Tuchman, Doris K. Goodwin, Elizabeth P. Brown. Good writers even if one can quibble with some of their analysis/conclusions
Lisa Randall
Moriah Jovan
Awwwwwwww, thanks!
I had French toast for lunch. Thought of you.
With maple syrup and copious butter?
Absolutely. And cinnamon in the egg.
I was BEYOND gassed last night
Whuuuuuut? Spaniard and I were 3 sheets. I should have joined Zoom you could have seen us bicker like an old couple.
I posted in the a.m. links that my bathroom smelled like Jack Daniels’ Tennessee Honey this morning! LOL
More Sakamoto, this time with his wife at the time
https://youtu.be/UGPy-LUo36Y
Scheherazade
Lionel Shriver
I don’t know if I’d like her novels but this is a good interview, seems she doesn’t put up with any bullshit.
Of course there are the famous Georges: Sand and Elliot.
Then there are best- selling women writers that Glibs may not want to read: Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Prince Harry
Oh, bravo. I was trying to work in a Prince Harry joke, but I can’t compete with that.
Yeah, L.O.L.
Zenna Henderson, especially if you move outside the stories of The People.
Andre Norton.
Tamsyn Muir.
Martha Wells.
Patricia McKillip.
C.J. Cherryh.
Lisa Goldstein.
Tanya Huff.
Arcady Martine.
(The above are all fantasy and/or science fiction, so YMMV)
Kate Colquhoun.
Joan Didion, at least Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album.
Shirley Jackson, at least The Lottery, and certainly We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
I’ll second Wells.
Murderbot is awesome.
👍
Couldn’t agree more.
Most of her other fiction is worth the time as well. Didn’t get into the Books of the Raksura series, but it the one I read was competently done. City of Bones, The Element of Fire, and Death of the Necromancers are early works but quite good. Wheel of the Infinite is apparently hard to find, but very good indeed.
Sigh. Necromancer, singular, above.
I will second Didion. One of the greats.
Also Shirley Jackson. The Lottery is one of the great short stories.
We read it in 6th grade. It was the first challenge to what we were taught — “democracy is good, democracy is great, democracy does no wrong.” First step on my journey.
Thanks auto-correct. It’s Arkady Martine, with a ‘k’ not a ‘c’. Book two of her Machineries of Empire duology has one of the most imaginative creations of an alien species I’ve ever encountered. Simply brilliant, although I prefer the first book overall.
Impressive praise. I’ll check them out. I haven’t read any author that is “new” to me in 15 years or so.
Of course, I’m stuck on The Exapanse for another couple years. Just started book 4….
Do you mean “A Memory Called Empire’? Machineries of Empire leads to a series by some one named Yoon Ha Lee.
Oops. Yes, A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. The Teixcalaan series. Duology so far. The lesbianism gets a bit heavy handed in Desolation, but so it goes. Not hard to skip those bits. They’re for building the 2 leads relationship, but not essential IMNSHO.
I had mistakenly thought that Yoon Ha Lee was female, but was wrong. Still, the Machineries of Empire is good stuff, powerfully written. Mostly horrible people doing horrible things to mostly horrible people for the sake of reducing tyranny.
Hoo boy. I dunno if I can deal with all that.
None of that is apparent in the trilogy. Other of his works, maybe. I gave up on one for wokeness & unnecessary scene setting.
OT – two more Premier League managers bite the dust (Rodgers and Potter); new record for managers fired in a season.
My son is ecstatic over Potter getting the boot. Chelsea has scored 29 goals so far this season. My also-ran Champioship-level squad Stoke City have managed to score 30 since January 1.
Hoping Pulisic finds greener pastures this summer.
So ridiculous. I hope they run out of managers.
Recycling is a thing.
This one’s easy. The answer is Dorothy Sayers.
She did a lot, but what I’ve read most are her Peter Wimsey mysteries. Classic English mysteries, fun, casual, etc.
The first one is called “Whose Body”, and the second is “Clouds of Witnesses”. And there are lots more – do them in order.
I’m reading a book by Juliana Tainer about her work with Dr. Noonien Soong. I just finished the chapter (titled ‘Are Friends Positronic?’) which describes the time they spent with Robert Moog building the prototype that would become Gary Numan.
Already mentioned but +1 to George Eliot, Patricia Mckillip.
Add Barbara Hambly and if you like classic Trek, DC Fontana and Diane Duane.
Ooh, forgot Giant Duane.
I greatly admire McKillip’s Od Magic for being an engaging and powerful story with no villain. There were plenty of possibilities for one, but she pulled it off sans villains. Perhaps my favorite of hers right after the Riddle Master trilogy.
👍
Couldn’t agree more.
Misthreaded, copied into its proper place. Sigh. Old sucks.
And crap, failure to proofread strikes again. Diane Duane. Sigh. Getting old sucks.
+1 Hed. Loved those books.
👍
Yeah, I re-read those at least once a year. Took a lot out of her, it was years before she wrote anything that came close to grabbing me. The Book of Atrix Wolfe, it was. Alphabet of Thorn, Bards of Bone Plain, and, as already enthused over, Od Magic have her back in good form. Aside from one weird interlude (I blame an editor), Kingfisher is also wonderful, and has her reaching beyond medieval settings into what, in lesser hands, would be steam punk. I recommend them all 😉
Evelyn Waugh
Rhymes with Laugh.
I lauwed out loud.
Rose Wilder Lane wrote some interesting books about her mother’s childhood.
Libertarians ought to be Rose Wilder Lane fans.
RWL was famous in her day, but her work got completely eclipsed by Little House. How much work she did actually did on those is hotly debated, but she (and Isabel Paterson) is lost to time in ways Ayn Rand never was and never can be.
Other than Anne Rice, I cannot think of any other women writers that I remember reading (excluding our very on MoJo).
C. J. Cherryh was one of the first sci-if writers I ever stumbled across. I was mesmerized by the whole alternate world thing. This would have been in the early/mid ‘70s, so only the oldsters among us who grew up in small towns can understand my frustration because there were only two such books in the entire town (school, library, etc.). Imagine how many times I read them..
The nearest bookstore was 60 miles away, and as a wee tad I had neither (a) any notion you could order books nor (b) money with which to do so.
I read every sci-fi book the school library had. The head librarian decided she liked me and would keep new sci-fi books under the counter and let me read them first.
My branch librarian did the same for me. She even moved SF books out of Adult to Young Adult so I could check them out. The only one she balked at was Lord of the Flies. I can’t shower enough blessings on that wonderful lady.
They had all the SF mag ‘annuals’ going back to the early 50s or so, so I got the best of Analog, Astounding, Galaxy, If, and F&SF. Dune when it was first published. And so on. A host of goodies for a bookish child ; )
Our school libraries were pretty crap, but the city library was marvelous. Branches all over town, and a ginormous main library. The branches have been replaced by bookmobile)p(s?). The old main library is now low-end condos.
Say what you will about corn country (Sioux City, IA), but the people valued books and reading.
I used to bicycle down to my city’s main branch and check out tons of SF. And language books and other nerd stuff.
I was lucky, my branch was in walking distance, and oh, how often I made that walk.
It broke my heart to see that branch having been converted to a D.A.R.E. center when I returned for my 40th class reunion.
This was after I wore out my local branch (which was also not within walking distance).
I didn’t get to the main library until I was in high school. But then I walked past it )usually into it) every day after school on my way to my dad’s business, where I worked until we closed and went home. By then home was 15 miles out in the country, to my dismay.
I read a lot Enid Blyton and Andre Norton when I was a kid.
I like some of Ursula Le Guin’s stuff.
No Ursula K. Le Guin?
Not my favorite, but I read all Earthsea.
Oddly, I read a fair amount of female manga (Japanese comic) authors. Mostly I suppose, because the focus more on day to day and are good reading and conversation practice.
In English, I’ve likely read far fewer, but never thought to read or not read a book based only on the sex of the author.
I hang my head in shame at not putting LeGuin on my list. She wasn’t always good, but when she was good she was great.
The Lathe of Heaven, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed made a huge impression on me when I was a kid.
Likewise.
Also the original Earthsea trilogy. She went off the rails with the later Earthsea books IMNSHO.
I’m not so much into fantasy but I did read the first one when I was a kid.
If you want well-written fluff, P G Wodehouse is your man.
“And at the library as I peruse the new books it’s one woman author after another “.
Diversity!
Dorothy Parker
Jesus. Finally!
Pearl Buck.
I liked her southern cousin, Minnie Pearl Buck.
I read a lot of s-f short stories and there are many more women writers than when I was a kid. I’d say that I enjoy them in the same proportion to men writers, i.e. some are good, many are decent, a few are not my cup of tea and one or two are too busy making political or social points to be enjoyable.
If we’re going non-fiction then they are a lot, including Juliana Barr, Jean Soderlund, Jill Lepore, Natalie Zemon Davis, Ann Little, Virginia DeJohn Anderson.
I’ll echo Joan Didion. There’s something I appreciate about her style.
Many of the authors we are discussing are junk fiction (Grafton, Evanovich, Cornwell) also proliferated by male writers as well.
I’ve long told younger people that, for one who didn’t live through it, to grasp the 60s one needs to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Two more different authors, styles, and perspectives on those years is, I submit, impossible to find. Both brutally accurate.
Fuck all this Bull shit.
Flannery O’Conner. Anyone who could write story about a woman with a Ph.D. and a wooden leg, and how that leg is stolen by a itinerate bible salesman is more hard boiled than a bucket of todays “crime” novelists. Also, Dorothy Parker:
I like a martini, two at the most.
Three I’m under the table, four I’m under my host
(I know you were just f’n around, but seriously, if you haven’t read her, step up.)
What’s the name of the story about the PhD’s stolen wooden leg?
Good Country People.
Thank you. Sounds too good to miss.
My wife started Flannery O’Conner and was less than impressed.
Don’t make me come over there and force feed you P. D. James.
If you are uninitiated, you can start with “Cover Her Face.”
Yeah, it’s British murder fiction. I dare you to come debate me on its merits over a lovely cuppa tea. 😊☠️
Her writing as Barbara Vine, a bit deeper psychologically, is sometimes pretty brutal/good. I recommend The Dark Adapted Eye. Also, Minette Walters is a good ‘un, start with The Scuptress, or The Scold’s Bridal.
Duly noted, Zwak!
🙏
😘
I need to re-try James. Did a few of hers maybe 25 years ago and something turned me off. I don’t remember what.
And British murder fiction is definitely my thing for casual/chill-out reading.
John Lawton?
I like Oriana Fallaci, she had more balls than the majority of male reporters.
You know who else had more balls than male journalists?
The Vienna Boys Choir?
The whole lot of Chinese Imperial Court bureaucrats?
“You know who else had more balls than male journalists?
I thought Who Else only had one.
Lance Armstrong
No one has mentioned Margery Sharp? I guess that most of her work is out of print now.
Zoe Sharp, no relation that I know of, has a very cool line of modern Brit-mystery thrillers.
E. Annie Proulx has written some good stuff. Lit fic, but pretty readable.
Hyp might like Wyoming Stories. There is one in particular…
I was hoping someone would bring that up…
That said, I unreservedly enjoyed That Old Ace in the Hole.
Children’s lit might be a different thing than what we’re discussing, but as a lad I enjoyed Beverly Cleary’s tales, particulary those of Henry and his dog Ribsy.
Never really got into Judy Blume, though — with the notable exception of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.
Oh, yeah. BC was terrific.
I don’t know that I paid any attention to the gender of the authors when I was a youngster.
In that case – Virginia Lee Burton. I like the one about the steam shovel.
Lol. Of course you do!
The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson is a classic, although it’s the only thing she’s written that I’ve ever read. Looking at my digital library I’m realizing it’s a sausage fest. To be fair though, I don’t read much fiction, it’s all boring politics, philosophy, and classics, with the notable exception of Philip K. Dick.
Was coming back to say Paterson but now that you said it I don’t need to.
Dick, sausage fest, really?
Huh.
I didn’t realize how few chicks I have in my library.
But Mo, PD James and Sabrina Flynn are all amazing.
Fuck you Hyp! 🙂
Thank you, Tundra! 😊
April 2nd and it’s snowing.
Almost 70 here, but Mother Nature is lining up a kick in the balls on Tuesday.
Bitch.
Fake tornado scare in DFW TX today. Really interfered with reading and playing cards. I was going to go visit my father in law for poker. Next week I suppose.
60’s (possibly) on Friday.
Flowers and robins don’t care.
I thought we moved here for the late spring mega snows?
Margaret Wies?
I have a few books and some 2E modules.
Mrs. N is a regular book reader and her response to Hyp was “What a twerp!” And then she said to share Hank Phillippi Ryan, specifically “The House Guest”.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
Huh, I had no idea she wrote, I just know her as a local investigative reporter.
Good news.
Finnish thot takes the L.
Apparently the rest of Finland isn’t interested in being vaporized.
Look for her OnlyFans, coming soon.
An OnlyFans would be nice. I’d like to get na good look at her, uh, policy proposals no doubt.
Another WEFfie?
🙄
And apparently her successor; how… convenient.
Our buddy Gordilocks is everywhere!
His Substack is solid, too.
O/T – Follow up to a (AFAIK) non-satirical news story Ssccrruuffyy linked to this morning – Is real life making things too easy for the Bee?
When I saw that ad my first thought was what an offputting thing to base an ad campaign on and I don’t like Mulvaney one bit either.
Heh.
I still don’t know if that story is a prank.
Perfect crystallization of current year.
Bud Light…the go-to beer for your average Joe Six Pack…put a tranny on its label?
At some point, people with vested interests in this sort of stuff should be able to sue because the people in charge are actively fucking over their own brands.
So really, this post was for Hyp to get a good list of authors together without having to do it himself.
So, he enacted our labor?
Lois McMaster Bujold, sci fi and fantasy.
Kerry Greenwood, period murder mystery.
Dorothy Grant, sci fi.
L. Jagi Lamplighter, fantasy.
Ditto ES on Zoe Sharp.
We are so doomed.
Wut. Do I want to know what they plan to do after that?
As far as I can tell, nothing. They aren’t going to remove troops from Iraq and they have the other authorization of military force to justify troops anywhere in the Middle East they want. It seems to be wholly symbolic because those authorizations were used for the Iraq War.
:This sums it up:
Maybe the Democrats should have shown some actual ethics, or hell even just foresight and not gone with the candidate that had severe medical issues? But I guess when you run a senile old fool for the highest office, you have already thrown standards out the window.
What the fuck does living in a post-covid world have to do with this guy self-admitting himself to a crazy hospital? It’s like let’s just throw as many buzzwords together as we can.
We’re celebrating people’s mental illnesses now. Try to keep up.
Product recommendation requested: mobile phone keyboard.
I’m finding a need to use my mobile phone a LOT for work, even during “personal time.” I am not adept at on-screens texting partly due to a birth defect that makes my thumbs not bend (—> insert non-opposable thumb=lower animal joke here.)
I’d love to hear from a satisfied customer on what keyboard you like! I have a purse so I can fit a folding type, a rolling type; even one of those laser projection types.
Sorry. I am not adept at on-screen texting because a phone is a terrible device for that. Some day we’ll have thought-texting or something and wonder how people dealt with such primitive devices.
I’m watching Compulsion. Was it typical for Orson Welles to look like they dragged him out of a gutter? I mean, I remember that drunken wine commercial but that was a couple decades later geez.
This is Ted’S’s department.
I’ll be in my bunk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVXCzOCmjRY
(spoiler alert: Johan Norberg talking about Capitalism)
more Austrian economics porn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WEwy-uGKoI
His book is quite good.
Johan Norberg has never even Firsted. You need to up your standards.
I’ve upped my standards.
Now up tours. 🖕
I read all the way through and realized that no one mentioned American Sci-Fi writer Connie Willis. Her time travel novels and short stories are particularly good, with “To Say Nothing of the Dog” being laugh-out-loud funny in many places.
In a similar theme, I don’t think I saw Jodi Taylor mentioned.
Good morning everybody.
https://www.prepperforums.net/attachments/gallery_ustv-the-simpsons-dr-nick-jpg.26945/
Good morning. Whatever woke me up woke up my son at the same time. I hid behind the kitchen counter so he would go back to sleep.
Good morning!! Planning to go straight back to sleep. My headphones ran out of charge so no e-book tonight!
🙁
Super serious question. Have you any experience of alternatives to Audible? Amazon have really been a huge disappointment in terms of customer service (like they’re beginning to scrape the barrel of personality disorders just to staff the chats and call centers) and I figured it’s time to move on. Given how little I get through it seems as though just buying books individually through iTunes/Apple Books would end up costing about the same although some of their audiobooks them can be over $20. I’m not sure a subscription service is worthwhile.
I’ve been borrowing e-books from my library for a long time, but on those rare occasions when I foresee having an opportunity to listen to audiobooks, I’ve used the free Libby app and have been quite satisfied with it. If your local library – or at least a library close enough for you to get a card – has audiobooks available, I’d recommend giving that a try.
Cool thanks GT 🙂
You’re welcome! It also works for e-books, but for those, I download them to my laptop using Adobe Digital Editions, then side-load them onto my Nook (Barnes & Noble’s e-reader, probably eventually destined to become the Betamax of e-readers, but I cling to hope.)
Charge? on the headphones?
Does not compute.
Good morning!
25 and clear here.
Prepper forums, eh? Collecting Simpsons memes isn’t going to save you in the end times, you need more white rice and bullets.
Good morning, Sean, Lack, hayek (if you’re still awake,) NA, and Stinky!
Morning.
Good morning, U! How are you today?
*grumble*
Decaffinated.
Hook up the IV! STAT!!! 😱
Mornin’
Good morning. Coffee makes us go.
Time to revert to my original form.
Good morning, Greb! Coffee has that effect on me, too.
Oh. You meant….. Never mind.
Well, like so many things it just happens to work both ways. There’s a certain beauty in that.
Mornin’, reprobates. Another lovely spring day here in paradise, 30 degrees now, 65 by the afternoon. Intraday climate change FTW.
Good morning, ‘patzie! It’s a balmy 40 degrees (“feels like 35”) here in SW OH, with a forecast high of 68, but some rain (more thunderstorms, maybe?)
29 here, perfectly fine to walk out in a thin shirt to add trash to the bin and take it to the curb. I might not be happy lounging for a while in that air though.
37 -> 73 here
58 here this morning with a “fire watch” until tomorrow.
41 here, heading to 60. Rain from late this afternoon through the night and all day tomorrow.
Of course, that’s the current forecast, subject to change as the weather spirits move them. ;-\ I swear there are days a Ouija board would give both more consistent and more accurate results.
66, going to 75 here. Tropical rains and heavy winds last night.
So, who wrote the tag line for this?
Some twerp.
Because of how it was published, I didn’t know if was you or the editor.
I can see that, It was all me but I wouldn’t have blamed Mojo for taking a shot either.