It does appear to be self-published, by a local author. He should have known of and approved what boilerplate he was attaching to his text.

According to their online catalog, there in fact is a copy in my local public library. According to the statewide database, there's another library copy next county over (in the author's hometown).

From a little free library, just finished Burn by Nevada Barr, part of her Anna Pigeon series. Normally these are all set in a national park, where the natural geology plays a major role in the mystery. This one happens near the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park, but doesn't have anything to do with the park, or jazz, or even New Orleans and could have taken place anywhere there's a black market for certain illicit services. I liked some of the more outdoorsy ones a bit better, but this was worth the read. I have to think about whether Anna Pigeon qualifies as an E5-caliber grump for bingo card.

The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer. This is a new author to me. It's about a group of left-wing activists who suddenly disappear and go off-grid. A lady FBI agent has been monitoring them for a while, even though there's no evidence they intend violence. Well, things happen, people die, and the surviving members are officially labeled terrorists. Anyway, I have about 100 pages left and some very suspicious characters haven't yet had their involvement adequately explained. If it finishes strong, I'll add Mr. Steinhauer to my list of authors I would read another book by.

Finished Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. Supposedly ranked the best crime novel of all time. I'm not sure I agree with the ranking, but can understand how it made the list. Detective Alan Grant, hospitalized from his previous case, investigates the historical murder of the Princes in the Tower, allegedly committed by Richard III. Grant's research brings this into dispute and he labels this narrative Tonypandy, after the Tonypandy Massacre where Winston Churchill ordered the British Calvary to violently put down a Welsh miners' strike. Which isn't at all what happened, but is repeated anyway because it's more politically expedient than the truth.

Moving on to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I intend to claim this one for the Late to the Party square as it's a classic that people who know my literary tastes would have expected me to have read at least twice by now. I have the 60th anniversary edition with a preface by Neil Gaiman, 100 pages of supplementary end commentaries, and extensive margin notes contributed by an anonymous previous owner.

It's Banned Books Week, so I downloaded a pdf of The Turner Diaries. I'm told this book is considered inspirational by those who think having a race war would be fun and glorious. It might also be of interest to non-racists with morbid curiosity about White Nationalist ideology. Otherwise, I do not recommend it for its literary value. I read this so you don't have to.

I have two in progress.

• Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. Some of it more dated than I expected (The opening page mentions a sign in Yugoslavia.) Some of it I already knew (or at least had already been told, even if I'd forgotten the details). But linguistical trivia can be interesting and informative, so it's worth the read.

• Louis Sachar's The Cardturner. This is a blatant propaganda novel. The author is a bridge player and hopes to popularize the game among younger audiences (perhaps inspired by the million weaboos who took up Go inspired by Hikaru no Go.) At least it's a nobler cause than some of the propaganda I've been exposed to. The old, rich, blind bridge expert hires a kid to escort him to tournaments, look at his cards, tell him his hand and play it as he directs. The previous kid fucked up and got fired for learning enough bridge to question his decisions, but this new cardturner knows nothing. The book is intended for YA audiences and has the usual scenes of teenagers acting like teenagers, often while their parents act like toddlers, neither of which appeal to me, but they can be skimmed to get back to bridge scenes more comprehensive than I'd expected.

The Cardturner would be a great fit for the 4E (Game, Gamble, Contest) bingo square. This would also break a beautiful symmetry on my card. Not counting the central square, all 12 of my my scoring lines have an odd number of books completed. (2 lines are 1/5 completed, 8 are 3/5, and 2 are 5/5.) I don't think that specifies a unique arrangement (even up to rotational and reflectional symmetry), but it was surprising.

See if your local library occasionally runs a booksale. I get most of my books that way. Their prices are competitive with thrift stores, usually about $1 paperback and $2 hardcover. But because it's run by friends of the library, tends to be higher quality and better organized. At those prices, I can afford to be disappointed, and sometimes get pleasantly surprised.

This week I'll mention John Grisham's The Brethren.

The Brethren are three ex-judges in a low security federal prison who should have been in a harsher one because they're using their time catfishing (though the book predates that term) and extorting closeted gay men who answer pen pal ads. In another thread, I think it was @[email protected] who conjectured that the LGBTQ hard mode was easier than the easy mode. I'm therefore pleased to report that The Brethren contains mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, tax evasion, embezzlement, legal malpractice, and even some light treason, but very little romance of any sort. Having seen the result of Grisham trying to write romantic scenes, this is probably for the best. He's much better at these sorts of characters.

Recently finished The Housemaid. It felt more like chick-lit than what I'd normally go for, but someone said I should read it and lent me a copy. The main plot premise was solid. The reveals were less surprising than perhaps the author intended, but well written regardless. I've scored it under film adaptation which is cheating, but I'm told Sydney Sweeny will make it valid before the bingo closes.

Up next I think is going to be Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. Not far enough into it to recommend yet, but looks as if it could be interesting, and set in a part of the world I'm underinformed about.

Started on Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. A lot of people say they like this one. Not far enough into it yet to say if I agree with them, but it looks like there's some detailed worldbuilding which is a good sign.

I'll claim 18 titles for 3 bingos: Row 1, Column B, and the main diagonal.

(This should duplicate what I submitted through the form and should be final. I cracked open a long one that I don't expect to finish this month.)

::: spoiler List

• 1A: The 47th Samauri by Steven Hunter
• 1B: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• 1C: Meg by Steve Alten
• 1D: Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
• 1E: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
• 2B: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
• 3A: Ireland by Frank Delaney
• 3B: The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb
• 3C: Burn by Nevada Barr
• 3D: The Brethren by John Grisham
• 4B: The Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston and Child
• 4C: Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
• 4D: Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews
• 4E: The Cardturner by Louis Sachar
• 5A: The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
• 5B: The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer
• 5C: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• 5E: (sub for it takes two): The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass :::

::: spoiler Favorites

• Saving fish from Drowning. Dead Bibi Chen's ghost was a charming tour guide through SE Asia, patiently and omnisciently watching unheard as her living charges do everything wrong. I thought it was beautifully written and culturally informative.

• Alice in Sunderland is a non-fiction comic book with a bibliography. My only complaint is that it should have had an index too. But mainly, I recommend it because it's clearly not the sort of thing you write just to fulfill a publisher's contract. Talbot must have strongly believed that such a book should exist, and that nobody else was going to make it. Moreover, it's a better fit for the category than I initially expected because in the middle of the book, he writes about the cover art, thus making it integral to the content.

Both of these have re-read potential. :::

::: spoiler Classics Three of these, I think are old enough to be considered classics. Steinbeck's wasn't nearly as funny as the cover blurbs said it was. Maybe political satire has a shorter half-life and it hit harder when it was fresh. While Bradbury uses some dated tropes typical of SF from that era, they don't detract from a central plot that is still disturbingly relevant today. Tey's was both old and British, and assumes the reader knows British history better than I do. It's still rather informative, but harder for me to properly appreciate. :::

::: spoiler Diversity Stats

• 5 from series I've enjoyed previously
• 2 standalone novels from authors I've read other works by
• 11 by authors I had no prior experience with. :::

There's probably a way to engineer a bingo here by reclassifying things that fit multiple boxes. I just put things in the better fitting or more interesting category.

• 1A: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- Agatha Christie. Missed Hard mode by 2 years. Old enough to read via wikisource. Everything else here was read in dead tree format.
• 1C: The Quantum Spy -- David Ignatius. Quantum computing, espionage thereof, and USA-China relations. Very Macguffin.
• 1D: Secrets to the Grave -- Tami Hoag. A single mother is brutally murdered. Her young daughter witnesses and survives the attack. Investigators wonder who the father is.
• 2C: Hannibal Fogg and The Supreme Secret of Man -- Tahir Shah. Hard Mode Published by and available free at http://secretum-mundi.com/
• 2D: The Cartographers -- Peng Shepherd. Hard Mode. About the 1930 General Drafting highway map of New York state, with the Agloe copyright trap. Additionally, includes a discreet, but significant shout-out to Ursula LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven.
• 2E: Boar Island -- Nevada Barr. A main character suffered a severe spinal injury (in a previous book, while mountain climbing with Anna Pigeon). She can walk with technological assistance. Boar Island was not designed for the mobility impaired; they move there for her teenage daughter's comfort, not her own.
• 3B: The Scent of Death -- Andrew Taylor. Hard Mode The narrator is a English clerk, assigned to New York City for the duration of the book, during the American Revolution. (I didn't look up the hard mode criteria, but assume it isn't this.)
• 3D: A Column of Fire -- Ken Follett. Follows Pillars of the Earth and World Without End in the Kingsbridge series.
• 4A: Gone Girl -- Gillian Flynn. I haven't seen the movie, but am told they made one.
• 5E: The Illustrated Man -- Ray Bradbury. Short stories, the majority of which involve extraplanetary travel, interstellar in some cases.
• AltA: Fatal Error -- F. Paul Wilson. I read Implant some years ago, but nothing of his recently or from this series. Order matters in this series; don't start here.
• AltB: Bones to Ashes -- Kathy Reichs. The author is a well-credentialed and academically respected forensic anthropologist who cares about getting the science right in her novels.
• AltC: Demon Crown -- James Rollins, ne James Czajkowski
• AltD: Inferno -- Dante Alighieri tr. Allen Mandelbaum. Hard Mode. I couldn't read it in the original Italian.

MEG by Steve Alten

The titular megalodon qualifies it for the 1C bingo square. Unfortunately, the human characters were all disappointing, and some of them survive long enough to appear in sequels which I won't bother with.

The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel, the first book of his Benny Cooperman series. It's almost a parody of the private detective genre which may or may not have been the author's intent. The cover art isn't much, but I've concluded it's an African tribal sculpture, normally posing as office artwork, but also sturdy enough to bash in the skull of a crooked psychiatrist on page 60, so I've scored it in the weapon on the cover category hard mode.

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. It's about a near-future maverick geo-engineering operation that hopes to protect Netherlands and other low countries from flooding and rising sea levels. It might also affect global weather systems. The organizers aren't very concerned about that, but India and China might get upset if it screws up their monsoon seasons.

It probably won't even get me a bingo square, but I'll read and recommend it anyway.

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates -- Sellar, Yeatman, and Reynolds.

Worth all of its 116 pages. (Also valid for 1A, but I have other plans for that square.)

The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharon McCrumb.

The sheriff of a fictional rural county in East Tennessee is invited to witness the execution of a local man he arrested 20 years ago for a double murder on the Appalachian Trail. He remembers what the then sheriff told him at the trial:

There's only two murder cases in these mountains I'm not happy with. One is the fellow you're about to put on death row, and the other is Frankie Silver.

So he ruminates over both of these cases, wondering if justice was served, or if something was missed. The Frankie Silver case is told through Burgess Gaither, clerk of the court that tried and executed her.

I think I'll count this for folklore (3A) bingo square. The author did significant historical research into Frankie's case which after 200 years is probably more legend than fact. Other of McCrumb's novels might also be good recommendations for this category, or just in general.

Recently finished Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan.

It starts off by confusingly introducing a large number of characters at the narrator's funeral, but gets good once 12 of them arrive in China for the Burma Road trip she organized for them. She joins them in spirit, but can only observe cultural misunderstandings she would have saved them from had she been alive, culminating in 11 of them going missing without explanation when their lake excursion never returned.

It's surprisingly funny given the subject matter involving oppressive regimes and human rights abuses. It's also entertaining and informative and gets a positive recommendation.

I scored it under Minority Author for bingo as she is Chinese-American. However, I think Amy Tan's more interesting affiliation is as vocalist with the Rock Bottom Remainders, who I learned about after reading a good book by their guitarist.

Asimov's Breeds There a Man ...?

A suicidal genius figures out the relationship between his brilliance and his mental health.