Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns - Howard of Warwick

   2016; 311 pages.  Book 6 (out of 26) in the “Chronicles of Brother Hermitage” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Satire; Murder Mystery; Humorous Crime; British Humor.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Gilder is dead, and the entire city of Shrewsbury is in an uproar.  Somebody bashed the back of his head in, and that’s usually a fatal thing,

 

    Every Shrewsburian knew Gilder.  He was their richest citizen, lived in a big house, and had a number of steady incomes.  He also had a knack for talking any bands of roving marauders who arrived at the city gates to take their marauding elsewhere.

 

     Therefore when Brother Hermitage, Wat, and Cwen stop by on their way home from an adventure in nearby Wales, it isn’t surprising that all of Shrewsbury is busy sharing their memories of Gilder.  What is surprising is that every man, woman, and child is celebrating his death.  The city is awash in drunken revelry and nobody sees any reason for anyone to try to find out who killed Gilder.

 

    Which puts Brother Hermitage, who is officially “The King’s Investigator”, in a rather ticklish spot.

 

What’s To Like...

    Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns is Book 6 of the 26-volume Chronicles of Brother Hermitage series, and my introduction to it.  Book 26 came out this past August, so I’m pretty sure this is not a completed series.  I’m obviously not reading the series in order, and I don’t think I’m missing much by not doing so.

 

    The story is set England in 1068 CE, or as the opening chapter indicates, 67 BC (“Before Cadfael”).  If you’re familiar with Ellis Peters’ fantastic Brother Cadfael series, but always wondered what it would be like if it were to stray into the Crime-Humor genre, you’re in for a treat.  One reviewer has described Brother Hermitage as a cross between Brother Cadfael and Inspector Clouseau, and I think that’s apt.

 

    His two traveling companions are also fun to meet and greet.  Wat is known throughout the land for his pornographic tapestries, and Cwen is called a “tapestrier”.  I gather Wat designs the dirty wall-hangings, and Cwen helps in the weaving of them.

 

    The book is written in English, not American, so the spelling of some words are weird to us Yanks, such as realise, demeanour, sombre, hiccoughed, and practise, but I like that.  The central plotline of course is to find out who bashed in Gilder’s head, which leads to lots of tangents that often send our trio of sleuths in different directions, but that's a clever way to do some character development.

 

    The crime-humor angle aside, I was impressed with how “real” the historical aspect of the tale felt.  Things like moots, weregilds, shire reeves, feme sole, the word ‘stuff’, and medieval privies really helped sell the 11^th-century England setting.  Edith Pargeter would be proud.

 

    The ending is good, with several nice twists that foul up Brother Hermitage’s best-laid plans.  All the plot threads get tied up.  I wouldn’t call Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns a whodunit in that, like in a Pink Panther movie, the reader won't solve the case until the sleuthing trio unearth some key clues.  OTOH, one crucial hint is given about halfway through the story which will point astute readers in the right direction and is withheld from Hermitage and company.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 193 ratings and 69 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.39/5 based on 198 ratings and 8 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Witter (v.) : to chatter or babble pointlessly or at unnecessary length.

Others: Femme sole (sic, n.); Weregild (n.).

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    Hermitage had to admit the sight of her head appearing through a privy seat was not one he was going to forget easily.  (loc. 4083)

 

Excerpts...

    “Nuns?” the boy asked.

    “Yes.”  Cwen tried her best not to sound impatient.  What little experience she’d had of children had not made their behaviour any more acceptable.

    They seemed charming at a distance, but when you got close they were revolting, especially the tiny ones.  When they were babies their bottoms didn’t work properly and when they grew up it was their noses.  It was like they were put on earth just to leak stuff.  “They’re like monks who are women,” she explained.  (loc. 2006)

 

    “If we could find the place it is hidden and see that some of it is gone, if not all of it, we can tell the moot that it was a robbery.  Wat didn’t do it because a robber did.”

    Cwen didn’t look convinced.  “We have to find a hiding place that doesn’t have anything (in) it.  That will prove that what isn’t there anymore was robbed?”

    “Erm.”  (loc. 3822)

 

Kindle Details…

    Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns presently sells for $0.99 at Amazon, but hurry, this deal will expire at the end of September.  Book 4, Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other, is also discounted for the nonce to $0.99.  The rest of the books in the series go for anywhere from $2.99, to $5.99.  Generally and logically, the more recent the books are, the higher their price.

 

He had been told once that he was a very agreeable fellow – and that if he didn’t sort that out he would get nowhere.  (loc. 3680)

    There’s not much to gripe about in Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns.  The language is impressively clean – just two “hells” in the first 50% of the book.  It validates my hypothesis that the quality of any given author’s writing is usually inversely proportional to the number of cusswords he employs.

 

    Some reviewers disliked the way Howard of Warwick uses footnotes to tout the earlier books in this series, but I thought it was quite clever.  By the second footnote, the pattern can be discerned, and if it bothers you, then just don’t open any further footnotes.  You’ll miss one or two witty remarks in later footnotes, but that’s NBD.

 

    The biggest problem with Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns is the frequency of typos, grammar errors, and poor punctuation.  Things like imaging/imagining, birth right/birthright, discrete/discreet, mean/means, store house/storehouse, and many more.  But that's nothing that another round of editing won't fix.

 

    But enough of the nitpicking.  It’s always a delight to stumble across a great series that you’ve been meaning to try for a long time, and that’s what Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns was for me.  Daring to blend Brother Cadfael historical fiction with Pink Panther mystery zaniness is an ambitious undertaking, and Howard of Warwick makes it work nicely.

 

    9 Stars.  "Howard of Warwick" is obviously a pen name, and if you stay awake at night, wondering what his real name is, I have some good news for you.  Mosey on over to the Copyright page and your query will be answered.  Nonetheless, we will continue to list the author as “Howard of Warwick”.  It’s. Just. That. Kewl.

The Deaths of Tao - Wesley Chu

   2013; 460 pages.  Book 2 (out of 3) in the “Lives of Tao” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Action-Intrigue; Sci-Fi Fantasy; Humorous.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Right now, there’s a global war going on, and not many people are aware of it.  That’s probably because it involves two factions of an alien race that was marooned on Earth a long time ago when their spaceship crashed here.  How long ago, you ask?  Well, the dinosaurs were walking around back then.

 

    Our planet’s atmosphere is toxic to them, but they’ve found an effective way to overcome that.  They simply “inhabit” the body of a living creature.  It could be a human being, it could be a shark, it could be a brontosaurus.  The earthly creature is referred to as its “host”.

 

    Nowadays, the two alien factions—the Prophus (the good guys) and the Genjix (the baddies)—both utilize humans almost exclusively as their hosts.  But the Prophus view the arrangement as sort of an equal partnership (kind of like roommates), while the Genjix consider it a master-slave relationship.  Guess which one’s the master.

 

    So the next time you hear voices in your head—well, just a single voice, actually,—choose your words back to it carefully.  You don’t whether it’s a Genjix or a Prophus.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Deaths of Tao is the second book in Wesley Chu’s (completed) trilogy called “Lives of Tao”.  The Prophus-Genjix conflict is heating up, and the Prophus continue to get the worse of it.  The protagonist from the first book, Roen Tan, is back again, along with his Quasing (that’s what you call an alien that’s inhabiting your body) Tao.  This time he shares the spotlight with his wife Jill (although they're separated now), who’s Quasing is named Baji, and an up-and-coming an bad guy named Enzo, who’s Quasing is named Zoras.

 

    There are 45 chapters covering the 460 pages of the story, and for the most part, they cycle among the three protagonists.  There are a bunch of plotlines, but the three main ones mostly take place in Taiwan (Roen’s), China/Tibet (Enzo’s), and the US (Jill’s).  The Taiwan setting became my favorite, because you very rarely find a novel set there and because it is where the author was born.

 

    If you’re a lover of Action-Intrigue stories, The Deaths of Tao is the book for you.  All three storylines have plenty of it.  The fight scenes are well-written and easy to follow: you can feel the punches, kicks, bullets, and deaths.  The intrigue is equally fascinating – why are the Genjix so concerned about US trade sanctions, why is a Quasing prison camp in Tibet so crucial to their long-term plans, and where in the world did Dylan disappear to?

 

    Each chapter opens with a short “intro” written by one of the Quasing.  It’s not crucial to the story, but it is a clever way to give the reader their version of “history” here on Earth.  I chuckled at the mention of durian; I once had an opportunity to partake of this fruit when I was traveling in Asia, but passed on it.  I think I would do the same with the “stinky tofu” mentioned here.

 

    The ending, or “endings” to be precise, are okay but incomplete.  Each of the three main storylines closes with an exciting battle, but none of the plot threads are resolved.  That’s “none" as in "zero”.  The Prophus are still in dire straits, only they’re more dire now.  Both sides have suffered some deaths, including both Quasing and humans, but the losses by the Prophus are far more grievous.  The human world has become more aware of aliens amongst us, but discover there’s not much they can do about it.

 

    Oh well, that’s why there’s a Book Three, The Rebirths of Tao.

Kewlest New Word ...

    Ghillie Suit (n.) : a type of camouflage clothing designed to resemble the background environment such as foliage, snow, or sand

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 216 ratings and 150 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.91/5 based on 3,580 ratings and 329 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Zoras watched with disdain as Enzo played the crowd like a politician walking the rope line.  Keeping his face stoic, he touched the outstretched hands and made eye contact with the worshipping masses.  It was a far cry from how Devin, who played the role of an isolated Egyptian Pharaoh, treated his people.

    You are a god.  Remember that.

    “A god who leads, Guardian.”

    To lead is a human trait.  A god demands obedience.  (pg. 79)

 

    Sixteen behind you.  Ten on both sides.  All armed and probably awful shots.  Four bosses in front.  Oh, and you have Hutch, the narcoleptic guard.  You got a plan to get out of this?

    (…) He shrugged.  “I got nothing.”

    I find it ironic that you had a plan to fight your way out of Prophus Command, but not out of a triad warehouse.  I am starting to doubt your loyalties.

    “Or intelligence.”

    Or will to live.

    “Or delusions of invincibility.”  (pg. 166)

 

“He should be alright when he wakes.” (…) “Ground hit him in the head when he jumped out of a second story window.”  (pg. 223)

    There are some nits to pick.

 

    There’s a moderate amount of cussing in The Deaths of Tao, 16 instances in the first 20% of the book.  That’s not excessive, but given that I didn’t note any adult situations or other R-rated stuff, it has to be asked whether the cusswords could've been omitted.

 

    More serious is the abundance of errata, something other reviewers also pointed out.  Spelling miscues such as eying/eyeing might be shrugged off as choices of British-vs-American English. But grammar boo-boos like “Sure buddy”/”Sure, buddy”, “several startled crewman”, and “could happened” are just sloppy proofreading.

 

    So are continuity issues such as a guy named Jim showing up (page 432), followed one paragraph later by Roen asking where Jim is, and being told one paragraph after that that Jim was blown out to sea by a grenade.

 

    The most egregious typo is the misspelling of “Genjix” on the back cover of the book, where it is rendered as “Gengix”.  Sheesh.  Angry Robot Publishing is already rivaling Tor Books as the publishing house with the worst set of copy editors.

 

    At the other end of the Picky-to-Egregious Scale was a chemical cited on page 315 as “Osmium Quintoxide”.  We’ll forgive the chemistry issue regarding Osmium’s possible/impossible valence states.  But calling those five Oxygens “quintoxide” instead of “pentoxide” is like fingernails-on-the-chalkboard to a chemist.

 

    Still, cusswords can be tolerated when they’re used in moderation, typos and grammar can be corrected by copy editors, and if you aren’t a chemist, you won’t care whether it’s quintoxide or pentoxide.  True, the ending doesn't tie up any plot threads, but the story has lots of action, significant character development of all three protagonists, and a rapidly deteriorating outcome for the Prophus that now seems inevitable.

 

    7½ Stars.  In summary, The Deaths of Tao didn’t captivate me the way Book 1, The Lives of Tao did (and reviewed here).  But that doesn’t merit the 1-star and 2-star ratings that some reviewers gave it.  Book 2 in any trilogy is mostly just tasked with linking the first and third books together in a coherent, if forgettable, manner, and The Deaths of Tao does that successfully here.

 

    For comparison, consider J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.  You probably remember the epic endings in both The Fellowship of the Ring (Book 1) and The Return of the King (Book 3).  But how much, if anything, do you recall about the ending of Book 2, The Two Towers?

The Adventure Tournament - Nicholas Andrews

   2013; 310 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in “The Adventurers” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Fantasy; YA.  Overall Rating: 7½*/10.

 

    It’s just been announced: the Kingdom of Bolognia will be holding an Adventure Tournament!  Everyone in the kingdom is so excited!  All the famous adventurers are sure to be there!

 

    Of course, no one’s exactly sure what the adventure, or adventures, will be, but that’s in the able hands of Lord Sophar, head of the EAS, which is short for Epical Adventuring Society.  No doubt, the assigned quests will be utterly exciting!

 

    The king himself, Calder VII, will be presiding over the opening ceremonies!  He has a vested interest in the making the tournament a smashing success, since all those entry fees are expected to build up an embarrassingly depleted Royal Treasury.

 

    I sure hope Sir Gorgomar is entering the contest.  He’s the foremost adventurer in the land and any team with him on it would be the heavy favorite to win it all.  But we need lots of students from Foeny University (if you don’t like FU, well, FU!) to enter as well.

 

    They don’t stand a chance of winning, but their amateur attempts to win will make the professional adventurers look real good.

 

What’s To Like...

    Entrants sign up for The Adventure Tournament individually and get placed on teams that are put together through the whims of the tournament officials.  We follow the efforts of Remilius “Remy” Fairwyn as he learns how to work with others and develop some adventuring qualities.  It is a slow process.

 

    Remy has the makings of a fine anti-hero.  He’s a 22-year-old university student with mediocre-to-poor grades, and not motivated at all to improve himself scholastically.  His father is a professor at Foeny U, and is against Remy’s entering the tournament since logically it will cut into his son's study time.  Remy enters anyway, partly because adventuring sounds better than studying, and partly just to spite his dad.

 

    I’d label this book a “Lighthearted Fantasy”.  There is a magic system in it, but it doesn’t overwhelm the adventure storyline.  Remy wisely buys himself a couple pieces of magical equipment, including a club, which he dubs “Smacker”, and some “Boots of Flight”.  In the early going. they turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help.  A wide variety of magical critters show up, including vampires, dwarves, elves, wyverns, giants, and my favorites, the dreadfully cute "kitty-lizards".

 

    There’s plenty of action, which is what you want from a book titled The Adventure Tournament, but Nicholas Andrews also weaves some humorous bits into the tale, such as the background to the team’s name, “The Bowels”, and the “Elvis Affairs”.  Subplots include a coming-of-age romance and Remy’s tense relationship with his father, but they mesh nicely with the main questing storyline.  I loved the nod to The Princess Bride enough to include it as an excerpt below.

 

    Things progress in an easily anticipated manner for a while.  You know Remy and his teammates are going to somehow beat the long odds in the preliminary rounds because, well, why else would we be following them?  But when the championship round approaches, Nicholas Andrews adds a number of clever plot twists that I wasn't expecting.  And in the end, the winner is…

 

    Well, we’ll let you read the book to find out.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Geas (n.): an obligation or prohibition imposed magically on someone. (an Irishism)

Others: Favrile glass (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 19 ratings and 19 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.45/5 based on 40 ratings and 8 reviews

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “Stop fingering your wax-hole and pay attention!”  (loc. 1172)

 

Excerpts...

    Edgen had always felt sort of sorry for King Calder.  He was the latest in a long line of great King Calders, each one having achieved a great deed during their reigns.  His Majesty’s father, Calder VI, had managed to cement the rights of dwarves within the kingdom.  No longer will dwarves be considered half-a-man, or men be considered too-much-a-dwarf, but all races shall share the bounties of this kingdom in equality, went his famous saying.  (loc. 53)

 

    Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure.  It had been so long since Remy kissed a girl, this one didn’t even come close.

    He released her and gave an apologetic grin.  Kyra looked behind Remy and saw the rest of Team Bowel coming over to them.  “We can work on it later,” she told him.  (loc. 3611)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Adventure Tournament presently costs $3.99 at Amazon.  The sequel, Babyface Fire, is the same price.  Nicholas Andrews has three other e-books to offer, they range in price from $0.99 to $4.99.

 

“Remy, duck!”  “Where?”  (loc. 3244)

    There are a couple quibbles, but nothing major.

 

    There was some cussing – I counted 12 instances in the first 25% of the book – but I wouldn’t call it excessive.  There was also one “adult situation”, of the hormonal ilk, but it was tastefully and humorously done.

    These things might cause an eight-year-old to ask embarrassing questions, but Amazon lists the target audience as 13-18 years, meaning junior and senior high schoolers, and they’ll be amused, not confused, about them.

 

    Similarly, the writing style felt a bit simplistic to me, but I’m not the target audience and YA readers won’t care because the pacing is brisk, the action is non-stop, and the storyline is engaging.

 

    The biggest issue is the editing.  There are lots of punctuation errors, especially ones involving commas in direct dialogue (or lack thereof) and hyphens in compound words (or lack thereof).  There were also a fair amount of “spellchecker errors”, such as discretely/discreetly, towed/toed, reign/rein, lead/led, and chain mail/chainmail.

 

    But I quibble.  My expectations from The Adventure Tournament were modest since it is written for a YA readership, and it held my interest much better than I thought it would, particularly in the second half when those plot twists started popping up.

 

    7½ Stars.  Judging from his offerings at Amazon, it looks like Nicholas Andrews has retired from writing.  The last two of his books there were published in June, 2017.  Here’s hoping he unretires at some point in the future.  We need more lighthearted fantasy novels.

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

   1951; 255 pages.  Book 1 (out of 7) in the “Foundation” series.  New Author? : Yes, surprisingly.  Genres: Classic Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    All hail the Galactic Empire!  It’s the dominant power in the Milky Way, and it’s been around for 12,000 years.  Yeah, it may be a bit past its prime, but who’s big enough to try to knock them off?

 

    Enter Hari Seldon.  He’s a Psychohistorian (a what?!) and he’s been doing some calculating, and has come to a startling conclusion: the Galactic Empire will collapse within 300 years.  And that will lead to a “Dark Ages” period on a galactic scale, which will last for 30,000 years.  Ain’t mathematics amazing!?

 

    Needless to say, the present rulers of the Galactic Empire are not amused, but Hari’s calculations also show a way out of the disaster.  Sorta.  The Empire needs to commit to writing the sum total of all the knowledge in the galaxy.  Hari says it won’t prevent the collapse of the Galactic Empire, but it will shorten the duration of the Dark Ages to maybe as little as 1,000 years.

 

    The path forward is clear.  The Empire will exile Hari Seldon to the far-flung fringes of the galaxy and tell him to get busy writing down all that knowledge.  It’s not that they believe his predictions.  But it’s imperative that this rabble-rouser gets put somewhere so out-of-the-way that his message never gets heard by the rabble.

 

What’s To Like...

    Foundation is composed of five novelettes, four of which had been published previously in a sci-fi magazine called Astounding Stories in the 1940s.  A fifth novelette was written and the combined result was published as a full-sized novel in 1951.  Its five sections are:

    Part 1. The Psychohistorians  (3% Kindle)

    Part 2. The Encyclopedists  (17% Kindle)

    Part 3. The Mayors  (34% Kindle)

    Part 4. The Traders  (59% Kindle)

    Part 5. The Merchant Princes (68% Kindle)

 

    Foundation is the first book in what would eventually be a 7-book series by Isaac Asimov.  This tale focuses on the onset of the disintegration of the Galactic Empire, which I’m assuming will be the main storyline throughout the series.  It covers a time-span of about 155 years and, for now, has only human characters, which means that those alive in Part 1 will not still be alive by the end of the book, although the aforementioned Hari Seldon still occasionally pops up as a hologram.

 

    The title refers to the group of psychohistorians who have traveled with Hari to the aptly-named planet Terminus, located on the edge of the galaxy.  They are officially known as “The Encyclopedia Foundation”, and ostensibly tasked with chronicling the sum total of human knowledge.  But they have a hidden agenda as well.

 

    The first territorial losses suffered by the Galactic Empire will occur out here.  Five rebellious planets, including Terminus, break away, and frankly they're just too far out in the galactic sticks to be worth the expense and trouble of the Empire sending a force out to quash the uprising.  Besides, the inhabitants of these planets spend much of their time squabbling among themselves, so maybe they'll do each other in.  It is more of an economic style of warfare anyway, and the titles of the five sections give the reader a hint as to what faction in society is top dog at any given time. 

 

    Asimov gives the development of nuclear power as an energy source a lot of ink, which impressed me, given that Foundation was published in 1951.  I chuckled at the choicest smoking material being called “Vegan Tobacco” until I realized it referred to the star named Vega, and not a meatless designation.

 

    Each chapter starts off with an excerpt from the “Encyclopedia Galactica”, which is the massive tome the Foundation is busy writing.  They give some background to the world-building, but aren’t crucial to the understanding the storyline.  There are 48 chapters in all, which averages out to about 5 pages/chapter, so you’ll always have a convenient place to stop reading for the night.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 16,346 ratings and 1,893 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 486,117 ratings and 13,717 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “I’ve been sent here for no other purpose than to assure you that you need not fear.  It will end well; almost certainly so for the project and with reasonable probability for you.

    “What are the figures?” demanded Gaal.

    “For the project, 99.9%.”

    “And for myself?”

    “I am instructed that this probability is 77.2%”

    “Then I’ve got a better than one chance in five of being sentenced to prison or to death.”

    “The last is under one percent.”  (loc. 368)

 

    “I’m here in the capacity of your spiritual advisor.  There’s something about a pious man such as he.  He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.  It’s just a piece of empirical psychology.”  (loc. 2070)

 

Kindle Details…

    Foundation presently costs $7.99 at Amazon.  The other six books in the series are all priced either $7.99 or $8.99.  There are dozens more Isaac Asimov e-books available, most of them in the $6.99-$12.99 range.  Asimov's books are occasionally discounted, but not very often, and I've never seen Books 2-7 in this series in those discounts.

 

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!”  (loc. 1974)

    The thing to keep in mind when reading Foundation is that it is science fiction written in the 1940s and 50s.  The genre was in its infancy back then, the stories were usually short so that they could be submitted to monthly magazines.  Epic Star Wars-type battles were rare, and character development was a low priority.

 

    All of that is true here, at least in this first book in the series.  Asimov wrote the first three Foundation books in the 50’s, so I expect this will hold true of Books 2 and 3 as well.  The last four books were published in the years 1982-1993, so they may have a more “modern” style.

 

    It should also be noted that 1950s sci-fi had very little cussing and adult situations, and that also holds true here.  I counted only four cusswords in the first 50% of the book, and no R-rated situations.  When the plotline called for swearing, Asimov usually opted for “made-up” phrases, including “Space knows”, “by the Galaxy”, “I don’t care an electron”, “by Seldon”, and my favorite: “Son-of-a-Spacer”.

 

    Last of all, keep in mind this was intended to be a series from the very start.  The ending is thankfully not a cliffhanger, but certainly a “to be continued” sort of thing, and just about all of the plot threads remain unresolved.

 

    7 Stars.  Science-fiction writing has come a long way in the last 70 years.  I wasn’t expecting Ewoks, phasers, or blue-skinned aliens, so wasn’t disappointed when none of those showed up.  This book was groundbreaking in its time – a doomsday scenario for mankind, and a target audience of both adults and YA readers, instead of just the latter.  Unfortunately, since Asimov’s Foundation books are rarely discounted in e-book format, I'll need to hit the used-book stores if I want to delve deeper into this series.

The Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson

   1990; 245 pages.  Full Title: The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Linguistics; Reference; English Language - History; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 10*/10.

 

   When you get right down to it, English is a poor choice for a global language.  Oh, there are worse ones, such as Mandarin Chinese which has thousands upon thousands of ideographs that you pretty much have to just memorize.  Or Basque, which has almost no words in common with any other tongue.

 

    There’s also well-intended things like Esperanto, foremost amongst about a half dozen artificial languages that were created with the intent of convincing the whole world (literally) to use them as a global tongue.  The problem is that they have zero native speakers, so you’re basically asking every person on Earth to learn a second language.

 

    So maybe English is not such a bad choice, despite the British and the Americans having different words for the same thing, different ways to spell words we have in common, different accents, and a different set of idioms to contend with, including the unfathomable Cockney rhyming.

 

    Perhaps it would behoove us to study up on the English language: learn its history, its subtleties, its variances, and its abundant inconsistencies.

 

    In other words, let’s read Bill Bryson’s fantastic book, The Mother Tongue.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Mother Tongue is divided into 16 chapters, namely:

01. The World’s Language

    An overview.  English’s strengths and weaknesses.

02. The Dawn of Language

    Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.  Pidgins and Creoles.

03. Global Language

    Various “Endangered” Languages.

04. The First Thousand Years

    From 450 AD to Shakespeare.

05. Where Words Come From

    Five different ways that words come into being.

06. Pronunciation

    It changes over time.

07. Varieties of English

    Dialects.

08. Spelling

    Weird spellings in English.  Spelling reform movements.

09. Good English and Bad

    How “proper” grammar is constantly changing.

10. Order Out of Chaos

    The history of dictionaries.

11. Old World, New World

    American vs. British English.  Cross-pollination.

12. English as a World Language

    Global mangling of English.  Esperanto.

13. Names

    Nobles, Streets, Pubs, Surnames, and Places.

14. Swearing

    Including euphemisms and etymology.

15. Wordplay

    Crossword puzzles, and other linguistic pastimes.

16. The Future of English

    Featuring the “English only” movement.

 

    I usually mark my favorite chapters in pink, but here, I loved them all.  Chapters 1-7 are the history of the English language, Chapters 8-10 focus on how grammar evolved, and Chapters 11-16 are an assortment of “fun” linguistic aspects of English.

 

    I was raised in Pennsylvania Dutch country, so I loved seeing that dialect getting some ink, ditto for the nearby town named “Intercourse”.  The section on the Basque language also resonated with me, since I read a Mark Kurlansky book about them earlier this year.  The review is here.

 

    The book is chock full of trivia and obscure facts.  The oldest sentence we have that was written in (early) English is “This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman” and it's anatomically accurate to say you are capable of speaking because you can choke on food.  Interestingly, the traffic term “roundabout” was coined by an American living in Britain and replaced the clunkier phrase “gyratory circus.”

 

    The grammar sections were fascinating.  The esoteric and unintended word “Dord” was mentioned, and it was fun to see verb options such as dived/dove, sneaked/snuck, strived/strove, and wove/weaved are still a “whichever you want to use” sort of thing.

 

    The “fun” chapters were . . . well . . . lots of fun!  The full gamut of topics there is: crossword puzzles, Scrabble, palindromes, anagrams, lipograms (huh?), acrostics, rebuses, holorimes (what?), clerihews (say again?), spoonerisms, amphibology (oh, come on, now), and Cockney rhyming.

 

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 3,299 ratings and 1,372 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.91/5 based on 39,484 ratings and 3,026 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    There is an occasional tendency in English, particularly in academic and political circles, to resort to waffle and jargon.  At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as “the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance.”  That is jargon—the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement—and it is one of the great curses of modern English.  (pg. 19)

 

    The combination “ng,” for example, is usually treated as one discrete sound, as in bring and sing.  But in fact we make two sounds with it—employing a soft “g” with singer and a hard “g” with finger.  We also tend to vary its duration, giving it fractionally more resonance in descriptive and onomatopoeic words like zing and bong and rather less in mundane words like something and rang.  We make another unconscious distinction between the hard “th” of those and the soft one of thought.  (pg. 87)

 

Imposing Latin rules on English structure is a little like trying to play baseball on ice skates.  (pg. 16)

    Frankly, I can’t find anything to grouse about in The Mother Tongue.  There are some cusswords, but that’s a given since there’s a whole chapter devoted to swearing, and it was enlightening to learn that the F-bomb is not an acronym of “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”.

 

    It was therefore somewhat surprising to see its relatively low rating at Goodreads (3.91/5).  Most of the criticism there was about perceived inaccuracies detected about some of the non-English languages Bryson mentions.

 

    For instance, one reviewer was upset by Bryson’s assertion that the Finnish language contains no swear words, and gave several examples to disprove this.  Admittedly, my knowledge of Finnish is zilch, I suspect Bryson’s is close to that level also, so he was most likely relying on some Finnish-speaking expert's “facts”.  But let's get real now; this book isn’t about the Finnish tongue.  The low rating given by this reviewer is unmerited, and, to misquote Hamlet, “methinks he doth protest too much”.

 

    For me, The Mother Tongue was a thoroughly enlightening and educational read.  This was my eighth Bill Bryson book, but others were all either in the Historical or Travel genres.  It’s great to discover he’s just as skilled when it comes to writing a book about Linguistics.

 

    10 Stars.  We’ll close with an old children’s riddle which Bill Bryson says comes close to being an example of a holorime: “How do you prove in three steps that a sheet of paper is a lazy dog?”

      The answer is posted in the comments.

Ting-A-Ling - Mike Faricy

   2013; 307 pages.  Book 7 (out of 32) in the “Dev Haskell – Private Investigator” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Airport/Beach Read; Hard-Boiled Mystery; Private Investigator Mystery.  Overall Rating: 6½*/10.

 

    Danielle Roxbury is interested in hiring Private Investigator Dev Haskell, whose cash flow is looking rather anemic lately.  True, the job she wants him to do doesn’t involve much actual investigating.  It seems she loaned fifty thousand dollars to some sleazeball named Renee Paris, and she’s having trouble getting him to pay her back.

 

    To his credit, Dev has told her she’d be better off hiring some junkyard dog attorney who could haul Paris’s butt into court.  But her case is woefully weak – she’s got nothing in writing to prove that she ever gave Paris a penny, let alone fifty grand.

 

    Nonetheless, she’d still like Dev to nose around a bit and see what he can find and/or do, to help “persuade” Paris to pay up.  And despite the dismal prospects, Dev is considering taking the job.

 

    Partly it’s because Danielle Roxbury is one sexy-looking lady.  But more importantly, she’s just peeled off ten one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them over to Dev as a retainer fee, and acts like it's pocket change for her.

 

What’s To Like...

    Ting-A-Ling is the seventh book in Mike Faricy’s Dev Haskell – Private Investigator series, which is up to 32 books now, the latest being Hit & Run, and which came out just a couple weeks ago.  It’s also the final installment in a 7-book bundle which I've used to read most of these books so far, and which seemingly isn’t available anymore at Amazon.

 

    There’s really only one plotline to follow: Dev’s efforts to get Renee Paris to pay back the money he owes Danielle.  But things get complicated by several key characters suddenly disappearing, as well as a case of vandalism-&-arson that the police are working on, and some embarrassing actions by Dev that were caught on a surveillance camera, much to his dismay.

 

    The books in this series are formulaic, and that’s not a criticism.  It means you’ll find the storytelling moves at a fast pace, there’s plenty of wit, sarcasm, and action, plus Dev spends a lot of time girl-watching, girl-wooing, and alcohol-consuming.  In short, this is an ideal beach read.

 

    I liked the character development in Ting-A-Ling.  Louie Laufen, who’s Dev’s attorney, pal, and office-mate, is becoming a more valuable asset with each book.  So is Heidi Bauer, one of Dev’s “friends with benefits”.  Even Dev’s strained relationship with Detective Norris Manning is beginning to thaw a bit; I think this is the first book in which Manning doesn’t try to arrest Dev for a crime.

 

    There are some great music references in the book, including nods to Bob Seger, Lady Gaga, Leonard Cohen, and Blondie.  Mike Faricy obviously has some good tastes in that regard.  The title is referenced several times, it’s just the sound of Dev’s phone ringing and it doesn’t play any major part of the story.  And for those keeping track, Dev wrecks one car (but it wasn’t his fault), has two rolls-in-the-hay, and frequents three places that serve booze, with “The Spot” being by far his favorite watering hole.

 

    The story is set in St. Paul, Minnesota in the dead of winter, and is told from the first-person point-of-view (Dev’s).  The chapters are short, with 57 of them covering just 285 pages.  Ting-A-Ling is both a standalone story and part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.9/5 based on 279 ratings and 224 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.71/5 based on 552 ratings and 35 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Look, I gotta run.  I’ve got a luncheon meeting.  Hey, if you find my thong, it’s red, hang onto it for me.  I couldn’t find it, unless you did something typically stupid and crude, you perv.”

    “Actually, I think it’s down on West Seventh, right near to the stoplight at Grand Ave.”

    “What?”

    “Yeah, you said you felt imprisoned or something along those lines and you threw it out the window.  I can’t remember exactly.  It was just before your ‘impetuous love’ suggestion.”  (loc. 21513)

 

    “Didn’t they see you?”

    “That’s what I’m saying, they did see me.  They tried to run me down.  Tried to kill me.”

    “Kill you?  God, then you’re awfully damn lucky, Dev.”

    “Maybe.”

    “Any idea who?  Or why?  Was it someone’s husband?”

    “No to your first two questions, and I don’t think so to your third,” I said.  (loc. 23682)

 

Kindle Details…

    Ting-A-Ling is presently priced at $3.99 at Amazon, as are most of the other books in this series.  A couple of them are discounted to $0.99 for now, and you can get various subsets of these in 3-book bundles.  Mike Faricy has several other series (Hotshot, Corridor Man, and Jack Dillon Dublin Tales) in addition to the Dev Haskell misadventures.

 

“You’re sort of sweet, in your own warped little way.”  (loc. 22732)

    There are the usual nits to pick.  Ting-A-Ling has a moderate amount a cussing in the text, 16 instances in the first 20% of the story, which is one short of what the previous book had.

 

    And as always, typos abound, especially (but not limited to) abusing compound words such as newscast (“news cast”), hitman (“hit man”), footprints (“foot prints”), and even a childhood favorite of mine, Play-Doh (“Play Dough”).

 

    The most serious quibble, as pointed out by several Goodreads reviewers, is with the ending.  It includes an unbelievable escape from certain death by Dev, has some bad guys and good guys getting away, and the climactic confrontation leaves the reader the job of inferring what was going on in the whole debt-repayment plot thread.  After that, the book shuffles along for several more informational chapters tying up loose ends.

 

    6½ Stars.  The problematic ending notwithstanding, Ting-A-Ling is still a decent read if you’re looking for something witty, entertaining, and not very deep.  Just don’t make it your first Dev Haskell book.