Pun Salad

[Pictured book here is pretty close to my hardcover copy, obtained from the Science Fiction Book Club back in 1981 or so, unread until now, about 45 years later!]

I was encouraged at the beginning of this book; it threatened to have interesting characters, a unique setting, some intriguing ideas, some sly humor, … but it just went on too long, and got silly and incoherent, and I forgot what all the fuss was about.

It's set mostly on the planet End of Nothing, where a group of robots have established the "Vatican-17", a thousand-year-old project to create an ultimate true religion. In support of this effort, they have enlisted human "Listeners", and developed technology to send Listeners throughout space and time, so they may experience the variety of life's instances. For example, what it's like to have been a trilobite, back on early Earth, burrowing in the warm ocean mud.

Into this stable setup comes Tennyson, a doctor on the lam from planet Gutshot; he essentially stows away on the starship Wayfarer, helmed by a cynical captain, whose only purpose is to ferry passengers and supplies to End of Nothing. Also on the ship is Jill Roberts, a journalist who's been hired to write a history of Project Pope, describing its major findings. Once on the planet, they encounter Decker, who got stranded on End of Nothing after a long-ago starship disaster, and now leads a hermit-like existence with "Whisperer", who appears to him as a sentient cloud of sparkly dust.

Complications arise when one of the Listeners, "Mary", an older lady, claims to have encountered Heaven on her journey. Can that possibly be true?

So, not bad, but after a few hundred pages…

Plop, plop, plop went Poppler.

I've been a Richard Feynman fan (Feynmaniac?) since running across his three-volume, big red, Lectures on Physics long ago in my high school library. One of the many posthumous books by/about him was perfectly titled The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

That would also have been a very good title for this 2014 book by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon, It details how, in just a few decades, the mysteries of electromagnetism were solved, mostly due to the efforts of the two remarkable men in the title: Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. It is an underappreciated story, and it's told in tandem with a lot of colorful biographical details about them, and many of their contemporaries. It's layperson-accessible, with only a few handwaves at the mathematics behind it all.

Faraday was a brilliant experimentalist, and his lifetime of lab-tinkering produced the foundations for understanding what was "really going on" with many disparate phenomena. (Coincidentally, I was reading Michael Connelly's latest "Lincoln Lawyer" book concurrently with this one. In which it was revealed the Lincoln Lawyer had a special place in his offices that was guaranteed to be immune from electronic surveillance: yes, a Faraday Cage, which Faraday developed in 1836.

Faraday was also a great visualizer, with an instinctive notion running counter to most of the other scientists of his time: that electricity and magnetism operated via "lines of force", and not "action at a distance". He was relatively weak on the necessary math, though.

So along came Maxwell, his career briefly overlapping Faraday's. In addition to being a pretty good guy in the lab, Maxwell was an absolutely brilliant theoretical prodigy, not just about the electromagnetic field. A quote is provided from our guy, Feynman, leading off a late chapter:

From a long view of the history of mankind—seen from, say, ten thousand years from now—there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.

High praise! (Feynman was no slouch either.)

By the way: I was encouraged to get this book off the shelves of the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library by Greg Lukianoff's recent recommendation. (His monthly "Prestigious Ashurbanipal Award", which is a reliable guide to interesting and thoughtful non-fiction.)

Spoiler: the "greatest sentence ever written" is the second one in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

But you may have figured that out already.

The author, famed biographer Walter Isaacson, takes a scalpel and a microscope to the GSEW, looking at its most important bits, devoting a (short) sub-essay to each: "We"; "self-evident" truths; "all men"; "created equal"; "endowed by their Creator"; "certain unalienable rights"; and "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." His analyses are brief and mostly on-target. He's pretty rough on the sexism inherent in the "all men" phraseology: yeah, they probably did mean just the guys; sorry, ladies. And he spends some time looking at how Thomas Jefferson's first draft contained plenty of anti-slavery rhetoric, stripped out at the insistence of the delegates from southern colonies. This, despite TJ's own sordid history as an enslaver himself. This inherent contradiction would take a lot of bloodshed to remedy. And, of course, many would argue that it's still a work in progress.

Isaacson gets into iffier territory once he's done looking at the GSEW, veering into the notions of "common ground" and the "American Dream". He considers them to be "at the heart" of the Declaration's declarations. That is, at best, debatable. His prose is earnest, but kind of hand-waving. I'd like to know what Bernard Bailyn had to say about this. (That book's on my to-be-read list, I swear I'm gonna get to it some day.)

Finally, there are appendices: his description of the Declaration's drafting process; excerpts of Locke's Second Treatise, Rousseau's Social Contract, Jefferson's original first draft, and the finished Declaration, as declared. (I'd say that Rousseau's inclusion is kind of a mistake here, but…)

It's very short, Amazon counts 80 pages total, and they are small pages. Might be a good graduation gift for your thoughtful high-schooler!

I put this on my get-at-library list thanks to the WSJ's Tom Nolan putting it on his list of 2025's best mysteries (WSJ gifted link). In addition, the book's Amazon page reveals more praise: "The Economist 40 Best Books of 2025 * Apple’s Best Books of the Year * Hudson Best of the Year * Kirkus Best Books of 2025".

I liked it anyway.

It is the story of two brothers, Thad and Hazen, living their economically-perilous existence down in the southwest corner of Montana, near Yellowstone. Their primary means of survival is the backbreaking, sometimes heartbreaking, work of harvesting, chopping, and delivering firewood to their neighbors. They supplement their income with some illegality: trapping bears and selling their pelts, claws, and gall bladders (!) to a local fence, the "Scot".

The Scot tempts them with an even-more-illegal proposition: an early-spring incursion into Yellowstone to harvest "sheds", elk antlers dropped on the park's scenic meadows. Yes, that's a no-no. Thad and Hazen hatch a convoluted scheme involving inflatable rafts to bring around a hundred sheds out of the park down a twisty and treacherous river, under the noses of park rangers. (I'm old, so Boo-Boo Bear saying "the Ranger isn't gonna like this, Yogi" kept popping into my head.)

Minor spoiler: it all goes horribly wrong.

It's set close to C.J. Box territory, both in physical location and sheer outdoorsiness, well-described. The author, Callan Wink, tends to emphasize the grittier aspects, though. And even though Joe Pickett would consider the brothers' activities beyond the pale, Nate Romanowski would probably sympathize.

Amazon counts this as book #53 in the Spenser series. It is Mike Lupica's third try at Spenser novelizing, and it's not bad.

After some ruminations between Hawk and Spenser about how old they're getting, libidinous lawyer Rita Fiore ropes the detective into investigating the paternity of Daniel Lopez, a young law student (and a "bit of an activist for immigration reform"). His mother was an illegal migrant from Guatemala, and also a murder victim down in Miami. After her death, Daniel discovered indications (but not proof) that bio-dad was Vic Hale, a loudmouth Boston podcaster who's very much anti-immigration.

Also showing up is Ricardo Baez, a crusading reporter from Florida who starts asking questions about the case; he pretty quickly (page 89) turns up dead from two bullets in the chest.

A bunch of people are introduced, all with "Possible Suspect" stamped on their foreheads. Spenser antagonizes them with questions, which (in turn) leads to threats and some violence. Cameos from the Parker stable in addition to Rita and Hawk: Belson, Quirk, Jesse Stone, Tony Marcus, and more.

Random observations/gripes:

The "official" title on this book at Amazon is Robert B. Parker's Showdown. I guess this is the Way Things Are Done with the Parker estate now, no matter how dumb it is.

Most of Spenser's wisecracks are clever, and his repartee with friends and antagonists seems slightly less forced this time around.

Boston's major paper is still typeset "The Globe" in italics here, which is irritating. It should be "the Boston Globe". (Amusingly they get it right with Boston's other paper, on page 37: "the Boston Herald". And also "the Miami Herald" on page 42. Come on, G.P. Putnams Sons' editors!

Kindle search finds 72 instances of the F-word, or variations thereof in the book. Even Susan Silverman drops one! I'm not a prude, but that seemed gratuitous.

Spenser goes out to eat a lot, identifying a bunch of actual area restaurants by name. I remember the good old days when he got excited by going to (now defunct) Hamburger Hamlet. Here, the closest he gets to that is the Boston Burger Company (page 150), where he has a Big Papi Burger ("Smoked bacon, griddled hot dog, fried egg, guacamole, pickled red onions, lettuce, tomato, Papi sauce", at $19.50), washed down with a Green Head IPA from Newburyport Brewing. Most of the time, he hits places like Pammy's, where he and Susan ordered off the $88/person prix-fixe menu: gnocchi with lobster in a San Marzano sauce for him, wild mushroom lasagna for her. (Does Lupica write deduct meal costs as "research", or does he just check out website menus like I did?)

This is a short novella, slightly over 100 pages, first-person narrated by Molly Gray, the neurodivergent maid at a posh Manhattan hotel. She is happily cohabiting with Juan, the hotel's pastry chef. As you might surmise from the title, the book is Christmas-themed. Molly is enraptured by the hotel's decorations, and looking forward to the hotel's celebration, to be capped off with a Secret Santa game for the staff. But she's increasingly concerned with Juan's secretive behavior. He's hiding something, but what?

Not only did I read this book out-of-season, I also read it out of order. This is the third book in Nita Prose's "Maid" series, and (oops) I already read book number four last year.

Reader, the book's entire plot involves Molly's growing insecurity about Juan's possible infidelity. But I was already perfectly aware of what was going on there; not much mystery involved. And, frankly, these books aren't that interesting without an actual crime for Molly to solve. I didn't hate the book, exactly, but it wasn't as much fun as the others.

The back cover of my edition promises: "A thrilling collection of stories that pushes Bond to his limits."

This is an unforgivable lie.

It is a 114-page collection of four short stories, Bond appears in all of them, but he is rarely pushed to his limits, and the thrills therein are (to be generous) low-key, nearly entirely absent.

"Octopussy" mostly concerns Major Dexter Smythe, "O.B.E, Royal Marines (Retd)". He's living the lush retired life down in Jamaica, and "Octopussy" is (unlike in the movie) an actual octopus he observes while snorkeling. The sins of his past life, committed in the closing days of WWII, have caught up with him in the form of James Bond, who's pretty much figured him out. Smythe's demise, when it comes, is well-deserved, but Bond has nothing to do with it.

"The Property of a Lady" is a convoluted tale revolving around a Fabergé egg that "just happens" to have been discovered in the Soviet Union, which (ostensibly) is being sent to Maria Freudenstein, the alleged heir. This is a thinly disguised payoff: Maria works in MI6, is a KGB double agent. Fortunately, MI6 is perfectly aware of Maria's disloyalty, and has been using her as a conduit for disinformation fed to the Soviets. M and 007 hatch (heh) a scheme that will reveal the identity of the local KGB section head during the egg's auction at Sotheby's.

"The Living Daylights" puts Bond in Berlin, where "272", a Russian with extremely valuable information, plans to defect. Unfortunately, the KGB knows exactly when and where 272 plans to scamper from East to West, and has placed a sniper to shoot him during his attempted escape. Fortunately, MI6 knows about the KGB plan, and has sent Bond as a counter-sniper, tasked with shooting the KGB sniper before 272 gets plugged. This is the only story in the collection that is remotely violent. It was also very loosely adapted into the Timothy Dalton-era movie of the same name.

"007 in New York" is a thinly disguised travelogue. Bond's in the Big Apple to meet up with a female MI6 spy who is (apparently innocently) cohabiting with a KGB agent. Bond is to warn her that the CIA is on her trail, but before their rendezvous, Bond has a free day to enjoy the city, makes elaborate plans, and … sorry, no spoiler.

Bottom line: I can't recommend the book unless you're a completist. Like me. This finishes up my "read Ian Fleming's Bond tales" project, started back in 2022. (This project was in preparation for reading Anthony Horowitz's Bond novels, which I assume will be worthwhile.)

Another fine novel in Michael Connelly's "Lincoln Lawyer" series. But the LL, Mickey Haller, has undergone some drastic life changes: he's mothballed his big Lincoln, sold the others, let go his chauffeur, and now drives a Chevy Bolt. (To the discomfort of his large investigator Cisco Wojciechowski.) Whatever: Connelly has the knack of telling a compelling story that … well, I won't say I couldn't put it down, but I read it pretty fast.

The biggest change in Mickey's life is that he's dropped his previous criminal defense practice, and now finds himself suing "Tidalwaiv", a big AI company. One of their products, an AI "companion" named Clair, may have encouraged an impressionable teen to shoot his ex-girlfriend in the head. The victim's mother has engaged Mickey in order to receive a "triple-A" settlement: accountability, action, and apology. Page 35 spoiler: one of Mickey's key witnesses, an ex-employee of Tidalwaiv, turns up very dead. Everything points to suicide, but was it really?

In a nice crossover, the journalist Jack McEvoy, who's had his own Connelly series, appears here to help Mickey out with his diligent investigatory skills.

There's a brain-twisting aside: one of the book's characters mentions that she's watched The Lincoln Lawyer series on Netflix. How many layers deep does Connelly's meta-fiction go?

This is the third entry in Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series, set 30 years after the events in the second book. As previously noted, 36 billion humans have been resurrected along the banks of the millions-miles-long River, supplied periodically with food, drink, and other substances via their "grails". And instead of settling into quiet lives of Edenic bliss, a significant fraction of the populace have devoted themselves to finding the secrets behind the planet, held (they think) in a near-impregnable tower at the north pole. And (believe it or not) they can't manage to do this peacefully; much of their effort is devoted to violence, betrayal, and subterfuge against their fellow humans.

Over the intervening decades, there's been a lot of technological progress, but mainly in the service of warfare: lasers, sonar, radar, huge blimps, advanced guns, plastic explosives, and more. New characters are introduced, some famous (Tom Mix, Jack London) and some not. Progress is made, some secrets revealed, but (spoiler) the underlying mysteries of Riverworld remain mysterious. (Two more volumes to go!)

One feature of Farmer's prose this time around: he often provides distances in both normal and metric units, to an irritating extent. E.g., page 14 of my $1.25 paperback edition: "Presently, intense blue flames roared upward from the top of the stone to 20 feet or a little over 6 meters." Over and over, throughout the text.

(The book is ©1977, when there was a push for the US to convert to metric. The seventies were crazy, man.)

Last month on the blog I linked to a George Will column that favorably referenced this book by Michael W. McConnell ("Stanford law professor and former federal judge"). So I put in an Interlibrary Loan request at UNH, and voila, A few days later Tufts sent it up to Durham.

Very on-topic, given the recent "No Kings" theme adopted by recent anti-Trump street protests. It is ©2020, and a continuing thought as I read was how much more McConnell could have written on his topic based on the Biden years, and (so far) Trump II.

One example of McConnell's current thoughts is seen in the amicus brief he signed onto, along with a bunch of other Constitutional scholars in support of the plaintiffs challenging the legality of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. One of the attorneys involved, Ilya Somin, excerpts at the Volokh Conspiracy:

What unites these amici is a shared conviction that process matters—that how we govern is as vital as what we decide. The powers to tax, to regulate commerce, and to shape the nation's economic course must remain with Congress. They cannot drift silently into the hands of the President through inertia, inattention, or creative readings of statutes never meant to grant such authority. That conviction is not partisan. It is constitutional. And it strikes at the heart of this case.

This dispute is not about the wisdom of tariffs or the politics of trade. It is about who holds the power to tax the American people. May a President, absent a clear delegation from Congress and without guidance that amounts to an intelligible principle, unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs under laws never designed for that purpose? This is not a debate over outcomes but a test of structure. It asks not what should happen, but who decides.

McConnell's book is an impressive piece of scholarship, going back to the origins of the country's governmental design. Appreciate the difficulty the Founders faced; it wasn't as if they had a lot of good examples around the world to choose from! The prime example they had to work with was: England, as ruled by George III. You might remember from your history books that they were not fans.

But (on the other hand) they had a pretty decent grasp of what powers and duties were involved in ruling a country, and many of them were steeped in the works of Montesquieu, Blackstone, Locke, et al.

That said, it's surprising they did as well as they could, given interstate rivalries and suspicions, the continuing threat of slavery, and so on. Their only major botch was their design of presidential elections, which only survived until 1804.

(Minor botch: the Constitution left unspecified about which branch of government had the power to recognize foreign countries. This was sort of "settled" in 2015's Zivotofsky v. Kerry; McConnell's not a fan, calling the SCOTUS ruling in that case "less-than-obvious".)

That said, most of today's controversies about presidential powers aren't new at all. The Constitution kept some issues ambiguous! And some of SCOTUS's decisions come in for McConnell's withering criticism. Most notably, for its relevance to current events, is Humphrey's Executor, which limited the President's power to dismiss officials in "independent" agencies. McConnell is pretty convincing there.

But as legal scholarship goes, I'm not even at the "junior dilettante" level. Many of the issues McConnell discusses are currently under debate; to his credit, McConnell deals with opposing views respectfully, but also forcefully.