Okay, yes, I know that I have said, on numerous occasions, if Scalzi writes it, I will read it. That is just the way it is, no arguing.

Except I hadn't read this book. I had actively chosen not to read this book. Why? Because the reviews said it diverged from the classic science fiction that Scalzi is known for, and if I wanted to read not-science-fiction Scalzi, I'll read his blog. So, I skipped it.

All the way until Rob commented that it was the perfect brain candy and he hadn't laughed this hard in a while (who knows if that while is more than I day, I don't, because getting Rob to laugh is a goal of every conversation), and I have already read it wait I haven't well I should. So, as soon as I was done with The Gates of Fire (which I recommended to Rob), I started Redshirts.

Is not classic Scalzi science fiction.

Is amusing.

Yes, the Redshirt phenomenon from Star Trek is the title of the book, and yes, the characters figure this out, but there are more absurdities in the plot, resulting in an internally-consistent and thoroughly-absurd plot twist (time travel back to the authors) that is the cause for the original fanboy uproar that kept me from reading the book. It wasn't so bad. I enjoyed how all the pieced tied up nicely at the end.

Worth reading if you're a Scalzi fan, or a quirky science-fiction fan.

Dahl paused a moment before answering. “Do you know how the rich are different than you or me?” he asked Duvall.

“You mean, besides having more money,” Duvall said.

“Yeah,” Dahl said.

“No,” Duvall said.

“What makes them different—the smart ones, anyway—is that they have a very good sense of why people want to be near them. Whether it’s because they want to be friends, which is not about proximity to money and access and power, or if they want to be part of an entourage, which is. Make sense?”
Page 14

Hester looked at Hanson admiringly. “I didn’t think you were that cynical,” Hester said.

Hanson shrugged again. “When you’re the heir to the third largest fortune in the history of the universe, you learn to question people’s motivations,” he said.
Page 62

“Sure, I’ll baby-sit him until he passes out,” Dahl said.

“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.

“What?” Dahl said.

“What?” Hester said.

“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It’s just an expression.”

“Got it,” Dahl said.

“No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said.
Page 68

I read this and, yes, starting laughing out loud. I'm sure this isn't Caltech specific, but this is an actual conversation I have had.

"But they don’t know why. You do.”

“Maybe I do,” Jenkins said. “But why would it matter?”

“Because if you don’t know why something is the way it is, then you don’t know anything about it at all,” Dahl said. “All the tricks and superstitions aren’t going to do a damn bit of good if you don’t know the reason for them. The conditions could change and then you’re screwed.”
Page 87

Hanson said. “When you’re nuts, your reasoning is consistent with your own internal logic, but it’s internal logic, which doesn’t make any sort of sense outside your own head.” He pointed at Jenkins. “His logic is external and reasonable enough.”
Page 96

“In retrospect, the plan has significant logistical issues,” Finn admitted. “On the other hand, it worked. You can’t argue with success.”

“Sure you can,” Dahl said, “when it’s based on stupidity.”
Page 120

Also known as a Bold Play™ in ultimate.

“Yes, and I have training dealing with deep, existential questions,” Dahl said. “The way I’m dealing with it right now is this: I don’t care whether I really exist or don’t, whether I’m real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate. That’s something I can work on. It’s what I’m working on now.”
Page 159

I never understood writer’s block before this. You’re a writer and you suddenly can’t write because your girlfriend broke up with you? Shit, dude, that’s the perfect time to write. It’s not like you’re doing anything else with your nights. Having a hard time coming up with the next scene? Have something explode. You’re done.
Page 228

You don’t win by getting through all your life not having done anything.
Page 284

“E, don’t you ever wonder about how your life could have been different?” Samantha asks, changing the subject slightly. “Don’t you ever wonder, if things just happened a little differently, you might have a different job, or different husband, or different children? Do you think you would have been happier? And if you could see that other life, how would it make you feel?”
Page 292

“Did you want to make a confession?” Father Neil asks. Samantha giggles despite herself.

“I don’t think I could confess to you with a straight face,” she says.

“This is the problem of coming to a priest you used to date in high school,” Father Neil says.

“You weren’t a priest then,” Samantha notes.
Page 299

SAMANTHA WASN'T THE ONLY ONE GIGGLING AT THIS. Take note, Paul. <grins>

This book was recommended in a recent Ryan Holiday's book-reading newsletter. He had read the book 14 years ago, recently reread it, and was impressed with all the nuances of the book. Along with The Road, I picked up the book from the library. Related: I'm pretty sure that I read the Reading List emails faster than most people on the list, as the books Holiday recommends are usually available when I look for them, and have a backlog of holds about a week later. Is amusing to me.

The book is the telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, more commonly known in today's culture as the battle that the 300 Spartans held off thousands of Persian invaders. Now, I am REALLY not a fan of historical fiction, to the point where I might say the movie is better I dislike historical fiction so much, but, well, this causes me to reconsider my stance. The book is written in third person, and not third person omniscient, which means we see the characters' actions, but don't hear their thoughts. I suspect this is why I enjoyed it, it was a story that didn't go too far.

The basic plot of the book is, well, the Battle of Thermopylae. That story has been told many times, in many mediums. I found the surrounding elements of the book engaging. Pressfield gives us many lessons of Stoicism in the book, while wrapping them into the story, without the dryness of a textbook or the boredom of a lecture. He gives us

The parts that I appreciated the most were the elements of reality in the book. The Spartans were well trained, seeming superhuman, but they were still human. They felt despair. They felt misery. They felt heartache and pain. Pressfield gives us these, tells us about them, and shows us how habits and training and acknowledgement and acceptance all work towards becoming the people we want to be. He shows us that being a warrior was a job, and that includes embracing the suck, as Rob told me was a Marine saying. We also read about the camaraderie of the warriors, how adversity binds us, and how there a moments when we become more than just ourselves.

I also appreciated the campfire philosophy sessions, and, well, let's be real, all the shit talk.

As much as Holiday recommended this book, I strongly recommend it, too. Great book. Way worth reading.

She was trying to dispatch the child that might be growing inside her. “She thinks she has given offense to the god Hymen,” Bruxieus explained to me when I broke in upon her one day and she chased me with curses and a hail of stones. “She fears that she may never be a man’s wife now but only a slave or a whore. I have tried to tell her this is foolishness, but she will not hear it, coming from a man.”
Page: 54

This was the first and only time I saw Bruxieus truly, physically angry. He seized me by both shoulders and shook me violently, commanding me to face him. “Listen to me, boy. Only gods and heroes can be brave in isolation. A man may call upon courage only one way, in the ranks with his brothers-in-arms, the line of his tribe and his city. Most piteous of all states under heaven is that of a man alone, bereft of the gods of his home and his polis. A man without a city is not a man. He is a shadow, a shell, a joke and a mockery. That is what you have become now, my poor Xeo. No one may expect valor from one cast out alone, cut off from the gods of his home.”
Page: 69

I curled contorted in Diomache’s arms, with Bruxieus’ bulk enwrapping us both for warmth. I called out again and again to the gods but received no whisper in reply. They had abandoned us, it was clear, now that we no longer possessed ourselves or were possessed by our polis.
Page: 70

The roar multiplied threefold, then five, and ten, as the enemy rear ranks and flankers picked the clamor up and contributed their own bluster and bronze-banging. Soon the entire fifty-four hundred were bellowing the war cry. Their commander thrust his spear forward and the mass surged behind him into the advance. The Spartans had neither moved nor made a sound. They waited patiently in their scarlet-cloaked ranks, neither grim nor rigid, but speaking quietly to each other words of encouragement and cheer, securing the final preparation for actions they had rehearsed hundreds of times in training and performed dozens and scores more in battle.
Page: 154

Once, at home when I was a child, Bruxieus and I had helped our neighbor Pierion relocate three of his stacked wooden beehives. As we jockeyed the stack into place upon its new stand, someone’s foot slipped. The stacked hives dropped. From within those stoppered confines yet clutched in our hands arose such an alarum, neither shriek nor cry, growl nor roar, but a thrum from the netherworld, a vibration of rage and murder that ascended not from brain or heart, but from the cells, the atoms of the massed poleis within the hives.
Page: 159

They did not strip the bodies of the slain, as the soldiers of any other city would eagerly and gloatingly do, nor did they erect trophies of vainglory and conceit from the arms of the vanquished. Their austere thank-offering was a single cock, worth less than an obol, not because they disrespected the gods, but because they held them in awe and deemed it dishonorable to overexpress their mortal joy in this triumph that heaven had granted them.
Page: 168

“Let those we spared this day stand beside us in line of battle on that day when we teach the Persian once and for all what valor free men can bring to bear against slaves, no matter how vast their numbers or how fiercely they are driven on by their child-king’s whip.”
Page: 178

Dekton was the first person I had ever met, man or boy, who had absolutely no fear of the gods. He didn’t hate them as some do, or mock their antics as I had heard the impious freethinkers did in Athens and Corinth. Dekton didn’t grant their existence at all. There were no gods, it was as simple as that. This struck me with a kind of awe. I kept watch, waiting for him to be felled by some hideous blow of heaven.
Page: 187

“I saw Dienekes first from behind. Just his bare shoulders and the back of his head. I knew in an instant that I would love him and only him all my life.”
Page: 289

“At last he turned. He was wrestling another boy. Even then, Xeo, Dienekes was unhandsome. You could hardly believe he was his brother’s brother. But to my eyes he appeared eueidestatos, the soul of beauty. The gods could not have crafted a face more open or touching to my heart.
Page: 289

“The gods make us love whom we will not,” the lady declared, “and disrequite whom we will. They slay those who should live and spare those who deserve to die. They give with one hand and take with the other, answerable only to their own unknowable laws.”
Page: 291

“Men’s pain is lightly borne and swiftly over. Our wounds are of the flesh, which is nothing; women’s is of the heart—sorrow unending, far more bitter to bear.”
Page: 294

Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not
Page: 359

merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s own discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions. Not only to achieve this for oneself alone, as Achilles or the solo champions of yore, but to do it as part of a unit, to feel about oneself one’s brothers-in-arms, in an instance like this of chaos and disorder, comrades whom one doesn’t even know, with whom one has never trained; to feel them filling the spaces alongside him, from spear side and shield side, fore and rear, to behold one’s comrades likewise rallying, not in a frenzy of mad possession-driven abandon, but with order and self-composure, each man knowing his role and rising to it, drawing strength from him as he draws it from them; the warrior in these moments finds himself lifted as if by the hand of a god. He cannot tell where his being leaves off and that of the comrade beside him begins. In that moment the phalanx forms a unity so dense and all-divining that it performs not merely at the level of a machine or engine of war but, surpassing that, to the state of a single organism, a beast of one blood and heart.
Page: 359

His Majesty, cognizant of the catastrophic consequence for the Greeks of this betrayal, may marvel at their response in assembly to the timely and fortuitous warning delivered by the noble Tyrrhastiadas. They didn’t believe him. They thought it was a trick. Such an irrational and self-deluding response may be understood only in the light not alone of the exhaustion and despair which had by that hour overwhelmed the allies’ hearts but by the corresponding exaltation and contempt of death, which are, like the mated faces of a coin, their obverse and concomitant.
Page: 419

There is a secret all warriors share, so private that none dare give it voice, save only to those mates drawn dearer than brothers by the shared ordeal of arms. This is the knowledge of the hundred acts of his own cowardice. The little things that no one sees. The comrade who fell and cried for aid. Did I pass him by? Choose my skin over his? That was my crime, of which I accuse myself in the tribunal of my heart and there condemn myself as guilty. All a man wants is to live. This before all: to cling to breath. To survive. Yet even this most primal of instincts, self-preservation, even this necessity of the blood shared by all beneath heaven, beasts as well as man, even this may be worn down by fatigue and excess of horror. A form of courage enters the heart which is not courage but despair and not despair but exaltation.
Page: 423

“When I first came to Lakedaemon and they called me ‘Suicide,’ I hated it. But in time I came to see its wisdom, unintentional as it was. For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.
Page: 456

This book was recommended by Ryan Holiday in his June reading list. It sounded interesting, so I borrowed it from the library, read it, and here we are.

The struggle in this book is man against nature in a post-apocalyptic world which seems to be some sort of ecological disaster that blighted the world. Many scenes include ash and melted roads, along with the two main characters, a father and his son, covering their faces with masks so that they can breathe. The disaster is such that it appears there are very few people left, and the ability to grow crops or feed is pretty much gone. The remaining people are struggling to survive, which includes resorting to anything edible, including other people.

The journey of the father and son is to the ocean. They are moving along with a shopping cart, trying to survive. They appear to have been doing this together for six, eight, maybe ten years, since the boy was born, and the ocean is some level of salvation. Except it really isn't. It is more like "something to do that provides some level of meaning."

I can see where the book would be more emotional if, say, a parent is reading the book and is thinking of their child when reading it. I lack that perspective, so some aspects were perhaps lost on me. What wasn't lost on me was the portrayal of flowing empathy and refused kindness. The boy wants to help, the father knows they can't. The boy is angry the father refused to help some people, the father fears losing his son's love as the father chooses their survival. It's a hard choice, too willfully lose your humanity to keep a loved one alive.

The book is worth reading, but I'm not sure it would be one of my first books to recommend.

He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, dont you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
Page: 11

He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death.
Page: 17

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.
Page: 56

I cant help you. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I dont dream at all. You say you cant? Then dont do it. That’s all.
Page: 59

A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.
Page: 59

Because I wasn't done reading books I should have read, but didn't, in junior high and high school, nor was I done reading historical war fiction, I picked up this book. Well, that, and because it was recommended as a book that illustrates different aspects of the Civil War (Abe's a babe!). The Killer Angels was also recommended, so both entered into my reading list in the fast track.

The five Aprils of the title are the five Aprils that the Civil War spans. The story opens with an introduction to Jethro Creighton, a white Southern Illinois 9 year old boy who farms a plot of land with his father, brother, three brothers (might have been a cousin in there), and sister. There had been several other siblings in the mix, but death came to at least four that I was paying attention to (illness for three, wagon accident for one). His mother, Ellen, couldn't read, but Jenny, his sister, could. The whole family works the farm in some fashion.

While reading the book, I was struck with how much the book smacks of Early American Stoicism: work needs doing, so do it; life sucks, you carry on; tragedies happen, appreciate the bounties. The book was published in 1964, which makes me wonder if this is more "This is how we think people thought back then," more than "people actually thought this way back then." I had the same question when reading The Little House on the Prairie. Was that really the prevailing mentality? Or are we fictionalizing it the same way Gone with the Wind fictionalized "It was about state's rights!"?

I appreciated how the plot mentioned many of the leaders for both sides in the Civil War. If one has no recollection of the battles fought or the duration of the war, this book is a fine introduction to some of the names. I can't say I recognized very many of the leaders for either side. This book and various animated maps of the troop movements of the American Civil War have helped greatly in reading other American Civil War books. One can appreciate how they all come together.

As the "gentle introduction to the American Civil War," this book is great. It presents, in an easily comprehensible way, the various arguments for the Southern Secession, and puts forth a number of the counter arguments, including the one that f'ing trumps them all: slavery is an abomination that should be wiped from the face of the Earth. The initial character conversations need to be read out loud to be comprehensible, with their being written phonetically instead of being spelled correctly. I argue that contributes to the charm.

Strongly recommended, even if you aren't in junior high school any more.

Of note, when I started reading the book, I couldn't figure out if the main character and his family was white or black. Eventually we learn of hair color, and the cover of the book distinctly shows a white boy. Until then, I was uncertain. I'm guessing I didn't recognize the era properly when I started reading the book.

Jethro was depressed by her somber mood, but not by the imminence of war. He had listened to his brother Tom and their cousin Eb, the two younger of the grown boys in the household, and their excitement had found its way into his blood. Dread of war was a womanly weakness, he had discovered, evidenced by his mother’s melancholy and the tears of Jenny and his brother John’s wife, Nancy.
Page: 7

She had a way of closing her eyes briefly when exasperated as if to reject for at least a second the existence of a folly that she was bound to recognize later.
Page: 7

War meant loud brass music and shining horses ridden by men wearing uniforms finer than any suit in the stores at Newton; it meant men riding like kings, looking neither to the right nor the left, while lesser men in perfect lines strode along with guns across their shoulders, their heads held high like horses with short reins. When the battle thundered and exploded on all sides—well, some men were killed, of course, but the stories of war that Jethro remembered were about the men who had managed to live through the thunder and explosion.
Page: 10

The shot that Travis Burdow fired over Rob Nelson’s team that night was a shot fired at a society that had kicked a boy from childhood on because he bore his grandfather’s name.
Page: 12

“He’s like a man standin’ where two roads meet, Jeth,” she said finally, “and one road is as dark and fearsome as the other; there ain’t a choice between the two, and yet a choice has to be made.” She shook her head. “May the Lord help him,” she whispered. “May the Lord guide his hand.”
Page: 13

Then Ellen’s voice was heard, timid and a little tremulous; farm women didn’t enter often into man-talk of politics or national affairs.
Page: 25

Wilse brought his hand down sharply on the table. “What the South wants is the right to live as it sees fit to live without interference. And it kin live! Do
Page: 25

What about the right and wrong of one man ownin’ the body—and sometimes it looks as if the soul, too—of another man?”
Page: 26

“I’ll say this to you, Cousin John,” he said finally. “I own a few slaves, and if I stood before my Maker alongside one of ’em, I’d hev no way to justify the fact that I was master and he was slave. But leavin’ that final reckonin’ fer the time, let me ask you this: ain’t there been slavery from the beginnin’ of history? Didn’t the men that we give honor to, the men that shaped up the Constitution of our country, didn’t they recognize slavery? Did they see it as a festerin’ hurt?”
Page: 26

“Well then, I’ll ask you this: if tomorrow every slave in the South had his freedom and come up North, would yore abolitionists git the crocodile tears sloshed out of their eyes so they could take the black man by the hand? Would they say, ‘We’ll see that you git good-payin’ work fitted to what you’re able to do—we’ll see that you’re well housed and clothed—we want you to come to our churches and yore children to come to our schools—why, we danged near fergit the difference in the colors of our skins because we air so almighty full of brotherly love!’ Would it be like that in yore northern cities, Cousin John?” “It ain’t like that fer the masses of white people in our northern cities—nor in the southern cities either. And yet, there ain’t a white man, lean-bellied and hopeless as so many of them are, that would change lots with a slave belongin’ to the kindest master in the South.”
Page: 26

“Slavery, I hate. But it is with us, and them that should suffer fer the evil they brought to our shores air long dead. What I want us to answer in this year of 1861 is this, John: does the trouble over slavery come because men’s hearts is purer above the Mason-Dixon line? Or does slavery throw a shadder over greed and keep that greed from showin’ up quite so bare and ugly?” Wilse Graham seemed to leap at Bill’s question. “You’re right, Cousin Bill. It’s greed, not slavery, that’s stirrin’ up this trouble. And as fer human goodness—men’s hearts is jest as black today as in the Roman times
Page: 27

Matt Creighton shook his head. “Human nature ain’t any better one side of a political line than on the
Page: 27

We’re from the South, John; would we want men of their kind tellin’ us how we must live?”
Page: 29

“There’s strong feeling throughout the country,” Shadrach continued. “To open fire because provisions are being brought to hungry men...” “Mister, I’d like to git a word in right here.” Wilse Graham’s voice was strident with anger. “This is exactly what Ol’ Abe’s bin waitin’ fer—jest exactly what he wanted. He’s worked it so the Confederates would fire the first round, and he’s fixed it so they fired on hungry men. Well, fine! Now he kin set back and look pious at the states that has been blowin’ hot and cold.”
Page: 32

“I don’t know if anybody ever ‘wins’ a war, Jeth. I think that the beginnin’s of this war has been fanned by hate till it’s a blaze now; and a blaze kin destroy him that makes it and him that the fire was set to hurt.
Page: 39

“But the South started it, didn’t they, Bill?” “The South and the North and the East and the West—we all started it. The old slavers of other days and the fact‘ry owners of today that need high tariffs to help ’em git rich, and the cotton growers that need slave labor to help ‘em git rich and the new territories and the wild talk—”
Page: 40

When one found comfort, he was grateful, but he was never such a fool as to expect a great deal of it.
Page: 54

“I’m not eager for it either, Jeth, not by a long way. I’ve got a lot of plans for the next forty or fifty years of my life, and being a soldier is not a part of any single one of them.”
Page: 56

“I think a lot of Mr. Lincoln,” he stated in quiet self-defense after a while. “I know you do, Jeth.” “Lots of people don’t. I could name you people in this neighborhood that hate him like poison.” “Not only in this neighborhood—not only in the South, either. It seems that people everywhere are criticizing him. The abolitionists hate him as much as the sympathizers of the South do. People blame him for the mistakes of his generals; and they’re just as bitter about his grammar, his appearance, his family.” Shadrach took a poker and stirred it thoughtfully among the red coals. “I’m not wise enough to measure Mr. Lincoln, Jeth; I just don’t know. But I have a feeling of confidence and faith in him that I can’t always justify. Sometimes I’m angered with him as others are; sometimes I can’t understand him. But somehow my faith in him always comes back.”
Page: 61

[H]e wished with all his heart that he had not meddled in the affairs of a country at war, that he had let Eb work out his own problems, that he, Jethro, were still a sheltered young boy who did the tasks his father set for him and shunned the idea that he dare think for himself.
Page: 160

“But they’re bein’ cheered on, Matt. Congress—the whole country—is happy with ‘em; these boys air goin’ to believe that they be heroes for lootin’ and burnin’, fer laughin’ at distress, fer smashin’ the helpless without pity.
Page: 196

“Don’t expect peace to be a perfect pearl, Jeth,” Ross Milton had warned. “This is a land lying in destruction, physical and spiritual. If the twisted railroads and the burned cities and the fields covered with the bones of dead men— if that were all, we could soon rise out of the destruction. But the hate that burns in old scars, and the thirst for revenge that has distorted men until they should be in straitjackets rather than in high office—these are the things that may make peace a sorry thing....”
Page: 198