Month: November 2025

Of all the sets of authors’ books which I would complete in 2025, the smart money would be on the Ben Wolf books I bought in 2024 and 2025 especially as I have stated my goal to read them in case I am again in Davenport, Iowa, in October. But it turns out I have completed the three books I bought from Julian Lynn at ABC Books in 2019–I previously read Divine Fruit in 2019 and Yoga’s Devotional Light in 2020. This book took me a while because the title sort of seemed like it would be hints at diet and whatnot, but that’s not what it is at all.

First, though, a story from the ABC Books book signing. I guess I was talking to Mrs. E., who used to attend our church, about church or other people from church before picking up the three Hindu-influenced books by Ms. Lynn (which are unsigned for some reason, or at least this one is). After I left, Ms. Lynn expressed surprise that a church-going person would pick up her books, and I guess Mrs. E. eventually gave the author an answer she could accept: He is a poet. Given that Divine Fruit is a collection of poetry, maybe she thought I bought them all in solidarity with a fellow poet. Truth be told, I buy too many of these books both to help out ABC Books and to encourage the authors.

At any rate, this book is not a dietary guide. Its basics are that the Four Gates are considering:

1. The short term affect on my vitality
2. The long term affect on my vitality
3. The short term affect on society’s vitality
4. The long term affect on society’s vitality

It comes in an early chapter, so it’s not like I am spoiling the whole book for you.

It focuses a lot on the concept of vitality, which is the, I dunno core energy of your person, breathing exercises, and self-improvement the yoga and Hindu way.

So it’s not as deep as say post-sesshin talks from Shunryu Suzuki or Joko Beck, but I suppose it’s helpful if you’re into yoga. The book doesn’t smell like essential oils, but the target audience probably has some handy even today.

One thing I did dispute, though, was a couple of exhortations to leave behind toxic or unuplifting relationships once you start your journey. I bet this eat pray love-styled advice blew up a lot of families when some wives started taking yoga and got this message, and ultimately led to unhappier lives and less vitality for those involved, including the women. But I espouse stoicism, which is not far off of these teachings but definitely differs in vital ways.

Ah, gentle reader. I bought this book in the swirling mists of pre-history where by “pre-history,” I mean before I started tracking book purchases on the blog–probably not long before, as the real book sale frenzies would have not begun before the 21st century–well, not much–although it might come from my Ebay days where I bought books like this for a buck or less each and listed them for a couple of bucks a throw on Ebay. I did come up with boxes of books then, and when I gave up on them, I put them in my sainted mother’s yard sale, and she once set up the night before, and several hundred dollars’ worth of books, or at least books I paid several hundred dollars for, were ruined.

But not this book. It remained in my to-read stacks, most recently (and maybe for 16 years) in the hall between the offices. I must have pulled it out and put it back many times, as I remembered that mid-70s cover with the, what, sasquatchish creature on the cover? The back of the book looked interesting, but not compelling, but eventually the time came to read it, and that time was last week.

So: On a cold planet which has a narrow habitable band between a sun-blasted side and a side where the sun never shines–and where the narrow band has a year of sun and a year of darkness–a species called the Onhla are dying out from a disease which sickens but does not kill the last, Hult. He’s on his way to human settlements with invaluable furs from the starside of the planet where only the Onhla can travel. They’re stolen when he’s sick, though, but they create a sensation as traders from a galactic corporation want more. Hult agrees if the traders will help him to another planet where some Onhla were taken centuries ago so he can find a mate. They do, but the senior trade delegate dies on the return trip, and the more militant and haughty junior member of the group “renegotiates” the deal by demanding additional furs, but Hult renegotiates by killing the two troopers and breaking the back of the now-senior trade manager. Who comes back to the planet generations later (space travel, you know) seeking revenge on the Onhla race and helps the grandson of the previous tyrant to track down a renegade band who can remember the old ways to Starside. The expedition goes bad for everyone.

So, I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but some of the midlist (Midlist! The copy I have is a book club edition, which meant people were buying stuff like this in enough quantities to print book club editions, although perhaps this was the bulk of the print run at the time.), the midlist (he repeated so you could remember where we were in the sentence) the midlist science fiction was far more speculative than what you would get later. I guess in 1977, you could find the James Blish Star Trek books, and Star Wars was about to hit big, meaning science fiction would suddenly be awash in space opera. But with these little midlist books, you never knew where they would go. This one skips generations, but with the main character evolving into almost a god amongst the creatures on the planet including the humans whose settlement grows over time (but will probably decline, as the epilogue is the trading company abandoning its contact with the planet).

So perhaps I should not have dodged this book for decades. It made me want to try out more of the era, but maybe not that boxed set whose first volume I picked out the night before last but will likely put back the next time I pass by the chair. I will continue to dodge that boxed set for another decade or maybe forever.

Unlike The Last Christmas Show, this is a Christmas novel, one I bought in September 2024 to spread among my stacks so when the season rolled around I would be able to find a Christmas novel to read as is my wont.

This short book (181 pages, but the print surface of them is small) is a fantasy novel wrapped in a frame story. In the frame story, a father of a family whose children have become teenagers tries to get them to participate in the family Christmas traditions, but they resist, so he tells them the story that is the bulk of the book. In that story, a young man with little Christmas spirit (much like the family in the frame story) cuts across a wood in the snow so he’s not late home falls into the snow globe he’d received as a gift. Within it, the meaning of Christmas is lost; he comes upon a city with the craziest enforced holiday cheer and consumerism (lots of puns about Christmas traditions abound, making it not unlike Rickshaw Riot in that way). To get home, the boy must befriend a young lady whose relation lives in the castle on the hill who provided the spirit of Christmas but has given up. And, doncha know it, he saves two or three Christmases that way (in the snow globe, in the boy’s own family, and in the frame story by serving as an example–and it is the dad from the frame story who had this adventure in the first place).

I mean, it’s nice and all, what you expect from a Christmas novel. I guess it didn’t take off–it didn’t become a series as so many other titles like it did–and it did come with a CD sampler of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas songs. It was sealed, and I started to unseal it, but I realized it was a sampler and had no new music on it, and I already have most or all of it on CD, so I preserved the collectibility of the book. Which is not likely to be that collectible at all. Apparently they’re five to ten bucks on Ebay.

Still, by getting started early, I might get in more than one Christmas novel this season. Or I’ll clutter my reading with the rest of the Ben Wolf books I have. Maybe both.

Rest assured, gentle reader; this is not my annual Christmas novel–but it does have Christmas right in the title, so it seemed a timely read. When I picked this book up eight years ago, I must have wanted to save it for a season such as this.

At any rate, this is partially a picture book which explains its large size, but it’s basically the story of Bob Hope’s Christmas tours to various bases between World War II and Vietnam. As I mentioned, it has lots of photos of the celebrities that he brought with him and photos of different environments/bases where they performed. He includes a number of gags and quips, often self-deprecating, and the final chapter is actually a transcript/script of the final show he put on–although they were not probably that big of a deal at the onset, by the 1960s, a film crew came along and cut the shows down for broadcast television in the U.S.

The tours took place over Christmas and were often whirlwinds where they would hit multiple bases in multiple countries and sometimes on different continents and ships at sea. The troupes put on several shows a day and then had formal dinners at night with the brass or with royalty (Hope and crew often visited the King and Queen of Thailand when in Bangkok).

You know, I kind of give Bob Hope a bit of short shrift in my memories of the comedians who were old when I was young–I remember his later television specials in the 1980s, but that’s about it. Contrasted with George Burns, who had contemporary movies out at the time, I guess. And I’ve watched Burns’ television shows and read many of his books, so he seemed younger and more vital. But I’ve seen some of Hope’s movies, and it’s easy to overlook what he did for troop morale in three wars (in some situations, for different generations of soldiers with the same family). And the shows were broadcast on television. I cannot think of a contemporary who had the same impact–Gary Sinise, maybe?

Oh, and researching this post (reading the Wikipedia entry) indicates that this might have been the last television program, he continued on USO tours up until the first gulf war.

I have another Hope book around here probably very similar–I Owe Russia $1200 is somewhere–so I’ll have to pick it up sometime soon.

I picked this book up after reading The Turquoise Lament because I have a twee goal of reading all of the Ben Wolf books I own if not this year then before I find myself in Davenport, Iowa, again.

When I read his Tech Ghost series, most recently The Ghost Pact and The Ghost Plague, I said that his plotting and pacing seem to have been heavily influenced by video games. This book absolutely leans into it. In it, a techbro CEO who steps all over the little people, which is everyone else, pushes ahead to launch an immersive online video game universe over the concerns of a very attractive underling and his brother’s objections. He straps himself into a pod for the launch, and he’s then in the game with a billion other players. Loot boxes from the sky drop initial classes, and he lands a good one–until a woman comes and steals his class information, leaving him alone to take on the only thing left–a rickshaw driver. He becompanions a space octopus NPC and goes on a series of sidequests as he tries to find a way out.

He comes to learn that the woman who stole his class is actually the woman who tried to stop him in the real world. A programmer/analyst, she built in some extra features into her avatar for troubleshooting, but it seems like the AI in charge wants to keep them in the game forever–or to kill them, which might or might not be permanent.

The authors clearly had a lot of fun with it. They make puns on a variety of video game properties, make light of a lot of the conventions, and because of the game world’s child-friendly rating, they get to throw in a lot of fake-swearing where the bad words are replaced by innocuous equivalents.

So a fun read, a little more smooth than Wolf’s earlier work. As he has a co-author here, I’m not sure if it’s the other author’s influence or if his own writing has improved. Probably a bit of both.

That said, I’m not sure how fast I want to delve into other 300+ page books in the series. Fortunately, he probably won’t have too many more available next October, and its novelty might reset by then–and I’ll remember I had a good impression from this book.