On Writing Books

"Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book."

Nero Wolfe
From Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

On Finishing Shogun

Whew. Finished Shogun. It clocks in at over 1,100 pages and took me nearly a month to read. This was my 50th book for the year, so I've hit my usual goal. I wanted this one to be a long one since I've read so many short books. Quick review – an enjoyable piece of historical fiction that has dated fairly well. Full review at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2075227529.

On Hunting Whales and Failing

In the Heart of the Sea is not what I expected, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The book retells the story of the Narrative of the Whale Ship Essex (the inspiration for Moby Dick) using research and a more modern account from the cabin boy, discovered a few decades ago and unpublished until the 90s. (Even then it was published only by a historical society.) The actual incident of the sinking is pretty short. The book is a lot more about what happened before and, especially, the horror that came after.

On Loyalty

"You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty to his own concept of the obligations of manhood. All other loyalties are merely deputies of that one."

Nero Wolfe

From Rex Stout, Gambit

On People Named Tiny

On Restoring the Republic

“... it’s no use arguing with you republicans. You refuse to see that one can no more reintroduce republican government at this stage than one can reimpose primitive feelings of chastity on modern wives and husbands. It’s like trying to turn the shadow back on a sundial: it can’t be done.”

Livia to Claudius
From Robert Graves, I, Claudius

On Unruly Places

I am getting a lot out of Alastair Bonnett's Unruly Places, especially in regards to building unusual RPG locations.

What about a ...
• decoy city, to fool the enemy or lure in defectors.
• city built to fulfill some expansionistic agenda but which sits empty for lack of people.
• city closed because of toxicity. (The magical version of asbestos? Chaos winds?)
• pop-up village of stubborn settelrs the empire won't recognize and continually razes.
• city to which only one sex is allowed entry.

So many great ideas in this non-fiction work. It is composed of short chapters, each discussing a specific place, grouped together by types of places and coupled with intelligent analysis.