Taiye Selasi Reads “Firstborn Immigrant Daughter”

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/taiye-selasi-reads-firstborn-immigrant-daughter

Have You Read The Bet?

In college, I remember reading this fascinating short story by Anton Chekov called The Bet.

It’s about this banker who challenges his young lawyer friend to live in solitary confinement for a stipulated no. of years in exchange for a handsome sum of money. It starts off fun, but leaves you with a nice little lesson in the end.

I think of myself as that young lawyer. I like to stay by my lonesome mostly. Except no one pays me for it.

On a given non-office day, I will not step out of my home 99 out of 100 times. There’s nothing outside that is so appealing for me to get out of my inertia.

Despite all that it costs me, I still crave it.

Last Thursday was Bakrid, a holiday for us. And I took the following Friday off, too. That means I haven’t stepped out of my home in the past 90 hours. By the time I go to the office Monday, it would be 111 hours!

This is my no means a record for me. There were weeks when I lay sick, and then there was the pandemic.

I would love to change it, but my newly discovered condition of Chondromalacia patella (shitty cartilage in the knee) is a serious disadvantage.

And yes, I have one friend with whom I hang out occasionally.

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Lord Darcy" (1983) by Randall Garrett

This is a collection of all the Lord Darcy stories and the one novel by Randall Garrett. They're unusual, in that they're both fantasies and mysteries; Lord Darcy is Chief Forensic Investigator for the Duke of Normandy. It’s set in an alternate world in which magic rules, rather than technology. Darcy, a non-magician, plays Holmes to Master Forensic Magician Sean O'Lochlainn’s Watson. It’s a clever series that always plays fair with the reader.

The parallels to Holmes and Watson are close. The mysteries generally involve magic of some kind; the specifics involved are laid out so that the readers can try to work out the puzzle for themselves.

The world is quite fun. It's based on a history in which King Richard the Lion-Hearted survived the crusades and returned to England; thus the English Empire never fell. But since magic is real, it's used in daily life as well as in service to the Crown.

["Master Sean, we have a murder to investigate," said Lord Darcy.
The sorcerer caught the tone of his voice and nodded quickly. "Yes, me lord." And he walked rollingly away.
"Now, where's that secret stairway you mentioned, Sir Pierre?" Lord Darcy asked.]

The ebook used to be available from Baen Books, but is now only available in physical copies. Fortunately you can borrow the book for free from the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/bwb_Y0-DCL-013

I should note that the omnibus Lord Darcy ebook no longer seems to be available commercially anywhere, but the major ebook publishers do have smaller ebooks of various Lord Darcy material. And of course there's always Anna's Archive.

It's safe to say that if you like Sherlock Holmes, you're going to like Lord Darcy. I should also mention that two more Lord Darcy novels were written by Michael Kurland, an excellent science fiction author in his own right: "Ten Little Wizards" (1988) and "A Study In Sorcery" (1989). I just wish he'd written more.

Happy reading! 🤓📖

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