I'm not as familiar with her murder mysteries, which were contemporary at the time. I've read several of them but don't recall the titles ;)

the reluctant widow is a regency spy story.

and the talisman ring is a murder story (sort of), and my personal favourite.

I'll take your ngaio marsh and offer you two in return: Edmund Crispin and Georgette heyer.

... yes? idk if you're implying it's a silly thought, or saying Kazakhstan's screwed. but either way, checking the map doesn't change my mind much about that factor.

https://hir.harvard.edu/chinas-kazakhstan-gambit/

now they just need to dodge china ....

yeah, that's what I figured you meant . it's actually you "conveniently ignoring" the factor of sovereignty since accepting it doesn't suit Russia's wants in this situation. and we all know what Russia is saying. "we're gonna do whatever we want, so fuck you."

well, they can try that and see how it flies. if you take this trajectory all the way to its hypothetical conclusion: someone arrests Putin's spindly little ass, along with whoever else; Russia declares war on the entire world because they're so special and precious etc; Armageddon.

in theory. in practice I don't think anyone can predict what will come of all this. Russia is acting like a shower of assholes, a significant part of the rest of the world is clearly determined to stand against it.

the last one lost me.

the first one: I guess you're right, in the sense that that's mostly what "rule of law" means. it means that a community of nations, in this instance, kind of have to agree these are the principles we will be governed/ will govern ourselves/each other by.

in this context a community of nations did agree, by signing the Rome treaty. Russia may not have signed, but they're able to read so they're well aware that the treaty exists and what its terms are.

So thats the jeopardy they took on by invading Ukraine and committing these actions there. Big shrug. Guess it hasn't been working out for them.

not sure of your point?

their 'lack of recognition' is another meaningless russian canard. from the ICC's own website:

>Jurisdiction

The Court may exercise jurisdiction in a situation where genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes were committed on or after 1 July 2002 and:

the crimes were committed by a State Party national, or in the territory of a State Party, or in a State that has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court; or

the crimes were referred to the ICC Prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) pursuant to a resolution adopted under chapter VII of the UN charter.

As of 17 July 2018, a situation in which an act of aggression would appear to have occurred could be referred to the Court by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, irrespective as to whether it involves States Parties or non-States Parties.

In the absence of a UNSC referral of an act of aggression, the Prosecutor may initiate an investigation on her own initiative or upon request from a State Party. The Prosecutor shall first ascertain whether the Security Council has made a determination of an act of aggression committed by the State concerned. Where no such determination has been made within six months after the date of notification to the UNSC by the Prosecutor of the situation, the Prosecutor may nonetheless proceed with the investigation, provided that the Pre-Trial Division has authorized the commencement of the investigation.

that's three separate ways the investigation and therefore the warrant are completely legitimate:

1. ukraine accepted jurisdiction in or soon after 2014.
2. MULTIPLE other state parties have made requests for investigation. i'm talking more than three dozen.
3. the prosecutor can just nike it anyway, if they see fit.

nothing i've read that was written in that century has appealed to me. i disliked all of it, in both french and english.

the only exception i can remember is emile zola. i liked germinal so much that i went on to read all but two or three out of his rougon-macquart cycle. but he's the outlier.

​

edit: i lie again. moby dick. i like moby dick too.

I didn't like it because the 19th century just doesn't do it for me. but I saw what he was getting at and I appreciated that. fwiw, mb was actually the only assigned college book (any language) I had a truly spontaneous and sincere essay idea about. The way Flaubert used dimensional space suddenly got hold of me and became fascinating.

>I just wondered if anyone else had experienced things like this from toxic book fans.

I don't use other online media, so I've been spared your kind of experience. but very occasionally in here I've encountered someone being startlingly hostile and personal over some opinion that I've expressed. there are certain books and/or authors that are just ordained emperors: you deviate from the communal admiration of their outfits at your peril.

it rattles me too, if knowing that cheers you any ;-)

i've heard all kinds of people talk about this urge and thought it was a myth. until i met the writings of sigmund freud.

i picked up a sort of taster-pack volume of some of his essays from some thrift store 50 cent table. on the premise that i'm all grown up now, i've been a rock-solid feminist for 25 years, freud holds no terrors for me. i also thought the kind of lunacy people attribute to him must be another myth.

well, it is not. some of what i read was kind of interesting - i didn't realise, for instance, that there was ever a time when people might not realise dreams are an outgrowth of whatever is bothering us. but when he went sideways and started to haver, oh lord. it wans't even especially misogynist. my outrage was 100% logical.

i've never felt such a (repeated) urge to yell "what?? no it isn't!"

I do somewhat, yes. I think I came up in an era where the publishing world was a bit insular. [that's one way of looking at it; an alternative way would be to say in the old days you had to be able to write to get something published.] there was more print and radio media and less tv, much less internet, too.

the upshot of that is that my conditioning had me seeing book world of the 60s and 70s as a sort of community. I know quite a bit of background on many of the people who were big names. in addition to that, many of them wrote, at some point, about their own lives. or someone else wrote their biographies.

I find all of it interesting. it doesn't necessarily illuminate or ruin whatever they wrote, for me. it's simply interesting.

when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy: I've been a side eyed skeptic from those days too. I just read too much of it not to infer that for many of them, it was alluring more because of the "freedom" to step beyond current social constraints. that's great when it's experimenting with concepts like hey, maybe race shouldn't matter. but far too much sci Fi/fantasy just used the genre to handwave far more real emotional truths - such as, for instance, real live 10 year-olds don't necessarily want to be some adult's sexbot.

I didn't conclude anything about the individual authors -that seems to be a more latter-day hobby. but nothing much that I've learned was much of a surprise.

phew my heart. I misread "add" as "aid" and I genuinely felt it right where my pearls would be, if I happened to be wearing pearls.

I'm really pissed off.

>But it’s not clear to what extent the two objectives — arming Ukraine and pursuing peace negotiations with Russia — are conditionally linked, Fix said. “It might be that these two issues are discussed at the same time, but I would find it difficult if there was a linkage, and I find it difficult to believe that the linkage would be Ukraine only gets additional defense and security support if it agrees to negotiations.”

their own article reports this statement, yet all the rest of it seems determined to see the exact opposite in the situation.

you could reverse the names in that statement and it would still run :P this war isn't turning out to be the big breakout prigozhin was hoping either.

such a whiner this guy has turned out to be.

actually, if this progress continues I think it may be binding. you should read the details in the article.

by someone's choice, or is it not our business? there was an article about him finally winning back his copyright, sometime this year.

he's a remarkable writer but that one is not my favourite. I'm always pushing people to read a fine and private place.

dis amper asof die koeel was deur die kerk of soiets, ne.

I don't even want to speculate. I know far too little about politics in that area. but I hope (and actually believe) it's not the us.

previous us administrations have done this kind of thing, or at least had a john wayne-y mindset that fitted with this kind of thing. but it doesn't really track with Biden and Blinken, for me. however I'm not American.

oh boy. they're definitely having a bad weekend.

It is hard. I usually say "I like stuff published after at least 1920" and hope that does it. if I say lit fic it sounds pretentious and people get pissy with me, but it's probably a fair description.

same. the only exception that comes to my mind is far tortuga by peter matthiessen. I love that book.

it's told in brief, very impressionistic snatches of text, and uses very simple pen-and-ink graphics as a narrative element, which it took me some time to catch on to. the story would have me anyway, but for me the layout is needed to give the right pacing and balance to the prose. so it works. those elements contribute strongly to the "feel" of the story, as well as adding beauty to how it's told.

but that's rare.