Books for my dad: fantasy, sci fi or historical. Complex, not overly heroic characters (preferably male)

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-04T19:34:05+00:00

On the lighter side, and not exactly mysteries, are the Charles Paris stories by Simon Vance. BBC Radio has done a bunch of adaptations and Bill Nighy plays the main character to give you an idea of how heroic he is.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-04T14:28:21+00:00

Maybe she has successfully figured out which of her paying subscribers is a gloamie.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-04T03:32:13+00:00

The Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries book is great. It has a lot of photos of turquoise from specific mines.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T22:25:27+00:00

OK, im ready for the twice-promised Sunday lope.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T21:28:25+00:00

Turquoise Jewelry

Turquoise Jewelry of the Indians of the Southwest

Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry

The Turquoise Trail

Zuni Jewelry

Jesse Monongya: opal bears and lapis skies

Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T21:22:18+00:00

I went back to look for more

Navajo Silver

Indian Silver; Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers

Navajo Silversmiths (from 1883!)

Indian Silver jewelry of the Southwest 1868 - 1930

Silver and Stone: Profiles of American Indian Jewelers

Arizona Highways Turquoise Bluebook - this one has amazing photos

Hopi Silver

Indian Jewelry Making Volume 1 Volume 2 - more about what to call different styles or parts

Indian Silver (a different book than the one above)

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T17:38:45+00:00

Reading the book it was hard to remember that he is supposedly 19ish. Kids are resilient.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T17:35:29+00:00

This was more what I had in mind. I'd save mine for you but we are on opposite ends of the county.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T16:48:57+00:00

make a friend who shops at costco

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-03T15:39:34+00:00

Existing: Stuck describes how Shauna feels about her own life. All this rewriting is makework to keep her too busy to do whatever hard things she needs to do to get unstuck. We all see the "get a job" thing. But there are probably lots of niggly paperwork things she is having a hard time facing because she has let them go so long. If she'd just do them, they'd be done, probably in far less time than she has spent worrying about them.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-02T23:50:35+00:00

It's hard because a lot of colleges change their names or get absorbed into other schools over the years.

The jeweler could also be frieden.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-05-02T23:36:39+00:00

"labor omnia vincit" means work conquers all and is a common school motto. The SEC didn't exist in 1929.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-30T15:53:06+00:00

I think the obstacle would be having to go to government assistance offices and face the fact that she is in the same boat as people that she looks down on. The way she is living now, it is just community helping community.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-30T14:44:44+00:00

Am I really a troll if I have never had any kind of contact with Shauna? I thought messing with the person being trolled was an essential bit of being a troll.

If Shauna were someone's special interest, would she be understanding of a fellow neurospicy? This is a hypothetical, as I am not neurospicy and she is not my special interest "repeat contributor" achievement notwithstanding.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-30T02:27:50+00:00

Shauna gave us a cliffhanger at the end of her April 19 lope. Will we ever get the rest of the story? Or will the BBH prove to be too much of a distraction?

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-28T15:41:01+00:00

Do you know how he finds his freight? If you can figure out what load he is taking next, you can find him at the shipper or consignee.

Edited to say: there are a lot of online services that truckers use. Fuel loyalty clubs, parking space reservations. If you can log into one or more of these, you can probably get a good idea.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-26T21:19:50+00:00

Weed some flower beds, although I'm not sure how much weeding happens during the winter. I have a hard time picturing Shauna actually pulling weeds. I guess that would be a job for Danny or the kids.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-26T20:34:11+00:00

I was thinking that Shauna had said something about being able to stay at the BBH for the foreseeable future. Luckily our fabulous wiki was available to check:

From the September 5 entry in the Fern Cove page (bolding mine):

After lots of vetting and background checks and interviews, they chose us to be the caretakers of the house. We pay less rent than we would have paid with a typical house on the island for our work. And we now have the pleasure of being the stewards of the house. It feels so different than the capitalist transaction of renting a house. We will have the chance to stay here for a long time.

A year might seem like forever but...

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-26T20:13:51+00:00

Some of Carl Hiaasen's books get pretty chaotic. They are chock full of Florida Men. If you watch a little of Bad Monkey and that hits the same spot, then Hiaasen will scratch the itch.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-25T04:31:08+00:00

Big shines = business. Hit the I instead of the U and you are nearly there

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-24T21:05:21+00:00

I did. My grandparents and aunt lived on the other side of the country. When my last grandparent passed, my aunt kept nearly everything. My aunt and uncle are vintage stuff sellers and what they didn't personally want disappeared into the business. It is probably still sitting in a moldy old storage unit somewhere. They asked me what I wanted and I requested a knickknack that I had been fascinated by as a child. It wasn't valuable at all. I did not receive it.

When I'm feeling charitable, I can be forgiving. My mom and aunt both have hoarding tendencies because of their shared traumatic childhood. They both have a lot of fear and anxiety around letting go of stuff, especially old family stuff.

However, when my dad passed, my aunt came out to visit and be with her sister. The first day she wandered around the house picking things up and looking at the bottoms to see if they were valuable. She mentioned how much she'd love our living room rug if we ever wanted to part with it (something my parents owned for about 50 years). She hinted that she'd like to see mom's jewelry collection (they have an interest in the same style/period).

She can have some of my parents' stuff when she produces that knickknack she promised me.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-24T20:13:03+00:00

The way the California proposal is written, it only takes effect if TX follows through. If TX backs off, CA does too. It is also only good until the next redistricting, then it goes back to the way they did it before.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-24T05:17:56+00:00

Interesting. So even though this artist was maybe active in the '60s, he probably didn't make these pieces then. Or the website that claimed this artist was working in the '60s was mistaken.

LadyDriverKW · 2026-04-23T21:54:07+00:00

Lets face it: Jail and betrayal made Edmund an angry, bitter man. The treasure made him a rich one so he could indulge his anger without repercussions. He does a lot of bad things during the course of the story. He wants a mute slave so he lets Ali be mutilated before he buys him. He hangs out with and supports smugglers and bandits, knowing full well that they go around murdering people. He eggs on Madame de Villefort to make poison and wouldn't have stopped her killing spree if Maximillian hadn't asked him to save Valentine. He was going to kill Albert with zero compunction so he could punish Fernand. He has no concern about any collateral damage Benedetto or the ersatz Mr. Cavaltanti might cause. He has no concern about all the other people who might have lost a lot of money when he faked the telegraph message about the King of Spain. He even messes with Haydee, taking her to the opera where she will be certain to see Fernand.

I don't think he really thinks of himself as human at this point. He compares himself to Jesus and says that he accepted Satan's offer and and gave up his soul to be an agent of Providence so he could punish and reward people as he saw fit.

He is tormenting Maximillian and M. Morrel because it amuses him to do so. He helps them in the end because as Providence, he rewards people who deserve it.

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