The Bottoms and Paradise Sky are outstanding historical novels. The Thicket is just a bit behind them and is pretty dark as well. The first three or four Hap & Leonard novels are excellent. Pretty much any of his short story collections are worth a read (though there’s a fair bit of overlap). The Best of Joe R. Lansdale and High Cotton are both highly recommended.

Messiah
Gore Vidal, 1954

This is a story about how a minor cult-like movement known as Cavism is formed and then quickly grows into a major religion that eventually takes over the US and much of the world (except, notably, the Islamic countries). The titular messiah is a man named John Cave (the significant initials are remarked upon in the book), who was an assistant mortician from the Seattle area. He’s not a very sophisticated person, and his ideas are rather simplistic: the basic idea is that death is not to be feared and avoided, but rather gladly accepted when it comes. What’s notable about Cave is that he has an odd charisma and an almost hypnotic gaze – which plays well once he appears on television. Against all expectations, Cave and his message become wildly popular and eventually supplant every other religion within a matter of about two years. Of course, his message gets subjected to numerous interpretations and reinterpretations by the members of his inner circle, and gets turned into a death/suicide doctrine by some, while Cave himself eventually seems to outlive his use. The book is narrated as a memoir written by a man named Eugene Luther (the surname is, obviously, symbolically significant, but it’s also notable in that the author’s official name was Eugene Luther Gore Vidal – he later dropped the first two), one of Cave’s earliest adherents, a bored East Coast intellectual with deep knowledge of Classical history and philosophy, who becomes a member of the movement’s inner circle but who is later branded as a heretic because of certain disagreements with the accepted Cavist doctrine. In fact, his memoir is being written 50 years after the main events, when Luther is an old man in failing health, living in exile under an assumed name in Egypt.
There is well worth reading for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it’s a really well-written story, but Vidal also delves into many religious, philosophical and political themes here in a very thought-provoking way – which should come as no surprise if you’ve ever read any of his non-fiction works, the guy was really knowledgeable in all of those fields. You can also see it as Vidal anticipating, among other things, a number of death cults in the US, like Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple or Heaven's Gate. And I can’t help wondering if he was also basing some of aspects of the origin of Cavism on L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, which was just being established in the early 1950s when Vidal was writing this book.

What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown

Keith Winton is an editor of pulp science fiction magazines.  Things are going well...the job is good.  His boss likes him.  He's making headway in romancing a lovely editor of romance magazines.  And then a freak accident from a failed rocket launch thrusts him in to a different reality...one that, upon further review, bares a striking resemblance to one of the space opera's from the stories he edits.  Now Keith Winton has to try to survive in a world where he can be shot on sight for being an alien invader.  Where the Earth is united in an intergalactic war.  And he has to hope he can survive this mad universe and find a way home.  

This is a re-read but, honestly, I didn't remember anything but the very basics of the story.  This is a very early use of parallel universes and an explanation of the classic multiverse in SF.  A good book and historically important.  It breezed along, which was nice.  I have seen this sometimes described as humorous and I have to wonder if that's solely on the basis of Brown's reputation for writing humorous SF.  Because this is not a particularly funny book.  It's light, but you're not getting anything like Brown's "Martians, Go Home."  It is a recommended read, particularly if you are looking for seminal SF.  

Finished the last bookof the History of the Runestaff (Book #4 The Runestaff) by Michael Moorcock



This was not one of the Moorcock Eternal Champion series I sampled in high school, so was a first time read for me. I found this series to be uneven, but I am glad I read it.

-M

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Ian Mortimer

While I was pretty familiar with the broad strokes of the life of Edward III, but was by no means prepared for the deep dive of this biography.  I certainly should have been, as Edward III was one of the most consequential monarchs in English history.  Taking far more after his grandfather, Edward I, than his poor father, Edward II, Edward III was a giant of foreign adventures, extending English territories to their greatest extent in France at the start of the Hundred Years War that it had been since the reign of Henry II.  He was also a very successful monarch at home, regularly calling Parliament, regularly listening to The Commons and setting a standard for letting Parliament have a voice.  

My biggest complaint is that Mortimer subscribes to the theory that Edward II wasn't killed and was kept in hiding in Italy following the deposition by Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella.  I don't find the evidence compelling and it just kind of smacks of the penchant for conspiracy theories.  I do think that other than that Mortimer gives us a very good bio of a very important king.  Under Edward III, England truly became a great power.  He introduced innovations to warfare that had far-reaching impacts on the course of war and to the politics of Europe as it became clear that commoners with projectile weapons could defeat knights on horseback.  Mortimer also did a very good job of showing us the later years of Edward and the impact his aging had.  He was the longest reigning English sovereign until Victoria and it probably was detrimental that he outlived his eldest son, Edward, the Black Prince.  

Overall, an interesting and thought provoking biography.  I'd now really like to read good bios of both The Black Prince and John of Gaunt (Edward's fourth son and one of the richest and most powerful men in England during his life).  It also definitely raises a lot of alternate history speculation, particularly had Edward chosen to advance on Paris following the Battle of Crecy instead of besieging and taking Calais.  

Just finished my fifth read of Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May, and once again, it had me in tears, it had me laughing out loud, it had me gaping in astonishment at the unprecedented effects the author achieved using layout of words on the page to control the reading pace, to convey more than simple straight text could ever do via color, font, voice, and format, it had me philosophizing over the high concepts lurking under the surface narrative. I almost never re-read a book, especially not an 800+ page book, but this and the other four volumes are as close to genuine magic as I have ever experienced in my life. One of the more well-worn premises in this series is the idea of reality/history being subtly altered after the fact--the Mandela Effect--but these books manage to convey that through the most mind-blowing method I've ever had the delight of experiencing: every time I read it, I come across events that I could almost swear didn't happen the previous time I read it, as if the books were being re-written in small ways while they were sitting on my shelf between readings. I think MZD is accomplishing this because the story is so dense that some elements are inevitably forgotten, but also because the events become clearer after the reader has already been exposed to later developments in the story, but don't sink in the first time around. But then there are some that seem completely straightforward and unambiguous that I think "Wait, I would have remembered that from the last time I read it, wouldn't I?"
It's a challenging work, written in nine (plus) very distinctive voices, an intricately intertwined narrative in which each chapter picks up immediately following the previous one, time-coded for your convenience. Each volume includes an ancient history short story, a related/unrelated short story, an animal story, two serial installments, two pages of graphic narrative, in addition to the primary story about nine (main) characters and a mysterious cat, an invention that can receive scenes from the past, the criminal drug trade, high-tech conspiracy, murder investigations, the Armenian genocide, but primarily, it's about an epileptic girl who's one of the most unforgettable fictional characters I've ever read. 
Like all of Danielewski's works, there is a high likelihood that "This is not for you."
But man, oh man, it's for me.