Current reading on High Low Brow: Ilium / Olympos, Dan Simmons The Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett Next: True Grit, Charles Portis The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson Titus Groan / Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake youtube.com/@DavesHighLowBro…

True. Johan de Witt, poor bastard. Charles II was king in England.

I get spam calls or texts ten times a day. I of course am a cantankerous bastard and report and hang up on all of them. But this flood means they must be getting successful hits on more credulous, vulnerable people. This is a real problem.

I think you will find that the lyric is: "Stop! Don't touch me there, this is my no-no square." It DOES have the virtue of rhyming. In English, which is kinda weird, since it's a song by Finnish bureaucrats trying to teach middle eastern immigrants western sexual ethics. Not sure how conversant the target audience is in English. They might just see this dance as a bunch of Finns babbling gibberish while gesticulating at their pelvises.

Next Tuesday, my video on the Urth of the New Sun will post, and that wraps up Book of the New Sun (in a couple weeks, we'll do a livestream; later, other Wolfe books). If you haven't started the Book of the New Sun yet, here's the link to my first video. youtu.be/HXcx5l5SDj0

I am surprised to learn he hadn't died twenty years ago. RIP.

One of my character defects is that when I learn a language exists, I immediately really, really want to learn it. Today I learned about Jibbali. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shehri…

This week on the Baen Free Radio Hour, part three of three of Jeremy Comeaux’s interview of @David_JWest and @DavidJohnButler on Hell on Wheels. Also, part 67 of One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name is read. Podcast: baen.com/podcast/ YouTube:youtu.be/9YHC3EK4dXs To learn more: simonandschuster.com/books/H… To get the ebooks: baen.com/hell-on-wheels.html and baen.com/one-jump-ahead.html #BaenBooks #BFRH #DJButler #DavidJWest #MLVName

Science Fiction is now. Here's a link to the SpaceX roadshow deck (the slides they showed investors). s21.q4cdn.com/184289198/file…

I will at some point talk about Robert E. Howard on the channel. If you haven't read him, he's probably a much better writing than you're imagining.

In the last 28 days, 96.2% of the views of High Low Brow are men. Curious. I'm thrilled that I'm reaching men, of course. I didn't think I was doing anything that would resonate exclusively with men. Does culture not matter to women? Do women not want to have fun? Hmmn. We'll see if that percentage holds when I start talking about romance novels. youtube.com/@DavesHighLowBro…

The Chess game in Dorothy Dunnett's PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE is one of the most intense chapters of any book I've read.

I feel bemused at the YouTube commenters who feel it's worth their time to tell me that my discussion of a book is "insincere" or that they don't like my thumbnail. I mean, thanks for the engagement, guys...?

Rural Utah turf battles go hard.

Selfishly, I took the pre-dawn walkies without the dogs. I'll get them their exercise when the sun goes down.

The Umberto Eco video is charging ahead. It makes me happy that people seem to remember Eco so well.

In which I talk about one of the bestselling books of all time -- The Name of the Rose. youtube.com/watch?v=0Tr9ltvP…

RIP Gordon Wood.

It's time for #BeyondTheCover, where we show you the spellbinding art behind our breathtaking book covers! Today we are showcasing the art created by Kurt Miller for Hell on Wheels by @DavidJohnButler & @David_JWest. About the artist: Dragon Award Winner Kurt Miller graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Visual Communication and with an Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement in Illustration. He has been in the visual communication field since 1990, going back to the days before the 3D generation. His ability to conceptualize for these clients is highly regarded and allows them to focus on the written message while he explores the visual content. He has won numerous awards for his cover art, including the Dragon Award, Infected By Art, Society of Illustrator, Spectrum 23, IC Awards, Play and may others.Currently Kurt is a full time freelance Illustrator as the owner of KMI Studio. About the book: Hell on Wheels by D.J. Butler & David J West. A CANNONBALL RUN ACROSS AN AMERICA FULL OF MAGIC Silas Danger can’t stop running. The year is 1975. Silas drives a red Pontiac GTO. Trapped in the back of his muscle car are the ghost of his sister Betty and half of the demon that killed her. He doesn’t know how she died, and he hasn’t figured out how to save her yet, but he knows that if he spends three days in any one place, the other half of the demon will catch up, kill him, and drag Betty down to hell. Silas works as a scout, messenger, courier, herald, and sometimes spy across the weird, fragmented, magical world of Other America. Dodging bridge trolls as well as alien grays, lamiae along with snallygasters, undead blues singers and also bison-headed giants, he runs errands in exchange for information that will help him save his sister. This time, he’s hired to run a deck of Tarot cards from New York to San Francisco on a tight schedule. The first complication comes when the dame with the card deck won’t just hand them over, she insists on coming along. The second is that everyone else in Other America seems to know that Silas has the cards, and everyone seems willing to kill to get them. To see more of the artist’s work, go to: kmistudio.com/ To learn more, go to: simonandschuster.com/books/H… To get the ebook, go to: baen.com/hell-on-wheels.html #BaenBooks #NewRelease #BeyondTheCover #KurtMiller #DJButler #DavidJWest