Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

Against the Machine

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

At some point during college, I tried to work out what an ideal human society might look like. This was back when I still strongly identified with the left,  but my dreams were not of a world state and a … Continue reading →

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13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

When I was a wee bairn, in the olden days when the Earth was new and dinosaurs roamed the land, I cut my teeth on reading Kathryn Tucker Windham’s collections of ghost stories. KTW, or “Kathryn” as Selmians still call … Continue reading →

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The Impossible Nazi

Posted on October 25, 2025 by smellincoffee

Yes, yes, I know. I said I wouldn’t read more in this series until I’d hit some nonfiction first — but the last book ended with the Dome of the Rock being blown up! How could I resist? The Impossible … Continue reading →

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The Improbable Nazi

Posted on October 23, 2025 by smellincoffee

In The Accidental Nazi, a historian from 1981 West Berlin was astonished to find himself inexplicably standing on a tarmac in 1941 Berlin, watching a plane carrying Adolf Hitler plow into the pavement and completely reroll the dice on Germany’s … Continue reading →

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The Accidental Nazi

Posted on October 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Can you imagine the Russians marching through Berlin? And the Americans and the British in the Ruhr? It would be the end of everything.” “It almost seems as though you can see the future,” she said. “Do you think you … Continue reading →

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Scary things & WWW Wednesday

Posted on October 22, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s Long and Short review is….”Things that Scare Me”. Swarm insects that sting/bite, obviously. Falling off bridges into deep water. The increasing dystopia of the 21st century, as technology further destroys our ability to be human and AI begins destroying … Continue reading →

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Teaser Tuesday

Posted on October 21, 2025 by smellincoffee

In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of ‘home’ has steadily crumbled under this external pressure until it is little more than a word. In a Machine anticulture, the home is a dormitory, probably … Continue reading →

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From Raiders to Kings

Posted on October 19, 2025 by smellincoffee

I can still remember being scandalized in seventh grade when I opened the next chapter in our western civ text to discover we would be studying THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. England, conquered? At that age, for whatever reason, I had … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

WWW Wednesday

Posted on October 15, 2025 by smellincoffee

WHAT have you finished reading recently? In Distant Lands, Lars Brownworth WHAT are you reading now? I just started The Normans: From Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownsworth. WHAT are you reading next? Perhaps The Devil in the White City, … Continue reading →

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In Distant Lands

Posted on October 14, 2025 by smellincoffee

When the Crusades are mentioned today, it is almost always in the context of weary self-flagellation by Westerners searching for some ersatz virtue in denouncing their own history. Forgotten are the Muslim assaults on the Eastern Empire, the conquest of … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments