Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray I come to this both wanting to dip my toe into Thackeray's output and as a big fan of the Stanley Kubrick movie. It's not often that you read the novel from which a movie was derived and find that the movie was an improvement on the original work. Shorn of such artifacts of cinema as the beautiful photography and classical music, Barry Lyndon is a much grittier, nastier tale. But it's well worth it nonetheless. The eponymous hero (or anti-hero) narrates the story and despite his boasting he's from a fairly lowly origin in the 18th century. By a combination of much deception, theft, cruelty and other devices he spends his life attempting to improve his station and stay ahead of the consequences of his actions - making his way through the army during the Seven Years War, a career as a gambler and attempts at securing himself a title through marriage. The first person point of view is a tremendous satirical device - Barry has the highest opinions of himself and describes things in an absurdly one-sided way - but it's possible to see through the reactions of other characters to him what the truth of events often are. It seemed that as well as altering the story in some ways, Kubrick toned these down considerably and here he emerges as a much less sympathetic character, particularly by the end and amidst his wholly abusive relationship with his wife. But the book has in common with the movie a great way of making one feel "present" in a time that is long past, much more so for us than the hundred or so years that it was when written.
Saw the film for the first time only last year and thought it (as has been well-noted many time) an absolute visual masterpiece. Seems a pattern with Kubrick to change the characterizations...
The Old Dog Barks Backwards - Ogden Nash Picked this up at Goodwill for the usual song. This is, I gather, a collection of Nash's poems unpublished in book form, now forming a posthumous throng. The subjects run from contemporary celebrities to aging to airline food to equality of the sexes to feeding birds in the winter. "Cheerful cynicism" is a fairly reasonable descriptor. At no point is there an old dog krabing, but there are some charming line illustrations throughout. I found that I enjoyed the poems best if I imagined Nash standing at a podium or the head of a banquet table, paper in hand, declaiming them to an appreciative audience, whilst I nodded, knowing well all the celebs being spoken about. Most of the poems pay no attention to meter and often barely make it to a rhyme at the end, sometimes so as to delightfully mangle a word for rhyme's sakend. When you see lines like these twain: It was a bloodless war, not a crude war, But imperceptibly you infiltrated such masculine strongholds as the ballot and the bank account, the highball and the highway, the lobby and the lab, the college and the country club, while emerging from the kitchen and the boudoir. you realize any expectations of poetic grace are in vain. But the poems are witty and human even if not brusque, and I'd rather be skewered by one of them than by an elephant's tusk.
The Documents in the Case - Dorothy Sayers and Robert Eustace Okay, first off, negative points to the blurb on the back cover. Quite deliberately done, the blurb says "[the documents] concealed a clue to the brilliant murderer who baffled the best minds in London, and might have outfoxed LORD PETER WIMSEY as well." Implication: Wimsey gets a shot at it and might get outfoxed, wanna watch? Reality: Well, the murderer might theoretically have outfoxed him if he appeared in this story. Bad show. The actual novel is told entirely through the form of various letters (and a few memoranda) written by or about the inhabitants of a maisonette, a husband and wife and live-in maid, and the writer and painter who come to live in the loft above them. Drama ensues, characters are developed, long digressions into the philosophies, religion, and sciences of the day occur, a very suitable reference to The Moonstone is dropped, and the maid plunges ever deeper into obsessions with sex and calendar scarves (not in conjunction with each other). A particularly delightful facet is the unreliability of all these narrators, and how drastically different their characters appear from different angles. Finally the death happens, with a ruling of accidental death, but one outside observer is not satisfied. Will he find what he's looking for? Will it be what he wants? I enjoyed this very much but was a bit discomforted with the ending (besides Wimsey failing to show up). I thought I saw Sayers drop a thematic clue, Christie-style, as to the true solution, and I was all psyched up to meet it, and then it went quite a different direction, albeit gratifyingly intensely so. I guess that only heightened my appreciation but at the same time left me feeling a bit empty?
Read two classic scifis this month. Man, they were doing good drugs in the 60s. A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer (1965). A classic spy story investigating the UN oversight of an African brushwar. Which turns into a classic alien invasion story with some of the most unnerving aliens I've seen in a while, lean houndlike creatures with skeletal beaks and four man like hands at the end of their quardripedal limbs, who have extraordinary strength and speed. Oh, and they are here by the thousands, and they have psychic technology that can either make you ignore them, make you see them as human, or totally shut down your brain. Oh, and they are here for your brains. This takes a turn into the conspiracy against the conspiracy of the aliens, and then into cyberpunk body modification - about 20 years before that genre existed. A quick tour on a submarine freighter, through a strangely rural America, and then it gets weird. LOL. You follow one of the brains who becomes self aware as a biological computer on the other side of the galaxy, and it soon realizes it is now controlling a Bolo, a 70 foot high continental siege engine, the ultimate endpoint of tank design. That's the last quarter of the book. All in all it was one hell of a ride, and Laumer tackles several concepts that could have been fleshed out as full epics in a paltry 140 pages. It was nominated for a Nebula back in the day, and wow was it ahead of its time in the concepts he was playing with. Though the form of the story still had a ways to go. Neat bit - if you ever played Steve Jackson's Ogre game, it was clearly based on Laumer's Bolos, and the sentient bolo even thinks 'I am an ogre' in this book. Hey, the greatest artists don't borrow, they steal. Oh, and I got interested in this one due to another old book, Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. A very talented illustrater's take on the most influential aliens of the golden age of science fiction, the Demons were prominent and their image remained with me after reading it in my early teens. A quick read and a lot of fun.
The second, Roger Zelazny's This Immortal. Ole Rog, between learning fencing, taking in a struggling author named George RR Martin (Martin thanks him in his foreword for the first Game of Thrones book IIRC), and roleplaying with his buddy authors in Albequerque setting up the Wild Cards series, had a definite type. And Zelansy's type was a larger than life demigod, preferably immortal, who touches on being the avatar of an Earth pantheon of Gods. This Immortal is the first of this track, and his ideas on this can be seen in his later works Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and the Chronicles of Amber. This book, published in 1966, tied for the Hugo Award for Best Novel with another minor little contribution to the field of science fiction - Frank Herbert's Dune. It was Zelasny's first award. Honestly, it starts a bit rocky, with the protagonist's interaction with his new wife, Cassandra. Cassandra has several forbodings about her husband's future, which he promptly ignores. But it quickly dives you into the world of Conrad Nomikos, and what a world it is. Several hundred years after the Three Day Incident and the end of human civilization, Nomikos is the Earth Office's Commissioner of Arts, Monuments and Archives for the offworld earth government that lives under the protection of the Vegans. The Vegans have taken much of humanity under it's wing - but also have designs on the remnants of the Earth, which has radicalized many of it's inhabitants to protect it from offworld acquisition, as the Vegans buy up huge swathes of what territory remains habitable. Earthers now live on the major island chains as much of the mainland has been heavily irradiated. And that radiation has spawned scores of dangerous mutations making Earth an incredibly dangerous place to live. But not the spiderbats - those were accidently imported from Titan, and have grown massive and taken over the ecology. Nomikos is concerned when a particularly wealthy Vegan, then enigmatic Mishtigo, comes for a cultural tour of Earth. He wants to see the remnants of civilization, and that means going to some very dangerous places. His goal is unknown. It's nominally to write a travelogue, but many humans think he's there to survey what is left of the world to see if it is worth the Vegan's time to purchase. He's also interested in Nomikos himself, and has come to realize that it is quite possible that the Commissioner has had many identities over the years, and may be several hundred years old. Along for the ride are Phil, the last poet laureate of Earth and Nomikos oldest friend, who may hate him for stealing his girlfriend 50 years before. Elaine and her husband George, uppercrust human socialites, George being a zoologist interested in the megafuana of this post apocalyptic Earth and Elaine interested in Nomikos. Red Wig and Dos Santos, well connected terrorists for the RadPol that despises the Vegans. And Hasan, once Nomikos right hand man and most adept assassin in the world - who knows that Nomikos once was the leader of the RadPol and a terrorist himself. I won't spoil the adventures they have, but you can see how Nomikos is the precursor character to later Zelasny incarnations such as Mahasmatma and Corwin, Prince of Amber. An incredibly imaginative tale that is part Gamma World, part Hearts of Darkness, with a dash of ET thrown in.
Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope & Justin Scheck Part biography, part political history - this one charts the meteoric rise of Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS). Not originally considered particularly high in the line of succession, a combination of good fortune and sheer ruthlessness has catapulted him into the position of Crown Price (heir to the throne), from which in his thirties he essentially rules the kingdom in lieu of his ageing father, having gathered all of the previously diverse strands of power to himself and controlling a fund of around $1 trillion. Mohmmed emerges as a somewhat paradoxical figure. He wants to modernise Saudi Arabia - to stamp out corruption, diversify the economy away from the reliance on oil and to lift the more restrictive religious prohibitions. But he wishes to do these things in an entirely top-down way where no dissent is tolerated, power is further concentrated to himself and opponents face harsh repression. It's a contradiction that has led to a horrific war against Yemen, the kidnapping of the Lebanese PM, the economic strangulation of Qatar and murders such as that of Jamal Khashoggi (no angel himself) amongst other brutal crackdowns, with the attendant PR disasters and a stalling of his more ambitious plans. I learned a lot about Saudi Arabia. About the vast and growing number of minor royalty. About the clientelist and highly corrupt economic system. About how the US relationship with Saudi Arabia nowadays is considerably frostier and on shakier ground than it was in the 1990s (driven primarily by the emergence of fracking and less reliance on Saudi oil). The book has a certain journalistic quality to it and it feels like some important chapters are yet to be written. The pariah status that MBS had been in danger of obtaining seems like it might be temporary as the war in Ukraine and other events push political and business leaders back into the arms of the Saudi's.
The Secret Chapter - Genevieve Cogman Irene and Kai are settling into their new posts as peace officers between the Fae and Dragons, with no more problems on their hands than figuring out who the Fae delegate will be and Irene getting a straight answer -- any straight answer -- out of her adoptive parents. But then word comes that Irene's "home" planet is on the brink of falling into chaos, and the only way to save it is by retrieving a unique book currently held by a Fae. Mr. Nemo is the archetype of "rich white collector dude with a Caribbean base" and sends them on an archetypal heist to a 21st century police state Vienna to collect a painting. Irene has to find a way to play nice with Fae and Dragons who want to kill each other and sometimes her as well, while finding herself waist-deep in Dragon politics and desperately trying to avoid doing anything that will damage the truce she worked so hard to achieve in the previous book. Who has inconvenient hidden motives? Who is more than they seem? How many people are going to get fed to Mr. Nemo's sharks? A few of the answers are visible before the author probably meant them to be, but this is one of the more fun books in the series.
Fruits Basket Again Vol. 1 - Natsuki Takaya This is a sequel to the beloved manga series from about 20 years back. This contains the first four issues of a story about one Mitoma Sawa and her adventures at high school. She has severe social anxiety issues and, on the theory it'll be good for her, two Sohma boys draft her onto the student council. Fruits Basket could get its own whole long post about its many qualities and why it should be considered legitimate t(w)een literature, but suffice to say this first volume is clearly going for more of the same as opposed to "something completely different" and I welcome that. The characters are simply and boldly drawn, with room left for nuance. The feelings are real. The interactions are entertaining. At the same time, this is clearly set after the events of Fruits Basket, with the children of the characters taking center stage now. Hajime is blatantly spoiler and spoiler's son, even being drawn basically like his father and with a caption teasing his parents for being bad with smartphones (yes they would be), Mutsuki is at a guess his rival's son with the girl he met late in the manga, and there are a bunch of other descendants scattered around for fans to pick up the breadcrumbs on. Ironically, the most explicit indications of the timeframe come from side characters, with the daughter of the leader of the original Sohma Fan Club expanding her focus to the whole Sohma family (meta-commentary on fandom?) and one of the teachers probably being the little brother of Tohru's friend, he gives his name but I forget what the brother was called. The author goes out of her way to tease the fans by never actually dropping any names or showing any of the original characters, even to the point of Mitoma visiting the Sohmas for dinner--ooh who will we see~~?!--only to find that the parents are out. The differences are profound enough to make this a new story rather than hitting the same old beats all over again. Perhaps the biggest one is the new Sohma generation, who after the spoiler was spoilered in F.B. have a chance to be almost normal, sane people. We meet a lot of them in a short period of time and, aside from Hajime being as easily tweaked as his father was, there's nothing to suggest they have any problems that would turn this series into an epic like Fruits Basket, where practically all the 9,000 Sohmas we met had capital-I Issues. But this counterbalances the other big difference in Mitoma. Tohru Honda drove the positive themes in Fruits Basket with her simple, optimistic outgoing nature toward the whole human race, while even the few extroverts among the cursed Sohmas had to restrain themselves with the public. Mitoma's issues derive from being rejected by her peers when she was little, which fed on itself over the years until she is constantly telling herself to stay away from people, she can do nothing right, she just annoys everyone without even knowing why they're annoyed. So it's the same kind of dynamic in the reverse direction. Listening in on Mitoma's issues actually takes up a large part of the first volume. This could be annoying, but the author portrays this kind of inner struggle so true to life, with nuance and not just a trope come to life to serve an intended purpose in the plot. Characterization is one of the top draws in Fruits Basket and it's working again here. And Mitoma drops the "woe is me" long enough to realize that people are trying to be kind to her and decides she'll do her best to rise to their challenge. Mitoma also suffers from an absentee mother, whereas Tohru had her relationship with her late mother to buoy her through the rough patches of life. I was a little worried that this would be a letdown, but aside from not seeming to have enough plot threads to develop into the epic that was Fruits Basket -- and really, can a mere mortal pull that off more than once in a lifetime? -- everything seems in place to be up to the author's par. The balance of similarities and differences feels just about right, with the positive worldview from Fruits Basket still present. I just wonder if Creepy Girl wound up getting Kyo's teacher, because that really seemed like it would be a May-August romance.
A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution - Carol Berkin Mainly an account of the Philadelphia convention that produced the Constitution, with an account of its ratification and a glance at Washington's early presidency as well. It feels a little more lightweight than I hoped for. What analysis there is seems to be good, e.g. Berkin explaining the reasons why the delegates were swift to declare the proceedings secret. She also explains the advantages the "Federalists" had over the opposition in the fight for ratification, e.g. they were better organized, they had worked out all their arguments for the Constitution over the long arduous months of hashing it out, the newspapers were mostly on their side, and they seized for themselves the title of "Federalists" which would really have better applied to their opponents, whom they called anti-Federalists despite being nothing of the sort. But the actual narration of the proceedings feels like it is mainly a blow-by-blow summation of the proceedings, with some insight here and there as to individuals' tactics and thoughts, as if the author were reading a more detailed account and summarizing as she went. The lack of verbatim exchanges or thesis statements or other, different levels of prose are what I think I feel are lacking. Several big takeaways are that 1) a lot of the delegates didn't expect anything they came up with to last more than a decade or two, 2) they were all fearful of abuse of power or a descent into monarchy or other undesirable systems, or the big states dominating the little ones, and much of the debate was spent on erecting and shoring up defenses against same, 3) Congress was expected to be the leading part of the government, full of the best the nation had to offer, with the executive branch mainly just carrying out their wishes, until partway through the delegates had a panic attack and beefed up the presidency a bit more as a check against Congress, 4) no Bill of Rights because all the states already protected all the important rights, and it's not like we could ever have more states enter the Union right guys? or the wrong person gets into power and suddenly we need a national backup law to protect a freedom? that would never happen 5) as a result of all this the Constitution really is, however intelligently, a collection of compromises and best guesses rather than some precise geometric proof of political truths 6) a government that can't collect any sort of income to pay itself with is still one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard There's a list of the delegates toward the end with a ~1-page biography of each, which is nice. The smart people back then really did bounce around between law and business and clergy and medicine and all the branches of politics. A surprising number of them ended up destitute.
Industry and Empire by Eric Hobsbawm It's surprisingly difficult to find any "big history" of the industrial revolution - so having stumbled upon this one by a noted Marxist historian, I jumped at the chance. The first half of the book is about the industrial revolution in Britain - how it came about and how it transformed the country. I learned much more from that than the second half, which goes over 20th century territory more familiar to me. It seems that there were numerous causes of the industrial revolution - each by itself necessary but not sufficient. These included the existence of capitalism, food security and incentives in government policy. But Hobsbawn links the process closely to the British Empire. The demand created by both a large military and privileged access to world markets were decisive, the home market being far too small and not yet wealthy enough. Other comparable European nations lacked these advantages and were unable to industrialise until much later. The revolution can be divided into two phases. The first (starting in the late 18th century) was based on cotton, textiles and the like, primarily for export. It was not driven particularly by new technology and did not lead to increased living standards. What it did lead to was squalid urban concentration, some very wealthy people, and threats of a social explosion. This is the situation analysed by Karl Marx, written about by Charles Dickens, that of the Peterloo Massacre. The second (in the late 19th century) was based on technology - including those of steel, railways and so forth. This time there was a considerable uplift to living standards - but Britain was exporting in order to build the economies of her competitors as the likes of Germany and the United States got in on the act. First mover advantage came with a cost - the UK had 'baked in' some business and industrial methods which became obsolete and which were difficult to reverse. The Empire provided her with an easy out - trade became focused on it rather than on competing for other markets and further ground was lost. By the 20th century she had been surpassed in important areas and as time progressed her export base declined in relative terms. What industry remained was focused on the home market and eventually the UK became just one of a number of rich economies. An update to the book (originally written in the 60s) reviews the impact of Thatcher and deindustrialisation, placing the UK in a difficult position at the turn of the 21st century. I found it a very worthwhile read. At times it can become bogged down in statistics, but that is probably common in works of economic history. Hobsbawm has written extensively about other matters and I might check those out as long as his bias towards the Soviet Union (apparent once or twice in this volume) is kept at arms length.
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert It seemed a shame to stop after reading 4 books out of the 6 in the main Dune series, so I decided to return to it. Following another time-jump of thousands of years, the life and death of the God Emperor is now well in the past, yet the consequences are still central - as humanity experiences an explosive "scattering" amidst the stars. One of the main protagonists of the series - the Bene Gesserit - take centre stage as they attempt to deal with some of those returning. Two things remain intact from the prior books. The first is the opacity of the plot and the motivations of the various factions. The second is the weirdness of those factions. Unfortunately Herbert loses his grip on both of these. The build-up is very drawn out and when the dominoes do fall near the end, it's frustratingly quick - with many of the key actions happening "offscreen". And it is hard to maintain disbelief when you're asked to believe in an entire civilisation whose central function is to control men using sex. It's not all bad. Miles Teg is an interesting character (although he suffers from the above problem at the end of the novel). The Tleilaxu get much more exposure here than they have previously, and they're a very interesting element. The Ixians are also given a little more depth. But overall, I do have to agree with the consensus that this is where the quality of the series really goes off the cliff.
Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande This comes highly regarded and the winner of various prizes a few years ago. Written by a surgeon, it examines the experiences of people and their families relating to end of life care. The main point is that this care ought not to be solely a medical issue, as it has come to be in most cases - and that quality of life should be prioritised over mere quantity. Gawande hammers this point home with reference to several real-life cases from his own experience, where painful treatments and lack of communication made dying a much less dignified event than it should have been. Ultimately these stories include that of his own father. Occasionally these are moving but they are also quite repetitive and the point seems a little laboured and obvious. Also examined are various models such as home-living and hospice care. Euthanasia ought to be a much larger part of this conversation (it's raised only cursively). The more gaping hole is the lack of reference to or recognition of socio-economic factors. Costs are barely referred to at all in any of this, an astonishing omission when examining such a major part of the US healthcare system. I may be cynical but I feel that that reduces this exercise to one of middle-class sentimentality and not quite the powerful narrative I was sold. Somehow it is being adapted as a movie. I'm not clear how that could work.
Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War by Diarmaid Ferriter It's the 100 year anniversary of the Irish civil war and there is a lot of material being released, as well as discussion ongoing about it and related events. I've enjoyed Ferriter's other work - he's a serious historian - and so this looked appealing. It's decidedly a book of two halves. The first is a narrative and analysis of the actual events - how things started and how they developed. It's an absorbing read offering new insights and information. I came away from it with a new repulsion for various aspects of the conflict. Firstly the British role in stoking it - by threatening war were the treaty not adopted and then issuing an ultimatum for the government to deal with the IRA. Secondly the governments methods - they essentially ended the war using a policy of mass execution and the new state was ruthlessly right-wing. And thirdly, the senselessness of the anti-Treatyites pursuing a lost cause - with no hope of victory and a primary grievance that most of them would adapt to within a few years anyway. The second half of the book I was less impressed with. Ferriter details the aftermath of the civil war, including the lives of those who fought in it and how it was a political faultline for decades. Much of this is based on excerpts from military pension records - which I believe were not widely available until recently. They illuminate how poorly veterans were treated and how the issue became a political football. But we didn't need several chapters recounting personal stories of poverty. Ferriter's writing is always a little dry and this section is difficult to wade through. Had it been shorter I would be able to recommend this one more wholeheartedly.
Short-story masterpieces - Vol. IV - Russian - J. Berg Esenwein (ed.) and John Cournos (trans.) Short stories by six Russian authors, five of whom I hadn't read yet seeing as none of them are Gogol or, um, the other guy we read in college. This is a 1912-13 edition, so Esenwein's warm, gushing, literary-theoretical introductions to each author are of historical interest to give some idea of the contemporary perspective on Russian literature and the featured authors in particular. E.g., Esenwein names Dostoevski, Tolstoi, and someone named Turgenev as Russia's greatest novelists. Anyway, all six featured short stories are affecting, all of them memorable. The most haunting for me is probably Garshin's "Four Days", about an idealist soldier left behind to slowly perish alongside the Turk he killed in combat. This is a nice dip into Russian literature for someone whose tastes do not run toward immersion in the kind of, ah, melancholia that Russian literature is known for.
Hemlock at Vespers: Fifteen Sister Fidelma Mysteries - Peter Tremayne This is *checks notes* a binding of "advance uncorrected proofs" that somehow ended up in a Wisconsin Goodwill, collecting all the short stories about a 7th-century Celtic princess nun with a white belt in law. Well, how could I resist? The author is IRL a Celtic historian who initially wanted to illustrate a woman practicing legal advocacy in that setting and who evidently enjoyed it enough to keep writing about her. The stories are nothing amazing, but good enough to scratch the detective fiction itch while also providing insight into the time. There's a good balance between focusing on plot and "let me tell you all about my specialty". Good diversity in setting and crime and some nice twists. A few of the characters, like King Sechnasach, are historical fact, but I believe the vast majority are the author's invention. The weakness, aside from the typos inherent in this being a proof copy, is that these short stories were all originally submitted as one-offs to various periodicals and themed collections, and so some space has to be taken up establishing the same facts over and over. I'd be interested to see what the author can do in one of the novels he's written about Fidelma, where he has more space to establish character and Fidelma doesn't have to sweep her charmingly unkempt red hair out of her eyes fifteen times over.
The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope Disappointingly, Zenda is not the name of an evil insane wizard who shoots fireballs and lightning bolts . . . but there is a castle with a dungeon. Rudolf Rassendyll is a dissipative young British gentleman who bears the genetic markers of a Ruritanian prince's scandalous dalliance with a British lady some generations back. On a whim he himself decides to visit Ruritania, running into the current king who is quite taken with this foreigner's resemblance to himself. It's all smiles and good humor until the king's evil brother makes his move. Rudolf finds himself caught up in a desperate, adventurous plot to save a king, a country, and the most beautiful woman in the world. It's well-plotted, well-paced, and sharply written with appealing characters. All in all, a breeze to read. Even if there are no wizards.
I Sing The Body Electric! - Ray Bradbury A collection of short stories. I very much enjoyed all of them. A lot of high-concept ideas, some good old-fashioned sci-fi about lost Martian cities and robots, a couple of "normal" stories about the Troubles and a man on the spectrum, and a baby that pops out of his mother as a blue pyramid. Bradbury very much writes about the people involved and their feelings and reactions. A lot of big splashes of colorful dialogue and monologue. Where Heinlein would very explicitly lay out the moral of his entire story through conversation, Bradbury often chooses to lay out a smaller, more "local" idea (except in the title story, where he lays out several of them). Definitely interested in reading more by Bradbury.
A Dawn Like Thunder - The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight - Robert J. Mrazek The story of one of the most decorated (and killed) American flight squadrons of WWII, focusing on their experiences from Midway through Guadalcanal. The author interviewed as many of the survivors as he could find and read diaries and letters (and poetry) of others. The book reflects that by focusing on the points of view of the squadron's men, with the commanding officers of the opposing fleets thrown in as needed to give the full picture. It's a very good read, lots of little incidents outside of battle, following the squadron's lives and personalities in and out of battle, and keeping the action clear without bogging down in details that would belong in a formal treatment of the campaign. It feels like a pretty comprehensive record of the unit's experience and you can tell almost from page one that the author got most of it from one horse's mouth or another.
The Black Enigma - Bart Somers (allegedly) 1965 space cheese. In the 75th century, Super Duper Awesome Commander Craig has just gotten back from a difficult mission and is contentedly spending some time with his passively devoted fashion supermodel girlfriend, only to be put on a case that threatens the existence of the Empire and maybe the universe. The Black Enigma, a giant gaping nothingness, is expanding. Two entire fleets have been sent to explore it, only for contact to be lost the moment they enter. Fortunately a new ship made of superduperium has been built that will withstand whatever mysterious forces made the fleets vanish (and Craig also gets several similarly overpowered gadgets a la Bond). So Craig goes in all alone, finds an empty solar system, time travel hijinks occur, there's a sexy girl and telepathic alien slave jerks, punches are thrown, gotta kill the supercomputer that set itself up as a god over a decadent civilization, you know the drill. Oh and a lot of cool-sounding futurey jargon and tech coexisting with cassette tapes, vacuum tubes, and laminated paper. Always entertaining.
Fallen Founder: the Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg As usual, it took me much longer to get thru this than it should have simply because I have so little time to just sit and read these days. I also don't find Burr a particularly engaging subject, so that slowed me down as well. Isenberg gives us 414 pages of well-written biography, tracing (as these things typically do) Burr's life from birth thru education, political rise, political fall, and finally his death. Along the way she goes into considerable detail about Burr's influence on founding-era politics and of course the famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. Burr was a major force in the post-revolution period, being the prime mover of New York politics. He was Jefferson's Vice President during Jefferson's first term, but the President and the party turned on him, seeing him as too much of a threat to Jefferson himself. So he was minimized and eventually ejected from politics. The major triumph of the book is that it presents a much more full and richly developed version of Burr than what historians generally give us, which is little more than a caricature of "that guy who killed Hamilton." Burr was involved in a ton of shit, politically, legally, and economically. Like many of the movers and shakers of his time, he was a speculator in land and other ventures, always dancing on the edge of financial ruin. After the main body of the text, Isenberg provides an extensive section of notes, fleshing out details that would have been a bit tedious to include in the main narrative. And this, my children, brings me to the end of my stash of Founding Fathers biographies, at least the ones in dead-tree editions. I have a couple ebooks yet to go thru. I generally count the "founding" era as being from the French and Indian War up thru the War of 1812, so I've got a lot of material yet to explore.
Star Trek Voyager: The Nanotech War - Steven Piziks This is pretty good for a VOY novel and honestly above average for a Trek novel in my experience. The ship is critically damaged in an ion storm but manages to save an alien race's Zefram Cochrane in the process. They tow him back to his planet and find that the local technology is 60% nanites by weight, down to the clothes the locals wear. Of course not all is as it seems and eventually our heroes find themselves in peril. There's a little science that's shaky even by Trek standards, but the author takes advantage of the textual format and 300+ pages to create a non-human race with a culture that reflects their technology. Some careful handling of first contact with a planet that's only technically warp-capable. The inevitable planetary factions are presented as made of people rather than just Good Guys vs. Bad. This is set after Paris and Torres marry but before Neelix leaves, which allows for a lot of P/T scenes. The author thoughtfully retro-foreshadows C/7 as well, with Chakotay helping Seven learn about playground bullies and how boys act when they lose their fear of cooties. Even Neelix and Harry get some positive bits where they get to be good at their jobs. All of this is good and the poor science is largely excusable. 3/4 rating on the Trek scale.
Star Trek: Voyager: Dark Matters I: Cloak and Dagger - Christie Golden Remember that time Voyager ran into a wormhole that led to the Alpha Quadrant but OH SNAP! it was too skinny to get the ship through but there was a guy on the other end to talk to but OH SNAP! it was a Romulan but they gained his trust and found they could beam people through the wormhole but OH SNAP! he was in the past so Temporal Prime Directive says they can't escape this show so easily but they gave him messages to give their loved ones when the time came but OH SNAP! he died probably too early to send those messages? And remember how dark matter and dark energy were all the rage at the turn of the millennium? Sure, we all do! Turns out the Romulan was actually making wormholes on purpose. The Tal Shiar gets wind of his contact with a future ship and demands he help them re-establish contact so they can capture it. Well, they catch him warning Voyager and Janeway has him beamed aboard for his safety. A mysterious jerk from a species calling itself the Shepherds introduces himself to the Romulans and says "I'll give you these totally awesome dark matter cloaking devices if you'll use them to capture Voyager and their little Romulan too." Meanwhile it turns out that the wormholes the Romulan was making are contaminated with dark matter. Now, for once Trek gets the bleeding edge of science right in that dark matter is stated/treated as only being detectable via its gravitational effects . . . but that's normal dark matter. Dark matter that passes through a wormhole or other subspace disruption turns eeeevil and does evil things to baryonic matter, and also apparently breeds like rabbits whenever the current danger level isn't high enough. So Voyager has to find help fast before its systems and crew fall apart. We also find out that handheld tricorders are so sensitive they can scan a distant lifeform and tell that its DNA has all the usual TACG bits but they're paired differently than ours. There must be miniature transporter sensors in those things. The same sensors that won't let you beam through a few miles of rock. Whatever. 3/4. Plenty of action but less character than the last one.
Star Trek: Voyager: Dark Matters II: Ghost Dance - Christie Golden The plot has split up a bit. On the ship, Torres leads a team to figure out a dark matter - eating orb that a Shepherd quest-giver NPC gave them. This is the least entertaining part of the book. The team includes the hot blue alien chick that Harry's unerring instinct for unattainable hot chicks locked on to in the first book. Unfortunately, she's from a planet split between religious luddites and uber tech nerds who despise each other's cultures, and she can't get over how he can just sit there and play music with his own hands like an animal. Anyway they figure out the orb and save a bunch of ships full of self-important legalistic jerks and then the planet but the jerks kidnap Janeway in lieu of arresting the Romulan who started this mess. At the end of the last book, Chakotay grabbed an injured Tom Paris and jumped into a big shiny light because it seemed like a good idea. Now they're on the luddite half of the blue alien planet and the natives aren't sure whether to kill them or keep them. Here we see a lot of both sides of the planet with some good ideas and some pretty horrible attitudes that will likely lead to a genocide attempt in the last volume. Finally, the Tal Shiar chief suspects that the reason their fleet they wormholed to Voyager got its butt kicked might have to do more with the dark matter tech than with anything the future Starfleet ship did. (If they'd accepted Voyager's hail they would have known this. Romulans beating themselves with their own mistrust.) But she'd better investigate fast, because Shepherd Lhiau knows she doesn't like him and he's gaining the Empress's trust . . . It's about the same quality as the first volume and adds enough new details to avoid a middle volume syndrome of just playing out the known plot threads from the first part. The luddites being walking Universal Translators is a little convenient but that's Trek for you. Golden does a good job of balancing the plot threads and character development in the space she has to work with. 2.5 or 3 / 4.
My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown From the vantage point of today and the post-Brexit mess that the UK finds itself in, more than a decade after he left office, Gordon Brown presents an impressive, almost mythical figure - a competent and serious British politician. I've begun to enjoy political memoirs and of all recent prime-ministerial tomes, his was the most appealing. It's far from the finest of the genre but it does make one appreciate the achievements of New Labour (in the domestic sphere at least) and underlines how far things have deteriorated since they left office. As probably the most powerful Chancellor in the history of the role, Brown takes credit (and credibly so) for many of those achievements. And having become PM, his response to the financial crisis was impressive - both domestically and internationally - before being sadly frustrated by an election defeat and a change of direction towards austerity. On the flipside, he skims lightly over the Iraq debacle taking little involvement at the time but admitting to some doubts. With retrospect he consigns it to the category of a mistake rather than malignancy. One doesn't expect otherwise but it still makes one think less of him. The relationship with Blair is up and down, largely due to the latters alleged violation of repeated promises to hand over power earlier than he did. I'm told that the story is told differently by others so it's hard to know what to believe. Ultimately while illuminating on a political level, and while Brown does broach personal matters such as the death of his child and the loss of most of his eyesight, too much of the book is written in the measured tone of a public relations document. I'm wondering if this is reflective of his famously private persona - almost a defense mechanism. By keeping things at such a high-level - about policies and the debates around those, he offers only a limited insight into what living in this world is actually like.
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell Campbell examines the universal themes underlying pretty much all world mythologies and shows how those themes inform our everyday lives. Presented as a dialogue/interview with Bill Moyers. This is one of the best explanations of the basis for human belief systems you’re ever going to find. A brisk 287 pages.
Kings for a Day by Niall McCoy Gaelic Football was my sport for many years, both as a participant and as a fan. One of the standouts from that was in 2002 when my county team, Armagh (for whom I was never good enough to play with at top level) won their first and only All-Ireland title. 20 years on, this is a history of the successful season and the team that achieved so much. The period covered is actually several years - from the genesis of the team in the mid-90's through to the latter 2000's as they seek to repeat the success. Much of the book is drawn from interviews with the participants and enough time has passed to allow brutal honesty. We hear about some of the conflicts, some incidents that aren't widely known. About what those involved were thinking as human beings as they strived, as well as the sheer dedication to a goal. All very different from the somewhat banal PR that sportsteams tend to exude. It's an enjoyable, easy read with many interesting insights and anecdotes about the period. What stands out is perhaps that a single title - while an enormous achievement and an exhilarating thing to witness - was less than was deserved.
Ulysses by James Joyce Reading what is effectively the defining work of our national literature seemed like something I ought to do at some stage. It's reputed to be one of the greatest novels ever written and the pinnacle of modernist writing, due to its multiple points of view. The story describes one single day in the life of Leopold Bloom as he travels around Dublin - while back at home his wife cheats on him. It parallels Homer's Oddysey, amongst many many other literary allusions. The final chapter is almost pornographic and I'm not surprised it caused such a controversy. However I found it a terrible slog. I've remarked on Faulkner and one or two others previously that they're not really written to be read - but to be studied. That's even moreso the case here. Every chapter is written from a different point of view in a different style. One is stage play. One is a single sentence running for the whole chapter. One is written in archaic forms of English. And so on. Much of this is simple unreadable and I found that the primary effect was simply one of disorientation. It's clear that there's a lot going on. A lot about Irish national identity. About masculinity. About literature itself. It has been influential in terms of how it presents streams of consciousness and other techniques. But I must temper this by suggesting that many of the experimental styles are also a failure. Ultimately it would take multiple readings to form a clear picture. That is an activity for English professors and their students and not one I have the inclination for.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker I was bought this book somewhat randomly as a 40th birthday present, the sentiment being that it was either the most acclaimed, or best selling of that year, or both. It's the story of Celie - who has a lot working against her. She's poor, black, a woman and a homosexual in early 20th century Georgia. The novel takes the form of a series of letters written by Celie to God, and eventually to others. These open with a palpable sense of fear as she is abused as a child, then separated from her children and her sister before being subjected to conditions of virtual slavery. For the reader this provokes a rare kind of anger. However - just when I was reflecting that it was effective at that but questioning the utility of that emotion, the story developed wonderfully into one of struggle, redemption and forgiveness. The monstrous antagonists of the novel are shown to be victims themselves, whose power falls away when confronted. It's a vivid account of African American life, pulling no punches about the complicated legacies of slavery and racism, but also about the internal problems of violence and broken families inside the black community.
